:fiction 10
"Perhaps the best comic book series of all time; I would say *The
Sandman* as a whole ranks higher than anything even Alan Moore has
-written."))
+written.")
+ ("Good Omens"
+ :fiction 8
+ "A friend of a friend decided one evening that I needed to read
+so-called *normal people books*, and so she lent me *Good Omens*. It
+was an enjoyable read and unearthed vague memories of comic book
+magazines I read when I was small and the name *Sandman*; thus through
+one book I found something far greater.")
+ ("American Gods"
+ :fiction 6
+ "Entertaining, but the end was a bit much rushed."))
((|William| |Blake|)
"Blake is my [[William Blake][favorite]] of the English poets. His
unique use of relief etching and watercoloring makes for very
((|Marcus| |Aurelius|)
nil
("Meditations"
- :nonfiction 6
- "I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on Stoic
-philosophy. It is a fairly quick read; I read each of the twelve books
-before sleeping over the course of two weeks. Toward the end of the
-collection things get a bit topically repetetive (e.g. acting
-according to the nature of man is reflected upon over and over), but
-each repetition looks at the topic in a slightly different light. A
-number of passages I found quite inspiring, and scratched them down in
-my notebook to ponder further."))
+ :nonfiction 4
+ "At the time, I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on
+Stoic philosophy, and it was a fairly quick read (fifteen minutes a
+day over the course of two weeks for me). Nowadays I've read
+Epictetus, and I suggest reading his *Discourses* instead."))
((|Søren| |Kierkegaard|)
"Kierkegaard was a master of style and philosophy; his writing is
interesting even if one finds the theistic extentialism espoused
conflict between the views.")
("Fear and Trembling"
:nonfiction nil
- "An interesting dialectical lyric contrasting Despair and Faith."))
+ "An interesting dialectical lyric contrasting Despair and Faith.")
+ ("Repetition"
+ :nonfiction 10
+ "He who despairs of esthetic repetition gets none; he who despairs
+of ethical repetition receieves the esthetic. Is it true then that no
+repetition exists? Is transition all one can hope for?")
+ ("The Concept of Anxiety"
+ :nonfiction 7
+ "...Very clearly an early work of Kierkegaard. It is rather formal
+and difficult to get through. I'd recommend reading a lot of other
+Kierkegaard before this. "))
((|Thomas| |More|)
nil
("Utopia"
by being read by far too many angsty teenagers who see (and relay)
only Nietzsche the asshole rather than Nietzsche the master of the
polemic."
+ ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
+ :fiction 8
+ "A masterpiece of indirect communication depsite the occasional
+flaw and overly dramatic passage. Certainly a book worth reading many
+times over the course of one's life.")
("Beyond Good and Evil"
:nonfiction 8
"A somewhat more comprehensible, if a bit less aesthetically
("On the Geneaology of Morals"
:nonfiction 9
"*On the Geneaology of Morals* is a wonderful book of three
-polemical essays on the origin of moral/ethic valuations, and the
+polemical essays on the origin of moral/ethical valuations, and the
blindness of modern philosphers whose very thinking is tainted by
these valuations unknowingly.")
("Ecce Homo"
("Euthyphro" :fiction nil)
("Apology" :nonfiction nil)
("Crito" :fiction nil)
+ ("Phaedo" :nonfiction 10)
("Protagoras" :fiction nil))
((|Aeschylus|)
nil
utterly worthless.")
("Heaven and Hell"
:nonfiction 0
- "Blah blah LSD blah blah Mushrooms blah blah Peytoe blah blah I'm
-Aldous Huxley I'm a pretentious jerk. Don't bother."))
+ "Blah blah LSD blah blah Mushrooms blah blah Peyote blah blah I'm
+Aldous Huxley I'm a pretentious jerk. Don't bother.")
+ ("Brave New World"
+ :fiction 7
+ "A nice light read; the story is obvious and by the hundreth page
+the ending is clear, but it provided a bit of a break from heavier
+reading for me. I must say that anyone who has read *Brave New World*
+and does not despise modern society has the intellectual capacity of
+an *Epsilon*. *1984* is perhaps easily misread, but *Brave New World*
+is very clear with its message and is a bit like being smacked upside
+the head with a hammer."))
((|Douglas| |Adams|)
nil
("Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (collected)" :fiction 8)
("The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" :fiction 6))
((|H.G.| |Wells|)
nil
- ("The Island of Dr Moreau" :fiction 7)))
+ ("The Island of Dr Moreau" :fiction 7))
+ ((|JRR| |Tolkien|)
+ nil
+ ("The Lord of the Rings" :fiction 9)
+ ("The Silmarillion" :fiction 10)
+ ("The Lost Tales" :fiction 7))
+ ((|Bjarne| |Stroustrup|)
+ nil
+ ("The C++ Programming Language (3rd edition)"
+ :nonfiction nil
+ "Once upon a time I was fifteen and I read this book. It was more
+or less what taught me how to write programs just large enough to do
+useful things, and so shall forever be remembered by me. A year and a
+half later I stumbled upon a little language called Scheme and fell
+down the rabbit hole."))
+ ((|Confucius|)
+ nil
+ ("Analects" :nonfiction nil))
+ ((|Mencius|)
+ nil
+ ("Mencius" :nonfiction nil))
+ ((|Walter| |Miller|)
+ nil
+ ("A Canticle for Leibowitz" :fiction 10))
+ ((|David| |Lamkins|)
+ nil
+ ("Successful Lisp"
+ :nonfiction 8
+ "After learning Scheme, I read *Successful Lisp* and was able to
+pick up Common Lisp fairly easily."))
+ ((|John| |Allison|)
+ "The author of the rather amazing [[http://scarygoround.com][Scary Go Round]].
+I highly recommend procuring the printed collections; the printing
+quality is superb (full color on glossy paper), and the long story
+arcs are much easier to read."
+ ("Looks, Brains and Everything" :fiction nil)
+ ("Blame the Sky" :fiction nil)
+ ("Skellington" :fiction nil)
+ ("The Retribution Index" :fiction nil)
+ ("Great Aches" :fiction nil)
+ ("Ahoy Hoy!" :fiction nil)
+ ("Heavy Metal Hearts and Flowers" :fiction nil)
+ ("Ghosts" :fiction nil))
+ ((|Mike| |Carey|)
+ nil
+ ("Lucifer (series)"
+ :fiction 6
+ "Of the *Sandman* spinoffs, *Lucifer* stands out as the best for
+the first half, but then the writer appears to take on far too great a
+task, and, with the introduction of some disagreeable character
+relations, fails to execute the story as well as it could have
+been. Still, it was worth reading to the end even though most of the
+stories after issue 35 or so were merely ok. If you like Kierkegaard I
+suggest issues 2, 3, and 62--they show the form of the incommensurable
+relation of the single individual to the absolute perfectly."))
+ ((|Anonymous|)
+ nil
+ ("Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz" :fiction nil))
+ ((|Alisa| |Kwitney|)
+ nil
+ ("Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold" :fiction 8))
+ ((|John| |Milton|)
+ nil
+ ("Paradise Lost" :fiction 10))
+ ((|Yevgeny| |Zamyatin|)
+ nil
+ ("We" :fiction))
+ ((|Kurt| |Vonnegut|)
+ nil
+ ("Cat's Cradle"
+ :fiction 9
+ "There are few books that I have started to read before sleeping
+and found myself watching the sun rise after finishing. *Cat's Cradle*
+is definitely required nerd reading."))
+ ((|Robert| |Anton| |Wilson|)
+ "Or rather, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea (but my book script
+updating thing doesn't do multiple authors"
+ ("The Illuminatus! Trilogy"
+ :nonfiction 10
+ "e-cash MP5K-SD Adriatic Bellcore Lon Horiuchi 9705 Samford Road
+jihad New World Order AVN FTS2000 ANZUS subversive SAPO PET Armani"))
+ ((|Edgar| |Allan| |Poe|)
+ "ULTRAGOTHIK"
+ ("Tales of Mystery and Suspense"
+ :fiction 6
+ "This is when I learned that I still don't really like late 1800s
+American literature all that much. Some of the tales were worth
+reading, but most of it was not in a style I like all that much."))
+ ((|Albert| |Camus|)
+ nil
+ ("The Plague" :fiction)))
+
+
HCoop / clinton / website / src / unknownlamer.org.git / blobdiff