Taking a break from the Manosphere today. Instead, I’m reading the new biography of Joan Didion.
What are you all reading?
Categories
Yes, we have no manosphere, we have no manosphere today
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman.
Well, half listening via the audiobook while doing chores, half reading when I can sit down and read.
That last bit’s been scarce lately since most of my sittin’ down time’s been consumed by Fallout 4.
I’m currently (and slowly) working my way though Jackson Benson’s biography of John Steinbeck. It is a bit of a doorstop, but I got a job about 6 months ago as the archivist of a Steinbeck collection, so it is a hazard of the job, really.
It also helps to just know the answers to people’s questions, rather than having to look stuff up.
I will be starting “In Dubious Battle” soon too. James Franco is directing/starring in a movie of the story and it is set to come out next year, so I figure I should be prepared. It is exciting; a movie of a Steinbeck work hasn’t come out since 1992 when Gary Sinise and John Malkovich did “Of Mice and Men” and that one has been done about three times now. “In Dubious Battle” has never been done on screen or stage before, as far as I know.
Meditation is the answer. It can create peace on earth. Who hear meditates?
I’m reading “Virtues of ZIKR” Translation of the Urdu book Faza’il-e-Zikr by Shaikhul Hadith Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kaandhlawi translated by Shafiq Ahmad.
Zikr is a type of meditation.
And now I’m responding to others.
This will be a bunch of posts written as I rest as need dictates.
@Aerinea – *book buddy high five*
There were actually some passages from Chapter 6 (“Princes of the Air”) that I thought provided a sound explanation for geek exclusivity / gatekeeping (and why, even though I know it’s silly, I actually nurse a constant, low-level annoyance at popular culture’s current embrace of All Things Geeky).
@Heinz D, @CD – There’s a new Ms Marvel compilation coming out in early December.
@ej, @bluecatbabe – Have you heard Radiolab’s program re: Henrietta Lacks?:
http://nwpr.org/post/radiolab-podcast-immortal-life-henrietta-lacks
River Of Shadows: Edweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, by Rebecca Solnit. Funny, this thread is supposed to be a break from misogyny, but it so happens that in an essay called Men Explain Things To Me (excerpted here https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/), Solnit talks about the time a man at a party mansplained to her about her own book. River Of Shadows is the book.
Anyway, all that aside, it’s a good book. It combines threads of biography, history and philosophy, with really engaging prose. You should read it.
@Fruitloopsie – The part of your comment about pictures got me thinking: Are graphic novels (especially the ones with cleaner design) easier for you than straight print?
As a child, my cousin was diagnosed as having convergence and processing problems (there’s a name for it, but I’ve forgotten it – it’s not dyslexia because she’s diagnosed with that, too), I’m pretty sure that my Mom and sister are running around with it undiagnosed, and I’m beginning to suspect that it may be an issue for my middle child, too.
For her, I’ve begun pushing graphic novels and she’s really gotten sucked in – we’ve even “caught” her reading after lights out lately 😀 😀 😀
I think she has an easier time reading without strict lines of text.
Currently reading some wonderful Sam/Lara fanfiction of Tomb Raider, as well as the new Black Widow YA novel, and just finished Monstross by Majorie Liu.
Why? Beccause it got the Mad Max Fury Road endorsement from a good friend of mine, and I was sold.
I am reading “The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia,” part of the gripping Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Such is the glamorous life of a professional author.
My book struck out on the first round of submissions, and my agent wants to shelve it and focus on my second book, which isn’t nearly as good but has a dragon in it and will therefore sell. Nobody wants historical fiction.
I’m on an Octavia Butler binge. I’m reading Blood Child but I’m a little sad because I fiinished Kindred, the Parable books, her version of vampires, and the Lilith books. Blood Child is just a compilation of her short stories – short read looks like.
I’m slowly trudging through Lolita, still unsure how I feel about it. Well written, for sure, but ugh, even knowing HH is an unreliable narrator and what he has to say about Lolita isn’t what Nabokov thought about little girls, it still makes me feel dirty.
And thus I’m thinking about reading Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (again) because seriously, Emilie Autumn sucks me into her book just as much as her music. That or figuring out where I put that book on saltwater aquariums, but that’ll just make me want to convert the 29 gallon and I so cannot afford that right now.
Oh and WHTM, I’m reading that too 😛
“Well written, for sure, but ugh, even knowing HH is an unreliable narrator and what he has to say about Lolita isn’t what Nabokov thought about little girls,”
We can’t know that for sure. A “novel” is a great cover.
I have just finished ‘The Woman Who Died A Lot’ by Jasper Fforde and am trying Pratchett’s ‘Darwin’s Watch’ again – I get distracted easily. I also read the first 3 chapters of ‘Take It Like A Man’ Boy George’s autobiography when I was in the bath.
No, no, I meant “coloring books that aren’t sold on the bottom shelf” if you catch my drift. Ones that aren’t marketed towards kids, but aren’t…raunchy.
I just purchased two steampunk-themed ones from Barnes & Noble online today (here and here). My crayons will be here on Thursday, because I ordered a 7$ USD big 120 count box of Crayolas from Target.
I honestly wanted to get the 200 count bucket, but they apparently don’t sell them anymore, and the only places that still have them want way more money than I was comfortable spending.
I read Lolita when I was 13 and I thought that there was no way that Nabokov wasn’t a massive pervert – he just seemed to know WAY too much!
David, I just finished the Dideon bio myself, and it’s inspiring me to go back and read “Slouching Toward Bethlehem.” Right now I’m halfway through Jonathan Franzan’s “Purity.”
I’m currently reading the new Star Wars novel. Got to the bit that was so controversial about the same sex couple, and passed right over it before I remembered “Oh, that was the bit everyone was so complainy about.” It astounded me.
Charlie, that Hitler book sounds amazing. I love alt-history, I’d love to hear how it goes.
Gabrielle, I need to read more Atwood, particularly as a Torontonian.
Next on deck for me is Seveneves. Got it from the library, didn’t realize I’d requested the audiobook on CD. Figuring out how to deal with that now. Probably rip it (all 25 CDs) while I can have it out, then listen to it after and trash it.
I just finished “Vitamania – Our Obsessive Quest for Nutritional Perfection” by Catherine Price. Good general history of the discovery of vitamins and the rise of the supplement industry. She is clearly skeptical about the need for vitamin/mineral/et cetera supplements, but not obnoxiously so. In the section on the development of MREs, I learned that the Army lab responsible is called the Combat Feeding Directorate and the in-house term for military personnel is Warfighters. Also, the ingredient in multivitamin pills that turns your urine neon yellow is riboflavin.
Earlier, I read Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here”, which was MUCH grimmer than expected. I cheered myself up afterwards with ” The Castle of Otranto”.
I was reading a book on Surrealist art earlier, and at my desk (though I haven’t re-opened it) is a collection of essays by Aldous Huxley called On Art and Artists that I’ve read a little off. Interesting stuff, though occasionally showing its age– and not in a good way– when it comes to anthropology. (The essay “On Tradition and Individual Style”, written in 1934, touches on some of the racial theories put paid to by WWII, but Huxley, in a good case of Fair for Its Day, suggests that culture rather than race is a much bigger influence on artistic traditions and styles. He also notes that there aren’t really European “races” as was thought of at the time.)
@Robert: So what’d you think of Otranto? As early Gothic goes, I got a lot more out of Beckford’s Vathek.
@PI trying to find colouring books that aren’t bloody mandalas or cheezy repeat patterns or sodding pseudo tattoos, is hard, especially if your on a limited budget. I use colouring books alot with my kids for quiet chat time, to listen to their feelings and troubles. I got a couple of Kew Gardens flowers ones and the Auberon’s birds of north america for my eldest and general ones for my youngest. I found one called complicated colouring which is really dense tiny pictures all over lapping.
we use gel pens rather than crayons, but I’d love to get steam punk, alt history or forbidden planet robot stylee, but keying colouring books into Amazon gets reams of choss. If you find any let me know
Mockingbird
I never read a graphic novel (I least I don’t remember ever reading one) before they are comic books/manga right? Or they’re much longer? There are times I read comics I espesically can read when they’re big print and not that many words on each page. Sometimes I wonder if I do have some sort of reading disorder (not dyslexia) most of it comes from ADHD having little to no patience, being distracted and forgetting.
Anyway has anyone heard about the ISIS attack on Lebanon?
*at least not *I least