I've been reading a bit more recently:

Neuromancer - Was kinda cool, but I don't know if my ebook was fucked up, or the book was just jumpy as shit, so I stopped 38% of the way through.
Shogun - I read this in highschool, but stopped for some reason, so I went ahead and reread it. Very good book; I wish there were a direct sequel.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Pretty cool book; I recommend it.
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Not as douchey of a book as I thought it was going to be. It was definitely insightful without being sociopathic.
Fahrenheit 451 - An interesting book. I thought it ended kind of abruptly though. I would have liked to have more backstory about the dystopian society.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Reading this now, but it's pretty riveting so far. As one can imagine, it's about mental illness, and well, it's not as dry as I thought it would be.

[quote="Blank"]One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Reading this now, but it's pretty riveting so far. As one can imagine, it's about mental illness, and well, it's not as dry as I thought it would be.[/quote]

I remember reading this in high school and liking it a lot. I never read any other of Kesey's books, though. Has anyone here? Any recommendations?

I have just started reading a book about ginkgo trees. They are so fascinating, I was pleased to find a detailed volume at the local library about them.

There was a random Gingko tree along the road in Boston about halfway between my job and a Trader Joe's that a friend pointed out to me. I hope they move it to somewhere it can grow to full size someday, as that small square of dirt along the sidewalk is a sad kingdom for such a majestic tree.

Finished [i]One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest[/i] and spent the last two weeks reading the Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss, namely, [i]The Name of the Wind[/i] and [i]The Wise Man's Fear[/i].


I enjoyed it a lot and it was quite refreshing to read some fantasy again.

Patrick White - The Vivisector...

Picked it up in a hotel, pretty nice surprise. I like the style. Synopsis: Hurtle Duffield loves only what he paints. The men and women who court him during his long live are, above all, the materials of his art. He is the Vivisector, dissecting their weaknesses with cruel precision.
I also read Galapagos and Breakfast for Champions by Vonnegut. Galapagos was funny/interesting...I enjoyed it. Breakfast for champions, not that much.
Some non-fiction I have read: Nature as Measure, and, The Gift of Good Land.. books about ecology and agriculture, pretty cool reads.

edit: here are some cool Murakami shirts https://www.kulturaclothing.com/collect ... x/murakami
I definitely gonna buy the Wind-up Bird Chronicle shirt.

[quote="Marekenshin"]There was a random Gingko tree along the road in Boston about halfway between my job and a Trader Joe's that a friend pointed out to me. I hope they move it to somewhere it can grow to full size someday, as that small square of dirt along the sidewalk is a sad kingdom for such a majestic tree.[/quote]

The Ginkgo book is fantastic! It's written by (Sir) Peter Crane and is really everything I could ask for from a nonfiction book--it is accessible to non-botanical types like myself, and is written in a beautiful and engaging way. I have learned so much about these trees, and their long existence on the earth. I also started stealing little ginkgo seedlings that had sprouted up under an old female tree downtown and replanted them for myself (I figure that they would be pulled out, dismissed as weeds, by some overzealous park maintenance person anyway )

On the other hand, I am [i]still[/i] working on the History of the Somali People by I.M. Lewis. I think it's considered one of the more authoritative books on the subject, but it's totally opposite in style and passion from the Ginkgo book--it is the old-fashioned, ultra-dry history book. It's not very user-friendly either...there are some maps provided, but as I'm not totally on the up-and-up about cities in Somalia, I struggle to get a picture in my mind. Can't a decent girl get a map of the imperial partitions throughout the years?

[quote="Jomei"]I checked off what must be on a literary bucket list somewhere and was reading Salinger's Zooey in a Japanese bathtub yesterday.

Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans is going well so far, too. His style is elegantly British-feeling, but where his writing shines is in his little insights into intricacies of human interaction--and in his ability to tell a story.[/quote]

Haven't read that one but his [i]The Remains of the Day[/i] is just beautiful. Been meaning to check out some of his other books.

Not reading much lately, just finished Amy Poehler's [i]Yes Please[/i], a nice fluffy fun read.

[i]I am Cat[/i] (Natsume Soseki)--Brilliant! Soseki must be one of my favorite novelists. I would be interested to compare the translation to the original Japanese and see what discrepancies exist. I spoke to several Japanese students who said it was a rather difficult read for them.

[i]The Earth Moved[/i] (Amy Stewart)--An accessible, nonscientific book covering the life and work of earthworms. I used to be phobic of worms, but in the past few years I've warmed up a bit to earthworms--however I couldn't shake the urge to scratch my scalp whenever I read it.

[i]Rayuela[/i] (Julio Cortazar)-- It's a small bit challenging for me in Spanish. Of the two options of reading (either reading straight on from chapter 1 and ending at 51 -or- starting at 1 and following a prescribed order for reading the chapters, jumping around) I've chosen the latter for my first read. So far, so good.

[i]How to Build Your Own Greenhouse[/i] (Roger Marshall)--A very nice and informative how-to book. I doubt I'll ever have the luxury of a greenhouse, but it is nice to learn about them anyway.

I finished my first reading of [i]The Revolution Betrayed[/i] by Leon Trotsky. This was my third attempt at reading this one, and it took me a few months to get through. It is essentially a top-to-bottom analysis of the Soviet Union as it existed by 1936. Trotsky sought to describe why Stalin and the bureaucracy he represented were squandering all the gains of the Russian Revolution of 1916... and he does just that.

I have a few complaints with the edition (though this is apparently the best one available to date), mainly that there are a lot of Russian words included that aren't given full definitions or enough context. I was using google every other page to try and piece together a more full meaning for whole swaths of text. At first it was a bit enjoyable, because it felt like I was doing "research" for something I'm very interested in, but that got old fast.

Nonetheless, very insightful read. A lot of the elements of the Stalinist regime are revealed that transform how one looks at the history of the first World War, the Second World War, and the development of the modern world in general. For this to be done from the analysis of one country in the mid-30s is a testament to Trotsky's level of objectivity in his social and economic analysis. I'll be returning to this one next year I think, after I've read a few more books and my mind has grown a bit more.

Now on to [i]Art as the Cognition of Life[/i], by Voronsky.

[quote="yaro"][i]I am Cat[/i] (Natsume Soseki)--Brilliant! Soseki must be one of my favorite novelists. I would be interested to compare the translation to the original Japanese and see what discrepancies exist. I spoke to several Japanese students who said it was a rather difficult read for them.[/quote]

Okay, help!! I just started reading this and I feel like I'm missing something. I rarely give up on books but I'm tempted with this one. I'm in the middle of some exchanges with the teacher and Coldmoon and the other dude, why do I care about the teacher's friends making up crap to make themselves sound smart and the teacher's constant stomach problems? There's more to this book, right?

Just finished the Conversations with God trilogy. Anyone read it or heard of it? It was suggested to me by a man who was a librarian at a university in Poland, the country where he was born and lived for many years, but now lives in Peru on a plot of land with his Peruvian wife. They are all about healthy living in all its meanings.
Anyway, the book is of a spiritual nature. Do not be set back by the title of the book. I found it inspirational. Book 1, I did not like too much, and almost stopped reading. It is a lot of bragging, common sense and repetition. It is very basic. Yes, it lays the foundations for books 2 and 3. Book 2 was rather enjoyable, and book 3 even better I think.
It is really light reading. And if you wish you can skip parts. You can even start with book 2 (or 3 for that matter).
There was a lot of stuff I already knew. But mostly it also strengthened my believes. There are some things I feel I now truly comprehend. I found the treatise on death enlightening. Also the concepts of 'be yourself', 'become yourself', and 'remember yourself' are helpful to me. I can also see how 'The Matrix' trilogy was influenced by it. Or at least develops similar ideas. I considered myself agnostic flirting with atheism, now I am more the believing type. A great deal depends on how you interpret the concept of God. Suffice to say, that this concept has changed for me. For me it is more of a pantheism. An energy that is imbued in everything.

Other than that I read the essay 'The Doors of Perception' by Aldous Huxely today. Always nice to read about others' experiences of psychoactives. (here is the link http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/Hu ... eption.pdf)
And I read the essay 'Experience' by Ralph Waldo Emerson (http://www.rwe.org/ii-experience/, but there are better links out there).

Here are the PDFs to the Conversations with God books.
http://www.law-of-attraction-haven.com/ ... /cwg-1.pdf
http://www.law-of-attraction-haven.com/ ... /cwg-2.pdf
http://www.law-of-attraction-haven.com/ ... /cwg-3.pdf

DMT - The Spirit Molecule
Interesting read!, Even though I will not try the substance in the near future.
http://www.organiclab.narod.ru/books/DM ... lecule.pdf

Excerpt:
"[i]Sara was DMT-34 and Rex was DMT-42. By the time they volunteered for
the studies, more than two and a half years after the DMT project began,
we had gained a familiarity, albeit an uneasy one, with tales of encounters
with intelligent life-forms. If their sessions had taken place earlier in the
research, we might not have been as supportive of their telling, nor learned
the level of detail we did.[/i]" - page 203

Reading:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/5gWQ0tH.png[/img]
On my nightstand:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/y0Bm0W8.png[/img]
Just read:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/INpMXZg.png[/img]
Just read:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/QYLMxJ7.png[/img]

I...sorta got into jazz, a lot, this year.

Pretty cool GR. I never really got into jazz that much. I tried several times, but never got into it that deep as with rock. My father loves jazz though. (He does not listen to it that much, but when he listens to music at all, it is mostly jazz.) He loves 'Song for my father' by Horace Silver, haha. What are some of your current favorite tracks?

Like you got into jazz, I kinda got into psychedelics and everything around it.
I am currently reading the The Human Be-In (1970). https://erowid.org/library/books_online/human_be_in.pdf
I like it a lot, started it yesterday and I am almost done with it. It is an ethnographic account of the hippie movement in '66 and '67 in San Francisco. Particularly it zooms in on the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. Really interesting how youth culture, dissatisfaction with the political status-quo and the capitalist system in general, interest in Eastern mysticism, native American culture, music, psychedelics, the lot and culture of poor and marginalized African-Americans, all coalesced into this wonderful movement. Inspiring read.

[quote="terra"][quote="yaro"][i]I am Cat[/i] (Natsume Soseki)--Brilliant! Soseki must be one of my favorite novelists. I would be interested to compare the translation to the original Japanese and see what discrepancies exist. I spoke to several Japanese students who said it was a rather difficult read for them.[/quote]

Okay, help!! I just started reading this and I feel like I'm missing something. I rarely give up on books but I'm tempted with this one. I'm in the middle of some exchanges with the teacher and Coldmoon and the other dude, why do I care about the teacher's friends making up crap to make themselves sound smart and the teacher's constant stomach problems? There's more to this book, right?[/quote]

Yeah--I'll agree with you that some of the conversations can get tiring...I guess they're there to be somewhat amusing and to illustrate the inanity of the characters, or something. For me it was OK, because I don't really need or enjoy action anyway (when I was a child I complained about how every book had some problem in it that had to get solved, and why couldn't they just make a book where people were hanging out and everything was normal?), but I will concede that the dialogues get long in this one.You could probably gloss over them and still be OK.

Currently:
[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/267355.The_Triumph_of_the_Fungi?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1349060171l/267355.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/267355.The_Triumph_of_the_Fungi?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Triumph of the Fungi: A Rotten History by Nicholas P. Money[/url]

Interesting! I never really considered fungi seriously until I began hunting mushrooms for fun this past summer. This book isn't so much on mycology as it is historic fungal attacks on plants (think Irish potato blight, etc.). I think that, to the general public, fungus is misunderstood (or at least, less than understood). Probably those in agriculture have in on their minds much more than everyone else... for us, it seems that it really only comes up when we've left bread for too long and find mold. The author of this book kind of makes me groan with his humor, which is not really necessary in a scientific book, in my opinion, but I appreciate his trying to spice up this topic that many would deem boring.

[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/856232.Widdershins?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348476675l/856232.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/856232.Widdershins?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Widdershins by Oliver Onions[/url]

Ghost stories from 1911 in time for Halloween! Who is a ghost? Who is not? Creepy and a just little off--a kind of horror that I enjoy.