What are you filthy heathens reading atm?

MagicMarker

MagicMarker wrote: »

Has anyone read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid?

I got my copy in the post today, it looks absolutely fascinating, here's a brief synopsis...

I read it about three years ago. It's a brilliant book, and one I must read again to refresh my memory of it. From what I remember, it's fairly interactive — by that I mean I spent a lot of time with a notepad attempting puzzles and so on that Hofstadter suggests readers attempt. Doing so gives you a real feel for what he's discussing, especially when he's discussing logic or number theory and so on. There's so much information contained in the book that it demands a slow and, at some points, painstaking reading, because, being almost like a textbook, each chapter is built on preceding chapters, and without a firm understanding of what is being discussed at all times a reader will eventually get lost.

Edit:

If you enjoy GEB, I'd recommend its follow-up book I Am a Strange Loop. It deals with the central idea of GEB and examines it in more detail, without getting lost in related subjects and ideas, which GEB does to a small degree. He has another book, a compendium of articles written for Scientific American, Metamagical Themas, which deals with a whole host of subjects, discussing everything from artificial intelligence to fonts. If you enjoy his other two works I'd recommend this, too.

robindch

MagicMarker wrote: »

Has anyone read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid?

Yes, I picked it up at some point during the early eighties in a small bookshop in Ballydehob and read it from cover to cover in a few weeks, a cram session from which I may not yet have recovered fully. It's like no other book on earth.

His longer and more diffuse work, Le Ton beau de Marot, isn't as well known as GEB, but it's just as interesting for people interested in the intricacies of language, translation and expression in a very general sense.

I can't give any praise higher to these two books than saying that each of them changed the way I think.

coffee_cake

Beruthiel wrote: »

Robin Hobb I have read.
But not those two.

What book would you recommend first?

Daggerspell by Kerr and King's Dragon by Elliott. Both the first books in great series. Which to start on? No idea which you'd prefer! Get both!

Sulla Felix

MagicMarker wrote: »

Has anyone read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid?

I got my copy in the post today, it looks absolutely fascinating, here's a brief synopsis...

Hmmm, have to put that on the to read list. It does look good.

bluewolf wrote: »

Yeah, she's brill
Her and kate elliott and katharine kerr.

Have to second Kate Elliott. Glen Cook is good in a similarly character driven direction.

MagicMarker

Just finished Ender's Game, absolutely brilliant!!

Andrewf20

pauldla wrote: »

I went through a big Orwell phase years back, read and reread everything I could get my hands on by him.

I didn't particularly like most of his novels (A Clergyman's Daughter put years on me, in particular), but I really enjoyed most of his other work. I picked up his Collected Essays again there recently, and wow, I had forgotten what a good writer he was.

I had an interesting conversation with a former student about 1984. After reading it, she said (in awe, I might add) that Orwell understood China. No higher praise can I think of...!

The Hitch mentioned it a few times so I said I must give it a blast. It certainly sounds like North Korea. 61 pages in at this stage.

Andrewf20

Just finished The Caged Virgin. Good read, fascinating, shocking, just the right length. Read Mortality before that by Mr Hitch and before that - Left for Dead (story of the 1979 Fastnet race storm disaster).

DazMarz

Recently finished:

The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The General by Paul Williams
Avenger by Frederick Forsyth

and am currently on Badfellas by Paul Williams

Yeah, crime and thrillers feature highly on my list of books that I read.

I would highly recommend the first 3 as cracking good reads, and the last one is shaping up to be a cracker too.

kylith

MagicMarker wrote: »

Just finished Ender's Game, absolutely brilliant!!

Told you! Now on to Speaker for the Dead with you.

pauldla

Andrewf20 wrote: »

The Hitch mentioned it a few times so I said I must give it a blast. It certainly sounds like North Korea. 61 pages in at this stage.

Great stuff, let us know what you think of it!

Dades

DazMarz wrote: »

I would highly recommend the first 3 as cracking good reads, and the last one is shaping up to be a cracker too.

I went through a Freddie Forsyth phase many years ago. Read all his 70's and 80's stuff. The Dogs of War - what a cracker! Didn't realise he was still putting stuff out.

robindch

Forsyth doesn't only write fiction in books, he also writes for the British right-wing press:

http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/320923/Frederick-Forsyth

...and the local equivalent:

http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/320923/Frederick-Forsyth
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/new-deal-is-a-charter-for-the-fourth-reich-2829834.html

etc, etc, etc.

Mickeroo

bluewolf wrote: »

Daggerspell by Kerr and King's Dragon by Elliott. Both the first books in great series. Which to start on? No idea which you'd prefer! Get both!

Since ye seem to like Dragons and such I must recommend Temeraire (AKA His Majesty's Dragon) by Naomi Novik. There's a whole series but I've only read the first one, it's set in the Napoleonic Wars except the opposing sides have an air corp made up of dragons, think Master & Commander with dragons. Whats not to love?

swampgas

kylith wrote: »

Told you! Now on to Speaker for the Dead with you.

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Ender's Game is epic, but Speaker for the Dead is truly awful, and a massive let down after Ender's Game. Even Orson Scott Card has admitted as much.

MagicMarker

I'll save Speaker of the Dead for a later date...

Right now I'm going to start on The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

swampgas

MagicMarker wrote: »

Has anyone read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid?

I got my copy in the post today, it looks absolutely fascinating, here's a brief synopsis...

Read it years ago, pretty mind-bending stuff. Funnily enough, a reference to it (and its author) popped up in a book I'm just reading now, "The Psychopath Test", which is a cracking read.

coffee_cake

Mickeroo wrote: »

Since ye seem to like Dragons and such I must recommend Temeraire (AKA His Majesty's Dragon) by Naomi Novik. There's a whole series but I've only read the first one, it's set in the Napoleonic Wars except the opposing sides have an air corp made up of dragons, think Master & Commander with dragons. Whats not to love?

Read the first one, was pleasant while not rushing out to read the rest. I might order them sometime

DazMarz

Dades wrote: »

I went through a Freddie Forsyth phase many years ago. Read all his 70's and 80's stuff. The Dogs of War - what a cracker! Didn't realise he was still putting stuff out.

Oh yeah. I'm a huge fan of his. Have nearly all his books. I highly recommend you give Avenger, Icon and The Fist Of God a go. They're his later ones. His latest one, The Cobra is... ok. It takes too long building up, then whips through a lot of action far too quickly. It's like it goes plodding along in 2nd gear for 2/3 of the book, then flies into 5th for the final 1/3. It's an intriguing story, but not as flawlessly executed as his earlier works. He's still my favourite author. I re-read so much of his stuff. It's all so insanely read-able.

robindch

Barack Obama reckons that Ayn Rand is for angsty teenagers and Republicans:

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/cultists-lose-their-minds-after-barack-obama-says-ayn-rand-teenagers

Obama wrote:

Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

coffee_cake

Reckon mr obama may have missed the point

robindch

We'll agree to disagree on that point

ShooterSF

So my hardcovered copy of Arguably has arrived. I can't wait to sit down with it but first I better dig up a dictionary to keep beside it.

Turtwig

ShooterSF wrote: »

So my hardcovered copy of Arguably has arrived. I can't wait to sit down with it but first I better dig up a dictionary to keep beside it.

See on a kindle the dictionary and book are the one thing.

[-0-]

ShooterSF wrote: »

So my hardcovered copy of Arguably has arrived. I can't wait to sit down with it but first I better dig up a dictionary to keep beside it.

I find it hard to read Hitchens when I'm not reading him on a Kindle. Such a huge vocabulary!

Jernal

Jernal wrote: »

See on a kindle the dictionary and book are the one thing.

Where's the fun in that?

I find I soon forget words that I look up on a Kindle or something similar. When I use a proper dictionary, and have to thumb through its pages to find what I'm looking for, the word permanently lodges in my mind. There's something about getting the definition of a word without effort that lowers its value; when you have to "work" to find it it becomes worth remembering, if only because the thought of having to find it again, in a tome of a dictionary, while using up valuable seconds and minutes, is displeasing. I'm just old fashioned, I guess ...

I'm currently attempting to read Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad. After reading about three dozen pages I think I'll have to resign myself to the fact that it's too challenging and resort to a more modern translation. Any recommendations?

Aenaes

gvn wrote: »

I'm currently attempting to read Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad. After reading about three dozen pages I think I'll have to resign myself to the fact that it's too challenging and resort to a more modern translation. Any recommendations?

I read it 5 or so years ago, think it was Penguin Classics version. Might be an easier entry into it for the story element (which is great), then take another crack at Chapman's?

Might as well say what I'm reading. Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, an account of Naples mafia called the Camorra. Interesting how you think these organisations might have faded away as they are no longer in the limelight but then reading stories of how they supply armies and warlords (ETA for example) and how a dress Angelina Jolie wore to an Oscars was made in a Camorra controlled underground garment factory.

Nodin

....christ, the last time I needed a dictionary the shaggin words weren't in it. "Hitler - The Fuhrer And The People" by JP Stern, many years ago. Dragged out the biggest one in the house (and the largest I had access to) which was a two volume hardback edition of the Oxford English and not a sign....Might try it again now though, seein as I have the interweb

Aenaes

Aenaes wrote: »

I read it 5 or so years ago, think it was Penguin Classics version. Might be an easier entry into it for the story element (which is great), then take another crack at Chapman's?

That's the plan. Once I've read a modern translation, and have a grasp of the story and its characters, I can return to Chapman's version with an idea of what's happening. I find it difficult to simultaneously parse Chapman's verse and comprehend what's happening in the story; the former takes up so much cognitive effort that the latter becomes secondary in importance. I haven't read much Middle (I believe it's Middle, but I could be wrong) English before so that's my problem. I'll check out the Penguin Classics version, thanks.

MagicMarker

Nobokov is a bitch to read as half the feckin words aren't in the dictionary.

Beruthiel

I am going on holidays in a couple of days. \0/
I'll be bringing a couple of Sherlock Holmes books with me as I've never gotten around to reading Arthur Conan Doyle.