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koth's reading log

12357

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  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Heretics: Adventures With The Enemies Of Science - Will Storr

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    Will Storr was in the tropical north of Australia, excavating fossils with a celebrity creationist, when he asked himself a simple question. Why don’t facts work? Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world – from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides – meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. He goes on a tour of Holocaust sites with David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis, experiences his own murder during ‘past life regression’ hypnosis, discusses the looming One World Government with iconic climate sceptic Lord Monckton and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult. Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological ‘hero maker’ inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship and science denial.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Understand Political Philosophy - Mel Thompson

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    Understand Political Philosophy is an in-depth guide to the philosophers and political ideas who have shaped our society. Quickly and easily get to grips with the key thinkers and theories, from Aristotle to Wollstonecraft, from capitalism to utilitarianism. With exploration of contemporary issues and current debates, this book will put political philosophy in the context of the world we live in today.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    How to Thrive in the Digital Age : The School of Life - Tom Chatfield

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    Our world is, increasingly, a digital one. Over half of the planet’s adult population now spend more of their waking hours ‘plugged in’ than not, whether to the internet, mobile telephony, or other digital media. To email, text, tweet and blog our way through our careers, relationships and even our family lives is now the status quo. But what effect is this need for constant connection really having? For the first time, Tom Chatfield examines what our wired life is really doing to our minds and our culture - and offers practical advice on how we can hope to prosper in a digital century.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide - Dan Cryan, Bill Mayblin + Sharron Shatil

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    Logic is the backbone of Western civilization, holding together its systems of philosophy, science and law. Yet despite logic's widely acknowledged importance, it remains an unbroken seal for many, due to its heavy use of jargon and mathematical symbolism.This book follows the historical development of logic, explains the symbols and methods involved and explores the philosophical issues surrounding the topic in an easy-to-follow and friendly manner. It will take you through the influence of logic on scientific method and the various sciences from physics to psychology, and will show you why computers and digital technology are just another case of logic in action.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Ethics: A Graphic Guide - Dave Robinson + Chris Garratt

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    What is the place of individual choice and consequence in a post-Holocaust world of continuing genocidal ethnic cleansing? Is "identity" now a last-ditch cultural defence of ethnic nationalisms and competing fundamentalisms? In a climate of instant information, free markets and possible ecological disaster, how do we define "rights", self-interest and civic duties? What are the acceptable limits of scientific investigation and genetic engineering, the rights and wrongs of animal rights, euthanasia and civil disobedience?"Introducing Ethics" confronts these dilemmas, tracing the arguments of the great moral thinkers, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes and Kant, and brings us up to date with postmodern critics.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



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  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Dodger - Terry Pratchett

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    Dodger is a tosher - a sewer scavenger living in the squalor of Dickensian London. Everyone who is nobody knows Dodger. Anyone who is anybody doesn't. But when he rescues a young girl from a beating, suddenly everybody wants to know him. And Dodger's tale of skulduggery, dark plans and even darker deeds begins . . .

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Introducing Philosophy: A Graphic Guide to the History of Thinking - Dave Robinson, Chris Garratt and Judy Groves

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    Philosophers have always enjoyed asking akward and provocative questions.

    Some of these include: What is the nature of reality? What are human beings really like? What is special about the human mind and consciousness? Are we free to choose who we are and what we do? Can we prove that God exists? Can we be certain about anything at all? What is truth? Does language provide us with a true picture of the world? How should we behave towards each other? Do computers think?

    Written by Dave Robinson and illustrated by Judy Groves, Introducing Philosophy is a comprehensive and enjoyable graphic guide to philosophical thinking. It examines and explains the key arguments and ideas of all the significant philosophers of the Western world from Heraclitus to Derrida.

    Lively, accessible and never obscure, it is the perfect introduction for anyone who is intrigued by who philosophers are, and the sort of questions they ask.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Deeper than the Dead - Tami Hoag

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    Tami Hoag is in a class by herself, beloved by readers and critic s alike, with more than 22 million copies of her books in print.
    California, 1984. Four children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn’t yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial killer’s escalating activity.

    Detective Tony Mendez, fresh from a law enforcement course at FBI headquarters, is charged with interpreting those now revealed secrets. He’s using a new technique—profiling—to develop a theory of the case, a strategy that pushes him ever deeper into the lives of the three children, and closer to the young teacher whose interest in recent events becomes as intense as his own.

    As new victims are found and the media scrutiny of the investigation bears down on them, both Mendez and Navarre are unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves—or the family and friends of the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very close to them is a brutal, calculating psychopath.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Help! For Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces - Roy Peter Clark

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    The craft of writing offers countless potential problems: The story is too long; the story's too short; revising presents a huge hurdle; writer's block is rearing its ugly head.

    In HELP! FOR WRITERS, Roy Peter Clark presents an "owner's manual" for writers, outlining the seven steps of the writing process, and addressing the 21 most urgent problems that writers face. In his trademark engaging and entertaining style, Clark offers ten short solutions to each problem. Out of ideas? Read posters, billboards, and graffiti.

    Can't bear to edit yourself? Watch the deleted scenes feature of a DVD, and ask yourself why those scenes were left on the cutting-room floor. HELP! FOR WRITERS offers 210 strategies to guide writers to success.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Pirate Cinema - Cory Doctorow

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    Trent McCauley is obsessed with making movies. But when his illegal download habit causes his family's Internet to be cut off, he's forced to run away from Bradford to London. Squatting in an East End pub, Trent falls in with a band of activists who introduce him to dumpster diving, graveyard raves and the anarchist girl of his dreams.

    When a new bill threatens to criminalise Internet creativity, the future looks bleak, but the film industry fat cats--and the MPs they hold in their pocket--haven't reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change the people's minds...

    If you can read this, you're too close!



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  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    The Moth - Various

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    For the first time in print, celebrated storytelling phenomenon The Moth presents fifty spellbinding, soul-bearing stories selected from their extensive archive (fifteen-plus years and 10,000-plus stories strong). Inspired by friends telling stories on a porch, The Moth was born in small-town Georgia, garnered a cult following in New York City, and then rose to national acclaim with the wildly popular podcast and Peabody Award–winning weekly public radio show The Moth Radio Hour.

    Stories include: writer Malcolm Gladwell's wedding toast gone horribly awry; legendary rapper Darryl "DMC" McDaniels' obsession with a Sarah McLachlan song; poker champion Annie Duke's two-million-dollar hand; and A. E. Hotchner's death-defying stint in a bullring . . . with his friend Ernest Hemingway. Read about the panic of former Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart when he misses Air Force One after a hard night of drinking in Moscow, and Dr. George Lombardi's fight to save Mother Teresa's life.

    This will be a beloved read for existing Moth enthusiasts, fans of the featured storytellers, and all who savor well-told, hilarious, and heartbreaking stories.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

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    The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads: Opens at Nightfalll Closes at Dawn.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    koth wrote: »
    The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

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    . . ..
    :o


  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    someone forget to finish the book? :P

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    koth wrote: »
    someone forget to finish the book? :P

    Gonna have to restart it from scratch too, I think.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,383 ✭✭✭emeraldstar


    Aw, it's a good one!


  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests - Julian Baggini

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    All major social advances started with a complaint: Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela each brought about change by protesting that the status quo was wrong and needed to be rethought. Complaint has revolutionised society - yet it is now associated primarily with trivial moans and frivolous litigation.

    Renowned popular philosopher Julian Baggini shows that in order to reclaim complaint as a positive force, we need to know what we wrongly complain about, and why. He explores every kind of complaint, from the contradictory to the paranoid and the Luddite, and presents a unique and revealing survey into whether Britons complain more than Americans, men more than women, the old more than the young.

    This fascinating, witty insight into an essential part of the human condition will help you find the best way to bridge the gap between how things are and how we think they ought to be.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane

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    ey gather in darkness, sharing ancient and arcane knowledge as they manipulate the very matter of reality itself. Spells and conjuration; legerdemain and prestidigitation – these are the mistresses and masters of the esoteric arts. Magic comes alive in their hands. British Fantasy Award nominee, Jonathan Oliver, gathers together sixteen stories of magic, featuring some of today’s finest practitioners, including Audrey Niffenegger, Christopher Fowler, Gemma Files, Thana Niveau, Robert Shearman, Will Hill, Sarah Lotz, Storm Constantine, Dan Abnett, Sophia McDougall, Alison Littlewood, Lou Morgan, Gail Z. Martin and others.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Forgotten Voices of the Second World War - Max Arthur

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    The Imperial War Museum holds a vast archive of interviews with soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians of most nationalities who saw action during WW2. As in the highly acclaimed "Forgotten Voices of the Great War", Max Arthur and his team of researchers will spend hundreds of hours digging deep into this unique archive, uncovering tapes, many of which have not been listened to since they were created in the early 1970s. The result will be the first complete aural history of the war. We hear at first from British, German and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians. Accounts of the impact of the U. S. involvement after Pearl Harbour and the major effects that had on the war in Europe and the Far East is chronicled in startling detail, including compelling interviews from U. S. and British troops who fought against the Japanese. Continuing through from D-Day, to the Rhine Crossing and the dropping of the Atom Bomb in August 1945, this book is a unique testimony to one of the world's most dreadful conflicts. One of the hallmarks of Max Arthur's work is the way he involves those left behind on the home front as well as those working in factories or essential services. Their voices will not be neglected.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Moral Clarity - Susan Neiman

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    Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher committed to making the tools of her trade relevant to real life. In Moral Clarity, she shows how resurrecting a moral vocabulary—good and evil, heroism and nobility—can steer us clear of the dogmas of the right and the helpless pragmatism of the left. In search of a framework for forming clear opinions and taking responsible action on today’s urgent political and social questions, Neiman reaches back to the eighteenth century, retrieving a set of virtues—happiness, reason, reverence, and hope—that were held high by every Enlightenment thinker. She shows that the pursuit of moral clarity is not a matter of religious faith but is open to all who are committed to these ideals, believers and nonbelievers alike. And she draws on literature, evolutionarytheory, and other contemporary research to show why, by keeping before us the distinction between the real and the possible, these ideals continue to guide and inspire.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



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  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Shivering Sands - Warren Ellis

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    SHIVERING SANDS is a bit of an experiment: part Greatest Hits collection, part late-night ramblings, all crackling text transmissions sent down the wire from anywhere Warren Ellis had access to a computer and something to say. These essays, stories, music reviews, the occasional chemically-induced rant, and a couple of recipes- because, for whatever reason, everyone seems to love his recipes-represent a cross-section of the past seven years' worth of Warren's writing online. From jumping around Britain, Europe and North America to just dragging his carcass up to the local pub for a think, this is the unedited spillage from the inside of the writer's head during the '00s. Some of it even makes sense.WARREN ELLIS is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as Fell, Ministry Of Space, Planetary, and Transmetropolitan, and the author of the "underground classic" Crooked Little Vein.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    What the f**k are you doing posting in Koth's log? :p


  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Jernal wrote: »
    What the f**k are you doing posting in Koth's log? :p
    :o:p:pac:

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Essays - George Orwell

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    This outstanding collection brings together Orwell’s longer, major essays and a fine selection of shorter pieces that includes My Country Right or Left, Decline of the English Murder, Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging.

    With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from the moral enormity of Jonathan Swift’s strange genius and a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, a comic yet profound discussion of naughty sea-side picture postcards and a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose style, Orwell’s essays challenge, move and entertain.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    shootin' the sh*t with - Kevin Smith

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    Following on from the New York Times-bestselling My Boring-Ass Life, Kevin Smith is back!

    In freewheeling conversations with his friend and producer Scott Mosier (as heard on their top-rated podcast, known as SModcast), we discover — to pick just four random examples of the riches therein — the genesis of Stalin’s Monkey Soldier army, the horrifying tale of Kevin vs. Steak Tartare, how to make bukkake eggs, and how Kevin was once willing to let Alanis Morissette get mugged...

    Defiantly lewd, crude and hilariously rude, Shootin’ the Sh*t with Kevin Smith is a must for all his fans! Adults Only!

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Some Remarks - Neal Stephenson

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    'Sometimes when you're reading Neal Stephenson, he doesn't just seem like one of the best novelists writing in English right now; he seems like the only one.' Time One of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels - works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, pop culture, and philosophy, his books are the product of a keen and adventurous intellect. Not surprisingly, Stephenson is regularly asked to contribute articles, lectures, and essays to numerous outlets, from major newspapers and cutting edge magazines to college symposia. This remarkable collection brings together previously published short writings, both fiction and nonfiction as well as a new essay (and an extremely short story) created specifically for this volume. Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; video games to classics-based sci-fi; how geekdom has become cool and how science fiction has become mainstream (whether people admit it or not); the future of publishing and the origins of his novels. By turns amusing and profound, critical and celebratory, yet always entertaining, Some Remarks offers a fascinating look into the prismatic mind of this extraordinary writer.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman - y Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, Stephen R. Bissette

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    Over the past twenty years, Neil Gaiman has developed into the premier fantasist of his generation, achieving that rarest of combinations—unrivaled critical respect and extraordinary commercial success. From the landmark comic book series The Sandman to novels such as the New York Times bestselling American Gods and Anansi Boys, from children’s literature like Coraline to screenplays for such films as Beowulf, Gaiman work has garnered him an enthusiastic and fiercely loyal, global following. To comic book fans, he is Zeus in the pantheon of creative gods, having changed that industry forever. For discerning readers, he bridges the vast gap that traditionally divides lovers of “literary” and “genre” fiction. Gaiman is truly a pop culture phenomenon, an artist with a magic touch whose work has won almost universal acclaim.

    Now, for the first time ever, Prince of Stories chronicles the history and impact of the complete works of Neil Gaiman in film, fiction, music, comic books, and beyond. Containing hours of exclusive interviews with Gaiman and conversations with his collaborators, as well as wonderful nuggets of his work such as the beginning of an unpublished novel, a rare comic and never-before-seen essay, this is a treasure trove of all things Gaiman. In addition to providing in depth information and commentary on Gaiman’s myriad works, the book also includes rare photographs, book covers, artwork, and related trivia and minutiae, making it both an insightful introduction to his work, and a true “must-have” for his ever growing legion of fans.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    The Fault in our Stars - John Green

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    Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    The Traveller (Fourth Realm #1) - John Twelve Hawks

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    In London, Maya, a young woman trained to fight by her powerful father, uses the latest technology to elude detection when walking past the thousands of surveillance cameras that watch the city. In New York, a secret shadow organization uses a victim's own GPS to hunt him down and kill him. In Los Angeles, Gabriel, a motorcycle messenger with a haunted past, takes pains to live "off the grid" - free of credit cards and government IDs. Welcome to the world of The Traveler - a world frighteningly like our own.In this compelling novel, Maya fights to save Gabriel, the only man who can stand against the forces that attempt to monitor and control society. From the back streets of Prague to the skyscrapers of Manhattan, The Traveler portrays an epic struggle between tyranny and freedom. Not since 1984 have readers witnessed a Big Brother so terrifying in its implications and in a story that so closely reflects our lives.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



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  • Moderators Posts: 51,683 ✭✭✭✭Delirium


    The Ego Trick - Julian Baggini

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    Are you still the person who lived fifteen, ten or five years ago? Fifteen, ten or five minutes ago? Can you plan for your retirement if the you of thirty years hence is in some sense a different person? What and who is the real you? Does it remain constant over time and place, or is it something much more fragmented and fluid? Is it known to you, or are you as much a mystery to yourself as others are to you?With his usual wit, infectious curiosity and bracing scepticism, Julian Baggini sets out to answer these fundamental and unsettling questions. His fascinating quest draws on the history of philosophy, but also anthropology, sociology, psychology and neurology; he talks to theologians, priests, allegedly reincarnated Lamas, and delves into real-life cases of lost memory, personality disorders and personal transformation; and, candidly and engagingly, he describes his own experiences. After reading The Ego Trick, you will never see yourself in the same way again.

    If you can read this, you're too close!



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