What book(s) are you reading right now and recommend for others?
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I recently started Blood Meridian. It's too early to tell if I like it yet, but I like McCarthy's other works I've read. I'm also listening to the audiobook adaption of Alien: Covenant. It's part of the Audible subscription right now, so I thought I'd give it a try. I like it a bit better than I remember liking the movie. It's pretty similar, but I feel like it adds a little more nuance to some character actions.
I have very mixed opinions of McCarthy. He focuses on the grim darkness of humanity a lot. If that is what you want to hear all you have to do is turn on the news. I thought The Road was well done but super depressing. In the process of reading All The Pretty Horses and it's tone is much more upbeat. But his style is cribed almost entirely from Hemmingway.
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Holistic management by Allan Savory. Especially if you are interested in permaculture and regenerative practices, sustainability
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Trans liberation: beyond pink and blue by leslie feinberg. Very insightful stories.
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Driving directions to your mom's house.
I'm on book 3 of the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson. It's fantasy, it's weird in a lot of ways, but it's well written for the most part and enjoyable to read. It feels like reading an unfolding story of people in a parallel universe where things are half the same and half completely alien and different, but to them, it's commonplace, and I like that.
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If you like science fiction, I just finished reading Semiosis by Sue Burke.
A story about colonists starting a new life on the planet Pax and their alliances with sentient indigenous plant species.
A really great read !
EDIT : grammarThanks! Seems interesting, added it to my to-read.
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Just started Exordia. It's great for a particular kind of sci-fi fan. Reminds me of Ian McDonald a little.
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Repurposing most of a comment from earlier in the day where someone asked about learning about the Jesus Myth theory that Jesus was originally a heavinly figure and only got turned into a guy with an earthly ministry decades later. This is well supported by the evidence in texts from the start of christianity (epistles, Dead Sea Scrolls).
The Jesus Puzzle, by Earl Doherty. He gets criticized because heās not a trained scholar, but his work remains compelling and Robert M Price endorses him. I really enjoyed this one.
The Amazing Colossal Apostle - The Search for the Historical Paul, by Robert M Price. Heās a former Baptist minister with multiple degrees in the field, a true expert. He has a bunch of published YouTube interviews talking about these topics as well.
Quick warning: RMP is a Trump supporter. That makes sense. Ministers are rightwing. Coming from believing to realizing that the Bible is a collection of stories rather than history doesnāt necessarily change your politics. He mostly never mentions it, but itās come out a couple of times in videos. Luckily, he doesnāt say anything further about it. The book is phenominal.
And, if you still want to consider Jeses to be a historical figure, I loved this controversial piece: The Passover Plot, by Hugh J. Schonfield. This book assumes that Jesus was a real apocalyptic Jew who truly believed that he was the messiah and who brilliantly engineered the conditions to fulfill prophecy. Itās a great read. If Jesus was a historical figure, this is the version of him that I think is most likely.
I am currently reading Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, by Markus Vinzent. Iām enjoying it a lot. Marcion was the first āhereticā for his view that Paul was the only apostle who understood the true message: that the creator god of the Jews was a lesser god, which is why there is evil in the world, and Jesus's god would adopt us.
Learning about the history and timeline of things sped my deconstruction considerably. Namely the Council of Nicea (sp?) where a group of men decided what to add or remove or change. The King James stuff. And I forget the names, but there were other places where they have found copies of the original or older manuscripts and it paints an interesting story that is NOT what is presented in present day as "the unchanging truth that has always been", but it paints more of a "men made all this up or there was some original story that maybe did happen and it has been changed a million times through the ages like a game of telephone to the point that not much remains of the truth." Sorta story.
Also, an epistle is the wife of an apostle.
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If you like fantasy and haven't read any Brandon Sanderson then do yourself a favour and get on it!
My personally favourites are the Mistborn books but it isn't exactly an easy choice because literally everything he writes is great in my experience.
I just finished Tress of the Emerald Sea which is a shorter standalone book but still great!
I completed the Wheel of Time last year and liked the Sanderson style of the latter books and am now on book 3 of Stormlight Archive and love it so far. It took me a good half the first book to "get it" or "get into it" rather, but now I see the vision and am enjoying it all. Planning on the other Cosmere series and books after.
Sanderson is definitely one of the better sci-fi/fantasy writers I've read.
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My experience was that the first book was fine, say 6,5/10. Just enough to move on to the the second, which I absolutely loved 9,5/10. Started reading the third with high expectations but it just didn't engage me at all. Didn't get through more than perhaps 25% of it.
I read the first one as a teen and loved it but couldnāt get into the second one. I loved it as an adult and Iām currently 80% of the way through the complete series. Itās got ebbs and flows but overall itās definitely a masterpiece. For me itās her mysticism that gives it real depth.
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I reread 1984, Animal Farm and Farenheight 451 recently, for no particular reason, but they are more accurate and depressing than ever about current events.
Highly recommended. But be prepared to be angry or depressed.
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Finally got around to the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan and it's more relevant than ever. It absolutely predicted the world we're in politically now and has some insight and analysis as to how and why and what to do to help. Definitely worth a read or reread if you haven't read it or it's been a while.
I have this on audiobook and it's brilliant.
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The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. It's set in a fantasy medieval Europe. Unfortunately, its not long out and is the first of a series, so I'll have to wait for the rest.
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1Q84. Magical realism. Bizarre, but can't stop reading. I need to know mooore.
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I completed the Wheel of Time last year and liked the Sanderson style of the latter books and am now on book 3 of Stormlight Archive and love it so far. It took me a good half the first book to "get it" or "get into it" rather, but now I see the vision and am enjoying it all. Planning on the other Cosmere series and books after.
Sanderson is definitely one of the better sci-fi/fantasy writers I've read.
Wheel of Time is on my to do list, I've heard a lot about it both being great and hard to get into to begin with and so I keep putting it off. I will get around to it at some point.
Enjoy your journey into Sanderson, I'm a little jealous I can't go on those journeys again for the first time!
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Project Hail Mary
Andy wier returns to the roots of The Martian. Also, movie is coming next spring about it.Dark Matter
Some deep physics stuff occurs, but the story can be followed with no knowledge of super position. Also released as a mini series on some streaming channel -
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I'm reading "don't let him in" by Lisa Jewel, it's great so far, very intriguing (I also recommend "none of this is true" by the same author)
Last week I read "the road to tender hearts" by Annie Harnett and it was very moving. It touches very hard topics with a splash of humor to make it easier to digest
I also recommend anything by TJ Klune. His books are very wholesome, sometimes I just want an easy reading where everything is solved with hugs and love
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Ok, so I have no shortages of critiscism when it comes to the book. I do agree that they seem to have a foolishly optimistic assumption that the only (or I guess just the principal) hurdle in the way of housing development is regulation. I'm certain corporate greed does play a MAJOR role in this. However, going over what you've linked here, I have a couple issues. Most notably, the second point there. It really seems odd to essentially say that we shouldn't be considering housing reform because we need healthcare reform. Two issues can and do exist, and both issues need to be addressed. The authors focus on one of them. That doesn't mean they don't care about the other. As for Kline and Thompson's call for deregulation, it's something that rubs me the wrong way initially, but they do a pretty good job demonstrating the way that regulation can be used to slow and even fully prevent development, and how it leads to developers only building luxury housing because the costs to develop are too high. And while this make me think somethng like, "boohoo the rich guy will need to wait a little longer to get a return" we can't ignore that under our current system, profits are the prime motivator. I'm on my phone right now, so I feel I can't really dive too deep into your question, but my main point would be that I do agree with some of the critisicm and I don't think they fully address some pretty big concerns the reader may have with what they're saying.
I did keep notes on quotes that I felt were important in the book, and then went through and wrote out why I felt they were. A lot of them touch on these topics. If you're interested, I can share it. Though please keep in mind, I haven't refined my notes as I wasn't really expecting to share them.
If you're down, absolutely.
What I'm getting so far (from the reviews and your comment) is that deregulation could incentivize more housing construction, but there's a massive asterisk that Klein and Thompson are avoiding.
My opinion so far is they either earnestly believe in the neoliberal promise that "if you just get out of the way, the free market can solve anything" or (more cynically) they're seeding the terrain edify buzzwords for a Democratic comeback campaign.
Either way, you've convinced me to put it on my to-read list.
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Wheel of Time is on my to do list, I've heard a lot about it both being great and hard to get into to begin with and so I keep putting it off. I will get around to it at some point.
Enjoy your journey into Sanderson, I'm a little jealous I can't go on those journeys again for the first time!
If it helps, read the first one and if you don't like it, you don't have to finish it or the series. It stands alone decently well. I know that's obvious, but I often don't do things because I feel like starting something mean I have to finish it. Books, games, movies, etc
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The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. It's set in a fantasy medieval Europe. Unfortunately, its not long out and is the first of a series, so I'll have to wait for the rest.
I read the First Law series. And after that devastating ending, I can never go back to reading his books. Do all of his books end like that?
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If you're down, absolutely.
What I'm getting so far (from the reviews and your comment) is that deregulation could incentivize more housing construction, but there's a massive asterisk that Klein and Thompson are avoiding.
My opinion so far is they either earnestly believe in the neoliberal promise that "if you just get out of the way, the free market can solve anything" or (more cynically) they're seeding the terrain edify buzzwords for a Democratic comeback campaign.
Either way, you've convinced me to put it on my to-read list.
Yeah, I'll send you a google docs link. I mean, they provide a lot of great examples about how regulation is halting progress on projects that pretty much everyone, regardless of political ideology, can agree are good. So, they have a point. But I feel like their conclusion is somewhat lacking in substance. This is not to say it's not a great read. It's just something that would benefit further analysis. Definitely let me know when you've finished reading it, if you wanna discuss it more. I don't really know anyone who's interested in this topic, so it's nice to get a chance to discuss it.
