he didn't make it, but are you talking about: http://www.gamingw.net/forums/index.php?topic=77211.0 this one? he posted in it alot (so did you i think). i read through it recently. maybe you are talking about a different one.

idk. i'll look through it

http://www.gamingw.net/forums/index.php?topic=77770.0 is it this one? there don't look like there are too many recs though. i think ryan made a topic with all the modern lit recommendations in it http://www.gamingw.net/forums/index.php?topic=78518.0

i've stopped reading the decameron for the moment because it's kind of uh just crude short tales for the most part! there's nothing wrong with that but i'm not sure if i wanna plough through 100 of them right now. i just finished 'at swim-two-birds' by flann o'brien and a bunch of the newspaper columns he did as miles na gopaleen, they're all pretty great. at swim-two-birds in particular is kind of famous for being uh pre-postmodernism (drowning in prefixes, help) and metafiction and all that but it's also very funny and weird too! a lot of the humour for me came from this really dead-on take on dublin speech patterns etc and i'm not sure how well that'd translate abroad but i'd still recommend it.

didn't steel make a sticky in his forum that was like READ THESE WHEN MY EYES CAN FOCUS ON STUFF

Reading A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen.  One of my favorite authors!  Only problem is his books make me depressed by like the second page

Didn't Diet Coke rip apart that book in another thread awhile ago?  Or maybe it was another book on Mao.  All I know is he ripped apart a book on Mao.

i'm reading a mao biography

yes i know it's not very good - i've read most of the critisisms - but I don't have anything else to read for now

lol why would you even read that? that book is huge, a bunch of lies/bunk sources(but lots of them!) and openly sells itself as revisionist history


throw it away and go to a bookstore tomorrow

Reading A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen.  One of my favorite authors!  Only problem is his books make me depressed by like the second page

Almost the entire body of Derrick Jensen's work is completely awful sentimental bullshit and transparent radical posturing. Anyone advocating abandonment of industrial society just doesn't get it and will always remain politically castrated.

he's got some interesting things to say about violence... but on the other hand he openly tells people that he cries about salmon

His book Welcome to the Machine will give you a straight up panic attack, I'll give him that much

i don't know someone gave it to me for my birthday and once i read up on it i kinda started hating them for giving it to me. i just started reading it for kicks to see how bad it was and it pretty much reads like a Crichton action-movie novel right now. hmmm I guess I could start reading tropic of cancer which i totally forgot i had on me.

I am considering buying a real biography though - do you have any suggestions?

there's pretty much no good biography about Mao. Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China is probably the best book to read if you're interested in the subject.

I'm not really into biographies tbqh so I'm not the one to ask about em

i'm reading through wittgenstein's philosophical investigations and it's pretty much nothing like what marmot said (so far)

modern lit was the best thread

Almost through reading Orcs: by Stan Nichols

I don't know what the standards for fantasy reading are around this circle of all places, but I really like what I'm reading so far, and could easily recommend it to others.

I'm reading Moby Dick, it's really good. There's a lot about whales in it!! "Enough with the whales Einstein". Like there's whole chapters justifying the existence of a vindictive white whale and also notes on whale species and whaling lore and I think I understand what it's trying to do but uh it's kind of tiresome because a lot of the stuff on Ahab especially is really good and sharp but it kind of gets buried under justifications and kind of worthless digressions. Like I guess the point is that the devil's in the details and that rather than seeing it all as a big allegory (worthless specifics framing Big Idea) it's exactly the specifics which make it interesting and important but the actual writing consists mostly of good and evocative ideas which get thorougly drained of all interest as the book goes on and on about their basis in reality. Ahab rules though and I'm still enjoying it.