Well that was a short book in terms of what is there to read from the author, the rest are from others in an alphabetical list. More of a toilet reader I would think.

So next book is Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985 - Goodreads).

Synopsis

wow lots of cool books here to read :p I got interested in the ones about digital minimalism and degrowth

I am currently reading "Art, originality and copyright" sadly the book is new so it is only in portuguese

https://abca.art.br/2022/11/28/livro-arte-originalidade-e-direitos-autorais/

I am also reading The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy (the brazillian edition)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19870587-the-ancient-near-east

I am realy enjoying this two books

It is only 5,415 more rules than Jordan Petersons book. Must be good! ;)

Niel Postmans classic. While it didn't predict the rise of the internet and how social media would amplify everything in that book, it all holds up pretty well. In a similar fashion to how Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, the base ideas still hold regardless of the medium. Sorry Marshall Mclugan in this case the medium is not the only message.

I've never read the book, but I own a copy of the Roger Waters album (which is excellent)

I've been reading a bunch of shorts by C. L. Moore because of this post. Apparently he originally posted this on Reddit's r/fantasy. Dude can't write for shit but he seems to have read more in his genre than most r/fantasy types.

Not so much. The rules were kind of fun to browse through but overall a very boring read. Something you put next to Uncle John's Bathroom Reader (Wiki) when you forgot your phone.

Marshall I think was a bit too into himself with his 'medium is the message' and basically tried to turn everything into a multi-faceted/leveled structure when as Freud liked to say "Gentlemen, there are times when a cigar is only a cigar!". I do however agree with Marshall's idea of considering the character of the medium before the message since as we have seen over the last 40+ years, the medium providing the message isn't always there to provide a good message (e.g. Fox News, OAN, etc.). But I agree with you that the medium is not the only message.

Absolutely, Marshall is a good launch pad for ideas but isn't the end all of media analysis. There is a lot of philosophical writing like that that are brilliant analysis but then cannot tie it all together into a complete idea or solution.

To get a little on edge here, this is something I have said of Karl Marx and Ted Kaczynski, both had a stunning analysis of problems as they stood but the solutions were clearly lacking or in Ted's case just insane.

Just finished "Blood Meridian" for the first time, am currently reading "Democracy: The God that Failed"

Looks like a fascinating read even if I don't think I would entirely agree with it.

You could fill 20 libraries with perfectly valid failings of democracy and still come up a little empty as to the potential alternatives. Doesn't make the criticism wrong, it is definitely things to consider.

The longest lasting civilizations are those one that just sort of muddle along, nothing achieving huge things but also not slumping into oblivion a quickly. While all civilizations so far are self terminating, there is the consideration of how they progress along their lifetime.

Im reading Man as Witch: Male Witches in Central Europe, its about the men that got accused of witchcraft during the 1500s to the early 1700s and about the role of gender in witchcraft back then

I've been reading The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy by Ryan E. Stokes. It traces the evolution of the Judeo-Christian Satan figure and explores how God's prosecuting angel became his enemy and a scapegoat for the evils of the world.

Got a few books going this weekend:

• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

• The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

• The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

I finished SOA last night. Ms. Miller clearly knows her Homer, but her depiction of Patroclus' relationship with Achilles doesn't really make sense to me. I get why Patroclus is into Achilles, but I don't see why Achilles cares so much for Patroclus except that he's the one person who doesn't fully buy into the hype around him and is thus willing to call him on his bullshit.

I also read the titular novella in Lovecraft Country last night. I want to say the story was a hoot, and it was, but I can't help but suspect that there are a lot of white folks in the US who are still nostalgic for the days when black people needed a safe travel guidebook advising them on where it was safe to seek food, lodging, fuel, etc.

I know what you mean. I studied Russian for two years in university, but in order to maintain a language you must speak it regularly. Seeing how little I communicate even in English, I wasn't willing to change my hermitic lifestyle to accommodate more socializing, LOL!

My current pursuit is Biblical Hebrew, which has the distinct benefit of not having to know how to speak it fluently or how to be able to construct sentences out of thin air. Since it's a literary language, all I need to know is how to recognize vocabulary and all the various grammar forms and the like.

The textbook that I'm using is Introduction to Hebrew by Moshe Greenberg (1965). It's small but incredibly dense. You know a text is dense when the size of your notes is comparable to the size of the chapter (either that or you may suck at taking notes!). It's designed to be as concise as humanly possible and to prepare you to open up that Tanakh as quickly as possible and start picking up verses.

The copy that I have contains a bunch of scribbles from a guy who must've been using it for a class since all of the exercises are dated in and around October 1969. I have finally surpassed the end of the scribblings, so I can say that I beat at least one person. LOL feelsgoodman

I'm halfway through "The Man in the High Castle" since I enjoyed the TV adaptation. It's slower than I expected, but pretty good.

Jumping in the train to say this is a great book. Maybe the only book I read in university that I read again after and think about.

Bonus, the book I should be reading is a Tagalog language study book. I swear, wife, I'll learn the language and you can stop being my interpreter at your family events

I'm reading Lord of the Rings for the second time. I'd rather be reading something new to me, but my partner got me a really nice edition last year, and it got lost in the shuffle of several life events over the last year, and I finally found it again a few weeks ago.

Goddamn does it take forever for the Hobbits to get to Rivendell.

I've only read LOTR once and I gotta say it didn't wow me. I'm glad a lot of people enjoy it, but for me it's a slow going book. I mostly remember the Hobbits talking about food.

Frodo has the ring for 17 years before he even leaves the Shire, he's 50 years old for the majority of the book(s). I can relate to the hobbits though, I also spend a lot of time talking about food.

I do feel like Lord of the Rings is one of those things that blew people's minds in 1954, a fully fleshed out world that doesn't fit the standard fantasy narratives of the time. The problem is 40+ years later (or whenever you read it) it's influenced so much it's just not as impactful, not to mention it's now been 20 years now since the last movie came out, so all the beats are imbedded in the public consciousness, it's just a genie that can't be put back into the bottle.

I am currently reading the book "The Harbinger".

I'm currently reading Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's Iliad. Also, there's a British author named Emily H. Wilson who recently dropped a historical fantasy called Inanna. My wife gave me both since we had recently read Madeline Miller's Circe. Also, I haven't seen Sumerian/Mesopotamian myth used much in sff aside from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

You sure your wife doesn't secretly wish you dead?

If she wanted me dead, she's had twenty years' worth of chances to make it happen. She's at least as smart as I am, and has consumed enough true crime media that she should be able to do it and get away with it. She certainly knows not to talk to Johnny Law without an attorney. :)

@starbreaker

I've taken you up on your suggestion and am currently rereading Dune for the first time in twenty five years. Much enjoyment so far. This after P.D. James's Children of Men nearly did me in through boredom.

Are you enjoying it? I've only ever read a prose translation.

I am. Wilson has a deft hand with the material and a lively wit. For example, her translation of the Odyssey begins with "Tell me about a complicated man." Odysseus was definitely that, but other writers translate the original polytropos differently.

That sounds interesting. I might give it a go. Also, novel approaches can sometimes break through the 'literary' baggage of a work, maybe getting us a little closer to the liveliness of the original. Here I'm thinking of Steve Ellis's Divine Comedy. (Though hell is a slog, no matter what you do.)

TBH, I'd pay to see Emily Wilson take on Dante, though I think a translation of the Aeneid might be more likely.