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What I read in June:
The KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, John Higgs. This is the updated version with the thousands of words of new footnotes, a good excuse to read it again. Some comments here.
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. I'm told Jill Biden has instructed Biden diehards not to read the book.
Lake of Darkness, Adam Roberts. A horror story about black holes, pretty well done. Mentioned in this blog post.
Eight Million Ways to Die, Lawrence Block. I have been reading all of the Matt Scudder novels. This is the fifth in the series.
What RAW fan Mark Brown read in June (I have myself read the Silverberg novel more than once)
The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick 6/2
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 6/6
A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg 6/24
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 6/30
6 comments:
Not really a "list" person myself, but I like the idea of promoting books. I tend to have several tomes on the go at once, which I dip into and read over a long period, rather than "Wham bam thank you ma'am, my quota sorted for the week!". Currently piled high on my coffee table or Kindle (about 50% of each):
(Not all good, a few quite bad, imo, but mostly worth checking out, for me).
Invisible Rulers - Renee DiResta (latest arrival)
More Everything Forever - Adam Becker
Live Flesh - Ruth Rendell
The New Inquisition - Robert Anton Wilson (nth re-read)
The Dose Effect - TJ Power
Firepower - John Cutter (John Shirley)
Silicon Embrace - John Shirley
Owned - Eoin Higgins
Reading Emptiness - Jeff Humphries
Dark Money - Jane Mayer
Tampa - Alissa Nutting
Hayek's Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right - Quinn Slobodian
Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism - George Monbiot
The Trouble with Sunbathers - Magnus Mills
Idoru - William Gibson (re-read)
Reverse Meditation - Andrew Holecek
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky (first time read, I read Crime and Punishment yonks ago)
The Linguistics Wars (new edition with Lakoff in subtitle) - Randy Allen Harris
Transparent Body, Luminous World - Rupert Spira
Know Yourself - Ibn 'Arabi / Balyani
The Proof of My Innocence - Jonathan Coe
Metaphysics - Aristotle
Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain - Pete Egoscue
Zero to One - Peter Thiel
Abroad in Japan - Chris Broad
Mastering Bitcoin - Andreas Antonopoulos
Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari
Brian Dean: I wanna party with you, man.
Yes, but seriously: I'd love to read your takes on The New Inquisition. And...uhhh...what do you think of Zero To One?
Last month I read:
Vineland by Pynchon
Lineland – Mortality and Mercy on the Internet's Pynchon-L@Waste.Org Discussion List by Jules Siegal, Christine Wexler, et al. I haven't found anything interesting about this book except for Siegal's famous Playboy article "Who Is Thomas Pynchon ... And Why Is He Taking Off With My Life?' which can also be found online.
Lines of Flight – Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon by Stefan Mattessich. I've only read the introduction and some of the chapter on Vineland. The author's combination of extreme Academese combined with Deleuzespeak presents a daunting challenge. He makes one extremely good point I can use and maybe others if I come to understand them.
Cosmic Trigger Vol. III by Robert Anton Wilson in progress. Loving and enjoying it immensely.
A typo crept in my list: "Taking Off With My Wife" incorrectly has Life for Wife.
@Michael: I read 'Zero to One' (or rather I'm still reading it) hoping it'd reveal something interesting about how Thiel thinks. And it does, I guess, but limited to mildly-toned business advice for start-ups, with a lot of "founder" speak, plus his oddly banal-sounding philosophies of vertical/horizontal progress (ie new things vs copying things, with monopoly capitalism as his preferred way to create new things), and "definite" vs "indefinite", etc (he's big on definite, on firm convictions). Maybe I'm not competent enough to appreciate his (supposedly) contrarian thinking. I think Max Chafkin's Thiel bio might have been a better bet.
The New Inquisition: god, I love that book! Always refreshing to return to, a terribly underrated masterpiece of insight, and has much more to offer than many people imagine, I think.
Just finished Straight Outta Dublin--great read--my reading has slowed down quite a bit over the past few years but my purchasing of books hasn't! I have a stack of partially read--too many to list!
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