Reading Books For Pleasure

[twister947]

Bad Dirt
Annie Proulx

 

[phil97405]

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Good story!

 

[seela]

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Good story!

Ooh, good book!


I read Linguistic Forest by Valdur Mikita. It’s a difficult book to explain… (edit: here’s a little something about him and his style)

It’s a collection of essays about Estonia and Estonians, but also about Finnic, and to some extent Nordic people in general. It’s about what makes Estonia/Nordics special and resilient (people have a hi-tech machine in one hand and a mushroom knife in the other), how the forest and our mythology gives us a way to cope with things that has been lost in countries that have been “civilized” longer etc.

I found the book interesting but also aggravating, it makes some rather expansive reaches in some points, drawing a straight line from one thing to another that don’t seem to have much binding them together. But even when the reaches annoyed me, they also gave me a lot to think about. And when I thought about them, I often found that maybe there’s something to them, even if I wouldn’t necessary agree with the complete, bold statements he made.

At times I kind if rolled my eyes a little when he made some things sound so profound or exoticized things that I feel like are just a part and parcel of human life. But maybe, maybe I feel that way because the things he writes about are so familiar to me. I can’t see the specialness of it all because I’m surrounded by it? But I have to say, at times the book really made me cringe a little, which in itself was an interesting experience. The cringe also made me question and look at things from another perspective, so, good times.

Like the “hi-tech - mushroom knife” thing that makes Estonian/Finnic/Nordic people resilient I mentioned above… I don’t necessarily agree with it (which is funny because I’m exactly like that myself!) but after having read the book and mulling it over, I realized that because I feel like our “forest relationship” and “forest skills” are waning, it means that at least there is something to wane there. And maybe it really is a little special in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know. I think I’ll ruminate on this book for a long while, actively and passively. A very good read.

 

[IrisAlthea]

Ooh, good book!


I read Linguistic Forest by Valdur Mikita. It’s a difficult book to explain… (edit: here’s a little something about him and his style)

It’s a collection of essays about Estonia and Estonians, but also about Finnic, and to some extent Nordic people in general. It’s about what makes Estonia/Nordics special and resilient (people have a hi-tech machine in one hand and a mushroom knife in the other), how the forest and our mythology gives us a way to cope with things that has been lost in countries that have been “civilized” longer etc.

I found the book interesting but also aggravating, it makes some rather expansive reaches in some points, drawing a straight line from one thing to another that don’t seem to have much binding them together. But even when the reaches annoyed me, they also gave me a lot to think about. And when I thought about them, I often found that maybe there’s something to them, even if I wouldn’t necessary agree with the complete, bold statements he made.

At times I kind if rolled my eyes a little when he made some things sound so profound or exoticized things that I feel like are just a part and parcel of human life. But maybe, maybe I feel that way because the things he writes about are so familiar to me. I can’t see the specialness of it all because I’m surrounded by it? But I have to say, at times the book really made me cringe a little, which in itself was an interesting experience. The cringe also made me question and look at things from another perspective, so, good times.

Like the “hi-tech - mushroom knife” thing that makes Estonian/Finnic/Nordic people resilient I mentioned above… I don’t necessarily agree with it (which is funny because I’m exactly like that myself!) but after having read the book and mulling it over, I realized that because I feel like our “forest relationship” and “forest skills” are waning, it means that at least there is something to wane there. And maybe it really is a little special in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know. I think I’ll ruminate on this book for a long while, actively and passively. A very good read.

It sounds very interesting.

I suppose the duality of deep roots in traditions on one hand and a lot of modernity on the other, is a bit of a trademark.

Currently reading Robert Sapolsky’s Determined - The Sience of Life Without Free Will and trashy romance featuring elves.

 

[seela]

It sounds very interesting.

I suppose the duality of deep roots in traditions on one hand and a lot of modernity on the other, is a bit of a trademark.

Currently reading Robert Sapolsky’s Determined - The Sience of Life Without Free Will and trashy romance featuring elves.

It was interesting. Funny, confusing, annoying, interesting, good stuff. I still don’t know what was meant as humor and what wasn’t.

I moved south and read a Latvian book called Doom 94 by Jānis Joņevs. Excellent stuff about finding your own identity in a pretty tumultuous time. Post-Soviet things and heavy metal things - now if ever there was a book written for me specifically, that’s the one.

Next up will be sappy, christmassy romance stuff. ‘Tis the season.

 

[magic_rat]

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Good story!

If you like his work try Never Let Me Go. Brilliant, but fucking devastating.

 

[phil97405]

If you like his work try Never Let Me Go. Brilliant, but fucking devastating.

It's on my list. Thanks.

 

[phil97405]

Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams. Cyberpunk Sci-fi. A good read, so far. I'm half way through.

 

[seela]

Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams. Cyberpunk Sci-fi. A good read, so far. I'm half way through.

I love reading a little older scifi, to see what has aged well and is eerily accurate, but also to see what hasn’t aged well. Sometimes it can give hope.

My absolute favorite example of that is Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton (amazing book and I talk about it way too often). The book was written in 1930, but space travel was still such an implausible idea to the writer that it didn’t happen in the book until hundreds of years into the future, when in reality it was so, so close. I love how really big breakthroughs can be lurking right around the corner.

Thank you, btw! Googling Voice of the Whirlwind also solved a birthday present problem I’ve had.

 

[phil97405]

I love reading a little older scifi, to see what has aged well and is eerily accurate, but also to see what hasn’t aged well. Sometimes it can give hope.

My absolute favorite example of that is Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton (amazing book and I talk about it way too often). The book was written in 1930, but space travel was still such an implausible idea to the writer that it didn’t happen in the book until hundreds of years into the future, when in reality it was so, so close. I love how really big breakthroughs can be lurking right around the corner.

Thank you, btw! Googling Voice of the Whirlwind also solved a birthday present problem I’ve had.

Thank you, too! I'll check out Olaf Stapleton.

 

[seela]

Thank you, too! I'll check out Olaf Stapleton.

I hope you enjoy it if you end up reading the book! It’s one of my all time favorite books and reading experiences, but I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.

 

[Purple_Fronds]

Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams. Cyberpunk Sci-fi. A good read, so far. I'm half way through.

I loved that book, I also highly recommend angel station by the same author, it’s a shorter book and moves quickly. The cyberpunk genre is a lot of fun.

 

[phil97405]

I loved that book, I also highly recommend angel station by the same author, it’s a shorter book and moves quickly. The cyberpunk genre is a lot of fun.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Re-reading Hench, about a woman's descent into murderous villainy after being injured and unable to afford adequate medical care. Fiction.

 

[twister947]

Re-reading Hench, about a woman's descent into murderous villainy after being injured and unable to afford adequate medical care. Fiction.

The times we live in...

 

[Bramblethorn]

The times we live in...

Yeah, I'd started my re-read well before last Wednesday, but it's ended up being quite topical. :-/

 

[twister947]

.....

 

[Purple_Fronds]

Re-reading Hench, about a woman's descent into murderous villainy after being injured and unable to afford adequate medical care. Fiction.

The “fiction” part made me laugh, are you sure?

 

[Bramblethorn]

The “fiction” part made me laugh, are you sure?

It also has superheros who can fly through the air, phase through matter and start fires with the power of their mind, so yeah, fiction.

 

[twister947]

Head Fake
by Scott Gordon

I liked this...a light touch on a heavy subject (mental illness).

 

[twister947]

Legends Of the Fall
Jim Harrison

 

[gabriela_2003]

Art.Guido Mauas

 

[seela]

I’m almost done with Balli Kaur Jaswal’s The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters. It’s about three sisters who go to do a pilgrimage of sorts in India as per their mother’s dying wish.

It’s a light and easy read, but also deals with deeper themes and shows things about a world I’m not particularly familiar with. I also read her Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows earlier this year (or maybe last year?) which was an equally interesting and entertaining book.

 

[IrisAlthea]

Legends Of the Fall
Jim Harrison

I’ve never read it, but I vaguely remember the film.

I’m almost done with Balli Kaur Jaswal’s The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters. It’s about three sisters who go to do a pilgrimage of sorts in India as per their mother’s dying wish.

It’s a light and easy read, but also deals with deeper themes and shows things about a world I’m not particularly familiar with. I also read her Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows earlier this year (or maybe last year?) which was an equally interesting and entertaining book.

My mother loved Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows too.

I love that there are more stories now, from those living between cultures.
Having grown up with a comparably mild version of that, I can only imagine what it would be like when the discrepancy is larger.

 

[seela]

I love that there are more stories now, from those living between cultures.
Having grown up with a comparably mild version of that, I can only imagine what it would be like when the discrepancy is larger.

True, that’s something I have zero personal experience with, so it’s always interesting to read about the topic or see it explored in movies. In Shergill Sisters it’s especially interesting to see how differently the sisters experience things, simply because of the different atmospheres they grew up in socially, despite being the same family.