OT: The Good Book: What are you reading right now?

[ProspectsFanatic]

One example as related to behavior, a powerful one. We have plenty of data on the effects of stress in the womb. High stresses will modify genetic expressions (epigenetic effects) to a myriad of genes and neurobiological processes (especially related to the ANS, major motivaton/reward pathways and to fear/agression) setting basal levels of activation to a state that will lead to misadaptation/insult/deregulation in both biology and behavioral expressions. These are highly important to know in preventive medicine, related to mental health issues and public health issues, related to many of our societal problems. Epidemiological data, biological data studies and neurobiological studies all align together perfectly. There's very little speculation about this anymore, ever since both epigenetics and neurobiology brought the major missing pieces of understanding.


Maybe it has to do with how we were differently brought up. Really early on in my journey, I stumbled unto chaos theory by chance. I borrowed James Gleick's Chaos from my mother's business partner's library in my early 20's, fascinated by the mandelbrot set fractals on the cover. I think this book, more than any other, helped me understand the importance of never leaving a stone unturned. The more complex the system, the more layers you need to account for. The higher the complexity, less manoeuvre there is for reductionism. And that's mainly the problem of the fields that have attempted to lead the behavioral sciences, especially anthropology and psychology, which is why I find it really odd how you harp on the speculative part of neurobiology, when both the formers, when it comes to behavior, are repleet with behavioral interpretations and even higher speculation. Neurobiology and epigenetics are actually helping those disciplines to remove many of the false interpretations they had come up with. Just need to take a look at present day research on empathy versus the interpretations of sociality that existed before, the old dogmatic interpretations of altruism and emotional intelligence (which psychology is extremely late on). Psychology is still seeing emotional intelligence through mostly only the prefrontal cortex and emotion regulation. Neurobiology has shown this to be a grave error as it is only part of the story. Don't wanna dwell too much into this, but it's an example of what field is influencing the other fields right now.

10 years ago, I discovered primatologist, endocrinologist and neurobiologist, Robert M Sapolsky, who is today one of the leading figures in behavioral biology. I had goosebumps when I realized the providence of where my path had lead me (trying to understand human nature) when later on, I started watching his Bio intro course at Standford on youtube and he explains the two mandatory readings for his course; Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which was his primer on the neurobio of stress, first book I had read from him, and the other one was Gleick's Chaos. Sapolsky stresses how you need to account for all layers of explanation when it comes to human behavior.

I think it is essential to your understanding. I didn't simply read Sapolsky though, but i always mention him, because he's probably the best and most complete reference when it comes to human behavior. He's also an excellent orator, bar none.

Hope it helps

Oh... and my second favorite primatologist (incidently since you mentioned Sapiens) who is also redefining how we interpret our past relating to our confounding and common ancestry with Bonobos, not just the chimps, Franz De Waal. I think his work on the origins of morality are exceedingly important in our understanding of our behavioral past.

Thanks for your insights, I'll check into that.

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

Reading “ Le maitre des illusions “ de Donna Tartt.

I have french version.

Story is ok, although nothing special I still am enjoying it, but the writing is fantastic. Its like an explosion of amazing beauty.

Read it a long time ago in French as it was in my mother's library. Can barely remember it. The weird part is that I still have a copy an ex left behind a few years back. Might read it again.

 

[Kimota]

Alan Moore definitely took a very cynical, pessimistic approach to his take on that concept. In his own words, it was a very cynical time in England when he wrote it , with Thatcher and all, so it kind of permeated into his work. V for Vendetta was very much the same in that aspect . Those were written by a man who felt the world was headed in a very bad direction.

Another book of Moore I would like to tackle one day is Miracle Man/Marvel Man, I heard a lot of people saying this was their favorite work of his. It's another realistic angle on super-heroes and it seems closer to Clash in its execution, yet more disturbing. Moore took a funny simplistic Golden Age character like Shazam/Captain Marvel and applied it to the real World. Like having David Lynch doing I Love Lucy.

 

[Wats]

Finished "The Fifth Season" Trilogy, really surprised how much I enjoyed it.

 

[Runner77]

I haven't watched the shows but I've read the first 4 books. The 3rd one is really good. I'd like to read the 5th but they can take a while to get into sometimes.

I've bought the books but haven't started them. I've read some fans say that the story doesn't hold up and gets mired in useless details in some of the books.

How much did you enjoy your reading experience in the first 4 books? Did they hold your attention or did you find that there was a lack of cohesion and structure along the way?

 

[Runner77]

Finished "The Fifth Season" Trilogy, really surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Didn't know what this was, so I looked it up. It's in the sci-fi genre. Found this user on Goodreads that gave a compelling account. Was this your experience?

I picked this one up because I greatly enjoyed Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but this novel was even better. Jemisin blew me away with her world-building and beautiful writing. It's the tale of an alternate earth called the Stillness, which is plagued by constant seismic activity. This leads to frequent near-extinction events called "Fifth Seasons" that keep humans on their toes. The evidence of past civilizations litters the planet -- ruined cities, incomplete 'stonelore' handed down from earlier generations, and strange obelisks that float through the atmosphere like low-altitude satellites and serve no apparent purpose. The civilization that we meet in this book, the Sanze Empire, has survived for centuries by harnessing the power of orogenes -- people born with an innate ability to control their environment. The orogenes can stop earthquakes or start them. They can save cities, or drawn power from living creatures and "ice" them. Their powers are terrifying yet essential, so the empire develops a caste of Guardians who have the power to neutralize the orogenes when necessary. The orogenes are held in contempt and called "roggas" by ordinary humans. Despite all their power, they cannot control their own lives. They are either hunted down and destroyed or sent to the Fulcrum to be trained and used by the empire. Imagine Hogwarts, if Hogwarts treated its students like chattel. The world Jemisin creates is as horrific as it is brilliant.

My advice is to give the book at least fifty pages before passing judgment, because it takes a while to understand what is going on. There is a lot of terminology to get used to, and the book is told in three intertwining narratives that at first don't seem to match up, but once you get into the world and into the story, it is a fantastically rewarding read. I can't say much about the plot without giving away some of the wonderful surprises, but if you want to read about a truly dystopian world that holds a mirror to the darkest of human motivations, this novel will haunt you long after you finish it.

 

[Wats]

Didn't know what this was, so I looked it up. It's in the sci-fi genre. Found this user on Goodreads that gave a compelling account. Was this your experience?

I picked this one up because I greatly enjoyed Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but this novel was even better. Jemisin blew me away with her world-building and beautiful writing. It's the tale of an alternate earth called the Stillness, which is plagued by constant seismic activity. This leads to frequent near-extinction events called "Fifth Seasons" that keep humans on their toes. The evidence of past civilizations litters the planet -- ruined cities, incomplete 'stonelore' handed down from earlier generations, and strange obelisks that float through the atmosphere like low-altitude satellites and serve no apparent purpose. The civilization that we meet in this book, the Sanze Empire, has survived for centuries by harnessing the power of orogenes -- people born with an innate ability to control their environment. The orogenes can stop earthquakes or start them. They can save cities, or drawn power from living creatures and "ice" them. Their powers are terrifying yet essential, so the empire develops a caste of Guardians who have the power to neutralize the orogenes when necessary. The orogenes are held in contempt and called "roggas" by ordinary humans. Despite all their power, they cannot control their own lives. They are either hunted down and destroyed or sent to the Fulcrum to be trained and used by the empire. Imagine Hogwarts, if Hogwarts treated its students like chattel. The world Jemisin creates is as horrific as it is brilliant.

My advice is to give the book at least fifty pages before passing judgment, because it takes a while to understand what is going on. There is a lot of terminology to get used to, and the book is told in three intertwining narratives that at first don't seem to match up, but once you get into the world and into the story, it is a fantastically rewarding read. I can't say much about the plot without giving away some of the wonderful surprises, but if you want to read about a truly dystopian world that holds a mirror to the darkest of human motivations, this novel will haunt you long after you finish it.

I'd say it's accurate, definitely could not have described the experience as well as this person. The most enjoyable part of this trilogy for me was how the secrets of the characters/world were revealed. It's also dark enough that it didn't feel like a teen scifi/fantasy fiction.

 

[Pompeius Magnus]

Anytime Alan Moore is brought up I can't help but bring up Warren Ellis' impression of him:

That's actually a pretty darn good impression . Pretty spot on.

 

[Harry Kakalovich]

I've bought the books but haven't started them. I've read some fans say that the story doesn't hold up and gets mired in useless details in some of the books.

How much did you enjoy your reading experience in the first 4 books? Did they hold your attention or did you find that there was a lack of cohesion and structure along the way?

The narrative breaks up in perspectives, so it can take a while to get into it. But once I got 100 pages in or so it starts to take off. The 3rd book is really really fun to read. The 1st takes a while, but gets good. The 2nd felt a bit like filler. The 4th was ok - I don't remember too much about it. It's like a new start. I haven't read the 5th yet.

My main annoyance with the books is that they end sometimes on cliffhangers. That's why the 3rd book is so great because it has a true ending. The other thing is that a ton of people die.

 

[Intangir]

I'm currently reading ''the Magicians'' by Lev Grossman and it just sucks. I don't know how in the world it could have spawned a TV series. But I guess I did learn something for all my trouble; that I'm never, even when completely bored, watching the TV adaptation of this book.

I get that this is a clever-ish re-imagining of Narnia and Harry Potter that explores, pays tribute and makes fun of some of the tropes in those books and in the fantasy genre of litterature as a whole, that the setting is intellectually-challenging and all, but I find it devoid of any type of charm. To be more precise, I hate the narration, the prose, the characters and the book has a smug feeling to it that makes me want to cross space and time to punch Grossmann, wherever he might be. The only truly good thing about this book is the description of the environment, and that's pretty low on the totem pole of the litterary components to a book, to say the least. I'm finishing the first book out of pure pefectionism and then never touching the series again.

In the end, some other people might have derived entertainment from this work by Grossman, I derive peeved-off anoyance.

 

[Hansman]

Don Quixote

 

[Lshap]

Don Quixote

How far in? Long book, beautifully written.

Big generalization here, but the length and ornate detail of many classic novels amaze me. Those dudes had no word processors, no command-Z, no file saving beyond don't-let-the-stack-of-papers-get-wet. I remember reading a description of the writing of Anna Karenina (I know, Tolstoy's an extreme example of length and detail) which detailed Leo's wife's enormous contribution to the editing & organizing of the mountain of papers. I wonder how Cervantes did it centuries earlier and what tools he used.

It would be interesting to graph the changing nature of fiction writing in the last century and how it's accommodated a more crowded market with shrinking attention spans.

 

[NotProkofievian]

How far in? Long book, beautifully written.

Big generalization here, but the length and ornate detail of many classic novels amaze me. Those dudes had no word processors, no command-Z, no file saving beyond don't-let-the-stack-of-papers-get-wet. I remember reading a description of the writing of Anna Karenina (I know, Tolstoy's an extreme example of length and detail) which detailed Leo's wife's enormous contribution to the editing & organizing of the mountain of papers. I wonder how Cervantes did it centuries earlier and what tools he used.

It would be interesting to graph the changing nature of fiction writing in the last century and how it's accommodated a more crowded market with shrinking attention spans.

They had one key advantage: being bored as shit. We can only imagine such boredom today because amusement is always within our grasp.

 

[Lshap]

They had one key advantage: being bored as ****. We can only imagine such boredom today because amusement is always within our grasp.

tldr

 

[Kimota]

wrong thread

 

[Hansman]

How far in? Long book, beautifully written.

Big generalization here, but the length and ornate detail of many classic novels amaze me. Those dudes had no word processors, no command-Z, no file saving beyond don't-let-the-stack-of-papers-get-wet. I remember reading a description of the writing of Anna Karenina (I know, Tolstoy's an extreme example of length and detail) which detailed Leo's wife's enormous contribution to the editing & organizing of the mountain of papers. I wonder how Cervantes did it centuries earlier and what tools he used.

It would be interesting to graph the changing nature of fiction writing in the last century and how it's accommodated a more crowded market with shrinking attention spans.

On page 611 out of 940.I must confess I;ve been at it for over 3 years.I crack it open whenever I;m in Cuba or Mexico.Very good points about about editing and organization.I wonder if less was more back then?I chuckled about the shrinking attention spans just watching people hold their phones wading into the piscina checking it every 4 seconds like they are on a kidney donor list waiting for a notification.In 1605 part 1 was completed,1615 Cervantes completes Don Quixote.Good thing his family paid his ransom to Barbary pirates or the world would have missed on a master piece. Weird fact Miguel de Cervantes dies on the same day as William Shakespeare. Edith Grossman translated this 404 year old book-brilliant work.

 

[Andrei79]

Bought 5 or 6 of the recommandations from this thread lol.

 

[ProspectsFanatic]

@Ozymandias Watch some of Robert Sapolsky conferences on Youtube, I remember watching some of his Stanford lectures a long time ago, but didn't come across his work since. Clearly, a very smart and knowledgeable man, gained a lot of respect from me by being a firm believer of hard determinist through his scientific understanding of the human mind. Are you a believer of hard determinism as well?

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

@Ozymandias Watch some of Robert Sapolsky conferences on Youtube, I remember watching some of his Stanford lectures a long time ago, but didn't come across his work since. Clearly, a very smart and knowledgeable man, gained a lot of respect from me by being a firm believer of hard determinist through his scientific understanding of the human mind. Are you a believer of hard determinism as well?

Pretty much, but it has nothing to do with belief, more a question of pragmatism. The only level on which causality seems to take a hike is at the subatomic level, regarding quantum entanglement and time/timing, and unpredictability (the unpredictability of particles seems to show that there's no true destiny, while entanglement seems to show the opposite, that life/energy acts strangely and seem to be pushing forward events). At the macro level though, causality rules, complex systems abound and interlock, and there's no room for reductionism.

 

[angusyoung]

On the lighter side,
Been reading how to cook my mac & cheese.But on a serious note, a few publications on the plight of the current situation on global warming and rising flood waters globally, nothing serious.

 

[Andrei79]

Read and finished Sapiens as well as Fall of Giants from Ken Follett in the last week. They were captivating reads and I'm going to buy the rest of century trilogy. Thanks to everyone contributing for the recommandations.

 

[Harry Kakalovich]

I'm reading Educated by Tara Westover.

 

[NotProkofievian]

Pretty much, but it has nothing to do with belief, more a question of pragmatism. The only level on which causality seems to take a hike is at the subatomic level, regarding quantum entanglement and time/timing, and unpredictability (the unpredictability of particles seems to show that there's no true destiny, while entanglement seems to show the opposite, that life/energy acts strangely and seem to be pushing forward events). At the macro level though, causality rules, complex systems abound and interlock, and there's no room for reductionism.

Like, ''free will is an illusion'' hard determinist?

 

[Tyson]

The Killing of Lincoln, an amazing story in American history

 

[Andrei79]

Where do you guys get your books, aside from amazon ? Any good websites for buying or renting to recommend ?