What are you reading currently?

[Jaygo]

16 minutes ago, Rainier said:

The only romance book I've ever read (that I can think of) is The Time Traveller's Wife. It is a decent book and possibly worth reading if you are researching romance genre meshing with other genres (light sci-fi in this case). Very easy to read and the romantic relationship in the book is both very weird in some places and very realistic in others.

 

I think Hemmingway has some good romance in otherwise non romance books. For whom the bell tolls and a farewell to arms both touch on love and are entertaining reads. 

 

If you like Western genres Lonesome Dove is in my top 5 all time books and Id recommend it to anyone. 

[Rainier]

Just now, flesh said:

When I was reading sutree by cormac McCarthy recently I kept getting flashback to the book of the new sun. 
 

I can’t pinpoint why. I guess it’s the style/prose/ non goal oriented unfolding meandering way it’s presented. 

I haven't read Suttree, but I get what you are saying about the non-goal oriented way the plot unfolds (or at least it seems to be non-goal oriented on first read). The thing I love about New Sun (and the rest of the Solar Cycle) is the fact that it's like an iceberg in terms of both plot and symbolism. You see the plot of what is happening with the characters and you can tell that there is a lot of symbolism going on. And you may eventually realize that there is actually a massive amount of symbolism. But you also may realize that there is an absolutely massive amount of plot that requires re-reads and analysis to tease out. And there are so many theories about what is going on behind the scenes. For my own theory, I think I am the only person in the world who probably holds it (or at least I've never met anyone else who holds it). And there are so many cases of that regarding Wolfe's works. Alot like Borges in that respect.

[Rainier]

3 minutes ago, Jaygo said:

 

I think Hemmingway has some good romance in otherwise non romance books. For whom the bell tolls and a farewell to arms both touch on love and are entertaining reads. 

 

If you like Western genres Lonesome Dove is in my top 5 all time books and Id recommend it to anyone. 

Funny you mention that. Lonesome Dove is up next after I finish Winslow's border trilogy. I've had numerous people tell me it is one of their favorite books.

[Jaygo]

Lonesome Dove has some truly incredible character building and the pacing is near perfect. The landscape unfolds for you beautifully and really gives a feel of the west at the time. You want to love the characters but deep down you know you probably shouldn't.  Its not a time I would want to have lived but a time I am drawn to, same goes for early 1900's Russia. 

 

I tried other McMurty books but couldn't get into them. I guess it was a one off at least for me.

 

 

 

 

[RichardGibbons]

2 hours ago, flesh said:

With you being a thoughtful poster I found this interesting. I've also read most of the sci fi books I've seen here, not forever war, but it's on the shelf. Hyperion 1 and 2 are in my top three sci fi's of 100 hundred ish. However, I don't believe I've read any romance books, ever. I can't be sure I'll like them as I tend to side with the evolutionary psychologists when it comes to relationships but I'm open to trying. Can you give me a top three "romance" books?

 

First, some provisos. I've only been reading romances for a bit over a year (and interspersed with non-romances that people recommend), so I'd guess I've probably only read about 75-100 romance novels.

 

It's also worth noting that I'm generally not the target demographic for this genre, and my criteria for a good romance novel might not match others'.  The things that matter to me include:

• I like there to be some complexity beyond the complications of the romance
• The reasons why the characters fall in love need to be obvious, and they need to be reasons that wouldn't apply to any random person chucked into that situation. It often works if one character's trauma is soothed by the other's quirks.
• The characters need to be real enough that so that I want to cry when they're hurt.
• For me, it's not really about self-insertion, but it is a bit about me falling in love, just slightly, with the characters. Like, how is the romance even plausible if you don't love the character just a bit yourself?

With that massive proviso, I'd say my three-ish favourites are:

 

The Happy Ever After Playlist  (Jimenez): This is the second book of a series. The main character of this book was the side character in the first one. But at the end of the first, her boyfriend--clearly the love of her life--dies in an accident. This book picks up a year later, when she's trying to feign normalcy while still being completely broken inside.

 

Polaris Rising (Mihalik): It's a sci fi future where planets are colonized and spaceships flying all over the place. Major and lesser houses (families) are battling each other for influence. The daughter of one of the major houses has been trying to get away from it, living her own colourful life, when she gets abducted by mercenaries, likely to be sold to a rival house. This is 100% competency porn--almost every character is amazing at all things they do. That's usually a problem, but in this one, it just works for me (maybe because it was justified--her childhood was all about her family forging her into the tool they needed her to be.)

 

Harrow Faire Series (Kingsley): Might not be fair to include this, because it's a very non-traditional romance, isn't just one book, and is completely insane. The setting is a parasitic magical fair powered by devouring tiny parts of people's identities (e.g. their favourite colour. Afterward, the person no longer has a favourite colour.) The female protagonist is a visitor to the fair. The male protagonist is a short-tempered irreverent and unrepentant psychopath with extremely bloody magical abilities who wants to force the soul of the woman into a carved puppet for his show. The romance actually works, though the first book isn't that romantic. It's like nothing else I've ever read.

 

Failure to Match (Parsi): I feel kind of bad including two fantastical romances, so I'll add this one as well. It's a traditional contemporary romance executed well. He's a billionaire using a matchmaking service to find a wife while she's the matchmaker. He's a jerk, so they hate each other. It's neatly woven together and the sex scenes are hot. (It's also worth noting that, for women, most romance novels are the exact same thing as porn is for men. Same book with a different cover. Maybe that's already obvious to everyone, but I didn't know that when I started this journey.)

 

 

[flesh]

7 minutes ago, RichardGibbons said:

 

First, some provisos. I've only been reading romances for a bit over a year (and interspersed with non-romances that people recommend), so I'd guess I've probably only read about 75-100 romance novels.

 

It's also worth noting that I'm generally not the target demographic for this genre, and my criteria for a good romance novel might not match others'.  The things that matter to me include:

• I like there to be some complexity beyond the complications of the romance
• The reasons why the characters fall in love need to be obvious, and they need to be reasons that wouldn't apply to any random person chucked into that situation. It often works if one character's trauma is soothed by the other's quirks.
• The characters need to be real enough that so that I want to cry when they're hurt.
• For me, it's not really about self-insertion, but it is a bit about me falling in love, just slightly, with the characters. Like, how is the romance even plausible if you don't love the character just a bit yourself?

With that massive proviso, I'd say my three-ish favourites are:

 

The Happy Ever After Playlist  (Jimenez): This is the second book of a series. The main character of this book was the side character in the first one. But at the end of the first, her boyfriend--clearly the love of her life--dies in an accident. This book picks up a year later, when she's trying to feign normalcy while still being completely broken inside.

 

Polaris Rising (Mihalik): It's a sci fi future where planets are colonized and spaceships flying all over the place. Major and lesser houses (families) are battling each other for influence. The daughter of one of the major houses has been trying to get away from it, living her own colourful life, when she gets abducted by mercenaries, likely to be sold to a rival house. This is 100% competency porn--almost every character is amazing at all things they do. That's usually a problem, but in this one, it just works for me (maybe because it was justified--her childhood was all about her family forging her into the tool they needed her to be.)

 

Harrow Faire Series (Kingsley): Might not be fair to include this, because it's a very non-traditional romance, isn't just one book, and is completely insane. The setting is a parasitic magical fair powered by devouring tiny parts of people's identities (e.g. their favourite colour. Afterward, the person no longer has a favourite colour.) The female protagonist is a visitor to the fair. The male protagonist is a short-tempered irreverent and unrepentant psychopath with extremely bloody magical abilities who wants to force the soul of the woman into a carved puppet for his show. The romance actually works, though the first book isn't that romantic. It's like nothing else I've ever read.

 

Failure to Match (Parsi): I feel kind of bad including two fantastical romances, so I'll add this one as well. It's a traditional contemporary romance executed well. He's a billionaire using a matchmaking service to find a wife while she's the matchmaker. He's a jerk, so they hate each other. It's neatly woven together and the sex scenes are hot. (It's also worth noting that, for women, most romance novels are the exact same thing as porn is for men. Same book with a different cover. Maybe that's already obvious to everyone, but I didn't know that when I started this journey.)

 

 

Wow. Thanks. I’ll give a couple a try. 
 

 

[RichardGibbons]

2 hours ago, Rainier said:

The only romance book I've ever read (that I can think of) is The Time Traveller's Wife. It is a decent book and possibly worth reading if you are researching romance genre meshing with other genres (light sci-fi in this case). Very easy to read and the romantic relationship in the book is both very weird in some places and very realistic in others.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I got a few pages into that one, but put it down because when I read somewhere that the man visits the wife several times when she's a girl. Just thinking about that icked me out, but, if it were executed well, it might be fine, and it does seem relevant to what I'm writing. So, I'll put that back on the list.

[RichardGibbons]

3 hours ago, flesh said:

Well, I'd say, most of what is called Romance, is better explained by applying evolutionary principles to human psychology.

 

I think that this is absolutely true, but I also think this doesn't matter because existence as a human is governed by feelings.

 

Cypher's figured it out in this scene from The Matrix.

 

 

[Rainier]

10 minutes ago, RichardGibbons said:

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I got a few pages into that one, but put it down because when I read somewhere that the man visits the wife several times when she's a girl. Just thinking about that icked me out, but, if it were executed well, it might be fine, and it does seem relevant to what I'm writing. So, I'll put that back on the list.

Yeah, that is the weird part about it. There isn't anything inappropriate that happens during that portion of the book (and if I remember correctly, I think the character goes out of his way to try to make sure of that), but it is definitely a strange choice. 

[RichardGibbons]

Just now, Rainier said:

Yeah, that is the weird part about it. There isn't anything inappropriate that happens during that portion of the book (and if I remember correctly, I think the character goes out of his way to try to make sure of that), but it is definitely a strange choice. 

 

Yeah, if I were writing it, I wouldn't include it. But if I did write it, it would be because the man loves his wife so much that he wants to truly understand the entirety of her life, and he wants to be able to support and protect her for the entirety of her existence.

 

Now I'm curious how it's handled, and actually have to read it.  LOL.

[flesh]

2 hours ago, Rainier said:

I would both agree and disagree with you on this.

 

I agree that the idea of "romance" is almost completely devoid of any real meaning. Likewise, the idea of being "in love" is almost nonsensical. However, people are definitely capable of loving each other - with the word "loving" describing the acts of kindness, caring, self-sacrifice, etc. toward another person. And I think, to the extent that there is any subconscious direction going on regarding relationships, those are not genetic or evolutionary. They are simply societal norms that are so ingrained that people don't question them. They could question them but choose not to. If you were able to look at the "romance" of different areas of the globe now, or the same areas at different times, or go back to ancient Greece or ancient Egypt or however far back, you'd see that the "romantic" norms were completely different, therefore contradicting any possibility of an evolutionary factor.

 

I disagree with the idea that people don't have or are almost devoid of free will. There's no evidence for this and it is an avenue of philosophical thought that ends up in either dead ends or circular reasoning. And I wouldn't be so quick to disregard your own thoughts or consider them outside of your own authorship, as it is very easy to train oneself to think in different ways. We choose to allow societal norms to override our own thought processes on a million little or big things every day (and most of the time this is fine and usually beneficial). But that doesn't mean that you should give your brain a free pass because it uses the norms as a crutch or assume that you couldn't easily think a different way if you wanted to.

This treatment of free will hurts a bit in the way that my writing likely hurts some of you reading it, lol. Also, the treatment of there being differences throughout time of the definition of romance excluding evo psych as a sort of base programming being a part of the picture. A couple dozen books and more experiences flash through my mind. Which I won't get into unless someone wants book reco's on the subject. Directly and indirectly related. My thoughts here aren't really directed at you as I don't really know your position, just guessing. 

 

I'll keep this short because unless I had a 3 hours tete a tete with you, I don't believe I'd shift your thinking more than half way. Keep in mind my position is we don't know and I'm okay with not knowing. The metaphysic I'm leaning towards allows for a will of sorts. I'd assume most people believe they have libertarian free will with significant frequency and magnitude, my argument is that there's scientific evidence that limits it and that you can experience evidence in the first person for yourself. Everything third person does flow through the first person after all.  

 

I know many of you have read Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. You know we have shared biases and heuristics, that are irrational (but maybe useful, useful how/when? ). Shortly before dying Kahneman was asked how learning all that he did changed the way he did things and he said that it didn't change a thing, he was as he was before. Does this increase or decrease our free will? Can you remain without confirmation bias without intending to do so, in the moment? If you pay attention to these biases and heuristics for a year, and then stop paying attention to them, to what degree have you overcome the default mode? To what degree did you really overcome them during the year you tried? Why is the default mode the way it is? How many of them can you remember now?

 

Reductio ad absurdum, let's go there. If you take free will to the fullest definition, one could say that one could choose to be perfectly happy in solitary confinement indefinitely. You'd simply choose contentment (as an aside I was quite content when locked up for 105 days, not solitary, haha). Of course this is absurd, so what people mean by free will is less free than this. The question is how much less or if there is any. 

 

I'll appeal to your own inner experiences for brevity's sake. If you ask yourself to pick a song, the first that comes to mind, what was the song? Did you choose it? Where did it come from? Could you have chosen a different song? 

 

Try not to think, zero thoughts. Most can't do it, nobody can indefinitely. If you can't stop thinking, are you authoring your thinking? If a thought arises in consciousness, where was the choosing? If you can stop thinking for 10 seconds, or 10 minutes, when that absence of thinking ends, did you choose the next thought that came to mind? What % of your thoughts throughout the day are just a appearance in subjectivity seemingly from nowhere vs those you feel like you authored if you pay attention? Why is the thoughts that you seemingly author generally directed towards what humans normally direct their thoughts toward and not something that's not that? 

 

For those that believe the fact that romance was different in some ways in the past excludes the possibility of some evolutionary principles impacting what we attend to in sexual relationships largely, I'd just ask you to try some evo psych books. If evolution programs our bodies in certain ways but not others, ways that result in our genes being more likely to replicate, why wouldn't you expect that to happen to our minds? Is it cultural/nurture that makes you horny? You wouldn't be horny if born on a deserted island by yourself? When you are horny, does your psychological state change? If your mind is programmed to attend to some things, that result in genes replicating themselves, to the exclusion of other things, does this increase or decrease your free will? Is this attending limited to only being horny in regards to sexual relationships? If you believe we are a blank slate, that's so extreme at this point, I'd suggest partaking in some cognitive dissonance and read the overwhelming material against it. It is difficult to tease out what's more likely but there are some interesting ways that are more likely than others. 

 

Sorry if this isn't very clear as I've only rarely discussed these ideas with anyone, not sure what's effective. Also, in general, I don't think it's good for most to go down this path. You will if your willed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[flesh]

54 minutes ago, RichardGibbons said:

 

I think that this is absolutely true, but I also think this doesn't matter because existence as a human is governed by feelings.

 

Cypher's figured it out in this scene from The Matrix.

 

 

Gotta go play nintendo with my 5 year old but Yes! The female porn being the biggest seller since forever, yes! Why is it the porn it is and not other? 

[DooDiligence]

Speaking of westerns, Louis Lamour's Sackett series. Fair Blows the Wind is a really good non-western prequel (Europe to the Americas). Others of his non-westerns I liked a lot were Walking Drum (12th century Europe and western Asia), and Last of the Breed about a native American U2 pilot downed in Russia and his escape.

[Rainier]

39 minutes ago, flesh said:

This treatment of free will hurts a bit in the way that my writing likely hurts some of you reading it, lol. Also, the treatment of there being differences throughout time of the definition of romance excluding evo psych as a sort of base programming being a part of the picture. A couple dozen books and more experiences flash through my mind. Which I won't get into unless someone wants book reco's on the subject. Directly and indirectly related. My thoughts here aren't really directed at you as I don't really know your position, just guessing. 

 

I'll keep this short because unless I had a 3 hours tete a tete with you, I don't believe I'd shift your thinking more than half way. Keep in mind my position is we don't know and I'm okay with not knowing. The metaphysic I'm leaning towards allows for a will of sorts. I'd assume most people believe they have libertarian free will with significant frequency and magnitude, my argument is that there's scientific evidence that limits it and that you can experience evidence in the first person for yourself. Everything third person does flow through the first person after all.  

 

I know many of you have read Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. You know we have shared biases and heuristics, that are irrational (but maybe useful, useful how/when? ). Shortly before dying Kahneman was asked how learning all that he did changed the way he did things and he said that it didn't change a thing, he was as he was before. Does this increase or decrease our free will? Can you remain without confirmation bias without intending to do so, in the moment? If you pay attention to these biases and heuristics for a year, and then stop paying attention to them, to what degree have you overcome the default mode? To what degree did you really overcome them during the year you tried? Why is the default mode the way it is? How many of them can you remember now?

 

Reductio ad absurdum, let's go there. If you take free will to the fullest definition, one could say that one could choose to be perfectly happy in solitary confinement indefinitely. You'd simply choose contentment (as an aside I was quite content when locked up for 105 days, not solitary, haha). Of course this is absurd, so what people mean by free will is less free than this. The question is how much less or if there is any. 

 

I'll appeal to your own inner experiences for brevity's sake. If you ask yourself to pick a song, the first that comes to mind, what was the song? Did you choose it? Where did it come from? Could you have chosen a different song? 

 

Try not to think, zero thoughts. Most can't do it, nobody can indefinitely. If you can't stop thinking, are you authoring your thinking? If a thought arises in consciousness, where was the choosing? If you can stop thinking for 10 seconds, or 10 minutes, when that absence of thinking ends, did you choose the next thought that came to mind? What % of your thoughts throughout the day are just a appearance in subjectivity seemingly from nowhere vs those you feel like you authored if you pay attention? Why is the thoughts that you seemingly author generally directed towards what humans normally direct their thoughts toward and not something that's not that? 

 

For those that believe the fact that romance was different in some ways in the past excludes the possibility of some evolutionary principles impacting what we attend to in sexual relationships largely, I'd just ask you to try some evo psych books. If evolution programs our bodies in certain ways but not others, ways that result in our genes being more likely to replicate, why wouldn't you expect that to happen to our minds? Is it cultural/nurture that makes you horny? You wouldn't be horny if born on a deserted island by yourself? When you are horny, does your psychological state change? If your mind is programmed to attend to some things, that result in genes replicating themselves, to the exclusion of other things, does this increase or decrease your free will? Is this attending limited to only being horny in regards to sexual relationships? If you believe we are a blank slate, that's so extreme at this point, I'd suggest partaking in some cognitive dissonance and read the overwhelming material against it. It is difficult to tease out what's more likely but there are some interesting ways that are more likely than others. 

 

Sorry if this isn't very clear as I've only rarely discussed these ideas with anyone, not sure what's effective. Also, in general, I don't think it's good for most to go down this path. You will if your willed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree, no need to get into a long discussion about this in a book thread.

 

I would just say that, I don't think what you are describing is really related to free will. You're describing almost animalistic programming (I think). And since we aren't basic animals, I am not sure how that would apply. If there is no free will, then it is difficult or impossible to come up with an explanation for morality, which nearly all humans possess an innate understanding of. Without free will people can't make moral judgments, can't apply reason/logic to problems, can't choose to be non-normative eccentrics or hermits, don't simply have the ability to veto their instinctual responses, etc. And beyond that, the existence of free will is a philosophical question and not a psychological one.  

 

You are probably alot smarter than I am and you are definitely more well read regarding psychology than I am. I have no background in evolutionary psychology, and to be completely honest I have no interest in researching it. I personally don't think that psychological study beyond what can be observed at a very basic level is very useful due to the extreme complexity of the human brain/consciousness and the specificity of how individual brains adapt to the near infinite range of events and outcomes that a human can experience (not to mention the fact that the brain can also hypothesize about and be molded by an infinite amount of counterfactuals that didn't happen). Basic understanding of psychology makes sense to me (i.e. understanding financial motivations, understanding fallout from abuse or trauma, studies of cult members, etc). But beyond those types of things, I think it becomes alot of supposition and navel gazing. Also, the basic idea of "evolutionary psychology" sounds contradictory to me - since any psychological analysis (if it can be assumed to be accurate) could only apply to an individual and not a species, and evolutionary biology (if it can be assumed to be the correct understanding of biological history) relates to genetic differentiation and has nothing to do with the interior mind of an individual within a species.

[Rainier]

49 minutes ago, DooDiligence said:

Speaking of westerns, Louis Lamour's Sackett series. Fair Blows the Wind is a really good non-western prequel (Europe to the Americas). Others of his non-westerns I liked a lot were Walking Drum (12th century Europe and western Asia), and Last of the Breed about a native American U2 pilot downed in Russia and his escape.

I didn't know L'Amour had non-western books. Walking Drum sounds interesting. I'm always looking for good historical fiction.

[DooDiligence]

4 minutes ago, Rainier said:

I didn't know L'Amour had non-western books. Walking Drum sounds interesting. I'm always looking for good historical fiction.

 

It's a really good swashbuckler. Fair Blows the Wind has a lot of sword fights too.

 

I mentioned this guy before but Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles are really good. They cover the era surrounding Alfred the Great. There's 13 novels and none of them stunk. His Grail Quest series is also worth repeating.

Edited February 26 by DooDiligence

[brobro777]

Wait you guys read? Like books and stuff?

 

I don't get it, where's the punchline

 

[flesh]

Dan Simmons died. Writer of Hyperion. sad. 
 

another great sci fi is 

 

player of games of the culture series… can be read stand alone. 

[DooDiligence]

That's a terrible punchline.

[RichardGibbons]

2 hours ago, flesh said:

Dan Simmons died. Writer of Hyperion. sad. 

 

Darn. I had no idea he was born in the 40s. I thought we had another few decades.  

[Pauly]

3 hours ago, flesh said:

Dan Simmons died. Writer of Hyperion. sad. 
 

another great sci fi is 

 

player of games of the culture series… can be read stand alone. 

 

Sad to hear. Haven't read Hyperion, but The Terror (fictional account of what happened to the lost Franklin expedition) is one of the best historical fiction novels I've ever read. Was also made into a fantastic limited series on AMC a few years ago. 

[flesh]

1 hour ago, Pauly said:

 

Sad to hear. Haven't read Hyperion, but The Terror (fictional account of what happened to the lost Franklin expedition) is one of the best historical fiction novels I've ever read. Was also made into a fantastic limited series on AMC a few years ago. 

Yep. Both are great. Read Hyperion 1 and 2. You’re lucky you get to! 

[whiskybravo]

I am reading the 6th edition of Kandel’s Principles of Neural Science and Bob Spitz’s Dylan biography.  
 

As a student I found that I learned more from reading than from attending lectures.  I bring that up, because I find myself periodically tempted to sign up for Great Courses.

 

Does anyone subscribe and if so how many courses to you complete over the course of a year.  And if you are a reader, do you find it takes away from your reading time.  Perhaps it complements it…sometimes you want to go into passive mode?

 

Thank you for any feedback.

[flesh]

21 hours ago, whiskybravo said:

I am reading the 6th edition of Kandel’s Principles of Neural Science and Bob Spitz’s Dylan biography.  
 

As a student I found that I learned more from reading than from attending lectures.  I bring that up, because I find myself periodically tempted to sign up for Great Courses.

 

Does anyone subscribe and if so how many courses to you complete over the course of a year.  And if you are a reader, do you find it takes away from your reading time.  Perhaps it complements it…sometimes you want to go into passive mode?

 

Thank you for any feedback.

I’ve been through some of them.. iirc was free w audible sub years ago. They are good in a broad brush sort of way. Personally, liking philosophy for example, a broad brush is antithetical to the subject. I could provide some good stuff if you have interest here. 
 

I just looked up what they offer. I was only listening to audio… looks like they have written material videos of lectures and more.  If you do it and it’s cool let me know how it goes. 

[cubsfan]

21 hours ago, whiskybravo said:

As a student I found that I learned more from reading than from attending lectures.  I bring that up, because I find myself periodically tempted to sign up for Great Courses.

 

Does anyone subscribe and if so how many courses to you complete over the course of a year.  And if you are a reader, do you find it takes away from your reading time.  Perhaps it complements it…sometimes you want to go into passive mode?

 

Thank you for any feedback.

 

I did a few of the Great Course when it was DVD's.

 

Here is another avenue to look at - Hillsdale College - free online courses.  I've done the WWII course by Victor Davis Hanson. But that's right up my alley with history & current events.

But lots of philosophy, arts, science offerings..

 

Might browse through here and see if anything strikes your fancy! 

 

https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses?subject=History

 

Right now I'm reading "Sword and Scimitar" - 14 Centuries of War Between Islam and the West.

 

Quite timely and revealing.