What are you currently reading?

[Mookalafalas]

It is. I just finished the trilogy and liked it a lot.

Just started Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

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I liked Player One a lot.  It reminded me of a faster-paced, slicked up and toned-down version of Suarez "Daemon" and "Freedom" set.  The celebration of 80s pop culture as something worth celebrating and worshiping, however, got on my nerves at times.

[stingo]

I liked Player One a lot.  It reminded me of a faster-paced, slicked up and toned-down version of Suarez "Daemon" and "Freedom" set.  The celebration of 80s pop culture as something worth celebrating and worshiping, however, got on my nerves at times.

I'm only about 40 pages into it and it's getting on my nerves already. It seems like an exercise in packing in as many 80s references as you possibly can in the smallest amount of space.

[milk]

And yet, it's a tale which could have been written today:  about how the people who wear Christ's name like a sort of badge, would crucify Him anew if He walked among us today.

I loved reading all the Russian stuff but Dostoyevsky best of all. Yes, this idea still resonates. The other ideas in there are fascinating as well. I think many politicians would agree with the GI's ideas. And as you say...
I love D's madness.

[Ken B]

I loved reading all the Russian stuff but Dostoyevsky best of all. Yes, this idea still resonates. The other ideas in there are fascinating as well. I think many politicians would agree with the GI's ideas. And as you say...
I love D's madness.

I have to stop reading this thread! I do not have time to reread Dost.

On the other hand, I keep thinking, I wish I could find a book as good as The Brothers K ....

[milk]

I have to stop reading this thread! I do not have time to reread Dost.

On the other hand, I keep thinking, I wish I could find a book as good as The Brothers K ....

Some new translations came out of Dost and Tolstoy over the last few years by a team...I think a husband and wife team. I acquired a few of them but then realized I just can't. I just can't. Not now. Maybe some day. When I was younger I just plowed through all that stuff. Now I'm just like, "Um...not today. Not this month. Not this year."

[Florestan]

1 the last 100 pages of wp
2 the maudlin rose colored view of the peasants in ak
3 the religiosity
4 the kreutzer sonata's implicit views on women and sex
5 his collection of Stockhausen CDs

Don't get me wrong. [Tolstoy] had an incredible pull on me when I was in high school. But that's an age when many are seduced by nonsense. (How many fell victim to Ayn Rand at that age?)

Without getting into a point-by-point debate (I concede #5 is irrefutable), I would like to say two things.

1. I agree that Tolstoy is not a comfortable, nor a comforting, thinker. His ideas are hard to swallow, and his ethics even harder to follow, especially in the contemporary society. But this doesn't make them less interesting, less thought-provoking or in some cases less true. Calling them teenage-ish "nonsense" and putting him in the same class with Ayn Rand puzzles me greatly...

2. You see, by great thinker I don't mean someone who I agree with on everything, not even on something. I mean someone whose ideas it is difficult for me both to reject and to accept; who made a tremendous effort to thoroughly think through all the important issues that confront human beings; and whose works and thought had an enormous influence on their posterity. Tolstoy is exactly one of those, with the additional twofold distinction of (1) having a truly great and noble heart and (2) really practicing what he preached.

i am thankful I never had a chance to meet Leo.

Oh, you would have had nothing to worry about, I'm sure the dislike would have been reciprocal...   

(Sorry, couldn't resist the temptation.)

  Tolstoy espoused a kind of liberal egalitarianism, but he has scenes that go on for pages before you realize there are servants in the room with the protagonists. They are invisible to him.

He was actually a Christian Anarchist, but he was also far too great an artist not to know the difference between art and ideology. He was not writing Cristian Anarchist novels, he was a Christian Anarchist who wrote novels --- there is all the difference in the world between the two.

Dostoevsky was a social conservative and elitist (especially after his 10 years in Siberia)

Hmmmm.... Given that universal love and brotherhood are the exact opposite of elitism and that never and nowhere were they established as a social norm, in his novels Dostoevsky could not be actually farther from social conservatism and elitism. His political articles are a different matter altogether

Re: Tolstoy vs Dostoevsky as social and political thinkers

Between Tolstoy's Christian Anarchism and Dostoevsky's redeeming mission of Russia, I choose the former for all its flaws and utopian features. I'd rather live in a Quaker world than in a Russian one, because if Russia gives you a hug, beware! you run the risk of suffocation. 

[Florestan]

I think many politicians would agree with the GI's ideas.

Actually, the modern welfare State is the exact embodiment of those ideas. 

[mn dave]

Advance Reading Copy
[asin]1476736553[/asin]

[Florestan]

Leo Tolstoy --- What Then Must We Do?

[Karl Henning]

Must be Что Делать? Which is the simple sort of everyday Russian question, which the utterly formal English translation fails to hint at 

[Mookalafalas]

Advance Reading Copy
[asin]1476736553[/asin]

  After looking at the Amzn stuff on this, it looks like it could be embarrassingly entertaining. I may give the first volume a peek and see...

[kishnevi]

  After looking at the Amzn stuff on this, it looks like it could be embarrassingly entertaining. I may give the first volume a peek and see...

He  blogs, but be warned that he has some very conservative political views  http://monsterhunternation.com

[Mookalafalas]

He  blogs, but be warned that he has some very conservative political views  http://monsterhunternation.com

Believe me, I will not be reading it to learn from his insights into the best paths to social betterment.  I'm still reading Robert Caro's 1200 page biography of Robert Moses for that side of things.  Books which project the idea that an ultra-violent superhero is what is needed to right the world's wrongs are pretty likely to stem from a less than highly evolved sense of the intricacies of social justice.  Still, could be fun and diverting for a couple of hours

[Ken B]

He  blogs, but be warned that he has some very conservative political views  http://monsterhunternation.com

So? I support gay marriage, abortion, ending drug laws, separation of church and state, trimming back the Patriot Act, and other such extremely conservative  positions.

[Daverz]

He  blogs, but be warned that he has some very conservative political views  http://monsterhunternation.com

"Conservative" political views are not at all unusual for SF authors.  The real issue with this guy is that he is a troll who associates himself with virulent racist sack of shit Vox Day.  More info:

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2014/04/if-i-dont-win-award-its-because-youre.html
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/04/20/no-the-hugo-nominations-were-not-rigged/
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/05/science-fiction-assholes-nominate-larry-correira-hugo-award-solely-can-dangle-front-quickly-jerk-away-saying-psych

[mn dave]

Believe me, I will not be reading it to learn from his insights into the best paths to social betterment.  I'm still reading Robert Caro's 1200 page biography of Robert Moses for that side of things.  Books which project the idea that an ultra-violent superhero is what is needed to right the world's wrongs are pretty likely to stem from a less than highly evolved sense of the intricacies of social justice.  Still, could be fun and diverting for a couple of hours

Guns and monsters. Win/win.

[stingo]

Finished Ready Player One. While the stream of 80s references and explanations can get to be a bit much, I did like story and the characters.

Now reading Art's Cello, by James N. McKean.

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[stingo]

Finished Art's Cello. Started The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna.

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[Mookalafalas]

Guns and monsters. Win/win.

  Read the first one.  It was one of those rare books that you can't put down but you really wish you could...   

[bwv 1080]

I have to stop reading this thread! I do not have time to reread Dost.

On the other hand, I keep thinking, I wish I could find a book as good as The Brothers K ....

Have you read Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate?