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[Victoria Waterfield]

I picked up David Wong's "This Book Is Full of Spiders" and it's pretty good so far. I don't know that anything could match "John Dies at the End," which I first read in the serialized web format. I seriously lost an entire day at work reading that thing. Now it's been pulled down and made into a book (and also a movie); can't say as I blame him, might as well make a buck or two off of it. But the sequel is decent so far.

Are either of those books anything like this?

[dejavroom]

I'm nibbling around this bad boy here - "Meditations on the Tarot": http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Tarot-Anonymous/dp/1585421618 (I recommend you read some of the 5 star reviews, they're pretty, er, illuminating, like this one, for instance: "That is to say, in my experience, to engage sincerely with this book is to engage with more than a book. It is to engage with a living spiritual master and genius of the highest order. A very human being, with the warmest of hearts, the most lucid of minds. A profound, profound thinker whose heart, burning with compassion for the world, gave us a manual of practical Christian alchemy - an alchemy that has undone my neuroses, strengthened my sanity, vastly enlarged my scope of feeling, vitalised my mind, melted my anger, fired my compassion, deepened my calmness - and more - so, so much, much more besides.").

I had never read anything about the subject, but am completely engrossed by it. It was written anonymously and published posthumously. It's comprised of 22 letters adressed to the "Unknown Friend" (the reader), each letter dealing with one card. I made it to half the book (the Hanged Man card) but felt the need to start all over again and so I did. Thing is so dense you can't read a paragraph without being majorly mindblown. I don't think I ever said so many "whoa, dude"s before. Cool thing is that is not only theoretical (the author says he wouldn't have bothered writing it if that was the case), but it points the way toward a practical incorporation of the knowledge contained therein into one's life. Other than that it is really beautiful -- its underlying tenet and guiding compass is the notion of Love, which is expounded on, illustrated, extoled etc. It helped me a lot during a certain rough patch I was going through -- lifted my spirit, really. That you can get that from a book is something that seems almost forgotten today, but there it is: someone who never knew of me helped me from beyond the grave, and that is fuck*ng beautiful and amazing.

[theinevitable]

I re-read A Wizard of Earthsea for the millionth time. What a good fantasy book.

Trying hard to make myself read Marx or finish this history of Latin America, but I think I want to read a Story.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Are either of those books anything like this?

Wong's books have more dong jokes.

[pmcd9]

I'm reading Moby Dick. You guys can send me to the remedial class if you like.

[theinevitable]

What a great book! I just read it a few months ago. Great.

Now I am reading A Canticle for Leibowitz which is pretty awesome. Post-apocalyptic fiction written during the cold war. A secret monastery are the only ones who preserved knowledge of man's technology and writings from before the war-- the general society are all virulently anti-science and anti-technology. At this point they don't even remember what happened to destroy the old world, and even the monks don't understand the technical writings they're copying over and over. There was this part about a guy making an Illuminated version of a circuit diagram that really hooked me.

[CortJstr]

I'm trying to read Big Little. I forget what prompted me to add it to my wishlist but right now I'm about only reading about 2% of the book a week.

[AugustWest]

What a great book! I just read it a few months ago. Great.

Now I am reading A Canticle for Leibowitz which is pretty awesome. Post-apocalyptic fiction written during the cold war. A secret monastery are the only ones who preserved knowledge of man's technology and writings from before the war-- the general society are all virulently anti-science and anti-technology. At this point they don't even remember what happened to destroy the old world, and even the monks don't understand the technical writings they're copying over and over. There was this part about a guy making an Illuminated version of a circuit diagram that really hooked me.

Great book. 

[theinevitable]

hmm. I am working on the idea that I alternate chapters of fun books with chapters of interesting but not exciting books. Eric Hobsbawm is going well. The end of Canticle for Leibowitz pissed me off in a major way. I guess maybe I wasn't reading closely, because I didn't pick up on the theme of "the world is going to shit because people don't care about God, and if they understood God and His Plan they would stop trying to make the world better and fuck*ng it up" until the last chapter.

I try hard sometimes to understand religion and religious beliefs, but it is sometimes a lot easier to say "maybe this book is just about the bad kind of religion."

[Arachno-capitalist]

Carl Jung's Red Book. "The Red Book was a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed active imagination. As Jung described it, he was visited by two figures, an old man and a young woman, who identified themselves as Elijah and Salome. They were accompanied by a large black snake. In time, the Elijah figure developed into a guiding spirit that Jung called Philemon (ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, as originally written with Greek letters). Salome was identified by Jung as an anima figure. The figures, according to Jung, "brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life."[4]

The Philemon figure represented superior insight and communicated through mythic imagery. The images did not appear to come from Jung's own experience and Jung interpreted them as products of the collective unconscious"


Guys -It is really fuck*ng weird.

[dejavroom]

Guys -It is really fuck*ng weird.

Sounds fuck*ng awesome, that's what it sounds like. Give William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" a whirl next, you're in for some intraplanar shenanigans.

[theinevitable]

The Savage Detectives was excellent. It was split into three sections-- the first is from the point of view of this young nerdy guy getting to know this group of poets. It leads up to a dramatic moment, then the second part starts. That part is a series of short (interviews? not the right word, but they are reminiscences addressed to an imaginary listener, as if answering a question we didn't hear) about the poets with different characters who knew them, over the course of 20 years after the first part. They tell you all sorts of adventures and stories about these guys' fucked up lives over the following decades, from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of voices. Then, the last page of that part is with the nerd from the first section, and he says, "oh, did you ever hear what happened [at the end of the first section]?" and then you learn what happened, and it is a really intense and strange series of events which gives a different perspective on all the events of the second part. Really awesome.

Damn, that book was GOOD.

[Choop]

Grendel, by John Gardner, 1971 tells the oldest story of northern Europe from the monster's point of view. Ostensibly. It's a philosophical examination of life, time, culture, meaning, growth, intent, religion, and emotion, which plays with form as just another facet of the investigation. It has the feel of being crafted, not just written, distilled to just under 200 pages without losing anything and potentially becoming more potent. Even at that length, it took me nearly a week to read, because each passage required some digestion and thought. I still haven't unpacked it, but I'm looking forward to reading it again and figuring it out a little better. And again another time, most likely. I haven't read anything quite so good in a long time.

Among Others, Jo Walton, 2011 is a rich fantasy in journal form, from the viewpoint of Morwenna, a fifteen-year-old Welsh girl and one of a pair of twins, which doesn't offer nearly the depth of Grendel but is still a delightful read. The narrator herself is incredibly well-read in the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy, and I look forward to cataloging her favorites into my own next-to-read list. Mori deals in magic and solitude until she finds a way to connect with a couple of like-minded loners  she finds through channels both normal and unusual. She is mature for her age and intelligent, and we slowly learn what's shaped her into who she is as she sparingly doles out secrets from her history while trying to navigate unfamiliar surroundings and situations. This one is probably best suited to help teen girls deal with the unexpected loss of a loved one, but it's a lovely story regardless who you are.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling, 2011 is one my wife picked out while we were at Powell's books in Portland, when I chose Among Others. Mindy, contrary to her current sitcom, is dreadfully funny, and the prose sounds so much like her voice that my imagination basically gave me a free audiobook. She's no Tina Fey, and this book is no Bossy#####, but it's a quick, fun read broken up for the most part into short chapters of just a few pages. There's some memoir in there, some advice, some lists, and some grievances, but mainly jokes. Lots and lots of pretty good jokes and a couple absolute killers. If you know enough about Mindy that you can pick out the Office episodes she wrote or directed, you'll love this book. Comedy nerds should read it to give them more  to talk about than Louis CK or the podcasting scene. When you look at it in the long run, it's just fluff, but it's some of the better fluff you can find.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Sounds fuck*ng awesome, that's what it sounds like. Give William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" a whirl next, you're in for some intraplanar shenanigans.

Thanks for that recommendation. When I'm done traveling Jung's delusions I'll pick that up. [Edit: I don't need to pick it up, because it is right here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080727010425/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JamVari.html]

[Arachno-capitalist]

For LFM and the other Vonnegut fans: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html