[anasawad]

Just started with "Beyond good and Evil" By Friedrich Nietzsche.

[Reichstraten]

[Drlee]

"The Killer Angels"

again

[Paradigm]

Globes by Peter Sloterdijk
Security, Territory, Population by Michel Foucault

[Decky]

Ergh Foucault. I always assumed it was so shit as the translation from French was so awful but then I met I Romanian lady who spoke French. She said she had assumed the same as me and bought discipline and punish in the original French and it was just as fucking bad.

[Paradigm]

The book I'm reading is part of his lecture series at the Collège de France. He's much more lucid in his lectures than he is in his writing. He's even pretty much admitted that he wrote in the way he did because that was just how French philosophers were expected to write at the time.

[Wellsy]

Dialectical Logic - Evald Ilyenkov

Definitely above my head, but am able to gleam some good stuff in it's overview of philosophers so far.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

I finally managed to get through reading VALIS by Philip K Dick. It is literally the most bizarre novel by a well-known author I've ever read. The story manages to distort the author's sense of identity and the entire thing appears to have been written during and after PKD's brain was fried from intense drug use. He appears to have done acid so much and so often he began suffering from long term cognitive issues associated with LSD like symptoms of schizophrenia (which can occur with sufficient abuse of acid). The book itself is a sometimes incoherent jumble of different trains of thought that all piece together a kaleidoscopic mosaic of drug-addled insanity and PKD's many delusions about himself and others. It's impossible to distinguish what is fiction and what he thinks happened during any number of his many psychotic episodes.

The book is, as its heart, the story of how PKD had an experience in 1974 where he, for a brief moment, had a flash of insight into himself (he first believed he was the recipient of a pink laser beam of enlightening information which cannot be put into words by the universal Oneness called Zebra, and then later once he became saner seemed to think he simply had a sense of understanding himself) and then lost his mind.

[Decky]

Sounds like something that might happen after too much scrumpy.

[HoniSoit]

The book I'm reading is part of his lecture series at the Collège de France. He's much more lucid in his lectures than he is in his writing. He's even pretty much admitted that he wrote in the way he did because that was just how French philosophers were expected to write at the time.

I am hoping to get to the same book, too. Do you have further thoughts? And, is there an order to read the lecture series/books?

[Paradigm]

I am hoping to get to the same book, too. Do you have further thoughts? And, is there an order to read the lecture series/books?

There's basically a trilogy of them: "Society Must Be Defended"; Security, Territory, Population; and The Birth of Biopolitics. I'm on the middle one right now. I think there are a couple more books that come later, but those are the main three.

Anyway, I've also started reading After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre and A Secular Age by Charles Taylor.

[Reichstraten]

Don't read too much Foucault or you'll end up like this:

[skinster]

I read two of Rebecca Solnit's little book of essays (the blue and orange ones) and yesterday I started RD Laing's The Politics of Experience, enjoyed the first chapter.

[Paradigm]

Don't read too much Foucault or you'll end up like this:

[One Degree]

I am currently reading “The God Virus: The Pontius Pilate Report”. It is labeled Sci Fi but the author makes extensive historical arguments why the Old Testament is pure fiction. I find this a little boring, but I know many here enjoy religious arguments. I keep wondering how they would respond to the authors arguements
I am not knowledgeable enough to know if they are strong arguments or not and I don’t care enough to fact check. I almost quit reading because the first half just seemed typical religion bashing, but it isn’t.

[Unperson-K]

Just finished Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 and Alon Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front. I have now started Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 and Alan Palmer, The Gardeners of Salonika: The Macedonian Campaign, 1915-1918.

Last year, I wrote an article on a subject related to the First World War and now I am in the process of applying for a grant with a project that takes place during the conflict. I have realised that my knowledge is in many ways deficient, so I am doing some reading to fix that. I am particularly interested in looking up lesser known aspects (i.e. not the Western Front).

[fuser]

I have read the Rogan's book, great book and frankly there isn't much written on ww1 from Ottomans perspective, in that sense it becomes even more enjoyable.

Currently I am reading :

[Pants-of-dog]

I wish I had the time and intellectual energy to read good books. Right now I am reading Aliens Omnibus volume 5. It has two novellas about Aliens. I am also reading a Dacid Wong novel.

[skinster]

This essay again because it's excellent.
https://goo.gl/images/wQxfEf

[colliric]

Interesting Religious reading. Protestant book about Jesus and the fact he was a Jewish Rabbi, the most famous and controversial Jewish Rabbi of all time.