Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: yor_on on 22/10/2012 10:52:09
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Crowds And Power. By Elias Canetti (http://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elias-Canetti/dp/0374518203)
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I would like to Reread Moby Dick...I have a couple copies and have just not had the time.. I read it as a preteen, but would like to read it again as an adult, with a better and more mature, understanding then that of a youngster!
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That's interesting, Karen. What prompts you to re-read Melville?
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Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.
Started it. Loved it. Stopped for some reason and haven't picked it up again.
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That's interesting, Karen. What prompts you to re-read Melville?
Well like I said I was very young when I was young and think I missed a lot of the meaning when I was younger..Thngs I did not understand might be more understandable now that I am an adult!
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Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.
Started it. Loved it. Stopped for some reason and haven't picked it up again.
Maybe you stopped reading the book because the author doesn't have a surname ??
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Three men in a boat is one of my favorites too. And then you have Kenneth Grahame's 'Wind in the Willows' too :) somewhat childish maybe but for grownups, sort of :)
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Even though we passed 1984 a few years ago, it would still be good to re-read the book.
Likewise, Aldous Huxley A brave New World was perhaps a book ahead of its time.
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If you're into SF I think one guy most miss is Jack L Chalker. The four lords of the diamond is a very cool read (four books) about four different worlds, just got hold of them again after reading two a long time ago, never finding the rest, and I look forward to reread them. Old but very cool.
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I might check out the four lords of the diamond. Found all 4 volumes reasonably cheap on E-Bay.
Another sci-fi book I liked was L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth. It was a bit long though.
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The four lords are cool in what they question, depending on what one think oneself about the questions it makes. It's quite provocative questions about 'when are you 'free'', and 'what type of society do you want?'. The books has some simple, or maybe not so simple, answers, some of them making me want to shake the guy writing actually, but still :)
They are good books for seeing why democracy is the best thing explored so far.
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Certainly many Sci-Fi authors come up with interesting socio/political comments. For example the Star Trek episode about the Yangs and the Coms... a post-apocalyptic society about bitter enemies, that no longer truly knew what they were fighting about.
The utopia/dystopia stories also make one think about society and government, and perhaps what truly makes a person happy.
Here's a brief short story by Italo Calvio, La camicia dell'uomo contento.
Italian: La camicia dell'uomo contento. (http://www.iik.ch/wordpress/downloads/maerli/italienisch/das_hemd_des_zufriedenen_mannes.pdf)
English Translation: The Happy Man's Shirt (http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/dblea/foktales/The%20Happy%20Man.doc).
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Slightly off topic, I came across this article recently:
http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php (http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php)
Which refers to the excellent novel the "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson.
The article is about what happened when the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project delivered some boxes of tablet pc's to two villages in Ethiopia, taped shut, with no instructions whatsoever.
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I enjoyed the story about the Ethiopians.
Perhaps one should send the little gremlins a copy of the movie "War Games", although I wonder what is really meant by "And within five months, they had hacked Android". Perhaps they just customized the OS settings.
However, I know that kids can take to computers quickly. My mother gave my nephew and niece a Nintendo, and they were quick at finding things like the camera, and how to edit and distort images.
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Impressive indeed, but I wll have to assume the kids getting some help with the English, or knowing it some other way as showing a box on the screen labeling it 'box'. A Rosetta stone of sorts? http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/08/28/2669603.htm
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Here is another good author that I found just recently. As you grow older it seems to become harder and harder to find a author that captures your imagination, but this guy does it, incredibly well. Tim Powers is his name, and he's, sort of, into fantasy? Or maybe it's magic? Whatever, he writes like it anyway :) And I won't recommend any specific book as I'm still exploring his works, but so far they're all good.
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Well, got two to recommend ( the ones I've read so far that would be :) 'The Anubis gates' which is a book of a most unholy blend, mixing time travel with quantum logic, old religions and magic, or if you're into mythology 'The Drawing Of The Dark' which, in a way, is about King Arthur reassembled :) And he does it quite well I think, somewhere in between dreaming and telling a tale. A modern bard perhaps? Must admit that most of the new literature I see seems brain dead to me, kiosk literature adapted to people that want to be able to discuss 'literature' as they do movies.
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Okay, since this has turned into "Authors I have read and enjoyed" rather than the original subject, James E Gunn.
Only read two of his books ("The Listeners" and "Crisis!") and but found them refreshingly realistic. Others found him boring but I enjoyed the science.
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I've just finished reading all 20.5 books (the last was never finished) by Patrick O'Brian. These are the Aubrey/Maturin series about life in the Royal Navy around 1800. The most famous is Master and Commander (film made of this but the books are much better). Excellent story telling.
Great books (in differing genres) for me are:
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
Ulysses - James Joyce
Dune - Frank Herbert
AllanBrooke War Diaries -
All Hell Let Loose - Max Hastings
The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker
The Feynman Lectures on Physics - Feynman, Leighton and Sands
Books I'd like to read, I read so there is not really a list.
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I would like to Reread Moby Dick...I have a couple copies and have just not had the time.. I read it as a preteen, but would like to read it again as an adult, with a better and more mature, understanding then that of a youngster!
I reread the book not long ago after a 30 year gap and realised that the book is very homoerotic!!!
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The Talmud in 97 easy volumes.