What book(s) are you reading?

[IrishLion]

 

[ickythump1225]

 

[zelezo vlk]

Inferno. 5 canti in and I've learned way more than last time

 

[IrishLion]

Just started The Eye of the World .

I have somehow avoided "The Wheel of Time" in my years as a fantasy fan, so I figured it was time.

The first chapter or two had me worried, tbh. Jordan doesn't give you much to cling to about Rand or Tam that keeps you invested while he builds the plot, and I was worried it was going to be a true slog of a hero's journey.

But then the peddler visits around page 35, and shit pops off quickly. I then read another 100 pages before heading to bed last night.

I now greatly look forward to finishing the first book and then deciding if I'm going to power through the whole series or not.

 

[P_Rose]

Started reading the Broken Empire Trilogy by Mark Lawrence. I'd seen it B&N the last couple of times I was there and decided to pick up "Prince of Thorns" the first book in the series. Will definitely be picking up the other the other 2 "King of Thorns" and "Emperor of Thorns".

 

[ACamp1900]

Witcher books are good for fantasy... I'm mid way through my second one. This is not a genre I typically enjoy much but have been liking these. Even with that said I'm starting to feel the nag to move to something more my speed. Not sure what I'll pick up after this current Witcher novel.

 

[Irish#1]

I'm reading "Traction" right now. Actually listening to it on CD. It's a business book on growing your business through the use of some core tools and staying the course regardless of the backlash from managers and employees.

1. Define your businesses core focus and remain focused.
2. Get the people on the bus, but also get them in the right seat.
3. Get rid of those that don't share your goals or refuse to change.
4. Set goals and report on those goals on a regular basis.
5. Report publicly how everyone did in meeting the goals.Making results public, people will be sure to meet their goals instead of facing embarrassment.
6. Consistently hit your goals and the company grows.

Nothing earth shattering or revolutionary.

 

[greyhammer90]

I've had serious issues sticking with anything lately, even stuff that I'm usually very into. Anybody else go through those phases?

 

[zelezo vlk]

I've had serious issues sticking with anything lately, even stuff that I'm usually very into. Anybody else go through those phases?

I've had a very hard time of sitting down and consistently reading for years now. My attention span and motivation has been shot. It just takes more dedication for me.

 

[ACamp1900]

I've had serious issues sticking with anything lately, even stuff that I'm usually very into. Anybody else go through those phases?

Yes, I do too from time to time.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

I've had serious issues sticking with anything lately, even stuff that I'm usually very into. Anybody else go through those phases?

I've had a very hard time of sitting down and consistently reading for years now. My attention span and motivation has been shot. It just takes more dedication for me.

Yes, I do too from time to time.

What are your ages? Anything else dominating your mind? I've had a similar issue for a year now. Pick something up, read about 50% of it and just can't get locked in.

I'm 35 FWIW, don't know if there is a particular time of life that this happens? Or if it's related to uncertainty in one's current position? (we've been contemplating a move)

 

[ACamp1900]

mid 30s as well...

 

[zelezo vlk]

My theory is it has to do with the amount of time I spend looking at screens. Netflix, reddit, memes etc appear to have a negative correlation to my attention span

 

[Whiskeyjack]

My theory is it has to do with the amount of time I spend looking at screens. Netflix, reddit, memes etc appear to have a negative correlation to my attention span

I stopped gaming and watching TV about 6 months ago, which did wonders for my attention span. I tore through a huge pile of books in record time and my prayer life improved tremendously.

God of War has recently put me back on my bullshit, but once that's done it's back to the digital fast for me.

 

[zelezo vlk]

Yeah unlike the rest of you guys, I have nothing outside of work/the stuff around my parish. Gotta fill the hours of nothingness somehow, which can mean Netflix etc.

 

[greyhammer90]

My theory is it has to do with the amount of time I spend looking at screens. Netflix, reddit, memes etc appear to have a negative correlation to my attention span

The only issue with that theory is that I've been Netflixing/redditing/memeing/IEing for a long time and have never had problems maintaining a healthy reading habit.

My (current) theory is the presence of the wife. Reading novels is a very isolated activity for me and I get easily distracted if there's movement or noise (such as the TV). So basically if I'm going to read it needs to be away from her or she needs to also be reading. With my limited days off it feels inconsiderate to sequester myself for the periods we do have to hang out. It's not such an issue for her, because she reads at night before bed. I do too, but unlike her, I'm asleep five pages in and rarely remember what I read. I also read a lot for work so that probably doesn't help with my reading fatigue.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Sharing this here since this thread contains most of our discussion about Peterson. Michah Meadowcroft just published an article in the Washington Free Beacon titled "Power and Responsibility":

Reuben drove six hours to see Jordan Peterson. He brought his mother. It's his birthday present.

Reuben, "like the sandwich"—"or the patriarch," I say, prompting a laugh of agreement—just finished his freshman year at a small Christian college. He's maybe a bit above average height, thin, with an open, intelligent face. He has a mop of curly hair and is wearing a sensible plaid shirt. He's studying something combining bits of business and engineering.

They are, his mother tells me, farmers, the kind of farmers who—mom, dad, Reuben, and a sibling—are looking forward this summer to a TransAmerica trail ride from North Carolina to Oregon (or to "or-eh-GONE," as Reuben's mother keeps saying with too much charm to be corrected). That's motorcycles, mostly off road, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Reuben's mother is also in reserved plaid, with her hair up; but she's wearing a girlish choker necklace and has a ready and winning smile, so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised.

They are cheerful and talkative and excited to hear Peterson. Reuben's been a fan for a couple years. He's dedicated, working his way through Peterson's first, much less accessible book, Maps of Meaning. That's the almost 600 page Jungian block from which the breezy 12 Rules For Life (read my review here) was carved. This lecture is part of what's ostensibly Peterson's book tour for 12 Rules, but Peterson, not his books, is the product on promotion. As he makes clear at the beginning of his remarks—these ones and every recorded talk of his I've heard—these public appearances are an opportunity to think on his feet with a live audience, to see where his own ideas take him.

Reuben and his mother are not, probably, your idea of the Jordan Peterson audience. Sure, Reuben is the right age, and white, and male, and found Peterson through right-wing YouTube (the channel of British e-pundit Carl Benjamin, who inexplicably goes by the nom de culture guerre Sargon of Akkad). But he's an obviously motivated and bright young man with parents who clearly love him and every indication of a happy homelife—he chose his college so he could stay close.

It is, looking from the balcony above the lobby before finding my seat, a very caucasian crowd spilling into downtown D.C.'s Warner Theater the Friday evening of June 8. But, less accordant to the Professor Peterson's incel army narrative, the sexes are almost at parity (yes, slightly leaning male), and the socio-economic demographics, though already constrained by $55-plus-processing nosebleed tickets, include plenty wading through to the Warner's bars. "Power of Myth" (vodka, peach schnapps, oj, cranberry) is going for $13 and the vodka, soda, grenadine, "Forever Jung" is $10—high rollers can get a slightly less petite beer and shot combo for $15. These are not basement dwelling perpetual adolescents. Much of the audience appears to be here on dates or with family. I think I recognize a few people, another journalist here, an academic there, a Hill staffer.

The age range is more surprising, though. There are adults here who are approaching, in, and past middle age. Some like Reuben's mother are with a younger companion, but many seem to be fans themselves. Even the settled and comfortable, the Glenn Beck listeners, of D.C.'s conservative functionary class find something sexy and exciting in the phenomenon that is Dr. Jordan Peterson. For Reuben, Peterson is a way to spice up his inherited cultural dispositions—rural conservative, Protestant—and integrate them with his Generation Z life online. For these established professionals, men and women, Peterson is someone who makes them feel that what they already believed is actually fresh and provocative and inspiring. Because, at the end of the day, Peterson's project is a strikingly original presentation of strikingly unoriginal ideas. He'd hardly contest that.

In fact, after a somewhat shy and starting acknowledgment of the (cliché, but it's true) rockstar welcome he's given upon walking on stage—that it is so good, man, to have so many people appreciate what you're doing—Peterson says his audience has mainly two responses to what it is he's doing: first, that he articulates what they knew but could not say, and, second, that he gives them the tools and motivation to change their lives for the better. He says, soon after, "I don't think what I'm doing is political." I think I believe him. It's not that it isn't political: It is. But Peterson really doesn't think what he's doing is political.

Peterson's thing is typological and symbolic readings of everything: from the great stories of history and world religion to his wife's dreams and Disney movies. You don't know everything that can be read into The Lion King until you see Peterson live. I certainly didn't and I doubt the 28 people IMDB gives some sort of writing credit for that movie do either. But what is curious about all this close reading is that, despite all the flirting with the Bible or the Buddha, the conclusions sound an awful lot like whatever a psychologist who voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 might think, Freud and all.

Roughly: Life is suffering, for reference see Siddhārtha Gautama and Genesis 3; you can and should live each day according to the best that is in you, viz. Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics; the cosmos is divided by Chaos and Order, e.g. Tao or Gnostic or Babylonian thought; so you must build order as you accept chaos, i.e. "clean your room" and "straighten yourself out, bucko"; you're an animal, descended of animals, like other animals, source, Charles Darwin (1809-82); this means your biology matters, is real, as is and does hierarchy, see figure a. Lobsters; there are two sexes, c.f. the postmodernist feminist et ceteras, and they're basically for sex, which means babies, which means children need a mother and a father and men and women are different; you are an individual and a social contract preserves you from a state of nature, ref. Locke, Hobbes, et. al.; central planning will kill you, namely Marxists, for more see 1) history, 2) Hayek.

Basically, Jordan Peterson is a mid-century classical liberal a couple decades late. He likes religion (the idea of it) but doesn't go to church. He should be boring. He is not supposed to be a prophet. Boiled down to the content nothing he is doing should result in what has happened. The Art of Manliness website has been reconstructing an idealized 20th century masculinity and helping young men become functioning adults, along with frequent forays into psychology, philosophy, science, mythology, and theology, for a decade. They're doing well, but they're not doing global-notoriety, prompt-a-thousand-takes well. Why would 1,800 people come out to listen to Peterson on a Friday night in the most powerful city in the world?

Another Canadian, Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message." Jordan Peterson's message is conventional. But Jordan Peterson the medium is a man who goes, in seconds, from stammering to silent thought to speaking with the certainty of the dead returned. To watch him lecture is to think at first that he is frailer than expected, leaning into an invisible wind. And then he Says Something. He says you must take responsibility or things will fall apart, but you hear that You must take Responsibility, or Things, the most important ones, Will. Fall. Apart. You can't help but hear capital letters; he speaks with such conviction.

It's not political, in the modern sense of the word. It has nothing to do with elections or parties or institutional power. An absolutist zeal for freedom of speech and the sensibility summed up by Goldwater's "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away," is about as political as Peterson gets. Till 2016 Jordan Peterson was just a peculiarly authoritative academic with an eccentric preoccupation with integrating mythologies, like Casaubon in George Eliot's Middlemarch. But the sexual revolution has come a ways since Woodstock, and to be a deliberate square today—no ze or zir from me please—makes Peterson a radical. He's been eager to embrace that role, and to be embraced.

On Friday night at the Warner theater I saw a man who knows what he has is fragile, a stroke of lightning that can't be bottled and won't come twice. He's trying to make what he can of it while he has it. Yes, there's the entrepreneurial spirit animating Peterson Inc., with his tour and books and Patreon and "self authoring" suite and plans for an online university and more. But the real Peterson phenomenon is either a martyrdom or some Great Awakening.

Peterson behaves, speaks, stands, like a man who sees death coming and accepts it. Maybe it will, in some form; maybe things are as bad, the enemy as powerful, he as likely to fall as he seems to fear. Or maybe Peterson will be Charles Finney for a Third Great Awakening. America is a great burned-over district, ripe for some kind of religious revival, and Peterson's self-help anti-ideology is a religious proposition. Finney's Second was less orthodox than the First of Edwards and Whitefield. A Peterson Third would be a poetic and Darwinian syncretism, a perfectionist liberalism.

Whether because of time constraint or weariness, Peterson does not even pretend to get through all 12 of his rules for life. He stops with rule nine, deflated after exhorting his listeners to take responsibility for themselves with all the surprising force his froggy voice can summon. Dave Rubin, online talk show host and fellow member of the "Intellectual Dark Web," moderates a few superficial questions. But the show is over. When Peterson stands for his last applause the audience streams out quickly, spilling back into the city, looking like so many other after-theater crowds. Reuben and his mother say goodbye.

 

[zelezo vlk]

I started this up on Friday. It's been too long since I've opened up anything regarding history.

It also looks like I'll need to crack open Augustine's Confessions again soon

 

[ACamp1900]

Did my biannual, "Let's go drop 100s of dollars at Barnes and Noble" trip this past weekend....

Picked up a number of books but I am starting with New York by Edward Rutherford. I love my historical fiction and heard good things about it. Just started it last night.

 

[koonja]

Not an avid reader, but our daughter Quinn Elise was born a week ago, so looking for a low key way to pass the weekend time until football.

I'm so far out of the loop for books so looking for suggestions. Doesn't have to be brand new.

I like underdog stories about someone who overcame a lot and made something of themselves. I like a business touch to it, but not just business. Maybe like a refugee or immigrant that fought his or her way to success.

Doesn't have to be an immigrant, but that's just an example. Doesn't have to be an inspirational book, but a story that's inspiring if that makes any sense.

This is probably a lame description of my interest, but if anything rings a bell that you'd suggest, I'd appreciate it
Again, does not have to be new - odds are I haven't read it.

Funny story - in middle school I once had to do a book report, and turned in a report on a horror story that I completed made up. I didn't get a perfect score, but did score about 90, and the teachers comment was "I think I might have seen the movie" LOL.

 

[IrishSteelhead]

Not an avid reader, but our daughter Quinn Elise was born a week ago, so looking for a low key way to pass the weekend time until football.

I'm so far out of the loop for books so looking for suggestions. Doesn't have to be brand new.

I like underdog stories about someone who overcame a lot and made something of themselves. I like a business touch to it, but not just business. Maybe like a refugee or immigrant that fought his or her way to success.

Doesn't have to be an immigrant, but that's just an example. Doesn't have to be an inspirational book, but a story that's inspiring if that makes any sense.

This is probably a lame description of my interest, but if anything rings a bell that you'd suggest, I'd appreciate it
Again, does not have to be new - odds are I haven't read it.

Funny story - in middle school I once had to do a book report, and turned in a report on a horror story that I completed made up. I didn't get a perfect score, but did score about 90, and the teachers comment was "I think I might have seen the movie" LOL.

I recommend this as a first baby book:

 

[koonja]

I recommend this as a first baby book:

I could write this book.

I like the sound of "Chasing the Lion", but I don't like that its religous based. I'm religious, but just not interested in that being the basis of what I'm reading.

I like real life application and enthusiasm.

 

[ACamp1900]

Did my biannual, "Let's go drop 100s of dollars at Barnes and Noble" trip this past weekend....

Picked up a number of books but I am starting with New York by Edward Rutherford. I love my historical fiction and heard good things about it. Just started it last night.

New York has been fantastic thus far...

 

[BGIF]

New York has been fantastic thus far...

Don't know this book but like Rutherford's style. Reminds me of Michener books.

A year or two ago I read The Princes of Ireland by Rutherford based on a poster's comments in this thread. Good read particularly since my ancestors were princes.

 

[ACamp1900]

Don't know this book but like Rutherford's style. Reminds me of Michener books.

A year or two ago I read The Princes of Ireland by Rutherford based on a poster's comments in this thread. Good read particularly since my ancestors were princes.

Agreed... in fact this isn’t the first time I’ve read that comparison I believe...

 

[Jimmy3Putt]

Not an avid reader, but our daughter Quinn Elise was born a week ago, so looking for a low key way to pass the weekend time until football.

I'm so far out of the loop for books so looking for suggestions. Doesn't have to be brand new.

I like underdog stories about someone who overcame a lot and made something of themselves. I like a business touch to it, but not just business. Maybe like a refugee or immigrant that fought his or her way to success.

Doesn't have to be an immigrant, but that's just an example. Doesn't have to be an inspirational book, but a story that's inspiring if that makes any sense.

This is probably a lame description of my interest, but if anything rings a bell that you'd suggest, I'd appreciate it
Again, does not have to be new - odds are I haven't read it.

Funny story - in middle school I once had to do a book report, and turned in a report on a horror story that I completed made up. I didn't get a perfect score, but did score about 90, and the teachers comment was "I think I might have seen the movie" LOL.

The Force by Don Winslow

I listened to the audiobook last year while driving to Texas. I liked it so much I ended up getting a few more of his books.
The reader was exceptional.

 

[Emcee77]

I just finished _Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back_ by Nathan Bomey. It tells the story (as you can gather from the title) of how Detroit ended up in bankruptcy, how the bankruptcy unfolded, and how the bankruptcy case ended up getting resolved.

The writing was not great (Bomey should really pick up, say, Jeffrey Toobin's O.J. Simpson book, or maybe _A Civil Action_, to see how legal journalism is done right), but it's not bad either, and more importantly, the story is much more interesting than I realized while it was in the news, at least to this legal nerd. If you are interested in municipal administration or the problem of municipalities being unable to afford pension payments, or even broadly in topics like bankruptcy or debt finance, I recommend it.

 

[zelezo vlk]

Gonna need to start City of God soon

 

[koonja]

I randomly landed on "The Subtle Art of not Giving a F&ck".

Wasn't what I was going for, but Target's selection was bad and I wanted something quick. I'm half way through and like parts of it, it's interesting that's for sure. Anyone else read this? Thoughts?

 

[IrishLion]

Switched gears from "High Fantasy" and "Sci-Fi," and settled with the much more mellow "Stephen King Horror Fantasy."

Currently about 50% through 11/22/63.

It's really unique, in terms of King's work. There are still aspects of his famed unsettling horror, but not much, and the book is much more a character and time-period study.

I think I can predict what one of his big twists will be, but I can't decide if I think this book is going to take a turn to full-on horror at some point, or if King sticks strictly with the 'time-travel and how it can be weird for many reasons' thing.