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I found an interesting book and its not about what you think it might be..

The Currently Reading pile (which includes several Rereading items).... There are also two novels I'm beta-reading for writer friends, but those don't count. That's kinda part of my "day job."

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aha Austruck you're reading Strange and Norrell! How are you getting on with the multitude of footnotes? I loved that book, in fact as I read it so long ago now I could do with a re-read. Did you see the BBC did a series that's just recently finished? Pretty good, well as good as they could make it given a limited cgi budget for magic, but nothing like as good or as wideranging as the book obviously.

I'm almost scared to read Go Set a Watchman....let me know what you think.

I'm about 325 pages into JS&MN right now and really having fun with it. The series can't really get the feel of the book since it's written in a style that mirrors the time period itself. I'm reading all the footnotes because they're also great fun, though the one footnote/story that ran about four pages was a bit vexing. Still, I'm readin' 'em!

I've been DVRing the series and trying NOT to watch an episode that gets ahead of where I'm reading, but since they brought in Strange a lot earlier than the book did, there's been some mixing of the two storylines (when they're separate). So I'm going to stop watching altogether until I finish the book...

I'm only about 2-3 chapters into Watchman. So far the style definitely is Lee, and so far I'm not feeling the negative vibes so many have posted about. We'll see how I feel once I get further into the story... but I did manage to lower my expectations before starting.

Just read Philip K Dick's Time Out of Joint. I won't say anything about the plot as it'd be too easy to give away but it's very thought provoking as a lot of his work is.

and The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker. Enjoyed this murder mystery a lot despite me guessing whodunnit halfway through , it was still fun seeing all the twists and turns and how he got there.

funny story, I saw a lady reading it on the bus and asked her if she was enjoying it. She said she wasn't reading any of the footnotes cos they were too annoying

I'm trying to only half listen to the radio when they've been discussing it these past few days. There was someone quite dismissive of it tho but I was thinking whatever happens it can never take away from TKaMB.

I've just read Plato's Symposium. It's interesting, the idea that a group of friends instead of drining heavily try to define the concept of love. Sure most of the conclusions are ridiculous, but as a work of litterature and of history I really liked it.

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I do not speak english perfectly so expect some mistakes here and there in my messages

Ha ha! A few were annoying (so far) but I'm slogging through them. I'd hate to miss something worthwhile.


Agreed! I'm now about 1/5 of the way done (maybe a little more). So far, so good. Am enjoying it and want to see where it lands. Still haven't seen anything much of the stuff I've heard about from others...

That's good to hear Aus, keep me up to date when you finish. I'd rather hear it from you than a radio or newspaper as they're often out to showboat.

Some update (essentially what I did with my most of my free time in the last 35 days):

Parasyte (58 chapters, 2000 pages)


Incredible masterpiece of manga horror.

School-Live! (first 30 chapters, 1000 pages)


Moe horror manga: The Walking Dead meets K-On!. Pretty fun but nothing really deep, it's cool to read/watch those little girls freak out and cry when zombies are trying to eat them.

Master Keaton (2 volumes, 600 pages)


Generic detective manga. Pretty well executed, it's Naoki Urasawa afterall.

Vagabond (18 volumes, 3600 pages)

So far one of the best manga I have read in a long time. As critics say, it spans the whole spectrum of the human condition. The art style is also highly realistic which is uncommon for manga.

Vinland Saga (100 chapters, 3500 pages)

Vagabond's nordic brother in a way. Amazing manga so far as I am reading the chapters that were not released in the West but were translated by fans. Art style is a mix between the realism of Vagabond and the more cartoony looks of typical teenager manga.

Deadman Wonderland (2600 pages)


Pretty fun but superficial shounen manga. The extremely brutality of the story lacks the dramatic depth required to make it great and affecting, instead it sometimes feels artificial and forced. However, it was still a good read but ultimately forgettable.

The Great Gatsby (Manga de Dokuha) (200 pages)

The manga adaptation of the classic North American novel. It's very good and feels very different from usual manga as it borrows more American style sensibilities while mixing them with Japanese sensibilities. Still, the quality of the adaption is lower than those of great manga but it was a good read.

Brothers Karamazov (Manga de Dokuha) (400 pages)

Very condensed if compared to the original. I read it in 3 hours while it takes at least ten times longer to read the original book. Still some of the flavor from Dostoevsky can be sensed (even though I only read one of his novels his style is pretty personal and characteristic).

Metamorphosis (200 pages)

Now this is a more faithful adaptation since the original is a short story the adaption is pretty much identical in many ways, besides substituting descriptions by manga panels.

Gunnm: Last Order (90 chapters, 3000 pages)


Incredible so far. Like the first manga, Gunn, it continues the story as the author who finished the original manga in 1995, decided in 2000 to resume the story from the chapter before the last one as to expand the fictional world and further develop and explain the world as depicted in the original. Though it was good to not have much information about the state of the world as in the original manga, to create a sense of mystery and allow multiple interpretations, it is also good to know how the author interprets the first manga.

It took the author 14 years to finish the next version of the manga and it's 129 chapters.

Terraformars (30 chapters, 1000 pages)


The horror manga of the giant martian humanoid cockroaches. Pretty fun but it gets repetitive after 30 chapters, I think I might drop it, since it is going nowhere though I want to know the origin of the giant martian humanoid cockroaches before I drop it.

The Idiot (original novel, 700 pages)

It was the first Dostoevsky novel I read, since I didn't want to die without knowing anything about Dostoevsky, he was like the Miyazaki of Russian literature . Still I found some elements of it more interesting than others, since I didn't relate very much with the characters and their world I found the philosophical contents of their dialogue more interesting than the personal drama.

Watchmen (500 pages)


American manga, it's pretty fun. Art looks a bit primitive compared to Japanese manga but the story is very good despite featuring men who dress up in a ludicrous fashion. I think it represents a self portrait of the North American comic book fan who as an a "mature" person abandoned his hobby of reading comics about superheros and discovers it was a mistake.

A Bride Story (2 chapters, 60 pages)


Started reading this historical manga set in late 19th century central Asia among some Turkic tribes. I think it is a bit of a romantic view of primitive peoples in my opinion. Widely regarded as a masterpiece of manga I expect it to get "epic" very soon.

Monster Musume (1 volume, 200 pages)


Pretty mediocre erotic manga. It's just low quality comedy, especially if compared to the masterpieces I have been reading.

Doing some page reading accounting:

May 25: 26,510 pages

+ 250 26,760
+ 300 27,060
+ 250 27,310
+ 2000 29,310
+ 1000 30,310
+ 3600 33,910
+ 2000 35,910
+ 2600 38,510
+ 200 38,710
+ 400 39,110
+ 200 39,310
+ 3000 42,310
+ 1000 43,310
+ 500 43,810
+ 500 44,310
+ 60 44,370
+ 600 44,970
+ 200 45,170

July 17: 45,170 pages of fiction read in 2015. Goal of 70,000 pages looks within reach! Maybe even target 100,000 pages, since manga is essentially one major field of art in which I still haven't experienced most of it's masterpieces (yes, I think that in terms of live action movies and TV and anime I have already watched most of the stuff that I would find worth watching), I think I will just focus on that and not waste time on movies and TV for this year.

Parasyte is great

Migi rulez!!

Yeah, Parasyte if absolutely fantastic, but I don't really see it as horror. I see it more as a philosophical thriller or something like that haha. Definitely one of the best manga I've read.

literature
nonfiction
comics
re-read



The Face of Another by Kobo Abe
Tales Designed To Thrizzle Volume Two by Michael Kupperman
Life and Death in the Garden: Sex, Drugs, Cops, and Robbers in Wartime China by Kathryn Meyer
Empire of Cotton: a Global History by Sven Beckert
Moebius, Vol. 2: Arzach and Other Fantasy Stories by Moebius (Jean Giraud)
The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction by John Crowley
McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh
Axe Cop: Vol. 1 by Ethan and Malachai Nicolle
Maakies: The First Five Years by Tony Millionaire
Prospero's Books: A Film of Shakespeare's Tempest by Peter Greenaway
Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano



Scary Book, Vol. 3: Faces by Kazuo Umezu
Little Orphan Annie, Vol. 1: Will Tomorrow Ever Come?, 1924-1927 by Harold Gray
Astro Boy vol. 3 (The Greatest Robot on Earth, the storyline Pluto is based on) by Osamu Tezuka
Y: The Last Man volumes 6-10 (complete) by Brian K. Vaughan
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
Massacre at Paris by Christopher Marlowe
Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us by John Quiggin
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes



I Drink for a Reason by David Cross
Grey by E.L. James

Anyone know any good audiobooks they can recommend? My new job lets us listen to mp3 players and stuff when we're working and I've mostly been listening to podcasts like StarTalk. If I can find a good audiobook that can last a solid 8 hours, then that would make my day

Rating "The Road to Serfdom"??

Friedrich ''you deserve to be poor you piece of ****'' Hayek

I guess you still need to concentrate on work, so maybe some thrillers rather than anything too heavyweight? Not sure what your tastes are but a lot of audiobooks that are read from whole books last more than 8 hours.

That was a really ignorant comment Pussy. To say that liberal thinkers hate the poor is as ignorant comment as to claim that all manga is tentacle pornography.

I was inspired by Hayek's work when I was in high-school and undergrad to pursue an academic career in the social sciences, in fact, I am now working on my research because of his inspiration. He was perhaps the greatest social scientist of the 20th century and The Road of Serfdom, while a political book, represented an argument for the classical liberal principles, which are principles that underlie modern industrial civilization and made it a possibility. These principles which were in danger of not being respected in the mid20th century even in democracy's traditional strongholds, such as the UK and the US.

Hayek is as an important figure for the 20th century social sciences as men such as Borh, Heisenberg and Einstein were for the natural sciences. Indeed, Hayek was ranked in 2nd place among Nobel prize winning economists in citations by other Nobel prize winning economists, just behind Arrow and above Friedman and Samuelson.

Hayek's notion that society is essentially a system of intellectual division of labor and that modern institutions such as private property and contracts exist in order to allow different individuals to integrate the plans formulated into their minds as a cohesive social whole, is fundamental to understand how societies work. Hayek also developed distinct concepts of equality: equality of outcomes is different from equality of conditions and he worked out a better definition of freedom. These days (in the 1970's actually) people value more an abstract notion of social justice, which he shows to be meaningless, rather than the principles of rule of law, this might be a severe problem that will threaten social development and perhaps even fundamental institutions such as private property that enable society to actually exist.

He might have gone a little too far in his expectations regarding how the growth of the welfare state might spiral out of control and become a totalitarian dictatorship, which in the end would destroy the fundamental institutions of society leading to the collapse of civilization: countries like Sweden have a huge welfare state and government expenditures of 40% of GDP or more but they appear to work quite nicely and be very stable democracies. However, I don't think the Swedish system would work in many other countries, countries that are lacking the self sacrificing cultural traits of the Germanic people. In Brazil, for example, we have the same system as Sweden but implemented in a different culture, what happened? Income inequality became higher than would have been without government intervention.

Though it's also true that The Road of Serfdom is not important for understand Hayek as it is his book for laypeople. His work on Law, Legislation and Liberty, The Constitution of Liberty, Prices and Production, collected papers in his Individualism and the Social Order and The Pure Theory of Capital, are his important works that really inspired me. Though I haven't finished reading his Law, Legislation and Liberty because his arguments started to become repetitive after I was reading him for a decade now.