Books
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On a lighter note, Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary my fastest read in years, i just hope the upcoming movie does it justice.
Spoiler alert: it won’t, but only because it’s an impossible assignment.
I fully expect to enjoy it going in with that cheerful expectation though. What a great book. The audiobook narration really brings it to life for any on Audible, read by my favorite narrator.
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@Aetas I really liked Night Boat to Tangier
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Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber. I think I already mentioned The Dawn of Everything, which is similarly fascinating, but Debt is so full of insights and quotable quotes, and ties them together into a coherent and compelling thesis. Both books explain why “it doesn’t have to be this way.”
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@mclaincausey said in Books:
The Dawn of Everything
now that sounds interesting! Thanks for mentioning it
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@mclaincausey said in Books:
Speaking of violence.... You want violence, try reading this one I finished last night: Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy by Philip Freeman.
Absolutely brilliant. I judge a book, to a great extent, by how many times I disturb Paula, by reading out a passage. She almost does not need to read the book now
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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Thank you very much. By disturb, I mean annoy her by interupting her reading. I learned a long time ago not to read out stuff that will disturb her. I finished Ice Master, yesterday, I read out nothing of that.....
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The live intro to the Shades of Indigo doc today (see movies thread) was by Dr Linda Brassington a textile artist and researcher who is featured in the film. She has a book out called “Indigo and Resist Dyeing
Performance, Metaphor and Materiality in Contemporary Cloth” which sounds intriguing. Tempted to get hold of a copy based on her talk, even if most of it will probably go over my head.
Note: I haven’t read this yet, but it sounds like the sort of thing that would interest people here.
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@mclaincausey said in Books:
@Giles I am so glad you and P enjoyed / will definitely enjoy it. Hannibal was a badass. What wild times those were!
Yeah thanks. I've been thinking about it a lot. I actually said out loud last night, that I think what we were like back then, was probably a truer reflection on what humans are like. This "civilised", polite, woke facade we have is just that, a facade. And it does not take a lot to dislodge it.
The human race did not get to the top of the food chain/dominant race by being nice......
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@Giles could be. Another book I mentioned here (the Dawn of everything) challenges that though and highlights a lot of archaeological evidence that humans have formed all sorts of ways to live before we invented the state 12,000 or so years ago, some authoritarian and brutal and others more egalitarian.
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I finally got to read this wonderful book and I cannot thank @Giles enough for bringing it into my life. I had no knowledge of Antarctic exploration and the history surrounding it, so this world was truly alien to me and I was immediately captivated. I’ll say this…the metaphor of the Endurance stuck in the ice and sinking hit me personally in ways I’ll have to write about in another thread on another day…but it was very powerful. And then there was this passage which echos many artists and creators I admire…
I want to record Orde-Lees recording of his sunset, because it is like a hand-print on a cave wall. We give beauty to the world by seeing it and loving it and saying
'this is beautiful. The world doesn't need us in order to exist, but it needs us in order to be beautiful, just as we need it in order to be purveyors of beauty. Through loving the world, we love ourselves into finer being. Neither of us, neither us nor the world, must be lost.This book has instantly become one of my favorites and I will read it often, continuing to play the infinite game. What an inspiration.
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Thank you. Funnily enough, we had friends around for dinner. Richard loves books, so I told him about Finding Endurance, and how much it had affected me and how much I loved it. I used the example of the finite and infinite game, as one of fundamental things I had learned from the book.
He took my copy home with him.
