241–250 of 651 posts
The Fault in Our Stars Okay, I know it's young adult, but it really effected me. I don't know that I've ever read a more honest discussion of death. I don't read much fiction though. Maybe I should read more.
And yet, I did. Whenever I had a free moment, a household issue I didn't want to solve, etc, I grabbed after this book to simply get lost.
I'm not sure if one can consider it a literary masterpiece, but it sure was impossible to put down. In one of the back-cover blurbs, a critic said something like that: this series makes it clear that a person's life is actually by no means a story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausg%C3%A5rd_no...
It’s an incredibly fascinating book that runs through all the history, science and politics coming out of the most recent ice age. Highly recommend!
https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/...
Just read “LaserWriter II” and it was a surprisingly fun read. All about the characters in an old Apple repair shop in the ‘90s. The writing style is really unique, and the nostalgia was high. Discovered it while eavesdropping on someone recommending books in a bookstore. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56269270
I read Sapiens by Yuval Harari this year. It was long and fascinating, incredibly well researched, and easy enough for "light reading" that I had time for between writing research papers. A couple things that stuck with me were stories of giant land mammals that used to exist, many more than I realized, alongside humans. Wherever humans colonized, the large mammals were killed off soon after. This happened in Austral…
Not a fan of Harari’s pop science books. Lots of theories and opinion presented as fact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did the mushroom trip enlighten you? Did it change how you view the world? Were you worried about a bad trip?
> Were you worried about a bad trip? I feel like people need to start talking about bad trips in a more helpful and realistic way. The info I got about put me off to tripping for years. I avoided them until my late 20s, wish i did them sooner. I think bad trips are mostly just people who mix psychedelics with other drugs (weed is common) and freak out or aren't used to introspection (so is this really bad then?) or u…
Respectfully: this is dangerous speculation. You can have a bad trip even if you do everything right, and it’s an important risk that we should highlight rather than minimize.
I believe that many psychedelic experiences are net positive, but some can be very negative for a very long time.
The Anubis Gates , extremely entertaining time travel story by Tim Powers. It's not very "sci" sci-fi, actually there's magic in the mix, but totally recommended anyway.
"My Struggle" series by Karl Ove Knausgård [1]. The whole series is 3600 pages in six books, and I read four of them this year. Why on earth am I reading ridiculously detailed reports on some Norwegian guy's personal life, I thought. His divorce, parenting struggles, creative aspirations as a writer, sexual aspirations as an adolescent, in-depth descriptions on how his dad became an alcoholic, etc. Why am I reading t…