Landscapes: John Berger on Art by John Berger

Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami

Excellent choice! Enjoy it friend! :up: :ok:

The Warden
by Anthony Trollope

Just hitting the good bits and it's grand. :up:

August-October readings:

• Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Karen Barad
• Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar's Philosophy, Andrew Collier
• The Origin of Phenomena, D. B. Kelley
• Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics, Peter Lewis
• Defending the Axioms: On the Philosophical Foundations of Set Theory, Penelope Maddy
• Giving Beyond The Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania, Elliot Wolfson

Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature edited by James Christie and Nesrin Degirmencioglu

Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics, Peter Lewis — 180 Proof

Let us know if this is worth reading once you've had a chance to read it.

I keep reading to the master of masters.

After the Banquet, Yukio Mishima.

Death in Midsummer and Other Stories, Yukio Mishima.

Critique of Instrumental Reason
by Max Horkheimer

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe
by George Eliot

Current
Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago

Recently read
Christopher Priest, The Glamour :up: :sparkle:
Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun :confused:
Robert Silverberg, The Book of Skulls :up: :sparkle:
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake :meh:

Soon to read
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration
Michel Houellebecq, Submission
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Bob Shaw, The Palace of Eternity

:cool:

Art History as Social Praxis: The Collected Writings of David Craven edited by Brian Winkenweder

Knowledge and Human Interests
by Jürgen Habermas

Magister Ludi
by Hermann Hesse

Autumn readings

• Captain Shigemoto's Mother, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.
• Rivers, Teru Miyamoto.
• Beauty and Sadness, Yasunari Kawabata.

Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck

For the second time.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Dystopian fiction called 'prophetic' by critics, citizens are manufactured by genetic engineering on assembly lines to fulfill their respective roles in society, they anaesthetise themselves into acceptance by sex and opiates, children are conditioned to hate flowers and books, the calendar begins from the first creation of cars on the assembly line of ford, A.F.- after ford- as opposed to -anno domine- A.D. polygamy is encouraged and monogamy is a perversion, love and parentage are disgusting anachronisms to the conditioned citizens of the brave new world

3 characters have the intimation of the emptiness of their lives, one is a woman who falls in love with a man who is physically defective for the caste he was engineered for, another is a case of refinement above his upper echelon purpose, a fortunate idiosyncracy of the assembly line,

The society is predicated on empty hedonism, the material needs are provided for, so the culture is without neccessity and without purpose, or meaning, it is not a totalitarian imposition, it's enclosed upon itself by citizens' anaesthetised acquiescence.

The soma the citizens consume resemble psychiatric medication to assuage the anxiety of a life without purpose or meaning, the material needs are provided for, the spiritual sense negated, reflected in the calander measurement, of "our Ford"

Aldous Huxley lamented he did not include nuclear power in the narrative, it would have lended the prediction greater accuracy, a complaint in spite of the accuracy of the culture he wrote of in the novel, it was so spot on, using nuclear power as a concept would have been clairvoyant

I read the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels and the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, the edition of the Communist Manifesto had a treatise on the horrific conditions of the lives of the newly created working class in the major cities of Britain, "property is theft" and a "dictatorship of the proletariat" appeared to be an appropriate response to the injustices inflicted by the economic power of the bourgeoisie, the Manifesto is thought to be a worthy ideal because it advocates for property to be centralised, parentage is negated in the manifesto itself

I think Aldous Huxley took the communist manifesto as a template for the utopian ideal inverted in brave new world, characters include a woman called Lenina and a protagonist named Marx,

In the Gulag Archipelago a faithful rendition of the disaster of Stalinist USSR is revealed in its outright hellishness, a criticism to a friend of the regime was weighty enough to be sentenced to a 5 year prison term, that is a minute detail in the epilogue of horrors, not to be glib, but it was hell.

Closure: A Story of Everything, Hilary Lawson

Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy
by Johann Gottlieb Fichte

New World by Natsuo Kirino.

Also ploughing extremely slowly through Locke's Essay this time around.

The Tempest - By some guy called William or other

Nietzche, The Aristocratic Rebel by Domenico Losurdo

Excited to dive into this

Autumn readings

Captain Shigemoto's Mother, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.
Rivers, Teru Miyamoto.
Beauty and Sadness, Yasunari Kawabata. — javi2541997

I told you, no more Japanese reading. Except for those cool porno comics.

I told you, no more Japanese reading. Except for those cool porno comics. — T Clark

:lol: ! I promise those are the last books of Japanese literature in my room. I will read other types of literature in the coming months.

I promise those are the last books of Japanese literature in my room. I will read other types of literature in the coming months. — javi2541997

Closure: A Story of Everything, Hilary Lawson — 180 Proof

Great timing. I'd value your thoughts on this and Lawson - would you mind offering a brief assessment when you're done? I saw an extended interview with Lawson on his notion of closure and his non-realist metaphysics and found myself being sympathetic.

Current
Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions :up: :sparkle:

Recent
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller :up: :sparkle:
Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago :up: :sparkle:
Robert Silverberg, Downward to the Earth :up: / :meh:

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller — Jamal

From the Wikipedia description, this sounds all post-modernist and self-referential and stuff. It seems like it might be fun and funny, but I could also see it might be tedious and obvious. From your emojis it seems like it's not that.

this sounds all post-modernist and self-referential and stuff — T Clark

Yep, I like that kind of thing.

It seems like it might be fun and funny, but I could also see it might be tedious and obvious. From your emojis it seems like it's not that. — T Clark

I loved it, but I gather that several other intelligent readers do indeed find it tedious and obvious.

EDIT: Incidentally, I posted something about it in the Shoutbox a few hours ago. It’s also relevant to your discussions of literary interpretation.