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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 8, 2017 19:49:17 GMT
There is already a "summer reading" thread, but I decided to make it more ongoing. Anyone is invited to post here about whatever they are reading-- books, magazines, comics, blogs, etc.
I've just started reading Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan. Never read it before. It's very good. The best thing about it is how apparently staightforward and descriptive it is. Behan doesn't really dwell on his emotions very much, or play up the pathos--- mostly he just describes the conditions of prison life.
I read most of a biography of Behan recently. And I read his play The Hostage, or the English translation of it. (I particularly like the moment in The Hostage when a black character carries a banner reading: "Keep Ireland Black" across the stage. Pure farce and not making any kind of point at all.) I find Behan interesting because he lived in two mental and spiritual worlds-- nationalist and Catholic Ireland, and the world of pop culture and liberalism.
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Post by cato on Aug 8, 2017 22:26:14 GMT
I have started to read the Spectator again I like the reviews and the urbane subversive line it takes on post modern pieties. On line I read First Things and the Imaginative Conservative. While travelling on the Luas I brandish the Irish Catholic which is so uncool that it may start a movement.
Occasionally strangers comment to me on public transport on how nice it is to see someone reading in public. I don't know should I be pleased or annoyed or whether I am being subtlely told off for being non conformist. One positive recent trend has been the decrease in kindle and electronic book readers at least in my estimation and more people seem to be reading paper books .The vast bulk of reading on public transport seems to be on iphones.
I remember laughing as a child when people opined that in the future TVs would be mobile and you would be able to watch films on little screens.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 8, 2017 22:33:19 GMT
I have sometimes put away my smartphone and taken out my book simply because I felt ashamed that EVERYBODY on the bus is looking at a screen.
I'm sure those people were complimenting you, not covertly complaining!
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Post by seangladium on Aug 9, 2017 2:28:28 GMT
I have sometimes put away my smartphone and taken out my book simply because I felt ashamed that EVERYBODY on the bus is looking at a screen. I'm sure those people were complimenting you, not covertly complaining! I still like reading an actual physical book. There is something about a screen that makes reading not as enjoyable for me.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 9, 2017 8:23:03 GMT
I like reading a physical book, but I've come to believe that online texts have their own pleasures. I don't mean e-books, which I hate, but websites, blogs, forms, etc.
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Post by ZenoOfCitium on Aug 9, 2017 9:11:35 GMT
I've a deep, deep love for reading off dead trees (to use the sneer kindle users threw at book readers in the past). Cato, I'm sure that they were contemplating you. I've been reading the Spectator for a few years now and enjoy the house style and much of the content too. Damien Thompson had a wonderful piece on a recent subversive performance at the BBC Proms[/i].
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Post by servantofthechief on Aug 10, 2017 11:09:41 GMT
Currently reading Hitler in Hell, which is basically Hitler writing his perspective on his life and rise to power while commenting on all the biographies and histories written about him all the while being unrepentant and unapologetic for his decisions and actions (I mean, he IS in Hell after all), written, amusingly, by an Israeli Military Historian or so I am led to believe.
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Post by Stephen on Aug 14, 2017 13:40:14 GMT
Just finished reading the Benedict option (Need to write a review) and will be starting Star Spangled Crown this week by Charles A. Coulombe.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 14, 2017 13:59:05 GMT
I am enjoying Borstal Boy but thinking of interrupting it to read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.
I'm terribly introverted. Those who have met me will be surprised at this, given the brilliance and fluency of my conversation. However, it takes a lot out of me.
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angelo
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by angelo on Aug 14, 2017 14:49:07 GMT
I am reading The Anti-Oedipus Complex: Lacan, Critical Theory and Postmodernism by Rob Weatherill. It is a critique of contemporary culture from a psychoanalytic point of view. The author is Irish. The book requires a certain level of knowledge of the discipline but I am enjoying it. I would recommend it.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 14, 2017 14:53:57 GMT
What's the gist of it?
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Post by cato on Aug 14, 2017 16:43:18 GMT
Angelo that sounds like the sort of book I will get in purgatory to translate into classical arabic.
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angelo
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by angelo on Aug 14, 2017 18:13:39 GMT
Angelo that sounds like the sort of book I will get in purgatory to translate into classical arabic. Even into simple English would be painful.
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angelo
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by angelo on Aug 14, 2017 18:20:01 GMT
"The Anti-Oedipus Complexcritically explores the post-'68 dramatic developments in Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and cultural theory. Beginning with the decline of patriarchy and the master, exemplified by Freud's paean for the Father, the revolutionary path was blown wide open by anti-psychiatry, schizoanalysis and radical politics, the complex antinomies of which are traced here in detail with the help of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Levinas, Steiner, Žižek, Badiou, Derrida and Girard, as well as theologians, analysts, writers, musicians and film makers." I am still at chapter 2 so I can't really summarise it but here is a review from the Irish Times: www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-anti-oedipus-complex-review-how-the-west-was-lost-1.3070132
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Post by Séamus on Aug 22, 2017 12:14:32 GMT
I've been reading THE JESUS PAPYRUS. It's a 90s edition. I remember it being reissued a few years ago, but never bought it. I didn't realise anything bought in a mainstream bookshop would be so positive towards the historicity of the Gospel. I'm mentioning it now because the city of Barcelona is mentioned quite a bit. The book is mainly about three fragments found in Luxor and brought to Oxford, but a papyrus fragment called P67, kept Barcelona, is dealt with also, it seems to be an early piece of Matthew. It's of interest just now to note this little part of the city's scholarly heritage
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