Books

[LostLegend]

Down & Out in Paris & London and The Road to Wigan Pier, by George Orwell.

This one is a collection of 2 short memoirs and a handful of essays.

'Down & Out' is probably my favorite of the 2 and details Orwell's time living in poverty during the late 1920's.
The first half based in Paris where he was living in a insect infested hostel barely scraping along with wages from working as a 'plongeur' or what we would call a pot-washer in a couple of different Parisian restaurants. The petty workplace politics and bizarre class system are the highlights.
The Chef du personale demanding he shave off his mustache off with seemingly no reason and getting into scraps with the waiting staff are the highlights. It gets very Python-esque at times if unintentionally

The second half deals with the month he spent living as a drifter or 'Tramp' as he calls it, having to drift from doss house to doss house in London and the humilities the homeless community had to endure at the hands of the people running these places, which were essentially homeless prisons and the injustices at the hands of the 'Vagrancy' act. which essentially made it very easy for the police to arrest homeless people for the most petty reasons.

The Road to Wigan Pier covers his travels around the north of England when writing a news article about unemployed coal miners in the region during the late 1930's.

The whole collection is a real eye opener on the conditions poorer working class people suffered through before the introduction of the welfare state and NHS.
He also speaks a lot on working conditions for the miners when they were working - we have a lot to thank the unions for these days!

As bad as things may seem to some people these days, it is important to put things into perspective in how difficult it really was for less privileged people even relatively recently (in historical terms that is)

 

[Progrez]

Free legal books here with audio as well. If you want to learn various languages Including Chinese and even Hindi and Thai @Jetflag

Downloadable Content

www.tuttlepublishing.com

 

[Jetflag]

Free legal books here with audio as well. If you want to learn various languages Including Chinese and even Hindi and Thai @Jetflag

Downloadable Content

www.tuttlepublishing.com

Thanks brother but my neuroplasticity is 40 y old, and with fluent

Frysian
Dutch
German
English

and basic

French
Afrikaans
And Russian under my belt I’m calling it a day

 

[Progrez]

@badass

 

[badass]

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@badass

Thanks I've yet to see a good book that explains music theory very well to a noob lol

 

[Progrez]

Thanks I've yet to see a good book that explains music theory very well to a noob lol

Well, you can't always rely on books and what is it about music theory that you unsure about?

 

[Hensmon]

Reading Lila, by philosopher Robert Pirsig. Some might recognize that name from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is now a cult classic. Lila is written 20 years after that book, and is exploring the same metaphysics of quality, and with more time under his belt, his own development and articulation of that philosophy has only gotten stronger and more precise.

His metaphysics describes the structure of reality, where he moves beyond (and somewhat rejects) the subject-object metaphysics we are all familiar with in modern society, instead outlining (imo) something much more accurate and mind-blowing, where quality, as a value, is the fundamental force of everything.

I've listened to much analysis of this philosophy since reading Zen in 2019 and I am blown away by it. It feels like I have been looking my whole life for these types of questions and answers to be addressed, and his framework resonates with me on every level. Reading it all come together in Lila is just amazing, I'm finally beginning to understand it on a more deeper and more detailed level.

If anyone is into this kind of thing, and wants to go deep, this podcast series is where to start

 

[Kate_grey]

I try to read every day because I love learning new things. It can be books or just useful information on the internet.=

 

[LostLegend]

I recently received a Kindle as a birthday present, and I'm still figuring it out and don't quite understand how to download books onto it yet.

Who's your favourite t-ra.,n'c.e artist?

 

[Progrez]

I purchased all 3 of them to see which one might suit me.

 

[badass]

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I purchased all 3 of them to see which one might suit me.

Absolutely LOVE Stoic philosophy. Been wanting to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations for the longest time. Hope i can get to it soon after the other books I have piled up waiting to be read lol.

Anyhow, up next on my list is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I'm fascinated by this book because it's about synchronicities and I've been coming across this book quite often last 6 or 7 months at various times via different mediums. My friend recently took out this book to read while we were on a trip. After that, I said to myself "maybe the universe wants me to read this book next, it's been nudging me towards it"

 

[Progrez]

Absolutely LOVE Stoic philosophy. Been wanting to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations for the longest time. Hope i can get to it soon after the other books I have piled up waiting to be read lol.

Anyhow, up next on my list is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I'm fascinated by this book because it's about synchronicities and I've been coming across this book quite often last 6 or 7 months at various times via different mediums. My friend recently took out this book to read while we were on a trip. After that, I said to myself "maybe the universe wants me to read this book next, it's been nudging me towards it"

Just be careful when it comes to Stoicism there is a thing called "Broicism" which is the shit you see on Youtube with sculptures not saying that some of them are bad advice but they are good advice but I have not read the meditations yet because I am just new to it. I got introduced to it back in 2018 but I have been struggling to follow it or understand it. These books or journals I am getting will help me broaden my knowledge and give me actionable steps to learn and that's the limitation of a book. All they contain are words but not actions I can take for my current circumstances and situation in life and I think that's what's missing in the meditations (I could be dead wrong here but I have skimmed through the Meditation book recommended by Ryan Holiday) and but they don't suit my needs for the moment anyway. His book doesn't teach you how to journal, how to self reflect, how to have gratitude But I do like his book of Obstacle is the way it's taken me a number of tries to fully grasp what he said in that book. What questions to ask? When you don't know yourself what do you do? When you never had an inner voice before what do you do? Or you've been taught to be quiet all the time. What do you do?

 

[Archon]

Absolutely LOVE Stoic philosophy. Been wanting to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations for the longest time. Hope i can get to it soon after the other books I have piled up waiting to be read lol.

That sounds like one of them - whatchamacallit - incongruences now, doesn't it?

READ IT.

 

[Progrez]

Obstacle is the way is too tiny of a book. I love my books to be thick, heavy and age a bit. I am actually returning my own copy because it's too small.

 

[LostLegend]

Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen

“Nuclear War: A Scenario, describes the horrifying, minute-by-minute reality of a hypothetical nuclear conflict, detailing how a first strike escalates to global war within minutes, potentially causing mass death and a subsequent nuclear winter. The book, based on interviews with military and nuclear policy experts, emphasizes the critical decisions made in seconds based on incomplete information, the potential for widespread destruction, and the need to rid the world of such weapons.“

Without doubt the most terrifying book I’ve ever read.
Annie Jacobsen is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who’s spent the past few years interviewing current and retired politicians, military, defence contractors, scientists and the like to put together scenario of just what would happen if the US was hit by a ‘bolt from the blue’ (unprovoked) nuclear missile attack.

The book takes place over the course of 72 minutes, starting by breaking down the first seconds of an ICBM launch, to the detection, response and impact. There are also chapters on the history of nuclear war and deterrence peppered throughout.

In short, it’s all so much worse than you’d imagine. Like way worse.
ICBM’s don’t have any sort of kill switch or deactivation code like you see in the movies. Once they’re away, that’s it. And once it finishes the boost phase of flight, they are next to impossible to shoot down.

If you survive the attack (unlikely) don’t expect help. First responders won’t come within 50 miles of the affected area for weeks. Even then there’s not enough staff and resources to deal with all the injured.

Think you can survive by seeking shelter in a home made bunker or into the subway?
Unlucky, if you are within 20 miles of ground zero, expect 1-200mph fire storms consuming all in their path. Sucking up all the oxygen and either asphyxiating or slow broiling anyone underground.

And it only gets worse from there.

Absolutely fantastic book, but expect nightmares for several weeks after…

 

[Progrez]

I am hoping I can finally play some of Bach's favourite pieces and also next is Mozart and Beethoven as well.

 

[LostLegend]

Educated (A Memoir), by Tara Westover

This was a fantastic read, probably one of my favorites this year so far.
It's the authors memoir of her time growing up in rural Idaho, in a strict, ultra conservative, Mormon household.
Her father is a somewhat deranged doomsday prepper who would stockpile guns and food in preparation for the end times.
He believed that all forms of government were part of the illuminati (which is ran by Satan himself) so her and most of her siblings were not registered when they were born, never went to state school and going to the doctors or hospital was completely out of the question.

Her mother was an unlicensed midwife, who'd help deliver babies for other mormon women who were equally skeptical of the government and would make home made homeopathic "medicines" and healing oils and the like in lieu of actual medical treatment.

Eventually, Tara defies her parents and goes to college to seek out an education and thus realises how removed from the rest of the world she has been.
There's a part where, in an art history class, when looking at a painting by a Jewish artist of one of the Nazi concentration camps, she has to ask the professor, in the middle of the class room what "The Holocaust" means.

 

[Super-Frog Saves Tokyo]

Educated (A Memoir), by Tara Westover

This was a fantastic read, probably one of my favorites this year so far.
It's the authors memoir of her time growing up in rural Idaho, in a strict, ultra conservative, Mormon household.
Her father is a somewhat deranged doomsday prepper who would stockpile guns and food in preparation for the end times.
He believed that all forms of government were part of the illuminati (which is ran by Satan himself) so her and most of her siblings were not registered when they were born, never went to state school and going to the doctors or hospital was completely out of the question.

Her mother was an unlicensed midwife, who'd help deliver babies for other mormon women who were equally skeptical of the government and would make home made homeopathic "medicines" and healing oils and the like in lieu of actual medical treatment.

Eventually, Tara defies her parents and goes to college to seek out an education and thus realises how removed from the rest of the world she has been.
There's a part where, in an art history class, when looking at a painting by a Jewish artist of one of the Nazi concentration camps, she has to ask the professor, in the middle of the class room what "The Holocaust" means.

Is that a book, or just a documentary about the current adminstration in America?

 

[Jetflag]

@Narel

I've just finished Ilium part one,

highly recommended if you haven't read it already and are a fan of absolute bonkers sci-fi and brilliant world building.

 

[LostLegend]

@Narel

I've just finished Ilium part one,

highly recommended if you haven't read it already and are a fan of absolute bonkers sci-fi and brilliant world building.

Heard some good things about Simmons books, am yet to get around to reading any yet.

I did see the BBC TV adaptation of his book 'The Terror', which is a fictionalised account of the disappearance of the HMS Terror, a British ship that went missing in the 1840's whilst trying to find a route through the treacherous 'Northwest Passage' between North America and the Arctic Circle. He takes a fairly trippy, Lovecraftian horror angle on the story. It's well worth a watch if you can find it anywhere - I hear the book is fantastic as well.