Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN "I think, whoever you are, regardless of race, age, culture, religion etc. reading about the racial and social injustices and the lives of those who have helped to shape society, for better or worse, is indispensable for intellectual survival in today's climate. That's my takeaway from the book so far".

That's definitely something we should all do.

Glad you are enjoying the book. It's been a while since I've read it, but Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca has always stuck in my mind.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN - I think, whoever you are, regardless of race, age, culture, religion etc. reading about the racial and social injustices and the lives of those who have helped to shape society, for better or worse, is indispensable for intellectual survival in today's climate. That's my takeaway from the book so far.

Did you just read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? It sounds like you did, I read it once years ago after the movie and then Freedom Writers, followed by Mississippi Burning. I've read some of Maya Angelou's work too, I never finished 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' but an organization I work with uses parts of it in their work. It got a little too real and raw for me, I'd never seen selective mutism in a book before (I had it for a number of years) It happens to people for different reasons and I worked very hard every day to beat it.

It's been about two years since it lifted, and sort of fizzles back in now and then. In the book it was a kind of self-imposed silence, it was the one part of the book that I could really identify with, it broke any kind of race or colour barrier and allowed me to see the book as 'I understand now'. I couldn't identify with Malcolm X, it was too overwhelming and I didn't have enough of a grasp of racial issues to form any real reference point. I saw his words more as a manual of strength, direction and resilience. Powerful.

I struggled to see colour in the book because I wasn't raised to see colour. The attitude was 'we'll do business with any colour, any creed' and that attitude remained, we're sort of like nomad economists, we don't allow race or religion to dictate such relations. I've always been taught to see people as just 'people'. I explained it to Tjuz as 'if I see a black cat, and a white cat', all I see is each cat. I apply that to people too, it's more of a mind to mind connection, it's what's inside not out and you never 'know' a person until you take the time to talk to them.

I don't know if racism is something that people learn gradually by living in society, for example they might assign blame to someone else because of some kind of perceived threat to their way of life or national identity. If you are removed from society you don't brush up against that way of thinking. That's something I'm grateful for.

Which ties into what I was saying to MD82 last night about Marcus Aurelius, the Inner Citadel and stoicism, both advocate for equality, racism isn't compatible with his teachings. Those teachings are a blueprint for virtue, truth and self-improvement, so to me racism is the opposite. It becomes self-destruction, for both the individual and society as a whole. I can only see it as some kind of human ignorance. I can't imagine living in a world where the colour of your skin dictates or influences how another human sees you. I don't know if it's sad, or baffling. Hating someone you don't even know is weakness, not strength. It only empowers separation, violence and even war.

But yes it's worth reading some of Maya Angelou's work, especially her poetry. It's easy to identify with her poem about insomnia, I think most might if they've ever had bouts of it. She suffered from insomnia her whole life and wrote about it at length. She saw it as creative thought and frequent musings not allowing her to switch off, that's how I see my insomnia too. If I try to sleep I think 'I could be reading right now'.

Her poem about insomnia.

There are some nights when
Sleep plays coy
Aloof and disdainful

And all the wiles
That I employ to win
Its service to my side
Are useless as wounded pride
And much more painful.

almost about finished reading the last 100 or pages of Wheel of Time Memory of Light.

the final battle is pretty good. not a awesome like Gandalf bringing an army backup to help Arogorn in Tower Towers/Return of the kIng

@GirlVersusGame I only just now saw your UFO/UAP comment. Did you edit that in later? Could have sworn that it only contained the ChatGPT comment to Sol when I initially read it. If you added it later, then that would explain why I didn't get a notification that you had @ me (seems that notifications only trigger on the initial creation of a post).
Anyway, interesting stuff. I'm half Mulder and half Scully: I want to believe, but I'm just not there yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there is life out there, it is almost a statistical certainty; I'm just not convinced that there are alien spaceships flying around our neighbourhood. I'm not discounting it, there is plenty of smoke for a fire, but I'm just not there yet.
A couple of friends and I used to take an annual trip to a "UFO campsite" at Hessdalen, staying in wooden lavvos with glass ceilings, drinking whisky and playing board games. While we never saw any phenomena, we have had a few interesting conversations with the locals. Great place to spend some fine summer nights, though

@GirlVersusGame Thank you for your missive. I am currently reading the book at the moment. I found your response well-considered and a reflection of a healthy mind. I'm sorry to hear about the issues in your personal life that reading the books reminded you of, and I wish you all the best with coping with the insomnia as it sounds to me as though you have already conquered the selective mutism. I'll have to explore Maya Angelou's history ,in greater detail, in due course, although I was already familiar with her in a peripheral sense.

When I went to college and joined bands and a social community with members that were predominantly white, I didn't feel like my colour was being seen, outside of a couple isolated incidents which I won't discuss here, (and those came from older white musicians who attended different colleges or were working and attended or played at the same music venues as us younger kids) and felt accepted overall due to a shared interest in the music/fashion that oscillated around the 00s alternative music scene in that area. So your words about not seeing people in terms of colour brought that to mind, so I thought I'd share it with you.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Your welcome and don't worry about it. If we don't go through things we don't learn. I wouldn't have even known about issues of race and discrimination had someone from the outside not started to nudge material my way. It's amazing how much can be kept from a person if the right reinforcement and environmental control is there. I'm of two minds about it, because on the one hand if I'd been 'normal' and in the thick of society then maybe something would have influenced my thinking and I could have become a horrible person.

Mutism is a strange thing. I know what caused it. I just wasn't talking to people, and like any kind of muscle or limb if you don't use them they start to weaken. I went maybe one year without anyone talking to me, then it happened. I remember because I'd use events like Easter and Christmas to track the time, it was Christmas to Christmas. I didn't go outside that year either, except to ice skating practice. Then I opened my mouth one day and nothing came out. I didn't understand it all.

Nannies aren't there to be talked to, they aren't like Mary Poppins. And everyone else avoided me because they didn't want to go against my parents wishes, to basically intrude on my space. At the same time I was talking like this 'with a keyboard' to all of the wrong people online so my method to communicate sort of inverted. That method lasted for about eight years until all those people came to light and all my electronics saw a hammer or other. Then my PS4 after that because it happened all over again.

It was the push from my Partner that made me want to make that breakthrough. When it's selective it's based more on trust, I have full trust in him so it worked. I still really enjoy silence, it's a kind of default setting that I can easily tap into and feel real inner calm. I think of it as a gift, most wouldn't. I enjoy going most of the day without talking, I prefer to listen and observe. I learn more that way.

When I went to college and joined bands and a social community with members that were predominantly white, I didn't feel like my colour was being seen.

• You just summed up another reason why I got involved in the music industry. There is no colour in Metal, nor politics nor a social divide. I never once heard anyone say or do anything related to either, everyone was there for the music and only the music. Which I find ironic because Metal is one of the most understood genres of music, it's outsider music. I'm not sure if it's the same for other genres, I have no experience with the others.

We wouldn't even have Rock if it weren't for people like Rosetta Tharpe and Chuck Berry. Movies like The Blues Brothers introduced me to Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and James Brown, I'd never heard Blues music before that. Then Withnail and I introduced me to Jimmi Hendrix, it was profound and still is. I didn't see his colour I just heard his music. The Blues was the same and Jazz, I'm aware that both have a strong history association but I didn't know of either so all I heard was the music.

I started reading about Blues, bought some CD collections and found people like John Lee Hooker, it was very different music, but I liked it. Then at some point I found Bob Marley and his Legend album. Music is the only medium I know of that links every culture, faith and nation. Everyone has a favorite genre or sound. I don't even think music has a colour if that makes sense? Ted Grant (photographer for TIME and National Geographic) once said that colour photography captures the clothes, and that black and white captures the soul. I think of music like that, when you remove colour and just listen to the person you hear their soul. And since I don't see colour all I ever hear is their soul.

@FuriousMachine Let me know when you read that last reply please, I need to delete it. I'm not being rude, it's just a really odd subject and if I don't have the answers for something I don't like to speculate. Maybe in another ten years I'll understand it better. I don't know what it was or is, I just know what it wasn't. It goes away when I pay it less attention then when I do it comes back. Christmas is almost one week away and I need to focus on what's down here on the ground, not up there, in the wherever.

I just finished reading Jim Horne's Sleeplessness. He was a pioneer in sleep and circadian science, that's primarily what the book focuses on. He talks about 'sleep debt' or 'societal insomnia'. Which basically means that humans aren't sleeping as much as they once were, he calls it a chronic loss of sleep and believes it leads to physical, mental and even heart disorders. It's very evidence based and concise. It mixes modern sociology, psychology, and neuroscience. He believes sleep debt has been on the increase and his data seems to prove it. It's really interesting because he's able to describe the science without infusing it with scaremongering (like some other books on sleep) he describes sleep deprivation as something else completely, I.E. that REM can be linked directly to appetite regulation. He defines insomnia, as a kind of 'disorder of wakefulness', intruding into sleep, and not as a simple 'lack of sleep'. He takes something like a person being 'tired all the time', and applies it not to sleep but to that same kind of appetite regulation. I was about to write to him but apparently I missed him by two years.

Next up is The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene. I've read it before, but I like to reread some material a number of times until I understand, especially when it relates to subjects like quantum mechanics, unified theories, string theory, M-Theory and such. He describes the workings of microscopic and subatomic particles like few other authors I've read. For example he simplifies mathematical conflict by replacing zero-dimensional point particles with minuscule, one-dimensional vibrating strings of energy. By simplifying it he allows for two theories to coexist in harmony, through quantum flow and violent fluctuation. M-Theory becomes a little more complex. It's by definition the second superstring revolution that Edward Witten described, a multidimensional framework that brings together those previously separated systems of string theory. That might sound like a terribly boring and laborious read but it's deeply fascinating too. I finished another book on Cold Fusion yesterday too, it's a really interesting subject, as is zero-point energy. No Witcher yet, eventually maybe.

@GirlVersusGame I haven't been able to fully read it yet, but that's OK, just go ahead and delete it if you feel you need to

@FuriousMachine Thanks, I just did. Is your Goodreads wrap up broken too? It thinks I only read ten books in twenty twenty five. It's more like ten books this week. I think I overloaded their wrap up system. Either that or I wasn't logging them correctly between 'started reading' and 'finished reading', I was logging them after I finished. How's yours? It should have tracked the fifty I think you mentioned then give you graphics for your various stats and genres.

The end result is something like this.

@GirlVersusGame I've been tracking mine throughout the year (I like checking in every time I finish a new book to see my average page length, rating, etc) and it's fine. I see from your book list that only a handful of you books have "date read" set to a 2025 date, so that's what causing the issue for you, I think

@FuriousMachine @GirlVersusGame Is it worth joining Good Reads? I've just started putting what I've read on a WhatsApp to myself this year.

@MightyDemon82 For me it's an indispensable tool for keeping track of the multitudes of books I want to read and I've come to enjoy following other readers and their reviews on there as well. I haven't engaged much with the community, but there are many groups and "reading clubs" on there, should you wish to do so (I joined a horror reading group to keep abreast on what they're reading as a way of getting good horror novel recommendations, because I evidently don't think a 1200 book deep to-read list is quite large enough )
There are also some fun stats to check out if you log the books you've read and an annual reading challenge where you can set a goal of how many you would like to read that year. I typically keep mine well below my best efforts; I don't want to be stressed by the target number but I do want to have it as a driver to keep reading, should I get distracted by other things (so far, the number of interesting books on my to-read list is more than enough of a driver, though)

The site is slow and the interface is quite clunky, but I still love it and visit it almost daily to check in on what my friends have been reading and rating (which also keeps my to-read list growing), among other things.

If you do decide to join, feel free to add me as a friend, if you want

@MightyDemon82 It absolutely is. More than half of my book recommendations came through there and it's kind of priceless to be able to go back and see how interests changed over the years. I joined in in twenty twenty seven, it's probably one of the only sites I still have since then. I've watched it change over the years but never lose it's actual identity, which is rare for anything like that. Just the lists alone are a big part of why I use it.

I can spend hours browsing peoples libraries and writing down books that they've read but that I didn't even know about. I don't know any site like it, and connected with so many Authors on there too. They forwarded their private emails through PM. People are very approachable over there, it's almost like a time machine. People seem more lost in their reading material than anything else. Even the Authors themselves share what they are reading. There are groups, discussions, giveaways too. Not to mention the actual reviews, they aren't trying to sell anything, just give some honest feedback and it shows.

If you join let me know and I'll send you a friend request, my titles are a little weird but not that weird compared to some of my friends on there. Books are a kind of last bastion of authenticity, everyone can see the same movie because it's popular or has mainstream distribution. Reading material is so different. That's why I spend so long looking through peoples lists, I ask myself 'how did they even find that?'.

Here's an example of a list.
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/philosophy-basics

People put a lot of effort and thought into lists, I don't know anywhere else on the internet that does a better job, it's people doing it not some quickly thrown together article for views. I'm behind by about two thousand books, it's the only way I can avoid buying doubles now. I look on there and then know. My goal is preservation, even now my Government are censoring so many books. Others aren't being published. It's easier to buy a Kalashnikov than to buy certain well known titles. Words are now weapons. I understand preservation more than ever. I buy them, read them, get them scanned, archive them. Harry Potter and Stephen King are now extremist material, maybe someone is gay in such a book. I never read Harry Potter so I don't know, or the movies, just the game. I noticed the box-set I did have is gone, I didn't even ask, I know they burned it. But yes that's why I preserve books, knowledge. Goodreads helps me to figure out what's important and what's not. It's integral. Once something goes on a cloud or sequestered onto a server it can't be burned. I had that box-set for years, I was going to read it one day. My Lady Gaga CDs met the same faith, one was signed. It's ridiculous.

just yesterday i bought off of amazon with a gift card that i got for christmas, i bough the kindle ebook versions of Star Wars Legacy of the Force book 1 Betrayal and Anne Rice's Prince Lestat.

going to be busy with those two books in January

@FuriousMachine @GirlVersusGame It appears I already had signed up but didn't get very far. I'll set it up properly later today.

Thanks i'll give you both a shout later on. Will be nice to start out and I'm sure between the two of you I'll have a wealth of new books to choose from, nevermind everyone else on there.

@GirlVersusGame keep up the good fight. It sounds terrifying when you say King and Harry Potter are viewed as extremist material.

I'm off to finish up Meditations this morning, although it's more of book to pick up and flick through and chew on. So it could be one to constantly refer back to.

One more book after that to finish up 2025. Still making my way through Nausicaa but it's huge and the art is gorgeous so I'm not rushing through it.

@MightyDemon82 Fair warning, though: That site is insidious! It tricked me into expanding my to-read list with no less than 15 titles yesterday by posting an article highlighting the readers' most anticipated 2026 novels. Fiendish!

I still have enough left of my Norwegian noir novel that today's activities may change it from my last novel finished in 2025 to the first in 2026 instead. I still have about an hour left of reading time today, but not sure it will be enough. We'll see

@FuriousMachine I'll just have to make room for more books in my life I guess haha.

I have a book that I've started 'Early Cinema in Scotland' which is a collection of essays going over scotlands love for cinema in it's early days. Glasgow was home to 127 cinemas in the late 1920's. Nice wee fact for you!

I'm happy enough with what I've read this year and looking forward to continuing series next year that I started in 2025.

@MightyDemon82 127! That's quite the number, even for a large city like Glasgow! Fascinating fact. I may have to check out that book myself

Just finished my first Norwegian novel in probably 20 or 30 years and it was a good one! I gave Jo Nesbø's The Bat four and a half stars in my Goodreads review. It's the first in the author's crime series about detective Harry Hole (pronounced 'Holy', as the main character makes a big point of in the very first pages - nobody's going to associate him with a hairy hole if he has anything to say about it) and I will continue reading and hopefully get through most of them before the Netflix series drop in late March.

This was a detour from my planned excursion with Geralt of Rivia and unfortunately for everyone's favourite Witcher, he'll have to wait even longer as my next read will be Freida McFadden's The Housemaid; my enjoyment of which will determine if I go and see the Amanda Seyfreid/Sidney Sweeney movie when it arrives in theatres in two weeks' time. Sorry, Geralt.

And with that I want to wish all my fellow readers here a very happy new year; may you all find joy and fulfilment both on and off the page in the coming year!