The Gamer's Quarter

a_plus · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 252 Location: olympia

Finished "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace about a week ago, and am now reading Salman Rushdie's "The GRound Beneath Her Feet". that is all

baronpatsy · . Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 22

I just finished reading a bunch of different books, including JPod, which I actually really liked, the Illuminatus! trilogy, which I also really liked, and A Confederacy of Dunces, which I also really liked! What a surprise!

In fact, all three are now in my top ten favourite books list. Somewhere.

a_plus · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 252 Location: olympia

What's Jpod about? i remember hearing about it and thinking it sounded interesting, but I need more info. I forgot about what I'd heard, i think.

dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

Man, I fucking HATE Jpod. It's like a laundry list of issues with postmodernism.

So to answer your question, it's about how much of a coward Douglas Coupland has become.

Also he writes himself into it as a character. The nerve!

seryogin · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 10:55 pm Post subject:

Man, you peoples read some bad books. On my way to work I enjoy reading "Taming the Tiger in Paris" by Edward Limonov (not translated, sadly).
_________________

baronpatsy · . Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 22

GSL · Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:49 am Post subject:

Alc · . Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 109 Location: UK

Even if you're not interested in id software at all, Masters of Doom is well worth a look.

baronpatsy · . Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 22

dhex · Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 9:36 am Post subject:

baron patsy has read illuminatus.

my work on earth is complete.

i've been playing the grab a random title from the shelf before i leave game and the last three before i left on vacation were beyond good and evil, the master and margarita and white noise. i don't really care for delillo but bulgakov is the shit, man. i still think nietzche is very readable as well, so long as one is ready for the crazy sidebars on the german spirit and how much women and democracy will destroy the tempo of master morality. not that he wasn't mostly right about the slavenmorals thing.
_________________

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

Yeah, Nietzsches fun. Beyond Good and Evil is probably my least favorite of his that I've read though. It's great, but a little too crazy and sprawling. My fave is Ecce Homo, where he does a reading of his own work, complete with chapter titles such as Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books.

White Noise is a decent read, but a bit overrated. It has its moments. I don't really care for DeLillo much either, though.
_________________
Brauner: Damn you, humans... You selfishly start wars and despoil the earth. Perhaps justice wasn't on my side but I will never admit that it was on yours.

dhex · Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:33 pm Post subject:

delillo writes too much of that oh woe is my station wagon type stuff.
_________________

a_plus · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 252 Location: olympia

oh god, the few things from White Noise I have read were completely awful.

seryogin · Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 9:22 pm Post subject:

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Someone's going to have to explain to me DeLilo's appeal. He's one of those writers I keep hearing name-dropped for no real reason, and it tells me very little about what he's about.
_________________
"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

rf · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 23

In a high school class, I once recommended that a friend write a paper about DeLillo. Crucially, I hadn't read any of DeLillo's books! (I still haven't.)

We spent a lot of time talking about how terrorism "creates something new" because the media reports on it, which is, um, like a protein, and means terrorists are like authors, and has something to do with Mao.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Thomas Pynchon releases his new novel, tentatively called Against the Day, in December.

Just saying because I just found out.
_________________
"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

I started reading Borges last night.

It's going pretty well so far.

GSL · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:35 am Post subject:

Thanks to Shaper's recommendations, I have called upon my heroic superpowers (inter-library loan) and procured a copy of Dick's Galactic Pot-Healer. I'm not terribly far into it as of yet, but... well, it's awesome, as can be expected. I realized with not a little bit of horror that it has been YEARS since I last read anything by PKD, and it took me a while to recall his oh-so-solid authorial voice. Nobody does utter hopeless paranoia quite like Dick, although 1984 came pretty close.

Also, The Game is absolutely awesome, but at the same time really, really sad in its utter plausibility.

dizzyjosh · . Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 64

oh wow you guys read good-- i have like twenty tabs open in firefox and two copies of notepad all generated just from reading this thread front to back.

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

dhex · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:17 am Post subject:

lobster nubergh is a totally gross food to the max.

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I read 1984 the other week for the first time since High School. I had forgotten like 80% of the book, and it was much better than I had previously given it credit for. I also finished the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which deals with the same subject matter as Ubik (sort of) only it is much more blatant about it. I like Ubik a lot more. I am currently reading Vulcan's Hammer... which is really straight forward for a PKDick book.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Mir · . Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 3

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

So, I am attempting to wade my way through Nueromancer by William Gibson. All I can think is how it is not as good as PK Dick. Esp. in the conversation department. Stuff that Dick wrote in the 60's reads like more natual conversation than this does which comes 25 years later. Also the pacing is all... weird. I don't have any idea what is happening sometimes, but not because things are weird, but because no where near enough information is given.

blah, it's not that bad, I would just rather be reading some more PK Dick, but I ran out of books (not of his, but of ones I actually had on hand).
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

rf · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 23

Neuromancer dragged for me a little at the beginning, but it quickly gets into an action-thriller pattern that's totally conventional, but (therefore) engrossing. It didn't seem brilliant to me, except for originating a certain kind of setting that I've already been numbed to, but it sure was fun. I also enjoyed the character introspection he weaves into the action, which is really effective and wards off the impression that the novel should have been a movie.

I'm reading Foucault's Pendulum, which is well-written (and not killed by the translation, thankfully) and entertaining. Sometimes it shows a particular flaw you often get with authors who know a ton about one area: it feels implausible that nearly all the characters, even those who enter the plot entirely by chance, seem to be equally fascinated by certain occult/historical conspiracy theories, just as in sci-fi worlds where everyone's technologically adept, even those who don't need to be. On the other hand, Eco is refreshingly good at creating conversations that both exposit information to the reader and feel like sincere exchanges. A lot of writers will use a format like:

Expert character: "Stuff!"
Novice character: "Out-of-character quip that prevents this from feeling like a lecture."
[Repeat]

Eco does it masterfully, though.

I'm also reading Consider The Lobster, a collection of David Foster Wallace's essays. The journalistic articles tend to seem, uh, embellished, and some of his arguments are bullshit (A dictionary that tells you how people actually use words is like an ethics textbook that tells you what people actually do!), but his style is hilarious when he hits his stride, like in "Up, Simba."

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Nueromancer usually doesn't click, in terms of understanding "what's going on", until the second or third time you go through it.

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

I've just finished a few gaming books, actually. "Xbox 360 Uncloaked," "Opening the Xbox," and "Smartbomb."

Uncloaked is the best of the three from my standpoint. The others seem to be very position oriented, like they are attempting to make an argument or point about gaming in general, and are using the book as a vehicle to that end. Uncloaked is a much more straight-forward business and management book, which I really enjoyed. Reading Opening and Uncloaked together is pretty much required, IMHO, because you get to read all Microsoft's reasons for doing things the way they did, then you get to see that basically every assumption they made was wrong, and they basically did a 180 degree turn with the 360. Very cool.
_________________
Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

dhex · Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:30 am Post subject:

there will be a review of uncloaked in this next tgq.

i tried reading neuromancer in high school. didn't work out.

went book shopping this weekend, and found some good stuff. a pet peeve of mine is writing in books, especially in pen; i know some folk find it easier to study or absorb using this method. to me it's more like taking a shit on your sainted grandmother's grave. plus it makes it difficult for future travellers to actually read the book.

anyway, i picked up a copy of the prince from 1952 for a quarter. it's got that great yellow-bronze cover and the 20 page introduction which is blessedly free of any hints of modern sensitivity. but the whole damn thing is filled with purple pen underlines and notes; worse yet, they are the notes of some poor soul who had just finished a freshman modern political philosophy course and had to read the prince after reading rawls or some other kindly soul. my favorite note is in a section where machiavelli rightly claims that without a strong state, strong laws are impossible. (i.e. laws are based on force, duh) and the poor purple pen weilder writes "that's too pessimistic" underneath it.

and thus lol's were had. poor kid. (there's also the chance it's some poor woman in her 50s who picked this up by accident to give her something to do between bouts of listening to npr or whatever constitutes soul death in upstate new york, but i prefer not to think about that)

also got time out of joint for a quarter and a really neat looking paperback edition of finnegan's wake from the mid 60s. the upside to park slope is that there's a fuckload of used bookstores within a few blocks, as well as street vendors and flea markets on the weekends. some dude with a van was selling what seemed to be every single fantasy paperback ever printed for a dollar each (4 for 3 dollars, etc). there must have been at least a 1000 books spread about on tables and in the back of his truck. it was nearly child molester-ish.

the weird part was that he had two hardcover books in the center of one table. one was called mists of avalon and the other was a hardcover edition of wasson, et al's persephone's quest, which is about ethnomycology. he wanted 14 bucks for it though, and i already have a copy. it's a very interesting book but it's fairly dry and doesn't ever get fanciful so i don't know why they'd try to bundle it with what i understand to be a pagan-feminist fantasy, except maybe the title.

used book shopping is one of those pleasures like walking around on a cold fall day at 4 in the morning when there's no one but you and the leaves. (but as always, stay sharp)
_________________

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

I think the question is more whether strong laws are necessary to a functioning society.

I would argue that, when the society is sufficiently small, they are not. When it gets too large, then society will continuously trend toward increasingly non-democratic forms of government and ultimately to one or another type of totalitarianism.

We're seeing that here. It's been happening for a while, but I think people are only starting to realize it.
_________________
Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Anybody read Walter M. Miller Jr's Canticle for Lebowitz? I did in 9th grade and, seeing it in the bookstore the other day, thought it would probably be something I could pick up and really appreciate now. But I didn't, cause I'm already in the middle of about a dozen different books.

I read Peter Carey's Wrong About Japan a little while ago (Powell's, the world's best bookstore, had just about everything he's written on sale when I was out in Portland, so I bought it all). It was an interesting read; an exploration of anime/manga from the PoV of an upper-middle class dad. He's certainly not producing great insight on the subject (and there are bouts of pure description of this or that anime scene, unfortunately), but that's kind of the point. It's more a brief memoir of his encounter with the completely different worldview of his son.

dhex · Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 8:31 am Post subject:

just finished reading the prince. purple underlining sucks balls. her notes were amusing, however.

re-reading steven pinker's how the mind works. he's an engaging guy, even if he overreaches with his metaphors sometimes (more common in the blank slate, which is also an excellent book, btw).
_________________

rf · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 23

dhex · Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:49 am Post subject:

yeah, i agree with that. the research is boring; the sexy part is fighting with the fuckwits who think study xyz means something politically. which is unfortunate, and i may have been genuinely naive, but in light of the utter pap which passes for scholarship in some of the louder fields (namely "cultural studies" as a whole) there seems to be several decades worth of arguing over what study xyz "really means" politically. i genuinely thought people like david horowitz were 100% nuts with no exceptions before my wife started her phd; it was a sad day when i discovered he's only about 75% nuts.
_________________

TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

Well, I have just finished Crime and Punishment. Specifically at 6:05 a.m. I really don't know how to sum up my feelings right now, as it is not appropiate for this Forum, and it isn't needed. All I can say is that changed my outlook on life and left me even more hard-hearted. The positives come with the negatives in this aspect. Next is "Notes fron the Underground."
_________________

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 2:04 pm Post subject:

TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:

man, if you felt hard-hearted before.

shit, let's list some merciless literature

-death on the installment plan
-naked lunch
-etc
_________________

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 2:53 pm Post subject:

no, i'm not really into remixing literature and it makes more sense chronologically.
_________________

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Last time I tried it it wouldn't play nice with me. That was over a year ago, but it was on the same PC. I just couldn't seem to get anything to run properly on it, and my brain dumped all that DOS info I learned over a dozen years ago.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

rf · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 23

Gah, I want to finish Foucault's Pendulum before school starts, because I'll forget what's going on pretty quickly, and I'll be reading too much for school to want to continue it. I was really enjoying it for a while, but once the characters come up with a certain inside joke, it becomes nearly unreadable. It's all this dense, kaleidoscopic detail, and yet the plot and style both imply that none of the specific detail is actually important, but there's nothing else there, so you have to try and ingest it, or you'll effectively be skipping pages. Oh well, I hope it comes to something good in the end.

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 10:37 pm Post subject:

it makes more sense if you hang out with classical conspiracy theorists. (none of this namby pamby 911 truth / prisonplanet type stuff.) ever meet a bircher? they're like those dudes.
_________________