Danica asked me for my to-read pile

[petronia]

So that she could prove to me that nothing in it was important enough to justify not moving Dorothy Dunnett to the very top. XD; Keeping in mind that I would actually have to go looking for Dunnett at the library, I've whittled this down to the physical pile in my house, in order of acquisition:

• Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services by Kim Goodwin -- yeah OK this is for work
• Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon -- I REMEMBERED HER NAME, GUYS
• Persuasion and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen -- gotta 'fess up: Dunnett aside, I've not read Heyer or half of Austen
• Cheap Complex Devices by John Sundeman -- "short story collection" purchased from the author at SXSW, alongside Acts of the Apostles, a novel related via Nabokovian meta. Already finished the latter, which started well and irritated me increasingly until I was in a fervour of grump by the end; suspect I would like this one better
• Reality Is Broken by Jane Mcgonigal -- impulse purchase as I missed her talk at SXSW
• The Four-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss -- my current diet (it's working creepily well). This:The Hacker's Diet::agile:waterfall. Kevin Rose crops up in the narrative like a jack in the box, which you can't say for most self-help tomes out there. For more profound hilarity, the case study for the "getting ripped" chapter was Neil Strauss, the dude who wrote The Game (which I've been reading on and off in the bookstore... more on this?). He comes off as super-nerdy, but then that's the point of The Game. It was like the setup to a Hollywood bromantic comedy. What T4HB doesn't relate is whether Ferriss was getting tips from Strauss on picking up women, although it does contain two chapters on female orgasm, with diagrams. This book probably deserves its own entry
• Burning Chrome by William Gibson -- re-read, but I don't remember anything in it
• The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence -- there is a new biography of Lawrence out, which sent me back to this in the hope of maybe grokking the geography this time around. Though I've realized the thing about this book, above and beyond the prose style, is that I just enjoy spending time with the dude. LOL INFJs, idek why I like them so much, from an I/ENTP POV they are basically nutters. You can't convince one, really, but you can imprint them. Maybe that is why the main MBriggs page says this is a grebt romantic pairing, bawling

Comments

[charmian]

Mmm, I don't know if Mansfield Park is really worth reading though, compared to the rest of Austen.

[brooms]

Persuasion is lovely and a really quick read, I really recommend. Fave Austen book by about a mile.

Don't care much for Masnfield, tho, tbh.

[petronia]

So everyone is saying! Well, the books were $5. XD

[karalee]

I haven't read most of Austen either - in fact Persuasion is the only one I didn't put down in disgust and managed to finish (I pretended to read Mansfield Park for a class, somehow or other). Let me know what you think of the rest XD

[karalee]

Oh and I nearly posted this on LJ, heh ... if you do start a reading group, I would love to get in on it :O

Also, speaking as a nutter INFJ, laughing at your last bullet point XDDDDD

[petronia]

Well, I really loved the Austens I have read. P&P is and will always be one of my favorite books. I just have this thing where I don't read everything by an author. XD;

I might? The problem is, though, it would have to be a reading group where we read the books I wanted to read, or I'd fail out pretty quickly. XD;;;

No but that is exactly it - I think I actually posted this about Spock and McCoy like a grillion years ago. It's an insanity the other side has a mad respect for, because that set of internal processes would render me (and, I feel reasonably safe in positing, Spock) non-functional. If I had Lawrence's ~*feelings*~ I would just curl up in a fetal ball and whimper. The best part is, he doesn't talk about his feelings in the book! Or when he does, it's in this po-faced stoic elided manner! Possibly he didn't realize the entire book is awash in restrained feeling, or he did and hated himself roundly for it.

It's actually weird that the INTP respect is reserved not for healers, but for (those we perceive as) warriors. Because on the other hand, all warriors are fundamentally kind of misguided. IDK what that implies really.

[karalee]

Bahahahaha well I always did love that pairing! And I'm sure if *I* lived in Spock's head I would have gone crazy. There is a bit of aspiration to that in me, though, b/c every so often I wake up and decide the ~feelings~ are a hindrance, but the resolve never lasts very long. (And I posit that supposing Lawrence really was an INFJ, your second theory would be correct.)

re: the book club, I'm okay with that actually since I am perfectly capable of grabbing books that I want to read on my own time. Book clubs for me are for finding material filtered through someone else's taste, that I may not have found on my own. But it would have to be a group where I can ... soundly mock ... things I don't like XD

[marej.livejournal.com]

let me know when you start reading Dunnett. Perhaps at that time I'll actually be reading anything that's not baby-related and will join you. Last few times I ventured to read The Game of Kings I stopped at page 20 or so, and decided that the days I gulped this kind of stuff have passed. There was something itchingly Dumasesque about the prose which is a huge bonus if you're me and spent years reading and rereading and rereading everything he wrote and yet.

The wassname (will ALWAYS call her that now) is any good?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The last one was pretty good! I expect the current one to be consistent. XD As for Dunnett, can do... perhaps I will end up with a reading group. XDD

[marej.livejournal.com]

Now that my time is scarce and I read so much less than I used to (UNLESS YOU COUNTING BABYBOOKS, which well) and as result I read everything that comes out a lot later than most, I've been thinking more and more about a book club type thingy. Thoughts?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

We definitely could - the problem is, I'd have to pick the books, or I'd fail out. XD;;;; This is why I'm never a part of book clubs.

(That and I can't genteelly read X chapters, discuss, read X chapters, discuss. I'm basically a drug addict with books. Either I binge, in which case I give up on reality for that 24-48 hour period or what have you, or I don't do'em.)

Other ppl are asking, though! I might set up something, for the Dunnett. XD;

[dipping_sauce]

Now I'm curious what my Myers-Briggs thing is now, but am too lazy to take the 8 brazillion question test.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

You should take it, if only because there are so many people who take it seriously to whatever degree. >_>

there is no one writer on your list that i can justifiably call a waste of your time. hangs head.

[rondaview.livejournal.com]

I WILL HAPPILY BE IN YOUR READING GROUP ANYTIME, SABINA :D

To be fair I am not much more well-read than you in the Heyer and Austen dept. I've only done P&P and just tucked into my first Heyer a month ago (Devil's Cub -- I was totally enamored with it after I finished but the fizzy glow has since been eclipsed by Lymond & Friends). Probs goes without saying but Dunnett's got a lot more breadth. and how dazzling it is!

I haven't read any of the Lord John spinoffs before but my 15 yo self did spend a year breathlessly consuming all of the Outlander books that had been published up to that date. IIRC there were a lot of titilating gay bits to it that stirred up the interweb fangirls into a tiffy, I'm sure. Always assumed that Lord John was a result of Gabaldon talking up her inner slash fan and running with it, ALTHOUGH I COULD BE COMPLETELY WRONG and it could instead be about straitlaced British nobility breaking from murder investigations to have a proper spot of tea.

Gibson is good too! I've only read Neuromancer, though. What are your thoughts on the second and third entry in that trilogy? Worth the time?

As for the others, I have for the most part not heard of them. Still, murder, subterfuge, and rampaging elephants >>>>>>> Designing for the Digital Age, amirite? XD

Re: there is no one writer on your list that i can justifiably call a waste of your time. hangs head

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the thing about the Lord John books is that they feel well-balanced - like, not embarrassingly ~*slash fangurl*~. Even when it gets into secret sodomitical societies or whatnot. XD I mean it won't win the Man Booker, but as period mystery novels go, I've done worse.

Many people like Count Zero better than Neuromancer, so I'd at least give it a try. I remember not liking Mona Lisa Overdrive as much, but I never feel Gibson's trilogy enders are his best efforts. XD

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

What is the deal with Myers-Brigg anyway, why are these important things to test on.

n.b. I come out as INFJ usually, although the last two are clouded by neuroticism.

I wish Gibson didn't have to write as fantasy doorstop trilogies. I'm not sure who's best represented by that model, but him especially not. He'd work as double-length newspaper articles -- but then I wouldn't pay for it, so...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Myers-Briggs is discredited as scientific proof of anything goes, but people still want to know what yours is in companies, to gauge your ~leadership potential~ and how they should act around you in order to keep you productive. It's like how diplomas don't mean jack, but you still need one to get hired. Or how standardized test scores don't mean jack, but four years down the line, my team lead is selling me to potential clients on the basis of the 780 I scored in the GMAT. And no one asks how I did in the actual MBA! At least Myers-Briggs is fun to talk about and speculate on, which you can't say for standardized testing. XD;

I actually believe Gibson doesn't set out to write trilogies; it just eventually always takes him three books to exhaust his interest in a setting/cast, and by book three, it shows. XD XD