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naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
A couple of Fridays ago there was a comment thread on what the best series you watched in 2022 was/were. In honor of @EdenicFaithful's weekly Sunday reading question, what were your best reads of 2022? What did you enjoy or find interesting? Anything of note you didn't finish?
For me:
God Emperor of Dune. Such a good book. Well, Idk how to qualify it in terms of goodness. Such a unique book. How many have a near-omnipotent, centuries old, giant worm-man with voices in his head as the main character? My favorite bit: Leto is so wrapped up in his own ancient internal monologue about the voices of his ancestors inside him and the future he can see that he almost misses getting a gun that he knows is going to be pulled on him pulled on him.
I read a bit of horror later in the year. Ghost Story by Peter Straub would probably be my favorite of the bunch. It loses some steam near the end, but I think that's a flaw intrinsic to the horror genre. Or maybe that's all the Stephen King I've read talking. Speaking of, Revival would be my runner-up. It's the only post-car accident King I've read that's not The Dark Tower, and I wasn't disappointed. He maybe could have used a little trimming in the second quarter of the book to shorten the gap between the inciting incident and the next big plot movement, but other than that I think he even stuck the landing.
Books I did not finish:
I didn't read a lot of books this year. Sometime around March I attempted to do what I thought of as a "liberal arts" read: reading world history, art history, music history, philosophy history, and literature concurrently, going through sections that aligned with the same time period. A bit ambitious. Couple of problems with it, besides coming up with the "curriculum" on my own based on what we already had in our home library: I started with human pre-history, which kept me hopping between just a couple of books at first; a couple, particularly the philosophy book, were Western focus, whereas I wanted to be more comprehensive; the literature portion (the first volume of Norton's world lit anthology) covered a lot I had already read; for world history, I picked a book that's like the notes to a world history encyclopedia - very dense and dry, and I wasn't trying to skip any of it; finally, the sections just didn't line up that well for jumping between things and keeping it "fresh". My goal was to get to 0 AD. I barely got to the Greeks. After a couple months or so of spending my bedtime reading time on this, I was worn out and needed a narrative I could start and finish without interruption and moved on to a fiction splurge. I'd like to go back and read some more of the individual books on their own. Except that encyclopedic notes one. It's literally organized in a ABC, 123 subnote style. Very dense and dry. Overall, and interesting experiment.
Too many.
Most impactful: Levy's Hackers. Clarifies a lot about the world we're living in.
Most important: Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, H. A. J. Munro's translation. Still not finished, but I'll be mulling this one for a long, long time.
Most useful: Ellis' Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy. It led me to E-Prime (I don't think it was actually mentioned in the book), which has had much use in my life. Also, Ellis' thoroughly calm viewpoint was an example to all. The book itself could have been better, but was not bad as far as I got.
Best written: Chandler's The Big Sleep. "Masterful" doesn't even begin to describe it. This is a man's book. I'll add Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. It's the kind of book which reminds you why preachers exist.
Most memorable: Freinacht's The Listening Society. Something didn't work in his conclusions, but the structure of his thoughts follows me.
Glad I forced myself: More's Utopia. The creeping conformity and obedience which I saw in the beginning went full circle by the end, and it became odd, charming and disturbingly striking. There's an ethos there.
Most reread: DaystarEld's Pokemon: The Origin of Species. This man ought to be famous, rich and have an anime. Still ongoing.
#1 Should finish: Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. The conversation with the trees about AI risk has remained in my mind, as someone who doesn't usually get anxious about those things. Very unsettling. Feels like a source for unconsciously absorbing best practices.
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