I am re-reading the Historical Dynamics again.
If anyone is interested in cliodynamics (also coined by Peter Turchin), and wants to know how far we got in the real world psychohistory, this is a good starting point.
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Physical Control Of the Mind
My Simak reading project continues. I have now read or reread 19 of his 26 novels. A couple highlights: I have a much greater appreciation today for A Choice of Gods, a Hugo finalist in 1973, which I ranked fourth when I voted at the time. Today I would place it second behind Silverberg’s masterpiece, Dying Inside. (Neither won BTW.) ACOG is a fine novel, and I believe it exerted considerable influence on George Turner’s Genetic Soldier. I have also been impressed with Simak’s handling of mob violence (esp. in Time Is the Simplest Thing and All Flesh Is Grass) and by his treatment of the theme of abandonment-and-return in many novels.
I’m also continuing my latest enthusiasm, the fiction of Cornell Woolrich. His Rendezvous in Black does for crime fiction what Brave New World did for science fiction.
Just started All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai for my book club reading. I need to finish by Saturday, but it is so engaging and easy to read I expect I can manage that. The beginning is very reminiscent of Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (one of my five favorite SF novels), in which the narrator hooks the reader with a paradox about himself. The writing is clever and stylish, but without affectation.
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i’m reading a lot of spy and detective thrillers, i used to read a lot of fantasy and horror too R.L Stine mostly. currently also busy reading the whole lord of the rings books ( i allready read return of the king, i still need to read the two towers and the fellowship of the ring ), i might also try to get my hands on the hobbit.
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I find this very very weird
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?tɒʜt tυobɒ dɿiɘw ƨ’tɒʜw ,γʜW ?ʜυH
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The return of the king book came as a gift, it was a second hand book somebody gave me because they never read it. Way later I found the two towers in a thrift store and even later in got the fellowship of the ring as a birthday gift. Yes I should have started with the first book, but the books came into my possession in reverse order.
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I was laughing at the joke too, but it is really harmless - really doesn’t matter too much in which order you read anything, imo, its well covered by right of the reader n°2, 5 and 8. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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If a series is very organic (essentially one story), I like to read it in order and only when I have all the volumes in hand (e.g., Turtledove’s World War series). If the series consists of stand-alone stories more loosely connected, then I will read them as they come to hand (e.g., E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest series, which has a continuing protagonist in an overarching plot, but with distinct storylines in each book). Since many of the Dumarest volumes are OP and hard to find, I read them as I get them, 17 of 32 so far.
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You’ve misplaced an arm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here is the raw text code with the necessary backslashes for escaping special characters
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
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Thank you for reprinting this splendid list. Some thoughts:
(1) Since the list specifies “readers,” this must refer to readers taking a break rather than to non-readers. I’ve taken breaks, usually just a day or two when I was younger and forced on me by real life. Now I have more time, I am happy to say, and never take a break.
(2) I never skip, except in a recent book that had half a page repeating two words the OGS filters would block.
(3) Not finishing a book was taboo to me when I was young. Then I read half of Keith Roberts’s Pavane and gave up. Thank you Mr. Roberts (wherever you are). Ever since, my willingness to stop reading something seems to be coverging with my age—a frightening thought.
(4) Rereading was strongly advocated by C.S. Lewis, who said (I’m paraphrasing), “A book is no good to me until I have read it at least twice.” I’m rereading a lot these days. My most read book is James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold, which I have read 5 times.
(5) I strongly believe in reading as a personal choice, as someone whose teachers (in the bad old days) frowned on science fiction.
(6) Life has a way of correcting this “mistake.” Contrariwise, I tend to view life as a book, and mourn for the countless stories lost to the world with each death.
(7) In clearing out my late father’s books, I found his old paperback copy of one of the Durants’ books about philosophy. It was still warped from when he carried it everywhere in his back pocket, to read while standing in endless lines during his time in the army. For a couple years (7th and 8th grades), I read while walking to school (a mile). However, I never did that while crossing a street.
(8) I do like to dip into books that have fine passages and epigrammatic thoughts, such as The Crock of Gold, or the works of Eric Hoffer.
(9) I love reading out loud and listening to others read. Fortunately my daughter enjoyed this too, so I read a great deal to her, including the 14 Oz books by Baum, the Chronicles of Narnia, and many others. Poetry, of course, should be read aloud.
(10) I can and have read in noisy places, including on buses and subways. However, I do prefer the quiet in my old age.
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What is this coding sorcery lmao? ty very much, over the months I lost a whole bunch of upper arms in here
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I love re-reading books too - Solaris and The Congress by Stanislas Lem, the trisolaris trilogy by Liu Cixin, Soul Mountain by Gao Xinjiang (which might be poorly translated to English? some of its poetry might have been lost, critics weren’t so keen about it, the French edition is stunningly beautiful, imo), Death on Credit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, there is a 'umber of books I’ve read and re-read several times.
Reading on the school way, or while walking generally, reminds me of a hilarious vid of someone walking with a blind man’s cane while using his smartphone - can’t find it in my Playlist tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I might have crossed some streets, while reading. 
Edit: the warped book is a beautiful anecdote. 
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Thank you. I was pleased to learn that you are a Lem fan. I too am a great admirer of his work, despite his excessive criticism of American SF. My favorite Lem book is The Futurological Congress, followed closely by His Master’s Voice and Eden (the scariest novel ever, IMHO).
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While en route to visiting relatives this last Christmas, I read a collection of CS Lewis essays titled after one of his better known essays: “On Stories”.
A particular essay collected therein undertook to propound a method wherewith to differentiate good art from bad with the conclusion, if I am not mistaken, that there is a qualitatively different type of benefit provided by good art, and the litmus test of it is to experience the same art multiple times, and only the bad art will lose its appeal.
Is this where your quote came from? I found it [CS Lewis’ Essay] very interesting, and I’ve been paying attention when I read, now, whether there’s something in the text which keeps me coming back, or if it is just a vessel of excitement.
I do not believe he mentioned it in the essay, but I am reminded of his treatment of art in an excerpt from another of his essays.
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things– the beauty, the memory of our own past– are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
EDIT: really, that whole passage is great, not just what I put above.
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Wonderful! I find it really heartening when anyone connects so well with C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite writers. I own and have read nearly all his work, including that collection. However, my paraphrase was based on something he said in his classic work of literary criticism, An Experiment in Criticism. That book has the fullest treatment of the idea that you summarize so well. It was, I think, one of his most important ideas, and he used it in various contexts in many other works.
You may be interested in the book comments of Dr. Peter Kreeft, which are based on the same philosophy: Place to share relaxing and thought-provoking videos - #194 by Conrad_Melville
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I’m listening to the german edition Eden audiobook rn; I get why you would see it as being frightening. I’m surprised too that it made it through censorship, it is blatantly anti-communist (at least what concerns the botched state-capitalism bureaucracy people called communism in the states of the Warsaw pact.)
I’m looking forward to read His Master’s Voice, I heard high praise of it. ^^
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After finishing another Simak novel (just six to go), I felt like reading a nonfiction book, which I haven’t done in a while (other than a few pages now and then in Montaigne). Stimulated by our talk with @Samraku about C.S. Lewis (see above), I started a book I acquired a couple months ago, C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences, edited by James T. Como (1979). It is a rich, insightful collection of remembrances by his friends, colleagues, and former students. I was pleased to learn that Lewis was a great admirer of one of my favorite books:
“…most important, indeed almost an obsession was the book by that leprechaun James Stephens, The Crock of Gold. Here we found a food we both needed: an amalgam of humor, poetry, myth, philosophy and, above all, imagination. I have no doubt that Lewis was quite deeply influenced by that book. We knew chunks of it by heart and quoted from it delightedly…. Even now the thought…conjures up Lewis’s young face grinning.” (p. 9)
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Haha, I know this too well … after reading a few of one kind—fiction or non-fiction—I usually need one or a few of the other kind, I view it as sort of “rinsing my mind”, and “allowing things to settle”.
Currently I’m on a Science-Fiction interlude again after a few non-fiction books:
The late and great Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s “The City And The Stars” (1956, one year before my birth; links go to Wikipedia)
(I’ve read so many of his works, still so many more to read 
)
@Conrad_Melville
BTW, @Conrad_Melville, after your mention of James Stephens’ “The Crock of Gold” I immediately ordered the book, got it cheap from a used books store online, as usual. Thanks for that!
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