I don’t look at recommendations. I just get a figurative bug up my ass about a particular type of book I want to read and start searching on Libby. That also leads to other ones. Unfortunately, the older, more obscure ones aren’t available electronically. The other day I was thinking about one I’d read in high school “The veils of Azlaroc” but it’s only available in print.
The nice thing about library books is that I’ll take more chances than I would with books I have to lay out cash for.
Exactly. I have the Libby and Audible app. I take way more chances on Libby.
Sometimes I pick ones just fir the narrator. That has been some great reads.
I’ve done the same thing. I listened to “The Passage” and really liked the man who read the book and ended up searching for more he’s read.
Scott Brick is my fave 
Thoughts and feelings are being imported and exported across nodes on a network. Thoughts and feelings themselves - words, sounds, my vocal cords vibrating, tongue wiggling, fingers typing are just methods of transportation - thoughts and feelings are pretty much telepathically communicated with a time delay and syntax issues included. Were I to shoot words through waves in the air directly from my brain it would only be a little different.
Realizing that makes me consider my words as much more important, which makes me much more careful.
Someone said to me a few weeks ago “talk is cheap”, I said no - talk is very expensive. Minimum, it comes at the cost of all other talk. Only so many things can be said, heard, considered. But more than that, cheap talk can be costly when people act on it since “actions speak louder than words”. And it can become a race to the bottom since people just want to be heard, period, as an end to itself.
Now I try to take my words as seriously as I would take telepathic communication, but I should probably just stfu and chill out…
I’d be interested in hearing you continue…
Learning deep learning, neural network programming,etc. helped me realize how we, our brains learn - repetitive external stimuli and reflection. Still, why? How does that work? I get the process, but not the why and how…fun stuff to think about and your description is very eloquent.
for the most part, yes. Words matter and words are chosen and used for a reason. One of the reasons I seek to ever expand and refine my vocabulary. The only issue with that is, I might be able to verbalize ideas more granularly than the person to whom I’m speaking can comprehend. So, I’ll “pull back” which is fine for conversation but not when I want to convey deeper ideas. Still, fun stuff.
ooophf ain’t that the truth. Luckily, I’ve selectively surrounded myself, mostly, with people who enjoy engaging in dialogue.
lol … time and place bud.
You gotta at least offer to buy me dinner first haha
Conversely, I too am interested in hearing you continue…
I disagree. Willpower does not change due to subconscious habits. For example - I used to smoke cigarettes heavily. My subconscious habit would be to have another cigarette out of the pack and lit the instant I threw a smoked-down filter away. Yeah - I was a chainsmoker, and pulling another one out of the pack to have immediately after I’d just had one was a subconscious habit. What’s the key word there? Was.
I believe implanting the idea of who you want to be into your subconscious in order to help you break a nasty habit is an invaluable tool.
I agree with everything you said except for the part where you said that you disagree with me.
All I said was to be careful
I did not say to turn away
Thanks though, sincerely, no worries
This explains it, along with the reasons behind our never-ending search for the divine. We’re too smart for our own good. Ignorance is truly bliss. Animals experience instinctual satisfaction through accomplishing tasks such as hunting, mating, and protecting their fellow animal. This is enough for them because they do not process emotions, and as such they are objectively “happier” (within their own intellectual capabilities, which isn’t saying much, although “happiness” as it pertains to animals just means “satisfaction”) than we could ever hope to be.
Nice paradox! 
I’ve miscommunicated; I don’t read books because I think I should, but because I really like the variety, just like I like the piles of broccoli on my dinner plate. It’s part of the joy of my diet. I feel the same about books.
I had a rapacious appetite for books when I was younger. My parents wouldn’t buy them for me and I had limited money for them as I got older, so I either went to the library or bought books at the used book store, where I got what I could afford, often from the table out front (terrible disclosure: I have stolen books, too). That exposed me to stuff I might otherwise not have chosen. I found Jane Austin very entertaining for a time, Henry James for a bit, Tolstoy, etc. I’m not entertained in the same way I am reading a three hour bullshit book, which isn’t as much “entertained” as absorbed, I think. I don’t remember the three hour bullshit books the way I remember Of Human Bondage.
The internet (YOU GUYS) have put a big dent in my book time, so I tend more to nonfiction now. Part of it may be that my work is all narratives all the time - I get on average 6 unique stories a day, which is a lot.
Gotcha.
I went through a big Dickens phase when I was younger. I don’t recall reading much Jane Austen. I read some Flaubert and Ayn Rand (the way you do when you’re young)
Here is my most oddball book story. When I was in grade 8 I was very taken with the BBC series “I Claudius” and then read the books. My mother knew I loved historically based stories and for Christmas that year I ended up with a copy of Caligula by Gore Vidal. If I recall, the cover was very Roman history looking. I guess my mother never cracked it open to check the content. To this day, it’s never been mentioned.
Pretty fucking stellar, man.
This is one of the funniest stories ever. Thanks for that!!!
Did you actually read it at that time? Or did you fling it away in horror once you realized where it was leading…?
Reflection. It happens, but how often? I reckon most of ‘learning’ is void of reflection, which reminds me of a past conversation we had involving ‘learning’ vs ‘true learning’
I’m thinking of learning to talk. Learning the sounds and how to make them is motor skill, not reflection. Learning words and what they mean at first seems like it would require a large bit of reflection, but eventually you get a pool of enough words that are then compared to each other and subtleties in differences, grammar, etc. are hashed out. Basically to expand my vocabulary a little more doesn’t take any real reflection at this point, and most of the English I have learned was through (subconscious) calculation, imitation and comparing.
A thought occurred to me once that I am constantly reacting to external stimuli. Even when I am alone pondering something completely in my head (no books, computer, etc.), the things that I am pondering are a part of a chain reaction of ‘internal stimuli’ that are reactions to external stimuli that did occur in my past which are still continuing within me into the present moment, and that this is inescapable. If so, that would make reflection itself a (delayed) reaction to external stimuli. Basically something doesn’t add up well enough and the mind keeps churning, digesting and simulating ways to fill the gap or close the circuit.
I sometimes think of the mind as being a bunch of layers of consciousness stacked on top of each other (maybe a sphere) - reflection is looking at whatever is currently exposed to the ‘outside’ so you can see it, but stuff moves around. Some stuff has more transparency than others, so you can see with varying degrees of depth
Thanks. I think it is pretty much brute force pattern matching and trying to creatively fill gaps/breaks at key spots, just inherently what the human mind does automatically for survival, procreation, the group, etc.
Dickens is one of my favorites! I picked it up when I went through an “England phase” in 4th grade. I’ve been reading A Tale of Two Cities every summer since.
I’m personally more partial to Dostoyevsky. The blatant political commentary is fascinating and he deals w/ real problems and not just rich people w/ too much time (Tolstoy)
What always gets me is that these authors are now considered “greats” when their works were literally the equivalent of “airport novels” in their time.
I wonder what it would be like if people made rational, educated, and unbiased decisions towards politics. No alliance to red or blue, no labels of liberal or conservative. Simply well informed decisions that would benefit people as a whole.
I’ve always believed that through the pursuit of physical perfection (performance or physique) that everyone that pursues their goal for long enough will ultimately face the choice of taking gear. And if far enough along, will almost always say yes. I’m not against it, but I wonder what my personal “limit” would be. At what point will I hit a hard enough wall, where I’ll be inclined to partake.
This is kind of… generic and preachy… but I’ve always wondered, how people can stand being a certain level of out-of-shape. I never played sports, I wasnt a big fighter, I’m fairly large just by nature and I’ve never had that “smol man syndrome”, and I never really had a sleep around phase… I’ve always been big into long term relationships, in other words, I never really seeked out looking good for the women at large…
And still I just have this primal need to be as strong as I can for me… and to look a level of fitness that i can be proud of myself for… and to maintain a schedule and level of progression that I am 100% responsible for, for better or worse…
Tldr; I’m on the lower end of the spectrum of people that should desire a need to lift as I do, and I’m one of a very small percentage that seems to take it seriously… why is that?
It’s not that people aren’t aware classics exist. They don’t personally know someone who recommends classics to them. Most people read for fun, and a friend’s suggestions have significant impact on your reading list. Some of my favorite recent reads (Rothfuss’ Kingkiller books) were recommended by a friend. Mark Twain is a highly acclaimed author, but the only books people recommend are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. He has dozens of others that are practically forgotten by modern society.
I think this describes 90% of readers today. I read the Illiad because I thought I should. I hated that thing, and I felt like I wasted a bunch of time that could have been spent on another book.
Atlas Shrugged was like the most exciting book of my life at one point. Yeah, because I’d have been invited into that utopia of industrialists.
Hahaha! Along the same lines, my mom took my brother and me to see a Tess of the D’Urbervilles movie when we were kids, and it was total erotica. I’m not sure what she expected, but she sat like stone through it. This, too, was never discussed.
I’m going to put my money on “read every single word.”
By age 12 I’d been given free reign to read whatever, and I did. God, I love books.
I’ve gotten less willing to slog through as I’ve gotten older - in fact, I’m completely unwilling to read something I’m not enjoying - but even when I was young, if I didn’t feel grabbed 30-50 pages in, I’d drop it. I did for some reason feel obligated to finish once I started, not sure why, but that’s gone by the wayside. There are jut too many books to waste time one something that doesn’t speak to me.