jfv wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 3:55 pm I have been listening to early Sonic Youth lately and as a result have been revisiting their chapter and some of the other chapters in Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Any recommendations on books that cover similar/related topics you all would recommend?

I picked up Viv Albertine's later book To Throw Away Unopened last weekend which is good so far, but can definitely recommend Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys which covers her punk rock years. Both books are unflinchingly raw and honest.

Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke. A discussion about how modern America is saturated with quick fix dopamine, and what it's doing to us.

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O Paxton

Really good, would recommend his essays too.

Preface of User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Brian Massumi

Deleuze recommends that you read Capitalism and Schizophrenia as you would listen to a record. You don't approach a record as a closed book that you have to take or leave. There are always cuts that leave you cold. So you skip them. Other cuts you may listen to over and over again. They follow you. You find yourself humming them under your breath as you go about your daily business. Capitalism and Schizophrenia is conceived as an open system. It does not pretend to have the final word. The authors' hope, however is that elements of it will stay with a certain number of its readers, weaving new notes into the melodies of their everyday lives.

Most of all, the reader is invited to lift a dynamism out of the book and incarnate it in a foreign medium, whether painting or politics. Deleuze's own image for a concept is not as a brick but as a "tool box". He calls his kind of philosophy "pragmatics" because its goal is the invention of concepts that do not add up to a system of belief or an architecture of propositions that you either enter or you don't, but instead pack a potential in the way a crowbar in a willing hand envelops an energy of prying.

The question is not, Is it true? But, Does it work? What new thoughts does it make possible to think? What new emotions does it make possible to feel? What new sensations and perceptions does it open in the body?

<3<3<3

What's Left of Human Nature?
A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept
By Maria Kronfeldner

Just came in the mail. Heard an interview with the author and was impressed with her criticisms of 'human nature talk' that nefariously pops up all over the place. I've long been critical of the exploitation of this vague notion, but she actually puts together a rigorous break down. And while, like myself, she thinks most talk about human nature is unhelpful, confused, or even dangerous, she's not a complete eliminativist about it. She identifies a few key ways the concept does some minimal but actual work.

Want to read soon:
Medical Nihilism
By Jacob Stegenga

A highly controversial argument for a sceptical view about the effectiveness of modern medicine - Draws on interdisciplinary research and grounds the arguments in medical examples - Accessible to readers from any academic background

Don't be mislead by the sensational title. Stegenga is not a medical nihilist. Pessimist is a more accurate label, from what I've looked into. Still, I'm looking forward to it.

Similarly on the list:
Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It
by John Abramson

Among the Thugs by Bill Buford. My boss got it for me. Fantastic cover:

https://archive.org/details/amongthugs00bufo

Dude embeds with Manchester United fans. He meets a few and ends up in Turin in 1984 for a match. Mayhem ensues. It's kind of a terrifying read. Is it still like this over there?

enframed wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 10:45 am Among the Thugs by Bill Buford. My boss got it for me. Fantastic cover:

https://archive.org/details/amongthugs00bufo

Dude embeds with Manchester United fans. He meets a few and ends up in Turin in 1984 for a match. Mayhem ensues. It's kind of a terrifying read. Is it still like this over there?

Nah. I only caught the tail end of it as a lad, Rotterdam 91 (no real aggro as it was a great night, but the genuine lads were there in force). You get the odd bit here and there but it's nothing like how it was.

jfv wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 3:55 pm I have been listening to early Sonic Youth lately and as a result have been revisiting their chapter and some of the other chapters in Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Any recommendations on books that cover similar/related topics you all would recommend?

I was considering reading the Kim Gordon memoir.

Not exactly helpful, but I read her book a couple of years ago and the only interesting chapter was the one about her brother (and that only because of the parallels to my partner's brother).

Anthony Flack wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 5:35 pm Been dipping into a book of Kafka's short stories. They are very short, some as short as a single page. Surreal and baffling apparent allegories with dark undercurrents. Characters seem helpless, their actions futile. They are little vignette-sized nightmares.

essential reading, the all-time master iyam. Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, Hunger Artist are all great but there's much more. Have you read Josephine?

finished recently Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo. guy goes to purgatory to find his father. minimalist writing, surreal and macabre, highly recommended.

started Jane Austen, Persuasion. Predictably great so far.

The singing mouse? It's in the book, yes.