Best Book You Read Latey

[don]

I read Richard Nixon's last book, In The Arena, recently, and can recommend it to anyone interested in politics. It's kind of a weird read in that it was clearly dictated, so its structure goes all over the place and its anecdotes frequently recur more than once. It reminds me of John Madden's autobiography if we're being honest.

Content wise, it's Nixon at the end of his life giving final thoughts on basically everything. Watergate ("I played politics according to the rules as I found them"), China (we gotta not overreact when they kill student protesters), writing, success, failure, booze, reading ... you name it, basically. Nixon describes himself as a pragmatic idealist, which is interesting. He's a little bit The Prince and a little Vince Lombardi and he has no shame at all about bombing Cambodia -- he wishes he'd done it sooner.

Nixon, love him or hate him or hate him and love him as I do, is the kind of politician the modern electoral system has practically bred out of existence. Today, I think, the gift of the American executive is in getting elected -- but rarely do you see a real theory of power at work once they're in office. Nixon had a theory and practice of power that's worth studying and In The Arena is basically the version of it he would have shared with you if you were both fucked up on percosets and sitting next to one another on an airplane

Also paperbacks of it can be found cheap as hell

[GenerallyKilling]

I really enjoyed Boris & Arkady Strugatsky's Hard to Be a God after accidentally watching the movie before reading the book: the former being an excellent homage to the latter, and hard to follow without understanding the story beforehand.

The protagonist is from a space-age Earth society sent to a planet inhabited by medieval humans who are on the precipice of a self-renewing dark age that will never have an enlightenment. He's infiltrated their society and poses as a noble and a demigod, and over the course of the book his experiences and reflections on human nature shape his decisions on how to save Arkanar. The rules set out by his institute are that he may not introduce new technology and he may not kill. It's weird, gross, and very easy to sympathize with the protagonist, and a lot of it reminds of conversations people often have, like "How would you dominate if you were sent back in time?" and "How could you enlighten the people without shocking them?" The movie is extremely worthy and blast if you've actually read the source material. It's all part of a larger universe (weird soviet censorship-compliant science fiction) that I haven't dug into yet, but some of them look interesting so hopefully I can talk about them sooner than later.

You can read it here on wayback, the current link doesn't work for some reason.

[don]

I really enjoyed Boris & Arkady Strugatsky's Hard to Be a God after accidentally watching the movie before reading the book: the former being an excellent homage to the latter, and hard to follow without understanding the story beforehand.

The protagonist is from a space-age Earth society sent to a planet inhabited by medieval humans who are on the precipice of a self-renewing dark age that will never have an enlightenment. He's infiltrated their society and poses as a noble and a demigod, and over the course of the book his experiences and reflections on human nature shape his decisions on how to save Arkanar. The rules set out by his institute are that he may not introduce new technology and he may not kill. It's weird, gross, and very easy to sympathize with the protagonist, and a lot of it reminds of conversations people often have, like "How would you dominate if you were sent back in time?" and "How could you enlighten the people without shocking them?" The movie is extremely worthy and blast if you've actually read the source material. It's all part of a larger universe (weird soviet censorship-compliant science fiction) that I haven't dug into yet, but some of them look interesting so hopefully I can talk about them sooner than later.

I saw the movie without reading the book and was pretty lost. Thanks for the rec and the background info. I'm reading a ton of SF at the moment but would like to check this one out if only to explain how all those peasants got so muddy

[Lazarus]

Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima was pretty good.
If you've never read Mishima I would suggest reading some of the Sea of Fertility Tetralogy or Temple of the Golden Pavillion to get a grip on his thought processes.
Basically this Sailor settles down on this island with this kid and his mom. The kid and his friends hate him for for choosing a stable life that is no different than the life all of their dads chose. It gets dark at some points, but again if you have some idea of what Mishima is trying to talk about in the story you will enjoy it more.
I remember reading Confessions of Mask some years ago and got nothing out of it except "I'M A HUMONGOUS F*GGOT."

[DevilDoa]

This resolution limit is killing me, Donathan.

[don]

This resolution limit is killing me, Donathan.

I bumped it up hopefully it'll work going forward

[MuhPigeon]

Just finished Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Really good shit. Not necessarily anything ground breaking, but solid challenging advice.

[SpaceLions]

I finished Hypersphere finally and it's fucking hilarious. Shitpost literature is the future.

[don]

I finished Hypersphere finally and it's fucking hilarious. Shitpost literature is the future.

what's Hypersphere?

[SpaceLions]

I finished Hypersphere finally and it's fucking hilarious. Shitpost literature is the future.

what's Hypersphere?

Hypersphere is like the fourth or fifth collaborative novel by /lit/ which is THE BEST BOARD FUCK ALL Y'ALL.
It's so dense, every page has so many things going on. If you look up like, Hypersphere .pdf or something you'll find it pretty easily. Barring that you can always just ask them for a copy. If you do that ask them for the other novels they've written too, Legacy Of Totalitarianism In A Tundra is my favorite out of all of them.