What are you currently reading?

[Bizet]

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

This book exposes how the U.S. has historically exploited developing nations through strategic loans.

It's a interesting and easy read, just watch out for the 2023 revised edition of this book - it’s got an anti-Russia/Putin bias that sours the taste a bit.

 

[Aboulia]

Just finished A History of the Island - Eugene Vodalazkin

It's the third book I've read from him. IMHO, I didn't enjoy it as much as "The Aviator" which deals with the topic of alienation. That book's premise is what would happen if you froze someone from a miserable time (under early Soviet persecutions), and moved them a few generations in the future.

This novel is something similar but from a different angle. It deals more with a people's alienation from God through history, from the medieval to the modern, he does a good job of bringing the reality of time to the forefront by putting a royal couple with an lifespan a few centuries long who lives through all of this.

 

[Bizet]

I remember reading Roosh’s American Pilgrim years ago and feeling an overwhelming urge to quit my job, give notice on my apartment, and embark on a road trip across the country. But it was 2020, and I was stuck in the most locked-down city in the world, tethered to my apartment. Still, I vividly remember that longing for adventure and the open road.

Now, I’m reading Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. I know I’m late to the party, as it’s been around for ages, but it’s reigniting that same call for adventure. This time, I have no excuses. It’s really pushing me to consider making some radical changes in my life.

 

[Gazza]

I remember reading Roosh’s American Pilgrim years ago and feeling an overwhelming urge to quit my job, give notice on my apartment, and embark on a road trip across the country. But it was 2020, and I was stuck in the most locked-down city in the world, tethered to my apartment. Still, I vividly remember that longing for adventure and the open road.

Now, I’m reading Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. I know I’m late to the party, as it’s been around for ages, but it’s reigniting that same call for adventure. This time, I have no excuses. It’s really pushing me to consider making some radical changes in my life.

I consider it daily. The more i think about it though the more I’m convinced that I shouldn’t do anything TOO radical. I’ve very nearly invested a lot of money into buying a campervan a couple of times, but something just didn’t feel right. I think I need to cool my heals a bit and maybe have a couple of trial runs with a rental van first.

 

[Unending Powerhouse Match]

I consider it daily. The more i think about it though the more I’m convinced that I shouldn’t do anything TOO radical. I’ve very nearly invested a lot of money into buying a campervan a couple of times, but something just didn’t feel right. I think I need to cool my heals a bit and maybe have a couple of trial runs with a rental van first.

Absolutely. Today's world is so fake and gay, so viscerally disgusting, that it's easy to get these types of reckless ideas into your head at times. "I want to throw it all away and go live in a van/cabin/cave/boat" is a common one. Roosh did this once it was a pretty terrible idea, he ended up inadvertently living in a demon-infested crackhouse for a bit. It's important to be sober about such things.

 

[GoodShepherd]

 

[Unending Powerhouse Match]

View attachment 18053

Chapter 1:
Don't molest the child.
The end.

 

[thinkreadwritecode]

I've been reading Mindset by Carol Dweck. Wish I had read it back when I read Gorilla Mindset a decade ago, which is a far inferior product. It's because Mindset directly attacks what's been my problem since childhood. I was/am the fixed-mindset type, a kid who was gifted, endowed with enough intelligence to feel smarter than others, but I used my intelligence for evil, to find ways to slack off, to barely give effort, to avoid work and doing hard things. It catches up to you and you feel guilty you haven't done anything. Mindset by Dweck could have been a potential escape rope, but maybe not, I think only at age 40 I am finally beginning to mature into the kind of adult one should have matured into in one's 20s, someone who can take care of themselves and gets work done, whatever that may be, not someone who looks to avoid work and maximize pleasure. It's hard to tell if you could have benefited from certain knowledge earlier in life, sometimes knowledge seems useless if there aren't some prerequisite life experiences beforehand.

 

[Laner]

I've been reading Mindset by Carol Dweck. Wish I had read it back when I read Gorilla Mindset a decade ago, which is a far inferior product. It's because Mindset directly attacks what's been my problem since childhood. I was/am the fixed-mindset type, a kid who was gifted, endowed with enough intelligence to feel smarter than others, but I used my intelligence for evil, to find ways to slack off, to barely give effort, to avoid work and doing hard things. It catches up to you and you feel guilty you haven't done anything. Mindset by Dweck could have been a potential escape rope, but maybe not, I think only at age 40 I am finally beginning to mature into the kind of adult one should have matured into in one's 20s, someone who can take care of themselves and gets work done, whatever that may be, not someone who looks to avoid work and maximize pleasure. It's hard to tell if you could have benefited from certain knowledge earlier in life, sometimes knowledge seems useless if there aren't some prerequisite life experiences beforehand.

You just described me

 

[SkiPro]

I am currently re-reading the Spenser series of detective novels.

 

[El Dorado]

Currently reading Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization (2023) by Ed Conway.

The six raw materials being:

1. Sand - Concrete, fibre-optics, computer chips/microprocessors
2. Salt(s) - Chlorine/water purification, explosives, fertilizers, etc.
3. Iron - Steel-making
4. Copper - the electrical revolution
5. Oil - internal combustion power, plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, etc, etc,
6. Lithium - advanced battery/power storage technology, etc

The book covers the history of human use of these materials and the modern processes involved in their harnessing and utilization. Worth reading for anybody interested in the modern global economy.

 

[El Dorado]

Chapter 1:
Don't molest the child.
The end.

Revised and updated edition:

Chapter 1:
Ensure your wife consumes plenty of red meat during pregnancy.
Chapter 2:
Don't molest the child.
Chapter 3:
Don't allow the child near faggots and/or dykes.
The End.

 

[Gazza]

This just arrived in the mail, really looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into it and spending less time on my phone. Thanks for the suggestion @GodfatherPartTwo

 

[SpyofMoses]

Does anyone have any recommendations for reading about Captain James Cook?

I've seen this guy's name on everything Pacific ocean related so many times now that I've decided I would like to know more.

As an aside, to any young men out there feeling like you haven't found your calling yet or are having a hard time in your younger years- this dude was 40 when he started the first of three voyages for which he is known.

 

[Iakobos]

Does anyone have any recommendations for reading about Captain James Cook?

I've seen this guy's name on everything Pacific ocean related so many times now that I've decided I would like to know more.

As an aside, to any young men out there feeling like you haven't found your calling yet or are having a hard time in your younger years- this dude was 40 when he started the first of three voyages for which he is known.

I've just started the one by Pete FitzSimons, I haven't gotten far enough to personally vouch for it but it's well-reviewed.

 

[GoodShepherd]

Chapter 1:
Don't molest the child.
The end.

Im half way through the book its actually very good and informative and its helping me to understand why a lot of people struggle with homosexuality, it was also a bit of a scary book, I was sometimes a bit afraid everytime I turned a page hoping I hadnt been doing something wrong as a parent towards my kids that could contribute towards homosexuality, its a feeling Iv never had while reading a book.

Im also very concerned about the present generation because society, education and the mental health professions are actually not helping homosexuals but making everything worse and adding fuel to the fire

 

[El Dorado]

Does anyone have any recommendations for reading about Captain James Cook?

I've seen this guy's name on everything Pacific ocean related so many times now that I've decided I would like to know more.

As an aside, to any young men out there feeling like you haven't found your calling yet or are having a hard time in your younger years- this dude was 40 when he started the first of three voyages for which he is known.

Dover Publications has published in trade-paperback format, The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific - As Told By Selections of His Own Journals 1768-1779. It retails for USD 18 new. I used to have a copy of it; can't remember if I gave it away or if it's still packed away somewhere...

The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific

"No man ever did more to alter and correct the map of the Earth," writes Percy Adams in his new Introduction, than James Cook, the Scotland-born British naval commander who rose from humble beginnings to pilot three great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery in the then practically uncharted...

store.doverpublications.com

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

I just finished reading Poetics by Aristotle. You could finish it in one sitting. For as smart as he was, one wonders how much stock they should put into his thoughts here since he was no playwright. But there are interesting themes and ideas he raises about storytelling.

I've also been reading Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is interesting to see when the stories heavily resemble the Bible, though they will always fall short.

 

[SkiPro]

I'm reading the Matthew Scudder series of detective novels. Good so far.

 

[El Dorado]

Just started reading The Frogmen of Burma (1968) by Lt-Cmdr Bruce S. Wright, RCN(R). Wright was a WW2 Canadian naval officer who got the idea for creating a unit of combat swimmers for covert operations. He sent a memo up the chain and it went all the way up to Lord Mountbatten of Combined Operations (which the Commandos fell under). Thus the Sea Reconnaissance Unit was born. They trained at Camp Pendelton CA, in the Bahamas, and in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). They ended up working in conjunction with the Special Boat Section in Burma, supporting the British 14th Army, doing beach and river reconnaissance for amphibious operations.

A pretty rare book, never published outside Canada. I saw it by chance in the bookcase in my apartment's front lobby. Not a long book; only about 150 pages.

Canadians served and fought in every theatre and corner of the globe in WW2, but this is one of those stories that nobody ever hears.