What book are you reading now?

I decided that I needed a new book to read and managed to find one on my bookshelf that I’d only half read so thought I’d finish it off: Tower, An epic History of the Tower of London by Nigel Jones. I just wondered what everyone else is reading at the moment? What does everyone else like to read?

  • Thanks! I like her too, she's curious and expressive. Cows were my best companion as a kid (i grew up on a farm).

  • I am fascinated by the whole question of Utopia, and in a book I mentioned here earlier, Utopia for Realists, his point was that by the standards of earlier times, we already have it, at least in relatively developed countries (like Scandinavia, I don't count either the UK or the States as being all that developed. Not after what has happened in each country after the last four years). 

    Delicious food that can be obtained with ease, warm places to live in, cleanliness. Freedom basically from being cold, hungry and dirty. 

    Then Basic Income was almost success introduced by the Nixon government no less, and it is being tried out in Germany now, has been experimented with in Norway. And what is interesting and totally counter intuitive is that most people don't just spend it all on drink, drugs, or sit around doing nothing. They start investing in their educations! They start small businesses! They start planning for their futures! With the stress of worrying about how you can hope to survive gone, the threat of punishment removed for being poor, the ability to make good decisions is restored. 

    So interesting........

    So there are places that appear to be doing something right, at least. And perhaps removing many of the causes of inequality might help keep.the work.on the apple at bay that much more. 

    The other problem is that poo happens. In the past there has been climate change not of our making, but even now there are still rapacious climate change deniers. Volcanoes erupt, creating long volcanic winters, meteorites strike. Will there be the ingenuity in the future to handle these?

    I don't think that autism confers niceness necessarily either, humans are only 98% removed from chimpanzees after all. 

    More recently I did read something far more sobering, by a Fabian Scheidler. He sees us all as being trapped in a malignant machine of power that is basically holding the whole lot of us to ransom.

  • Yeah, there's as much variance in being nice and being nasty, selfish, whatever amongst ASs as NTs. The person who's been most relentlessy mean to me had an autism diagnosis. And the person who's been most caring of me has one too.

    There seems to be particular ways of being nice/kind or nasty/selfish in the two brain types that's different, but I'm not sure utopia is made up of ASs. Maybe if you just take the nice ASs it could;>).

  • Laughing

    Only an hour of model trains?!

  • what ????      autistics can be incredibly selfish/ self centred to the point of distruction. 

    Autistics vary in their thinking just like NTs do ......

    .......... if u want to find out put my autistic nephew in charge and everyone will be forced to fly drones with him everyday for an hour, followed by one hour building Model trains, then One hour of Star Wars lego.

    Everyone with be eating chips with Coke forever !  Slight smile

    everyone run      Runner tone1

    feel free to poo poo me  Poop 

    Heart

  • I'm half way through David Attenboroughs witness statement and it occurs to me, that although we need some kind of utopia to survive and help the planet to survive again...it is based on removing greed and distributing wealth evenly and in the pursuit of regaining balance, rather than for personal gain.

    In that way it struck me that it would appear to suit the autistic way of thinking more than the neurotypical

  • I know this is an "old" thread, but I'd like to reply?

    Currently reading: - 

    "The Power Of Neurodiversity"

    "The Science Of Self - Hypnosis"

    "Overpaid, Oversexed & Over There"

    "The Perfectionism Workbook"

    "Character Design From The Ground Up"

    Been reading "self-help" since 2003, but only now discovering why I needed it. I gave up fiction years ago, but recently picked up a James Elroy novel. As I get older, fantasy is losing it's appeal as reality is just as weird, if not weirder. And, usually true!

  • What do you think of Roger Penrose's approach that consciousness and, therefore, ideas originate from the quantum world via microtubules? This would link in with Gödel's assertion that one can never prove a system of logic (including maths) from within the rules of the system, even though they are true insofar as they work, but that one has to step outside of the rules of the system to see that a proof is possible? Now where would that come from? Not from a computability model, surely? In other words, a system of rules can never prove itself without an attending consciousness?

  • i remember  , just up a bit, she was really nice and kind and very knowledgeable. No idea why she never came back. so miss her Disappointed

  • My guess is it's a play on neurotypical, although the characters are AS.

    When I read the authors first book I assumed the author was AS given her characters. There were sections that just came too close to how my brain works and couldn't have been written by an NT. When I read Normal People again I felt Connor in particular was likely AS although the book's not about being AS in particular. He's verbally challenged and shutsdown. So the two characters are AS and she's called them normal, cos they are, just not NT! It's great, a great book with two AS people at the centre and nothing about autism!

  • How is this supposed to be insulting or reflecting any kind of belief?  I wrote about Agilulfo the knight in empty armour as one of my final essays! That is fact, and I didn't make the story up either, and nothing to do with any kind of belief whatsoever. I was interested because Calvino came up in that course. 

  • Is that meant to be helpful/insulting or both?  It's certainly incredibly direct.  You must be very certain in your own beliefs to say something like that to me.  Or perhaps not.

  • was that pun intended - funny i have a collection of bayonets ---- in ww1 they are like  little swords but by end of ww2 they were reduced to a 6 inch spike due to lack of metal  I guess 

  • We studied him at uni. There is one featuring a knight who is an empty suit of armour, but he is still.keen on pursuing various various lost causes

  • Seen any of the documentaries?  He was a big collector of daggers and swords.  I fancy getting into that at some point.   Ebay is an interesting place.  I don't buy anything at the moment ,i just browse.  Save my money.

  • I wish i were him sometimes

    who doesnt Slight smile 

  • I have recently purchased a book of short stories by Italo Calvino.  I am interested in Italo as he was Gore Vidal's favourite writer. I admire Gore a fair bit.

      Less literary, but no less fascinating to me will be Lemmy from Motorheads Autobiography.  Top bloke.  I wish i were him sometimes.  Anything has to be more interesting than this.  I wish i lived on impulse alone.  

  • Also a big Simpsons fan. x

  • I'm reading a Simpsons comic at the moment. I love everything The Simpsons and own a lot of the comics which I read frequently.