Hello Veeky Forums, tell me the last book that you read, not necessarily completed but read from

I heard that The Prince gives great insight into medieval ruling. Is this true? Is it more practical or philosophical?

Catch 22

Dante's Inferno, like ten minutes ago.

Just finished a chapter, still have 30 pages to go.

C and P

English Meaning and Culture, Anna Wierzbicka

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Alice_(novel)

Fucking good

>Currently reading: No Exit and Three Other Plays [Act 2 Scene 2 of The Flies]
>Just finished Candide
Pic related: it's me.

The Corrections by Franzen. About 320 pages in. I hope he can keep up the humor/strong narration for another 240 pages

This thread.

Or the Iliad. Whichever you prefer.
Both. It must be. Even nowadays it must be -- any "practical" guide must have its own assumptions of how the world works. Machiavelli just had to be explicit about his assumptions.

Plus, a fair amount of it is concerned with certain values and certain motivations; not "justness", but "virtue (capability)" and "stability".

Beyond Good and Evil

I've been liking it so far but I honestly only comprehend maybe 70% of it. Seems as if Neitzsche was purposefully bombastic to jar you and at times seemingly contradictory to keep you from any simple interpretation. It's kinda dizzying.

I am not the OP, but I coincidentally am also re-reading the Prince for the second time in my life right now, the first time having been over a decade ago. I expect to get a lot more out of it this time, naturally. This was partly inspired by a reader on the Chomsky-Foucault debate where Foucault does spend some interesting time discussing the reason of state, models of function of state, and so on.

The Prince is essentially a very long essay on statecraft for monarchs, princes, and basically any would-be Head of State. It is a work of political philosophy which blends theory and praxis (examples, Alexander the Great did this, So-and-so in Turkey did that). In short, Machiavelli advises the cynical and sociopathic behavior that we now rationally expect from any competent president, CEO, monarch, or other extremely powerful person - be nice to some people, totally destroy others, and be prepared to kill still others if the situation calls for it. This is all quite common-sensical to a rational person today, of course (if unpleasant for non-sociopaths who rightly have a moral compass of some kind), but it does grate against Christian and later Victorian sensibilities, and reasonably so.

It is an unusually frank and modern text, and example of a sort of realpolitik, which runs contrary to the Christian sensibilities of Europe at the time. Even today, one has to be very, very careful in any written communications of any kind, as to whether they propose to kill, or threaten to kill. After all, there's just something about writing that lends itself to a greater seriousness and permanance than speech.

An example of the type of killing that Machiavelli advises, is the situation where a Prince (or more broadly, some entity) wrests control of some other monarchy, somewhere. In this type of situation, Machiavelli openly advises the extermination of the previously existing royal family, which from a purely practical, amoral standpoint is completely rational and sensible advice, if what you are trying to do is to hold onto the state and forever preclude all possibility of an opposition rallying around an even nominally legitimate scion. Fast forward to one hundred years ago, and witness the successful applicaiton of this in the course of the Russian revolution. Of course, the Soviet Union collapsed, but does anyone /really/ see the Romanov line coming back, bar some pretenders? I didn't think so.

I am also currently closely studying the founding American documents, and I recognize Machiavelli's anticipation of the course of the American Revolution. Machiavelli advises, in certain species of cases, that a Prince who is administering a distant territory from afar must be careful not to be cruel to those people, lest he lose the territory. Even the word capital-P Prince is used in reference to King George III in the Declaration. Machiavelli even /advises not changing the taxes of a distant colony/, which anticipation is unmistakable.

just a stupid kid being mean with his poor mommy

I'm reading The Waves by Virginia Woolf

It's bretty gud but I get lost way too often.

Mine was The Face of Chaos, The Beginning. Talk about a crazy read.

I just finished reading Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser.
It's very comfy.

He is portraying principalities as especially vicious in contrast to his preferred form of government; republics. There is a huge contrast between his work on republics and The Prince.

I'm the OP, sorry for the late response. I am only three chapters in, but there seems to be a very good mix of practical and philosophical references and instructions. I am so far finding it very interesting and educational. One problem I find is that they reference historical events that I don't know about on a regular basis and I need to research and take notes in my notebook along with some annotations. I'm enjoying it though, try it out. I purchased a paperback version via ebay for a little under $3USD.

I have another question in addition to the first:

Are you a reader that tackles a book slowly, or finishes it in one or two shots?

I usually do like 2-4 chapters per day depending on the book.

>I usually do like 2-4 chapters per day depending on the book.
Cat's Cradle would take you about 1,000 years to read.

Fuckeroni bro, I don't have the paitence to read super long books and idk what to do. I'm also in uni and work-full time and IU can barely find time to read anyways.

The Stranger by Camus

kek. It's not a long book. 250-300 pages, but its 120 chapters.

oh fuck that lad

GEB:EGB

got to like page 500 and after finally comprehending Goedel's theorem I was like "oh okay so that's why math is trippy. Thanks Doug."

Numbers.

any good?

One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Pirandello. What a ride.

The Great Hunt, book two in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time

I want to face fuck you.

I'm on page 20 of Bleeding Edge.

Isn't that Sasha Grey

>implying she doesn't post on a regular basis on Veeky Forums

my men

Currently reading The Conquest of Bread, p good so far

Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Wew, these vagina people have some funny ideas about how to write a book

I wrote an essay on this work as phil. undergrad.

From a philosophical perspective it gives you an idea that you should not passively wait for Fortune to smile in your favor(as Boethius would have suggested), but actively force her at your side by exercising a specific set of virtues - *virtu*(manliness essentially, but that's an oversimplification). You also should not be too dogmatic in your principles and be ready to change with times. From this follows that you should not completely reject traditional morality, but, if needed, accept ethical trade-offs if it is more beneficial than being ethical - hence the larger importance for *is* than for *ought*.

From a politological perspective it outlines a very militaristic concept of state, based on virtuous and cold-blooded, rationalized (in Weber's sense) monarch. At first it gives advice to every form of conquered or established form of state, gives advice for evaluation of strength of autocracies and goes on to describe the needed virtues of autocrat. It ends with an appeal to Italian nationalism.

Lolita just finished part 1. I like it. Most bold book I've read by far

Count Zero

I am reading Crime and Punishment, before that I have read Heart of Darkness.

The first book I had started to read and finished this year.