What Are You Reading?

[Visions of Khas]

I'm half trolling. Yes, only half.

Heh, I got that hint. After reading some of the things I have about extremists -- including but not limited to the Taliban -- I can strangely see that as happening. Then that person gets to rename the land in their own honor because of their obsession with naming crap after martyrs. :\

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I'm half trolling. Yes, only half.

Heh, I got that hint. After reading some of the things I have about extremists -- including but not limited to the Taliban -- I can strangely see that as happening. Then that person gets to rename the land in their own honor because of their obsession with naming crap after martyrs. :\

[TheEconomist]

After re-reading my posts and feeling like a complete dick for not mentiong Malala, I'll say, from what I've read in a few articles, she is a truly miraculous girl and I wish her and her works all the best. Must be such hell living in the god damned Middle East. Although I'm hoping that there's more "good people" in the Middle East than I'm giving them credit for, just oppressed by shitty governments and a shitty religion and overshadowed by terrorists always trying to grab attention.

In other news, just started reading the second book in the Malazan series. I told myself I'd take a longer break because those damn things are beasts to read and comprehend but I just couldn't stay away. It's just that epic.

[Visions of Khas]

From Malala's account, many of the people of her region, the Swat Valley, are normal people who are completely disgusted at both the Taliban and the Pakistan governmeny & army. She talks of numerous individuals fighting for equality and freedom from religious persecution, as well as to modernize their admittedly backwards tribal traditions. She also provides some interesting insight as to why people joined the Taliban; she wrote of a custom where shoes and food are deeply appreciated, but cooks and cobblers are themselves looked down upon. It's a very stark and rigidly defined classist system which, in a lot of ways, can be equated with the french society prior to the french revolution. The social and traditional inequalities are just mind boggling.

The war she fought was against the Taliban's suppression of schooling, especially of teaching girls, which they saw as a westernizing influence. They also fought for purdah, the concept of a woman being sacred, but they fought for this in the extreme, wanting women utterly secluded. Of course, Muhammed's own wife was a learned woman with a business of her own, so what they were doing was very un-Islamic.

[TheEconomist]

The war she fought was against the Taliban's suppression of schooling, especially of teaching girls, which they saw as a westernizing influence.

I remember reading articles on CNN quoting some Taliban extemists that were claiming that pressure to educate women was a front for America to replace itself as God in the Middle East. Somehow, they equate such things with a direct challenge not only to the people, to Islam, but to God itself. Oh, and naturally Israel as involved somehow, someway. Zionism this, Zionism that.

Dafuq?

On a somewhat unrelated but related side note, was reading some books on the Minoan civilization (probably Atlantis) and how they had a very gender equal society and it was revered as one of the most prosperous from Egypt, to Mesopotamia, all the way to India. We're talking about 2700 B.C. here. It should have improved from there, not gotten worse. How the world regressed from there is something that I beyond my comprehension.

[Visions of Khas]

On a somewhat unrelated but related side note, was reading some books on the Minoan civilization (probably Atlantis) and how they had a very gender equal society and it was revered as one of the most prosperous from Egypt, to Mesopotamia, all the way to India. We're talking about 2700 B.C. here. It should have improved from there, not gotten worse. How the world regressed from there is something that I beyond my comprehension.

... Well, someone has to make the sandwiches.

[TheEconomist]

Shhhhhhh, quiet! The feminists that confuse gender roles with gender oppression with cut your nut sack off and feed it to the lesbians.

[Nissa]

Shhhhhhh, quiet! The feminists that confuse gender roles with gender oppression with cut your nut sack off and feed it to the lesbians.

Best quote ever.

To get back on topic, I'm in the midst of three books. Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky; August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; and Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell.

[Visions of Khas]

I'm actually finishing off the Divergent series right now. Kind of ashamed I'm actually liking this.

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I'm actually finishing off the Divergent series right now. Kind of ashamed I'm actually liking this.

[TheEconomist]

Should move on to 'Fifty Shades of Grey' or 'Twilight' next. For me, however, being the manny-man-man I am, I've been reading lots of Conan the Barbarian and I finished Altered Carbon's sequel, which was epic of an entirely different kind from Altered Carbon. I also finished the second book of Hyperion, which might just be the most depressing, but deep science fiction novel I've ever heard of. Some time in the future, that book will be literature in school, I'm sure of it.

I think I remember you saying you read Altered Carbon and didn't like it. I think you should read Broken Angels because its an entirely different kind of story and told much better.

(I kid about the Divergent, don't know much about it to even make fun of you even if you deserved it )

[Visions of Khas]

(I kid about the Divergent, don't know much about it to even make fun of you even if you deserved it )

It's a step down from Hungry Hungry Hippos... I mean the Hunger Games. Nothing heavy in the least. Looking around for a good book to read though. Thinking about Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom.