Metal Reviews

Read a bunch of books on my trip:

Jeff Vandermeer- Veniss Underground: An interesting sci fi book by a great author, but you can tell that this is his first book- some of the writing is sloppy and pretentious, and it's missing Vandermeer's great humour which can be found in his other books. 7/10

Vladmir Nabokov- Pale Fire: This book is brilliant. The book is written as a poem by a deceased writer, John Shade, with a forward and a commentary by his insane admirer and fellow colleague Dr. Charles Kinbote. Nabokov's prose is excellent, and the book itself is hilarious and fun, and is just an interesting read due to its odd form. Highly reccomended- 9.5/10

Dan Simmons- The Terror: A historical fiction novel set during the ill fated Franklin Expedition to find the North West Passage in the 1840s. As a historical fiction novel, it works very well, despite being overlong and some structural issues (introducing POV characters for one chapter and then forgetting about them until they die, having the chapters take place at different times for the first third but then not for the rest of the book, etc...). Unfortunately, Simmons also tries to make it a horror novel with shitty results- the "thing on the ice" is just not scary, and you don't actually learn anything about it for 800 pages, long past the point you've lost interest. And then the ending is clumsy and just filled with straight out exposition (there are seriously just chapters, written from a third person omniscient POV, which essentially just explain the central mysteries of the story). 4.5/10

Joe Abercrombie- Best Served Cold: A rollicking fun (and depressing, as is usual with Abercrombie) fantasy story about revenge, set in a Renaissance Italian city states style setting. As usual with Abercrombie, great characterization, dark but very funny humour, and a bleak but satisfying ending. Reccomended. 9/10

Gene Wolfe- The Fifth Head of Cerberus: A collection of three short stories dealing with the colonization of two sister planets, St. Anne and St. Croix, and the indigenous peoples who lived there. As usual with Wolfe, I'll have to re-read this, but as of now I really enjoyed the first story and the third (especially the third, which is just a collection of prison transcripts and interviews with a prisoner that a officer is reading) while I found the second to be too odd to get into- it's written in a primitivist style which I found hard to understand. 8/10

Henrik Mouritsen- Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic: An examination of the role "the people" played in late Republican politics. Mouritsen goes against the recent democratic trend of late Republican politics theories, arguing that although theoretically the people were important in Roman political rhetoric and in the republican constitution, political institutions actively discouraged poorer people from getting involved in the political process. He also argues that there was little reason for poorer Romans to get involved in politics, since few could actually take the time off from working to use their political rights and since most policies were irrelevant to their lives- when poorer citizens did come out, it is because they were mobilized by aristocrats fighting amongst themselves. A very interesting book. 9/10

Brian W. Jones- The Emperor Domitian: An exhaustive account of Domitian's reign. Jones examines his early political career, his court, administrative policies, military policies, and relationship with the aristocracy. Although Jones nicely summarizes the evidence and convincingly revises the view that Domitian was an incompetent tyrant and completely paranoid for his whole reign, some sections contain too little analysis, and Jones' points are not always as clear as they could be. 7.5/10.

Yeah but people have argued for the belief in god through existential terms so you have a Pyrrhonian dilemma on your hands. It's easy to incorporate it into Camus but it's much better to simply look at The Stranger as an analysis of the human condition.

Just got some Trostky in the mail with an introduction written by Zizek. Verso is such an awesome publisher.

But atheism is an ideology inherent to existentialism. For Camus religion obviously plays a large role in defining the human condition, and he addresses it accordingly.

Anyway, it's not really that important, as Camus is a writer and not a philosopher. I should get some Sartre.

Jim Butcher- Storm Front: The Dresden Files, Book 1

Umm no. Simply no. Kierkegaard, the originator was a devout Lutheran. Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber, especially Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr are the most famous religious existentialists and are highly respected.

I honestly respect Sartre more because he roots existentialism's often times nihilistic outlook in capitalism and sees Marxism as the alternative. It's a lot more complex in that and I may have it misconstrued but Sartre's later works come from the background of a hardline Communist and his political work is highly critical of imperialism, liberalism, capitalism and how it all usually is rooted in the U.S. and Europe. Oh but Being and Nothingness is so dense, I would avoid it. Existentialism is a Humanism or some of his plays would be a good start.

I mean that if you start thinking in existential terms, you'll invariably end up abandoning belief in the supernatural, as submission to unprovable entities just doesn't fit in. Maybe it's a bit of a subjective statement, but I didn't mean historically. I don't actually know much about historical existentialism, so I'll avoid sounding off about shit I don't know.

Well how religion comes into existentialism is that we feel angst and have to reaffirm our self through our embrace of faith, ie: the leap of faith, or something along those lines. Basically faith is the only way to self-affirm our existence.

But the faith doesn't affirm your "self", it affirms your belief in a supernatural "self".

You develop yourself through faith insofar as faith inevitably leads to self doubt. Kierkegaard understands that rationality hinders the belief in god and this gap creates angst. Overcoming that angst through a leap of faith enables us to build up ourselves. This constant turmoil between our faith and our reason enables us to be ourself. It's existentialist; it embraces faith.

So sidestepping "angst" (i.e. skepticism and rational thought) by an imposed ignorance of doubt is self-affirming? If that's what you're saying, I must disagree most vehemently, my good sir.

Then you disagree with Kierkegaard. You can at least recognize that there is a discursive formation between skepticism/rationality and faith that can create who someone is. Kierkegaard is by no means advocating dogma, actually quite the opposite. He thought that your faith must be total but you have to criticize and re-affirm it daily. Faith that doesn't trouble you is worthless.

Faith can be a defining quality of someone's personality, absolutely. But Kierkegaard's argument seems illogical, at least from my perspective (of course, a theologian would see things differently). Faith must be doubted, challenged and criticized, but always maintained? Ok, faith as an asset I can understand, but for a believer this seems a remarkably unexpected argument.

Kierkegaard was big on the paradoxical. How an infinite god can fit in to a finite boy or how abraham risked so much on so little of an intuition from God are two I'm thinking of. Wouldn't you rather have his tried and tested faith as opposed to the blind stupid faith so prevalent today?

Sure, but there's no need to have those be the exclusive possibilities. Faith is faith, it's just that some people jump through more hoops to justify it.

I don't want to start another debate, but I think (as a believer) I should probably give my own perspective on this issue.

Your concern is where the difference between "faith" and "certainty" come into play. Faith, quite literally, means "trust." For a believer, it means trust in his own perception of and experiences with spirituality, as well as trust in God's guidence. However, if we had "certainty", there'd be no need for faith because we'd already know that what we believe in is absolutely correct. However, one important area where we feel faith has the upper hand is that, as long as there's no "certainty", there's always something new to be learned. And as you learn new things about your faith, you also learn new things about yourself. And, thus, you grow as a person. Doubt usually occurs because you have questions. But if you're able to ponder these questions and find a solution that satisfies you, you'll be all the better for it. Similarly, an intellectually-honest scientist will freely admit to having doubts about his own theories. But as he addresses these doubts (be it through further study or simple reflection/theorizing), he'll gradually temper his theories and they'll (ideally) become all the more valid to him.

I'm going to tell you straight that most of the Christians I typically associate with welcome questioning and honest doubt. In fact, many of them look down on "blind faith" (which, as Trapt pointed out, has become way too common in today's world). What's important is to firmly maintain your faith (unless, perhaps, things become so bad that you just can't maintain it anymore), while still maintaining an open mind and recognizing that, whether we may like to admit it or not, people like Daniel Dennett and Micheal Shermer are completely justified in their skepticism.

Clive Barker-Abarat

I've actually been interested in this guy lately. How do his books compare to writers like Stephen King or HP Lovecraft?

He's really fucking good, but in a lot of cases things get perverse. Abarat I think is aimed at young adults though, it isn't as heavy as other stuff. Admittedly, I've read very little of his but generally the quality is very good.

Hellbound Heart and Damnation Game are good. Scifi horror stuff. Nothing to write home about but a good read.

Just finished Watchmen

Jesus H. Christ. Let's just say that's not how I wanted it to end. What a depressing book.