Head-Fi.org › Forums › Misc.-Category Forums › Members' Lounge (General Discussion) › What book are you reading right now?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

What book are you reading right now? - Page 6

post #76 of 3825
Thirteen Moons - Charles Frazier
post #77 of 3825
Le Morte Darthur
post #78 of 3825
Survival in Auschwitz - Primo Levi
post #79 of 3825
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lectorcito View Post
The cave of Montesinos! That is my favorite part of Don Quijote. Enjoy!
It's my favorite part as well. This is my 4th reading. It marks the most interesting change to Don Quixote and Sancho as characters. It wasn't untill the Adventures that follow the cave of Montesinos at the Dukes manor that I became absolutely enraptured by this book.
post #80 of 3825


Very good read so far
post #81 of 3825
Time After Time by Karl Alexander
post #82 of 3825
I just read all the Tom Clancy Op Centers I could get my hands on. Pretty decent and fast paced. After about 100 pages.
post #83 of 3825
I just bought Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising today.
post #84 of 3825
"Atheism: The Case Against God" by George H. Smith
post #85 of 3825
"The Di Vinci Code", and "The Furer's Reserve"
post #86 of 3825
"Rich Dad Poor Dad", by Kiyosaki
post #87 of 3825
I just recently recieved the complete tales of anton chekhov. 14 volumes total. I've read a good part of his work and it's simply amazing. Nobody can write about how we are like he can.
post #88 of 3825
I recently ordered a a bunch of books from Chapters; right now I'm very gradually reading Coming Out to Parents: A Two-Way Survival Guide for Lesbians and Gay Men and Their Parents by Mary Borhek. It's pretty good so far.

I'm really looking forwards to finding some time to devote to Carol Off's Bitter Chocolate: Investigating The Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet. It's about the appalling conditions of chocolate plantations on the Ivory Coast - like child slaves used to harvest the cocoa pods. Should be an interesting read. I'm just glad I've managed to find some places that sell fair trade chocolate!
post #89 of 3825
Intoxication by Ronald Siegel

Siegel is a psychopharmacologist from UCLA, who has extensive experience studying animals and humans under the influence of mind-altering substances, in both laboratory settings and in the field. This book, Intoxication, is an extremely thought-provoking treatise based mainly on his own researches. Siegel presents his hypothesis that the pursuit of alternate states of mind is a basic biological drive -- like hunger, thirst and the desire for sex -- which he dubs "the fourth drive".

Siegel's account is behavorist: you won't read about neural pathways and neurotransmitters in this book. Instead, the pages are packed with eye-opening records of how animals and humans behave under "the fourth drive". Siegel traces out the histories behind each major groups of drugs (tobacco, alcohol, opium, cannabis, hallucinogens, and cocaine), noting how their use transend cultures, social classes, and even species -- birds, mammals and insects deliberately seek out and ingest psychoactive plants, then behave in atypical ways; and when the effect wears out, they go again for another helping -- sometimes continuing until they die of the toxicity.

Even more uncanny is the observation that animals tend to consume greater amount of psychoactive substances under environmental stress: the water buffalos in South East Asia would browse on opium crops (which they normally shun) when their habitat is ravaged by human warfare. Lab monkeys locked in a pitch-black box will overindulge in hallucinogens. Do animals use drugs to alleviate stress and to relieve boredom, as many humans claim to do?

As Siegel claims the pursuit of intoxicating substances is a hard-wired biological drive, he has controversial stance about the legistration of controlled substances. This is a sensitive area, and I won't say any more about it in this forum. Interested reader will want to read about it themselves.

Controversy aside, Intoxication is a marvellous read -- the discoveries of a seasoned researcher culmulated, presented in colorful, enthralling prose. A required reading for anyone who to have an intelligent discussion on the subject of mind-altering drugs.

(#1500)
post #90 of 3825
I'm reading Macbeth for school. While I dislike Shakespeare in general, Macbeth is utter crap having recently just done Hamlet.
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Misc.-Category Forums › Members' Lounge (General Discussion) › What book are you reading right now?
http://www.head-fi.org/t/195492/what-book-are-you-reading-right-now/75
www.head-fi.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-41
168893
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:HDD7B7XUKCGOGSQL46YIOMYZAT7AHZXW
<urn:uuid:83f29ecd-aac2-4f6b-b3c6-66e9664d5113>
2014-09-22T17:59:10Z
23.235.46.185
sha1:VPYN4JQMGR6TC2HUFGCYY6KW636JPOSI
<urn:uuid:7d16b189-d367-4735-82c5-108bac805e12>
http://www.head-fi.org/t/195492/what-book-are-you-reading-right-now/75
response
<urn:uuid:4233888d-e145-4ffa-9e99-fdf4f9b9c4e9>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-41
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for September 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf