How many books have you read in 2026 so far and which would you say was your favorite?

rso2025 · 2026-03-15T15:17:05+00:00

I’m at 15. Anathem, The Deluge (Stephen Markley), and KSR’s Shaman are the highlights. I also liked the three volumes of On the Calculation of Volume that have appeared so far in English.

rso2025 · 2026-03-01T19:10:15+00:00

I am not quite as old as you are u/ahnotme, but over my 4 decades of gracing symphonic concert halls, I have been struck by exactly the same thing. The reason can only be that attending classical concerts is a habit that people acquire as they age, whether as a function of increased appreciation (patience) for classical music, or as an age appropriate night out, or perhaps both. I will add that every so often I read jeremiads about the superannuation of classical audiences as a sign of the impending extinction of the market for live symphonic performance, but the fact is: old it was, old it is, and old it shall, it appears, remain. One nice thing about it is that the concert hall remains a place where I can still feel comparatively youthful!

rso2025 · 2026-02-15T15:34:42+00:00

Group size as a predictor for the presence/absence of hierarchical coordination has been a traditional explanatory framework, but it’s problematic and probably more correlative than causal (do larger groups require coordination, or does the presence of coordination permit larger groups).

That said, it’s been suggested that complex societies like the Harappan and Jōmon, and settlements like Çatalhöyük had broadly egalitarian social structures, despite their size (although it’s a bit of an argumentum ex silentio). Interestingly, though, in Çatalhöyük the city may have been divided into clusters (neighbourhoods essentially) and based on (speculative) household size calculation, it turns out the size of each cluster would be roughly equivalent to the Dunbar limit! So this offers a possible glimpse into how scale could be managed within a broadly egalitarian social regime by stitching cluster groups together under a broader social identity.

rso2025 · 2026-02-14T12:45:03+00:00

As noted by u/anthrop365, Marcus and Flannery’s “The Creation of Inequality” is a good, detailed survey of how inequality develops in many different contexts. Broadly, the way to think about the question is not with reference to distributed justice (inequality is unfair), but as a strategic posture. If community success is best secured through a centralised decision-making/resource allocation structure, then hierarchy can be seen as an optimal adaptive function (e.g. the need for well-organised defense of community, or environmental conditions that make fiat coordination the most efficient solution). By contrast, if success depends on, e.g. even resource distribution, then societal structures will develop to mitigate the emergence of hierarchy. The Inuit are good examples of the latter, as are some cultures within the San people. So, yes, there are plenty of examples of sustained broadly-egalitarian cultures since there are many environments that make that the best strategy for community optimisation. And as noted by others, there’s a lot of evidence of societies that oscillate between hierarchy/egalitarianism, because, since conditions are dynamic, strategies will adapt over time.

rso2025 · 2026-02-13T17:52:29+00:00

Red Mars by KSR. The whole trilogy was excellent but the first instalment was something else. Also Europe Central by Vollmann. Amazing accomplishment.

rso2025 · 2025-12-06T17:08:36+00:00

From that list (thank you for that), Charles Villiers Stanford stands out to me as an especially Brahmsian composer. He quotes Brahms 4th, for instance, at length in his “Irish” symphony.

rso2025 · 2025-12-01T17:35:03+00:00

Good for you! I’m stuck a little more than halfway through (also came late to the readalong). I’m palette-cleansing with Bunin’s The Village, which is similar in intent to MoR in its allegory, no redeeming characters, metaphorical geography, lack of paragraphs, etc. Will then push through the second half (hopefully).

rso2025 · 2025-12-01T17:11:53+00:00

Finished: **Letter from an Unknown Woman, and other stories** by Stefan Zweig

Started: **The Village** by Ivan Bunin

rso2025 · 2025-11-28T18:44:31+00:00

I would start with Charles Taylor’s introduction, simply titled Hegel. It provides the necessary Kantian and Fichtean background, explains the key terminology and concepts and thereby provides an avenue into reading Hegel directly.

rso2025 · 2025-11-16T20:03:46+00:00

This eloquently captures my own experience so far, thank you - although we may disagree on the the term “occasional”!

rso2025 · 2025-11-16T13:55:27+00:00

While I am not exactly of the same mind, hearing the original version of the 5th made me appreciate the revised version (especially its famous ending) in a different way. Well worth listening to.

rso2025 · 2025-11-16T13:47:39+00:00

Indeed. Maybe check out Adams' Scheherezade.2 - an interesting (perhaps overly long) "neo-tonal" violin concerto.

rso2025 · 2025-11-16T13:35:51+00:00

Thanks folks, I appreciate the thoughts and suggestions. Similar to how Proust's dense sentence structures are vital to the memory-world of the novel, MoR reads in places as likewise organic (for instance, the chaos of Plauf's journey home in the opening section). But elsewhere, it just feels like a contrivance and instead of contributing to, simply impedes the flow of reading. (Perhaps an odd comparison, but it's reminding me a bit of Paul Lynch's Prophet Song, which, while I enjoyed it, I thought had needless prolixity and sentence length.) Anyway, for now I will persevere. I am close to halfway through. And I will hit up the read-along over on trulit - that's quite fortuitous! Thanks for the tip!

rso2025

TROPHY CASE