I do plan to join and squash you all, !@#$%!, but the damn site keeps saying it'll be coming soon.
I wish I already had all the data to create a team.
Why the postponing? Can I blame the Russians?

I'll read Hans Castorp's "story" during pauses.

I heard it was June 7th but nothing so far. If nothing comes up by Friday I'll find another site and use that instead.

that’s great news on you joining, not so great on the software fails, and yes let’s blame putin

i’ll match your practices then and get on with some dostoevsky.

Just finished Saul Bellow's Seize the Day and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. Interested to read more of both but I think, of the two, I'll probably end up preferring Bellow.

I finished The Great And Secret Show by Clive Barker, and I was thinking of reading his The Thief Of Always.
Maybe I'll take a break and read a Dick Francis or Ian Rankin instead.

I have been writing to the authors of the books I review. Just got an email from 94 year old physicist genius mathematician Freeman Dyson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! man, fucking awesome. I get just as hype for talking to physicist as I do for talking to my rock god heroes!!!!!!!

whoa! freeman dyson!

how did he invent the vacuum cleaner? :D :D :D

but seriously now, that’s awesome

Finished up "On Stranger Tides" on Tuesday.


Planning to start "Foley is Good: And the Real World is Faker Than Wrestling" by Mick Foley next. Been years since I read it.


After that, my general plans look to be a re-read of all the Harry Potter books. That'll likely finish up my year.

he even gave me some reading suggestions. sweet,

Just finished Alexander Solzhenitsyn's first novel, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2018/0...iterature.html

Scars of Independence by Holger Hoock, a German academic who looks at the American Revolution, or Civil War, through the lens of violence. Having all the massacres, atrocities, biowar, torture, vendettas, death camps, etc in one volume is great reading! The vicious fighting in the South and New Jersey are particularly emphasized

Out by Natsuo Kirino

winner of crime writing award in Ja. Not bad, female protagonists, complex situations.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25365.Out

hey dude i read your review and it’s a good one.

but i’d take it a step further, see...

it’s not just that one can adapt to “horrific” circumstances imposed by political imprisonment under totalitarian systems

sometimes the horrific prison comes from something else—illness, poverty, depression, etc.

the larger, practical meaning for me is that one can manage to score small victories that keep us going or give our life meaning when every other option is closed.

yes, building a good wall for your captors is a minimal victory— but the satisfaction of doing a good job is something, and it’s meaningful in that small restricted world.

and that is how one survives when in chains. whether the chains are a siberian gulag or an oppressive job or a country gone mad or a struggle with mental illness.

the same kind of effort, the squeezing a victory out of whatever our circumstances, helps us survive all kinds of difficulties too. more than just a story... it’s a demonstration of a technique.

Very true. Food for thought.

I reread Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach today, after discussing it here a few weeks ago. Whatever issues I might have had about it before seemed to evaporate this time round - maybe because this time I read it in one single go. Beautifully written and constructed is a given with McEwan but, while it may superficially lack the edge of his earlier books, in some ways it's even tougher. And truly heartbreaking, in a way that other novels try but rarely actually achieve.

My Sunday lecture:
Man admits having sex with 1,000 cars

Afterthought:
I'll never rent a car again!
Yuck

Foley Is Good is done. Onwards to Harry Potter!

Such a great book that. The first probably pips it, mind

Must agree, "Have A Nice Day!" is better, but definitely a worthy followup.

RIP Harlan Ellison http://www.vulture.com/2018/06/write...ead-at-84.html

Rabble in Arms - Kenneth Roberts


The Battle of Lake Champlain!

Already finished the first Harry Potter book, but that's mostly because it's the shortest and easy to digest. Onwards!

I read all of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman” from beginning to end. Now I’m reading the prequel that came out last year.

I also read “PREACHER” in its entirety (so, second time through for most of it) in preparation for the third season of the show.

Lotsa comics and magazines... not a book lately.

ham on rye rules. harsh, funny, brutal..

BOGLEHEADS!

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

*THE BEST*

So in about 21 days, i finished the 2nd, 3rd, and half of the 4th Harry Potter books. And here I thought they'd carry me through the end of the year.

ha ha ha neil gaiman wrote an episode of the final season of babylon 5 and i’m watching it right now. it’s very good! and funny...

i was searching for articles on conflicting moral codes and ran into this great little publication. just finished 3 articles (the first one germane to my search, the second one because someone had to finally say so, the third one because it echoes my constant complaint against stupidly calling horrible events “tragedies” —but the third one takes the “tragedy”label consciously and runs with it, and does so brilliantly).

https://thesmartset.com/the-clash-of...ee-moralities/

https://thesmartset.com/laughing-heathens/

https://thesmartset.com/something-is...ca/#more-40671

this is better than i regularly find in paywalled subscription-only publications. highly bookmarkable. a real pleasure.

here’s the front page:

https://thesmartset.com

(not really enamored with the pretentious name, but fuck names, read the great content)

another...

https://thesmartset.com/what-hallie-knew/

damn, i wanna watch more john ford

I am reading (about 85% through) a book called Panpsychism in the West, detaling the history of the Panpsychic idea in philosophy since ancient times.


Panpsychism is the idea that "Mind" is inherent in all of existence. Hylozoism is the idea that everything is "alive." Pantheism is the idea that everything is "god." quite a lot to take in!

^^oh yeah a. huxley (not thomas) advanced that notion in his peyote book

the brain as a valve to the large mind, not as the seat of the mind

some schools of zen have also a “big mind”theory, search it if curious

even if zen is not of the west it’s been in western culture for nearly a century now, maybe more if you’re jesuit

but anyway this “big mind” business is entirely western

well actually the jungians too... the whole ego/self thing

where does one draw the east/west line

—-

OOH I FORGOT THE DENISOVICH. SORRY.

will update

“The Terror” by Dan Simmons

this about the Franklin expedition?

The book was recommended to me by Rudy Rucker, the cyberpunk author and mathematician

man i havent read his ware trilogy in aaaaaages

i mean, not since it was a trilogy. i didn’t know he had added.

i lie: i was remotely aware but grad school ptsd left me functionally illiterate haa haa haaa

maybe i just read software and wetware

maybe i should have a look again

tell him hi & thanks

he calls it a tetralogy

now he does

what i meant was i read him in the 90s

no, how did it go

i read him this century, but i only read what he had written in the 80s

back in the 90s i had begun to read the hacker and the ants and some terrible things happened and i never could continue

anyway my biography is not important lol

what’s important is that there are now 4 books!

SPEAKING OF TETRALOGIES...

It’s literally been YEARS since you read the first hundred pages of Booknof the New Sun and said you’d finish it after whatever mushroom book.

JUST SAYIN’

Thinking about disrupting my Potter-thon with a read of "Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age" by Mike Godwin, even if I just have the 1st edition.


First I need to finish Goblet of Fire though. I'm not going to sidestep in the middle.