Campbell's Masks of God series changed me profoundly.

I am halfway through Oriental Mythology. I tried reading these books in my 20's but I did not have the necessary background to digest what he is discussing. Now, at age 41, I can read them and am able to grasp it all. some books require preparation!

Yeah, I read them when I was 20 or so, and I looked at them recently and wondered how the hell I pulled that off. No way I understood very much, but the big theme is clear enough, isn't it? Stories repeat. A simple idea that Campbell spent the rest of his life unpacking, so I guess it's also a very complex idea.

But mostly it was being shown the difference between the occidental and oriental approach to the big questions which made me rethink everything. That was brand new to me. It's not like a grew up around a lot of Buddhists.

i re-read the secret history by donna tartt the other day, then il purgatorio

good choice! have you read the goldfinch? i really liked it when i read it (about a year ago - close to when it came out) but now I'm not so sure.

haha maybe some of his longer works. i quite like this in an author though , i find it kinda soothing. i think by the sounds of it we look through different things from fiction...?!

but have you read his shorter works? Siddartha? Klingsor's Last Summer? Rosshalde?

i am intrigued now too - let me know how you find it!

i really want to read these

such spam

I am now currently reading Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

That's like the heaven for Sci-Fi fans (along P.K.Dick, of course)

this kind of book would have been difficult for me to read before the existence of wikipedia. it assumes you know who is everyone mentioned there and it goes on to make overarching judgments and interpretations-- looks at trends, really. very nice really as a kind of global view of the renaissance.

i started the other day & left for wikipedia to read about the hohenstaufens, ezzelino, frederick I, etc. (i know about some of them vaguely but never made any study of them). this is fun but a massive distraction because i get lost in the web of information, but if i remember to return to the book then everything looks clear. so my linear progress has been slow but with the accessory expeditions one gets to cover a lot.

I read Siddartha in my 20's, and it left no impression I can recall.

I will have to give his shorter works another go

I am reading The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. Great sci fi from the early 50's. I had never heard of him except for a Simpsons episode where Martin the smart nerdy kid, says that the ABC's of science fiction are Asimov, Bester, and Clarke, and some kid says "what about Ray Bradbury?" and Martin replies, "I am familiar with his work..." That shit makes me laugh. Ray Bradbury is suck. I find him more boring that Hesse.

Sooooo, this Demolished Man book is amazing so far.

I devoured it at first and now I wish it had a better editor. I think the Vegas part kinda drags.

yah - i think i wanted to like it more than i actually liked it.

a few people have said that to me about the vegas part but that was my favourite part.

(see previous comments about liking boring novels haha)

a lot of books (most of them actually) are rushed for publication these days


XIX century FTW

---

been reading a little more of the burckhardt reinaissance book and it's highly entertaining but somehow feels like a pointless exercise. eta: meaning i enjoy it, but i need other knowledge right now.

i'm more interested in buying this book. in fact i have for the longest time:



THE ART OF FERMENTATION by sandor katz (but fuck michael pollan)

i make yogurt and sauerkraut as daily staples but i need to up my game. kimchi, you are next. pickles too.

also, i wanna learn to cure meats-- but that's a different book.

eta, again. this is what i'm actually reading right now along w/ burckhardt:



BARNYARD IN YOUR BACKYARD

good stuff! furrealz.

donna tartt has a really interesting interview on some site about her use of male protagonists; if i find it again i'll post it here

GIMME ALL THE KIMCHI. damnit !@#$%!, you made me hungry.

i'm also reading marcus aurelius's meditations, and waiting for "the last thing he wanted" by didion to ship to my parents' house

what amount are you talking about? roommates would kill me.
kimchi I'm developing myself. getting better at it. still not quite there yet.

kimchi and grilled elk!!! so good.


kimchi is tough for me because of the innumerable ingredients, especially the hard-to find korean pepper flakes.

sauerkraut is the *easiest* thing. i make a gallon (you can make less). i make it like this:

1) i shred a couple of cabbages (you can use knife or food processor or mandoline or whatever)

2) add 2 fat teaspoons of COARSE sea salt and proceed to smash it with my hands so it releases juice

3) i put it in a 1 gallon (4 litres) mason jar-- the name of this type of jar is american but mine are made i think in italy (has a rubber ring to seal). <-- you can start with 1 cabbage and 2 litres, or a smaller one and reuse some glass jar from something else. --> adjust salt to about 1 tablespoon per kilo.

4) i add a weight on top of the cabbage so it sinks in the juice (e.g. a glass jar w/ rocks). i use a cabbage leaf as a "lid" to hold the shredded cabbage down as liquid rises.

5) i cover the open jar with a kitchen towel. leave it in a cool room and the next day i'm starting to see bubbles. keep it that way for about 10 days.

6) after a week or 10 days i put it in the fridge and start eating it. at this point you start to taste but it's still too

7) you can start eating it then. lasts indefinitely i think. captain cook sailed around the world with a ship full of sauerkraut and nobody got scurvy.

note: i've read that normally one wouldn't need to add water to the mix, but i live in a desert and evaporation happens. so i add filter, boiled &cooled water to the jar. that way it stays submerged instead of dried up. water is filtered to remove chlorine-- if your water supply doesn't have it then it's not an issue.

trust me it's super easy. and kimchi stinks waaaaaay more with the fish sauce and scallions and all the ultra-funky stuff.

i got 2 bok choys on sale today i'll try starting that as kraut not kimchi.

also you can mix red/green cabbage, add some shredded carrot, maybe caraway seeds (i'm not crazy about those but some people use them).

fresh Polish saurkraut smells like goddamn barf bile

I'm secretly jealous of !#@$!$!'s self-sufficient rugged-outdoorsman lifestyle, but yeah, all I can think about is the smell.

fuck, I can hardly eat chicken without clearing a room, I can only imagine what it'd be like if I tried to ferment it.

i remember my grandmothers room where she made and kept the Sauerkraut.
we made 40 to 50 kg of sauerkraut at once and always let it ferment for 4 weeks minimum.


!@#$%!,

in austria (germany and poland too for that matter) we always add caraway (whole) before fermentation too.
Also I think I would put the glasses into hot boiling water for a while, before you fill them. you don't really want any bacteria in there.

yeah the caraway is nice with some things (e.g. pork) but it narrows the flavor profile for me. sometimes i make fake kimchi by adding chili powder & green onions at the last minute, and the caraway would short-circuit that. other times i eat it with carnitas. so making it plain keeps the options open until the last minute. you could do 1 small jar caraway 1 small jar plain 1 small jar experimental, etc. that's the beauty of small scale.

from what i've read, the smaller the jar the quickest the fermentation so 4 weeks are not needed for this project. also, if temps are warm, it runs faster too-- maybe just a few days before you refrigerate. just keep tasting it.

i did use boiling water to rinse all. and in principle yes you don't want bacteria but there's gonna be more bacteria in the cabbage itself and in the air every time you open the lid etc. so while you don't want real filth, i think sterility is not a big issue-- the salt and the lactofermentation take care of all enemies.

i've heard that some people get a little mold on top but they just remove it.

give it a shot!

i see, i see! Smaller container means faster fermentation you say? have to check in praxis.

will try with and without caraway.
how smelly does it get, made in smaller portions?

not very smelly-- just the typical sulphur smell of all cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc). small container also means gases disperse quickly. avoid excess heat and direct sunlight.

go for it man! 1 tablespoon coarse salt per kilo of leaf. remove hearts, shred, salt/mix, work it by hand--no need to use feet! then pack & wait & taste as you go. once you close the lid and refrigerate, fermentation slows down and the smell does not escape the seal.

this is a mason jar:



they come in all kinds of sizes.

A girlfriend of mine once read me some pages of Steppenwolf. She found it very relevant with what she felt life was like - when in fact, what really was happening to her was that she had to chose who to dump among three men.

The pages she read were really boring.

Looking for a book I never found, I told a librarian that I'd pick whatever book she wanted. She handed me Steppenwolf. I reluctantly read it.

It was extremely boring in its first half. A boring life = a boring way to show it, in Hesse's mind. Which I found a bit easy.
Then, the routine is shattered, and it was kinda good.
I won't read it again though.

I've just finished The Nazi and the Barber, by Edgar Hilsenrath, and I liked it. There's a little dip in form, I'd say, circa 1950, but, that's more than ok.

Next: Laura Kasichke

Oh! And I read Ivan Gontcharov's Oblomov.
The most beautifully told love story I've read in years, even though it's nof half the subject of the book, centered on a man labeled as lazy, the poor weary bloke (how I relate to that).

New book reviews up http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/

Reviews of The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester and Masks of God: Oriental Mythology by Joseph Campbell

women in soviet society. academic text about Soviet socialist policies and the impact on social roles for women. one of my pet passions so I'm super stoked to read

Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan

British precursor to Lovecraft and the whole 'weird' genre. Anyone who likes Call of Cthulhu will love this.

The "There are many things I did not understand about Eastern religions..." paragraph is exactly why the book is so exciting. Nailed it.

read this bad boy here
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/389/389-h/389-h.htm

funny coincidence, this movie i watched last night, IDA, shows one of those women in those new social roles in poland in the early 60s-- she was a state prosecutor in the 50s and then (at the time of the movie) a judge. sharp contrast to the mad men era in the land of the free.


i've never liked lovecraft but i'll check that out regardless-- though i've been a fan of poe since i was about 12.


oh hell yes thanks

Can you believe it? I'm still plodding through Cheever's big STORIES book. I took a break to read Salinger's Nine Stories.

I want to get into Denis Johnson's new one.

With Rob's link you should give him a go. It's a short story - closer to novella really - but I think you'll find him a far better writer than Lovecraft. Although the ideas are very similar.

yes!!! saw that the other day and enjoyed it

I bought the following books yesterday:



it's Neil so I'm very much looking forward to reading it.
I already read Neil And Me a few years back, but don't remember much of it.




I recently read another set of his short stories, and loved it a lot, especially Sally. So I wanted to get some more.



Don't think I ever read something by this guy, but the plot sounds interesting. After they won WOII, Japan rules over California and the Germans over New York

But I still need to finish this bastard first.


blerk, don't really like it. But I want to know how it finishes off anyway

haha.
no. not really.

My book review blog is banned in China now.

Bucket list achievement unlocked?

well, that was 2h23min of glory, not bad at all

I had an average of 20-40 original "hits" a week on my blog from China since August. Only two weeks ago the hits from China stopped. I think it is not just about Google.

This is last months data


This is last week's data


Since August of 2014 China was my second largest audience... Bye Bye China...