I finally finished Ten Cent Plague yesterday. It was a good read all around, sometimes funny in how the author points out ironic situations, but also very depressing as you got toward the end.
I was able to get my hands on volumes 2-4 of Dark Horse's reprinting of Gold Key's Solar, Man of the Atom. I was pretty lucky in doing so, because they're out of print and Dark Horse doesn't often do many reprints and seeing as how Dynamite currently holds rights to Solar, I don't think I'd get a second shot at those books. I think for the rest of summer, I'll be switching back and forth between those and my Bret Harte books, maybe some of my wife's sci-fi anthology books to mix things up.
I got that myself not long ago. I haven't really gotten into the body of it yet, but the historical context is interesting. I was especially fascinated on the Stoics' idea of logos, and how that was context for when Christianity started talking about The Word.
Since you're about done with the History of Rome, if you happen to be looking for more: - "12 Byzantine Rulers" is a short but pretty awesome series on the Eastern Roman Empire - "Emperors of Rome" is super interesting too and it's still going, I find Rhiannon Evans really interesting to listen to (she's a lecturer in Mediterranean History), and Matt Smith the main host is always very excited and interested in the topic. - "When in Rome" is about the history of different places in the city it's also by Matt Smith but the co-host changes. Also, Meditations is a great book, enjoy it!
I'm slowly working my way through the "complete" H.P. Lovecraft. I say "complete" because apparently it's not complete and if it was it would be even more massive than it already is. Lots of short stories, which I like because i'm reading it on my phone, and also because I believe the short story and the Novella are super underrated.
You don't really want a truly complete Lovecraft.
yeah, i mean, even a lot of the Cthulu universe stuff features "brave upper class german officers" in ww1. Pretty gross, but at the same time, there's a lot of good writing. It's a bit like Wagner - you have to take his operatic genius with the fact that he was a vehement antisemitic.
I think Lovecraft's racism, when it goes beyond what was just in the air in his day, is different from Wagner's antisemitism in that it's cosmic horror writ small and so very entwined with what he's trying to express. Not only is the universe not for humans, but humanity isn't for humans like Lovecraft. It's the horror at realizing nothing about you matters, at least not in any absolute way. I think that's why we see more Lovecraft-inspired work more sympathetic to his cultists than his heroes as time goes on; they at least embrace their insignificance.
I've primarily been on a Gene Wolfe kick. His shit is amazing. I read The Book of the New Sun to my daughter over a few months. She's two, so doesn't really get into the stories themselves, but I like to think I'm giving her some good vocabulary and a sense of wonder. I'm now reading The Urth of the New Sun to her, with the same hopes. I also recently picked up Gene Wolfe's Castle of Days, which is a combination of short stories and some non-fiction essays, the latter primarily on writing. As someone who hopes to do some kind of storytelling myself one day, I'm enjoying the latter quite a bit. In the car, I'm re-listening to the audio book of Woken Furies (the sequel to Altered Carbon) by Richard K. Morgan. I love everything he's written. I'm debating whether I want to give The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter Hamilton another try. This is the second in a sci-fi trilogy, but shit be looong. Each of the three books is about 1,200 pages. Unfortunately a lot of it feels like filler. The overarching evil keeps doing what it does over and over, and people are trying to stop it or whatever, but it's hard to get particularly invested right now because I know that absolutely none of it will be resolved for a long time, potentially up to 2,000+ pages depending on how much gets put off until the third book. It's a really cool premise and an interesting universe, but I'm just not feeling it. I think I'm going to try The Commonwealth Saga instead, which is supposed to be really good. Last week, I read Nameless, a six-issue comic written by Grant Morrison. It is terrifying in the best way, in that it operates on a very primal level. It's not scary because of what it makes you think, but rather in the way it causes you to do the spiritual/existential equivalent of looking over your shoulder. Next on the list: Locke and Key.
I love Hamilton. But yeah, that series can be hard to get into. Once I managed to finish it I ended up re-reading it twice over rhe years. The Commonwealth series is better, and I might re-read it this winter. Still long, but that's the point of space opera, isn't it?
Yeah exactly. I don't mind long per se, but too often these books feel like long for the sake of long.
He is amazing, but be warned that those series do not hold the reader's hand. There's a lot going on that is just mentioned in passing, and you have to pay very close attention. Comics-wise, not a lot. I don't like keeping up with ongoing series, I'd rather binge something once it's totally done. My favorite is probably Preacher, which I re-read once a year or so. The TV series is so-so. I really liked Saga, but have been waiting 'til the next hardback collection is out, at least, if not until the series is finished so I can read it all. I also enjoyed a short series (about 4 issues) called Pax Romana. That's been about it. I read some of The Boys, but couldn't really get into it ... just seemed kinda repetitive. And then of course Nameless recently, like I mentioned. I also read Neonomicon a couple of years ago and enjoyed that too. That's about it, but I'm always looking for more....
Oh. I'll try him out, but I might have to give him a pass. I'm not exactly what you'd call a strong reader, though sometimes I've been known to surprise myself. ;) If you haven't read it, The Sandman is considered a classic, though it can get a bit dark and a bit weird at times. The Unwritten is also a pretty good read as well. If you're big on Sci-Fi and don't mind comics with a slow, methodical pace, Brandon Graham's The Prophet is absolutely wonderful. The artwork often reminds me of some of Moebius' illustrations while still being able to be new and unique.
Ooh, that last sounds right up my alley. The Amazon page for the first issue definitely looks and sounds intriguing. Is it still ongoing, or is it finished?
Finally starting These Are My Sisters at the suggestion of kleinbl00. Wondering what the possibility is that it is fictional, because otherwise I think the next 150 pages will take some mental work on my part to accept that such a world truly did exist for hundreds of thousands of people less than a century ago. It's got a dark sense of humor (I think?), too: Also an audiobook on the history of treating mental disorders with psychedelics for when I'm in lab. I keep having to stop that one though, the blatant disregard of medical researchers by the DEA and FDA just makes me sad.The nurse just now picked up one of the sheets I have written. She read it--looking at me oddly--asked what in the hell I thought I was doing. And because she expected an answer in keeping with my strange occupation--I did not have the heart to disappoint her. So I gave her an answer that fitted. I told her that I was Shakespeare, the reincarnation of Shakespeare trying to sidestep a strait-jacket. [...] She came back down the aisle with a whole ream of paper and said to me: "Go to it, Shakespeare."
Phillip Sidney Horkey's Plato and Pythagoreanism, on the influence of the mathematikoi on Plato. Paolo Rossi's Logic and the Art of Memory, on the continuity between wacky guys like Giordano Bruno and Ramon Lull and early formal logic by way of the idea of a universal language.
About 2/3rds of the way through the third book. As audio. Then I got hit by a car and I seriously lost interest. Shit be dry. And mostly you learn that every civilization you've ever heard of, every culture you've ever studied, every people you've ever seen a class presentation on, A) hated women B) tortured the lower class C) is memorable primarily for being incredibly evil. Also, the Stoics were dicks. So was Confucius. But fuckin' Schliemann was a badass.
I love the style of the book set in that picture. I'm sorry to hear it's both dry and depressing, because it does look like a very compelling read. I'd say keep at it. Maybe somewhere, probably around The Renaissance or The Age of Reason, you'll find a bright spot. Though I doubt it will be with Voltaire. I've been told that while he eloquently supported some very revolutionary ideas for his time, he was also crazy racist too.
I'm halfway through the Audible version of Robert Caro's Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. It's a mammoth book, and well-written and researched. But it's getting a bit repetitive. Robert Moses, originally an idealist civil servant and reformer, turns into a power-hungry, morally compromised, and arrogant as hell political appointee of numerous mayors and governors of New York City and State, spanning the nineteen teens through the sixties. The book is a catalog of all the law-bending and backroom dealing that never really seems to stop. It's also hard to overstate the depth of Moses' influence on the shape, look, and demographics of the city. As the "Parks Commissioner" --among other appointed positions -- Moses built an absurd amount of parkways and roads and parks. This was often at the expense of the poor and people of color that were evicted to make room (the Riverside Park project, in order to save money, budgeted almost ten times more per mile of everywhere south of Harlem; pools in black neighborhoods were purposefully not heated because Moses thought black people shouldn't swim) though the rich and landed were also found themselves the victims of flat-out illegal land and power grabs. Moses was utterly tireless and industrious: he had a cavalcade of cars all turned into offices on wheels for him and the engineers and architects and lawyers that followed him almost everywhere he went. He operated outside the traditional bounds of legislative input and direction, because of his ability to fund his projects through tolls he collected, bonds he issued against future earnings, and other means. But I'm keeping on with the book to say that I've finished it. I have Piketty's Capital up next on Audible. I'm also reading A Very Short Introduction to Jung. I think bfv recommended it. It puts me in a heady funk, and I'm only 50 pages in. Won't comment on the content yet, since it's so short and I haven't finished it, but will say that reading the biographies of highly prolific people makes me yearn for more self-discipline. Sort of off-topic, but it's been on my mind a lot. What do people do in the age of distraction do to inculcate discipline?
The reviews for the audiobook version are all pretty high, despite the occasional mention of PDFs being helpful. You still think it wouldn't make for a good audiobook?
Finished The Buccaneers of America by John Esquemeling, from 1684. This translation is probably the wildest one, translated from the Spanish version that freely added unsourced new material, but since "history" and "truth" and even "publishing" were very flexible words at the time, I figured this was as good a way to get a pirate's-eye view of the infamous Henry Morgan and Pirates of the Caribbean. The writing is completely different than our method of writing today, and takes a little time to get used to. But there is a poetry and flow that becomes infectious, because it pays so little heed to what we nowadays deem important. The narrative is not slavishly tied to being a sequential a blow by blow timeline of battles... rather, it flows around as the author's mind recalls details they want to insert into the story. Sometimes he will jump back or forward in the story, or wander off on a complete pages-long tangent, just to illustrate a detail in the current storyline. It's fascinating, a fun read, and has some real gems in it. And at the same time, leaves huge frustrating holes that our modern minds think, "How could he have left that bit of information out?!?" So you get glimpses and insights into the real life of a pirate on a sailing ship in the Caribbean (Spoiler Alert: They spent a lot of time on land.), interspersed with stories of amazing cunning and sneaky pirate tricks, and always winding up with the pirates on some desolate shore, under-provisioned, desperate for food and water, and then happening into riches of food and gold, and immediately using them all up. It's hilarious and fascinating as a story, and also a really interesting experience to see how language has developed over the last 400 years. Definitely worth the time!
Finished The Descent on audiobook, found out after finishing it that the audio version is abridged heavily, which stinks. I am the type of person who enjoys Frank Herbert style prose about mundane stuff. I think it gives texture to a story universe. Considering that I already liked The Descent, I bet the unabridged version is even better. And it's nothing like the movie of the same name. Starting in on Surviving Schizophrenia 6th ed by Torrey, on recommendation.
Started reading Voices from Chernobyl a few days ago. Alexievich was awarded a Nobel Prize for it. I'm a little torn by the first 50 pages that I've gotten through. On the one hand, it's gut wrenching to read individual accounts of suffering through Chernobyl. On the other hand, it's a series of quotes, some 10 pages long, others only a sentence or two, and nothing more (at least so far). I'm not sure what to make of that. If there's a narrative that's being built, I haven't discovered it yet. Does it even count as literature if the "author" is just compiling interviews? Isn't that more of an editor? I'm going to keep reading and try to reserve judgement, but so far, I think the Nobel is a stretch.
Primo Levi - If This Is A Man Haven't made much progress yet, for lack of time.