Finished reading, with satisfaction: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin 📚
Good story, it really moves. Not sure exactly the genre. Probably not science fiction. Maybe fantasy? Elements of young adult, but also romance (I think, very adult topics anyway). I very much appreciate the natural, non-judgy, and often kind but not holding back, point of view. Casual writing style works better for me than I expected. Some of the best interpersonal arguments/fights with about the right emotional sting that I’ve read. Bravo! Can’t wait to read the next one.
Some other things I liked:
geology! And rocks
a building’s structure plays a critical role for a plot point
Fun made up words that are suggestive of their origin. I am not a linguist but I still enjoy it
Finished reading, with satisfaction: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚
I only read the last chapters, to get the highest of highlights covering from ~1800 up to 1915. For that purpose it served excellently. My appetite is whetted for more details on this period. I have more questions now, and some better, refreshed and renewed, understanding of the shape of events during that time. I will refer to this text in the future when I want to get the gestalt of the orthodox view of events for other periods as well.
I found this book to be very informative and overall a good read. I’m looking for more context in this area. In particular:
Why did progressive taxation and the welfare state become the chosen option beginning around 1915? What events lead to that conclusion? I don’t find “because World War 1” to be sufficient. It must have been a long road leading up to that.
How did the free movement of capital around 1980 come about? Also, there are consequences of this globalization, and I want to have a firmer grasp on the connection between this cause and effect. It really seems to be a defining frame for so many issues in the world; is that true?
And at the same time, circa 1980, the decline of progressive taxation. Was is the same fundamental forces? And no wonder our infrastructure is poorly maintained and failing: we built it all in an entirely different budgetary situation. (Edit: added this one)
Generally more of a connection between the historical context and the basically economic story that Piketty tells here. I would really like to compare the events that are emphasized by different authors in the same time periods.
Exploring the conceptions of private property as a concept for common good. I assume that this is a regular socialist topic, but I haven’t read much of that.
Finding an accurate description of the global economic system, meaning capitalist, socialist, and the hybridization.
There are some few details in the text about these events and ideas, but I want to understand more concretely. If you’ve got good book recommendations, I’m interested. I have a few books in house already that I can credibly start to expore some of this stuff.
I saw this book before somewhere, I don’t remember where. But I passed it up because it couldn’t possibly be true; knowing everything is not something that a person can do. So I figured it must be some gimmick, something else. Plus, I’d already read How Not To Be Wrong. Until I read this book review which corrected my misunderstanding. Philosophy, you say? How to ask better questions?
I am ambivalent at best toward online Bullet Journal culture, more often I find the ferver off putting. I have found the book 📚 to be none of that. Today, and yesterday, one line is particularly applicable:
When you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else.1
That point is much more broadly applicable to me too, but I’m focusing on today. I said yes to several things today: journaling about yesterday, errands, repairing a sliding door that wasn’t sliding,2 visiting with a friend, and making dinner. Making dinner to me means cooking and preparing, and serving, a time consuming thing. But it’s all making and sharing. It’s something that I haven’t said yes to enough.
But saying yes to these things means I didn’t say yes to some other things that are also important to me, but apparently less so? Or less right now? I’m not sure. They were less urgent. Working ahead of time on this blog post is one thing that got a no. And making some art with my plotter also got a no today.
Sidebar comment: It’s not the right time, but I am exploring alternative names to “bullet journal.” I am not a fan of the bullet in bullet journal. Maybe “just journal” or “right journal” or… hmm. I don’t know, it’s a work in progress.
I guess there will be more posts in this theme, this personal journey of journaling.
That may be a paraphrase, I don’t have the book next to me as I write this. ↩︎
A team effort and success that I am most proud of. ↩︎
Just doing a quick tour through this. I kinda feel like my notes aren’t gelling, and I’ve started collecting kind of a lot of them. A friend said this was working for him, so I’ll take a look. Not planning to read every page though. I’ll set a reminder to post an update in a couple of months.
I’ve had to move Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford Worlds Classics) by Epictetus 📚 to my Reading, but like not right now shelf. I have completed Book 1, and will shortly finish Book 2. Books 3 and 4, the Fragments, and the Handbook will have to wait until some other time. I’ll probably start with the Handbook when I do pick it back up. I have some more thoughts…
I may do a more well thought out review later, when I finish the rest of it. But here is my hot-ish take right now:
Is it me or is he brining up death, exile, and suicide-as-a-legitimate-option kind of a lot? Maybe times were a lot different back then and these were common concerns. Or maybe these things loomed large in the minds of his target audience: the wealthy men that could afford to hire philosophy teachers.
He has his moments when he’ll say directly what he means. But a lot of the time he is pretty round about with getting to the point, or saying clearly what he is trying to tell his students. It can be rather indirect. Is it a mysterious affectation? A conversational style to engage the listener? He was speaking these words, after all. Something else, like giving the audience what they want to hear, what they’re expecting a philosopher to sound like?
Come to think of it, I get the sense that he doesn’t think too highly of a lot of the students or interlocutors he’s addressing. Even if they are just hypothetical people he sets up to knock down, it seems like not the most trusting of teaching styles. It also seems like his students maybe had a habit of coming all haughtily arrogant and he’s got to take them down a peg. I find it off putting and boring. Tiresome. The teacher is not taking the students seriously.
At several points he makes rather unserious arguments. That a god or gods exists isn’t even said as an axiom, it’s just so obvious that anyone who says differently is a fool. This, Epictetus, is not an argument. Instead of treating the competing philosophical schools seriously, they are usually rather casually characatured, or straw man/person’d and considered dealt with. Frankly, I can hear the guy yelling about it through the ages and pages even today.
Not a very inclusive group either. It was the times, sure. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t color the rest of the work. How are you going to just paint over those pieces and not see/wonder how they have distorted the rest?
All that said, there have been a few passages that seem quite useful. There were some interesting points made that are worth pondering. But there was a lot of wading through sections that wavered on the edge of just not worth reading, with the occassional bit of useful life observation hidden in there that makes you not give up. Even if the life observed was almost 2000 years ago, some things are still familiar.
↝ morrow
Do y’all know this book? The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker 📚 I love this book. Anyone know any more books like this? I’m always on the lookout for good books. This town has one of the best bookstores in the world, and I like supporting it by buying books there.
Dracula Daily is taking off? I didn’t have this on my bingo card.
@cobblystreet on Twitter has grabbed a bunch of memes from Tumblr for me to enjoy; thoroughly enjoying these takes 🤣
Can’t wait for tomorrow’s installment, hopefully there is one!
But like, I’m going to have read it ten more times at least. There is an extra dollop of mystery in this poetry, and calling it that seems to be understating it. I’m not even sure what to say right now, so much good stuff here.
It is, as Brian Doyle says, “a thirsty book.” In just one sentence: a great many enjoyable personal essays on the growing and making of the Lange Estate wines. And really it did make me want to head out and pick up one or several bottles of pinot noir from all around, Oregon or elsewhere, because that is a wine that I do enjoy, among others.
I made many underlinings, and asteriskings, and otherwise notings and dogearings while reading this one, which is my new habit. I am going to let those marginalia age for a month and then come back and I might have more to share about this book. And after I talk it over with my dad who recommended it because he knows many of the people in the book and worked in the Oregon wine industry for almost 30 years, I suspect I’ll have a few more things to say then too.
Oh, and a very unexpected cross connection: this is “a thirsty book”, and so was the chicken
“paprika hendl”"very good but thirsty," that Jonathan Harker eats for supper on the 3rd of May in Bistritz, Romania in the very opening of Dracula that I just started reading yesterday.
I read this book in the form of a physical trade paperback that was printed very very well, however if I had one thing to mention it would be that the typesetting was left aligned instead of justified, but I think that may have been a design choice to support the author’s rather conversational, and often long, sentences. Good bright white paper and clear text throughout. A joy to read.
PS: my writing style may, just a bit, have been affected by the writing style of the author of this short book.
There is a ton of fascinating history in managing and accessing all the information in books. A lot of the tools and technology you and I use today are much older than you might think! Tables of contents probably started out as the outer layer of a scroll.
Also, lots of fun random trivia. And not at all presented as fun random trivia. This is a serious scholarly book after all. Example: incipit: “the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label.” I didn’t know that word or definition. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I might be able to use that. Cool!
Or the crazy random rabbit holes you can get to on the internet now. I learned about the Bibliotheca of Photius, which is Photius’s
Photius of Constantinople, 810-893. list of all the books he read, and his reviews
Maybe he even invented the book review, or at least the written form. of them. Like this gem about Socrates of Constantinople: “There is nothing remarkable in the author’s style, and he is not very accurate in matters of doctrine.” Ouch. You can check out the rest of Photius’s big list of books with commentary here! Never would have found something like this in a million years.
But, what am I going to do with it? Right now I haven’t got many plans that this would fit in. Maybe one story idea could use it for texture, so I’m glad I found it. Reminds me a bit of The Ninth Gate (book or movie, take your pick). But there was a lot of reading to find these two and the few others too.
So, I’m a bit more bummed about quitting this one than the other one. It was interesting, often fascinating. But, in the end there was too much to read here to get the useful bits out that I wanted to use for my own practical gain. I’ll probably graze occassionally, maybe I’ll pull out more random gems.
I read this as an Apple Book, and my comment is the same as last time: I’ve seen the end notes done in a more useful way in other books. But I was able to get to the good stuff, so they are at least workable. Really appreciated that about it.
cc @chrisaldrich
Oh oh, oh! Dracula Daily began today! I don’t know why I am so excited about this! Maybe it’s the travelogue nature of the beginning, or the comparison of weathers
I mean, the experience of comparing and contrasting my weather against the atmosphere of the book, which I assume will follow some seasonal trend and be called out. Just a guess on my part.I’ll be having over the next 6 months (weather: I’m a fan). I plan to do some realtime commenting on the reading too.
The things I noted in the first day’s reading: the food (I see cooking opporutnities here), the locations, the corporeal inhabitedness,
Harker mentions how he slept, and talks about food, and not wanting to miss the train. It seems all very personal/experiential, and immediate. and the sense of mystery and even a bit of calamity. The world is being set before me, and I don’t know which of the possibilities is a probability. It was only a couple of pages worth. The annotations in the Norton Critical Edition help and also distract a bit.
This is a request from my dad; he worked in the Oregon wine industry for 28 years in distribution and knows a lot of the people mentioned in the book. Just not the mainly featured vintners.
Planning to read it slow-ish and interactively, taking lots of notes on the paper copy. I already see that it’s not the most pleasant object to read with variable clearness of the actual text.
I approached it with the mindset that these ideas are options for me to consider in my own mind practice, and there were a number of interesting ideas.
But yesterday I had to admit to myself that it is time to abandon my comittment to reading this book. I have to do the same with another book it was partnered with, but I’ll get to that another day. I think I read about 30-40% of the book before my calculations told me a sustained effort would require more energy than I had to give it at this time. I will keep it around for the option to browse different sections look for useful tidbits.
I found the idea of the Magpie Mind to be a useful one for understanding how I assemble bigger ideas from whatever is around. Want better ideas? Have better stuff around. Also remember to pause and examine the ideas you have constructed.
I also found the ideas discussed around the poured paintings of Jackson Pollock to be really helpful for inspecting and understanding some things about my own computer art practice that had been quite mysterious to me. My random search for what works and what doesn’t work for me will probably be much more effective with this clue.
There are many other ideas that were also useful and that I will continue to personally explore. You can get a pretty good sense of the type of ideas from Ezra Klein’s podcast with the author.
But some sections were less obviously plausible. I did not see the connection to thinking in groups in the tale about the aircraft carrier and the sailboat. If one of you did find a connection there, I would listen. There was also quite a bit of text related to the ideas presented that I didn’t feel added all that much; some stories about trainings and their audiences that I didn’t think clarified what I was to do with the idea at all. Maybe it’s just me.
Now, some comments about the (virtual) book itself as an object. This is a thing that I care about and might explore at a later time. One thing that I greatly appreciated the author and publisher for including is rich end notes. I was able to use these to track down more technical materials on some of the concepts that had been diluted beyond recovery in the book. Those breadcrumbs are invaluable. However, I’ve seen it done in an easier to use way in Apple Books before, and the increased friction was an annoyance. I have nothing else worth mentioning in my review of the experience of reading the book on an iPad.
Did you read The Extended Mind? What did you think of it?