Henry David Thoreau - Walden

So far I only read the first chapter, Economics, and I’m not sure what to think of it. On one hand HDT clearly had a great capacity for identifying issues with society and capitalism, on the other hand his reaction to these feels like a capitulation, almost like a suicide. He diagnoses all those social issues, but instead of looking for a collective solution he takes the most individualistic course possible. He even states that this isn’t feasible for everyone and that wants others to go their own way. But if everyone lived his way there would be no human society possible. He states that cooperation isn’t really possible while at the same time taking advantage of cooperation (living on people’s land, help setting up the cabin, his mom washing his clothes, etc). The Indians who he praises so much were living under very cooperative social constructs, helping one another. Looking forward to seeing where this is going…

Finally Out - Letting Go Of Living Straight by Loren A. Olson, M.D. and
Before We Were Trans - A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

They are the first two books I checked out at the library after coming out, if anyone has any other good recommendations by all means.

About a third of the way through Blood Meridian. Basically just feels like more of The Road but less gloomy and with more of the old ultraviolence.

Claims that this is the Great American Novel leave me mystified. I realize that this book as an “anti-western” isn’t doing quite the same thing as the morally gray Spaghetti Westerns were, but I still can’t help but think that they did it better.

Probably won’t read any more McCarthy after this.

Finally reading The Lord of the Rings.

Almost at the end of Fellowship, but I must say it has been a bit of a drag.

I will most definitely finish it, but from all the hype I did have slighty higher expectations.

It’s also very likely that since I have already seen the movies and loved them, and already know what is going to happen, it has somewhat taken away from the book experience.

Although the whole Bombadil section was new, and I did not find it especially interesting.

I read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky which I enjoyed. I now started Children of Ruin, also by him.

Starting the bra dragonlance chronicles. I feel its aged poorly.

I finished two books this past week:

The Magician King by Lev Grossman (The Magicians book 2). I mostly enjoyed this one. I felt there was a lot of character growth in certain characters and a lot of exploration of mental health and healing. The ending soured me a bit, but I think I understand why the author went that route.

I also read Macbeth by William Shakespeare. I mostly knew the story already from pop culture, but it was nice reading the full thing. I think this is one of the more enjoyable and approachable plays of his that I’ve read.

I’m now on the last Magicians book, The Magician’s Land. So far I’m liking it quite a bit, but we’ll see how he sticks the landing.

Nearly done with reading A Parade of Horribles, Matt Dinniman! It felt like it took a little while to get ramped up, but I’m enjoying the chaos as things continue to spiral. Unsure what I’ll read after this.

For my audiobook, I’m about a third of the way through Isles of the Emberdark, Brandon Sanderson, which may be my favorite of his special novels so far. Very cool to see how things are all tying together in the broader cosmere. Well thought out strategy on how to expand a short story. Only quibble is Sanderson still doesn’t seem to write natural dialog. It never feels like a something someone would actually say.

Finished the Babylon 5 PsyCorps trilogy

The first two were good, fleshing out the lore of the show and some characters.

The third was a bit meh

Listening to Braiding Sweetgrass. A great antidote to corporate capitalism, beautiful writing and well read by the author. Observation of nature that reminds me of A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but with a grounding tradition and a vision of better culture.

Just finished Sourdough (and before that Moonbound), delightful wacky sci-fi. Science is well thought out but not central. Mostly it’s an interesting world and characters that are enjoyable.

I read Mark Freestone’s Making a Psychopath: My Journey into 7 Dangerous Minds. It’s was a short and frankly somewhat shallow book, but I did think it was okay. My own interest in the subject matter probably carried the experience for me, but the seven cases were also genuinely interesting.

Right now I’m reading Andy Weir’s Artemis, since I really liked The Martian, just like pretty much everyone else. Artemis, however, has not lived up to The Martian so far. While I really, really love the moonbase setting, the main character and dialogue doesn’t have the wit and charm of the previous book. It’s still pretty good, just disappointing.

Speaking of moonbases, I wonder if there’s any good sci-fi stories exploring the concept. I have read A.C. Clarke’s Earthlight and I remember it was pretty good. If anyone has any recommendations, I’d welcome them!

This week I finished the Lee Harden series of books and thus finished all of The Remaining books by DJ Molles.

My reading order was definitely screwed up by the site that I used to get a reading order from and I feel I would have enjoyed some of the earlier books I read a hell of a lot more if they had been put in their proper places in between the Harden series of books. I know understand some things that went on a lot better but this didnt ruin my overall enjoyment of the series at all. It was great!

I’m now back to some Outlanders for a bit whilst I decide where to go next. I will probably check to see if some other series I am into have any new books released before then searching for some new things!

After a bit of gap, I read a couple when on holiday for a couple of weeks and am now that I am back, am starting another:

• Domination by Alice Roberts - looking at the rise of the Christian church over the first few centuries as an extension of the Roman empire - just doing empire stuff by other means. Solidly written and well evidenced.
• Smuggling Under Sail In The Red Sea by Henry de Montfreid - A fascinating account of the author’s hash smuggling expedition in the 1920s. I would put it broadly under travel writing, since he clearly loves being away from the ‘civilised’ world and writes best in those sections. All the casual racism that you would expect from the era, though.
• Bleak House by Dickens - some recent editorial about falling literacy and comprehension quoted the opening passage of the book and prompted me to pull it from the shelf. As with so many, I had Dickens forced upon me at school and my contrarian streak dominated my opinion of his writing for a long while after, but I did eventually realise that, had I been allowed to find his work myself, I would have enjoyed it. A good few decades have passed since then and I can appreciate it free of baggage now.

My library is doing summer reading, and they added a version of the challenge for adults. Their goal is to read 4 books over the summer, for bonus points one can be a non-fiction book about dinosaurs (their theme).

In the spirit of that, planning to read 4 library books. I’ve checked out Dragon’s Teeth and Thunderstones: Quest for the Meaning of Fossils (McNamara) since it was out in the display and ostensibly about dinosaurs.

So far I am not loving it, lol. It’s slow, spending a lot of time reiterating that ancient people made stuff out of rocks and sometimes those rocks were fossils and they thought those looked cool. And the author has repeated the phrase ‘they looked for all the world like _’ like 6 times. Distractly uncommon phrase to use so much. On top of that, it’s not really about dinosaurs even, most of the fossils mentioned are sea urchins. /shrug At least it’s short and has pictures to make pages go quick.

But alongside it I also checked out The Memory Police (Ogawa). In the opening pages it seems really interesting and well-written. The premise is a bit on-the-nose dystopian tho, so we’ll see how well it’s executed.

Just finished The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (which was fantastic); starting There There by Tommy Orange, Models of the Mind by Grace Lindsay, and What Art Does by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse.