I’ve been in a little reading slump which tends to happen when I am doing more art and writing.
I’m currently slogging through two books. One is Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. I guess it’s interesting because it’s written as a stream of consciousness novel, and it explores the absolute filthiest corners of 1930s Paris, but the narrator (Miller himself) is so odious. I don’t know why I feel like I have to finish it.
The second book is much better but just long, with a writing style that is also quite different. It’s called the Sympathizer, and it’s about a Vietnamese double agent spy who finds himself being airlifted from Saigon to the US…and everything that comes with that. It’s honestly a really compelling story, but the writing is much more unedited than I am used to. There are a lot of pages that have no paragraph breaks at all! So it feels dense even though the story isn’t.
I will wrap these up soon and then move on to something that’s a bit easier on my brain.
I am reading “The moon is a harsh mistress” by Heinlein. It’s the first time i read him in the original language, and it’s glorious!
He talks about a moon uprising against the earth government.
The book reads a bit like a battle diary, at times quite dry. The part I love the most is how he plays with so many political and ethical concepts, like completely supporting prostitution. His extreme left tendencies are not hidden in this book. I’m enjoying it a lot!
"yet Heinlein became a hero to libertarians: Milton Friedman praised Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which chronicled an anti-statist rebellion on a lunar colony, as a "wonderful" book and commended Heinlein "
Having read the gizmodo article again it seems a more complicated shift than a simplistic left youth, right in middle age and for most of his books. Seems to have a complex view point although "starship troopers" is certainly a right wing oriented novel.
Thanks for triggering further investigation. Interesting
Thanks for the extra info. In the meantime I finished the book, so I have a better outlook. At the beginning, the push is towards a revolution against the authoritarian regime, with some sprinkles of “workers unite”, so I expected to go more towards socialism. Then it becomes more clear that he is against all a d any government, even while accepting that it can’t work. Quite interesting overall!
Started reading Second Apocalypse by R. Scott Bakker recently. It's rough around the edges but shows promise. Although I really don't like how conflict of two major religions is a straight ripoff of Crusades (completed with "bad guys" being desert people who occupy the "holy land" of "good guys"). Screams lazy world building to me.
Just started on a re-read (audiobook) of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams, also read by him. Oh I love him as a narrator! Also continuing with Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol.
Code by Charles Petzold, about halfway through and it slaps. I knew how logic gates worked/are, but having someone walk you through how they can be combined to build complicated electronics is incredibly interesting and valuable.
Also finished Frank Herbert's Dune and Seneca's "On the shortness of life" since last thread. Really liked Dune and will probably read Messiah soon, it's a bit silly and slightly problematic at times. Seneca I didn't appreciate nearly as much as I had hoped, his teachings are not consistent throughout the three texts in the book (not sure how these were originally produced/published, I assume at different times) and the "god I wish I was poor, life as a rich dude is so hard" is a bit hard for me to swallow. As a historic text it was very interesting though.
Just finished Ain't I A Woman by Bell Hooks. I'm currently listening to Disability Visibility by Alice Wong. (I've been trying to get into more non-fiction)
The most important lesson to take from Canterbury is that if anyone tries to cry about modern society being lewd, or not respecting marriage, or whatever dumb puritanism is on public display that week, you can point to Chaucer and say "See? We were always gross perverts!"
I'm trying to get out of a reading slump I've been in for the last... 3 months? Picked Orconomics to get back into things and just finished it today. Honestly, the first 50% was like pulling teeth. But I got pretty hooked after that, once it really got going and subverting the usual fantasy tropes, and enjoyed it enough that I'll probably read the sequel at some point.
There was just one bit of weirdness that kinda bothered me - in the main cast there were two decently important female characters and they were both absolutely fine, I liked them a lot! But there were just... no other women in this world? No female city guards, innkeepers (there was the innkeeper's wife, I guess, but she was there for a joke), no clerks or managers or shopkeepers. Idk.