Reading Pet Sematary. Recently read, Shining 10/10, Christine, 8/10. I am at page 309 of 406 or something and this thing has been an incredibly slow starter. Not sure who else has read the book. But the book feels like its about to completely go off the rails as I assume it needs to as I only have about 90 pages left. I keep flipping the book over and seeing “King’s scariest book ever written” in bold print on the back. But so far its been meh.
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Yeah it’s 7-10 that are the killers. 10 especially. Literally nothing happens. 1-5 are GOATed, 6 & 11-end are good to great.
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Giving Three Body Problem another try now that I’ve watched the Netflix adaption. Now that I at least know the direction the story is going in I expect to like it much more this go around.
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20 years after reading the Lord of the Rings I listened to the “Fellowship of the Ring” on audible. What a delight after such a long time and what a difference from the films. So far I never got the feeling that Frodo is such a whiny Hobbit. Maybe its just the face of Elliah Wood that made him such a soft character.
I started reading it on your suggestion, and I’m about 80% through. I’m enjoying it.
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Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
by Erik Larson
The story of the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, which was one of the main impetuses to push America into WW1.
The best part of the book is tracing the individual traveler’s stories, but the general background was helpful too. Interesting too was the sheer number of things that had to happen to put the ship in the submarine’s path and lead to its destruction.
I was surprised that Germany was so reckless. They basically told their submarines you can sink anything you think might be helping the Allies, which basically resulted in meaning sink anything in the ocean. The Lusitania was the main driver but they sank other ships with Americans after the Lusitania which, combined with the Mexican letter, made the US joining a forgone conclusion.
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Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
3/5
At less than 400 pages the book covers Mussolini, Hitter, Franco, Gaddafi, Pinochet, Berlusconi, Putin, and Trump with some other strongmen thrown in at random times. The book goes through six phases of strongman politics starting with getting to power and ending with losing power with violence and propaganda in the middle.
With so many people though the pace is hectic with each person in each section only getting a couple of pages. The result is the book skims the surface of every strongman and feels like a big let down.
The only things that I learned is that there’s kind of an unbroken chain of strongmen explicitly learning from each other. The book does chain how the fascists influenced the coupe leaders who then influenced the modern day strongmen, also didn’t know the specifics of Italy’s anti Jewish laws during WW2.
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Last month I read The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bailyn. It’s a little dated, and pretty dense. Lots of good references in the footnotes if you are so inclined. Sometimes the writing is academic and turgid, but overall I enjoyed it.
One thing I found interesting is that even then, a big chunk of people were yearning for an idealized past that never really existed. America was a “purer and freer” England. So there was this vague notion of this glorious past that had been lost (Saxon England maybe?).
Also, and this would be funny if it weren’t sad, the colonists, with little self-awareness, kept referring to things like the Coercive acts as slavery–not just metaphorical slavery, but literal slavery.
So these strains of thought have obvious parallels today. It’s always easier to point to a “before” time when things were simpler and not so messy. Never mind that life gets messy as you get older, just naturally. So I feel that the maga morons have an easier time of creating easy slogans (as compared to the people who actually want to make changes to improve society).
I also read The Cunning of History by Rubenstein. This is a short book that discusses some reasons for the Holocaust, and implications for the future of the US. One thesis was that the wide-scale killing only began when “the project was taken out of the hands of bullies and hoodlums and delegated to bureaucrats”. The idea is that the killing was (please pardon the term) inefficient when it depended on humans as free-thinking individuals. Bureaucratization is moved along when you have a system whereby everything can be calculated in a dispassionate and methodical manner.
Also, Protestantism, unlike Catholicism, removed the sacred from the world entirely, and so on a day to day basis, humans do not bump up against anything divine. They are left to their own secular devices. Now, I am not religious, so I am not sure what to think of this fight, but I do find it interesting. The author says that the land of the Reformation was the natural place for the Holocaust to happen: “the process of secularization that led to the bureaucratic objectivity required for the death camps was an essential and perhaps inevitable outcome of the religious traditions of the Judeo-Christian west” (meaning Protestantism). I don’t think the author is so much letting Catholics off the hook, morally speaking (they have their own atrocities to account for), but rather saying the specific nature of the Holocaust was a natural result of Protestantism.
I am always iffy on these sweeping claim of historical causation, but I did think it was interesting. The author says “how utterly mistaken is any view that would isolate Nazism and its supreme expression, bureaucratic mass murder and the bureaucratically administered society of total domination, from the mainstream of Western culture.” Hmm, are there any possible applications to the current landscape? I can think of a few.
One thing that is unquestionably relevant today is the notion that the existence of apatrides (people who had no state) made the Holocaust a lot easier. The Nazis first denationalized the Jewish people, and took away their citizenship. Once this was done, they could kill these people, and not violate any law–these people were not covered by any state or law!
Hmmm, does this apply to any group of people in the news today?
Anyway, I recommend The Cunning of History, your local library probably has it. It’s short, and even if the arguments are not fleshed out in detail, it’s definitely worth reading.
The Bailyn book on the American Revolution I would recommend only if you have a pre-existing interest in the nuts and bolts of the period. I really liked it though.
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This is the best short book analyzing Trumpism as continuous with American anti-liberalism since the founding, with particular emphasis on parallels with the 1920s.
Kagan is widely and deeply read and it’s a well-written book with some genuine insights into the US and its historical development. I “read” most things these days via Audible, and I find their “1 book per month” plan quite useful.
His Youtube lectures on the book and its perspective are also quite good.
My dad wouldn’t let me see the movie until I read the entire trilogy. Took me almost a year before I finally picked up the Hobbit. I read the next 3 within a month. Glad I did. A movie can’t compete with what the imagination comes up with from written words
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Literotica>PornHub?
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Yah, honestly
Grunching.
But regarding Manila. The US absolutely destroyed the city with artillery, in a way they didn’t do in European capitals.
Speaking of war crimes… And Manila was an ally.
How did you go with the rest of pet cemetery
There’s a few scenes in there that I will remember forever.
Thanks for this. With Shogun done (I’m sure I’ll re-read it in a couple years). I’m ready to tackle another Clavell novel so will be heading to the store soon for Tai-Pan. It’s interesting that you put King Rat a level below b/c some of the reviews I’m seeing are saying it’s the best of the lot. In any case, sounds like at least the first 4 are all great in their own right.
I’m guessing you’ve read Musashi by Yoshikawa as well? How does that stack up?
King Rat is a terrific novel, but it’s kind of separate from the “Asia Saga” comprised of all of his other books. Most definitely a worthwhile read.
As is Musashi. Another one I’ve read probably a dozen times. But it is quite different from Clavell’s novels in tone. Written by a Japanese writer for a Japanese audience rather than a Western writer for a one.
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Just got myself a.library card and going to start on the Brandon Sanderson books, but there are like 9 different suggested reading orders online.
Anyone a fan amd can recommend a good reading order?
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The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
4/5
The story of Jim Jones and what lead to the largest mass killing in American history before 9/11. The book details out how Jim Jones was both extremely charismatic and weird. It details out his church and how it evolved from a Church that almost single handedly integrated Indianapolis to a cult where family members were completely cut off from any outside relationships and had to turn over all money to the Church.
The book also goes into detail about his mix of Marxism and Christian religion and it’s pretty much heavily implied though never completely resolved whether the Christian part was a knowing cover to teach Marxism or if he did have some belief the Christian aspect of his teaching.
The Jonestown part is pretty harrowing and the dread reading about Leo Ryan scheduling his trip to inspect Jonestown with every sign pointing to it being a real bad idea.
Some thoughts of mine was there was a lot of finger pointing at San Francisco politicians after the massacre, but it seemed to me that they were mostly just doing politician things and weren’t privy to all the bad stuff happening in private. As soon as a media article ran bringing to light, they abandoned him.
I didn’t know that Jim Jones would do mock poisonings from time to time, telling people to drink something, telling them it was poisoned and they would die and then tell them he was testing them.
It’s never completely laid out but it seems like he had planned the mass poisoning weeks ahead of time, having his subordinates perfect the cocktail over several iterations before shit went down.
I got you. Start with Mistborn: The Final Empire. It’s his second published novel, and gets better from there but the novels definitely are meant to build on each other. If you find it a bit rough, go to The Way of Kings and circle back to Mistborn after.
If you want it from the man himself.
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I just finished the mistborn trilogy myself and now on book 1 of wax and wayne