Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

Haven't read one of these postapocalyptic books in a while. This seems to be a good one, but they're all much of a muchness. I know Atwood's meant to be excellent (I've only ever tried one of hers before, and gave up for some reason), but this feels a bit like fan fiction from a Fallout game. Good fan fiction, mind. But still...

Damn, these are some looooooong sentences... One went on for 19 pages... It works, though.

Have started this again from the beginning, now with added audiobook version for when walking the dog. It really is excellent - and I'm also finding it much easier to keep track of who's who this time.

Considering this is the *shorter* of his two books on this topic (the other being c.1500 pages), I'm kinda amazed at how prolix he is. Feels like everything so far could be summed up in a few hundred words. But some people rave about it, so will persevere. It reads well, at least - and the audiobook version works well on 2.5x speed, so...

I may have mentioned it before, but the man can *write*. Damn. Chugs along at an insane pace (despite not an awful lot happening much of the time, in classic meandering flashback style), and then he'll hit you with a paragraph of insanely poetic description, or genuinely profound insight. And then it's straight back to the lighthearted jokiness.

He *really* doesn't like Emmanuel Macron...

Dipping back in, and remembering how much I enjoy Meades' ability to continually surprise, provoke, and entertain - often on topics I know next to nothing about.

Still feel this could be much, much shorter, but still has the ability to surprise. The sections on French and British colonial wealth and inequality in particular had some pretty brutal stats. Almost like imperialism was an exploitative system of conquest and oppression...

I need to read me some more William James, it seems.

Continues to be pretty long-winded and mostly very familiar, but engaging.

I'm not sure this needs to be as long as it is, but seems solid. Basic argument: All problems in society stem from social inequality; social inequality stems from property rights, because property is about power and control, and tends to accumulate. Capitalism is fundamentally about property rights, and therefore tends to increase inequality. All of this is deliberately obscured by various ideological justifications.

Rushdie can write, eh?

"There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished... It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognizable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens - an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren't obvious... Only foreigners can truly understand the way things work."