Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

This is pretty decent so far - testing out Audible, and this is solid.

Less twee than I was expecting.

More Britishy reading of a Jubilee long weekend. Fun so far. Whimsical. A bit different to what I was expecting, and better for it - especially the explanations of the sources.

Good topic for a long weekend of nostalgic patriotism. Telling me nothing I didn't know in an entertainingly well-written, prejudices-confirming way.

Doing a re-read after finding a rather nice edition in a charity shop - the Modern Library paperback from 2000, full of rather nice illustrations.

This is pretty readable straight narrative history - though the introduction with its clichés, it gets better as it gets to the body. Written after the Crimea annexation, so with a strong eye on explaining the Russia-Ukraine tensions from a long historical lens, and very topical.

That thing where you keep forgetting you haven't finished reading a book that's actively awesome.

Horrendously dated attitudes in places - but read between the lines, and the *intention* is impressively contemporary. Written, as this was, in the early 50s - and talking mostly about the 30s and 40s so far - it's trying to convey through the language of the times a concept not too far off being "woke".

It's still pretty racist in places, mind.

Picked up on a 99p Kindle deal because something caught my eye. So far, so unconvinced. All seems a bit obvious. Perfectly well written, but obvious. Will see if it picks up

Have had the book sitting on the shelf for a couple of years, and have been listening to the unabridged audiobook version (read by the author) while walking the dog. A fifth of the way in, and I'm really struggling to see the point. Well written? Yes. Interesting concept? Yes. Interesting / engaging itself? Not really. I'm struggling to care about any of the banalities that count for events, or any of the characters.

Definitely much more readable than teenaged me would ever have given credence to when I was railing against all things Austen and Brontë as twee and tedious, and lumped Eliot in with them through ignorance.

Too early to tell if I'll join the ranks of those lauding this as one of the best novels ever, though.

Extremely self-satisfied, more concerned with providing anecdotal evidence of influential people using his techniques than really articulating how to use those techniques, but some useful stuff in here. "Reading" as an audiobook while walking the dog, and a decent recording - albeit on 2.4x speed due to painful slowness otherwise.

Strange book, this. Not sure what I was expecting, but still strange. Readable, though.

"Fuck the gods."