Luke > Recent Status Updates

Finally Graham's growing some kind of backbone, nepotism-logged as it is.

He is contemplative and relaxed, which Atonists confuse with laziness because he is not hard at work drilling, blocking the view of the ocean, destroying the oyster beds or releasing radioactive chemicals that will give unborn 3-year-olds leukemia and cancer.

To interrupt James' bloviating enthusiasms for a moment with a brief summation: she's of old money. Old as balls.

The manner in which everyone in this pie in the sky circle pats themselves on the back when it comes to "being one of the boys" and being "destined for greatness", through intentional crime and conscious failure, is fascinating. And these are the folks that the US loves having in charge of its political system.

Main character's having rather a crisis here. The sole purpose of him being in Europe is so that he can 'rescue' a man and be rewarded with the man's mother's hand in marriage. However, at this moment in time, he'd vastly prefer to marry the man rather than become the man's father. Unfortunately, cishets gonna cishet.

Would be great if James stopped consciously undercutting the sexiness of his prose.

Fascinating intersection between Graham and Jessica "Decca" of the Mitford set, but of course carefully restricted to scenes of money exchange (Graham's father lent Jessica's first husband $1000) and vague summations of Jessica's whirlwind of a radical career that somehow didn't drastically conflict with Graham considering her "my dear friend."

I longed for a respite from people who considered themselves superior only because they were overpaid.

Well, more than 600 pages of "The money! The Money! THE MONEY!" and its various, often wildly conflicting ideological covers being remedied with alcoholism, personality cults, and abuse is going to be pretty tedious, but this is certainly one way of tracing Trump, anti Roe vs. Wade, and other contemporary breeds of terrorism back to its source.

Committing to this and thereby making three quarters of my current reading nonfiction isn't the wisest move, but this is the last of the heftier reads I have planned for 2022 reading challenges, and I'd rather not lose my momentum now.

This book would be a lot better if US capitalism didn't force academics to make their thinkpieces fit into trending Twitter tag style journalism so that they aren't forced to resort to donating plasma in order to put food on the table.

"There are professions, such as orchestra conducting, directing, film producing and even teaching, which spoil one's character, for it is dangerous always to know better."
(By the way, so far, this book is bloody fantastic.)

Certain readers of this kind of piece are going to be put off by how blunt Viertel is about the sexual harassment/assault she dealt with as a young entry level actress, but honestly? Good on her for being upfront about it.

I have a feeling that this book is going to be an awful lot of fun.

Too many Gary Stus/Mary Sues and not enough enculturated politics for my tastes.

It wasn't enough not to show my suffering: it was necessary not to suffer.

I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself.

You ever run into the kind of reader who is mortally offended by yet secretly obsessed with certain writers who dare to be good prose stylists without being white, English, or straight? It's always a trip.

They do not need to look at him very long to understand that he thought as they do, exactly as they do, on all subjects. At the service of their obstinately narrow, small ideas he has placed the authority and immense erudition drawn from the papers crushed in his hand.

End of 'The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal'; beginning of 'The Saga of the People of Laxardal'.

And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others[.]

A whole unrecorded history is spoken then, Brother. You wouldn't believe it but it's true.

Weil's one of those thinker writers that I'm probably going to be worrying at every so often throughout the years until I'm on my deathbed. Not the most boring thing to be doing, at any rate.

Where were the historians today? And how would they put it down?

Bless the random strangers who click the follow rather attempt to force through an auto friend request. They looked at my nearly 100:1 books to friends ratio and thought, hm. Maybe this person actually likes their personal space.

End of 'Egil's Saga,' beginning of 'The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal'.

Wonder if there is a record for longest book introduction.

Well, it's safe to say that I probably got confused about what I had actually read whilst logging in multitudes of ratings into my GR account all those years ago, but unless something goes massively wrong, this work needn't worry about losing its five star rating with me.

White guy horrified that white guy sanctioned tech treats him in the same manner that white guys treat everyone who isn't a white guy. More at 11.

What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked.