A. > Recent Status Updates

Candleflames, mantras. idk man. Meh.

Introduction+ chapter 1. First encounter with Ruth, magic shop, relaxing meditation

Shadow reborn. The war starting. Laura gealed?

Meeting Whiskey Jack.

Lakeside, Mike Ainsel. Hinzelmann. Journey to Las Vegas. Wednesday’s charms (spellbinding).

Still on Naomi

Third case: Naomi, and the mental toll of black oppression in America.

On foot to New Orleans. Kidnapped, tortured, released. A fun car ride through middle America with a hitchhiking teenager.

End of the Bapu chapter. This book is beginning to lose me. For all its emphasis on the power of stories, its own depiction of the cases are muddled, the timelines murky. And in pushing for understanding over bias, it seems to be falling into bias of its own.

The spellbinding intro (young Rachel, the world’s youngest anorexic).
Part I — Ray. Antidepressants 1, Psychotherapy 0.
Part II — Bapu, a devotee of Krishna.

idk man. The cases seem kind of arbitrarily chosen, and the analysis shot through with bias.

Czernobog and the Doryas. A great passive bank robbery. The House on the Rock. Mr Nancy. The World’s Largest Carousel—and the gods.

Chapter 1: A penny saved = two pennies earned. Saving money by bying in bulk and using priceline.

Restarted! Shadow sprung from prison. Mister Wednesday, Mad Sweeney. The funeral. First encounter with a new god. The atmosphere, elusive, dreamlike.

“On Cruelty”. The difference between being good—easy—and being virtuous—grueling, because it can only be done against adversity. Montaigne himself spurns most vices. In particulsr, cruelty. A surprising ode to the rights of animals. A pretty good essay.

“On books”. Montaigne professes to read for pleasure, and to have a low attention span; he reviews his books after he reads them and clearly would have loved goodreads. His favorite authors are Plutarch and Seneca.

“On the amor of the Parthians”. A loosie about armor so heavy it’s practically useless.

“On the affection of fathers for their children”. The parts where Montaigne talks about how he hopes toraise his own children, how he wants them to like him and to make his love for themobvious—sublime, wonderful, revealing. Whenhe talks about women, wills, or books as children? Blech.

“On rewards for honor”. It took 500 pages but Montaigne is heating up—fever example scrapbooks, more blind reasoning. Honorifics are worthless except by virtue of their rarity.

“On practice”, in which Montaigne relives his near-death experience being thrown from a hourse. The main business of living is to learn how to die. An outstanding and autobiographical essay.

Rwandan genocidaires stirring it up in refugee camps. The key differences between rehabilitating post-genocide Rwanda vs Germany South Africa. The pragmatic Paul Kagame. Rwandan genocidaires refusing croissants and protesting for gruel.

“The Moons of Jupiter”, Alice Munro, 10/10. An unbelievably good story—the various elements skilfully introduced and masterfully intertwined until they’re almost unbearably charged with meaning, dotted with moments of blinding wisdom and poignancy. The frame—daughter helps her father through valvular heart disease—becomes a reckoning with death and a lifetime of regrets. Munro doesn’t ever miss.

“I WillKeepHer Company”, Rhys Davies, 5/10. A old man dies with his wife in their snowy rural Welsh cottage. Lots of pointless natural descriptions. The entire first sectioncould have been cut—start with Nurse Baldock, the snowplough, the helicopter.

“Life-Line”, Robert A. Heinlein, 7/10. A pleasant satirical story about a doctor who can predict the exact moment of death and all the ensuing societal repercussions. Satirical. The only story here that addresses medical research.

“Lady With A Lamp”, Dorothy Parker, 2/10. A terrible unreliable narrator story, not very funny, the voice poorly realized.

“Amy Foster”, Joseph Conrad, 6/10. Incredibly overwrought, but the central story of a shipwrecked immigrant in a small British town, is fine. “Yanko Goorall” would have been a better title.

End of part I. Genocide = cheese sandwich. The “refugees” were actually Interahamwe. You feel for Gen Dallaire, neutered during the genocide and anguished afterwards.

“Let Mw Feel Your Pulse,” O. Henry, 5/10. So much of this story depends on the voice, which falls flat. I wasn’t even expecting a twist but I got one anyway—Amaryllis! That half of the story was better.

“Swept and Garnished,” Rudyard Kipling, 6.5/10. Acute encephalopathy 2/2 viral URI in the setting of national guilt regarding tge massacre of innocent children in wartime.