Dan > Recent Status Updates

And Sands’s tone is very outraged, rightfully, though not very scholarly—a lot of these books on war on terror torture act as if this was the first time soldiers/CIA engaged in activity like this, and it was all Bush’s fault. Top-down approach to abuses. I think it would be more honest and powerful if these books mentioned that this stuff was commonplace, but Bush was the first one to properly sanction it.

On page 9, Sands is talking about how respected the Army Field Manual was to interrogators before Rumsfeld’s torture memo, how soldiers didn’t view it as quaint or obsolete. I don’t know much about Vietnam, and massacres aside, I’m pretty sure soldiers tortured people for information not infrequently.

Really liking this so far because this book was pre-war on terror, and every justification and step on the road to torture are things America did later. Maybe if someone in the Pentagon had read this book, he’d have realized none of that would end well.

(Also I can’t read even one of these research books without walking away having added more to my to-read—gotta read his source for the Battle of Algiers next.)

This author needs to learn the difference between jail and prison. Also, the judge is focusing on the kid having a 0.1 BAC when the legal limit is 0.08, but he’s neglecting the fact that he’s underage, so /any/ alcohol in his system is automatically an issue.

I like dark academia books at least in theory, but I always forget how silly it is when they take place in high schools. Also I don’t know why Hopen expects us to believe a boy from a school which provided barely any nonreligious education, who never even took geometry, would be in the AP bio class. But the author has nailed the tone of The Secret History, which is good.

Very creative concept, and it’s not BAD or anything, but I was expecting a masterpiece and this is falling a little flat for me.

Also the poem itself, Pale Fire, gave me Eliot vibes—Prufrock in particular, but a couple parts were reminiscent of The Waste Land, and there seemed to be a bit of The Hollow Men too.

Calling it now, Kinbote has a thing for Shade and he’s not a trustworthy dude.

I read this one every other year or so when the weather warms up. Predictable story, lots of things that are too convenient to be believable, but cute and fun anyway.

The story is intriguing enough, but it’s the most tell-don’t-show writing I’ve read in a while. The author keeps name dropping clothing brand, which is annoying. I’ll stick it out, but it’s really not great.

Very bad so far so we’ll see if I stick with it

Sticking with this because it’s one of the foundations of military sci-fi, but Jesus Christ, it has disgusting ideas about women. Starship Troopers was better than this—no women in the army at least meant no women could be objectified.

This is my read-outside-in-springtime book. Started reading it on Sunday, when it was 70 degrees out, but now it’s cold and rainy so I have to postpone it until it’s warm again.

Palate cleanser after Johnny Got His Gun; nothing like Wimpy Kid to get the taste of something awful out of your mouth.