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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4371 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 26, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on The Future Does Not Compute. Picking up Reagan in His Own Hand, a collection of radio addresses he wrote, which has been cited as proof that the "amiable dunce" theory of Reagan is clearly false.

I finished Through Struggle, the Stars after catching a glimmer of a rec from @IdealFireplace and man - I really enjoyed it. I'm less critical of the quality drop off outside of space. There was something strangely addicting about both of the books to where there was some sort of action leading me to turn the page over and over again. I burned through both books very quickly. it's supposed to be a trilogy so, be warned, the fucking author decided to never finish it, instead dedicating himself to an obscure video game that supposedly tries to make horrifically boring spaceship conflict exciting. In that vein, I'll be bitching about Homeworld 3 on Friday.

I also finished Mixtape Hyperborea. Looks like the author is pretty active on goodreads. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I read some suggestions that you should listen to the actual mixtape on spotify while reading it. Frankly, I didn't like any of the music. The navel-gazing playlist selection and lack of violence were the biggest indicators that the author was most familiar with a prep school instead of public. One common criticism of the book seems to be that it's plotless, which I think is obviously untrue. Is it super exhilarating? No, but at least the main character graduates and gets his dick sucked at the final party of the book. I think it had more appeal than raw nostalgia, and I'd suggest it for any millennial.

Coming up next is me taking another crack at the Culture series. Finished book 1 (what a fuckin drag) and finally finishing up "Don't Sit Under the Grits Tree with Anyone Else but Me".

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

It's interesting to see how small details in Bourdain's memoir found their way to The Bear.

Worth reading?

I'm about 100 pages into the book, and I'm enjoying it. I'm fresh off a re-watch of the second season of The Bear, and it's been fun picking up small details from the book used in the show.

"Beggars in Spain", the original novella, by Nancy Kress. I have no idea how I went this long without reading it. There's almost nothing I could describe as "filler"; she makes me work as a reader, in a good way. It hints at the inner life of other characters, without ever giving definitive answers. And it's on-topic for this forum, too.

"Why do law-abiding and productive human beings owe anything to those who neither produce very much nor abide by just laws? What philosophical or economic or spiritual justification is there for owing them anything? Be as honest as I know you are."

I just finished The Forever War. I thought it was interesting but ultimately worse than Starship Troopers. It was far too cynical in my opinion.

Picked up Wolfe’s A Man in Full again after 15+ years, with a lot more cultural knowledge and stronger English. A hundred pages in. It’s phenomenal.

Still reading Flynn. At this point he has:

  1. Begun acting, to great success. One of his co-stars (a man named Bill Meade) falls from a horse and is impaled by the sword he flung away as a failed protective measure. Flynn mourns this man's death. Flynn is also almost run through with a sword by fellow actor Anthony Quinn. Flynn states he makes a vow never to spar on film with actors, preferring stuntmen, who rather know their craft better and do not ham dangerously for the cameras.

  2. Gotten married to his first wife, a French woman who he says was both beautiful and amazingly talented in what he terms the "erotic arts."

  3. Been hospitalized when this same wife hits him over the head with a champagne bottle when he is late for their first year anniversary (not of their wedding, but their courtship or whatever.) He punches her in the face, in his first act, he says, of any sort of violence against a woman. He feels guilty about it, or claims to.

  4. Drunkenly bought a pet lion he named "Wellington."

  5. Been to some place in Paris that his wife took him called Le Monocle. There his wife flirts with what Flynn terms a "bulldyke" woman who he also describes as "better dressed than any man." After being conned into being charged for 6 bottles of champagne (instead of six drinks, which is what he imagined he was buying) he is then beaten up by a bunch of apparently large women. He goes to a French jail where he is beaten up some more by the gendarmes.

  6. In a fit of pique wanting to flee his wife and her jealous rages (he has cheated on her repeatedly, though with whom he does not say), fled to Spain to pretend to be a war correspondent during the very real Spanish Civil War. He writes of himself as: "A man who chose to go off to a bitter war instead of remaining with (his wife.)" His comrade is blown apart by a bomb.

More to come! Sorry I'm so incredibly slow reading this.

Just starting Sputnik Sweetheart I found at the used bookstore.

Not one of my favorites, but readable I seem to remember. Murakami's best book in my view is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It's as weird as his others, but I liked the story.

So far my favorite has been A Wild Sheep Chase but I think 1Q84 was just behind it and I don't get the feeling that most people pit those two 1-2. Wind up Bird was my introduction to him. I liked it but definitely found it pretty weird.

What’s the timeline on those addresses?

Perhaps I’m too young, but when I see Reagan’s faculties criticized, it’s framed as dementia and degradation. I’m not familiar with the argument that he was always a pretty face.

Seems to be from 1975-1979, not long before his presidency, although the last section has miscellaneous writings from 1925-1994. It’s very engaging, much better than I would expect from a politician but not as dense as an actual book. The lack of a voice definitely diminishes his usual impact.

According to this CIA pdf there’s been a reappraisal in the 2000’s. As for my own previous impression, they were coloured by brief and likely misremembered readings of Lou Cannon’s work, which gave me the impression that he was aloof.

Reading that came with a strange sense of deja vu. The author is fighting for Reagan with the same attitude some people use for ivermectin. It’s strange to see this applied to a subject I didn’t know was controversial.

I suppose positioning oneself as a bold iconoclast has a certain appeal. Perhaps it’s the best way to get attention in the competitive marketplace of, uh, CIA history periodicals.

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