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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2414 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 13, 2025

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?

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Korzybski and Lovecraft. Also going through a few religious things.

I just finished Elena Ferrante's second Neapolitan novel. The writing is terrific and beautiful, but the plot movement left something to be desired in my mind. The first book was far better. I might still get around to the third some time this summer if I can get it from the library, it's not a difficult book to read, so it's a good vacation book.

This weekend I'm planning to dig into Moneyland, which my mother picked up for me at the bookstore because an old advance copy was available free, I guess it's a book about how rich people move money around. Should be a fun read.

I'm wrapping up The Cartiers on audiobook. I'll do a bigger writeup when I finish it, but it's a really fascinating work of family and business history. The jeweler aspects are interesting, the innovation of platinum settings and the creation of iconic pieces like the Santos and the Tank. There's also a personal view of European history to it, the family firm working its way through wars. In 1870, the business almost failed during the commune, but ultimately survived and made money selling the gems of bankrupt Paris aristocrats. In 1914, all three brothers (Louis, Jacques, Pierre) served; Louis most famously as a general's aide behind the lines would invent the Tank style of watch based on seeing early tanks at the front line, though it was Jacques who would win the Croix de Guerre and serve at the front lines despite his brothers and father urging him repeatedly to avoid combat service and think of the company. After the war they lost their Russian customers, but did a roaring business recycling gems for cash for exiled Russian Whites and (sub rosa) for the Soviets. With the firm remaining open through WWII, it's a snapshot of real life for frenchmen in occupied Paris, and what it actually looked like. The aftermath permanently reoriented their business toward their US offices. It's not exactly a worms-eye view (these are guys who had bitter rivalries with Faberge, challenged Rothschilds to duels, and made gems for kings and capitalists) but it's a uniquely selfish view: the Cartiers cared most about Cartier, and though they were often patriotic ideology was secondary to personal interest.

How difficult was the first book? I'm thinking of reading it in Italian (my Italian is workman-like but not good). Do you feel like it works as a stand-alone?

I'm a dirty monolingual so I read it in English, but the language wasn't difficult, nor were the concepts. There is a lot of mentions of interplay between dialect and "Italian" in the text, so idk if in the original you'll run into Neapolitan slang. The first book is pretty self-contained, and it's mostly one of those post-modern one damn thing after another books anyway, but knowing it's a quartet I'll probably finish it up.

Hmmm maybe not the best Italian book for me to start with in that case. Thanks for the info.

I'm finishing a short story collection by Peter Watts, aptly titled "An antidote for optimism". I don't know man, I just don't get misanthropes on a fundamental level. The cynics, the antinatalists, the degrowthers - he's all that and then some. And I resent the probable riposte that it just means that I'm not enlightened enough to see the human and universal condition for what it is. Sometimes it feels like people like him or Von Trier or Herzog treat/use depression like a contagious vector - trying to spread it around to dull their own pain.

I am in the middle of the Culture series and feeling a loss of momentum. I enjoyed Player of Games, Consider Phlebus and to some degree Use of Weapons but it feels pretty underwhelming afterwards.

The State of the Art was a weird mix of short stories that barely kept me going. Had to skip ahead to Matter since the others aren't available in my library.. I'm finding Matter is also rather snoozeville.

Any other good ones? I really like being immersed in the Culture parts of the Culture universe but all of the rest is not that interesting.

State of the Art was pretty awful and threw me off bigly. The only story I liked was about that suit from the crash-landed guy.

If I were telling anyone else new to the series how to read it, I would say "skip it".

I do think it's a bit "overrated" as far as sci-fi goes. None of the books is going to change your life like some other 5/5 sci-fi, especially not the back half of the series. However, re-looking at the synopses for Matter/Surface Detail/Inversions/Look to Windward, I will say you still have some exciting books left. Hydrogen Sonata was a bit weaker, but still worth reading to complete things.

All that said, none of them are set primarily in the culture. If that's what kept you hooked, then be warned.

No love for Excession? That's got to be in my top 3 among the series.

I also loved Inversions, but IIRC it's about as far from the Culture parts of the Culture universe as you can get.

I found Look to Windward so uninteresting that I remember my annoyance with that better than I remember any of the plot.

Matter and certainly Surface Detail were both worth reading; perhaps better than Consider Phlebas, if you don't give the latter credit for introducing the whole universe.

Surface detail is great.

I second this, Surface Detail was my introduction to the Culture (though full disclosure it's also the only one I've read so far, doh ho ho).

The O'Rahilly by Michael Joseph O'Rahilly. A biography of one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, he tried to stop it from happening and ironically ended up being the only rebel leader to be killed in action (as opposed to being executed). W.B Yeats wrote a poem about him. I had barely heard about him before and it's unclear whether this is whether he was relatively unimportant or because he ended up on the wrong side of history for opposing a rebellion which has since become glorified (though by now the revisionists have had their say).

The book was written by his son Aodogán O’Rahilly and he makes the latter case. I haven't gotten to the action yet but the family anecdotes and descriptions of life in the late 19th/early 20th centuries are interesting. It's a bit of a mystery as to why O'Rahilly became a radical Irish nationalist. Unlike most of the other Irish revolutionaries I have read about he had no family history of Irish nationalism, they had even removed the O' from their surnames, he had no experience in war and he wasn't a young man with nothing to lose either. He was part of the rising Catholic middle class, enjoying an income of £900 per year and he was married to an even wealthier American heiress. The most you see are hints here and there in his personal letters before he quickly becomes devoted to the cause.

I haven't gotten to the action yet but that should be interesting. The whole Irish Volunteer movement was subversions within subversions. On the one hand you had moderate parliamentary nationalists like John Redmond successfully convincing 90% of the Volunteers to go and fight in WW1 (Ireland had no draft) and achieve self-government by showing loyalty to the crown, on the other you had the secret oath-bound organisation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood doing their best to take control of the organisation and turn it into a force for insurrection. All that was for certain was that a 180,000 strong nationalist paramilitary organisation was being built to counter an equally large loyalist paramilitary organisation and O'Rahilly was helping to build it.

On the day that he drove across the country alone to join the battle he tried to stop, speaking to the people who had just wrested control of the Volunteers and relegated him to the sidelines of history, he is quoted as saying - "Well, I've helped to wind up the clock -- I might as well hear it strike!"

Finished War at Every Door. It seems to me to be more of an overview of guerilla resistance practiced by both sides in East Tennessee in the American Civil War. A little light on the details of what motivated each particular person and how they came to their views, but I suppose that's a bit difficult to know. It's more of a high-school history class level overview of people, places, incidents, and times, but at a high enough level that I found it interesting and easy to keep up with reading.

What I'm more interested in is any evidence to support or refute the theory that the Borderer elements of the American South were never all that into slavery, secession, etc, and it was all a Cavalier thing. After reading this book, I don't think that theory is specifically proven or refuted, but remains a possibility. It does seem to have some possible jumping-off points for further research on the subject, which I may or may not try my hand at at some point.

The book does seem to have a "both sides" view. Both the Confederate and Union armies experienced guerilla resistance and tried various methods to deal with it, some working better than others. The guerilla resistors mostly hassled civilians supporting the other side and small groups of soldiers and civilian Government representatives from the side they were against. They sometimes tried more direct interference with larger-scale military operations, which was mostly of very limited effectiveness and brought down harsh reprisals - the most direct example is the Unionist attempt to burn several bridges early on in the war, which would have impeded the movement of the Confederate armies northward to defend against a then-planned Union invasion (Wikipedia summary). This did not go well and mostly lead to a number of executions by hanging after court-martial.

The Door by Magda Szabó is a little over 300 pages long. The plot starts around page 200. I'm not enjoying it.

Reading the second book in "La Saga de Los Confines" by Liliana Bodoc. Trying to only reading in Spanish until my DELE exam in May.

For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, book 5) by Kim Harrison.

Just read the wiki

Tell me so much more?

Is it good / fun ?

Sure! I'll start by saying that I can be easy to please with books in general, especially when I'm getting them for a couple-few bucks a pop at the Kindle store. On top of that, I have a soft spot for Urban Fantasy thanks in no small part to Shadowrun and Anne Rice novels when I was a teenager and, more recently, The Dresden Files. But yes! I like them so far and have been having fun getting to know the world and the characters, and when I saw that a whole bunch of them were on sale for a few bucks each, I got all of the cheap ones for my Kindle.

I'd say that thus far, The Hollows books are, in a general way, reminiscent of the earlier Dresden Files books to me, which is to say that they have a strong MC narrating in first person, they aren't too heavy/grimdark despite both MCs having issues with their respective authorities, they have the mystery novel aspect to them, they have good worldbuilding, and they are centered around a Midwestern city. The Hollows seems to be a little bit more lighthearted and whimsical overall, although there is plenty of double dealing, death, and hair-raising adventure to be had in each book thus far, as well as plenty of relationship drama. For me, it's the development of the various characters that I'm really enjoying and where I feel the writing shines, including the will-they-or-won't-they situations, the snags, imperfections and complicated interplay between the various characters and factions that are slowly but surely drawing our MC into deeper and more troubled waters. I particularly like how Harrison has developed and deepened the relationship between MC Rachel Morgan and her roommate and business partner, Ivy.

If you like the looks of it, I'd encourage you to pick up Dead Witch Walking and give it a try. Also, I stayed kinda general here to try and keep away from spoiling anything significant but if you want to hear more/have more specific questions, fire away!

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