Kevin's Watch

Currently reading "Lila" by Marilynne Robinson.
There is no way I was not reading this book once I opened it...

Wosbald wrote:He has very whimsical, though not frivolous, style. His writing can be a welcome change-of-pace from the more rigorous, and occasionally stolid, style currently prevalent in much of academia.

That sounds neat.
Sometimes a bit of humor or an unexpected perspective in writing... really helps people to loosen up, play with unfamiliar ideas... and think.

lorin wrote:I'm not reading right now. I think I have a tendency to mimic a writing style that I like. I believe you have to be well read in order to write decently but while I am writing I avoid books. I have a list for wanna reads for my next break.

What didja read on your last break from writing?

(I'm sure I mimic stuff I read, too. Heck, I unconsciously start mimic friends' verbal habits after being in conversation with them for a bit.)

Haha, that happens to me too. If somebody speaks to me in a certain way, I'll find myself falling into that pattern in reply.

I do sometimes worry people will think I'm making fun of them...but I can't help it.

--A

+JMJ+

The Quadruple Object by Graham Harman

+JMJ+

Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory by Graham Harman

does all of mine own poetry count? collating it.

+JMJ+

Manifesto of New Realism by Maurizio Ferraris

Julie just bought me
the Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire

+JMJ+

Introduction to New Realism by Maurizio Ferraris

+JMJ+

Positive Realism by Maurizio Ferraris

+JMJ+

Documentality: Why It Is Necessary to Leave Traces by Maurizio Ferraris

Read The Girl In The Spiders Web this weekend. A follow-on from Stieg Larsson's "Millenium" trilogy, now taken over by a different author.

Not as good as I'd hoped, not as bad as it could have been.

It's always hard to say with books that have been translated, but this new author doesn't seem to be as good. A bit stilted and clumsy, but could have been the translator...can't tell.

Still ended up enjoying it well enough I guess, and will read any more, but not fantastic.

--A

Just finished War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

Although I've read and enjoyed discursive novels in the past, he did kind of overdo it, especially toward the end. Seemed almost like he added the final family scenes just to get it over with so he could write his Second Epilogue, an essay on the complexity and indeterminacy of history which has an important point and displays hard thinking and inquiry for the time when it was written, but still. It would be like George Lucas making you sit through a 45 minute documentary about the Rebellion after Luke has killed Anakin. (I skimmed.)

But the characters really were fascinating, and I highlighted some really amazing quotes. For example,
"Ifwe admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed."

"A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised land to have the strength to move."

"As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man."

I read War and Peace last year. I agree with you that the Second Epilogue dragged on a bit, although whether I would have felt that way had I read it as a stand-alone essay is another matter.

I'm currently reading Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

This is Wiki's summary of the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great ... ion_(book)'

Something called The Snowman by Jo Nesbo.

Touted as the new Stieg Larsson, which is why I'm reading it, but not all that impressed so far.

Serial killer / cop thing.

--A

So, it grew on me in the end, but he's no Stieg Larsson.

So I'm reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo again.

--A

The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Next Millennium book.

--A

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest

Last Millennium book.

--A

+JMJ+

Where Are You?: An Ontology of the Cell Phone by Maurizio Ferraris

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles