“The Burnout Society” Byung-Chul Han. Lots had been said about this essay/book; I found it as compelling as others have. A solid critique of where we find ourselves today and why.
“Wuthering Heights” -Emily Brontë. A deeply weird and sad book; I am glad I have finally read this one, and hopefully now that fucking song can stop lodging itself in my brain when I pick up the kindle.
"Starry Speculative Corpse" - Eugene Thacker. The second volume in Thacker's "Horror of Philosophy" trilogy. More 'academic' than the first, Thacker sets out the notion that we may be ruminating on things that do not care we are ruminating on them.
"Morning and Evening" - Jon Fosse. It's the first book I have read in ages that made me cry; Fosse is a master, pure and simple.
"The Spectacle of the Void" - David Peak. Another attempt (like Thacker) to use horror films and literature to illustrate a "horror of philosophy"-- how do we cope with our own extinction, or the extinction of "us"? I don't think Peak is as successful as Thacker, but the book is put together well.
"The Spy who Loved Me" - Ian Fleming. One of the weirder Bond novels; Bond doesn't even show up until halfway through it, it's in first person, and it's got a very small arc.
"In the Dust of This Planet" - Eugene Thacker. Thacker takes a stab at the philisophical problems that arise if we see the universe as indifferent to us-- what happens when nothing has meaning? He also writes about zombies, a little bit. And fog. And ooze.
“Bertrand Russell : The Ghost of Madness” - Ray Monk. Volume two of Monk’s masterful biography of a deeply, deeply flawed person whose genius left him and who left behind a legacy of …. Shitheadedness. It’s a solid read, but a difficult one, meticulously researched and thoughtful, but deeply sad.
"Open Socrates" - Agnes Callard. Good, but I found it a very uneven read. It made me re-think Socrates, which is the goal, so it's sucessful; parts of it felt kind of meandering and dull. The last chapter, on death, is excellent.
"Right Wing Women" - Andrea Dworkin. Dworkin is more talked about than read, and I am glad I took the time to do so. She's a difficult read, and you may object to several things she says, but her arguments are clear, thought through, and researched.
"Bertrand Russell : The Spirit of Solitude" - Ray Monk. Volume 1 of Monk's two volume biography of Russell, there's a LOT about Russell being a horny nerd; interesting to note how much his encounters with Wittgenstein fucked up his philosophy careeer. It's a solid read for those with interest.
"Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"- Ludwig Wittgenstein. I reached the end of this. I have not finished it. No one has.
"Scorch Atlas" - Blake Butler. I wanted to dig this, as gross apocalypses are a total thing I enjoy, but this was all image in service of nothing.
Perhaps I shouldn't make flippant references to self-harm, but two weeks seems like a weirdly long delay.
A little bit ago I posted a picture on Instagram with a copy of Schopenhauer's "The World as Will..." next to a jar of Marmite with the caption "I hate myself and I want to die". Two weeks later, I get a popup expressing "concern" and offering "resources".
Yeah. I will say that Erickson *delivers* what a lot of epic fantasy *promises*, so it's enjoyable. It's just a commitment.
I have enjoyed it all thus far, but reading them is... slow, and I am a fairly fast reader. I keep thinking "gee, this will be a fun break from (whatever I am torturing myself with)" and they both are and are not, simply because they're 850+ pages each.
"House of Chains" -Steven Erikson. These are good novels, but they are long novels, which I should consider a bit more before embarking on them. He begins to pick up the threads a bit more in this one. Maybe I'll get to book five this summer.
"notes."
"The Aesthetics of Music" - Roger Scruton. A joyless slog. Scruton does make some interesting points, but he is also an irritating toff. Huge sections of the book are weighed down with classicist examples.
"Technic and Magic" - Federico Campagna. A work of two halves, the first half posits our present world, the second half attempts to create a way out of it. I thought it leaned too heavily on mysticism, but it's not *dumb*, if that makes any sense.
From now on, anyone entering the French Quarter will be required to take off their shoes. That way, no one will be able to tell you where you got them
www.nola.com/news/bourbon...
"How to Read Wittgenstein" - Ray Monk. It does what it says on the tin. Monk wrote the skull-cracker of a biography I read late last year. It may be time for me to stop reading *about* Wittgenstein, and read some Wittgenstein.
"Mrs. Dalloway" - Virginia Woolf. Probably the least favorite Woolf book I have read, but that means it still stands head and shoulders over most things I read. A deeply human story, written as only Woolf could.
As is my custom, I will have a thread with all the books I read this year, as I finish them, with a few notes.
Hey @zitron.bsky.social I'm assuming you're a lot less busy on here so are you going to talk about BlaBlaCar acquiring Klaxit now?
I ask annoying questions on my blog: https://thelithole.com/2023/05/16/authenticity-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-other-ephemera/
I do not have answers.
