I'm about to start The Passenger today. While he may have started it in the 80's, I'm not expecting another Blood Meridian.

The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession. About dude called Luca Turin, who apparently revolutionized how we think about the sense of smell.

enframed wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:00 pm The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession. About dude called Luca Turin, who apparently revolutionized how we think about the sense of smell.

Very interesting.

Also just started Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band.

Dave N. wrote: I read the new Cormac McCarthy joint a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed the first 2/3 immensely, but I found the last 1/3 to be a bit of a slog. I get the sense that these two parts of the book were written at different times, as the momentum and humor let up after Bobby Western visits his grandmother. I’m going to read it again. Maybe it was attributed to distractions in my own life.

I finished it as well...and while I enjoyed the entirety, an honest appraisal of the scenario at play here verges on the ludicrous. I mention this only because previous books seemed much more concerned with not presenting such a wildly romanticized world for his characters to play in.

Krev wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:13 pm I'm about to start The Passenger today. While he may have started it in the 80's, I'm not expecting another Blood Meridian.

not going to ruin it for you, but if it's darkness you crave, I think it delivers.

VaticanShotglass wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 4:35 pmSpinoza (I like that dude)

I like him too, though the geometry stuff feels to me like more of a novelty (not that I've bothered to go deeply into it). What I like is that the consequence of his idea of separate manifested things being attributes of a single substance is that there becomes just this endless variation of individuals where each is completely unique, each one equally itself, with no model to compare them to. No clear lines therefore separating one type of human from another, nor man from woman, nor even, ultimately, human from non-human. Obviously the last one gets you into some ethical problems. In either case it's clearly from here that Deleuze takes off. Rather than "what is it?", the question is "what can it be?". Nothing is for an individual the right thing to be except just what it is.

Another objection to this would be that it seems to suggest that each living thing, conscious thing, thing interacting actively with its environment, is in a direct relationship to the full truth of existence. Whereas in a typical Christian or Jewish view, as well as most liberal ones, there is never such an immediate relationship, but it is mediated by the word (law), which is interpreted in a community, i.e. its meaning is never fully graspable to a single individual, or at a single point in time. Something which can stifle and frustrate but also protect. I haven't looked at Spinoza's political text yet, interested in what his angle might be on this.

I have also adopted a Spinoza-inspired view on scientific naturalism, where we can view descriptions of reality offered in physics, biology, sociology and so on, as modalities of phenomena, with no need to determine which one comes "first" or which one is more fundamental (which at any rate makes little sense). Same for brain states vs. mental events, and similar.

My aversion to sytamization is methodological. I find piecemeal, bottom up investigation (or at least a sort of pincer attack) to produce more empirically sensitive results. The less commitment to a priori reasoning the better. Should overarching systems emerge fromthis work, then good, so long as they can be revised moving forward. This comes from my pragmatist and naturalist tendencies.

My approach is basically Deleuzo-Guattarian - while interacting with some body of thought allowing pieces to break off at random which can then be repurposed or mutate into something unexpected. This is partly me adapting to my impatience and laziness. But it also seems to fit the way my mind processes things.

Thank you for these thoughtful comments.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Invasion by Luke Harding. I know this is already the global sentiment, but fuck the Kremlin.

Re-reading Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector.

GuyLaCroix wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 3:47 pm The Overstory by Richard Powers.

Sublime first couple page. A book about trees!

I've been chipping away at this one for over a month. It seemed like a collection of short stories but once it started to connect it's kind of a 'a ha!' moment. Way into it now but still have a ways to go.

"Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell. Was really looking forward to this - I like a lot of what he's written, plus this one is about, y'know, a rock band, so... - but I am not enjoying this at all. Very very disappointed. Very little of the 60's trappings feels credible (the speech so often feels absolutely contemporary), I don't believe the band or their relationships, and I'm particularly gutted that Mitchell seems set on linking up all his previous works with characters being related to those in other books, like they all happen in the "David Mitchell Universe" or something. I keep plowing on, hoping that it will get better, but I think that's probably misguided.

Also really annoyed by the nerdy "smuggling" in of lyrics from songs. At one point, a character says "An ounce of perception. A pound of obscure". That's the kind of dumb nerd shit I'd do.