Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits has been a really fun read so far. Reminds me of One Hundred Days of Solitude a bit along with some of Ursula Le Guin's works.

I finished Scott Eyman’s biography of John Ford not long ago. My key takeaway is that Ford was a dick.

A book written by a Czech author, called Saturnin. It was recommended to me at a funeral last week by one of my in-laws, who was born in Czechoslovakia. My previous experience with literature from that region had been limited to Milan Kundera. Saturnin is hilarious and I'm liking it very much.

iembalm wrote: Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:18 pm A book written by a Czech author, called Saturnin. It was recommended to me at a funeral last week by one of my in-laws, who was born in Czechoslovakia. My previous experience with literature from that region had been limited to Milan Kundera. Saturnin is hilarious and I'm liking it very much.

This sounds pretty good. Thank you.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Finally finished Braiding Sweetgrass. It was a dense read, and I read some other stuff in between, but it offers some glimmers of hope if you're feeling like we're ecologically doomed.

-- There is the possibility of a pain through lack, even the possibility of an absence, only because it had been previously supposed that there was the presence of a mother, of someone.

And this constitutes a petitio principii, a formal vice without weight for people like us whose discourse makes no claim to consistency, refusing to buy it when an explanation is attempted :

as soon as there is someone, an instance which passes for the place of totalization, the unification of several singularities, of several libidinal intensities, one is already in the great Zero, one is already in the negative ;

and one is already in distress, since this instance onto which these singular jouissance-deaths will be beaten down, the mother or whatever equivalent, is on the one hand never given, there is never a connection onto her, there are only scraps, partial metamorphoses and thus nostalgia begins with this unitary instance ;

and on the other hand such an instance devalues, annihilates, inevitably cleaves the intense signs that are libidinal commutations ... since instead of being passages of abundant intensity, these metamorphoses become metaphors of an impossible coupling, these commutations just so many allusions to an elusive ability to enjoy, these incomparable, fiercely singular signs just so many common, universal signs of a lost origin. --

- Libidinal Economy (Lyotard, 1974)

zircona1 wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 10:02 am White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I liked that a lot when it came out. Curious how it holds up.

Selected Nonfictions by Jorge Luis Borges. This man was almost impossibly well read. Must have been some sort of speed reader. Philosophy and the art of fiction are mostly covered, though he also commented on films and politics from time to time.

enframed wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 11:37 am

zircona1 wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 10:02 am White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I liked that a lot when it came out. Curious how it holds up.

Me too. She must have a new one since that one. [Edit] It's way older than I thought and she has written several more including this year's The Fraud.

I'm rereading The Invention of Nature-Alexander von Humboldt by Andrea Wulf. The dude lived an incredible life. Close buddies with Goethe and Simon Bolivar, he trekked all over Europe and South America with that crazy, manic enlightenment energy where everything was being discovered simultaneously. He told an admiring Thomas Jefferson his slave owning was bullshit.