The way of the samurai By 三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio.

Political Liberalism
by John Rawls

Hopefully this will counteract the vile taste of the current debacle of Roe v. Wade in the US.

I was absolutely mesmerized by Hardy's last novel, so I'll also now be reading his first:

Desperate Remedies
by Thomas Hardy

Silence and Beauty, Makoto Fujimura
— 180 Proof

Interesting choice, he was a big influence on me as an artist back in my Christian daze. I still respect him, and his art is incredible. — Noble Dust

I looked him up. I really like the paintings I saw. They all looked like book covers for dystopian science fiction novels.

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

They all looked like book covers for dystopian science fiction novels. — T Clark

Haha, a strange interpretation. His paintings make me feel very calm and generally ok. I had the good fortune of meeting him and seeing some of his work in person, years ago. i was running slides for him at a conference. When I handed him the remote, he asked "which button turns back time?" :lol:

‘Oh, the same one that gives you a Command-Z in real life.’

If only I had been that clever.

and ctrl Z for us peasants

Oh, that's a big one. Let me know if worth, if you can! — Streetlight

I'm a little over halfway through it and it's excellent so far. Very thorough. Helpful in filling some gaps in the period of Europe I was arguably most unfamiliar with. Going to read his book on Medieval Europe next.

Unfortunately had to take two days off of reading; finally caught Covid last week after successfully avoiding it for 2+ years, which were instead were lying on the couch watching mindless movies.

Get well soon! I had it twice in 2021 (before and after the Pfizer jab), no bueno. Two boosters later, some "long haul" symptoms are still fucking me up. :mask:

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
By Francis Fukuyama

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
By William Finnegan

Going into it I was very skeptical of a surfer autobiography but the Pulizer is well deserved.

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain
By Steven R. Gundry, MD

An important book if you care about your health, particularly if you have any autoimmune issues.

Right-Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

From father’s house to husband’s house to a grave that still might not be her own, a woman acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence.

Some Prefer Nettles, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎)

The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成)

July readings

• Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy, vol. 6, Peter Adamson
• Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews 1984-1996, Noam Chomsky

still reading

• Silence and Beauty, Makoto Fujimura
• Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness, Neil Vallelly

Medieval Europe by Chris Wickham

The Mental Life of Modernism by Samuel Jay Keyser

The Patient's Secret by Lorenth Anne White

Keyser's book is extremely interesting, very provocative and suggestive of our mental makeup, would definitely recommend for people interested in how the arts and innatist philosophy of mind interact.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, Bertram Gross

The Sound of Waves, Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫)

Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami (村上 春樹)

Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History by Rodney Hilton

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Just finished the first volume.

I didn’t like it when I read it 20 years ago, but now I do. Many people go on about how deep and difficult it is, and fail to convey how beautiful, engrossing and enjoyable it is.

In contrast, I recently read Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg, having been impressed by some of his earlier books. Like the Wolfe, it has an SF-tinged fantasy setting, but it’s embarrassing, the kind of stuff that gives fantasy fiction a bad name.

Ah, you never said if you enjoyed Mason & Dixon, did you finish it?

I'll have to go back to re-reading someday, it's been several years...

Ah, you never said if you enjoyed Mason & Dixon, did you finish it? — Manuel

It’s an odd thing what happened. I loved it, was totally into it, totally involved and swept up, but with around a hundred pages to go I don’t know what happened, I just dropped it. It was like okay, that was a lot of fun, but it’s boring now and I don’t need to read on.

I’ll likely go back and finish it some time soon though.

It's an interesting phenomenon. Lots of people love the beginning at the ending (remember it best), then they forget what happened in the middle. That happened to me.

So your case is not too strange. It's very curious that it happens with that book.

The characters live on in my imagination so I would actually like to read through to the end.

Now I think about it, there was a point when I just stopped reading for a month, from around February 24. Mason & Dixon may well have been the book I was reading at the time. So, blame Putin.

So, blame Putin — Jamal

I thought we had a tacit agreement on this... Of course it's him, always.

Anyway:

The Logos by Mark de Silva

Re-reading:

A Treatise of Human Nature Volume I by David Hume

It’s an odd thing what happened. I loved it, was totally into it, totally involved and swept up, but with around a hundred pages to go I don’t know what happened, I just dropped it. It was like okay, that was a lot of fun, but it’s boring now and I don’t need to read on — Jamal

Describes too many of my relationships.

That comment sent my mind on a journey in which I explored the role of storytelling in relationships and noted the difficulty in creating satisfying endings in life.

And they both lived happily ever after. The end.

That comment sent my mind on a journey in which I explored the role of storytelling in relationships and noted the difficulty in creating satisfying endings in life. — Jamal

If I can evoke a pensive moment, especially one burdened with sentimentality, i feel I've been successful.

More on satisfying endings in life:

I think of sentimentality as akin to regret but distinguished from regret in that instead of wishing you could travel back in the past to change your errors, you wish you could travel back and relive the romanticized perfection of what once was. It shares with regret the impossibility of correction and so a melancholy.

This gets at it:



It only makes sense if you saw the movie.

Good chat.

Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain is Built, W.A. Harris

I think of sentimentality as akin to regret but distinguished from regret in that instead of wishing you could travel back in the past to change your errors, you wish you could travel back and relive the romanticized perfection of what once was. It shares with regret the impossibility of correction and so a melancholy. — Hanover

:cry: