I do plan to join and squash you all, !@#$%!, but the damn site keeps saying it'll be coming soon.
I wish I already had all the data to create a team.
Why the postponing? Can I blame the Russians?

I'll read Hans Castorp's "story" during pauses.

I heard it was June 7th but nothing so far. If nothing comes up by Friday I'll find another site and use that instead.

that’s great news on you joining, not so great on the software fails, and yes let’s blame putin

i’ll match your practices then and get on with some dostoevsky.

Just finished Saul Bellow's Seize the Day and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. Interested to read more of both but I think, of the two, I'll probably end up preferring Bellow.

I finished The Great And Secret Show by Clive Barker, and I was thinking of reading his The Thief Of Always.
Maybe I'll take a break and read a Dick Francis or Ian Rankin instead.

I have been writing to the authors of the books I review. Just got an email from 94 year old physicist genius mathematician Freeman Dyson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! man, fucking awesome. I get just as hype for talking to physicist as I do for talking to my rock god heroes!!!!!!!

whoa! freeman dyson!

how did he invent the vacuum cleaner? :D :D :D

but seriously now, that’s awesome

Finished up "On Stranger Tides" on Tuesday.


Planning to start "Foley is Good: And the Real World is Faker Than Wrestling" by Mick Foley next. Been years since I read it.


After that, my general plans look to be a re-read of all the Harry Potter books. That'll likely finish up my year.

he even gave me some reading suggestions. sweet,

Just finished Alexander Solzhenitsyn's first novel, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2018/0...iterature.html

Scars of Independence by Holger Hoock, a German academic who looks at the American Revolution, or Civil War, through the lens of violence. Having all the massacres, atrocities, biowar, torture, vendettas, death camps, etc in one volume is great reading! The vicious fighting in the South and New Jersey are particularly emphasized

Out by Natsuo Kirino

winner of crime writing award in Ja. Not bad, female protagonists, complex situations.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25365.Out

hey dude i read your review and it’s a good one.

but i’d take it a step further, see...

it’s not just that one can adapt to “horrific” circumstances imposed by political imprisonment under totalitarian systems

sometimes the horrific prison comes from something else—illness, poverty, depression, etc.

the larger, practical meaning for me is that one can manage to score small victories that keep us going or give our life meaning when every other option is closed.

yes, building a good wall for your captors is a minimal victory— but the satisfaction of doing a good job is something, and it’s meaningful in that small restricted world.

and that is how one survives when in chains. whether the chains are a siberian gulag or an oppressive job or a country gone mad or a struggle with mental illness.

the same kind of effort, the squeezing a victory out of whatever our circumstances, helps us survive all kinds of difficulties too. more than just a story... it’s a demonstration of a technique.

Very true. Food for thought.

I reread Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach today, after discussing it here a few weeks ago. Whatever issues I might have had about it before seemed to evaporate this time round - maybe because this time I read it in one single go. Beautifully written and constructed is a given with McEwan but, while it may superficially lack the edge of his earlier books, in some ways it's even tougher. And truly heartbreaking, in a way that other novels try but rarely actually achieve.

My Sunday lecture:
Man admits having sex with 1,000 cars

Afterthought:
I'll never rent a car again!
Yuck

Foley Is Good is done. Onwards to Harry Potter!

Such a great book that. The first probably pips it, mind

Must agree, "Have A Nice Day!" is better, but definitely a worthy followup.

RIP Harlan Ellison http://www.vulture.com/2018/06/write...ead-at-84.html