I’ve been looking for my niche as an author, and ended up reading these:
First two books, anyway. Solid military sci-fi. I would probably keep reading except I am not writing military sci-fi, so the search must go on.
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Good. This is a relatively substantial paper, that I have not yet fully digested, but I have confidence that Barry can provide some valid correctives to the defects of such abominations like ChatGPFU or whatever.
True to form, Barry Smith is applying his robust tools to correct a number of semantic problems in real-world scenarios. I’m not familiar with Mr. Thomsen’s work, but Barry would not have co-authored a paper with a defective or an antagonist.
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I bought the Kindle Scribe recently, which is the new big one with a pen (I love the pen!), and it came with a subscription to Kindle Unlimited, which is letting me read some books I probably otherwise wouldn’t buy.
I’ve been fascinated by Twin Peaks as a whole and particularly by the newer series The Return, and this author does a deep dive into the new show. I was pleased with it at first because he expresses some of the same opinions I’ve had, particularly that the coda at the end of the series takes place in our reality. He goes down a few rabbit holes that don’t interest me, though, like seeing particular details as “clues” to help figure things out, which I’m not all that much into. I think the best way to watch most of Lynch’s work is to let it wash over you and not to see it as a puzzle box (despite the actual presence of puzzle boxes in some of his work.)
The book is somewhat interesting, but I’m not sure I’ll finish it.
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Strange Attractor Journal Five. An interesting mix of articles and images, as always.
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I’ve been trying so hard to read this book about the military commanders of Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union in WWII), because my knowledge of the Eastern Front is embarrassingly slim and I just finished watching a great Lithuanian-produced miniseries on the subject.
But this book is terrible. 101 pages in and it’s literally been page after page after page of “this Field Marshal was born in this town and held these commands in these years.” And it’s written in the driest academic tone. There have got to be better books on the subject out there, and I’m gonna go find them.
Yeesh.
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Got this from the library. As a pretty large size fan of The Band, as well as the documentary film/concert, I never got around to reading this. Seems to be the first edition the library has, too. Don’t know what that means, but whatever.
Also, from the library. I’m pretty sure I sold my own copy a while ago…sold, or misplaced. Sadly, criminally, OOP. Great memoir from a great musician. This one I’ll scan, probably try to figure out how to get decent scans from a phone/tablet for fun, because I miss flipping through this one from time to time. Has some pretty good musical details as well IIRC…not much technical dirt on piano picking, but, some.
And, of course, may both those great musicians rest in peace.
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They’re reprinted the early Pratchett Johnny Maxwell series with cool new covers, and I’ve just finished Only You Can Save Mankind. It’s a very weird book, based on Pterry’s love of video games and the tv footage of the first Gulf War, surprisingly somber and thoughtful, but still having the expected humor. I don’t remember the other two books having much continuity with this one; Johnny’s just a kid who has weird things happen to him, like a weekly tv show. The only explanation we get is a suggestion that he might be a kind of shaman or medium, which really is all we need.
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The Johnny Maxwell series is the only time I can recall where a Pratchett book had chapters, and (more importantly) chapter titles. My favorite of these is “In Space, No One Is Listening Anyway”.
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I believe Going Postal had chapters at the request of the publisher.
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Are we just talking solo Pratchett? The Long Earth books with Stephen Baxter have chapters.
Oh, but solo, Dodger, Nation, and The Carpet People have chapters (of ones I own and have at hand). I think it’s just the Discworld books that are primarily chapter free.
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I should probably note that I stopped following Pratchett at about Carpe Jugulum for various reasons that I won’t bore you with.
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Dipping into this. Apparently it’s kind of a famous novel. Somewhat amusing. Somewhat tedious.
However, there is a fair amount about radar mixed in there! For example, “‘The radar patrol,’ Ignatius was telling Darlene, ‘is obviously rather foolproof. It seems that the cab driver and I were making small dots on their screen all the way from Baton Rouge.’
‘You was on radar,’ Darlene yawned. ‘Just think of that.’"
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I loved that book. Sad loss that it would never be made into a movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman.
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That book fascinates me, because I hated it at first, but by the end I loved it and was sad there wasn’t more.
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Hmmm. I hated it at first and didn’t finish it. We’ll see if I can make myself try again.
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My biggest fan is a four hundred pound man
Who knows how many stones hang onto his bones?
And you ask how come, but hey, look
His mother was a professional cook
I loathed it. Loathed it.
I felt like the Rifftrax guys talking about Starship Troopers: “No, I get it, I just think it’s stupid.”
But who knows? Could’ve just been a mood.
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I hated that book as well. The person at a former job who loaned it to me was convinced it was one of the best, most funny books ever. He was so very wrong.
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Trying out the online viewer from our library. Got hold of a Lorna Simpson collection. Very current. Plus a copy of Max Ernst’s venerable A Little Girl Dreams Of Taking The Veil. As a collage maven, I’m of course in Heaven here.
Also got down my “normal” copies of Audrey Flack’s Breaking The Rules and Wayne Thiebaud’s 1985 retrospective to leaf through again. 
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I mean, at least with the Starship Troopers, the director also thought it was stupid and was making fun of it the whole way through. Riffing on comedies is apparently difficult.
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