In honor of Longmont's own passing away earlier this year, I decided to try and push through the first 10 pages that I've been stuck on for a while. Following the stories of individual pilgrims a la The Canterbury Tales, the first journey of Father Paul Duré is probably one the best pieces of science fiction I've read since Ted Chiang's short stores.
Draws the line between the formation of the German Empire to the end of the Weimar Republic. Maybe not as many parallels as one might expect?
Outside the obvious premise, its wild that Lewis's America hasn't changed all that much since 1935.
A play on the life of Nazi film director G.W. Pabst explores the limits of we can ignore pursuing our life's work. Coming from a native author, the book comes with clear look into the uncomfortable realities facing German high-society during the Nazi regime.
Everyday is Nov. 18th. A meditative slow burn. Legend has it she stayed on a deserted island for 30 years to capture the isolation. Karl Ove Knausgård called it “absolutely, utterly incredible”. Hard to describe the beauty in here.
Hemingway said, "How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?" Every seemingly innocuous passage comes around to eat at you when your going about the day. I don't think anything has brought me closer to God than following Alyoshka around. And the green onion.
Even as everything continues to move faster, this collection of essays published nearly 10 years ago is still very pertinent today.
I think about "Authority and American Usage" every day. If you write and/or enjoy Wallace's writing, this is it.
The GOAT.
What is there not to love about this Irish family saga? The people in here stick with you for a long time, even after the end.
If you need an audiobook, this one knocks it out of the park.
My first King novel and still my favorite.
Controversial? Sure. An awesome time? Yes.
The opening chapter goes between Hermann Göring's addiction to dihydrocodeine, Pervitin, the use of Cyanide for suicide, the discovery of the first synthetic pigment Prussian Blue, the agricultural advancements of the Haber-Bosch process, and chemical warfare. It both stands alone and sets the tone for a book that explores the darkness behind our noble pursuits. It is without a doubt my the single best piece of writing I've ever read.
It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give ourselves away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms, blandly filled with excrement and heat? To what purpose? This was why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions why and to what grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way. Modern German is better equipped for combining gerundives and prepositions than its mongrel cousin. The original sense of addiction involved being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually. To devote one’s life, plunge in. I had researched this. Stice had asked whether I believed in ghosts. It’s always seemed a little preposterous that Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost. Never questions whether his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned. Stice had promised something boggling to look at. That is, whether Hamlet might be only feigning feigning.
Did you know that the The Army Corps of Engineers in 1900 reversed the flow of the Chicago river from Lake Michigan toward the Mississippi river basin in an effort to curb pollution in the city? Did you also know that when invasive Asian carp was introduced into the Missisisspi River in the 60's, the same Army Corps of Engineers build electric barriers in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal—a direct to stop the fish from entering the Great Lakes and destroying the entire ecosystem?
The author of Moneyball writes about the psychologists Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow) and Amos Tversky—the grandfathers of behavioral econ. Just an amazing story.