I’ve been in a little reading slump which tends to happen when I am doing more art and writing.
I’m currently slogging through two books. One is Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. I guess it’s interesting because it’s written as a stream of consciousness novel, and it explores the absolute filthiest corners of 1930s Paris, but the narrator (Miller himself) is so odious. I don’t know why I feel like I have to finish it.
The second book is much better but just long, with a writing style that is also quite different. It’s called the Sympathizer, and it’s about a Vietnamese double agent spy who finds himself being airlifted from Saigon to the US…and everything that comes with that. It’s honestly a really compelling story, but the writing is much more unedited than I am used to. There are a lot of pages that have no paragraph breaks at all! So it feels dense even though the story isn’t.
I will wrap these up soon and then move on to something that’s a bit easier on my brain.
I am reading “The moon is a harsh mistress” by Heinlein. It’s the first time i read him in the original language, and it’s glorious! He talks about a moon uprising against the earth government. The book reads a bit like a battle diary, at times quite dry. The part I love the most is how he plays with so many political and ethical concepts, like completely supporting prostitution. His extreme left tendencies are not hidden in this book. I’m enjoying it a lot!
It’s a great book but Heinlein is generally considered right wing not left I thought ?
According to wiki while he started off leftish he was quite conservative/libertarian by the time of “moon is a harsh mistress”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein
"yet Heinlein became a hero to libertarians: Milton Friedman praised Heinlein’s 1966 novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which chronicled an anti-statist rebellion on a lunar colony, as a “wonderful” book and commended Heinlein "
https://gizmodo.com/how-robert-heinlein-went-from-socialist-to-libertarian-1588357827
Edit to add
Having read the gizmodo article again it seems a more complicated shift than a simplistic left youth, right in middle age and for most of his books. Seems to have a complex view point although “starship troopers” is certainly a right wing oriented novel.
Thanks for triggering further investigation. Interesting
Thanks for the extra info. In the meantime I finished the book, so I have a better outlook. At the beginning, the push is towards a revolution against the authoritarian regime, with some sprinkles of “workers unite”, so I expected to go more towards socialism. Then it becomes more clear that he is against all a d any government, even while accepting that it can’t work. Quite interesting overall!
Listening to Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of the otherlands! It’s so good so far.
Also, we may need to scale up the instance soon. Oof.
Just finished Ain’t I A Woman by Bell Hooks. I’m currently listening to Disability Visibility by Alice Wong. (I’ve been trying to get into more non-fiction)
Just started on a re-read (audiobook) of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams, also read by him. Oh I love him as a narrator! Also continuing with Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol.
I loved the Dirk Gently show, I honestly forgot it was a book! Never read (or listened) so thanks for this reminder! Adding it to my list for sure!!
However, the plot of the show is very different from that of the book. Though both are interesting in their own way.
Ah, good to know.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It was an assignment from my university. I still like the book though.
The most important lesson to take from Canterbury is that if anyone tries to cry about modern society being lewd, or not respecting marriage, or whatever dumb puritanism is on public display that week, you can point to Chaucer and say “See? We were always gross perverts!”