Currently reading: Effective Data Storytelling by Brent Dykes 📚
Finished reading: The Road by Cormac McCarthy 📚 // A hard book to rate and review. The language was spare and at times beautiful. It was full of powerful emotions and thoughts of how all easy answers breakdown at the extremes. But I was also left wondering what it was all about exactly? Just the above? Perhaps my literary sensibility is not deep enough to appreciate a book where all is bleak and the world is ending and yet I was hoping for a little more direction, a little more purpose to the story.
“We’re all Cotton Mather in the long term, and we’re Hunter Biden in the short term.” - Kevin Williamson
Nerd alert! Picked up this bundle from Liberty Fund. Now just need to find time to read them…
Finished reading: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green 📚 // I enjoyed reading this version after having read The Once and Future King. This seemed more in the romance-in the older sense-category that T.H. White.
Book Banning and a Sane World
“In a sane world, the term “ban” would be reserved for books whose sale and circulation are illegal in some given place, and “censorship” would refer to the removal, by some legal or commercial authority, of certain portions of a text or film or recording. (I say “commercial” authority because sometimes companies that own the rights to works of art decide, without legal pressure, to delete some lyrics in a song or change certain words in a book.) But thanks to people who want to smear their RCOs, it is now common to use precisely the same words to describe (a) what the nation of Iran did to Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and (b) a polite letter from a parent to a school librarian asking that books that offer anatomically detailed descriptions of sexual practices not be readily available to third graders. Of course, many concerned parents are not polite, but polite letters on this topic still count, for the ALA, as a “challenge,” and the organization defines a challenge as an attempt at censorship or banning.” Alan Jacobs
Celebrating Ohio Pint Day 2023 🍺
Want to read: The Road by Cormac McCarthy 📚
“Sen. Lee knows the U.S. flag when he sees it. If he knows U.S. interests when he sees them, then he should grow up and act like it. The world has enough Twitter trolls already.” - Kevin Williamson
Sorry, I can’t seem to find how to easily cross post to WordPress. Can you point me to something? @help
I love how easy it is to blog using micro.blog but there is one small problem… I don’t really think I have an audience at this point. Only traffic at collectedmiscellany.com is random Google searches.
Finished reading: Musical Tables by Billy Collins 📚
Currently reading: Why the Bible Began by Jacob L. Wright 📚
Finished reading: Evil Things by Katja Ivar 📚// Scandinavia Noir frustrates me, and yet I keep reading… 🤷♂️
Another Saturday = Just Another Ten Mile Run. Five weeks until my half marathon 🏃
Finished reading: Fifty Places to Run Before You Die by Chris Santella 📚// if you enjoy running and travel, this book is for you. Even if it is only aspirational, it is fun to dream of running around the world in these famous events and unique locales.
Currently reading: Evil Things by Katja Ivar 📚
Currently reading: Fifty Places to Run Before You Die by Chris Santella 📚
Currently reading: Forgiveness by Matthew Ichihashi Potts 📚
Finished reading: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne 📚 / still wrestling with and thinking about this one…
“Thinking about the Holocaust is like staring into an abyss and hoping it will not stare back. It is the ultimate extreme case, a black hole of history that not only challenges our facile assumptions about modernity and progress but questions our very sense of what it means to be human.” — Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust
America
Currently reading: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne 📚
Finished reading: A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul 📚 // I absolutely adore Everyman’s Library Editions. I have collected dozens of them and find they such a joy to read. Beautifully crafted with a built in bookmark. But I have to admit this does not make me a close student of classic literature. Nevertheless, on a recent trip to DC I picked up A Bend in the River because it was a discounted Everyman’s Library edition and I felt like I owed V.S. Naipaul another chance. I didn’t’t finish A House of Mr. Biswas was and so was determined to try again.
And I enjoyed A Bend in the River and had no trouble finishing it. It was a fascinating exploration of Africa, colonialism, immigration, and relationships, etc. I can’t say I have a deep insight into what makes this book Naipaul’s best or what sets it apart as a novel. But I am a little more knowledgeable about this author and his work and literature in general.
Going to do some more reading and see if I can’t learn more about this book and connect it to my reading.
Using the Nike Run Club app to train for a half marathon in October. Did intervals on Monday based on 5K pace. Probably a little fast at first but pretty accurate by the end. 🏃
