leave it to quence to make a thread about books all about his thirst for mudskins.
book thread
- Thread starter minty
- Start date
i had been mainlining a lot of old lovecraft for spooky season
after going through most of them tho, i decided to try some ghost story books so i gave "a winter haunting" by dan simmons a try. it wasn't the best written book in the world, but i do like the secondary character, who happens to also be the narrator and a ghost. at the end he takes over the main character. the idea of being possessed by a hyper intelligent 11 yr old who taught himself old english, hieroglyphics, old german and hittite... enough to be fluent in it, is neat. i like this ending.
starting pet sematary tomorrow
after going through most of them tho, i decided to try some ghost story books so i gave "a winter haunting" by dan simmons a try. it wasn't the best written book in the world, but i do like the secondary character, who happens to also be the narrator and a ghost. at the end he takes over the main character. the idea of being possessed by a hyper intelligent 11 yr old who taught himself old english, hieroglyphics, old german and hittite... enough to be fluent in it, is neat. i like this ending.
starting pet sematary tomorrow
re: a winter haunting. genius ghost child in book called his house the jolly corner, after a henry james story.
after my disappointment with turn of the screw, i was mildly hesitant but did dig into the jolly corner after pet sematary. it was lovely, and the amount of parallels made me appreciate both books more
i ended up getting more henry james works after that, like the aspern papers and the wheel of time. they were both lovely, but even a re-listen of turn of the screw did not make it less disappointing.
at over 180 reads this year now. my original goal for 100 books this year has unintentionally doubled.
a week back or so i read the creative gene by hideo kojima, which is basically just a collection of essays abt books he'd read n movies he'd watched
dunno if anybody cares to know this or not but his "literally me" is travis bickle from taxi driver
had to take a fiction break n do some history again tho
ilan pappe's very short history of the israel-palestine conflict was... illuminating. p sure i don't really need to go further. although it did mention near the beginning that evangelical protestants were the ones who started the zionism movement. always another reason to hate the WASP crowd
got a short history book on the battle of kosovo, which admits a ton of shit is mythologized on both sides...
very first line in the introduction "the balkan area has historically been one of the world's most combustible regions" made me choke on my coffee
the hideo book made me interested in a sci-fi called inherit the stars, because it's abt a skeleton in a space suit
so, prologue homie dies, n i'm halfway through the book n it has all been "skeleton is 50k yrs old, where did it come from?" just, an actual real sciencey book. no indiana jones shit so far, just a bunch of nerds bickering around a table while they argue about what the stuff he had before he died means, carbon dating, n trying to decipher the ancient runes (a calendar)
i fucking love it
dunno if anybody cares to know this or not but his "literally me" is travis bickle from taxi driver
had to take a fiction break n do some history again tho
ilan pappe's very short history of the israel-palestine conflict was... illuminating. p sure i don't really need to go further. although it did mention near the beginning that evangelical protestants were the ones who started the zionism movement. always another reason to hate the WASP crowd
got a short history book on the battle of kosovo, which admits a ton of shit is mythologized on both sides...
very first line in the introduction "the balkan area has historically been one of the world's most combustible regions" made me choke on my coffee
the hideo book made me interested in a sci-fi called inherit the stars, because it's abt a skeleton in a space suit
so, prologue homie dies, n i'm halfway through the book n it has all been "skeleton is 50k yrs old, where did it come from?" just, an actual real sciencey book. no indiana jones shit so far, just a bunch of nerds bickering around a table while they argue about what the stuff he had before he died means, carbon dating, n trying to decipher the ancient runes (a calendar)
i fucking love it
Tech Noir
Ediot
well, i'm biased, but here's our version: Kosovo was predominantly populated by Serbs until 1690. Austrians and Turks waged a war, the Serbs took the side of Holy League, and then when in 1690 Turks reclaimed Serbia, some 40 000 Serbs fled Kosovo and were settled in parts of Croatia that their descendants tried to separate in the 1990's wars (Krajina, "the border"). Turks brought in Albanians to repopulate the area, and also so they could have a loyal Muslim population that won't be a chink in their armor. Albanians gradually became a majority, and first time actually came into possession of Kosovo during WW2, when Serbia was partitioned by axis between Albanians, Croats and Bulgarians*. They kicked out some 400000 Serbs, and bolstered their own numbers by bringing another 200000 settlers from Albania. After ww2, Albanians that fled Enver Hoxa's regime crossed the border and were allowed to settle on Kosovo. There was always a separatist movement on Kosovo, but we lived in a perfect communist country of "brotherhood and unity", where such things couldn't happen. Kosovo remained the poorest province despite receiving regular financial aid from Belgrade. When Serbs living there pointed out that the Albanian officials were either pocketing the money or using it to finance the separatist movement, said officials would just go "and there it is, Serbian nationalism rears its ugly head again". When I served the army, I remember one of the contract soldiers was from Kosovo, and was part of a tank crew there during the 99, from him I heard where that money went: "we exited the forest and came upon a... kaserne. Shiptars literally copied our military kaserne down to the last bolt". Despite this, Albanian separatist were not a burning problem until 1997**, when there was an unrest in Albania, and some government official used the chaos and opened up the military arsenals, allowing them to get their hands on better hardware. Then in 1999, NATO got involved. Bill Clinton claimed that the Serbs have exterminated 100K Albanians, and that we'll exterminate the rest if we are not stopped. Our government got handed a peace treaty that it couldn't accept. Basically, we were given a choice: either sign and allow NATO to wipe its ass with our sovereignty, or they'll do it by force. The rest you already know.
*I've read a book on it a decade ago, one detail was about how the Bulgarians issued their troops with a booklet with instructions on how to terrorize the Serbian civilians ("rape the mother in front of the husband and kids, kill the father in front of the family, insert bottleneck up the ass, etc."), and I came to a conclusion that the worst people in the world are pencildick bureaucrats that need to regulate everything, even the war crimes
**Those Serbs in Croatia, descendants of Serbs that fled from Kosovo, ended up as refugees in Serbia, about 250K of them. Ironically the government was planning to settle them on Kosovo, and Albanians, fearing that they will lose the population majority, upped their terrorist activities.
well, the book was mostly abt situation in the 1300's n demographics then, but briefly mentions the 90's powder kegging, n the albanian population during that time being higher but no mention of the demographic changes over time or their causes. thank you for the textwall
as for the pencildick bureaucrats, that was another thing i had noticed between the two books was the 100 yrs worth of lack of action towards the zionists who *checks notes* bombed british hospitals n killed british civilians, etc. because, well, pro-european outpost in the middle east. n then because kosovo is "strategic" to western interests...
national sovereignty*
*some restrictions apply. must give up self-interest, national interest, n cultural identity for a soulless neoliberal with a necktie
but that was always what i was going to take from those history books n i imagine anyone reading my posts in the book thread when i type "hey guys i read a history book" may get tired of me repeating myself
do you remember the title, by chance?
to further cement this analysis i got a book last week about a whiskey maker. pappyland, abt this dude who comes from a line of fine whiskey makers in kentucky, right? talks abt the difference in northern n southern whiskey n how this dude's stills who had been in the family for years got sold out after his grandfather passed n how he'd spent decades n his entire inheritance trying to get the business re-started n get back to the specific taste, but finance bros more focused on marketing the legacy under the name brand don't actually care abt quality so they had modernized all the still equipment n got rid of the self-propagating yeast
to sum up, i listened to a book abt whiskey n ended up fucking hating capitalism from it (also i might buy a bottle of this type of whiskey i kinda wanna try it i mean it's specially curated)
Tech Noir
Ediot
Don't think you can get it in English, and don't remember the title, though it was probably "Bulgarian occupation politics in Serbia"
yeh, i searched "bulgarian occupation politics" n got suggested a book on hitler's banker
i am going to choose to not give myself aneurysm n instead get mouseheart
just finished listening to this. beautiful. 10/10. takes place in the 2200's. soviet union still exists. no bankers, no lobbyists. not a single character that deserves to have their cock snapped like a glowstick
that also makes 200 books down
and as i am not capable of stopping me, i am downloading another history book abt an irish priest who armed the nra with gaddafi's money
Tech Noir
Ediot
?
Neubacher, maybe? But nvm.
schacht... i'd probably have got it if it weren't ai narrated n "fictionalized biography"
for later, ofc. need somebody i can root for in a history book atm n i'm hoping this ira priest does the job
quality palate cleansing book: krakauer's "into the wild"
mccandless
>handwrites in all caps
>hated his dad
>over romanticizes the woods n isolation to the point of borderline retardation
>hated being a wagie
>fascinated by alaska
>lofty ideals
>been to kingman az, needles ca, up n down the pacific coast to astoria or, queets n forks n seattle up in wa
HE'S LITERALLY M-
>hated the rainy n foggy weather of the pacific northwest coast
nvm... fuccboi
mccandless
>handwrites in all caps
>hated his dad
>over romanticizes the woods n isolation to the point of borderline retardation
>hated being a wagie
>fascinated by alaska
>lofty ideals
>been to kingman az, needles ca, up n down the pacific coast to astoria or, queets n forks n seattle up in wa
HE'S LITERALLY M-
>hated the rainy n foggy weather of the pacific northwest coast
nvm... fuccboi
Tech Noir
Ediot
that's the guy that thought he can wing the wilderness survival and then starved to death?
that's the shortest n most succinct way to put it
he made it quite far, actually. he didn't take into account local season changes enough, tho. he had successfully off-grid'ed down in the lower 48 a number of times. when he initially crossed the teklanika in late april/ early may the glacier wasn't thawed for summer yet n then when he tried to leave mid-july he couldn't. bro rubicon'ed himself. he had bagged a moose but tried smoking it instead of cutting it into strips n drying it out, leading to maggots getting the unsmoked excess. n by the time early august rolled around the wild potatoes he had been foraging had started to seed. a lot of plants, when going to seed, have defensive mechanisms like mild poisons... which is what did him in. n the sad part is it's a fucking seed alkaloid, which is easily survivable... if you're not subsisting off of lean meats n berries. local ppls would still be able to eat the wild potatoes n their bodies would process n maybe have some stomach cramps n mild diarrhea n go on to live another day because they eat seal blubber. but bro only brought a 10 pound bag of rice with him n didn't bring lard or butter, so his body couldn't deal with it. he would lose like, 20 pounds each time he would off-grid bro was begging to die from rabbit starvation for years.
the sad part is ppl had told him he was heading up too early n to get a better map n such on the way up there (a geographical map would've shown a shallower part of the river like 5 miles downstream) but everyone interviewed in the book who knew him said he was too stubborn. let the record show, having a 22 rifle, one bag of rice, a single foraging book n 3 cumstained jack london ones doesn't cut it long term.
the sad part is ppl had told him he was heading up too early n to get a better map n such on the way up there (a geographical map would've shown a shallower part of the river like 5 miles downstream) but everyone interviewed in the book who knew him said he was too stubborn. let the record show, having a 22 rifle, one bag of rice, a single foraging book n 3 cumstained jack london ones doesn't cut it long term.
onto maine hermit book now. much more successful than mccandless. 27 years, hid his footprints despite the snow... only got caught because pigs were jealous of how insanely based he was (they put motion trackers in the food pantry of the retarded kids' camp he was getting meat from)
Tech Noir
Ediot
that's the guy that broke into peoples' homes, right? also remember he hated H.D. Thoreau and considered him a poser
yeh, deep disdain. says thoreau's a "dilettante" and not a true hermit because he hosted family dinners when he lived in the woods.
apparently knight's "literally me" is the guy in dostoevsky's notes from underground.
p ethical with his burglary mostly, in a sense where he raided empty seasonal cabins n not ppl's actual homes. ppl saw him as a nuisance, but mostly on the level as the black flies. like, if you left for the family vacation home for the season n a propane tank, a flashlight, flashlight batteries, are gone is it even worth calling the cops?
some of the locals were even raised on the north pond hermit legend n would even leave out notes like "bro let us know what cookies you like" n a bag of books on the porch. divided opinion tho cuz others who had hand-made family heirloom quilts taken were a bit pissed, n rightfully so
this book's kinda funny cuz the author went n interviewed him, easing him out of his shell by sending some articles he had written in magazines about hunter-gatherer tribes, n he had to sit and wait cuz knight didn't wanna talk to him at first. n then eventually, knight dusts off n revvs up them unused vocal chords n says slowly and deliberately "you look particularly nerdy. you should let your wife pick your photo next time"