J. Walker > Recent Status Updates

Growing up a teenager in the 60s, the science fiction quartet were Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Bradbury, and at the time, for me the pinnacle of speculative fiction.
The title denies its own naming, the irony running from the 'real world' through the narrative world and into the title.
Today, Casey Cox is in my MM-MM/Preg quartet of inspiring writers of a popular but denigrated genre (your turn will come...).

I've been bingeing shifter romance since December, largely enthralled.
With that in mind, the balance between romance and violence has itself shifted, and I'm giving up on the w,hole genre.
I walked out of AVATAR: The Way of War - twice ( I tried going back into the auditorium, and left even faster than the first time).
I won't watch war stories, now it's to the point I won't read them either.

At the end of Chapter One
Already fascinating, the story of the Borgias begins with a piece of history I knew little about - the Roman Catholic Church Papal schisms. I knew about the Avignon pope and the anti-popes, but little about the details.
I'm a great reader of history, and following the focus on works like this is very rewarding.

Looking forward to more turmoil at the hands of the Borgias.

Not better than the first

I am digging the heck out of Proust. The first volume (and a half) was a slog; it's been 12 years since I first picked up Swann's Way, I just couldn't get the drift of it.
Then I found out about the Enright revisions, and picked out the volumes I didn't have in the earlier, Vintage Books edition, and read volume VI because it arrived, and it completely changed my perception and Budding Grove is a joyride.

I've switched editions to the Penguin Modern Library edition as revised by D.J. Enright. It very simply reads better; I don't know if it's the editor (it uses the same basic translation, Montcreiff's manuscript, but it goes much more smoothly (?) in this other edition.

Day Four of yet another unspecified (thus far; EMP at this point in the story is still conjecture) apocalytic narrative.
BE WARNED! DANGER, Will Robinson - foreward by our own favorite Newt, the Nut - "Speaker Gingrich". Enjoy!

This is about where I switched versions from the Montcrieff to the Kilmartin versions, which I find much more readable. I have to wonder, though; is it the formatting, the printing and presentation that makes all the difference, or is it the revised translation that is itself so much easier to read?

800 hundred pages in, I have slogged partway through into the second book of Proust's original seven, since perhaps February of 2010.
It just never took with me, the 19th century setting and culture of bourgeois Europe eluded me, and Proust's narrator's early growth and groping into and among society was missing the point, somehow.

This book was recommended by TV pundit David Pakman and I'm glad I explored his suggestion.
The book addresses technology's relation to culture, and the evolution or transition from a tool-dependent culture to a technological culture and what lies beyond.
I'm interested enough to stick with it.

I just read Paul Krugman's collection of newspaper columns and although initially underimpressed, my valuation increased as I read.
So it is with Piketty. I'm glad he collected these, and I'm glad to be reading them. Illuminating and interesting, it expounds and expands on the ideas presented in his recent volumes, CAPITAL in the 21st CENTURY and CAPITAL AND IDEOLOGY, which I'm also in the middle of reading.

I'd read 800 pages of Moncrieff, in the first two books of A La Recherche, and it had been a slog. Then I switched to the Kilmartin compilation put out by Modern Library and skipped to the final volume, Time Regained. I'm 200 pages in and engrossed.
I thought the time period of the 20th century would be more familiar territory, but I wonder how much is the liveliness of the translation, which can be crucial

It took months to get through The Transcendent Function (bringing the unconscious contents of the mind to consciousness) took me months to wander and ponder through. This book is just amazing.
It is not a volume authored by him but a collection of his writings on different aspects of his work on the unconscious.

saw the complete works for Kindle, had to grab it.
Gravitated first to final entries - FRESHEWATER (1935 edition); this collection has both.
It will aid greatly in my project to re-read and read Virginia in chronological order. I've already been on THE VOYAGE OUT and TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, am currently into NIGHT & DAY, having long ago read THE WAVES, MRS. DALLOWAY and (her) PARTY.
The Diaries, and the Letters!

So far I'll give it a pass. Not thoroughly engaged, it strikes me as rather slight.
All of the adolescent angst that turned me away from the second volume of the Beautiful Creatures series.

Got bogged down at the end of Chapter 6 and returned it to the library in favor of Proust.
The conventional structure of N&D didn't grab me, and neither did the characters, not like Lily Briscoe, earlier.
I'll wait and return to it after I give some other authors a chance to engage my interest. But Virginia Woolf will always be there. I could skip right to Jacob's Room.

A friend with whom I'm enthusiastically sharing WONDERWORKS has fallen all over herself over volume two of this work, TRUTH OF THE DIVINE. As eager as I was to honor her enthusiasm, I instead opted to get the first volume from the library.
I'm not enchanted, it doesn't seem that involving or thematically deep, but I'm giving it a chance.

I'm still encountering the unconscious, just getting to the transcendent function. I "get" it, but I can only absorb it in very small bites. This after six years of focused study of Jung's work; I'm still fumbling around in the darkness of the unconscious.

I got bogged down in Moncrieff's translation and never really got absorbed into it, and when I read about the Penguin Modern Library edition from a later edition, I leapt at the chance to give it an assessment. However the happenstance, I picked up the final volume, Time Regained. Perhaps it was the 20th century setting, perhaps it was the translation, but I dove right in, and I'm enjoying this much more than that

Chapter 21 Decide Wiser
I set aside the book for a while, life kept interfering.
I'm recommending this book to everyone I can; to me, I still think it's the most important publishing event since Jung's The Red Book.

Very in-depth look at Constitutional law cases throughout American history and across the American landscape.
This is my 5th volume of Reed's work, immensely important and extremely valuable, I'm getting to the point of exhaustion.

Just finished the actual text of Virgil's work; I wanted to mark the time and date when I finished this monumental work.
I still have the Translator's Postscript to go through before officially finishing "the book", because often the essays surrounding work like this are just as enlightening as reading the text and becoming familiar with where many of our sayings come from.

This book is brilliant, this book is transformative, this book covers more than just literary invention but philosophy, psychology and history all at once.
It wasn't what I was expecting; Clarissa is often cited as 'the first novel' in the western literary tradition, yet doesn't appear here until page 172, in Chapter 11.
This book is about so much more, it is invaluable to any reader or teacher.

Different from the other works I've read by Amar, this is a series of essays on Constitutional and Supreme Court matters in different periods and different sections of the United States.
Sometimes, the simpler restatement of Constitutional principle goes a long way in explaining what the different clauses mean, together and separately.

Starting book 12 of 12, the goal is to finish by the end of next week.
The translation is very readable, very compelling, and it reads familiar to the contemporary eye.

The story moves along at a good clip; the 300-page "exposition" claim from another reader still rankles. Gloria Swanson (or Tallulah Bankhead?) said when she reads biographies she skips to the part where the subject starts having sex.
In Termination Shock, you can start reading at pg. 274, Gloria. That's well before the "exposition" limit, I'd say.
Read it, it's a wild ride.

It's not 300 pages of exposition; if it's the tale of the queen, the action started as soon as the wing touched the ground - and they burned up the plane.
"... like tributaries feeding into a river high mountains, all contributed their force to what happened next." (start of the next chapter after this, but pertinent). He's laying a lot of brickwork, but the foundation is solid and the action has already begun.

This just came in, and I am very excited to get into it - but here I am blogging about it and not reading it.
Highly anticipated work by my favorite living writer. The New Yorker review was a slog, here's hoping the book is not!

Chapter IV The Practical Outlook
I want to argue with Junior about the essentially conservative nature of his endeavor, and then he attacks the Open Education movement of the 70s that I was 'educated' into, and his real target becomes clear.
But he is very literate.