Aaron Schmid > Recent Status Updates

This book suffers the common ailments of Christian non-fiction. Each chapter tries to cover a big topic and most fail to address the most pressing questions men have. I understand length limitations, but some contributors come across as pedantic and inaccessible. Also, brother of mine wanted to go through this book with me, but the text is so broken by references and parentheses that his audio-book is intolerable.

Been reading this to the kids before bed, a chapter at a time, and the pictures are beautiful. Grahame's prose is so wistful and frolicking, it's lovely, but it does show its age sometimes - the sentences do tend to run a bit. It's a decent book for reading out loud, but it's not the easiest read. Some words are antiquated and unused by this reader, but the kids still follow along just fine. Excited to read the end.

I think this is the first time I've ever read a story that seems so mythological about America's south. The bit with the tar-baby felt like I was reading about a leprechaun or a cryptid. The parts about Russia and the Mexicans seem just as colorful and imaginatively outlandish. I often feel the urge to read this out loud because the language is so thick with southern accents, but man, do those southern boys drawl on.

I grew up loving the 1996 film adaptation of this (starring Ted Danson). So far, it turns out, it was a fairly faithful adaptation. Gulliver does come home after Lilliput though, gets rich off micro-husbandry, and has a couple of kids before leaving again and having more adventures in, or near... Tartaria? Lovely. I can't wait for parts 3 and 4. Brobdingnag is terrifying, but Laputa has always been so magical to me.

I appreciate the collaborative and multi-tonal approach of this collection. We'll see, but I've often found that by about 60% of the way through Christian non-fiction, a single author might have exhausted their contributions to a given subject, then fall into mostly to repetition or reiteration. I will say the varied contributors do make for an interesting kind of necessity to "code-switch" when reading each chapter.

This book is really good so far. It hammers home the really vital ideas, repeating definitions and theological necessities, challenging but reassuring readers, and accounting for the nuances in the many messy and unique situations of offense. Forgiveness is at the core of Christianity. It's so desperately needed, but it can be done poorly or falsely. The applications of this book are extremely broad and just as deep.

This book is Southern, in that its language is abundantly loquacious. Read it in a Foghorn Leghorn/Bonoit Blanc voice, a molasses drawl, it feels absolutely appropriate. Stickley seems simply virtuosic, definitely maximalist (to say it could be shorter is an understatement) but the pacing fluctuates quite a bit. Sometimes it's very fast reading. Mostly not. I like when his wit bends into comedy, but it feels angry.

It's fun to think about how this story might've been moralized and interpreted by its original audience. It's hard to say whether this is myth or fantasy. Did Homer's readers believe in Cyclopes or Athena's protection as much as Odysseus' ships, skepticism, and world-weariness? The Odyssey certainly isn't as exciting or violent as the Iliad, but it has some good moments. Lots of it just gets muddled as events fly by.

Crazy that this book has so many (50,000,000) copies in print. I know very few people who have ever heard of it. I imagine school teachers must like to use it, perhaps. Still, this is like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a philosophical novel, a few decades old, and I just cannot help but lament the loss of a culture capable of making this a best seller. The story is thin, so far, but the lessons are nice.

The city is a sad place. The country is too, but with a different brand of whistfulness. I really like the mix of anathema and the inversons of space and time, but it does sort of take over and obscure the characters a bit. Everything feels metaphorical and cryptic in some weird, unintelligible, occult/pagan, fairie way. Reminds me of The King in Yellow a bit. I'm hoping it ends well. I think it'll end in mystery.

I'm so torn by this book. Some parts are wonderfully brilliant. It captures so much essence: what it feels like to be a child, or a parent, an insomniac, a city-dweller, even an animal... This is a true mastery of language and artistic expression. It's magnificent. But it's also incredibly sad, lost, lonely, depraved, even destructive at times, or so it seems. I still feel like it's only just stopped beginning.

This book is almost a hundred years older than it feels at times. There's something very old and creepy and mystical about. It's reminding me of a lot of other fairy stories I've read (including 1Q84), but it also reminds me of Steinbeck and Garcia-Marquez. Timmy Willy has to be the most unfortunate name for a female character, haha, but I do love a lot of the other names: Daily Alice Drinkwater, Smoky Barnable etc.

Is Pynchon really dropping a D.L. Moody reference?! So bizarre, haha. This whole book is Bizarroland. Really funny and flowery and oddly endearing in a very Americana sort of way. Feels like Wallace might've take some cues from how Pynchon plays with the setting. Very cool alternate-reality-feeling version of Reagan era California, like White Noise too, kinda. I'm enjoying it but feel totally up in the air still.

It's noticeably feminine, which makes sense, as the author is a woman, but also seems to fit with the average characteristics of American pastors... I wish it was less the case, in both instances. That's not to say there isn't some worthwhile reasoning and theological exploration in these pages, but I do wonder what a good shepherd would think. In one case, I know it's far too scattered and rambly. Gossipy almost.

I'm not sure why, but this book feels a bit off. I don't know if it's because I just don't believe in the character, or if it's the author's fault. This is one of a kind with Jayber Crow and Tinkers. They're all a bit different, obviously, but I believed more in Jayber, and reveled more in the prose of Tinkers, this is something between those and maybe a bit more generic, literally? It's good and fast. 3.5/5 so far.

Really good so far. Feels like a product of the 90s, and I guess that's when it was written (with a Y2K publication date). It's incredibly nostalgic. A little boring too though. Not a whole lot of meta-commentary or cleverness where I tend to like it. But it's been quaint and beautiful and sweet, at various points. If there's a villain, I think I empathize more with him than anyone else, so far, haha. We'll see.

There are a surprising number of typos in this edition! It's also annoying to have no translations for the pages of French...I have found my own methods of translation. There's no editor's or translator's notes of any kind. It's unfortunate actually. Peepercorn was fantastic. Castorp has become a bit of a sullen hipster though. I don't blame him. Dude needs to leave. Literally get a life. I kinda envy him though lol.

Do they write books like this still? The mountain is truly magic. "Snow" is incredible. The dream and the danger and the "wadded soundlessness" have left very little to be desired. And now a long ending before the final chapter begins By The Ocean of Time. This book keeps getting better. "It seemed indeed that life meant well by her lone-wandering delicate child."

Somewhere after the mid-point, the book seems like it gives a new beginning, as well as an ending. Naphta sparks a new form of compulsion, and then Mann creates the strangest sort of "death" I've ever read. It's so tragic and lonely and there's still so much further to go... It's a masterpiece, for sure. I thought I might give it a 3 at first, but now I'm at 4, tipping towards a 5! I miss reading proper long books.

Mann, Walpurgisnacht must've had some influence on Pynchon and Bulgakov. The profane and pagan ideas of love mixing with, or stemming from, or contributing to disease, and the baseness of the body and its carnality - it's all so fraught with a sort of pedantic youthfulness and empassioned naivete. Oh to be young and wealthy and unencumbered and dumb... So dumb. Castorp, for all his bourgeoisie intellect, is lost.

Hans reminds me of my younger self, a little too much for me to love him. He's a romantic, and caught up in novelty. It's not exactly an easy read, but it's not woefully difficult either. I've used plenty of book darts already, so I'm definitely enjoying it, but I'm not sure I believe the book will be able to keep me interested for the whole 762 pages, unless something happens that I'm not currently anticipating.

Started this in audiobook format before and it was good, but I'm definitely enjoying it more as a first time read. I was struggling to pick up what it reminded me of, but I think it's Proust, which would make sense, considering they lived at the same time and wrote about similar things, albeit rather differently. I've only listened to the abridge Proust on Audible, but this makes me want to dive into that journey!

I finished it. The Nonexistent Knight was a fantastic companion to the Once and Future King, which I also finished earlier this year. It's hard to say why I appreciated this one so much, but it's partly the dialectical structure of existence and humanity, past and future. The frame is great. I love the idea of writing to a book, haha. That empty suit of armor, perfectly preserved. Agilulf lives! It was amazing. 5/5

The Cloven Viscount was great. Like The Baron in the Trees, it has a fairly simple premise, but it's written with beautiful simplicity and lightness, as is totally characteristic of Calvino. I'd say it's nearly flawless. It's only 122 pages if you buy the standalone paperback, but in this edition it was even fewer: only 68 pages! What a fantastic novelette. On to The Nonexistent Knight now, for more absurd wonder :)

Brilliant as ever. The Cloven Viscount has a great opening. It made me recoil, and then laugh. But his little genuflection with the octopus halves... Calvino dishes up some rare treats. Both stories I have left in this collection are sub-100-pages. Should make for some fun, fast, and light reading. Been doing that a lot lately, with Metamorphosis and The Stranger. This seems a fitting continuation of that trend.

The characters and plot have developed into something pretty enjoyable. I'm not too focused on plot holes at this point, but I can kinda smell them. Overall, I really appreciate how it's made me consider the secrecy of children and Jones' imagery of adulthood. It's interesting to consider how this story affects the one before it too. The kids all just seem so aloof, haha. Makes sense, I suppose. They're just naive.

I wish the main character was less naive. It feels like he barely thinks about the world he inhabits. It's interesting how much he embodies a sort of combination of the two main characters of book 1, but I wish I liked him more. The adults are pretty uninteresting. I'm kind of waiting for something new to happen in the narrative at this point, but I really hope it gets better soon. Not sure I'll continue the series.

I definitely like it more now than I did before. It's super surreal, like a bad dream. I'm reminded a lot of various segments of Infinite Jest. The opening, and the cannabis binge, with the externally unintelligible anxiety speak, and the insect going in and out of the girder. Makes me want to watch Cronenberg's The Fly again. Haven't seen it since I was a kid. It gives me the same sort of soft horror vibes.