Meghan > Recent Status Updates

Started disc 8 of 14, and we're just getting out of central California. Sideways Oregon, I dunno... also, when the navigational voice was described early on as a woman, I was waiting for these middle aged horn dogs to discuss how hot she sounded, and that just happened. The story has gotten mildly more interesting, particularly around Miles' mom, but it's still very predictable.

So far everyone sucks in this story, with a particularly odious depiction and treatment of women. Let's see if any kind of redemption can get drummed up over 14 discs. As of disc 3, there's nothing much.

I just heaved the biggest sigh after a stint of breathless reading. It's SO GOOD. The origin story of the comic book is as good as the origin story in the comic book.

"Sammy performed the rapid series of operations--which combined elements of the folding of wet laundry, the shoveling of damp ashes, and the swallowing of a secret map on the point of captured by enemy troops--that passed, in his mother's kitchen, for eating." There are many details in this book, often seemingly inconsequential, that paint such a picture that it takes my breath away.

It's intense and I sometimes need to take breaks, but it's so damn good and doesn't pull a single punch.

My goodness. I have been so hungry for a book just like this for a long time. Also, I'm starting to recognize a writing style that feels like the 90s, although I can't pin down exactly what it is... at this point it feels like a vibe more than anything.

It was surprisingly satisfying when von Neumann started to lose his mind. His daughter says "I asked him, point-blank, how he used to be able to contemplate, with total equanimity, the killing of hundreds of millions of people in a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, and yet he could not face his own mortality with any sense of calm or dignity. 'That is entirely different,' he replied." And that's why.

In true nonfiction fashion, slowly but surely.

"All that maddening, unthinking optimism."

"Rosie the Riveter, celebrated during the war, was now expected to resume her feminine role and let the men handle the heavy lifting. But in many cases, that quintessential American wartime woman had gotten a taste of what it was like to be out on her own, earning a little money and enjoying a few of the finer things I bought." The transition of women's roles from the 40s to the 50s is such weird, wild stuff to me.

HAHAHAHAHA! This book is wild.