S. K. Pentecost > Recent Status Updates

I guess I was more of a Hickman fan than a Weis. To be fair, though, I haven't tried any of Hickman's solo projects.

A remarkable and remarkably gay young explorer in the 1930s. Roberts hasn't come out and said it, but it feels like he's building to a big reveal. I identify very closely with the explorer's philosophy of life which seems to be very "why not".

Obviously I suspect the philosophical acuity of anyone who's read Mere Christianity and not immediately dismissed Lewis as a faith blinded zealot.

The author assigns causation to religion, for WW1, that could be just as easily explained as cynical pulpit stokery for the war effort.

A Christian agenda is apparent from adjective use when any modern non Christian movement is described.

≈ "Our summers up here, like hope, don't last too long. "

This book's genre listing had thrown me off till very recently in the story. It reads WAY less like sci-fi and more like magical realism. Once I shifted my expectations, it's been instigating many fewer WTF moments.

Richard Zachs is that rare example of a charming racist uncle whose good old days diatribes are surprisingly fact based and entertaining. Still, I don't think he knows that North Africa is a part of Africa.

The author assert that NO one can be a badass in the emotional arena without some concept of a "god thing", then goes on to use a trigger word of mine, "synchronicity" in close proximity to a trigger author of mine, Coehlo. Is she saying that success absolutely requires a propensity for delusion?

For reals!!! One character has been soliloquizing for THREE hours.

At 66% of the way through I realize that this book is like Louis CK asking me to watch him jerk off, and I reluctantly humor him because he's so talented in other areas, and then he proceeds to take the whole goddamned afternoon. An ENTIRE afternoon of creamy pasta noises and the certainty that only one of us is having fun.

It takes almost half the book just to get thru with the first set up. The extremely talented voice actor was directed to read at almost half speed, and that does sorta work, at times. But if I wasn't currently sailing on a timeless sea there's no way I'd be able to resist cranking the speed setting up. Author has extreme love for the word "voluptuous".

Sure does use the N word a lot. Conjugates it and everything.

I pushed thru the portraiture talk, and there was even more after that, but I'm glad I did, or I might have missed the barbed wire telephone.

Eh. The history is enjoyable, but the painting and photo section doesn't move me in the least. May not be able to maintain momentum.

Ach! I can't get over the fact that she keeps using a former President as an example for how to have meaningful conversations with people. Her refusal to acknowledge that that president's election highlighted how broken the system is makes me mistrust her advice.

Very quirky and upbeat advice on how to ignore the real problems.

I can already see why it's called the art, and not the science. I hope this one doesn't have a non-fiction catalog number.

Tackling O'Connor for the 1st time, based on the recommendation of David Sedaris at the end of The Best Of Me. The great Southern novelists are all so deliciously dark.

A cogent reviewer notes that the author doesn't differentiate between characters well enough to keep them straight in our heads. While that is true, it's only fair to mention that everyone seemed hell bent on conformity in the USA's 1950s, and the subjects of this book don't lend themselves to differentiation.

A cogent reviewer notes that the author doesn't differentiate between characters well enough to keep them straight in our heads. While that is true, it's only fair to mention that everyone seemed hell bent on conformity in the USA's 1950s, and the subjects of this book don't lend themselves to differentiation.

Billy Idol starts this book off like a prose reading at hot topics. I worry that this will make me like his big nostalgic hits less.

Chapter 3 makes me think I have MGTOW leanings. Yikes! I'm going to look into that. But also, a self proclaimed feminist is fully on board with the biblical misinterpretation of Madeline as a prostitute, (or as Bates put it, a sexual deviant, [which, if she was a manically depressed groupy, & not Jesus's "companion" as the Disciple Thomas documented, would be an accurate depiction of her society's perception of her])

I've watched & re-watched Roger Taylor high-mark his engineless, junk-rigged sailboat up to 80° north over on his youtube channel, and it isn't enough! I'm hoping his literaryness methadones me for the scanty blacktar sweetness of his vlog.

Already, he's reaffirmed our soul kinship with his line about not always loving the sea, but always being under its spell.

Got a couple of life hacky ideas from it

Almost halfway and it's nothing but a repeating loop of boring unlikable family alternating with another scene of the outbreak. No forward movement plotwise.

Had dinner with a friend who's all current fan-girl of bizarro fiction and all things DM3. So I decided to dip my toe.

Promising, so far...

Giving this one a re-listen because I've been spending so much time on the Willamette this year, and oof, the Wiccan wiccanny wiccaness of it all. WE GET IT! THEY'RE WICCANS!

Why the samhill didn't the Dreadnought fire up on the tracks before the Shenandoah caught up with them? Steampunk? Yes! Zombies? Yes! Deliberately ignoring the most obvious course of action in a plot? Goddammit!

She admits self knowledge of her diva-hood from a very young age. I am reminded of an Ani DiFranco lyric to "give up and admit you're an asshole. You would be in some good company." Amanda Fucking Palmer is some good company.

Everything she presents is designed to elicit emotional focus on her. She suffers no shame for this; or she very successfully wins her battles against the shame. Like any good general, she is unafraid to fight dirty. If a bullshit yoga aphorism shortcuts her dopamine centers to really FEEL, she says "yes and..."

I get why she rubs some people the wrong way. Her delivery, both in the audiobook & her self related life is painfully, constantly PRESENT. This is a person who BELIEVES. An Eat, Pray, Love person, and that cheese grates my dead eyed inner cynic with the big holes. Many of her critics call her obsessed with money, but it's more accurate to say she's monetized attention. Or more precisely attention is her currency.

Amanda Fucking Palmer!

Also, Gaiman has a type.

"Because, fuck physics. No! Fuck even my made up physics."

And with these words, Levine set off to write a rip roaring, steampunking, fairly enjoyable, and maddeningly physically inconsistent yarn.