Gregory Rothbard > Recent Status Updates

Great, gives a good sense of the time the nazis took power! And it’s an intriguing case!

So much good stuff here!

I really like this book but listening to it takes at least three listens before moving to the next chapter! It’s a great meditation. Reading anything one time is never a true listening. This idea comes from listening to Saul taub in his reading of the masters, he recommends 5 times!

This book would be great to share with second story book group! I think it would be a great discussion!

Love this book, but it’s one to study again and again and again, three times at least! It also helps to listen to!

Love the setting in this book as it rings true to Denver and the metro area. She nailed it in her descriptions of my old haunts.

“Compassion fatigue” there is only so many times one can empathize with your others story. Marriages outside covenantal are transactional. Transactional marriages most continually feed the marriage account. Eventually this becomes a monster.

Why I love ghost stories is that they delve into the subconscious and how we deal with trauma. A good ghost story deals with the secrets of them who are involved. It’s what made the “reformatory” great, the trauma hidden in the historical record. “The Grip Of It” deals with marital trauma in our modern age. They want a new life and buying a house, moving to the suburbs will be their escape.

“ i know what it feels like to speak a lie to make it sound more true.” James thought.

What happens to the unity of marriage when the center is based on faulty logic? Does evil work to separate unity?

A husband wife but a home in the suburbs In the hopes of escaping the urban grind. They find themselves haunted by the home’s past, they begin to lose touch with reality and liminal space, and are haunted by the house’s human tragedy.

The way that each of us shapes the others reality is important in the expression of this book. James, the husband, is shaped by Julie, who are both shaped by Rolf!

Trick of the trade: I love the use of dialogue breaking into 1st person.
The author uses 1sr person narrative to force a pov. This pov is limited because you only see what the narrator sees. It’s far more moving when the pov is limited and the anxiety of the scene is amped. You can’t see outside the box you reading in.
But then the dialogue allows her to have both pov at the same time!

Why torture? Torture was to “control bodies by imprinting minds; the horrors witnessed or stories heard were meant to be hard to shake.” The traumas were so hard to shake they became generational. They became prisons through the white devil who might come for you, so you better follow the lines.

The logic of elimination masks itself as benevolence.

School prison nexus. Like a spiderweb they are connected

Schools socialize black children so “they are accustomed to surveillance and control so they can be effectively policed as adults.” Reading Eve L. Ewing’s book original sins and then reading the reformatory seems to go hand in hand not sure which is scariest, as the fiction matches the history of our educational programs.

Reading “original sins” by eve L. Ewing one finds that the key to African American education was civilizing them to white standards. The majority of white people saw blacks as smart barbarians, but needed to learn how to behave. The black man had no innate gene for proper gentleman behavior.

Good so far

Set between September 1846 and January 1847. 11 years before the Mormon wars.

Chapter 11
The girls have to deal with the consequences of possibly conjuring a man from a bunny. Is it possible? Is this what an MFA program feels like?

It’s easy to look past this moment in history but it explains a lot of how political relationships would occur in the future. My interest in this book began after watching the Netflix series “house of Guinness”.

Great I have read the first part then returned it. I have enjoyed it so far.

I love this book and am going to include it in my reading club list.

I am loving this book.