Ryan > Recent Status Updates

This book is utterly terrifying.

This book is amazing so far.

This is a surprisingly good book so far. A few stupid errors but nothing core to the plot.

These are amazing. I think Haldeman is better at short stories than novels, with the exception of Forever War (which was structured as multiple separate stories internally)

A truly exceptional book.

"Can you walk me through a forequarter amputation via text message?"

You should definitely read Thomas More's Utopia before reading this book.

This book is impressively more interesting than the Vance Elon book, which I also loved.

Surprisingly good -- although it actually overestimates the strength and coherence of the US in 2034, given current trends.

A concise overview of Sartre's philosophy and life. I didn't realize he was such a successful womanizer and Epstein-like figure in addition to his weird latter-life Marxism. Yet somehow despite being a fairly horrible person who birthed horrible beliefs, what came after him (postmodernism) was even worse.

This book is amazing. Spanish civil war account by a British guy who was on the Nationalist side; a better person and with better people than Hemingway, but not as good a writer.

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

This book is possibly the best work of historical fiction I’ve ever read, although admittedly choosing Sparta at Thermopylae is stacking the deck.

Wow this book is long.

Hopefully will be back on the 183 books/yr pace by the end of the month. Yay long international flights.

Ah, Audible sale ($4-5/book for a bunch of stuff I was interested in); I really should be completely price insensitive to normal-priced audible or kindle books (~$9/ea), but when they're half price I get 10x more.

One of the most controversial books, so I feel obligated to read it. I don't think it is possible to credibly criticize it without reading it, but I can understand why people are reluctant to put in the 10-20 hours required -- it is really long and dense and on its face objectionable.

Trying to decide how much effort to put into logging past-read books (I read a lot from ~1983 to 2016 before actively using Goodreads to log everything).

Looks like a 12h drive plus audiobooks at 3x speed = back on 180 books/yr pace.

Reading some extra short books just to get to 100 by the end of this month. Being only five off of pace for 180/yr is an improvement, but still challenging, especially since most of the books I want to read are 20-30h audiobooks or 800-1200 page.

This book is so horrible. Boomers can ruin anything, even drugs! I will still try to finish it but it is a struggle. Do not recommend. The worst parts by far are his “trip reports”; the history is all better covered by other people. He also managed to talk to the most boring or irrelevant person whenever there were several choices.

This is possibly the best book.