Gregory > Recent Status Updates

Snow by John Banville: finished

Re-reading Mervyn Peake, of all things… but wonderful food for the mind: interesting vocabulary, characters that current film directors, actors, and script writers have undoubtedly encountered…

Reading Henry Miller “Moloch or, This Gentile World”

I like Pynchon’s writing style: irreverent, ironic, satirical, inventive, cleverly critical of certain political philosophies - and so much more: really enjoy his story telling prowess.

A marvelous novel: the main character goes through not just a sea-change but a kind of Sisyphysian flattening as he shoulders the boulder that is the selfishness of his life; he examines this «wreckage of the past» in order to salvage something good in himself and find peace after two tragedies and their consequences.Don’t let this short description put you off:it is remarkably funny, poignant, & brilliantly written.

Chapter 5 - the footnotes are as fascinating as the history…

The best way to describe what I have read so far is that Shipley has found in his research the history that is the root of the history I have been taught. I am an educator and this book has shown me in these 135 pages I have read important events that were either hidden from me as I went through school or not divulged to the writers of the history books from which I was taught as I went through school.

This is the Dreyfus book. A difficult - but not difficult-er - than Heidegger. Still, it was a plow-through read.
I can't say I understand Heidegger any better through reading Dreyfus, but I was able to grasp more concepts . Still - it is not for the weak of will: you gotta stick with it and re-read countless paragraphs twice to three times (at least I did) in order to get a semblance of understanding.

Would you believe me if I told you I am still trying to read this? Well, I am not. I gave up. So I went to an interpretation of the book.

Never got through it: Dense - Difficult - Difficult - Difficult. So, I tried the Dreyfus interpretation.

Never got through it: Dense - Difficult - Difficult - Difficult. So, I tried the Dreyfus interpretation.

...ugh. I am understanding more of this perspective on Existentialism - mostly due to my reading of Dreyfus. It is still a most difficult read - for me, at any rate. But I am not giving up. Certain aspects are much clearer - but I am no scholar...

I will have to buy this book: Dreyfus makes Heidegger more understandable, there's no denying that, but it is still dense and difficult.

Finished it a few evenings ago: at the end of the book she referenced some disorders based on the DSM II and violent crimes. I started looking at certain Dissociative Identity Disorders as possible motivations behind some violent acts - aggression, manipulations, theft, and so forth. She did the same at the end of "Every Move You Make", and now I want to read more of her work - and others, as well.

If I said this before, it deserves to be said again: this is hard sleddin'... I picked up the Dreyfus book to help me with the interpretation - it helps somewhat, but a kid of concepts ("occurrentness" and "levelling" and "availableness") are difficult to understand in a philosophical/phenomenological context and this makes the reading a tough slog.

This starts out as an interesting study of a character("the perfect man", according to Dostoyevsky), but the interactions of plots, subplots, and parallel intrigues weighs it down, as Dostoyevsky begins to send his main character, the perfect man, into tailspin after tailspin. I believe this book was written in periodical form(?) and so it lags in many places as one tries to keep the various storylines in order.

Great story. Anyone out there who has had an encounter with someone with borderline personality disorder should read this book. Anyone who might wonder what humans with the disorder are capable of, who need to know what lengths of deviousness such persons will sink to, read this book. Start with the afterword, at the back of the book.

Finished this read. It took me a couple of chapters to realize the state of the characters "being", as it were. Once I decided on this the anecdotes, the language being used started making sense. The various characters and their observations on "reality" and interactions with one another; their attempts to affect events and their transformations and limitations - all these elements began to make more sense.Read this.

This was a good read, fellow goodreaders. It was so good I had to track down several titles to supplement my knowledge about existentialism: Heidegger, Kirkegaard, and Sartre to name a few and I am awaiting their arrival at my local library. Reading Jane Rule non-fiction right now and I am finding the sociopath profiles in her writing relate to R.D. Laing's theories on psychosis/schizophrenia and existentialism.

Ploughing through - a series of lectures about Academia, University politics, "left vs. right" , Canadiana vs Americana cultural norms. Some of it makes me sit upright and grab my notebook, lots of other rather uninteresting observations about scholars and intellectual pursuits.
I could not finish this book - became distracted with some other books - about psychology/psychotherapy