FirstNations Bobations > Recent Status Updates

I have been reading like A MACHINE.

What's on my nightstand:
The Day Of Their Return, Poul Anderson
The Great Shark Hunt, Hunter S. Thompson (actually in the bathroom)
The Human Cosmos, Jo Marchant
Travels In Alaska, John Muir

On my desk:
14 vintage cookbooks
The Busy Life of Eighty Five Years, Ezra Meeker (a pioneer relative of mine!)

Just started! Sorry for the long interval; I've been reading a lot of obscure stuff that I just haven't had the patience to enter into the Goodreads rolls.

This is my second go at The Silmarillion since I bought it in it's first printing. I literally had to take notes and make a flow chart to keep up with the names and events, but this book is entirely worth that effort. This is the font of all things LOTR, the underlying structure and prehistory of Middle Earth.

I'm surprised at how pragmatic this woman is, despite the conventions of the time. And there's a lot of that mess to wade through, but after all is said and done, she knows the score when it comes to traditional hetero relationships and isn't coy about putting it out there. Pleasantly surprised by this!

The author has taken on a character to speak through, and it's the character of a well travelled, well educated, kind of a pirate type of guy, not at all politically correct, sweary, hearty and full of hell. The type of guy you wished was your cool uncle c. 1943. Really enjoying this, despite the unfortunate illustrations.

So far we have the full lyrics to the song 'Derelict', aka 'Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum' which is a spectacularly gory song and an excellent way to begin a cookbook, IMHO.

This far in, including the Introduction, and I am struck by how guilty this man feels about being Stephen Kings' son. Blood will tell, though. Like his father, he does not do his research, and like his father, he writes about things he doesn't have the first clue about, if the story "Throttle" is anything to go by. I've read better efforts by Hill.

Actually, that is a lie, as I have yet to make it through the Introduction, which is dense with kiss-ass.

I have yet to make it through the Introduction, which is dense with kiss-ass. Joe certainly knows who his daddy is.

This should be the core text for anyone wanting to understand the mindset of the early Oregon pioneers and the conditions they were subjected to once they had arrived at 'The Promised Land'. This is another one of those books that I wish I had run into years ago. Indebted, terrified, ignorant subsistence farmers did not a 'Land of Heroes' make.

Eye-opening account of the calculated imposition of economic exploitation practiced by the Hudsons' Bay Company. Serfdom was alive and well in the PNW, and dear old Dr. McLoughlin was it's overseer, a man utterly without a conscience. So much for everything I learned in school about Oregon history.

Just lingering over it and enjoying every florid, purple turn of phrase. Damn I love H.P.L!!

The intelligence of this man, and the prodigious amount of reading he must have done are staggering. You get the feeling that he felt free to go wherever his imagination took him when he wrote. There is a great amount of beauty in his work, a love of the sound and feel of words, the rhythm of sentence, the drive of a phrase. I still find him just as fantastic a read now as I did in 1970.

Always a pleasure.

Loving every minute. On page 272 and don't want it to end. This really fleshes out the Mythos, and the hand of the Master is evident. It's his work that changes the most pallid of the stories here into true creepfests and I LOVE IT!

The use of the language is so fluent and effortless that you are lead without effort along the path the unknown authors laid out. It is definitely made to be spoken. Try saying a few stanzas aloud and you'll hear the rhythm of the spoken word and the music that's hidden in language. It's beautiful.

Page 70 of 1250 - and not volume two, but volume one. Woooo! Of course these accounts are painted in shades of heroism and valor, the men are strong and honest and the women mannerly and motherly. Then you reach the account of the Whitman Massacre by one of the survivors and that changes. Looking forward to this.

He's more entertaining than the painfully earnest Ram Dass, but he's way, way more full of s#17. The whole 'cult of personality' thing comes through right away. Still I have to admit, he was seeing exactly what the future was going to look like and how drugs would change it. Enjoying read so far.

Am enthusiastic to read this! This is my target area of study and I'd never found a hint of this volume until just now!

If you're going to write a 'memoir' style book, please keep the patois consistent. And this isn't a memoir. This is an 'Oregon Trail' - themed romance. Somebody wanted to put Mattie Ross on a covered wagon and see what happened - my judgement.

A good deal of this is introductions, and introductions of introductions. You'd do better to skip to the actual Sagas, and then go back to the Introductions and let it inform what you just read, rather than slog through all the pedantic mire beforehand. The Sagas are excellent reading in and of themselves.

It was...apocalyptic.

After the Septuagint, this should be a breeze.

Also reading The Orkneyinga Saga, translated by Jon A. Hjaltalin, 1873. Another one where the footnotes almost overwhelm the actual text, but I intend to stick with it and real all the Sagas I can get my hands on. On page one, and loving it so far!

The writing is wonderful, the stories are great. But if you are looking for political correctness, you will NOT find it here. Ms. Huston pulled no punches and did no prettying up of her output. This is entirely of it's time and place in social history. Sacrifice are any notions that the authors of the past have to live up to the standards of the present, and enjoy.