Finished: Jenny Odell’s How to do Nothing. 2/5⭐️

What an absolute shitshow of a book. I went in with great expectations. The first chapter gave me even greater expectations. So much so that even before I was done with that chapter, I had ordered a physical copy of the book from Half Price Books for future reference and rereading.

It went downhill from there.

I’ve often heard that if California were an independent economy, it would be the sixth or seventh largest in the world.

Now I understand why that statement makes a lot of sense. Just like all other economies in the world, the people who belong there are often so Nationalistic and narrow minded that their thinking starts and ends with that economy. It just so happens that that economy more often than not coincides with a country.

The same is true for California. The author wouldn’t be bothered to give an international example with a gun to their head. Yes, at the outset of the book there were references to European philosophers and places. But that’s all foil. Once you are invested in the book, the author can’t get their head out of California’s ass.

So much so that the grand idea – how to resist the attention economy and do something structured as a means of protest against it – is completely lost in example after example of how fucking amazing California’s people, ecology, redwoods, and birds are.

Oh. My. God. The fucking birding. We get it. You’re into birding. Shut up about it.

No, the author just keeps dragging you through tired metaphor after tired metaphor about birding and how fucking great it is.

Seriously Jenny, get a life.

Key takeaway from this rant – don’t waste your time, energy, mind, and effort on this book. If you are desperate to know what’s in it, read the article the author has based this book on. It’ll probably have just the same amount of drivel in a concise form.

2/5 ⭐️ because while the book is a waste of space, it’s got a nice set of references which can feed my TBR for a long time to come. Goes to show that you can take some really world class reading and churn out utter drivel from it. Also, the hardcover will form a nice and light doorstopper for me one day.

How to do Nothing Chapter 2

I mentioned before that I’m listening to Jenny Odell’s book “How to do Nothing” before. Well, slowly, I’ve inched towards closing Chapter 2. At first, I was irritated by the chapter. After a wonderful chapter 1 where she talked about the Ethics of Care and Deleuze and how she’s building a philosophy to inculcate instead writing a book that’s just meant to be read once, she then waded into a whole history of the 1960s in the US and the commune movement thereof. So boring. But I trudged along knowing that there must be some reason why she’s talking about this completely left-field topic. Towards the end of the chapter, she explains that she’s covered all these failed communes to talk about how the way to protest this attention economy is not to run away, since that rarely works, but to protest in place. She wants us to be a part of society and to find a middle path instead of diving in too deep or leave altogether (a concept I’m deeply familiar with).

I’ve also ordered the physical copy of the book, so I can potentially accept Jenny’s suggestion to make it a part of my digital life instead of a flash in the pan.

Finished: The Story of Hong Gildong (Korean Classic) translated by Minsoo Kang 5/5⭐️

I love reading folk classics. They’re simple yet so eloquent. This one was no different. There are some life lessons, some drama, some awesome supernatural elements. It even has a whole thing about filial piety and honoring your ancestors. I only saw this before in the Indian context, so it’s interesting that it’s actually a pan-Asian thing. We should resurrect this in societies where it doesn’t exist anymore.

There are one critique of this story. Largely to do with how repetitive it is. But can’t really blame the story for that. Folk stories have a way of saying the same thing in a hundred ways. After all, what happens when an awe-inspired Korean child asks Grandma, “and then what happened?” Grandma has to invent a whole new adventure for the little one to enjoy. So the story of Hong Gildong gets another chapter.

I found this repetitiveness in The Tale of Genji too, which I’ve tried to pick up twice, only to DNF it again and again. Luckily, the repetitions in thing Gildong’s story were fewer and more interesting.

Watched: Mr & Mrs Smith – the TV Show (2/5⭐️)

We went in hoping for an action packed TV show with loads of fun intrigue and fight sequences. We were disappointed. It was an avant garde take on a spy thriller. In between hours of just talking and talking and talking, the protagonists did some action and shot up a house. That’s it. It felt like Amazon Studios told them that they don’t have budget for stunt doubles, so they skimped on proper action.

Finished: Assassin of Reality by the Dyachenkos

4.5/5⭐️

This one was a little slower and felt a little dragged out.

Finished: Vita Nostra by the Dyachenkos

5/5⭐️

An awesome book! Dark academia, loads of twists and turns, and a page-turner to boot.

Some folks have called it the anti-Harry Potter, simply because in Harry Potter, you want to go to Hogwarts, but you do not want to go anywhere near the Institute of Special Technologies in the Vita Nostra universe. But this comparison is false. Vita Nostra is nothing like it. To get selected to study at the Institute is more about destiny than choice. That’s all I’ll say on that topic.

Also, a fair few reviewers have said that they were shocked or surprised at the ending. I don’t know why. The ending was almost foregone after the events of the book. I’m not saying it was predictable, but it was just the perfect ending. No surprises there.

Watched: Saltburn (1/5⭐️)

What a pathetic waste of time.

Saltburn is a decadent and windy art film. It has a story, yes. But it’s rather linear and further ruined by a rather dull and obvious cast of characters. Ten minutes in, you’ll know who the antagonists are. Midway through, you’ll know what the climax will be.

What does that leave the movie to show?

Only cringy shock-value scenes. That’s it.

2/5 stars because it could be sat through, if you feel like wasting an evening of your life.

Go for a walk instead. You’ll feel much better.

Update: After careful consideration, I’ve reduced the rating from 2/5 stars to 1/5 stars. This was a horrid movie. Skip it. Do not watch.

Thoughts on Parisian Lives by Deidre Bair

I started listening to Parisian Lives on the third of July and only just finished it. That’s almost three full months of interrupted listening, mostly in my car. But also while doing the dishes and grocery shopping.

A couple of things struck me about this book.

Firstly, I didn’t know what I was expecting going in. I’ve never been much into reading biographies, let alone autobiographies. But due to my recent interest in feminist memoirs and the “women writing women” idea, I’ve been diving into a lot of non-fiction. It surprised me to see that this book is semi-autobiographical and semi-biographical of the two Subjects Deidre Bair wrote about in her first two biography books – Samuel Beckett and Simone De Beauvoir. It contained equal parts an examination of Deidre Bair’s own life and struggles and her writer jitters and apprehensions when meeting literary giants; and an equal part her interactions with her Subjects, their reactions, and reasons for allowing her into their lives, the doors they opened and closed for her, the way they wanted themselves to be remembered and not. So it was quite the satisfying read.

Second, I wanted to know more about the lives of these two people. They are philosophers and interesting ones. Absurdism and Feminism. Both interesting worlds. So it was a nice introduction to their lives. Something the author says struck me as the perfect reason to read a biography – her goal has always been to make it so that the reader of her biographies whets their appetite for the Subject’s work and after finishing the book, dives right into the published works of the Subject. That’s what this book did for me. Though I’m wont to meander my way through some other works before carrying on with the “original” strain of thought I was following (I’m listening to Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott now instead of digging into either of the Subjects’ works), I do see this book as an important milestone for me to dive into more philosophy and also into more “women writing women”.

Third, and this is something I noticed in Figuring by Maria Popova, I love and hate that the final chapter in such books is chock full of “homework”. No where does Deidre Bair mention so many names, so many influences and inspirations for her Subjects as she does in the Final Chapter. In Figuring too, the final chapter had me taking copious notes and marking multiple books as “to be read”.

Deidre Bair says at one point that she writes the introduction at the end of her book writing arc, because she wants to summarize why the reader should read the book. This explains so well as to why I despise reading introductions. Once I’ve picked up a book, I want to quickly get to the meat of it, not keep navel gazing upon why I should be reading it. So I skip the introduction. But the final chapter, oh I need to keep coming back to it. This is partly why I dislike audiobooks. For all their convenience, there’s no way for me to highlight passages and make good notes. Oh well. Trade offs.

Overall, loved this book. It was unexpected and yet exactly what I needed in my reading journey.

Onwards!

Finished “Rousseau and Revolution: The Story of Civilization” audiobook

For the last six months, I’ve been on a journey. A journey through time. Specifically, from 1715 to 1789 AD. This journey has chiefly focused on one man – Jean-Jacques Rousseau and one country – France, as they both hurl towards the French revolution of 1789. However, surprisingly, the journey also touched almost everything else – it covered hundreds of artists, writers, essayists, satirists, scientists, inventors, enterprises, kings, queens, books, pamphlets, lies, then-hidden truths, and ideas. It talked primarily of France, but framed its history by talking about every force outside of it, including Russia, the Turks, the many travails of Poland, and so many other factors that ultimately led to the revolution which shook the foundations of the Western World.

It also revealed to me how amazingly France participated in the formation of the United States of America, if only to spite the UK in doing so, and in the process destroyed it’s own wealth and legacy. But the silver lining shines through – that revolution led to so much democracy and pushed the ideas of the Rights of people to the fore.

France, it’s history, and consequently, this book, are not without faults. The widespread support for slavery both within and without, the absurd conflict between Catholics and Protestants, which still boggles me, the constant wars with England, are all part of the history of France. The somewhat uneven-handed remarks and accolades to everything European being the “best” and the “greatest in the world”, the unnecessary descriptions of the visages of the persons described, and the somewhat abrupt ending, with only allusions to the excesses of the revolution, are all the faults of the book.

But I cannot thank the authors enough for giving me a springboard to leap off of. I have some semblance of an idea of where to start my next reading from, even though it’ll be a while before I come back to anything regarding history. For now, I’ve got quite a lineup of audiobooks to work through, from Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary to a collection of short stories by amazing authors as Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, and Mary Shelley. I think I’ll stay in the fiction lane for some time, till the call of history, philosophy, and the story of our civilization rises again.

Regarding the titular man – Rousseau – well, first of all, this book taught me how to write his name! It also told me of how terrible the person was in his personal life – how cruel to his own children (none of whom he raised himself or welcomed into his home), how callous towards his long time lover and wife, how immature and suspicious of his friends. But also, how brilliant in his writing, how influential in thought, and how deeply rooted our current world is in his ideas. Apparently, he affected everything from both our major systems of early childhood education – kindergarten and montessori, to innumerable philosophers, writers (Tolstoy, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Thoreau, Kant, Schopenhauer), and the Romantic movement. He even made it fashionable to climb mountains and explore the great outdoors in Europe as well as to have gardens that look more natural than manicured perfections. In an upcoming blog post, I argue that the writings matter, not the writer. As much as I’ve come to despise the man, this is true for Rousseau – he was an influential writer and thinker, even though he was a horrible little man.

Book timeline – Jul 22nd 2022 -> Jan 24th 2023

Format – audiobook

Length – 57 hours 22 minutes

Tonight’s iPhone wallpaper is the Pale Blue Dot, where everyone ever has lived and died, mostly unnoticed by the rest of the solar system, let alone the galaxy or the universe.

Finished reading Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

One of the strangest books I’ve read in a while. Even as I was finishing it, I felt like there’s so much more the story can tell but the author knew when to close it so as to leave us with the purity and purpose of the story instead of the comprehensiveness of reality.

Excellent writing by another Japanese author I’m a fan of now.

BTW, the book is full of trigger warnings – paedophelia, child molestation, murder, cannibalism, to name a few.