Motley Kamuka

 

I'm in a Chinese poetry binge of Red Pine translations , and I'm reading a Star Trek novel, and a Joan Halifax book. u/HutVader suggests this Order for Dickenson on r/charlesdickens My recommended order (not entirely as I would rank his works, but this worked for me. More of ranked by order of essential reading). Oh and I recommend watching Dickensian the show as well, perhaps first. Great Expectations A Tale of Two Cities Oliver Twist David Copperfield Bleak House Hard Times Little Dorrit Nicholas Nickleby The Christmas Stories Edwin Drood Our Mutual Friend Old Curiosity Shop Pickwick Papers Dombey and Son Martin Chuzzlewit Barnaby Rudge Sketches by Boz [end] I've read Barnaby Rudge and Pickwick Papers. I fell asleep listening to David Copperfield. Same with A Christmas Carol. I think I only listen to 40% at most, and sleep through most of it. I think I should stick to Moby Dick as my fall asleep book. One Hundred Years of Solitude was too exciting for me to fall asleep.

As a Buddhist, I'm fascinated by Sri Lanka who preserved the Pali Canon and allows us to keep the memorized stories and teaching from the Buddha through the mist of time. When the Buddha died, they got together and tried to remember the teachings. Hundreds of years later, writing became more of a thing and they wrote down what the oral tradition had memorized. Slowly slowly the teachings made it to Sri Lanka around 3 ace. And the English translations I read today are from those preserved writings.  It turns out there was a terrible war dated between 1983 to 2009 with an estimated 70,000 had been killed by 2007. United Nations estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. Ondaatje's novel came out in 2000. He was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Canada. He spent his first 11 years there, then went to England. He went to Canada in 62 when he was 19. There is a delicate sensibility, he's a empath, a highly sensitive person perhaps. Anil is a forensic anthropologist . I had a que

My father read The Hobbit to me when I was little, to help me fall asleep. Maybe that's a story I made up. As a teen I read through the book in one day. A great feat of reading but I don't remember much from that reading. I woke up and started it, read it through the day and then read into the night. I think I stayed up till 2 reading it. I remember wanting him to get home, I guess I really wanted the book to end. I read a third of it to my sons before they decided they didn't want to be read to any more. My daughter won't let me read to her, only books she chooses.  I read through the Lord of the Rings trilogy recently. So I thought it was time to come around on the Hobbit again. It's a small paperback that I can take sometimes. I read it in spurts. I took it to read when I was flying and I read of Bard killing Smaug as I landed.  I was horrified that Smaug attacked the river island city. I thought Thorin was pretty horrible to not give them some money for their

Where I go, I like to look up the Native American tribe who used to live on the land in America. Cape Coral had the Calusas tribe . The Calusas were the ones who killed Ponce de Leon. Cape Coral is on one side of the  Caloosahatchee River , which stops being tidal at LaBelle. Fort Myer is on the other side. Out for a walk in Cape Coral I ran across Bob who came out of a house that had a flag that said "Ivanka Trump 2024". Said he'd lived there 19 years.

I'm listening to Normal People , and it's really compelling somehow. Two people seem to love each other but somehow can't commit. There are times when things happen and you have to have flashbacks to understand. It's no secret that I love Irish literature. But she's also got a kind of early Philip Roth vibe, if Roth hasn't been such a steam roller, if he had more subtlety, intelligence and insight. I'm thinking about just reading the book again after I read her other two novels. Links: A New Kind of Adultery Novel New Yorker Alexandra Schwartz ‘It Was Like I’d Never Done It Before’ : How Sally Rooney Wrote Again NY Times Lauren Christensen video review Normal People Sally Rooney Even if you beat me . Sally Rooney on Normal People, with Kishani Widyaratna YouTube video Color and Light  by Sally Rooney (short story) New Yorker Mr. Salary by Sally Rooney

I found my read-along for the year. Turns out 2020 was unique to have one for Shakespeare, and 2021 had one for Transcendentalists, and Dickins. Now I'm wanting a Dickins read-along and I can't find one. Maybe I'll create one next year. Still feel like reading where my interest take me. But then this comes along and I've read all the other ones, and I'm feeling strong enough to tackle a challenging text. A YouTuber is doing a read-along for Silmarillion by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien . Silmarillion Read-along  (3:35) Silmarillion  (8:24) You can follow along on r/TheSilmarillion . Or YouTube . 32 pages for January 17th I just looked for my copy, and I couldn't find it. Maybe I don't have a copy. Or maybe I lost it in the purge of heavy books I'm ambivalent to read.

Blaming Obama for Trump is pretty twisted. As though trying to act in everyone's best interest causes evil to come out of the woodwork. As if having a desire to benefit all mankind causes the dark side to raise up. I know yin and yang, but I'm not sure if that applies to kind centered government versus evil government, grift and corruption. That whole conception is progressive and would be challenged, but I think it's a special brand of twisted to blame well meaning people for the actions of not well meaning people. As if it's one side's responsibility for the toxic polarization actions of the other side. As if having a progressive perspective kills the don't tax me, and the don't want government people. Any means necessary is one side's tactic.  The specious rope a dope arguments aren't sincere, and power grabs don't have an ideology. Trump couldn't say what he would accomplish with a second term. He's not going to say I don't want a