Motley Kamuka

I've always been vaguely disgusted by Bertie's worldview and way of being, though the language of the books can be fun and Wodehouse can set Bertie up for funny situations. The point is to laugh, but you have to enter into it a bit to find the effort to find the laughter. The language can be quite poetic and subtle at times. Sometimes I get into a reading funk and don't know how to get out. I read a few pages of the 10 books I'm stalled on reading. Can't get anything going. I read a post on Reddit asking how to get out of it. I wrote: My pop says Wodehouse but I’m afraid I’ll add this book to my pile of ten books I’m half heartedly reading. I’m more inclined to Slaughterhouse Five , The Hobbit , The Sun Also Rises or Raymond Carver. So I'm trying Jeeves in the Morning . It occured to me that there's something Quixotic about Jeeves. There's a faint hint of nobility and chivalry but he's really out to just protect himself. I googled Wodehouse and Cer...

Reading the New Yorker article on Ulysses by Merve Emre.

  Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney quotes (read on Kindle so no page numbers): "...we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one." "I have put between myself and my parents such a gulf of sophistication that it’s impossible for them to touch me now or to reach me at all. And I look back across that gulf, not with a sense of guilt or loss, but with relief and satisfaction. Am I better than they are?" "I know we agree that civilisation is presently in its decadent declining phase, and that lurid ugliness is the predominant visual feature of modern life. Cars are ugly, buildings are ugly, mass-produced disposable consumer goods are unspeakably ugly. The air we breathe is toxic, the water we drink is full of microplastics, and our food is contaminated by cancerous Teflon chemicals. Our quality of life is in decline, and along with it, the qu...

Sally Rooney referred to the Lorde essay in Beautiful World, Where Are You? I'm reading it now. "..., every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change." "As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge." "So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters." "...pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling." "The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings." "The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which de...

 

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....