I rarely end up with many notes from audiobooks. A few scattered impressions.
Truman read constantly, even as a kid. The Bible, Shakespeare, Plutarch. He played the piano - page 61 lists pieces and composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Grieg). He was kind of racist, being of the opinion that “negroes should be in Africa, yellow men in …
[Read More]
I kept this on my nightstand to read before bed, which means it took me forever (ok, around 5 months) to finish. I read at least half of it at a couple of cubing competitions I took Jonah to.
In high school, I bought Infinite Jest at Hastings, not knowing anything about it. I got about 100 pages in, so around 8%, then gave it up. …
[Read More]
Having just heard an excellent presentation by Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller on the Psalms (at Higher Things 2023 in San Antonio), I was really looking forward to this book. I’ve gotten a lot out of some of Lewis’s theological writing (especially Mere Christianity), but not this one. Overall, I was appalled and disappointed by …
[Read More]This was my second time reading through the Bible. I went a little slower this time, about a chapter a day, from May 1, 2020 to August 25, 2023.
[Read More]
People I respect really liked this book. I did enjoy parts of it, and it was compelling, but overall I do not think it is that good. It does have lots of fun sentences, ideas, and vocab sprinkled throughout:
Lila Mae Watson is a black elevator inspector in a 1950s noir version of New York City, or maybe Chicago (I don’t think it ever says). There are two approaches to inspecting an elevator. Empiricists examine the mechanical workings of the elevator and note their findings. Intuitionists stand near the elevator, maybe put a hand on it, …
[Read More]
This is a dump of my notes without much analysis. Basically, medieval people may have conceived of reality differently than we do, less mechanistically, more as an orderly (designed) system. Their intellectual experience was different from ours in ways that are hard to recapture, but CSL seems to have captured them to a …
[Read More]
This was on my Amazon wishlist for a while, and then I read this blog post by one of the authors and decided to order it. Basically, this book from 2019 suddenly shot to #21 on the Amazon sales rankings due to a viral tweet by a guy named Bigolas Dickolas. He said something like, “Don’t look …
[Read More]
Below are my barely edited, raw notes from reading Poetic Diction. Some of the better stuff is toward the bottom!
“No poet can be the creator of all the meaning in his poem,” since he must work with words, which “owe their meaning to the generations of human beings who have previously used them.” (50)
Appreciating poetry …
[Read More]
Haldeman served in Vietnam, and this 1974 sci-fi novel provides commentary on that experience. William Mandella serves in earth’s war with an alien race called the Taurans. The battles are rarely decided by any of his actions (except a good one at the end). When he returns to earth after his first tour, everything has changed so much …
[Read More]