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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3052 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

Adding Who Killed the Berkeley School? Struggles Over Radical Criminology to my list, another open access book. It's from a radical left perspective, and sadly spends more time on the struggle than the Berkeley School itself, but its a good read.

This week I finished Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See, which a friend had suggested we read together, I hated it, spoilers ahead.

For most of the book, Doerr adopts a tone that felt very Scholastic Book Fair. The two kids existing in parallel, the Marie-Laure blind French girl, and Werner the German radio nerd who ends up in the wehrmacht despite not being all that enthusiastic about Naziism, bumble along through WWII running into mild oppression along the way. No concentration camps, just trains running through. We get wartime privation, but not starvation, and it impacts Germans as much as the French. Werner does go around killing partisans by tracking their radios, but they were partisans. Marie-Laure's father is taken prisoner, but he was concealing a priceless diamond. It's constantly hinted that the German soldiers will do bad things, but they mostly don't. Then we get to the end of the book and there's a fairly explicit gang rape scene when the Red Army gets to Germany.

And it was a real tone shift, and I'm left kind of stumped as to why the author made that choice. The book as a whole is too anti-German to be trying to smuggle in that Stalin was the real villain here and Hitler did nothing wrong, and it's not anti-German enough to be cheering on the vengeful rape of German shiksas like the Hebrew edition of Night. It just felt gratuitous.

Though I disliked the book as a whole, it was well written so I see why it got a Pullitzer, but there was nothing much going on for too much of the book, just not my thing. He does a decent shift at creating a blind protagonist without making her completely useless, but at some level I was still like "Ok, she's blind, the bombs are falling, there's no way out of this that isn't Deus Ex Machina." But the ending fell flat for me.

I also read the novella Fat City by Leonard Gardner after seeing it recommended as a classic boxing book. It's a picaresque of mid-century Stockton, through two struggling bums vaguely trying to make it as professional boxers. It did a good job of capturing the feeling of training and competing in fight sports, and a general sort of struggle of masculinity in the main characters, who have big dreams and minimal capability to reach them. Also a lot of long scenes of farmwork for those of you thinking about illegal immigrant labor jobs. Highly recommend this one, it's very short and tightly written, no extraneous pages.

I've now finished 18 books this year out of a goal of 26. My wife getting me a kindle, combined with LibGen, has been a huge improvement in reading for me. I still love physical books, but I also love the infinite access to a huge number of books. On a trip I'm not limited to what I brought with me if it turns out it sucked, if I finish a book at 9pm I can start the next one without even getting up. I'm ahead of my targets, so maybe I can afford to get stuck in on Infinite Jest soon, though I'm now onto On the Marble Cliffs by Junger which is another short one, I'm curious to get more into his mature work after how amazing Storm of Steel felt.

I've now finished 18 books this year out of a goal of 26.

I'm one behind you, out of the same target.

Great work! I've included some real lightweight shit in there this year so it's been easy.

Still on The Secret of Our Success, after getting no reading done over the weekend. It's still fascinating, but I miss reading fiction. Going to read an Agatha Christie next just to cleanse my palate.

I've been reading Ar'Kendrithyst on the recommendation of a few people here / another friend.

Book One started off really slow but I was enjoying the system exploration and the worldbuilding up to Book Four.

I'm in Book Five now though and I'm starting to drop off the novel. It feels too early to end the titular Ar'Kendrithyst, which kept getting hyped and foreshadowed as the greatest threat to the world, and which was imo the most interesting part of the word building. The "Worldly Path" arc feels a bit aimless since Erick is pretty much already a minor deity with every relevant god already in his rolodex to back him up, I'm getting a bit bored of this book pretty much just being him going around curbstomping everything.

I'm looking to read:

"America's Peacemakers: The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights Hardcover – Nov. 23 2020 by Bertram Levine (Author), Grande Lum (Author)"

The DOJ CRS was created by the civil rights act back in the 60s and by statute is immune to most FOIA requests. This is one of the first insights into the organization.

I'd also be interested if anyone has a detailed review or analysis, because I don't think I'll have the time to read it properly.

Starting to dip my toes into Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, to be followed up in the case I don’t lose interest by another book that extends reconstruction through the Gilded Age. The most interesting part of American history I know the least about, in my eyes!

Though I also have this Ben Franklin autobiography hanging around that sounds interesting and of course my regular diet of fantasy stuff.

Speaking of, I’m going to throw out a recommendation for Guild Mage: Apprentice, which is free to read (serialized) for another month or so. Has that classic fantasy feel, with good writing and with an interesting world and magic. Very enjoyable read.

My own novel. I'm performing a much-needed edit pass on certain chapters, which necessitates close reading, to excellent effect.

(And Reverend Insanity, as usual. I wasn't kidding about it being a whopper, I've been at it again for around a month and half already.)

Despite my plans to the contrary, it's He Who Fights With Monsters 11, by Shirtaloon, as book ten ended up being a massive setup for a boss battle book. Stupid cliffhanger endings! :/

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