The second epilogue I also don’t look forward to. I usually don’t do too well with the straight philosophical exposition. And I would agree with you on Tolstoi being moralistic overall, but here I feel like it’s not really that on the nose. Kreutzersonata or Master and Man on the other hand were both quite unenjoyable because of the preachiness.

I’m about 400 pages into War and Peace, and I’m blown away. The story is rich in themes, well-developed characters, history and ideas. At the same time, it is a gripping read and nowhere near as tough as I feared. My only regret so far is that I wish I had bought a translation that kept the French intact; I am switching between translations – I read the free Maude translation digitally, and my physical edition was translated by Anthony Briggs. While both are enjoyable, neither indicates which character is speaking in which language. But it’s important to know, because Tolstoy puts a lot of meaning into how characters express themselves.

Anyway, is anyone else reading it at the moment, or has anyone read it in the past? How do/did you like it?

Just finished this:

People say that writing an anti-war war story is impossible. Even if the patriotism, the institutions, the politics and the propaganda are all revealed to be hollow  excuses to justify sending another generation to their doom, the camaraderie, the sacrifices and heroic deeds of the individual soldiers will make war look glorious. Many have tried to avoid this trap; most have failed. William March’s Company K succeeds in this goal, but at a high price. There are two main techniques that are instrumental for this: First and foremost is the structure of the text. The book is a collection of 113 short vignettes, each one about a soldier of the company. This results in the reader never getting attached to any particular person, since we never have time for that attachment to form. But this also kills any semblance of an objective for the narrative and therefore the tension. Joseph Heller‘s Catch22 has a similar episodic structure, but we stay with Yossarian and his companions for a long time. The objective is clear: Survival. This allows for the narrative to develop stakes and tension. Will they survive? Who will die? In Company K we follow the collective, but a company can’t die, and we already know how the war ended. So there isn’t really any objective.  There aren’t any stakes and neither is there tension whether the objective will be achieved or not. 

March’s second method of achieving the anti-war war story is the tone of the story. It’s remarkably bleak, even amongst its peers. The “good guys” do terrible things and commit horrible crimes, justified only by hollow propaganda that is also portrayed as such. Even the humor is black as night. This makes for a quite depressing reading experience. 

In summary: this might be one of the best tries at achieving the anti-war war story, but it definitely isn’t the most readable try.

Having a Gogol Week.

First I read his most famous play, „The Government Inspector“. It was alright, an archetypal story of mistaken identity. I liked especially that it didn’t really have any moral characters. Everybody is crooked as hell and everyone knows it and rationalises their own corruption. But overall I kinda expected more from one of Russias most famous authors.

So then I got into his Petersburg Stories (The Nevski Prospect, The Portrait, The Nose, The Overcoat and Diary of a Madman). There are five of them, and I really thought they were all great and some even brilliant. I enjoyed most „The Overcoat“ and „Diary of a Madman“. These are in many ways similar stories about Bureaucrats ignored and forgotten by society, but they develop into quite different resolutions. The others were also great to pretty good at least.

From what I hear a lot of Gogols signature style, the so called Skaz, gets lost in translation, but what remains was still pretty beautiful writing. It helps to get some background on Russian bureaucracy, names, status symbols at the time and a concept called „poshlost“ (Nabokov defines it as corny trash, vulgar clichés and bogus profundity, amongst others), as well as Skaz itself to enhance the reading, but I’m sure it’s also enjoyable to just read and see what you get from it without all that.

Next I’ll probably get to „Lost Souls“. This was supposed to be part 1 of three in his magnum opus, but in his later live he got very christian and never got around to finishing it, burning the second volume and never even starting with the third. From what I hear volume one is a closed story tho, and it might be better he didn’t finish it after getting very religious…

Anybody here read it? What was your experience with Gogol?

I know a lot of people don’t like AI and I also feel some kinda way about it, but I found it pretty helpful here. There aren’t many people who read as much or are into the kind of books that I am in my circle, so I can’t really cover this via social connections outside the internet.

How it works: write a list with all the books you read in the past, plus how you rate them. Put that into whatever AI and tell it to suggest some books with a short spoiler free paragraph on why it would be a good suggestion.

Sometimes I ask for stuff that fits with what I already read, sometimes I ask it to suggest stuff that might cover blind spots or perspectives that I haven’t covered yet. So far I’ve enjoyed most suggestions and found some books I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

I read mostly classics, so if you’re into newer stuff it might not be as up to date.

Happy birthday haha

The article doesn’t call the dead woman the client of her boyfriend, it calls the boyfriend the client of the defence attorney.

Ah my bad, didn’t even know it was private. Now it should work.

That honestly sounds like a lot of very interesting stuff, thanks for the very thorough answer! I’m trying to stick to fiction, non fiction often feels too much like work to me haha. Used to be biiiig on fantasy and scify when I was young, like Lord of the Rings, Dune, Ender Series and Cosmere type stuff. Then I stopped reading for a while and afterwards I couldn’t really get into it again for some reason…

So since I started again I’ve been working my way through mostly classics. Last year I was mostly into naturalist/existentialist/psychological realist novels with a focus on Russian, German, French and a few American authors. So stuff like Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, but also lots of plays by people like Hauptmann and Ibsen. Greene I read mostly as a nice lighter distraction in between, but I’m happy that it started off this conversation. I definitely wanna broaden my horizons a bit this year to get some more international perspective, especially since last year I read quite a few colonial novels, but very few that were narrated by the colonised. Also trying to read some more women since that is a huge blind spot for me… if you want, check out my StoryGraph profile for more. I’m trying to be thorough on reviewing the stuff I read and I’d love to get a little more social on there since I know no one who uses it yet. Here’s the link: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/flo1312

Maybe I’ll check it out one of these days then… since you said your tastes have changed, what are you into nowadays?

How’d you like Slaughterhouse Five? Been meaning to get to it.

I really wanted to like On the Road. The whole movement and characters are so cool and sympathetic to me, but somehow it had too little direction for me to really enjoy it. I know that’s sort of the point though…

Just finished reading „The Quiet American“ by Greene. I read it based on @adhd_traco@piefed.social suggestion. Thanks for that mate! I enjoyed it quite a bit. Although I thought Our man in Havanna was better, since it didn’t take itself as seriously. Any other ones you liked by Greene?

Right now I’m reading „The Crucible“ by Arthur Miller. Idk what to think yet, I only just started, but so far it seems quite good and unfortunately sort of on topic with all the tyranny going on in the world nowadays…

Edit: Just got done with the Crucible. I thought it was great. Definitely gonna try to catch the play some time soon. I probably liked it even more than „Death of a Salesman“ and I already loved that one. Next up: Probably either „The Nickelboys“ or „Berlin Alexanderplatz“.

Not Jewish and I’ve only been to Israel once, so take my anecdotal experiences with the appropriate amount of salt…

So as with any religion, there are a lot of different sects in Judaism. Some are more radical and traditional than others. The most fundamental Jewish communities in Isreal sometimes have a pretty negative outlook on outsiders and foreigners in general and stick to strict fundamental religious principles. So there are stories of them messing with tourists, like throwing rocks at their cars and spitting at them. I didn’t experience anything like that myself, but was warned about it happening in certain areas.

My theory is that the American group wandered into one of those areas and got roughed up a bit.

This is a frequently repeated quote attributed to the late philosopher Frederic Jameson. On its own it doesn’t make a statement about capitalism or what it is at all. (If you wanna know more about Jamesons theories on capitalism you can read about it in his books)

Jameson’s quote points out that people often find it easier to picture possible world ending doomsday scenarios, than it is for them to think about alternatives to living in a capitalist world to try to avoid these scenarios.

You can even test this yourself. Ask people around you about the end of the world and many will point out reasons like climate change, demographic changes, environmental destruction, pollution, world wars, nuclear holocaust, asteroid impacts (shoutout Roland Emmerich) and even biblical scenarios for an eventual end of the world as we know it.

But ask them if they think there are other ways to live, so that those things won’t happen and usually they will just give you a version of “this is just how things are, not much you can do about it” or “the world could be different, but there is no use in trying because this is just a utopia and I have no idea how to change stuff anyways”.

Regarding your last paragraph, imo this kinda misses the point. I agree, there are structures that exist parallel to what most people consider capitalism, but ask people in most self described capitalist societies and they will not really recognise the difference and will just see it as an anomaly at best.

Btw, this is all coming from a European perspective, albeit heavily informed by US media.

Another company Microsoft bought and ran into the ground. It’s really incredible that they managed to get their lunch stolen. They had basically a monopoly and gave it away without a fight. Hell, the colloquialism for video calling someone was to Skype them for a looong time.

And then one small competitor comes along and it’s all gone. How can you fuck up this bad? Especially during the pandemic, in which they should have further entrenched their monopoly…

That is the German name for flea markets. It’s when people sell old stuff they don’t want or need anymore in their garden/some square/the street.

Guess the creators are Germans…

This joke has gotten pretty old by now and only helps downplay the seriousness of their dangerous ideas.

Great image, love the vibe.

We might have that here, but half the people I know work jobs that still expect them to be on call all the time and would get in serious trouble if they turned of their phones during busy periods. So while yes, in theory it’s great, our toxic work culture seems to cancel it out quite well.

I always tell those guys they should quit it or sue the fuck out of those assholes, but no one ever does -.-

People in western nations are largely responsible for climate change. Someone in Syria won’t be flying around the world and buying new clothes all the time. But they will be the ones hit the hardest by climate change, so they will likely either die or become refugees trying to come to the west.

Also, a lot of our western wealth is based on exploitation of those nations (through colonialism and later capitalism or wars). So if westerners don’t want people from poor countries to come to the west they should help those nations to recover from that exploitation.

Furthermore we need to do these things, because a bigger influx of desperate migrants will steer western politics even further to the right. That’s never a great thing and will lead to more inequality and possibly the collapse of our democratic systems.

Finally to your point about migrants being more criminal. That is largely a result of worse economic circumstances and outlooks. Improve their chances and watch the crime rate drop.