I think that 12 volume comic issue made it easier to understand for me why people have the relationship with religion they do than the book the entire system is derived from which is wild. I’m going into Watchmen now and a friend told me to check out Astro City and the original Fantastic 4 run so I’ll get into those. On a side note, reading these digitally is awesome but I always wanted a color Kindle to make it easier instead of having to use my Surface but there’s no way the screen would be big enough. Sometimes there’s pages that aren’t scanned right and are almost impossible to read some of the words. It’s an interesting set of obstacles to have to deal with that I didn’t really consider before.
OS Book Club Pt II
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
I think that 12 volume comic issue made it easier to understand for me why people have the relationship with religion they do than the book the entire system is derived from which is wild. I’m going into Watchmen now and a friend told me to check out Astro City and the original Fantastic 4 run so I’ll get into those. On a side note, reading these digitally is awesome but I always wanted a color Kindle to make it easier instead of having to use my Surface but there’s no way the screen would be big enough. Sometimes there’s pages that aren’t scanned right and are almost impossible to read some of the words. It’s an interesting set of obstacles to have to deal with that I didn’t really consider before.Originally posted by G PericoIf I ain't got it, then I gotta take it
I can't hide who I am, baby I'm a gangster
In the Rolls Royce, steppin' on a mink rug
The clique just a gang of bosses that linked up -
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
Watchmen by Alan Moore
I've seen the movie a few times, but had never sat down and read the graphic novel. It did not disappoint, partly because the movie is almost literally the comic for the vast majority of it, but also because it's just up my alley. Superheroes, good vs. evil, what it means to humanity when a truly superior being like Dr. Manhattan shows up, all my bag. The extra news clippings and supplementary material at the end of each book really helps to open up the world. Nite Owl's scientific journals were cool to read, I could've done without the pirate comic, but I didn't really understand what was happening until like halfway through the series. I didn't realize I was actually supposed to be following this other story, so I didn't really. Kinda curious to see the ultra extended edition of the movie with that plotline added in.
Spoiler
"Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children; hell bound as ourselves; go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. Only us." Rorschach
"I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spellbinding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies in the first place. This is not to say that we should cease to establish facts to verify our information, but merely to suggest that unless those facts can be imbued with the flash of poetic insight then they remain full gems; semi-precious stones scarcely worth the collecting." Nite Owl
"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point as if new, it may still take the breath away." Dr. Manhattan
The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
Spoiler
I'm taking a class now in a branch of what UVA calls "science, technology, and society" which is supposed to make us well-rounded engineers or whatever. Anyway, the class I'm taking now the first case study we did was read a bunch of documents put together by the Army Corps of Engineers and others on the failures of the hurricane protection system. The whole thing was a clown show of ****ery, organizations placing blame and responsibilities on anyone but themselves, cost cutting measures, the system was started in 1965 and supposed to be finished in 2017 for an area that gets hit with a crazy storm every 30-75 years which obviously ****ed them in 2005 when it wasn't done. The craziest (most frightening?) thing to me was the idea that they basically dredged a canal, and out of convenience and cost used the sand from it to form the levees...plain *** sand. You're reading the report and every 6 lines it's like "well yeah it was supposed to work but it didn't because the sand got hit with water and eroded the entire wall of protection". This is all irrelevant. The relevant part is the solutions. They pointed out every engineering flaw, every organizational miscommunication, every hole in the system, and the verdict was "projects like this need to be undertaken with more value placed on human life than short term cost". And I'm like oh so we're just ****ed then?
The closest book I can compare End of Policing to is definitely Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis, but it goes more in depth. APO basically just laid out a case to the reader to make you re-consider your idea of what prisons are there for. EoP does that too, but then it hammers the case home. I'm not sure how much facts would even sway someone staunchly pro police in the same way that the fact that it costs more to put someone on Death Row and the small chance they'd actually be executed than to just put them away for life doesn't sway people that just want to see people in the chair, but the stats are there.
Starts with a history of policing in the US, in the South the first police were slave patrols and in the North private security was often used to shut down labor disputes, until the police got deputized to do the same thing. In essence, police are a tool of property and class control, they're not here to protect and serve anything other than the interests of the state. He argues against the idea of police reform essentially because there's no way to reform something rotten to its very purpose. Any attempt to turn the police into an institution more like something many would like to see would make them almost unrecognizable as police so I guess that's a matter of semantics whether you think burning something to the ground and starting over is reform but whatever.
Tying it back to Katrina, the thing I took most away from this book is why I've had such a hard time trying to figure out what it is that I actually want from a moment like this, and that's because the police are not the problem, they are a problem. They're the cashiers at Oppression Depot, we need to talk to corporate. Vitale gives us the comrade view of the police problem, breaking down their role in different areas in each chapter: schools, mental health, homelessness, sex work, the war on drugs, gang suppression, border policing, and the police as a political tool. In order to fix this problem which seems huge but is really just a small part of a massive problem would require a complete rewiring of what Americans hold dear. We'd have to strip laws, reallocate money in ways that benefits all of society, among other things. As Webbie told Charlemagne on a Breakfast Club interview when Charlemagne asked him for his thoughts about Obamacare, "man I don't think nobody care."
With schools, he points out how the emphasis on test results over everything else gives teachers and administrators a financial incentive to suspend, expel, "get rid of" troubled students instead of dealing with them in house and with many minor school issues being listed as crimes, the school to prison pipeline is formed. Mental health basically dealt with the idea that society doesn't take care of those with mental illnesses, and in the wild cops are called on people "acting erratic" when they have no business dealing with people of that nature. Same with homelessness, who are tossed aside by society and then told they can't stay on the streets when they're given nowhere else to go, many of whom deal with mental health issues. Sex work talks about how the illegality of prostitution forces those in low positions in society to seek shelter and protection from shady, illegal figures who can then take advantage of them with no legal recourse. I think war on drugs speaks for itself. Gang suppression was about how the societal factors that make people join gangs are left alone while they are punished for going to the only place they feel safe, which is of course generally a dead end life or a ticket into the system. Border policing was interesting because while I knew that the history of border protection was super racist with quotas and whatnot, he makes an interesting connection between people who've lived here their whole lives who are deported to countries they're completely unfamiliar with, which basically puts them in the same situation as those who join gangs here and essentially creates the "bad hombres" in the same way that we create terrorists at Gitmo.
Didn't know what to read next, my friend suggested I should read about the Fall of the Roman Empire but for obvious reasons I'm not in the mood. I went to my goodreads want to read list, which has 525 books on it, shuffled for a random number between 1 and 525 and got 399 which ended up being Miracle Creek, some random fiction book that came out last year. But it's set in Virginia, so I'm in. Almost done with the Court of Owls vol for Batman, it's dope, I love the covers. Going to see how the Court story ends or if I need to go onto City of Owls which I'm assuming I will, and start Astro City. Sike, was listening to a podcast talk about Don Delillo and figured it's time to finally get into White Noise.Last edited by DieHardYankee26; 09-07-2020, 06:26 PM.Originally posted by G PericoIf I ain't got it, then I gotta take it
I can't hide who I am, baby I'm a gangster
In the Rolls Royce, steppin' on a mink rug
The clique just a gang of bosses that linked upComment
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
I hadn't read for about 5 months so I decided to "give up" on what I was in the middle of and start a new book. I grabbed The Prestige off my shelf since I was wanting a mystery and my personal selection is minimal.
I was always hesitant about reading it since I've seen the movie about five times, but from the start it's already different so that was a quick relief.
Also jonesing for some comics so probably startup the Court of Owls or Batman Inc arc - and then of course The Long Halloween is a must for October.
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
Finished up The Prestige last weekend and added another Christopher Priest book to check out...sometime.
I'm having a hard time trying to decide if I think the book or Nolan's film adaptation is the superior work. The book wraps itself in a present day/modern times with decedents of the two families basically leading the reader back in time and over the life of the two quarreling magicians: Al Borden and Rupert Angier.
The book itself is a fun and at times fascinating read. Certainly some good character analysis regarding obsession and the affects that obsession can take on the obsessed and those around them - whether directly or indirectly. I personally found the Al Borden "book" portion of the first half to be the most interesting simply because he had a better mind for "magic" than his arch nemesis Angier. Then again, Angier's portion is presented in a memoir/diary format. His actual magic craftsmanship is somewhat perplexing considering he only "understands" once a trick has been explained to him. In that way he's seemingly not a magician, but merely a performer. I digress anyway.
At the very least the movie is an exceptional supplement. It's been several years since I've watched the movie, but Bale and Jackman really pulled everything off of the pages with these two characters so its hard to imagine reading this book without their performances in mind.
In the end - its only a trivial matter anyway. The movie is perhaps Nolan's most underrated film and the book itself is a clever, fascinating read. Like the book states, most magic secrets are trivial anyway. The act of keeping the secret and the lengths one goes to preserve those secrets is the true tale.
I began reading The Shining and am about 1/3 or 1/2 of the way through. Its already creepy and I'm still firmly entrenched in King's interpersonal dynamic setup of the tale. The Kubrick film is one of my personal favorites, but I am happy the book and film differentiate so widely and so early.
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
The Shining by Stephen ****ing King.
I can only imagine the gigantic social media backlash that would result if Kubrick's film was released in today's climate. The basic premise is the same. Same cast of characters and location, but holy E **** are there a lot of differences and exclusions. Having seen the movie first as a teenager and it becoming one of my favorite (or honestly the GOAT) horror films I was thankful for just how wide the differences are between the two.
Anyway - the book. I really loved it. Which is a little alarming to me all things considered. I was about halfway through and never wanted it to end. I guess a little bit like ol Jack Torrance in that regard. Also about halfway through I basically decided I need to read all of King's books. Having read IT two summers ago and this - time to deep dive.
Obviously the scariest aspect of the book is Jack's descent into complete lunacy as the reader waffles between the camps of whether Danny is imagining everything or if the hotel is actually ****ed up. The progression from Jack hating his father to "understanding him" and eventually loving him again was great and as a reflection of adulthood scary as ****. Nobody wants to turn into their parents. As a teenager that is possibly one of the scariest thoughts. Wendy is clearly the "straight person" in all of this - which is basically what she was in the movie - and so I didn't find her as a character nearly as interesting as Jack or Danny. She's operating on motherly instincts and trying to save a marriage, but she doesn't have much individual thought. To her credit book Wendy is a hell of a lot stronger (physically) than the movie version, though, Shelly Duvall's acting in the final hour or so is pure wide-eyed horror.
Danny's character and Tony are both much more complex, thankfully. The one aspect of the movie that falls flat now is the treatment of Tony as an "imaginary friend" and never really developing into the complexity of the book's illustration of him. Much less having Danny's parents come to terms with Tony. Which I understand, but I just wish the movie treated him as more seriously as a character rather than an ability of sorts. Which he technically is, but whatever.
The ending is wholly different than the movie as well - which was great. The little "twist" picture at the end of the movie feels more and more like a wink and a "gotcha" moment each time I watch it.
I feel like I need to read this again to really dive into all the different themes King has laying all over the place. There's obviously some kind of US imperialism/Manifest Destiny thing going on. Even before the random lady on Hallorann's plane citing "It is the line soldier who ultimately pays for any foreign intervention" which feels like a complete elbow in the stomach that King seems to sprinkle throughout his books to MAKE SURE the reader gets it. He hits it on the nose until it's a bloody pulp.
Clearly I'm all over the place with this, but its a fantastic read. Definitely a great horror book simply because its more putting up a mirror than trying to sell the ghosts and possessed hotel angle. Still, **** hedges and cement playground rings.
I think I'm going to round out the month with Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, but I really want to try and fit in Something Wicked This Way Comes despite reading it a couple years ago. After that I'm going to try and power through The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro.
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
Great review, FT. You know, I've stayed away from this book for decades because I'd heard of the differences between it and the film, of which I'm a big fan. I was fearful that after reading, I'd never want to return to the movie. I think I'm ready to dive into the novel and believe that afterwards, I'll still be able to watch the movie.Currently Playing:
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
Great review, FT. You know, I've stayed away from this book for decades because I'd heard of the differences between it and the film, of which I'm a big fan. I was fearful that after reading, I'd never want to return to the movie. I think I'm ready to dive into the novel and believe that afterwards, I'll still be able to watch the movie.
Even if you're a book purist the movie itself is capable of standing alone. The performances are exceptional, the mood and atmosphere is expertly crafted, and the soundtrack is truly haunting.
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
I write things on the Internet.
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
I think it was the reaction to the Desean Jackson foolery that made me interested in the perception of him. Like I know what everyone knows about Hitler, but I've always just been like yeah there's another terrible dude. People made it clear in that reaction that he is THE terrible dude. Again not surprising, just interesting. Just made me wonder if he would've pulled a fake quote from Genghis Khan or Stalin how would that have gone over? Then I saw Grave of the Fireflies and its like well from the Japanese point of view it's the Jedi who are evil. I wonder what they think of Hitler. Drake had a music video a couple months ago showing off his mansion and dude's got a big *** Warhol of Mao on his wall, like what are we doing here?
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Never know what to expect when going into something considered a classic from an author you've never read but just hearing that he was an inspiration for DFW who is one of my favorite authors was enough. Weirdly enough, this book feels both as old as it is and still very relevant. Ironically, the main character is a guy who made his career by creating a Hitler Studies department at a university and crafting a whole persona around the idea that the study of a great historical figure brings the professor closer to greatness himself. A lot of the book deals with people's perceptions of events. There's also a consistent theme of the pervasiveness of technology and branding, at one point the main guy's daughter whispers "Toyota Celica" in her sleep and it calms him as he sees this as a pleasant dream for her. It was actually a much funnier book than I expected, though I'm not sure it was supposed to. The most relatable thing was they were doing constant exercises in preparation of a terrible event, so much preparation that it got to the point where they were doing exercises based on simulations of their simulations. When the actual event hit, nobody followed it and nobody cared. That felt too real.
Spoiler
"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies. Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism. They're taking pictures of taking pictures."
"For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their tv set."
"To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone. Crowds came for this reason above all others. They were there to be a crowd."
"The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Overcloseness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate."
"In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are. No one's knowledge is less secure than your own."
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
I finished this book and just haven't been able to really dig into another one since, it leaves that kind of shadow to follow. Follows Ghanaian woman, Gifty, who is studying neuroscience as a way to answer the questions she has about her family's past. She is studying rats reaction to stimuli, trying to find if there's an answer to the question of how much pain they would have to go through in order to stop going for the reward as a way to mirror her brother's descent into drug addiction. Her mother is dealing with depression, but is old school and doesn't believe in the idea of it so she's just been moving through life like a zombie since losing her son and her husband. Some religion thrown in, reminds me of Pachinko a little bit in the way it follows the family trauma, I appreciate these kinds of stories. There's just a lot to unpack in the "wow, I just realized my parents were as clueless as I was at one point" genre. People spend their whole lives trying to avoid becoming their parents and then realize they were never who they thought they were, or just understanding why they are. Hits like a ton of bricks man.
Spoiler
"The two of us back then, mother and daughter, we were ourselves an experiment. The question was, and has remained: are we going to be okay?"
"Live long enough and you'll forget almost everything you thought you'd always remember."
"We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn't change, but we do."
"The ending, the answer is never the hard part. The hard part is trying to figure out what the question is, trying to ask something interesting enough, different enough from what has already been asked, trying to make it all matter."
"Sitting there, melting into a puddle at my own feet, I pictured my mother as I'd left here, and I knew that if her own faith, a living breathing thing, could not save her, then my small portion would do nothing."
"It's true that for years before he died, I would look at his face and think, What a waste, what a pity. But the waste was my own, the waste was what I missed out on whenever I looked at him and saw just his addiction."
A pod I listen to was reading Hitchhiker's Guide but I just couldn't get into it so that's back on the shelf. I tried to start reading a book of essays about programming but that's not a cover to cover book so I'll need something else, not sure what. Gyasi's first book Homegoing was pretty acclaimed so I might get into that, also might say screw it and finally start Fellowship of the Ring. Used my last Audible credit on Obeezy's new book so I'll be all over that when it comes out in a couple of weeks.Originally posted by G PericoIf I ain't got it, then I gotta take it
I can't hide who I am, baby I'm a gangster
In the Rolls Royce, steppin' on a mink rug
The clique just a gang of bosses that linked upComment
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
Bought an Oasis during the Prime Day sale, and I'm loving it so far. I still have a Kindle Voyage which I travel with now.
Is anyone on Goodreads? I find the format inconvenient but it's nice to have a place to see where all my "books read" are. One of these days though, I'm just going to make a spreadsheet or Word document on my computer and simply list the books I've read and maybe one or two lines about what I thought of the book along with one or two quotes that resonated with me the most.Comment
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
If you buy Kindle books or get them from a library, goodreads is undefeated. Auto syncing quotes saved is the most valuable thing any site of its kind can do for me. Until they make it easier to export Kindle quotes there won’t be a better alternative for me. If I can ever figure out how to get non-purchased books to update on there it’s over.Originally posted by G PericoIf I ain't got it, then I gotta take it
I can't hide who I am, baby I'm a gangster
In the Rolls Royce, steppin' on a mink rug
The clique just a gang of bosses that linked upComment
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Re: OS Book Club Pt II
I don't think I'll ever be team Kindle over the physical books, but logging quotes would certainly get me closer.
Last year I was using neon colored stickies and going back as necessary. Typically to post in here. This year I've s abandoned that. Not sure what I prefer, but I have missed at least going back after reading and seeing what I marked and how it resonates after finishing.
Goodreads is essential for keeping order that is the chaos of my To Read list.
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OS Book Club Pt II
I used to quote them in my Kindle and then go back when I was done and hand write them into a binder. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was the first one that made me hate doing that, there was so much to write it was like a book report. I have legit like 8 loose leaf pages front and back of quotes from that book.
On the keeping order hand, goodreads is more of a hindrance for me. Every time I see an interesting book I add it to the point where now I have 532 books on my to read list and half the time I go to pick something it’s not even on there lol. They do have one of the worst search features of any site I use. Type in 80% of a books title and it’ll probably find it, the whole thing and it has no idea what I’m looking for.Originally posted by G PericoIf I ain't got it, then I gotta take it
I can't hide who I am, baby I'm a gangster
In the Rolls Royce, steppin' on a mink rug
The clique just a gang of bosses that linked upComment
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