Reading Ayn Rand To My Dog

I've been reading Ayn Rand's /Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology/ (which I got for a buck at the Salvation Army) to my dog, Ginger. She won't pay attention, and I don't think any of it is sinking in. {please note: I am not a Rand Kool-Aid drinker, I'm just curious to see what affect this information will have on my dog. Will she abandon her dog-like tendencies and follow a path of ruthless Machiavellian selfish motivation?}

Authors mentioned in Herman Wouk's novel, Aurora Dawn

"Spinoza rubbed bindings with Mark Twain, Jane Austen with La Rochefoucauld, James Joyce with Lord Chesterfield, Keats with Clarence Darrow..."

Sam's First Take On War

"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace--" Sam's first view of a battle in The Lord of The Rings

Reading A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham.

Here are some notes, written on green graph paper.  It makes a great list of things I know nothing about:

Le Cid; Gogol; Lermontov; Turgenev; Chekov; Byron, Shelly, Walter Scott; Thackery; The Revisor; Congreve; Wycherley; School for Scandal; Kotzebue's Kleinstadter; She stoops to Conquer; G.B. Shaw; Ruritania; Katzenjammer; Sacher Masoch; The Hounds of Heaven; Oblomovism; Eugene Sue; flipperty-gibbet; Julien Sorel; El Greco; Resurection by Tolstoi; Octave Feuillet or Cherbuliez; Flaubert; Maupassant; Concourts; Huysmans; Princess Mathilde; Herzen; Bakunin; the reign of Alexander II; Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov; On the Eve; A House of Gentlefolk; Anthony Trollope; demagogues; compte rendu; Balzac; Jane Eyre; The Waverley Novels; peroration; Saint-Just; Bolsheviks; Charles Frohman; The Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; Polynesian Garden of the Hesperides; the book Main Street; epigrammatic; mythomaniac; Le Cousin Pons; sycophancy; turbid 

What I'm Reading

I'm reading The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988). He packs a lot into every enjoyable paragraph. So far it is very entertaining. I'm also reading, as a palate cleanser between chapters, a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury titled A Medicine for Melancholy (1959). So far my favorite is the story "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit", about six poor guys who save up to buy a white suit so they can take turns walking around like big shots.

My manuscript is coming along nicely. Lots of characters and sub-plots and other shenanigans.

Dante's Inferno, Corporate Edition

I'm reading THE INFERNO (Dante Alighieri), which is Dante's (the Pilgrim Dante, not the Poet) tour of the nine circles of hell, lead by the poet Virgil. Reading it now, with all the B.S. going on in our country, I can imagine some of the well-healed criminals from today spending eternity in some of these places. The book describes sins and the punishment for those sins:

• gluttony (the obesity epidemic)
• usury (Wall Street/Banks)
• avarice/greed (Wall Street, Corporate Tax Evaders, Congress)
• thieves (Wall Street, Congress, War Profiteers)
• hypocrites (Democrats, Republicans, Politicians, the Media and probably most people, myself included)
• fraudulent counselors (Wall Street, the ratings agencies, Fox News/MSNBC/Network News/Pharma Commercials)
• sowers of scandal and schism (Fox News, MSNBC, network news in general, the compromised media)
• Falsifiers (Congress, Wall Street, Politicians) etc.

I'm kind of cynical these days, and alas, all of the characters ruining our country will be able to avoid these exquisite tortures because there is no hell, but if there was, I'd love to see some of these suits buried upside-down in filth, with their feet set on fire, but that's probably not going to happen.

What I'm reading, etc.

I'm reading I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. It is about the "I" we all live(?) with in our heads (or the mirage of an "I" that exists inside our skulls). It is about more than that, but I'm only halfway through, so I don't know exactly where it is heading just yet. But it is clearly and simply written, with analogies and metaphors to help things along, and it is a very enjoyable read.

I'm still plotting out my Arabian Nights inspired book; things are coming together nicely, plot-wise. I'm about to create a golem of sorts: although golems are from Jewish folklore, my book takes place on another planet, so rules don't count.

Today was also about fixing the van. I have lived 44 years without knowing what a MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensor is, but now I know. Replaced that, replaced a vacuum hose, and replaced fog light bulbs.

I also fixed a couple of 'puters for customers. Some printing stuff and some database file location stuff.

Thus: reading and turning wrenches. Fun fun.

Words I've noted to look up while reading Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. I'm on page 79:

polyphony, diabolus in musica, tesseract, krupskaya, philology, egalitarian -pg 46:,the Trial of the Templars, Ophiulco, navigli, Etruscan(48), demiurge(49), Finis Austriae(51), cabalistic(ally)(53), paralogism (56), ontological (56), and "Godel's Theorem.

Quote: "There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics."(54)

Notes from bookmark used in Bible, 1001 Arabian Nights, and Conan

-20 Shekels for a slave
-Exodus 22:25 – No Interest
-Leviticus 13:45 "Unclean!"
-nidodded
-withersoever
-Don Quixote, dinars
-Dickens, Master of serial narration and endless beginnings
-a talisman against ennui and despondency preface to 1001...
-14: what so woman willest...
-17: oh scanty of wit
-Clark Ashton Smith
-"evening is the time of thieves"
-"Oh commander of the faithful"

finished Pheonix

Phoenix by Richard Cowper








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reading reading

reading Upton Sincair's The Jungle. Finished reading Cannary Row last night. Trying to read 50 novels this year.