My Random Thoughts series has been running so long I'm starting to worry it's not really random. Oh, well. I did take a few months off from posting them, but that only means I have a few months of thoughts to post. And some memes and other stuff to look at just to keep it all a bit random. And now I've reached the milstone of 928 thoughts! What makes that a milestone? Nothing, really. It's just random. Enjoy!
Dear reader, I haven't been posting book reviews here on the blog as much as I would like the last few months. I've still been writing some reviews over on Goodreads, but I haven't even been keeping up over there. It has been a busy few months, and the energy for blogging has often been elusive.
I could keep castigating myself, or I could just post the reviews!
After I post this, I have two more reviews to finish of Death's End by Cixin Liu and Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. I may also return to a holiday tradition from my past: reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings! I may even read A Christmas Carol, which I've been thinking about the last few years in line with my tradition of watching holiday horror movies.
Anyway, here are my reviews of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, Books of Blood, Vol. 3 by Clive Barker, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S. Carroll, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, The Fall of Gilead (graphic novel inspired by Stephen King's Dark Tower), and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.
Happy Holidays to you and all sentient beings! May all beings be jolly!
Dear reader, I have been remiss. I have not posted in my Random Thoughts series in almost seven months. I have been doing a lot of random thinking since then. And I have collected even more random funny images. So without further ado, enjoy this Super Sized and Super Random collection of my Random Thoughts!
My long-running Random Thoughts series has continued, randomly. Here we are at Part 24, which I'm happy to announce includes Random Thought 666! And there are also memes, because why not? Enjoy!
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| My recent positive COVID test |
During 2020-2022 I was posting a lot of my Pandemic Journal here on the blog. I got up to Part 25 in 2022. I didn't stop writing in that journal, and I even occasionally posted an entry on a specific topic, like this one on the Fourth Pandemiversary.
I guess just as most of the world lost interest in COVID, I lost interest in posting all of my entries here on the blog. I've also been journaling a lot less in the last year or two, often only once every couple of months.
I had a good reason, however, to start the Pandemic Journal again in earnest when I tested positive for COVID in late June! So, as both an exercise in self-indulgence and a public service announcement to get a COVID test if you have symptoms, here is a ... "sequel" doesn't sound right, so let's call it a "reboot" of my Pandemic Journal. And there are still memes, of course!
At first I wasn't sure what to think about Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, then I started to really love it, then I lost the thread as the central science fictional premise never really made sense to me, and then it came back together toward the end with some interesting thoughts on fascism, gender, indoctrination, and war. This one is nominated for a Hugo this year, and I will be voting for that soon. So, what did I think?
"Bullets don't have a name on them."
- One of my neighbors
Alex Garland's Civil War (2024) is one of the more disturbing films I've seen recently, and that's saying something, because I also watched Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest several weeks ago. I've been meaning to write something about Civil War since I saw it last week. And here I am.
It's time for another Review of Reviews! Since it's the last day of Women's History Month, I figured I'd include reviews of books by women authors. Is it too cheesy to call it "Women's Future Month" as I have before? I'll let you decide. Anyway, here are my reviews of The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse, Houston, Houston Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr., and Primary Inversion by Catharine Asaro.
My Random Thoughts series continues. Randomly, we are now at Part 23, which is an extra large helping of random thoughts and even better: it comes with an extra large helping of random memes (although I should warn you, dear reader, that the Dune memes have been flowing more strongly with the release of Dune Part Two). Enjoy!
Me: I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s happening in Israel/Palestine, but I’m not sure what to say. I haven’t been saying much about it.
Me 2: But who are you to say anything? You’re not Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian? Why should anyone care what you think?
Me: I don’t know, honestly. Obviously, I relate to this issue differently and less personally than people more directly affected by it, or by the recent rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia here in the US. I guess maybe writing this is a way to figure out what I think? Maybe it could help others? Or they could tell me where I’m wrong?
I often find novels written in the present tense to be a bit gimmicky (like the author is trying too hard to make it feel immediate). I also don't always like horror that relies heavily on Christian symbolism (I can appreciate The Exorcist, but I prefer it when authors create new ideas to terrify us rather than riffing on centuries' old preexisting material). Yet somehow I really loved The Cabin at the End of the World, which probably says a lot about Tremblay's skills as an author.
Stephen King never (okay, rarely) disappoints, and this Holly Gibney novel, simply titled Holly, is no exception.
Since I started reading the Holly Gibney stories in a weird order, starting with If It Bleeds and The Outsider without having read the Bill Hodges trilogy, I figured it was fine to pick up King's latest book in the tradition of having had new Stephen King for the last few autumns. I do plan to read the Bill Hodges trilogy soon, but when they came out I was under the impression (which I now realize is mistaken) that King's "crime fiction" would be less interesting than his traditional horror.
There's a lot one could say about this novel, so let me focus on two of its more controversial aspects: being King's first novel in which the pandemic is part of the plot, and being less of a traditional horror story (while nonetheless being firmly in the horror genre in my opinion).
My lists of random thoughts continue with Part 17, and they're new for '22! And of course there are also random memes for no particular reason.
So you're going to quote Martin Luther King, Jr.? Great! Here are a few pointers.
I just finished watching The Matrix Resurrections, one my most anticipated movies of the year (after Dune, of course). The best spoiler-free review is the shortest: Whoa.
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| Me, watching The Matrix Resurrections |
My series of Random Thoughts started randomly one day almost two years ago. I would wait until the exact two year anniversary of that first post, but that wouldn't be random, now would it? Add in a pandemic and some random memes, and here we are: Random Thoughts, Part 16: Dune the Random Things!
American political discourse is drowning in freedom. After 9/11, many politicians assured us that the terrorists hated our freedoms. The Tea Party modeled itself on the American Revolution (a bit awkwardly since the government they wanted freedom from was the same government established by that revolution). Advocates for gun rights talk about freedom more than anyone else, such that one might easily believe they think the fundamental Ur-freedom of all humanity for all time has always been to keep and bear deadly firearms.
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| A representation of Indra's Net |
Continued from Part 1...
Dualism and Responsibility
How did the US come to possess such a set of flaws that uniquely predisposed us to react to the pandemic as we have? There are large cultural and political forces that no one of us is uniquely responsible for, but each of us bears some responsibility for. I don’t deign to know your life, dear reader, so let me think through my own example.
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| Photo Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Thailand/comments/gg7eu4/a_statue_of_buddha_wears_a_face_mask_at_a/ |
A text written by a Buddhist monk 1,000 years ago probably seems like a remote concern in comparison to the pandemic we’ve been living through since March 2020. And of course, that’s true. I’m not going to claim that medical professionals should all stop what they’re doing and pick up ancient Sanskrit texts.
A Personal Connection?
But there is a connection for me personally. When the pandemic was declared in March 2020, I was in the early stages of a new research project on the 11th century Indian Buddhist philosopher Ratnakīrti. I was looking at one of his texts that modern scholars often read as a defense of solipsism—the view that there is only one mind, of which we are all part.
Solipsism is heady stuff (even if there is only one head!), but I wondered if Ratnakīrti’s point might run in a different direction. As a Buddhist philosopher heavily influenced by the Yogācāra tradition and its emphasis on nondualism, I thought that maybe Ratnakīrti’s point isn’t that there is one mind (my mind?) but rather that the very concept of discrete minds totally walled off from one another is an illusion in the context of nondualism, which in turn is a philosophical development of the idea of non-self. If there is no self, separate from the rest of the world, then the very concept of an individual, discrete mind is nonsensical.