I had not read any of her work in years, I used to enjoy it. Moved this book to the front of the 75 unread books on my iPad. I got as far as the Major Characters and decided not to go further. 1 of the 2 rival clans lives on the planet Galt & are members of the Libertarian League & teach at Galt U. etc.I thought I had written a post where I ranted about how much I hated Libertarianiasm, with a list of "I don't want to discuss ..." topics. I couldn't find it. I did enjoy reading some old posts. I'm not going to waste my time writing such a post. Libertarianism - the "I got mine, fuck you" philosophy. Life is too short.As the years have passed, I have become ever more convinced of the complete and utter worthlessness of Libertarianism. It is a political philosophy for privileged white people - period.
Very unusual for me, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t finish a book I started. But after 5 months of COVID-19 lockdown, I am totally not in the mood for Libertarian BS.
Well, this failure to launch put me in the mood for something different. Someone on twitter was raving about the noir cheap detective series by Joseph Knox. So I got the 1st novel of that series, "Sirens", 2018, 360 pages, 98k words. It had good pacing, plenty of action, a highly flawed hero. It was set in Manchester, England, home of the Manchester Capitalism book series, of which the most recently reviewed/summarized economics book "Foundational Economy" is book #6, yay! I tagged this as "mystery", it's actually much more like "true crime".
This was a good read, but I'm not going to continue with the series. This was falsely advertised as a cheap detective series. The protagonist is an undercover cop in the War on Drugs. Ugh. Given #BlackLivesMatter and #DefundThePolice and our increasing understanding of how the War on Drugs started as a way to put hippies and blacks in jail and now serves the additional purpose of lining the pockets of private prison fat cats, I cannot support a novel set in this environment with my $$$ or attention.
Finally, I felt like it was time for some short stories. I decided on "The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories" by Ken Liu, 2016, 521 pages, 141k words. This was a really excellent collection. A lot of variety: transcendent humans traveling the cosmos; a timely story of living in the panopticon; a Chinese god in the Old West; 15 stories total.
Hah! Close to one of my deep theories of meaning, from the story "An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition":
It has been argued that thinking is a form of compression.Many of the stories provide interesting contrasts between the American and the Chinese mindset, in a way that is not always complimentary to the American mindset - nice! A few stories repackage events in Chinese history, complete with footnotes, etc.
The last story, 'The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" uses a time machine of a sort to examine the Josef Mengele type of war crimes committed by the Japanese in China in World War II at Unit 731. It goes into excruciating detail. It is a good story with important information, but it seemed a bit heavy handed. But you know, just like the Confederate statues here, sometimes you just got to do what it takes to get the right thing done.
This is a great collection, I highly recommend it.
Next up, the 4 book sci-fi series "the Eden Paradox" by Barry Kirwan, recommended by my son. Kobo had only books 3 & 4, so I had to go to Amazon where a 4 book compendium was $5.99. Fingers crossed, I don't know when the last time was that I read something my son recommended. It will be a bonding experience regardless. He finally did watch "Iron Sky" on Netflix and enjoyed it grudgingly. Joe Bob sez, check it out!
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