Of Mice and Men

Last week was at my college alma mater, and I was surprised at the memories that came back to me. The campus was permeated with fear and self criticism, bad memories of asking for a loan, opening a bank account with a $50 paycheck, or thinking about how to spend the last $4. What I forgot was the wild ambitions, of foundj a club, gettingperfectgrades, the compulsive gap to live in a fantasy world since incremental progress was itself depressing. Of mice and men nails this reality of being poor. Thinly sirprisj g part is how hard it is to see the reality when you are in it. ...

2025.01.01 · 2 min · John Steinbeck

One Battle After Another

Author: Paul Thomas Anderson Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Completed: January 1, 2025 Last edited time: January 2, 2026 12:43 PM Status: Reviewed Type: Film What was it that made that movie so good? It had a cultural element, looking head on at the immigrant situation to paint a dystopia that is not far from our own. The vision of an alternate America haunts. The theme of being a dad, being a better self to protect one’s daughter, that also hits hard. The few lines, about biological vs genetic father, about parenting in a way that is different than peers, and the cinematic moments of being caught, of discovering that the time is now, of what it would mean to be paranoid against the US government.

2025.01.01 · 1 min · Paul Thomas Anderson

Re-org-er: Pretender

Re-org-er Want to see how power al-Sharaa drove in victory to Damascus, or how a CEO reclaims a stalled culture transformation? Skip the nonfiction. Read Pretender! (But certainly don’t read this if you haven’t read the proceeding 7 novels) This is the second leg of Bren Cameron’s long logistics return. Destroyer was apex tech: shuttles, starships, and Skyfall. This one drops to trains, buses, biplanes. 1917. ...

2025.01.01 · 1 min · Barbara Cartland

Tea Drinker: Inheritor

Tea Drinker Reading Inheritor three years after the first two books, I had to reassemble Cherry’s political map from fragments. Like Bren, I often didn’t understand what was happening. What holds the book together is the widening field of conflict. On the human side, factions maneuver against each other. On the atevi side, rival interests circle the center. The multilateral tension gives the novel its energy. No single antagonist dominates. Instead, power shifts through conversation, protocol, and small missteps. ...

2025.01.01 · 1 min · William Golding

Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise

Not a new message, but a more first principles approach to Chinese international policy. A new author on China to keep tabs on.

2024.12.30 · 1 min · Susan L. Shirk

The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

Can a single book be responsible for a book slump? The Good Life is my argument for yes. Over the years, I’ve found the way to keep reading is to make sure I have multiple different streams of books. My main streams are as follows: The fiction book - Trashy, zero effort, likely just another space opera. The easy non-fiction book. Probably written in the last 5 years, history about a person, company or phenomenon. ...

2024.10.26 · 2 min · Robert Waldinger

In this Familiar Multiverse: Echo of Worlds (Pandominion, #2)

**In this Familiar Multiverse ** Infinity Gate and Echo of Worlds present a familiar concept if you’ve read other multiverse stories, like Dark Matter or The Long Earth. There’s a macguffin that allows stepping into a different dimension. Some of these dimensions are imperceptibly different, while others are completely alien. I enjoyed the multiversal play and while the premise was worn, the characters and pacing were enough to keep me going. ...

2024.10.13 · 2 min · M.R. Carey

A Predictable End... of the World: Day Zero (Sea of Rust, #0)

A Predictable End… of the World Not nearly as interesting as Sea of Rust. Especially for those that have read Sea of Rust, there’s little point in this book. The hope would be one about near-future tactics, but that is something that books like The Last Soldier covered in more detail. The transformation from nanny into tactical paranoid bot seemed interesting but underdeveloped.

2024.08.18 · 1 min · C. Robert Cargill

Excession (Culture, #5)

Multiple POVs in quick succession dealing with unknown unknowns, not a good book to fall asleep to as I keep getting lost. Someday…

2024.07.13 · 1 min · Iain Banks

Adventures in history and the land of Nod: Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire

** Adventures in history and the land of Nod ** This may be the perfect book to fall asleep to. I know almost nothing about Assyria, but every night am excited to learn. There’s little ability for an author to assemble a plot, since we know so little about the Assyrian empire. Missing a few chapters cannot cause a reader to miss the plot - our historical record is already full of holes. The vignettes What we do have contains the rangu of skullduggery of history and civilization building that you would expect. I fell asleep to this book for a month, read and forgot chapters multiple times, and honestly still don’t remember too much about the Assyrian empire. But I did sleep well!

2024.04.25 · 1 min · Eckart Frahm