On the page #4

I used to do these on my other blog, but they fit better here. 

I am reading Be Cool most days. It was the most appealing Elmore Leonard at my local book shop. It's mostly boring, but Leonard does some interesting things. I won't read another. I started reading Rage again. I really lost interest in Trump last fall. But with the election cycle in full heat, it's a good time again. This sort of nonfiction is the easiest thing to read, though much of the time it's boring. I finished Children of Dune like a month ago. It feels like the greatest encapsulation of the Dune ethos so far. Dune 1 is pretty standard; Messiah is the pulp fanfic pageturner; this is an exploration of the most distant implications of Herbert's presets. It's a warm and friendly place to occupy. 

I was reading Fellowship heavily for a couple weeks, but I put it aside to focus on completing Children. The meticulous construction of Middle Earth makes it pleasant enough. I also like constant puzzle-experience presented by its divergences from the film. My copy also is pretty old, with yellow pages, which makes the words feel more hallowed. The universe is male-dominated so I assume that will limit its ceiling somewhat. But that's most books I read. I'm hoping as the overall volume of my reading (and breadth of survey) increases I'll have a better sense of where what I'm looking for is hiding. 

I read the entire series of Neon Genesis Evangelion manga. This was an exhilarating experience. That month also coincided with a sizable work project, which I would toil at by myself every day. I built the whole thing with the modern tools most pleasurable to wield. And after work each day, maybe just before bed, I would read a bunch of NGE on my computer. It is a perfect match of story and medium. Losers will tell you to watch the anime first. The manga allocates necessary time to contemplate the imagery before jumping forward. 

After this amazing manga experience, I tried to read Ghost in the Shell. The world feels very similar to Neuromancer's. It's interesting, but in a compartmentalized intellectual way. There are no emotional bridges to board. The first manga I read was actually Tokyo These Days. It presents how personal and professional life intersect. I wish there was more stuff like this. 

I started reading Moby-Dick. It is a new thing to experience. I'm glad to venture into the uncharted, even if it's not accompanied by welcoming feelings. It's not the profound thing I was hoping for, but it's unfamiliar enough that it continues to change. 

I started reading The Hare. Years ago I was consistently reading Aira, but something shifted, so I stopped. I might be back in that place now. And this might be me be walking down the golden path again. So much while reading in general there'll be a total detachment from the pages, with a random 1% green candle, then back to flatline. The hit rate here is 10 or 20x. 

I read The Education of a Coach. It's a lot like the Musk and Jobs books--how focus and brilliance manifest in professional life. When an incident is taken to the microscope we see some compelling case studies. When it goes to survey-mode it's worthless trash. Halberstam is definitely among the greatest writers of sports material--far above the mean. E.g. I read Benedict's LeBron book. Part of the problem is the obscene breadth of material. The Heat-Cavs-Lakers arc is just not explored in any reasonable detail. Just fact vomiting. I did find LeBron's early life up to joining the NBA very interesting; but there's a complete absence of style.

Edits: typos