AWESOME

Finished Mircea Eliade's Rites and Symbols of Initiation. VERY COOL


review up at RXTT's Book Journey https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2025/...s-through.html

I forgot to pop in here and say that I finished this a month or so ago.

Fucking tremendous novel. Holy hell. Why did it take me this long to read it?

because it took a long time to write and it was think with ideas, characterizations, and a "philosophy of life" as they say, and it wasn't written in 4 days on twitter, and it wasn't a stretched out short story either. it was an entire world. my favorite chapter is when levin is working with the mujiks. felt like i was right there!

took me like 2 months to read it at the rate of a chapter or two a day. like one would watch a tv series these days, only requiring more effort, and therefore more satisfying

i also love the idea of "living well but thinking incorrectly" or however it was put in the translation, i forget really. one of the greatest books ever written

It didn’t resonate with me quite as intensely as Brothers Karamazov — the only other Russian classic I’ve read in the last few years — but yes, a whole world indeed.

I loved the chapter after Levin and Kitty first get married, the beginning of book 2, when it breaks down how their communication seems to constantly, inexplicably, deteriorate over the smallest things. That was relatable as hell, and utterly, devastatingly sad.

Also, the chapter when Levin’s brother is ill and Kitty is there to help. That was so touching.

So much of the book feels so nihilistic, but there’s a tenderness to the way it wraps up. So many people seem to find it so depressing, but to me it ended on a positive note (possibly because I was convinced tragedy would strike more characters, up to the very last page I was afraid of more deaths!)

Currently reading The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving, an all-time favorite author of mine. I haven’t read one of his books in many years.

eh?? the book is anything but nihilistic. maybe levin's "bad thinking"? but the "bad thinking" is thoroughly refuted by the entire novel. tolstoy was a christian and ended up as i recall founding a religion or a cult or a theology or something...

it's a depressing book for anna, but in spite of the title she's not the main character, she's the... cautionary tale? this is levin's story, who is tolstoy's alter ego, after all

then again like count vronski tolstoy was a count and an officer (he was involved in the crimean war) and a young degenerate. so maybe anna is the life that he gave up

for more on tolstoy's moral/moralistic approach, i'd recommend a couple of shorter narratives: the kreutzer sonata (a "nervous" novella), and ivan the fool (a very funny fable, i read it as a child)

Reading a book called Time of the Magicians, about the intertwining lives of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer, major philosophers whose ideas shaped the twentieth century

I just mean it kinda seems that way. It often feels hopeless, like there’s nothing worth believing in. And several characters — Anna, Dolly, Levin — essential say as much out loud multiple times in the novel. But I don’t think it’s nihilistic at its core. To me, again, it’s more hopeful than it’s made out to be.

I’m onto shorter and more leisurely reads now (see: Irving, boy am I storming through Hotel New Hampshire compared to the 2-month journey that was Anna K.) But eventually I’ll want more Tolstoy (AND Dostoevsky — man, that Brothers Karamazov floored me!)

Pure, White, and Deadly: How sugar is killing us and what we can do to stop it

That's true - as Miranda July says on All Fours (see how I keep it on-topic?), sugar is basically heroin. BUT, I'm not switching to Coke Zero or Diet Coke, which are an insult to Coke. So I'm fucked I guess. FUCKED.

Are you enjoying life? If yes, so be it.

Not particularly. :D:(

Maybe cut the soda pop then.

https://youtu.be/E90_aL870ao

Brothers Karamazov was my mom's favorite book

Finished Hotel New Hampshire. Weird fucker of a book, but somehow normal for John Irving.

Maybe Lonesome Dove next?

Or perhaps Ragtime?

Finished a great book on Amber. super cool.

https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2025/...-and-time.html

My sister in law gave me 120 Days of Sodom for Christmas so I'm reading that. So far, it's not what I was expecting.

More tame than expected? Somehow way worse? Just meh?

Different vibe. I was expecting a grim horror show, something like reading Peter Sotos (who I have read about two or three sentences of and then stopped) but it's more fun and silly than I was expecting. But also I've only read about 20 pages.

The World According to Garp

Been stuck on Jack Vance and Michael Moorcock paperbacks for a good while now.

I read a trilogy of Moorcock’s once. Warlord of the Air, I think? It was fine but every plot was essentially the same: Guy goes back in time, encounters some steampunk variation of a famous dictator.

A Widow for One Year by John Irving. Just started it after finishing Garp.

Any Irving fans in these parts?

I only know Irving Berlin. Sorry. :)

Yeah, not my favorite stuff of his either. I’m more an Eternal Champion kinda guy. Especially Elric and Corum.

I finished “A Widow for One Year” and now I’m reading something called “The Nix” by an author named Nathan Hill. Was entirely unfamiliar with him until I picked the book up the other day.

So 120 Days of Sodom starts out with a moustache twirling villain vibe and then gradually descends in to a repitive and far fetched slog of paedophilia, coprophilia and masturbation and then ends in what is pretty much a monotonous list of torture and murder fantasies. It's a weird book and in a way I'm glad I've read it, but I would recommend it to no one except the person that gave it to me who should be made to read it as penance. Also while while reading this I kept thinking the Marquis de Sade must have been a pathetic and pitiable character.
I'm baffled why anyone considers this book a classic and even more baffled why some people think it is some kind of philosophical achievement.

finished Time of the Magicians, by Wolfram Eilenberger.

RXTT's Book Journey continues with an exploration into the lives of four preeminent philosophers, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, Walter Benjamin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2025/...res-lives.html

From my research, De Sade wrote it while incarcerated. He intended it as a satire of the actions and debauchery of the ruling aristocrats of his time. Then, just as now, the ruling classes pretend to be righteous, religious, moral folks, all the while they rape their children, force their Slavic mail-order wives to fornicate with large dogs, and play golf every other day. Wait, that's just Trump.

I may be in error.

Finished The Nix. Damn good.

Maybe Blood Meridian is next. Never read McCarthy.

to me the books are unreadable, i tried them a long time ago, bored me to tears

but the reason they are considered philosophical is because they are a kind of answer to rousseau, who argued basically that "man is born good and society corrupts him"

he's the french representative of the hobbesian state of nature, if you will, and people find parallels between him and the nietzschean will to power or the freudian id-- camille paglia name checks them all as her intellectual ancestors. tldr, nature is savage

de sade was a bit of a real life monster and was often imprisoned for actual cause. as i recall he's also admired for writing all kinds of atrocities with perfect grammar, hahahah... there's a comment about him by barthes i'd look up if i had my books around me, but see if it is on "the pleasure of the text"

the parody rob speaks of only comes with pasolini who uses the 120 of sodom it as the literal incarnation of fascism and as allegorical representation of the republic of salò. but since pasolini was a real artist he just steals de sade for his own purposes (see harold bloom's "the anxiety of influence"). de sade also is a parody of rousseau in a way

congrats on your superhuman endurance anyway. a quality i only display for worthy causes and only if absolutely necessary due to being "efficient" (lazy). not sure if either was for you in this case, but now you can be one of the few and the proud who can quote actual sources

*i purposefully wrote literal incarnation and allegory in pasolini which appears contradictory but not really, in this sense: the story in the movie is an allegory for thenlast days of the mussolini regime. but the acts depicted in them pasolini took literally, which is to day: capitalism is feeding us shit. and he was a good italian and meant this literally, as in the quality of the food, not a metaphor for something else

ah this is fun to talk about

mccarthy is hard and rejects me every time

i keep hearing: the best novel! from people i respect (harold bloom again!)

but the last time i tried it was in paper and the search for meanings and references kept throwing me off

i made several attempts, all ill-timed

speaking of mccarthy: i tried watching "the road" but meh. then again a movie is not a book. but mccarthy is hard to read for me

--

lately, heretically, i hav been wondering if the individual author might not have been superseded by writing teams. this seems strange for me to say but since litersture migrated to television i find television more interesting than books. the true polyphonic novel i think requires a writer's orchestra

for real though. when one writer writes for one character and another writer writes for another character... this is a historic development in literature, #sorrynotsorry

I too have not made it past the first dozen pages of a McCarthy novel.


Just don't care.

I’m halfway through Blood Meridian but I find it incredibly depressing and also quite … I’m not sure pretentious is the right word, but something akin to that.

But I love a good impenetrable sonofabitch of a book because the payoff is often pretty huge. We’ll see if that’s the case here.

I don’t think McCarthy’s really “for me,” but I reckon I’ll finish this.

I've never read any Cormac McCarthy but my mum has been telling me to read All The Pretty Horses since the 90s, so maybe you should tey that one instead of Blood Meridian which everyone says is grim as fuck.