I saw Idi i smotri a few years ago for the first time - as you say, harrowing - brilliantly disturbing.
I don't know how you read so many books! I guess I'm forced to read papers for my day job, so I guess I could match you if I didn't have to do that. Nevertheless, jealous.
TV series - Severance - a most brilliant and quirky series - hope they do a second season.
Top books this year- The Matter with Things; Madness and Modernism; The War on the West; The Secret Language of Cells; The Real Anthony Fauci (or was that last year? can't remember); Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order; Fahrenheit 451 (my first time); What is a Woman (book and doco); The Bodies of Others (audio). there's a bunch of other audio books but these are the standouts. Oh gosh! Almost forgot, your new edition of Lobaczewski - didn't read it cover to cover but plunged into the bits that the first edition made difficult to understand (which was a lot of it!).
I've got Mattias Desmet book on audio but never got around to listening to it - after the crash and burn post I did recently on a criticism of his book, I'm now obliged to listen to the book in detail, take notes, and go back to your series on it... sigh.
Hadn't heard of Severance. Looks good! There's a few in your list I've been planning to read, but haven't gotten to yet. Maybe they'll appear next year. I wouldn't say your post was crash and burn. ;) Something about the topic brings out strong opinions on either side, I'd say!
- Xenophon ‘Anabasis’. The Landmark edition. It’s a Landmark edition. Of Xenophon. Drop everything.
- Robert Nisbet ‘The Social Philosophers’
- Victor Klemperer ‘LTI The Language of the Third Reich’. If you think today’s propagandising of language cannot shit up another gear or two, think again.
- Solzhenitsyn ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. My white whale. Sooo depressing.
- Lukian ‘everything’ in the Loeb edition. He funny.
- Casanova ‘Story of my Life Vol 1 - 3’. I’m reading a lot of 18th century texts atm and thought Casanova would provide a sort of color commentary, what with him having being seemingly everywhere during that time. It’s hard going because the guy is such a cad. If not outright a sociopath then he’s very close.
- the most impact* on me had a book about the Reformation by Georg Habenicht which is only available in German right now so I won’t obnoxiously be raving about it.
Interesting that you liked the movie Top Gun because it was first and foremost a promotional/propaganda vehicle for the Pentagon death machine - promoting war as a boys-own-adventure. The Pentagon is of course the principal epicentre for the generation of humanly created evil in this world - our modern day Mordor.
The Pentagon which houses the various segments of the department of War was/is the world's largest building. There is grim and ironic, if not utterly black, humour to the fact that the Pentagon was built on an area of land once occupied by pawnshops and low-life seedy bars, and commonly known as "hells bottom".
The form of the Pentagon, whose five sides and five inner corridors symbolize the Firth Sun, is also that of a Pentagram, the principal magical aid for gathering power. When a pentagram is drawn on the ground with its base to the north, and its chief point point toward the south, as is the case with the pentagon, it is used for negative or black magic purposes.
Meanwhile some of my all-time favorite movies all of which are about what I call emotional conversion, both individual and collective.
Three Thousand Years of Longing by George Miller
The Whale Rider - the end was awe-inspiring
Shall We Dance - the original Japanese version
Departures a remarkable Japanese movie
As It Is In Heaven a Swedish film - buckets full of tears at the end
I saw Idi i smotri a few years ago for the first time - as you say, harrowing - brilliantly disturbing.
I don't know how you read so many books! I guess I'm forced to read papers for my day job, so I guess I could match you if I didn't have to do that. Nevertheless, jealous.
TV series - Severance - a most brilliant and quirky series - hope they do a second season.
Top books this year- The Matter with Things; Madness and Modernism; The War on the West; The Secret Language of Cells; The Real Anthony Fauci (or was that last year? can't remember); Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order; Fahrenheit 451 (my first time); What is a Woman (book and doco); The Bodies of Others (audio). there's a bunch of other audio books but these are the standouts. Oh gosh! Almost forgot, your new edition of Lobaczewski - didn't read it cover to cover but plunged into the bits that the first edition made difficult to understand (which was a lot of it!).
I've got Mattias Desmet book on audio but never got around to listening to it - after the crash and burn post I did recently on a criticism of his book, I'm now obliged to listen to the book in detail, take notes, and go back to your series on it... sigh.
Hadn't heard of Severance. Looks good! There's a few in your list I've been planning to read, but haven't gotten to yet. Maybe they'll appear next year. I wouldn't say your post was crash and burn. ;) Something about the topic brings out strong opinions on either side, I'd say!
Check out Severance - it’s unique.
I guess you are right about the Desmet post. Would rather present things that evoke strong opinions than topics evoking a yawn.
Definitely Northman - the story Shakespeare maybe could have told but did not. In 2023 maybe it will be Killers Of The Flower Moon?
Hadn't heard of that one. Maybe!
Idi i smotri =/= Come and See <-- ‘Tis a lousy translation with displaced emphases 🤷 Go and Watch works way better 😏
If I may add a book - Victor Herman's "Coming out of the Ice" if you can find it.
Looks right up my alley. Thanks, Dan!
Off the top of my head:
- Xenophon ‘Anabasis’. The Landmark edition. It’s a Landmark edition. Of Xenophon. Drop everything.
- Robert Nisbet ‘The Social Philosophers’
- Victor Klemperer ‘LTI The Language of the Third Reich’. If you think today’s propagandising of language cannot shit up another gear or two, think again.
- Solzhenitsyn ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. My white whale. Sooo depressing.
- Lukian ‘everything’ in the Loeb edition. He funny.
- Casanova ‘Story of my Life Vol 1 - 3’. I’m reading a lot of 18th century texts atm and thought Casanova would provide a sort of color commentary, what with him having being seemingly everywhere during that time. It’s hard going because the guy is such a cad. If not outright a sociopath then he’s very close.
- the most impact* on me had a book about the Reformation by Georg Habenicht which is only available in German right now so I won’t obnoxiously be raving about it.
*apart from ‘Political Ponerology’, obviously.
Only read one of those all the way through (Gulag). Just bits of Klemperer. Might have to check out that Xenophon!
Interesting that you liked the movie Top Gun because it was first and foremost a promotional/propaganda vehicle for the Pentagon death machine - promoting war as a boys-own-adventure. The Pentagon is of course the principal epicentre for the generation of humanly created evil in this world - our modern day Mordor.
The Pentagon which houses the various segments of the department of War was/is the world's largest building. There is grim and ironic, if not utterly black, humour to the fact that the Pentagon was built on an area of land once occupied by pawnshops and low-life seedy bars, and commonly known as "hells bottom".
The form of the Pentagon, whose five sides and five inner corridors symbolize the Firth Sun, is also that of a Pentagram, the principal magical aid for gathering power. When a pentagram is drawn on the ground with its base to the north, and its chief point point toward the south, as is the case with the pentagon, it is used for negative or black magic purposes.
Meanwhile some of my all-time favorite movies all of which are about what I call emotional conversion, both individual and collective.
Three Thousand Years of Longing by George Miller
The Whale Rider - the end was awe-inspiring
Shall We Dance - the original Japanese version
Departures a remarkable Japanese movie
As It Is In Heaven a Swedish film - buckets full of tears at the end
Fly Away Home
Ladies In Black - an Australian film