July was not my best reading month. Too much work, plus prep for, and participating in, my first vacation of the year. But what my monthly reading lacked in quantity it more than made up for in quality. Plus, Viriconium was a long, extremely dense book. But well worth the effort.
[The bloom at the top of a six foot tall thistle plant in our back yard.]
This past week was, like so many of the previous weeks, too busy to do much beyond working, working out, and the myriad maintenance projects which come with owning a house.
Reading
I am well on my way through M. John Harrison’s Viriconium, and loving every page of it. The writing therein is difficult to read quickly, and Harrison’s prose worth lingering over, so this might be another month-long read.
Writing
My world-building documents grow in size and number, and I have taken up, as a writing exercise, writing and re-writing the first paragraph or page of Cacophonous. I think of it as revving my engine, in the hopes that one of the revs will turn into a launch. If nothing else, I will have a SMASHING first paragraph.
Book Marks – A new review aggregator site (think Rotten Tomatoes) for books. A project of Literary Hub. Browsing through here brought to my attention a new book called Black Pill by Elle Reeve. A quick search of “black pill” brought me to the following link:
“Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism” (Megan Kelly, Alex DiBranco, Dr. Julia R. DeCook, New America) – Because it needs to be repeated ad infinitum, any time a member of an in-group thinks their problems are caused by members of the corresponding out-group: Never in the history of the USA have men been systematically oppressed or marginalized for being men. To believe otherwise is ignorant. To act in support of that belief is cowardly.
