Category: input update (Page 2 of 4)

My reading list grows ever longer. The Coleridge came about because I was rereading How to Be Idle, and there’s a little anecdote about how Coleridge probably got the idea for the poem after walking in the countryside and taking some opium. Does not surprise me. I hadn’t read “Kubla Khan” in awhile, but reading it again was fabulous. Very DCC RPG in a lot of ways.

Other books currently reading or in the queue: The Two Towers, Labyrinth (yes, the movie novelization), On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (by G.K. Chesterton), Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers, and Jack of Shadows (this one is in the queue). Plus, I have about a dozen more I really want to start reading in earnest. Too many books. I really need a week off from everything just so I can read. It will never happen, but a girl can dream.

Input Update 5/8/2021

May 8, 2021 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

Reading: The Right to Useful Unemployment by Ivan Illich

Listening to: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #1

Watching: The Last Blockbuster

I have thoughts about nostalgia, video rental stores, Blockbuster Video, the documentary referenced above, etc. that I might riff on in another blog post. Overall, the best parts of the documentary were in watching Sandi the Blockbuster store manager do her thing, and seeing how a humanely-run and community-oriented business can be such an important part of people’s lives (the humanely-run and community-oriented business in question is specifically the franchised Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, not Blockbuster stores in general).

As far as the Illich book, I don’t know what to think. I was very excited to read it, and it’s the first of his books I’ve tried, but I’m worried that I’m not intellectually up to the task (i.e.: I’m not a good enough reader/not smart enough).

I feel like maybe I’m not getting the nuances of Illich’s points. Based on my reading so far (about 2/3s through), his ideas would fit right in with today’s Covid anti-vaxxers and denialists. And yet, thinkers I admire like Sam Rocha and L.M. Sacasas are Illich guys (as is Mr. Idler Tom Hodgkinson) so I’m not sure if I’m just reading Illich wrong, misunderstanding him, or being too quick to lump him in with the “Free Michigan” people who stormed my state’s capital last spring. Or maybe my reading of the book is right, and Illich would be very much against the vaccine and masks and everything related to slowing the spread of Covid, things I consider to be necessary for the common good and do out of concern for my fellow humans. David Cayley’s piece on Illich and Covid seems to indicate that I am reading him right, which is kinda… bleh.

I was very excited to dive into Illich’s writings because I’ve become more and more disillusioned with our current meritocracy, with our hyper-Capitalist society, and with the ways in which we devalue work that doesn’t contribute to the GDP. But in reading this book and seeing Illich argue against things like gynecology and giving birth in a hospital just seems insane to me. I and/or my daughter probably wouldn’t be alive today without modern obstetrics. His weird swipe against breast self-exams and mastectomies was jarring too. Like, why are you against women getting treatment for breast cancer, Illich?

Anyway, maybe I’m not following his argument or I’m missing some important details. I’m planning to give Tools for Conviviality a try next.

Input Update 2/15/2021

February 15, 2021 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

Reading: Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman

Also reading: Out of the Silent Planet

Also also reading: The Twilight Realm

Listening to: The Raveonettes

Watching: Cadfael

I really should do a post about The Twilight Realm and that curious fantasy sub-genre of “friends-who-unexpectedly-get-transported-into-a-role-playing-game.” Part of my fascination with this sub-genre is that as a kid, I remember reading one of these books and feeling as if the book was perhaps “too adult” for elementary-school me, and reading it secretly because I figured my parents wouldn’t approve. (Of course, I never realized my parents wouldn’t have known what was in the book, nor would they have ever tried to find out. But somehow, I was convinced this book was verboten, and thus I would sneak around to read it. Gosh, I was a weird kid!)

Anyway, whatever this book was from my childhood, I’ve never forgotten the feeling I had while reading it. Trouble is, I can’t remember anything else about it! I know it involved kids getting sucked into a role-playing game, but that’s it. So now, with the help of the internet, I’ve begun making my way through mid-80s to early-90s books that involve people from our world getting transported into a fantasy role-playing game world. As I make my way through these novels, I’m hoping one of them will stand out as the one that was so scandalous to nine-year-old me. So far, The Twilight Realm is maybe, kinda fitting the bill, but none of it makes me go, “Yes! This is the book!”

I’m not sure what I’m expecting with this project, other than I just really want to KNOW what that book was.