It’s all in the second person, which i got used to but, ugh

it’ll probably make an OK movie

it reminded me a lot of Jeff Noon who I enjoy more for this kind of thing

Being set in and about Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka politics was really neat

it’s pretty brutal in some places, which I don’t get down with

the twist was annoying

the last 20 pages were not needed

21st book of the year: “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”, by Shehan Karunatilaka

A friend posted that they’d just read a book that they think might be the best book they’d ever read, and it was this one. 4, 3, 2, 1 was listed for a Booker and this one won the prize? OK, I’ll try it.

I really wanted to like it more than I did, and the second act really flows well, but I had a hard time finishing it, today, finally. It’s right up my alley in lots of ways. v0v

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57224204-the-seven-moons-of-maali-almeida

stunt dark, labor free (free as in time)

my kid (5y old this week!) has been obsessed with building stuff out of cardboard after drawing front back top and sides and cutting them out and wanted me to make a transformer yesterday

so i searched for patterns and fell down a papercraft hole, do not recommend

fiddly as shit i had to do all of the assembly myself

he loves them though!

also, cyberdrone’s deviantart is wild: https://www.deviantart.com/cyberdrone

i learned to make roux for gumbo from dad’s pal from boot camp, who was from louisiana, and he taught us the patient “stir, stir, stir, heat, stir, but whatever you do, don’t burn!” method.

it stinks to stand over and mind and is apparently a recent trend. like, originally, people just didn’t make roux so dark that it was so much work

but i do like my roux dark, so i start a few hours earlier and bake it at 350F, slight stir every half hour or so, easy mode

✅ boosted, ✅ flu vaxed, ✅ guy giving me the shot asked if I was a swimmer on account of these deltoids

incredibly neat to me, after having read it, to learn that Kohlhaas was a historical person ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas), that Marthin Luther actually did attempt to intercede, and even cooler, that Kohlhaas was out doing direction actions for 8 years to get justice before the state got him (and broke him on the wheel, yikes)

also there’s of course a feature film which I’m probably not gonna bother with but what if it’s good idk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2054790/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

20th book of the year: “Michael Kohlhaas”, by Heinrich von Kleist. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas)

4 3 2 1 was full of writers learning the trade from other writers and hundreds of books are mentioned. I’m sure I’ll thumb through it for more suggestions but this one was the first I chose.

I think probably best to go in completely without any idea what it is beyond: german, written early 1800s, takes place in the 1500s, and Kafka, of all people liked it a lot.

The ebay search paid off and I was able to buy a pair of out-of-production pants identical to ones I already own (noticing as I post this that I’m wearing the original pair right now) for next to nothing because I like the pair I have and want them to live forever and this is one way to cheat commodity death. huzzah.

Telling a friend about 4, 3, 2, 1 over dinner, I said it was romantic and lovely, if you didn’t mind new yorkers in love with new york, ellis island through the 60s, the anti-war movement, and all that shit we’ve heard so much about, which I did not mind.

Later, while my kid was eating pizza and getting sauce two inches up both cheeks, I asked him to fold it in half and the guy at the next table who’d overheard me laughed and said "I’m from New York and it’s really like all of that, you know”