The last book you read

[The Architect Of Fate]

Rereading 

[Foxaèr]

If I'm going to read anything again, I'll have to catch up on years of books by Dean Koontz.

[The Valkyrie]

A collection of short fantasy stories centered on women.

Chicks in Chainmail.

[The Grand Nudger]

Rereading One Straw Revolution. It’s mostly but loosely about the philosophy of a japanese grower who worked out a system we’d (much later) call regenerative agriculture. Some credit him as the start of the movement.

The reason I constantly reread it is that it got me hooked on the idea of do-nothing farming. It’s full of anecdote and unreliable data-as-field trial….and ofc a bunch if zen deepity and narration…but what stuck with me and is still with me and genuinely changed the course of my life was the suggestion that, at the very bottom of our chains of production…we’re doing way too much work for nothing.

Do-nothing farming was what he called no-till agriculture, and he was certainly a pioneer in that field which has since become the uniform recommendation of every land granted institution in the United States. I re-read it, and other books about and by him, to try and work out whether he was just lazy and shiftless and accidentally right, or genuinely and contemplatively, and methodically right. Still not sure.

On the one hand…anyone who set out to commit to no till would have ended up with the same observations we have today, observations about soil health and fertility and water holding capacity, anyway. All of those observations, back in the 70’s…at least, would have been holy shit important on their own. In the other, his origin story( for lack of a better term) for the idea isn’t exactly credible and has nothing to do with agricultural practice. One can even get the sense that the success of the model is secondary at best, it’s main value in the confirmation of his worldview about things beyond the boundary of any productive acreage.

Read in a vacuum or at the time one might see it (and many did) as a set of wild testimonials about a wonder method. The efficacy of the alleged wonder method an implied argument for the truth of his philosophical world view.

Each time I reread it I lean more and more into some combination of elements. He was a charlatan selling a product…but, in a rare departure…..for charlatans anyway…the product worked. Places him in the company of people who knew they were full of shit but were so committed to a genuinely good idea that narrative fib here and there could be legitimate means of disseminating the practice.

You can find a full version by googling it, if anyone wanted to read it. Certainly don’t pay, that would be overwork.

---

-as an addendum, the practical aspects of his methods only became important to me later- for better or worse, I was initially drawn to his description of his farm…specifically the fall webs covering his entire acreage. Just something about that imagery. The literary antithesis of the sanitized and unbusy rows of my own experience.

[Ranjr]

1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.  It discusses the history of Mediterranean trade routes, communication between kings, and the devastation brought by the invading "Sea People." 

Started the White Horse King, the Life of Alfred the Great by Benjamin R. Merkle.  Didn't read as much the past week as I thought I would.

[Fake Messiah]

Philip Roth The Biography

Throughout the Middle Ages, Polish landowners had employed Jewish agents to collect rents and taxes from the peasantry, who meanwhile were reminded every Sunday, in church, that the Jews had killed Christ. “Pole, Yid, and hound—each to the same faith bound,” read the legend commonly nailed to trees where a Pole, Jew, and dog had been hanged. Almost every Jew in Tarnopol was killed or expelled in the massacre, and the city itself was burned to the ground.

[zwanzig]

Reading The Piper's Graveyard by Ben Farthing right now. Holy shit, this is great. It's eerie and full of mystery so far. Small town cults and a modern take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin? Uh, yes, please! Always a yes.

[Spongebob]

I'm half way through Sword Song, book 4 of the Saxon Chronicles, by Bernard Cornwell. This is a series of historical fiction novels based in late 9th century British Isles and chronicles the wars between Saxons and Vikings and the ultimate emergence of the nation of England. Very good reading and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys historical fiction, particularly English history.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

‘Practical Blacksmithing’

The title kinda says it all, really.

Boru

[zwanzig]

Tried reading Radio Tower by Boris Bacic. Dnf at 25%.

It just felt so basic and was taking too long to introduce any tension or dread. And when it finally came it was hamfisted and played upon the main character being just THAT stupid. Like, "I move to a new town and everyone keeps smiling at me in a very creepy and unsettling way, like, oh my god, something might be wrong with these people mentally but oh well, I'm gonna ignore the red flags because this makes me feel welcome and everything seems so perfect." Just over and over again, the protagonist noticing off stuff for our benefit as the reader but ignoring it because the story has to happen.

And it didn't feel like that was really going anywhere or very deep at all. That whole, "The people in town were friendly... Too friendly...." horror trope that you thought was a clever subversion in high school because you were edgey and goth and scared of making human connections. Fake people and smiling when you don't mean it is a big part of polite society and human community behavior. We all lie a little bit to everyone every day. It's not unsettling just by itself, especially with a main character who's too stupid to live.