RICKENBLOG

I read this right before Biden dropped out of the race. A good portion of the book covers his first run for president in the year I was born, 1988. He was really living hard those years. Not surprised he ended up with a brain aneurysm. And not surprised he’s completely dust now. Burned both ends for a long, long time. I will admit, I do respect the grind. After reading, I’m not sure there is a more exhausting exercise than running for president. Or more shameless. Also, both Dole and Bush’s WW2 experiences are insane.

Really fun, Hunter S. Thompson type writing, but a bit too long to really recommend. And it doesn’t even cover the general election. The woven-in bios are easily the best part of the book.

Ladurie just died and someone on Twitter said this was his best book, so I picked it up. Apparently there’s a real lack of information on what the day-to-day was like for medieval peasants. But because Bishop Fournier was such a detailed notetaker when he was burning Albigensians alive during the French Inquisition, we got a real account of what these folks were up to through his records. It’s like the confessionals on reality TV. He calls them in, they spill, and then he uses it to thicken up the plot. And by thicken up the plot I mean cutting out a woman’s tongue for heresy and making people wear a yellow cross (history rhymes, as they say).

One thing that stuck with me was that body odor was considered very good, and the worse it was, the more virile you were considered. For a minute, please imagine the baseline they were nose-blind to. And then imagine what was cutting through and getting the womenfolk sprung. Also, these people were truly idle. I guess when you’re a peasant, you don’t have much to do beyond work, eat, fuck, and argue about religion. Hey, wait a minute…

This was so good, I read it in a week, which is very fast for me. Gives you a nice history of salafi jihadism and its roots in Egypt’s revolution. Doesn’t preach at all, just gives you the story and perspective. It reads like a thriller, despite the spoilers of it being a real thing that happened (crazy, right?). Still feels extremely current, and now I feel myself going down a Middle East/Antiquity rabbit hole.

“She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life-those moments when a man shows once for all what he is worth, that his past was not lived in vain but was preparation for these moments.”

LEO TOLSTOY, ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina is full of these “decisive moments of life”: Vronsky’s horse race; Levin working with the peasants; Anna reuniting with her son; The death of Lenin’s brother; Kitty’s labor; Anna’s final hours; Lenin’s revelation. These are visceral and unforgettable moments.

However it’s also full of superfluous scenes, characters, and dialogue. Is this the secret that makes Tolstoy’s world full and rich? Do these moments shine the way they do because of the slog it took to reach them?

In this way perhaps it mirrors life. And maybe that’s why, when Faulkner was asked his three favorite novels, responded, “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina”.

Also, I can’t help but notice the same thread of mania running through both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s characters. Karenina’s frenzied paranoia is the same of Raskolnokov’s. Is it a Russian thing? I think it may be.

Started this book a few days after I returned from Beirut. A few days after that, Hamas attacked Israel. Now Israel is launching drone attacks in Beirut and trading rockets with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Despite the title, what happened in Hama, Syria in 1982 will stick with me more than anything else I read. Once you understand “Hama rules”, nothing about Israel’s response will surprise you.

The first (Lebanese) half is much better than the second (Israeli) half, only because the latter half covers the same ground that’s been covered many times before (and after). Somehow, Friedman is able to maintain a folksy optimism about the whole thing. Saw an interview with him recently – wasn’t getting a lot of optimism.