The Book I Just Started Reading Today: Karl Ove Knausgård's Winter

 

I wasn't all that thrilled with the first book in this series (Autumn), but it was a foregone conclusion that I would read Winter because (1) I bought it from the bargain shelf at Half-Price Books before I'd read Autumn and (2) it has beautiful illustrations. Like this one:

Who could resist that? Not me. So I bought it...$4...and then got the first volume from the library and the rest is history. The library also has Spring and Summer, so I'll probably carry on through...but here's hoping that Karl Ove doesn't spend too much time explaining toilets and such (as he did in Autumn--I shit thee not).

News as it happens.

The Book I'm About to Read: I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov

2/12/26

I've had this one on my shelf for many years. Decades. But I've never read it. Despite the fact that I'm quite fond of both Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov. Mostly because though I've read quite a few Harlan Ellison books, that was a long time ago, back in the Pyramid Ellison days...and when I got the itch to re-read him awhile back I chose Memos From Purgatory, and that ground me to a halt. In it, Ellison, undercover as a gang member, commits statutory rape, intimidates old people, and does other unsavory things. I don't think you can use Writer's Research as a cloak for that kind of shit. Also, in the second part of the book when Ellison is jailed for a weapons violation, he is incredibly whiny about what amounts to a very short time of incarceration. It's a bit histrionic, to say the least.

But that was then, this is now. I have read 49 Isaac Asimov books in succession. I wanted something special for my 50th. So I chose this.

🤞

Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie

 

I've seen a few of the movies based on Agatha Christie novels (the Kenneth Branaugh ones...were there two or three?), but I've never read any of her books. My friend Susanne's mother is a big A.C. fan, though, so I'm always on the lookout for stuff related to The Dame, and when I spotted this graphic biography at the library, I picked it up.

It's a nice looking little book: sewn binding, good European style art (whatever that means; I can't define it, but I know it when I see it):

 

I think it has something to do with an uncluttered, open look and slightly wobbly "straight" lines.  Some of the character illustrations reminded me of Chester Brown, who is still one of my favorite artists:

The writing was very smoothly carried along, largely on the back of interactions between Agatha and her creation, Hercule Poirot. It made for interesting confrontations as Agatha was not overly fond of Hercule, and also allowed for "natural" meta-commentary on both Agatha's life and her writings. 

A very satisfying and quick read.

I'm thinking I might need go read some Agatha Christie in the near future. But which one? She wrote a lot.

According to this book, Agatha Christie's own two favorite novels were Crooked House and Ordeal By Innocence. She also wrote an autobiography: An Autobiography. You've gotta love that, right?

Somewhere along the line I also remembered that I had seen the movie Agatha when it came out in 1979...starring Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie, Dustin Hoffman as Wally Stanton, and Timothy Dalton as Archie Christie. I don't remember anything about it, but I would like to see it again now. And since it's the 21st Century...here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQj23PTy6cQ.

☮ ➡

DDR: Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System by Brando Simeo Starkey

 

This is a big book...672 pages. 

Day 1 (DDRD 3,018) February 5, 2026

Read to page 30.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson said, "I advance it...as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to whites both in body and mind...." (11)

Thomas Jefferson! What the actual fuck!

 

Day 2 (DDRD 3,019) February 6, 2026

Read to page 64.

The subject matter of this book is compelling and horrifying, and I'm pretty sure that I will continue to forge my way through it, but Starkey is not a good writer. He tries to make his narrative more immediate by placing the reader into it, which is a bit forced. He also relies upon repeated phrases such as "We the People" far too much. I am currently on page 46, and I would estimate that he has used that phrase at least 100 times (no hyperbole*). He also has a very bizarre way of wording some thoughts. For instance, "Some thought Black men need not the ballot."(47) That is some strange syntax.

In fact, I found his writing so bad that I looked up a video to see how he spoke. I found several short ones, which seemed fine, so I thought I would check out a longer one. I found this one, with a rather startling picture at the front, of Supreme Court justices in Ku Klux Klan roNow.

https://youtu.be/cZT6kkf6_fA?si=VmvYHnBHDjaLru0m

It's actually an image I've had in my mind since I picked this book up and was planning to photoshop, but I suppose, I don't have to now.

Starkey also regularly (and by that I mean far too often) refers to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Ammendments to the Constitution as "the Trinity," which I find (1) too cute by half and (2) inappropriate in that the religious connotations of the word are inescapable. 

* He uses the phrase 5 times on page 46, for instance.

Day 3 (DDRD 3,020) February 7, 2026

Read to page 100.

William Woods Holden called the Ku Klux Klan the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party" and said that they "had caused the defeats of Republican candidates through voter intimidation and brownbeat [sic] state officials into discharging their duties in ways the Klan demanded." (65) Oh, how doth the 🪱 turn.

Another turn of the 🪱: "The states' rights party lacked feasible means to attract southern black voters, and reducing them to nonvoters would help." (70)

All of this talk about Republicans being the good guys fighting for Black rights, especially voting rights, led me to check current political party demographics. Here's what I found:

https://www.google.com/search?q=racial+demographics+of+political+party&oq=racial+demographics+of+polit&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgBEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMg0IAhAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IAxAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IBBAAGIYDGIAEGIoF0gEKMjA1NjZqMGoyOagCALACAQ&client=ms-android-verizon-us-rvc3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#lfId=ChxjMe

Hmmmm.

Day 4 (DDRD 3,021) February 8, 2026

Read to page 137.

After the confusing election of 1876, on February 8th 1877, a consortium of 15 gave the election to Rutherford B. Hayes. As a result, Federal troops (sent to defend Black folks) were removed from the South: "Republicans had concluded that claiming the mantle of Black rights hamstrung their political ambitions." (111)

Nothing new under the fuckin' 🌞,  is there? 

Day 5 (DDRD 3,022) February 9, 2026

Read to page 159.

Mississippi Plan 1875

😔 😟 😠 😡 

Day 6 (DDRD 3,023) February 10, 2026

Read to page 192. To reiterate: I'm not a fan of Starkey's writing style. He continues to write grammatically incorrect sentences (including sentence fragments), intrusive authorial addresses to the reader (e.g., "Come now and we'll take a look at _____ ), and annoying euphemisms ("The Trinity" for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Ammendments, "We thePeople" for the Constitution). These subject matter, however,  is riveting (and horrifying). And so I soldier on. 672 - 190 = 482 pages to go, ÷ 30 = 16 days. I can do that.

Day 7 (DDRD 3,024) February 11, 2026

Read to page 223. (15 🍺 🧱....)

"People work hard and follow the rules if they believe they can win." (201)

Which is kind of the whole story? And look at the converse: if you believe that you can't win, if you believe that the game is rigged, then you will not work hard and you will not follow the rules. Why would you? To do so would be stupid.

Day 8 (DDRD 3,025) February 12, 2026

Read to page 254. 

A white Southerner meets Booker T Washington and tells him, "Say, you are a great man. You are the greatest man in this country!" Booker. T. downplayed the praise, but the man shook his head and reiterated, "Yes, sir, the greatest man in this country." Roosevelt, Booker T. responded, deserved that honor. "Huh! Roosevelt?" he replied. "I used to think that Roosevelt was a great man until he ate dinner with you. That settled him for me." (228)

Ummm...what?

"Laziness and shiftlessness, these, and above all, vice and criminality of every kind, are evils more potent for harm to the black race than all acts of oppression of white men put together...." (241) That's beloved President Theodore Roosevelt speaking. For fuck's sake.

Day 9 (DDRD 3,026) February 13, 2026

Read to page 287. So many racist white men in our history.... 😔 

I'm thinking that I should read a biography of Lyndon Johnson. What made him sign the Civil Rights law? 

This

looks like it might do the job. The library has an e-book, but I'm thinking I want a real book.

Day 10 (DDRD 3,027) February 14, 2026

Read to page 320. 

Day 11 (DDRD 3,028) February 15, 2026

Read to page

DDR: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

I hadn't intended to read this next, but it became available from my requests and I had a little peek at it and then didn't stop. Pages vary in e-versions, as always, but I'm assured by the library and Amazon that it's a book of 208 pages, so that's the official ruling.

Day 1 (DDRD 3,016) February 3, 2026

Read to page 57, and didn't even want to stop then...and will probably go back for more. Here's why:

"It is a hallmark of failing societies, I’ve learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist." (13)

"It has been, for as long as I can remember, the memory that anchors my overarching view of political malice: an ephemeral relationship with both law and principle. Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power. Otherwise, they, like all else, are expendable." (15)

"In this place, at this time, people who looked like him were to be invisible. They could perform labor and be paid wages, but as vessels of agency beyond the most necessary transactions, they quite simply did not exist. They were not subhuman, they were nonhuman, non-anything. To allow oneself to think otherwise risked having to contend with the reality that this whole place lived on top of people who looked just like this man. It risked an indictment of an entire narrative, a self-told story of being. It risked everything. 

     "I return to the memory of that moment often, the way we watched and laughed, didn’t think for a second to stop, to interfere, as the man in the Mercedes assaulted someone whose existence he had been so rudely forced to acknowledge. It’s come to shape the way I think about every country, every community: Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place, and how uncontrollable is the rage whenever that nonexistence is violated?" (19 - 20)

"For members of every generation, there comes a moment of complete and completely emptying disgust when it is revealed there is only a hollow. A completely malleable thing whose primary use is not the opposition of evil or administration of justice but the preservation of existing power." (26)

"...in times like these, one remarkable difference between the modern Western conservative and their liberal counterpart is that the former will gleefully sign their name on the side of the bomb while the latter will just sheepishly initial it." (56)

"Whatever the quality of its rhetoric, any politics that buckles at the prospect of even mildly inconveniencing the rich, or resisting an ally’s genocidal intentions, will always face an uphill battle against a politics that actively embraces malice. “Yes We Can” is a conditional. “Yes We Will” is not." (61)

∞

I read this at the beginning of Chapter Five:

"To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die."

And I thought surely not. Then I went looking. It took no effort at all to find this:

Gaza man with Down's syndrome attacked by IDF dog and left to die, mother tells BBC

16 July 2024https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9drj14e0lo

And I wondered, as you probably did, why I hadn't heard of this story. So I Googled the man's name--Muhammed Bhar--and New York Times. Here's what I found:

Then I tried the same with Washington Post. Same results. It's almost as if the USA's media were being manipulated.

Also, read to page 114. I suspect I'll be finishing this one off tomorrow.

Day 2 (DDRD 3,017) February 4, 2026

Read to page 189 (= 208)...The End.

An alternate title for this book could be Why Liberal Cowardice Has Allowed Fascism to Triumph in the United States of America. Or, to get de Tocqueville-y about it, How a Fascist State Must Be Created by Liberal Hypocrisy. And here we are.

"On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice rules that Israel must stand trial for genocide. Not long after, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and six other nations decide to cut off all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, one of the few organizations providing any aid to Palestinians." (118)

For an alternate point of view, here's 

Ocasio-Cortez Statement on the First Anniversary of October 7th

October 7, 2024

Press Release

Washington, D.C. - On the first anniversary of the October 7th terrorist attacks in Israel, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released the following statement: 

“The violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th, murdering more than 1,200 people and kidnapping hundreds of innocent men, women, and children, was a crime against humanity and an atrocity that will shock generations to come. It was the single deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust. I have seen footage from that day. I will never forget it. 

“In the weeks after the attack, I met with hostage families whose loved ones were being held in Gaza. Their message to me and to the world was clear: we can save the hostages, secure a ceasefire, and stop the needless suffering of Israeli hostages and Palestinians alike.

“Instead, Prime Minister Netanyahu pursued a path of mass revenge, killing over 40,000 Palestinians, blocking humanitarian aid, pushing Gaza to the brink of famine while only further endangering the lives of hostages, and consistently undermining ceasefire negotiations.

“One year after the attack, the region is barreling toward even wider conflict. The Biden Administration has failed in its responsibility and own stated goals to prevent a wider regional conflict. The administration’s refusal to enforce U.S. Leahy laws and humanitarian standards has contributed to the devastation in Gaza, added to the profound human toll on and since October 7th, and allowed the conflict to escalate. 

“None of this was inevitable. And it can still be stopped. Hamas, Israel, and Hezbollah should agree to a lasting ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. The Biden Administration must uphold U.S. humanitarian law and withhold offensive military support when it is violated. The world must come together to build a lasting peace. All of us must protect our Jewish communities at home and abroad from rising antisemitism. All of us must demand respect for the lives of Palestinians and human rights everywhere. The only way to end these horrors is through a diplomatic solution.”

https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ocasio-cortez-statement-first-anniversary-october-7th

So there's that. This woman has more guts and bigger balls than all of the other members of Congress combined and multiplied by 17.

"How empty does your message have to be for a deranged right wing to even have a chance of winning? Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close." (124)

"Power absent ethics rests on an unshakable ability and desire to punish active resistance—to beat and arrest and try to ruin the lives of people who block freeways and set up encampments and confront lawmakers. But such power has no idea what to do against negative resistance, against someone who refuses to buy or attend or align, who simply says: I will not be part of this. Against the one who walks away." (155 - 156)

Is that last sentence a reference to Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"?

I think this might be the perfect summary of this book: "What is the ethical legitimacy of any system in which one has to hope the most privileged sliver of global society decides, in large enough numbers, that a sufficient number of children have been murdered to warrant choosing a different brand of couscous?" (165)

And this is too important not to quote at length:

"...every small act of resistance trains the muscle used to do it, in much the same way that turning one’s eyes from the horror strengthens that particular muscle, readies it to ignore even greater horror to come. One builds the muscle by walking away from the most minor things—trivial consumables, the cultural work of monsters, the myriad material fruits grown on stolen ground—and realizes in the doing of these things that there is a wide spectrum of negative resistance. Maybe it’s not all that much trouble to avoid ordering coffee and downloading apps and buying chocolate-flavored hummus from companies that abide slaughter. It is this realization that renders negative resistance most terrifying to political and economic power—the simple fact that, having taken these small steps, a person might decide it was no great sacrifice, and might be willing to sacrifice more, demand more. That having called for justice in one instance, one might do it again and again, might call for a just world. It is probably the case that most mainstream Western politicians don’t actually care one iota about Israelis or Palestinians and, were the calculus of electoral self-interest to shift, would happily back whatever position serves their own interests best. But what about a population whose inability to countenance genocide spreads outward, becomes an inability to countenance what the same political systems do and will always allow to happen to so much of the planet in the name of endless extraction, endless more? Such a thing puts the entire ordering at risk." (166)

If that's not a mission statement, I don't know what is.

I just found a critique of this book entitled "Author Omar El Akkad’s Bizarre Anti-Israel Ravings Receive Uncritical Coverage In Toronto Star, Globe And Mail & Toronto Life"  by HonestReporting Canada (What? No name?) dated March 5, 2025. Hmmm. 

This was ons of the most powerful books I've read. Very disturbing, of course, but wouldn't it have to be? Well worth your time.

P.S. I just checked out Omar El Akkad's first book, American War. Watch this space.

Read This Poem. (Please.)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/154658/fuck-your-lecture-on-craft-my-people-are-dying

Winter

 

Metastaseised

Horse running backwards

Through the crop-circled field

I know how she feels

I know how she feels

Ice in the river sighs and congeals

Like aloe it heals

Like aloe it heals

Diamond Cinderella has a passion for the part

She wants to run away but she needs a head  

     start

And a heart

Sorrow running backwards

In circles and sighs

It no longer cries

It no longer sighs

Passioned Cinderella headless falls to her knees

And drowns in the sea

And drowns in the

Sea.

The Shipwreck

I am the shipwreck

On the shore of your life

And when you wander down that way

In dreams, unbidden memories

You'll see only broken ribs

Empty treasure chests

Sails that no longer gasp for air

And you'll turn away swearing

That you will never walk this way again.

DDR: Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity by Marcus du Sautoy

Calling this one in off the bench because my Collected (Possibly Complete) Seamus Heaney poems was grinding me down.

"I am a strong believer in the idea that the mathematical structures that underpin both art and nature are timeless. That they do not need a moment of creation. They exist outside time and space. The universe we live in is a physicalization of these abstract structures.

"There will be a moment when the human mathematician will see and articulate that structure for the first time in an act that often feels like a feat of creativity, but that moment is always mixed with a sense that this was a structure waiting there to be discovered, whose existence is independent of human involvement. Mathematicians are revealing the pure abstract structures that are the true origin of the things being projected onto the wall of Plato's cave. The universe we see around is simply a physical manifestation of those abstract forms. And within that universe artists are creating their own works which reinterpret these structures once again." (3)

x + 372 pages = 382

Day 1 (DDRD 3,006) January 24, 2026

Read to page 10. Ahhhh.

Day 2 (DDRD 3,007) January 25, 2026

Read to page 41. And it was not a struggle. And when I stopped for breakfast and lost my place, it was easy to find it again because I remembered what I had read previously. 👍

There was an extended reference to a piece called Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen:

https://youtu.be/zYpBHc8px_U?si=2zbNEf_PVl3PlCY9

Very strange.

Now THIS is the way it's supposed to work: reading about Messiaen led me to a video of Quartet for the End of Time, and reading the comments on that video led me to a novel that looks very interesting: Orfeo by Richard Powers. Which is, alas, unavailable for free...except as an audio recording. I don't do well with audio recordings, but I'll give it a shot. I don't do well with audio recordings but I'll give it a shot. News as it happens.

"Both mathematics and the arts emerge out of our encounters with the world around us. They are languages that we have developed to make sense of our environment." (27)

There's also a lecture on this book by The Author at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqH-oscXKTM.

Later...

I went back for more. If you get to page 42 and don't know "Take 5" by Dave Brubeck & Co., here ya go: https://youtu.be/vmDDOFXSgAs?si=2giquhmb3H7I7rar

No, no, no...thank YOU.

Read to page 49, btw.

Day 3 (DDRD 3,008) January 26, 2026

Read to page 82. 

This book is making me happy. Get this: there's discussion of the dome for Florence Cathedral, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and finished in 1436. According to du Sautoy, it was the belief that the universe was a sphere that inspired these structures. 

Public Domain*

* There are some excellent photographs of this dome online, but this was the only public domain picture I could find. Check out Wikipedia for the good stuff--including the amazing artwork on the interior of the dome.

Guillaume Du Fay wrote Nuper Rosarum Flores to Celebrate the consecration of the cathedral in 1436. It was (much) later discovered that he "used the dimensions of the cathedral as a blueprint for the composition. There are four sections, each comprising two sets of 28 units made of four lots of seven-beat phrases. The four sections repeat the same music, but at different speeds, in a proportion of 6 to 4 to 2 to 3. All these numbers that Du Fay used to create the piece are the same numbers that define the proportions of the cathedral that Brunelleschi had worked on." (65)

Music, maestro?

https://youtu.be/P9yzTTwAj5U?si=sSUopDeImd97-2Hr

Ah, yes.

On page 79 there's a reference to the short story "A Subway Called Moebius." I read that story a few days ago in the Asimov edited anthology Where Do We Go From Here? Do do do do, do do do do.

Day 4 (DDRD 3,009) January 27, 2026

Read to page 112.

Speaking of architecture, check this out: L'unite d'habitation. Apparently this "self-contained city" was an example of Brutalist architecture. The details of its construction are worth looking into. 

Now I feel like watching The Brutalist again.

Day 5 (DDRD 3,010) January 28, 2026

Read to page 155.

Got to Philip Glass today, starting with a piece I'd never heard of previously...and I've been listening to PG for over 50 years. It's a simple bit of rhythm performed by one person with two hands: 

https://youtu.be/A3IYzX0yJKc?si=UtT6laZGLk9V9Fec

I don't know if it's Music,  but I sure as hell couldn't do it, so there's a vote in favor of.

Day 6 (DDRD 3,011) January 29, 2026

Read to page 214.

I'm thinking that Matryoshka (as in doll) would be a good name for a novel. Or a character.

Y'know, this book really should be produced with hyperlinks. References to paintings, images of other sorts, videos, music, literature abound, and I often have to stop in my reading to access those references. It'd be so cool to have that embedded in the text. Let him who has ears and unlimited funds listen.

Nietzsche: "...we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once." (186)

The Flagellation of Christ (1459–1460) by Piero della Francesca

Public Domain 

Day 7 (DDRD 3,012) January 30, 2026

Read to page 254.

Greek composer Iannus Xenakis: Metastasis. 

https://youtu.be/Jjpq2Y4tUGI?si=Eihwa-Rozb8S99nk

This sounds so much like the weird symphonic progression in "A Day in the Life" that I'd think the Beatles had ripped it off if it weren't so obscure.

Guess I'm not alone:

Speaking of music...I wish I'd kept track of every piece of music Du Sautoy referred to on this book. It would make a dandy little Spotify Playlist. I don't know if I have the strength to go back through the previous 250 pages to scope them out. 🤔 

Day 8 (DDRD 3,013) January 31, 2026

Read to page 284.

Messiaen "stopped a rehearsal in order to complain that the clarinet had turned dark blue when it was meant to be green. The blue clashed with the colour of the other instruments. What had actually happened is that the clarinet had played a B, not a B flat. But for Messiaen, this had translated into the wrong colours appearing in his mind." (258)

So...there's this group named Oulipo. Here's part of what Wikipedia has to say about them.

"Oulipo (French pronunciation: [ulipo], short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated as "workshop of potential literature", stylized OuLiPo) is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/creative??,

And that got me thinking. This was a group that specifically thought out different kinds of limitations in order to spark greater creativity. And that's what poetry does as well: it creates false limitations in order to subvert the conscious mind and drive the creative person's consciousness into other areas. As a matter of fact, that same concept applies to sports: create false limitations (the dimensions of the playing "field," time limitations, etc.) in order to make the game more exciting. Would anyone want to watch a basketball game if there were no baskets at the ends of the court? And that got me thinking about corporeal existence. What if immortal and limitless spirits wanted to ensconce themselves in finite bodies in order to accentuate their ability to be creative? Would some choose such drastic limitations as crippled or diseases bodies? Well, you see where that goes. 🤔

Two more pieces of music, both of them by Emily Howard:

"Torus" 

https://youtu.be/PoRLvQwuzYM?si=LGGd_1LE5JSfln6_

&

"Four Musical Proofs and a Contradiction"

https://youtu.be/ZWjaUuk51pg?si=khUFvO8sI0wPzREY

https://youtu.be/pUHU_PfGUY8?si=71I5nlLXC0okHTsq

https://youtu.be/YyAEUYM1_cQ?si=-i3rEAcPdhy6xkOL

https://youtu.be/kg4MBc9HpTM?si=TgHcUamsegH5WfyZ

https://youtu.be/Wf9J795s_AQ?si=MQ-ejDReYVrh5X8I

Day 9 (DDRD 3,014) February 1, 2026

Read to page 339.

"Albert Einstein said "If you ask in whom I am most interested at present, I must answer Dostoevsky - Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss!" (292)

Day 10 (DDRD 3,015) February 2, 2026

Read to page 372, The End.

I had coffee with some friends yesterday morning and mentioned that I had read that Jackson Pollock's paintings followed fractal patterns. C. remarked that that was bullshit, that all Pollock did was pour paint onto the canvas in a random pattern. I let it lie there as I am pretty non-confrontational in real life, but as I read through the bibliography of this book, I saw a reference to an article on this which I hope to read soon.

https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/e/12535/files/2016/02/PollockLeonardo-2e2w0wh.pdf

Amazon Strikes Again

Uncle Scrooge has been having something of a Renaissance of late. He's appeared under the Marvel Comics banner (the one-shot Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime, the four issue miniseries Uncle Scrooge: Earth's Mightiest Duck), under Dynamite's (DuckTales), and Fantagraphics' Uncle Scrooge (which is double numbered, with one of those numbers being the Legacy Number which runs through ten different comic book publishers(!). 

I'm not a fan of what Marvel has done to the character, so I dropped them after Infinity Dime, but I've been with the Dynamite and Fantagraphics books from the get-go. Unfortunately, I neglected to put the Fantagraphics version on my hold list, though, and I missed issue #3. 😩

I asked Krystal at The Great Escape if she could order #3 and she said she'd see what she could do, but JiC, I also took a look around the Internets. I found this on Amazon:

Then I thought to check Fantagraphics' website and found this:

 

Fantagraphics also charged $4.47 for shipping.

Now riddle me this: why does Amazon charge $3 more for the book...and 52¢ more for shipping (for a total of $3.52 up charge)?

Answer: because they can.

Fuckers.

Oh, by the way, in case you're interested...

• Dell Comics: 1952–1962 (Four Color Comics issues 386, 456 and 495; issues 4–39)
• Gold Key Comics: 1962–1984 (issues 40–173 as Gold Key, 174–209 as Whitman)
• Gladstone Publishing: 1986–1990 (issues 210–242)
• Disney Comics: 1990–1993 (issues 243–280)
• Gladstone Publishing: 1993–1998 (issues 281–318)
• Gemstone Publishing: 2003–2008 (issues 319–383)
• Boom! Kids (Boom! Studios): 2009–2011 (issues 384–404)
• IDW Publishing: 2015–2020 (IDW #1-56, with "legacy" issue numbers 405–460 in brackets)^[1]
• Fantagraphics: 2025- (Fantagraphics #1-, with "legacy" issue numbers 461- in brackets)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Scrooge)

Logan's

 

Every Tuesday (when I volunteer at the hospital) I pass this door four times. And every time I pass it, I think, "I should print out the word RUN and tape it onto this sign." But by the time I get home, I've already forgotten about it. 

Maybe next time.

Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgård

 

"...churches were...feats of spiritual engineering...they... represented another level of reality, the divine, which was present in the midst of everyday toil, and there stood open to the future, when the kingdom of heaven would be. Established on earth. That no one seeks the divine level of reality any more and that the churches stand empty means that it is no longer necessary. That it is no longer necessary means that the kingdom of heaven has come. There is nothing left to long for other than longing itself, of which the empty churches I can see from here have become the symbol." (38)

Some of that goes a bit too far, but I thought that the way that KOK expressed the essential nature of churches summed up my beliefs nicely: "engineering...they... represented another level of reality, the divine...." That's one of the reasons that the physical appearance of a church matters to me. Old Catholic churches, with their huge stained glass windows, statuary, and sometimes relics suit my idea of the proper way to signal that you have entered the presence of God.

"...the wisest person knows that 'I' is nothing in itself." (133)

"Madame Bovary is the world's greatest novel.... Flaubert's sentences are like a rag rubbed across a window pane encrusted with smoke and dirt which you have long since grown accustomed to seeing the world through." (178 - 179)

I think this would make a great title: "The archaic light of the soul...." (224) Somebody should tell a writer.

And the 🎤 drop: "to gaze into the eyes of the one you love when love is at its most powerful belongs among the highest joys." (224)

This wasn't really a good book. More a series of descriptions, most of them banal and unnecessary--like the description of how a toilet functions, for instance--but occasionally there'd be a flash of inspired stuff, and I don't feel that Autumn was a waste of time. In fact, I'll probably be starting Winter tomorrow. 

DDR: The Poems of Seamus Heaney

Well, this is a woppa. xliv + 1252 = 1,296 pages. Don't know if I have it in me to read poetry every day for 43 days, but ahmo give it a good go.

Day 1 (DDRD 3,001) January 20, 2026

Read to page 21 and 693 to 700.

This book is divided between poems (3 to 689) and 691 to 1219). Which makes for awkward reading...especially in a book as heavy as this one. Still I persisted. 

It was nice and a revelation to find out that not only did Seamus Heaney admire Gerard Manley Hopkins, but that he even imitated Hopkins' style in his earliest poems. 

I have to admit that this was a taxing read. I do love Heaney's poetry, and there are gems in every one of tlthe poems, but it takes a lot of concentration to read poetry, and having to flip back-and-forth between notes detracts from the experience. But of course, it also adds to it.

Day 2 (DDRD 3,002) January 21, 2026

Read to page 38 and 701 to 713. Some of the notes on the poems seem ridiculous to me...many of them point out things like "sheep," in the original, revised to "sheep." I'm not exaggerating, either. Have to admit that it's kind of draining to read this.  But het, only a little over 1,200 pages to go, right?

Day 3 (DDRD 3,004) January 22, 2026

Read to page 57, 724. 

I do love Seamus Heaney, but I'm thinking hard about whether or not I want to continue this for my DDR. It's kind of exhausting,  and I feel like the words are slipping through my fingers.

Day 4 (DDRD 3,005) January 23, 2026

Read to page 77, 734.

Pages 58 to 68 went pretty quickly as (1) they were somewhat interconnected, (2) had few notes, and (3) weren't very good, so easy to glide through. As total last, most of these were song lyrics, and were rhymey and superficial.

My frustration with reading this collection made me think about reading the collection of the complete Blaise Cendrars poems, which I don't recall gave me this trouble. Thinking about that made me think about "Easter in New York," and when I went looking for that I found this (by Cendrars):

"In 1912, at Easter, I was starving in New York, and had been for a number of months. From time to time I took a job, by force of necessity, but I didn’t keep it a week and if I could manage to get my pay sooner than that I quit sooner, impatient to get on with my sessions of reading at the central public library. My poverty was extreme and every day I looked worse: unshaven, trousers in corkscrews, shoes worn out, hair long, coat stained and faded and without buttons, no hat or tie, having sold them one day for a penny in order to buy a plug of the world’s worst chewing tobacco."

Day 5 (DDRD 3,006) January 24, 2026

Read to page 89 / 740 (12 + 6)

I stopped reading for some Dad of Two Autistic Kids Who Are Freaking Out About the Incoming Snowmageddon stuff, and when I got back to it I had to search for where I'd stopped...even though I had a bookmark. As I read backwards, I realized that these poems had moved through me like a Big Mac through my digestive system--swift slide, splash, and no trace left behind. 

That's not good.

In fact...I need a break. I might be back, but this just ain't gettin' it right now.

44 + 89 + 40 = 173 pages