@q00w2

Sleep the sleep of champions*!

*champions of what is up to you!

@LiseL @q00w2

(You, too, lurking @CanisPundit . You can hurl digital objects at me any time. 😊)

@q00w2 @LiseL

😂 Same rules apply! Feel free to hurl virtual objects at me after.

And seriously, I mean it: there are too many good books, movies, and albums in the world as is, for us to waste even a minute on a stinker. If it doesn't work for you, move on! Enjoy something else!

@LiseL @q00w2

Lise! If you read it, let me know!

You can always hurl the book virtually at me if you decide it stinks. :)

@q00w2 @LiseL

It's a pretty moving tale, of ghosts trying to help Lincoln's dead son move through the bardo so that his father can turn his attention back to the war - and it was based on how absolutely devastated Lincoln was by the death of his son Willie in 1862 - but I am emphatically NOT the kind of person to tell someone else that they "must" give something a try if it's not to their taste.

TOO MANY GOOD BOOKS.
NOT ENOUGH TIME!

@q00w2 @LiseL

(That, and the idea of a ghost caught with a dingleberry in the afterlife, are what stick with me from that book. So, uh, points for range? 😂)

@q00w2 @LiseL

George Saunders' 1st novel! Famed writer of short stories that often have atypical structures. It's 1/3 excerpts from old news reports (some fictionalized, some real), 1/3 stage play, 1/3 prose.

He wasn't part of the "twit-lit" scene, but I can definitely see how his experimental novel wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

I'd known nothing of Lincoln's long bereavement for his son, though, so the whole "returning to the tomb to hold his body" bit was an affecting bit of history.

@LaurelGreen

Definitely. I check in daily on a few war forums, and twice-daily with regional media of import for key stories, then deep-dive if a story seems to require more corroboration--& my tolerances are higher than many others.

Even then, I *do* hit them. Usually from the glib commentary around the awful reports, but still: when you trip over a limit, you step back and regroup.

We're always going to bring wounds to what we read, but we don't have to go out of our way to inflame them. 💙

@peterquirk

I think it would sorely help if we flipped the cultural branding on them. The term "smart device" makes them seem too classy.

Personal panopticons, maybe?

@LiseL

Oooo, if we'd frozen internet time on LJ and Blogspot days, we'd definitely have a rich and integrated culture of serialized fiction models today!

Alas, LJ got overrun by Russians, Blogspot stalled in its growth model, and we all fled into the arms of Zuck instead. :(

@LiseL

I'm also dead certain that many of the great novels would never have been written if those writers had had access to social media instead. 🙃

😬 Alternately, though, I'm pretty sure that Dostoevsky would have been even more of a nightmare than the rest of us if he were online today, so I'm glad he had his era, and we have ours!

😂 I've said this before, because the trial scene in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is excellent for describing the whims of the crowd, but hot dog: Dostoevsky had social media *down pat* long before our current tech.

I first read NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND as a teen, when the self-loathing protag best sings out to self-loathing youth, but I've always loved this chapter, and its description of how even educated humans will sometimes make a public spectacle of pain just to regain some agency over suffering.

@Mauve_matelot

😂 I love those moments when we're essentially shrieking "get out of my brain!" at popular media.

Did you ever see the musical INTO THE WOODS? It's not my cuppa, but it also has a blending of fairy tales, and was greatly beloved on the stage before they made a film version in 2014.

@q00w2

Ah, shaving cream.

Were we supposed to remember the plot? 😬

I've always loved this quote, because of how seamlessly it transitions from the innocuous to the dangerous.

It starts with "instrument". It ends with "weapon". But it can be difficult to trace the shift from one to the other in the text.

I think I'll be writing on Murrow's speech next week. 1958, and yet it feels like yesterday.

We don't change as much as we think we do.

But we have to live through our moment like everything *can* change. Maybe, just maybe, this time it will.

#MediaLiteracy

I love when a thunderstorm here is so intense you can see the storm-clouds move in vertical waves horizontally, as they roll across the landscape.

Mountain valley living! You can just *feel* the thunder in your heart. 💛⛈️

@CLManussier

The problem is that no matter what one calls oneself, there will always be those who treat the term as suspect, because there's no "neutral" here; everything is infowar now.

Most of us are ill-prepared, though, for a world in which all discourse is shaped by fears that we'll be seen as giving aid to X just by talking.

So I'm humanist in this conflict, but for exactly that reason I'll also be considered a two-faced saboteur to some no matter what. That's the hard nature of war. 🫂