Thwap's Reading Achievements for 2026

 Here's links to 2025 Books I & II.  2024's readings.  2023.  September 2021 to December 2022.

Anyway, a few days ago I finished Fresh Green Life by Sebastian Castillo.  

I knew that it was about a guy in his thirties who has been living in self-imposed isolation for a year who goes to a News Year's Eve party with friends and colleagues from his university days.  You can read the linked review if you want.  But I will just say that I enjoyed the book.  If held a few surprises for me as it went along.  I found the language of the narrator a little pompous at first.  I wasn't sure if that was intentional on the part of the writer to mock the narrator, or whether it was the writer's own voice.  Whatever it was, it faded and the rest of the time was smooth sailing.  In the end it was (for me) a hilarious send-up of the lives of academics.  [Here's a link to the narrator's favourite film.]

2026-01-18

Today I finished Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine:

Pappe argues that Israel's creation involved deliberate ethnic-cleansing:

In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine ) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, beginning in the 1948 war for independence and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet , in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units organized by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the “architect of ethnic cleansing. The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948 and 1949, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. 

It's depressing reading Pappe's conclusion, written in 2006, about the slim possibilities for peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, knowing how far from that outcome the reality in 2026 is.  

I didn't know much about the "war" between Israel and the Palestinians and other Arab states.  I had been raised to believe that the Arab states told the Palestinians to temporarily leave so as to be out of the way while they crushed the Israeli state as it was being born.  I never thought that their leaving justified not letting them return, but I learned a long time ago from Christopher Hitchens that there had never been such an order.

The reality is that the Palestinians were hardly armed.  They weren't happy with the UN partition plan but those within the borders of what was to be Israel had resigned themselves to living in "Israel" when the time came.  They weren't prepared for what the Israelis had planned for them.

Iraq, Syria and Jordan sent troops that never left the lands that had been allotted to Palestine by the UN.

Egypt sent a mostly untrained militia into Gaza with little preparation and bombed Tel Aviv and some other towns for a few days.

Jordan's King planned to take the West Bank for himself in return for allowing Israel to take the rest of all that it wanted.

And all of this ethnic cleansing had been planned long before WWII and The Holocaust.  

2026-02-21

I read a fair bit of "OSHO"'s Coming Home to Yourself: A Meditator's Guide to Blissful Living.  And I don't plan on reading more of this book.

 

Some work colleagues recommended this guy.  You can read about him in the link.  I think I'll find books where he talks about other religions and other stuff that actually exists in the world.  Some people swear by meditation and maybe there's something to it.  But OSHO and another guy I read last year say stuff like:

"Maybe it will take six months, maybe a year, but eventually clearing your mind and sitting at peace WILL have a profound effect and your life will be positively transformed."

Either that, or your subconscious makes a deal with your conscious mind (which is worried about the sunk-cost fallacy) and you'll delude yourself that turning off your brain and taking the advice of charlatans HAS led to self-improvement. 

A lot of it is just vague stuff about love and openness and oneness and bliss.  Nothing is described concretely.  The universe didn't make us to feel permanent joy.  I just don't subscribe to this stuff and I'm not going to work hard at turning off my thinking so as to make the suggestions of a cult leader more acceptable to me.

2026-03-10

Last week I finished John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. 

 

The man was a great talent.  The language is magnificent.  It almost redeems the silly story that it's based on.  I'm not the sort of reader that Milton intended the work for.  I haven't even read the Bible.  And I have only a cursory knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics.

Parts of the story that irritated me:  A)  The animals in Eden are just invented by God and named by Adam.  Darwin's Theory of Evolution was hundreds of years in the future, so I can't fault Milton for not inventing any coherent reason for the variety of animals in Eden.  It's just that it reminds one of how empty present-day "creationism" is.  B)  The numerous entreaties of God or His angels to tell humanity not to try to think too hard or question too much.  When you think of the wasted centuries when people were told to focus on their imaginary God and to avoid trying to understand the world.  C) The grotesque misogyny.  Eve doesn't need to be told that she is incapable of understanding stuff about the moon and the stars or any of the other deep concepts that Adam thinks about or discusses with God or the Angels. That the woman Eve is the source of humanity's downfall is obviously the product of a patriarchal religion of a patriarchal society.  All the evil and abuse that men have inflicted on women when inspired by this bullshit story.  D)  Milton's God sets everything up and he knows what's going to happen.  He knew that Satan would escape from Hell and manage to slip past the angels guarding the perimeter of Eden and then seduce Eve into violating the one commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  What supposedly save God from being a sadistic maniac is that human beings have Free Will.  Except that we don't.  E) Milton's hatred of other Christians he doesn't agree with.  Especially Catholic.  I could see him not liking the Dominicans.  But to think that a Franciscan monk, inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, especially one who lived and died before the Protestant Reformation, was going to go to Hell as an infidel, ... it's too much.

 

All that having been said, as someone who believed in this stuff as a child, Milton's language manages to capture the beauty of the idea of the Garden of Eden.  There are parts when he discusses the love of Adam and Eve and it does sound beautiful.  And, the scenes with Satan and the rebel angels have a horrible grandeur.

Here's a quote from the review:

 When reading this epic poem, it’s clear why it has become a classic. There are numerous references to Greek and Roman mythology and to ancient history. I had to check the notes frequently to understand the allusions. It made me wish I knew the classics better. It also made me read slowly. Though we all know the story of the Fall, Milton speculates on many of the issues the biblical account doesn’t explicitly address. We wonder why God allows Satan to remain free to deceive people. We ponder the relationship between the spirit world and the material world. We question what motivates Satan and his forces to oppose almighty God. We are also baffled how people living in a paradise could ever be convinced that God is being cruel and unfair to them. Even though Milton speculates, he at least offers food for thought.

Good times. 

New laptop.  New problems.  I'm logged-in to Blogger, but not to my blog.  I can see no reason why I can't edit a post from the Schoolyard page, on the same laptop, in the same browser, wherein I'm logged-into Blogger.  What is it with the geniuses behind the 2026 internet that we have to endure such pointless stupidity???

Anyway, ... last night I finished Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook.

 The Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by the British writer Doris Lessing. Like her two books that followed, it enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature called Lessing's "inner space fiction";^{[citation needed]} her work that explores mental and societal breakdown. The novel contains anti-war and anti-Stalinist messages, an extended analysis of communism and the Communist Party in England from the 1930s to the 1950s, and an examination of the budding sexual revolution and women's liberation movements.

I'd heard it was a groundbreaking feminist novel and I'm always trying to broaden my horizons, so I set out to read it.  It's very readable.  I worried that it'd be some surreal, difficult mixture of post-structuralist Andrea Dworkin meets Foucault meets William Burroughs.  It was nothing like that.

 

Here's a reviewer:

The Golden Notebook is a mixed-up novel, and my feelings about it are mixed-up too. On the one hand, there’s a whole bunch of reasons I shouldn’t have liked it: it’s spiralling, it’s confusing, it’s indulgent, it’s full of women making shitty decisions because of the shitty men in their lives, it’s got a jumpy timeline – all things I’ve really hated in other books. But, on the other hand, I really enjoyed reading it! I looked forward to sitting down with it each day. I loved peeling back its layers, and seeing what new treasures lay underneath. By the time I got to the penultimate chapter, in which the contents of the titular golden notebook are revealed, my breath was positively bated.

The Golden Notebook is a strange one: good-strange, but strange nonetheless. It’s not one I’d recommend blindly, because I think it takes a certain taste and outlook to enjoy properly. I liked it for myself. And I’d say that if you’re going to give it a go, make sure to allow yourself plenty of time. Don’t try to rush through it all at once. Let each section percolate in your mind a while before you go back for more.

It was Lessing's book to write, and she was pretty fair (relatively speaking) with her depiction of the men in the book.  All things considered.  Politically, she's writing about the disillusion of the Left in the Anglo-American world after the failure of democracy in the Soviet Union under Stalin.  That loss of faith led to the creation of "The New Left" that renounced power and violence and which has brought us to present state of total ineffectuality we have now.  It was interesting reading her take on that period in world history. 

2026-04-11

A couple of days ago I finished Geezer Butler's memoir Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath and Beyond. 

 

Last year I read Tony Iommi's autobiography, but I used to play the bass guitar in a band, and when I heard that Geezer Butler was Black Sabbath's main lyricist, he became more personally interesting to me.

In his own book Iommi comes across as much more reasonable and diplomatic and fair than appears to be the case.  From reading Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell With Black Sabbath you wouldn't know that after splitting with Black Sabbath Ozzy Osbourne had a far more successful career.  Every dispute comes across as somebody else being unreasonable or misunderstanding the situation.  With Butler there appears to be a bit more honesty.  He acknowledges that Osbourne went on to become a pop cultural phenomenon, and that he himself could be a cantankerous, short-tempered individual.

I got a better understanding of the nature of his relationship with Ozzy and then Ozzy's most famous replacement, Ronnie James Dio.  Butler was able to stay friends with both men, despite their career clashes.  When Butler was going through a tough time personally, it was Osbourne who reached out and asked him if he was okay.  With Dio, Butler would almost come to blows with him over business or musical differences, but then they'd eventually reconcile.  Often this was due to Butler sobering up the next day.

Butler claims to have had numerous paranormal experiences.  I'm not going to say they didn't happen.  But I'm always skeptical of such claims.  Really, besides giving a more accurate account of Black Sabbath's history, Butler's book conveys how much him and his band-mates and fellow rock stars were overgrown boys, fighting and frolicking across the decades. 

2026-04-17

Tonight I finished Wittgenstein by Hans Sluga. 

 

I have to return this book to the library in 2 days, and I want to quote some stuff from it, so I'll write what I write tonight, post it, and add to it later. 

So, a while ago I read a biography of the philosopher and social commentator, Bertrand Russell.  The author was more a fan of Wittgenstein and a critic of Russell.  I knew almost nothing about Wittgenstein. In this book though, he came across as this very intense, histrionic individual.  Everything was "vital" or "essential" or whatever superlative you want to imagine, for Wittgenstein's need to get at the truth.  Maybe it was because he was Austrian (which means German) that I thought that the way he wrote and spoke and acted reminded me of Adolph Hitler.  And then, when I found out that this guy who claimed that everything around him was nonsense and trivial and superficial and deluded, actually signed up for Austrian military service in World War I, I felt, he was even more like Hitler.  I mean, if everything is false and lies and confusion and stupid, ... why the fuck sign up to fight and kill and maybe die for any of it?!?

Russell (to his infinite credit) was a pacifist and an outspoken critic of the war, for which he was sent to prison.  The author [hold on, I'll look up the book ... Ray Monk's Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude] made sure that we knew that Russell used his social status (he was an English Lord) to avoid the worst of British prison life, but he didn't know that going in.  And, he lost his job at Cambridge.

While Wittgenstein was in the service, he found a strange little store selling mostly I don't know what, but also, one book, Leo Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief.   Apparently the book made a real Christian out of him.  I heard somewhere that Wittgenstein described himself as "3/4 Christian, 1/4 Jewish."  This was because his family had been Jewish, but someone (his grandfather or great-grandfather) had converted to Christianity.

Anyway, while he was fighting bravely against the Russians (and later the British and the Italians) he wrote the only book ever published in his lifetime.  The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  Apparently the book is a difficult read.  But maybe it doesn't matter.  Because it was based very much on his mentor Russell's wooly-headed attempt to apply some misguided claims about "logic" from mathematics to broader human experience.  Wittgenstein was beginning to repudiate it himself as he finished writing it, but I guess the exigencies of fighting a war distracted him from this truth.

This documentary about him can summarize much of these twists n' turns for you.

 

So, my thing with a lot of philosophy is that (being all too human) philosophers and philosopher-wannabes gravitate to whatever validates their delusions.  For example; they assume that we have "free will" and then they write intricate (sometimes brilliant) arguments for how that can be.  But they never stop to explain what "free will" means.  They never attempt to PROVE it exists.  (Obviously there have been philosophers who have argued against "free will."  I'm just using one example to prove a point.  And, generally, the philosophers who invent justifications for our cherished delusions often seem to have the greatest number of followers.

And then there are philosophers like Martin Heidegger, who had some valuable things to say, but who also played the stupid role of the small town sage of the German peasants (who were probably clueless about his thinking) and who was an enthusiastic devotee of Adolph Hitler.  And, I mean, COME ON!  Even if we agree with Karl Marx about history repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce, and compare Trump to Hitler, Hitler was still an obvious lunatic.  How deep and profound and TRUTHFUL can your philosophy be if you were bewitched by a clown such as that?

So, for me, what I knew about Heidegger was that he was a very intense man who spent around ten years, TEN FUCKING YEARS, concocting a philosophy of the world, which he then totally rejected.  After that, he designed a modernist mansion for one of his sisters, then he became a small-town teacher who was so abusive to his child pupils [in the 1920's!!!] that the villagers complained about him!  

In his Tractatus he pompously concluded that language is so imperfect an instrument for conveying ANYTHING that we could only speak with confidence about the simplest things.  And, for everything else, we should be silent.   Bertrand Russell (whose attempts to invent and then apply mathematical logic to more everyday human topics had foundered) was keen enough to notice bullshit when he saw it.  He once said that Wittgenstein said an awful lot about an awful lot of topics for someone who believed we should be silent about them.

So, after completely abandoning a philosophical path that he spent almost five years fixated upon, and another five years writing it as a soldier, Wittgenstein would then go on to (as I said) designing a house, abusing children, and then, returning to philosophy.  As such a brilliant, focused, diligent thinker that he wrote published absolutely nothing, until he died and his posthumous works included (by necessity) the notes taken by his Cambridge University students.  Since the pompous ass had nothing other than his own scribbled notes and narcissistic musings.

So, like, one of the funny things was that I just got the impression that this maniac sounded like Hitler.  Imagine my surprise to find out that he and Hitler went to the same school at the same time in Linz, Austria. 

Hitler again.

Quotes from the book.