I wasn't sure she was going to buy my story, but I guess she's a bit of a romantic. Elopement is always good for a fashion emergency.

'He wants your sympathy, and sometimes, India, people mistake sympathy for love.'

Yet what she didn't add was that Charlie's suffering had always touched her. When this happened, her father's lifelong advice about cutting her losses seemed not good sense but rather the easy way out of a relationship in which she'd had expectations which had gone unmet.

'It hurts too much,' Mather says. Just that simple.
That makes me stop. I meet his eyes, a long, careful gaze. 'Someday it won't hurt.'
The promise we refugees always make one another---before going on missions, whenever people come back bleeding and hurt, whenever thing go badly and we're huddling together in terror. *We'll be better . . . someday.*

No matter what I want to do, no matter how well I lead or how hard I train, I won't be able to force life into frozen fields, or cure plagues, or feed strength into soldiers like I would if I could use the conduit. The Winterians would probably rather have a cruel queen than a king with *good intentions*...It doesn't matter what I would do with the magic, because leaders are valued for the wrong things.

#beginswith state, day 14

A short story with a collection by Emma Straub I found thrifting called Other People We Married (2011, Riverhead Books). I really need to get on my short story collections and anthologies. I have lots of philosophy, critical theory, global politics, economics on the concept of and issues with The State . . .

@alwaysbeenaloverofreading @eggs @puzzledbooks

#firstlinefridays @puzzledbooks

When does murder begin? With the pull of a trigger? With the formation of a motive? Or does it begin long before, when a child swallows more pain than love and is forever changed?

A predator is not prey. When you hunt a predator, you place yourself in a position to be hunted yourself. There's no other way. If you follow a lion into a thicket, you step within reach of his claws. And my adversary is no lion. He's the deadliest creature in the world: a human male driven by anger and lust, yet governed---at least temporarily---by logic.

When does murder begin? ... Perhaps it doesn't matter. Or perhaps it matters more than everything else. We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees.

This novel is dedicated to those women who realize in the dead of night that something is wrong, and has been for a long time. More than most, they know that Faulkner's words are true: 'There is no such thing as *was*---only *is*. If *was* existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.' You are not alone.

'Can you talk about it?'
'The actual abuse . . . what's the point? It's not the crimes against us that make us unique, but our responses . . . I had a lot of rage inside, but also a desire to help people. A quite common paradox among abuse victims.'

'We can trade stories. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.'
'Is that something you do commonly with patients? Trade horror stories?'
'I do whatever is required. I'm not afraid to experiment.'
'Do you consider that ethical?'
'In the benighted times in which we live, I consider it essential.'

Lancey noticed something then that he knew from his encounters with celebs at Slitscan: that binary flicker in his mind between image and reality, between the mediated face and the face there in front of you. He'd noticed how it always seemed to speed up, that alternation, until the two somehow merged, the resulting composite becoming your new idea of the person.

It was, the Belgian said, as though the city, in its convulsion and grief, had spontaneously and necessarily generated this hidden pocket universe of the soul, its few unbroken windows painted over with black rubber aquarium paint. There would be no view of the ruptured city. As the reconstruction began around it, it had already become a benchmark in Tokyo's psychic history, an open secret, an urban legend.

A Belgian journalist, struggling to describe the scene [of the Western World exclusive club], had said that it resembled a cross between a permanent mass wake, an ongoing grad night for at least a dozen subcultures unheard of before the disaster, the black market cafes of occupied Paris, and Goya's idea of a dance party (assuming Goya had been Japanese and smoked freebase methamphetamine...).

'Real estate was baroque, here, before the quake; now it's more like occult.'

'But you know [Rez]? You knew him before [this idoru thing hit]?'
'He's the navel of the world I work in, Laney. That has a way of making people unknowable.'

'[T]heir secret was that they'd never cleaned the kettle. In fact, they never stopped cooking the soup. It was the same seafood soup they had been selling for fifty years, but it was never the same, because they added fresh ingredients every day, depending on what was available. [Lo of Rez/Lo] said that's what his career as a musician felt like, and he liked that about it.'

'What *are* the nodal points?'
'It's like seeing things in clouds. Except the things you see are really there.'
She put her sake down. 'Yamazaki promised me you weren't crazy.'
'It's not crazy. It's something to do with how I process low-level, broad-spectrum input. Something to do with pattern recognition
...If I enter a specific area, I don't get any sense of how the data there relates to the rest of it, see? It's got to be *relational. *'

Wonderfully conceptual associative broaching of topics, with the apt atmosphere of a chewing-gum-themed unpopular bar. I haven't read this in over a year since I moved from Baltimore, but I have confirmation this is definitely a city/nightlife/bar/jazz club/rainy day-with-whiskey kind of atmospheric read.

@thespineview's #twofortuesday

1. Fast-paced or slow-burn?

It really depends on the shifting sands of the reading moods I'm caught up in at the moment (I do like caper romps), but I'm usually too slow and scattered of a reader for it to really matter if the plot takes me along or not. Crime and Punishment and Lord of the Rings were both slow-burns, but I'm grateful I stuck with them, appreciating the final sections of both.

2. Solid plot tagged

'Certain innovations serve as catalysts for each other---creating a positive feedback cycle. Eventually a technology becomes inevitable. It's managing the transition that's critical.'

Contemp commentary urges us to reflect: how have we done managing these transitions the 19th century catalyzed? Arguably, not well. Late philosopher Bernard Stiegler makes the point regarding the psychosocial stakes in coping. Chalmers reflects on consciousness here

Wow, this chapter was a doozie to get through emotionally. I'd like to hear others' thoughts on world-building vision of it and if it struck them as a punch to the gut; as the scientist was trying to cope and rationalize its starkness. Think Matrix + Matt Damon's Elysium + Adjustment Bureau.

'You've been through a traumatic experience, I know. It's never pleasant, but neither is being born. And yet both are necessary to go on to greater things.'

I figured it out, it's David Chalmers!

'Well, it looks like the universe is as crazy as you are, Jon.'
'That's a frightening thought.'
'Agreed. And yet you succeeded'
...
'This ridiculous hair. You know, the first time I met you, I told Greta that a dirty hippie was stalking me.'
'Hey, hair is nature's calendar.'

(Seriously, check out his incredibly articulated interviews on the soft vs hard problems of consciousness.)

This became a major piece of the firm's identity: Narrow expertise is for chumps; we do vision.

CEOs like this [non-disclosure policy] because they don't want competitors, or anyone else, to know they need outside help. McKinsey in content to let credit for any success accrue to the client. As the journalist and biographer Rober Caro once observed: 'You can get a lot of good done in this world if you're willing to let someone else take the credit for it.' That's what McKinsey does: It *sells the credit* to its clients. And it's a good idea.

Most people don't strategize alone, however. And you certainly don't strategize with your competitor. Enter, once again, the disinterested consultant.

Consult recruits '[Flashman's] eyes [were] blue and prominent and unwinking---they looked out on the world with that serenity which marks the nobleman whose uttermost ancestor was a born nobleman, too. It is the look that your *parvenu* would give half his fortune for, that unrufflable gaze of the spoiled child of fortune who knows with unshakeable certainty that he is right and that the world is exactly ordered for his satisfaction and pleasure.'

On McKinsey's in-the-dark PR strategy: 'Management consulting is too complex an art to be explained effectively in the limited space of an advertisement,' wrote journalist Hal Higdon in The Business Healers. 'About all a consulting firm can talk about effectively is the extremely high competence of its personnel. The effect might be somewhat similar to the Roman Catholic Church's taking two pages of Life [Magazine] to advertise God.'

Oprah fans were favorite targets for interrogation. As long as you appealed to their emotions, you could almost always get them to talk.

Day 9, #beginswith final:

“But as Mary's attorney, he had no choice but to choke on his silence and hope the fallout from this unexpected turn of events would not be as explosive as he feared...What a sad mantle to Mary's memory. What a tragic ending to the special relationship...For a second he considered the wastebasket, then shrugged and weaved to the documents cabinet, where he filed away in its proper place the last regards of Mary DuMont.“

My #sundaysoapbox on recommendations is that I usually refrain from it, or prefer to encourage readers to explore and read widely. But I do recommend readers get into books from before 1990 because I feel the whole writing endeavor is just different then! Just watch my roulette!

But as far as popular general recommendations go:

Wislawa Szymborska poetry

JRR Tolkien Histories of Middle Earth (context)

Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow

I felt sorry for kids her age [18], kids who are light years away from their parents and anyone else over thirty. Older people have nostalgia for the good old days, but there are no good old days for people nurtured in a culture of sex and drugs...Raised in an era when Baywatch plastic sexiness was confused with sensuality, [her] generation believed a good night kiss was unzip...that didn't believe in Santa Claus and whose dreams were all digital.

Pieces of stars, that's what diamonds were, the hardest substance on earth with fire a billion years old trapped inside...Not the 'blood' of conflict diamonds that fueled African civil wars...It was a gem with a history. Murder, lust, greed---the worst of the deadly sins---were part of its pedigree. Vanity and greed, that's what they say the diamond industry is based upon. And that the human race could be relied upon for an endless supply of both.

Attention! Calling upon the Litsy welcome train to welcome my friend @puzzledbooks

Let's show her what kinds of reading and other challenges we have in this community, please.

I hope you enjoy the community here, Faydra!

'I often think some passionate thing will last forever, Carlo. You know that. That's what the passione is all about. Believing in forever. It is a kind of wishful magic.'
'There's a difference in believing and wishing, 'Ilia.'
'No regrets?'
'Oh, Carlito, there are always regrets.'
“With her arms quivering awkwardly, she finally achieved in death what a sybaritic life had denied her, a moment that lasted forever.“

'You're likable enough, Hillary.'

“They knew that he detested televised debates. That he disdained political theater in every guise. That, on some level, he distrusted political performance itself, with its attendant emotional manipulations. The paradox, of course, was that Obama had risen to prominence and power to a large extent on the basis of his preternatural performance skills.“

Would love intellectual discourse w/ this guy, drink in hand.

Another thrifting haul!---2 hardcovers and 8 paperbacks Mostly thrillers and a political commentary (current reading mood) on what made the 2012 Obama campaign different and a success. I think I'm going to attempt today to list out my publication dates to consider what I'm going to include in my attempt for the #19822022 reading challenge.

'Just an observation: You're using enough energy to light a hundred thousand homes---to levitate a mouthful of malt liquor six feet off the ground. That's about as cost-effective as using a Boeing 747 to clean a throw rug.'
'You're not realizing the potential significance of this discovery, Mr. Marrano.'
'Significance is great, but it's not gonna make the economics work any better.'

'Do you even know what chiral superconductors are, Mr. Marrano?'
'No, and it's not for a lack of trying. But I do know the government invested in this place. So someone somewhere must understand it.'
'And thus marches Wall Street.'
...
'Okay. And how does that relate to chiral superconductors?'
'It doesn't.'
'That's fraud.'
'Fraud's an ugly word. Anyone reading the business plan able to comprehend our math would clearly understand...'
'Fraud.'

Orienting dedication:

“The future is already here---it's just not very evenly distributed.“ William Gibson

I wish the reference was more specific of which work of his it came from! Maybe someone on here has read enough Gibson to know of the reference.

My January #bookspin2022 landings as 8 & 15. I've been meaning to read some political context & theory, but I might take the Hillary Rodham off the list for this challenge because of its size and my inability to focus in general. Updated my list slightly for more freedom.

@TheAromaofBooks

#8 Stiegler pharmakon & the societal psychological impact of the 20th century

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks #beginswith day 4, secrets, second selection: what fae and paranormal secrets of Fairyville from his past---he wants to forget and leave behind---will P.I. Alex share with and show his new lover and longtime P.I. colleague, Bryan? Up next: what will happen in the haunted hotel room with a ghost as voyeur?

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @puzzledbooks #beginswith challenge, day 4 #beginswith secrets, first selection: see my posts of quotes from the introduction.

My tentative #roll100 list, made after I was tagged in the challenge and the numbers were already rolled! OOPS

24. Mistaken Identity (a Verso Books London radical philosophy pick; I need to start getting through my Verso orders off philosophy, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis from 2020)

49. The Lillies of the Field (adapted into a wonderful Sidney Poitier film!)---I need to read more adaptation inspirations!

@puzzledbooks

First book I started for the year was a Kindle Oasis book, the one tagged, and during a drive. I'll probably finish this one before my other behavioral study I started last July or August, Atomic Habits!

Not sure about the other two questions yet, just better focus and continued exploration of genres.

Any behavioral economics/science or cognitive science books you'd recommend?

@ozma.of.oz

“ 'This one knows,' Magnus thought. 'This one knows there's more to life than most people see. This one knows there's truly nothing to cry about.' “

This is a very open book...these erotica....

“The fey were a lusty lot, and sex was like food to them: something to be enjoyed with gusto, not life or death serious[ness]...but to his kind nothing compared to the delicious skin-to-skin contact of intercourse. He needed that like a Phoenix needed water, and without it he felt himself approaching a state that, for a naturally cheerful person like him, resembled surliness.“

'A verse too polished will not stick at all:
The worst back-scratcher is a billiard ball.'

'Sometimes I feel I am not the stuff that professors are made...Too sensitive and not conceited enough---physically conceited, I should call it. I know it is all wearing me out. And why shouldn't sitting in the professor's chair all these years benumb me to the world? What must someone like you, prince of industry, think of such a paltry existence?'

Defend Dante!“ 'Shall we have England lord over our bookshelves? Why did we not just hand Lexington over to the redcoats and spare General Washington the trouble of war? Till America has learn to love literature not as an amusement, not as mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people.' “

“ 'Sherri, give me the damn key.' “

No exciting or worthwhile quotes from my brief reading earlier today. Almost 30% through, though!---an accomplishment for me!

#firstlinefridays