Miscellany, 5/3/23
I feel like I’m in a bit of a rut, only posting here when I finish reading a book. After all, I do so much during the week that’s not book-related, and it really feels too sporadic for my tastes. So here’s a round-up of what I’ve been doing.
- I watched the Prime Video series Dead Ringers a week or two ago and it was fantastic. Rachel Weisz is perfect as Elliot and Beverly. I thought the supporting cast was insanely good as well. The show is very well-written, and each episode makes unique choices in terms of theme, cinematography, and mood that nonetheless support the overarching whole production. Highly recommend.
- Tried and failed to read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The speeches were cool, and I thought the history of the military and diplomatic maneuverings was somewhat interesting, but ultimately I found the whole project a bit too dry. I try not to give up on books, but this one really tested my patience. Not only that, but I even went at it with two separate editions: the Landmark edition which includes maps and a whole lot of appendices (which were interesting) but has incredibly turgid prose, and an Oxford edition which somewhat modernizes the dialogue but still didn’t catch my interest. Maybe I’m just not a primary source guy.
- I have queued up Vol. 1 of the Army’s official investigation into the My Lai massacre. For whatever reason, I am still fascinated and shocked by this war crime. Like a car accident, I cannot get myself to look away. Or maybe it’s more like poking at a traumatic memory over and over again, like I can’t help myself. I’ll probably work on this in between stints of reading actual books over the next month or so. It doesn’t seem like something I want to focus all my attention on–mostly because I’m heading to summer school in a couple of weeks and I don’t want this to be the last thing I read. Similar rationale to why I abandoned Thucydides.
- One tip I have for the world: get your to-read list off of Amazon! I used to put all the books that interested me in one Amazon wishlist, which I would often share with my sibs around the holidays. It turned out that I never actually reviewed the list for more books to read, because the whole thing was so unwieldy to navigate through; paginated as well. Now I just put my to-consume list in a note file I constantly add to. What’s more, I can add things to investigate that aren’t books: movies, musicians, recipes, general trends and phenomena. Way better way of doing things.
- Trying to eat in a more “wholesome” way (defined as not eating take-out or prepackaged food). My two faves are nước chấm, which I like to put on rice along with a fried egg in the mornings, and Ugandan rolexes. Frozen chapatis and a bag of cabbage seem to last forever in the fridge (either that or my tolerance for food that’s going bad is scarily high).