I just finished “Cannibals are Human: A District Officer’s Wife in New Guinea” by Helen McLeod.

It’s a very interesting book about the wife of an Australian district officer who was trying to curtail inter-tribal warfare between PNG highland tribes during the decades when PNG was an Australian mandate.

The woman herself is quite admirable hiking 100kms in the highlands mostly barefoot and covered in leeches. It also describes the state of tribal warfare as it stood, in objective terms, without being too derogatory or dismissive. It emphasizes the truly vast differences between regional tribes, their farming prowess, and the existential threat that looms over all of them from centuries of war. It also doesn’t wrap everything up in a neat bow at the end. The Australian governance wasn’t perfect, the influence of western technology and medicine was paradigm-shifting and both good and bad, independence was a shitshow, but the author considered it a painful necessity.

I’m listening to Pratchett’s Mort and noticing how neither Pratchett nor Serafinowicz had quite figured out the Death character yet.

I also DNF-ed The Great When (did Moore swallow a thesaurus?) and Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale.

This week I finished up Star Wars “The Shadows of Mindor”. Has some interesting lore with some potentially disastrous consequences.

I’m a little ways into book 3 of the Silo series “Dust”. The entire series has been a fantastic read so far. Just when you think you got a grasp on things, another layer is ripped apart to start unraveling again.

Up next I have Star Wars “X-Wing” series which consists of 10 books, so my alternate reading while doing this batch will probably be catching up on some my Short story collections. Like Nebula and Hugo yearly “Greats”.

I just finished:

Starship Troopers I still think it is satire. I don’t want to believe that there are people who actually believe that the described system is a good one. It is more military fantasy than sci fi. I was entertained but prefer the movie for once.

The Stepford wives is a very quick read and I was well entertained. From a contemporary point the position of the main character still feels very Hausfrau, even so she doesn’t feel this way. I would have loved to get a little more depth for the reason and how the Hausfrau thing works but maybe it is better to be a mystery.

Currently reading:

House of leaves. Damn I needed a break from this book. It is very tough to read but a cool concept. I think I might have to appreciate it from afar.

Jurassic Park never in my life did I read a book which is so close to my profession and I know it is bending the reality and science a bit, but damn do I feel good seeing a Fasta file actually printed on paper. Name dropping everywhere. Even in the introduction it already starts where you have to check when does reality end and fantasy starts (wanted to take a pen and add Franklin to the list). But I should not have googled the author.

I just started Moby Dick. This Ishmael guy really doesn’t want to sleep with some random harpooner.

Just grabbed Among the burning Flowers from my local library. Really enjoyed the other roots of chaos books so I’m looking forward to this one.

I read most of the Bullet Journal Method and what I learned from that has been really useful. Also Mistborn is one of my favorite series, and the last 2 books of era 2 are great.

I’ve started Going Postal, I’ve never read anything by Pratchet before

I recently finished listening to Watership Down by Richard Adams, read by Peter Capaldi. ~11 hours long, if Libro FM was right.

I’ve been listening to him at work, and Peter Capaldi making animal noises and accents just maaaaade my days :3

Finished The Strength of the Few by James Islington on Monday.

I need some time to digest. I don’t know if I’m gonna get anything else read this week as I need a palate cleanser from reading so many heavy and dark books lately, but I also can’t imagine anything but a direct sequel to be a satisfying follow-up after that book.

Reading The Clown by Heinrich Böll.

Probably his most famous novel this book mostly criticises post war catholic/capitalist German society for it’s hypocrisy and not really denazifying. It’s good, but the main character, who loses his girlfriend to a catholic and is handling it pretty badly is quite the doomer at times. There is enough cynical humor, sarcasm and irony to not make it too dark to read, but depending on how the story ends it definitely could become pretty dark in the end. It also cuts very close to home with some issues, but that rather enhances the reading experience, despite being quite uncomfortable at times. At times it’s a bit hard to discern wether the author did something on purpose to give his protagonist some negative traits, or if he just believed that stuff himself (especially how women are treated is pretty bad) but I’m quite sure that I’ll be able to judge this better by the end of the book. Overall I’d recommend reading it, but it’s definitely an emotional downer.

Re-reading house of leaves since it’s been so long and just started Dracula for a book club

Bullet Journal is good, I can also recommend “Getting Things Done” (but don’t take everything seriously though) and any book on the Pomodoro technique.

Right now I’m reading

• Designing Your New Work Life which seems interesting (science-backed philosophy on why work sucks and how to love it, it’s a fun book so far), and
• the latest version of Discrete Mathematics with Applications for computer sciences (the latest version).

BTW, why are we using librarything instead of goodreads? It’s the first time I’ve seen this web site.