Those vampires are still waiting. And so is Asimov.
How to Live Like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life is a beautiful little book. Daniele Cybulskie, part of the crew over at the medievalists.net website, blog, and podcast, wrote this book about monks, nuns, and their practices during medieval times. I really like the author’s style, and loved the details of monkish life. I wasn’t as enamored with the “wisdom for modern life” parts, but it’s the smaller part of the book. It’s possible that I’ve read enough life advice over the years that nothing offered here struck me as new. But the medieval monkish bits I liked quite a lot!
I started Dayworld by Philip Jose Farmer, a book recommended by Tom LA Books and a book I’m buddy reading with David Wiley, who has a website and a YouTube channel, both worth your time.
Dayworld starts with a quick few pages of info dump. Farmer explains a bit about the world in a way that doesn’t feel like part of the narrative, but like the author talking to the reader. This is fun stuff, Farmer says. Check it out. On this crowded world, people spend 6 of 7 days in a “stoner”, and 1 glorious day out and about in the world. In other words: every day of the week, one seventh of the population runs around living while the other six sevenths sit in their stoner pods, hibernating.
Our protagonist, though, is a daybreaker. He has found a way to stay active all seven days. I’m 100 pages in and have seen his Tuesday life and part of his Wednesday life. I’ve seen his Tuesday wife and his Wednesday wife. And I’ve seen how complicated it was getting safely from Tuesday to Wednesday. Fun book so far!
I haven’t read a lot of Philip Jose Farmer, but I did like To Your Scattered Bodies Go.
I’m listening to Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. The subtitle is: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. I’m interested in books about reclaiming deep thought and have read several of them. This is a good one because Hari is a very good writer (and a very good narrator), and he looks at the problem of lost focus from a number of different angles, including but not limited to the what-is-social-media-doing-to-my-brain angle that other authors focus on (if they’ve figured out how to focus, that is).
Some sample chapter titles:
He addresses each subject in a conversational style, and interviews experts in various disciplines, letting us know what he found. Christopher Hitchens once said that “the most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed”. Johann Hari makes me feel personally addressed in both his prose and narration, and the book, so far, is time very well spent.
I’m currently in the “Cause Six” chapter. Could fixing social media be as simple as moving away from an ad-supported model to a subscription model?
Last thing: I am continuing Njal’s Saga, more than halfway there. Still enjoying this second visit quite a bit. More on Njal soon!
Books in:
