Wasn't just Ulysses but that was the worst. Admittedly, I had a problem with my focus (I thought I had ADHD but it I now think it was more depression related bad habits exacerbated by the advent of the smartphone) and made a real effort to get off social media and pick up an awful lot of books I had abandoned. It's one of the reasons I drop off here for a month or two occasionally.As a matter of interest, why did you try to read it so often, if you kept on abandoning it?I tend to find more people admit to not having been able to finish it than actually boast of having done so. In fact it took me years of false starts.Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.LOL
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
I generally try my darndest to complete a book once I start it, to plough on through. But those I do abandon I generally do not pick up again. There're so many other books to read...
Imagine if Corbyn had become PM and then started blaming sinister puppet masters in the financial world when the markets violently turned against his first budget. Who on the Right wouldn't be saying there was some anti-Semitism afoot?I think that a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds using money to control the world is about as obviously anti-Semitic as you can get. If Truss isn't an anti-Semite then she is at the very least very, very stupid, and perhaps so caught up in explaining away her own failure that she'll latch onto any vile conspiracy theory that will deflect blame.The Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and apologised for doing so when later challenged. It might have taken a day or two, but Starmer decided he had to disown the candidate.Do you really think she is repeating the conspiracy from the anti-semitism angle or more likely trying to make a clumsy point about controlling money being more important than laws because she’s a bit too intellectually lazy to examine the theories and background of things she’s read that she has allowed to shape her worldview.
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.LOL
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
Who's afraid of her ?I waded through the turgid mess that is Middlemarch. I'm sure I can manage Ulysses. But not this week.Nothing could be as bad as Virginia Woolf.
Joe Biden urging Congress to pass aid for both Israel and Ukraine: https://www.wsj.com/articles/moment-of-truth-on-ukraine-and-israel-war-ammo-aid-package-iran-russia-7ed30288?mod=opinion_lead_pos5Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.Yes, though do we know it survived 'several rounds of drafting and editing'?
I'll wait until he has seen it through and the bill is passed and signed before getting too excited about giving him credit, but it does look like that's the way things are heading, and so my previous cynicism may have been a bit overdone.I think FF43 was specifically referring to working with the Democrats on this bill rather than more generally. It will probably cost him dearly so, whilst I have no time for him generally, credit to him for this action at least.How does that work? Mike Johnson is a religious fundamentalist who tried to overturn Biden's 2020 election win, doesn't believe climate change is caused by humans (or at least is paid lots of money by fossil fuel companies to say this), and doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He wants to recriminalise sex between consenting adults who are the same sex. And claims all his policies are from the Bible.Joe Biden urging Congress to pass aid for both Israel and Ukraine: https://www.wsj.com/articles/moment-of-truth-on-ukraine-and-israel-war-ammo-aid-package-iran-russia-7ed30288?mod=opinion_lead_pos5There's a lot of speculation about why Mike Johnson has decided to push the Ukraine aid bill through now. My suspicion he realised he literally cannot work with his own party so he's decided to work with the Democrats instead.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Doesn't seem keen on democracy either:
https://newrepublic.com/post/176497/speaker-mike-johnson-warned-dangers-living-democracy
I think FF43 was specifically referring to working with the Democrats on this bill rather than more generally. It will probably cost him dearly so, whilst I have no time for him generally, credit to him for this action at least.How does that work? Mike Johnson is a religious fundamentalist who tried to overturn Biden's 2020 election win, doesn't believe climate change is caused by humans (or at least is paid lots of money by fossil fuel companies to say this), and doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He wants to recriminalise sex between consenting adults who are the same sex. And claims all his policies are from the Bible.Joe Biden urging Congress to pass aid for both Israel and Ukraine: https://www.wsj.com/articles/moment-of-truth-on-ukraine-and-israel-war-ammo-aid-package-iran-russia-7ed30288?mod=opinion_lead_pos5There's a lot of speculation about why Mike Johnson has decided to push the Ukraine aid bill through now. My suspicion he realised he literally cannot work with his own party so he's decided to work with the Democrats instead.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Doesn't seem keen on democracy either:
https://newrepublic.com/post/176497/speaker-mike-johnson-warned-dangers-living-democracy