Summary
  Review
  Takeaway
  
  
2026.2.29
  
  
"Fall to Pieces," Mary Forsberg Weiland
  Summary: Biography of a model who marries a rock star, they both have domestic/mental problems and get into heroin. Eventually she breaks out of addiction and he does too, through help from rehabbed Guns 'n Roses members.
  Review: Personal, fun to read. 3/5
  Takeaway: It takes YEARS of effort to recover from an addiction and all the problems that cause it, and endless relapses. Drugs are fun, but life is better.
  
  
"The Orthodox Way," Bishop Kallistos Ware
  Summary: Down to earth explanation of the Way, or Christianity, with some digressions for Orthodox Christianity. Uses lots of quotations from previous religious writers. 
  Review: 4/5. Didn't convert me, but as good as a religious book can be. The writing is not confrontational and good to read.
  Takeaway: Explained the trinity for once: The Father is the non-entified god, the Son is the human incarnation and truly 100% human, and the Spirit is the material world and the energies of God. Very roughly, because Christianity actually has a hard time delineating them, and explaining God is always a bad idea.
  
  
"Adobe Houses for Today," Laura and Alex Sanchez
  Useful for adaptable houseplans and some history on adobe. Skimmed it, solo quiero aprender puedo hecho adobe. (fuck my spanish)
  
  
"Surviving Heroin: Interviews with Women in Methadone Clinics" Friedman and Alicea
  Summary: What it says on the tin.
  Review: Didn't finish. Very dry, lot of feminist apologetics and explanation on the behalf of the victims that's unnecessary and annoying. I just want to hear their story, not the author's intervention.
  Takeaway: Methadone helps, but the bureaucracy can suck. Also, anyone can be addicted, rich, poor, queer, black, or white. People need this shit to function and avoid relapse.
  
  
"Demonology: Sorting Fact from Fiction," Riley Star
  Summary: A little essay and a list of some demons.
  Review: Not impressive. Also the clickbait picture of the author is fucking hilarious.
  Takeaway: Pre-zoroastrian culture mashup, the Jews used to believe that Satan was actually an angel working for God as the Tempter, which makes a lot more sense theologically. I think Judaism would have been a lot more balanced if it stayed that way. Also, they considered Phoenixes a demon.
  
  
"Cicero," Anthony Everitt
  Summary: Life of Cicero, a Roman politician before and after the time of Julius Caesar. He was very politically involved and one of the last Old Guard who managed to survive and then attempt to protect the Republic from the Caesarian monarchy and from the national problems tearing Rome apart.
  Review: It's okay, writing wise. There's a lot to cover, and Everitt does a good job moving along. I expected to hear more about his career as a writer and master of rhetoric, being one of the last, but it was primarily about politics.
  Takeaway: People should learn more about the fall of Rome, it's pertinent to the U.S.. Rome and the U.S. are both empires based on conquest that became unsustainable governments and led to violence and partisan politics.
  Basically, the government was unsustainable, and Cicero, who was raised within the senate, saw the need for change but believed that the republic and constitution was indestructible. Caesar didn't care for the politics or establishment and realized that the age of politics and debate was over, and Rome was going to be ruled by military might. Cicero's last days were spent trying to prevent a military takeover by any means possible, which was drastically different from his earlier, idealistic outlook. He changed from trying to improve the republic to trying to save it and from an idealist to a moderate. Ironically, his greatest contribution to modern society was the books he wrote on morality and government, not the politics he spent his life on. The things he spent less time on had a greater impact on the future.
  
  
"Random Family," Adrian Nicole Leblanc
  Summary: Life in the Bronx. Two black couples, sex, drugs, jealousy, murder, repeat.
  Review: Tedious. Too much detail, and the couples aren't writing the book.
  
  
"Cat's Cradle," Kurt Vonnegut
  Summary: Three siblings from a dysfunctional family get hold of high-tech weapons that can end the world, and our narrator coincidentally aligns with them and a strange religion/country.
  Review: It's like the Celestine Prophecy, with religion and strange coincidences. It's a quick read, enjoyable from the start, unlike Deadeye Dick.
  
"Deadeye Dick," Kurt Vonnegut
  Summary: Guy has a difficult and strange childhood, and he accidentally shoots a pregnant woman at 12, and it screws up his life in his small Midwestern town.
  Review: Picks up a lot after the introduction of his parents and the accidental murder, then it's much more enjoyable. Before, I was ready to put it down.
  Takeaway: Vonnegut's characters are nihilists, and are so careless and emotionless and ready for the end of the world that they're already dead. They're smart, and they notice lots of things, but ultimately it's pointless. Also, his theme seems to be nonlinear stories, where he jumps around in the story the narrator's mind. Plus, the narrator has usually been traumatized somehow: Rudy accidentally killed someone and was ostracized, in Cat's Cradle the narrator is writing after the end of the world, which he helped, and in Slaughterhouse V it's the horse and WWII I believe.
  
  
2026.2.2 - "Gonzo, the Life of Hunter S. Thompson," an oral history by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour and "Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century," by Hunter S. Thompson
  So they're separate biographies about Thompson. Kingdom of Fear was written while Thompson was still walking around at the end of the 2000s, but afterwards he went through a bad hip and a broken leg, and when he realized he was crippled and unable to write anymore, he killed himself. Honestly, I can respect that. If you're not going to be useful to the people around you anymore, I wouldn't want to get senile either, although elderly people can be uniquely skilled.
  Hunter was an old school Kentucky boy from the 60s, which makes a lot of sense, as he was a riotous outlaw and rabidly individual. He was one of the old guard who remembered what "Freedom" used to mean in the U.S. before Gen Z was raised in the police state. Through his tough guy act, he was also a great listener and a southern gentleman with a passion for justice and the U.S. He said to his friend Ralph, who drew his abstract portraits in Fear and Loathing, that he would oppose his U.S. Citizenship because he didn't deserve it. 
  When faced with the Hell's Angels or the war in Korea, he wasn't so tough and definitely preferred life.
  Personally, Hunter S. Thompson is as American as Mark Twain. They were spokesmen and prophets of their eras, and their dramatic celebrity personas swallowed them. But still very witty. For Hunter, his life depended on his persona, and a good part of his persona was also the astronomical amounts of drugs he was reliant on, even though they hindered and crippled his writing ability. He was someone who never wanted to appear weak. When he was on the drugs, which was always, he was a confident rebel, but they say that he was full of fear and a "vortex of wrath" and indignation, which fueled a lot of his writing. His writing would disregard fact in search of truth. "Everything he wrote was true, but he pretended it wasn't," unlike the others, vice versa.
  And his writing power is undeniable, if ludicrous.
  "There is no such thing as Paranoia, only Ignorance."
  He also randomly capitalizes words... and messes with typeface in his own book. I'm sure he was an influence on House of Leaves.
  Personally, my ma told me Johnny Depp's "Captain Jack Sparrow" character was pure Thompson, and I distinctly remember the poster with the crazy neck, so he's always been a myth in the background for me. 
  P.S. - Oh yeah! He also ran for Sheriff on the Freak Power ticket and almost won... They created a retro-legal gray area in Aspen basically by controlling the Sheriff's office. Local politics for the questionable win?
  
  
"The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky," translated by David Margarshack.
  Dostoevsky is great, but full of rambling. Books full of rambling. They were paid by the page at times.
  White Nights - Prototype Notes from the Underground, with a happy romantic ending for a guy who gets snubbed at romance.
  The Honest Thief - Story about a guy who repents on his deathbed.
  The Christmas Tree and a Wedding - Very good, about 1800s society and marriage. A horrible arranged marriage set decades in advance, for a sum of money.
  The Peasant Marey - A memory for Dostoevsky, explains his fondness for the common peasants of Russia. SHOULD HAVE BEEN SET IN HOUSE OF THE DEAD, but is not.
  A Gentle Creature - It has a very odd taste. The whole book is a revisitation of a failed marriage, that this eccentric man caused by being unnecessarily cold in a marriage of necessity to a wife he truly does admire... What can I say, people are weird, it could very well happen. Personally, it's a captivating tragedy.
  Notes from the Underground - What can I say?! Redefined me, slapped me with reality of who I was, and am going to be otherwise... The Crystal Palace is a great symbol of the monument of perfection in the industrial age, a symbol of Modernism, and it shows up in Watchmen, only to be crushed to ordinary "thermodynamic miracles."
  The Dream of a Ridiculous Man - Yin to the yang of Notes from the Underground. It beats it with optimism. I'm reminded of a theological lesson, that the reason humanity is doomed is because we are ALL Adam, and we would all eat the apple. We're doomed because we're fundamentally the same and repeat the same mistakes, and the only cure for the Ridiculous Man is to just be ridiculous and love all these crass human fools. Actually, that reminds me of "The Peaceful Warrior, which I also read.
  
"House of the Dead," by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  It's basically a memoir about his time in the Siberian Gulag posed as fiction, and he gets fuzzy on this too. Frankly, it's a miserable hellhole, but the prisoners set up their own little society inside, with their own twisted hopes and dreams, even if it's just to have some vodka and to get whipped for it. It's a lot like the outside world, just purified into "Jailer" and "Jailed." Dostoevsky is a nobility prisoner, but he wants to be with the rough peasants, which in Russia are just called the "Unfortunates," and taken care of by peasants outside the jail. They just happened to have that one rush of passion and finally murdered their wives along with whoever they saw. Yes, and it's a lot like "One Flew the Cuckoo's Nest," -- if these people are crazy, aren't we all? Thinking back, these people basically prefer to stay in jail and don't openly rebel, and when they get released it's Shawshank Redemption, it's hard to adjust to a completely different kind of life. The jailers go along with their charges (who they're afraid of because they outnumber and outmuscle the jailers) on holidays. Gosh, this sounds like society is a prison, and the free life is inconceivable for people in the system.
  
  2026.01.06 - Trejo, by Danny Trejo, Mark Twain's Other Woman, by Laura Skandera Trombley
  Sorry, I'll be back in a sec.