I have stopped reading The Samurai’s Garden A Novel by Gail Tsukiyama 📚. I remember being so excited about reading the book, but it has turned out to be so underwhelming. I only had 20 pages or so to go, but I see no point in going on when all that’s in my mind is wanting to be done with the book and to mark it off my list. Except for Sachi telling her story, I have found most of the book too slow and boring. I also cannot help being displeased at Stephen-san’s and Keiko’s relationship; it feels so unearned, as though it is being forced on us and is very well dispensable. There are of course those moments when you know the issue isn’t with the book, but with you, this is just not one of them. More than finding those who are in agreement with me on this point, I hope to find someone who has read the book and loved it, and to get to hear their defence, and their reasons. Maybe I will pick this up again some other day. I most likely will not.

Hosea is quite a book! 💜 Much to glean from and reflect on!

4th Philokalia discussion tonight on Morrison’s Beloved. A little catching up to do before then! Excited.

Finished reading: The history of Christian thought by Hill, Jonathan 📚

Finished reading: The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien 📚

💜🥳

Finished reading: Night by Elie Wiesel 📚

Alan Jacobs:

If you read old novels — as I do — you’ll occasionally come across a certain phrase: “That’s past praying for” — meaning “That’s impossible, even for God.” I’d suggest that you never use that phrase. Better a fool’s hope than no hope. Better to say, along with Dr. Moncrieff, “Lord, when is it too late for Thee, or what is too hard for Thee?”

Finished reading: Beloved by Toni Morrison 📚 My oh my!

L. M. Sacasas

Interestingly enough, the insertion of an ordinary language interface between ourselves and the digitized collective unconscious makes it more obscure and inscrutable to us. The chatbot interface reconfigures our agency in navigating the collective unconscious by, in a manner of speaking, becoming an anti-therapist leading us away from self-knowledge and insight, however disturbing or startling, toward a comfortable and soothing encounter. It offers a false clarity and lulls us into self-satisfaction, guarding us from self-doubt and from lingering too long in an awareness of our ignorance or in a place of troubling uncertainty. It veils the tangled forest of human experience and lights an artificially clear path for us toward the promise of knowledge and wisdom. In this way, though, it sinks us gently but decisively back into the unconscious. Perhaps this is the root of AI psychosis.

Finished reading: The Narnian by Alan Jacobs 📚