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“Strategy” by B.H. Liddel Hart is an ambitious and incredibly detailed book about war, grand strategy, the history of various campaigns and battles, famous military figures, and, most importantly, what Hart calls the “indirect approach”.

He begins by laying out his discovery of the indirect approach via his study of the history of warfare and one by one he shows how refusing to attack where an enemy is strong, tricking the enemy into fighting where one is well prepared, placing them on the ‘horns of dilemma’, taking the circuitous route, appearing where one is not expected, etc. have been the means of victory and the causes of defeat with few exceptions.

He works through the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Medieval, Seventeenth Century (Gustavus, Cromwell, Turenne), Eighteenth Century (Marlborough and Fredrick), French Revolution and Napoleon, The American Civil War, and the Russo-Japanese War. I had studied a fair bit on most of these historical periods previously, but the detail he goes into left me feeling a bit overwhelmed and in the cases of wars of which I had no, or very little, knowledge I quickly became lost and had to settle for completing those chapters with only a slight understanding. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) was something I’d never even heard of before this reading.

Chapters X Conclusions, XI Constructions, and XII The Concentrated Essence of Strategy are the best of the entire book and if you wanted to get the core knowledge contained in this volume without investing the effort and time into reading the whole thing these three chapters should suffice.

The second part of the book is devoted to the analysis of World War I and World War II. His analysis of the former is lengthy (World War 1 has never been of great interest to me due to its static lines, blundering statesmanship, and meat grinder tactics) and the former is spent considering Hitler’s personality, leadership style, and his theory of war. The second part was written as WW2 was in progress and foretells a great deal about what was to come in the wars and conflicts that followed it (i.e. hybrid warfare, information operations, special forces, insurgencies, etc.)

I found the book instructive and thought-provoking. He’s got a way of getting you to consider things in a different light. His maxims and axioms are grounded in reality and painstakingly supported by historical evidence.

• Really beautiful example of what I call “shadow language”. If you try too hard to understand you’ll miss the point –they’re evocative and not meant to be enjoyed too literally. In many cases they aren’t even symbolic or representing anything specific and are masterful wordplay, sounds, and button pushing.

• Most enjoyable when read out loud. Seriously, take the time to read them out loud. For me this was when I experienced their full power.

• So many times I would finish a poem with an internal “oh fuck” or just laughing in astonishment. On other occasions I was too stunned to say or even register any identifiable reaction and could only manage a flat “ok” –I mean this in a good way.

• Sounds, rhymes, moods, deconstructed forms; sophisticated, creative, sustained, and consistent craft expressing a genuine and honest pathos.

• The first time I sat with it I was disappointed. I remember thinking,”Oh, man a bunch of deconstructed, selfish dumb dumb.” But, I got up to page 7 before setting it down. But, the next day, oh man.

• Some of the most beautiful nonsense I’ve ever read.

• Deals mostly in archetype, long shadows, and human, organic landscapes devoid of technology.

Reading Reflections of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin”

File created: Feb 17, 2003 Started reading: Feb 14, 2023 Finished reading: Feb 15, 2023

Star-rating: 3.5

Blurb: Does for the TMNT franchise what the Dark Knight Did For The Batman.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin” is a graphic novel written by Tom Waltz, Kevin Eastman, & Peter Laird and published June 13, 2022 by Idea & Design Works, LLC.. It serves as the most recent story of the franchise and caps the story-lines of the original main characters.

In a series of flash-backs and flash-forwards interwoven with a vague ‘now’ we follow this tragic story telling of the deaths of Splinter (the leader of the Ninja clan in NY) and all but one of the 4 original teenage mutant ninja turtles –Michelangelo.

I was familiar with the original stories as told in the 80s comic books and have also watched a few of the cartoons when they were first released, this story references an intermediate set of stories and so I was somewhat in the dark, but I never felt as though I was lost or not understanding what was happening and why it was happening.

It progresses nicely with one thing flowing easily into the other. As is usually the case with page-turning action a lot relies on lucky circumstances and the characters tend to the archetypal rather than the personal. Yes, it’s pop culture, but it’s good pop culture to me because it actually made me feel something.

This was a fun ride. It was well-structured. The story itself is grim without being dark and evokes a feeling reminiscent of ones felt at the end of other young adult multipart stories one has grown up with. I think this shift in tone is smart considering the age of the audience –youngsters in the 1980s, but middle-aged in this year of 2023. Mostly a sad story, but one that ends with redemption, hope, and renewal.

I found the artwork, lettering, panels, etc. to be masterful and full of competent craftsmanship. The foreword from Rodriguez and the afterward by Laird are worth mentioning.

“Bloodchild and Other Stories” is a very small collection of short stories and essays written by Octavia Butler and originally published in 1995 by Four Walls Eight Windows.

Each of the stories and essays are followed by an afterword written by Butler explaining her process, reasoning, and motivations behind them. These afterwords are extremely helpful in guiding the reader to understand what she was thinking and although, in my opinion, there are instances where she was, perhaps, blind to her own internal, creative catalysts they are informative and there highest value comes from the encouragement they offer to other writers.

The publication I read only contained the short stories Bloodchild, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, Near of Kin, and Speech Sounds, Crossover, and the essays Positive Obsession and Furor Scribendi. The short stories Amnesty and The Book of Martha appear in the subsequent 1996 and 2005 publications from Seven Stories Press.

Bloodchild, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and Speech Sounds are the three science fiction stories and Near of Kin and Crossover are both present day slice-of-life stories. All three science fictions stories deal with themes of family, belonging, and helping. All three have elements of control and subjugation and they all have medical and health issues at their center. This is a trick Butler used in her creation of these stories and in one of the afterwords she discusses her interest in disease and her research in biology as providing the impetus for a certain amount of her work.

The other two stories (Near of Kin and Crossover) are more in line with writing as a form of catharsis and exploration of society and the individual. Near of Kin deals with an incest and Crossover is about the despair a single woman feels in an oppressive environment (another theme she visits and revisits in this collection).

I felt the stories were completely original and representative of the socially conscious literature of the era and place (1960s-1980s Pasadena, California) that produced Butler as a writer. If you’re looking for operatic adventure or hard science mind-benders you won’t find them within these pages, but you will find some of the most original and different stories you have seen in a long time if you have mostly stayed within the boundaries of those now well-worn out, sci-fi, sub genres.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s short, it’s powerful, humble, expressive, and encouraging all while avoiding the pitfalls of maudlin sentimentality and hackneyed rhetoric so often indulged in by more modern, (and more coddled) social commentators.

“Bloodchild and Other Stories” is a very small collection of short stories and essays written by Octavia Butler and originally published in 1995 by Four Walls Eight Windows.

Each of the stories and essays are followed by an afterword written by Butler explaining her process, reasoning, and motivations behind them. These afterwords are extremely helpful in guiding the reader to understand what she was thinking and although, in my opinion, there are instances where she was, perhaps, blind to her own internal, creative catalysts they are informative and there highest value comes from the encouragement they offer to other writers.

The publication I read only contained the short stories Bloodchild, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, Near of Kin, and Speech Sounds, Crossover, and the essays Positive Obsession and Furor Scribendi. The short stories Amnesty and The Book of Martha appear in the subsequent 1996 and 2005 publications from Seven Stories Press.

Bloodchild, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and Speech Sounds are the three science fiction stories and Near of Kin and Crossover are both present day slice-of-life stories. All three science fictions stories deal with themes of family, belonging, and helping. All three have elements of control and subjugation and they all have medical and health issues at their center. This is a trick Butler used in her creation of these stories and in one of the afterwords she discusses her interest in disease and her research in biology as providing the impetus for a certain amount of her work.

The other two stories (Near of Kin and Crossover) are more in line with writing as a form of catharsis and exploration of society and the individual. Near of Kin deals with an incest and Crossover is about the despair a single woman feels in an oppressive environment (another theme she visits and revisits in this collection).

I felt the stories were completely original and representative of the socially conscious literature of the era and place (1960s-1980s Pasadena, California) that produced Butler as a writer. If you’re looking for operatic adventure or hard science mind-benders you won’t find them within these pages, but you will find some of the most original and different stories you have seen in a long time if you have mostly stayed within the boundaries of those now well-worn out, sci-fi, sub genres.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s short, it’s powerful, humble, expressive, and encouraging all while avoiding the pitfalls of maudlin sentimentality and hackneyed rhetoric so often indulged in by more modern, (and more coddled) social commentators.

Sei Shonagon’s “The Pillow Book” (translated by Meredith McKinney and published by Penguin Books (2006)) was written about a thousand years ago by a gentlewoman that served as an attendant to the Emperess of Japan. It’s a collection of observations, recordings, and events, but just as importantly it records the subjective reactions of Shonagon to these things and in this way transcends a mere official record and becomes more of a diary.

At the center of this document is Sei Shonagon a young woman in her 20s who lives within the most luxurious surroundings available. Not only is her environment royal the dynamics of the social life of the court are also completely different from everything else.

There’s a great deal of emphasis on clothing, music, poetry, architecture, and travel, but there is also a great deal of importance attached to nature, manners, social politics, romance, and spiritual refinement.

A lot of the entries take the forms of lists (e.g. “things that are beautiful”, “situations that cause distress”), but there are also many entries that span pages telling of a particular intrigue or escapade that passed her notice and little by little I found myself understanding more and more not just about that time period and place, but about the human condition in general. How adaptable man is.

Sei, since the work is told from her perspective, is perhaps the most interesting piece of the entire structure. As you read, you form a fully three dimensional understanding of her as a real person and see that she ranges from loyal, loving, spiritual, and creative on one end to pragmatic, political, elitist, and, sometimes, mean. But, though others point to this as a reason to dislike her, I personally found her enchanting and real. I could understand that the environment she moved through required her to be the way she was and, was in fact, as her employer the Empress put it, the “epitome of the type of person” that belonged where she was.

Sei Shonagon’s “The Pillow Book” (translated by Meredith McKinney and published by Penguin Books (2006)) was written about a thousand years ago by a gentlewoman that served as an attendant to the Emperess of Japan. It’s a collection of observations, recordings, and events, but just as importantly it records the subjective reactions of Shonagon to these things and in this way transcends a mere official record and becomes more of a diary.

At the center of this document is Sei Shonagon a young woman in her 20s who lives within the most luxurious surroundings available. Not only is her environment royal the dynamics of the social life of the court are also completely different from everything else.

There’s a great deal of emphasis on clothing, music, poetry, architecture, and travel, but there is also a great deal of importance attached to nature, manners, social politics, romance, and spiritual refinement.

A lot of the entries take the forms of lists (e.g. “things that are beautiful”, “situations that cause distress”), but there are also many entries that span pages telling of a particular intrigue or escapade that passed her notice and little by little I found myself understanding more and more not just about that time period and place, but about the human condition in general. How adaptable man is.

Sei, since the work is told from her perspective, is perhaps the most interesting piece of the entire structure. As you read, you form a fully three dimensional understanding of her as a real person and see that she ranges from loyal, loving, spiritual, and creative on one end to pragmatic, political, elitist, and, sometimes, mean. But, though others point to this as a reason to dislike her, I personally found her enchanting and real. I could understand that the environment she moved through required her to be the way she was and, was in fact, as her employer the Empress put it, the “epitome of the type of person” that belonged where she was.

A friend recommended Evelyn Waugh when I joked that I enjoyed books that were about bitter alcoholics with too much time and money on their hands. A quick search showed me who he was (surprise, not a woman), that he most famously wrote "Brideshead Revisted", and came from a family of book publishers.

A comprehensive collection of all of his short stories from boyhood on up are contained in this thick hardcover volume and they vary in genre, style, and tone mostly being held together by the common thread of early 20th C. England. Though there are stories of 'bitter alcoholics with too much time and money on their hands' there are also bear-trap stories, morality plays, weird stories, a satirical science fiction piece, stories of crime, old age, and much more.

More than once I found myself reading the last sentence of a story and having to stop because it was such a masterful concept so masterfully told.

I highly recommend this one.

A friend recommended Evelyn Waugh when I joked that I enjoyed books that were about bitter alcoholics with too much time and money on their hands. A quick search showed me who he was (surprise, not a woman), that he most famously wrote "Brideshead Revisted", and came from a family of book publishers.

A comprehensive collection of all of his short stories from boyhood on up are contained in this thick hardcover volume and they vary in genre, style, and tone mostly being held together by the common thread of early 20th C. England. Though there are stories of 'bitter alcoholics with too much time and money on their hands' there are also bear-trap stories, morality plays, weird stories, a satirical science fiction piece, stories of crime, old age, and much more.

More than once I found myself reading the last sentence of a story and having to stop because it was such a masterful concept so masterfully told.

I highly recommend this one.

"The Museum of Dr. Moses" is a collection of 10 short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. The stories range anywhere from a couple of pages to a couple around forty to fifty pages with most of them around fifteen to twenty. The types of stories are varied with a lone gunman, a crazed addict, a desperate boxer, a vengeful suicide, the wrecked family of a serial killer, a supernatural tale, another serial killer (this one the protagonist and multidimensional), a pair of feuding brothers and the detached father that sets them upon one another, a stream of consciousness experience post-murder, and a variation of the "trapped in the house with the murderer" trope.

That's a lot of variety. Some of the commonalities might be violence, fear, insanity, desperation. Another might be of the successful brought to shame.

Oates is a bold and experimental writer that plays with fractured time lines, fragmented perceptions, and unreliable narrators paired with POV snapshots, shorthand flashbacks, and imagined dialogue that keeps the reader in a state of tension between attentiveness and disorientation. The effect is pleasurable.

Oates also spends a great deal of attention to the minutiae of characterization, the atomic level of detail adds a great deal to the reader's understanding of each story's context and helps develop empathy and understanding of each character's motivation.

"The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza" and "The Hunter" stood out to me as the best of a good collection.