Lee Hunts

The following is a quickie review I wrote on Goodreads a while back. Overall, I thought the book was good. It doesn't really function as a narrative, so much as it does a philosophical treatise for the author's variant on anti-natalism. The plot is bare-bones, adopting an adventure story structure (traveling from one place to the next). But instead of fantastical locations, the story indulges in varied philosophical debates about the morality of life itself. As a narrative, I thought it was fairly lacking. As a treatise, it was good, though I have disagreements. Let's start with the positives: I enjoyed the prose. It was competently written, and even simply written, taken alongside the occasional esoteric terminology that I had to look up. My kindle often failed to find the definitions of the words in its own dictionary. It was reminiscent of R. Scott Bakker's later works, which did the same thing, though Bakker was much more complex in every respect. All the same, like...

Just over a year ago, I was diagnosed with epilepsy, something that has the potential to progress to grand mal seizures, meaning I could lose consciousness and convulse on the ground. That is a story of its own, I suppose. But this is a different story. After being diagnosed, I was put on medication, and I had to be switched to a new one after the doctors decided that the previous medication was not sufficient to address the problem. A few days ago, I experienced a mild seizure, or what you could call an aura, and the doctor increased the dosage of this new one. A couple days later, seemingly unrelated, I had to print, sign, and scan a document—and then send it to my doctor. I fulfilled this obligation. Or so I thought. That leads to yesterday. Yesterday was a completely normal day. I had the morning shift at work. I was not able to work on one of my projects that day, but I planned on working on the other that night, and there were several books that I was reading as well. Basically, ...

I just finished reading The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny. This is a mystery/thriller novel  in a larger series called Three Pines. Inspector Armand Gamache is at the center of the story, a man of principle and character, who lives in the titular tight-knit community. In this particular entry, he is asked by an old friend to run security for a speaker who proves to be particularly controversial. From there, the story explodes, as people begin to react to the speaker's presence and message in volatile ways, leading to a body, as you can imagine. Overall (No Spoilers) This was meant to be a quick and simple read for me. But it turned out that it really wasn't. The story was getting on my nerves from the outset for writing craft reasons; then, it started to show moralistic tinges that rubbed me in the wrong way. Instead of the quick read, I got over-analytical, and it took way too long to get through. This is probably because I read it rather than listened, but I wanted to get...