https://slackersmuse.com/tags/2025/ Recent content in 2025 on Slacker's Muse Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_casanovasmemoirs/ Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_casanovasmemoirs/ A Review: Casanova’s Memoirs Title of Work: Casanova’s Memoirs Author: Giacomo Casanova Format: Published: 1789 Started: Finished: 2025-12-18\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 2/5 Not much shagging to be found here for the memoirs of one of literature’s infamous fuckboys. This edition seems to have been expurgated of all the good bits. Barely erotic but occasionally interesting for adventure (prison break), fine dining, and snarky salon society banter with Voltaire and other Enlightenment intellectuals. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_vineland/ Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_vineland/ A Review: Vineland Title of Work: Vineland Author: Thomas Pynchon Format: Published: 1990 Started: Finished: 2025-12-04\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Way more fun than I expected. A lot of it goes over my head but you kinda sense when that’s happening and can appreciate the maniac that makes it all happen. Enjoyed this one a lot more than Crying of Lot 49. It was fun to see how the recent One Battle After Another film stuck to and how it deviated from the source. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_theincal/ Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_theincal/ A Review: The Incal Title of Work: The Incal Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky Format: Published: 1981 Started: Finished: 2025-11-08\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Really cool art style in this graphic novel/comic from an iconic duo: the Chilean-French film director Alejandro Jodorowsky and the great French artist and illustrator Jean Giraud, better known by his alias, mœbius. Visionaries, the pair of ’em and their works influenced massive franchises like Star Wars, Bladerunner, and The Matrix in subsequent decades, both visually and spiritually. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_woodyguthriesongsandartwordsandwisdom/ Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_woodyguthriesongsandartwordsandwisdom/ A Review: Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom Title of Work: Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom Author: Robert Santelli Format: Published: Started: Finished: 2025-09-29\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 5/5 Wow… wow wow wow. I’m obsessed with this book – the cartoons and the paintings and the songs and the stories and Woody Guthrie, the man himself. Everything we consume makes us different somehow as it passes through, but it’s usually hard to notice. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_thediaryofanasninvol119311934/ Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_thediaryofanasninvol119311934/ A Review: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 Title of Work: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 Author: Anaïs Nin Format: Published: Started: Finished: 2025-09-26\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Nin is a great writer and hung around some interesting, influential artists and innovators in her time. She kept a beautiful, narrative diary through most of her life, starting when she was a young girl. Highly self-aware, reflective, sensitive. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_becomewhatyouare/ Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_becomewhatyouare/ A Review: Become What You Are Title of Work: Become What You Are Author: Alan W. Watts Format: Published: 1955 Started: Finished: 2025-09-22\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 3/5 One of those you-are-what-you-aren’t, do-nothing-to-have-everything, become-empty-to-be-full type books which makes it difficult to say one way or the other if it’s recommendable or not. In this everything is its negation way, it is: useless ∴ priceless overly general ∴ hyper-personal obvious ∴ obscure https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_stoner/ Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_stoner/ A Review: Stoner Title of Work: Stoner Author: John Williams Format: Published: 1965 Started: Finished: 2025-08-09\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 5/5 Read this for the condensed experience of living a mundane life. Most of us will. You accumulate countless disappointments and fewer though still numerous small joys. Gradually you slow, tiring under the weight of this accumulated life until the slowing inverts and suddenly you’re speeding toward something you hadn’t much considered, something final. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_themaniac/ Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_themaniac/ A Review: The Maniac Title of Work: The Maniac Author: Benjamín Labatut Format: Published: 2023 Started: Finished: 2025-07-18\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 3/5 Give it a spin if you’ve ever found yourself reading the Wikipedia pages of the great math and physics geniuses of our kind, wondering what their lives may have been like. Did they argue? Did they admire each other? Were they dorks? Did they sleep around? What, if anything, did they struggle with? https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_themycoculturalrevolutiontranformingourworldwithmushroomslichensandotherfungi/ Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_themycoculturalrevolutiontranformingourworldwithmushroomslichensandotherfungi/ A Review: The Mycocultural Revolution: Tranforming Our World With Mushrooms, Lichens, and Other Fungi Title of Work: The Mycocultural Revolution: Tranforming Our World With Mushrooms, Lichens, and Other Fungi Author: Peter McCoy Format: Published: Started: Finished: 2025-07-07\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 3/5 Good intro. Includes detailed “recipes” for growing edible mushrooms at home by several accessible methods. Cute illustrations. General idea of de-mystifying mushroom foraging and home cultivation. Author’s hope is that one day growing edible and medicinal mushrooms will be as commonplace as growing tomatoes or peppers in the home garden. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_firstwereadthenwewriteemersononthecreativeprocess/ Sun, 06 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_firstwereadthenwewriteemersononthecreativeprocess/ A Review: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process Title of Work: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process Author: Robert D. Richardson Jr. Format: Published: 2009 Started: Finished: 2025-07-06\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 2/5 Probably not worth your time. Better off reading the Emerson essays (Nature, The American Scholar, The Poet, etc.) or one of the more substantial Emerson biographies. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_thecoddlingoftheamericanmindhowgoodintentionsandbadideasaresettingupagenerationforfailure/ Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_thecoddlingoftheamericanmindhowgoodintentionsandbadideasaresettingupagenerationforfailure/ A Review: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure Title of Work: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure Author: Jonathan Haidt Format: Published: 2018 Started: Finished: 2025-07-02\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Four stars for the content related to childhood development, educational environments, pedagogy, CBT, and mindfulness. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_thewayofthesuperiormanaspiritualguidetomasteringthechallengesofwomenworkandsexualdesire/ Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_thewayofthesuperiormanaspiritualguidetomasteringthechallengesofwomenworkandsexualdesire/ A Review: The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire Title of Work: The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire Author: David Deida Format: Published: 1997 Started: Finished: 2025-03-05\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 4/5 I was never going to read this. A gift from years ago, A brother and law kept at arms length. https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_personalwritings/ Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://slackersmuse.com/posts/br_personalwritings/ A Review: Personal Writings Title of Work: Personal Writings Author: Albert Camus Format: #essay paperback Published: 2020 Started: 2024-12-01 Finished: 2025-01-19\ Posted: Goodreads Rating: 4/5 A light rain in Sevilla wets cobbled streets and I mourn three artists this morning. I mourn the diffusion of three great lights, local sources burning out but waves of their brilliance expanding, propagating out and out to meet me here. I fold time and bring each into entanglement with my own knotted node on the great net spanning all ways, a moment or a lightyear depending how you lay it out.