For non fiction my diet has been pretty sparse, but not nothing. American Prometheus - Nothing earthshattering. Gave good context for Oppenheimer I felt. Curious if anyone else has read it. The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore - A 13 hour telling of the work of Elizabeth Packard exposing the horrors of the mental health treatment system of 1860's era america by the same author who wrote Radium Girls. Mini book club with my wife on this one, she finds it relates a lot to her work in behavioral therapy with very young, very combative children. Now to the candy and confectionaries The End and the Death Volume 2 - The second of the final trilogy of the extended Horus Heresy series and the Siege of Terra. There's nothing but brief vignettes in this one, almost all of them so emotionally taxing in different ways the sum effect is numbing. At least if you give a shit. Lots of critique that its dull and unnecessarily long. I enjoy it a lot. The final scene is so bleak it was painful. It's the known, prophesied, long coming, guaranteed outcome of a fight that had its conclusion written in like 1991 in a footnote of ancient sci-fi history. This entire series truthfully is the exposition of about 3-4 paragraphs in a rule book from a tabletop game that almost nobody plays anymore. Wild stuff. Helldivers XI: Renegades - Absolute pulp, also bleak, but chewy and enjoyable in the same way Phase 1 Marvel was enjoyable. No real surprises but the author has managed to keep my interest over close to a hundred hours of what amounts to contemporary spaceman spiff ray guns and aliens and Thomas A Swifts Electric Rifle saving the day, and that's something. I'm drawing a parallel to the collection of Western pulp novels my grandfather accumulated over a lifetime. I inherited most of them. A Song of Ice and Fire - Over the summer, I finally half-watched game of thrones while hiding from the sun from extended antibiotic treatment this past summer. Apparently this changed my taste enough that I can listen to the ASOIAF audiobooks and enjoy them. There was some quality to them stylistically that I couldn't really get into when Game of Thrones was popular. But I'm halfway through A Clash of Kings right now and enjoying it a lot. Honestly I think I enjoy ASOIAF conspiracy theories on youtube and reddit almost as much.
Read it many years ago, I knew very little about Oppenheimer going into it. The main takeaways was the sheer size of the Manhattan project, the curious nature of Oppenheimer as a person, and then the political intrigue that followed related to his security clearance over the suspected association with the Communist party. I particularly liked the "competency porn" aspect of it; remarkably talented individuals doing things that require remarkable talent. It scratches that "gee I wish I was a genius" itch you get in fiction like The Martian or whatever. But this was a real genius working with other genius's to do something momentous. I remember reading Bryson's book at the same time as this and it explained much of the explosion in physics around the 20's and 30's and the big players involved. As a self professed nerd I knew I'd like the science stuff but was surprised to find the political bits pretty interesting. The paranoia of the time period, the creation of a new age, what it means to create something you cannot control, being discarded once you have served your purpose, the beginning of the cold war, and perhaps the social structures in the US at the time, were all fascinating. I ended up reading Caro's LBJ biographies not to long after which though not completely related, have some overlap with the social paranoia and McCarthyism. The part that stayed with me afterwards was how Oppenheimer was such a difficult person to really get a grip on. He was clearly brilliant, and charming, but also depressive and emotionally complex. Morally ambivalent? Is that a good term for it? He wrung his hands and quoted the bhagavad gita over his role in making the bomb, but then celebrated the anniversary of the day the bomb was dropped in costume dress up for the rest of his life... Was he too brilliant to comprehend, or just a messed up clever individual? The book was good to not spell out too much its views, although given it took years to write I wonder how much bias it contains. As for the movie, I've seen it once and was underwhelmed, I'm holding judgement until I watch it again.American Prometheus - Nothing earthshattering. Gave good context for Oppenheimer I felt. Curious if anyone else has read it.
I have thoughts. I will extend this post with them later. I saw Oppenheimer in true giant IMAX as a double feature with Barbie. This is how those films should be enjoyed IMO, back to back. Barbie has to live in the world Oppenheimer helped create. I'm half joking half serious.