I have mentioned in my previous scribbles that I read a lot of fantasy literature in my adolescence. I was reminded of this time in my life when a friend of mine asked if he could borrow my copy of the first entry in the Wheel of Time series. Funnily enough, even though I own the book, I have never actually read it. I bought it in the twilight period of my fantasy-reading phase and never got around to reading it before I ran out of enthusiasm. Why did this happen, I wonder. I rarely read fantasy nowadays; the last book I read that comes even close to the fantasy genre was Piranesi and even that is arguable.

The thing about the fantasy genre, though, is that it’s very broad. The aforementioned Piranesi, The Lord of the Rings and the expanded universe Star Wars books all qualify as fantasy even though they have very different settings, themes and atmospheres. When I was reading fantasy I was mainly interested in the subgenre of fantasy that most people think of when the subject is mentioned; medieval Europe-ish setting, swords, dragons, magic, the lot. Think something along the lines of The Witcher, The Chronicles of Narnia or Tales from Earthsea. All of which I’ve read, by the way. Then there are the outliers such as Harry Potter or Discworld, which do not tick all the boxes in terms of traditional fantasy settings or themes, but still cannot be classified as anything else.

It is very difficult determining all the subgenres and subclasses of fantasy. Most people do separate the genre into two main categories, however, them being the low fantasy and high fantasy genres. Now, even the people who divide fantasy into those two categories argue where the line exactly goes and what the dividing factors are, but I believe most people agree that the factors lie within the epicness and scale of a story. Epic, grim stories featuring humane characters and intricate built fantasy worlds such as A Song of Ice and Fire are usually classified as high fantasy, whereas less intricate stories with more mundane worlds such as the aforementioned Harry Potter are classified as low fantasy.

To return to my earlier question why I ditched the fantasy genre and never got back to it, I believe I might have simply gotten the fantasy fatigue. See, I read a lot of high fantasy, the subgenre with intricately woven worlds and plotlines. A well-written high fantasy story is like an expensive wedding cake; layers upon layers of detailed flavors, all designed to work together in harmony to bring you the best possible experience. But you really have to savor all the bites you take to get the best experience out of it, and if you miss something, the harmony is broken. A good low fantasy story, on the other hand, is to me more like a well-made sandwich. It’s not as classy as a wedding cake and maybe there wasn’t a lot of thought put into the flavors, but a well-made sandwich nevertheless leaves you satisfied and content.

Maybe I got tired of consuming entire wedding cakes one after the other. Reading The Lord of the Rings is a feat in itself; you need a breather after finishing such a literary classic. After reading so many stories with carefully constructed worlds and carefully planned intriguing plotlines, I just had enough. I got burned out by high fantasy and haven’t looked back since.

But how about low fantasy? Did wedding cakes ruin sandwiches for me too?

As I said, I have read Piranesi which would qualify as low fantasy, I suppose. It doesn’t have magical creatures and dark, brooding characters like The Witcher or political intrigue like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it does have fantasy as a background element, an atmosphere of sorts. Now, I’ll probably talk about Piranesi in more detail in the future as part of my Mind, Body and Soul series, but the gist of it is that the main character explores a seemingly never-ending maze-like building and keeps records of his exploration. The exploration in itself is very fantasy-like, as the character comes across statues of people and mythological creatures and different ecological environments within the building. It’s very fantasy-like in its setting and I enjoyed it a lot.

So it cannot be that I’ve been burned out by the fantasy genre completely; I just happen to enjoy the lighter side of it now that I’m older. I’m less interested in dragons now and more interested in the mood of it all.

There was one fantasy series that I wanted to bring up as an example of a series that I think strikes a good balance between high and low fantasy that I’ve been meaning to get back to. When I was younger, I used to be quite into the Redwall series, and as it happens, it might be my favorite fantasy series altogether. See, it does feature a setting akin to medieval England with meadows, sword fights and the occasional gruesome death, but it also features fuzzy animals, weirdly detailed descriptions of delicious meals and worldbuilding that is only as intricate as it needs to be.

Redwall is a series of books that center around a monastery inhabited by anthropomorphic animals named titularly Redwall Abbey. Every book in the series is a self-contained story and only a few entries in the series share characters between them. There is a chronological order to the stories which does not follow the publishing order of the books, but there is so little continuous story between the books that you could just read them in the order they were written.

A common story in the Redwall series centers around some of the animals living in the abbey when a disaster strikes, usually in the form of a marauding group of vermin who pose a threat to the existence of Redwall Abbey. The hero or heroine then must go through a series of trials, usually manifesting as a series of riddles, to fetch a mcguffin that would supposedly help with dealing with the threat while also enjoying vast amounts of meals that the author is very keen on describing in much detail.

Take the first book in the series, which incidentally is also my favorite one, simply titled Redwall. The story follows the mouse Matthias, as the abbey gets sieged by a rat warlord Cluny the Scourge. Matthias then has to solve a series of riddles to find a sword belonging to the legendary Martin the Warrior to defeat Cluny and his army of vermin. Adventures in the English countryside ensue.

Yeah, not a story that would make for an award-winning Scorcese adaptation, but there lies the beauty of it. I say adventures in the English countryside ensue, but it’s never really clear where Redwall Abbey is located or what the world is like apart from the locations the story takes the reader to, but the story doesn’t really need that. I believe Portugal is mentioned in the first book but as far as I know that is the only real world place that gets name dropped in the series.

Yes, all the characters are either good or bad; good characters being charismatic farmyard animals such as mice, moles and rabbits and bad characters being disgusting vermin like rats and stoats. Not very subtle but I think subtlety is sometimes overrated in literature. Sometimes I want things spelled out for me so I can focus on just the adventures and not the duality of the human-animal psyche. I can just relax and let the story take me and not worry about complex characters or geopolitical plotlines. 

Redwall as a series is a well-made sandwich that doesn’t have the subtle flavors of a wedding cake fantasy story, but I’d take a well-made sandwich over a wedding cake any day. These days I enjoy the lowest of the low fantasy that barely qualifies; the lower the better, until the story reaches wine cellar levels of low. I’ve been meaning to tip my toes into the mid-low levels of fantasy by picking up one of the Redwall books again to see if I can manage to get through one of them. If I am, maybe I’d even give The Winds of Winter a try when it’s published as I hit retirement age.

Once again it’s time to discuss my three books of the month, featuring the book of the Soul, the book of the Mind and the book of the Heart. I think it becomes evident that my choices were safe this time, and as it happens, I could have made them better. I do not wish to spoil the next paragraph, but even the best of them was sort of okay, and even then it was mostly because the book was copying its homework from another book I had already read. It is interesting, though, that this time the choices feature a book that I did not finish but retrospectively regret ever picking up and giving the author money for. Without further ado, here come the books two… plus another one.

For my Soul book I decided to play safe and bought a book by an author I already like, namely No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh. A short read compared to his books I’ve read previously, which is not a problem at all. What attracts me to Thich Nhat Hanh’s books are his philosophy and how he writes, even if the writing has gone through translation into English. Mindfulness is something I’d like to give a more serious try one of these days. Speaking of, the book goes into great lengths about the benefits of practising mindfulness, but also therein lies the problem. In my opinion No Mud, No Lotus as a book is so close to Mr. Thich’s earlier book Peace is Every Step that after reading it I was not much more educated on mindfulness than before reading the book, since it pretty much goes through the same motions. No Mud, No Lotus does include some practical exercise sets on mindfulness that Peace is Every Step lacks, but when it comes to theory, I would rather recommend the latter. All in all, still a very enjoyable read, and I already have my eyes on my next Thich Nhat Hanh book.

You probably are aware that I am a fan of the absurd. Catch-22, A Confederacy of Dunces and Naked Lunch all stand proud on my new bookshelf. Again, playing it safe, I went for a rather new book of absurdist fiction called Antkind: a Novel for my Heart book. The book is authored by Charlie Kaufman of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fame. Being John Malkovich is a movie I like and I would even classify as Kafkaesque, if I was feeling particularly pretentious. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a movie that exists to me, and I have no problem with it. It’s nice to see Jim Carrey try something serious for a change. It’s alright.

Antkind really evokes the spirit of the former, in my opinion. It is absurd, I’ll give it that. And thick; spanning over seven hundred pages. It’s sad for me to say, but for my Heart book Antkind really breaks it by being really tedious and somehow dated for a book that was published in 2020. Okay, it had some laugh-out-loud funny moments, but mathematically speaking seven funny pages out of seven hundred only amounts to one percent of fun and ninety-nine percent of boredom. It did tickle my absurdist bone the right way; the book is about an unlikeable film critic named B, who comes across what he thinks is the best movie ever made, called Antkind, before accidentally destroying it and having the chance to show it to the world. B then proceeds to try to reconstruct the movie from memory, which is harder than it seems since he also suffers from a case of amnesia.

There are some really funny chapters about B’s encounters with psychiatrists, and the book piqued my interest at themes when it broke the fourth wall, but then there are several really unfunny chapters about, I kid you not, an army of robots all of whom resemble former president Donald Trump, and who also behave like sexual deviants. As I mentioned the book being dated, for even for the memelordiest forum posters of the internet Donald Trump in 2020 is a pretty old hat. I guess these chapters are funny to you if you think Donald Trump is inherently funny and not the epitome of everything that is wrong with Western democracy and the patron saint of the downfall of the civilised world. If that’s the case then good for you, this is your book. I, on the other hand, am not going to recommend it.

If you thought that Antkind was the low point of these books three then guess again. Antkind was a slog to get through but I still finished it. For my Mind book I chose a book titled How to Build a Billion Dollar App by George Berkowski. I would like to praise every book I read at least a little bit, even for the smallest achievements. No Mud, No Lotus was still educational and well written, and Antkind was occasionally funny. What I have to praise about HtBaMDA (I can’t bring myself to write out the whole title) is that it validates the habit of judging a book by its cover.

I know the title sounds cheesy and like one of those million get-rich-quick-scheme books. I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt. I thought the book was going to give me some insight into mobile app development; how does one set up and maintain the infrastructure, employ external contractors, plan out a technical roadmap for future features, things like that. What a fool I was. As you could probably guess, the book was all anecdotes about known successful mobile apps and zero technical or financial advice. The teachings of the book boiled down to: Have a million-dollar idea and build your app. Case closed. I wasn’t even in it to make a million dollars; I just wanted to build an app and learn how to do all the other things besides programming which I already know how to do. I believe I caught wind of the book’s true intentions and I left it unfinished around the midway point.

So, yeah, not a great month for books. The Soul book was pretty alright, and I guess I’m happy that I finished my Heart book. I would have been better having left my Mind book in the store, though. Thankfully the next three books I’ll talk about are better, and I did finish them all, but that’s a story for another time.

Sometimes programming is less about the code you’re writing and more about the tools you’re using. I do not manage this website in an industrial capacity and I feel that my selection of tools reflect that.

I have written this website using .Net – Razor Pages, to be precise – so I feel Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition and Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio suffice for my needs. I have been meaning to convert this website from Razor Pages to a more up-to-date Blazor, but that seems like a lot of effort for something that already works fine. Razor Pages might not be the hip new framework that the kids are using, and asynchronous component reloads are borderline impossible without writing your own AJAX scripts, but for a simple website like mine it does the job.

However, I recently did upgrade my toolbox with a whole new integrated system. See, I recently finished reading a book called The DevOps Handbook. In my opinion, mostly an underwhelming book, but it did contain some valuable nuggets of information. I read the second edition, which contained some real-life examples of implementing DevOps in big businesses. So, most of the time it just boiled down to a chapter beginning with theory about a certain aspect of DevOps, and then ending with a concrete example, meaning the same as the beginning but with proper nouns mixed in. After finishing it I’m not sure if I learned more about DevOps or the business culture at Etsy.

Back to the topic. I use DevOps, kanban boards and CI/CD pipelines every day at my work. However, I realized that there is a staggering contrast between my work methods and my hobbyist methods. When I first started in web development in 2019, my job required me to develop and maintain a website using Web Forms and then deploying it to the server using an FTP tool. Eventually my job evolved to developing a Razor Pages project as well, but the methods stayed the same. Only two job changes later was I introduced to continuous integration and continuous deployment.

It has been five years since I started my career in web development, but even as late as this January, if I needed to update this very website, did I publish the files onto a local folder, drag them over to the server using FileZilla and replace the existing server files with the new ones. I don’t want to pull back the curtain too much, but for security reasons this involved some tinkering with the server firewall as well. It was all very inconvenient.

After reading The DevOps Handbook, even if I didn’t learn much new from it, it did give me the inspiration to finally implement a CI/CD pipeline on my server, so I could deploy website updates like a goddamn professional instead of my former caveman methods.

I familiarized myself with Jenkins, an open-source automation tool. It was a bit of an arcane process to get it installed and working on my server, but I finally managed to set it up and get it running on my server. Mind you, this whole website generates zero revenue for me, so I used the lowest available tier possible, meaning this whole website is running on crackers and spit. After installing Jenkins I did have to bump up my memory up to double the previous, so that’s how much I considered it an improvement.

I am a solo developer so I rarely use more than one Git branch in my projects. When there is nobody else to mess up your version history there are also no merge conflicts. With Jenkins up and running, however, I did create a new release branch alongside the master branch. I set up Jenkins to communicate with GitHub so whenever I make a push into the release branch, an automatic build and deploy are started. So, I can safely work on the website in the master branch and whenever I deem it ready for publishing, I merge it with the release branch and push the changes into GitHub.

Since I could update my website anytime I have spare time, my website could also go down any hour of the day for the duration of the update. IIS has this convenient feature that when it detects an app_offline.htm file in the website root folder, it displays that file instead of the website, so the website could go down and the users could still see a maintenance message. This website is running on an Ubuntu server with NGINX, so I had to configure NGINX manually to have the same feature. I created a simple app_offline.htm file and committed it to the version control. Then, I set a new step in the Jenkins deploy process that the file is copied into the root folder at the beginning of the deployment, and then removed when everything is finished. In the NGINX configuration, I set it to serve the client with the app_offline.htm file if it is detected in the root folder, otherwise it would serve the actual website as per usual.

Now I don’t have to bother with FTP tools or managing the server portion of the website manually. Jenkins will do it for me. This system is fairly standard for people in web development, but I was inspired only recently to implement it, even though I consider myself a skilled professional. There are probably more methods I could put into practice, but there is a limit of cost-efficiency with hobbyist projects like this one. First and foremost, I really should update this website to use Blazor. Maybe down the line I could add more unit tests or create a whole program that runs the whole server for me. The best part of being a programmer that when it comes to code, the sky's the limit.

Continuing on the last scribbling’s subject, I would like to write about a specific book I read. As I previously mentioned, I do order three books at a time as per my method. I want to write about a specific batch of books that included a very special book; a batch that consisted of Ikigai, The Pragmatic Programmer and, today’s main course, House of Leaves.

Disappointingly enough, I have little to say about Ikigai or The Pragmatic Programmer. Sometimes I have difficulties with choosing my Soul book, and going through the list of potential candidates on my regular online book retailer, I chose Ikigai for its pleasant appearance, length and price. I had heard of this book, mostly in the context of discussing coffee table books. You know, books that look pretty on a coffee table and mainly serve as a conversation starter rather than as a reading experience. But since it’s a fairly popular book I purchased it, read it and put it in my bookshelf after. What do you want from me? It was an alright book, telling about a specific Japanese lifestyle that enables some people to live in their nineties and beyond. Nothing world-changing but there was nothing wrong with the book either. I enjoyed my time with it and now I’ll probably never think about it again.

The Pragmatic Programmer was a book I picked up to hone my programming skills. Even though I consider myself a pretty seasoned software developer I still like to keep my basic skills sharp and shiny. The Pragmatic Programmer is a book about general programming paradigms; the does and not-does of software development. The book did teach me new things and things I already knew just bolstered my pre-existing knowledge. I do think it’s a very good book to read whether you are a novice programmer or a very experienced one. Moving on.

I did not know much about House of Leaves getting into it. I did know it was considered a cult classic, I knew that there was something peculiar about the style of writing and I knew the story had something to do with impossible geometry, and that’s about it. Boy howdy was I in for a treat.

I must preface this by saying that I love House of Leaves. It might even be my new favorite book, but as I will explain later, that is very hard to qualify. One reason I say that is that House of Leaves is a book I find myself thinking about a lot even months after finishing it. It really is a book so special and masterfully written that I find myself considering if I should call it a book in the first place; perhaps a written experience is a more accurate depiction, since the word book carries several connotations.

When you think about book as in the concept of book, you usually think about a written sequence of words, fiction or otherwise, that goes from point A to point B in some fashion within the confines of the stack of papers the words have been printed on. Nonfiction usually deals with presenting information, starting with the abstract and getting into more detail from there. Fiction might tell a story, usually in a three-act structure. Nevertheless, books are by design intended to be read in a linear order from page one to the last page, correct? By this I don’t mean fiction that plays with a non-linear sequence of events in terms of the story’s chronology. There are several books that have a non-linear narrative where some events are read about before other events that, in the context of the story, happen before said events. No, even in that case I mean that the reader is expected to read the book in the order of the physical pages from one, two, three and so on until they reach the last page with no backtracking needed.

Also, I used to hold the firm belief that a book’s quality can be measured on a single thing; whether a book makes me feel something or whether it makes me bored; bored being the absence of feelings. The Wager by David Grann was a gripping book that kept me on the edge of my bed throughout the whole story. That is a book that made me feel excited, worried, terrified and sad for its characters. On the other hand, I felt nothing for the cutout archetype characters of The Fatherland or its stupid story, so I didn’t even bother finishing it. It made me feel numb, which I used to interpret that the book is unequivocally bad.

I will come back to both of these points.

House of Leaves not only provided me with one of the greatest reading experiences of recent years; House of Leaves changed how I see books as a medium. And now that I’ve been building up this book as some sort of holy grail of literature, let me tell you what it’s about.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a book that involves several multi-layered stories. At first hand one could easily state that there are three stories, a story within a story within a story, but as is the case with many things in this book, there are arguably more depending on how you interpret things.

The first level in this wedding cake of a novel is the Navidson Record. The Navidson Record is a seemingly fictional documentary about Will Navidson, a journalist, and his wife and two children, and the titular house they move into in the beginning of the book. The Navidson Record is a the story of Navidson finding that the house his family has moved into contains a door that leads into a seemingly infinite labyrinth of empty rooms, doors, hallways and staircases, all of which couldn’t possibly be contained in the small house alone. Navidson ventures into the maze several times, deeper and deeper each time, hires help investigating the house’s secrets while trying to keep his family together as the appearance of the mysterious door causes his relationship to his wife to rupture.

The Navidson Record in House of Leaves is the center point of an academic dissertation by a man called Zampano. This is how the Navidson Record is presented to the reader; as the subject of an academic paper that discusses themes, psychological motives and symbolism in the documentary recorded by Will Navidson. The academic paper quotes several real-life people and professionals in several fields dissecting the events and characters presented in the Navidson Record like an actual piece of academic writing. This is the first layer of the book.

The first layer is the academic paper regarding the Navidson Record and written by Zampano. In his paper Zampano assures that the Navidson Record is a real documentary and has been published and documented by several other people. However, as the second layer starts to unfold, Zampano is blind, and there seems to be no evidence that anything in the paper is real, and none of the people being quoted in the paper are aware of such a documentary.

This is where we arrive at Johnny Truant, an orphaned man who together with his friend find Zampano dead in the man’s apartment, where Johnny incidentally finds the paper discussing the Navidson Record. Johnny’s story is told as footnotes to Zampano’s paper; he starts reading the paper he finds and gets practically consumed by it, and starts documenting his own thoughts in the footnotes of Zampano’s paper. Sometimes he talks about the paper itself but more often than not he goes over things happening in his own personal life. As Johnny’s story is written in footnote format, both stories, Zampano’s paper on the Navidson Record and Johnny’s journal, go on simultaneously on the same page throughout House of Leaves. On top of that, there is the third level of storytelling, which is another set of footnotes to Johnny’s footnotes, written by people only referred to as “the editors” and that seem to have been written after Johnny’s notes, commenting on them. So, in House of Leaves, there are in total three simultaneous stories going on on every page.

I said earlier that the book is masterfully written. I do really think so because Danielewski takes the concept of an academic paper, usually the most boring and least engaging form of writing and turns it into something so surreal and yet so gripping, and uses footnotes and margins as a way of telling a story which is absolutely fantastic. If this was not enough to turn this book into a cult classic then let me tell you, reader, that Zampano’s notes contain references to other notes or citations to other sources, as is usual for academic writing, but this feature turns the whole book upside down. As I mentioned earlier, a book is usually designed to be read in the order the pages are layed out. However, with this genius idea of writing, following Zampano’s notes and citations the reader is encouraged to jump from page to page, sometimes backwards, and sometimes ending in a literal dead-end. The reader could traverse the pages in order, or discover alternate routes and secret paths throughout the stories. I loved reading it, never knowing what I might uncover next.

The thing in House of Leaves that made me change my view of books as a medium was a chapter very early in the book titled “Echo”. This chapter involves Zampano discussing a moment in the Navidson Record where Will Navidson prepares to determine the size of an impossibly large hall he found within the house by the means of sonar measurement. Zampano’s paper goes on to infuriating details about the concept of echo, its symbolism and meaning in different cultures. This chapter goes on for pages without much action and it was truly a slog to get through for me.

However, the geniusness of the chapter lies in its boredom. In the context of the Navidson Record, Navidson’s exploration of the house has started to affect his relationship to his wife, and their mutual communication has started to cease. More to the point, the hallways and rooms Navidson comes across in the house, completely alone both physically and increasingly also socially, are described to be completely featureless, and as Navidson descends deeper and deeper into the house, also quite chilly. The way Danielewski uses boring academic writing peppered with dense jargon through Zampano really emphasizes the loneliness Navidson experiences in his exploration into the house and the constant dullness of his environments. Empty, featureless room after empty, featureless hallway with nobody to talk to; emphasized by paragraph after paragraph of boring, rambling discourse on echo and its presence in Greek mythology.

Using previously mentioned techniques and styles Danielewski is not only writing about a maze; he has written a maze. Several notes and references that take you from the straight path and sometimes leave you to nowhere, paragraphs of text that have seemingly nothing interesting to them only to simulate a long journey through a labyrinth with no stimuli whatsoever. If the echo chapter was not as boring and difficult to read as it is, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it more. The fact that Echo is as boring as it is makes it good in the end, because it really ties back to the subject matter and the themes of House of Leaves, that I can’t in good conscience use boredom to measure a book’s quality ever again.

This is why I’m not sure if I should call House of Leaves a book, since it breaks so many rules of writing a book that I have previously taken for granted. It is by no means linear in its physical appearance and it does have intentionally boring parts, but all of these techniques work to its advantage. I am yet to mention the appendices; if you’re like me and you buy the edition that includes the Whalestoe Letters, a series of letters written by Johnny’s mother Pelafina to her son featured as an appendix, then once you reach the end of the book you are left wondering if you missed a completely sectioned-off part of the book. I don’t want to spoil anything, but much like Zampano’s paper, Pelafina’s letters contain several passages that the reader is required to decrypt. There is one particular letter that is very heartbreaking, and the way it is meant to be read really punctuates the emotions in that letter. The letters, incidentally, raise the question if there are more than just these three stories I described going on in the book, or whether there is something bigger the reader might have missed. At least I felt that way.

I am aware that Danielewski has encouraged this kind of speculative interpretation of his book, and that there are internet communities sharing and discussing possible clues and additional paths in the labyrinth that is House of Leaves. I do love the book but I do think discussing it like a sort of Da Vinci Code style riddle would diminish its value for me. Someday I will pick up the book once again, and much like Will Navidson, Zampano and Johnny Truant, I will go back to the maze again. House of Leaves is a book I could talk about for hours and there are still so many unique little characteristics that I haven’t even mentioned, but it also makes me a little bit melancholic. House of Leaves was such an unique and unforgettable reading experience for me that I fear I will never come across a book of its equal again. A book that is so memorable but a book that also changes how you view every other book from here on out.

I could end this piece of writing with some sort of poignant pun like I usually try to do, but having finished writing I find myself in a wistful mood. Instead, I would like to close this with a poem included in the book’s appendices:

You shall be my roots and

I will be your shade,

though the sun burns my leaves.

You shall quench my thirst and

I will feed you fruit,

though time takes my seed.

And when I'm lost and can tell nothing of this earth

you will give me hope.

And my voice you will always hear.

And my hand you will always have.

For I will shelter you.

And I will comfort you.

And even when we are nothing left,

not even in death,

I will remember you.

It has been quite some time since I published anything on this website. To tell the truth, I have been occupied with a hobbyist programming project for the last few months that I have dedicated all the time left over by work, relationships and wasting time in general. Today I found some time that I’d rather dedicate to writing these scribbles again rather than producing loops, statements and variables.

But  what should I write about this time? When I glanced at my Google Docs folder, I saw two unfinished scribbles, one of which never got further than the title. I don’t feel like continuing on either of them since they were not interesting enough to finish in the first place.

This is probably going to be a short one, but I’d like to talk about this system I came up with last fall around the time I took a break from writing. I like to read a lot, right? In high school I used to consume a lot of fantasy; Harry Potter, Witcher, Althalus and the entire Redwall series to name a few. During my college years my reading habits grew faint, mostly because of the amount of academic writing I had to wrap my mind around. Now that those days are in the past and I’ve found myself with a stable job and adulthood responsibilities, I’ve taken up reading again.

The problem with reading as a hobby is that there are so many books one can choose from. There are some freaks who are able to read several books at once, switching from one to another on a day-to-day basis, but I am not one of them. I pick up a book, finish it in several short sections and put it on my shelf. Therefore I have to dedicate my time to a single book at a time, and choosing which book to pick up can be quite the hassle. Sometimes I’m interested in one kind of topic, such as historical true crime à la David Grann of Killers of the Flower Moon and the Wager fame. Sometimes I feel like improving myself as a person so I pick up a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. The problem is to select a book to stick to for days at a time and not lose interest in the topic before finishing it.

For this problem I did create a system: Every time I order more books to read, I order three books, one for each category I devised. The categories are Heart, Mind and Soul. The Heart category comprises books that cause emotions, whether they be joy, sadness, fear, et cetera. The Mind category comprises books that teach me something, such as books about programming, history or natural sciences. The Soul category comprises books that develop my psychological side for the lack of a better wording, such as philosophy books and certain publications with spiritual subtexts. After I acquire the three books, I finish them and start the process from the beginning.

I have done this now for a few months, finishing three very different books at a time. Just for example, the first three books I started out with were:

1. For the Heart: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys

2. For the Mind: Narconomics by Tom Wainwright

3. For the Soul: The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

I chose Flowers for Algernon for my Heart book for I had read that the book is very touching. I did know the book by its reputation beforehand and I had heard it’s a common reading assignment in American schools. It’s one of the great novels one should read in their lifetime, so I bought it and had a go at it. I must agree it is very moving and the last page managed to squeeze some tears out of me. It actually resonated with me more than I had expected; the book is about Charlie, a mentally handicapped person who gains great intellect through an experimental surgery, previously having been performed only on a laboratory mouse named Algernon. Charlie finds himself alienated from his former relationships because of his intellect and confused by his emerging sexual feelings. The way the book is written, in the form of a self-written journal by Charlie, really emphasises his progress as his grammar and writing style improve paragraph by paragraph. Charlie’s conclusion in the book also really touched me, since the thoughts and fears he goes through in the end are really similar to mine. As I said, the Heart category must not be only about joy; sadness is a feeling too and not in any way worse.

I heard a recommendation for Narconomics in a now-finished podcast I sometimes listen to called Hello Internet. The book is about the drug trade, its causes and results. The book was published a decade ago so some of the data it refers to might be outdated, but it really grants the reader a great insight into why modern policies to restrict illegal drug trade fail so spectacularly, since the policies have not really evolved since the 1930s. Wainwright himself did the investigative journalism and writes about his journey through South America having visited cocaine farms and talked to cartel members. The book really gives you the basis you need to understand why criminalising some substances is not always the best solution and which actions could lead to the best results.

Last but not least, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching was the second book by Thich Nhat Hanh that I’ve read, the first being Peace is Every Step. This book is a bit more technical than the latter and it provides more direct insight into the Buddhist faith than any of the other books of his that I’ve read since. Let me be clear; I’m not into Buddhism as a religion, but I do appreciate the message it teaches and especially the lessons Thich Nhat Hanh brings across. I like his writing style, even if translated from Vietnamese to English, and I like how he does not act as an authority in what he teaches. Instead of commanding as many religious texts do, he suggests, which is a very important distinction. I’d imagine The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching to be a handy pocket guide to Buddhism if you’re a practitioner, but even a non-committed layman such as I got a lot out of it. The Four Noble Truths and the Three Doors of Liberation, for example.

After finishing these three books, I did order more following the same pattern. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll write about them, who knows. I do like to write about what I read, for it allows me to process the books in a way I can’t do without an outlet, and that’s what this website is for.

Back in high school I was given an assignment to review a book of my own choosing for a Finnish class. I went straight to the source to the village library to pick up a book. I had no idea what kind of book I was going to borrow, so I went in pretty blind. In front of the entrance, there was a rotating metal shelf displaying books that had recently been acquired and added to the library’s collection. I remember one of the books stood out from the rest; it had a purple, intriguing cover that immediately caught my eye. The name was also short and striking; The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I refused to walk further into the labyrinth of shelves and books and borrowed The Alchemist instead.

I did end up giving it a praising review, if memory serves. I had not yet been tainted by exposure to Zero Punctuation at that time of my life, more’s the pity. I seem to remember that even at the time of the assignment I genuinely thought the book was trash, but lacked the conviction to give it the written treatment it deserved. I don’t usually look back at my high school years, but the reason I’m doing that now is because a book I recently finished reading reminded me of The Alchemist.

I have the habit of ordering a batch of new books every few months. Once I finish reading the last one, I order a new pile. One of those batches contained Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. When I look for new books to read, I usually go to Reddit or some other forum to skim through book recommendation threads. That one time I was interested in fiction books that at least tangentially touched upon the subject of Buddhist ideas. One of the most recommended books on the subject was the aforementioned Siddhartha.

First, I sort of liked the core premise and story of Siddhartha. A son of a brahmin goes on  a journey wanting to find enlightenment, meets a cast of characters including Buddha himself and takes upon himself a variety of professions. However, after reaching the last page I found myself disliking the book. The main problem I had with the book, alongside the weirdly short inner margins on the pages that my copy had, and the main problem I had with The Alchemist, is that it is written in a really infuriating way; I feel like the author wanted to have a grand meaning behind every single sentence in the book.

Paulo Coelho, as I understand it, is regarded as an author associated with self-discovery literature. It makes sense that a book of this variety, a category that Siddhartha falls into, would have a grand meaning. It is expected that the reader has somehow changed or come across a discovery by the end. The problem is, I feel like every sentence in the book is designed to bring forward ideas first and to develop characters or advancing plot distant second. The characters and situations feel very hollow when all they do is talk in mysterious riddles paragraphs on end, rather than bringing across what the character is like, and by the end I end up disliking the whole cast because I know nothing about them and don’t care about their predicaments. For example, in one chapter the titular character Siddhartha comes across a person whose job is to transport people across a river on a raft. The rest of the chapter is spent with the character rambling on about what it means to live by the river, how the river talks to you if you listen closely and the meaning of flowing water and stuff like that. Not one line is dedicated to what the character likes as a person or why I should care about him.

Siddhartha is a short book, meaning it doesn’t contain a lot of if any filler, but the incessant philosophical onslaught brings it down. I wouldn’t recommend it. Incidentally, after I finished it and ordered new books online, I got my hands on an actual nonfiction book about Soto Buddhism, which is a collection of written works by an influential Japanese monk titled A Moon in a Dewdrop. I have only read a few chapters into it, and it is very difficult to grasp at times, but I’m enjoying it a whole lot more than I did Siddhartha. At least in a nonfiction book the thematic ideas and the narrative are not in a constant war with each other, which is sort of ironic about a fiction book on finding nirvana.

This month I finally finished reading another book. No, it was not Franz Kafka’s The Trial. I started reading that because I am a fan of absurdism, and based on the synopsis it was right up my alley. So I did start it but never finished it. I don’t know if this was the case with the original first edition, but the copy I have has a quality that makes it very difficult to read; it has virtually no line breaks. There are breaks between paragraphs, but after a dialogue line, for example, the text just keeps on going on the same line without a break. This may sound like a minute problem, but trust me, it keeps adding up and the book turns into a wall. It was such a slog to get through so I never finished it.

After giving up on The Trial I looked for something different. The online book store that I order my books from had updated their Top 10 Most Popular Books list recently, and this time it featured a book called Atomic Habits. A self-help book, focusing on how one can improve their life by adjusting their routines. I’ve never been a person particularly fond of self-help literacy, but since it was on the list and had a nice cover, I decided to give it a go.

After finishing reading it, I must say I enjoyed it. It is not a long book and it is not preachy like some other books of its kind. Even though I consider myself a man of established routines, I got some good tips and even motivation from the book. It also made me think about my own habits and how they fit into the templates the book used to illustrate its points.

For example, I eat the same breakfast every day, which I have done for years. Occasionally there are periods when I have to switch to cheaper alternatives like oatmeal when money is tight, but most of the time I eat the following: two slices of rye bread, toastered, topped by a layer of plant-based spread, two slices of poultry cold cuts and four slices of cucumber, six even if I’m feeling frisky. This complemented by two cups of coffee is what I eat every morning and have eaten for as long as I can remember. Some people would consider this insane and ask me why I don’t mix up my choices. Variety is the spice of life, after all. See, I don’t even think about that, because this breakfast is a habit for me, and like the book says, you have to make your habits appealing if you want to execute them long-term. See, it may not look like it, but my breakfast is actually crafted to be culinarily appealing.

I toast my bread slices because it makes them nice and crispy. This, combined with a butter-like spread, creates a contrast of textures.Cold cuts have a softer and dryer meat-like texture and cucumber slices are crunchy but also very moist. When you combine all these layers you get a whole that has different oral sensations with every bite. This, I have found, is the key that makes me not get bored with my breakfast. You have to make your habits stimulating to make you keep upholding them, if you see what I mean.

One of the points the book makes is that to be successful at anything that requires habits or repetitive routines is that you have to fall in love with boredom. Successful athletics may get a head start with the right genes, but only the best ones are the ones who can keep exercising time and time again without getting bored of it. I am a hobbyist swimmer, far from a professional one or what people usually consider an athletic body, but I still run into the problem of getting bored in the pool. There are very few stimuli in the pool; the only things my eyes see are either the bottom tiles of the pool or the feet of the person swimming in front of me. I don’t have water-resistant earphones, so I can’t listen to music or podcasts as I swim. The only audio I hear are the background noises of the swimming hall. I admit, it gets really boring after the first thousand meters, but I still haver to push through. Same with professional bodybuilders who have to do the same reps over and over again.

The book has some tips how to get your motivation up. One example was adjusting your habit to make it stimulating, see my breakfast above. One other idea is to keep track of your habit. I always wear my sports watch to the pool, which helps me keep track of different stats of my performance. Heart beat, distance swum, stroke-to-distance ratio, things like that. It also keeps a calendar of the days I go swimming, which makes it easier to track. All of my swims are converted into numbers, which I enjoy seeing go up. The downside is that tracking your habit can easily become a goal in itself, which can make you lose motivation. I swim because I want to have a healthy heart and weigh less. I do weigh myself on a scale and note down the numbers, which I enjoy seeing go down, of course, but I do not set the numbers going down a goal, if that makes sense. If I did, and after a month didn’t see a significant change in the numbers, I think it would make me lose motivation, since what’s the point of trying to lose weight if it’s not going down after a month’s worth of exercise.

Atomic Habits also mentioned that to keep yourself motivated you have to make the habit a part of your identity. You don’t study a new language because you want to learn a new language, you study a new language because you are a person interested in languages. A tiny difference, sure, but very essential. Now, this part of the book I was very iffy about, because I am very wary of building my identity based on something external. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I even wrote a thing titled Personality Lich on that subject; basing your sense of self on external phenomena. But after finishing the book, I must admit there might be a kernel of truth in the claim. After thinking about it, I might be more hesitant to skip my exercise if I considered myself a swimmer. Do swimmers skip swimming exercises? No. Do those guys who like pandas skip swimming exercises? Maybe.

At the end of the day, I do recommend Atomic Habits. It’s 20 percent actual useful information and 80 percent anecdotes, but it gets the points across. If you are like me and want to improve yourself as a swimmer, this book might be for you. If you want to improve yourself as a Schwimmer, however, better start by enrolling in an acting class for neuroticism and destructive co-dependence.

I don’t watch a lot of movies. I see new ones with the same interval most people make dental appointments. Watching movies is an investment; you give up two hours of your life and if the movie is good, it may enhance your life. Chances are, too, that the movie is bad and you will never get those two hours back. In late 2022 and early 2023 I saw an unusual amount of movies, some of them even in the theater oddly enough. What’s even more odd, the ratio of time wasted to world-changing thoughts provoked was surprisingly positive. I’m not saying 2022 was an overwhelmingly great year where every movie that came out was a Scorcese-level character piece, but I had fun watching some of them.

Technically I saw this movie in early 2023, but I went in with little expectations to see Puss in Boots 2: The Last Wish. I had heard some people on the internet praise the story and the animation style, but then again, Puss in Boots is a franchise that was originally a spinoff of a sequel to an erect middle finger to Disney disguised as a movie. Furthermore, I remember going to see the first Puss in Boots in a theater, but I remember virtually nothing about the actual movie. I do remember a goose and Humpty Dumpty being the central villain, but nothing more. So remembering how unforgettable the first movie was and the franchise’s position in the grand scheme of Dreamwork’s things, you could understand that I was not expecting much, even though I definitely should have been knowing the result.

Puss in Boots 2 is an amazing movie. Not only is the animation a mix of traditional Dreamworks style and a hint of anime, which is inherently interesting, but it has speed and energy that matches the tempo of the scenes, which makes it fun to watch. The two main antagonists, the John Mulaney one and the other one, are very distinct from each other but equally entertaining. For a long time watching one family-friendly Pixar flick after another, I have begun to dread the way Disney et al have abandoned the idea of a traditional fairytale villain. These days Pixar films are all about life lessons and moral ambiguity, which was fine the first twelve times, but now it’s getting old. The Wolf in Puss in Boots 2 is my favorite type of villain; very funny but at the same time extremely intimidating (see The Joker in The Dark Knight or Gaunter O’Dimm in Witcher 3:Wild Hunt). I might actually go see a second sequel if they ever make one.

The other movie I have fond memories of watching was Everything Everywhere All at Once. Not only is the movie gut-punchingly funny and tears-in-eyes heartfelt, but it managed to do something no movie has done since The Dark Knight; it managed to topple the competition within ease and make its way to my favorite movie of all time.

Everything Everywhere All at Once, or EEAO for short, is a multi-dimensional tale about a Chinese laundromat owner and her relationship with her husband and daughter. I don’t want to talk too much about this movie because I don’t want to spoil anything, but it hits just the right spots for me. It starts out slightly absurdist and doesn’t let up. In fact, there is a fight scene early on between the laundromat lady and the IRS agent that was rather silly, and watching it I though the movie had reached maximum silliness. Oh, how wrong I was. What I love most about the movie that every time you think you have seen the craziest thing yet, the movie whacks you over the head with something even crazier and just keeps on going.

Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but the moment a character played by Randy Newman, of all people, appeared, I was already in tears marveling at what this movie was doing to me. Movies rarely make me laugh, most of the time they manage get a light chuckle out of me or, at most, a sudden burst of air from my nostrils. This movie exceeded all expectations and made me laugh in tears. Not to say that the movie lacks drama; again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but the scene with the rocks, especially when the other one turns around, is at the same time one of the funniest and definitely the most touching scene in the movie. I did not know if my eyes were wet from laughter or this movie managing to strike sparks out of my flinty heart.

I have never had much respect for the Academy, I admit. The reason that I dislike the Oscars is that, in my opinion, most of the time the Best Picture Award goes to a movie that was specifically built for that award, hence the term Oscar bait. The Academy feeds into the loop that keeps churning out these soulless character/period dramas like Forrest Gump or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. You know, serious movies about characters suffering from circumstances manufactured to be as touching and thought-provoking as possible, even though it usually ends up being either a war or incurable illness.

EEAO winning a truckload of awards including the Best Picture changed my mind. I was a hundred percent sure that for the reasons I just listed, the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front was going to take the cake, since it’s a movie about the horrors of war, in addition to the war being the First World War which in turn has spawned more period dramas than widows. I was sure that the Academy would go for it since then we could all sit down and have a ponder about the point of sending young men to their deaths for no actual gain, and pat ourselves on the back for realizing that. EEAO winning the awards gave me hope that the Academy does actually care about the movies’ technical achievements and, most importantly, the feelings they make us experience while watching them.

There were many other movies that I saw last year and enjoyed, but these were the two I think about even now. I should probably watch more current and upcoming movies in case the same thing happens again and a movie exceeds all my expectations. Or maybe I’ll go back and watch Ratatouille while listening to the Toy Story soundtrack, for no particular reason.