lumensoutdoors.org - Page 13

• Death Pact 2! - October 27, 2007

  Hey what do you know? I fail at blogging, just like I have the several other times I’ve had one of these things on my website.

  Anyway there’s been a recommendation for another reading death pact, this time Dostoevsky’s Demons. I haven’t read anything by this author before though his name and the size of most of his books already intimidates me a little bit. That’s not a serious problem, though. We got through Gravity’s Rainbow so I’m not terribly concerned.

  Anyway, what do other people think? If this is a good choice, we could start it up in November. Are there other books we should suffer through first?

  UPDATE: It’s official, we’re going to do this. Go to the bookstore and get your copy because we start reading on November 1. Luckily I don’t have anything else to do that month, like move or travel.

• Date check - July 20, 2007

  It may be 2007, but November Rain is still awesome. That is all.

• Day 34 - completion - June 3, 2007

  This morning, I woke up early and finished Gravity’s Rainbow. The rest of the book left me confused, amazed, and bewildered. In contrast, the ending left me feeling empty and disappointed. The story just ends, with the main character vanished (dead? insane? dissolved into the universe?) and a chapter from hundreds of pages prior retold from a different perspective to its conclusion. Other characters who seemed extremely important in the first part of the book only to disappear for 400 pages reappear, then also mysteriously vanish with no real conclusion. Then there’s the story of the Schwartzcommando who are preparing to fire their rocket but are never heard from again. Characters just disappear from the story entirely. Whole subplots that seemed so important never come to a conclusion. Then, the ending itself describes events that happened chronologically before lots of other parts in the book. Slothrop (more or less the main character), from interacting with other characters, must have known that the thing he was looking for had already happened. So what is he really looking for?

• Day 31 - May 31, 2007

  Here it is, the beginning of day 31 and the last day of the month. I’m still way back at page 601 which is the very beginning of section four. I haven’t made much progress in the last week and a half due to Sarah’s visit and my rafting trip. Were it not for those things I would probably be done by now. But I’ll still finish. It might just take into the first week of June.

  After running around in a pig costume for a couple chapters, Slothrop is really starting to lose it. He can’t concentrate on what he’s doing anymore and is losing touch with what’s real vs. what’s fantasy. Another reader brought up the point that the chronology is screwed up. I agree. I don’t understand why he’s looking for the 00000 when from what all the other characters say, it seems like it’s already been launched. So what’s he really searching for? Perhaps the final section will make these things clear.

• My trip to T3 Indian Purchase - May 30, 2007

  This past weekend, I went on a whitewater rafting trip in deepest, darkest Maine with Lon and a bunch of other people. We went down the Penobscot River way up near Baxter State Park. This was my first whitewater rafting trip, so it was pretty exciting.

• Plymouth, lambic tasting - May 23, 2007

  Sarah’s been here all week, which is why there haven’t been any updates. That’s also why I haven’t made any progress on the book. Oh well. I’ll try to describe what we’ve been up to starting with the most recent.

• Day 17 - May 17, 2007

  I’m now at page 527. Slothrop sure does keep getting into trouble somehow. It also looks like he’s really starting to lose it - he keeps forgetting where he is or what he’s supposed to be doing there, even when it’s just been explained to him. He’s never going to find the S-Gerat at this rate.

  Sarah’s coming into town tomorrow night. This might mean that I update this thing less frequently, though hopefully my updates will be more interesting than my slow progress in this book.

• Day 15 - winners - May 15, 2007

  Today is day 15 of the Gravity’s Rainbow Death Pact. I’m at page 457, having quit last night after a really wonderful section involving Poekler and Ilse and then doing a little more reading today.

• Sandwich Mountain - May 14, 2007

  Yesterday, Lon and I drove up north to hike Sandwich Mountain a 3980’ peak in the middle of the Sandwich Range wilderness. With the days getting longer and warmer, we decided to take a leisurely start, hitting the trail just before 10am. We made a couple stops to eat, buy lunch, and pick up White Mountain National Forest parking passes. It also took a little while to find the trailhead.

• Day 12 - May 12, 2007

  Just a quick note on my progress, since it’s been several days. I am sitting just past the middle of my copy, on page 389. It’s all downhill from here. If I keep this pace up, I’m sure to finish before the end of the month though I’m positive there are lots of people ahead of me.

  And now it’s off to bed early so I can hike in the Sandwich Range Wilderness tomorrow.