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Walk a mile wearing somebody else's mind. Or somebody else's dog's mind.
I started this book after reading Don DeLillo's Underworld, and Idaho felt almost like a continuation of that book.
I suspected Ruskovich was giving a more legitimate perspective of the psychological makeup of her female characters.
There's a bit of a drought at one point where isolation and suffering seem to be the main themes. Finally enlightenment appears for one of the characters. This was the high point of the book and redeemed the suffering. We don't get to see too much of the enlightened perspective, but I guess it's ok not to beat us over the head with it.

Well deserving of its spot on The Guardian's 100 list.

This book can be a central hub for making a "crazy wall" for understanding the world up to 1960.

The author performed some magic with this book. But there is a point at which you can stop reading and imagine your own ending. Hopefully you'll know when you get there.

Continuing research for my punk philosophy.
Early in the book there is an introduction to Leibniz, so I am also making another pass through Monadology.
The book promises to offer alternatives to the philosophical paradigm that is coupled to Newtonian physics.
My interpretation of the Newtonian paradigm:
Dumb particles moving through space, trying to mind their own business... Observers coldly observing the observables... God watching his creation.
I'm guessing that the alternative may be a universe of infinite connectedness... where nothing happens in isolation.

This book is available as a single html page:
http://home.datacomm.ch/kerguelen/monadology/monadology.html
Useful book for the modern armchair philosopher.
Alternative to the Newtonian paradigm.
I'm about halfway through, so I'll spout off my understanding.
There is "perfect" sequence of events, symbolically described, somewhat like a computer program, but not limited by a programming language. The sequence is perhaps infinite. The sequence is self-contained... cannot be influenced by anything else. Leibniz calls this sequence God.
All other entities contain some transformation of the God sequence. The transformation is a projection from higher-dimension events to lower-dimension events, causing "imperfections." The other entities exist to become aware of limited segments of the God sequence. This awareness is not always direct. It may come about through unpleasant means, for example "contraction."
(Partial) understanding experienced by the limited entities is a kind of resonance with the God entity.
Well... my review seems to depart a little from the actual text.
The second half of the Monadology is amazingly consistent with Davd Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order".
Quantum rendering (qwendering), is the method for keeping the "created" instance monads in sync with the God monad. It appears to be an iterative process.

Personal 5. I can forgive the ending.
Enjoyed the excellent narration by Shelly Frasier.
Interesting comparison of class in England being similar to gun rights in America. Leads to the reflection that participation in a class system in America is voluntary, but in England it is more ingrained.

Spoilers below:
Immediately after I had seen a vanity plate with the text: "WHY?", I heard this passage:
Looking up at the animated forest of signs, she sees the Coca-Cola logo pulsing on a huge screen, followed by the slogan "NO REASON!".

I've had an obsession with a photo I took of a pelican in flight, slightly blurry, with wings against a gray sky. It is the only photo that I have hanging in a frame.
Very much like the description in the book of Nora's earlier work being edited down to a single frame, of a bird in flight, slightly out of focus, with wings against a gray sky.

Entertaining ride from the tranreal life of Rudy Rucker.
The narration by Scott Grunden is excellent. Surprising that he hasn't narrated more books in this genre.

This is a key piece of the "quantum rendering" puzzle.
It provides the motive and a method to "think differently" ... to see a wholeness in constant transformation, rather than a bunch of particles moving independently and obliviously, according to some mechanical program.

I'm hooked on this series for the dry wit. What the world needs now is more annoyingly competent heroes.

Required reading for any conspiracy theorist.
The shortest book on alien-human contact you will ever read.
As the author mentions, the book does not provide any evidence, and does not reference any evidence that aliens have contacted humans.
For some, this book may be a piece of a puzzle. For others, it could be seen as interesting speculation on how communication might actually occur between aliens and humans, and possible motives for such "cooperation".

Now that corporations have rights similar to humans, shouldn't we execute a few of them for treason?
We should at least make them add little swastikas to their logos.

Readers will be happy to learn that while millions were dying in World War II, Money Disneyland and its priesthood were not disturbed in the least bit.