Reading Log, February 2025

Part 1

Today's date: 07.03.2025

Books I have finished reading since last log:

The Martian
  by Andy Weir

In the Buddha's Words
  by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Milk and Honey
  by Rupi Kaur

The Martian

My edition of the book: Del Rey, 2014.

“I can't wait till I have grandchildren. When I was younger, I had to walk to the rim of a crater. Uphill! In an EVA suit! On Mars, ya little shit! Ya hear me? Mars!”

After an incident on the sixth Sol of his Mars mission, Mark Watney is thought dead by his crew, who evacuate the mission and thus leave him behind. All alone. Again, on Mars. The worst part: He isn't dead. And so, without any means of communication to Earth and any idea what to do, Mark tries to survive for as long as he can manage in this foreign wasteland.
His life on the red giant is full of ups and downs as he does all that is in his power to stay alive as long as possible, such as planting potatoes and driving aimlessly to retrieve an old rover, which he turns into a makeshift communication device.

Final verdict?

Loved it so much! That's why I'm staying vague with the description of the book, because it's funny, witty and scientific. And I can't do it any justice, I am fully sure of that. Really, if you're looking for a science fiction novel that will make you laugh, you'll find that here. Mark is unhinged and records literally every one of his thoughts in his logs and that makes it ten times better.

In the Buddha's Words

My edition of the book: Beyerlein & Steinschulte, 2018. Translated into German by Andreas Hubig with the help of Bikkhu Analayo

“The Buddha asks us to stop drifting thoughtlessly through our lives and instead to pay careful attention to simple truths that are everywhere available to us, clamoring for the sustained consideration they deserve”

There really isn't much to say here. It is a compilation of the Pali Canon of Buddhism, the earliest written version of these teachings. Different lessons are compiled together by Bhikkhu Bodhi, who before each also summarises and contextualises them and their meanings.

Final verdict?

As a collection of suttras, it does what it is supposed to. Yet these suttras, the way they are written, are very repetitive and forced all the patience out of me. I have really struggled getting through this, I can only take so long of reading basically the same sentence with different keywords for entire pages. It is very likely that I am the problem here, if you are a dedicated and knowledgeable buddhist, I don't think you will have any difficulties with this compilation. Bodhi's paragraphs to me were the best out of all of this though.

Milk and Honey

My edition of the book: Createspace Independent Pub, 2014.

“and you should see me

when my heart is broken

i don't grieve

i shatter”

Milk and Honey is a poetry collection by Instagram-like poet, Rupi Kaur. And for fuck's sake, I don't think I've ever been as unchallenged when reading poetry, as I have been "engaging" (if you can even call it that, because my brain was really not engaged) with Kaur's work. It is about love, good love, bad love, abuse, and so many other topics. And there are a few poems which come close to actually being classifiable as poetry.
When you think of poetry, there are certain things you come to expect: stylistic devices, such as metaphors and similes (in their rawest form, but let me not start counting off more) and maybe also metres and rhyme schemes. Kaur's work barely has any of that. My problem does not lie within the poems forms, since free verse has been a thing for over a hundred years. My problem lies within the lack of complexity, the lack of thought that the reader has to put into understanding the work, and the fact that some poems are just sentences broken apart by line breaks. Tell me how these lines count as a poem, really:
“the idea that we are
so capable of love
but still choose
to be toxic“
Have you taken all that in? Given it a good thought? Really let it sink in?
What the fuck? In what dimension does this count as poetry? And I am again, not shitting on its form. Bukowski has poems written just as quirkily, written with bizarre line breaks and weird placement. But can you compare some of his simplest works, e.g. 8 count, with this? I couldn't.

Final verdict?

Really not for me. Maybe I am just a fucking hater. My biggest problem with Kaur is that not all of her work is ridden of substance and meaning. If it were, I could just come out here, shit on all of it and then go to bed with a clean conscience. But that is not the case here. There are a few poems sprinkled in, which let you think a bit more about their content, give you time to jog your imagination. The things she speaks of, even in some of her shitty four line poems, can sometimes be interesting. But the writing feels like something that you would put in an Instagram caption and never think of again, let alone publish in a 200 page collection!
But in an age where the average reader cannot distinguish real, human poetry from meaningless trash made with ChatGPT, I guess I can only say: "Go get it, girl!" Even if a lot of it is tasteless to me personally. But that's why opinions are opinions. If you enjoy her work, then I have nothing personal against you. It is accessible, and I will give it that. But please, I am on my knees, begging you to branch out a bit! You don't need to go from Kaur to Byron, but anything will do! P l e a s e.

This is the end of this blog for now! Thank you for reading!

Stay tuned; there will be more coming in March! I apologise to the two or three people who will read this for putting this out so late. This month has been crazy.