the attempt by certain roman personalities to erase carthage from history is well understood and i don't want to challenge it. it's not unique, either - they did the same thing to the celts, and failed to carry through with the greek, but at one point began to try before pulling back. every paving stone was removed from the city of corinth, which then ceased to exist.

however, the fact that we have literally nothing at all written in phoenician - that nothing survived. at all. - generates some questions in my mind about the centrality of the canaanites to writing. i understand that the idea that the lebanese invented writing is something that some greeks told us, but there's lots of things that some greeks told us that are incorrect. you'd think we'd have something. we have nothing.

it's the greeks themselves that have left us the most writing, and the evidence seems to suggest that that's really where the idea came from. i think that the story in herodotus is likely confused.

it's possible that the sea peoples, or the hyksos, brought the letters from greece to the levant, that it was transformed there and that it came back. the evidence seems to be that the greeks forgot how to write in the bronze age collapse and subsequent greek dark age, and then remembered again when the idea was imported back from the middle east. in fact, that's similar to what happened in our more recent dark age.

but if the idea was middle eastern in origin, the evidence - beyond herodotus - should uphold it, and it really doesn't. we have to trot out cato to explain it, and it seems like mythology. it seems far more complicated than it should be.

if all of the evidence of early writing is in the aegean and the balkans (despite the subsequent dark age that herodotus was on the renaissance end of), i'm willing to take the leap and dispense of the conspiratorial approach to history. occam's razor is enough for me.

i am still working on the big post. i'm going to repost it in years as i finish each new reading plan for the journal series. i'm doing this now to get the books out of boxes and on to shelves.

part one is year 2/3 which is just the asimov, but i've finally finished filling in the remaining gaps. there are still items left to hunt for in goodwill bins, but it's not a priority. asimov is dead. so this is done.

==============

i can't do this all at once. so, rather, the way i'm going to do this is to start with school novels. 

like everybody else, i read some boring books in school and some good books in school. i remember the good books, and largely enjoyed reading them. you didn't have to pull my teeth to get me to read something, i'd do that with minimal prodding. the good books were classic texts that i want to have copies of and, at times, have had copies of on my shelf, but sold, or lost, or had damaged, or had stolen. the boring texts were almost universally "canadian content", although they never made me read any atwood until university, and i actually enjoyed it.

i took english every year from grades 1 to 13 and was initially admitted to university as a math-physics student. i mostly took science, math and computer engineering courses in my first stint at university and then went back to study law as well. i did take reading courses for breadth and there are a number of courses in history, classics, english literature, gender studies, and other topics that i was enrolled in that it's going to take me a little bit of time to collect all of the information regarding but that i want to collect texts for. the list of novels, however, as mentioned previously, is going to be less than the list of reference texts, and the direction is going to be on (1) children's literature, because literature is more appropriate as a source of entertainment for children than adults and (2) complex, thick texts when the topic does shift to mature texts, but only sporadically, and restricted to a top 1% of authors, intellectually. i have no time at all for pop culture young adult novellas designed to waste an afternoon with specious nonsense, which is 90% of the market. you'd might as well just watch a stupid film. i have always had something better to do than that.

i'm going to update this page as i build the notes for it.

very early childhoood texts i will skip or only mention in passing:

- lots of dr seuss

- mister/mrs /miss books

- the curious george books

- beatrix potter series. i had all of these. i found one when i moved into this basement.

- shell silverstein- we may have done some in the 4th grade, but i'm glossing over it. i liked the sidewalk ends as a young kid but it's mostly empty children's comedy. a gift from nana that got handed down to a younger sister.

- the hockey sweater - my dad liked this

- the mare's egg - my dad's book

2nd-9th grade independent reading for j's journal (both real and inserted, not necessarily in this order,) that i will collect as i go through the journal phase and not before:

a) the summer before grade 3:

1. isaac asimov  [done]  [2/3, but not really. should have been 7/8/9].  first author in comprehensive journal review series. all full length novels already bought. remaining short stories anthologies (legacy txts early asimov, winds of change, buy jupiter and an updated 9 volume almost complete harper collins anthology) recently purchased. robot visions and robot dreams not anthologized and skipped. look for at goodwill or in bargain bins, as online prices are too high. not very interested in the robert silverberg texts, lucky starr, norby or in honey i shrunk the kids. grab if you see cheap. otherwise, meh. acknowledge you may be surprised but doubt it. i remember reading foundation's edge in grade 5 on a suggestion by my teacher (not for credit) and then nightfall at university. i don't recall any asimov in middle or high school, and i'd already read through it all by then, mostly in grades 5 and 6. asimov would fit best in the whoddunnit theme for grade 7 but i'm isolating it to a grade 2/3 project and assigning it as first in the list. that's a little early, but it gets it out of the way. this is a very close to comprehensive asimov science fiction collection, at this point, and will form a somewhat opaque barrier to get through the start of the journal series.

that tops the asimov science fiction collection off as:

- 9 updated and expanded and recently republished short stories collections: the complete robot, the martian way, living space, the bicentennial man, mother earth, nightfall, ring around the sun, gold and magic

- 4 much shorter historical short stories collections from before 1980 (early asimov (combined), winds of change, buy jupiter, the martian way). there are a small number of stories that got dropped and are only in the old anthologies.

- 7 foundation novels: prelude to foundation, forward the foundation, foundation, foundation and empire, second foundation, foundation's edge, foundation and earth

- four robot novels: the caves of steel, the naked sun, robots of dawn, robots and empire

- three galactic empire novels: currents of space, the stars like dust, pebble in the sky

- three other novels: the gods themselves, the end of eternity, nemesis

and that's it.

===========

note: i can find documents called circular 14 at archive.org that have approved texts for each year, 1989-1996.

it changed in 1997, but i was in the last year of the old model. i did not shift to the new curriculum. at all.

it wasn't as helpful in finding novels as i hoped but it helped me remember that grade 7/8/9 is still grade school and you're still doing spelling, comprehension and grammar assignments in english class. only a percentage of english class in those years is spent reading lit. that's the real reason nobody remembers what they read....that, and the fact that what they *did* read was probably less advanced than they want to remember it was, because there were still kids in their class that could barely read at all. like, after thinking about it for a long time, i'm now certain that we spent months reading charlotte's web in grade 7. that's at 12-13 years old. i remember it very clearly, now. it's maybe deceptively abstract as a hidden allegory, but it's not animal farm. it's intended for a much younger audience and legitimately more appropriate for a younger audience, and it was certainly below me, but the fact is that it was actually absolutely appropriate for roughly half the class, which was reading at half their age level, not twice it, like i was. they didn't split you up into advanced and special students until grade 10, in those days. no wonder i don't remember much from middle school english, and no wonder you don't, either; if you were a smart kid, the school system just slowed you down.

note: be careful buying books on amazon. lame people just print books out to 8x11 computer paper, staple it together and call it a book. it's not even properly bound. this nonsense is going to get banned. for now, you have to check or you'll get ripped off.

update: i'm shifting much of this to bookoutlet.ca or to chapters to avoid this issue. i'll cross-reference. shop, even.

i might get an ereader soon. it won't be a kindle. but it won't be my primary reading source, it will be for bus rides and supplementary. i like physical books. i'm building a shelf - it's the point, to have it on your wall and say "these are my books, this is my library". 

===========

books i remember reading in school (not comprehensive), starting in grade three

before 3rd grade (theme: asimov):

- i'm assigning asimov to the summer before the 3rd grade, and bleeding into the 3rd grade before it's done.

- this is a little too early, but that's ok. 

- already had the 7 foundation novels, the four robot novels, the complete robot, the three galactic empire novels, the old martian way, and the gods themselves, the end of eternity and nemesis

- added the early asimov (used), buy jupiter (used), the winds of change (used) and the recently published 8 volume complete short stories collection, which is close to comprehensive. amazon.

adds for 2/3 are:

- the complete robot (already had, harpercollins)

- the caves of steel, the naked sun, the robots of dawn (already had, bantam spectra), robots and empire (already had, harpercollins)

- currents of space, the stars like dust, pebble in the sky (already had, tor/orb)

 - prelude to foundation, forward the foundation, foundation, foundation and empire, second foundation, foundation's edge, foundation and earth (already had, bantam spectra)

- the martian way (already had, panther)

- the gods themselves (already had, orion)

- the end of eternity (already had, voyager)

- nemesis (already had, bantam spectra)

+

- the early asimov (found used, doubleday)

- buy jupiter (found used, harpercollins)

- winds of change (found uesd, panther)

- the martian way (complete stories vol 1) (found new, harpercollins)

- living space (complete stories vol 2) (found new, harpercollins)

- the bicentennial man (complete stories vol 3) (found new, harpercollins)

- mother earth (complete stories vol 4) (found new, harpercollins)

- nightfall (complete stories vol 5) (found new, harpercollins)

- ring around the sun (complete stories vol 6) (found new, harpercollins)

- gold (complete stories vol 7) (found new, harpercollins)

- magic (complete stories vol 8) (found new, harpercollins)

=============================

$115 (6 volume short story box set) + 50 (two extra volumes) + 50 (three historical subvolumes) = 

$215

i would support a north american air pollution taxation scheme, where polluters on both sides of the border (including gasoline consumers) are taxed to compensate for the externalities resulting from the pollution they generate, including health care costs. an integrated, international carbon tax would address some of the criticisms in the way that more localized carbon taxes essentially offshore pollution. that's a good idea, and i hope the governments of canada and the united states sit down and work out a serious implementation.

i just finished a major overhaul of grades 2-9 and i need to double it now for grades 10-13.

i've got piles of novels coming in, and it's overdue. the update's coming. soon.

trump thinks it's good if people don't understand what he's doing, which is retarded. if the americans had any semblance of competition for hegemonic dominance, they would nuke the white house to eliminate the uncertainty. there is nothing more dangerous than unpredictability. 

so, it looks to me like the americans are planning an invasion of southwestern iran, and that they want to go in from the sea and from iraq, in order to hold the port towns and basically blow up any remaining farce of naval control the iranians have. if the iranians continue to send missiles, the americans will put boots on the ground.

however, they are foolishly attempting to obfuscate it and they will deflect if you ask them about it.

i hope that is what they are doing. it's not the plan i would have written, but it's a step towards regime change. if you don't like the violence, if you want the killing to slow down, there's no way to get there without changing the government in tehran. if you haven't learned that yet, you have a learning disability.

jd vance is emerging as the fascist trump replacement, and the potential point where trumpism gets seriously dangerous. his rhetoric about the jewish media is right out of mein kampf.

right now, trumpism is just a 21st century update to the idiocracy of the robber baron era. hitler was broadly seen as a dunce rather than a genocidal maniac; the scary one was supposed to be mussolini. i've repeatedly argued that trump is not a real nazi, he just plays one on tv, and that he's ultimately not smart enough to be scary. trump may cause a lot of problems before he's done away with, but he's not a serious threat to democracy. vance is emerging as the more serious threat and the more dangerous successor.

rubio is emerging as the counter-revolutionary. if rubio follows trump, the republicans will likely do a lot of backtracking. that might be the preferable option.

the canadian government has cut taxes so dramatically that, instead of providing disaster relief using it's own resources, it has to import third world missionary groups, that will terrorize the local population with their extremist religious beliefs. we're like venezuela, or cuba, or haiti, at this point. it's not acceptable.

flood relief should be done by local government and paid for by taxing canadians. it's not charity work. it's a basic public service that citizens have a right to access. we have enough wealth in this society that we can tax our people to provide services; we don't need to rely on american missionary groups because we're too poor to pay for it ourselves. 

it's embarrassing.

i'm increasingly left with the question: why, exactly, do canadians pay taxes at all? our government doesn't do anything anymore. it outsources everything.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/disaster-relief-group-s-anti-2slgbtq-views-draw-pushback-in-ottawa-9.7272735

canadians and ontarians have made choices over the last several electoral cycles to abandon attempts to reduce carbon emissions, and to cut taxes instead of spend money on climate change mitigation.

those choices have consequences.

meanwhile, the federal government is trying to convince people that building dirty natural gas plants - which ontario was in the process of completely getting rid of as vicious pollution generating machines until recently - is building "clean electricity".

that is complete nonsense. it's maliciously dishonest. it's contemptibly evil.

mark carney's government is in fact abandoning clean energy in favour of a return to 20th century technology, namely gas power plants, and that policy will further deteriorate our air quality and the air quality of our neighbours. his attempts to deflect are dishonest lies. he's a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

ontarians have made poor electoral decisions over the last decade and thrice elected a government that does not care about the environment, but repeatedly campaigned on reversing environmental regulations in order to reduce public spending. we are left to choke on our own filth, as a result. 

we got what we deserve for our anti-social voting choices.

its time to wake up and throw these losers out of office and replace them with a government that will recover some of the environmental policies that it destroyed.

this government has also all but put an end to recycling in this province and replaced it with burning garbage, which is going to make our air quality - and the air quality of our neighbours - dramatically worse. this disastrous waste management approach needs to be aggressively reversed by the next government, which needs to view recycling as a public service and not a market service and move to create a publicly funded recycling model that is run by government employees and paid for with tax dollars, at a loss. ontarians need to accept that recycling is neither free nor profitable, but is a necessary public service that the state has a health mandate to enforce, at a justified cost to taxpayers.

as is often the case in canada, it is the indigenous inhabitants of northwestern ontario feeling the brunt of and taking the hit from these conservative party budget cuts to forest fire prevention, at a time when any basic analysis should have predicted the need for large increases in funding. this is incompetence. this is mismanagement. and the government should correctly get reamed for it.

this is what happens when a society slashes tax rates for decades on end, it starts to become unable to provide basic services to it's own people. without a sufficient tax base, a society begins to fall apart.

the government of ontario should be heavily criticized for it's funding cuts and forest fire mismanagement, which are dominantly responsible for the wildfire situation. that is correct. as global warming accelerates and intensifies, governments should be increasing funding to fight forest fires, not just in ontario but everywhere. in a show of incompetence and mismanagement, the ford government has instead slashed funding for forest fire prevention. we see the consequences of that mismanagement.

i would rather charge him with multiple counts of murder and try him for it than deport him.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11966601/iran-former-deputy-interior-minister-tries-to-stop-deportation-from-canada/

good

this was insane.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/canada-pauses-applications-for-parent-grandparent-sponsorship/

the bridge deal is apparently that canada collects the tolls, pays everything down first (including the amount michigan owes) and then uses 50% of profits after that, for the first 15 years, in building infrastructure around the bridge, on both sides of the border.

ok.

i live here. i'm not opposed to that. more bike paths and more parks and better sidewalks and roads sound good to me. in fact, there was an infrastructure component in the initial deal, and i haven't been over it, but michiganders should take note that canada paid for all that development on the detroit waterfront. i'm happy to pay for more. i'll use it.

a discourse on middle powers is certainly not a waste of time. however, the discourse, as it exists, is often fraught with factual inaccuracies and poor level of empirical analysis.

the idea that american hegemony declined after the fall of the berlin wall, for example, is little more than russian propaganda. an empirical analysis demonstrates that american hegemony has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and especially since 2003. america is today dramatically more powerful than it ever was during the cold war, and has less rivals for global control than it did then (source: chomsky). arguments or projections otherwise are just not based in facts, they're magical thinking. they're nonsense.

further, the premise that american hegemony could exist without the american hegemon to enforce the hegemony, which is almost always what proponents of middle power collusion actually want, is absurd on it's face. this is the christian missionary trying to convert the lion. it's sheer stupidity. it's utter folly.

....but that doesn't mean that the model of the middle power within the system of american hegemony is without value. indeed, it's a system that many seek and would benefit from. those seeking independence of american hegemony generally don't take the time to understand exactly what exists outside this bubble they seek to escape from. the grass is always greener where the dogs are shitting, or so a dead rock star once said.

i'll volunteer to continue criticizing the advocates of middle power collusion. i agree that that's not going anywhere. but i'll hold to the value of middle powers on the world nonetheless.

the idea missing from the argument against middle powers is that america needs allies. all hegemons have allies. when you lose your friends, you lose your influence. you'd think a specious 80s capitalist like trump would tie together meeting friends and spreading influence. so, america needs the middle powers as much as the middle powers need america, and this denial needs to be addressed from both sides.

trump will be gone soon and we'll kiss and make up. but, in the mean time, it's actually valuable that we all take the time to understand the limitations of our theories and the mistakes inherent in our ideologies. we will be better off if we learn from this.

i strongly oppose any normalization of canadian relations with the fascist state in saudi arabia. i would support strong economic sanctions against the saudis for the perpetual future.

turkey is not a legitimate nation-state or a real country, it's a usurping military dictatorship enforcing imperialism and colonialism everywhere it goes. it has no indigenous turkish population. it has enforced it's language, religion and culture strictly through violence and it remains the sick man of europe, on the brink of historical cessation.

there was a time not long ago when turkey had imperial control over north africa, the levant, the arab peninsula, southeastern europe and mesopotamia, but a fundamental outcome of the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries was that turkey's imperial project was severely curtailed and reversed and many of these conquered and subjugated peoples rose up and declared independence for themselves. however, this process is incomplete. there remain subject kurdish, armenian and ionian populatons, and the longstanding illegal occupation of constantinople also needs to be addressed. further wars through the 21st and perhaps 22nd centuries will finish this process of the abolition of the turkish state, and return sovereignty to the remaining subjugated populations of greeks, kurds and armenians. it would appear that a new round of popular uprisings in this illegitimate usurper state is imminent.

the illegal occupation of constantinople remains one of the greatest injustices of modern history and it will be a day of great liberation when the turks are finally permanently expelled from the city, and the greeks take their rightful place as sovereigns of their own capital.

those who seek to align with the turks as a rising power are flat out stupid. turkey remains a collapsing empire and a sick society lost in backwardsness that has no future but elimination. the permanent and total cessation of the turks state is both imminent and desired by all freedom-loving peoples. those advocating for turkish power in the 21st century need to be wiped away, into the latrine of history.

bombing civilian infrastructure in iran will do nothing to generate the regime change that is required to put an end to the situation in the region.

the nazis had marches, too. it means nothing. it's irrelevant 

it's a child-like analysis intended for juvenile minds that want to differentiate periods of time into a false dichotomy of "war" and "peace", as though wars have definitive ends and there exists states of non-war between periods of states of war. only an ignorant child would see the world in those terms.

yes, war is perpetual. peace does not exist. that's pretty fundamental. you have to get over that basic point of fact if you want to sit at the grown up table.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/opinion/us-iran-forever-war-strait-of-hormuz.html

i wanted to eat this morning but it wouldn't fall below 141, it sat at 141.2. i woke u at 138.7. my target was 140.x. so, it's time to eat a bowl of bacon vegetable soup.

if the americans want to pay a premium for high quality canadian mushrooms, let them do that. what do we care?

i suspect american citizens don't want to pay a tax on canadian mushrooms and won't stand for it for too long.

https://www.castanet.net/news/Canada/624671/U-S-moves-to-slap-more-tariffs-on-fresh-Canadian-mushrooms

i don't like the republicans very much, but i fucking hate the democrats.

chuck schumer should be held legally liable for every person that dies as a result of the cut in funding.

it's a policy decision that will lead to dead americans and dead arabs in the region.

what a pile of contemptible, immoral losers.

the democrats have the moral equivalence of the irgc, at this point.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/14/senate-dems-block-defense-bill-protest-iran-war-00997134

i can't do this all at once. so, rather, the way i'm going to do this is to start with school novels. 

like everybody else, i read some boring books in school and some good books in school. i remember the good books, and largely enjoyed reading them. you didn't have to pull my teeth to get me to read something, i'd do that with minimal prodding. the good books were classic texts that i want to have copies of and, at times, have had copies of on my shelf, but sold, or lost, or had damaged, or had stolen. the boring texts were almost universally "canadian content", although they never made me read any atwood until university, and i actually enjoyed it.

i took english every year from grades 1 to 13 and was initially admitted to university as a math-physics student. i mostly took science, math and computer engineering courses in my first stint at university and then went back to study law as well. i did take reading courses for breadth and there are a number of courses in history, classics, english literature, gender studies, and other topics that i was enrolled in that it's going to take me a little bit of time to collect all of the information regarding but that i want to collect texts for. the list of novels, however, as mentioned previously, is going to be less than the list of reference texts, and the direction is going to be on (1) children's literature, because literature is more appropriate as a source of entertainment for children than adults and (2) complex, thick texts when the topic does shift to mature texts, but only sporadically, and restricted to a top 1% of authors, intellectually. i have no time at all for pop culture young adult novellas designed to waste an afternoon with specious nonsense, which is 90% of the market. you'd might as well just watch a stupid film. i have always had something better to do than that.

i'm going to update this page as i build the notes for it.

very early childhoood texts i will skip or only mention in passing:

- lots of dr seuss

- mister/mrs /miss books

- the curious george books

- beatrix potter series. i had all of these. i found one when i moved into this basement.

- shell silverstein- we may have done some in the 4th grade, but i'm glossing over it. i liked the sidewalk ends as a young kid but it's mostly empty children's comedy. a gift from nana that got handed down to a younger sister.

- the hockey sweater - my dad liked this

- the mare's egg - my dad's book

2nd-9th grade independent reading for j's journal (both real and inserted, not necessarily in this order,) that i will collect as i go through the journal phase and not before:

a) the summer before grade 3:

1. isaac asimov  [done]  [2/3, but not really. should have been 7/8/9].  first author in comprehensive journal review series. all full length novels already bought. remaining short stories anthologies (legacy txts early asimov, winds of change, buy jupiter and an updated 9 volume almost complete harper collins anthology) recently purchased. robot visions and robot dreams not anthologized and skipped. look for at goodwill or in bargain bins, as online prices are too high. not very interested in the robert silverberg texts, lucky starr, norby or in honey i shrunk the kids. grab if you see cheap. otherwise, meh. acknowledge you may be surprised but doubt it. i remember reading foundation's edge in grade 5 on a suggestion by my teacher (not for credit) and then nightfall at university. i don't recall any asimov in middle or high school, and i'd already read through it all by then, mostly in grades 5 and 6. asimov would fit best in the whoddunnit theme for grade 7 but i'm isolating it to a grade 2/3 project and assigning it as first in the list. that's a little early, but it gets it out of the way. this is a very close to comprehensive asimov science fiction collection, at this point, and will form a somewhat opaque barrier to get through the start of the journal series.

that tops the asimov science fiction collection off as:

- 9 updated and expanded and recently republished short stories collections: the complete robot, the martian way, living space, the bicentennial man, mother earth, nightfall, ring around the sun, gold and magic

- 4 much shorter historical short stories collections from before 1980 (early asimov (combined), winds of change, buy jupiter, the martian way). there are a small number of stories that got dropped and are only in the old anthologies.

- 7 foundation novels: prelude to foundation, forward the foundation, foundation, foundation and empire, second foundation, foundation's edge, foundation and earth

- four robot novels: the caves of steel, the naked sun, robots of dawn, robots and empire

- three galactic empire novels: currents of space, the stars like dust, pebble in the sky

- three other novels: the gods themselves, the end of eternity, nemesis

and that's it.

b) grade 3/4

2. hans christian anderson (i was younger)  <----soon [3/4]

3. grimm brothers (i was younger)  <----soon [3/4]

4. aesop. i was younger.  <---soon [3/4]

5. i had a book of greek mythology my grandmother gave me that included stories like icarus. i will do a section on "greek mythology for kids". i was younger. <---soon [3/4]

6. cs lewis  [3/4] <----soon

7. lewis carroll [3/4] <------soon

8. eb white (i was younger)  <---soon [7]/[3/4]

9. aa milne [3/4]

10 roald dahl (my grandmother bought me a copy of james and the giant peach, and i read it, but it was left at her place and that was the extent of the roald dahl. i'll rectify that.)  <----soon  [3/4]

11. l frank baum <----soon  [3/4]

12. rudyard kipling (i was younger) <----soon [3/4]

13. michael ende (i used to watch the neverending story a lot) <---soon [3/4]

14. eta hoffman (i was older, but i liked the nutcracker)  <---soon [3/4]

b.5: between 4 and 5

15 i read the king james' bible from start to finish at the start of the summer between grade 4 and 5. i was not raised religiously, but i've been a staunch atheist ever since.

c) grades 5/6:

16. frances hodgson burnett [5/6]

17. anne of green gables [5/6]

18. jules verne (i was younger) <---soon [5/6]. verne will follow asimov, and i will fill in the list when i get there. for now, i have purchased the three classics: around the world in 80 days, journey to the centre of the earth, 20000 leagues under the sea. i recall reading verne at home when i was younger, in middle school for sure and also maybe in elementary school. the readings in middle school were handouts and passages and for shortform reading comprehension responses and not full reading assignments. i think it was grade 8, but it might have also been grade 7. i am assigning verne to the adventure novel theme for the third/fourth grade, not to the 7th or 8th.

19. dickens (i was older, but i remember a christmas carol) [5/6]

20. mark twain [5/6]

21. i should read the three (nine?) star wars books. i never did. i saw the (three) films. i felt i was too old for star wars when the other six films were released. i haven't bothered, and i'm not that interested. i wasn't much of a star wars fan, actually. even as a young kid, i found films to be kind of low brow. i've always preferred to read a book than watch a film. [5/6]

22. tolkien (i was older) [5/6]

mythology to cover in more detail: celtic, english, germanic, norse, greek, roman.  also, 8.

only briefly touch on hebrew mythology. also, 8.

23 edgar allen poe. [5/6]

24. saint exupery [5/6]

d) grade 7:

25. stephen king  [7]

26. tom clancy  [7/8]

27. dean koontz [7/8]

28. robert ludlum [7/8]

29. michael crichton [7/8]

30 john grisham [7/8]

31. arthur conan doyle (i was younger) <----soon  [7] 

32. i did read some rand as a kid but didn't finish it, which was unusual for me. i thought it was awful. [7/8]

e) grade 8:

33. william goldman <---soon [8]

34. chaucer (i was older). do a section on chaucer, beowulf and other english mythology classics. [8]

35. do a section on celtic mythology. [8]

36. there's a book on arthurian grail legends coming in. [8]

f) grade 9:

37. ray bradbury  [9]

38. hg wells  [9]

39. arthur c clarke  [9]

40.  philip k dick   [9]

41. alduous huxley  [9]

42. wllliam golding  [9]

43. frank herbert (i think i read a chunk of dune at my grandmother's because she was reading it, but didn't finish it) [9]

44 douglas adams  [9]

45. hp lovecraft [9]

46. william gibson  [9]

47. joseph heller.

g) grade 10:

48. wyndham, which i read a little for school and enjoyed. [10]

note that the time frame here is before 1995 and really before 1990. texts from after 1995 are off limits.

49. orwell.

50. hemingway.

51. vonnegut

h) grade 11:

dickens

hugo

i) grade 12:

j) grade 13:

pynchon

conrad

joyce

kafka

neil stephenson

nonfiction i read as a kid:

- my dad bought me hockey biographies, because he liked hockey. i never even learned how to skate. i read the game and biographies written by ghost writers for wayne gretzky, maurice richard and robert orr quite young.

===========

note: i can find documents called circular 14 at archive.org that have approved texts for each year, 1989-1996.

it changed in 1997, but i was in the last year of the old model. i did not shift to the new curriculum. at all.

it wasn't as helpful in finding novels as i hoped but it helped me remember that grade 7/8/9 is still grade school and you're still doing spelling, comprehension and grammar assignments in english class. only a percentage of english class in those years is spent reading lit. that's the real reason nobody remembers what they read....that, and the fact that what they *did* read was probably less advanced than they want to remember it was, because there were still kids in their class that could barely read at all. like, after thinking about it for a long time, i'm now certain that we spent months reading charlotte's web in grade 7. that's at 12-13 years old. i remember it very clearly, now. it's maybe deceptively abstract as a hidden allegory, but it's not animal farm. it's intended for a much younger audience and legitimately more appropriate for a younger audience, and it was certainly below me, but the fact is that it was actually absolutely appropriate for roughly half the class, which was reading at half their age level, not twice it, like i was. they didn't split you up into advanced and special students until grade 10, in those days. no wonder i don't remember much from middle school english, and no wonder you don't, either; if you were a smart kid, the school system just slowed you down.

note: be careful buying books on amazon. lame people just print books out to 8x11 computer paper, staple it together and call it a book. it's not even properly bound. this nonsense is going to get banned. for now, you have to check or you'll get ripped off.

update: i'm shifting much of this to bookoutlet.ca or to chapters to avoid this issue. i'll cross-reference. shop, even.

i might get an ereader soon. it won't be a kindle. but it won't be my primary reading source, it will be for bus rides and supplementary. i like physical books. i'm building a shelf - it's the point, to have it on your wall and say "these are my books, this is my library". 

===========

books i remember reading in school (not comprehensive), starting in grade three

before 3rd grade (theme: asimov):

- i'm assigning asimov to the summer before the 3rd grade, and bleeding into the 3rd grade before it's done.

- this is a little too early, but that's ok. 

- already had the 7 foundation novels, the four robot novels, the complete robot, the three galactic empire novels, the old martian way, and the gods themselves, the end of eternity and nemesis

- added the early asimov (used), buy jupiter (used), the winds of change (used) and the recently published 8 volume complete short stories collection, which is close to comprehensive. amazon.

adds for 2/3 are:

- the complete robot (already had, harpercollins)

- the caves of steel, the naked sun, the robots of dawn (already had, bantam spectra), robots and empire (already had, harpercollins)

- currents of space, the stars like dust, pebble in the sky (already had, tor/orb)

 - prelude to foundation, forward the foundation, foundation, foundation and empire, second foundation, foundation's edge, foundation and earth (already had, bantam spectra)

- the martian way (already had, panther)

- the gods themselves (already had, orion)

- the end of eternity (already had, voyager)

- nemesis (already had, bantam spectra)

+

- the early asimov (found used, doubleday)

- buy jupiter (found used, harpercollins)

- winds of change (found uesd, panther)

- the martian way (complete stories vol 1) (found new, harpercollins)

- living space (complete stories vol 2) (found new, harpercollins)

- the bicentennial man (complete stories vol 3) (found new, harpercollins)

- mother earth (complete stories vol 4) (found new, harpercollins)

- nightfall (complete stories vol 5) (found new, harpercollins)

- ring around the sun (complete stories vol 6) (found new, harpercollins)

- gold (complete stories vol 7) (found new, harpercollins)

- magic (complete stories vol 8) (found new, harpercollins)

=============================

$115 (6 volume short story box set) + 50 (two extra volumes) + 50 (three historical subvolumes) = 

$215

3rd/4th grade:

- journeys in mathematics 3 for grade 3, i think. later.

- journeys in mathematics 4 for grade 4, i think. later.

- course work: spelling, grammar. minimal in class reading, testing for basic reading comprehension. abstract learning through reading may be common at this age amongst white canadians that speak english as a first language, but not a part of the school curriculum.

- no recollection of any science, at all.

- tickle the sun english textbook by jaap tuinman had some passages that were read in class for grade 4, nothing that exciting. i'll buy this if i find it anywhere, but can't right now. wait for textbook/reference book run

- my grade 3 teacher liked the beatles and would often play yellow submarine in class.

- very large amounts of busy work, especially in grade 4.

adds for 3/4 are (theme: children and anthropomorphic animals as protagonists) :

5th/6th grade:

-we watched a lengthy video called "voyage of the mimi" for english class, which i can't currently find for sale in book form anywhere. 

- there was a school play for a christmas carol (found new, aladdin books) that i didn't participate in but there was no reading of the book in or out of class, students were just given lines to remember with no context. it was a complete joke. 

- there were minimal in class readings, mostly of short stories that i don't remember. 

- i remember listening to a 1930s recording of Leiningen Versus the Ants, which is weird and obscure and which i can't find anywhere. he was an odd guy. 

- i remember reading sections of call of the wild by jack london in class (found new, oxford classic's, with white fang and short stories). 

- we read some mark twain (huckleberry finn). i had a hardcover twain anthology with tom sawyer, huckleberry finn and the prince and the pauper in it that my grandmother had given me and i had hung onto it into my late 20s, although it's not in any of the boxes. i'm a little upset that it disappeared.

- anne of green gables. i think this was actually grade 8.

- i remember writing an essay on asimov's foundation's edge (found new years ago, bantam spectra) in grade 5, but it was because i was a gifted student and the teacher assigned it to me because he knew i was bored and was trying to get me to stop misbehaving because there was nothing challenging for me to do. he used to let me play tetris in the computer lab during math class, too. i should have been skipped a grade or two, but the principal kibboshed it under unjustified concerns about my "maturity level". she was a retard, broadly speaking. my standardized testing was consistently off the charts.

- course work: spelling, grammar. minimal in class reading, testing for basic reading comprehension. abstract learning through reading may be common at this age amongst white canadians that speak english as a first language, but not a part of the school curriculum.

- sail the sky english textbook by jaap tuinman had some passages for grade 5, nothing that exciting. i'll buy this if i find it anywhere, but can't right now.

- ride the wave english textbook by jaap tuinman had some passages for grade 6, nothing that exciting. i'll buy this if i find it anywhere, but can't right now.

- i do recall some small amount of newtonian force analysis, and work with newton meters. 2nd law. we did some measurements with metre sticks. nothing very exciting. extremely minimal.

- i don't recall any chemistry,

- my grade 5/6 teacher didn't believe in evolution, and it's a primary part of the reason i didn't have much respect for him, at the time. i used to often take library books out on cladistics. but there was no discernible biological instruction.

- i didn't attend the religious instruction and should have been at a public school, but my mother had me baptized at 3 for two reasons (1) the catholic schools started at k4 and the public schools started at k5, so i'd have to skip a year after preschool (defeating the point) if i were to go to public school but i could avoid the gap year by getting baptized and going to catholic school and (2) while my mom was herself a vaguely protestant scandinavian atheist, if not an explicit laveyan satanist, she was also an extremely racist person and she preferred to send her kids to the mostly white (franco-irish-italian) catholic school. my franco-italian dad's family were catholic a few generations back. he believed in hockey and always watched football on sundays.

- we actually did some programming with logos.  no books.

- we took recorder lessons. ode to joy.

- the 5/6 teacher was also the coach of every sports team and that's what he actually cared about. he was a hard worker, and he spent a lot of time doing his job, which he clearly cared about, he was just a doofus.

- the school's french teacher was also the phys ed teacher. 

- journeys in mathematics 5 for grade 5, i think. later.

- journeys in mathematics 6 for grade 6, i think. later.

- 5/6 was a little better than 3/4 but still had a lot of busy work.

adds for 5/6 are (theme: adventure novels and the last of the truly children's lit):

- a christmas carol, dickens (new, aladdin). it's a cliche. bookoutlet.ca.

- call of london/white fang, london (new, oxford). i liked these, for sure. they're well written. amazon.

- huckleberry finn, tom sawyer: 4 novel set (gift from nana, disappeared, bought new,). read in grade 5/6 and maybe later. done.

- anne of green gables series: partial collection. i read some of this in middle school. done.

- verne: three classics. i remember handouts, i think in grade 8. done.

- cs lewis: i was missing the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. i have the other 6 narnia novellas. i read some of this in middle school. done.

- lewis carroll: alice in wonderland, through the looking glass, what alice saw. i read this in middle school or earlier, but i've forgotten when. done.

- peter pan, actually read in grade 8. done.

- charlotte's web, actually read in grade 7. i remember this for sure, now. we actually spent a very long time reading charlotte's web in grade 7. we read it in class, very slowly.

- rudyard kipling, jungle book / 2nd jungle book was read in the 8th grade, for sure, and maybe earlier. done.

- i know i read black beauty in middle school, but don't remember when

- i know there were king arthur stories read in middle school, but am not sure what grade.

================================================

122

- little mermaid, actually read in grade 8. i should have a hans christian anderson complete works.

- we read snow white in middle school. i should have a copy of grimm's fairy tales, complete works.

- the tortoise and the hare is something we did in middle school. i should have a copy of aesop's complete works.

- there was poe read in elementary, middle and high school, and university. i should have a complete works of poe. done.

=================

71

- we did the secret garden in grade 8 for sure. i'm sure i also read a little princess, although less sure when.

- winnie the pooh. fragments read in 8th grade and probably earlier. done.

- wizard of oz  <-----put this off. it's going to be expensive. there were passages read in middle school. 

- asimov, foundation's edge (already have, bantam-spectra). add early asimov, buy jupiter and winds of change for $49, includng shipping from us.

- the three jaap tuneman journeys hardcovers, which are well put together little course packs for kids, but probably very hard to find

- if i can find a print version of the voyage of the mimi, i'll collect it.

- leinengen vs the ants, stephensen is out of print because it was overt nazi propaganda. the author was an adamant nazi. i'm not worried about becoming a nazi, but there is no way to buy this in english except as an ebook of an article; it was never published in english beyond the initial article publication because it's just too overtly nazi. it's a weird thing to have such a prominent memory of. i remember almost nothing from elementary school as well as i remember this radio broadcast. it was truly chilling, and legitimately fascinating. them ants are smart.

==============

starting in 7, to 13, i acknowledge this list is an approximation. i've read everything in this list (and then some. i'll never have a complete list), but for each grade there may be a few titles that are added at the wrong time, or to the wrong grade, or that i read out of school. i just don't remember complex details about every book.

i ultimately want each grade level to have a nice list. it's more important that this is ready to go and is substantive than that it is completely accurate, although i'm trying here.

for that reason, as i'm not always sure about what was read in what grade, i'm going to move things around a little, to generate themed years. maybe the curriculum should have done that in the first place. so, while i think i read the chrysalid in grade 8, i'm going to move it and the the crucible to grade 10, where there' a cod war theme. grade 11 had a french revolution theme. grade 8 had a pre-enightenment theme. grade 12 was boring nineteenth century literature.

7th grade (theme: mystery texts):

- i vaguely recall reading handouts in class but don't remember what it was. i think it was "canadian content".

- there was a novel in a brown cover that wasn't very good. i read it, but it was not well written. after doing some google searches, i think that the cover art style i'm remembering belongs to robertson davies novels. i am not collecting novels by robertson davies, as i don't consider them to be substantive or worthwhile or, frankly, to even be very good. they are 100% plot, 0% substance. robertson davies novels are just about people doing stuff, they don't hit upon any sort of abstract or interesting political, scientific, philosophical or historical themes. i find books about ordinary people just living their ordinary lives to be fucking boring wastes of time. they aren't even complex, or flamboyant, or abstractly written. his writing is described by critics as "readable", which should be an insult, not a praise. they are badly written, simplistic novels with boring plots and vacant development that are designed for the dumbed down, sunk browed, lowest common denominator to waste their lives consuming, to no meaningful end. i read several of them in high school, as "canadian content". fucking hosers. i think it was one of the deptford trilogies.

- i'm sure there was some agatha christie as a handout in the 8th grade, but i'm moving it to the 7th grade because it's not pre-enlightenment.

- i think there may have been some sherlock holmes in the 7th grade.

- charlotte's web, actually read in grade 7. i remember this for sure, now. we actually spent a very long time reading charlotte's web in grade 7. we read it in class, very slowly.

- the circular 14 pdfs are reminding me that we had english txtbooks in grades 7-9, which sounds weird, but really isn't. university english courses often have course packs. also, grade 9 was middle school, not high school, despite being at the high school and not at the middle school. i need to find the txtbook, which had readings and excerpts.

- the circular 14 pdf indicates that grades 7-9 had a variety of textbooks approved for use. i've searched for information on a lot of the texts in the circular 14 for grades 7-9 from 1993-1995 and they are all extremely obscure, but the one that looks the most familiar is cycles (3) by mcclung. i can neither find the text or it's contents, which is what i want. i can't find the covers for the other two books. these books probably had the shakespeare, etc in them. if i can't find them, so be it.

- the jaap tuinman anthology, breaking ground, also looks familiar, not certain what grade. i can't find the other one, burning fire.

- perspectives 1 by ed hannan is a hit due to the decal in the front, not sure what grade. i can't find  pctures of two or three.

- did we read shakespeare in the 7th grade?  William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new.

- math book: journeys in math 7 and intermediate math 1 (mcgraw hill, dino dutton) both look familiar, and it's possible the second was used for grade 8. 

- geography book: this was in french and was like a quebec history course rather than a canadian geography course. we spent 2/3rds of the class on the legendary plesiosaur in lake champlain, which was seen as a part of quebec (it's actually in new york). creepy, weird frenchie teacher. in the end, we got graded on our french, not on geography. there was a book but i can't find it.

8th grade (theme: pre enlightenment era historical fiction):

- a man for all seasons (found new, vintage/penguin) was actually grade 8 for sure.

- i remember reading the crucible because i remember the character names, but i don't remember when.  (found new, penguin) (moved to grade 10). i'm leaving this in grade 8 because it's pre-enlightenment.

- i think there were handouts of sections of robinson crusoe. (found new, penguin). there was a sequel. pre-enlightenment for sure.

- i'm going to put the hunchback of notre dame in grade 8 because it's pre-enlightenment but i feel like it might have been grade 13.

- i don't remember what grade i read ivanhoe in, but i know i read it. i'm going to assign it to grade 8 as the setting is pre-enlightenment.

- i don't remember if the three musketeers was 7, 8, or 9 but it was one of the books i read in middle school. i'm assigning it to 8 because it's pre-enlightenment.

- i think the prince and the pauper, which is the only mark twain i remember reading in middle school, was read in the 9th grade, but i'm assigning it to the 8th for thematic continuity, as the setting is pre-enlightenment.

- the chrysalids (found used years ago, penguin uk) (moved to grade 10)

- shakespeare, henry VIII. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new

- i am assigning a huge amount of reading to grade 8 and very little to grade 7 or 9. i should point out that it might have something to do with personal circumstance. my grade 8 class had a huge amount of empty busy work which resulted in me getting in a lot of trouble. i would get through the math homework or spelling assignments in ten minutes (of a two hour block) and find myself with hours of empty space, which i would often use in ways that often found me ending up sitting in the hallway, with a textbook or novel. i read so much faster than most kids at that age, that isolating me with a textbook resulted in me just plowing through it. much of what i'm citing was fragmentary, and out of coursepack like textbooks, rather than full novels. students were not supposed to read all of this, and most didn't. so, i wish i could find these txtbooks, or gain access to the printouts the teacher gave us, but what's happening is i'm sorting through list after list and identifying having read piles of things i'd otherwise forgotten about, all of it in the 8th grade. i am moving much of it to the 5/6 pile because it better belongs there. i got into a lot of trouble in grade 7 too (grade 9 less so), but they didn't send me to the library to read by myself when i was misbehaving, so the 7th grade was more like hours of poorly utilized time, while the 8th grade was hours of time spent reading alone in quiet areas, instead of spent fooling around during lengthy periods of unstructured busy work time. by getting myself repeatedly thrown out of class, i ended up using that time more productively than the kids that stayed in it did.    

- the circular 14 pdfs are reminding me that we had english txtbooks in grades 7-9, which sounds weird, but really isn't. university english courses often have course packs. also, grade 9 was middle school, not high school, despite being at the high school and not at the middle school. i need to find the txtbook, which had readings and excerpts.

- the circular 14 pdf indicates that grades 7-9 had a variety of textbooks approved for use. i've searched for information on a lot of the texts in the circular 14 for grades 7-9 from 1993-1995 and they are all extremely obscure, but the one that looks the most familiar is cycles by mcclung. i can neither find the text or it's contents, which is what i want. these books probably had the shakespeare, etc in them. if i can't find them, so be it.

math book: journeys in math 8

science book: grimace. the focus was on knowing what's alive and what isn't, in an epic delayed snub to thales. take that, rocks. your magnetism is not life, according to our rigour. memory heavy but not that profound. the virus remains ambiguous, alas, although a better and newer definition of life is much simpler - dna - and has to include anything that evolves.

history book: grade 8 history was relatively well constructed. i didn't learn much, but it went through riel, laurier, conscription crisis, silent revolution, pearson, patriation. it hit a lot of points. i don't think there was a textbook used.

9th grade (theme: dystopian literature):

- i remember reading shakespeare, but that's it. merchant of venice for sure.  William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new

- i remember reading a boring novel with a tedious teacher, but don't remember what it was. i read it, but it was not well written. after doing some google searches, i think that the cover art style i'm remembering belongs to robertson davies novels. i am not collecting novels by robertson davies, as i don't consider them to be substantive or worthwhile or, frankly, to even be very good. they are 100% plot, 0% substance. robertson davies novels are just about people doing stuff, they don't hit upon any sort of abstract or interesting political, scientific, philosophical or historical themes. i find books about ordinary people just living their ordinary lives to be fucking boring wastes of time. they aren't even complex, or flamboyant, or abstractly written. his writing is described by critics as "readable", which should be an insult, not a praise. they are badly written, simplistic novels with boring plots and vacant development that are designed for the dumbed down, sunk browed, lowest common denominator to waste their lives consuming, to no meaningful end. i read several of them in high school, as "canadian content". fucking hosers. i think it was one of the deptford trilogies.

- we did the diary of anne frank, which in hindsight is creepy and weird. i'm not sure if it was 7, 8 or 9 but i'm moving it to 9. this is a reference text, so not now - when i try to collect the math and other books.

as i remember nothing else about grade 9 english, i'm going to move dystopian literature that i'm sure i read in high school but maybe at some other time into the grade 9 slot

- farenheit 451, ray bradbury (grade 8, i think)  

- i read lord of the flies in the 8th grade in my stepmother's father's spare room one weekend overnight, as it was on the shelf when i was there. it made a bigger impression on me than the books i read for school, and was really more appropriate reading than the books i read for school. i collected it from his books when he died. it's one of the books that disappeared. (collected, disappeared, found new, ???)

- animal farm

- brave new world

- i'm pretty sure that the lottery by shirley jackson was a handout in the 8th grade. 

- the circular 14 pdfs are reminding me that we had english txtbooks in grades 7-9, which sounds weird, but really isn't. university english courses often have course packs. also, grade 9 was middle school, not high school, despite being at the high school and not at the middle school. i need to find the txtbook, which had readings and excerpts.

- the circular 14 pdf indicates that grades 7-9 had a variety of textbooks approved for use. i've searched for information on a lot of the texts in the circular 14 for grades 7-9 from 1993-1995 and they are all extremely obscure, but the one that looks the most familiar is cycles by mcclung. i can neither find the text or it's contents, which is what i want. these books probably had the shakespeare, etc in them. if i can't find them, so be it.

math book: journeys in math 9

science book:

adds for 7-8-9 are:

7:

8:

- a man for all seasons (new, vintage). i enjoyed this for the historical context, but i would have rather read utopia and in the end did. this was intended to get around the religious concerns with reading more's classic, which i thought was stupid and backwards and ignorant and still do. amazon.

- the chrysalids (already have, penguin uk). i legitimately liked this and grabbed it used when i saw it in a book bin. it's exactly the kind of science fiction i'd read piles of at that age and foreshadows some king texts like the dead zone. moved to grade 10.

- the crucible (new, penguin). i only remember reading this because i can identify the characters, clearly. but, because i can identify the characters clearly, i'm sure i read it. i'm wondering if i read it years later, with the scarlet letter, because i'm having difficult separating it. there's also the king angle via salem's lot or children of the corn. but it's usually read in middle school. i'm going to pick it up now and say i read it even if it's blurry. i may have read a section of it in a handout, maybe. amazon. moved to grade 10.

- robinson crusoe (new, penguin). i'm sure i read excerpts of this in middle school. i can't remember what grade. bookoutlet.ca.

 suspected counterfeit version and a little less than the unjustifiably altered penguin version. amazon.

- shakespeare text,  [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new], $44 total. amazon.

9:

- martian chronicles

- farenheit 451

- animal farm

- the lord of the flies (new, faber and faber). as mentioned, i read this in the 8th grade, but not for school. i greatly enjoyed this, and it's a more substantive text than the books read in school that year. i had a version that disappeared. so, i'm replacing that. i've had a little difficulty picking the right version to buy for the shelf. the cheap version on amazon doesn't appear on the faber & faber site, is dated to 1973 and claims it has a foreword by stephen king, which should be dated to after 2011. something is wrong there. i think it's a counterfeit reprint of a 1973 version with the added foreward, which may be to get around a censorship issue, about the word 'nigger'. there has been an attempt by extremely immature people to remove the word nigger from print sources that i strongly disagree with. nigger is a word like any other word and it's strictly up to the individual, including the individual writer, to decide when to use that word or not to use that word. nigger has a definition in the dictionary that is unique from all other words; sometimes, it's the most correct word to use, in context. the artist decides, not the censors. if people are offended, they should choose not to read the book. nobody has any right to tell an author that they don't have artistic freedom to use a word because they take offense to it; that is juvenile and immature and has no place in a developed cultural environment. if you really can't deal with it, you get up and leave. whether somebody is offended by a book or not is of absolutely no relevance whatsoever. i would suspect that i could avoid the censorship by getting that counterfeit version, but piracy is not a valid solution to censorship. there would be two publishing houses printing this text. the penguin version replaces the word nigger with the word indian, which is something i take offense to, not because i'm offended by the word indian, but because i'm offended by the idea that indigenous racism is softer than black racism. the author said nigger. it's entirely unjustifiable to insert indian in it's place; it's not less offensive, and it's worse that you think it is. the faber and faber version replaces nigger with n*****, which is the height of immaturity, but at least isn't distorting the intention of the artist. you still understand that he said nigger, you just say nigger the way that an eight year old says nigger, with a hushed sense of deviance, because you have the maturity level of an eight year old. ok. let them eat that. history will ridicule them for it. so, i ended up with the version with the king forward and the juvenile n***** in place of nigger. it ended up being about $20, which was a little more than the

===============================amazon purchase for $41 + lof + 44 = 85 + lof. i spent $37 for lof & animal farm, so i'm at 85 + 37 = $122.

+ $60 (bookoutlet) = $182 + 49 (asimov) = $231

+ (amazon) = 122 + 71 = 193

10th grade (19th and 20th century historical fiction (anti-)war novels)

- grapes of wrath (isu) (bought used years ago, sold years ago, found new, penguin). bookoutlet.ca

- animal farm (have never owned, just found new, penguin.) amazon. moved to grade 9.

- something about the brutality of ww1 and trench warfare specifically:

- all quiet on the western front?

- for whom the bell tolls, hemingway <--for sure

- johnny got his gun, dalton trumbo <---for sure

- A Gallant Grenadier: A Tale of the Crimean War, F S Brereton  <---for sure

- the unknown soldier <--for sure

- the chrysalids (found used years ago, penguin uk)

- gone with the wind

- there was a first person narrative about escaping slavery to come to canada

- shakespeare, romeo and juliet for sure.  [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new]. amazon. i am also getting a separate paperback at bookoutlet for $5.

- i remember reading the crucible because i remember the character names, but i don't remember when.  (found new, penguin) kept in grade 8

- there was a bigger focus on essay writing not tied to specific pieces of literature. just opinion writing, or to advance general arguments. 

- i took enriched grade 10 english. we didn't read in class. we were expected to read out of class. classes were mostly history lessons for animal farm, world war one/two, spanish civil war, crimean war, continuation war, us civil war, etc. txts were chosen to have a socialist slant. he was one of the very few legitimately good teachers i had as a catholic school student.

- i remember animal farm because the allegory slowed me down a little. i had to read up on it. i remember johnny got his gun because it's brutal. i think i just ripped through the hemingway, etc in an afternoon.

- i took enriched grade 10 math:

- advanced grade 10 science:

11th grade (french revolution / industrial revolution):

- i have almost no memory of grade 11 english

- i think it was largely canceled due to the ice storm

- tale of two cities (found, new). i didn't find this that compelling as a piece of literature, but the historical context it was set in held my interest long enough to stop me from tuning out like some of the worse texts this year. this is an objective classic, even if it's a little slow.

- oliver twist (found, new). i have a stronger memory of oliver twist and that's why i'm splitting this back to grade 11.

- we did les miserables. i'm assigning it the 11th grade. it might have been the 12th.

- i think much of the grading structure was cancelled due to the storm. it was all based on exams.

- i think i do remember doing shakespeare, but i don't recall what.

- grade 11 bleeds into grade 12 for me because i think the classes were in the same room at the same time, but with different teachers that were both short older women.

- i don't remember an isu. it wasn't dickens.

12th grade (): 

- 1984 (isu). i still have the copy i read in 12th grade. (already have, penguin) 1984 did not fit with the theme of the course.

- a streetcar named desire. i didn't think this was very substantive. i might say it was a go nowhere run-on story and flat out boring. i mean, who gives a fuck about these people? 

- the old man and the sea (found, new). i greatly enjoyed this. it's a strong delve into human behaviour. one of the best books i've ever read. i have never owned a copy until now. this text was not appreciated by most of the class, who didn't understand it very well and were audibly frustrated by it.

- fifth business, robertson davies (this was brutal, the only thing i've read that is worse than ayn rand). i am not bothering with this one. i am not collecting novels by robertson davies, as i don't consider them to be substantive or worthwhile or, frankly, to even be very good. they are 100% plot, 0% substance. robertson davies novels are just about people doing stuff, they don't hit upon any sort of abstract or interesting political, scientific, philosophical or historical themes. i find books about ordinary people just living their ordinary lives to be fucking boring wastes of time. they aren't even complex, or flamboyant, or abstractly written. his writing is described by critics as "readable", which should be an insult, not a praise. they are badly written, simplistic novels with boring plots and vacant development that are designed for the dumbed down, sunk browed, lowest common denominator to waste their lives consuming, to no meaningful end. i read several of them in high school, as "canadian content". fucking hosers.

- the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz, mordecai richler. also brutally boring. not bothering with this.

- shakespeare, macbeth, i think  [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new]. amazon. i'm also getting a separate paperback at bookoutlet for $5.

13th grade:

- gravity's rainbow (isu)

- heart of darkness

- i think we did of mice and men in 13. it was after the grapes of wrath, so it was 11, 12 or 13.

- random bits of poe

- kerouac? ginsburg? burroughs?

- the count of monte cristo?

- i vaguely recall some virginia wolff

- upton sinclair? jungle? excerpts?

- i think we read glass menagerie by tennessee williams but it's blurry

- i recall something by lord byron but it's blurry and it might be the wrong course

- shakespeare, hamlet i think.  [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new]. i'm also getting a separate paperback at bookoutlet for $5.

======================amazon buy: 

1st year greek civ:

homer

sophocles

aristophanes

herodotus

plato

thucydides

2nd year english I (individual in society):

scarlet letter

dora

picture of dorian gray

frankenstein

narrative of the life of frederick douglas

yellow wallpaper, charlotte perkins-gilman

2nd year english II (sci fi):

war of the worlds (found new)

neuromancer

slaughterhouse five

handmsaid's tale

gulliver's travels

flowers for algernon

asimov, nightfall

3rd year engish I:

gender studies:

- dream of the walled city

- oranges aren't the only fruit

what the mess in hormuz is exposing is how broken the system of international governance has become in the years of neglect since iraq. this is actually europe's - and canada's - fault for refusing to uphold or administer it, and allowing the un to devolve into a powerless, empty anti-semitic israel-bashing club. if canada and europe had taken better care of these international institutions in the years since iraq, and not allowed american hegemony to run off the rails, we wouldn't be in this situation.

the media is clueless.

it is obvious that what is needed in the region is a un anti-terrorism force to go in and take control of the region and keep the iranians out of hormuz and also out of the red sea. the primary participants should be the gcc, but the europeans would need to be in the organizing seat.

american tolls to pay for something the un should be doing is unacceptable and disappointing but not an entirely unpredictable ramification of the european and canadian abrogation of global leadership since iraq. abstention from events around you is not a mature policy taken by mature adults. if europe doesn't want to take part in global affairs, it has little grounds to complain when it doesn't like the outcome.

this is a much bigger project than i thought. i don't have the cash on hand to do this all at once. i need to do this in phases.

today, i want to fill in obvious gaps, first. i'll focus on the list of science fiction authors after for the early 90s project, starting in 1989, when i was 8-14 years old.

the list of authors for the childhood journal that i'll be focusing on is:

1. isaac asimov

2. jules verne

3. ray bradbury

4. hg wells

5. arthur c carke

6. cs lewis

7. lewis carroll

8. stephen king

9. tom clancy

10. dean koontz

11. robert ludlum

12 john grisham

but i won't be able to collect many of those today.

this was posted in feb, 2019:

i'm racking my brain for actual books that i read in grades 7 and 8 - and even 9 - and i'm not able to come up with anything. i remember being given photographed handouts and asked questions around an ability to prove very basic comprehension, or being asked to read short texts and then produce an opinion piece around it. but, i don't think anybody ever handed out books to us and told us to read them.

i went to both elementary school and high school under the rae/peterson curriculum (harris won when i was in high school, and didn't succeed in changing the curriculum until the year after i'd left), and i'm learning just now that it was kind of an experiment. i did not receive any actual marks until grade 10; my high school transcript, which i still have, simply states "completed" for grade 9. i have records of standardized testing where i scored in the 95th-99th percentile, but i don't have grades for these years.

what i remember about the report cards is that they had a long list of criteria, and you'd be evaluated on a points system, with 1 the highest and i think 6 the lowest. this was just the teacher's arbitrary, completely subjective opinion. i remember getting lots of 1s in english and math, 2s or 3s in phys ed and some pretty low marks in the "shows respect for authority" and "works well with others" categories. even my university profs would have scrawled "does not work well with others" on my report cards if given the chance, and i'm not particularly embarrassed about it - i don't work well with others, and i don't want to, either.

i'm not even sure i can pick out much of anything of shape in these years really at all. we were split into classes that taught core subjects, and then shipped into different rooms for specific topics. so, i remember having a science teacher, a french teacher, a geography teacher, a music teacher, a phys ed teacher, a home ec teacher, a history teacher and then a kind of general "grade 7 teacher" that was tasked with everything else, which i guess is math, religion and english. but, that really meant that the curriculum was focused on the peripheral subjects due to the more rigid scheduling, and that math & english were largely unstructured babysitting periods with a lot of pointless busy work. when we went to geography class, or phys ed, we were there for a short period with a defined curriculum; when we went back to the general class room, the teacher could organize it any way they wanted to, or not at all, which was often the actual reality.

so, the system put more of a priority on learning french or geography than it did on learning math or english. we did regular spelling bees in grade 8 english class. and, i don't really remember taking math in grade 7 at all. grade 9 was more structured, in the sense that there were separate math and english classes, but i still didn't get graded, and i still don't remember reading any actual books. i explicitly remember reading shakespeare, but we read it orally in the classroom. and, there's a text called the chrysalids that i can't otherwise place that i might drop into grade 9.

of course, there's some possibility that i don't remember any reading projects because i was so efficient with them. there's a few texts from later in high school that i remember putting off until the last minute and then reading through in an afternoon. there's certainly some possibility that i just devoured it so violently that it never really got digested. but, the thing is that i liked reading, so i don't know why that would have been true.

i think the truth is that i was mostly baby sat all the way to the end of grade 9, and consequently don't have a lot to report on.

if i remember something, i'll insert it, but i think the way we're going to do this is that i'll be doing independent reading over these years, instead.

the chrysalids was grade 8, and i have a copy of it that i found used. i also remember doing a man for all seasons in grade 8, and the shakespeare. the only thing i remember from grade 9 is the shakespeare, and i don't remember anything from grade 7 at all.

there are a few shakepeare plays i'm not sure if i read in class or not. i should get a collected shakespeare. that's a reasonable thing to have.

however, i read a lot on my own. i can generate a list of several hundreds of novels that i bought with allowance money and read on my own initiative from grades 3-9. starting around grade 9ish, i was spending more time playing guitar and less time reading novels, and the first demoes were recorded in grade 10 (1996). so, this is the period i'm really focusing on in rebuilding this.

i moved out of my mom's basement and into my dad's basement between grades 7 and 8. my mom smoked and my dad's third wife was highly anti-smoking (she used to smoke). she claimed my collection of science fiction and stephen king novels smelled like smoke and told me i couldn't bring them with me. so i left them there and never really replaced many of them. she was a clinical sociopath with no ability to comprehend sentimental value, so it didn't make sense to her to collect books; in her view, books should be read and disposed of immediately after, and keeping them around is just hoarding clutter. she hated keeping anything at all around past it's immediate use. when she realized this bothered me, she did try to compensate by buying me new books (because why would i want books i already read?), which ranged from ayn rand texts (which i just thought were boring and terribly written) to tom clancy novels (which were ok) to grisham, koontz and ludlum. i read most of what those four authors had written up to about 1995 or so, and i also bought some newer king, but i just didn't have time for books after i started playing guitar more seriously. i never replaced most of the king or the science fiction - asimov, clark, bradbury, wells, jules verne, cs lewis, lewis carroll, etc. i had everything stored on a large shelf outside of my basement bedroom. in later years, my mom claimed to still have these books and became evasive when i asked about getting them back when i was older. it was relatively clear that she wanted to keep them. i've been unsuccessful in even getting her to just write out a list of them for me.

if i'm doing this now, i wanted to see what i had written in 2019 and it's not all that helpful. that's ok. i'll have to just remember it.

i apparently also have a music list dated to the summer of 2008 to recover on my external drive.

hey, i've got some ideas for strain names for the tragically hip's new marijuana line.

10. blown brain cells at high dumb

09. the tragic-saline drip

08. a head in the last century

07. systolic equipment attached to the back of a motorized wheelchair

06. 50 mission ct-scan

05. new lung transplant is sinking

04. saliva trickling down

03. disgrace, too.

02. an inch an hour

01. head cave

they were always too pompous to understand irony, and wouldn't understand it if explained to them, now. the band that lost their singer to cancer at 53 is now selling marijuana. astounding.

they've always been a microcosm of everything that is wrong with canada, so i guess this is kind of an expectation.

at 18:39

"my new lung transplant is sinking, man - and i don't want to hack.

*cough*"

at 18:40

Location:

i'd give their first record a three in my rating system (where 0 is the highest and 10 is the lowest), and the rest is 4 or 5. there's a greatest hits ep in there of around a half hour of music that's worth salvaging.

i got most of the way through cleaning my bedroom last night and stopped to catalog my collection of novels at librarything. these are just the fiction texts right now, because the fiction texts are going to be on shelves on the wall (the last thing to install) in the bedroom and not on the library shelf.  i also have a small overflow shelf that will hold books waiting to be read that, for now, will have everything on it, as i read and review fiction for the journal and alter-reality sections of the integrated multimedia project, which is first in the list. i finished entering the reduced fiction library i have left (it's only 70 books) and started typing out fiction books to buy to immediately fill in gaping holes when i had to pass out. i got sick yesterday when installing the aluminum. i think it was the glue, but i'm noticing some of these old books are giving me a sore throat. there's a type of hallucinogenic spore that lives in old books and can make you sick. i'm feeling a little better this morning, but i'm also now at 141.8 so it's time to make some toast.

i kept in the last bowl of soup i ate on...tuesday/wednesday.

this is a part of the process, as i had to move these old books into my bedroom and they've just been sitting out on top of boxes. they're all moving to the overflow shelf and will get up to the wall shelves in the next few months as i get through the journal project and move to the alter-reality. i'm going to buy a round of items this morning and add those to the list before i print the pdf and upload it to drive, but it's going to be similar to the cd collection. there will be a chronological list, an alphabetical list, an loc list and the library things pdf. the library things pdf will have information about exact pressings. all lists will have fiction and nonfiction, but i'm cleaning my bedroom so fiction is first.

i don't expect that i'm going to find as many book list snapshots as cd list snapshots, because i kept deleting it, and because the page didn't get as much traffic. i've long struggled with the question of whether this is pretentious or not; it clearly is, but it may be more pretentious to struggle with it. i think i should have a book list around in my insurance documents, when i had insurance in the 00s, but i tried to keep any list of books i uploaded anywhere restricted to references or reviews, strictly. so, the lists tend to be small, or focused on library books rather than books i owned. i'm worrying less about finding lists and filling the holes in out of memory for that reason. there's also the question of high school texts that i want to fill in while i'm at it and will be reviewing for the multimedia project, as well as some university level english texts that i sold and need to get back.

i have not, as an adult, read as much fiction as i did as a kid. that might change as i get through these writing projects. however, my broad perception is that storybooks are for youngish people, and reading novels is broadly something that most adults shouldn't have too much time for. there are exceptions, but it's not as much of a grown-up artform as symphonic music. grown-ups are going to focus more on reading as an academic process, for diy self-learning. we learn from reading novels, but it's a type of learning more valuable for young brains than older ones, as it's not direct information. grown-ups generally need more useful data. there's certainly a place for abstract learning for adults, but there's not always the time. i have more time than many adults, and this is exactly the kind of thing i want to use it for (i'm an anarchist. it's a part of the theory.), but even i need to be reasonable: this has limited use value. there is also the simple fact that the artform has collapsed into itself in the last 50 years and that fiction is going to find itself in a serious crisis when the 70 year olds and 80 year olds (and 90 year olds) start imminently dying. there isn't serious replacement happening. the form may permanently change in the near future.

i'm going to have a fair number of very old plays in my list. there was a time before the novel. we are on the cusp of a time after one. but we're not there yet and my personal library will have an assortment of novels, i just need to carry out a recovery process before i post it anywhere.

let me eat, then get through that, and the pdf should be up by the end of the day.

well, i now have my aluminum up on the ceiling. it's a slightly cooler day today but it's going to warm up tomorrow. it should keep the candle heat in as a basic test, i think.

it looks like the cement work i did outside the other day has held up well. i'm still peeling from the sunburn, but i have a little more cement to use up in the front, and then i'll need to buy some more and another couple of bricks to finish the job, on the outside. i haven't addressed it yet from the inside, but i'd might as well just relayer over the existing concrete, if i'm going to do it at all. it's cheap enough and easy enough. i just want it to completely dry out first.

the next thing to do is that general clean in here, which will include installing and updating a number of items. i'm going to do a kind of tidy u in the studio after, and then i'll need to get into the laundry and bathroom to do some updates, before i do a final finish in the kitchen. but i want to get those lists of lists in order first when i'm done cleaning the bedroom, and before i get to updating the laundry.

that's going to mean that i'm basically done in the laundry, the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom, the listening room and the library and need to focus on the side entry, the garage and the studio to finish up.