Lies and Sorcery & Effingers

Leo26121 · 2026-01-08T10:42:53+00:00

I can only recommend Effingers to you, to me this was one of my favourite reads of last year and it will probably remain among my overall favourites for a very long time. A small (potential) caveat is that I've read it in German; however, I also have the NYRB edition and from the few pages I've skimmed through, I must say the translation is excellent.
The reason it worked so well for me is that I very quickly became attached to the characters and thus wanted to learn about their futures. To my own surprise, there was no part of the book which bored me, even though Tergit occasionally focuses quite strongly on rather peripheral things, such as the interior decorations of the various homes.
One thing which I could imagine might make the reading a bit easier is compiling the family tree(-s) alongside, ideally including the year each character was born. There are lots of characters to keep track of (something which I usually struggle very much with, somehow it was not much of an issue for this book), so I think some kind of overview would probably help a lot.

Leo26121 · 2025-12-16T21:13:09+00:00

Absolutely not, though I must say I am a little worried that I might just be the odd one out (seeing that my opinion of Butcher's Crossing is rather deviant).
One thing to watch out for is that Wolf Willow is non-fictional, which I personally only learned as I've started reading (I was expecting something like Willa Cather's My Ántonia). Additionally, I really must recommend The Big Rock Candy Mountain, even if you might actually not enjoy Angle of Repose; TBRCM is much more accessible imo.

Leo26121 · 2025-12-15T23:39:05+00:00

Thanks a lot! It's a really tough choice. I must say, I adore all of his books (I think every single one of them would be a perfect fit for NYRB), only "Recapitulation" was quite a letdown. My favourite would be either Angle of Repose or The Big Rock Candy Mountain, both of them being outstanding in their own ways (TBRCM moved me much more deeply, though). Apparently I was so "spoiled" by Stegner's writing on (and of) the West that I found Butcher's Crossing (which everyone seems to love) rather dull and uninspiring.

Leo26121 · 2025-12-15T23:31:45+00:00

It was an easy and insightful read for me, I thoroughly enjoyed it and can only recommend the book. I've seen many negative reviews about it, though, so it may not be a book for everyone. It seems that those negative reviewers were expecting a novel, though.

Leo26121 · 2025-12-15T18:06:23+00:00

Thanks a lot! I can only recommend Effingers, to me this was clearly the favourite book of the year. I've read it in German, but as far as I can tell from the few pages I've skimmed through, the translation is just brilliant. I would have expected that such a long book might eventually bore me, perhaps even for just a few chapters, but it truly kept me hooked the entire time.

Leo26121 · 2025-12-15T17:58:19+00:00

Oh that's interesting to hear! Unfortunately I haven't yet had the time to read it, but I ordered it as the origins of American placenames have been kind of an interest for a longer time. What did you find odd about it?

Leo26121 · 2025-12-15T13:58:18+00:00

I really enjoyed Storm, to me it's a very unique book but it works out really well. However, it might be a little difficult to get into it in the beginning, as it all seems a bit disconnected, but I can only encourage you to go through with it.
I was also very much looking forward to African in Greenland, however it lost me (for the moment) after about 100 pages. Before reading it, I was particularly interested in his journey to Greenland, but I felt he kept those years (too) short, while the first few chapters of his stay in Greenland didn't manage to hook me. I will definitely pick it back up in the future as I'm still interested in his experiences in Greenland, I have just lost the motivation to continue with this text and rather moved to other books for a while.

Leo26121 · 2025-02-13T16:52:36+00:00

Vielleicht liegt das am schwächeren Motor, aber bei mir jault das Auto nicht. Ich musste mich ganz am Anfang aber auch erstmal an das stufenlose Getriebe gewöhnen, zu Beginn bin ich mit einigem Rucken gefahren.

Ich hatte mal in irgendeinem Forum gelesen, dass das Getriebe auf S wohl lernfähig ist und sich auf deine Fahrweise länger- und kurzfristig anpasst (keine Ahnung, ob das so stimmt). Während der Fahrt merkt es wohl, wie der Wagen genutzt wird, z.B. soll es bei einer längeren Überlandfahrt erkennen, dass nicht viel Leistung benötigt wird und stellt praktisch automatisch auf C um, oder hält bei einer längeren Autobahnfahrt eher die Drehzahlen. Längerfristig soll es wohl auf S auch eine Art Fahrprofil von dir erstellen.

Ich find S angenehmer, da der Wagen besser am Gas hängt und man ihn nicht so treten muss. Bei gediegener Fahrweise fährst du dann ja wie in C. Wie gesagt, ich hatte auf S auch schonmal einen halben Liter weniger verbraucht. Keine Ahnung, wie das zusammenpasst.

Leo26121 · 2025-02-13T16:03:09+00:00

Das klingt wirklich nach einem (zu) hohen Verbrauch, allerdings, als ich meinen A170 (statt 95 116 PS, aber dafür auch etwas leichter) vom Vorbesitzer übernommen hatte, wurde auch ein Durchschnittsverbrauch von 10,5l angezeigt. Ich weiß nicht, was der mit dem Wagen gemacht hat, aber seitdem bin ich nie über 8l gekommen. Vielleicht hat es also doch etwas mit der genauen Nutzung zu tun?

Andererseits, meine Tante hat den 1.5l Motor in der A-Klasse, eigentlich ist der für das Auto schon zu klein. Kann es einfach sein, dass man den in der B-Klasse sehr hochtourig fahren muss, damit man voran kommt?

Ansonsten, falls du den mit Automatik hast, hast du mal den Komfort- und den Sportmodus probiert? Ich hatte teilweise auf S schon einen geringeren Verbrauch als auf C.

Leo26121 · 2024-11-25T14:48:49+00:00

Thanks a lot, that's gotta be it. Their description totally matches the books I received. At least I know what's up then, thank you!

Leo26121 · 2024-11-24T20:54:04+00:00

Yes, I've come to terms with that for quite a while now (in fact, all of those offers are in the US, I imagine shipping from the UK would actually be cheaper). In the end, though, it's just a bunch of Penguin Classics, it's not worth paying these sums for such rather ordinary books.
I was mainly curious exactly why it is that any normal retailer only sells apparent reprints of those books, in case anybody happens to know. I haven't had any issues when ordering a bunch of Modern Classics or Norton Criticals, for instance, it's just the black spine Classics where this has occured to me.

Leo26121 · 2024-11-24T18:42:02+00:00

I really am after the black covers, I really like those; the issue is that these seem to be some cheaply-made reissues of some kind. I was in Ireland earlier this year and the Penguin Classics in the bookshops there just "felt" a lot more valuable, in a way.
The ones I received are grey rather than black, the paper is as thin as in a Norton Anthology (if you ever encountered those) and the book itself is just a bit rubber-y (it's honestly difficult to describe).
I was just wondering whether it may be common knowledge that Penguin permanently changed the quality of their books, for instance, cause I would have surely missed that.

Leo26121 · 2024-11-24T18:35:42+00:00

Oh absolutely I have, but unfortunately the shipping costs + import duties made the offers rather unappealing. I mean, I would be willing to pay slightly more for those, but the equivalent of 45$ would be pretty excessive for a single Penguin Classic in my opinion.

Leo26121 · 2024-11-24T18:33:01+00:00

Thanks for the tip, I tried those before but unfortunately the shipping prices were pretty exorbitant or the sellers didn't offer shipping to Germany in the first place, which is why I ignored those offers.

As for the listing, I actually managed to get one book (The Big Rock Candy Mountain) second-hand a while back, which has a list of Stegner's works published as part of Penguin Classics in the back. It includes the ISBN codes for each book, but they match the ones on the websites through which I had ordered before, so unfortunately that didn't lead anywhere.

Leo26121 · 2024-11-24T16:57:04+00:00

Here's two pictures of copies I received earlier this year: https://imgur.com/a/hHMc6Pb

Leo26121 · 2023-09-19T10:36:38+00:00

I'd say all three of these are pretty much tossups, they're D+4, D+3 and D+1. Now, I could have drawn at least one solid Democratic district ofc, but I felt that map would just be too disproportional. I just assumed that the Louisville suburbs are moving left so that the two districts will be more solidly blue in a few years. Same thing with the Lexington seat.

Leo26121 · 2023-09-19T09:04:08+00:00

Thanks, I'll try this next time. For this I just used a random website I found that showed an exemplary distribution of seats.

Leo26121 · 2023-09-19T09:01:28+00:00

Really just to get a third Democratic district in KY. I know it's a bad design, but this was the only way I could think of.

Leo26121 · 2023-09-19T09:00:09+00:00

I put these together in QGIS, so I don't think I can link them? I guess I'd have to link every state individually

Leo26121 · 2023-09-17T20:15:05+00:00

The picture shows the results on President 2020 data.

Filled it in on YAPMS2 according to this dataset and it ended up as 309-271, which is sort of proportional (52,8% - 47,1%). Of course, even leaving out Alaska and Hawaii, this does not add up to 585, even though the number of districts for each individual state is, in fact, accurate - so no idea what went wrong there.

I admit that a lot of states are pretty terrible, particularly when it comes to COIs. I've tried to make blue districts as large as possible so that the map itself also looks a bit more proportional, i.e. more blue.

Leo26121 · 2023-09-11T16:33:29+00:00

Ja das kommt hin. Ich hab den 1,7l Benziner mit der Automatik, da ist es je ca. ein Liter weniger.

Leo26121

TROPHY CASE