I’ve just finished reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. One of the best books ever written, I’d say. Definitely deserved the Nobel Prize. It should be required reading for all Westerners.

I need to read it again.

I just finished reading James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization. If you have any interest the intelligence community, spys, or privacy, read this book. It has more information than I ever thought the NSA would possibly let out. (The fact that they did let it out frightens me. What are they hiding?) I can’t emphasize this enough: Read This Book. You’ll be amazed.

At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology... I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America... That is the abyss from which there is no return. -Senator Frank Church, 1973, referring to the NSA's SIGINT technology

Today I finally finished reading Volume Two of Emma Goldman’s Living My Life. Although it’s a direct continuation of the first (the first page is 504), I didn’t enjoy it as much as Volume One. The meat of the book is on Soviet Russia, following her 1919 deportation from America, which I just found to be too depressing.

Everybody should read the first volume. If you feel like it, go for the second.

Now I need to figure out what happened to her after her autobiography ends (1923/24).

Last weekend I finished reading Pirate Utopias. Although it tends to be a very dry read, I recommend it if you’re interested in pirates; and who isn’t?

I like the cover, too.

I’ve finally finished reading Emma Goldman’s Living My Life, Vol. 1. It’s a very good book. Even though I don’t agree with all of her ideas, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I think that people who aren’t even partial to anarchist ideals would like it.

I just finished reading The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey into the Underground. Although I have respect for George C. Smith, I didn’t enjoy the book very much. It’s interesting in a historical sense, but at times I find the book either too dry or not technical enough (yes, I know that’s contradictory); not to mention it just seemed to read too much like Masters of Deception, or some other book touting the good old days of underground BBS’s and those evil leet hackers. It’s short enough, so I guess if you have an interest in computer viruses, namely their history, you should pick it up and finish it in a day.

I finished reading Life of Pi (school required reading) last night. The first 100 pages or so I absolutely despised (religious rants and whatnot), but after Pi became a castaway, I enjoyed the book. The book’s tagline “this book will make you believe in God,” holds no substance. To me, god(s) wasn’t even a part of the book after page 100 or so. Oh well.

It’s not your typical school required reading.