the Concept of Anxiety

This book is "a simple psychologically oriented deliberation in view of the dogmatic problem of hereditary sin" (according to its official subtitle) by Søren Kierkegaard, the grandfather of existential philosophy. I can only say that the inclusion of "simple" in aforementioned subtitle is wholly undeserved; this was a very difficult book to read. You know those kinds of books where you know every word the author is using but have no idea how they seem to be fitting together to make the points they seem to think they are? For me, this was one of those. I would love to have some insights to make about this book but I have to admit I simply didn't understand most of it. The language is simple enough, enjoyable in places, but the trains of thought at the core of this text's argument are horribly tough knots to unravel. Maybe I will revisit this in a few years when I have more hard philosophy and theology under my belt and it might unveil something to me; but for now, unless my recitation of this book's subtitle grabbed your attention like nothing else ever has, I don't think I can recommend this book to anyone. Profound? Probably. Important? Almost certainly. Difficult? Most certainly.

Brutal Kunnin

This book is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by Mike Brooks about one of my favourite factions from that universe, the ever-hilarious orks. Ufthak Blackhawk and his war clan descend upon the Adeptus Mechanicus world Hephaesto to raid and pillage whatever cool tech they can get their grubby green mitts on, only the race is well and truly on because ork pirate Kaptin Badrukk has had the same idea (also there seems to be a Chaos Space Marine farting about on his own kind of mission, which messes things up for the defending Mechanicus no end). This book is pretty light on thought-provocation and complicated themes - it's simply a strong, comedic, grisly action blockbuster of a story. If you like the general energy of 40k orks, you'll love this book. And if you have a general affinity for science fiction where it happily veers into the extreme and the ludicrous in terms of creative violence, this could be a gateway 40k book for you.

One disconnected comment I will make is that this novel pretty much establishes as official lore that most Mechanicus agents and ALL orks are canonically non-binary and use they/them pronouns. At least from the narration's point of view. Which I thought was joyously unexpectedly woke of the Black Library, but makes perfect sense within the canon (as most Mechanicus forces are so technologically adapted in their physicality that concepts like gender were left behind several dozen upgrades ago; and orks? well, orks are fungus).