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Book(s) I am currently reading:

- The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
- The Antipodes of the Mind, Benny Shanon
- The Art of Nonfiction, Ayn Rand

Books I have read:

2017
- The Curse of Lono, Hunter S. Thompson 
- Rabbit Redux, by John Updike 
- Bourbon Empire, by Reid Mitenbuler 
- The Road to Sparta, by Dean Karnazes 
- The Boy Who Runs: The Odyssey of Julius Achon, by John Brant 
- My Year of Running Dangerously, Tom Foreman 
- Run the World, Becky Wade 
- The Art of Fiction, Ayn Rand 
- Ancestor of the West, Jean Bottéro, et al (English, from French) 

2016
- The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty 
- Rabbit, Run, John Updike 
- A Leg to Stand On, Oliver Sacks 
- Running With the Mind of Meditation, Sakyong Mipham 
- 50/50, Dean Karnazes 
- The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck 
- Running on Empty, Marshall Ulrich 
- Ultramarathon Man, Dean Karnazes 
- Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness, Scott Jurek 
- Running Man: A Memoir, Charlie Engle 
- Born to Run, Christopher McDougall 
- Why We Run: A Natural History, Bernd Heinrich (originally titled Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us About Running and Life) 
- Ahavat Zion, Abraham Mapu (Hebrew) 

<2015
- Running with the Kenyans, Adharanand Finn 
- A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami (English, from Japanese; originally titled An Adventure Concerning Sheep) 
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey 
- Focus, Arhtur Miller 
- My Friend Leonard, James Frey 
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 
- Dataclysm, Christian Rudder 
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald 
- To a God Unknown, John Steinbeck 
- Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris 
- The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand  essential
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami (English, from Japanese) 
- To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris 
- We the Living, Ayn Rand 
- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Edwin Lefèvre 
- Return to the Marshes, Gavin Young 
- A Drive to Israel, Ali Salem (Hebrew, from Arabic) 
- Flies, Aharon Megged (Hebrew) 
- The Black Guard, Yaron Zelekha (Hebrew)  essential
- Days of Pop, Amichai Shalev (Hebrew) 
- A Fox in the Chicken Coop, Ephraim Kishon (Hebrew) 
- Season of Migration to the North, Al-Tayyib Salih (Hebrew, from Arabic) 
- Hearing the Sea in His Death, Yaron Avitov (Hebrew) 
- The Longer Shorter Way, Moshe Ya'alon (Hebrew) 
- Journey into the Heart of the Enemy, Najem Wali (Hebrew, from Arabic) 
- Like the Eyelids of the Morning, Chaim Sabbato (Hebrew) 
- The Blanket, Amnon Rubinstein (Hebrew) 
- Life As a Parable, Pinhas Sadeh (Hebrew) 
- Samson, Ze'ev Jabotinsky (Hebrew, from Russian; originally titled Samson the Nazarite)  essential
- Anthem, Ayn Rand 
- The Periodic Table, Primo Levi (English, from Italian) 
- Children of Gebelawi, Naguib Mahfouz (Hebrew, from Arabic; originally titled The Sons of Our Neighborhood) 
- The Living on the Dead, Aharon Megged (Hebrew) 
- The Castle, Franz Kafka (English, from German) 
- Islamic Imperialism, Efraim Karsh 
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov 
- The Good Soldier Švejk, Jaroslav Hašek (English, from Czech) 
- Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy 
- Looking Ahead: Twentieth Century Happenings, Henry Pereira Mendes 
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis 
- School's Out, Christophe Dufosse (English, from French) 
- Noam Chomsky, John Lyons 
- The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom 
- Anti-Semite and Jew, Jean-Paul Sartre (English, from French; originally titled Reflections on the Jewish Question) 
- The Wicked Son, David Mamet 
- Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding 
- Candide, Voltaire (English, from French) 
- The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk 
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon 
- Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow 
- Stray Dogs, John Ridley 
- The Fixer, Bernard Malamud  essential
- The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (English, from Portuguese) 
- The Final Solution: A Story of Detection, Michael Chabon 
- Occupied Voices, Wendy Pearlman 
- An Odyssey of Survival, Michael M. Klein 
- A Million Little Pieces, James Frey 1
- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 
- Someone to Run With, David Grossman (Hebrew) 
- Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie (English, from French) 
- In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan 
- The Stranger, Albert Camus (English, from French) 
- The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto Che Guevara (English, from Spanish) 
- Dubliners, James Joyce 
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 
- The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass (English, from German) 
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon 
- A Guide for the Bedevilled, Ben Hecht 
- Miscarriage of Justice, Mark Shaw 
- Hannah Senesh, Her Life and Diary (English, from Hebrew, Hungarian) 
- Perfidy, Ben Hecht  essential
- The Pigeon, Patrick Suskind (English, from German) 
- The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger 
- If Not Now, When?, Primo Levi (English, from Italian) 
- The Island of the Colour-blind, Oliver Sacks 
- Animal Farm, George Orwell 
- Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck 
- More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon 
- This Path Begins Here, Dalit Shemhai (Hebrew) 
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 
- 1984, George Orwell  essential
- Freedom from the Known, J. Krishnamurti 
- The Book of God, Moshe Yahalom (Hebrew; originally titled God) 
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson 
- Jewish Pirates, Chaim Jacob Finkel (Hebrew, from English) 
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 
- Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo 
- The Pastures of Heaven, John Steinbeck 
- The Trial, Franz Kafka (English, from German) 
- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway 
- Itamar K., Ido Netanyahu (Hebrew) 
- The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller (Hebrew, from English) 
- Ashram, Ram Oren (Hebrew) 
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks  essential
- The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain 
- The Magician, Sol Stein 
- Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck 

[ Awful; Disappointing; Decent; Very good; Masterpiece. ]

1Read prior to the Frey scandal

Star Trek novels:

The Original Series: The Ashes of Eden
The Next Generation: #1, 2, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17-32, 34-36, 39; Metamorphosis, Encounter at Farpoint, Vendetta, Relics, Reunion, Descent, The Devil's Heart, All Good Things, Dark Mirror, Q-Squared, Imzadi
Deep Space Nine: #1-7, 10, 11; The Search
Voyager: #1-4, 6

Memorable Passages:

Young writers often make the following mistake: if they want a strong, independent, rational hero, they state in narrative that "he is strong, independent, and rational" -- or they have other characters pay him these compliments in discussion. This does not convey anything. "Strong," "independent," and "rational" are abstractions. In order to leave your reader with those abstractions, you have to provide concretes that will make him conclude: "This man is strong, because he did X; independent, because he defied Y; rational, because he thought Z."
...
The purpose of all art is the objectification of values. The fundamental motive of a writer -- by the implication of the activity, whether he knows it consciously or not -- is to objectify his values, his view of what is important in life. A man reads a novel for the same reason: to see a presentation of reality slanted according to a certain code of values (with which he may then agree or disagree).
...
To objectify values is to make them real by presenting them in concrete form. For instance, to say "I think courage is good" is not to objectify a value. To present a man who acts bravely, is.
- The Art of Fiction, Ch. 2: Literature as an Art Form

It hurt and I wanted it to hurt more, so I pushed harder.
- Running Man, Ch. 7

Whenever an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble.
- Born to Run, Ch. 22

All of [the runner's] motions must be harmonious and seamlessly choreographed in a fine-tuned coordination of hundreds of muscles and thousands of muscle units, for one integrated task, one huge reflex mechanism. Whether or not he consciously learned to do so, his arm swings are precisely integrated with leg swings, or stride. Both are meshed with his breathing and likely with his heartbeats as well. At the most efficient running stride, arms, breaths, and heartbeats are multiples of one another.
- Why We Run, Ch. 6

The speculator's chief enemies are always boring from within. It is inseparable from human nature to hope and to fear. In speculation when the market goes against you you hope that every day will be the last day – and you lose more than you should have had you not listened to hope – to the same ally that is so potent a success-bringer to empire builders and pioneers, big and little. And when the market goes your way you become fearful that the next day will take away your profit, and you get out – too soon. Fear keeps you from making as much money as you ought to. The successful trader has to fight these two deep-seated instincts. He has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit. It is absolutely wrong to gamble in stocks the way the average man does.
- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Ch. X

There is nothing louder than an American hotel; and, mind you, this was supposed to be a quiet, cozy, old-fashioned, homey place – "gracious living" and all that stuff. The clatter of the elevator's gate – some twenty yards northeast of my head but as clearly perceived as if it were inside my left temple – alternated with the banging and booming of the machine's various evolutions and lasted well beyond midnight. Every now and then, immediately east of my left ear (always assuming I lay on my back, not daring to direct my viler side toward the nebulous haunch of my bed-mate), the corridor would brim with cheerful, resonant and inept exclamations ending in a volley of good-nights. When that stopped, a toilet immediately north of my cerebellum took over. It was a manly, energetic, deep-throated toilet, and it was used many times. Its gurgle and gush and long afterflow shook the wall behind me. Then someone in a southern direction was extravagantly sick, almost coughing out his life with his liquor, and his toilet descended like a veritable Niagra, immediately beyond our bathroom. And when finally all the waterfalls had stopped, and the enchanted hunters were sound asleep, the avenue under the window of my insomnia, to the west of my wake – a staid, eminently residential, dignified alley of huge trees – degenerated into the despicable haunt of gigantic trucks roaring through the wet and windy night.
- Lolita, Part I, Ch. 29

On that particular day the first part of the password was "copy" and the second "Hatvan." The sentry at the van with the telephones, who had to remember this, was a Pole from Kolomyje, who by some strange mischance had got to the 91st regiment.
Of course he could not know what "copy" was, but because he had some faint idea of mnemonics he managed to remember all the same that the word began with a "c," and when Lieutenant Dub, who was duty officer, came up to him and asked him the password of the day, he proudly answered "coffee." Of course this was only natural, because a Pole from Kolomyje could not forget the morning and evening coffee in the camp at Bruck.
And when he shouted out "coffee" once again, and Lietenant Dub came nearer and nearer to him, he remembered his oath and that he was on sentry duty, and called out menacingly "Halt!" When Lieutenant Dub took two more steps towards him and still wanted him to say the password, the sentry aimed his rifle at him and not having perfect command of the German language shouted out in a strange mixture of Polish and German: "I'm going to shit. I'm going to shit."
Lieutenant Dub understood and began to edge away, calling out: "Commander of the guard! Commander of the guard!"
Then Sergeant Jelínek appeared, who had escorted the Pole to his post, and asked him what the password was. Lieutenant Dub did the same and the desperate Pole from Kolomyje replied to those questions with a roar which resounded all over the station: "Coffee, coffee." There were lots of transports there and men began to jump out of all of them with mess-tins and there was a frightful panic which ended in the worthy sentry being disarmed and led off to the arrest van.
But Lieutenant Dub harbored certain suspicions against Švejk, when he saw that he was the first to climb out of the van with his mess-tin. He was ready to bet his life that he had heard Švejk shout: "All outside with mess-tins, all outside with mess-tins."
- The Good Soldier Švejk, Part III, Ch. 3

The next of the great wastes was that from competition. The field of industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers wasted, in assailing one another, energies which, if expended in concerted effort, as today, would have enriched all. As for mercy or quarter in this warfare, there was absolutely no suggestion of it. To deliberately enter a field of business and destroy the enterprises of those who had occupied it previously, in order to plant one's own enterprise on their ruins, was an achievement which never failed to command popular admiration. Nor is there any stretch of fancy in comparing this sort of struggle with actual warfare, so far as concerns the mental agony and physical suffering which attended the struggle, and the misery which overwhelmed the defeated and those dependent on them. Now nothing about your age is, at first sight, more astounding to a man of modern times than the fact that men engaged in the same industry, instead of fraternizing as comrades and colaborers to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer madness, a scene from bedlam. But more closely regarded, it is seen to be no such thing. Your contemporaries, with their mutual throat-cutting, knew very well what they were at. The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community. If, in working to this end, he at the same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental. It was just as feasible and as common to increase one's private hoard by practices injurious to the general welfare. One's worst enemies were necessarily those of his own trade, for, under your plan of making private profit the motive of production, a scarcity of the article he produced was what each particular producer desired. It was for his interest that no more of it should be produced than he himself could produce. To secure this consummation as far as circumstances permitted, by killing off and discouraging those engaged in his line of industry, was his constant effort. When he had killed off all he could, his policy was to combine with those he could not kill, and convert their mutual warfare into a warfare upon the public at large by cornering the market, as I believe you used to call it, and putting up prices to the highest point people would stand before going without the goods. The daydream of the nineteenth-century producer was to gain absolute control of the supply of some necessity of life, so that he might keep the public at the verge of starvation, and always command famine prices for what he supplied. This, Mr. West, is what was called in the nineteenth century a system of production. I will leave it to you if it does not seem, in some of its aspects, a great deal more like a system for preventing production. Some time when we have plenty of leisure I am going to ask you to sit down with me and try to make me comprehend, as I never yet could, though I have studied the matter a great deal, how such shrewd fellows as your contemporaries appear to have been in many respects ever came to entrust the business of providing for the community to a class whose interest it was to starve it. I assure you that the wonder with us is, not that the world did not get rich under such a system, but that it did not perish outright from want.
- Looking Backward, Ch. XXII

Here again we live with two contradictory understandings of what counts for man. One tells us that what is important is what all men have in common; the other that what men have in common is low, while what they have from separate cultures gives them their depth and their interest. Both agree that life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, i.e., the interests of health and preservation, are what men share. The difference between them is the weight they give to being French or Chinese, Jewish or Catholic, or the rank order of these particular cultures in relation to the natural needs of the body. One is cosmopolitan, the other is particularistic. Human rights are connected with one school, respect for cultures with the other. Sometimes the United Sates is attacked for failing to promote human rights; sometimes for wanting to impose 'the American way of life' on all people without respect for their cultures. To the extent that it does the latter, the United States does so in the name of self-evident truths that apply to the good of all men. But its critics argue that there are no such truths, that they are prejudices of American culture. On the other hand, the Ayatollah was initially supported by some here because he represented true Iranian culture. Now he is attacked for violating human rights. What he does is in the name of Islam. His critics insist that there are universal principles that limit the rights of Islam. When the critics of the U.S. in the name of culture, and of the Ayatollah in the name of human rights, are the same persons, which they often are, they are persons who want to eat their cake and have it, too.
- The Closing of the American Mind, Part Two

"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, 'How would I do this if I were a fool?' Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you'll never go wrong." (Lieutenant Keefer)
- The Caine Mutiny, Ch. 9

And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.
- The Stranger

But the people are not the same proud race that time after time rose up against Inca rule [...]; these people who watch us walk through the town streets are a defeated race. They look at us meekly, almost fearfully, completely indifferent to the outside world. Some give the impression that they go on living simply because it's a habit they can't give up. (Said of the Aymara indians)
- The Motorcycle Diaries

The Jewish apologists are avidly and pathetically intent on stating the case for the Jew by contradicting his enemies. They do not even pause to study the accusations of these enemies. They feel only that anything an anti-Semite says must be contradicted and disproved - and they rush forward with statements that Jews love their mothers, are full of patriotism, sweetness and solid human charm.
These denials, contradictions and affirmations are a preposterous waste of time. Jewish diplomacy has been wasting its time in this fashion for almost twenty centuries, offering alibis and mitigating circumstances - for what? Is there anything for which the Jew could be guilty that could match the unsavory and contemptible antics of his accusers? Apologies to whom? To that judge with blood-caked hands who sits leering from his bench? To that enfeebled and chaotic brain that calls itself an anti-Semite? Or to that smug and highty-tighty bystander, World Opinion - a gentleman who hasn't been able to find his buttocks with both hands since he was given an alphabet to play with?
You would think that Jews would wake up to this one fact about themselves - that their defensive position is the chief delight and arsenal of the anti-Semite. But never comes such awakening.
[...]
There are two very unwise things to do in the world. One is to proclaim the fact that you are in distress - and expect your plight to bring Samaritans rushing to your side. An occasional Samaritan will arrive - but accompanied always by three hooligan sadists intent on the sport of increasing your misery. The other is the business of advertising your virtues. The "Jewish propaganda machine" is more or less devoted to both schemes, and the results continue, century in and out, to be the same. In a world that admires only victors, the Jews have persisted in advertising themselves as victims only.
- A Guide for the Bedevilled

Do I believe in God? I don't know. For me He is more a symbol and expression of the moral forces in which I believe.
- Hannah Senesh, Her Life and Diary, Age 20.
This passage is not to be taken as a general reflection of Hannah Senesh's personal beliefs; these vary in the course of her writings.

The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
- Perfidy

The hunters of men arrived two days later. There were more than fifty of them; somebody must have overestimated the strength of the defenders. The clatter of half-tracks was heard before anything could be seen through the veil of snow, still falling heavily. A light half-track led the column, following the trail that Dov had prepared. It advanced slowly, reached the trap, swayed on the edge, and fell in, shattering the planks with a splitting sound. Dov climbed up on the tower, where Mendel was all ready with the machine gun. Dov restrained him: "Save bullets. Only shoot if you see somebody trying to get out of the hole." But nobody came out; the vehicle had perhaps overturned.
Behind the light half-track, a heavy vehicle was coming, and behind that, men on foot were fanning out over the trail and among the trees. The heavy tracked vehicle went around the hole and opened fire; at the same instant Mendel began firing in brief spurts, gripped by the fever of battle. He saw some Germans fall, and at the same time he heard two violent explosions beneath him: two anti-tank rockets had hit the roof of the monestary, which caved in and caught fire. More bullets shattered the walls of the building in several places. In the midst of the smoke and noise Dov shouted into his ear: "Empty the gun now. Don't hold back. We're fighting for three lines in the history books."
- If Not Now, When?, Ch. 3

As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.
- 1984, Part One, Ch. V

The desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel, is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit that has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic...a blind faith in some higher and wiser "authority." The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister...all the way up to "God." (Paraphrase)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Ch. 11

[Grampa] was buttoning his fly as he came, and his old hands were having trouble finding the buttons, for he had buttoned the top button into the second buttonhole, and that threw the whole sequence off.
- The Grapes of Wrath, Ch. 8

"I once watched a Canada goose whose mate had been shot by hunters. They mate for life, you know. The gander circled the pond for days, and more days after that. When I last saw him, he was swimming alone through the wild rice, still looking."
- The Bridges of Madison County, Ch. 7 - Ashes

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"Tzahala Race 2014" (Hebrew)
"America Examines the Limits of Free Speech" (Hebrew)
"The Racist Legacy of Jose Saramago"
"Judaism, Atheism and the Book of Esther"
"5768: The Year in Review"
"Jewish Continuity and American Neozionism"
"Mistakes of '67"
"Reflections on Keffiyeh Day 2007"

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