Well, I thank the ladies with all my heart in that case.

Never heard of Night Watch. I'm sure I'll get around to watching it now that I'm suddenly obsessed with Vampires.

Just finished reading The Memoirs of Casanova and although I enjoyed most of it, I'm glad to be done with it after 18 long months.

I say I enjoyed most of it because if he did some of the shit he got up to in today's world, he'd be a sex offender and a rapist, AND incestuous.

The dude literally had sex with his own daughter, knowingly. In fact, I'm sure he had sex with two of his daughters but I can't remember because the story is so long. To his credit, if it could be called that, the daughters had grown up separately and pretty much without his knowledge of their existence until he met them in later life.

I get they were different times and laws were probably different, but that doesn't mean it's ok.

Most of the story is an interesting adventure but I found myself disappointed with him towards the end. When he was younger he seemed to have a bit more respect and morality but it seems when he got to his mid to late 30s he was a lot more open to "seducing" young girls.

Aside from the rapey stuff, the rest of it was cool.

EDIT: A little follow-up research has highlighted he actually fathered a kid with his daughter. Which made it his child, and grandchild 🙈

I was reading through the Amazon reviews of a PUA / self-help meme book maybe two or three years ago and i recall someone basically saying it was (unsurprisingly) a pile of shit but recommending another book by someone else as being one of the few books worth while.

It wasn't 48 Laws but was something similar in nature. I recall looking into the author and discovering that they were a neo-nazi/white nationalist but from the few reviews, it sounded like it was a worthy read.

Anyone know what this mysterious tome and its even more mysterious author might be?

I bought the 80-book Penguin Little Black Classics set on Amazon for myself at Christmas with the goal of reading one a week, but sadly work got in the way.

The first book is called Mrs Rosie and the Priest and is a selection of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's highly influential Decameron, which is infamous for its obscenity, especially considering it was supposedly "written" by thieves and whores sheltering from the plague.

Leo Tolstoy's How Much Land Does a Man Need? is very good also, including his famous moral story of the same name detailing how much man is motivated by greed even if it takes everything from him, especially when making pacts with talk dark strangers met on dark, lonely roads at night!

Johann Peter Hebel was a prolific storeyteller that was idolised by the Brother Grimm amongst others. The book How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher's Dog contains a bunch of his moralistic tales of highwaymen, tricksters and soldiers, falling well within the realms of rogue literature. I read this while travelling.

Aphorisms on Love and Hate by Friedrich Nietzsche is exactly what it says on the tin. Another travelling book.

Excellent reading, I have to say!

Was it the 48 Laws of Dating by "Richard Wallace" by any chance?

I've only read the first chapter and concluded it was all doom-and-gloom and that looks were all that mattered, and that conversation skills were irrelevant. Ya know, not counting learning social skills, disabilities/mental health and the like. Having said that, it did contain useful truths on relationship management & legal issues. I didn't spot any practical tips on how to improve oneself though.

Ironically the first chapter was called "never trust a dating coach."

Z

This morning I finished Les Miserables, and it's a masterpiece.

Rarely does a novel raise in me such emotional affectivity toward the characters within, but this did.

Been thinking about it all day, and I'm looking forward to watching the movie, or some screenplays of it. Not yet, though.

It automatically goes into my top 10. Maybe my top 5.

I think this officially means French literature is my favourite, with Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo writing two of my most highly-rated novels of all time.

It's great that I finally leveled up my reading material 4 years ago. It's been genuinely life-changing and fulfilling in comparison to the self-development garbage I used to waste my time with.