i finished Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman the other day, the first time i've read through a collection of his short stories
i liked it enough that i bought a copy of Fragile Things but i'm putting it to one side for the moment to concentrate on the innumerable non-fiction books i've started and then not finished.
So, currently i'm re-tackling The Exact Sciences in Antiquity by Otto Neugebauer.
Goethe wrote Theory of Colours in a period of his life described by one critic as "a long interval, marked by nothing of distinguished note." Goethe himself describes the period as one in which "a quiet, collected state of mind was out of the question." Goethe is not alone in turning to color at a particularly fraught moment. Think of filmmaker Derek Jarman, who wrote his book Chroma as he was going blind and dying of AIDS , a death he also forecast on film as disappearing into a "blue screen." Or of Wittgenstein, who wrote his Remarks on Colour during the last eighteen months of his life, while dying of stomach cancer. He knew he was dying; he could have chosen to work on any philosophical problem under the sun. He chose to write about color. About color and pain. Much of this writing is urgent, opaque, and uncharacteristically boring. "That which I am writing about so tediously, may be obvious to someone whose mind is less decrepit," he wrote.
I'd recommend Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories, if there's a complete collection available on Kindle. They start off pretty pulpy, but get better, especially in the ones with less focus on Manse Everard. I particularly liked "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth".
She giggled. That gave me a nasty feeling. If she had screeched or wept or even nosedived to the floor in a dead faint, that would have been all right. She just giggled. It was suddenly a lot of fun. She had had her photo taken at Isis and somebody had swiped it and somebody had bumped Geiger off in front of her and she was drunker than a Legion convention, and it was suddenly a lot of nice clean fun. So she giggled. Very cute. The giggles got louder and ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting.
Perhaps Dashiel Hammet's take on the genre would be more to your liking? His protagonists are still gruff and to the point, but less alpha-male about it, IMO.
It's not even that I dislike it. It's certainly #problematic but that's fairly inevitable with books written like, at all, let alone in the 30s, and it was entirely expected. It's just like, wow, Tracer Bullet basically nailed it?
Crime and Punishment: I can definitely see why Dostoevsky is universally understood as a great author. The characters are all pretty amazingly uh, characterized. I feel these people.
Buuuut it's unpleasant to read because everything sucks. I mean, everyone's poor, in just-freed-the-serfs Russia, so of course it sucks, but it really sucks.
And the characters... suck. I mean that they're almost all unpleasant people. I'm actually wondering if part of the point of this book isn't that everything sucks so much that Raskolnikov, a pretty unrepentant murderer (spoiler!!) and proto-Redditor, still comes off pretty well compared to some. Luzhin is evil, and in such a petty and incompetent way i just want to give him a wedgie. The leftists are all morons. The detective manages to be as vicious and frightening as someone can possibly be while, at least so far, being an actual upright law enforcement officer.
And speaking of leftists being idiots, I knew Dostoevsky was opposed to the Nihilists and so on, and I kind of figured he was some variety of conservative, but I'm not sure if there are any positive politics here? Like a vision of how things should work. Like, Luzhin gives this little Gekko speech (which is pretty good, btw)
"You must admit," he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of triumph and superciliousness - he almost added "young man" - "that there is an advance, or as they say now, progress in the name of science and economic truth..."
"A commonplace."
"No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, 'love thy neighbour'; what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'Catch several hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society - the more whole coats, so to say - the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring, so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour's getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it..."
now reading that again i'm noticing you could subsume this satire with the leftists by conceiving of them both as a reaction to uh, a particular thing I'm not sure I could name, but a kind of theory of how society should be organized that leans greatly on its supposedly scientific nature. That still leaves me kind of clueless as to how Dostoevsky thinks things should go, though.
I kinda get the impression that Dostoevsky believed that if everyone just followed "Love your neighbor as yourself" hard enough, then everything would work out for the best. And that any sort of purely secular political movement would inevitably fail—or if it did succeed, still wouldn't significantly improve life for the lower classes.
Dostoevsky also seemed to believe that people are redeemed from their sins by their own suffering on Earth, so the creation of a political utopia would be counterproductive anyway.
Crime and Punishment: I can definitely see why Dostoevsky is universally understood as a great author. The characters are all pretty amazingly uh, characterized. I feel these people.
Buuuut it's unpleasant to read because everything sucks. I mean, everyone's poor, in just-freed-the-serfs Russia, so of course it sucks, but it really sucks.
And the characters... suck. I mean that they're almost all unpleasant people. I'm actually wondering if part of the point of this book isn't that everything sucks so much that Raskolnikov, a pretty unrepentant murderer (spoiler!!) and proto-Redditor, still comes off pretty well compared to some. Luzhin is evil, and in such a petty and incompetent way i just want to give him a wedgie. The leftists are all morons. The detective manages to be as vicious and frightening as someone can possibly be while, at least so far, being an actual upright law enforcement officer.
And speaking of leftists being idiots, I knew Dostoevsky was opposed to the Nihilists and so on, and I kind of figured he was some variety of conservative, but I'm not sure if there are any positive politics here? Like a vision of how things should work. Like, Luzhin gives this little Gekko speech (which is pretty good, btw)
"You must admit," he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of triumph and superciliousness - he almost added "young man" - "that there is an advance, or as they say now, progress in the name of science and economic truth..."
"A commonplace."
"No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, 'love thy neighbour'; what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'Catch several hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society - the more whole coats, so to say - the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring, so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour's getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it..."
now reading that again i'm noticing you could subsume this satire with the leftists by conceiving of them both as a reaction to uh, a particular thing I'm not sure I could name, but a kind of theory of how society should be organized that leans greatly on its supposedly scientific nature. That still leaves me kind of clueless as to how Dostoevsky thinks things should go, though.
Opposition to system-building was a big part of early existentialism see: Kierkegaard vs Hegel
Maggie is great! i like this book... less than Bluets, but im still fond. as with... most? all? of her writing, it's a very distinctive form of semi-poetic theory memoir (this is less peculiar than it sounds), in this case it's her talking about her relationship with actor/sculptor/artist Harry Dodge, along with becoming a stepmother and having a baby of her own, and on the relationship between queerness and rebellion, queerness and family, between parent and child, and, in one memorable passage the exact nature of the relationship between taking a dump, being in labor, and being fucked in the ass, which terminates with relating an anecdote of her listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross. so, it's very self-interested, funny, smart, and all over the place. Good fun!
A Collapse of Horses ive read before, and probably posted about in this thread. here to report, it's still good! i will note that, having now back-to-backed the first and last stories in the collection, their weird interrelationship... still really doesn't quite make sense! and this time, the effect was... genuinely vaguely upsetting...
I don't know what I was expecting - some kind of dark fantasy thing I guess - it is not that. It's superficially similar but alien under the hood. I don't think I've read a book like that before.
For one, it's hilarious when it tries to be. At first I was actually annoyed, thinking it was going overboard with the ridiculousness of everything, but in several hundred pages it managed to make me care about a very absurd place and the people in it. Somehow the setting and characters are both ridiculous and not. Like, take Prunesquallor. He's named "Prunesquallor". He laughs stupidly at everything, he's basically a wacky doctor character, and yet he manages to be interesting, even sympathetic, while remaining that same parodic shambles. I don't know how it's even possible.
Also Peake just constantly rolls out these amazing little nuggets of description, something I've only really seen in Pratchett or Chandleriguess. Because he was a poet I suppose.
The introduction claims this first book in the trilogy is more popular than the sequels but I really can't get that. The whole thing is a prequel. Hell, it's like a prelude in the musical sense, one of those later ones where they just mean "prelude" to be a particular more improvisational form expressing a mood, regardless of whether it actually presages anything (but the book does).
I dunno. It's hard to describe. It wasn't a joke despite being a joke. It wasn't fantasy despite its fantastic nature.
The jacket tells me Anthony Burgess said "There is really no close relative to it in all our prose literature. It is uniquely brilliant and we are right to call it a modern classic." so I'll go with that.
Finished Crime and Punishment. After checking Wikipedia it does seem as though it was intended as antirationalist, in opposition to systems, as Myrmidon said. Given that that is against most of my basic beliefs it's neat that the book was still engaging.
So I have now gotten to the Dying Earth stories that focus on Cugel the Clever Which I would describe as either "If there was dark souls gaiden adventure game starring Patches" or "Conan the Barbarian, but instead of Conan it's Dennis from Always Sunny In Philadelphia Daffy Ducking his way through adventures"
i picked up the complete short stories by saki. on the basis of Sredni naming himself after his favourite saki story i’d now like you all to refer to me as Reginald’s Christmas Revel
i picked up the complete short stories by saki. on the basis of Sredni naming himself after his favourite saki story i’d now like you all to refer to me as Reginald’s Christmas Revel
Oh my god, I need to read more of the Reginald stories.
Anyone who enjoys new weird style books or just books that are odd, surreal, and atmospheric absolutely MUST read The Gray House by Miryam Petrosyan. It is utterly fantastic. It's fun, bizarre, violent, and endearing. The atmosphere is amazingly well done - for example, it perfectly communicates the feeling of walking (or wheeling if you are in a wheelchair as are these particular characters) into a dark hallway at night not knowing what you will find prowling the halls. That touch of apprehension when the known has become unknown. The fantastical elements are uncertain and unconfirmed. Is the House really alive? Did that kid actually turn into a cat or was it just a bad trip? Is the Forest real, and if so, what about the beings within it?
Constantly this book raises more questions than it answers. I love the characters, too. Tabaqui is a strange little dear, Blind is ruthless, Mermaid just wants happiness, Rat views the world through mirrors, Humback has an entire chapter with list of things he likes and dislikes.
Heyo! If anyone is interested in joining a small, close-knit Discord server about science fiction and fantasy novels, pester me. It's currently about ten people and we all chatter quite a lot; it's very active for the small user group.
The Luminous Dead is the best terrifying sci-fi horror lesbian romance with eldritch cave tunneling monsters and a constant threat of death novel I've ever read
Heh, perhaps a tad bit. But it IS utterly excellent. :D It absolutely blew me out of the water, especially what with it being a debut novel. It was spooky and filled with creeping terror in all the right ways. The main character is an absolute bad ass, and has darn near set the new standard for me on bad ass ladies in horrible situations. She's utterly human while also utterly amazing. Full review is long, but you can read it here if anyone is interested.
HIGHLY recommended if you enjoy scifi, horror, or books like The Martian by Andy Weir where characters are few and have limited resources!
I have been shamelessly shilling this book ever since I finished it, so may as well do a bit of that here as well :D
Also do not read The Path Keeper by N J Simmons. It's BAD. It's aggressively mediocre and bland. I get that's it's YA, but that's no excuse. Shadowfrost was YA and at least pretty good and had interesting and often funny characters. This one... Does not.
I would have given it two stars if it at least managed to stay at Twilight levels of bland, but it's definitely going downhill from there. They aren't even using the whole time mythology thing that's the premise!
And I actually still have no idea whatsoever what the time premise thing IS because they haven't even talked about it over a third of the way in!
If this weren't an ARC I'd stop reading now. This is going to be a one star for sure.
Comments
it was
quite something
described by one critic as "a long interval, marked by
nothing of distinguished note." Goethe himself describes
the period as one in which "a quiet, collected state
of mind was out of the question." Goethe is not alone in
turning to color at a particularly fraught moment. Think
of filmmaker Derek Jarman, who wrote his book Chroma
as he was going blind and dying of AIDS , a death he also
forecast on film as disappearing into a "blue screen." Or
of Wittgenstein, who wrote his Remarks on Colour during
the last eighteen months of his life, while dying of
stomach cancer. He knew he was dying; he could have
chosen to work on any philosophical problem under the
sun. He chose to write about color. About color and pain.
Much of this writing is urgent, opaque, and uncharacteristically
boring. "That which I am writing about so tediously,
may be obvious to someone whose mind is less
decrepit," he wrote.
dude had issues
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts
and
Brian Evenson's A Collapse of Horses
thoughts:
Maggie is great! i like this book... less than Bluets, but im still fond. as with... most? all? of her writing, it's a very distinctive form of semi-poetic theory memoir (this is less peculiar than it sounds), in this case it's her talking about her relationship with actor/sculptor/artist Harry Dodge, along with becoming a stepmother and having a baby of her own, and on the relationship between queerness and rebellion, queerness and family, between parent and child, and, in one memorable passage the exact nature of the relationship between taking a dump, being in labor, and being fucked in the ass, which terminates with relating an anecdote of her listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross. so, it's very self-interested, funny, smart, and all over the place. Good fun!
A Collapse of Horses ive read before, and probably posted about in this thread. here to report, it's still good! i will note that, having now back-to-backed the first and last stories in the collection, their weird interrelationship... still really doesn't quite make sense! and this time, the effect was... genuinely vaguely upsetting...
he knows what a gun is, and his boots have rubber soles
but he and his companion are also grievously injured when people in a fort? encampment?... throw rocks at him...?
Brian has a real knack for giving you absolutely just the wrong level of detail to easily suss out what/where/when the fuck his stories are happening
The third, Titus Alone, is waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy different and you may or may not appreciate it.
Prunesquallor is awesome btw
Which I would describe as either "If there was dark souls gaiden adventure game starring Patches" or "Conan the Barbarian, but instead of Conan it's Dennis from Always Sunny In Philadelphia Daffy Ducking his way through adventures"
Constantly this book raises more questions than it answers. I love the characters, too. Tabaqui is a strange little dear, Blind is ruthless, Mermaid just wants happiness, Rat views the world through mirrors, Humback has an entire chapter with list of things he likes and dislikes.
It's so good.
I have been shamelessly shilling this book ever since I finished it, so may as well do a bit of that here as well :D
I would have given it two stars if it at least managed to stay at Twilight levels of bland, but it's definitely going downhill from there. They aren't even using the whole time mythology thing that's the premise!
And I actually still have no idea whatsoever what the time premise thing IS because they haven't even talked about it over a third of the way in!
If this weren't an ARC I'd stop reading now. This is going to be a one star for sure.