is this the original “girl who stinks good”
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I have really slowed down on my reading habits, but that’s okay. Over the span of two months I have read through a book I always wanted to. Wuthering Heights! And it’s really good. Just the kind of English literature I love. Gothic, angsty, passionate (I am being tautological) but also full of that cheeky kind of humor carried through ironic notes in the narration of epistolary novels from this time. I liked it a lot and was absolutely delighted by my surprise with just how petty, scorn-filled, mad, and evil many of its characters were.
You could say lots about Heathcliff in respect to this, but I think I really found the most delight in the way all semblance of English politeness quickly dissolved around the young and feeble Linton Heathcliff. Even the maid would get into loud arguments in front of that weakling coward basically calling him a waste of everybody’s time that should hurry up and just die. It was hilarious, reminding me of something from like a Solondz film or something.
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yesss wuthering heights is savage i love it
He entered, vociferating oaths dreadful to hear; and caught me in the act of stowing his son sway in the kitchen cupboard. Hareton was impressed with a wholesome terror of encountering either his wild beast’s fondness or his madman’s rage; for in one he ran a chance of being squeezed and kissed to death, and in the other of being flung into the fire, or dashed against the wall; and the poor thing remained perfectly quiet wherever I chose to put him.
‘There, I’ve found it out at last!’ cried Hindley, pulling me back by the skin of my neck, like a dog. ‘By heaven and hell, you’ve sworn between you to murder that child! I know how it is, now, that he is always out of my way. But, with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving-knife, Nelly! You needn’t laugh; for I’ve just crammed Kenneth, head-downmost, in the Black-horse marsh; and two is the same as one—and I want to kill some of you: I shall have no rest till I do!’
‘But I don’t like the carving-knife, Mr. Hindley,’ I answered; ‘it has been cutting red herrings. I’d rather be shot, if you please.’
‘You’d rather be damned!’ he said; ‘and so you shall. No law in England can hinder a man from keeping his house decent, and mine’s abominable! Open your mouth.’ He held the knife in his hand, and pushed its point between my teeth: but, for my part, I was never much afraid of his vagaries. I spat out, and affirmed it tasted detestably—I would not take it on any account.
‘Oh!’ said he, releasing me, ‘I see that hideous little villain is not Hareton: I beg your pardon, Nell. If it be, he deserves flaying alive for not running to welcome me, and for screaming as if I were a goblin. Unnatural cub, come hither! I’ll teach thee to impose on a good-hearted, deluded father. Now, don’t you think the lad would be handsomer cropped? It makes a dog fiercer, and I love something fierce—get me a scissors—something fierce and trim! Besides, it’s infernal affectation—devilish conceit it is, to cherish our ears—we’re asses enough without them. Hush, child, hush! Well then, it is my darling! wisht, dry thy eyes—there’s a joy; kiss me. What! it won’t? Kiss me, Hareton! Damn thee, kiss me! By God, as if I would rear such a monster! As sure as I’m living, I’ll break the brat’s neck.’
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This was a highlight. I also love when they drop this kid off the upstairs banister. It’s deranged and actually scary!
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Just finished reading I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons. Back to reading the Wings of Fire series I guess.
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Draft post got very long. I think I read all this over the last few months.
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
I eat up the extended discussions of the decades of research on the ocean. I think the main characters of novels like these have that eternal problem of they could just be any guy. The human dimension is good and probably grounds the novel in a necessary way but I could honestly just read wikis and encyclopedias of attempts to make contact with extremely alien beings.
The Day Lasts a Hundred Years - Chingiz Aitmatov
I like this a lot. It’s about a guy from a small railway depot town burying a friend in the old Kazakh graveyard in the desert. The book is mostly wistful memories of days before institutionalised bureaucracy, remembering the wars they fought for others and the resulting pseudo-life they now lead. Straightforward and simple reminiscences covering the Kazakh experience of the mid twentieth century. The injustice of Russian influence is constantly felt. A lot of it is to do with the pressures of being the right kind of man in society.
‘Yedigei smiled as he remembered. But that showed what Kazangap was like. They don’t make them like that anymore; there are no Kazangaps around today. We are carrying the last of his line to his grave. It only remains to hide him under the earth, say a few words of farewell, and that will be “a man was close to that.’
The copy I got is full of misprintings where random characters are replaced with a close equivalent and I think something went wrong with the proof’s translation to digital, like a word doc imported wrong. This isn’t significant but it gives the book I got a kinda charming quality.
There’s a chapter where the main character Yedigei’s extremely huge camel gets so furiously in heat that he runs away and steals all the camels from neighbouring towns. It then proceeds to mate so loudly and persistently with all of the stolen camels that life is temporarily ruined for everyone. Yedigei has to solve it. Episodes like this stick with you much more than the scifi in the novel. The parallel scifi story is ultimately a bit of a cosmic punchline about how native Kazakhstani tribes are of no interest or consequence to the powers that hold the keys to space travel and potential intergalactic utopia (which they naturally refuse due to cold war paranoia).
‘In the past, people left their children things when they died-for better or for worse, there was always a legacy. How many books have been written, how many plays performed in theatres about those times-how they divided up the spoils and what happened to those who received things. And why? Because these legacies usually consisted of things obtained as a result of other people’s sufferings, other people’s work, deception and so they brought evil, sin and injustice. But I console myself with the thought that we, thank God, are free of that. My legacy will bring no harm to anyone. My legacy is my soul, my writings, and in them is all that I understood and learned from the water. I have no greater riches to leave to my children. Here in the Sarozek desert, I have come to the conclusion that life has been directing me here, so that I might be lost, disappear and then write down for them everything that I’ve thought and worked out. Thus I will live on in my children. Perhaps they will succeed in achieving that which I did not succeed in doing… They will find it harder to live than we do. So let them amass knowledge while they are young.’
Personal Finance – Jane King and Mary Carey
One of my new year’s resolutions is to read 3 books to improve my financial literacy. This is one of them. The chapter on buy to rent was like having an octopus made of ideology try to rip my brain out and reveal the landlord within. Reading about finance actually makes me break out in anxious sweat and makes me feel a sort of helpless anger at how complicated certain elements of finance apparently need to be. It feels like this should be a much larger part of education given how many ways there seem to be to fuck up long-term saving and income streams. I think it might be best to just get a financial adviser rather than self-teach myself about gilts and bonds and law.
The Strange Library – Haruki Murakami
A short children’s story with multimedia print as part of the stories presentation. It’s about a boy who gets trapped in a surreal library basement and it’s all quite Murakami-y. Although the direction it goes feels like there was no real ending in mind, the prints, illustrations and layout are a neat aesthetic layer to what’s happening. There’s a mild implication that some of the story happens out of order and there are false page numbers throughout.
The White Book - Han Kang
Quite a pleasant read but also sad. The chapters often being a single page long are impressive given how much scene-setting and character details they provide. The book is also very short and contributes to the ephemeral feeling of it all. A meditation on grief that comes and goes though I may probably never think about it again.
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I read almost 100 pages of China Mieville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution and don’t have much good to say about it, other than it offers a pretty eccentric way to learn about the revolution. It’s at the same time detailed, approachable, but inaccessible for how quick it moves and how little it actually functions as a narrative. Maybe that’s my bad. I thought this would have been a novel-like depiction of the revolution, told by someone who hopefully has some decent taste, and aimed more at providing a leftist education than turning life into a melodrama. But it’s sadly neither a dry historical telling nor a stupid Spielberg movie about the revolution. I’m putting it down.
I was also reading a bit of Titus Groan which is actually pretty cool. But while I find the character of the book really charming and the imagery to be some of the most fantastic I can think of, the prose is a bit exhausting to get through. Gonna take this one slow. I am reminded of places like Lothric Castle in Dark Souls 3 and the slums and regular people/monsters of Elden Ring as I read.
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Mervyn Peake is a genius and his Gormenghast books are masterpieces. Stick with it. He writes like an illustrator.
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Got through this in two days, it’s a great read, highly recommended
@OneSecondBefore think you’d enjoy it for obvious reasons
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Well well! This wasn’t on my radar, but it is right up my alley. And here I was finally returning to my old science fictional reading habits… I’ll seek this one out.
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Halfway through wings of fire 14. Going to finish the series soon. Then I can try to make myself read less fun things.
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I just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, and I’m now 1/4th into the sequel, Children of Ruin. I saw someone online say that it’s catnip for adults who grew up reading Animorphs. Well, I do see why someone would say that. Like Animorphs, it’s space opera grounded in evolutionary biology and alien consciousness. This series is a lot less dark though.
These are very light reading, easy page turners. Which is kind of just what I needed after slogging through too much marxist non-fiction lately. I’m enjoying this series so far but I can’t say I fully respect it – the characters are trash and the ideas aren’t very original. Especially when you get to the sequel, it becomes apparent that you’re reading a simpler and friendlier version of terrain that’s already been exhaustively mapped by Peter Watts, and with more panache. Like, it seems like he’s just trying to write the pop version of the Firefall books. Portia spiders, hive mind aliens, people mind melding with octopuses, humanity genetically engineering other consciousnesses, it’s all in there. This is all of that stuff with a less misanthropic worldview, so it’s no wonder these books are bigger hits.
But they worked great as chill vacation reads! And I do love the uplifted jumping spiders in these books… They’re adorable.
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I read the first one of those and had a good time with it, I keep going back and forth on giving the sequel a shot as so many people have described it to me as basically the first book happening again which isn’t exactly a rave?
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Cyclonopedia is a good time, reminds me of reading k-punk and the various blogs in his orbit while out of my mind with boredom, alienation, and undiagnosed mental health problems at my first job out of college. Mentally processing theory-speak feels akin to unfocusing your eyes to view a stereogram. It’s all vague and abstract enough that as I read it it seems to simultaneously explain American foreign and domestic policy as well as the lore of Elden Ring. I’m less than 2/3 of the way through it and assume there’s going to be more narrative toward the end but whatever is coming I’m here for it.
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I’m reading Daniel Stern’s autobiography and it’s mostly succeeding in making me resent how you could like, get an NYC apartment on a handshake, back in the day.
One interesting tidbit though, I didn’t realize his role in City Slickers was originally going to go to Rick Moranis, but he backed out of the film at the last minute.
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I finished Wings of Fire arcs 1-3. It was good. If I ever raise a kid they will have access to the books.
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finished Notes on the Cinematographer a few days ago and it was pretty good and illuminating. some i noted down
Two simplicities. The bad: simplicity as starting-point, sought too soon. The good: simplicity as end-product, recompense for years of effort.
No psychology (of the kind that only discovers what it can explain).
An ice-cold commentary can warm, by contrast, tepid dialogue in a film. Phenomenon anologous to hot and cold in painting.
Your film’s beauty will not be in the images (postcardism) but in the ineffable that they will emanate.
Your genius is not in the counterfeiting of nature (actors, sets), but in your own way of choosing and coordinating bits taken directly from it by machines.
DIVINATION - how can one not associate that name with the two sublime machines that I use for my work? Camera and tape recorder, carry me far away from the intelligence that complicates everything.
‘That’s it’ or ‘that’s not it’, at the first glance. Reasoning comes afterward (to approve our first glance).
i wish!!
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Reminds me of something else I’ve heard, but cannot remember the source. All filmmaking is compromise until you get into the editing room. The final edit is the only pure choice a filmmaker gets to make.
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I am still working on the autobiography of Daniel Stern and like, his son is a California senator? How did I not know he had so much going on beyond just being Marv from Home Alone
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So I think I just have Winglets and Dragonslayer left and then I’ll have read the entirety of Wings of Fire.
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