I really liked that book. Read it as I was first getting into board games.
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Is burglars guide by the bldgblog guy
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It is.
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this guy really thinks he’s the next cormac mccarthy, the writing is the most bathetic imitation of his style
It’s monsoon season, and lightning bobs and weaves in the corner of your eyes all day like floaters. There are three separate storms to the south, delicately wind-tilted on the horizon. Lightning races them in a stitchless thread, and to the north rain shimmers through the sheerest rainbow, stamped perfectly horizontal against the mountains like the execution line on a document.
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I finished Tombs of Atuan. It was very moving, but also wearying.
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Been trying to get back into reading after a very long break of not touching a book, luckily More Bugs by Em Reed came along!
This is not remotely my “usual thing” (if such a thing actually exists, as I said it’s been a while since I read anything) but by god did it hit. Lots of interesting thoughts and perspectives on alienation packaged in this sorta romance novel meets sci-fi blend all the while following a protagonist returning to her childhood home post-breakup, all hopes of an exciting, new life in some big city elsewhere jettisoned away and replaced with this thick, suburban dread. Stuck in the house all day with a spiteful single parent, getting regular awkward lifts from an ex because you can’t drive and it’s the only way to actually go anywhere, unexpected milf subplot that develops into something… bigger. I was worried it was gonna be a bit overstuffed with all these elements but it surprisingly all weaves together really well and felt very honest every step of the way. It’s also quite hopeful and legitimately beautiful in a way I wasn’t expecting but will probably stick with me for a long time. If you ever feel lost, this is probably both a good antidote and will give you plenty to reflect upon too. Can’t recommend it enough!
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A Burglar’s Guide to the City was a fun read
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This might come as a surprise to anyone who knows me but I think Clive Barker might be a little too fixated on genitals.
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he loves his swollen plums
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the din of ejaculaton
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I don’t mind a boastful plum but when a guy just saw his kid eaten by a giant monster man and in his grief he’s thinking “my dead boy’s dick was circumcised, just like mine” I think we’re seeing a pathology and maybe it’s not the character’s.
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really glad to see more people enjoying this! i liked it alot although for anyone else i should specify the important caveat that the author is my partner lol… i dont think thats a disqualifying detail though as i dont think i would have been able to marry anyone who wrote bad books
current reading
susan leigh foster - choreography & narrative: abt the development of ballet from court dances into a specifically narrative form. for being an academic book it’s happily still very readable and subtle in the points it develops, i sometimes feel chary of books from academia bc the arguments can be structured like “in this chapter i’ll do the thing. now i’m doing the thing. in conclusion, i did the thing.” really liked the first section’s comparison of three different danced versions of the pygmalion story. a lot of the history it relates was new to me but felt depressingly familiar from the game studies days - like the way a mythic prehistory of dance as universal language was invented at pretty much the same time the ballet itself was becoming increasingly hierarchial, reproduceable and removed from everyday life (gulf between what was possible for a good amateur dancer vs a professional, etc)
schiller - the robbers: i liked reading abt how the ballets would freely take stories from famous plays and things so have been trying to read more of those. this one is funny bc the basic plot is very bare and stagey but it’s punctuated by all these great, crazy sturm und drang speeches about defying god and becoming a monster in a monstrous world and such. the final fantasy of its day.
raymond chandler - the little sister: this was always my favourite raymond chandler book. reading it again now almost all the parts with a female character are unbearable BUT the little sister herself is great. it works so well to have this almost cartoonish country-mouse monster loose in the hardboiled setting of the books that i can’t believe it doesnt happen in them more; both she and the brother have some of the same horribly believable, flat, malevolent quality of like Wimpy from Popeye or Lucy from Peanuts or something. so yeah a mixed bag but you sort of read these for the “bits” anyway and between that character, the icepick stuff, and my favourite drug sequence of the many in these books it might still be the one i like best. favourite forgotten detail: when marlowe offhandedly remarks that smoking marijuana “warps and callouses the emotions” and that this might be why one of the characters ends up a serial ice pick murderer!!
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I’m currently reading Lonesome Dove for reasons I only vaguely recall, I think I saw an article about it some months back and was surprised by how many comments were along the lines of “this is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read”. Unfortunately it is like 840 pages long and I borrowed it from the library so I’m basically stuck hoping that no one places a hold on it as there is little chance I can get through all that in one single 3 weeks period, much less one during the holiday season.
Fortunately it has been a fairly easy read so far, generally not one for “cowboy” books but this has been mostly character focused and works on that level.
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oh yeah i read this last month too!! it took me a second to get into the long winding sentences, but once i got a couple chapters in it was a pleasure. loved the moments of sensuality as experienced by someone who lives entirely in their own head. the second half of the book was real fun and i’m still mulling over the ending
currently trying to read Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, third edition. have made it maybe a quarter of the way through the second-edition preface in the last two weeks – her online essays are packed with footnotes that say ‘more on this in my book that i wrote that you can buy with money’ but i was not expecting the same treatment IN her book. and it’s her first book too!! i’m sure that once i get into the actual text itself it’ll be fine, but i have been thinking about how a decade of reading angry trans women’s posts online has probably given me a decent working knowledge of transmisogyny anyway lol
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Never read a preface imo
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I was surprised at how much I liked Lonesome Dove. I also used to think that books about cowboys wouldn’t really interest me but I’ve been convinced otherwise several times now.
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Environmental grandeur, solitude, and social brutality are rich themes
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