Thus far this is some dense shit, it’s like a more lyrical Tollmaster post
I think I made it about half a chapter into Gravity’s Rainbow before I went “nope!”, hopefully your attempt is a good deal more successful.
anonymous
Read The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe is hard to find around here. Uh this was great and I can’t wait to patch together a mismatched set of the New Sun from the next second-hand book sale.
Also finished Decision at Doona (Anne McCafferey). I guess she lived on a farm at some point? The “small government good; big state bad, out-of-touch, inefficient” message got old quickly.
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The Book of the New Sun only gets better as it goes along. And then after that you’ll have to read Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun
I actually just started to re-read Book of the New Sun : o
BOTNS is white-hot fire.
Boy, I really need to read like a billion sf things that I never read.
read a sherlock holmes story called “the hound of the baskervilles” and whoa, so fun. it feels almost anachronistic to think people in the wake of the 20th century had such a fresh sense of humour. pacing is great; a lot of stuff going on at all times but always taking its time/controlling the flow.
This is, I think, one of the better Sherlock Holmes stories. The mystery is nonsense but the story is, yes, a delight.
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jump into Lost World next! Pulp (it turns out) is a lot more fun in its pure state. And it’s got dinos and jungle adventures and geography and even more jokes!
And Professor Challenger has the greatest introduction. It’s a credit to our universe that John Rhys-Davies got to play him even if in a bad movie (show? fuzzy memory).
sometimes I forget one of my cats is technically named after something from the tbotns
no neither of them are “Alzabo” damn that would have been good
yeah, but i was kind of expecting it. ended up being the goofy kind of nonsense so all the better for me.
will do.
sometimes I forget one of my cats is technically named after something from the tbotns
anyway all is vanity, there is nothing new under this dong, all we are is boobs in the wind, etc.
it’s Jolenta isn’t it
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I finished reading Dorothy Sayers’ translation of The Song of Roland recently so I might as well cross-post my review from off of goodreads
The Song of Roland is obviously going to fall short by a modern standard, and it is certainly more shallow than the epics of Antiquity, but there is powerful charm to this work, and as it forms the baseline for so much later literature, it could have been far worse. It is blatantly propaganda, in some way creating the chivalric ideals that would resonate for centuries thereafter. Yet we don’t find as much temptation to fault the Aeneid for its propagandistic tendencies. Still, the portrayal of Islam deserves to be ridiculed. The Saracens are indistinguishable from the Franks, except that they worship “Mahound” and Apollo (!) instead of the Christian god.
So, what is good about the Song of Roland? It has a swift, relentless pace, matching exactly the tenor of the battles described. The characters, though flat and stereotyped, are established as soon as they are introduced, and it is their own actions that determine the course of the plot, loosely lifted from a real historic battle. Unsurprisingly, the villain Ganelon is one of the more compelling characters in the narrative — neither brave nor a coward, neither wise nor rash — he is calculating and paranoid and his machinations are the main motivator of the plot.
So, too, can we praise the Song of Roland for its structure. Though the poem is short and the story simple, the symmetrical structure, full of distorted reflections of scenes is wonderful in revealing the ethics of the author. Charlemagne is portrayed as wise because he heeds the advice of his council, while the ‘paynim’ king Marsilion — in a similar scene near the beginning — almost murders a messenger with a javelin simply because the message was troublesome. Many characters have contrasting doubles. Roland has Oliver, reserved, thoughtful and sometimes condescending as a direct contrast to Roland’s boisterous, brave and prideful almost-innocence. The story is split into two battles, one in which the French are ambushed at Roncevaux and lose, and the other in which there is no ambush and they win. The work is full of such parallels. It is these qualities that enrich the otherwise simple poem.
no it’s Severa
it is when regarding my cats that all my most nihilistic boob and butt and dong philosophies become suspended
truly marvelous creatures
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I finished The Three Musketeers
and several other books since.
The Three Musketeers is really good.
I’ll read the sequels eventually.
I started reading The Shadow of the Torturer because of these mentions (and because I had nothing else to read atm and the library had it in stock), hopefully it goes well!
Always despised this dude’s facile and surface-level bullshit analysis, didn’t realize he was also an Actual Shill
I’m reading a collection of Seneca’s work, Dialogues or something like that. with the consolation letters and more
seneca was a yung savage, boy could write!!
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Seneca was a hypocrite!!! Where can I find the real anime fan stoic man?!
Never get in a time machine and meet your heroes.