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Robo Reagan posted:I'm surprised how quickly the book wraps up. The general spends all of like two pages to arrive at the graveyard and get to staking. He doesn't gently caress around. drat straight all the people pleasantly surprised by how good Carmilla is should also check out Le Fanu's story "Schalken the Painter" mentioned in the OP, which is maybe my personal favorite of his. it's very short and also involves a revenant who loves to gently caress https://gutenberg.readingroo.ms/1/1/6/9/11699/11699-h/11699-h.htm [there's actually two versions of the story since Le Fanu revised it between 1839 and 1851: an annotated version noting the revisions can be found here for those with academic interest, but it's probably not great for pleasure-reading: https://editions.covecollective.org/edition/strange-event-life-schalken-painter]
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# ? Oct 15, 2022 13:56 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 05:51 |
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I'm about 2/3 of the way through and I'm loving this vampire con artist. "Oh please, my preternaturally beautiful daughter simply must stay with you while I attend a matter of the utmost secrecy and importance. No, don't ask anything about it. Yes, she must be allowed alone around your daughter. Farewell."
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# ? Oct 15, 2022 14:14 |
Mercury Hat posted:I'm about 2/3 of the way through and I'm loving this vampire con artist. "Oh please, my preternaturally beautiful daughter simply must stay with you while I attend a matter of the utmost secrecy and importance. No, don't ask anything about it. Yes, she must be allowed alone around your daughter. Farewell." Look, it's hard for you city folk to understand just how . . . lonely . . . . a girl can get when she's all by herself in her chalet
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# ? Oct 15, 2022 16:54 |
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I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It's interesting reading about vampires before all the conventions and tropes were ossified. Some good gothic imagery and scene setting.
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# ? Oct 15, 2022 19:41 |
Also please suggest books for December. Right now I'm thinking _Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka_ by Gogol because it's free, set in Ukraine, and one of the short stories is Christmas-themed. I haven't read it yet so it would be bit of a shot in the dark tho.
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 00:29 |
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Part of why Dracula is so well remembered, it almost goes without saying, is that it was adapted into hugely successful movies. Nosferatu in 1922, Dracula in 1931, and a whole bunch of sequels that were all based on the book, really over-weighs the influence of the book to us (not that it isn't good). For BotM, now that it's being remixed: do they have to be novels, or can we throw in suggestions for nonfiction, essays, plays?
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 01:15 |
poisonpill posted:
It has to be a "book", that is, it has to be printable on pages between covers, and ideally it should be some combination of fun, interesting, and low-cost.
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 01:19 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It has to be a "book", that is, it has to be printable on pages between covers, and ideally it should be some combination of fun, interesting, and low-cost. I'll put the following out, and I think each one would drive some good discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAOS:_Charles_Manson,_the_CIA,_and_the_Secret_History_of_the_Sixties The best crackping CSPAM brain-breaking book of the last decade. Just incredible in scope and scale. This is both the story of Manson, and also the story of journalism, unravelling the established story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Country quote:Snow Country (雪国, Yukiguni, IPA: [jɯkiꜜɡɯɲi]) is a novel by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. The novel is considered a classic work of Japanese literature[1] and was among the three novels the Nobel Committee cited in 1968, when Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man More fun and readable than you'd think; one of the more enjoyable selects of important Black American Lit. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31451077-autumn-of-the-black-snake quote:Autumn of the Black Snake tells how the early republic battled the coalition of Indians that came closer than any adversary, before or since, to halting the nation’s expansion. In evocative and absorbing prose, William Hogeland conjures up the woodland battles and the hardball politics that formed the Legion of the United States, the country’s first true standing army. His memorable portraits of soldiers and leaders on both sides—from the daring war chiefs Blue Jacket and Little Turtle to the doomed Richard Butler and a steely, even ruthless Washington—drive a tale of horrific violence, brilliant strategizing, stupendous blunders, and valorous deeds. This sweeping account, at once exciting and dark, builds to a crescendo as Washington and Alexander Hamilton, at enormous risk, outmaneuver Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other skeptics of standing armies—and Washington appoints General “Mad” Anthony Wayne to lead the Legion. Wayne marches into the forests of the Old Northwest, where the very Indians he is charged with defeating will bestow on him, with grudging admiration, a new name: Black Snake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_and_Terrible_Saga_of_the_Outlaw_Motorcycle_Gangs Just a classic for anyone who hasn't read HST yet, or only read FaLiLV One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich In case you're looking for something RU/Ukraine - tangential
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 01:50 |
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This has my vote, the rest a bit less as I would prefer botm to stay away from political poo poo.
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 07:33 |
added these to the suggestions post at the top of the thread. One thing I need to figure out is how to do polls since we're in a megathread model now. I may shift to using twitter polls. Hrm. Let's try this quote:The King Must Die is a 1958 bildungsroman and historical novel by Mary Renault that traces the early life and adventures of Theseus, a hero in Greek mythology. It is set in locations throughout Ancient Greece: Troizen, Corinth, Eleusis, Athens, Knossos in Crete, and Naxos. Renault wrote a sequel, The Bull from the Sea, in 1962. quote:The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950) is a science fiction novel by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt. An example of space opera subgenre, the novel is a "fix-up" compilation of four previously published stories: quote:Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs is a book written by Hunter S. Thompson, published in 1967 by Random House.[3] It was widely lauded for its up-close and uncompromising look at the Hells Angels motorcycle club, during a time when the gang was highly feared and accused of numerous criminal activities. The New York Times described Thompson's portrayal as "a world most of us would never dare encounter."[4][5] quote:Snow Country (雪国, Yukiguni, IPA: [jɯkiꜜɡɯɲi]) is a novel by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. The novel is considered a classic work of Japanese literature[1] and was among the three novels the Nobel Committee cited in 1968, when Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.[2] https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1581764080037023744?s=20&t=nG90556cjuw5h2HbFb5Xpg Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 23:15 |
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It’s really really obvious but a lot of le Fanu’s material is direct or indirect allusion to the absentee landlords of Ireland. It’s probably less interesting to modern audiences than the lesbian vampire reading, but there’s a lot in Carmilla about the English owners of the land sucking it dry and dead, and giving nothing back to the people (who are being literally fed on). Anyway, good voting options.
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# ? Oct 16, 2022 23:56 |
poisonpill posted:It’s really really obvious but a lot of le Fanu’s material is direct or indirect allusion to the absentee landlords of Ireland. It’s probably less interesting to modern audiences than the lesbian vampire reading, but there’s a lot in Carmilla about the English owners of the land sucking it dry and dead, and giving nothing back to the people (who are being literally fed on). Not obvious at all, I wasn't thinking of that angle at all and should have -- I noticed it was weird that they were making the narrator so specifically English but figured that was just him writing for his audience.
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# ? Oct 17, 2022 04:19 |
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I'm new to this SA book club so I don't know what you've done in the past, or what the goal is for the future, but are more classic novels like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Invisible Man (HG Wells), War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Red Badge of Courage, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, Gulliver's Travels what we aim for or just more modern good reads that people have enjoyed? Or does it not matter All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr was good, do we do like cheesy adventure novels like Ted Bell or Clive Cussler? Michael Crichton has some good stuff that isn't Jurassic Park, etc
McSpankWich fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Oct 17, 2022 |
# ? Oct 17, 2022 13:43 |
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There's definitely a risk when picking classics, which I think we all tend to fall into. The old quote that a classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read, where it sounds like a good idea and then nobody shows up because it's a slog. 20,000 leagues under the sea, Red Badge of Courage, and even 1984 can all drag, even if they're important and everyone should read them. It's why I wouldn't suggest hemingway or Woolfe, even if they're awesome. I think a month of the thread digging into Ts Eliot would be awesome but I doubt it will ever happen. All the Light We Cannot See is a good pick: accessible, easily available, a fun read, but also has some depth and drives discussion. So would Gulliver's Travels (if you want to keep up the Irish theme) or Time Traveller. All these books are also good to have in the thread because they have good historical reference points that people could help give context and background to, that you wouldn't necessarily get just reading straight through. Michael Criton's State of Fear could be interesting because there would be a ton of people getting banned while arguing about climate change, but I'm not sure there would be much to talk about in the book itself (unlike Gulliver's Travels or whatever).
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# ? Oct 17, 2022 16:54 |
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State of Fear was actually exactly the book I was thinking of! That's funny. Yeah I get what you're saying about the classics. 20,000 Leagues in particular I remember saying to myself "Alright I get it there's a lot of fish" a few times. Alright yeah I see what the goal is. Thanks
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# ? Oct 17, 2022 16:58 |
McSpankWich posted:I'm new to this SA book club so I don't know what you've done in the past, or what the goal is for the future, but are more classic novels like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Invisible Man (HG Wells), War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Red Badge of Courage, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, Gulliver's Travels what we aim for or just more modern good reads that people have enjoyed? Or does it not matter All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr was good, do we do like cheesy adventure novels like Ted Bell or Clive Cussler? Michael Crichton has some good stuff that isn't Jurassic Park, etc There's a list of prior picks in the first post of the thread. The short answer is "yes." I try to mix it up a bit. The main consideration is more "are people going to participate for this book?" more than anything else. The draw of classics isn't so much that they're classics, it's that pre-1930 titles are out of copyright and free downloads so more people are willing to participate. More modern titles are good too but if they're too popular then all the copies are checked out at the libraries and fewer people can get their hands on a copy, or worse yet, everyone's already read it anyway (which is why we'd never pick, say, Tolkien). The ideal modern book is something like BEAR by Marian Engel or All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott ,; the ideal older title is something like Carmilla or Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome. Those may seem like disparate entries but they're all well-written, widely available, and with a powerful "hook" so that people will want to read them and post about them after reading. Roughly, what I think I'm going to try for the next year is alternating free-download books with newer titles, each every other month. Which brings me to a question about the poll candidates -- Right now "Snow Country" is ahead in the poll -- it's a relatively modern title. Are people picking it because they've read it already and want to talk about it, or because they want to read it, or because they think other people should read it? Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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# ? Oct 17, 2022 17:16 |
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I picked it but had not even heard of it before, I am interested in reading it more than the others. (Which I also have not read)
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# ? Oct 17, 2022 17:32 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Looking over the list of prior suggested titles, my plan for next month's Book of the Month at this point is probably going to be The King Must Die by Mary Renault -- putting that out there early so people can reserve copies etc. or give me other suggestions if folks think that one's a bad pick. I've previously suggested Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland but never heard back.
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# ? Oct 19, 2022 01:32 |
xcheopis posted:I've previously suggested Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland but never heard back. I'll make sure it's in the December poll. https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1582866365878132736?s=20&t=GNquRlr12MI6SRG9sPLxwg
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# ? Oct 19, 2022 23:49 |
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I started reading Voyage of the Space Beagle even though it had no chance of winning because I was in the mood to read something light. So far it's been space horror from the perspective of the alien, and by some strange serendipity it lines up with my current non-fiction book - An Immense World by Ed Yong, where I'm reading about the sensory systems of animals like electric eels.
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# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:40 |
AngusPodgorny posted:I started reading Voyage of the Space Beagle even though it had no chance of winning because I was in the mood to read something light. So far it's been space horror from the perspective of the alien, and by some strange serendipity it lines up with my current non-fiction book - An Immense World by Ed Yong, where I'm reading about the sensory systems of animals like electric eels. It's a really neat book and massively influential -- literally the sourcebook for Alien, Star Trek, and the AD&D Displacer Beast. And also, sortof, scientology. Van Vogt is a just in a really weird place in the history of SF, halfway between Philip K Dick and L. Ron Hubbard. Both brilliant and awful. Great article on him here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fix-up-artist-the-chaotic-sf-of-a-e-van-vogt/ Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:50 |
Snow Country won the poll, so that will be what we roll over to in November. Once I have a few more December ideas I'll get that poll up also.
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# ? Oct 22, 2022 20:58 |
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poisonpill posted:It’s really really obvious but a lot of le Fanu’s material is direct or indirect allusion to the absentee landlords of Ireland. It’s probably less interesting to modern audiences than the lesbian vampire reading, but there’s a lot in Carmilla about the English owners of the land sucking it dry and dead, and giving nothing back to the people (who are being literally fed on). This is good context to have and I appreciate it. I know some of the standard European vampire stories can be read as a general indictment of the aristocracy, but it's nice to have a specific historical issue to point to. It's definitely something I wouldn't get on my own reading.
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# ? Oct 22, 2022 21:32 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Snow Country won the poll, so that will be what we roll over to in November. Once I have a few more December ideas I'll get that poll up also. Odd, I thought it was going to be "The King Must Die" but I am cool with Snow Country. Considering it has been translated from Japanese, I will read it in Dutch as there were a few copies in the regional library and the book club got me back into paper books. Owning books is a burden and I love my local library so there we go.
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# ? Oct 23, 2022 09:35 |
Keetron posted:Odd, I thought it was going to be "The King Must Die" but I am cool with Snow Country. . Yeah that was what I'd planned but it's clear from the poll that the interest isn't there right now. I'll try re pitching it at some point in the future probably.
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# ? Oct 23, 2022 15:30 |
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Gotta say I am surprised at the overwhelming response to Snow Country. But I'm glad for it; this should draw conversation if anything does. It's short, has dramatic interesting sentences, and is capital-L Lit. Disclaimer is that the main character is not supposed to be likable, which is always a turn-off to some. The language is a primary draw, being likened to a haiku about impermanence, sadness, and beauty. https://japaneselit.net/2011/10/15/snow-country/ quote:Snow Country won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, a year which serves as a convenient temporal marker for the changing perception of Japan in the collective consciousness of the Western world. The postwar American occupation of Japan had ended fifteen years prior, and many of the American G.I. officers returned home from the country with the knowledge and motivation to create Japanese Studies departments in American universities like Columbia and Harvard. With their classes and translations came a new respect for the Japan of the twentieth century among academic circles. Meanwhile, Japan itself had risen from the ashes of wartime devastation and had begun to enter an era of double-digit GNP growth. The city of Tokyo had hosted the Summer Olympics in 1964; and, with the ultra-modern Tokyo Dome stadium and high speed bullet train between Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan was able to prove itself the technological and economic equal of any country in the world. The Nobel Committee thus awarded its literary prize to Kawabata for reasons that were partially political, as they would to many candidates over the following four decades. As with these other laureates, however, Kawabata did not win the world’s foremost award for literary distinction for political reasons alone. The US translator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Seidensticker quote:"Do you not, my esteemed master, find this a rather impenetrable passage?" Mr. Seidensticker recalled asking [Kawabata], ever so gently, during the translation of Snow Country.
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# ? Oct 25, 2022 03:55 |
Fan of the muscular approach to vampire-killing in this story. In addition to the general mentioned before, I love the little side story of the Moravian nobleman who spots there’s a vampire problem, nicks the vampire’s clothes and waves them at it from the top of a tower going “Oi, looking for these?” and then cuts its head off with a sword when it gets to the top of the tower.
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# ? Oct 31, 2022 05:20 |
Ok! We are officially in Snow Country! quote:Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring (onsen) town of Yuzawa.[1] (Kawabata did not mention the name of the town in his novel.) book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Country-Vintage-International-Yasunari-Kawabata-ebook/dp/B00B0LP3U0/ The author: quote:Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 16 October 1968, the first Japanese person to receive such a distinction.[10] In awarding the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of his novels, Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and The Old Capital.[11] Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Nov 7, 2022 |
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# ? Nov 1, 2022 13:33 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok! We are officially in Snow Country! Glad so, the library got me a copy from some far away location and I had to pay a whopping €2,50 as a handling fee.
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# ? Nov 1, 2022 17:36 |
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Luckily I finished The Passenger just in time to move onto something a little lighter like Snow Country. I've only started, but it seems very Russian to me, which might just be because I haven't read any other Japanese books to compare to. Everything is cold and covered in snow, and everyone seems disconnected and doomed.
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# ? Nov 1, 2022 20:39 |
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I also had to do an overly complicated cascade of inter library loans to secure a copy. None were available digitally either.
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# ? Nov 1, 2022 20:52 |
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AngusPodgorny posted:Luckily I finished The Passenger just in time to move onto something a little lighter like Snow Country. I read a few Japanese books and they always feel like all the characters are disconnected from reality and each other. I like it, it makes me feel normal and accepted.
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# ? Nov 1, 2022 21:21 |
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AngusPodgorny posted:I've only started, but it seems very Russian to me, which might just be because I haven't read any other Japanese books to compare to. Everything is cold and covered in snow, and everyone seems disconnected and doomed. You might enjoy this, which might have been a SA Book Club choice a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Four Six Four is kind of a Japanese police procedural that can be used kind of like a guidebook to late 80s Japanese culture. There are all sorts of workplace and family dynamics going on, and the focus is more on those than your normal crime novel. Everyone in Six Four is disconnected and doomed, too! Snow Country is on my Kindle. I'm just coming off the Gideon the Ninth books and I'm looking for a change of pace. I'm only partially ashamed to say I learned a little bit about snow country in Japan from one of the Yakuza games; a character escapes from prison and holes up in one of these snowy villages for a little while. The events in the game led me to reading up on Japan's "southern alps."
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# ? Nov 2, 2022 00:27 |
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I think I can finish my physical library book first and still finish this before Thanksgiving! I appreciate it being small.
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# ? Nov 2, 2022 07:23 |
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I got the audiobook for this, and I’m enjoying it. There was a five minute intro with spoilers to the (minimal) plot, but it did a great job laying out what to look/listen for in the book. Mainly that the details are ambiguous, and that they’re really pushed forward by inference. Listening to an hour or so, it’s been great. 5/5, would listen to a guy looking at a reflection of a woman’s eye in the window again
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# ? Nov 3, 2022 18:53 |
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The e-book has the same intro spoilers, but it seems like a story where anything that happens is going to be telegraphed, so no big deal. Unfortunately, I can’t read lines like: “It was such a beautiful voice that it struck one as sad.” and “The obi seemed expensive, out of keeping with the kimono, and struck him as a little sad.” Without immediately thinking of Patrick Rothfuss’s: “I moved a finger and the chord went minor in a way that always sounded to me as if the lute were saying sad.”
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# ? Nov 4, 2022 23:44 |
Considerations so far for the December book: Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland Village Evenings Near Dikanka by Nikolai Gogol (containing the short story "Christmas Eve")(Ukrainian, literary, free download) Five Decembers by James Kestrel (2022 Edgar Award winner) If On A Winter's Night a Traveler by Calvino (winter! littrachaw!) I'll try to get a poll up soon Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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# ? Nov 6, 2022 02:00 |
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I really should read that Calvino. I skimmed it in secondary school but never actually got into it.
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# ? Nov 6, 2022 10:03 |
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I discovered that Snow Country is a fix-up of various short stories, which explains why it felt like I was re-reading things sometimes with the descriptions. Also, why the ending felt different than the rest of the book, with the chijini fabric digression, then the Milky Way, and the biggest action of the book, all crammed into the last 10%. It’s a book that I find hard to discuss, though, because little seems to happen through most of the book, and I’m not a sophisticated literary person. Like I knew the “good woman” spoiler so I was looking for it, then read it and still didn’t get what it was so significant. I actually finished a few days ago and was hoping someone smarter would start the discussion. I enjoyed reading it, but it seemed to just wash over me without really sinking in. (Uhoh, does that mean I’m Shimamura?)
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# ? Nov 9, 2022 22:38 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 05:51 |
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Oops, I quoted instead of editing, so here's a double post. The 372 Pages podcast is reading a Christmas cozy mystery next, and there's apparently an infinite number of them, so that's a comedy option for December.
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# ? Nov 9, 2022 22:40 |