SA Book Club! Current: North Woods by Daniel Mason

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > SA Book Club! Current: North Woods by Daniel Mason

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Just finished it off. I had entirely forgotten the handbag subplot.

Quite a lot of fun. Although I played Jack in a high school performance, so many years have passed ( :corsair:

) that I had forgotten most of it. However, memories came flooding back which was an unexpected bonus.

Lady Bracknell got all the best lines really

# ? Apr 12, 2023 04:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 29, 2024 04:16

Tree Goat: May 24, 2009; argania spinosa

Bilirubin posted:

Just finished it off. I had entirely forgotten the handbag subplot.

Quite a lot of fun. Although I played Jack in a high school performance, so many years have passed ( ) that I had forgotten most of it. However, memories came flooding back which was an unexpected bonus.

Lady Bracknell got all the best lines really

i likewise was in the play in hs and had forgotten essentially everything. i assume my brain just mercifully blocked it out

# ? Apr 12, 2023 04:54

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Tree Goat posted:

i likewise was in the play in hs and had forgotten essentially everything. i assume my brain just mercifully blocked it out

yeah I can only cringe so hard, glad there is no video out there

# ? Apr 12, 2023 05:19

Jadecore: Mar 10, 2018; They say money can't buy happiness, but it sure does help.

Earnest is one of my favorite plays of all time so I was happy to take the excuse to revisit it. It really is just that drat funny.

# ? Apr 13, 2023 00:50

McSpankWich: Aug 31, 2005; Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center. Sounds charming.

Actually went back and finished Steppenwolf, I was only like 5 pages from Hermine and you guys were right it went much faster after that. I have no idea what was going on in the ending, I assume just some kind of drug fueled hallucinating? It would have been nice to have a few paragraphs about what happened afterwards without the LSD filter, but it is what it is.

# ? Apr 13, 2023 13:54

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

"To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both is just carelessness" is the kind of line I'm always finding uses for.

# ? Apr 13, 2023 17:30

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Rand Brittain posted:

"To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both is just carelessness" is the kind of line I'm always finding uses for.

The one about the widow whose hair turned "quite gold from grief" has stuck with me forever.

# ? Apr 14, 2023 01:09

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Just picked this up today.

# ? Apr 14, 2023 17:49

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Ok now that we're at Day 15 I'm going to unveil the second phase of my plan here

This month is actually a compare and contrast.

quote:

The play was first produced at the St James's Theatre on Valentine's Day 1895.[26] It was freezing cold, but Wilde arrived dressed in "florid sobriety", wearing a green carnation.[24] The audience, according to one report, "included many members of the great and good, former cabinet ministers and privy councillors, as well as actors, writers, academics, and enthusiasts".[27] Allan Aynesworth, who played Algernon Moncrieff, recalled to Hesketh Pearson that "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night".[28] Aynesworth was himself "debonair and stylish", and Alexander, who played Jack Worthing, "demure".[29]

. . .

The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas (who was on holiday in Algiers at the time), had planned to disrupt the play by throwing a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the playwright when he took his bow at the end of the show. Wilde and Alexander learned of the plan, and the latter cancelled Queensberry's ticket and arranged for policemen to bar his entrance.

. . .

Fifteen weeks later Wilde was in prison.

Wilde was incarcerated from 25 May 1895 to 18 May 1897.

He first entered Newgate Prison in London for processing, then was moved to Pentonville Prison, where the "hard labour" to which he had been sentenced consisted of many hours of walking a treadmill and picking oakum (separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes),[193] and where prisoners were allowed to read only the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress.[194]

A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison in London. Inmates there also followed the regimen of "hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed", which wore harshly on Wilde's delicate health.[195] In November he collapsed during chapel from illness and hunger. His right ear drum was ruptured in the fall, an injury that later contributed to his death.[196][197] He spent two months in the infirmary.[44][196]

quote:

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol (/rɛ.dɪŋ.dʒeɪl/) on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.

During his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen,[1] earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. He was aged 30 when executed.[2][3]

Wilde wrote the poem in mid-1897 while staying with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole.[4] No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them, but rather the poem highlights the brutalisation of the punishment that all convicts share. Wilde juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves".[5] Wilde too was separated from his wife and sons. He adopted the proletarian ballad form, and suggested it be published in Reynold's Magazine, "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes � to which I now belong � for once I will be read by my peers � a new experience for me".[6]

The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898[7] under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. This ensured that Wilde's name � by then notorious � did not appear on the poem's front cover. It was not commonly known, until the 7th printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. was actually Wilde. The first edition, of 800 copies, sold out within a week, and Smithers announced that a second edition would be ready within another week; that was printed on 24 February, in 1,000 copies, which also sold well. A third edition, of 99 numbered copies "signed by the author", was printed on 4 March, on the same day a fourth edition of 1,200 ordinary copies was printed. A fifth edition of 1,000 copies was printed on 17 March, and a sixth edition was printed in 1,000 copies on 21 May 1898. So far the book's title page had identified the author only as C.3.3., although many reviewers, and of course those who bought the numbered and autographed third edition copies, knew that Wilde was the author, but the seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3.[8][9]

quote:

Wilde's final address was at the dingy H�tel d'Alsace (now known as L'H�tel), on rue des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, Paris. "This poverty really breaks one's heart: it is so sale [filthy], so utterly depressing, so hopeless. Pray do what you can" he wrote to his publisher.[217] He corrected and published An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, the proofs of which, according to Ellmann, show a man "very much in command of himself and of the play" but he refused to write anything else: "I can write, but have lost the joy of writing".

. . .

By 25 November 1900 Wilde had developed meningitis, then called "cerebral meningitis". Robbie Ross arrived on 29 November, sent for a priest, and Wilde was conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church by Fr Cuthbert Dunne, a Passionist priest from Dublin,[223][224] Wilde having been baptised in the Church of Ireland and having moreover a recollection of Catholic baptism as a child, a fact later attested to by the minister of the sacrament, Fr Lawrence Fox.

Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900.[228] Different opinions are given as to the cause of the disease: Richard Ellmann judged it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (from the prison injury, see above) treated for several years (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs ann�es) and made no allusion to syphilis.

quote:

In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017 (homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967). The 2017 Act implements what is known informally as the Alan Turing law.[234]

You can download a free copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/301

quote:

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

# ? Apr 15, 2023 04:16

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Downloaded to my Google Books. Will give that a read.

Actually I've been to Wilde's grave at Pere Lachaise Cemetery back in early 2000s or so. The story I was told by my friend (who lives across the wall from the place) is that some lady back in the past sometime was scandalized by the rather large cock and balls dangling from the otherwise Art Nouveau sculpture of a dude with angel wings kneeling that they chucked a rock at it and knocked it off. Apparently, its in the groundskeeper's office for safekeeping.

Visited Balzac, Hugo, and Proust on that same trip, among others (especially old scientists).

# ? Apr 16, 2023 06:02

Captain Splashback: Jan 1, 2007; BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
SPLASHBACK HOLDINGS LTD
PUCKINS AND PRINTERS PURVEYORS

McSpankWich posted:

Actually went back and finished Steppenwolf, I was only like 5 pages from Hermine and you guys were right it went much faster after that. I have no idea what was going on in the ending, I assume just some kind of drug fueled hallucinating? It would have been nice to have a few paragraphs about what happened afterwards without the LSD filter, but it is what it is.

I can agree with this take.

I also take the psychedelic ending as a suggestion that an optimistic future is possible for Harry without the author having to find a way to end the book by bringing Harry's personal growth to an end. That way the ending of the book is about the journey rather than the destination, I guess, but it's because of the ending (and the tedious introspections at first) that I don't think I'd recommend this book to just anyone. I can say that this book has some deep personal meaning to me and has helped with the strugg, so I will declare it a success.

I read Importance of Being Earnest years ago and it was one of my absolute favourite plays. I'm going to sit that out though because I've already read it and because I've found a great read of my own for this month. If anyone is interested it is The Lure of the Labrador Wild by Dillon Wallace, available on Project Gutenberg. It's a true memorialisation of an expedition into the interior of Labrador, which was largely uncharted in 1903ish, that proved fatal for one of the party of 3. Good stuff.

# ? Apr 18, 2023 05:14

Lord Zedd-Repulsa: Jul 21, 2007; Devour a good book.

I am working my way through the poem collection but it takes a lot longer to process than prose.

# ? Apr 21, 2023 09:34

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I haven't done a poll, but this month's Book of the Month is by decree.

The Somethingawful Book of the Month for May 2023 is The King Must Die by Mary Renault.

The "elevator pitch" for this book is fairly straightforward: it's an attempt to write the Myth of Theseus as historical fiction, as "accurately" and "truly" as possible given modern knowledge from archaeology and scholarship, "modern" in this case being the 1950's.

quote:

I came home from seeing a performance of Euripides�s Hippolytos on Friday night and immediately curled up with Mary Renault�s The King Must Die (1958), one of my favourite books of all time. It�s the first person story of Theseus, and Renault used the legend and everything that has been discovered by archaeology since, especially the excavation of Knossos, to write a story that�s psychologically as well as historically realistic. It�s also so engraved in my DNA that I am incapable of evaluating it sensibly. I know it almost by heart and could quote long passages. It seems to me to be exactly the way everyone ought to write historical fiction�in first person, written in reflection by the character late in life, and deep within the worldview of the period. I first read it when I was seven years old1, and even though I didn�t understand all the words it made me fall in love with the ancient world and Greek mythology and Achaean kingship.

But is it fantasy?

https://www.tor.com/2012/06/27/the-very-breath-of-bronze-age-greece-mary-renaults-the-king-must-die/

quote:

Eileen Mary Challans (4 September 1905 � 13 December 1983), known by her pen name Mary Renault (/ˈrɛnoʊlt/[2]),[1] was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece.

Born in Forest Gate in 1905, she attended St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1924 until 1928. After graduating from St Hugh's with a Third Class in English,[3] she worked as a nurse and began writing her first novels, which were contemporary romances. In 1948, she moved to Durban, South Africa with her partner Julie Mullard, and later to Cape Town, where she spent the rest of her life. Living in South Africa allowed her to write about openly gay characters without fearing the censorship and homophobia of England. She devoted herself to writing historical fiction in the 1950s, which were also her most successful books. She is best known for her historical fiction today.

quote:

Mary Renault, n�e Mary Challans, (4 September 1905 � 13 December 1983) was an English author of primarily historical novels.

Renault read English at Oxford, graduating in 1928. She was a student of J.R.R. Tolkien's,[1] though probably just attending his lectures rather than being tutored by him.[2]

Writing to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer on 8 February 1967, Tolkien says that he has been "recently deeply engaged in the books" of Renault, and mentions in particular her works The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea (both about Theseus). Tolkien also tells the Plimmers that Renault has written Tolkien a card of appreciation, "perhaps the piece of 'Fan-mail' that gives me most pleasure".[3] And writing to his secretary Joy Hill on 25 August 1967, he mentions the fan-letter again (received "not long ago"), and tells Hill that he wonders how Renault would answer a particular question.[4]

The King Must Die is in copyright, but is available a few places:

https://www.amazon.com/King-Must-Die-Novel/dp/0394751043

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/king-must-die-mary-renault/1103272970

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3906339W/The_King_Must_Die

We've done Renault previously as BOTM once before; her novel The Last of the Wine was a BOTM in 2015: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3647305

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:22 on May 2, 2023

# ? May 2, 2023 15:44

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Hell yeah.

# ? May 2, 2023 15:51

Doc Fission: Sep 11, 2011

very excited for this

# ? May 2, 2023 17:26

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Some context:

Renault's "Artistic project" here is an attempt to write a novel that functions as an update of the Theseus mythology for then-current scholarship and archaeology etc.

But, keep in mind, that means what was current in the first half of the twentieth century. So, her archaeology is this:

quote:

The bull-leaping fresco is the most completely restored of several stucco panels originally sited on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the palace at Knossos in Crete. It shows a bull-leaping scene. Although they were frescos, they were painted on stucco relief scenes. They were difficult to produce. The artist had to manage not only the altitude of the panel but also the simultaneous molding and painting of fresh stucco. The panels, therefore, do not represent the formative stages of the technique. In Minoan chronology, their polychrome hues � white, pale red, dark red, blue, black � exclude them from the Early Minoan (EM) and early Middle Minoan (MM) Periods. They are, in other words, instances of the "mature art" created no earlier than MM III. The flakes of the destroyed panels fell to the ground from the upper story during the destruction of the palace, probably by earthquake, in Late Minoan (LM) II. By that time the east stairwell, near which they fell, was disused, being partly ruinous.

quote:

Now that the restriction of the Ottoman firman was removed, there was a great rush on the part of all the other archaeologists to obtain first permission to dig from the new Cretan government. They soon found that Evans had a monopoly. Using the Cretan Exploration Fund, now being swollen by contributions from others, he paid off the debt for the land. Then he ordered stores from Britain. He hired two foremen, and they hired 32 diggers. He started work on the flower-covered hill in March 1900.

Assisted by Duncan Mackenzie, who had already distinguished himself by his excavations on the island of Melos, and Mr Fyfe, an architect from the British School at Athens, Evans employed a large staff of local labourers as excavators, and began work in 1900. Within a few months they had uncovered a substantial portion of what he called the Palace of Minos. The term "palace" may be misleading; Knossos was an intricate collection of over 1000 interlocking rooms, some of which served as artisans' workrooms and food processing centres (e.g. wine presses). It served as a central storage point, and a religious and administrative centre.

On the basis of the ceramic evidence and stratigraphy, Evans concluded that there was another civilisation on Crete that had existed before those brought to light by the adventurer-archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae and Tiryns. The small ruin of Knossos spanned 5 acres (2.0 ha) and the palace had a maze-like quality that reminded Evans of the labyrinth described in Greek mythology.[44] In the myth, the labyrinth had been built by King Minos to hide the Minotaur, a half-man half-bull creature that was the offspring of Minos's wife, Pasiphae, and a bull. Evans dubbed the civilisation once inhabiting this great palace the Minoan civilisation.

By 1903, most of the palace was excavated, bringing to light an advanced city containing artwork and many examples of writing. Painted on the walls of the palace were numerous scenes depicting bulls, leading Evans to conclude that the Minoans did indeed worship the bull. In 1905 he finished excavations. He then proceeded to have the room called the throne room (due to the throne-like stone chair fixed in the room) repainted by a father-and-son team of Swiss artists, the �mile Gilli�ron Junior and Senior. While Evans based the recreations on archaeological evidence, some of the best-known frescoes from the throne room were almost complete inventions of the Gilli�rons, according to his critics.[45]

And her mythology is often this kinda thing:

quote:

James Frazer has a lot to answer for.

He was born in 1854 in Glasgow, Scotland. He became a Fellow of Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. From there he leapfrogged sideways into folklore studies and comparative anthropology, two disciplines he knew nothing about (although to be fair, at the time, neither did anyone else really.) His masterwork was The Golden Bough, two volumes of meticulously researched albeit fairly wrong comparative mythology from all over the world. His research was conducted mostly by postal questionnaire since he wasn�t into travelling. The title of the book comes from one of the more mysterious bits of the Aeneid , where the Roman epic hero finds a magical golden branch which he then has to hand over to a priestess in exchange for passage to visit the land of the dead.

Frazer had some Complex Views About Religion. He basically decided that cultures moved through stages�starting with �primitive magic�, and then moving to organised religion, and finally arriving at science. How did he know what primitive magic was like? Well, he studied the beliefs of primitive peoples (by postal questionnaire, remember). How did he know they were primitive? Well, he was a Fellow of Classics at Trinity College and this was during the height of the British Empire, so practically everyone who wasn�t him was primitive. Convenient!

I�m not going to go into real depth here (like Frazer, I�m a classicist talking about stuff I don�t know that well; unlike Frazer, I�m not going to pretend to be an expert) but what you really need to know is people ate it up . Magic! Religion! Science! Sweeping statements about the development of human belief! Universal theories about What People Are Like! All wrapped up in lots of fascinating mythology. And he treated Christianity like it was just another belief system , which was pretty exciting and scandalous of him at the time. Freud mined his work for ideas; so did Jung�the birth of psychology as a discipline owes something to Frazer. T.S. Eliot�s most famous poems were influenced by The Golden Bough. It was a big deal.

But the main thing that is noticeable about the early-twentieth-century attitude to folklore, the post-Golden Bough attitude to folklore, is: it turns out you can just say stuff, and everyone will be into it as long as it sounds cool .

https://www.tor.com/2019/12/27/inventing-folklore-the-origins-of-the-green-man/

and this:

quote:

The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by the English writer Robert Graves. First published in 1948, the book is based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine; corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961. The White Goddess represents an approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective. Graves proposes the existence of a European deity, the "White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death", much similar to the Mother Goddess, inspired and represented by the phases of the Moon, who lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European and pagan mythologies.[1]

Graves argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with the ancient cult-ritual of his proposed White Goddess and of her son.

. . . .

"Sir James Frazer was able to keep his beautiful rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge until his death by carefully and methodically sailing all around his dangerous subject, as if charting the coastline of a forbidden island without actually committing himself to a declaration that it existed. What he was saying-not-saying was that Christian legend, dogma and ritual are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs, and that almost the only original element in Christianity is the personality of Jesus."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_W...%20mythologies.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:56 on May 2, 2023

# ? May 2, 2023 23:43

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Anyway, this book is a genuine favorite of mine. To anyone who might be on the fence, here's a taste of the opening:

quote:

The Citadel of Troizen, where the Palace stands, was built by giants before anyone remembers. But the Palace was built by my great-grandfather. At sunrise, if you look at it from Kalauria across the strait, the columns glow fire-red and the walls are golden. It shines bright against the dark woods on the mountainside.

Our house is Hellene, sprung from the seed of Ever-Living Zeus. We worship the Sky Gods before Mother Dia and the gods of earth. And we have never mixed our blood with the blood of the Shore People, who had the land before us.

My grandfather had about fifteen children in his household, when I was born. But his queen and her sons were dead, leaving only my mother born in wedlock. As for my father, it was said in the Palace that I had been fathered by a god. By the time I was five, I had perceived that some people doubted this. But my mother never spoke of it; and I cannot remember a time when I should have cared to ask her.

When I was seven, the Horse Sacrifice came due, a great day in Troizen.

It is held four-yearly, so I remembered nothing of the last one. I knew it concerned the King Horse, but thought it was some act of homage to him. To my mind, nothing could have been more fitting. I knew him well.

He lived in the great horse field, down on the plain. From the Palace roof I had often watched him, snuffing the wind with his white mane flying, or leaping on his mares. And only last year I had seen him do battle for his kingdom. One of the House Barons, seeing from afar the duel begin, rode down to the olive slopes for a nearer sight, and took me on his crupper. I watched the great stallions rake the earth with their forefeet, arch their necks, and shout their war cries; then charge in with streaming manes and teeth laid bare. At last the loser foundered; the King Horse snorted over him, threw up his head neighing, and trotted off toward his wives. He had never been haltered, and was as wild as the sea. Not the King himself would ever throw a leg across him. He belonged to the god.

His valor alone would have made me love him. But I had another cause as well. I thought he was my brother.

Poseidon, as I knew, can look like a man or like a horse, whichever he chooses. In his man shape, it was said, he had begotten me. But there were songs in which he had horse sons too, swift as the north wind, and immortal. The King Horse, who was his own, must surely be one of these. It seemed clear to me, therefore, that we ought to meet. I had heard he was only five years old. "So," I thought, "though he is the bigger, I am the elder. It is for me to speak first."

. . . .

# ? May 3, 2023 00:11

Captain Splashback: Jan 1, 2007; BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
SPLASHBACK HOLDINGS LTD
PUCKINS AND PRINTERS PURVEYORS

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I haven't done a poll, but this month's Book of the Month is by decree.

Like some sort of Tyrant, eh? :agesilaus:

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

The Somethingawful Book of the Month for May 2023 is The King Must Die by Mary Renault.

[ etc ]

Ooooo, this looks good!

# ? May 3, 2023 00:36

Glimpse: Jun 5, 2011

Relevant to my interests! Love that classical poo poo.

Got to visit Knossos as a teen, it is extremely cool and I still think about it a lot. You could really see how the myth of the labyrinth might come from a place like that.

# ? May 3, 2023 02:25

AngusPodgorny: Jun 3, 2004; Please to be restful, it is only a puffin that has from the puffin place outbroken.

I cheated by reading this one ahead of schedule. The benefit to having done so is that I went in completely blind, so I got to play the game of guessing whether she was going to go with the myths being real, or mundane explanations for the myths. With the way it's written, it took me a surprising amount of the book to be sure.

# ? May 4, 2023 23:11

Glimpse: Jun 5, 2011

Theseus, blue eyed and blonde haired, typical greek. The layered tits-out dresses his mother wears sound accurate for mycenian greece but T-dog wears pants? Was a hero in a short skirt too much for 1958 readers, or did Renault have an issue, I wonder.

# ? May 5, 2023 17:14

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

AngusPodgorny posted:

o play the game of guessing whether she was going to go with the myths being real, or mundane explanations for the myths. With the way it's written, it took me a surprising amount of the book to be sure.

I mean, there's at least a decent argument either way. That's one of the things I like most about it; she writes convincingly from the viewpoint of someone for whom mythology was real.

# ? May 5, 2023 23:13

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

I'm really enjoying this, it's scratching an itch for me.

# ? May 7, 2023 17:40

Chairman Capone: Dec 17, 2008

I read this and The Last of the Wine in my freshman year of college and really loved both of them. Great pick.

# ? May 8, 2023 15:49

Genghis Cohen: Jun 29, 2013

Glimpse posted:

Theseus, blue eyed and blonde haired, typical greek. The layered tits-out dresses his mother wears sound accurate for mycenian greece but T-dog wears pants? Was a hero in a short skirt too much for 1958 readers, or did Renault have an issue, I wonder.

I can't see where this art/cover image you're describing is, but for what it's worth there are plenty of characters in classic Greek sources described as fair haired, can't remember about eye colour. Remember that modern Greeks are a little bit Turkish although you should absolutely not mention this to them. As for Greeks in trousers, you're right it would be unthinkable. But I very much doubt Mary Renault had any issues with men in skirts, almost all her novels explicitly have gay male romance as a major plot point, this novel and its sequel are actually the only ones I can think of that don't have a gay male protagonist.

# ? May 9, 2023 11:09

Glimpse: Jun 5, 2011

Genghis Cohen posted:

I can't see where this art/cover image you're describing is, but for what it's worth there are plenty of characters in classic Greek sources described as fair haired, can't remember about eye colour. Remember that modern Greeks are a little bit Turkish although you should absolutely not mention this to them. As for Greeks in trousers, you're right it would be unthinkable. But I very much doubt Mary Renault had any issues with men in skirts, almost all her novels explicitly have gay male romance as a major plot point, this novel and its sequel are actually the only ones I can think of that don't have a gay male protagonist.

Chapter 3:

�I began to be tired, and cold; my leather breeches dragged at my thighs, my wet belt pinched my breathing. �

�He is blue eyed and flaxen like a Hellene; but he is built like the Shore People, wiry and quick and small�

I know that Achilles for example is blonde, but the �like a Hellene� part made me chuckle, because, well, met many Greeks? I doubt that ancient Greeks were significantly lighter haired than modern ones because ancient sources tend to associate light hair with barbarians. Heroes having light hair could have been meant to show their exeptionality or imply grace (children often have light hair that darkens with age).

The pants thing stood out because the novel seems so well researched otherwise. Renault absolutely knew that they were anachronistic but chose to put them in anyhow. What�s up with that?

Totally enjoying the read, just poking a bit of fun.

# ? May 9, 2023 15:10

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Glimpse posted:

Chapter 3:

�I began to be tired, and cold; my leather breeches dragged at my thighs, my wet belt pinched my breathing. �

Yeah, you're correct, this is an interesting catch because she is normally great about not making that kind of mistake, and at first glance it does seem like an error.

I think we may have to assume she meant something like this and ascribe the use of the word "Breeches" to the "Translator" :

quote:

Fashion in the Minoan Period
. . . .

The basic garment for men was a loincloth tucked around the waist and held in place by a belt or girdle. The styles of loincloth varied with place and time; some styles seem to have been in fashion in particular regions. The loincloth might be worn as a kilt, hanging freely from the waist, or it might be tucked in under the groin, making it into something like a pair of shorts. In fact, by sewing the flaps of the loincloth, front and back, together under the groin, it evolves into a pair of shorts. This is a style found at Mycenae where a bronze dagger has been unearthed portraying a lion hunt on its blade, inlaid in gold. The scene shows men wearing shorts fastened under the groin. Above the waist, men normally wore nothing, as in Egypt. When cooler weather necessitated additional covering for warmth, there were furs and the skins of wild animals which could be worn as cloaks.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/culture-magazines/fashion-minoan-period

# ? May 9, 2023 23:03

Quantum of Phallus: Dec 27, 2010

I�m gonna do the June book, I�m just mid-another book now but should be finished by the end of this month. When do they usually get announced?

# ? May 22, 2023 22:24

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Actually about that

quote:

"He went consenting, or else he was no king... It was no man's place to say to him, 'It is time to make the offering.'"

I'll be stepping down as TBB mod at the end of this month (for good positive reasons -- I've had some positive real life developments and it doesn't look like I'm going to have time to keep doing this).

So I don't want to just declare and pick a book for next month; if the book club keeps going the format may change considerably.

Normally, I gather suggestions around . . . now, and then ideally we do a vote from the 26th to month end, and then whatever wins the vote by the 1st of the next month is the book going forward, or if we don't get around to doing a poll I just pick something. If people want to suggest books for next month we can do a poll to pick something provisionally.

# ? May 22, 2023 23:09

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

I am deep into one of my selections for The Year Of The Brick but will be done by month's end. I have a handful of palate cleansing horror chapbooks but were it up to me, I would suggest a brick (purely out of self interest): Don Quixote (was ages ago since last done as a BotM), Sarum (historical fiction, likely done in the past BotMs? I can't believe I'm going to have to get archives for this thread...) or The Plantagenets (history non fiction about the royal family).

# ? May 23, 2023 05:25

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

I finished the king must die and I thought it was pretty good.

# ? May 24, 2023 14:16

Captain Splashback: Jan 1, 2007; BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
SPLASHBACK HOLDINGS LTD
PUCKINS AND PRINTERS PURVEYORS

I finished The King Must Die a week or so ago and I really, really enjoyed it. I would, and already have, recommend it to others.

There were two things off the top of my head that stuck-out. The first is Renault's prose is beautiful. The second is that Renault's story-telling technique is such a wonderful accessible way of placing a myth in an educational/historical context. I wish scholarship (particularly historical scholarship) would use this technique more often because it's a great way of relating learning to a much wider audience instead of the typically small, stuffy academic audience. In that way, this book reminds me of Natalie Zemon's The Return of Martin Guerre, whichI would heartily recommend to anyone who enjoyed The King Must Die, and even for a BOTM if it hasn't already been done.

I wish I'd posted about this book sooner after finishing it so I could discuss some of the things I found surprising and cite examples, but it's been a crazy couple weeks. I'll just say I loved this book and thank you for the recommend.

# ? May 24, 2023 15:23

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Captain Splashback posted:

The second is that Renault's story-telling technique is such a wonderful accessible way of placing a myth in an educational/historical context. I wish scholarship (particularly historical scholarship) would use this technique more often because it's a great way of relating learning to a much wider audience instead of the typically small, stuffy academic audience.

Another author who does something very similar, but with Celtic mythology, is Evangeline Walton in her four-volume treatment of the Mabinogion.

quote:

Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi. She published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher's title of The Virgin and the Swine. Although receiving warm praise from John Cowper Powys, the book sold poorly and none of the other novels in the series reached print at the time. Rediscovered by Ballantine's Adult Fantasy series in 1970, it was reissued as The Island of the Mighty.

Editors at Ballantine were unaware that she was still alive, till she got in touch and sent them a second novel that had been left unfinished when the first failed to sell. This appeared as The Children of Llyr in 1971.[4] It was followed by The Song of Rhiannon in 1972 and Prince of Annwn in 1974. All four novels were published in a single volume as The Mabinogion Tetralogy in 2002 by Overlook Press. The four novels are translated and available in several European languages. The rights to Walton�s Mabinogi work were purchased by Stevie Nicks in the hopes of bringing the epic to the big screen.[5]

quote:

In 1983, Walton published The Sword is Forged, the first of a planned Theseus trilogy.[2] Walton had completed the trilogy in the late 1940s but the publication by Mary Renault of her Theseus novels in 1958 and 1962 kept Walton from publishing her own. The remaining two novels in the trilogy remain unpublished.[6]

They really are quite excellent but she just sortof got eclipsed.

# ? May 24, 2023 20:42

Captain Splashback: Jan 1, 2007; BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
SPLASHBACK HOLDINGS LTD
PUCKINS AND PRINTERS PURVEYORS

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Another author who does something very similar, but with Celtic mythology, is Evangeline Walton in her four-volume treatment of the Mabinogion.

They really are quite excellent but she just sortof got eclipsed.

Quoting because I think you just recommended me my next readings. Thank you! I really dig this style

# ? May 25, 2023 02:07

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Bilirubin posted:

I am deep into one of my selections for The Year Of The Brick but will be done by month's end. I have a handful of palate cleansing horror chapbooks but were it up to me, I would suggest a brick (purely out of self interest): Don Quixote (was ages ago since last done as a BotM), Sarum (historical fiction, likely done in the past BotMs? I can't believe I'm going to have to get archives for this thread...) or The Plantagenets (history non fiction about the royal family).

Unless a new mod revises it, let's do Don Quixote for next month, since it's free and a good place for a new beginning.

# ? May 31, 2023 13:02

ulvir: Jan 2, 2005

have you named a successor?

# ? Jun 1, 2023 19:11

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Unless a new mod revises it, let's do Don Quixote for next month, since it's free and a good place for a new beginning.

Hell yeah!

Once current brick is done on to new brick!

# ? Jun 1, 2023 20:11

Arson Daily: Aug 11, 2003

Riddle me this! Why is his name pronounced don quiHotay but his actions are quicksotic???

# ? Jun 3, 2023 22:25

McSpankWich: Aug 31, 2005; Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center. Sounds charming.

Finished The King Must Die. It was solidly ok. An interesting read as I've never read the Theseus myth directly and just in other things. Not sure I'd recommend it to anyone, but I can't put my finger on why. Perhaps it was weirdly paced or the writing was... Something? I don't know.

Also, I'm going to skip Don Quixote because I tried to read it a few years ago and found it boring but also it's like 12 trillion pages long.

# ? Jun 4, 2023 21:25

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 29, 2024 04:16

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

https://twitter.com/frogsforgirls/status/1664935296171929600?s=20

# ? Jun 5, 2023 12:48

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > SA Book Club! Current: North Woods by Daniel Mason

«‹›17 »