2025: The Premier Grand Unified WAYR thread

Happy New Year, y'all. Welcome to the first What Are You Reading thread of the Reform Era.

Due to a slacking off in the pace at which ILB's WAYR threads have been piling up posts, combined with some mild grumbling from our Southern Hemispherical friends about our quarterly threads constantly referencing the wrong season for them, I thought maybe we should ditch the old quarterly/seasonal format for a sleeker, modern streamlined thread. After the first six months we can decide if we want or need one or two WAYR threads per annum.

I'm about to start in on Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey of Homer. It's waiting for me at the public library (currently closed for New Year's Day). Meanwhile I'll browse around in David Hinton's translations of the poems of Wang Wei.

Here's a link to last year's final WAYR thread: Caught, Back, Party Going: What Are You Reading In The Fall of 2024?

I'm reading Hard to Be a God by the Strugatsky brothers, given to me by a friend years ago.

I think I left it sitting around because I mistakenly thought that Refn movie (Only God Forgives) was an adaptation? Even though I already loved Roadside Picnic. Idk, very silly of me. But I'm Strugatsky-pilled after reading The Doomed City and I'm glad to have it on hand (any other Strugatsky recs?).

I'm reading about the moles.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/917AlrBb9aL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

ALTERNATE COVER

https://archive.org/services/img/isbn_0600204340_no1/full/pct:200/0/default.jpg

alternate alternate U.S. cover

https://images.pangobooks.com/images/a260111c-a71b-4229-8be5-e881e035cb9a?width=800&quality=85&crop=1%3A1

"the savage kingdom of moles"? goodness me!

"I think I left it sitting around because I mistakenly thought that Refn movie (Only God Forgives) was an adaptation?"

The 2013 movie version of Hard to Be a God is nuts! watch it after you read it. There is also an earlier one with Werner Herzog in it but i've never seen that one.

I just recently finished “Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe, so am continuing this particular rabbithole with an overview history: a re-read of “The Troubles” by Tim Pat Coogan. I somehow lost my original copy & mr veg gave me a new one for xmas
He writes quite beautifully but it is a bit slow going as my holiday-brain struggles to keep hold of all the info

oh and am also reading “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent” by Judi Dench w Brendan O’Hea

series of long-ranging interviews w Judi on the various Shakespeare characters she’s played over her career; at times line-by-line /scene-by-scene insights into her perspectives on the characters & the text, it’s pretty fascinating!. a friend gave it to me for xmas, i hadn’t even heard about it, loving it so far.

Great moles.

Yes, good moleage indeed.

In prep for teaching Faustus next term, I'm reading Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man in Deptford. Being Burgess, it's full of language games, and he's hot on Latin filth*. Marlowe's time in the 'service' of Walsingham is really well put together, particularly the sections in Paris; it's great on the scuzz and grime of London (the brutal death of Babington is vivid and disgusting); I love the conversations over pubs with Raleigh and co, the dramatisation of Catholic and atheist guilt like a cloak over everything. It's probably a bit 'do you see' about Marlowe's sexuality but some of the sex is great all the same. There are also some 'chubby hmm' moments where he's working out his 'might line' drunkenly walking the streets and when he first tries 'the nymph' tobacco with Raleigh. I'm enjoying myself immensely.

*Irrumabo - Latin for fuck (I think). It appears in a poem by Catullus and in the phrase Irrumabo Omnia Et Facti Pirata, which translates to "Fuck everything and become a pirate”, which is 100% my new motto.

I think yearly threads are a good idea, fwiw. Happy new year you lot.

Happy new year! We made it. We can continue to read more.

Fleur Jaeggy - Proleterka

89 pages of very tightly written prose.

I found the mole book on my parent’s bookshelf over Christmas. On the inside cover there’s library stamp from my middle school library. I guess I borrowed it around 1990 and forgot about it. Or quite possibly I just stole it. Maybe I’ll actually read it this time.

I’m reading the new Richard Osman, it’s the start of a new series, the usual undemanding fun. I always try to give myself something easy at the start of the year, when it’s miserable and I feel like I’ve forgotten how to read.

Why not just What Are You Reading in 2025? And then if you eventually want to add a second, can guess the rest.

Anyway, I'm currently going back and forth between The Brothers Mann and Babel 17, young Delany's driving ambition proving compatible w the competitive sibs'.

Just finished the first volume of Your Face Tomorrow. Won't be getting the second. The long discursive sections that make up almost all of the book might have been hypnotic if my attention had been captured, but it wasn't. There is something compelling about it, but it's hard to say what. Maddening.

Why not just What Are You Reading in 2025?

Why not the current title?

The Penguin Book Of Korean Short Stories - Focuses on the modern Koreas, def nothing pre 20th century has appeared yet, but surprisingly there are some Northern writers!

South Korean writer Yi Munyol's "The Old Hatter" takes the cake in terms of a traditional mentality that feels alien to a Western reader in 2025. Check this lament:

Our old morality went the way of the old learning. The pious man who cooked his son to feed his old father; the filial daughter-in-law who cut off her finger to bring her mother-in-law back to life by feeding her drops of blood; the faithful wife who took her own life after her husband's death - we have totally forgotten these virtuous people, whose memory once shone brighter than any monument of gold. The world now belongs to those sons whose filial piety amounts to not striking their aged fathers, daughters in law who can earn praise by not throwing out their old fathers-in-law, and wives whose loyalty simply meant not having children by other men.

Society is in the gutter!!!

Very different indeed is Pak Taewon's A Day In The Life Of Kubo The Novelist, a stream of consciousness piece about a sad young man walking through the nightlife of Seoul. It's fascinating both as an example of how Beaudelaire, Woolf and Joyce (who gets a namedrop) were being digested outside of Europe, but also as a glimpse of Korea under Japanese occupation, a period which coincided with the beginnings of Westernization, writers in thrall to modernism, women hitting the bars in the style of flappers, etc.

Taewon ended up joining the North when the civil war came and stayed in N Korea until his death in the 80's; he had his right to write revoked for a few years but apparently regained it. NO IDEA what his later writings are like. He did leave a daughter in the South though, who in torn had a son...who turned out to be Bong Joon-Ho, you may have heard of him.

Thanks Daniel! I really want to check out Korean lit. Local library is closed for repairs, though relocation seems more and more likely (and then Local Library War can ramp back up, maybe with more xenophobia, considering return of Mr. T.)

Why not just What Are You Reading in 2025?

Why not the current title?

Pierre Senges - Rabelais's Doughnuts

A very short collection of stories and essays. Going for a bit of Borges here -- favourites are an essay on libraries, both actual and fictional, and a monologue by a counterfeiter -- its pretty good

i finished a book in 2025 which afaict means im ahead of 2024 already- i was gifted all the presidents men

anyway it tripped along more than i had expected and didnt get too bogged down in all the names, i enjoyed it

Currently reading Bryan Burrough's Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, which I bought in December. Giving it one chapter a night. It's good, but he clearly hates the Weathermen and has a red-hot hate-boner for Bernardine Dohrn.

Also downloaded a couple of ebooks that I'm either dipping in and out of (the Ellison) or going to get to soon:

Julia Armfield, Private Rites (apparently a modern gloss on King Lear focusing on three daughters after Daddy's death)
Alex Van Halen, Brothers (autobiography)
Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays of... (grabbed this just for his writings on jazz)

not far along, but

FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS, paul cooper: awkwardly written and handwavey, doubt i'll continue

BLISS & BLUNDER, victoria gosling: retelling of camelot with arthur as a tech billionaire, gwen as his influencer wife, etc. which may not sound all that promising but it's brilliant so far

Currently reading Raymond Smullyan - The Tao Is Silent. Prefer his style in smaller doses, honestly, although I'll finish this.

If I were you I'd skip it and just read the best bit online: Is God a Taoist?.

Currently reading "The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics" by Henri Bergson. The last book published in his lifetime, it's a collection of essays and lectures written over a twenty year period, but it holds together pretty well, since Bergson is at his most readable, and a couple of the essays were written specifically to tie the collection together.

Started rereading Moby Dick because Backlisted did their Christmas episode on it. I had vaguely remembered it as a good story with quite a lot of asides about whaling; I'm now finding that it's maybe 85% essays on whaling and 15% story, mostly concentrated in the first and last chapters. There are moments where Ishmael goes, "Now I really must tell you about X," and X is, like, the wooden fork that the harpoon rests in when it's in the boat, and tbh I really think the book would have survived without a chapter on it. Still good, though.

it's the way he does it, though, reveling in his knowledge, like some mad monk ov Dark Ages (not a sociable guy ashore, and sea life is getting pretty dark too, he even disappears for a while)

I stopped really keeping track of what I was reading around August of last year— I was reading but not in any organized fashion, feeling a little harried and disorganized in my thoughts and patterns.

In any case— this year I have resolved to take more organize joy in my reading and listening.

So far, I have finished ‘Skip Tracing,’ a book by Philly poet Ken Bluford. It’s his first major collection though he is nearly 75– it seems he was active in poetry in the 70s and 80s and then sort of dropped out for whatever reason and is finally having a little renaissance. Excellent book, the Tom Weatherly comparisons are apt but there is a classical air to some of Bluford’s poems that is really striking.

Also finished ‘The Climbing Zine: Book One,’ a collection of writing from the first twelve issues of a climbing-based zine out of Colorado. The best pieces are up there with some of the best adventure writing I have ever come across, and the worst pieces were among the most indulgent and insipid I have ever read. Only some athletes are good writers!!

Now just about to finish Emmanuel Hocquard’s ‘Conditions of Light,’ translated by Jean-Jacques Poucel. Uncanny, elegiac, formally restrained sequence of poems, with each iteration consisting of five poems of five lines each. Quite lovely, here is a nice sample from this morning:

It is noon touches the back
In the darkness photos await
The dough rises on the type
shop stool
The very idea of relation

Read Alex Van Halen's autobiography, Brothers, in a day. It's pretty good. He quotes from other relevant figures' VH books (David Lee Roth's, producer Ted Templeman's, former manager Noel Monk's) and tells you what he agrees with and what he disagrees with, and he's affectionately scornful of Roth, calling him a dilettante and a dummy but an immensely talented live performer/attention magnet on multiple occasions. Worth a read if you're a Van Halen fan; it will make you hear the records differently.

I'm about a third into Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation. It reads swiftly and clearly, but isn't prosaic at all. To achieve that she clearly trimmed and paraphrased rather than trying to save every detail and repetitive epithet in the text. Some people would consider that editing Homer like that is the height of presumption. Not me. I commend her for doing an excellent job, while losing nothing of real importance and producing a first rate modern translation.

For some unfathomable reason I also read the 90 pages of Introduction and Translator's Note, which delved far too deeply into the immense pile of marginalia that has accumulated around Homeric texts. What's worse is that I'd already rummaged around fairly thoroughly in that junk drawer back in college, so there was nothing new for me to learn.

Ia Genberg - The Details. A woman's life via her remembrances of 4 people. Liked it a lot.

Mariana Enriquez - A Sunny Place for Shady People. Short story collection, mostly set in Argentina, mostly horror or macabre/unnerving/supernatural in tone. I enjoyed it but I feel like I was missing a lot of stuff that someone more intelligent would get out of it.

Jean Paul - Maria Wutz

Maria Wutz?

Wutz it to you

Maria Wutz:

https://sublunaryeditions.com/products/maria-wutz-jean-paul

I really liked it but was reading it on a plane journey with two very nervous people sat beside me.

on a chapbook spree, though I did try to break it up with a book of poems which I decided was MFA-core slop after the first fifteen pages.

Augusto Monterosso - The Rest is Silence

Novel released in the late 70s, now available in a translation from NYRB.

Its about the 'life' of a literary critic in a small fictional town, by the name of Eduardo Torres. It starts with a few testimonies by others (unreliable, with digression as king), then we move to his 'criticism' (its ofc terrible, this is like the first novel I've read that really lampoons Sunday supplement crit properly), then we have aphorisms (most bad, but some might be good, this section is totally playing with your expectations of this kind of writing), and then an analysis of one of Torres' poem by a 'colleague' (or a rival, or Torres under a pseudonym), with a final two page commentary on the whole thing just before publication.

If you are into criticism its funny. If you are not you can read these as short stories -- which is what Monterosso spent most of his career publishing in Mexico (where he lived in exile from Guatemala). Whatever way you read it there isn't a lot like it.

Its possible this is the only way he could structure something approaching a novel.

Starting 2025 in suitably apocalyptic style: negrophobia by Darius James and late victorian holocausts by Mike Davis. Might have to go lighter for the next one

A while back, a friend said I should get into writing YA fiction because it can be lucrative and remain interesting, and because my poetic field has been feeling pretty fallow recently, I decided to dive into some newer YA books to see whether I think I could pull it off.

Of course, the first book I chose absorbed me completely for several hours and brought up some painful memories of adolescence. ‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe’ by Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a lovely book, narrated by Aristotle, a fifteen year old loner with some family drama, inner rage, a loathing of most other boys. He becomes friends with Dante, who is more of a hippie free spirit with a loving set of academic parents. It’s set in El Paso in 1987. I won’t give away much, but the essential drama of the book is Ari learning to “stop fighting the war he’s fighting” against himself.

It’s hard to read books like this sometimes— they didn’t really exist when I was a teenager. I wish they had, as I probably would have felt a lot less alone. Also tied into this thread is the idea that if my parents and the general environment hadn’t made me so afraid to be myself, my life could have been very different, and much happier. It’s a fool’s errand to obsess about what could have been, but it’s hard not to do so when looking back on how repressed and broken I was for much of
my teenage life.

What I am happy about is that teenagers today have these sorts of books. I am getting the sequel out from the library this afternoon.

I really liked Aristotle and Dante too, but I gave up on the sequel before the 100pg mark. The writing was super banal and just...bad in a way I don't remember the first book being (sample line of prose from the sequel would be something like: "I don't like it when Ari is mad at me. It makes me feel sad").

Queer YA is kinda my thing, so I'm here for any recommendations you need.

crypto— please give me all the recs for queer YA! thanks in advance <3

i am hesitant about reading the sequel because i have heard similar things, but i guess we’ll see.

I'd say start with Bill Konigsberg's Openly Straight--and then if you like it, move on to its (actually good!) sequel, Honestly Ben. Don't want to claim anything as authoritative as these being the *best* queer YA novels, but I did make them a focus of my dissertation, and I include Openly Straight whenever I get to teach my Gay Life & Culture in the 21st Century course (the students usually respond very positively to it). But there's plenty more where that came from, so feel free to reach out whenever you're ready for more.

I'm reading a posthumously published novel by Barbara Pym, An Academic Question. The narrative voice has many touches of her somewhat rueful and self-deflating humor, but I can see why she held onto it; it's a bit underdeveloped.

Currently reading "Letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man" by Friedrich Schiller, and also slowly making my way through "Family Furnishings: Selected Stories 1995-2014" by Alice Munro.

xpost thanks crypto, going to get that transferred to my local branch library.

today i *did* go to the library to get the Aristotle and Dante sequel, then read some reviews and thought better of reading it— i loved the first one and would rather not have it tainted, tbh.

Also took out ‘Darius the Great is Not Okay,’ ‘Boy Meets Boy,’ ‘Different for Boys,’ and a few others. Already finished ‘Different for Boys’ because it’s more like a short story, but it had its small moments.

Richard Russo “risk pool.”
I’d like to thank whoever it was (Scott?) who recommended him after I mentioned Richard ford. I adore this book, don’t want it to end.

yeah i love Russo’s books, he’s great

The Risk Pool is my fave of his.

xxxp

Boy Meets Boy is David Levithan, no? He's hit and miss for me--I nearly hurled Will Grayson, Will Grayson, his collab with John Green (the Fault in Our Stars guy) against the wall--but when he's on he's on: Every Day is a clever speculative/fantasy thing about a being who inhabits a different person's body each day, and Two Boys Kissing is a story of contemporary queer teens narrated by a Greek chorus of gay men who died of AIDS during the 80s and 90s. HIs latest, Ryan and Avery, is nice queer romance between a gay boy and a trans boy (I've assigned my students an excerpt from the novel this term). Some of his other books, though, show the obvious signs of an author who makes their living putting out a novel a year.

Don't know Different for Boys--one for me to check out! I've had Darius sitting on my shelf for a while now, so it's about time I got to that one.

Thread delivers---thanks, xyzzzz two days ago), and all others following!

Finished Dangerous Visions. Gave up on Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi, the simultaneous whimsical and smart-aleck style was not at all appealing. Started The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald.

crypto, i like Darius so far.

i couldn’t get through 15 pages of the Levithan— the narrator’s voice was so unlike a teenager’s and the setting so wildly unlikely given the time period that i gave up on it rather quickly.

Camilo Jose Cela - The Family of Pascal Duarte

In which a man, "cornered and terrified" by life jots down his thoughts, which become of interest to the authorities. This is set just before the Spanish Civil War and Cela's misanthropy and nihilism were in full flow from this, his first novel.

A mode which he would go on and refine in The Hive.

The Boys from Brazil! Features one of the worst intros I’ve ever read to a book in my life, by someone called Chelsea Cain. It did not predispose me to seek out her work.

Anyway, I haven’t ever seen the film but i I roughly knew what this was about. Brilliant opening so far.

Now I'm reading Breakout, a 'Parker' crime novel by Richard Stark. It's the kind of thing one can read in a day, if you care to put in about 4 or 5 hours. These novels have laconic style by the carload, which makes them fun to read.

Boys from Brazil update: they’re cloning Hitler!

Nürnberger said, ‘The initial batch must have had a higher success-ratio than he expected.’
‘I can’t help feeling,’ Klaus said, ‘that you’re a little bit pleased by the achievement.’
‘Well, you have to admit that strictly from a scientific viewpoint, it’s a step forward.’ ‘
Jesus Christ! Do you mean you can sit there and—’
‘Klaus,’ Lena said. ‘Oh – shit.’ Klaus slapped the almonds down.

another levin where the surpise ending is in the middle, leaving him half a book to show how it plays out.

see also: Stepford Wives, A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby, Sliver. in fact, most of them.

I'm reading Lucia Berlin's *A Manual for Cleaning Women*. I'm a doofus and read 'cleaning' as a verb, which on reflection is weird. But the process of learning who Berlin writes about has been instructive: the lonely, the lost, the people on your bus who look afraid to touch the ground. I did wonder if there was an element of misery tourism about some of the early stories but the further I go with her, the less this matters. People have compared her to Carver but I sense more heart and the unadorned prose quarries great depths. The title story is extraordinary.

https://shortstoryproject.com/stories/a-manual-for-cleaning-women/

I started reading The Pigeon Tunnel, John LeCarre. It's billed as a memoir, but I've read a third of it and it is more a series of anecdotes having to do with when, where & how he got the material for his books. He doesn't reveal much about his private life or thoughts, which is fine with me as long as the anecdotes are sufficiently interesting.

his collected letters might be good if you do want more private life and thoughts (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/john-le-carres-search-for-a-vocation)

Finished The Boys from Brazil. What a weird book, but fun (?) The ending is so predictable but again, fun. Think I rank his work I’ve read so far as:

Stepford Wives
Rosemary’s Baby
The Boys From Brazil

a mile of shit
This Perfect Day

Never read The Boys From Brazil, but the movie is hilarious.

More YA— finished ‘Darius the Great is Not Okay,’ which I wish had more “queer” content because of how it was marketed but which I liked nonetheless, as well as ‘The Chandler Legacies,’ about a group of students, four of them queer, at a boarding school with an abuse problem. The latter was good but it felt like not enough played out on the page for some of the characters to be acting as they were toward each other. Could have used more dialogue, more actual action instead of implicit action.

I broke down and started the Aristotle and Dante sequel, crypto, and while I can see what you (and other reviewers) have written about it, at least the first half of the book feels almost ambient in tone and emotional content— a lot of intense love and feeling pulsates through it— so I can forgive the sort of limited stylings of the prose.

xp I’m definitely going to seek this out and watch it this weekend

xp to Tabes. I have a creative writing class on a Friday afternoon. It's been a slow process getting to know the kids in there, who are mostly queer, trans and/or neurodiverse. One kid totally opened up today (we were writing about Gothic themes) and they recommended Aiden Thomas - a queer, trans Latinx writer. The Cemetery Boys series is supposed to be good. I did see the dreaded phrase 'MFA in creative writing' when I Googled them.

for some reason my parents took me along to see 'the boys from brazil' when it came out, which is kind of crazy as it is rated R (for what IMDB calls 'severe violence') and i was six years old!

i don't remember any of the details apart from a hand being clapped over my eyes multiple times

I have heard of that series, chinaski, thanks for the rec!!

I read the first Cemetery Boys book and enjoyed it. Didn’t know it had become a series.

Hanna Johansson - Antiquity. blurb calls it a female lolita or some such. it isn't really. jornalist befriends/becomes obsessed with an artist, goes on holiday with her and starts to transfer said obsession to artists teenage daughter. p good.

To Cook A Bear - Mikael Niemi. historical crime novel set amomgst the sami community in northern sweden. didnt enjoy the crime bits but loved everything else.

Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

About a 1/3 of the way through this story of murder of a painter in the sultan's 14th century court. It had an amazing opening which is told from the POV of the killed.

crypto, i finished the Ari and Dante sequel, and while it certainly could have used some major editing, i actually kind of loved it, as its poignant moments did feel honest and real, despite some naff dialogue here and there.

that Dante gets into Oberlin made me laugh and laugh— i clearly am the crybaby wuss in my relationship, so thst this fictional character made the same decision I did was super humorous to me.

The end of the affair. Enjoying it, six chapters in. I don’t know anything about it, picked it up from a charity shop on the strength of the first paragraph. I haven’t read any Greene since the obligatory Brighton Rock class at uni.

YES. I love The End of the Affair so much. Keep us updated please

For one thing, the Catholic path of Affair has many more forks than Brighton Rock's doctrinaire punk (not saying that's not the better novel, but will have to re-read the more controversial, challenging, obsessive Affair, which has Green flair to spare, although it's not so sparing).

Greene!

Read Judas Priest singer Rob Halford's autobiography, Confess. It's pretty hilarious at times: he talks about glory hole encounters with fans, and about sneaking gay references into Priest lyrics that he only explains/reveals to his bandmates years later ("Jawbreaker" is about a giant cock!), at which point they shrug and say, basically, "Yeah, that tracks." But he also talks a lot about his alcoholism and cocaine addiction (he's been in recovery for close to 40 years) and some pretty tragically fucked-up relationships. He's a smart guy and it's a good book. Definitely worth a read if you're a fan, but even if you're not, you'll learn a lot about an interesting person who's led an interesting life.

Picked up Levithan’s ‘Boy Meets Boy’ again, despite my negative first impression, and while I still rolled my eyes more than a few times, there were some moments where the narrator speaks some lovely truths that felt like things I felt and talked about as a teenager. Genuine moments. So, not all bad!

Started Memento Mori by Muriel Spark (Hampstead set lady gets anonymous calls reminding her she must die; spiky as always) and A Woman Like Me by Diane Abbott (so far, childhood in Paddington coming from Jamaica, a tale I've read in enough books now that it feels familiar - which is good I think, this is part of the UK's story and should feel like a well trod story).

xp

For some reason, I'm having a hard time remembering much about Boy Meets Boy, even though I'm sure I read it. But yes, not surprised to hear that Levithan's unevenness (which I spoke about upthread) manifests itself within a single text.

Refresher: its narrator has been out since elementary school, he’s just gotten over a weird break-up when he falls for a new kid in town, one of his best friends is a drag queen quarterback named Infinite Darlene, the town is quirky and rainbow-flagged, very northern New Jersey rather than Connecticut but close to NYC.

Ahh yes, I remember Infinite Darlene especially. I think this is the one that also begins with a bunch of queer kids gathering at a bookstore on a Friday night. Another thing with Levithan: the characters and even the situations in his novels can be a bit interchangeable. You could have told me that any of those characters/scenarios belonged to Two Boys Kissing (which I liked) and I would've believed you.

Yep! Yeah, it has the feel of interchangeability.

Ran out of YA books while others arrive from interlibrary loan, so decided to reread some Genet lmfao. “The Criminal Child” and “Fragments…” remain beautiful and bewildering texts for me in many ways, I can always find something new to ponder in them.

I'm most of the way through Earthlings, Sayaka Murata. It starts out playing with the the theme of alienation by having the narrator as a young girl in a dysfunctional family claiming she is from the planet Popinpobopia. It eventually moves into much grimmer territory.

Because I haven't finished it I can't absolutely say for sure that the carefully selected cover blurbs that portray the novel as "hilarious", "joyous", or "intoxicating" are misleading to the point of absurdity, but there's nothing in the first 4/5ths of the book that I'd remotely characterize that way. This is, at its center, a novel about dehumanization and its enormous psychic costs.

I think of it as Murata's big fuck you novel after Convenience Store Woman became a big success. It only gets grimmer.

Read a ton of Junji Ito & ordered Remina (Hellstar Remina?) and The Black Paradox to continue. Currently reading Happy Mania by Moyocco Anno which is a kind of proto Sex and The City manga from the late 90s. Pretty fun.

Also reread Rosemary’s Baby at the weekend.

Ps if I could murder a fictional character it would be Guy Woodhouse

But he was in Luther and Nobody Loves an Albatross

Plus the Anacin commercial

Ito is like the Agatha Christie of horror manga. He does same thing every time and every time I fall for it.

Ira Levin: what if husbands were bad (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives)
Ira Levin: what if Nazis were bad (The Boys from Brazil, reality)
Ira Levin: what if…I wrote the worst book of all time (This Perfect Day, Son of Rosemary)

On the rec of a friend, I took Denton Welch’s ‘In Youth is Pleasure’ out from the library

Ps if I could murder a fictional character it would be Guy Woodhouse
― triste et cassé (gyac), Wednesday, 22 January 2025 20:23 (yesterday)

But he was in Luther and Nobody Loves an Albatross
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 22 January 2025 20:42 (yesterday)

And a lot of TV commercials.

robertson davies, fifth business. which is -- and i'm not sure i've ever used this word before -- marvelous

Clark Ashton Smith - The Dark Eidolon & Other Fantasies: am only about 5 stories in (just finished ‘City of The Singing Flame’) but I am loving his writing so much. Great fun so far.

Tabes friend otm. Denton Welch rules.

Ira Levin: what if husbands were bad (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives)

A Kiss Before Dying is good, too.

started RED SHIFT, which is pretty fucked up!

xposts to chinaski— the Welch is so good but almost unbearable— Welch expresses the discomfort, anger, and resentment that Orvil feels so well that it is almost impossible to not be returned to one’s own teenage existence. excellent book.