Taking a break from the Manosphere today. Instead, I’m reading the new biography of Joan Didion.
What are you all reading?
Categories
Yes, we have no manosphere, we have no manosphere today
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
Nequam – Otranto seemed almost like a parody of Gothic literature. Vathek was an actual novel. I’m going to reread “The Monk” next – that was a ripping yarn with a twist ending.
Spoilers* –
There are two separate instances in Otranto of unexpected reunions between fathers and children, a case of mistaken identity that gets draaaaged out beyond all reason, and a missing heir to tie the whole package up with a bow. I don’t think there’s a single line of dialogue that could be believably uttered by any human being. In all, great fun.
*Spoiler alert for a book written before the American Revolution.
I always see really nice adult coloring books in museum gift shops. I’m sure they can obviously be bought online too, but if anyone is wondering where to get them out in meatspace, that’s a good place to start.
As long as we’re talking books, can anyone recommend a book trading or book giving system? I need to clear some shelf space, and I don’t believe in selling books or throwing away books. I used book mooch once, and that worked pretty well, but it looks like Book Mooch hasn’t been active in the past four or five years.
I’m perfectly happy to pay shipping within the United States, I just need to send some books to new homes
WWTH discount bookshops too are a pretty good source, as well as graphic arts shops – but their not cheap
Froitloopsie – The Lebanese Daily Star is a good source – they have an English edition too. Juan Cole’s Informed Comment is also good for analysis
just an an update France launched its first attack at ISIS this evening from the UAE and Jordan in cooperation with the US 20 bombs on command center, recruitment centre, arms dump and training camp, Reuters and AP are still sparse on info
Slowing reading my way through a book on the history of Congo, and some manga.
@Robert: The funny thing is that Otranto, for all its outlandishness, isn’t a parody but one of the seminal works, even with wacky occurrences like that giant helmet. The first widely-recognized parody of the Gothic was Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
I’ve seen quite a few adult coloring books in arts and crafts stores as well. If you’ve got a Michael’s or JoAnn Fabrics or even (sigh… if you must) Hobby Lobby, give them a look.
Autosoma
Thanks.
Do images here automatically re-size to fit the comment section? I will make a test post. If it’s a disaster I hope it can be deleted asap. :p
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Cool, it worked. 🙂
You can always give them to the library, unless you’re specifically looking to trade books.
to co-op this thread it look like ISIS/Daesh may start its swansong, The Kurds took Sinjar a few days ago, Iraq (with both US and Iranian help) is having moderate success in Anbar. Bashir & Russia are working on Allepo, Hezbollah in Baalkbek is on the offensive and now France, horrible to say but I feel there will be an uptick in (more) atrocities very soon.
@mockingbird:
I know that it’s probably not the wisest thing, given the lesser durability, but I’ve been buying individual issues, so I’ve got the material to be up-to-date, just haven’t sat down to read them in a few months.
Oh, no wait, I am up to date on Ms. Marvel. I’m just not up to date on Captain Marvel and on Lumberjanes.
Four semi-related thoughts:
1) since you clearly read comics, is “mockingbird” as your nym related to the hero in any way? If it was a hunger games reference, wouldn’t it have to be “mockingjay” – or does hunger games have mockingbird references as well? (I’ve seen the first movie & read the first book b/c my oldest is into it and I had to decide if it was too mature, but I didn’t find it compelling, actually, so I’m don’t know anything about the rest and have no plans to read any – spoilers are fine.)
2) Has mockingbird (the Marvel hero) ever had a good run in her own book? I don’t remember it, but I mainly read Marvel heroes as a little kid and a teenager from about 1978/79 to 1989 or so. I’ve read random bits since then, but when I came back to comics in the mid-2000s I came back with different priorities and habits than when I first was reading them. The comic that cemented my return to comic fandom was actually I was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!
3) I am convinced that “Rosie” in Lumberjanes is actually an in-joke/reference/homage to Megan Rosalarian Gedris who authored IWKbLPfOS. Look at the pictures of Gedris on her site, then look at the art in Lumberjanes. Pay particular attention to the fact that Rosie has a mermaid tattoo. Yep.
4) Do you read Pharyngula? I don’t remember being called CD here, but it happens all the time over there (and I’m good with it, of course). While I read WHTM consistently, I don’t comment here the way I do on FreethoughtBlogs, so I was surprised to see the nickname carry over.
I tried starting the Disc World series yesterday but wasn’t feeling it. Now I’m thinking about picking up Pern again.
Dumping some pics of the brothers Peeves and Puckerton, and their stepmother Panda.
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I liked Pern when I was 10. When I was 10 I thought it was brilliant. I kept reading with lessened interest til I was 15 or 16. I picked it up as an adult and it just didn’t hold up for me. There were some things that were very well thought out, some things that worked wonderfully, but they were mainly the concepts and conflicts that drove the plot, not the actual details of character and motivation or of writing. Since the concepts were no longer new (White Dragon was actually my favorite of the series and even though I don’t think the wordcraft reaches excellence, how it handles time travel is still as good as any time travel book I’ve ever read), it just couldn’t hold me. Nonetheless I still have respect for the imagination, background thought, and world-building.
OTOH, as a lover of bad puns I think I read my last Piers Anthony novel when I was 19, maybe even 20, but I don’t think that there was ever a plot of his that I really respected as creative other than kinda-sorta the first Xanth novel, but that one still not nearly as much as McAffrey’s work on Pern.
So I read the Xanth series later (since I started at 14 or so, it may have been the same number of years), but for a specific reason that provides little evidence of great writing on Anthony’s part. Worse for those arguing that Anthony is a good writer: apparently fans of his first Xanth novel sent him a good deal of the puns for his 2nd and 3rd novels. Once it hit 4 novels, the fans of the series were sending in more puns than he could use. So it’s not like he was even the creative source for most of those puns after book 1 (and not even the creative source for 10% of the puns after book 4 or so).
I do respect his work ethic, and I once heard a story (this american life?) about him taking in a runaway kid that spoke very highly of his character and kindness and partially redeemed his character for me from the damage done by his handling of certain women characters. But no, I don’t know how the Xanth series survived as long as it did (more than 13 books, I remember. Who knows how many before it finally died).
baroncognito — I get a lot (too many, I’m out of space) of mine from goodwill, they sell them, yeah, but at least at the outlet it’s 50¢ for hardcover and 25¢ for everything else.
Re: Lolita, I don’t think he’s writing what he thought of little girls, but what he thought of grown women. But that’s mostly because literary circles all seem to say that HH is supposed to be a horrible person and that anyone sympathizes with him is unbelievable. It’s definitely squicky but from everything I’ve heard outside the manosphere it’s not pro-pedophila.
dhag — cute kitty is cute. I’d love a perfect little all black kitty (or rather, the one my ex’s parents decided to give up because their damn dog wouldn’t stop harassing her… dog’s known me two years, still loses its shit at me >.< )
@Argenti
This particular black cat (Demi) just appeared in my mail box one day.
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@Virtually Out of Touch
I have meditated but I don’t do it often now. It’s great stuff. But it is difficult for me to keep up. My boyfriend has meditated for many years.
You might be right that meditation will save the world.
Other candidates: anti-domestic violence campaigns, feminism, environmental campaigns.
Shame about “I was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outerspace” it was a fun story, it’s really too bad about the jerks who have the rights to it. I did, however, pick up Yu+Me dream when the author was doing a sale.
Mockingbird has never had a solo title before, but she will be getting one next year written by Chelsea Cain (who apparently wrote Bobbi in the 50th anniversary issue of SHIELD if you want to get an idea of what that comic will be like).
The Fast Set by Charles Jennings. It’s part of my (woefully neglected) Dusty Bookshelf Challenge for this year
@ mockingbird – many thanks for the link for Henrietta Lacks – I’ve bookmarked it for later listening.
I first heard about her in this essay which you might enjoy: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/anne-enright/whats-left-of-henrietta-lacks
@ robert – I enjoyed Otranto although (or because) it is so utterly full of nonsense and weird shifts in perspective. What size is that helmet, for example? The Monk I thought was rather sweaty stuff…
I’m ambivalent about Lolita. When I was a teen it was marketed as a kind of daringly sexy read, so of course I read it as soon as I could get my hands on it, aged about 14, and it was (to me) nothing of the sort, but a fairly grim tale of obsession and manipulation, with quite a lot of underlying violence.
But later in life I’ve met several guys who read it as adults or were reading it and they saw it as a kind of sexy read, though one complained to me that there was too much “literature” in it and not enough sex scenes, and that of course it was OK for the narrator to have sex with his orphaned stepdaughter child because she “had already had sex at the summer camp”. So there’s that.
But I loved Pale Fire – that’s a great book, I think.
@ dhag85 – oooh, kitties! The little ones look like cousins of our mogs, only ours have black noses.
@Robert and Nequam, I like gothic, old and new, and have been meaning to read Otranto. I read Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho years ago. Enjoyed it at the time, but don’t remember a thing.
I loved Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, and ETA Hoffmann’s Tales of Hoffmann (the collection that includes the weird and wonderful The Sandman.)
I shall check out Vathek!
Anybody here read Joyce Carol Oates’s gothic novels and SSs? I can HIGHLY recommend The Accursed.
Right now I’m reading a collection of horror stories (called 999 because it was first published in 1999; it contains one of Oates’s.) Have Atwood’s latest on hold at the library.
Autosomal
Oh it’s a news site I thought it was a site for books, my bad.
I read comics like silent hill and a few of them are bad. I would read some others at book stores like Disney and some manga too. I tried looking for the Blair witch and Tank Girl comics but you have to pay. Ever since I was a baby I have most of the dr Seuss, Disney and the little golden books.