Finished reading a three part series written by a young English author named Joseph Knox. His books are crime/detective/thrillers that are gripping reads. Because his detective Aidan Waits is no hero. He is a disgraced cop with personal demons haunting him at every twist and turn and who stumbles across secrets, lies and deceit as he goes along. Set in Manchester, Northern England - a city known for its sporting prowess, its nightlife and a young student population but old fashioned landscape and mannerisms. This author captures a mood well and it’s more of an atmospheric thriller as the detective is being broken down as he doesn’t know anyone to trust.
Sirens
The Smiling Man
The Sleepwalker
In late February it was announced these books would be adapted to TV. I look forward to it when it comes out.
Quick side-rant: Lovecraft is in a selection of authors, like Edgar Rice Burroughs and JM Barrie, who I think are simultaneously genius and loathesome.
As an enormous sf/fantasy dork, I 100% acknowledge how each of them changed the genre and created astonishingly powerful new archetypes and tropes. I also know what horrible freaks they were and how they perpetuated nasty racist and misogynist and antisemitic stereotypes in their fiction, and how echoes of those come down into modern times. It’s great how Lovecraft’s work has undergone a reckoning, of which Jemisin is part, and I hope that Peter Pan and Conan can have a similar reckoning.
Especially if it was squamous, blasphemous, eldritch, or all three.
Spending so much time at home, I’ve resumed reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings aloud with my teenage son. We’re now about halfway through The Two Towers (and thus the trilogy), having just finished the chapter on the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Some of the writing is so elegant, so good, I just stop for a little and marvel at it.
Tell me about it. I think Richard Wagner is the Supreme God of Music, but…
BTW, I know how HPL felt about black and brown (and Italian-American, for fucksake) people, but where was he an anti-Semite? Did I miss those stories?
Also, you would think HPL would have admired Gabrielle d’Annunzio, the Italian proto-fascist decadent poet/novelist, who revered Wagner but promoted the Roman-style superman over the Germanic. Did he figure the “good” Italians just stayed in Italy, and only the dregs emigrated?
Years ago, I had a fun chat about Lovecraft with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro at an ABA convention. She contended that one aspect of HPL’s horror was based on his loathing of seafood.
“If I were on the beach and Cthulhu came lurching up out of the sea, my first inclination would be to grab a frying pan, some lemon and garlic.”
Just finished The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance during the Blitz. by Erik Larson. The book focused on a year of Churchill’s life, from May 1940 when he became Prime Minister to May 1941 as The Blitz wound down as Hitler prepared for war against Russia. It’s told from the background of his family and colleagues that were with him during those times.
It’s a long (500 pages) read, and heaven knows there is no lack of writing about Winston Churchill out there (including his own writings), but setting it at the most critical time of the war and seeing his family and how they were affected…was a rather interesting take. I don’t think you’ll find anything really shocking or profound, but if you want to see a man under great stress and still be a part of a family…it’s worth your time. Mr. Larson has done a number of good books, and I may have to go back to my personal library and re-read a couple of them…he is that good of a writer.
Today I read about 85 pages of The Unfortunates by Kim Liggett, then gave it up for good. I did the same with Liggett’s The Grace Year just a few days ago. I guess she’s not for me.
And that…was the end of my library books. I’ll have to go re-read something I actually own now.
McGonigal is a health psychologist, and I would describe her books as scientific self-help. If you can imagine a self-help book that was completely backed by neuroscience and research studies showing exactly how your thoughts and actions affect your mental state, that’s what her books are. Kind of like Brene Brown, except that McGonigal goes into more depth about the science behind things, as opposed to just the research.
The Joy of Movement shows the benefits of exercise, but instead of focusing on physical health, it focuses on how exercise affects your mental state. It also delves into some interesting related issues, like how music, physical interaction, and being outdoors affects the mind. It’s a timely reminder of how to stay in good spirits during this whole pandemic. While you obviously can’t do things like group exercise classes, you can still get outdoors, get moving, and listen to upbeat music, and you can still take steps to feel part of a community. I recommend any one of McGonigal’s books that I’ve read. If you struggle with willpower, with stress, or with finding motivation to exercise, I’m confident you’ll be inspired by her books.
I thought it would be interesting to rewrite The Shadow over Innsmouth, but with the sea-dwellers being Ariel and her sisters, King Triton, Ursula and her sister, and the rest of that crowd. The narrator can go into fits over the Jamaican-accented crab.
Was on a roll this afternoon, so polished off the last 50 pages of a book I’ve been reading on and off the past several weeks.
Merchants of Doubt, or as the front blurb says, “How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”. Pretty bold promise there, but in the main they do what they say, starting with smoking and cancer right up to modern times (the book was published in 2010). Seeing the same names, groups, and tactics on tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole and global warming is pretty convincing and the author’s conclusions on why they do this (anti-communism morphed to free enterprise and equating regulations=socialism=communism) may not be as supported as I like, but the argument seems sound.
Worth digging out if you can’t really comprehend where or why the ‘scientific’ opposition to many environmental problems comes from.
I also recommend Roy Jenkins’s masterful one-volume bio Churchill: A Life, and Mary S. Lovell’s broader-focus, more gossipy but still good The Churchills: In Love and War.
Working through Shakespeare’s plays. Reading each on straight through, then reading discussion material about them, and reading them a second time to see what I missed.
So far finished The Tempest, and on my second way thru 2 Gentlemen of Verona.
