What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

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Currently forcing myself through the dreck churned out by a far-right Catholic "historian" called Warren Carroll so I can write a takedown of him at some point in the future. Also rereading Tree and Leaf, which is vastly more life-affirming and fun.

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The Journal of John Wesley. I must say, if anyone ever were to read it without the faintest clue of religion beforehand, there is no other book so convincing. It reads like a sequel to the Book of Acts, and if half the claims in it are true, I would be greatly afraid to oppose a word of Wesley’s - on multiple occasions, mobs attempt to kill him and cannot harm him; his prayers bring a man back to life; his frequent rebukes unto Christians are startling and terrifying.

He was, by several records, the first to ordain blacks and women, and his writings elsewhere on such subjects are astounding. I have heard some call him the Thirteenth Apostle, but to my mind, he seems to surpass even the apostles.

I have a high opinion of John Wesley as well, but I doubt he'd want you thinking this.

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EDIT: And by 'lack of realism', I mean that the world that exists in Wuthering Heights is almost completely different from our own. Normal people in our world do not behave like normal people in this novel. Relationships rarely work like they do in this novel. All of this helps create a general sort of mood in the novel, which is pretty similar with most Gothic Fiction.

But it is a fiend of a book — an incredible monster, combining all the stronger female tendencies from Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Brownrigg. The action is laid in hell, — only it seems places and people have English names there.

(For the record, I love it too.)

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About to start The Big Sleep.

Finishing up White Fang and I swear to god this is the cutest sh!t i've ever read.

Speaking of schoolroom standbys, I'm also reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" books. It's an...interesting series. The books are deeply racist and written in the service of a political project that's glaringly obvious as an adult reader, but you can also see why generations of children and parents have found them so endearing.

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The Day of the Triffids is a justly iconic book that's clearly had an enormous influence on sci-fi and post-apocalyptic media of all stripes, and it's really fun to see the sources of those influences as they pop up in the plot. Unfortunately, to get that out of the book you have to be willing to overlook some of the most wildly ableist English prose ever written, so, for me at least, the book is slow going.

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I've had a bad lockdown in that I've read little.

But just finished re-reading Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller. Last time I rushed it. It's interesting to read a woman's pov when writing about gay romance and sex but she does a good job without veering too far into slash fanfic territory.

Would you recommend it to me? I've heard mixed things about it, all from women; I've never heard another gay or bisexual man's take on it.

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In short in order to elevate a same sex relationship historically whether real or imagined you have to 'negotiate' on page how you deal with the women that were used passively or intentionally by them as cover or deflection. I've seen criticisms of that with this book, but also a lot of praise for it. But I'm not in a position to dismiss the criticisms even though I think from my perspective they handle it well

Interesting. I wonder how I'll feel about that as someone who's interested in both women and men; it's something I've noticed in other gay literature and generally disliked (although I of course understand why it's done), but maybe I'll feel differently about it here. If I do end up reading it I'll definitely get back to you.

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The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson and The Tigers of Mompracem by Emilio Salgari.

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I'm having a look at Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Anyone here a stoic?

Not a stoic myself, but fascinating school of thought. Let us know what you make of it!

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Now reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, rereading parts of Philosophy as Metanoetics by Hajime Tanabe, and about to start a reread of In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu because 'tis the season.

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Henry James The American Scene.

There are some astute observations in it (America is a cultural bleach that strips the color off every nationality immigrating to it) but James is every inch the reactionary expatriate.

Henry James's body of work is what made me realize that being simultaneously gay and homophobic is the core of the Western cultural tradition.

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Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber.

Gory, hypersexual, overwritten, fabulous.

And, yes, I'm a Holmes fan as well. I particularly like "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" for its moody, gothic atmosphere and "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" for the great-for-its-time social commentary.

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Two great leftist or leftist-adjacent adventure classics, Capitan Tempesta by Emilio Salgari and Moby-Dick.

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On the advice of a friend who wants me to read more contemporary (read: post-1970ish) fiction, I just read Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and will next be picking up one of the two Umberto Eco novels I haven't read before.

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Just finished Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, and I'm revisiting Burke's Reflections

I absolutely love Decline and Fall. Incredibly funny. Depending on the day you ask me, I might just say it’s my favourite Waugh novel.

It's an excellent book. I annoyed everyone I live with by incessantly reading it aloud to them. I certainly plan on reading more Waugh in the future.

It was actually the first one I read by him, having been gifted it by my mother for my birthday, so I have a sentimental attachment to it that probably even further heightens my estimatation of it. Anyway, when you do return to Waugh, I’d highly recommend Scoop if you’re looking for more of his comic genius. Or you could always get stuck right into Brideshead Revisited!

Both absolutely fantastic novels. The great thing about Scoop is that when Waugh wrote it he probably took some of the racist attitudes it expresses as unironic givens, but it's written in such a sly, both amusing and amused style that it works just as well as a satire on those attitudes today.

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I'm rereading The Lord of the Rings, but this time I'm reading it in Japanese (Yubiwa monogatari). I've never attempted to read something so long in Japanese before, even when I was majoring in the language, and I figured a story that I'm already intimately familiar with would be a good place to start, especially since this way I get the fun of seeing what makes the translation tick. It's going well so far.

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Just ordered Submission by Michel Houellebecq, which a friend has strongly recommended to me.

Good grief.

Well, tell us what you think, I guess.

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My impression is that Houellebecq believes in the Great Replacement but has no strong position about whether it's a bad thing.

That's his stance on opebo-style sexpat subcultures too, and would probably be his stance on QAnon if he were American. If that weren't the case then it might actually be based-adjacent as a Great Replacement take, but alas.

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Finished John Brown's Body.  This is truly one of the best things I have ever read.  The First Manassas scene is one of the best things I've ever read.  I was glued to my seat on the metro reading it.

The epic poem by Stephen Vincent Benet?

Yes.  It's very good.

My impression of Benet's body of work in general is that it isn't very well-regarded in retrospect--basically as just a series of exercises in American nationalist mythmaking without a ton of literary merit separate from that. Would you say this is an unfair characterization, or is John Brown's Body in particular just a lot better than the rest of his work?

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Currently suffering through The Mists of Avalon. I certainly wish I could ~separate the art from the artist~ on this one, but it's awfully difficult considering how much energy the narrative devotes to hammering home the Good and Feminist nature of ritualized sexual promiscuity that you're not allowed to say no to if Marion Zimmer Butwhatifthechildconsents or one of her author mouthpiece characters thinks it's a good idea. The genuinely hilarious levels of protagonist-centered morality and occasional moments of bizarre antisemitism DESPITE THE BOOK HAVING NO JEWISH CHARACTERS IN IT are difficult to ignore too.

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Yes, this is the hill I’m willing to die on.

Why in this thread in particular, though?

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Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

Neuromancer's great, I really need to read more Gibson.

I'm only a bit into Neuromancer but it is super cool.

It gets easier to follow--and the concepts, thus, even cooler--as it goes on.

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Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

Neuromancer's great, I really need to read more Gibson.

I'm only a bit into Neuromancer but it is super cool.

It gets easier to follow--and the concepts, thus, even cooler--as it goes on.

Actual Neuromancer Joe Manchin

The pun on "necromancer" actually is made in-text late in the book.

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Vanity Fair. Comedy gold.

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Just finished (in Japanese) the most recent Otherside Picnic novel by Iori Miyazawa--the series is shockingly good for the "kind" of literature that it is, a bit like some of the better Ace Doubles if they had come out of Akihabara otaku culture rather than midcentury dime-novel hackistan--and just started The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen, which I'm also really liking so far.