Glad to hear I still occasionally occupy (audio) space on your bedside table. Just discovered substack and have become a subscriber. Have you ever read (listened to) Guy Gavriel Kay? 'Tigana' is an oldie but goldie and quite relevant in that Russia is trying to erase Ukraine (you'll know what I mean if you find it). His latest 'All the Seas of the World' was published this week and is glorious (yes, I recorded the audio).
I saw the movie based on Wise Blood starring a young Brad Dourif and directed by John Huston A fascinating film from 1979. Huston's 33rd directorial was so fresh it seemed it was done by a first timer. Vincent Canby the NY Times critic said that Huston had more highs and lows in his career than a decade of weather maps!
Thanks for the update! I just finished The Ministry for the Future as well. I found it to be both a brilliant and deeply agitating read. I’ve worked in renewable energy for most all of my professional life, so I can confirm that he hews very closely to the current realities and thinking in that sphere (though this also made for terrible bedtime reading for me). My hope is that the book helps frame thinking and discourse as we face down this challenge on so many fronts, and that more people realize the urgency with which WE NEED MORE DIRIGIBLES NOW!
I read "The Future Is History" as research for my crime novel set in the Russian diaspora of Brooklyn's Little Odessa. Definitely a recommend! It's brilliant and worthy of the National Book Award. It's as if Studs Terkel did a book on things even worse than working conditions in America.
i've just finished tim snyder's on tyranny, the coolly illustrated graphic edition, i recommend it right now to everyone.. will have to check out this other tim snyder book ;) & yes it has been the rainiest may here in pdx i remember ever experiencing.. why do the skunks come out in all this? :o
Hahaha! I actually JUST (as in two days ago) picked back up Wise Blood, which was once one of my all-time favorite books. I haven’t read it again in decades, and thought I was due for a reread. How funny that you’re also diving in. (I’ve been struggling to read for the last several months, and the only things I seem to be able to read at all are things I feel obligated to blurb.)
Just finished and highly highly recommend Bittersweet by Susan Cain. It came out last month I believe and does a wonderful job looking at the human ability to hold space for pain and melancholy and transform it into beautiful art that reconnects us all.
Currently reading through P. Djèlí Clark's novella Ring Shout which in a few short pages through skyrocketed to the top of best things I've read in a while. I've been working my way through Boss Fight Books series of monographs on video games and finished up the one on Kingdom Hearts II. I've been enjoying how they're all part media analysis part personal essay because you have to really, really deeply love and have a deep connection to a game to write 100+ pages of analysis on it.
I have watched that BBC adaptation of L. Dorrit. I really like those adaptations. The actors are all great, and they nail the costumes and sets. Bleak House with Gillian Andersen is the best, Oliver Twist is excellent (Tom Hardy is *the best* Bill Sykes!). So I say L. Dorrit is worth the watch.
I am trying to read through Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Educated Mind’s booklists. (So many weird Ss there) so I just read Oliver Twist for the first time, the only Dickens I have read other than A Christmas Carol. It was painful for me to be honest. The next one is Jane Eyre which I read a few times in my gothic high school days, no doubt set to The Cure’s Disintegration.
Colin, I’d like to hear more about your Russophilia. How does it manifest? Have you ever been there? Did you see the movie Russian Dolls (sequel to La Auberge Espagnole, takes place in Saint Petersburg before the grip of Putin, terribly sexist)? Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky?
I really enjoy your reading recommendations! I loved the BBC adaptation of Little D, it’s really good. I’ve started reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and so far, his writing style reminds me of your songwriting style. I like it so far.
After your initial post about Little D (😉), I made haste to the library to borrow it for my upcoming Cabo trip (because nothing says poolside-lounging-with-margaritas like a Charles Dickens book). Alas, it was checked out, so I ended up with Nicholas Nickleby which, so far, has been quite entertaining, depressing, and satisfies my penchant for semicolons. I can’t remember - have you read NN?
Another season of brief habits. Mary Karr's Lit, Michael Tubb's The Deeper the Roots, Ada Limón from 2018 on, and Ocean Vuong's newest, Time is a Mother. And Seamus Heaney's translation of book VI The Aeneid (the katabasis!).
Stories and language of reportage from the depths of humanness. Still not over people telling it from the bottoms of their barrels.
Glad to hear I still occasionally occupy (audio) space on your bedside table. Just discovered substack and have become a subscriber. Have you ever read (listened to) Guy Gavriel Kay? 'Tigana' is an oldie but goldie and quite relevant in that Russia is trying to erase Ukraine (you'll know what I mean if you find it). His latest 'All the Seas of the World' was published this week and is glorious (yes, I recorded the audio).
I'll check it out! Thanks, Simon!
This comment and reply is large enough to now do a “Houseguest” interview between the two of you!!
You will always be THE Maturin, like Tull is THE Aubrey, still can't decide who is Killick, though. A glass of wine with you, sir.
I saw the movie based on Wise Blood starring a young Brad Dourif and directed by John Huston A fascinating film from 1979. Huston's 33rd directorial was so fresh it seemed it was done by a first timer. Vincent Canby the NY Times critic said that Huston had more highs and lows in his career than a decade of weather maps!
Thanks for the update! I just finished The Ministry for the Future as well. I found it to be both a brilliant and deeply agitating read. I’ve worked in renewable energy for most all of my professional life, so I can confirm that he hews very closely to the current realities and thinking in that sphere (though this also made for terrible bedtime reading for me). My hope is that the book helps frame thinking and discourse as we face down this challenge on so many fronts, and that more people realize the urgency with which WE NEED MORE DIRIGIBLES NOW!
I read "The Future Is History" as research for my crime novel set in the Russian diaspora of Brooklyn's Little Odessa. Definitely a recommend! It's brilliant and worthy of the National Book Award. It's as if Studs Terkel did a book on things even worse than working conditions in America.
i've just finished tim snyder's on tyranny, the coolly illustrated graphic edition, i recommend it right now to everyone.. will have to check out this other tim snyder book ;) & yes it has been the rainiest may here in pdx i remember ever experiencing.. why do the skunks come out in all this? :o
Hahaha! I actually JUST (as in two days ago) picked back up Wise Blood, which was once one of my all-time favorite books. I haven’t read it again in decades, and thought I was due for a reread. How funny that you’re also diving in. (I’ve been struggling to read for the last several months, and the only things I seem to be able to read at all are things I feel obligated to blurb.)
Nice to be jointly reading with you!
Just finished and highly highly recommend Bittersweet by Susan Cain. It came out last month I believe and does a wonderful job looking at the human ability to hold space for pain and melancholy and transform it into beautiful art that reconnects us all.
Currently reading through P. Djèlí Clark's novella Ring Shout which in a few short pages through skyrocketed to the top of best things I've read in a while. I've been working my way through Boss Fight Books series of monographs on video games and finished up the one on Kingdom Hearts II. I've been enjoying how they're all part media analysis part personal essay because you have to really, really deeply love and have a deep connection to a game to write 100+ pages of analysis on it.
I have watched that BBC adaptation of L. Dorrit. I really like those adaptations. The actors are all great, and they nail the costumes and sets. Bleak House with Gillian Andersen is the best, Oliver Twist is excellent (Tom Hardy is *the best* Bill Sykes!). So I say L. Dorrit is worth the watch.
Bronson Pinchot? Don’t be ridiculous (dating myself with that)
The same! He has a major career doing audiobooks these days...
I am re-reading the border trilogy in anticipation of the two new Cormac Mccarthy book being released at the end of the year.
I am trying to read through Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Educated Mind’s booklists. (So many weird Ss there) so I just read Oliver Twist for the first time, the only Dickens I have read other than A Christmas Carol. It was painful for me to be honest. The next one is Jane Eyre which I read a few times in my gothic high school days, no doubt set to The Cure’s Disintegration.
Colin, I’d like to hear more about your Russophilia. How does it manifest? Have you ever been there? Did you see the movie Russian Dolls (sequel to La Auberge Espagnole, takes place in Saint Petersburg before the grip of Putin, terribly sexist)? Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky?
I really enjoy your reading recommendations! I loved the BBC adaptation of Little D, it’s really good. I’ve started reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and so far, his writing style reminds me of your songwriting style. I like it so far.
After your initial post about Little D (😉), I made haste to the library to borrow it for my upcoming Cabo trip (because nothing says poolside-lounging-with-margaritas like a Charles Dickens book). Alas, it was checked out, so I ended up with Nicholas Nickleby which, so far, has been quite entertaining, depressing, and satisfies my penchant for semicolons. I can’t remember - have you read NN?
Another season of brief habits. Mary Karr's Lit, Michael Tubb's The Deeper the Roots, Ada Limón from 2018 on, and Ocean Vuong's newest, Time is a Mother. And Seamus Heaney's translation of book VI The Aeneid (the katabasis!).
Stories and language of reportage from the depths of humanness. Still not over people telling it from the bottoms of their barrels.