Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day

finished the second part

If last week I got the rhythm of the novel, this week I got the joy. There's so many things I could point to, but the one image that stands out the most for me is the sudden move to the dump full of broken and failed time machines. On its face, as described here, it sounds entirely stupid—and even in the book, it partly is—but the fantastic part is how emotional a beat this absurd image is, how it seems to presage a failure, or a destruction of the world.

Unfortunately for me, I've been reading this as an ebook from the library, and since the book was dues in a few days, I returned it early, to have an easy stop. I now have the book, again, on hold. Here's to hoping the next few people in front of me in line give up early, so I can get back to the joy.

Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day

read about 50 - 100 pages from the second part

This week I feel like I really got into the rhythm of this book. In other entries here I've made the claim that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure requires a different sort of reading than other manga/narratives I've read, and I'd day the same for Against the Day (more so, even, than other Pynchon I've read). Of course, I might just be making this connection because both Against the Day and JoJo 7 take place in the 1800s in the American Southwest (and make use of/possibly parody the magical native american trope), but I think there's something about how each refuses to be easily contained in a simple explanation. Where JoJo messes with its own sincerity, Against the Day is more plainly and openly silly or madcap or so on, but it certainly messes with just how many plot threads you can have at once, how much it expects its reader to hold onto.

What does this lead up to? Why is this so? Who knows. Maybe I'll see as I read on

Alison Rumfitt - Tell Me I'm Worthless

Listened to the audiobook, and finished early this week, likely while doing the dishes, or something in the kitchen. I remember that specifically for the first scene of (what I believe was) the last part: the flashback to the house's history. I think something like that is always powerful: when a novel suddenly shifts to the speed and focus of a short story.

Overall: a pretty good horror book. Perhaps a little to "online" for my tastes (what a terrible phrase. what a terribly dismissive way of referring to an entire subsection of expression), but realistically that critique is self critique: how would I know that if i didn't waste time online.

JoJo's Bizzare Adventure

Finished part 6. Read the first chapter of part one.

I've debated counting manga in my reading log, but who cares! It has words!

JoJo is such a unique reading experience. I've been going through it slowly for more than a year now, and I'm still not sure if I know how to read it. Is it a joke? Is it almost uncomfortably earnest? I don't know at all, and I love to read it even if only for that.

But if I keep reading this slowly, I might have more time to think over that idea. This week I wanna take a moment to marvel at part 6, and how of all the fictional representations of Florida I've ever seen, none have come closer to capturing what it feels like that Stone Ocean, which really gives me a soft spot for the manga, even if its maybe as messy as its got since part 1. (Footnote: I grew up in Florida. My family lives in Florida. I'm not there now, but previously I've lived like everywhere in the state) Maybe this accuracy has to do with what I described in the paragraph above.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Got about halfway through book five. I've been reading them again to see if I like them, but I really don't think I do. Book 1, when it was playing with hobbits.... that was the stuff. This tho...

Ok, so let's be fair. I don't like fantasy much at all. Part of why I wanted to re-read these books (well... re-listen) was to sit with these feelings and try to understand them. So maybe expect more on that at a later time.

Joyce Carol Oates - Last Days (stories)

I read the last two stories in this collection this week: Lamb of Abyssalia and Our Wall.

Let me talk about this collection: Oates is back baby! This seems to be where she started to write more of her more fantastical, Kafka-influenced stories (no, not Kafka-esque. We're talking Kafka fables, not his bureaucratic kink), which is one of my favorites of her styles.

Joyce Carol Oates - Mysteries of Winterthurn

Started this after finishing the short stories above. I remember not liking it as much as the other gothic novels when I read it before, but we'll see what I think now. I'm maybe twenty pages in, only enough to start to pick up the narrative voice.

KA Applegate, Animorphs 3: The Encounter

I am now old enough to "go back" to books I liked as a child. Look: as an audiobook, you can knock one of these out in less than a day, while at your job. They've been pretty good, so far.

Berserk

Read chapters 368 to 375, which is all of them out now.

An observation, in place of anything else: ever since the original author died, Griffith has not been drawn as a woman. In fact, every chapter he's appeared, he's had a conspicuously muscular torso, drawn as though to ascertain to the reader that yes, he is surely a man. Make of that what you will.

The Cincinanti Review, vol 20.1

New thing: I am reading the places that have rejected my writing, to learn what they like.

Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day

Read a little from part 2 this week. It's really spreading in this chapter, with new places POVs, etc, and much more of an obviously sci-fi bent. I'm enjoying it by letting my mind go, as tho listening to a boomer relative at Thanksgiving or something telling lots of jokes.

Ursula K LeGuin - Earthsea

I finished Tombs of Atuan and I started The Farthest Shore.

Maybe this is a good place to think about my opinions on fantasy, as I loved Tombs, and I'm finding Shore hard to get thru, as I felt about Wizard, the first of the Earthsea books. I think it has something to do with the way the political structures of fantasy books usually are: stable, or at the very least organic.

Le Guin is (of course) a great counter example to this. Her sci-fi doesn't have this "organic" feeling to it, and neither does Tombs. In Tombs, especially, the social structure built atop (though not of) a magical Real (or whatever) feels more like a trap then a structure, you know.

But then why do I not feel the same about the other two books in the series so far? Who knows.