#i read the light novel in visceral detail and now i have to WATCH everything in visceral detail i hate it here

[latimeria-fell-from-heaven]

been watching the 2nd season of re:zero with a friendo and ive cried, like, two times so far and i've said "O H" in reaction to shit hitting the fan more times than i can count and we barely reached the 10th episode.

10/10 experience, can't wait to see the rest of what this mindfuck of a series has to show me <33

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #49 – The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Anna Older

I originally had aspirations of reading every Hugo nominee for best novella as well as best novel before the actual voting, but in retrospect that was always something of a bad joke. But a few weeks too late, my library hold on this did come in – I read it over a few days of lazy summer morning’s at a friend’s cottage, which was basically the ideal circumstances. It’s hardly high art, and not really my favoured subgerne of mystery regardless, but does accomplish its aspirations of being a cozy low-tension mystery-romance with style.

The story is set on Jupiter, some time after the environmental situation on Earth became sufficiently dire that humanity fled en mass to a life aboard rail-connected platforms floating in Jupiter’s (now ‘Giant’s’) skies. Mossa is one of the Investigator’s charged with solving crimes and disappearances, most pressingly the disappearance of a scholar in classical Earth ecosystems from the easternmost platform on a line. Expecting a suicide, she nonetheless travels to the University and calls upon Pleiti, her old university ex and now an established scholar in a similar field. From there, the two of them unravel the mystery together and things go basically as you’d expect them to.

Which is to say, this is billed as ‘cozy Holmesian murder mystery’, and each part of that description is much, much more important than the one that comes after. There is maybe two pages of what might be considered tension in the whole affair, and in general the reading experience is just the relaxing experience of watching a narrative travel along well-oiled tracks without anything much in the way of surprises and reversals. As Holmes-alikes go, Mossa isn’t bad. Not amazing, probably more of an archetype than a character, but the archetype and the dynamic of Holmes-and-Watson-but-they’re-lesbians-who-dated-in-college is handled as elegantly as the conceit really allows. The murder mystery largely exists to provide a structure for everything else – and I do viscerally dislike the fact that the actual villain is only introduced on the page at the same time the whole scene is revealed in the final confrontation. Feels like cheating.

The biggest part of ‘everything else’ is the setting. The vision of Jovian life was clearly worked out with a lot of love and care, and rather more effort is spent on the details of day-to-day life and academic bureaucratic politics than is on the specifics of the ostensibly driving mystery. I can’t speak to the plausibility of any of it, but that’s hardly the driving motivation here – it does successfully feel like a real world lived in by real people (if, perhaps, mostly improbably gentle and polite ones). Society is familiar and domestic enough to still fit the comfy label, but different enough to still feel plausibly alien. Though the fact that ‘conservative’ is an actual slur does kind of verge into self-parody of the whole genre of cozy progressive sci-i, here.

The romance is fine, I suppose? I’m hardly the target audience. That the two of the would get together in the end was absolutely never in question, and the book didn’t even pretend otherwise. And so it never really becomes an object of dramatic tension – the whole romance plot basically boils down to Pleiti lightly angsting over whether Mossa is sending mixed messages on purpose, only to eventually have her reveal she was awkwardly wondering she reciprocated before asking her out. There are lots of cute moments and no conflict to speak of.

This is a quick novella (fewer than 200 slight pages, in my copy), so there’s only so much it can be expected to do – but where it fell apart for me is actually the points where its ambition reached beyond just being a cozy murder mystery. There’s this light dusting of themes – of a conflict betwee nthe classisits who are so determined to perfectly recreate the pre-apocalyptic environment of earth in one go that they will study and plan for an eternity while humanity’s exile continues, versus the villains being desperate to return to a world with flowing water and solid ground that they’re willing to take drastic, independent action. The book acts like this was a real conflict the book explored and welt upon, patting itself on the back with a hopeful conclusion about Pleiti being the perfect woman to start a new synthesis of things – but honestly I just don’t buy it. It’s implicit but only barely touched on until literally the villains big monologue in the third act, which is a shame because you could get some really good ideological and political meat off that bone. Fees like wasted potential.

But yeah on the whole, not at all my genre, but fun lazy summer read.

[focusfixated]

february fic rec round-up

month #02: february - good omens, it, the goldfinch, little women, maurice

(please feel free to reblog)

---

jesus died for somebody’s sins (but not mine) by @lavellington

rating: G

fandom & pairing: good omens - aziraphale/crowley

summary: 'So you're going to start, what – praying?' 

'I already pray,' Aziraphale says, primly. 'I am an angel.'

'Yes, but it's different, what you do,' Crowley says, impatiently. 'It's not all sitting around trying to decipher mistranslated Hebrew, and searching for the Virgin Mary in your tea leaves. You're on the staff!'

notes: sharply beautiful, and a whole-ass queer mood in terms of the idea of awakening, of being able to fully occupy your own self and identity. there is a really lovely thing here of aziraphale finding a new, human way to express his faith and understanding of what god means to him, and it's explored in a way that is both incisive and uplifting. very well-observed, in terms of character, and crafted with such a light touch when it comes to the pace and wit of the dialogue. a joy to read the whole way through.

---

not exactly where i need to be (and yet it seems so close) by varnes

rating: M

fandom & pairing: IT - richie/eddie

summary: Richie runs all the way to Eddie’s. He has a bike but he can’t remember, just now, where he put it. Everything feels real, feels — the gravel hurt his shoeless feet, his lungs burn when he gets tired, there’s a cut on his chin that aches a little. It feels real but things always felt real, with It. You can’t trust how you feel or what you see. That’s the core of the terror of It. That everything is real and nothing is real and all of it can kill you.

notes: a subtle and thoughtful look at how your outlook changes over time, how your life shifts as you grow up, at the ways you can still make a difference. this is such a strong concept, and a masterful execution of a complicated, dimension-hopping story. full of world-building details and wonderfully in-depth character study. cathartic and emotional and beautifully written. 

---

24-pack card and sticker valentine kits by @stitchyblogs

rating: M

fandom & pairing: IT - richie/eddie

summary: Eddie grabs a bottle of Elmer’s and starts tracing each letter with glue. There’s a dopey, sort of proud feeling in Richie, watching him carefully craft the letters of his name. He could of picked Bill or Stanley, gnashing away on the other side of the table with their pinking shears, or the teacher - but he picked Richie. 

notes: structured as a series of valentines from 1984 to 2019, this is such a neat way of telling a story. a brilliant set of snapshots of richie's life, his trials and emotions, the absolutely compelling highs and lows. each segment is coloured by wonderful background details, sharply-observed, and the dialogue flows at such a pace, it sparkles with this characterful wit that is an absolute DELIGHT to read. 

---

feet on the ground, head in the sky by @suzybishops

rating: T

fandom & pairing: IT - richie/eddie

summary: richie and eddie put themselves back together, one long-distance phone call at a time.

notes: just a really lovely story of someone putting in the work to get better. taking the time to heal. learning how to be themselves again. captures the essence of fear and self-doubt - specifically, how richie feels about his writing, and about his potential lack of talent in the aftermath of any magically-boosted success - and leads us on a slow, soft walk towards renewal and acceptance.

---

a renaissance, another day by @tiny-steve

rating: E

fandom & pairing: the goldfinch - boris/theo

summary: Two years after Amsterdam Boris shows up on Theo’s doorstep in New York and he hasn’t had a hit in twenty-four hours.

notes: this is just INCREDIBLE. a deeply-felt, keenly-observed, brilliantly-constructed bit of storytelling. uses gorgeous imagery that is dramatic and sordid and beautifully-drawn, showing us the horror-show of drug withdrawal in a terribly visceral, awful way, but which also clears a path for something that gives us hope for the future, in a story that is otherwise characterised by its trauma. a brilliant end-piece to where the novel left off.

---

the home front by kindkit

rating: G

fandom & pairing: maurice - background maurice/scudder

summary: Alec Scudder and Clive Durham meet again in 1915.

notes: so neatly-conceived and executed. a lovely character study of scudder, full of warm, bright details of the world around him. a really gladdening thing to read and to imagine that, amongst the turmoil, the strength of this connection survives.

---

all this practice and still no grace by @drawsaurus

rating: E

fandom & pairing: little women - jo/laurie

summary: Laurie would have taken any humiliation, tenfold worse than this, to be as close to Jo as he was allowed now.

notes: a fascinating look at the gender-play between jo and laurie, the way they form their roles in opposition to each other. this is such a brilliant dynamic to play with, and is done in a really neat, sharp way, vividly-painted with economic and precise language. this is a look at people who are unsure of themselves, and the way they feel their way through something unfamiliar in an attempt to gain the freedom to get what they want. such a good read. 

---

previously:

month #01: january

[rhetoricandlogic]

THE MANUAL OF DETECTION BY JEDEDIAH BERRY

KAREN MEISNER / ISSUE: 9 MARCH 2009

Borges wrote in praise of the detective story that "it is safeguarding order in an era of disorder" ("The Detective Story," 1978). This notion is given a playful surrealist treatment in The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. Berry is no stranger to strange fiction; he's been up to his neck in it for years as the assistant editor of Small Beer Press, and his own short stories have been widely published to critical acclaim. Now he's written his first novel, and it is a stylish, exciting debut. In this story, sleuthing is more than a trade; it embodies an orderly approach to life. Mysteries must be solved to separate truth from illusion. Even the criminals seem mainly interested in crime as a mission, an artform, a way of affecting the world. Their leaders are magicians, masters of disguise, illusionists. The conflict between detectives and criminals is a clash of philosophical positions, a metaphysical struggle for dominance.

Our hero is Charles Unwin, mild-mannered file clerk for Detective Travis Sivart. They work at The Agency, a monolith of respectability which protects its city by standing firm against the criminal element. Unwin is a mild, unassuming fellow, never without his umbrella (it is always raining in the city). He excels at organizing and cataloguing files, comfortably contented within his appointed role. But when Detective Sivart goes missing, Unwin is unexpectedly promoted to detective and thrown into the field as an operative. Being thoroughly unsuited to the job, he protests his promotion, but when he comes under suspicion for murder, he must follow the clues in order to figure out what's going on. As he reluctantly begins to ask questions, he discovers that many facts in Detective Sivart's files are false. Soon he is swimming out of his depth, floundering in mysteries. In the thickening plot he finds evidence relating not only to the case at hand, but to secrets that may undermine all he's held true.

Unwin's initial approach to detection is clerklike: mechanically attempting to do what he thinks is expected of him, sorting the facts, bluffing his way through an assortment of odd discoveries. His transformation into an agent begins when he opens a copy of The Manual of Detection—the Agency's bible of the theory and practice of detective work—and reads his first bit of advice (under the header "Mystery, First Tidings of"):

The inexperienced agent, when presented with a few promising leads, will likely feel the urge to follow them as directly as possible. But a mystery is a dark room, and anything could be waiting inside. At this stage of the case, your enemies know more than you know—that is what makes them your enemies. Therefore it is paramount that you proceed slantwise, especially when beginning your work. To do anything else is to turn your pockets inside out, light a lamp over your head, and paste a target on your shirtfront. (p. 52)

Proceeding slantwise is also good advice for readers of this novel. The narrative does not propel us forward, guns blazing, so much as slowly draw us deeper into a mysterious world. Boundaries are blurred between realism and dream-states. The time in which events take place is never specified, though the story sustains a vaguely early-twentieth-century atmosphere throughout, as though tipping its bowler hat to the great mystery novels of that era. And yet the book feels fresh and new, even experimental. It's a book that provokes comparisons to other works of fiction, because it is so difficult to classify without reference points. However, I promised myself I would get through this review without quoting Chesterton, and I will not backslide now. The fact is that The Manual of Detection is a singular creation, confidently constructed in its genre-synthesizing originality.

Despite the book's many charms, I did not warm to the story immediately. The plot quickly becomes complicated, hallucinatory; I found it difficult to follow. (There's now a helpful websitethat makes it easier to keep track of personnel and other pertinent information.) The mannered, faintly Edwardian prose struck me at first as overly refined; corpses pile up and yet much of the action feels curiously bloodless, more dreamlike than visceral. Like Unwin himself, who "felt he had stumbled into the mystery he was supposed to be solving," I was thrown when the ground started shifting before I'd become quite anchored in the story. It was all a bit dizzying.

In 1924, André Breton wrote in the first Surrealist Manifesto that he sought to expand awareness and find a superior reality by exploring the associations of the unconscious mind. In Berry's novel, a similar notion is employed to practical ends by operatives of the Agency, who are able to spy on suspects within dreams, and see clues the unconscious may reveal about their crimes. As Unwin uses this surveillance method to track clues, the story drifts into the surreal. Curiously, the further Unwin submerges into the dreaming world, the more vivid and solid and awake a person he becomes, the more known to himself. When we first meet him, Unwin is a far cry from the hardboiled model of sleuth; he is a bit of a cipher, meekly shrinking from action, so buttoned-up and cautious that is difficult to get a grip on him. As he struggles toward understanding and his adversary, however, he begins to develop his own instincts, and life floods into the story.

Similarly, as the novel develops, the juxtaposition of precise, dapper prose in a bizarre context becomes hypnotic. The precision of Unwin's perspective gives every scene a realism that is constantly being subverted. The story never veers off into mere weirdness, but stays grounded in the inexorable dream-logic of its world. It reaches and unsettles the reader at an unconscious level. Science-fiction fans like to talk about the "sense of wonder" that results from encountering new concepts and creations, but what I got from this was the delicate sensation that arises when the familiar is made strange: a sense of mystery. Witness this scene when Unwin realizes he's being spied upon:

"He is trying to focus," said the man at the telephone.

Unwin set down the Manual and rose from his seat. He had not misheard: somehow the man with the blond beard was speaking Unwin's thoughts aloud. His hands shook at the thought; he had begun to sweat. The three men at the lunch counter swiveled again to watch Unwin walk to the back of the room and tap the man on the shoulder.

The man with the blond beard looked up, his eyes bulging with violence. "Find another phone," he hissed. "I was here first."

"Were you speaking about me just then?" Unwin asked.

The man said into the receiver, "He wants to know if I was speaking about him just then. He listened and nodded some more, then said to Unwin, "No, I wasn't speaking about you."

Unwin was seized by a terrible panic. (p. 54)

In short, Berry has put together a novel with the perception-challenging impact of a Magritte painting, and every element of the story works together to create that effect. It is Unwin's receptive, uncarved-block quality that allows him to traverse the landscape as a kind of lucid dreamer, sifting through information as it comes to him, without getting too bogged down in what he knows, perhaps falsely, to be true. He continues in his clear-headed, methodical approach even as reality is deconstructed around him. It is entirely right that the story should proceed at the pace it does, because the nature of this book is that it does not bombard the reader with emotion, action, or florid images. The storytelling is the opposite of bombastic; it invites you in to its stylish world, and parcels out its clues sparingly. It's an ambient kind of book. You sink into its atmosphere and let it wash over you, and it does things to your mind.

The surrealist painter Ian Hornak once wrote,

My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments. (Ian Hornak, The 57th Street Review, January 1976)

By this definition, The Manual of Detection succeeds brilliantly as surrealist art. It is also, without doubt, a sincere piece of good old-fashioned detective fiction, in which everything is connected, and readers are offered the satisfaction of a riddle that can be deciphered, of fitting interlocking pieces together into a logical whole. But something larger lingers in the wake of the individual mysteries Unwin investigates: mystery itself, strange and unknowable. Long after I finished reading The Manual of Detection I kept returning to it for the sheer pleasure of resting my eyes on the sentences, and falling back into that transcendent, mysterious mood. Unwin is described at one point as a "meticulous dreamer", and this elegant, intricate, ambitious book leaves me feeling that is a most wonderful thing to be.

Karen Meisner lives in the small city of Madison, Wisconsin, where it rains just the right amount. She edits fiction for Strange Horizons.

[thebookbeard-blog]

December is for Star Wars.

At least that's what I decided at the end of 2015 after watching The Force Awakens, a movie that re-kindled a love and passion that had been dormant since my teenage years. I went back to the theater three more times. I left each showing feeling like a kid, in the best of ways. I was, at almost thirty years old, Star Wars trash once again -- a label that I happily and readily accepted. I began to consume more SW-related pop culture. I started watching Star Wars Rebels, which in time I came to realize captures the spirit of the original trilogy better than almost anything else. I started reading some of the comics being put out by Marvel at the time, chiefly Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader run, a brilliant piece of storytelling on its own. Then I started to explore some of the books set in the Star Wars universe. 

The trash of the thing.

The first SW book I ever read was Claudia Gray's Lost Stars. My expectations were low: Star Wars is such a visually rich setting, after all, and I had doubts as to how well it would translate to the written word. If anything, I only expected a fun romp through the Star Wars universe. I certainly didn't expect it to be an arresting and heart-wrenching piece of fiction. But it turned out to be both. I loved it enough that it was the first book I picked as a favorite read for last year. And I loved Gray's writing enough that I would eagerly pick up whatever she wrote for the expanded universe next. The fact that this happened to be a story that focused on Leia increased my interested only by a hell of a lot.

Bloodline features and older, wiser, slightly weary Leia, still serving in her function as a Senator for the New Republic. At the beginning of the story, tired of all the ceremony and hypocrisy of politics, she's determined to retire from it all, but not before engaging in one last diplomatic mission which she hopes will do some actual, genuine good for the galaxy -- not to mention serve as one final adventure. That this adventure should prove to uncover a vast and deep conspiracy that threatens not only her personal safety and reputation but the fate of the entire galaxy should really come as no big surprise -- this is a Star Wars story, after all.

Gray's portrayal of Leia is beautifully nuanced, and balances the political and personal aspects of the character with grace and aplomb. This is a Leia that is a brilliant and savvy politician, as well as a bad-ass who knows how to handle a blaster and is ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.

Leia lifted her blaster, losing her sights on Rinnrivin’s guard — and targeting the central strut of the tunnel support directly overhead. One bolt held the entire thing together. That bolt was no larger than a child’s fist. At this range, in semi-darkness, perhaps one shot in a thousand might be capable of destroying that bolt. But Leia made the shot.

In short, the very same Leia that we all know and love. The same Leia that the late, great Carrie Fisher brought to life. Gray's capable prose does her more than enough justice.

The story is made all the more interesting by the fact that it deals heavily with politics, something that the prequels tried to do with very mixed and muddy results. It’s one of the more fascinating aspects in Bloodline however, and the intrigue and West Wing-like drama of it all carries the story through. That the political landscape of the novel happens to look very much like our own just adds a more surreal and slightly ominous layer to it all. 

Gray has gone on record to say that Bloodline wasn’t written as commentary, but it's pretty hard, especially after the events of last November, not to view the story as a reflection of our current reality. Part of the reason that Leia wants to retire has to do with the Senate devolving into a two-party system -- parties that are themselves fragmented into conflicting fractions. She laments how "every debate on the Senate floor turns into an endless argument over ‘tone’ or ‘form’ and never about issues of substance." And try to read this bit of dialogue and tell me it doesn't sound like something you’d find on a recent think piece.

“Surely you won’t deny the New Republic is committing mistakes of its own.”

“Not the evils of tyranny and control.”

“No. The evils of absence and neglect.”

And, of course, there’s the now viral quote at the close of the book that has gained new relevance in light of yesterday's marches:

“The sun is setting on the New Republic," Leia said. "It's time for the Resistance to rise.”

Indeed. 

Bloodline is both a brilliant character portrait and relevant social commentary. Claudia Gray can write Star Wars like no other and I will read anything she writes in this universe.

After dealing with the heady but heavy themes of Bloodline however, I figured I was due some for some warmth and comfort. At which point I usually turn to a Rainbow Rowell book.

I love Rainbow Rowell. I love her quirky and clever and passionate writing (if there was a book equivalent to Gilmore Girls, it would be a Rowell book). I love her amazing and uncanny ability to make you fall for a character in almost no time at all.

This same talent is brilliantly showcased in Kindred Spirits, a slim novella that, over the course of sixty-two pages, manages to have more character development than most sprawling, brick-sized novels.

It's an unfair gift, really.

This is a story about three Star Wars geeks camping out in desolate line in front of an Omaha theater for the premiere of The Force Awakens. It is lovely, and it is charming, and it is so wonderful. I finished the story in one sitting, desperately wishing there was a full-length novel featuring these characters that I could immediately pick up. Heartwarming and beautiful.

And so December rolled around once more, and with it another Star Wars film, because Disney will never be stopped.

But of course I loved almost everything about Rogue One: I loved its beautiful and beautifully diverse cast, I loved its relentless and brutal pace, I even dug its CGI missteps. It's a dark, dark film, to be sure, but it also seems very apt and timely. Rebellions are built on hope, etc.

I picked up the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story novelization by Alexander Freed because I kept coming across good reviews. I was skeptical -- I had tried to read Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of The Force Awakens and found the writing style so tedious that I couldn't get past the first chapter. Thankfully though Freed doesn't seem to suffer from this: his writing style is relatively spartan and straightforward, which serves this kind of story well. Even so I was still very much surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this, and even more surprised at how much more depth it managed to add to the story. 

One of the main criticisms about the film is that we don't spend enough individual time with the characters too feel much of anything when they meet their ultimate fate. Which is fair: movie's are all about the external after all, whereas in books and comics you can delve more into the character's feelings and motivations -- literally get inside their heads. This is what Freed does in the novelization, and to great effect. We get so many details regarding each character's background, personality, and motivation.

Cassian stashed his paranoia in the back of his brain -- out of the way but within easy reach.

Jyn knew the sounds of occupation well. They were the sounds of home.

Baze did not limit his targets to those who might spot the blind man, but he kept Chirrut under observation nonetheless; where the Force would fail Chirrut, Baze would not.

And it does affect how you feel about the characters as the plot happens to them. This is made most evident in K-2SO's final scene, an already heartbreaking moment in the film, but here Freed adds one last final touch that makes is all the more tragic and all the more beautiful. Totally evil stuff, but good nonetheless.

This device isn't limited to the characters either: for the more technical aspects of the plot we get things like communiques and log entries interspersed throughout the story, and they are also used to great effect. In a particularly brilliant entry, we get to find out just how Galen Erso, with the help of sheer bureaucratic nonsense, ensures the flaw he engineered in the Death Star reactor remains in place. A detail that is both morbidly hilarious and also incredibly realistic.

I do think that one of the things that makes the movie such a visceral experience gets totally lost in the translation, however, and that is much of the action. Freed does a serviceable job, but the action still very much slows down and lack urgency and tension. Darth Vader’s big scene is an absolute show-stopper in the movie, for example, whereas here it reads as very much anticlimactic. 

But that is admittedly a minor criticism that applies mostly to the third act, and I do think that the material and information that was added to the story more than makes up for it.

Highly recommend reading this before you watch Rogue One for the eight time.

It was raining. It didn’t rain in L.A. It was raining in L.A. and I was Princess Leia. I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would be her forever. I would never not be Princess Leia.

And then there's Carrie. Oh Carrie.

December was a particularly tough month in a particularly tough year. Too many artists I admired passed away, and then halfway through December I went a personal loss that left me dazed and numb. Then Carrie Fisher died, and it all struck me as once, and I was just sad for a long while.

I had downloaded The Princess Diarist shortly after finishing the Rogue One novelization. It seemed like an appropriate follow up, and I've been meaning to read Fisher's stuff for years anyway. It stayed unread on my tablet for a bit (the aforementioned personal loss took any desire I had to read much), but I picked it up immediately after learning of Carrie's death. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

The Princess Diarist is about Fisher looking back on diary entries she had penned in the late seventies, during the filming of Star Wars. It's a meditation on fame and growing up in Hollywood and being young and growing old. It's a wonderful read. Raunchy and hilarious and clever; whimsical and melancholy. Brutally honest and full of life truths. I highlighted a great many passages:

The crew was mostly men. That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it still is. It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.

I looked at her aghast, with much like the expression I used when shown the sketches of the metal bikini. The one I wore to kill Jabba (my favorite moment in my own personal film history), which I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that.

Back then I was always looking ahead to who I wanted to be versus who I didn’t realize I already was, and the wished-for me was most likely based on who other people seemed to be and the desire to have the same effect on others that they had had on me.

I don’t just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you’ve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong.

Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?

I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough. That I deserved time off for all my bad behavior. Let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack where I am both torturer and torturee.

I was sitting by myself the other night doing the usual things one does when spending time alone with yourselves. You know, making mountains out of molehills, hiking up to the top of the mountains, having a Hostess Twinkie and then throwing myself off the mountain. Stuff like that.

Trying relentlessly to make you love me, but I don’t want the love -- I quite prefer the quest for it. The challenge. I am always disappointed with someone who loves me -- how perfect can he be if he can’t see through me?

I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in.

I had feelings for him (at least five, but sometimes as many as seven).

Time shifts and your pity enables you to turn what was once, decades ago, an ordinary sort of pain or hurt, complicated by embarrassing self-pity, into what is now only a humiliating tale that you can share with others because, after almost four decades, it’s all in the past and who gives a shit?

This is a joy of a book, but it still made me sad. Sad that I never got to read and appreciate her written work while she was alive. Sad because the beautiful gem of a person who wrote these true beautiful things was now gone, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra, and we'll never, ever see her like again.

“Carrie?” he asked. I knew my name. So I let him know I knew it. “Yeah,” I said in a voice very like mine.

Good night, Space Momma. Thank you for you voice. Thank you for being so unabashedly you.                                                                                           

[caveartfair]

18 Artists Share the Books That Inspire Them

Some artists wear their literary loves on their sleeves. Take Frances Stark, who, for this year’s Whitney Biennial, filled a room with enormous, painterly reproductions of the first chapter of Censorship Now!, an irreverent essay collection by Ian F. Svenonius. Likewise, Icelandic art star Ragnar Kjartansson is such a fan of Halldór Laxness’s World Light that he not only plowed through the multi-part epic, he translated it into an almost 21-hour, four-channel video.  

But more often than not, we have no idea what artists are reading, no idea what books have shaped their life and work. And so, we asked 18 of our favorites to help compile an eclectic, artsy summer reading list, which includes everything from nature guides to Toni Morrison, Playboy, and a history of psychedelics.

Before we begin, I can’t resist interjecting my own beach-ready recommendation: Alissa Nutting’s Made for Love, out in early July, a smart-and-perverted tale of deranged tech geniuses and dolphin romance.

Ivana Bašić

The Eye, by Vladimir Nabokov

“This extraordinary book is based around post-existence and the malleable nature of reality,” says Bašić (whose own reality-bending kinetic sculptures can be found at Marlborough Contemporary in New York through June 24th). “The main character commits suicide at the very beginning, in one of the most profound and visceral scenes I’ve ever read. Yet instead of nothingness, he encounters a world constructed from his own imperfect memories. He is a disembodied gaze: The Eye. The world he creates becomes as convincing as the one he lived in, destabilizing the idea of the origin of reality. The character exists outside of a body in what he describes as a state of ‘absorption.’ A tireless, unblinking eye that observes—watching oneself, and others—is an eerie vision of today’s world…written 87 years ago.”

Ridley Howard

A Field Guide To Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit

“I was always the kid on school trips that got lost, and I took pleasure in it,” says the painter, whose travel-inspired work was recently on view at Marinaro Gallery in New York. “I’ve always been a daydreamer; it seems harder to do those things now. Solnit’s book is really about introspection and loss, but also about wandering, drift, the mythology of place, old country music, and the color blue. I think a lot of artists will relate.”

Betty Tompkins

Lives of the Artists, by Calvin Tomkins

Post-To-Neo: The Art World of the 1980s, by Calvin Tomkins

Seeing Out Loud, by Jerry Saltz

Seeing Out Louder, by Jerry Saltz

The Generosity of Women, by Courtney Eldridge

The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson

Tompkins—a fearless painter of all things sex-positive—likes to read about the art world itself. “When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, I read an article about Robert Rauschenberg by Calvin Tomkins in the New Yorker,” she says. That kicked off a fondness for Tomkins that led her to a series of books that she revisits every summer, beginning with Lives of the Artists and Post-To-Neo: The Art World of the 1980s.

“I was, and still am, impressed by critics—like Jerry Saltz today—who write for mass media,” Tompkins explains. “They talk to an audience who may not be art-wise, and they make art make sense.” Her recommendations include two volumes by Saltz: Seeing Out Loud, and Seeing Out Louder. “Those get tough competition from my two favorite novels about art: Courtney Eldridge’s The Generosity of Women, and Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang.”

Roger White

October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, by China Miéville

The writer and painter suggests a searing historical survey he’s currently reading. “It’s billed as a layperson’s introduction to the birth of communism in the epochal year of 1917, but it’s a lot more than that,” he says. “Miéville, known for his extravagantly weird science fiction and fantasy, is a virtuosic storyteller; here he conjures a society convulsing on the verge of total transformation while staying squarely within the lines of the historical record. Reading this blow-by-blow account of revolution now, when political life is stranger than any fiction, is galvanizing.”

Sean Landers

Dracula, by Bram Stoker

The painter was drawn to “the firsthand diary narrative written within the novel by the fictional character Jonathan Harker,” he says. “I liked the idea of a fictional character writing within a larger fictional context. It gave me the idea to write as a fictional character, Chris Hamson, in my early written artwork Art, Life and God (1990).  My character Hamson’s penchant for writing in a flowery, Gothic, 19th-century style of English was me paying homage to Bram Stoker.”

Joel Mesler

Playboy

The painter and gallerist (who recently set up shop in the Hamptons) has fond memories of his childhood reading material. “When I was around nine, my father kept most current issues of Playboy in a magazine rack by his side of the bed,” he recalls. “When the coast would seem clear I would frantically look through them, knowing my time would always be cut short. Other than the Playboys, the only other ‘reading material’ was a medical journal of some sort called, I think, Blood and Guts. This was my shield, my go-to deflection when either my father would come home or my mother would walk into the room. I would often just lay there on the floor reading Blood and Guts, waiting for my mother to walk into the room, just to drive home the point that this was the book of choice, not the Playboy.

“So by way of lies, this book and all of its detailed illustrations have forever scarred me and created a mountain of medical phobias I still suffer from to this day. I cringe at the sound of my stomach rumbling. I hate hearing people chew their food.  I’ve been known to pass out at the sight of blood. I blame Blood and Guts forever for this, as I am sure that if I had been able to comfortably peruse my father’s Playboys, I would be normal today.”

Shara Hughes

A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle

“I wanted to be really cool and say something artsy or more interesting, but I keep coming back to something that was in Oprah’s Book Club,” says Hughes, whose paintings are currently on view at New York’s Rachel Uffner Gallery, as well as in the Whitney Biennial. “I read this book while I was alone for a summer, making work in a tiny Danish town called Vejby Strand. The paintings I was making were based on a tragic event I had been working with for a long time; they were driven by my mind trying to keep this tragedy alive. A New Earth was a huge influence because it taught me to chill out—that nothing in your mind actually exists. It’s a pretty heavy book—with study guides and many, many spin-offs—but the message is always the same, just applied in different ways. It continues to be something I think about often.”

Derek Fordjour

Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison

“This novel demonstrates the immense power of exceptional prose,” says Fordjour, whose immersive exhibition “Parade” opens at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling in New York this July. “To call this book a page-turner would be a severe understatement. In addition to living with the characters so intimately, I marveled at Morrison’s thinking, her innate ability to transmit culture, to weave supernatural phenomena and the natural world seamlessly, and to captivate with language. I have never read a final page so slowly.  The novel does what only a novel can do: transport, transcend and transform.”

Haroon Mirza

The script for Einstein on the Beach, by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, based on the poems of Christopher Knowles

“Einstein on the Beach changed my understanding of art,” says Mirza, whose own work blends sculpture, installation, and sound. “For me it is a true gesamtkunstwerk at a grand scale, and allowed me to see how various forms of production and representation can be synthesised through collaboration. It led me to believe that true creativity can only come from two or more minds. Robert Wilson came across the work of 13-year-old Christopher Knowles. His poems and paintings, sometimes compared to concrete poetry, become the abstract narrative for the epic opera to emerge through the collaboration between Wilson and Philip Glass. I find it encouraging that people with very different situations can coalesce and focus their efforts to realise something that would individually be unimaginable.”  

Mirza’s Aestival Infinato (Solar Symphony 11), on view at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park through July 2nd, represents its own unique form of collaboration: The piece is integrated into an existing James Turrell “Skyspace.”

Sara Cwynar

Mythologies, by Roland Barthes

The conceptual photographer and video artist celebrates this iconic look at “how the most seemingly benign products of our popular culture are actually filled with meaning and power,” a notion that’s perfectly in keeping with her own practice. Barthes’s work, she says, shows “how kitsch has a class-based motivation. He breaks down how the bourgeoisie present their ideologies as ‘natural’ in order to mask hierarchies of power, and this happens through the everyday images and objects of pop culture: travel guides, cooking photography, movie stars.”

Of all the everyday things dissected in Mythologies, Cwynar’s favorite passage concerns plastics: “It is a ‘shaped’ substance: whatever its final state, plastic keeps a flocculent appearance, something opaque, creamy and curdled, something powerless ever to achieve the triumphant smoothness of Nature.…Its noise is its undoing, as are its colours, for it seems capable of retaining only the most chemical-looking ones. Of yellow, red and green, it keeps only the aggressive quality, and uses them as mere names, being able to display only concepts of colour.”

Samuel Jablon

A Simple Country Girl, by Taylor Mead

“When I read this book of poems, I thought Mead completely captured New York City with all of its disgustingly glamorous faults,” says Jablon, who is both a poet and a painter who works with words. When Mead died in 2013, Jablon made a painting in his honor, spelling out verses—like “I burned my candle at both ends I shall not last the night but what a fucking life”—using glass, mirror, and gold tiles.

Diana Al-Hadid

Don’t Think Of An Elephant, by George Lakoff

Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff

Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, by George Saunders

The artist’s work often deals with massive architectural forms or riffs on classical sculpture. She recommends a few books that might help you parse our current reality. “I recently returned to George Lakoff’s Don’t Think Of An Elephant,” she says. “The first book I read of his was in grad school—Metaphors We Live By—and it shook my world. Completely reshaped my little brain. Don’t Think of an Elephant was written during the time of George W. Bush, but Lakoff has also written essays on why Trump was elected.” For a fictional take on politics in America, Al-Hadid also suggests The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, a novella by George Saunders.

Joshua Citarella

Into the Universe of Technical Images, by Vilem Flusser

“This 1985 book has been a huge influence,” says Citarella, whose photography and sculpture often deals with technology, data, and the future. “I think it’s the best introduction for understanding images today. Before Photoshop and the internet, Flusser prophetically described how technology is going to reshape society. It feels like it was written yesterday. The first English translation was only made available in 2011, so it is still relatively under-referenced compared to other voices of the era. Last year I curated a show at Carroll / Fletcher in London—‘Dense Mesh’—based on several passages from the book.”

B. Ingrid Olson

Book of Mutter, by Kate Zambreno

The artist—whose highly personal, mixed-media assemblages are currently on view in “Fond Illusions” at Galerie Perrotin in New York—suggests this “especially raw, multifaceted portrait of loss.”

“Zambreno weaves together fragments of art history and biography (including pieces of Roland Barthes, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Darger) and her own episodic memories of her mother,” Olson says. “The structure of her writing reads at the pace of thinking, of the quick connections between one thought to another: Sometimes the text is full and clear, and other times it is an amalgam of scattered images, or simply a list of words.”

Trudy Benson

True Hallucinations, by Terence McKenna

“It’s a psychedelic adventure set in the Amazon, complete with aliens and miniature people,” explains Benson, whose work can be seen through July 28th at New York’s Lyles & King. “There are botanical and anthropological tangents, where mysticism and science blur together. A magical summer journey!”

Gretchen Scherer

We Have Always Lived In The Castle, by Shirley Jackson

“In the summer of 2015, I received an email from David Armacost asking me to be in a three-person show with himself and Katrina Fimmel,” Scherer says. “The gallery was called Evening Hours, a small artist-run space on the lower level of an East Village apartment building. Elspeth Walker, a writer and curator, also a member of the space, suggested we call the show We Have Always Lived in the Castle, after the novel by Shirley Jackson. I had never read the book, so Elspeth sent a short passage for us to read.

“The passage described a book nailed to a tree, meant to ward off evil spirits. I had a painting in process at the time of an old house, with a big tree in the foreground. Inspired by the passage, I decided to paint a book nailed to the tree. Katrina made a very large, washy and bright painting of figures in a forest. David made a large flower arrangement that was nailed to the wall, sort of the inverse of the book nailed to the tree.

“That summer, I read We Have Always Lived In The Castle in full. It was very different from what I had imagined—like entering a parallel universe. The feeling of the book and the show are forever linked in my mind; from time to time I think of it and can very quickly enter that world we created.”

Marilyn Minter

The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen

“I got a copy of these tales when I was a kid,” says the painter, whose lush subjects have their own larger-than-life, occasionally sinister magic. “I loved the illustrations, and tried to copy them all the time: witches thrown in barrels, covered with nails and rolled down a hill. Not like today’s fairy tales, I suspect.”

TM Davy

Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Dionysiaca, by Nonnus

Tree Finder, by May Theilgaard Watts

“I return most summers to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the Kalamos & Karpos myth in Nonnus’s Dionysiaca, and other poetry that will wake me back into the transmutational mysteries of being under our sun,” says the painter, whose recent work has explored natural landscapes (and horses). “But perhaps nothing has been more directly enlivening toward nature’s variations than the ‘dichotomous keys’ of May Theilgaard Watts. Her Tree Finder is an easy path of observational questions toward identifying East Coast trees by the shape and character of their leaves and branches. Small enough to take on hikes, it helped tune my novice naturalist eye to a living play of forms.”

—Scott Indrisek

from Artsy News