#just...really terrible books

[audible-smiles]

So, I think I may have accidentally found the worst book ever written by a human being.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Savitri Devi; she was a Hitler stan who moved from Greece to India, got really excited about "Aryan" racial mythology, changed her name, and tried to fuse Nazism with Hinduism. A lot of her ideology is patently absurd (e.g. Hitler is an avatar of Vishnu), but none of it is funny because she spent her entire life actively trying to build a coalition of the most violently racist people you can imagine. Hindutva paramilitary groups, American neo-Nazis, early ecofascists; you name them, she probably went to their meetings and wrote propaganda for them.

So, knowing this, it makes one feel particularly deranged to learn that she also wrote fiction about- and from the POV of- her many cats.

The book in question is called Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or The True Story of a "most objectionable Nazi" and half-a-dozen Cats.

Published in 1965, this text features a protagonist named "Heliodora", who Devi admits in the introduction is just her lightly fictionalized self-insert. In the beginning Heliodora heroically rescues a stray kitten and its mother, but then the narrative grinds to a halt to explain the weird racial theories that brought her to India, before it picks right back up with the cat fancying. Here is an excerpt that may convey a little of how jarring these transitions can be:

"An unexpected thought crossed Heliodora’s mind, like a flash of lightning: “Had I gone to Europe in 1939, or even in 1940, 1 should not have had this lovely creature, nor, in fact, any of these cats to which I have given a home. They probably all would have been dead, by now — would have died of misery, in some gutter, without love, poor beautiful felines!” And a strange question followed that thought: “Was it for them that I was fated to remain here?” She knew the thought was a nonsensical one and the question too. For of what account was the life and happiness of any creatures, nay, of any human beings, including her own, compared with the Service of the Aryan Reich and of the Cause of truth?

It is all. Fucking. Like This. There are grim descriptions of feline suffering contrasted with long, ecstatic descriptions of her cats learning to trust the only nice human in the world (her). There are passages on the virtue of vegetarianism and the evils of (especially Kosher) slaughterhouses. She thinks it's a great idea to do medical experiments on criminals rather than animals! She thinks kids who throw rocks at cats should have their hands cut off! She starts chapters with direct quotes from Mein Kampf! When her favorite cat runs away she writes the (fully imaginary) story of his adventures on the streets, including him having cat sex. Here is the cat sex:

"The coquettish she-cat jumped up and ran away, only to stop again some twenty yards further and again to roll in the grass, calling for love, — and again to ran away as soon as the lover was about to take her. At last, however, — after many an unsuccessful leap and further and further galloping in the moonshine, Long- whiskers overcame her faked resistance and possessed her. He forgot himself, and she — his black silky panther — forgot herself. Their individualities ceased for a while to exist, and in him, the eternal He-Cat, Creator and Lord of everything, and in her, the co-eternal, sphinx-like, dark Feline Mother, Lady of all Life, once more mingled their opposite polarities and took consciousness of their double Godhead, as they had been doing for millions and millions of years. And once more the divine spark — the Creative Lightning — flashed through their furry bodies, and the daily miracle took place: there was life in the female’s womb."

Sooooo......anyway...........the lost cat finds its way back to her, but has caught feline distemper and dies in her arms, but then he is REINCARNATED IN ENGLAND, as a kitten in a decent (white) home where his family loves him. Heliodora is coincidentally going back to Europe at this time (she lists her religion as "national socialist" on the travel paperwork), which means we get pages and pages of her obsessing over every 'misstep' in the war, and Germany's tragic loss, but more importantly, she meets a random cat and he is (unknown to her), the reincarnation of her beloved Long-whiskers, the Cat Who Fucked. She sees that he's well-fed and happy and is like "I finally understand why Hitler was so nice to the British; they treat cats well so I guess they're Aryan too". I am not making any of this up:

“They have poured streams of fire over Germany; betrayed their own race; identified themselves with its worst enemies ...”

“Prrr, prrr, prrr,” purred back the cat; “that is because they had been (as they are still being) misled, deceived. But one day they shall wake up from their delusion, tum against their bad shepherds, and help the people of their own blood to build up a new Europe — the very Europe of your dreams, in which we creatures will all be happy — for they are good people at heart; good people like Aryans generally are, taken as a whole. Prrr, prrr, prrr . . . The proof of it is that they have taken such good care of me! Prrrrrrrrr . . .”

This version of her cat grows old and dies. Meanwhile, Heliodora is arrested and imprisoned for distributing Nazi propaganda. When she gets out, she meets the reincarnation of a different cat she had left behind in India. (All of her cats want to find her again after death because they love her so very much.) In between her banal, mundane descriptions of caring for this new cat, she describes her various arrests, interrogations, and brief periods of imprisonment. And then she moves, gives that cat away and gets another fucking cat. It is at this point where I completely lose track of which cat is meant to be the reincarnation of which other cat; this woman goes through cats like potato chips. She says she doesn't even love them as individuals, but as one piece of "the intangible Essence of Catdom", so I guess it doesn't fucking matter whether I know their names or not.

This woman's primary thesis is "human suffering doesn't matter, only animal suffering matters" and she beats it into the ground. Her secondary thesis is that national socialism is the one true religion and will save the world. Not only is this a deeply self-obsessed, morally incoherent, grotesque piece of writing, it is also boring as hell. It's half stories about how people who are mean to animals all deserve to get murdered, and half a travelogue where the protagonist goes on screeds about race-mixing every time she visits a new city. While you're reading it you feel as if time has stopped, and you will be stuck reading this terrible book for the rest of your life. All she knows how to do is repeat her two ideas over and over again. Honestly, it reads like heavy-handed satire of a very specific type of white woman. Heliodora wears golden swastika earrings.

I'm exhausted. Never read this book.

[hellenhighwater]

wait, you're a lawyer? for real?

I got an associates in stage tech, a double BFA in Graphic Design and 3D Design, and then went to law school on full academic scholarship, booked twelve classes, fell asleep during the Bar Exam three times (but passed with flying colors before the curve), and the motion for my admission to practice (put forward by my brother, also a lawyer), started, "My sister has many issues, but the one before the Court today is that of her admission to the State Bar of Michigan."

And somehow yes, they do let me practice law.

[buboplague]

I've been on a small reading binge the last month, anyone have book recommendations? Any genre is fine, but preferably something a bit lighthearted, or easy/fun reads!

edit: oooo thank you guys!! I'll be checking out the ones I have library access to!

[wellijustfinnihedoneofthebooks]

Coming out as marius pilled since reading blood and gold

[ambient-arena]

what if the narrative wasn't so horrifically fond of gideon. what if instead of the lobotomy harrow just straight up tore herself apart trying to pry gideons soul away from hers. what if she resorted to the same violent, animal desperation john did when trying to consume the earth but instead of trying to destroy she was trying to recover. what if harrow in an unimaginable fit of despair forced her entire soul and necromantic capabilities to their intense limits but it doing so inadvertently rendered the task she was trying to complete impossible. like trying so so hard to use necromancy to give gideon's soul back that she accidentally ended up cementing its place inside her as an eternal furnace even more. and then what if she just lived like that with gideons soul and memory inside her and it was terrible and everlasting. yeah what if also my brain is rotting out of my skull

[shreksstepfather]

Liking Gray Wing not in the "he's wise and did nothing wrong" kinda way but in a "characters who sabotage their interpersonal relationships and defend heinous actions for the sake of someone who doesn't care if they live or die are really interesting" kinda way

[myokk]

[coquelicoq]

this chapter/episode feels very classic short story...something so satisfying about how it resolves. the A plot and the B plot are solved by the same action because it turns out, unbeknownst to the characters and the audience, that they were directly connected the whole time. and because the storylines are so linked, the resolution of chobi's depression is twofold: he's touched by the effort his friends went to to get him something beautiful, and he's touched by the fact that the thing his friends think is so beautiful is actually a part of him that he had cast off and thought of as unremarkable. it fits together so simply and so elegantly that it seems just as natural as it is surprising. what a pleasing economy of storytelling.

[sunny12th]

I see where the 'dragons are nukes' people are coming from in terms of the total devastation dragons are capable of in battle and in the hands of those that want to use them in such a way.

However, dragons are clearly meant to symbolize more than just their raw power in wartime. dragons are fire made flesh, dragons are Summer, dragons are flight and freedom, dragons are playful and warm, dragons are life in defiance of winter. dragons are the strength needed to break chains, topple corruption, and burn evil itself. dragons are flaming swords and lightbringers. dragons are loyalty and protectiveness. dragons are passion and mystery and magic.

dragons are the opposite end of the magical spectrum to the others.

and dragons are, above all else, lizard cats that like to bask in the sun and get scratches on the underside of their chins.

[wesavegotham]

"Talia can never be redeemed and her romance with Bruce can never come back because *falls for Grant Morrison's/DC's extreme racism towards asian and arab characters in the 2000s/2010s"

Yeah, sorry, but shut the hell up. It never fails to astound me when DC actually tries to fix the mistakes they made with Talia/the al Ghuls in general these last two decades and the fans manage to be even worse than DC by clinging to the blatant racist/sexist writing of the past instead of embracing the turn for the better.

"But she did this and that!"

She's a fictional character in a fictional universe that is aware that it goes through continuity changes/retcons. What Grant Morrison did to her character was a a complete retcon of her 30 year history and characterization with zero respect for her. Why am I supposed to take Morrison's bullshit as gospel and reject any attempts to fix her from writers who know better?

[markantonys]

just accidentally stumbled on an egwene hate reddit thread and everyone was bitching about how she tries to act like rand's equal when she's only the second-most powerful authority figure on the continent, and one sane person was like "well, balance was a huge theme of the series, so it's pretty clear that RJ did consider the dragon and the amyrlin two halves of a whole and that rand is meant to be egwene's equal co-authority rather than her superior" and of course they were downvoted to hell. and this one little thread just really epitomizes how the readers who approach WOT as a male power fantasy just fundamentally will never understand the series and its themes and the story it was ACTUALLY telling.

[bitchthefuck1]

It's always so funny to me when people call Kaz a serial killer or a murderer bc like. boy do I have news for you about the other crows.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Arya watched them die and did nothing. What good did it do you to be brave? One of the women picked for questioning had tried to be brave, but she had died screaming like all the rest. There were no brave people on that march, only scared and hungry ones. (Arya VI, ACOK)

--

The night she was caught, the Lannister men had been nameless strangers with faces as alike as their nasal helms, but she'd come to know them all. You had to know who was lazy and who was cruel, who was smart and who was stupid. You had to learn that even though the one they called Shitmouth had the foulest tongue she'd ever heard, he'd give you an extra piece of bread if you asked, while jolly old Chiswyck and soft-spoken Raff would just give you the back of their hand. (Arya VI, ACOK)

Arya: *restrains herself from acting out when captured by the Mountain and his men because she knows fighting back/being brave wouldn't accomplish anything*

Arya: *takes note of the temperments of several Lannister guards so that she can learn how to navigate around their behavior*

Fandom: Arya is a feral idiot with no self-control uwu 🤗

[a-menaceinpink]

read the green bone saga this week and i’m just saying. if you want an in-depth political fantasy mafia thriller (yes all of those words apply) set in a post colonial nation that is navigating an unsure global political position and the potential exploitation of its culturally significant resource that simultaneously explores the bonds between family and how they can take different shapes in the wake of loss and love and life, with brilliantly developed, fleshed out characters and realistic pacing (both in world and in the actual delivery of the story). i HIGHLY recommend.

[bonefall]

whats your take on the “palebird not caring about talltail leaving” scene? i always thought it was WEIRD, like yes she was a little distant because she was blatantly depressed, but not to the point where she would straight up not care about her first son leaving potentially forever?? it feels like one of those scenes the writers put in to make the The Woman look bad so the Bad Dad isnt aaaasssss bad.

I feel like many of my problems with it come from the end of TR being a mess. It sets up a ton of plot threads and either goes somewhere strange with them or drops them completely.

Palebird's is one of the ones that just gets dropped.

On one hand, I'm glad that Palebird isn't demonized, but they don't seem to know what to do with her. She's cold towards Tallkit and increasingly short and snippy as he gets older, reacts in a way that's pointed out as aloof and uncaring when he leaves and when he comes back, and Talltail takes it like betrayal when she moves on with a new mate... and then they just don't really have a thesis for that.

In the end, Talltail never stops and teases out his feelings on her, they never show a conversation where some characters talk about why she acts that way, Tallkit's upbringing isn't contrasted with his halfsib's upbringings... their last talk is actually about Shrewclaw and the kits his wife's going to give birth to. Talltail's BULLY.

This book that shows an abusive father and a nasty little jackass redeems both of these boys, making a sharp 180 to say they Weren't So Bad, but has barely any interest in Palebird. When she gives Tallstar one of his 9 lives, it's laughably short;

That's it. That's the resolution. She doesn't even act happy to see him return, they have a conversation about Talltail's bully, and then after she's dead he's like, "I'll never doubt she loves me ever again."

Like, ok? All right?? Did we just miss the falling action or did Ms. Hunter not feel like it that day?

In general I have so many feelings about Tallstar's Revenge... I can't say I HATE it because it is fun to read, and I like a lot of the things it lays down, but I can't LOVE it for how every step forward it feel like 2 steps back. And the differences in the narrative's sympathy towards Sandgorse (emotionally abusive and committing child endangerment because his son is disappointing him) vs his wife Palebird (completely unsupported while displaying a near textbook case of PPD) are like a tiny little microcosm of the problems in WC.

Sandgorse gets a whole journey dedicated towards finding out he was actually a hero who gave his life saving Sparrow, abuse forgotten, but Palebird... exists, and Talltail's mad she had new kids until he's suddenly not.

So in a nutshell, my take is that this soup is bland and watery. Look at all these complicated potential feelings they just cast out the window so they can talk about Shrewclaw the Bully and his Very Sad Death.

There's much better individual examples of how the narrative tends to treat their male and female characters (which is why I compare Sparkpelt and Crookedstar more than I compare Crookedstar and Palebird), but Palebird's a good place to talk about the pervasive disinterest that WC has in its girls. And how much of a waste it is.

[dxxtruction]

Louis being compared to as a saint. Saints, who find their salvation and then give intercession from beyond that veil to move others towards it. A guide for life, where they no longer fall into their sins and trajectories towards a certain hell. "Listen to me as if I am the voice of god, or an angel." Louis being that saintly catalyst for the vampires to confront themselves in that such a way. A saintly Louis is very dear to me.