#master i margarita 2023

[amiracleilluminated]

August Diehl as Woland in The Master and Margarita (2023)

[spacecrew]

The Master and Margarita (2023)

Director: Michael Lockshin

Writing credits: Mikhail Bulgakov, Roman Kantor, Michael Lockshin

Cinematography: Maxim Zhukov

[hotmusketeerspoll]

Magnificent Musketeer Tournament

Milady de Winter Poll 2 - Round 1

Milady de Winter - Margarita Terekhova D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers 1978 (Д'Артаньян и три мушкетёра)

Another Milady allowed to be mostly period-accurate, and she can sing. Joins in unprompted and uninvited in the song about how much Richelieu fucks for no reason other than to harmonise and let him know. Has a great deal of depth frankly; she's another Milady with insane facial expressions. She's very close to 73/74 for me, but her singing gives her an edge.

Milady de Winter - Eva Green Les Trois Mousquetaires: D'Artagnan 2023, Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady 2023

LOOOOOVED Eva Green as Milady!!! She was SO badass it was exactly as she deserved. She got to go full master of disguise mode and it was so delightful to watch. Added so much depth and intrigue to the character and was also so gorgeous and got styled in such beautiful costumes augh she's perfect

Milady de Winter - Preeya Kalidas The Three Musketeers 2023

she's so elegant and suave and beautiful i wish i could take her out of this movie and transplant her in a better musketeers adaptation

The complete list of entrants can be found here.

Additional Propaganda under the cut

Margarita Terekhova:

Eva Green:

Preeya Kalidas:

[aperiodofhistory]

20 books in 2024

Another year, another year of a TBR pile. I'm really satisfied with my reading in the year 2023. I read some books I wanted to read for a long time. But still, I left some for the year 2024. So I'm transferring the remaining ones into this year, and adding a few more. I'm happy about the upcoming year, as I want to read a lot of fantasy.

The library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

Babel by Rebecca F. Kuang

Legends & Lattes by Baldree Travis

Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay

The Island of missing trees by Elif Shafak

Ways of being by James Bridle

The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror by various authors

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet

The return of the king by Tolkien

A game of thrones by Martin

Shakespearean: On Life & Language in Times of Disruption by Robert McCrum

A court of thorns and roses by Sarah J. Mass

Femina by Ramírez Janina

Anything by Ava Reid

The road by Cormac McCarthy

Red rising by Pierce Brown

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Spinning silver by Naomi Novik

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

I'm tagging @artmill-danaan for its book list for the year 2024.

-------

Other read:

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The Bridge on the Drina (Bosnian Trilogy, #1) by Ivo Andrić

Love and Friendship by Jane Austen

A court of Mist and fury by Sarah J. Mass

A court of wings and ruin by Sarah J. Mass

A clash of kings by Martin

An atlas of Tolkien

[oleworm]

A bit late since we're already a quarter into the year, but I wanted to do this one anyway.

@sifilide tagged me to list my 9 favourite books of 2023 or my to-read list for 2024. I'll do the to-read list first and name 9 favourites in the reblog.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Italian Boy: Murder and Graverobbing in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Historia marítima del Perú: Época prehispánica by Hermann Buse de la Guerra

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

Dersu Uzala by Vladimir Arseniev

Huaco retrato by Gabriela Wiener

Los perros hambrientos by Ciro Alegría

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

Tagging @bacchanalium, @plantpretender, @osmanthusoolong, @trainspotting1992, @chicago-geniza, @strigops, @myfavoritedemons, @panikpanikpanik, @bezdomnyyy and @bogfox if anyone wants to do it!

[grusinskayas]

2023 recap 💞

i wasn't actually tagged by anyone lmao but i love doing this every year so :)

i tag @norashelley @littlebluestars @maddelineusher @rckhudson @kittensmctavish @murderballadeer @dulaman-na-farraige @chantalstacys & @joanleslies

top films:

the merry widow (1934) dir. ernst lubitsch

levoton veri (1946) dir. teuvo tulio

intolerance: love's struggle throughout the ages (1916) dir. d.w. griffith

christmas in july (1940) dir. preston sturges

oldboy (2003) dir. park chan-wook

the good fairy (1935) dir. william wyler

the dream lady (1918) dir. elsie jane wilson

corsage (2022) dir. marie kreutzer

tsuma yo bara no yo ni (1935) dir. mikio naruse

drive my car (2021) dir. ryusuke hamaguchi

twin peaks: fire walk with me (1992) dir. david lynch

top tv series:

oniisama e... (1991)

twin peaks (1990-1991)

paradise kiss (2005)

top books, in the order in which i read them:

l'écume des jours by boris vian

the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov

the color purple by alice walker

clarice na cabeceira: contos by clarice lispector

a bela e a fera by clarice lispector

my life by isadora duncan

depois de isadora duncan nunca houve tanto mar (roughly translated as after isadora duncan there was never as much sea) by almir ribeiro

dark star: a biography of vivien leigh by alan strachan

top mangas, also in the order in which i read them:

layers of fear by junji ito

souichi's egocentric curses by junji ito

solo exchange diary by kabi nagata

paradise kiss by ai yazawa

nana by ai yazawa (read essentially 1/3 of the story so far. slowly but surely i will get there)

favorite song: ok gonna put a couple of them here

favorite quote: there are a lot of bits and pieces from isadora duncan's autobiography that i could mention, but to be brief i'm gonna pick just one that really stuck with me:

"this was the first faint note of the prelude of the tragedy which presently was to end all hopes of any natural, joyous life for me— for ever after. i believe that although one may seem to go on living, there are some sorrows that kill. one's body may drag along its weary way on earth, but one's spirit is crushed— for ever crushed. i have heard people speak of the ennobling influence of sorrow. i can only say that those last few days of my life, before the blow fell, were actually the last days of my spiritual life. ever since then i have had only one desire— to fly— to fly— to fly from the horror of it, and my life has been but a series of weird flights from it all; and all life has been to me but as a phantom ship upon a phantom ocean."

[rabothekerabekian]

My top books I read in 2023:

1: Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut) - I love Vonnegut’s writing so much, and Sirens is such a great narrative on free will and loving whoever is around to be loved. (Plus chrono-synclastically-infundibulated is just fun to say)

2: Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison) - already a book about important social issues that are still incredibly relevant today, Ellison’s style portrays a lifelike picture of the politics of race in America.

3: Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie) - The language and style of this book make it a delight to read as Rushdie paints an incredible mural across a canvas of Indian historical events interwoven with the supernatural to create an amazing story.

4: Job, A Comedy of Justice (Robert Heinlen) - Excellent satire of fundamentalist religion, packed with jokes and reality shifts, a complex world that goes from Mexico to Kansas to heaven to hell has a lot to say about religion.

5: The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) - The Devil and his entourage cause chaos in Soviet Moscow, in addition to a narrative about Pontius Pilate. An excellent and absurd premise sets up a criticism of humanity but also a defense of it, both in Judea 2000 years ago and now.

6: Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges) - While the writing can be dense, so much is packed into these short stories parsing the meaning is definitely worth it. Fantastical scenarios act as mirrors to reality and each story leaves just enough to the readers imagination to make it a compelling and thought provoking work about the labyrinthine ways of reality.

7: Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) - I love novels you can get lost in, and such a rich portrayal of Igbo life easily lends itself to a complex world that many people failed to see about Africa. Important social issues are dealt with and both extreme ways of living are critiqued in a compelling narrative.

8: Bluebeard (Kurt Vonnegut) - A coming of age a going of age and the Armenian diaspora are explored through the life of Abstract Expressionist artists and what it has to say about culture, society, and gender roles. You have to keep reading to see what’s in the potato barn, and when all is revealed it makes a lot of sense for Vonnegut.

9: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) - So much happens in the book you are riveted as the chapters bounce between characters. An excellent hook grabs you in and doesn’t let you go. Murakami’s imagination runs wild and this strange reinterpretation of oedipus makes you think.

10: Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut) - Newt Hoenikker said it best - “no damn cat, and no damn cradle.”

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 798: Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet

For me, this is where The Rolling Stones really started getting interesting.

The band was coming out of their brief foray into psychedelic pop music. Founding member Brian Jones was largely absent during the writing and recording of Beggars Banquet, which allowed Mick and Keith to nudge the band back into rhythm and blues territories. But you could also hear elements of country-rock creeping into their sound, which has always been one of my favorite sonic elements of The Rolling Stones.

While the Stones had been hip to the psychedelics, experimentalism, and the questioning of social norms that came with the Summer of Love, they didn't seem to share the hippie movement's optimism and activist spirit. By 1968, the Stones were effectively outlaws. They'd been arrested on drug charges, they'd been branded as Satanists, and they'd been blamed for the moral decay of society. They responded with the defiant spirit and ribald revelry of Beggars Banquet.

"Sympathy For the Devil" was one of the first Stones songs that grabbed me. There's no open-G-tuning blues riffing. No arrogant strutting. Instead, you have a pop song set to a samba beat while Jagger sings about historic upheavals, violence, and atrocities from the perspective of Mikhail Bulgakov's devil from The Master and Margarita. Paired with "Street Fighting Man"---an anthemic ode to protest and civil disobedience---the Stones weren't shy about broadcasting their political stance in 1968. They were punks before punks were even a thing.

But the Stones weren't protest singers and Beggars Banquet wasn't some sort of manifesto. The band jumps between folk songs ("No Expectations"), country music ("Factory Girl"), brash blues ("Parachute Woman," "Prodigal Son"), '60s pop ("Jigsaw Puzzle"), and barn-burning rock ("Stray Cat Blues") as if the band is trying to build a bridge across a divided country. The Rolling Stones were in love with American music, but struggling with America itself. They weren't exactly in love with Britain either. They were on the path to becoming exiles, but that would play into their music later.

If the band was holding up a mirror to American society, then it's only fitting that their album cover featured a graffitied toilet. In 2023, that hardly seems edgy, but back in 1968 it was considered controversial. Why would you want something so gross and ugly on your album cover?

The dichotomy between beauty and the grotesque was one of many juxtapositions the Stones embraced. Nihilism and hope was another. Arrogance and defeat was there too. Social awareness and hedonism. Tradition and reinvention. They contained multitudes, and those often unsavory or contradictory traits were what made them human, interesting, and a little dangerous.

And they were just getting started.

[consistentsquash]

hello! i love all of your fic recs - you have impeccable taste! do you have any recs for books or other lit outside fic?

hiya! so happy you find something you liked from the recs <3 I need to get back to reccing more so this is a real boost to my motivation!

I usually get my books from a reading group + some fandom friend recs. Sharing some of my fav reads from 2023 and 2024 below the cut. Definitely share recs if you have got some <3

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kashu Ishiguro

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The House of The Spirits by Isabel Allende.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

also a couple I liked from local authors

Invisible as Air by Zoe Fishman

Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones

Also I read a beautiful novel by one of my fav authors ever but I don't want to link it here because they are also active in fandom <3

a couple about movie industry I really loved

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez

Monster by John Gregory Dunne

a couple of nonfic I really liked

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

[meta-squash]

Squash's Book Roundup 2023

Last year I read 67 books. This year my goal was 70, but I very quickly passed that, so in total I read 92 books this year. Honestly I have no idea how I did it, it just sort of happened. My other goal was to read an equal amount of fiction and nonfiction this year (usually fiction dominates), and I was successful in that as well. Another goal which I didn’t have at the outset but which kind of organically happened after the first month or so of reading was that I wanted to read mostly strange/experimental/transgressive/unusual fiction. My nonfiction choices were just whatever looked interesting or cool, but I also organically developed a goal of reading a wider spread of subjects/genres of nonfiction. A lot of the books I read this year were books I’d never heard of, but stumbled across at work. Also, finally more than 1/3 of what I read was published in the 21st century.

I’ll do superlatives and commentary at the end, so here is what I read in 2023:

-The Commitments by Roddy Doyle -A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero -The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell -Uzumaki by Junji Ito -Chroma by Derek Jarman -The Emerald Mile: The epic story of the fastest ride in history through the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko -Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks -The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington -Sacred Sex: Erotic writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates -The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And The Feebleminded by Molly McCully Brown -A Spy In The House Of Love by Anais Nin -The Sober Truth: Debunking the bad science behind 12-step programs and the rehab industry by Lance Dodes -The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima -The Aliens by Annie Baker -The Criminal Child And Other Essays by Jean Genet -Aimee and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943 by Erica Fischer -The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov -The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere -Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont -Narrow Rooms by James Purdy -At Your Own Risk by Derek Jarman -Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm -Countdown: A Subterranean Magazine #3 by Underground Press Syndicate Collective -Fabulosa! The story of Britain's secret gay language by Paul Baker -The Golden Spruce: A true story of myth, madness and greed by John Vaillant -Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert -Fire The Bastards! by Jack Green -Closer by Dennis Cooper -The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe -Opium: A Diary Of His Cure by Jean Cocteau -Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68 by Fredy Perlman and R. Gregoire -Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher -The Sound Of Waves by Yukio Mishima -One Day In My Life by Bobby Sands -Corydon by Andre Gide -Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson -Man Alive: A true story of violence, forgiveness and becoming a man by Thomas Page McBee -The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko -Damage by Josephine Hart -Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai -The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector -The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock n Roll by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press -The Traffic Power Structure by planka.nu -Bird Man: The many faces of Robert Straud by Jolene Babyak -Seven Dada Manifestos by Tristan Tzara

-The Journalist by Harry Mathews -Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber -Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev -Morvern Callar by Alan Warner -The Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard -A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White -The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee -Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson -Notes From The Sick Room by Steve Finbow -Artaud The Momo by Antonin Artaud -Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle -Recollections Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette -trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer -The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars -Sweet Days Of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy -Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor -What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund -The Cardiff Tapes (1972) by Garth Evans -The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe -Mad Like Artaud by Sylvere Lotringer -The Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille -Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante -Blood And Guts In High School by Kathy Acker -Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton -Splendid's by Jean Genet -VAS: An Opera In Flatland by Steve Tomasula -Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want To Come: One introvert's year of saying yes by Jessica Pan -Whores For Gloria by William T. Vollmann -The Notebooks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Walsh (editor) -L'Astragale by Albertine Sarrazin -The Decay Of Lying and other essays by Oscar Wilde -The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot -Open Throat by Henry Hoke -Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet -The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia -The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx -My Friend Anna: The true story of a fake heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams -Mammother by Zachary Schomburg -Building The Commune: Radical democracy in Venezuela by George Cicarello-Maher -Blackouts by Justin Torres -Cheapjack by Philip Allingham -Near To The Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector -The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander -Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon -Exercises In Style by Raymon Queneau -Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein -The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

~Some number factoids~ I read 46 fiction and 46 nonfiction. One book, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, is fictionalized/embellished autobiography, so it could go half in each category if we wanted to do that, but I put it in the fiction category. I tried to read as large a variety of nonfiction subjects/genres as I could. A lot of the nonfiction I read has overlapping subjects, so I’ve chosen to sort by the one that seems the most overarching. By subject, I read: 5 art history/criticism, 5 biographies, 1 black studies, 1 drug memoir, 2 essay collections, 2 history, 2 Latin American studies, 4 literary criticism, 1 music history, 2 mythology/religion, 1 nature, 4 political science, 2 psychology, 5 queer studies, 2 science, 1 sociology, 1 travel, 2 true crime, 3 urban planning. I also read more queer books in general (fiction and nonfiction) than I have in years, coming in at 20 books.

The rest of my commentary and thoughts under a cut because it's fairly long

Here’s a photo of all the books I read that I own a physical copy of (minus Closer by Dennis Cooper which a friend is borrowing):

~Superlatives and Thoughts~

I read so many books this year I’m going to do a runner-up for each superlative category.

Favorite book: This is such a hard question this year. I think I gave out more five-star ratings on Goodreads this year than I ever have before. The books that got 5 stars from me this year were A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero, Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, Mammother by Zachary Schomburg, and Blackouts by Justin Torres. But I think my favorite book of the year was The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia. It is an embellished, fictionalized biography of the author’s life, chronicling a breakup that occurred just before she began her transition, and then a variety of emotional events afterward and her renewal of a connection with that person after a number of years had passed. The writing style is beautiful, extremely decadent, and sits in a sort of venn diagram of poetry, theory, fantasy and biography. My coworker who recommended this book to me said no one she’d recommended it to had finished it because they found it so weird. I read the first 14 pages very slowly because I didn’t exactly know what the book was doing, but I quickly fell completely in love with the imagery and the formatting style and the literary and religious references that have been worked into the book both as touchstones for biography and as vehicles for fantasy. There is a video I remember first seeing years ago, in which a beautiful pinkish corn snake slithers along a hoop that is part of a hanging mobile made of driftwood and macrame and white beads and prism crystals. This was the image that was in the back of my head the entire time I was reading The Fifth Wound, because it matched the decadence and the strangeness and the crystalline beauty of the language and visuals in the book. It is a pretty intense book, absolutely packed with images and emotion and ideas and preserved vignettes where reality and fantasy and theory overlap. It’s one of those books that’s hard to describe because it’s so full. It’s dense not in that the words or ideas are hard to understand, but in that it’s overflowing with imagery and feelings, and it feels like an overflowing treasure chest. Runner-up:The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. However, this book wins for a different superlative, so I’ve written more about it there.

Least favorite book: Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert. I wrote a whole long review of it. In summary, Lambert’s book takes its name from Querelle de Brest, a novel by Jean Genet, and is apparently meant to be an homage to Genet’s work. Unfortunately, Lambert seems to misunderstand or ignore all the important aspects of Genet’s work that make it so compelling, and instead twists certain motifs Genet uses as symbols of love or transcendence into meaningless or negative connotations. He also attempts to use Genet’s mechanic of inserting the author into the narrative and allowing the author to have questionable or conflicting morals in order to emphasize certain aspects of the characters or narrative, except he does so too late in the game and ends up just completely undermining everything he writes. This book made me feel insulted on behalf of Jean Genet and all the philosophical thought he put into his work. Runner-up: What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. This graphic designer claims that when people read they don’t actually imagine what characters look like and can’t conjure up an image in their head when asked something like “What does Jane Eyre look like to you?” Unfortunately, there’s nothing scientific in the book to back this up and it’s mostly “I” statements, so it’s more like “What Peter Mendelsund Sees (Or Doesn’t See) When He Reads”. It’s written in what seems to be an attempt to mimic Marshall McLuhan’s style in The Medium Is The Massage, but it isn’t done very well. I spent most of my time reading this book thinking This does not reflect my experience when I read novels so I think really it’s just a bad book written by someone who maybe has some level of aphantasia or maybe is a visual but not literary person, and who assumes everyone else experiences the same thing when they read. (Another runner-up would be The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I think that’s a given because it’s an awful piece of revisionist, racist trash, so I won’t write a whole thing about it. I can if someone wants me to.)

Most surprising/unexpected book: The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. This book absolutely wins for most surprising. However, I don’t want to say too much about it because the biggest surprise is the end. It was the most shocking, most unexpected and bizarre endings to a novel I’ve read in a long time, and I absolutely loved it. It was weird from the start and it just kept getting weirder. The unnamed narrator decides, as a joke, to shave off the moustache he’s had for his entire adult life. When his wife doesn’t react, he assumes that she’s escalating their already-established tradition of little pranks between each other. But then their mutual friends say nothing about the change, and neither do his coworkers, and he starts spiral into confusion and paranoia. I don’t want to spoil anything else because this book absolutely blew me away with its weirdness and its existential dread and anyone who likes weird books should read it. Runner-up: Morvern Callar by Alan Warner. I don’t even know what compelled me to open this book at work, but I’m glad I did. The book opens on Christmas, where the main character, Morvern, discovers her boyfriend dead by suicide on the kitchen floor of their flat. Instead of calling the police or her family, she takes a shower, gets her things and leaves for work. Her narrative style is strange, simultaneously very detached and extremely emotional, but emotional in an abstract way, in which descriptions and words come out stilted or strangely constructed. The book becomes a narrative of Morvern’s attempts to find solitude and happiness, from the wilderness of Scotland to late night raves and beaches in an unnamed Mediterranean city. The entire book is scaffolded by a built-in playlist. Morvern’s narrative is punctuated throughout by accounts of exactly what she’s listening to on her Walkman. The narrative style and the playlist and the bizarre behavior of the main character were not at all what I was expecting when I opened the book, but I read the entire book in about 3 hours and I was captivated the whole time. If you like the Trainspotting series of books, I would recommend this one for sure.

Most fun book: The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. This book was amazing. It was like reading an adventure novel and a thriller and a book on conservationism all wrapped into one and it was clearly very passionately written and it was a blast. I picked it up because I was pricing it at work and I read the captions on one of the photo inserts, which intrigued me, so I read the first page, and then I couldn’t stop. The two main narratives in the book are the history of the Grand Canyon (more specifically the damming of the Colorado River) and the story of a Grand Canyon river guide called Kenton Grua, who decided with two of his river guide friends to break the world record for fastest boat ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The book is thoroughly researched, and reaches back to the first written record of the canyon, then charts the history of the canyon and the river up to 1983 when Grua made his attempt to race down the river, and then the aftermath and what has happened to everyone in the years since. All of the historical figures as well as the “current” figures of 1983 come to life, and are passionately portrayed. It’s a genuine adventure of a book, and I highly recommend it. Runner-up: Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton. It asks “What if Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was actually a trans woman?” Actually, that’s not quite it. It asks “What if a trans woman living in poverty in southwest America believed to an almost spiritual level that Brian Wilson was a trans woman?” The main character and narrator, Gala, is convinced that the lead singer of her favorite band, the Get Happies, (a fictional but fairly obvious parallel to the Beach Boys) is a trans woman. Half the book is her writing out her version of the singer’s life history, and the other half is her life working at a hostel in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, where she meets a woman who forces her out of her comfort zone and encourages her to face certain aspects of her self and identity and her connection with others. It’s a weird novel, and definitely not for everyone, but it’s fun. I was reading it on the train home and I was so into it that I missed my stop and had to get off at the next station and wait 20 minutes for the train going back the other way.

Book that taught me the most: Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor. In it, Nestor explores why humans as a general population are so bad at breathing properly. He interviews scientists and alternative/traditional health experts, archaeologists, historians and religious scholars. He uses himself as a guinea pig to experiment with different breathing techniques from ancient meditation styles to essentially overdosing on oxygen in a lab-controlled environment to literally plugging his nose shut to only mouth-breathe for two weeks (and then vice-versa with nose breathing). It was interesting to see a bunch of different theories a laid out together regarding what kind of breathing is best, as well as various theories on the history of human physiology and why breathing is hard. Some of it is scientific, some pseudoscience, some just ancient meditation techniques, but he takes a crack at them all. What was kind of cool is that he tries every theory and experiment with equal enthusiasm and doesn’t really seem to favor any one method. Since he’s experimenting on himself, a lot of it is about the effects the experiments had on him specifically and his experiences with different types of breathing. His major emphasis/takeaway is that focusing on breathing and learning to change the ways in which we breathe will be beneficial in the long run (and that we should all breath through our noses more). While I don’t think changing how you breathe is a cure-all (some of the pseudoscience he looks at in this book claims so) I certainly agree that learning how to breath better is a positive goal. Runner-up: The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes. I say runner-up because a lot of the content of the book is things that I had sort of vague assumptions about based on my knowledge of addiction and AA and mental illness in general. But Dodes put into words and illustrated with numbers and anecdotes and case studies what I just kind of had a vague feeling about. It was cool to see AA so thoroughly debunked by an actual psychiatrist and in such a methodical way, since my skepticism about it has mostly been based on the experiences of people I know in real life, anecdotes I’ve read online, or musicians/writers/etc I’m a fan of that went through it and were negatively affected.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Mammother by Zachary Schomburg. The biggest reason this book was so interesting is because the little world in which it exists is so strange and yet so utterly complete. In a town called Pie Time (where birds don’t exist and the main form of work is at the beer-and-cigarettes factory) a young boy called Mano who has been living his childhood as a girl decides that he is now a man and that it’s time for him to grow up. As this happens, the town is struck by an affliction called God’s Finger. People die seemingly out of nowhere, from a hole in their chest, and some object comes out of the hole. Mano collects the things that come out of these holes, and literally holds them in order to love them, but the more he collects, the bigger he becomes as he adds objects to his body. A capitalist business called XO shows up, trying to convince the people of Pie Time that they can protect themselves from God’s Finger with a number of enterprises, and starts to slowly take over the town. But Mano doesn’t believe death is something that should be run from. This book is so pretty, and the symbolism/metaphors, even when obvious, feel as though they belong organically in the world. A quote on the back of the book says it is “as nearly complete a world as can be”, and I think that’s a very accurate description. The story is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the magical realist world in which the story exists is fascinating. Runner up: trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer. This is a series of essays taken (for the most part) from Baer’s blog posts. They span a chunk of time in which she writes her thoughts and musings on her experience transition and transgender existence in general. It is mostly a series of pieces reflecting on “early” stages of transition. But I thought it was really cool to see an intellectual and somewhat philosophical take on transition, written by someone who has only been publicly out for a few years, and therefore is looking at certain experiences with a fresh gaze. As the title suggests, a lot of the book is a bit sad, but it’s not all doom and gloom. A lot of the emphasis is on the important of community when it comes to the experience of starting to transition and the first few years, and the importance of community on the trans experience in general. I really liked reading Hannah Baer’s thoughts as a queer intellectual who was writing about this stuff as she experienced it (or not too long after) rather than writing about the experience of early transition years and years down the line. It meant the writing was very sharp and the emotion was clear and not clouded by nostalgia.

Other thoughts/commentary on books I don’t have superlatives for:

I’m glad my first (full) book read in 2023 was A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guierrero. It’s a small, compact gem of a book that follows the winner of an Argentinian dance competition. The Malambo is a traditional dance, and the competition is very fierce, and once someone wins, they can never compete again. The author follows the runner-up of the previous year, who has come to compete again. It paints a vivid picture of the history of the dance, the culture of the competition, and the character of the dancer the author has chosen to follow. It’s very narrowly focused, which makes it really compelling.

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington could have easily won for most fun or most interesting book. Carrington was a surrealist writer and painter (and was in a relationship with Max Ernst until she was institutionalized and he was deported by the Nazis). In The Hearing Trumpet, an elderly woman called Marian is forced by her family to go live in an old ladies’ home. The first strange thing about the place is that all of the little cabins each woman lives in is shaped like some odd object, like an iron, or ice cream, or a rabbit. The other old women at the institution are a mixed bag, and the warden of the place is hostile. Marian starts to suspect that there are secrets, and even witchcraft involved, and she and a few of the other ladies start to try and unravel the occult mysteries hidden in the grounds of the home. The whole book is fun and strange, and the ending is an extremely entertaining display of feminist occult surrealism.

Sacred Sex: Erotica writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates was a book I had to read for research for my debunking of Withdrawn Traces. It was really very interesting, but it was also hilarious to read because maybe 5% of any of the texts included were actually erotic. It should have been called “romantic writings from the religions of the world” because so little of the writing had anything to do with sex, even in a more metaphorical sense.

Every time I read Yukio Mishima I’m reminded how much I love his style. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea almost usurped The Temple of the Golden Pavilion as my favorite Mishima novel. I’m fascinated with the way that Mishima uses his characters to explore the circumstance of having very intense feelings or reactions towards something and simultaneously wanting to experience that, while also wanting to have complete control and not feel them at all. There’s a scene in this novel where Noboru and his friends brutally kill and dissect a cat; it’s an intense and vividly rendered scene, made all the more intense by Noboru desperately conflicted between feeling affected by the killing and wanting to force himself to feel nothing. The amazing subtle theme running through the book is the difference between Noboru’s intense emotions and his desire/struggle to control them and subdue them versus Ryuji’s more subtle emotion that grows through the book despite his natural reserve. I love endings like the one in this book, where it “cuts to black” and you don’t actually see the final act, it’s simply implied.

In 2016 or 2017, I ran lights for a showcase for the drama department at UPS (I can’t remember now what it was) that included a bunch of scenes from various plays. I remember a segment from Hir by Taylor Mac, and a scene from The Aliens by Annie Baker. In the scene that I saw, one of the characters describes how when he was a boy, he couldn’t stop saying the word ladder, and the monologue culminates in a full paragraph that is just the word “ladder.” I can’t remember who was acting in the one that I saw at UPS, but that monologue blew me away, the way that one word repeated 127 conveyed so much. This year a collection of Annie Baker’s plays came in at work so I sat down and read the whole play and it was just incredible. I’d love to see the full play live, it’s absolutely captivating.

Narrow Rooms by James Purdy was a total diamond in the rough. It takes place in Appalachia, in perhaps the 1950s although it’s somewhat hard to tell. It follows the strange gay entanglement between four adult men in their 20s, who have known each other all their lives. It traces threads of bizarre codependency, and the lines crossed between love and hate. The main character, Sidney, has just returned home after serving a sentence for manslaughter. On his return, he finds that an old lover has been rendered disabled in an accident, and that an old school rival/object of obsession has been waiting for him. This rival, nicknamed “The Renderer” because of an old family occupation, has been watching Sidney all their lives. Both of them hate the other, but know that they’re destined to meet in some way. Caught in the middle of their strange relationship are Gareth, Sidney’s now-disabled former lover, and Brian, a young man who thinks he’s in love with The Renderer. The writing style took me some time to get used to, as it is written as though by someone who has taught themselves, or has only had basic classes on fiction writing. But the plot itself is so strange and the characters are so stilted in their own internality that it actually fits really well. Like The Mustache, this book had one of the strangest, most intensely visceral and shocking endings I’ve read in a while. It was also “one that got away.” I read it at work, then put it on my staff picks shelf, and only realized after someone else bought it that I should have kept it for myself.

The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector blew my mind. I really don’t want to spoil any of it, but I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to do. The build in tension is perfect and last 30 pages are just incredible. Lispector’s style is so unique and so beautiful and tosses out huge existential questions like it’s nothing, and I love her work so much.

Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev was another really unexpected book. It’s extremely Russian (obviously) and really fun until suddenly it isn’t. The main character, a drunkard, gets on a train from Moscow to Petushki, the town at the end of the line (hence the title), in order to see his lover. On the way, he befriends the other people in his train car and they all steadily get drunker and drunker, until he falls asleep and misses his stop. Very Russian, somewhat strange, and I was surprised that it was written in the late 60s and not the 30s.

Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle was what I expected. Weird in a goofy way, a bit silly even when it’s serious, and rather heavy-handed satire. The titular Dr Rat is a rat who has spent his whole life in a laboratory and has gone insane. The other animals who are being tested on want to escape, but he’s convinced that all the testing is for the good of science and wants to thwart their rebellion. Unfortunately, all the other animals who are victims of human cruelty/callousness/invasion/deforestation/etc around the world are also planning to rebel, connection with each other through a sort of psychic television network. It’s a very heavy-handed environmentalist/anti-animal cruelty metaphor and general societal satire, but it’s silly and fun too.

Confessions Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette is a self-published, nearly impossible to find book that came into my work. It’s self-printed and bound, and was published in the 70s. It is the autobiographical narrative of a trans woman who did drag and burlesque and theatre work all across the midwest, as well as New York and San Francisco, from the 1930s up to the late 60s. It was originally a series of interviews by the two editors, who published it in narrative form, and it includes photos from Minette’s personal collection. It’s an amazing story, and a glimpse into a really unique time period of gender performance and queer life. She even mentions Sylvia Rivera, specifically when talking about gay activism. She talks about how the original group of the Gay Liberation Front was an eclectic mix of all sorts of people of all sexualities and genders and expressions. Then when the Gay Activists Alliance “took over”, they started pushing out people who were queer in a more transgressive or unusual way and there was more encouragement on being more heteronormative. She mentions Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, saying “I remember Sylvia Rivera who founded STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. She was always trying to say things – the same kinds of things Marsha P Johnson says in a sweeter way – and they treated her like garbage. If that’s what ‘order’ is, haven’t we had enough?”

Whores For Gloria by William T Vollmann was exactly as amazing as I thought it would be. I love Vollmann’s style, because you can tell that even though the characters he’s writing about are characters, they’re absolutely based on people that he met or saw or spoke to in real life. The main character, Jimmy, is searching for his former lover, Gloria, who has either died or left him (it is unclear for most of the novel). He begins to use tokens bought from sex workers (hair, clothes, etc) to attempt to conjure her into reality, and when that doesn’t work, he pays them to tell him stories from their lives, and through their lives he tries to conjure Gloria. This novel’s ending had extremely similar vibes to the ending of Moscow To The End Of The Line.

Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet was a lot to take in. It was weird reading it at this moment in time, and completely unplanned. It’s just that I have only a few more books to read before I’ve made my way through all Genet’s works that have been translated into English, and it was next on the list. Most of the book focuses on Genet’s time spent in Palestine in the 70s and his short return in the 80s. He also discusses the time he spent with the Black Panthers in the US, although it’s not the main subject of the book. Viewing Palestine from the point of view of Genet’s weird philosophical and moral worldview was really interesting, because what he chooses to spend time looking at or talking about is probably not what most would focus on, and because even his most political discussions are tinged with the uniquely Genet-style spirituality (if you can call it that? I don’t know what to call it) that is so much the exact opposite of objective. It’s definitely not a book about Palestine I would recommend reading without also having a grasp of Genet’s style of looking at the world and his various obsessions and preoccupations, because they really do inform a lot of his commentary. It was also written 15 years after his first trip to Palestine, partly from memory and partly from journal entries/notes, which gives it a sort of weirdly dreamlike quality much like his novels.

Blackouts by Justin Torres was so amazing! It blends real life and fiction together so well that I didn’t even realize that most of the people he references in the novel are real historical figures until he mentioned Ben Reitman, who I recognized as the Chicago King Of The Hobos and Emma Goldman’s lover. The book follows an unnamed narrator who has come to a hotel or apartment in the southwest in order to care for a dying elderly man called Juan Gay. Juan has a book called Sex Variants, a study of homosexuality from the 1940s which has been censored and blacked out. Back and forth, the narrator and Juan trade stories. The narrator tells his life story up until the present, including his first meeting with Juan in a mental hospital as a teenager. In turn, Juan tells the story of the Sex Variants book and its creator, Jan Gay (Ben Reitman’s real life daughter). The book explores the reliability of narrative, the power of collecting and documenting life stories, and of removing or changing things in order to create new or different narratives.

Again, Clarice Lispector rocking my world! Generally I can read a 200-ish page novel in somewhere between 2 and 4 hours depending on the content/writing style. Near To The Wild Heart took me 9 hours to read because I kept wanting to stop and reread entire paragraphs because they were so interesting or pretty or philosophical. The story focuses on Joana, whose strange way of looking at the world and going through life makes everyone sort of wary of her. This book is so layered I don’t really know how to describe it. So much of it is philosophical or existential musings through the vehicle of Joana. Unsurprisingly, it’s a beautiful book and I highly recommend it.

I’m just going to copy/paste my Goodreads review for Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon: This book had so much potential that just…fell short. I could tell that it was written for an American audience but the way the reader/Skye is “taught” certain British terms and/or slang felt a bit patronizing. The characters were fleshed out and interesting and I liked them a lot but the plot crumbled quickly in the last half of the book Things sped up to a degree that felt strange and unnatural, the book’s pacing was inconsistent throughout. Perhaps that was deliberate considering the reveal at the climax, but if it was, it should have been utilized better. If the inconsistent pacing wasn’t deliberate, then it just made the book feel strange to read. There were moments were I felt like there should have been more fleshing out of certain character relationships. Even with the reveal at the end and the explanation of Pieces’ erratic/avoidant behavior, I wish there had been more fleshing out of the relationship or friendship between her and Skye at the beginning, when Skye first arrives in London. Characters who seemed cool/interesting got glossed over and instead there was a lot more dwelling on Skye walking around or busking or just hanging out. I could have gone without the last 30 or so pages after the big reveal, where Skye went back through everything that happened with the knowledge she (and the reader) had gained. It dragged on and on and at that point I felt like the whole story was so contrived that I just wasn’t interested anymore. A friend who read this book before I did said she thought it was an experimental novel that just hadn’t gone far enough, and I completely agree with her. I think if the style with the film script interludes went further, into printed visuals or more weirdness with the interludes, more experimental style with the main story, or something, it would have been really good. It just didn’t push hard enough.

The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson was a fun little true crime novel about a young flautist who broke into a small English natural history museum in 2009 and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of preserved rare bird skins dating back to the 19th century. He was a salmon fly-tying enthusiast and prodigy, and old Victorian fly designs used feathers of rare birds. The book first goes through the heist and the judicial proceedings, then examines the niche culture of Victorian fly-tying enthusiasts and obsessives, and then chronicles the author’s attempts to track down some of the missing birds. It was a quick, easy read, but fun and an unusual subject and I quite enjoyed it.

In 2024 I don’t plan on trying to surpass or even reach this year’s number. I’m going to start off the year reading The Recognitions by William Gaddis, then I’m going to re-read a number of books that I come across at work or in conversation and think Huh, I should reread that one of these days. So far, the books I am currently planning to reread: Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, The People Of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, McGlue by Otessa Moshfegh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neil, Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell, and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.

[ubyr-babaj]

I got tagged by @fangirl-saya so here, characters that I think are very me-coded: 1. Master, from "Master and Margarita". The guy wrote a doorstopper about his special interest, was told to get fucked by the publishing industry, suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an insane asylum his wife had to get him out of. Also he hallucinates, can't talk to people or understand the social and political norms of his time. He's like me for real.

2. The Wizard from "An Ordinary Miracle", 1978. A solipsist who summons people to tell their stories to the detriment of his relationship with his wife can be someone so personal.

3. Dracula from "Renfield", 2023. Spends half of his movie physically disabled and snarling at people because of his chronic pains, can't apologize for shit, has a big Dostoevskian Idea TM of the bright future his love interest looks at and goes: "Dude, what the everloving fuck". Also his RSD attacks are creepy and he genuinely believes that church and the psychiatric system are one and the same, which is very right of him.

4. Renfield from "Count Dracula" 1997. This guy has some nasty meltdowns, grumps at anyone and anything who looks in his general direction, quotes poetry and deifies his attraction to men. Him and his man should have been endgame, no I will not elaborate, that's the hill I will die on.

Pretty much if you have a messed up dude with no earthly tethers except for his lover (who's at least somewhat better at humaning), I'm going to relate.

I tag: @the-malfunctioning-somnambulist @ava-does-dumbassery

@fecto-forgo @scribe-of-monsters @angelofthemornings

[carnivalls]

tagged by @corpsepng to list 9 of the books i plan to read in 2023 - thank you, teamwork really does pay off 🤝

this is obviously just a glance at my stupidly long reading list but still ! here are the books most foreseeably in my possession and that i most dearly want to get through

Δαίμονες & Διάβολος στην Ελλάδα, Charles Stewart

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (about 1/3 through from last year)

Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts, Georg Luck

I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

The Master & Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler

no pressure tagging @wifewulf @akoumi @cry4judas @andreigoncharov @theklaapologist @honey-sipping-muse @doritofalls @catboypranparakulisaro @loukoumia @saltwaterbells @goosemixtapes @albatris @kafkaguy @kudzucataclysm and really whoever wants, just say i tagged you

[tenthousandyearsx]

Hey! I'm curious, pls indulge me: which book or fic that you've read in 2023 has made the most impression and why? x

Hi magpie! What a great question to find in my inbox. ❤ I actually rarely look back or make lists for some reason, so it was lovely to do so just now!

Books:

I saw someone reading “Lanark” by Alasdair Gray on public transport last December. I had never heard of it before, so I looked it up and it ended up being one of the wildest things I’ve ever laid my eyes on. I really, really liked the first book, it made me think of The Master and Margarita (which I adore!) and it seemed plucked entirely from the author's unconscious, which is always a bonus with me. But as I read the other three books, I got progressively more frustrated and annoyed, so I honestly don’t know if I’d recommend it. That said, the opening book was such a shock, I can’t stop thinking about it. I just keep wishing I could unread the rest. 😬 (Sorry for the conflicting rec! You might have read it already – and if so, I’d love to know what you think).

Because I'm so conflicted about choosing the novel above, my second pick is a reread of a book I used to love as a teen, but that nobody seems to have heard of. It’s called ‘The Only Alien on the Planet’ by Kristen D. Randle. It has nothing to do with aliens; it's a getting together YA novel about a boy who refuses to speak or be touched and the female protagonist, who's a transfer student and doesn't know what she can or can't do around him. It was my first time rereading it in almost two decades and I still loved it so much. I have no idea what it would be like to read it for the first time as an adult though. CW for childhood trauma – but it’s not a heavy novel. I fell for the male character all over again 🥲.

(Also, because I know you like danmei as much as I do, I just want to add here that I’m dying to read Nan Chan – but I haven't yet!!)

Fics:

I’ve been binging a lot of Alhaitham / Kaveh fics – their characters are so compelling and I cannot get enough of the whole quarrelling scholars living together dynamic they have going. On top of this, I discovered only a couple of days ago that Alhaitham is based on Tagore among other things, so now my brainrot is even worse.

This is probably not a ship you’re interested in, but if you are, I loved "pure conjecture" by shrimpheavnnow. It's 5.7k words PWP but it’s so them, and I thought the premise was hilarious. I also need to mention a wip I’m following, which is very much on the same vein but looks like it's going to be 12 glorious chapters of PWP: “testing, testing” by Lithopus.

Drarry: I don’t normally read memory loss fics, but I read "Somewhere in My Memory" by maraudersaffair while I was stuck at home with covid and it brightened my week so much I’m still thinking about it months later. I’m personally really bad at writing domesticity, and I thought their day-to-day looked so effortless here!

Oh! I also read astolat’s Jeeves and Wooster fic for the first time a few weeks ago ("Jeeves and the Blessed Indiscretion") and I thought her Wooster’ voice was brilliant.

Sorry for the long reply! I was probably supposed to pick only one but I got a bit carried away.

If you have any fic recs, especially wangxian and hualian, I'd love to hear them! x

[galateaencore]

6/11/2023

Fandoms I might one day write for that are not Witcher:

Disco Elysium: probably the only one on this list with compelling, complex, actually morally grey (or even black) female characters. I am inspired by Joyce and Klaasje, maybe shipped together, maybe not. Maybe I'll do what I really want to do and write a worldbuilding travelogue from the POV of the three mercenaries. But to feel ok, I'll have to read the book first.

Red Dead Redemption 2: maybe Dutch and Hosea before it all went to shit, maybe Sadie being a mercenary in the south.

Vagrus: deeply-felt fuckbuddies Kral Hestaera (dark elf army captain of an exiled regiment)/Prince Kareem (young merchant Prince making a name for himself) against a backdrop of protecting Tectum Carvos from the wyrms and trying to help their two disparate populations cohabit.

Master and Margarita: I just really like Woland, idk. I'd probably do it implicitly with the face of a more pop-culture property, but yeah.

Bonus Round: Silmarillion. I would need to reread the Silm (and by reread I mean reread small parts of it and read most of it for the first time) before I'm comfortable writing Tolkien fanfic, so I don't know if this one will ever happen. But if it does, joy to me, because the community is great!

[no-passaran]

Now that 2023 is over, here's my highlights of books I read this year:

🏆Favourite book: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I simply loved it. I love these characters so much, I wish I could give them a hug (especially Mariam!!!). I will never forget the scene at the end where [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] (seriously though, it will stay with me).

🏅Honorable mention: The Royal Game by Stephan Zweig. I read it almost in one sitting. Very addictive. The reason why it's not my favourite number 1 is probably only because it's short (100 pages) so it doesn't "stay" with you the same way that the characters that you've been following for so long I guess, though it's still very memorable. But I really enjoyed it and I'd recommend it to everyone.

🏆Most original/innovative/unique: The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn. I picked it up because it was recommended by the library in the public libraries app, saved it in my to-read list, picked it some months later when I had mostly forgotten what it was about besides being sci-fi, and I was so confused lmao. But the confusion is intentional and I enjoyed the process of piecing together what the hell is going on through the witnesses.

🏆Most fun: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakhov. Enjoyable and very unhinged. (I was also really enjoying the novel inside the novel).

🏆Best (auto)biographical non-fiction: Consent by Vanessa Springora. Definitely a must-read. The author explains how she consensually entered a relationship with an older famous man when she was a young teen, how the consent is created, how she created the consent of those around her (mostly her mother), how this relationship affected the rest of her life even after it was over, and how society around her normalized it. It's very well written, even though it's a hard topic it makes you want to keep reading, and also shocks you with the way many people —including people in the left— have encouraged this to happen. This one, The Royal Game and A Thousand Splendid Suns are definitely the best books I've read this year, followed by Infinity Inside a Reel. I really recommend it to everyone to understand what a situation like this really looks like, especially now that conservatives go around throwing around the word "groomer" without any meaning.

🏆Best topic-centered non-fiction: Infinity Inside a Reel: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo. Yes, I know in English it was translated as "Papyrus" instead of "Infinity Inside a Reel", but that's a mistake and, in my opinion, the reason why this book got bad criticism by English-speaking readers when it got translated to English. It was a huge hit in Spanish, Catalan, and the other languages around me, widely loved and praised by everyone who read it, and the only bad reviews I've seen of it online have been from English speakers and all for the same reason: precisely because of what the book is. It's not a classroom academic text book, it never intended to be. English-speakers who say they didn't like it because it's too poetic and personal miss the whole point that makes the book so delightful, but I understand they got misguided and had wrong expectations because of the title and synopsis they were given, so the book didn't always reach its intended audience in the English-speaking world. Leaving that aside, I really recommend it. I found it very lovely.

[summeroffice]

Interview with "И грянул Грэм" where you can phone in and ask questions, or ask them through Telegram.

22:53 You once in August in an interview voiced that it would be nice and it would be worth creating a database of translations of the most common statements of Russian politicians and officials so that people around the world understood what they are saying in fact, they are a softened form of translation and at the Centre of Translation at the University of Vienna we want to create just such a project because we consider it to be a new type of translation. Is it still relevant for the Office of the President and how can you be contacted if this is interesting? Thank you.

Hello, Ksenia. Of course you can contact my assistant Максим [they're speaking in Russian] through "И грянул Грэм" and accordingly, the topic is very relevant. Translations are undoubtedly important, namely identical or authentic words that are spoken by certain representatives of official representatives of the Russian authorities are certainly important because they are blasphemous, they are absolutely obscurantist and they are absolutely aimed at the public opinion of other countries and that public opinion in European countries, first of all, be understood.

26:37 Mykhailo promised to give an interview from Crimea at the end of the 2023. It was like on the stream of Yulia Latynina. Will Mykhailo succeed?

Look, definitely. I will definitely in any case do a stream or an interview from Crimea undoubtedly because Crimea will be de-occupied. I really like it of course when you said that you will definitely be there on June 23, for example, or on July 23. Look, it seems to me that with the intellect of people who say this like this, there are a little problems. This is a war. War does not have… It is not a film that you go see in a cinemat at 16.00. Question, will it be on June 23 or July 23 or August 23 or at the end of the year. This is a war. But the fact that we will be in any case on the Yalta embankment - undoubtedly.

45:19 Marat asks: how does Mykhailo feel about Bulgakov, Pushkin, Vysotsky and the demoliton of their monuments in Ukraine.

The question absolutely sounds wrong. Please understand, it immediately asks, will the monuments be demolished. But what is a monument for a writer or a composer and so on? It's ridiculous. In fact you individually determine whether you need it from the point of view of your inner needs, do you need "The Master and Margarita" [a novel by Bulgakov], do you need "Theatrical Novel" [by Bulgakov], do you need "Flight" [a play by Bulgakov], "The Day of the Turbins" [a play by Bulgakov] or something like that or not. It's an individual need.

Of course, monuments are in fact the ideological influence of a particular country. Through the monuments of Pushkin, for example, Russia says, look, there is great Russian culture, and you are nobody, you're provincials, you're insignificant, that is, the monument solves another problem, not your individual consumption of a cultural product. I emphasise again, in this you're free, you can consume Pushkin, it doesn't matter. But a monument is the ideological influence of the country of origin of this or that cultural product, so learn to tell this apart.

But this will definitely not affect your choice of this or that literary object for reading. This is an obvious thing, right? If you want to listen to Tchaikovsky, you will listen, if you want to listen to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, you will listen, Rimsky-Korsakov, please. But in parallel, you'll listen to Vivaldi, right? You will make your own choice and not the imposed ideological product. It is very important to learn to tell this apart because when someone comes, look, you have demolished a monument to Pushkin, probably we can come to you to cut your children. Do you understand the absurdity of posing the question?

49:27 I generally evaluate people not according to their passport but by their individual actions. And I think this is right, ethnicity does not matter at all in whether you're a person or a non-human, this is an obvious thing.

52:18 References the film "Stalingrad" (2013) by Fedor Bondarchuk, and "Burnt by the Sun" (1994) by Nikita Mikhalkov.

52:41 Why Mykhailo doesn't go to the TV station «Дождь»?

Look, I want values not to be a word. If you adhere to some values, you must understand them. You can't take an ambivalent position on the war. You can't say that our [Russian army] boys are dying and after that throw a tantrum when this mistake is pointed out and instead of apologising continue to play this game that not everything is so simple. It doesn't work like that. That is, either there are values and then we are not hypocritical or values are a way of commercialisation. For me the first is acceptable, the second is not.

53:27 Our viewer writes that Oleksiy Arestovych actually performs the same job as an adviser to the Office of the President but without official status. Is that so?

Oleksiy Mykolaiovych today is a blogger, he comments on the war, he does it professionally and effectively and accordingly, he really works in the paradigm of the state information policy and so on, he is no longer an employee of the Office of the President, no doubt, but since he is an intellectual smart person and understands exactly the value of the word, then he certainly works in the paradigm of the state and state interests.

54:08 At the very end, probably a little personal question from the viewer, he said that in one of the interviews he heard that at the end of the war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted to go to the sea and drink beer with his friends. What would Mykhailo want?

I just want an end to the war with minimal losses. That is, if we can minimise losses as much as possible. And the next it will be a large amount of work to punish the war criminals of the Russian Federation on one hand, this is after the war, and on the other hand, I think that there will be a lot of hard work to perpetuate the memory of people who gave their lives for their country. That is, not to erect monuments, that is to go to the family and pay tribute.