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75% complete! Hippo has read 18 of 24 books.
Started reading this on my Kobo on the metro ride home from Blossom's (where I unfortunately didn't get around to buying any books 🙁 mainly because I already had The Parable of the Sower, from my last Blossom's visit, still on my to-read stack)! It starts very fairy-tale-y but in a gritty, "this is what life is actually like, child" way. The only reason I'm not more hooked is that I'm half-hoping to lay my hands on a physical copy.
"We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America …
Finished it last night. Well that was intense 😳 it's quite disturbing but it's also got a lot of stuff (all her ideas) developing which don't come to fruition, so it looks like there's more coming? Now I need to read the second part, which I just realised exists!
"We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America …
Took an illness to finally make me start reading this >.< I've been wanting to for so long though, so I'm glad I finally did!!
Carried this to my cousin's house to finish reading 😉
The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day worked on me, as well as the slope of the road which eliminated any possibility of weariness. The afternoon was intimate, infinite. The road descended and forked among the now confused meadows. A high-pitched, almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance. I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words gardens streams of water, sunsets.
— Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (14%)
The last sentence!
A few years ago, @wickertongue@writing.exchange compared my writing to that of Borges, so I thought I'd better read at least some of the latter's work 😅️
Definitely worth it. The first story, with a title that I cannot remember, is really cool and thought-provoking! I'm looking forward to dipping into more 🪣
Whoa, this went much deeper into languages than I expected! In a good way. This is probably something I'd want to come back and re-read; there's a lot of material that I haven't fully absorbed in the first round :P
@verglas@books.theunseen.city wait, so did you ever finish reading the rest of it? I guess it doesn't matter that much if it's short stories though. It sounds intriguing enough—both from your description and from the official blurb—that I want to give it a shot!
@Smileybone ooh yes this premise looks very interesting! Especially with the ethnic stereotypes thing 👀
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Pick one? Just one, of all these treasures? Robin didn't know the first title from the second, and he was too dazzled by the sheer amount of text to flip through and decide. His eyes alighted on a title: The King's Own by Frederick Marryat, an author he was, so far, unfamiliar with. But new, he thought, was good.
'Hm. Marryat. I haven't read him, but I'm told he's popular with boys your age.' Professor Lovell turned the book over in his hands. 'This one, then? You're sure?'
Robin nodded. If he didn't decide now, he knew, he'd never leave. He was like a starved man in a pastry shop, dazzled by his options, but he did not want to try the professor's patience.
— Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (5%)
Me every time I enter a bookshop after a break 😜
The first book of a vast fantasy as rich and strange as Tolkien's "Lord of …
Therewith Lord Gro put up the parchment in his bosom and said, "Swift surgery. Needs must that we take them in their beds to-night; so shall to-morrow's dawn bring glory and triumph to Witchland, now fixed in an eclipse, and to the whole world peace and soft contentment."
— The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (Page 52)
Just the flowery language in which this is spoken—and also a reminder that "surgical strike" is by no means a new term! 😉
@PrimoNatura@books.theunseen.city when I started reading the blurb, at first I thought it was fiction! But then all the details sounded too real. What's the narrative style like—is it a birds' eye view or are we going into the heads of some of the characters, so to speak?
Came across this because the author used to edit a cool literary magazine which unfortunately folded, which sounds a lot like my situation. So I read some articles about her, which led me to this book, which has now ended up on my "to read" list!
Picked this up from the library because I had a free book slot and wanted something I could finish quickly without it lying on my "to read" pile :P
It's actually quite thoughtfully written; in the same "accessible to everyone" style as his fiction but (depending on your opinion of that) less cheesy. This guy really wants to improve the country but he's also sensible about it and not militantly nationalistic or anything.
