‘Perhaps in the end it was more about love than friendship? What other name is there for this urgent, violent marriage of minds, the appalling prospect of someone going to pieces, the impossibility of being indifferent, the joy you feel when at last they’re sleeping peacefully?’
“Sometimes, when a Person feels Anger, everything seems simple and obvious. Anger puts things in order and shows you the world in a nutshell; Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which it’s hard to attain in any other state.”
These are quite long lists. So find them after the jump.
I only kept a record of the films and TV I was watching from June onwards.
This fortnight’s dose of links and internet things.
Above is the railway line down by the Bristol Cut.
“The New Cut is an artificial waterway which was constructed between 1804 and 1809 to divert the tidal river Avon through south and east Bristol, England. This was part of the process of constructing Bristol’s Floating Harbour, under the supervision of engineer William Jessop. The cut runs from Totterdown Basin at the eastern end of St Phillip’s Marsh, near Temple Meads, to the Underfall sluices at Rownham in Hotwells and rejoining the original course of the tidal Avon.”
These are the books I have read in the last 12 months:
author: James Joyce published: 1914
The Essays of Montaigne, Book 1
author: Michel de Montaigne published: 1580 rating: 5
author: Rutu Modan published: 2008 rating: 5
author: Carlos Sampayo published: 1989 rating: 3
Author: John Steinbeck published: 1939 rating: 5
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
author: Hilary Mantel published: 2014 rating: 5
The Fortune of the Rougons (Les Rougon-Macquart, #1)
author: Émile Zola published: 1870 rating: 5
Deadpool & the Mercs For Money, Volume 0: Merc Madness
author: Cullen Bunn published: 2016 rating: 3
The Collected Stories Volume 4
author: Arthur C. Clarke published: 1956 rating: 4
Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom #1)
author: John Updike published: 1960 rating: 4
Captain Marvel, Volume 3: Alis Volat Propriis
published: 2015 rating: 5
When the World Screamed (Professor Challenger, #4)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle published: 1928 rating: 4
Captain Marvel, Volume 2: Down
author: Kelly Sue DeConnick published: 2013 rating: 4
author: Homer published: -750 rating: 5
Captain Marvel, Volume 1: In Pursuit of Flight
author: Kelly Sue DeConnick published: 2011 rating: 4
The Schoolmaster and Other Stories
author: Anton Chekhov published: 1921 rating: 5
author: Alan Moore & Brian Bolland published: 1988 rating: 4
author: Christian Williams rating: 4
author: Katsuhiro Otomo published: 1984 rating: 4
author: E.M. Forster published: 1908 rating: 5
author: Anne Brontë published: 1848 rating: 5
author: Mark Todd published: 2006 rating: 5
author: Thomas Pynchon published: 2009 rating: 5
Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor
author: Lynda Barry published: 2014 rating: 5
author: Marcus Aurelius published: 180 rating: 4
author: Stephen King published: 1977 rating: 5
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
author: Naomi Klein published: 2006 rating: 5
The Descent of Man, and Other Stories
author: Edith Wharton published: 1903 rating: 3
SPLIT: True Stories About The End of Marriage and What Happens Next
editor: Katie West published: 2017
A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)
author: George R.R. Martin published: 1998
author: Dorothea Brande published: 1934
Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels
author/editor: Tom Devlin published: 2015
“I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this.”
I just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I have always known of this book but never read it or even knew very much about what is was about.
I really wasn’t prepared by how relevant it was to so many situations occurring globally at the moment. The mass migration of populations due to climate changes, infrastructure collapse and economics, the refusal of a system to help and indeed the full demonisation of those in transit.
The language is beautifully simple and yet says so much about strength, sadness, suffering, perseverance and dignity.
A really intense, gruelling book about a pretty loathsome wretch. Horrible thing is there’s a billion Rabbits in the actual world. Ahead of its time in many ways. This is my first Updike. His writing is profound. But yeah. Relentless.
“The Parade” is a modernist dirge of a book that still packs an emotional wallop, telling the story of mankind’s recurring and deadly war fever. Einstein wrote Si a fan letter after seeing the drawings in 1951, saying, “Our time needs you and your work!” It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is still true today, so Si and I collaborated on an expanded “director’s cut” version of “The Parade,” remastered from the original art and published, this month, as a long accordion-fold book.
Paul Greer 