Crying about De La Pole again. Next on the schedule is crying about Katherine, and then crying about Feather, yet again.
[The first two characters are from Wyrm by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which is not in the database yet]

This is one of the books I'll be thinking of often as I figure out how to be a man. The more the protagonist-narrator tries to conceal his cowardice and selfishness and hypocrisy and will-to-violence from himself in recursive coils of prose, the more the design of the coils reinscribes it for the readers to see. The more a mediocre man of habitual bad faith stares into himself, the less clearly he sees himself. It's brilliant.

"A swarm of shame, centipede-legged, streamed out, choosing the parts of me most subject to goose flesh—my armpits, my back, my sides."

""You don‘t need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself. I don‘t ever again want to return to such a desert of mirrors.""

"I was overcome by a paroxysm of nausea, as if I had had the inside of my throat painted with iodine."

"In the final analysis, jealousy itself is something like a pet cat that insists on its rights but does not accept its duties."

"Just thinking of what happened before this was apparently enough to make the worms of shame come wriggling out of all the pores of my body."

"When I took the mask off, the adhesive material, musty with sweat, gave off an odor like overheated grapes. At that very moment an unbearable fatigue flowed over me, eddying in my joints like syrupy tar."

"And was it also because I could feel the cigarette resting lightly in my fingers like a little dead bird?"
Today in odd similes.

"Shocked as if I had bitten on a firecracker, I stood stock still in my tracks, but the woman simply glanced up and hurried on as if nothing had happened."
Today in odd similes.

"Thus, for example, if you tried to reconstruct a whale, which has especially developed subcutaneous tissue and fatty layers, on the basis of the skeleton alone, you would get a monster not in the slightest like a whale—something between a dog and a seal."

"It was the desperate feeling of loneliness one sees in the eyes of a decrepit old cur on the verge of death. It was an emptiness like the sound of track construction deep in the night when the pinging sings down the rails."

"Suddenly you began to sob. It was an unnerving sound, like air escaping from a faucet when the water stops."

"If you suppose Bach to be balm for the soul, imagine it as nothing but a lump of clay, neither poison nor balm. It was meaningless and stupid; every phrase played seemed to me quite like a dusty, sticky lollipop."

"The girl‘s knees knocked together with such force under her skirt that they might well have fused."

"If covering our bodies with clothes represents a cultural step forward, there is no guarantee that in the future masks will not be taken equally for granted."

Tragically, none of the neighbors got into their shelters in time; they couldn't hear the radio broadcast, or the blast, over the clap of James' godly ass cheeks.

"The first words I really remember were said very clearly. What a view. *What* a view. But I had my eyes closed. The river was running in my mind, and I raised my lids and saw exactly what had been the image of my thought. For a second I did not know what I was seeing and what I was imagining; there was such an utter sameness that it didn‘t matter; both were the river."

"The sun fell behind the right side of the gorge, and the shadow of the bank crossed the water so fast that it was like a quick step from one side to the other."

"In a while more we came out against the side of a bank that shelved up, covered with ferns and leaves that were mulchy like shit."

"I had watched everything that had happened to Bobby, had heard him scream and squall, and wanted to reassure him that we could set all that aside; that it would be forgotten as soon as we left the woods, or as soon as we got back in the canoes. But there was no way to say this, or to ask him how his lower intestine felt or whether he thought he was bleeding internally."
Masculinity is so alienating that you can't even take care of your bros ?

"He opened his mouth and it was full of blood like an apple."

"Griner set his heavy-hanging face on Lewis; they battled in midair; the sound of crickets in the grass around the garage clashed like shields and armor plate."

"It was dark and iron-smelling, hot with the closed-in heat that brings the sweat out as though it had been waiting all over your body for the right signal."

"When Lewis killed the engine, the air came alive and shook with insects, even in the center of town, an in-and-out responding silence of noise."

"Up ahead, the road ran between two hills. Lined up dead center between them was a mountain, high, broad and blue, the color of concentrated woodsmoke."

"We hummed along, borne with the inverted canoe on a long tide of patent medicines and religious billboards. From such a trip you would think that the South did nothing but dose itself and sing gospel songs; you would think that the bowels of the southerner were forever clamped shut; that he could not open and let natural process flow through him, but needed one purgative after another in order to make it to church."

"He was devoted to his family, particularly to his little boy Pope, who had some kind of risen hornlike blood blister on his forehead that his eyebrow grew out of and around in a way to make you realize the true horrors of biology."

"Two jokes written on the bathroom wall at Pages: How do you get a nun pregnant? Fuck her. What‘s the difference between a J.A.P. and a bowl of spaghetti? Spaghetti moves when you eat it. And below the jokes: "Julian gives great head. And is dead.""

""I think I would rather die in a plane crash than any other way," my father said after some time. "I think it would be dreadful." "But it would be nothing. You get bombed on the plane, take a Librium, and the plane takes off and crashes and you never know what hit you." My father crossed his legs."

"He insisted that "The Donner Party was responsible for its own misfortune."" Yeah, but is he wrong, Elsie?

Nothing more relatable than telling your foster dad he should buy you candy because when you almost died in the mountains, your late parents let you eat sugar every day until it ran out 🤣 A kid is a kid is a kid.

We missed out on some insane gothic horror short stories by Eliza Donner, judging by chapter 9.

"My mother was in accord with my father's wishes, and helped him to carry out his plan." What fuckin choice did she have, Betsy?

"Someone named Angel was supposed to go with us tonight, but earlier today she got caught in the drain of her jacuzzi and almost drowned."

"I can also hear the dog barking out in back and KROQ is playing old Doors songs and War of the Worlds is on channel thirteen and I switch it to some religious program where this preacher is yelling "Let God use you. God wants to use you. Lie back and let him use you, use you." "Lie back," he keeps chanting. "Use you, use you.""

"There's an old, expensively framed poster of The Beach Boys hanging over Rip's bed and I stare at it trying to remember which one died, while Rip does three more lines."

This is a good book to alternate with Wyrm, because it makes me feel nothing, while each chapter of Wyrm guts me in a different way.

"My father looks pretty healthy if you don't look at him for too long."

"Adam-or-Albert purpled, lips pursed as tightly as a cat‘s anus."
Today in odd similes.
[The book is Wyrm by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which isn't in the database]

Y'all, this book has medieval bear-baiting, but with a t-rex against a pack of velociraptors.
[The book is Wyrm by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which isn't in the database]

""To dead Welshmen," said sir Ralph, raising his wineskin. His spurs dug deeper into Will, who bit his lip to keep from crying out. Stools, after all, had no voices."
[The book is Wyrm by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which isn't in the database]

"Blood steamed in the dirt. It was a brisk afternoon, overcast and gray, and the wind brought the scent to coat his mouth. Copper. Rot. A thick, meaty sort of warmth, enfolding and sticky, like the condensation that would gather on your upper lip if you bent to inhale the aroma of a trencher full of good brown gravy."
[The book is Wyrm by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which isn't in the database]

"Pullets underfoot, bright-eyed little things eating lice from their bedrolls and stealing ends of bread. Will knelt to let one eat the rind of the little round of cheese he‘d had for breakfast from his palm. "Puss puss," he cooed, scratching its feathered skull as it nosed curiously at his hand. "That‘s a girl. Good girl."" ??
[The book is Wyrm by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which isn't in the database]

"He considered sending Abigail a picture in return but didn‘t have the energy to undo his pants."

"Just because someone sits down across from you and says ‘I‘m here to discuss our options in good faith‘ doesn‘t mean it‘s true. You know that, Sammy. You‘ve signed a contract, haven‘t you? Negotiating is really just about getting someone to consent to what you were gonna do anyway. It‘s someone with more power than you telling you there‘s a choice. A false binary. There are no ones for us, only zeroes."

1. Thomas and Rohaise from Ego Homini Lupus by Gretchen Felker-Martin.

2. Indi and Beth from the tagged book.

3. Griffin and Gage from Max Graves' brilliant webcomic, What Happened Next.

All of these works are criminally under-read.

"Whenever a Marigold building was torn down, all kinds of garbage came out of the walls, missives from the workers slipped beneath the surface. Stanley knew almost every tower in the city had water bottles full of piss clogging up the walls."