I was getting my oil changed the other day, and luckily it was just a short walk to the library where I quickly grabbed this and devoured it. I made it most of the way through Volume 2 before my car was ready. Bilford Bogin, it‘s so good!
“THERE IS NO FUTURE BUT OUR OWN BECAUSE THERE IS NO AUTHORITY BUT OUR OWN. YOU AND I, WHO LOVE THIS PLANET ‘EARTH‘, ARE ITS RIGHTFUL INHERITORS — IT IS TIME TO STAKE OUR CLAIM.
- -
...the Pistols released ‘Anarchy In The UK,‘ maybe they didn‘t really mean it ma‘am, but to us it was a battle cry. When Rotten proclaimed there was ‘no future‘, we saw it as a challenge to our creativity - we knew there was a future if we were prepared to work for it.”
McMurtry‘s “ballad in prose” follows Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday through the dying West from Long Grass to Tombstone as they sit on porches, talk shit, and drink. Sometimes they shoot at stuff. Mostly they miss.
Summer Vacation Book Haul, Part 2.
From the always dependable Pelican Bookstore.
-O‘Brian‘s first nautical adventure novel presaging the Aubrey-Maturin series.
-A book that‘s been on my wantlist for a long time about Mamah Borthwick and her affair with Frank Lloyd Wright.
-Oliver Sacks‘ study of music and neurology.
As RZA said, “Music and medicine all go together. It‘s like two planets revolving around the same sun. So, bong bong.”
Summer Vacation Book Haul, Part 1.
The 5 on the left were $1 each at the Ocracoke Library book sale!
Second Wind and All Summer Long were cover price from one of my all-time favorite beach book stores, Books To Be Red, and made for quick, fun summer reads.
This cinematic nightmare was an actual filmmaking nightmare. Everything that could go wrong, went completely wrong and then got worse. It‘s amazing that this movie even exists, and reading about how it very nearly didn‘t makes me appreciate one of my favorite movies even more.
“If you are expecting to laugh at what you are about to hear, you are missing the point. You should look forward instead to a kind of low inner chuckling, so dry and so deep inside you that you may not realize it is happening.”
Hodgman‘s summation of Maine Humor is also this book in a nutshell.
Love this meaningful tribute to Patrick O‘Brian.
And just like that, it‘s over. Though tragic, it‘s also kind of fitting and beautiful that there‘s no definite end to the saga of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. They simply sail off the page, “the future lost in a haze somewhere north of the equator.” The haze is both our memory of everywhere they have been and everything they have shared along the way, and our imagination running wild with all the adventures yet to come.
The last complete Aubrey-Maturin novel ends appropriately on one of the highest notes of the series.
It surely feels like an imposing task picking up Master and Commander knowing there are 19 1/2 more volumes to follow, but these books are endlessly welcoming and rewarding and I can‘t recommend them highly enough.
Extremely on point (and aesthetically pleasing) birthday gifts from @TobeyTheScavengerMonk
I‘m so close to finishing the Aubrey-Maturin series that I‘ve put multiple years of my life into so this companion will come in handy when I start going through nautical withdrawals. I‘ve also been anxiously awaiting this Criterion edition of one of my favorite films, and it‘s always a pleasure to add another BKV volume to my shelf. Thanks again.
Anybody else tuned in and waiting for this press conference to start?!
UPDATE: As Patton Oswalt said, “The cops will NEVER and HAVE NEVER credited a writer or journalist for helping them solve a case. But every time they said ‘Golden State Killer‘ they credited the work of Michelle McNamara. Michelle didn‘t care about getting any shine on herself... She was Marge Gunderson in FARGO, not Chilton in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.”
Borrowed this from a friend and just started it last night. Probably not the best choice for a pre-bedtime read because it is deeply disturbing AND completely captivating so I stayed up too late because I couldn‘t put it down and when I did finally put it down I was scared of the dark.
Whoops! Went birthday shopping for @TobeyTheScavengerMonk and accidentally bought some books for myself. $5 each at Nice Price Books. I got cool stuff for him too, don‘t worry.
Amazing that the 19th volume in this series is just as original, exciting, funny, thrilling and shocking as the first book. By far the longest series I‘ve ever read, I only have a book and a half left to go, and I am not ready for it to end.
1. I think John Darnielle‘s 33 1/3 about Black Sabbath‘s Master of Reality might be the best book about music I‘ve ever read. Runners up: Touching From A Distance, Please Kill Me, Hairstyles Of The Damned, Heart-Shaped Box, etc
2. Ramones.
3. Too many, but maybe Sufjan Stevens‘ Christmas Spectacular, Sigur Ros in the rain, or a handful of my favorite European indiepop bands in a Richmond basement.
4. Currently: I Am Here (I Am Alive) by Bonny Doon
Some recent finds at one of my favorite local shops, Nice Price Books & Records. The Springsteen box set comes with a book of lyrics and photographs so I‘m lopping it in with the pile. Not pictured, the Raising Arizona dvd I scored for $2. Good haul.
A suitably strange, deep, fascinating & mysterious insight into a singular artist who is all of those things and more (yet chooses to describe himself with this four word biography: Eagle Scout, Missoula, Montana)
I especially loved every time Rodley would try asking point blank what certain things are supposed to mean, and how Lynch would always manage to answer without ever making anything clear.
Nothing was elucidated, but much was gained.
Look at all that‘s happened here. One town. The commonplace, familiar, and ordinary—everything we think we know, until you sense the deep, unsettling strangeness informing all of it.
***
Finished this over coffee. Didn‘t quite live up to the greatness of The Secret History which I absolutely loved and totally consumed me, but an essential volume nonetheless, with some shocking twists to the already twisted story.
Really rooting for The Shape Of Water tonight, maybe the most beautiful and meticulously crafted film yet from a man who only makes beautiful and meticulously crafted films. I‘ve been enjoying this companion that @TobeyTheScavengerMonk got me for Christmas. It‘s a window into the extraordinary amount of thought and care Guillermo puts into every detail, down to the star sign and ruling planet of each character, minor and major.
After falling in love with Matt Fraction‘s FF series, and Jonathan Hickman‘s, I‘ve been feeling a real void left in the F4‘s absence since Secret Wars, and this new series by Zdarsky is a really fun answer to that.
I especially love this Twin Peaksian image of the Mad Thinker, who is also mourning the absence of the Fantastic Four in his own crazy way, by giving himself that classic Reed Richards‘ haircut.
Good stuff.
Saga‘s back!
And it will be the death of us.
“This liquid is technically known as soup, may I ladle you out a measure?”-Aubrey
“It is pleasant enough to see the remnants of peas so aged and worn that even the weevils scorned them and died at their side, so that now we have both predator and prey to nourish us.”-Maturin
***
Thanks to local libraries I made it through the first 17 volumes of this series without a hitch, but I had to get an interlibrary loan for this one. Only 2.5 books to go.
I pick this up every time I go into my favorite local bookshop, so it was more than a pleasant surprise when I received it for Valentine‘s this year. Excited to dig in deep on Chantal Akerman‘s “corporeal cinema”, specifically ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles‘, and my favorite genre of film, the kind where nothing happens.
Stories.
A sea of words,
Moments of light,
Book of longing.
Touching from a distance
Harbors and high seas,
The sea and the jungle;
The wood beyond the world.
See now then,
You can‘t go home again.
#spinepoetry #riotgrams
He approached Lynch and asked the director how he would like the piece to sound, to which Lynch replied, “Oh, just make it like the wind, Angelo. It should be a song that floats on the sea of time. Make it cosmic!”
“Kurt Brecht of Dirty Rotten Imbeciles was living in a tree. You could look him up in Golden Gate Park, literally.”
Could‘ve used more Ava and less Peter, but a good, sometimes brutal, often funny read nonetheless.
“Readers love that stuff.” -Peter Evans
“Fuck the readers.” -Ava Gardner
...he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equaled, though they had played together for years and years.
...observed Maturin, “In his own way he is the secret man of the world.”
