pica

rocky41_7 posting in

The most recent commute audiobook was The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, of The Night Circus fame (although admittedly I have not read that one yet). This is a fantasy novel about Zachary, a young man swept into the drama of a secret underground society and the mysterious figures who surround it.

I finished this book on Sunday morning, catching the last 7 minutes of a whopping 19-hour runtime over breakfast, and since then I've settled into a relative disappointment. On paper, this book has so many things that should make it an ace in the hole for me: Book lovers! Cats! Secret magical societies! Queer characters! Women who are something Other taking control of their destinies! And yet, overall, this book just did not land for me.

As is a risk, I think, with all stories that are about the power of stories, The Starless Sea comes off a little pretentious and self-important. It is a book lauding the unmatched importance of books. I felt aware at various points throughout the book of how hard it was trying to appeal to people like me, who would enjoy the idea of a dark-paneled underground room with endless books and an on-demand kitchen, and this sense of pandering did take away from it at times.

However, it also does some interesting things with regards to what it is like to be the person in a story (such as the fate of Eleanor and Simon, once their part in the story is done) as well as the risks of valuing preservation over change and growth. Without giving too much away, there is a secret society in decline, and a woman so determined to prevent its downfall that she ends up causing significant harm to the organization she's trying to save because she is unwilling to accept that an end comes for all things. I enjoyed this theme and I felt like it was echoed well throughout the story, and in many ways it's easy to sympathize with her ultimate goals, if not her methods.

( Read more... )

atlantablack posting in

poetry

I’ve been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite,
can stop the bleeding — most people forgot this
when the war ended. The war ended
depending on which war you mean: those we started,
before those, millenia ago and onward,
those which started me, which I lost and won —
these ever-blooming wounds.
I was built by wage. So I wage love and worse—
always another campaign to march across
a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin
settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast.
I dismount my dark horse, bend to you there, deliver you
the hard pull of all my thirsts—
I learned Drink in a country of drought.( Read more... )

From Postcolonial Love Poem - pg 1

atlantablack posting in

poetry

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,
Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.
I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat
Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.
I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold
While your better selves watch from the bleachers.
I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow
You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night
In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow-
Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars
Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls.
I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart.
Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough
To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

From American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin page 11

marycatelli posting in

books

Chancy by Louis L'Amour

Adventure in the Wild West.

( Read more... )

atlantablack posting in

poetry

The lullaby I wrote on your throat about the stained
hilt of the knife in my hand begins — Whisper, or snow
will come and make its sadness famous in your mouth.

The why of you a radiant devilfish, the what of you
a fat little soul bluing at the edges.

The surest way to receive a free ram is to tie your son’s hands
behind his back. Offer me a metaphor, God said.
Abraham stretched Isaac out on a rock, Like this?
( Read more... )

From Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod pg. 6

rocky41_7 posting in

books

Book #7 from the "Women in Translation" rec list: Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith.

Trying to accurately describe the plot of this book is an exercise in futility, so I'm not going to bother. All I can say is it centers around Ayami, a woman who is an actress, or maybe a poet, or possibly both, and is on her last day of work at an audio theater for the blind in Seoul.

This is a book I feel like I'd have to read at least one more time all the way through to be able to really discuss the themes and motifs at play. It's an incredibly cerebral novel that never gives up a clear answer about what's happening. What's real or not real changes from scene to scene. Is Ayami an orphan? Did she have a wealthy aunt? Is she the poet from Buha's youth? Is the director the bus driver? Who really got hit by the bus, and who was the murdered woman in the attic? Is Ayami Yeoni? The book leaves you to your own conclusions.

( Read more... )

atlantablack posting in

poetry

Delete the number,
trash the boxes
give the sweaters away.
Stop holding onto things
that do not fit you anymore.
Clutter has many faces.

Forgive them.
They didn’t apologize,
and you’re still mad,
but what I do know is this:
a closed fist
can punch through a wall,
but you can’t fix the hole
until you open your hands.

The past
is one of the few things
more stubborn than we are.
It will not change
and doesn’t care if
you have a better idea
of how the story
should’ve ended.
( Read more... )

from Excuse Me as I Kiss the Sky pg. 119-121

northlands posting in

poetry

to care this way

by Threa Almontaser

is turning me off. so i take a walk.
plums fall from trees and protest
& i can’t see the colour green
anymore & just last night yo
just last night god went SPLAT
on my window like a fluttery lick
spittle & told me all love starts
in a garden. what am i supposed to do
with that? another friend goes. gone
enough. almost never here. those facetimes
inside me out all year, wishing I could see you
in the hospital. life breaks who doesn’t cry
eventually. one more grave in the middle
of all that green. prayers tangle in my pockets
like earphone wire. i think about the best way
to maneuver my mask & eat, then give up.
i think about the best way to sneak
into the hospital. what about the body
& everything it can’t keep? i’m so over
the garden. i stood at its knee, dressed in
leaves, begging for fruit. learned the only
predator in paradise is me. no eating or being eaten.
bony limbs, broken lungs & growing more
unknown.

marycatelli posting in

books

Under the Sweetwater Rim by Louis L'Amour

Adventure, danger, action in the Wild West.

( Read more... )

snowynight posting in

poetry

Foresee how dried, yellowed,

with neglect, think

of the hands that made them,

not with love, with certainty,

the leather smooth decades later,

the pages warm as wood,

the thought reaching a seed

that fell from a bird’s flight,

a hoof tucking it in folds of loam,

wispy roots sending it deeper

into the dark, the thought

like a hair in your throat.

Earth knows no such ambivalence,

good to itself, mending,

dampening sends you to self-

ignited forests, hordes fleeing,

blazes in what was there before

mouths came to call them eyes,

fear and fire, how close

the thought wanders into flood

and drought and motions

attributed to a fist-sized heart.

All those rocked, senses quaked,

those eyes flooding and welling

add up to a stone rolling

down a mountainside

into salt water, the sum the size

of a cloud or glacier thawed.

Shut the book, the thought

writes itself like yeast;

seam the sky, a smoky tail,

fastened by the measure of limitation.

And you the world’s watcher,

moments at the mirror

allowed as achievement,

the wisp of wheat (highlights)

in the coffee of her hair,

the two of you hand in hand

across a window display,

a clip from that day in Eden

the short footage of days recalled—

all illuding fingers,

hidden under the sheet’s grain.

rocky41_7 posting in

books

My latest commute audiobook was A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson, a vampire novel that strides along at a brisk 5 hours run time. I have to admit upfront I did not have high hopes for this book. I somewhat warily added it to my TBR list, but I feared tired romantasy tropes that don't hit for me, and that the queerness which had landed it on my radar would turn out to be little more than additional titillation for a straight audience looking for a tale of decadence and indecency. I'm quite pleased to report neither of those concerns came to fruition!

As the title might suggest, there's a level of melodrama in this book you have to accept to enjoy the story. It reminded me in some ways of AMC's Interview with the Vampire in its shameless embrace of all those usual vampiric tropes and in the extravagances of its characters and its prose. Throughout the introduction, I was trying to decide if this was fun, or overwrought. I came down on the side of fun.

( Read more... )

marycatelli posting in

books

High Lonesome by Louis L'Amour

Adventure in the Wild West. An outlaw band gets supplies at a place where an old gunman and his daughter pass by.

( Read more... )

rocky41_7 posting in

books

Book #6 from the "Women in Translation" rec list was Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton. This novel is about a journalist seeking to score an exclusive interview with convicted 3-time murderer Manako Kajii. Kajii is in prison for killing three of her lovers, all older, well-off, lonely men, and with her retrial coming up soon, journalist Rika Machida thinks it's the perfect time for another focus feature on the famous murderess. However, the more time she spends with Kajii, the more she wonders if maybe Kajii is the only one seeing the situation clearly.

This book has been billed in some places as a crime thriller or murder mystery, but it's not really, so if you go into it expecting that, I fear you'll be disappointed. The core of the book isn't really whether Kajii killed her lovers or not. What this book really was is to interrogate societal attitudes in Japan, which it does through a lot of introspection on the part of Rika.

( Read more... )

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pica

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Reading

Recent Reading: The Starless Sea

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Sonnet 7 by Terrance Hayes

Chancy

Lullaby on Mount Moriah by Traci Brimhall

Recent Reading: Untold Night and Day

A Series of Gentle Reminders by Rudy Francisco

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Under the Sweetwater Rim

The Pages You Loved by Khaled Mattawa

Recent Reading: A Dowry of Blood

High Lonesome

Recent Reading: Butter

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April 2025

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