User Profile

Read the whole thing, and will admit that I liked slogging through the whole thing in certain ways. It's 853 pages, and I would say the 'good parts' could fit easily into about 50 pages. There are some interesting bits I'll admit. The chasing of the mushroom around the plate, that was interesting. Various bits of "philosophy" presented are actually interesting, but presented so superficially that they are more a prod to look up more about that, and the horse race was interesting.

Other than that, there's a lot of dull, nothing happens for 20 pages, and then the thing that happens, is essentially a scene change... Most of the novel is dull, and pedestrian. Maybe that's why it's so "good"? Because it's nothing fancy, but this is very much the bourgeoisie we're talking about. Even if they want to believe they are "poor".

This one was a bit of a weird one... Bits were really tough, bits were like, "thank god someone's saying this." Because it is an anthology of stories, it will often switch fairly quickly, and not really clearly in parts. There are 24 (I think) stories in 270 pages, and there is front and back matter. So about 10 pages per story. A bit over, and some are really short.

Many of these also feel like they could be part of an entire story of 100+ pages (as a graphic novel at least). Which I think is partially due to some of these artists having already done such themselves. Or maybe not.

Given the title, you should probably expect that this is a sad book. It's beautifully drawn and told. I have looked for the film, but haven't watched it yet. I really wish I could say more about it, without being overly spoilery. It's just a good book, but certainly a sad one.

@eddr@bookwyrm.social Repeatedly he refers to V by her (not sure of this) birth name. I believe that there were other things as well, with other people he quoted/referenced, but this was rather telling, and he went through a whole song and dance about how by using her birth name, he is respecting her desire to entirely distance herself from her birth family.

I'd say it's not really what I'd hoped it would be, it was not really any "whole" thing from any author (as best I can tell). It does end up covering a huge range of Homeric (translations, rewriting, allusions) that might be interesting if you're looking for some version of Homer to pick up something to read.

It also is probably pretty good if you want to study the range of versions of Homer that are in English (I understand this is really a tiny sampling).

@roytoo Well, it wasn't really just "sex and violence" it was "non-consensual sex," and "violence based on social structure." Ie. "justified rape and slavery".

Lovecraft has been a bit similar, but "Lovecraftian" often can lack the racism, sexism, and other discriminatory ideas.

The thing with Saturn's Children was that it's the start of a series, and you're not quite sure how unaddressed it may be in the end. At least there's hints it may get addressed... It just felt that it needed more than hints, but rather actual action on it.

This seems like an interesting title. It could go so many different ways.

@roytoo I read Saturn's Children and had a lot of problems with it. The writing, in terms of how it reads and all of that was really very readable, and easy enough to get past the parts where in the end... largely unaddressed terrible things happened. I'd love to know that other works are worth giving a try. I do like the style, just the content left a lot to be desired.

Oh, Dark Horse Comics? That's worth taking a look at...

I thoroughly enjoyed this and felt that it was a "Very British Humour" book. Some of it seems to be in bad taste, though it isn't clear if that is as a way of mocking those bad things, or if it is honouring them. I feel it leans more toward mocking than honouring.

This isn't Douglas Adams. It's Terry Jones. But they are compatible. I feel there was another book trying to continue the Douglas Adams legacy which felt rather incompatible. It was trying to honour him, but ended up feeling mocking, because it fell so short of what his style is, while clearly trying to duplicate it.

It's also been a long time since I've read any Douglas Adams.