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Showing posts from September, 2016

Future Readalongs Under Consideration

YES the time of readalongs is nigh at hand, as Master and Margarita is starting NEXT MONDAY (posts posted whenever on that day) and it has gotten me thinking about what's next. I personally am on a mission to read some Tolstoy, and it must be with a group, becuase otherwise itw ill never happen in my lifetime. So! War and Peace and Anna Karenina are both possibilities (using Volkhonsky and Pevear), but what else! What have people wanted to read and have just never gotten up the energy to get through? It doesn't have to be long. Hell, Master and Margarita isn't long, but enough of us owned it and had never read it that it seemed one of those books we just needed a group push to get through. So! Tell me things! Authors! Do we want to read that one book by our beloved Wilkie that I have forgotten the name of? I don't think it's No-Name , but ha. There's some other famous one. And there's sci-fi! We haven't done sci-fi. And there's...there'r

American Vampire by Scott Snyder: Vampires in Old Timey Times

American Vampire by Scott Snyder is a 19th/20th century American graphic novel/comic book series I-can't-quite-distinguish-between-those-two-yet about vampires. Scary vampires. Not terrifying vampires, but not your Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, whoever else was making vampires the sexiest versions of themselves. American Vampire  distinguishes between the Old World vampires, which are more of the Bram Stoker, how-we-know-them type, and the New World vampire, which has some convenient and fun traits and also very scarily long fingers. WHY ARE LONG FINGERS SO SCARY. WHAT IN OUR EVOLUTION MADE US THINK THAT WAS A SCARY THING. You know how squirrels and rabbits and whatever just know to stay away from certain shit? I feel like we have some instinct that's like "oh, long skinny limbs and/or fingers? Get the fuck away from that." But GOOD LORD, why .  Snyder's story starts with 2 Hollywood girls in 1925, then flips back and forth between then and the 188

The Manhattan Projects: Wtf, Man

I liked the hell out of Jonathan Hickman when I read the first East of West ( remember that? it's ok if you don't — I get it, life is busy), so when I saw he had ANOTHER series called The Manhattan Projects , I went "oooh." And then Jenny from Reading the End said she tried reading it and had to stop after #1 because it is entirely dudes. And I essentially POOH-POOHED HER CONCERNS and did it anyway, because #EastofWestLove. I just finished volume 2, and wtf, man. It's all dudes. I mean ALL dudes. I mean women do not exist in this universe. I mean that I get that he's basing it off WWII-era scientists, but if you're inventing magical science shit and Buddhist monks who can open portals with their minds, MAYBE ALSO HAVE SOME WOMEN IN THERE. damnit, Jonathan   East of West  is still great. But just...damn, sir. This is some egregious shit. Unless you were doing some Fight Club  thing where Chuck Palahniuk said he was trying to create a space for

Master and Margareadalong in October!

You guys. We've talked about it. We've talked about it for so long. And now...it's finally happening. This October, we shall read the classic tale by Bulgakov that seems to involve a cat! I have assumed it was about ships for about a decade, which I have now realized is because of the series Master and Commander , so! Let us proceed knowing it probably has nothing to do with ships, but will perhaps be great nonetheless. As is the tradition with our readalongs, let your GIFs be used liberally and let them be on-point. I SHALL SEE YOU IN OCTOBER. Schedule: October 3rd: Chapters 1-8 October 10th: Chapters 9-16 October 17th: Chapters 17-22 October 24th: Chapters 23-26 October 31st: Chapters 27 to end

Was Carrie Nation Just Insane?

If you dive into temperance history in the slightest, you'll run across the 6' tall figure of Carrie Nation (later changed by her to "Carry"). She is famous for going into saloons with a hatchet and destroying all the merchandise in the name of temperance. No one wanted to mess with her because she was a giant woman wielding a hatchet. Here's the thing. I always assumed she had just found a schtick and went with it. But the Carrie Nation episode of the hilarious podcast The Dollop, WHILE slightly reprehensible for dealing poorly with the extreme mental illness in her family, also entirely reframed her as a person and made her actions less "hilarious old woman has had enough" and much more "this was a person who needed help." Carrie Nation lived from 1846-1911. She was born in Kentucky to slaveholding parents. Her mother, some writers say (and The Dollop proclaims) thought she was Queen Victoria, and the family treated her as such. An aun