Weekly reading/watching meme
Feb. 7th, 2013 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaI was supposed to do this on Monday, wasn't I? Oops.
What are you reading/watching now?
Bentham on Torture. It's kind of dry, so I read other stuff for a while, then came back to it. It's short, though, so am likely to finish it this week.
What did you just finish reading/watching?
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. I'm hardly likely to spout forth new insight on this book, but the more I think about it the more I'm aesthetically dissatisfied with the "well turned" ending. It's just so... Saturday Evening Post pot-boiler cum Agatha Christie. They switch cars! They switch drivers! On the other hand, I do very much see the appeal. Furthermore, I can see now why Buhrmann cast Leo -- though I keep circling back to this feeling I have, that it would be more interesting to do a modern-day adaptation with an all-POC cast. Not to come over all SJ; it would just be truer to the actual tensions FSF was trying to work out of himself, rather than 120 minutes of Jazz Age Tumblr/Pinterest visual nostalgia pr0n. Probably my favourite passage is toward the end, when Nick describes his Christmas train rides back to the Midwest.
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (halfway -- but since I didn't buy it it's not officially "on the list"). I mentioned at some point that this inspired "A Proof by Contradiction," but of course I didn't mean I read it at the time. I get more writing inspiration from books I don't read -- only half-imagine -- than books I did. It's very good, of course; in a way, a book one reads to educate oneself -- as Didion read others to understand what had been written about grief. I didn't imagine it completely wrong. XD;
JRR Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle. It's just a short story, and someone on Douban had posted the whole thing. It's rather moving, if you know anything about Tolkien; and -- if you share somewhat in Tolkien's creative temperament, which I do -- squirm-inducing, in that way Chesterton did so well. Like the Big Finger came down from the sky and poked you in the shoulder blades.
George Bataille, La Mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh. I forgot to include this bit of frothy fun in the list of books I bought last time, so I ended up reading it first. I find dude's 1930s ethnography fucking dubious, but if the point is simply to point out a common compulsion over time and space (schizoids sacrificing bits of themselves to a solar deity, or some variation thereon) and its greater or lesser acceptance by "normal" society, well... yeah, that's a thing, I guess. And as art criticism it's not bad. Also, while I don't think Bataille was even aiming for prose fiction effects, he works up quite the crawling horrors just by treating the subject matter with a sense of academic intrigue.
The movie guide and art design compendium for The Hobbit (I'm too lazy to look up the actual titles). These are mostly picture books, anyway. I could go on about them but I ought to get off the computer. XD I will say -- because I've been meaning to -- that I tend to use "Peter Jackson" or "PJ & co." as shorthand for the process of collaborative creation behind these movies. Jackson's role is curatorial, often enough: nothing gets into the finished product without a yay/nay from him, but the answer to "who came up with this idea" can be quite different (and to everyone's credit, attributable). It's not at all the same as talking about Moffat, say, or JJ Abrams. The former writes, doesn't direct; I'm not actually certain how much the latter does, beyond the fact that he obviously doesn't have enough hours in the day to micro-manage all the projects he's signed up for. But the shorthand creates unintended implications. For one thing, I feel like people (myself included) talk about these movies without really digesting the fact that they're written by women. Like, do you think Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are less card-carrying fangirls than anybody? Like Peter Jackson made Thorin sexy in order to pull some sort of con on the ladies' quadrant? You'd be nuts.
I'm still fantasizing about the LEAPS AND BOUNDS in performance-capture technology that will ensue from this trilogy, insofar as it relates to dragons. By the time Peter Jackson gets around to filming Temeraire they could cast every actor/actress beloved of Tumblr and just shoot them Masterpiece Theatre-style pretending to be dragons, and on the little viewer screen they would be dragons, real time. I have a dream, ok.
FINALLY watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. Liked it, but not as much as I thought I might.
What will you read/watch next?
Kon-Tiki I... guess!? Also, the massive comics backlog. This question has not been a good predictor of my actual future activity.
BONUS QUESTION: what books/movies did you acquire?
Good question! The answer is, aside from the movie guide, a box set of Iain M. Banks' first three Culture novels. I doubt I'll rea Consider Phlebas gain, but I'm tired o The Player of Games ever being in the library. Plus, nice new reissue.
What are you reading/watching now?
Bentham on Torture. It's kind of dry, so I read other stuff for a while, then came back to it. It's short, though, so am likely to finish it this week.
What did you just finish reading/watching?
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. I'm hardly likely to spout forth new insight on this book, but the more I think about it the more I'm aesthetically dissatisfied with the "well turned" ending. It's just so... Saturday Evening Post pot-boiler cum Agatha Christie. They switch cars! They switch drivers! On the other hand, I do very much see the appeal. Furthermore, I can see now why Buhrmann cast Leo -- though I keep circling back to this feeling I have, that it would be more interesting to do a modern-day adaptation with an all-POC cast. Not to come over all SJ; it would just be truer to the actual tensions FSF was trying to work out of himself, rather than 120 minutes of Jazz Age Tumblr/Pinterest visual nostalgia pr0n. Probably my favourite passage is toward the end, when Nick describes his Christmas train rides back to the Midwest.
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (halfway -- but since I didn't buy it it's not officially "on the list"). I mentioned at some point that this inspired "A Proof by Contradiction," but of course I didn't mean I read it at the time. I get more writing inspiration from books I don't read -- only half-imagine -- than books I did. It's very good, of course; in a way, a book one reads to educate oneself -- as Didion read others to understand what had been written about grief. I didn't imagine it completely wrong. XD;
JRR Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle. It's just a short story, and someone on Douban had posted the whole thing. It's rather moving, if you know anything about Tolkien; and -- if you share somewhat in Tolkien's creative temperament, which I do -- squirm-inducing, in that way Chesterton did so well. Like the Big Finger came down from the sky and poked you in the shoulder blades.
George Bataille, La Mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh. I forgot to include this bit of frothy fun in the list of books I bought last time, so I ended up reading it first. I find dude's 1930s ethnography fucking dubious, but if the point is simply to point out a common compulsion over time and space (schizoids sacrificing bits of themselves to a solar deity, or some variation thereon) and its greater or lesser acceptance by "normal" society, well... yeah, that's a thing, I guess. And as art criticism it's not bad. Also, while I don't think Bataille was even aiming for prose fiction effects, he works up quite the crawling horrors just by treating the subject matter with a sense of academic intrigue.
The movie guide and art design compendium for The Hobbit (I'm too lazy to look up the actual titles). These are mostly picture books, anyway. I could go on about them but I ought to get off the computer. XD I will say -- because I've been meaning to -- that I tend to use "Peter Jackson" or "PJ & co." as shorthand for the process of collaborative creation behind these movies. Jackson's role is curatorial, often enough: nothing gets into the finished product without a yay/nay from him, but the answer to "who came up with this idea" can be quite different (and to everyone's credit, attributable). It's not at all the same as talking about Moffat, say, or JJ Abrams. The former writes, doesn't direct; I'm not actually certain how much the latter does, beyond the fact that he obviously doesn't have enough hours in the day to micro-manage all the projects he's signed up for. But the shorthand creates unintended implications. For one thing, I feel like people (myself included) talk about these movies without really digesting the fact that they're written by women. Like, do you think Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are less card-carrying fangirls than anybody? Like Peter Jackson made Thorin sexy in order to pull some sort of con on the ladies' quadrant? You'd be nuts.
I'm still fantasizing about the LEAPS AND BOUNDS in performance-capture technology that will ensue from this trilogy, insofar as it relates to dragons. By the time Peter Jackson gets around to filming Temeraire they could cast every actor/actress beloved of Tumblr and just shoot them Masterpiece Theatre-style pretending to be dragons, and on the little viewer screen they would be dragons, real time. I have a dream, ok.
FINALLY watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. Liked it, but not as much as I thought I might.
What will you read/watch next?
Kon-Tiki I... guess!? Also, the massive comics backlog. This question has not been a good predictor of my actual future activity.
BONUS QUESTION: what books/movies did you acquire?
Good question! The answer is, aside from the movie guide, a box set of Iain M. Banks' first three Culture novels. I doubt I'll rea Consider Phlebas gain, but I'm tired o The Player of Games ever being in the library. Plus, nice new reissue.
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no subject
Date: 2013-02-08 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-08 03:53 am (UTC)'Thorin' and 'sexy' should not be in the same sentence, not even with a negative
Date: 2013-02-08 03:22 am (UTC)I found the whole Bataille paragraph vastly entertaining. XD; I am sorry that this is likely only available in French, because it is definitely something I'd like to read. The mental anguish of symbolist landscape painters... is something that's cropped up strangely a lot in my reading, lately. Go figure.
And yes. Dragons. Lots and lots of dragons. Soon, precious.
Re: 'Thorin' and 'sexy' should not be in the same sentence, not even with a negative
Date: 2013-02-08 03:51 am (UTC)Just gonna riff on this, but: there is something about Tolkien-as-a-fandom-text that feels weirdly caught in amber circa 1970 (rather than when the books were actually written/published). Like, there is no real way to write a DJ AU? It would have to be a jam band AU. Similarly, when people write fic, and there is sex, and it is thoughtful (I can't quite bring myself to use "good" XD) it feels like trippy sociological SF. Or else that kind of really lovely granola twee 70s Euro-porn with healthy unwaxed Germans fucking in the forest.
I'm pretty sure there's an English translation of the Bataille, though it's definitely a "got lucky in the library or used bookstore" sort of deal (how I came across it myself).
*sits and waits for dragons*
Re: 'Thorin' and 'sexy' should not be in the same sentence, not even with a negative
Date: 2013-02-08 04:27 am (UTC)(I mean, really, it's taken me THIRTEEN YEARS to work up to occasionally glancing at Silmarillion fanart and parody comics. It's not so much that the fandom text is frozen in time, for me; it's actually impossible for me to parse.) I am rather envious of this latest incarnation of Tolkien fandom in an abstract way, in that I miss the fun & excitement of having a new, massive fandom/ship to occupy my brainspace, but holy hell the first time I stumbled across a Bilbo/Thorin [just typing that made me die a little inside] fic post it was like becoming aware of some kind of wrinkle in the time-space continuum and desperately wanting to straighten it back out.
Just to be clear, I bear them no ill will! A little envy, but mostly I just want to remain completely and blissfully ignorant. XDDDDDD
Re: 'Thorin' and 'sexy' should not be in the same sentence, not even with a negative
Date: 2013-02-08 04:30 am (UTC)I am going to start a campaign for the movie to contain a shot of dragons flying around/perching on Durham Cathedral. Screw London, Durham will be cooler.
Re: 'Thorin' and 'sexy' should not be in the same sentence, not even with a negative
Date: 2013-02-08 05:06 am (UTC)Are you in Durham??
Re: 'Thorin' and 'sexy' should not be in the same sentence, not even with a negative
Date: 2013-02-08 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 03:30 am (UTC)I really should start logging my reads on LJ again, shouldn't I? I mean, I do it for the APA I'm in and I end up having to catch up every six weeks.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 04:38 am (UTC)