Sam M > Recent Status Updates

“The War God rages at all, and favors no man.”

book 11 was spooky as shit! loved when he passed over the iconic mythical punishments (sisyphos, tantalos, tityos)

the part with odysseus’ mother was genuinely tragic, this whole sequence was great especially with the antinöos interlude lol

book 10 donezo!! this one was mainly circe’s island and the pig stuff, really fun chapter with an embarassing death (dude who got drunk and fell off roof lookingfot his friends)

what i said before about each book geting better still stands… book 8 is a phenomenal chapter in ‘the odyssey’, the famous cyclops sequence and the true inciting incident for odysseus and his crew (since the cyclops is poseidon’s son and curses him and his voyage)

the bit where the cyclops first grabs two of odysseus’ men is genuinely horrifying, i cant wait to see nolan’s interpretation of the sequence

book7 was incredibly short, but still enjoyable. odysseus is in the city of the phaiakians asking for ship. nice little chapter with athena disguising odysseus. most interesting part to me was when odysseus started talking about how hungry he is by likening his stomach to another godlike being. this is recurring, anything of value or seemingly organic gets treated with the utmost respect and worship

book 6 is simply a reprieve from odysseus’ tiresome 20day journey across the ocean on a raft (and without one for the last two days(!!!!!!)), but the most interesting thing to me is how the supernatural elements are so natural. pallas athene transforming into the best friend of nausikaa and speaking to her while she is tired and asleep ends up with nausikaa believing she dreamt it up.

peele is one of my fav new school horror directors, and my sister got me this book last birthday so it seems right to finally read it. so far i’ve read act 1 (including deleted scenes + dialogue) and the intro essay, all extremely insightful and shows exactly how much thought peele puts into his work

book 5 was basically just detailing how odysseus escaped kalypso’s island, and it was thrilling! seeing him make such a strong raft after his woeful beach appearance was great, and it was genuinely pretty intense reading his sleepless journey. poseidons a dick!

spooky! kurihara’s daydream about the corpse-smuggling, bathroom-stabbing child was kinda funny in an incredibly macabre way

“A room with no windows, a double-door vestibule and its own toilet. . . . It’s almost like some kind of solitary confinement cell.”(p.15)

a solid start to the ‘strange pictures’ sequel, already scared at the concept of this locked away child.

god, each Book gets better and better… (bk4)

Telemachos talks to Menelaos, hero of ‘The Iliad’, husband to Zeus’ daughter, Helen of Troy. My favorite part was the Old Man being ambushed for the answers of how to reach home but also who survived and who did not. The shapeshifting was dope, and there’s a small sequence where Poseidon causes someone’s death and it’s so cool

book 3 feels like the true “beginning”, telemachos talked to the guy that was in troy and now he’s going to speak to menelaos who (i believe) is the protagonist in the iliad. i liked the bit in the end when athena transformed into a bird and spooked everyone

“In 1952, I was in America, just in time for the McCarthy era. I had never seen anything like it.” (p.85)

i just knewwww he was gonna trash on ‘lawrence of arabia’, i love what he said about it; specifically the mortification of the english schoolboy and his country’s manipulation of him towards these people he views as “lesser breeds”.

“Revenge is a human dream. There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one—you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at the mercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.” p.46

so far he spends ch2 discussing the birth of a nation and in the heat of the night, and reading him shit talk in the ehat of the night was honestly really funny

brilliant. this is my first time reading james baldwin, and I love it. he turns punctuation into its own art, dropping colons and semi colons and em dashes… brilliant!!!!!! incredibly effective at outlining the frustration of a young Black american as well as the visual art surrounding him at the time. (ch 1)

book 2 done!

this seems like the true beginning of telemachos’ story, finally willing enough to express his distaste towards his mother’s gluttonous suitors and (with athena’s aid) he prepares for the journey. antinoos seems like a rival of sorts to telemachos, constantly antagonizing and patronizing the boy.

“Many are the birds who under the sun's rays wander the sky; not all of them mean anything”

book 1 done!
[it clicked for me when Athena was disapproving of Penelope’s suitors that I vaguely know the ending of the book; the painting of Odysseus and his dog, Argos(Argus?)]
i enjoyed the introduction of these characters, grief-stricken Telemachus, his mother Penelope, suitors like Antinoos and Eurymachos as well as the overt supernatural presence of gods and otherwise.

ok, why not! so far, i know odysseus is returning home after an adventure during which he blinded the son of poseidon, (a cyclops whose like the best cyclops ever) so poseidon’s pissed at him but zeus and athena try to help odysseus return so athena is going to speak to odysseus’ son telemachus and see if he can find anything out.

excited to read this!

i can’t believe i’m actually nearly done! wow! icannot tell you how much joy i took in learning about richilieu’s tuberculosis and exploding hemorrhoids:
“It was with the taste of excrement in his mouth that the arbiter of Europe’s destinies gave up the ghost.”


outside of that, it mainly focused on sister jeanne’s pathetic display of her traveling circus of gullible fools (ie surin and his buddy)

of course when i decide to power through the last 100 or so pages is when i get sick… frick my Huguenot life, right fellas?

ch9 was another interesting followup to grandier’s death. i didn’t expect the book to keep going for so long after his death but it does make a lot of sense. i loved how this chapter focused on poking holes in jeanne’s behavior/claims by simply recounting what happened. good stuff!

fr could not stop reading (ch8)…. wow.

“Although Beherit had been duly constrained, for some odd reason he had failed to tell the truth.”

eloquently tragic and disheartening, ch8 is mainly about m. grandier’s final time as prisoner before execution, including the execution itself. absolutely horrible, brutal stuff. the way this psycho-religiosity spreads while constantly contradicting itself is terrifying.

in the previous chapters, besides a few parenthetical snarky comments here and there, huxley presents everything very matter of factly, “this is what happened”. in ch7, he changes it up and spends the whole chapter criticizing the decisions of the good fathers and the jeanne’s convent. its great!! i prefer when he starts talking about how stupid they are, it’s honestly really funny.

okayy i’m into this!! it’s snappy, darkly funny, and breezy. feels like a simplified and hyperfocused william s burroughs story. excited to see how it plays out

laymon throws csa after csa and constant ridiculous mindless sexist comments but ch16 is exactly why i stay through the terrible dogshit!!! i love the description of the windowless brick house, pitch black interior with blue lightbulbs and the sleeping “beast”(?)

NOT excusing the other stuff, but moments like that do feel genuinely tense so… good job!

so. so?

“But if they were rude to the Cardinal . . . Well, see what was happening to M. Grandier”
ch6 is one of the more engaging chapters—not saying that the others weren’t, but ch6 is all about the possessions and exorcisms as well as grandiers imprisonment and torture. it’s detailed, sarcastic, and dark. my favorite bit is the part where laubardemont approved the document saying he’s a cuck!

honestly, it’s kind of funny that between this and ‘the devils of loudun’, THIS is the one that’s more upsetting. the genuinely scary bits are great! but there’s way too many chapters dedicated to roy and his fucked up road trip with joni. we don’t need to know that roy dressed her, it was implied! and anything further is just fucked! if i wasnt a completionist i’d honestly drop this.

pretty short chapter about jud’s prep and stakeout at the beast house. not clicking with laymon’s writing for the most part, especially his jk rowling-ass “euphrates d. kenyata”, a tyranical african emperor.

the scary bits are vivid and cool, but this was written by someone who hates women and minorities!

laymon’s dialogue is… not good. like at all lol. but his prose, specifically in the horror-focused scenes, is pretty great at times. it’s a shame the antagonist is easily the worst person ever, seemingly no motives besides pure evil and controlling. maggie’s story of the beast coming up the stairs was skin-crawling, loved it