W.R. Gingell > Recent Status Updates

i've been SO SLOW on this one bc i haven't had the brain space, but i finally got time to read at a cafe today, and i had SUCH fun with the first 30% of Saints and Monsters!

i'm really enjoying the chronic pain rep (finally, someone who can ride but is also already aching and KNOWS they're gunna pay for it) and also someone believably young enough to be believably stupid in her decisions without being irritating

55/153 pages edited on Splintered Loyalty! I'm remembering things that need to be tweaked as i go, so far? yay me!

time for more coffee? probably

will my heart agree? WHO KNOWS??

murderbot and art together kill me in the best way

here we go here we go

HERE WE GO

this is very cosy gothic horror with a nice undercurrent and thematic arc of abuse and manipulation

Dante: the OG teacher's pet to Virgil

"Christian eschatology taught that wealth and land were to be distrusted and that political and religious systems, intertwined as they were with the imperial cult, were anathema or cursed by their God. Instead, Christians created new families based on confession, not kinship"

so yeah those who have lost (evangelical/fundamentalist) family and are called "jezebels"/"lost" are in good company with early female martyrs

the gr version of this book has incorrect page counts, meaning i'm guestimating percentages rather than page numbers (and then forgetting that and thinking "oh yeah! it has page numbers as well! i can do that!" and then remembering why as soon as it shows the percentage done with the page numbers... >:(

Their defiance of conventional expectations for familial pietas, or faithful rendering of family obligations, is especially evident in the female martyrs' stories. Through the martyrs' actions and words, the early church forged a new model of community and familial responsibilities, which rightly shocked the ancient world, and still today, though perhaps for different reasons, raises scholars' brows." (3/3)

Based on her acceptance of the Christian gospel, and in a stance quite unbecoming for a Roman matron, [Perpetua] defies her father. We read about Felicitas, a young slave who gives birth to a daughter directly before dying a martyr's death in the arena with her fellow martyrs. (2/3)

"What is perhaps less recognised is the place of motherhood alongside martyrdom in the stories of female martyrs. As we saw in chapter one, Thecla, the beast fighter, is also known as the church's first female martyr. She defies her mother, gains a surrogate mother & refuses the promise of motherhood with her rejection of marriage.

...We find Perpetua, a young mother nursing her son. (1/3)

dante still coming in hot (ehehe) with some of the most hardcore horror-gothic imagery i've read

"Incline thee to inform us who thou art,
that dost imprint with living feet unharm'd
the soil of hell"

still lots of hard-core gothic description that i love, still moments of sublime meaning

i've slowed down bc brain does not want to co-operate; hopefully that will change again soon!

i've been having some really cool dreams after reading this before bed--plus i'm getting good sleep

so win/win

the imagery in canto 7 of inferno is particularly visceral and cinematic

up to canto 4, which will be for tomorrow (or later when i'm tucked up in bed). back to my other book!

so many good lines so far; my highlights are going to be CRAZY by the time i'm done

the Ciardi translation is so much better than the Longfellow one, which is so bad that i would dig longfellow up just to punch him in the face

anyway i am LOVING this already and i'm only 2 cantos deep

"Greatest & first of a man's lies are usually those he tells about himself. Hitler could not have forced the "big lie" technique down the throat of Germany if he had not began by lying about the goodness & wisdom of Hitler...Well for us if only great men could be great hypocrites, but unfortunately this sort of greatness is possible to us all"

"The road to Calvary was lined with many of us whited sepulchers--with scribes who claimed knowledge they had not, and pharisees who claimed holiness they had not...Denunciations of lying have been loud & frequent...and yet we all know the meaning of the words "pious fraud". From the beginning, the devil has loved to tempt the devout to lie for the sake of their good cause--and thereby make it a bad one."

"Have we got a society riddled with theft? There are two good places to look for the answer--in the headlines and in our hearts. We recognise that dishonesty seems to be a commonplace in our political life; and...we usually accept thieves in high places as inevitable...but what about the thief in the mirror? the dishonesty privately lurking in...us, without which our public dishonesty could hardly exist for long"

my lil girl is growing up so fast!

this kid..!

"...she would not be surprised if even in Henry and Eleanor Tilney, some slight imperfection might hereafter appear; and upon this conviction she need not fear to acknowledge some actual specks in the character of their father, who, though cleared from the grossly injurious suspicions which she must ever blush to have entertained, she did believe, upon serious consideration, to be not perfectly amiable."

Henry being especially sweet with Catherine so that she doesn't throw herself into an abyss of self-blame and excoriation 🥹

And Catherine, after recalling herself very sensibly from the brink of that pit; "she had only to forgive herself, and be even more happy"

Henry is now being grumpy about the phrase "faithful promise" in an entirely correct and entirely pedantic way

(and of COURSE he knows how to use the word "infer" correctly)

and then in a few moments he goes on to scoff that a thing can't possibly happen bc, and i quote, "remember that we are ENGLISH, that we are CHRISTIANS"

so i guess he gets to fall flat on his face sometimes too 😂

“THERE MUST BE MURDER”

have never felt so seen as i have reading mr henry "THERE MUST BE MURDER" tilney ranting for ten minutes about Catherine using the word "nice"

this is my favourite re-read so far; i'm guessing because of my age?

the chapter on "thou shalt not commit adultery" was full of small, thoughtful things, but what i mostly took out of it was how much Lewis was on Joy's mind

in this, the chapter where she's discussing marriage, remarriage & the christian ideas & ideals of both, she quotes lewis at least three times, which i find adorable. yes girl, i see the unconscious shifting of the mind toward lewis when you consider marriage ^-^

"They dreamed of revenge...a prince of war, who would smash the enemies they could not smash for themselves. Blind with hatred...even their law...had become corrupted into pointless rituals...a reassurance that they were indeed different from other people, a true super race.

What did he tell them, those bitter brooding men?

...that they must forgive their enemies!"

(2/2)

"....In part, this interpretation calls into question the equation of authenticity with resistance to the status quo...instead, individuals are constantly deciding how to manage and express competing and even at times contradictory cultural values."

from the chapter on Thecla:

"...women, including Christian women, might choose conservative expressions of modesty as they demonstrate their agency....This interpretation of women's agency is an important corrective to earlier scholarship's thesis that agency is synonymous with autonomy and can only be seen in countercultural moves and poses of resistance" (1/2)