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He lives in the contradiction between what he is and what he would like to be. Either he then becomes fully conscious of the contradiction and its causes, and so joins the political struggle for a full democracy which entails, amongst other things, the overthrow of capitalism; or else he lives, continually subject to an envy which, compounded with his sense of powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent day-dreams.”

Saving this:

“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generating such an emotion. The pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right. Yet the existing social conditions make the individual feel powerless.

« Man is an onion… »
Nuff said really

:’( but also :’)

:’(

This book is wild. I'm looking forward to and dreading looking back at it and trying to make sense of everything for a review.

On another note, Goodreads is actually getting a UI update? That's the most unbelievable news this year.

I think Gaiman has a great capacity for coming up with a variety of unique and fascinating ideas and he melds this very well with existing mythology and religious figures. I think this plays to his strength in creating lots of very different stories. Considering this is such a long book, when it's following just the one narrative I think its less to his strength. Thankfully, this is full of digressions.

Dude's horny

There's a figure in this who ruthlessly murders creatures - whether child, mother, or frail oldie - to cut off their toes and scrape off their toenail gunk into a chest...

...
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses the artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us."

"It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute, force, and we revolt against that.
...

My partner asked me to read aloud from this as she fell asleep. We had to skip through a few of the stories on offer here to find something gentle enough that it wouldn't fuel nightmares.

Ended up reading a nice piece about telling stories, built around the Goldilocks tale and a strange piece on the apocalypse happening unbeknownst to a figure who waits by the phone.

This is pleasurably whacky but I am waiting for things to tie together some more. There is a lot of chaos right now. Also trying very hard to understand (with extremely limited knowledge of the socio-political backdrop of Stalinist Russia) the allegorical themes - it is a satire after all.

This is my 'ebook on the phone' read for when I get caught short waiting around without a book. Hence the slow progress, aight

This book is manic

"Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, _les grandperes ont toujours tort_."

Every line of speech Wilde writes is an isolatable quote in itself. They might be pretentious and stupid if said with sincerity but make for very colourful fictional characters.

Read the first 100 pages or so of this in the back of a van during a stormy night on Dartmoor, this Saturday past. I read it by removing the top of an LED light casing that was part of a fairy light chain and directing it like a torch on the book. My head was freezing but slowly warmed by a bottle of Glen Keith whiskey. The further I got into the book - and the scotch - the blurrier the tales became. Bizarre tales.

Following the chapters of this story with the advent.

I remember my mum doing this for me when I was a child and loving it. I feel Christmassy just thinking about it.

"...never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love."

Been slacking with French in recent months. Time to slowly read some books.

"You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life."

George Bernard Shaw to T.E. Lawrence