Alice M. > Recent Status Updates

This volume has 46 pages of introduction. Essential introduction which you should not skip, mind, but it's a lot.

Holm's writing, or his translation, has a frank, matter-of-fact style that makes the book easy to read. He doesn't faff about with complex imagery at all.

I'm getting the ick r.e. Clarke's descriptions of gay men. One in particular fits the 'always creepily horny, predatory older man' trope, a magus written specifically in the shadow of Aleister Crowley.

Clarke easily achieves the type of pacing I've always wanted to master: I'm halfway through this book, only very few things have happened, the environment is strictly limited, and I'm not bored in the slightest.

Lily centres herself in her bad treatment of other people. It's not about their suffering; it's about the lessons she's learnt in causing it.

Read quickly when painting the front cover. Reading again more slowly to write a review.

I found myself accepting certain premises of the novel as I read and then realised that what I was accepting was propaganda. A character tells about her hometown getting a better water source thanks to the government investing in a canal and how this enabled them to eat rice for the first time. My first thought was "Oh, the government does invest in infrastructure." My second was "...wait. For the FIRST TIME?"

Here's the most petty, unreasonable hill I will die on: the word 'atop' sears my eyeballs every time I read it. It is never appropriate. It always adds bathos to every scene unless the narrator happens to be a member of the British gentry during the Edwardian era. Please, no more. Please stop using this word, everyone

My favourite part of this book so far are the essays by various featured writers, especially the essay on writer's block by Matthew Cheney, which made me sputter with laughter.

"recognize that no good ever came from not putting dialogue between quotation marks"

oof, disagree

DNF. Will pick up again sometime. Wasn't ready for the dreamlike structure, felt too much like my brain was getting lost.