(no subject)
Yesterday I made the mistake of putting a piece of a honeycomb into my hot tea. I did not really think it through. The wax melted, and the top of the tea was covered with these soft filmy tidbits, rendering it undrinkable. In one of those fractal-universe things, as I walked home along the rapidly freezing canal (winter finally arrived), the surface, with tenuous, uneven, sporadic film of ice looked just like the top of my teacup.
I finished "The Magicians" and DAMN it was good. It falls into the category of books that reviewers describe as "cold" (which I think is different from just "bleak"--it's about affect)--and I always love those books. I think part of it is that the world in books like that appears indifferent in a way that is meant to suggest that it really exists above and beyond the narrative. I also loved most of the writing--some passages were so well-written, that as I was reading them, I was aware of both the pleasure of reading them and the skill that went into crafting them.
I started the sequel, "The Magician King" which is good but so far I am still feeling it out--the plot is only establishing itself, and I don't yet know what the central emotional story of this book going to be.
These are especially good books to read in front of the fireplace which we have going almost every day now. It is excellent to have a fireplace when it is so cold outside. It feels like such a luxury, like something out of a book itself.
Fionn and I on the winter beach.
I finished "The Magicians" and DAMN it was good. It falls into the category of books that reviewers describe as "cold" (which I think is different from just "bleak"--it's about affect)--and I always love those books. I think part of it is that the world in books like that appears indifferent in a way that is meant to suggest that it really exists above and beyond the narrative. I also loved most of the writing--some passages were so well-written, that as I was reading them, I was aware of both the pleasure of reading them and the skill that went into crafting them.
I started the sequel, "The Magician King" which is good but so far I am still feeling it out--the plot is only establishing itself, and I don't yet know what the central emotional story of this book going to be.
These are especially good books to read in front of the fireplace which we have going almost every day now. It is excellent to have a fireplace when it is so cold outside. It feels like such a luxury, like something out of a book itself.
Fionn and I on the winter beach.