Completed(or currently reading):
(list starts august 24')

Rebeca
Too much happiness
My death
All my cats
Dont look now (and other stories)
The Incest Diary.
the Picture of Dorian Gray
A Confederacy of Dunces
To Read: Pride and prejuduice
Jane eyre
Wuthering heights
The haunting of hill house
We have always lived in the castle
Tibetan book of the dead (?)
The crying of lot 49
The seven pillars of wisdom
A good man is hard to find
The turn of the screw ?
Stoner
Turner Diaries ?
The Rig Veda ?
Growth of the Soil

Aug-???

reading quest;


Marabarl reccomended/mentioned these:
>Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
>House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (will tackle later)
>The Elementals by Michael McDowell (will tackle later)
>All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabal (the Czechs are a deeply evil volk)
>My Death by Lisa Tuttle
>Waystations of the Deep Night by Marcel Brion (cant find a copy ANYWHERE!)

Not reccomended but mentioned on X:

>Flannery O Connor ( said to be the sothern vers of alice munro)
>Too Much Happiness

And before I sent the letter, I read Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier, (reccomended by chatGBT)
126pg 1938 (5/5)

Rebecca is amazing, a novel which touches upon alienation, greif, marriage, ..., I felt as If I could perfectly subsume myself into the mind of the young bride. The only thing which made me upset was that I couldn't give that old hag Mrs. Danvers a whalloping. But then again I could perfectsly understand her, because, I too have been haunted. And it all became so much clearer when we learn that they were both venomous creatures. Brilliant. I was truly on the edge of my seat at the end, and gave L an enthusiastic call afterwords to tell him about the book.

and Too Much Happiness
by Alice Munro (found on mara's X)
392pg 2009 (3/5)

Too Much Happiness had a few good stories and a few bad stories. A lot of them had much suspense and no conclusion which was disappointing at points. After I got past the fifth story or so, I got habituated to the format, and began to enjoy the bite-sized stories more.

Indivivual TMH reveiws:

Dimensions:
I was also a maid once, although never a widow. I like this one because it is bleak and very comfortably lonely. I would like to read more stories about this kind of character. Before the murders I like how I like how the protag is completely hollow and allows this scumbag to subsume her, until the slightest other opportunity is presented and she forgets about him completely. It’s relatable female psychological torture.

Fiction:
 I liked how the characters met young and promised each other that dating around was stupid, then the husband experiences something that I could see myself doing, although not at his age or in my right mind. I could easily see a world where I lived a life as did these characters (either one). And the bleakness that follows after she is abandoned, it’s interesting. I would be more vengeful in that situation. I don’t like the ending. It is very suspenseful and non-conclusory.

Weock edge:
 This story is the belljar. I hate the belljar.

Deep-holes:
 Didn’t like. Nothing-burger and cringey characters.

Free radicals: Liked that there was resolution, liked the characters, liked the intensity. Made me want to read stephen king.

Face:
 I lost myself for a moment, in childhood stories. So many stories of people lost at sea in this book.

Some women:
 This story feels like the color dark kelly green. Drawn blinds in a musty dark room. Being a kid is complicated and more confusing than any adult can imagine. I like the commentary of the little girl and the characters are good. It was a subtle story about the often undramatic turbulence of life death and love. I guess.

Child’s play: (5/5)
 TOTAL RETARD DEATH! Retards have a sly demoniacal nature. It is only natural that human kind identifies health, and understands that illnesses should be expunged from the population. It’s made me wish that I had spent time as a child in religious institutions. (Although with my suicidal atheist redditor upbringing and internet attention span it would have been a disaster, maybe in another life.) Made me nostalgic for being a camper! What great days those were, even the gloomy sun showers, and especially the swimming. Great story. A great example of what alice munro is best at in my eyes, realistic experiences.

Wood:
 Really beautiful; downtrodden-ness. I do like how with alice’s stories there is a genuine aspect of suspense in the fact that they could end at any moment, no matter where you are in the story. It’s a stranded-type story(think kujo), but not for long. For 30 minutes maybe.

Too Much Happiness:
 I don't like it. Not short fiction stories that I wanted, go to hell alice munro.

My Death

Lisa Tuttle
80pg 2004 (3/5)

Short novel with a writer protag which is typical for self-indulgent horror authors. It has a really nice twist at the end :3.
I like books based off of myths, which is a big theme here). It has a bit of an errie paranoia to it at one point that I also liked, even though the protag's decision making is annoying at times.

Don't Look Now

Daphne du Maurier
369pg of short stories.

This book, instead of it's vauge unappealing title's in both england and america, obviously should have been dubbed, "never go on vaccation" instead.

I like the way that du Maurier writes her short stories more than alice munro (even though, throughout the first stories, I forgot that I wasn't still reading too much happiness). I dislike Alice's stories because they are always incomplete, and In my opionion it doesn't take much effort to write half of an unresolved plot.
While in contrast, Maurier breathes life into each uniqe life in her stories, and brings you on a thrilling adventure from start to contenting finish. It always feels as if the characters are real people, and that I could have been born as one of them as easily as I was myself. Maurier paints a photorealistic image of a soul, and although only a faccade, each specemin is a resplendently vivid pearl of her imagination.

1. Don't Look Now. (2/5):
 Only part of this I liked was the dread and unreality, although the psycik foreshadowing was good, and the charcters in Maurier's stories are always well-written. This story had a better conclusion than #2, but I liked the story less. One point for paranoia (denpa desu ne :3!)

2. Not After Midnight (3/5):
 Another vaccation gone wrong. The story follows a sensible and smart man as he grapples with the unruly and unusual geusts whom he has the misfortune of shareing a hotel with. I liked the story a lot and empathized with the main character and his nagging curiosity.
A major pet peeve I have with fiction is when the characters in the story are delibritly menipulated by the author into moving stiffly like marionettes in order to further the plot, maurier mostly avoids this, which is why she is the best.
This story is very well written which almost completely distracts from the unsatasfactory end, because we never fully find out what his "illness" is or what that snorkelling woman's deal is.

3. A Border-line Case (5/5):
 The only way I can describe this story which gives it the attention that it deserves, is that I do not have the skill to articulate how well done this story is. Definitly the pearl in this collection, and one worthy of being a well-renound novel of it's own, and to boost, it even appeals to my personal proclivities.

4. The Way of The Cross
 I saw many dissapointed reveiws for this title, and although I might just be a contrarian, I found it alright. It would have been gratly improoved if the plot point of the group being in jerusilum related to their ailments at all, through the ill-will of god and whatnot. Nevertheless, the pointless tale does not offend, it seems to share a nature with that hated stephen king tendency to draw up characters and play dolls with them, forgetting all the time that they are supposed to be horror writers, not slice-of-life oc crafters.

5. The Breakthough
 Like steinsgate but the charcacters are compitent and there is real plot progression. O.K. but it could have been written by anyone.

The Incest Diaries

Anonymous
144 bleak pages (4.5/5)

This book gets a high score because I can't stop thinking about it.
I thought that this book was some kind of joke at first. Because I was half way through and it was only porn so far. I was going to make one version of this reveiw where I reveiwed it as a fanfic, and another where it is a real story.
But I realised a quarter way through that it wasn't just porn. Although I don't empathize with the author very often.
If I was her, in pain as she is, I would say more than a single sentence about hating men. I don't understand why she writes the scenes as if they are a porn, or how she recives orgasms from these acts.
There are lots of things that people keep to themselves. This is most things. What you feel, think, thouch, smell every moment. These are private things 99.9% of your waking moments. There is an elegance in that. I've had to earn it with maturity, keeping things to myself. Like a stoic. Surfeit on it and it's only self-harm, though (my gradfather, he was probably just the right amount of reppressed in his youth, but as the lies festered and compounded, he became a bitter man).
This book is bleak.
"Sometimes around cats I want to crush their skulls. But I never have and I never would. I did kill caterpillars, and once I wanted to hurt a little girl named Natalie"
This happened to me in a way. With the internet. I showed all the same symptoms almost, but not as bad. Not nearly. It might even be the reason why I'm a perverted creepy person. It was at least, the start.

the Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde
231pg (5/5)

The first half of this book feels like it's the perfect novel which has been unearthed from the realm of forms. The second half is slower and less inresting but still high art. The philosophical nonsence from Mr.Henry is very quoteable. I imagined dorian as looking like lawrence of arabia (film).

There are too many good quotes to bother quoting anything.

I really like the theme of conscience and mourning. Like Rebecca, My Cats, my life last winter, and Mitsuzu.
As I grow out of petty tupors, conscience seems to be the only real sorrow.

I want to smoke opium-tainted ciggrettes.

Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

All My Cats

Bohumil Hrabal
66pg of czech evil (5/5)

I like this book so much that it gets it's own section. :3 meow.

The burden of conscience is something that is difficult to articulate.
In last winter's entry I made a poem which dealt with a spector which had crept under my own skin, although I have been lucky enough to have ejected the thorn from my side in less than a years time, but evidenced by Mr.Hrabal’s confession, not everyone is granted such mercy.

The book details the consequences of ignoring your soul.
God's retribution for summoning the hubris to think that man could ever be a purely logical creature, or perhaps his punishment for those who dare to rebel against the dominion of fate and natural death, who dare to rob God of his rightful providence over the creatures of the earth.

The book tells of what happens to those poor souls who must brave the disparity between what is right and what must be done, who are foolish enough to throw themselves from the precipice, and who are bound to plunge into pits of inestimably deep despair.

Remorse haunts interminably, and has no cure. There are times in your life when you will find yourself possessed by impulse or brainwashed over years of self-deception. And then you will spend the rest of your life wishing to pay penitence for the sins of a madman acting under your name. Reason allows men both to justify their wrongdoings and to obsess over them to no end after the fact.


I like the use of the word "liquidating" in this book to mean killing, even if it was only a translator's choice, because I did not know that the word "liquidate" could be used to refer to death. It makes me think of the formless waters of genisis. If the biblical cannon supposes the seas as biology's ambiotic fluids, and so does the scientific consensus, then this is a much more accurate term that than of "death", which implies an immitiet termination from existance, as opposed to a gradual return to base materials. It's like how jesus talks of being "poured out" on the cross.

"The black woods loomed across the frozen river and I walked along in high black boots and white socks through a landscape I have loved since I was six years old, a drab landscape, and therefore especially beautiful, a flat land you can walk through and no longer see anything around you, but rather you can commune with yourself, or simply let your soul commune with the spirit and the elements. When I was six and walked past the brewery and through the countryside along the Labe River, toward Komárenský Island, I was drawn forward, toward what was beyond it, what was on the other side of Písty, and once in Písty, to what was beyond the horizon on the other side of Kostomlátky. And so, back then, and for twenty years after that, I was drawn to walk, and go on walking, on and on, to see what was beyond the horizon. I walked and then rode my bike all the way to Hamburg. But today, horizons no longer pull me toward them, and I am happy where I am, happy that I simply am, that I can carry myself just a little bit further, and at the same time, dream about anything, think about anything, and even allow myself the luxury of thinking about nothing at all, and thus about everything."

I am an old man at heart.

The Bible

RSV
720pg 1400 BC-2 AD

It is unbeliveable that this janky peice of arabic theology has been the backbone of so many great cultures from the romans to the founders of the U.S... but it somehow was. Therefore, since I lack any background in religion, It is probably crutial that I read it, in order to understand the world in context.

I also really like the prose sometimes, I'll quote whenever that happens.

Book of Genisis

I like the idea that god is a formless spirit of mind that imbews humans with part of himself.
Beast is psysical, god is metaphysical, and human is a beast who holds a piece of God within him, making him the superior of true beasts.
I also like that heaven is depicted as a firmament that seperates the water of heavan from the waters of earth.

If beyond heaven there lie the immaterial waters, then it could be thought that unexplainable concepts like gravity could be attributed to the movemnt of waters.

It is cute that even god needs a nap after a week of working on his hobby, we really were made in his image.

Anyway, the earth is made, and it is good. So god puts man in eden, and makes woman as his servant because the animals are not capable enough, and the sepant tells eve to eat the apple of knowledge of good and evil, and she and adam do, and she and adam become ashamed of their nakedness. I belive that "good and evil" and "wisdom" is conscience?
Anyway... For this God makes Eve bear the pains of child birth, and gives her a great desire for her husband (trust me, this IS a punishment) and makes her subserviant to him. And to punish Adam He makes him toil the thorny earth for food.

3:19
"By the sweat of your face
you will eat bread
until you return to the ground,
because out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you will return.”

The snake is robbed of his limbs, and forced to wrythe on his belly and eat dust, and will forevermore have a blood feud with man.
Next Eve bares Cain and Abel, Cain is a farmer and offers god his fruits, and Abel offers god the meat from his flock, and God loves the meat and hates the veggies. And you know what happens next...

"Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
10 And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.
So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receisive your brother’s blood from your hand.
When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you.
A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.”

God hates humanity now because they are evil,

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

except for Noah, who is so fricking sweet and awesome. So God asks Noah to make a very specific boat, and to bring all the creatures upon it.
And then God opens up the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens and kills everything, and literally just forgets about Noah for 150 days. (what else does he have to do?) But when he "remembered Noah", the flood ceases, and noah gets out and offers god some of the "clean" animals on an alter, and it smells sooo good that god promises never evr to do it again, and he invents the rainbow as a reminder to humanity and himself (ug I forgot not to extinguish humanity again!) .

Next Noah gets fucking sloshed off the vinards and passes out naked his sons cover him up by walking backwards to him and he curses the one who saw him to be a slave or whatever. Then he dies.
The spawn of Noah populate lands. Among them is Nimrod, a great hunter, who founds many lands, one of them babel, another in assyria. The spawn of Canaan is formed into many, many ancient groups of Semitic-speaking Bronze Age people. They all shared "one language and few words". Some migrated to the plains and decided to build a city with a large tower to unite the tribes of the middle east. And god was threatened by it's encroaching near to heaven, so he spread the people of the middle east all over the world, and gave them different tongues, so that they will be weaker when un-united (Not cool honestly).

It was at this point in genesis, that sophia fully realized that she was really reading the theologized history book written by arabic people, and that christianity was always, and would only ever be fit for the arabs. She also lost resepect for jew-worshiping christians.

A long time later, God chooses a man named Abram to wield his power. He promises him a nation and infamy. Abram goes to egypt because there is a famine, telling his wife "say that you are my sister or else they will kill me for jealousy of your beauty". The pharaoh cucks him severly, but at least he is given luxuries for his loss. God curses the pharaoh untill, bafled at Abram's lie, he gives his wife back. The rest is boring so I am not going to reconunt it.

Book of Exodus

Book of Leviticus

Book of Numbers

Book of Deuternomy

Book of Joshua

Book of Judges

opinion:

Christ It was a good book! Everything tied together in the end (like a story should, take notes alice munro). Every character was great, not because they were supple and realistic, but because they were one-sided expressions of everything that they were meant to be. They're like little people tied by spider webs to their respective architypes in the world of forms.
And in an ironic way, that's why they were realistic. Most people are primarily shallow. I've rarely met anyone who is truely enigmatic. This book is timeless because these architypes persist eternally.

history:

My mom's boyfriend brought up this book. She said that she would let me barrow it during a conversation that I was having out of nicety, since M took me to his dad's friend's birthday party. And old white women are the only people I can sort-of conversate with, and books are the only thing that I could sort-of conversate about. Anyway, she knows someone who is OBSESED with the book, and reads it over and over again. She says its about this really horrible weird man, which is exactly what an old white mom would say about the book, what Ignatius's mom would say about him too.

After finishing the first chapter, I happened to listen to the new PGL newpill video where both sam and charles mention it. Funny. I have never routed for a fictional character more, besides mabye the girl in the border-line case, but that's a romance (psyc manipulation) so it doesn't count. Half way in now and I've yet to "laugh out loud" as is the most commonly attributed effect of this book. I have made a little gutteral huff of laughter 2 or three times. Maybe I empathize too much with Ignatius to find his plights funny.

"The outfit was acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life."