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working on a new book. today I rewrote my opening. it's better now, I think? still not saying exactly what I want it to, but it's better.
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Read Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, an absolutely delightful 1944 murder mystery in which the three precocious children of a widowed detective novelist go meddling in the murder investigation next door, while - as a side project - trying to set their mother up with the lead detective on the case.
Read Beowulf! I just saw Beowulf, A Retelling, a one-man show in a pop-up bar at a local arts center, which was a very good introduction to Beowulf, since it was literally just a guy telling the story in his own (conversational, compelling) words, weaving in references to modern heroes and villains* as a sort of touchstone for how parts of the story would have resonated in ye olde days and using instruments for sound effects (e.g., a violin bow across the strings of an electric guitar for Grendel's dying screech). It was very cool! Obviously then had to actually read Beowulf (the Francis Gummere translation; it was the first one available) and I'm glad I had the crash-course version first; it helped to know the shape of the story and have something to mentally translate it back to. (Plus, if I'd had to figure out how to mentally pronounce Healfdene and Ecgtheow on my own, I think I simply would have not.) What really struck me was the sheer sense of time of it all— the oldest known Old English poem, and possibly a story that was hundreds of years old by the time it was written down, and still there were recurring mentions of "heirlooms", which might be a quirk of translation but does suggest the weight of history behind this story that's already really, really old!, and also I found myself reading/listening to it like, okay, yes, I can see what Tolkien got from this.
( footnote )
Read Beowulf! I just saw Beowulf, A Retelling, a one-man show in a pop-up bar at a local arts center, which was a very good introduction to Beowulf, since it was literally just a guy telling the story in his own (conversational, compelling) words, weaving in references to modern heroes and villains* as a sort of touchstone for how parts of the story would have resonated in ye olde days and using instruments for sound effects (e.g., a violin bow across the strings of an electric guitar for Grendel's dying screech). It was very cool! Obviously then had to actually read Beowulf (the Francis Gummere translation; it was the first one available) and I'm glad I had the crash-course version first; it helped to know the shape of the story and have something to mentally translate it back to. (Plus, if I'd had to figure out how to mentally pronounce Healfdene and Ecgtheow on my own, I think I simply would have not.) What really struck me was the sheer sense of time of it all— the oldest known Old English poem, and possibly a story that was hundreds of years old by the time it was written down, and still there were recurring mentions of "heirlooms", which might be a quirk of translation but does suggest the weight of history behind this story that's already really, really old!, and also I found myself reading/listening to it like, okay, yes, I can see what Tolkien got from this.
( footnote )
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I seem to be on a kick of books about cults, with horror novels Herculine by Grace Byron (a trans woman with religious trauma is pulled back into the orbit of an ex-girlfriend who started a cult) and It's Not A Cult by Joey Batey (reviewed here), and also Mike Rinder's A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology (what it says on the tin).
In War and Peace, I've hit the first scene that made it into Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812— Pierre challenged Dolokhov to a duel (technically over a minor affront at a club dinner! actually over rumors of Dolokhov having an affair with Pierre's wife!) and, to everyone's surprise, managed both to hit Dolokhov and to avoid being hit— and recalled how many of the lyrics are just verbatim lines from the book. At the same time, Andrei (presumed dead after the battle of Austerlitz) returned home just in time for his wife, Lise, to die in childbirth. :( One thing I've started to notice is that everything in this book seems to happen in pairs: Pierre's and Andrei's marriages ended, albeit in very different ways, in almost back-to-back chapters; as discussed in my last post, Nikolai and Andrei had foil-like experiences of meeting their heroes at Austerlitz; Kuragin successfully maneuvers his daughter Helene into a marriage to Pierre and then immediately fails to marry off his son Anatole to Mary Bolkonskaya...?
In War and Peace, I've hit the first scene that made it into Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812— Pierre challenged Dolokhov to a duel (technically over a minor affront at a club dinner! actually over rumors of Dolokhov having an affair with Pierre's wife!) and, to everyone's surprise, managed both to hit Dolokhov and to avoid being hit— and recalled how many of the lyrics are just verbatim lines from the book. At the same time, Andrei (presumed dead after the battle of Austerlitz) returned home just in time for his wife, Lise, to die in childbirth. :( One thing I've started to notice is that everything in this book seems to happen in pairs: Pierre's and Andrei's marriages ended, albeit in very different ways, in almost back-to-back chapters; as discussed in my last post, Nikolai and Andrei had foil-like experiences of meeting their heroes at Austerlitz; Kuragin successfully maneuvers his daughter Helene into a marriage to Pierre and then immediately fails to marry off his son Anatole to Mary Bolkonskaya...?
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