2024 on Goodreads

 

2024 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I kept my reading goal to 11 books this year because I had plans to read some BIG ones. Fact is, I got in a couple of BIG ones, but not nearly the amount I had anticipated. As always, some books came fluttering along out of thin air and grabbed me by the shirt collar (at least the idea of reading them did). Yes, Finnegans Wake is still sitting on my shelf, squatting and staring at me. And there are others I had intentions on that will have to wait for 2025. Sorry, not sorry. I read what the voices in my head tell me to read.

As far as superlatives go this far, here you go:

Book that will stick in my brain and never depart, living rent-free in my head till I die (I might call this "a classic"): Dhalgren

Book with the most surprises in the form of authors whom I've never read, but will read more of: Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons

Book that will actually affect my day-to-day life in a most useful way: The Bullet Journal Method

Most stunning presentation, and the contents matched the beauty of the artifact: Cathode Love

Most elegant and profound (also living rent-free in my head): The Explosion of a Chandelier

Most intellectually challenging (and rewarding): On Poetic Imagination and Reverie

And if I took the time, I'm sure I could find or invent categories of all the other books I read this year. It was a good year of reading.

Next year, I am keeping my challenge low. I haven't decided on a number of books I plan on reading yet. I'd like to think I could read through all 22 on my TBR shelf (I have physical copies of all of them) plus the three I'm currently reading, but I am planning on doing a few re-reads this year, which will slow my consumption of new books. This is by design, as I have dubbed 2025 The Year of Simplification, and I plan on sticking with that. If you must know, some of the books I will be re-reading are: Malpertuis, The Jade Cabinet (I recently got back in contact with Rikki and am writing a handwritten letter to her now), and I will be actually doing Thousand Year Old Vampire (take that as you will, Lestat). So, I have a busy reading year ahead of me.

As for writing, look for a short story collection to come out from Underland Press this year, sooner rather than later. I'm pretty excited about this. This will collect many of the short stories that have been published by boutique publishers in South America and Eastern Europe, which are very difficult to find and incredibly expensive, once found. I am currently working on two short stories, one just about to be finished up, and another in the early stages. We shall see what else I can write this year, but I'm planning on a year of good output.

Part of the reason for my optimism on writing output is that after grousing a lot about social media and all of its issues, I am essentially withdrawing from Twitter (this actually happened years ago, though I still have an account open), Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram. My social media of choice will be Goodreads, my blog, and handwritten letters to a select few individuals - the original social media. If you'd like to be one of the select few, message me here and get me your address. No promises, as I have a handful of "must write to" people, but I will do what I can. Since I won't be polluting my life with social media of the most banal kind (see above), I will have a bit more time to write to friends, and some of you here I do consider friends, so don't be shy, message me. And I don't expect a handwritten reply in return. I'll do me, you do you.

On to 2025!

View all my reviews

________________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

2025: The Year of Simplification

 2024 was, for me, a year of change and renewal. The previous year, 2023, was one of ever-escalating stress at the workplace. In January of 2024, driving home from another long, depressing day of work, I hit a deer, which was the impetus for a major life change, namely: changing my place of employment. Another change was that, after having the car totaled, we decided to try and make it as a one-car family. My wife works from home and my new job is an 8 minute drive away, so we've made it work. She has three days off, so on her off day, when I have to work, she drops me off and picks me up. 

All that said, I've been taking time to assess 2024 using YearCompass. It's been a very valuable exercise to examine the previous year, acknowledge the successes and challenges and failures, and move on to the next year. If you're one who likes to do New Years resolutions, or if, instead, like me, you just want to process the previous year and prepare for the next, I strongly recommend it. 

Over the last couple of months, I've taken a significant amount of time to study Minimalism and Slow Living. I've found several Youtube channels to be of great help. The three most helpful and practical ones I've watched (and subscribed to) are Seve - Sunny Kind of Journey,  Gabe Bult, and The Swiss Simpleton. Honorable mentions go out to Olly Staniland, Poetry of Slow Life, and Helena Woods. There are others that have proven helpful, but they might only peripherally touch on these lifestyles, or some (and I find these the most insidious, if I'm being honest) use Minimalism as a leverage to productivity/Hustle. And I am not about the hustle life. I'm about simplicity.

This hasn't always been the case. My dad was in the military, an NCO for as long as I was being raised, so we led a fairly middle middle-class life. I was a child in the 70s, a teen in the 80s (yes, you did miss out, if you must know, they really were that great), the perfect receptacle for the decidedly American (at the time, though this has spread elsewhere like a disease) culture of buying and holding on to whatever you possible could. I've heard that the poorest people value, above all, relationships, the richest value connections, and the middle-class values . . . stuff. As I examine myself and those I come in contact with, I've found that to be a good thumbnail assessment, with many exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, I've found it accurate. So, I was firmly planted in the camp that values stuff. My parents did nothing to discourage that. In fact, my Mom was a bit of a hoarder, when it came to physical possessions and both of my parents ended up in financial counseling because of their indebtedness and addiction to gambling (which, thankfully, didn't really manifest until I was out of the house). My parents taught me many great life lessons, but how to manage one's wants was not one of them. 

Fast forward through life to today, with me firmly planted in middle age. My parents are gone, and I have unlearned many of the things I learned that I wish I had not and have benefitted from many of the things I learned for which I am eternally grateful. Mom and Dad did the best they knew how, and I am the beneficiary of the things they taught me, whether intentionally or not. Now, it's my opportunity to leverage the past and look to the future.

In the manner of Seve, I have dubbed 2025 The Year of Simplification. The changes of 2024 have set the stage for this year of simplification, wherein I am striving to take the best lessons I've learned over the course of life and stripping out the un-essential. I could not have done so back in 2023, simply because of the emotional duress and mental health challenges I was undergoing. I was not in a good place. Now, I am on a stable footing and ready to move on, to calve off the things that I have been burdened with and with which I have burdened myself. Here is the simple plan.

1. I will simplify Technologically. I recently committed some money to buying a "dumb" phone, which I am planning on supplanting my "smart" phone when the Mudita Kompakt arrives sometime late next spring. I am also saving to buy the Boox Go 10.3, an E-ink reader with android capabilities. I won't be abandoning technology, but by adding some friction to the interchange, I am hoping to stall myself in order to divert to more analog activities (something I've been working on for some time now) when I am tempted to dwell too long in the digital sphere.
2. I will simplify Digitally. Yes, I will still keep my Instagram, Blusky, and Facebook accounts open, but they shall join the eerie ether-zone that my Twitter account is in, namely, full dormancy. Will I occasionally check these accounts? Probably. But by not having any of the apps on my phone or my tablet, I will have to make an intentional choice to go to my PC to engage in any of them, again, adding friction to the interchange, a moment to stop and think "is this really what I want to do with my time right now?" I will still be on Goodreads and, of course, here at the blog, but I am otherwise severely limiting my social media interactions. Part of this will involve writing more physical letters (something I actually love to do) to a limited number of friends. 
3. I will calm my mind. I'm not talking about a full-on meditative practice here, though that might come into play down the road. Here I will strive to further leverage my existing Bullet Journal practice I've read and re-read the Bullet Journal Method and have taken time on Youtube to see what others have done with their own bullet journals. Here, I must point out Jashii Corrin and Elsa Rhae and Barron for their wonderful guides to bullet journaling. Because of what I've learned, I will be making more time to be introspective and have an appropriate "space" (physically and mentally) as a receptacle for this introspection. Part of this will be a gratitude journal to help me to see the good in my days, in my circumstances, and in other people.
4. I will simplify Physically. I've already pointed out, above, some of the many Minimalism practitioners. Part of Minimalism is loving what you have, minimizing physical clutter, and putting the reins on consumerism. Yes, I have already outlined two pieces of technology that I'll be buying, but I am buying them intentionally and foregoing a lot of other things (meaning physical stuff) in order to purchase these tools. I have other "big ticket" items on my list: expensive, high quality tools for living, for example, or experiences that I hope to have that require more than just a bit of change. Of course, I won't stop buying books, but I am going to be very picky about getting new ones. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I went through my books, tabletop games and supplements, clothes, and knick-knacks (I have a lot of these in my writing area) and ended up donating two huge bags of books and a garbage bag full of clothes and knick-knacks to a local charity shop, and selling some of my higher-end books and tabletop games and supplements for credit at the stores at which I sold them. Granted, the book money immediately went to a book I've been eyeing for some time now, but I shrank my book collection by about thirty books in exchange for one very nice signed edition of Centipede Press's edition of Quentin Crisp's I Reign in Hell. From what I understand, this may be one of the last signed copies "out there" available now. Crisp is a writer I love, and now I have what is sure to become an heirloom for my kids and grandkids, as well as providing me with hours of enjoyment. Win-win! And I have a large amount of credit waiting at one of my favorite places to buy RPG games and supplements online, just waiting for that perfect treasure to come through. 
5. I will prioritize Experience. Here, I mean a couple of things. First, I want to savor the moments. I'm only getting older, and when I think of the frantic pace that my life has been at times, I see a black hole of missed opportunities to enjoy the people and places that surround me. Did I say "screw Hustle culture" yet? I'm saying so now. I'm ready to live more slowly, whenever it is in my control, and take my time. I was thinking a lot lately about what I missed the most about my childhood, and it's the sense of time. Time seemed almost endless then. And while I'm glad to have learned the many lessons I've learned through the loss of innocence, I want to regain that sense of time as a friend to embrace, rather than an enemy to be run away from. With my new employment, I get an hour lunch break, and more often than not, I take the majority of that time to walk down the Ice Age Trail (which is conveniently less than a quarter mile from my work) and go for a languid walk, sometimes reading a book (a print book, not digital), sometimes not. This has helped me a great deal to decompress in what can sometimes be a very stressful job (though way less stressful than the place I fled). I've learned, during those walks, to pay attention to my surroundings and really absorb the experience. I've gained perspective on the shortness and fragility of life which has given me resolve to practice all the things I'm outlining here. One thing I noticed in my examination of the past year is that I only went to one live concert (outside of high school concerts we might have attended to see friends' kids perform). Usually, I try to hit a few shows. Now, I am picky about the shows I see, but I might have missed a couple of opportunities along the way. I'm going to keep my eyes open for more shows this year. Also in the realm of experience: we are going on a cruise to Alaska this summer. I'm guessing there are going to be some memorable experiences there! And, of course, I'll be going to Schimpkon, Garycon, and Gameholecon, as far as it is in my power. I can't live without gathering with my tribe frequently!

This is my blueprint. Are things going to go wrong? Absolutely. Will I hit all of my goals perfectly? I hope not, otherwise I'm not truly experiencing life. In any case, this is how I will strive to live my life this year: more simply, more intentionally, more meaningfully. A special thanks to all those who make this possible. 

I'll end with a poem which I first heard on one of the aforementioned Slow Living/Minimalism Youtube channels. It sums things up rather nicely:

My Symphony

To live content with small means.

To seek elegance rather than luxury,

    and refinement rather than fashion.

To be worthy, not respectable,

    and wealthy, not rich.

To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, 

    act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes, 

    and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, 

    do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.

In a word, to let the spiritual, 

    unbidden and unconscious, 

    grow up through the common

This is to be my symphony

William Henry Channing

 ________________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life

 

Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life by Kenneth Gross
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Puppets and I go way back. I want to say that the Muppets and Sid and Marty Kroft shows (HR Pufnstuf, Far Out Space Nuts), though the latter was more costumed humans than puppets, I admit, introduced me to bodies animated by unseen humans. But, outside of television (and that P movie by that D company), I quite fondly recall my mother making little puppets out of felt and doing little puppet shows for me. She was a drama-girl all the way. Furthermore, I remember seeing street puppets when I lived in Italy as a boy and at least one Punch & Judy show in Brighton, England, when I lived in the UK as a teenager.

But it was later in life that I learned to appreciate the uncanny nature of puppets. In the early 90s I discovered the movies of Jan Svankmajer, which sometimes featured marionettes, then, in the early 2000s, I discovered the stop motion films of The Brothers Quay, which have become an obsession of mine. Back in 2003, I believe it was, I saw another Punch and Judy show (this one in Minneapolis, of all places), I took my kids to a live puppet show (with puppets more reminiscent of Frank Oz's early creations, than anything else) not many years after. Then, in 2019, while on vacation in Europe, my wife and I visited Salzburg, Austria and attended the Salzburg Marionetten Theatre. And just tonight, I signed up for a Domestika course on making wooden marionettes.

I think I'm becoming a little obsessed. Maybe I was obsessed all along and am just now admitting it.

Back in 2021 (it feels strange to say that - has it really been that long?), I read and reviewed Victoria Nelson's outstanding book The Secret Life of Puppets, which I had stumbled on at Goodreads, if I remember correctly. Then, my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, did an episode on this same book in November of 2022. They followed this with an episode about the movie Evil Dead II, which also dipped into the uncanny nature of puppets. This is where I first saw reference to the book being reviewed presently.

It is this uncanny aspect of puppets that Kenneth Gross examines in Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life. All the while I was reading, I felt as if I had the voice of Mark Fischer whispering in my ear. His book/essay on The Weird and the Eerie could have formed the skeleton for Gross's essay, though Gross's work preceded Fisher's by five years. So, perhaps it is the other way around? However, I find no reference to Gross's work in Fischer's bibliography. Maybe this is just another magical synergy that seems to happen so often with these sorts of confluences.

The movement and intelligence that are apparent in a puppet is "weird" (in Fisher's sense) because there should be no movement or intelligence or intention in unliving material, yet that intent seems to come through the unliving (perhaps undead?) material of the puppet. There is movement in what there ought not to be. This offends our logic while simultaneously spiking our curiosity, a morbid curiosity for that which is incapable of morbidity, strangely enough.

It feels quite natural for humans to view these artificial beings as artifacts with some connection to the past. I've seen countless cast off dolls in the mud, for example, and it piques my sense of wonder. How did this get here? Who lost it? Is there some latent connection with a past owner? This begs the further question: Are puppets, dolls, and marionettes some sort of mana batteries, storing energy from some past life force? Perhaps the mystery of these unseen lives that live behind the figures is what we hope to see through to, with the "little people" serving as scrying devices into past lives, their joys, and tragedies. But are our visions clouded and warped by looking through these anthropomorphic lenses? Could some malevolent spirit twist or visions of the past if we are not careful? Do we dare look into their eyes?

Puppets and the stages on which they come "alive" ae not like us. They are exaggerated and often missing many of the subtle and not-so-subtle things that make up life. This creates what Fisher termed "the eerie". Much that should be "there" is not, yet some law of puppetry seems to govern their universe, laws that do not apply in the same way to us. Nor do our laws apply to them. So which reality is real? Which laws actually inhere?

Just as the paradox of life seemingly manifest in dead things causes unease and fascination, the utter unknowability of what it feels, tastes, smells, or sounds like to be a dead thing that was once living simultaneously terrifies us and fills us with curiosity, longing, even, to know and, with much fear and uncertainty, to experience what the dead experience. It is the age old push and pull of existential dread, brought to life(?) by the infusion of seeming intent into dead matter. The puppeteer possesses the puppet with life-force, animating it, the living possessing the dead in a reverse-seance. Who is the medium here?

Puppeteers I have met indeed often speak of waiting for some impulse from the puppet they hold, a gesture or form of motion that they can then develop often being shocked by what emerges.

The act of puppeteering blurs the line between tool and wielder. yes, the human informs the dead material, but the dead material imposes its own limitations, resisting, even fighting back!

The unliving puppet is, of course, innocent, as it can only react to others' manipulations. Yet many puppet shows are transgressive and anything but innocent (go watch a Punch and Judy show, if you don't believe me). Here the inherent innocence of the puppet allows for a buffer to the audience. Hence the shocking nature of the horror trope of puppets and other artificially animated human stand-ins possessed of self-realized inimical animation.

Remember, though, that's it not always the humans facing the puppet that have need to fear that strange intersection of life and death, of immaterial energy and material existence. As Gross implies, this liminal zone is fraught with danger for all:

Then there was the marionette of Antigone who had hung herself with the very strings that had earlier given her life. That had its own kind of truth.

View all my reviews

_______________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Exiting Modernity

 

Exiting Modernity by James Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For the record, this page is 590 pages long. For whatever reason, Goodreads doesn't have that information. So know when you are going into this, you're getting a lot.

But a lot of what?

Ellis can be, at times, obscure to the point of inscrutable. But his sometimes frenetic approach also allows multiple points of entry to readers who are constantly beset by the incessant demands of modernity. He uses the weapons of modern capital and consumerist social media against them. What I thought was annoying, initially, I eventually found quite brilliant as confusion resolved into clarity.

Ellis is not as a-political as he thinks he is, but I do think he makes a good-faith effort to try to push explicitly political opinions aside. It's not always clear where his loyalties lie, but there is a strong libertarian streak throughout his work, but thankfully without much of the conspiracy-craziness that so often accompanies that bent. When he's talking about personal freedom (whether of expression or work or goals), he is at his best. At times, Ellis tries way too hard to prove he's an iconoclast, and when he gets "in the way" of his thoughts, he muddies the clarity of his own vision. Of course, I'm certain he'd deride any call to tone things down, but really, the guy needs some editing.

And while his ideas are always controversial and often intriguing, the real test of such a book as this rests in the answer to the question "did it make any meaningful change in my life"? And the answer, in this case is, "yes".

Perhaps it's just in the timing, but this book pushed me over the edge of indecision and caused me to drop Twitter. There were a number of touchpoints leading up to that final decision.

It's no secret, at least to those who read my blog, that I have been contemplating a move away from some social media for quite some time. When I took my trip to Europe in 2019, I largely abstained from social media, and it was . . . liberating. The next year, I read the book Digital Minimalism, which led to a short social media fast (among other things!). I recorded some of my findings in this exploratory phase, including falling in love with blogs all over again. Next, I tried to go with a three weeks on, one week off approach. But that only lasted a couple of months until I was scrolling away again - mainly on twitter - to the point where I actually forgot I had committed to that approach. Much later, I watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. That made me wary for a while, and I set timers on Twitter, Instagram, and Redditt (I had already largely given up Facebook by that point). But it was really this book that finally pushed me over the edge to deactivate my twitter account. Why not delete it? Apparently it's really easy for conniving individuals to "take over" your old account if you delete it. So it sits dormant, now. It's been a few weeks now and I feel . . . liberated . . . again. The point of all this is that Ellis convinced me to drop Twitter, and that is not a decision I made lightly. Since I am an author (albeit very part-time) Twitter was the ideal place to huck my wares, so to speak. But I think I'm content to let my content (books, stories, RPG supplements, etc) speak for themselves. I'll keep blogging, as I feel that blogs are a more "meaningful" medium than social media. Besides, I'm done with doom-scrolling. I only have so much time left in life (could be tomorrow, could be fifty years from now, who knows?) and I don't want to be on my deathbed full of regrets because I wasted so much darned time on Twitter.

But social media critique is only one aspect of Exiting Modernity and, truth be told, it's not even that big of a deal in terms of the percentage of pages devoted to it. Much of the critique is aimed at social engineering at large, with media being only a small portion of "the problem". I'll spare you all the details of "the problem," as I agree with some aspects of Ellis's thoughts more than others and, well, you should read this book and find out for yourself!

Ellis' critique of measurement hues very closely to the critique in Technic and Magic, which I read very recently. I consider it an (improbable) and happy accident(?) that I read these one after the other. This really refreshed some thoughts that have been coalescing in my mind for many years regarding what I really want from life, and what I really don't want!

I was going along just fine until I encountered the section on Accelerationism, where Ellis drops the casual tone and goes for a jargon-filled philosophical analysis, which people smarter than me are likely to love. For me though, hitting this section was like taking my car to top speed on the autobahn, then encountering a wall of feather mattresses around the curve.

That didn't happen. Well, not the part about the feather mattresses. Though I did have to eventually slow down on the autobahn.

I really struggled with this section, then FINALLY! on page 213, Accelerationism was clearly defined. I would have liked this, oh, 120 pages earlier.

The largest fault of this book is not a fault of content, but of order. The last two sections on Accelerationism should have been put at the beginning of that section, not the end. The way it is structured now might have been true to the order in which Ellis' blog was created, but moving from the specific to the general does no favors to readers new to the material. The last 200 pages or so were an utter slog until the last section on "The Genealogy of Foucault's Numeric Power Structures - Man Under Number," but, then again, I read a lot of Foucault back in graduate school, so that background helped, no doubt. My very slight grasp of Deleuze made the section immediately preceding it almost tolerable, but not comfortable. There are obvious gaps in my philosophical knowledge that I'm trying to fix, but the last part of this book came, well, out of order in my philosophical life. I'll have to reread those latter sections again once I've got more philosophical reading under my belt, so to speak.

In time. In time . . .



View all my reviews

_______________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Reading Challenge 2023

 Since 2015, I've participated in the Goodreads reading challenge where one sets a goal for how many books they will read in a year. Your reading results are tabulated as you complete a book. In previous years, my totals have been:

2015  Goal: 25  Read: 68 (to be fair, I read a lot of graphic novels that year)

2016  Goal: 15  Read: 31

2017  Goal: 17  Read: 27

2018  Goal: 18  Read: 32

2019  Goal: 19  Read: 40 (starting to sense a pattern here . . .)

2020  Goal: 21  Read: 37

2021  Goal: 25  Read: 36

2022  Goal: 24  Read: 25

So my average goal was 20.5, average read was 37.

For 2023, I have set my goal at . . . 

10.

Yes, 10 measly books. "You must be getting old," I hear you say. While true, that's not the reason. "You must be busy with other things". That's . . . not true. Not really. I had a lot more going on in previous years, to be honest. 

So why only 10 books? 2 reasons.

1. I want to be writing more. I'm currently working on a novella, and, frankly, it feels good. I love the rush of writing. And while I've never fully stopped writing for an appreciable amount of time (three or four months, but that was before I started keeping track of reading goals), I don't write as quickly as I used to. At one point, I was cranking out a significant short story every couple of weeks. Now I tend to write longer stories (the novella is my favorite length to both read and write), so I need more time to write more material. Besides, I'm more careful about editing and crafting than I was, say, 20 years ago, and that editing and crafting takes, you guessed it, more time. 

2. I have some challenging works ahead of me. As I write this, I am in the middle of Heidegger's Being and Time. This is not a minor work. I also have, staring at me from the shelf, Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I've read excerpts from this before, but never the full work. And given how Ulysses was, I'm expecting this to be an uphill climb. Proust's Swann's Way is also on my shelf and, well, you likely know the reputation of that one. Meditations on the Tarot is another thick one squatting on my book pile. That brick is going to take a while to get through. Now, I'm not guaranteeing that I will read all (or any) of these books, but they are physically present on my shelf and I've been wanting and meaning to read some of them for a long time.

3. Most importantly: I am hoping to do some thematic readings this year, which means re-reading many works I've already gone through, as well as some I have not. For example, I have Kenneth Gross's Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life on my shelf, as yet unread. I am very excited to read this one alongside a re-read of Victoria Nelson's outstanding The Secret Life of Puppets, as well as a re-listening to an episode of my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, in which the hosts interview Nelson. With these two pieces, I will re-read The Quay Brothers' Universum, The Quay Brothers The Black Drawings, The Journal of the London School of Pataphysics, #21, and Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets, and I will be sure to re-watch Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers. I anticipate that I will revisit two RPG posts I've made here, as well: What's in the Quay's Wunderkamer? and Experimental RPGing: Help, Opinions, and Insights Needed! Part I and Part II. All of this work, then, will "count" as only 1 read book for the year. And you can see that this is a months' long endeavor, in all likelihood. I have another, similar deep-delve planned for Gaston Bachelard's On Poetic Imagination and Reverie (thanks go to my oldest son for gifting this one to me for Christmas), which is new to me, and Gary Lachman's Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, a re-read, with a potential sidestep into Fiddler's Green Our Bogeys, Our Shelves. Yet another set will center around Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie and David Peak's The Spectacle of the Void, both of which I've read, though I've never reviewed Fisher's book fully, though I did riff off of it in one of my more . . . morbid posts. In any case, you can see the dilemma here: For every "new" book that "counts" toward my goal, there will be anywhere from one to five books (plus a podcast episode, a Blu-ray, and a lot of thinking and writing on things TTRPG) that I will need to complete.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. Not at all. But I suspect my book reviews and blogposts will be more spread out over the year than usual. On the other hand, I'm hoping they'll be more thorough, well-thought out, compelling, and useful to readers. This also means I probably won't be on social media nearly as much (that is also part of my goal here), so if you have a google account, follow me so you can be apprised of those times when I am posting something. I don't want to hide, and I love the interaction, so please, post comments and I'll be sure to respond!

_______________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

My Mind on My Money and My Money on My Mind*

I'm not poor. I'm not rich. I'm squarely in the American middle class, when it comes to my day-job income. For many years, though, we were living super-tight on our budget. Filling the tank with gas was a necessity, but it bordered on a luxury. We rarely went out for entertainment and we often had to tell the kids "no" when they asked for stuff that their friends might have just taken for granted. 

As a result, I get skittish about spending large amounts of money. I have an allowance each month that I can spend on whatever I like (a luxury, I know) that falls in the middle of the two-digit range. If I want to buy something for myself that costs $100, I'm going to have to wait a couple of months, maybe a little more. I'm not bitter about it, in fact, I think it's a very good practice (obviously, I've been living it for many years now), but when it comes to a big personal purchase, I have to bide my time and *really* discipline myself not to spend that money, but, rather, save it up for the big purchase. I can supplement that allowance with sales of my RPG materials, and I've buckled and started a ko-fi. Occasionally, I will sell stuff on Ebay or sell a short story to help with funding, or even sell some of my books direct to readers (which I actually love to do . . . until I run out of sellable copies!) but when I want to buy something significant, I really have to think about it and I really have to choose wisely. 

Often my money goes, as you can imagine, into books, whether fiction or roleplaying books. I'm pretty picky about both. And, lately, I've bought more music in physical formats. Again, though, I am very finicky about my purchases. I really don't make "impulse" buys. I just don't operate that way. This is one reason I love Goodreads so much: when I see a cover I love or hear about a potentially cool book, I go to Goodreads and try to read a few reviews from people whose opinions I respect. This hasn't always saved me from unfortunate purchases, but it's done a pretty good job of making me think through by book-buying choices. 

Not long ago, I wrote a post about downsizing and upscaling my collection of . . ., well, stuff. My sentiments then still apply now, and probably even more so.

I've decided what I want from this.

Well, at least a few things:

1. A typewriter. An honest to goodness old-fashioned non-electric manual typewriter. Why? Maybe I hate myself, I don't know. Seriously, I am a kinesthetic and visual learner and writer. I always hand-write my first drafts. I can be as sloppy as I need to or want to, with no regard to anything except my ability to spew forth thoughts on paper. Then I edit as I'm typing into the computer. But what if I wanted to do a more careful edit? I think that typing on a typewriter will cause me to actually physically stop and think more, to focus. At least that's what I remember from typing as a kid (before home PCs were readily available). If you made a mistake, you had to get out corrector tape and fix it, which was a royal pain in the butt. Just like Goodreads reviews cause me to stop and think about what I'm buying, this should help me to stop and think about what I'm writing. I have several typewriters that I could live with , but there's one in particular that is *VERY* expensive and that I am absolutely lusting after. I'm not going to jinx things by linking to it, or even to the site it's being sold at because, like Highlander, there can be only one. Well, there really is only one. It will cost more than my computer. A lot more, in fact. There's only one out there (I think it's a custom job), but I really, really want that typewriter. I need to save up for this one first, which is going to mean no buying new books or LPs for a year or more. I'm hoping that no one else snatches it up in the meantime. And, no, I'm not interested in using credit to buy it. I've been in credit trouble before and, never again. This one I'll just have to scrimp and save for, and I'm willing to do it. Besides, this dovetails nicely with my desire to have more analog in my life and my desire to re-read many of the books I already own (c.f., my post on downsizing and upscaling - link above). Again, if you want to help, here's my ko-fi link, or if you want to buy a copy of my novel Heraclix and Pomp, comment below.

2. A new LP player. I love my old record player, the one I rediscovered after my parents died. But this old machine is about to give up the ghost itself. I'll probably buy something in the cheap range, so far as stereo systems go, but something that I can trust to play well and last, as well. Probably something along the lines of the 1 by one stereo system. Simple, but elegant, and hopefully built to last. 

3. This one might just seem silly, but I have an antiqued mirror that I love. By antiqued, I mean burned, abused, acid-etched, artificially aged. I love it. I want another. maybe two more. This will be the least expensive of my buys and also the most frivolous. But I just love the one I have and want to surround myself with more of them. There's something darkly beautiful about the odd distortion they give to everything caught in their reflective rays. Logically speaking, I should buy these first because they are the cheapest of the three things I am saving for, but who said I play by logic? No, really, I need to discipline myself to get that typewriter (presuming it doesn't sell to someone with similar tastes and more money than me).

And there you have it, all my most recent money-grubbing desires. Now that I've committed this on the blog, I feel a stronger resolve to carry through with it (barring some financial emergency, of course). 

Wish me luck! Or, better yet, buy me a ko-fi!

*Apologies to Snoop D-o-g-g, but the song I'm referring to in the title of this post is this version (which I'm guessing Snoop appreciates in his own smoove way). 

________________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Bitter Distillations: An Anthology of Poisonous Tales

 

Bitter Distillations: An Anthology of Poisonous Tales by Mark Beech
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anthologies are a hard sell. Meaning they hardly sell. I know a bit about this, having edited several volumes myself. Heck, I even won an award for editing one, a long time ago. Note that it's been a long time since I've edited a fiction anthology. I love short fiction, but editing a short fiction anthology is hard work, if you're doing it right. And it's often thankless. I remember speaking with author Stepan Chapman years ago about editing anthologies and his comment was "something for everybody to hate"! Truth.

A great anthology is one in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A careful balance has to be maintained for this to work. A theme needs to be strong, but not overwhelming. And there needs to be a variety of voices, but not so varied that they all become a choir of chaos.

Bitter Distillations: An Anthology of Poisonous Tales is an anthology that could easily fall out of balance in this regard. But it largely (though not completely) succeeds. Mark Beech, the editor, thankfully took a broad approach to the theme, though there is a preponderance of stories about "poison gardens". Of course, it might be difficult to winnow down the the absolute best stories about poison gardens, but that is an editor's job - to build a collection, then hack it down to the best of the best.

The presentation is nothing short of amazing. This is a book you want to have in your collection to show off to your friends. It is beautiful, well-built, and smartly-designed. This is typical of Egaeus Press books. You know you're getting a quality artifact when buying an Egaeus volume.

Some of the stories herein are outstanding. I guessed this would be the case after looking at the table of contents. Many of my favorite contemporary authors had stories in here, and they did not disappoint. There were other authors unknown to me (which is, actually, something I always look for in an anthology - including "unknown" authors was something I prided myself on while editing), some of whose stories succeeded, some of whose didn't quite. If you're on Goodreads, you'll note I gave the anthology a four-star rating. Not because most of the stories were four-star stories, but because many were five-star stories, and a not-insignificant amount were three-star stories. With that, here are my notes on the stories:

"A Night at the Ministry" is as crisp and decadent as one should expect from
Putting the "decay" back in "decadence," the story "The Blissful Tinctires," by Jonathan Wood, marries the grinding post-grandeur of Peake's novels or Wilde's Dorian Gray with the banality of Great War England (and France, for a critical few short moments). It is a grueling, lustrous, dirty, pathetic, and triumphal read, all at once. This is Wood at his hollow, beautiful finest, mixing glory and defeat. It's a tricky story, one that you think you have figured out in the split-second before you figure out you were completely (and delightfully) wrong. I like being tricked in this way.

"Delightful" isn't the first word one would use for a story about poisoning, but Rose Biggin's "The Tartest of Flavours" is light-hearted. This tale, set in the universe of Alice in wonderland (in a slightly different guise) is, shall we say, "frivolous"? I didn't dislike it, but, at times, it seemed to be trying too hard to be cute (in a grim sort of way). Still a nice change of pace, but the weakest story to this point of the book.

Timothy Jarvis' "The Devil's Snare" is everything I would expect from his pen: carefully-crafted mythic storytelling with a limning of dry-humor and dark beauty. What I was not expecting was the ending. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming - but should the townsfolk. Alas, they are in for a big surprise. I love the mix of rather ordinary people moved to extraordinary visions here.

Rosanne Rabinowitz hits a simultaneously melancholic and celebratory mood here with "The Poison Girls". It's a long story, grazing over many years, and the main character, Marla is a complex and interesting person. The story blurs the line between the nostalgic and the imaginal, "breaking" chronological constraints in an emotionally-satisfying story of joy and grief, healing and pain. Beautiful.

I greatly enjoyed "The Invisible Worm" by Ron Weighell (if one can call cringing discomfort brought on by masterful writing "enjoyment"), but I fail to see how it fits, thematically, with the rest of the volume. I suppose it is, loosely speaking, a "poisonous" tale, but it involves no poisonous substance outside of religious fanaticism. Still, it's a great story, though it reads like an introduction to a novel.

A nice, evocative poem with a deeper story between the lines in "Chatterton, Euston, 2018" by Nina Antonia.

"Out at the Shillingate Isles" is a tragic story of a socially-rejected woman named Gert making a living in a harbor fishing village. She meets a new friend, "Low-key," who has compassion for her and her plight. He has a flair for performing strange tricks of magic. They go together on a scheme to give Gert the upper hand against her enemies, and things seem to be going great. Seem to. Four stars to Lisa L. Hannett.

When George Berguño is at the top of his game - and he is at the top of his game in "The Other Prague" - there are very few who can match his writerly voice. Calvino, Borges, Schwob . . . he stands in good company. And this story is polysemic, not content to settle on one meaning . . . or the other. All is one. And none is all.

I don't know that I've read Sheryl Humphrey's work before, but if "The Jewelled Necropolis" is an indicator of the quality of her writing, I will read her work again. This is part of the joy of reading an anthology: discovering a new (to me) author whose work I can continue to explore. I love the framing piece of an anonymous manuscript found as a result of the Federal Writer's Project, and the way Humphrey leverages it is more than just clever. It's a dreamlike tale of searching and finding a glimmer of paradise.

"Not to be Taken," by Kathleen Jennings begs the question "who is who's victim"? Or, more properly "who is the real perpetrator"? It's a story of disturbed individuals who happen to meet and orbit around each other, further disturbing the universe around them. It's a touching piece, in Its own perverse way, with very distant echoes from the decadent tradition. Four stars.

With a writerly voice reminiscent of Sarban, yet with a cuttingly-clever humor very unlike the staid Sarban, Louis Marvick, in his uniquely Marvickian way, immerses the reader in a sea of poisonous plants with "The Garden of Dr Montorio". But he takes it a step further, not only trapping the protagonist in a presumably lethal maze, but by trapping readers in a deadly story within a story. Marvick continues to amaze.

I've been effusive in my praise of Stephen J. Clark's writing. "Of Mandrake and Henbane" does nothing to quell my enthusiasm. Here the triple goddess of Maiden, Mother, and Crone are tied to The Green Man (under a slightly different guise) by a "sacred unguent" that binds them all together. This is a beautiful story of loam, love, and loathing that blossoms under Clark's deft pen.

There's a kernel of what could be a good story in Joseph Dawson's "Beyond Seeing," but it appears to me that this is a rough draft in need of serious revision. I was willing to cut some slack, but with an awkward writerly voice that is too terse and too verbose in all the wrong places, I had little patience with such a predictable plot. This is harsh, but the anthology would have been stronger without this story.

For some reason, I sometimes greatly enjoy stories that obliquely or peripherally toy with the theme of an anthology (though I do like some connection). Such is the case with Yarrow Paisley's excellent "I in the Eye". Poison plays a part, but only a small part in the larger narrative of dissociation with self and family. The writing here is fantastic, and this is one of the darkest stories in the volume. Five stars.

Jason E. Rfe's "Canned Heat" was quaint, in a disturbing way. It feels like there could have been so much more to this story; should have been more. It felt like a pedestrian effort to me.

Alison Littlewood's "Words" is a weak story, strongly told. But I'm afraid that the eloquence, in this case, doesn't outweigh the inevitability of the plot. There may be something to "tried and true" stories (I'm certain I've written a few myself), but when one can determine what's to happen when one is only a quarter of the way through the story, no amount of good writing can save it, ultimately (and unfortunately).

The tone of Carina Bissett's story "An Embrace of Poisonous Intent" is strikingly different from the rest of the book. This is high sorcerous fantasy replete with unicorns and griffins. The mythic element here is powerful, and the story excellent. It stands on its own strength, meaning it contrasts, somewhat jarringly, with the rest of the volume. But I can't fault the story itself. Viva la difference!

So overall, an excellent anthology. It has it's weaknesses, but every anthology does. The strongest stories (Murphy, Wood, Jarvis, Berguño, Humphrey, Marvick, Clark, Paisley) will infiltrate your veins and seize your brain, just as one would expect from the theme. Cheers and bottoms up!

View all my reviews

__________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Reading: The Longue Durée

 Admittedly, I am not using the term "long durée" as Fernand Braudel did. I'm coopting the term and twisting it to my own ends (as any good author and historian will do), redefining and, more importantly for the present post, re-scaling it to reflect my love of reading and the puissance of certain texts in my mind (and sometimes my life, truth be told, as I have taken life lessons from some of these works). 

In a previous post, I had mentioned my goal of reading what is on my shelves currently, then re-reading some works alongside one another for the purposes of cranial cross-pollination, if you will. I think that many synergies lurk within certain pairings of books (or even triads) that multiply and expand single ideas with one another to create thought structures that are more than the sum of their parts. This is one thing I miss about graduate school (probably the thing I miss about graduate school): being able to devote time to a syllabus of study that allows me, in a concentrated amount of time, to bash ideas up against each other to see what sticks and what structures emerge from the "chaos". This might explain why I like some of the music I like.

But I'm not here to write about music. I want to write about reading, if only briefly. 

I read extensively, in a fairly broad range of styles, genres, and topics. I love reading. But, to be honest, I love reading writing that makes me have to meditate, to contemplate. If I'm not reaching for a dictionary, at least occasionally, I am usually dis-satisfied. I read to both be entertained and to learn. I read to stoke the fires of my own imagination and creativity. I read for the magic of it all. 

Currently, on Goodreads (still my favorite social media and maybe, someday, my only social media), I show 1035 books read. This is probably a hundred or more too short, as I can't remember or record all the books I enjoyed as a young person. These are books I've read through in all but a handful of cases (where my loathing for the work in question was so strong that I had to record that I hated it). I supposed that the works I did hate served some sort of utilitarian purpose, even if it was simply to hone my disdain for certain styles of writing or, more properly, to sharpen my sense of righteous indignation towards writers who "cheated" me with a dis-satisfactory bait-and-switch or Deus ex Machina. 

Other works, however, stuck with me. Even if they didn't strike me as I finished them, they haunted me, over time. I could not get them out of my head. When I have an idle moment and can think upon things, these books come back into my mind, unbidden. They are alive in my mind, as it were. They have an enduring presence that I cannot shake. They may not be my favorite works - indeed some of them I found excruciating to read (I'm looking at you, Joyce) - but they have stuck with me and they just won't get out of my head. This is what I mean by The Longue Durée. These works have impressed me in the long term enough that they crowd the literary memory spaces of my brain. For whatever reason, to me, they are important and lasting. When my thoughts fall slack to their lowest ebb, these are the books that seem to almost accidentally slip into my head. They form the base of my intellect; they are the undergirding to how I think. 

This list could be very, very long, but I'm trying to keep it very short for the sake of brevity and concision. I am inevitably excluding a lot of important books and I will, no doubt, regret the inevitable omissions. In passing, I note how few of these books are actually fiction (which I write). In all honesty, there is little fiction that sticks in my mind enough to be considered Longue Durée, so if you see a fictional work below, do note that it must have made a huge impression on me. Again, I cannot necessarily pinpoint exactly why that is. But here is my very short list, which I will amend after my grand experiment of re-reading concludes (hopefully in early to mid-2023) - in no particular order:

Hamlet's Mill, Giorgio de Santillana

Enchanted Night, Steven Millhauser

Searching for Memory Daniel L. Schacter

The Roots of Civilization: the Cognitive Beginnings of Man's First Art, Symbol and Notation, Alexander Marshack

Three Novels by Samuel Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett

The Voice of the Air, John Howard

Ulysses, James Joyce

Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology, Valerie Ahl

Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino

Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, William Barrett

Stealing Cthulhu, Graham Walmsley

Sub Rosa, Robert Aickman

The White Goddess, Robert Graves

The Academy Outside of Ingolstadt, Damian Murphy

What are your Longue Durée books? Post them in the comments!

If you'd like to lend a hand to my creative endeavors, here's your chance! 

________________________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Downsize, Upscale?

 My oldest son is a Spartan. He does very much with very little. I've often said that if I were to have to survive an apocalypse, I'd want him by my side. He's incredibly resourceful, loves to learn new things, and is excellent at figuring out how things work. All of my kids share that trait to one extent or another, but my oldest son . . . well, he's a Spartan in all the good ways.

When he was young, we were a resource-poor family. I was an undergrad when he was born, but when he was a toddler and young child, I was either in graduate school or had just dropped out. We didn't have much at all. I recall one month where, for several weeks, we subsisted mostly on beans and rice, because that's what we had. I'm guessing that those formative years of "want" were what spurred him to make do. 

Now I'm older and more financially secure. We live comfortably in the middle class, pretty much right in the middle, if I understand American salaries correctly. We have what we need and a good amount of what we want. Well, maybe not a "good" amount. Sometimes, when I'm not struggling with having been brought up in the '70s and '80s, when conspicuous consumption became a reachable norm for the middle class, I think I have just a little too much. But just a little.

I think back to times when I had less. And, without growing sentimental or nostalgic, I think I can say that I was only slightly less content than I am now. Any discontent back then really arose from not having enough to meet all of my family's needs, having to go into debt to survive - you know. You know. If you've never been there, well, don't say so because I have a hard time respecting people who haven't gone through hard times, whether financially, emotionally, or with health issues. I like fighters who've had to fight.

But I look around me and I think that maybe I've become a bit too spoiled. 

For example: Books. As you can tell, I review a lot of books. And I own physical copies of almost all the books I own. I think I've actually reviewed a digital book maybe three times? The other book reviews here (and there are a few) were all from physical books - probably 90% owned by me (the other 10% would be library books I borrowed). Now, I have a wishlist of books. But it's only 20 books long at any given time. I use Goodreads to maintain my list. But I do not allow myself more than 20 books on my "to be read" shelf. Otherwise, I just have a long list of books I'm never actually going to read. Besides, forcing myself to only have 20 on the list makes me REALLY think about what I want to read. 

And yet, I think I have more than I need. 

I've promised myself to re-read some of those books. And I have a nascent plan to read some of them in close proximity to each other to see what that does to my brain and my creativity. For example, I want to re-read Robert Graves The White Goddess at the same time I re-read Hamlet's Mill (which I have not reviewed here yet). These books are thematically similar-ish, but far enough apart to cause some fruitful cognitive dissonance, to trick the brain into seeing new patterns and angles heretofore unforeseen, in this case involving themes of myth and myth-creation.

Other groups of books I plan on re-reading together:

Piranesi + The City of Dreaming Books (I haven't reviewed the latter, but I feel that the tone in both of these books is very similar, at least in the corners of my memory they are - we shall see)

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination + The Secret Life of Puppets + Hieroglyphics + The Spectacle of the Void (I almost think this could be a bibliography for an undergraduate college class on . . . what, exactly?)

Swann's Way + Finnegan's Wake (neither of which I have read in full. This pairing might kill me.)

etc.

You get the idea . . . 

In order to keep my focus, I'm going to have to resist the temptation to buy new books. And I still plan on keeping my "to be read list" down to 20 books and no more. 

So my tentative plan is this: I will read the books I physically have and not order new books. When i have read through all the books I physically have now, I will concentrate on re-reading books in the combinations I've listed above and a few others. I think I might try this (deep breath) for . . . a year? I honestly don't know if I can make it. But I have to try.

Extending this further, I will try to forbear from buying (even deeper breath) new roleplaying supplements or games. And new vinyl records.

Do I just hate myself? Maybe. But I also think that if I hold off on those things and use what I already have, a few things will (hopefully) happen.

1. I will learn to more fully appreciate what I already have.

2. I will utilize what I have in new ways, especially as I "use" the media vis-a-vis each other to explore new brain spaces.

3. I will be forced to create more. If I want something new to read, I'll need to write it myself. If I want a new game or adventure to play, I'll need to make it myself. If I want new music - well, that one's easier because of bandcamp and youtube, but really, I'm hoping to force myself to pick up that darned guitar and play it more often.

4. I will save my monthly allowance that I would normally spend on books, games, and vinyl and save up to buy myself some things I've promised myself I would get but never have: a working old timey typewriter, for instance. Or a *decent* phonograph (do they even call them that anymore?) and speakers, along with some wishlist vinyl. 

5. As part of this effort, I will sell some or give away the books I feel I don't really need anymore. And I've got some knicknacks and gewgaws that I thought were a great idea at the time that I can sell on Ebay and maybe save even more for a final splurge at the end of this exercise.

It's going to be my turn to be the Spartan. We'll see how I fare.

__________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Sacrum Regnum II

 

Sacrum Regnum II by Daniel Corrick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After being entirely blown away by Sacrum Regnum I, I was excited, but a touch guarded, when approaching this second volume in the series. While I saw a lot of names that I normally love, I was wary of the sequel, worried that it would either fall flat or "jump the shark".

My fears were completely unfounded. This second volume absolutely lives up to the promise of the first. My only disappointment is that a volume three was never compiled.

But why focus on what might have been, when we can focus on what is? And this volume is absolutely brilliant! By that, I don't mean bright and shiny, oh no, this volume is dark, in places very dark. I mean smart, intelligent, dignified, and, dare I say it: literary? It is, with the first volume, a Symbolist master stroke, and a worthy bow to the Symbolist and Decadent literature of the past, without being enslaved to it.

My praise for Sacrum Regnum II does not, however, mean that I felt entirely comfortable with it. Not by a long shot.

For example, I feel, as the kids say these days, "seen" after reading John Howard's tale of a slightly neurotic numismatist, "Into An Empire". Yes, I saw myself in the protagonist on several levels. John, how did you get into my head? This hits too close to home for this mildly neurotic wannabe numismatist. I even restrict myself to pre-1776 Germanic state silver coins in a similar manner to the story's main character, Payton. Seriously, I feel naked before your pen. That is to say, I could completely immerse myself in Payton.

Next, "The Human Cosmos" is Charles Wilkinson at his best. Strong echoes of Italo Calvino ring throughout, and that is some of the highest praise I can give a story. An ambiguous story (in the best way possible) of fabulism that ends poised on the knifes' edge of dark and light. I am reminded of my favorite quote by Calvino: I am a Saturn who dreams of being a Mercury, and everything I write reflects these two impulses. Wilkinson hits both sides of that balance at the same time.

Colin Insole's "Dreams from the Apple Orchards" (which I have read before) is an excellent example of psychogeography, where the landscape itself pulses with the negative energy of those who lived their before. The setting is the character, the setting that has seen so much of corruption and baleful intent. A thin veneer separates the trappings of civilization from the base layer of chaos beneath.

I had wanted to read Thomas Strømsholt's fiction before, but this was my first chance to do so. "Szépassony-völgy" packs an unexpected gut punch. Strømsholt layers a seed of utterly mindless random brutality under a veneer of mythic legend and romantic nostalgia and longing for past love. The contrast is striking and invokes a strong existential response in the reader, leaving one's head reeling. Powerful.

An entire section about author Quentin S. Crisp, replete with an interview with the author and a piece of short fiction, entitled Crispiana opens a window into the brain of the author, at least what he's willing and able to share about his brain. An interesting peek at an author whose work I quite like. As with the first volume of Sacrum Regnum, I love the collection of fiction, non-fiction, poetics, and reviews. An eclectic selection, but with it's own firm voice.

The Poetics section in this volume contains work by Mark Valentine, Loha Connell, and Bethany van Rijswijk, along with a translation of Stefan Grabinski's "Red Magda".

Ah, kids. Can't live with them, can't bury a fire hatchet in their forehead when they are possessed by fiery arson demons without feeling some degree of guilt. Watcha gonna do with "Red Magna"? This brilliant (pardon the pun) translation will lodge itself in your brain, just like an axe. The effect is no less painful. I did warn that some of these works go to very dark places.

Mark Valentine turns his always-keen critical eye on novelist Claude Houghton in his article "The Stranger Who Opens the Door - The Novels of Claude Houghton". As is usual, the reader is sent off scurrying to find the work of another forgotten author. Valentine is an archaeologist of literary treasures that need to again see the light of day. This essay is no exception!

Martin Echter's essay on the aesthetic principles espoused and practiced by Hanns Heinz Ewers is an exemplary examination of not only the writer's oeuvre, but of the undergirding philosophy that drove Ewers' work. A marvelous examination of an incredibly underrated author.

I had read, with interest, Mark Valentine's essay on Mary Butts from his collection Haunted by Books, whom I had not heard of to that point, with interest. Now, with Nigel Jackson's essay "Obscene Ikons: Desacralization & Counter-Tradition in the Work of Mary Butts," I have felt compelled to add her complete short fiction to my To-Be-Read list. For those who know me well, you know I don't add things to my TBR list lightly. I curate it a great deal (and am often chided for how few books I have on my TBR list on Goodreads). So, yes, I expect something special from Mary Butts' work.

. . . and the review of Georg Trakl's The Last Gold of Expired Stars in the book review section cements my decision to buy that book, as well. Thankfully, it was already on my TBR list.

There is some high praise for The Ten Dictates of Alfred Tessler by D.P. Watt. But isn't Watt always deserving of high praise? Yes. Absolutely.

A critically-constructive eye is placed upon Alex Miles' debut weird fiction collection The Glory and the Splendour. I haven't read said collection, but the assessment here seems fair, yet firm: there's potential here, but it needs work. It's strangely refreshing to see a review that is measured and doesn't overstate the work being reviewed, but sees raw potential.

Another balanced, insightful review, this time of Quentin S. Crisp's All God's Angels, Beware! clearly explains what it is that makes Crisp's work tick. I have yet to see a clearer explanation of how he does what he does when he writes. It is unique, quirky, weird, and charming at the same time. It has heart and this essay shows how and why this is done. An important essay on Crisp's fiction, to say the least!

When I read through the list of forthcoming books here, I am reminded of how good of a year 2013 was for literary fiction of the sort that I love. Halcyon days, to be sure. Hopefully, they'll return. In some small way that's happening, but we need an updated equivalent to Sacrum Regnum or an outright resurrection of the same to really seal the deal, as far as I'm concerned. Where is our Sacrum Regnum? And here I go again, pining for the past by longing for the future. I'm tempted to try to make it happen myself. It's been a while since I've edited . . . hmm . . .

View all my reviews

__________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

2020 on Goodreads

2020 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

2020 did not suck . . . as far as reading went. Au contraire, my methodology for limiting my "to read" shelf seems to be working. The secret is: I don't let my list get longer than 30 books. If I have 30 books on my TBR shelf on Goodreads, and I want to read another, I have to remove one. This causes me to be very careful in my pre-assessment of books. I read a variety of reviews (eschewing those with spoilers, of course) and give a good hard think to whether or not I want my "current crush" to displace something else on the list. My pickiness has paid off. I'm going to keep doing this. It also ensures that if I have had something on the list for a while, I better save up my geld and spring for that book before too long, or it might be pushed off the list by something more desirable.

To quote Devo:

Ain't it true
There's room for doubt
Maybe some things that you can do without
And that's good . . .

Another good thing is that I started the year reading Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. This set the tone for my year in many ways. I took two social media "fasts", one in February, one in December, which allowed me to read and write a lot more and focus on some projects that I had been wanting to accomplish for, in some cases, many years, including the publication of my books The Varvaros Ascensions and The Simulacra and the inclusion of a story in an anthology which I was very excited about. I was also able to spend time handwriting letters and snail mailing my favorite literary people (one of which I owe a letter, still). With my resolve hardened to spend more time in the analog world, I hit the books harder than even I anticipated.

I read so many great books that it's hard to narrow it down to my absolute favorites, but among them were definitely:

John Howard's The Voice of the Air

Benjamin Tweddell's A">http://forrestaguirre.blogspot.com/20... Crown of Dusk and Sorrow

Damian Murphy's Psalms of the Magistrate

The Journal of the London School of Pataphysics, #21>

Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams

Colin Insole's Valerie and Other Stories

Louis Marvick's Dissonant Intervals

If you held a gun to my head (please don't), I would probably pick Howard's work as my favorite. I won't go on about it here - go read the review (then buy yourself a copy and read the book)!

Were there disappointments? Sure. I DNF Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, and my expectations for Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life were probably unrealistic, going into it. But I didn't read a bad book all year. Unsuccessful? Yes. Bad? No, not really.

For Christmas, my wife bought me five books. That, added to the 15 or so on my shelf, could last all year, who knows? No, who am I kidding? I'll buy more. But only up to 30 at a time! I have my limits!

Note that many of the books on my list this year and all of my favorites listed above, are from boutique small presses. I really do believe in getting the money to the authors directly, whenever possible, and to the publication houses, as the next best thing. Especially when people are struggling, I want my money to go directly to those who are producing such beautiful works, whenever possible. Yes, they are expensive. Yes, they are sometimes difficult to get a hold of. And, yes, I do sometimes buy from that one online book distributor. But I'm trying to keep it direct, as much as possible, since I'm in a position to do so. I know not everyone can do that (did I mention that many of these books are expensive), but if you can, please support the small guys out there. They need it now, more than ever, and I'd hate to see the wonderful sort of literature they are publishing and the beautiful editions that they are producing disappear.

With that, I should be spending waaaaaay less time worrying about the news in 2021, whether because of regime change or because I'm burying my head in the sand during a social media fast (I plan on "fasting" every two weeks for a two week duration, at least for the first part of this year). Oh, and I should mention: I'm not counting Goodreads as "social media" when it comes to the fast. I'm always up for intelligent conversation (or outright goofiness) when talking with readerly friends. You guys are the best!

View all my reviews

Slow/Fast

 A few weeks back, I announced on Twitter that I needed to take another break. I entirely forgot to post something here. No wonder, with how busy life has been! Hence, part of the need for a social media fast. Really, I'm burned out on the electioneering. I have unsubscribed from all the mailing lists I was on. I had decided, weeks ago, that no matter what, I needed a break. After reading about the benefits of a social media fast and having done one this past winter, I decided it was time again. I'm glad the election *seems* to be going the way I had hoped (though I am very disappointed with the Democrats senate showing - *yawn* - they need to do better), so I can leave it off without a ton of anxiety. More than anything, I am looking forward to being away from the twitter storm, a storm that I, admittedly, helped create. So, I won't be stirring any chaos there for about a month. In any case, I'm not nearly so nervous to begin the social media fast as I was the first time through, back in February. A little nervous, but not so bad. The world didn't fall apart while I was away and I was able to get a lot of projects done. This time, I have several writing projects to do, at least one more blog post about my 2019 trip to Europe, maybe two more if I have time, an RPG post or two (one for DCC, one for Carcosa), and, yes, a little touch up to do on the Esoteric Denim.

Furthermore, in an attempt to get my physique to where I really want it to be, I'm going to be doing water fasting each weekend this month. I've got this last eight to ten pounds of fat I need to burn off and it's not coming off easily. Yes, I've lost - good grief - over thirty five pounds since I began seriously watching my weight a few years ago, but I need to bust through the floor and get rid of some of this extra junk. I've been working out regularly and will continue to do so while fasting, so as to build, rather than lose muscle. But on the a good chunk of the weekends, I will be only taking in water. Ketosis, here I come!

One thing that will make it a bit easier this weekend, anyway, is that I am participating in Gameholecon virtually. I'll be playing in 2 DCCRPG games, 1 AD&D1e game, 2 Call of Cthulhu games, 1 Empire of the Petal Throne game, and a game of Numenera, which I've never played before. I always like to try at least one game I haven't played before, so this year, it's Numenera. I'll see what all the fuss is about. 

Speaking of games, I ran the new Casting the Runes RPG on Halloween day for some good friends (who I know are not infected). The scenario I prepared was loosely based on the story "The Tractate Middoth" by M.R. James, but with a twisted folk-horror ending in which players needed to make some tough moral (or immoral, as the case may be) decisions. I love pinning players in a corner where their characters have to make a difficult decision and they need to justify that decision. This one ended up with the human sacrifice of an innocent victim (though the innocent victim was quite a jerk) to bring another person back to life. Always fun to see the players squirm a bit as they discuss the pros and cons. That's what makes a true horror game, huh?

It will be weird, not being on twitter, instagram, or facebook for the month. Again, I'm not counting Goodreads as social media, though it technically is. There's something qualitatively different about the conversations that I have there. Facebook is not quite dead to me, but its comatose. Twitter I will be "cleansing" and continue to be careful about who I follow. Instagram . . . it's alright. But I'm really starting to lean into blogs again. If I thought I could get enough followers here, I'd just blog and roam around other people's blogs, but it's a bit like walking around a metropolis that's been hit by a little tornado. Yes, there's a lot of activity, but when you turn the corner and see some of the ruins and bodies . . . *shudder*. But maybe we can make a go of it, I dunno.

PS: Thought I'd change the theme here - because: because.

__________

If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!