Lucas Blogs About Books

Huh, I guess the library lost the Criterion Collection booklet. Wait a minute, this is the last Monday of the month, shouldn't this be Whan That Augustus ? It should, but you may recall that A Year of Unfortunate Events started to feel like a homework assignment after awhile. You may have complained about that at some point. I did. And since I'm taking a month off from The Canterbury Tales  I thought we could talk about A  Canterbury Tale instead.   So this is gonna be like that time when you talked about A Knight's Tale  last month? This is gonna be like that. Did a lot of people read that one? Nope! You know, I can't say as I'd heard of A Canterbury Tale  before. I'd heard of it, but I'd never seen it before. So let's talk about it. I'm game. A Canterbury Tale was written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (aka The Archers ) during WWII. It's a mystery in small town, but describing it that way...

Once again, I must comment on the badass cover. So, what's this book's deal? Well, the deal with Neoreaction a Basilisk  should be obvious from its subtitle: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right . But in case it isn't, it's a collection of essays by Elizabeth Sandifer concerning the origins and philosophical implications of the Alt-Right. Not some light summer reading then? Well, yes and no. While the subject matter is often quite serious, Sandifer's prose is engaging and accessible. For example, the first essay — from which the collection draws its title — is a lengthy and involved discussion of the texts that might be considered foundational to contemporary reactionary movements, with a lengthy digression comparing their prophetic mode to the poetry of William Blake; however, Sandifer's writing never becomes dry or academic. Partly because she makes liberal use of jokes and asides to show that while she's willing to take the arguments of the Alt-Right seriou...

Have you ever heard the writing advice, "Murder your darlings?" Is this in reference to the title of this post. It's not that precious is it? It's a little precious. Well, it's too late to change it. No, it isn't. It will be by the time this has been posted. No, it won't. You can edit your posts whenever you want. Whatever, I just wanted to talk about the way an author's toxic views can intrude on your enjoyment of their work. Specifically J.K. Rowling's? Yeah. You may recall that earlier this summer J.K. Rowling decided that she'd had enough of being called a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) just because she had previously liked transphobic social media posts, and had previously posted statements to her social media accounts using transphobic talking points. So she did what anyone who wanted to prove that she wasn't a bigot would do: she posted a diatribe to her website that doubled down on her previous sentiment...

You shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but this cover is dope! That's right, three posts in a row without Hypothetical Reader butting in. A blogger could get used to this. This week, I'm blogging about Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's debut novel, Kintu . According to the introduction by Aaron Bady (don't worry, I read the book before I read the intro), Kintu is the Great Ugandan Novel. I don't know enough about the Ugandan literary scene (or even contemporary African Literature at large) to make that judgment, but I can say that Kintu  is an engrossing novel It opens with the death of Kamu Kintu on Janurary 5th, 2004 at the hands of a vigilante mob after he is falsely accused of theft. It then jumps back to 1750, when his ancestor, Kintu Kidda was ppookino (this word is never translated, but it is clearly a title like governor or prefect) of a large territory in the Kingdom of Buganda. On a trip to pay homage to the new king, Kintu accidentally strikes...

wow! much penguin very classics Everyone has literary blindspots. For example, I read The Forever War  more than ten years before I read  Starship Troopers  (For the record, The Forever War is a much better novel, as far as I know it's not intended as a direct response to Starship Troopers , but it definitely answers the question: "What if Starship Troopers  had been a good book?"). But you know, sometimes checking in on a book that you'd previously dismissed is  rewarding, so it never hurts to give something a chance. Previously, I'd dismissed the work of Jane Austen as "rich people socializing" without ever reading it (okay, I'll own up to the fact that there was also more than a little casual sexism involved). But the  trailer for this year's film adaptation looked pretty funny. I still haven't seen it, but I've read the book, so let's see how that turned out. Now, remember, the works of Jane Austen have definitely passed t...