your favourite wayward dilettante has begun the last samurai. so far so delirious
― imago, Friday, 23 November 2018 22:02 (five years ago) link
✔️
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Saturday, 24 November 2018 00:40 (five years ago) link
as the person who actually started this thread I have to say that i finished it at least six months after the schedule I'd set.
― brokenshire (jed_), Saturday, 24 November 2018 01:09 (five years ago) link
finished the book, that is. i could finish this thread in way less than six months.
― brokenshire (jed_), Saturday, 24 November 2018 01:10 (five years ago) link
Gets off at Farringdon - how like a man
this is some exquisite deep-London humour. i cackled
― imago, Monday, 3 December 2018 10:49 (five years ago) link
big takeaway from the first 100 pages: poor Sybilla being the world's best tutor before the noughties tuition boom, she'd have definitely been able to afford ice-cream
― imago, Monday, 3 December 2018 11:34 (five years ago) link
holy fuck the yamamoto chapter
― imago, Monday, 3 December 2018 13:40 (five years ago) link
i know right
― na (NA), Monday, 3 December 2018 15:59 (five years ago) link
trying think of a more bravura, high-art, firework-laden passage of writing I've read recently; drawing a blank
and to think there's probably more to come
― imago, Monday, 3 December 2018 21:21 (five years ago) link
Maybe I should just give up on all the books I’ve been starting lately and just read this again.
― JoeStork, Monday, 3 December 2018 21:35 (five years ago) link
most amusingly, that chapter is based on a fictional Sunday Times interview that in reality would have had to span half the paper and been the best thing any print journal has ever contained
helen just has higher standards for everyone I guess
― imago, Monday, 3 December 2018 21:38 (five years ago) link
That’s pretty much it yeah
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Monday, 3 December 2018 21:52 (five years ago) link
She doesn't lack for astonishing bravura setpieces does she?
While the HC/RD bit (which I haven't even finished yet) is obviously some sort of literary pinnacle, I do feel I should observe that the best bit of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, which came out only a few years before, was also a long and dazzlingly fabulistic reported narrative about a couple of scholars (astronomers rather than philologists) involving impromptu flying devices in China and some complex and ambiguous moral lesson. I know I shouldn't compare everything to Pynchon but
― imago, Monday, 10 December 2018 20:51 (five years ago) link
Also of COURSE I should have anticipated L's banter with S once he turned 11. Delightful :D
― imago, Monday, 10 December 2018 20:52 (five years ago) link
ah man this gets intense
final chapter is perfect, cheers-to-the-rafters stuff. i cried a bit
― imago, Wednesday, 12 December 2018 23:10 (five years ago) link
when Tom Cruise presents the Emperor with Katsumoto's sword? ;_;
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 12 December 2018 23:17 (five years ago) link
― imago, Monday, December 3, 2018 6:40 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
otm
almost halfway through, pretty sure this is the best book i've ever read that's not the magic mountain
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 15:53 (five years ago) link
part of it is that it kind of feels like a great work of criticism on top of being a novel, so of course i'm extremely taken with it
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 15:55 (five years ago) link
I should reread sometime next year, especially if a certain career move comes through.
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 16:26 (five years ago) link
happy to hear you're enjoying the book, Brad :)
― flopson, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 21:26 (five years ago) link
a certain career move
Samurai?
― jmm, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 21:28 (five years ago) link
maybe!
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 21:29 (five years ago) link
i think i would have had more success in turning people onto this if she hadn't named it The Last Samurai
― flopson, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 21:29 (five years ago) link
she didn't, she named it "The Seven Samurai"
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:02 (five years ago) link
should have named it Tetrakaidecapod tbah
― imago, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:05 (five years ago) link
me: you should read this book The Last Samuraithem: lol like the Tom Cruise movieme: no it's this really cool book about a child prodigy and his mo-them: yeah yeah sure i'll check it out *never reads it*
― flopson, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:11 (five years ago) link
of all the child prodigies born in london in early 1987, ludo is probably my favourite. he didn't end up wasting his life chatting shit about indie on the internet. at least, so we hope
actually of course he didn't, he wasn't coddled and then ruined by private school
― imago, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:18 (five years ago) link
imago :( it's ok, Ludo's fictional and anyway the default trajectory for a gifted kid is to grow up into an average adult.
that said even if you aren't a child prodigy I think one of the things I took away from reading this is that it's always possible to just sit down and do something hard that you want to do, even if nobody gives a shit. Like, not for nothing did you upload your novel to createspace. The challenge is finding the time when you have to survive under capitalism but you can still make gestures at the ineffable yknow
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:27 (five years ago) link
:)
the novel definitely gave me strength more than it made me wonder what could have been!
― imago, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:28 (five years ago) link
This is a bit of a basic bitch question about this book, BUT, I loved the introduction (10 pages or so) then immediately struggled with the first chapter and the new narrator, and gave up. Does it stay that full-on for the whole book?
― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:34 (five years ago) link
nearly every other chapter is a dramatic shift in tone/style but it never returns to the style of the prologue
― flopson, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 22:57 (five years ago) link
had maybe 1 or 2 stylistic misgivings over the first ~70 pages but they all resolve with extreme suddenness and the rest of the book is nothing short of gripping
― imago, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 23:17 (five years ago) link
silby otm
one of the great things about this book is that it makes "genius" a completely unintimidating inconvenient mundane thing like everything else in life
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:13 (five years ago) link
― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, December 18, 2018 3:34 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
sibylla's narrating the prologue, so i don't understand your question
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:14 (five years ago) link
― flopson, Tuesday, December 18, 2018 3:57 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i also disagree with this, sibylla's whole thing with liberace is as much of a yarn as the prologue
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:15 (five years ago) link
agree to disagree. i got like, mythical vibes from the prologue
― flopson, Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:26 (five years ago) link
don't know what a yarn means, but there are many parts of the book i would describe as 'yarns' yet not similar
― flopson, Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:27 (five years ago) link
i guess i don’t get it when the vibe of the prologue continues in the first chapter when sybilla picks up the thread with her father and her mother, it’s basically the same style
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:42 (five years ago) link
i am really good at spelling sibylla wrong on the first try every time
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:43 (five years ago) link
i don’t necessarily even know what i mean but a yarn but i guess i mean when whenever this novel really slides into a mostly unbroken story. yamamoto part has that fuckin incredible power too
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:45 (five years ago) link
this just in: i unconsciously stole “yarn” from the time blurb on the back cover
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:46 (five years ago) link
maybe the thing is that with this book i feel like i am encountering a brain not a series of styles
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, 19 December 2018 03:54 (five years ago) link
haha i remember that from the back cover now you mention it!
― flopson, Wednesday, 19 December 2018 04:08 (five years ago) link
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, December 18, 2018 10:42 PM (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
oh i think i meant this whole part
― flopson, Wednesday, 19 December 2018 04:27 (five years ago) link
Ah, the first chapter felt so different and more difficult to me tha the prologue, that I assumed they were different narrators.
But I’ve just rebought it so it’s now my Christmas holiday read.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 19 December 2018 10:19 (five years ago) link
ludo isn't like me anyway, he's like our dearly departed nakhchivan
― imago, Wednesday, 19 December 2018 20:24 (five years ago) link
i'm in the 11yo ludo narration rn. been thinking about recommending this book to my mom bc she's a former teacher who was v frustrated with the educational system but also i think she'd just like ludo a lot ("here mom enjoy this 500 page experimental novel some of which is in japanese and greek")
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, 20 December 2018 14:58 (five years ago) link
also i cannot overstate how much of a blast this book is. it's so fun! i never want to stop reading it
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, 20 December 2018 15:08 (five years ago) link
also i studied japanese for five years (but: almost a decade ago at this point) and lol at how much it is *not* helping me with the japanese sections, mostly bc ludo and sibylla immediately attack it from the angle of kanji-memorization and grammar, which is the complete inverse of how it was taught to me
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, 20 December 2018 15:10 (five years ago) link
but i think that's part of the point (also it's not like the sections are hard or aren't ever thoroughly translated), what with sibylla trying to develop this linear approach to mastery and ludo skipping straight to learning the characters for "turtle" and "gloom"
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, 20 December 2018 15:19 (five years ago) link