Thanks, Kate!

Part two of the Adolescent Reading Habits.

aww. This account has been suspended. I was wondering if anyone would get pissy about copyright infringement.

Might be a bandwidth issue.

What Dana said. It's been both boingboinged and slashdotted.

James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." I almost gave myself a swirlie for that one.

total swirlie.

Do you know who Larry Levis was?

Oooh... I can't believe I left Roethke off my list. DOH.

Do you know who Larry Levis was?

Nope.

Paging Steph! Have you read the second Skulduggery Pleasant book? I just ordered it and wanted to know what you thought.

Not Steph, but I liked the second one as much as the first. Skulduggery is still essentially a very thin Remmington Steele with added magic, so it's all good. (Indeed, I sort of want someone to write Remmington Steele/Skulduggery crossover fic, which joins up the dots. 'Cause after all, we don't know what he looked like with his skin. And Pierce Brosnan is Irish...)

eta

Meanwhile (and I realise that there's a valid argument to be made for me asking this question over in Other Media, but the thing is it's SO VERY MUCH a lit geek thing): who's read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? And, more specifically, its latest incarnation: The Black Dossier? Because on the one hand, Moore just blows me away. And I want to talk/write/think about what he's doing in relation to Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels.

But also, the gollywog is pretty damn problematic, and I'm still mulling over how I feel about what Moore is doing (or rather, failing to do) with race in the books. But of course, there's the fact that he and Kevin are reflecting the societal attitudes and Western canon of the various periods they're writing about - I really wouldn't want some kind of Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman whitewashing of prejudice. But... the gollywog? Ngah. Head go boom.

Apparently he and Kevin are consciously trying to rehabilitate the image of the gollywog. Which... yeah, I'm not sure about that. I mean, I still remember being pole-axed when I heard that Robinsons Jam were no longer going to have the golly as their logo, because it was seen as racist - I had never ever, until that point, registered that gollywogs were supposed to represent actual humans. But that was as a child; as an adult, it's pretty disingenuous to pretend that it isn't a parody of a black man. I've just spent some time reading a very articulate and well-researched essay in response to the inclusion of this character, which filled me in on the history of minstrelsy (and I can still remember when the Black And White Minstrels were on telly in England every week) and its role in race relations. And - yeah. I think if Moore and O'Neill wanted to bring this in, then there might have been better ways to do it. It's pretty damned jarring, within a setting where (since Nemo left in Book II) everyone else is white.

That discomfort aside, though, this is a FABULOUS piece of work. I love the fact that the texture of the paper varies depending upon which 'found object' you're reading, I love the 3D section, I resent the fact that the vinyl disk that was supposed to be included was NOT included; the Bertie Wooster Meets Cthulu section made me laugh out loud, the Shakespeare folio was great - just the whole thing, structurally and as a game of spot-the-reference was terrific. And, Jesus, so densely packed! I've been reading frame-by-frame annotations thanks to the miracle of the Internet, and there are SO many things that went over my head (although lots that I did get, thank goodness).

....anyone?

...Bueller?

But of course, there's the fact that he and Kevin are reflecting the societal attitudes and Western canon of the various periods they're writing about

He does try to address this somewhat by having Nemo be unequivocally Not Western.

I think, if anything, Moore is hyperconscious about the tropes of genre. Particularly the historical (problematic) tropes.

Though he's been less focused in dealing with racial tropes than he has with sexist ones.

the Bertie Wooster Meets Cthulu section made me laugh out loud

When we first got our copy of The Black Dossier, Pete read that part out loud to me. Yes, doing character voices. He had to pause at one point while I tried to catch my breath because I was laughing so much.