Last song: the credo from Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir (but that’s for choir rehearsal reasons. Not counting that, Long Time Running by the Tragically Hip)
Currently watching: E and I recently restarted Farscape, which is exactly as much of a fever dream as I remember (also oh my god Claudia Black)
Currently reading: Treason’s Harbour by Patrick O’Brian. By my count at book nine I am not even close to halfway through this long-running series but it is an excellent commuting read, especially if you like boats. I also recently read The Stars Undying, which I thought was fun and clever (but I’m also so clearly the target audience that it’s almost cheating).
Current obsession: The Dawnhounds, always and forever. That book wormed inside my head and rewrote the concept of obsession. Also E’s project, but that’s different.
Whale Shark Gliding Through Bioluminiscent Algae _ Mike Nulty
SPACE SHARK
[ID: A silent black and white video showing a whale shark swimming through black water studded with small dots of white, or bioluminescent algae. Combined with the white spots along the whale shark’s entire back, the video gives the strong impression that the shark is a being swimming through space. End ID]
Today I get to show my piece for the super ambitious Ladies of Literature, Volume 2! It features a TON of beautiful artwork dedicated to female authors and female characters. I chose one of my all-time favorite books, Garth Nix’s Lirael, and snuck in two females - the titular Lirael and the Disreputable Dog.
There is a gigantic Kickstarter going on to get the book printed (with just a few days to go!), so if you love female literary characters, I hope you’ll check it out (LINK)! And I’ve been interviewed by YA Interrobang for my piece too, if you wanna hear me wax poetic about how much I love Lirael (ANOTHER LINK!)!
for this course I’m teaching I selected both Iliad 24 and Odyssey 22 and it wasn’t planned but there’s something about the contrast that is really striking - I think the Odyssey is often seen as a softer and more accessible epic than the Iliad, but on this reread I’m struck by how Iliad 24 is Homeric epic at its most empathetic, and Odyssey 22 is Homeric epic at its most coldly, jarringly brutal. and there’s something to be said the way that the poem about rage ends with an act of profound and complicated humanity, while the poem about a complicated man (nearly) ends with an act of profound rage
thinking more about this and the dynamics of space also. Achilles’ tent is no proper oikos, and yet when Priam arrives there Achilles nevertheless treats him like a xenos at the doorstep of any good host - he takes him in and feeds him and gives him lodging for the night. and then Odysseus gets home to his real, proper oikos and he fills it with so many corpses that we almost forget for a second that we’re not still on the plain of Troy
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