Finally, Some Books
Feb. 15th, 2020 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pshaw_ravenRecently at the library, I checked out a copy of Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Genius and Mysterious Life of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery. So far it is absolutely living up to expectations and, if you're a Goreyphile, I would definitely recommend it. I developed a fascination with Gorey's drawings when I found a copy of a collection of ghost stories he'd illustrated (not The Haunted Looking Glass) and of course a collection of his own books. I also had a diet of pen-and-ink illustrators and engravers that I consumed as a kid, so Sir John Tenniel, James Montgomery Flagg, and Thomas Nast also contributed to my tendency to scritchy-scratchy hatched and crosshatched styles. Having a digital tablet has only provided a minor correction to that habit, but it allows me to draw scritchy-scratchy crosshatched things in a vast range of colors.
Anyway, reading that led me to pick up a copy of Aesthetes and Decadents of 1890: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose edited by Karl Beckson. I used to have a copy of this but have had to replace due to Ex Husband keeping it. He also kept my Norton Shakespeare, not that I am at all bitter or still ruminating over how he kept my Shakespeare, that fucking jackass. (Ex Husband, I mean, not Will.) So my copy is an updated 1990s edition that, unfortunately, has been annotated and scribbled in by someone else. Their observations seem decent so I'm not as bothered by them, but it was the least written-in and least damaged copy they had. Many of the others all seemed to have a break in the spine, all in the same spot. I typically manage to read without cracking the spines, but it requires a certain amount of care in opening and flexing the book and I know not everyone is as ridiculously obsessive about it as I am. ANYWAY. It also includes some of the poets who're considered "Uranians," and the obligatory Aubrey Beardsley drawings, so on the whole a worthwhile purchase if you're so inclined.
Relentless Forward Progress by Bryon Powell and Finding Ultra by Rich Roll also made it home with me, since there's no better way to spend your non-running time than by reading books about running. I will never be that fast, and I will never likely be considering even remotely "elite," but unless something catastrophic happens to me, I intend to continue running until something forces me to stop. I'm not in this to merely lose weight or be healthy. Running has been one of the best things I have ever done for the my horrendous mental health and my almost non-existent self esteem. I like finisher medals, I like racing, and I like the excitement leading up to an event, but even if all that stopped I'd still keep running just for the sheer physical, animal pleasure of it. As I said, I'm not that fast, and my form probably looks less like a sprinting cheetah gracefully bounding over the grasslands and more like a housecat having a seizure, but I am having fun.
Then there is Sangharakshita's commentary of the Noble Eightfold Path, Vision and Transformation - he's normally a very scholarly and somewhat dense to wade through. And finally, a Barnes & Noble edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, in their standard order, starting with A Study in Scarlet, and breaking between volumes one and two with the story where Doyle tries to kill off Holmes, but then has to bring him back because Sherlock fans are always going to be Like That.
The main thing I can see with Aesthetes and Decadents is that they switched the cover drawing from "The Stomach Dance" to "The Peacock Skirt," so it no longer has Salome with her tits out on it. Actually, I'm fairly biased on this, since "The Peacock Skirt" is one of my favorite Beardsley drawings, along with another from the same play, "J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan" both of which can be seen in insanely high resolution Here.
Anyway, reading that led me to pick up a copy of Aesthetes and Decadents of 1890: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose edited by Karl Beckson. I used to have a copy of this but have had to replace due to Ex Husband keeping it. He also kept my Norton Shakespeare, not that I am at all bitter or still ruminating over how he kept my Shakespeare, that fucking jackass. (Ex Husband, I mean, not Will.) So my copy is an updated 1990s edition that, unfortunately, has been annotated and scribbled in by someone else. Their observations seem decent so I'm not as bothered by them, but it was the least written-in and least damaged copy they had. Many of the others all seemed to have a break in the spine, all in the same spot. I typically manage to read without cracking the spines, but it requires a certain amount of care in opening and flexing the book and I know not everyone is as ridiculously obsessive about it as I am. ANYWAY. It also includes some of the poets who're considered "Uranians," and the obligatory Aubrey Beardsley drawings, so on the whole a worthwhile purchase if you're so inclined.
Relentless Forward Progress by Bryon Powell and Finding Ultra by Rich Roll also made it home with me, since there's no better way to spend your non-running time than by reading books about running. I will never be that fast, and I will never likely be considering even remotely "elite," but unless something catastrophic happens to me, I intend to continue running until something forces me to stop. I'm not in this to merely lose weight or be healthy. Running has been one of the best things I have ever done for the my horrendous mental health and my almost non-existent self esteem. I like finisher medals, I like racing, and I like the excitement leading up to an event, but even if all that stopped I'd still keep running just for the sheer physical, animal pleasure of it. As I said, I'm not that fast, and my form probably looks less like a sprinting cheetah gracefully bounding over the grasslands and more like a housecat having a seizure, but I am having fun.
Then there is Sangharakshita's commentary of the Noble Eightfold Path, Vision and Transformation - he's normally a very scholarly and somewhat dense to wade through. And finally, a Barnes & Noble edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, in their standard order, starting with A Study in Scarlet, and breaking between volumes one and two with the story where Doyle tries to kill off Holmes, but then has to bring him back because Sherlock fans are always going to be Like That.
The main thing I can see with Aesthetes and Decadents is that they switched the cover drawing from "The Stomach Dance" to "The Peacock Skirt," so it no longer has Salome with her tits out on it. Actually, I'm fairly biased on this, since "The Peacock Skirt" is one of my favorite Beardsley drawings, along with another from the same play, "J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan" both of which can be seen in insanely high resolution Here.
