I have signed up for GoodReads because I thought it would be a procrastinatory aid less diverting than a videogame, and because I’ve been worried (well, not very worried) over the past x years that I have forgotten some huge proportion of the books I have ever read, and would like some system to suggest books that I have read to me, based on other books which I have also read. GoodReads is very good at this, and this afternoon I have done no work and added two hundred books I have read, because it is very important that the internet learns about all the books I have read, very important indeed.

The and of A. to in, - I, that is, with you.
My, for me, have-not, as his/her are.
It? From on no all he - this.
But will she, we, at was, your,
they, our or one, their (there!) be so.
Who by? us! when our

Thou, O -

Them upon, like if nor what, an now
Come. Had, has love, old, go such? Here? How?
Man, they about am. Some these up him. Do were into.
Let men over where its more -
Shall through know would God. Light.
Song. Great. Seen, can night -
Never. Thee - little day. Say.
Eyes, then. Young, yet heart new, good,
white, hath still wind. Lady?

Oh. Dead.

Even than many soul, sun, against time, see things gone.
May, though. Long, once, though any came.
Down’em. Full place set before.
Comes high, make, save ever made take thing.
Well ye. Air clear. Death king.
Life said, three back, own should, years.
Among left, mind much other thought.

Tree. Which days get lands? Last women? Words?
World after, beneath, bright. Sing. Speak.
Two very (water) fair, green, mine. Why, again?
Alone. Art, beauty, De. Give most. Nothing.

Sea woman. Ah. Also. Away, been.
Being Gods. Think. Turn ways, because, could enough -
First, keep lips - might off thousand too.
Gold head. Look, name. Only small tell: those waters,
Without word. Another black earth. Find friend.
House land. Leaves, people, songs. Sorrow thus, till ‘tis.

Trees. Under, between. Free horses knew.
Lo! Red rest, silver, swift, went above. End,
Half-just. River singing: ‘Together, unto Audiart.’
Bring, call, desire. Did each goes got?
Known lot. O’ -

Sleep way, While whom age amid ask, drink.
Face, far. Fear feet, grass. Heard quite read.
Sky. That’s - wine. Year, better bit.
Colour crying dark flame. Flowers found. Hast hear?
Live, meet. Music. Must none pay? Radway
Says: ‘since spring walked, whose wide work -
Aside: beautiful, beyond blue, doth -‘

Else forth friends, going, held Mr. Pass right.

Roads.
Rose spread arms.
Birds brought delicate Des.
Does flow hair?
Hand; hour; lay; lost.
Mad Montague.

Power praise sound sweet.
Talk ten true vain whole winds.
Aye, behold.
Blood, books, born, broken, died four glory, grey.
Hold joy, ladies!

Leaf. Lie lies. Lord loved moon near. Remember. Walk
Within youth. Alf’s bed. Body. ‘Castle, certain.’
Cino city despite. Done. En every few fingers girls golden. Ha’!

Home hot. Knows mist. Move part. Quite rain. Rather
return. Rome round same. Saw sense. Shadow sort.
Speech, stand, there’s told toward turned wall.
Believe. Beziers bow. Close country. Delight.

Drunk, English, feel fellow fere. Fountain girl. Goddamm.
Goodly grown hundred. Kind laughter.
Lovers Maent met ‘mid North. ‘Pleasure, purple.’ Put second.
Silent, silk. Something south, strange, strong.
Taken times until wife.

Wood. Yellow, almost amber. Autumn.
Bear Bertrans’ brown case. Change children.
Clouds course crimson, dance deep dust, et falls.
Fields fire; gallows garden. Glad, hard hate.
Hell image kept late. Less men’s metal mouth moves neither.

Next: pale passed passion peace play. Poor road.
Sadness. Sell slow, St. Stars, swords, to-morrow truth.
Walls. Always America, ancient, behind best. Both bound.
Breath-care caught. Clash coeurs. Cold, coming, curious.
Cut! Damn.

Dear dew: die. Dogs don’t.
Dreams early fit folk form, ‘gainst gay
Gilded grave, having Heaven-hope. La.
Large leave Les. Lest living lover low.
Mate, morning, moving, naked - naught.
Nights, Nos, O’er.

Open. Pepita person. Press purifiez. Reach, ready Roman, run.
Sad sings Sir son: spirit stands state. Street sung,
Talking: ‘Th’ thing (thine) towers. War.
Wite, woe, wonder, write.’
Yes. Affairs. Already.
An’ Arnaut? Bitter bones.
Book breat. Can’t. Cloak cloud, coat, company.
Cool, cry dawn, dream dry. Eager, eternal,
Evening. Evil faces fact, faint, fashion fates.
Fish flood; folly. Foot. Forget game, ghosts,
Glass grace.

(There’s like ten more pages of this. I know: don’t call us, we’ll call you.)

The Onion AV Club thing on how to get into Steely Dan seems like some garbage. For one thing Gaucho is frankly the consummation of their aesthetic and if you don’t get that you’re missing the point. I don’t like any reading that doesn’t acknowledge the problematics oh god I am using that as a noun of their engagement with jazz. For ages I thought ‘Fez’ was about that, like that piece in Everything but the burden that talks about how Lily Tomlin was good enough to play a black woman without donning blackface. Then I realised it was about contraception.

The Men Who Stare At Mountains

In terms of its design, Skyrim bears a strikingly close resemblance to the accounts and reflections of the early sublime theorists. Of Addison’s list, only the vast uncultivated desert is missing, though in its stead Skyrim has frozen wastes and barren marshes. Moreover, the landscape is precisely as Burke describes it - rugged and negligent. The particular similarities between Skyrim’s design and the neoclassical theories of what can inspire sublime emotions make it an excellent example of how the sublime can be experienced in gaming, because the chroniclers of the sublime were not merely concerned with the emotional reaction to such grandeur, but how to replicate these sensations in works of art.

…

Eventually though, we overcome this feeling of paralysis at the scale of the game, and begin to explore it properly. Kant wrote, “In order for the mind to be attuned to the feeling of the sublime, it must be receptive to ideas.” Indeed, after that initial sense of being overwhelmed, we become attuned to the game, we receive its ideas and in turn create ideas of our own. For players, games like Skyrim are story-engines, just as the Grand Tours became story-engines for the men who stared at mountains.

tag this “there is definitely nothing wrong with this argument”

I mean, I’m just saying.

I am from Mass. I can tell you all about it! Are you eating well? There are good places but you need to look hard.

I left already, I’m back in Oxford as of this morning. That last post was probably unclear; I was there for a funeral and barely left the Boston suburbs. It was weird to leave a bizarrely sunny New England and find the old one, in my absence, had dropped to minus ten centigrade; when the plane broke through the cloud cover (I’d just woken up) my first thought was the landscape below was being presented in monochrome.

I don’t know about eating well but I ate a whole bunch and enjoyed it — there are certain needs mostly related to high-calorie takeout food which are much harder to quell in England than they are in the States, and every time I’ve been my resolve to not indulge fails within about a day. I flew back with a bunch of tempeh and soy chorizo from Trader Joe’s in my duffel, having resolved to undergo a couple weeks of vegan penance for all the crap I ate. Like e.g. the Trader Joe’s in question occupies a space in a strip mall just across from my girlfriend’s lowbrow Mexican joint of choice, which has no queso fresco but does have a chili con queso apparently made of a foodlike product called ‘Velveeta’ (it was delicious.) Good Mexican food is very rare in this country; good bad Mexican food is impossible.

What if the greatest 20th-century children’s author were to present us with an intractable moral knot?

The disgraced children’s author William Mayne died in 2010, some 57 years after the publication of Follow the Footprints, the first of his more than a hundred books, none of them for adults.

I found a half dozen or so of his books in the warehouse not long after: Cuddy, Low Tide, Antar and the Eagles, The Last Bus, another very young readers one I forget, the first edition of Earthfasts. I’d never read Mayne as a child, though when I read a handful of them in my late teens I had a queasy recognition of the half-remembered BBC adaptation of the last. Last year I was reading them and trying to organize my thoughts around them, and like everything else I do it got back-burnered — (nb. this would tend to imply that I actually have projects which are front-burnered, which would be a lie) — anyway, Mark Sinker, who is a fantastic critic and who knows a great deal more about the subject than I do, has beaten me to it. Mayne is a great author in a British strain of children’s fiction I don’t think exists anymore, and he’s critically under-discussed for at least two huge reasons, — one logistical and one moral — and I suspect a handful of small ones. This is here for a couple of reasons: one, to remind me to find that small stack of books; and two, because if any of the couple dozen people who read this are interested in the topic, they should go read the above.

I am, or have been, briefly, in Massachusetts; I’m leaving tomorrow evening sometime. It may or may not be worth sharing that the first thing I saw when I got out of the airport was a guy roasting a full size Giants player in effigy. I’d never actually seen the Superbowl before; it’s a very odd thing. I don’t think there’s a sporting event that has a whole cultural conversation surrounding it the same way in England; obviously we have sporting events that are culturally a big deal but the whole discourse (oy) that comes into play with the halftime performance, the ads, Tom Brady on the front page of both Boston papers every day I’ve been here, that’s an odd one. I know these are things completely naturalised to citizens here and I’m not complaining; I think the ways the money and the thought surrounding the Superbowl function are probably healthier than same in the FA Cup final or whatever, though I suspect a larger proportion of our population actively gives a shit about that. It’s just different. Probably relevant to note that I spent about ninety minutes walking entranced around a Stop and Shop, you know? There are certain types of not particularly foreign foreignness that I get stuck on. There are squirrels in the roofing, in this house, and in the attic, where I am sitting, I can hear them while I type. 

I wrote a thing for the not-so-great Oxford graduate review of books thing and they edited it and I don’t like it anymore, I am sure this feeling is a novel one that has not been felt by anyone before