Ex Libris Kirkland is my entirely self-centered way to keep track of what I read, what I enjoy, and what I want to remember.
📓 Recent Notes 📓
Really great sci-fi novella, in a future where the skyrocketing price of ivory has driven all elephants completely extinct, but also Russia has de-extincted the Wolly mammoth. And uploaded the consciousness of a deceased elephant researcher into the mind of a mammoth, to teach them how to be a herd, to actually be mammoths.
Jumps back and forth in time and across character viewpoints, all of which is handled well and builds up the plot nicely. Definitely enjoyed this more than Mountain in the Sea.
a note about Tusks of Extinction
Charles Williams was one of those weird midcentury guys who was interested in Magic, and was part of a secret magical society that actually attempted to do spells and things. It's one of the most embarrassing things about him. But this is one of the 'history' books he wrote primarily for profit, churning out a book when he could get any decent pay to do so. It purports to be a history of magic as it stands in relation to Christianity, and plays it pretty straight. But you can see CW's interest in the subject for sure!
a note about Witchcraft
Was this book funny? Not for me.
a note about The Organs of Sense
A really enjoyable verse translation here. I've read Gilgamesh before, of course (Honors English 105, fall 1999!) and probably a couple of times. I know the basic outline of the story. But it's great to have a poet's version of this. I like how Simon Armitage works not from the original text, but from all the other translations into English. It's a synthesis and retelling job, that benefits from the care of an actual poet.
a note about Gilgamesh
Astonishing amounts of alcohol being consumed in this book. I see what they mean by 'hard-drinking'.
a note about The Thin Man
📖 Recent Quotes 📖
[loved this thing about 'the rich']
But there was something else that Svyatoslav knew—and he knew it because he had watched his father come home penniless over and over, smelling of sweat and drink: Myusena would never sell the tusks, and live. Somewhere along the way, they would be taken from him. He would be swindled. Killed, even. Men like Svyatoslav's father and Myusena did not get rich. They did not go and live on private islands, or send their children to university in London. No-they fulfilled their purpose: they retrieved things for others. They did the work, and were thrown away. Things like the tusks weren't just for rich people to have, or buy— the rich already owned them. They just needed to be handed over to their rightful owners.an excerpt from Tusks of Extinction
But there was something else that Svyatoslav knew—and he knew it because he had watched his father come home penniless over and over, smelling of sweat and drink: Myusena would never sell the tusks, and live. Somewhere along the way, they would be taken from him. He would be swindled. Killed, even. Men like Svyatoslav's father and Myusena did not get rich. They did not go and live on private islands, or send their children to university in London. No-they fulfilled their purpose: they retrieved things for others. They did the work, and were thrown away. Things like the tusks weren't just for rich people to have, or buy— the rich *already owned them*. They just needed to be handed over to their rightful owners.
an excerpt from Tusks of Extinction
These pages must stand for what they are-a brief account of the history in Christian times of that perverted way of the soul which we call magic, or (on a lower level) witchcraft, and with the reaction against it. That they tend to deal more with the lower level than with any nobler dream is inevitable. The nobler idea of virtue mingled with power either worked itself out eventually as experimental science (but the extent to which experimental science was at any time denounced has probably been exaggerated), or it was kept carefully secluded in its own Rites (and to know these one would have had to share them), or it did in fact degenerate into base and disgusting evils (as I have here and there tried to suggest). No-one will derive any knowledge of initiation from this book; if he wishes to meet the tall, black man' or to find the proper method of using the Reversed Pentagram, he must rely on his own heart, which will, no doubt, be one way or other sufficient.
an excerpt from Witchcraft
[ devastating! ]
You strove and labored but achieved nothing.
You drove yourself onward but without profit.
You strained every nerve and sinew with effort
yet brought the day of your death even closer.
Every family tree can be snapped like a reed:
the handsome boy, the beautiful girl,
how suddenly death can spirit them away.
Death appears from nowhere, acts without warning.
No one has seen the face of death.
No one has heard the voice of death,
the silent, invisible, savage assassin.
There comes a time when we build a house;
there comes a time when we fill the nest;
there comes a time of feud between heirs;
there comes a time of hatred in the land.
There came a time of high water and flood;
one moment the dragonfly followed the river,
its face lit by the light of the sun,
then suddenly everyone and everything was gone.
The missing and the dead—how alike they are.
Neither can draw an image of death.
The dead never say good morning to the living.
At the great assembly of the Anunnaki,
the goddess Aruru decreed man's fate:
the gods will give and take away life
and no man will know when death will strike.an excerpt from Gilgamesh
[ People keep asking Gilgamesh why he looks so distraught, and this is part of the long response he gives each time explaining how he’s mourning Enkidu. The pivot from ‘my friend is dead’ to ‘and will I also die?’ That hinges on seeing the maggot - that’s so good. ]
My friend, who I loved, my brother in hardship,
my constant companion through struggles and sickness,
who met the end that all men must face.
I wept for six days and seven nights,
refused to hand over his body for burial
till a maggot came crawling out of his nose.
I was suddenly afraid for my own life.an excerpt from Gilgamesh