Eddie's Monthly

Despite a shorter and busier month I managed to read quite a bit. I'm currently very impulsive with my reads, and will just grab whatever catches my eye. It started with:

A che ora si mangia? – Alessandro Barbero

Did you know that in the 18th and 19th century, people of the fancy western world started to delay lunch to the evening? That it was deemed high-class to only have lunch at 6 or 7pm? And that at some point they only ate two meals a day, breakfast and late lunch? Well this book goes over this bizarre trend that took over western Europe, with examples from England, France, Italy, Germany and Russia during that time.

My sister gifted me this book a little while ago, and it's been on my book backlog (a booklog?) ever since. The book is in italian, but despite my rustiness with the language, reading it was actually not bad at all. The author is a proper joker though; there are many excerpts and citations from diaries or books from the time and the english and french ones are not translated at all. This italian book, printed in Italy and made for italians has whole paragraphs in english and french that are integral for understanding it. I believe my sister is the only person I know that can also read this book. Absolutely based author actively trying to reduce his reader base.

In any case, the content was really interesting, and I learned a lot. I was confused with the dates initially, until I remembered that italian don't really use century the same way as us, and will use “ottocento” (eight hundreds/century) to signify 1800-1899 instead of saying the nineteenth century. After that, I was in the clear to delve into the folly that took over the brits, french, italians, and to a lesser degree germans and russians. The practice of delaying lunch was mostly constrained to the bourgeoisie and people trying to emulate their lifestyle. Or should I say delaying dinner; you will not believe it, but dinner was the name of the meal that was eaten midday. It's only after the 19th century was the dinner associated with the evening meal. Lunch was created to fill the gap between breakfast and dinner in England. In France, breakfast was delayed until later in the day, and another meal for before breakfast had to be invented and only came into effect around the 1930s! It was funny to see how gradually over the course of a couple of decades, this evolution took place. This prompted for the disappearance of souper (the meal after dinner) which is a word that is nowadays very seldom used in either english or french. In the end, everything came back to normal, with three meals a day but different names. Truly another win for the “nothing ever happens” crowd. The book could only have been made better if the excerpts from the german and russian books/journals had also not been translated.

This was actually as super interesting read, so big shoutout to my sister for finding this book.

Crying in H mart – Michelle Zauner

Holy hell, there were 33 copies at the library, I've never seen any book with more than 5 copies total. This memoir was warmly recommended by a book reviewer colleague here on the printhouse, Kaitlyn z.c.. And believe it or not, this book also started out as a Reylo fanfiction!

This is a memoir detailing the author's relationship with her mother, more specifically her [SPOILER] death. This review will mostly be filled with spoilers, beware.

I think the book was good and it was very raw in its presentation. A lot of emotionally charged events were very descriptive and matter of fact. It was kinda disconcerting at some point, for instance when the author's mom asked her dad to hit the author, as her mom wasn't strong enough to do any damage anymore. This culminated in her mom telling the author that she aborted a potential little sister/brother because she was such a horrible child. This was incredibly fucked up and not even just bordering on abuse. The author does not dwell a lot on those events, like the fact that she very early on discovered that her dad was cheating on her mom, which was just mentioned in passing. The memoir is also disconcertingly honest, one example that struck me is that she admitted that in the later days of her mother's illness, she was just waiting for her passing and that it happening would be a relief. Obviously she would have preferred if her mom didn't die at all, but the way she retells the last few days of her mom's battle with cancer paint a pretty pitiful picture. The overall battle between her mom and cancer hit particularly hard because it was heart-breaking and the writing was so raw. It also hit me in the feels as when I was reading this, Sirius (my cat), was ill, refusing to eat and losing a ton of weight, and we were still waiting on the vet's results. He's getting better now though — turns out this idiot managed to become allergic to cat food. To come back the the memoir, the story is very touching if a bit messy with time jump that don't feel super fleshed out, but it is overall well written and engaging.

Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters – August Ragone

Do you guys know about Godzilla and Ultraman? Eiji Tsuburaya is the man behind the visual effects for these productions and the co-creator of these icons. In general, he was on the forefront of visual effects in Japan, which very well rivalled and even surpassed the then effects in western production. This man is easily the goat of early visual effects. His work is not only limited to monster movies, and he started his carrier doing period pieces and propaganda films for the japanese military (yikes). This book goes over his life and the films he worked on.

Love the subject, love the aesthetics, love godzilla, but god damn, was that book's reading experience terrible. The paper is nice and thick, but incredibly glossy, which makes the ink invisible if there is even a single photon in the room. The images cut the sentences in their middle and not at appropriate points either. Each chapter is preceded by a gorgeous monochrome double-page image, but there's also the beginning of the chapter there in the corner that also gets cut weirdly. Then the descriptions for the images are sideways, and are very annoying to read as turning this massive book is a whole operation. The books is absolutely gorgeous and stylish, but anything involving actual words is really frustrating to read. The pacing was really strange and the content just ok. There's just not a really coherent and compelling story being told here, it's just a collection of facts about his life and movies he worked on. I am not a fan of biographies at all, but this wasn't the issue here — this was just not a great one. It's mostly very lean in interesting details or funny anecdotes, with the octopus one being the exception. The images also don't really match the text, and sometime they are about something that we read 2 pages ago. I must emphasise that it's a visual treat, and while its big size is a minus on comfort, it's a big plus on design. I was just disappointed with the content. It's my bad though, why would I read a book when it contains images — I should just have looked at them.

_{love the cover that they chose though}

Grendel – John Gardner

All is well in the land of the Danes and they have many parties. They are very loud thought, and Grendel is not happy about that. He sets out to terrorise the Halls of Hrothgar for twelve years before our hero, Beowulf, arrives and slays him. Spoiler I know, but it was released about 1250 years ago, if you still haven't read it, it's your fault. This is the plot of Beowulf. In Grendel, the author spends time with Grendel, detailing his motivations and drives, which were only barely mentioned in passing in the original poem, and extrapolates from them.

This was a very good read. Derivative in the best of way and yet still original and very contemporary. Whereas the original poem is a bit thin in substance and more of a classic straight-forward epic tale, this has many layers and brings some very interesting themes. It is very well written, if a bit too “english academic” in my hateful french eyes; every action or description needs a comparison, every noun needs to be qualified by no less than two adjectives and every verb by at least one adverb (ideally two). I do not know moncrief very well — who recommended this book — but I can feel in my bones that chapter 5 (the talk with the dragon) is without a shadow of a doubt his favourite. There is not much else to say apart from: based comrade peasant.

Children of Ruin – Adrian Tchaikovsky

I cannot spoil this for anyone, so no synopsis. Sorry not sorry.

This is book 2 of the Children of X series. It would have been so easy to fuck it up but no, it's so good. I like it even more than the first one. I wholeheartedly disagree with people that say it's just a refresh of the first one — it's completely different. The story, themes and even the writing style is different. There is a horror section in this one! I think this was better paced and I was surprised when I reached page 500 because there had not been any dip in intensity and “things happening”. Even from a structure standpoint, the chapters were super well divided and it made the legibility much better. I could easily crank out one or two chapters on the GO train, without having to rush. The meshing of past and present timelines is also done well. It might still be a bit too fresh in my memory — and the honeymoon period hasn't faded — but I cannot find a single issue with this book. Maybe the ending was a bit rushed and a tad confusing, but it's very minor. Will definitely read the third (and for now final) volume in the coming months.

The Dragon and the Foreign Devil – Harry G. Gelber

This book was part of the white elephant book exchange. As per the contract that each and everyone of us have signed (and are bound to by blood) I will make a presentation about it. Wouldn't spoil the fun by telling you about it here.

HxH – Yoshihiro Togashi

Chimera Ant Arc/Chapters 186 – 259

I'm not gonna lie, I never really understood it when montcrief said that this manga was peak. I still stand by my opinion that the beginning is very rocky, and while it gets good after that, I still didn't really think it was worthy of being the top dog manga. With this new arc, I might be seeing the light. It really opens with a bang. The premise is goated, the designs are goated, the fights are goated, the characters are goated — it's just all around good original stuff. I'm far from done the arc but the story seems to kinda drop in intensity halfway through, when the king is waiting to execute his plan. I was very underwhelmed by the king's design as he looks like a generic DBZ villain. Also please don't tell me he's falling in love with a child. I am still excited to see where it's going — I shall report back next month.

Good continuation of the year, 6 books and 70-ish manga chapters, we're doing pretty good. At my current pace, I should finish HxH by the end of April. What manga will replace it: who knows?

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie