Eddie's Monthly

We're back in business baby! 6 books and 40 odd manga chapters this month. Granted some of those books are on the smaller side, but I still read'em. I took my foot of the backlog gas pedal, and made a bit more time for reading. Without further ado, let's get into it:

God Emperor of Dune – Frank Herbert

THE GOAT, THE GOAT

This book being set 3000 years after the last one, we were leaving the Paul and kid's story, and I wasn't sure how Frank was gonna keep us interested. I forgot that he was the goat, and this is my favorite book out of the four by quite a lot. Of course Dune is iconic, Messiah is a really interesting change of tone, and Children of Dune a great end to the Paul and Co arc, but this just takes it a step further. I love reading about the God Emperor's thoughts, his inner monologue, how he's so ahead of the game but at the same time how he is so bored that he will let a bit of chaos in from time to time just to be amused. World building is as interesting as always, characters are well written even if our main boy takes most of the screen. I will definitely read the other two book, as long as Liam stays away from twitter (delete your new account 🔫).

Le Treizième Guerrier (Eaters of the Dead) – Michael Crichton

Some of you might recall that the entirety of one of my earlier article was solely dedicated to the dissing of Michael Crichton. I really don't like his writing style. While he can usually find cool premises, the way he treats characters and how the plot contrivedly unfolds is not my cup of tea. When I went back to France, I talked about it to my dad, who enjoys Crichton, and he gave me a couple of books of his to change my opinion. This is one of them.

I enjoyed this book but there are some big flaws with it. The book is a patchwork of the accounts/journals of Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāshid ibn Ḥammād (shortest royalty arabic name) and of a retelling of Beowulf. The way the two are linked is pretty clumsy, using a very convenient prophecy™. The retelling of Beowulf from an outsider's perspective, namely, Ahmad ibn Fadlan is really interesting but this could have been achieved by any other means. The account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan before he joins Beowulf on his expedition are boring; he went here, we stayed for two days, we met those guys.... Without any substance or anything of note happening, it reads like a boring report. The Beowulf tale is entertaining, but it looses the “epic” of the original, but on the other hand the outsider bit is interesting for a while. But of course because it's Michael Crichton, everything has to be based in “science” therefore Grendel is actually multiple people, and those people are just Neanderthals that didn't go extinct! bruh. Also, I hated the obsession of Crichton with the vikings having sex with everyone, which he writes it as “possessing” women. yuk

La Métamorphose – Frank Kafka

Dude wakes up as a insect, no chaos ensues

I have the bilingual edition of the book, in french and german (its original language), and planned to read the original with the help of the french — if I was having difficulties. Needless to say that my barely conversational german, which I haven't practiced in 5 years (apart from deciphering memes on ichiel) was not enough. The book is short and there are five thousand possible interpretations or analysis of it. Even I, a french idiot with 0 media literacy, was able to find a couple. There is not a lot to say here, it is a well crafted story. (sa fé rèflaichir🤔)

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Dude, it's like in civ!!1!!1

We're in the 26th century and society as we know it has changed quite a bit. Henry Ford meatriders have taken over the world and implemented enormous civilizational change in those few centuries. We follow around a few people who do not feel at completely home in this new civilisation, and who meet someone who somehow escaped being brought up in/by this civilisation. What will happen when they bring him back?

That was a strange book. Chapter one and two are utter gibberish. Chapter one reminds me of the most opaque SF books; throwing new words at you five times a sentence (my favorite one being bokanovskification). Chapter two's formatting is just unreadable. However, after reading those few pages, the writing settles down and we get a clear story. The pacing is good and I was invested enough that it took very little time for me to finish. We are offered a wildly different totalitarian regime than in 1984 here (because of course I have to be original and compare the two books); where 1984 is more “the boot”, Brave New World offers a “bread and games” approach to it. Although weird, I enjoyed the book. I hated that they described some women as “particularly pneumatic” 🥴

Candide – Voltaire

I had “read” it in high school (read a summary online cause I couldn't be bothered + french class made me despise reading) and I still remembered how silly it was. This is Voltaire so you know it's just gonna be criticizing people and institutions left and right and everyone will catch a stray. We follow Candide's adventures from his castle days until he retires in a small farm in turkey. As said before, it is silly all around, there's constantly stuff like: the duchy of Bukring Welchafen declared war to the chiefdom of Fundertürentrock, 10 000 died; the border changed by 5m. It's a fun read and it contains the famous “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” (One must cultivate one's garden); most people can't agree on its meaning (maybe it's a final troll from Voltaire; there is no real meaning but it sounds philosophic).

Standing in the shadows of Motown – Allan Slutsky

I've been trying to be a good boy and get back into bass more seriously, and after seeing many recommendation from bassists for this book, decided to pick it up. It follows the life of legendary (yet relatively unknown) session bassist (although he also played live) James Jameson. For those who are not familiar with music recording, a session player is the player who actually plays on the record. A main entity of this story is Motown, a black owned Detroit record label of the 60's that specialised in its own sounds, the “Motown sound” (think Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Four tops...).

The book starts with a biography of James Jameson, who is heavily intertwined with the history of the Motown label. He lead a pretty eventful life which had its share of ups and downs. It's kind of crazy to read that one of the most prolific session bassist of the 60's could go completely uncredited for most of his contributions (they just didn't do credits for them at the time). This definitely played a part in his future self destructive habits, amplified by alcoholism. There is a bunch of sheet music in the book that I'll have to decipher and play (if I can), but overall, I'm done with reading the “word” part of the book. The rest is partitions with some commentaries, I'll play them in due time as I am getting more serious about bass. Overall, the book is good and it was interesting to read about the music scene in the US in the 60's and onwards. I wish there were more comments about the relevance of Motown in African-American culture (or vice-versa), but the author is a white boy, and although the influence of Motown is mentioned as well as a very brief mention of the Detroit riots, there is no insightful commentary given.

Dungeon Meshi – Ryoko Kui

Chapter 1 to 42

Prior to dungeonclub forming, Tetyana and I had watched the first three episode of Dungeon Meshi on netflix and were digging it but our access was then cut-off due to IP restrictions. Damn you netflix!

In any case, I really like the manga. I love the art style, it looks so “soft” and satisfying (idk i'm not good with words). The characters are great, their relationships are believable and have depth. The monsters are cool and I love the attention to detail to make each of them edible. I think the concept of showing how adventurers would survive in a dungeon/on adventures is great, in some fictional settings, I've always wondered how the regular folk actual make it (for instance in the Dark Souls games).

I also liked how the initial arc doesn't drag on for an obscene amount of time. They have their goal and the always move towards it, without getting sidetracked by filler side quests that last for way too long. Overall, I loved reading it and I can't wait to read more.

There is no way I can keep up this reading pace next month, as you guys are organising way to many things that I want to attend, but I'll do my best.

Thanks for reading my logorrhea, Eddie