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Reading stuffs
Mar. 8th, 2022 09:42 pmFor a while, I did not read a lot of books because my brain felt dull and I felt most comfortable doing nothing, scrolling social media so when I finally got my break, I decided to catch up on my reading.
I read some stuffs that I really do not want to admit I read outside of some special circles. After that, I read one Lankhmar book as it is an important and influential work in the genre of sword and sorcery. Haha, Pratchett totally parodied these Lankhmar book in his Discworld novels. It is interesting and fast-paced and fun enough but I wonder whether Leiber had any bad experiences with women considering he had very interesting presentations of the female characters in his book. But generally pulp fictions targeted towards men do not tend to have nuanced portrayals of women so Leiber was not the first and would not be the last. I think the best portrayals of women of in older male-power-fantasy works that I have read definitely belong to Jin Yong.
After that I read The Flight of The Heron by Broster because Regshoe loves it. I thought Broster was a man at first but after her description of Ewen's glistening chest during the first part of the book, it did not take long for me to realize Broster definitely was interested in men. So I thought he was a gay man because I am dumb. When I got to the last page and realized what the initials actually stood for, it then made perfect sense for me why Broster wrote that way, though. It is definitely interesting how the word "glistening" was used by both an old writer and modern day's romance writer to describe a hot man. And how Broster described Ewen so much resembled present day's romance writers that I have to say, we have not changed at all the last one hundred years or so. The book is engaging but I can't say its focus on hyper-masculine values appeals to me.
I am currently reading The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles and Malory and I have read more than half of it. When I was about one fourth into the book, I was interested by one of the tale because I am a hopeless JSMN fan. In the tale, one knight had to fight his own brother and they both did not know the other person was their brother. The brother of the knight was stuck to the place after he defeated another person and had to fight any knight that came to the area. If the knight defeated his own brother, he would have to take up his brother's spot and got stuck there. There was also a castle in this story and the castle was filled with many people. (I am sorry with my very unclear description of the story, I did not want to scroll through the ebook and lost my current place in the book). This story resembled Lascelles's fate so much that I could not doubt that Clarke had been inspired by it especially when it is very well-known. It is always interesting to read stories and legends and come across one that definitely inspires Clarke.
I was surprised by how much I do not know about Arthur despite encountering him everywhere. For example, I definitely do not know he was supposed to be a Britton force that resisted Saxon's invasion into England. I always thought he was a mythical king that ruled a mythical Britain completely divorced from historical events.
I read some stuffs that I really do not want to admit I read outside of some special circles. After that, I read one Lankhmar book as it is an important and influential work in the genre of sword and sorcery. Haha, Pratchett totally parodied these Lankhmar book in his Discworld novels. It is interesting and fast-paced and fun enough but I wonder whether Leiber had any bad experiences with women considering he had very interesting presentations of the female characters in his book. But generally pulp fictions targeted towards men do not tend to have nuanced portrayals of women so Leiber was not the first and would not be the last. I think the best portrayals of women of in older male-power-fantasy works that I have read definitely belong to Jin Yong.
After that I read The Flight of The Heron by Broster because Regshoe loves it. I thought Broster was a man at first but after her description of Ewen's glistening chest during the first part of the book, it did not take long for me to realize Broster definitely was interested in men. So I thought he was a gay man because I am dumb. When I got to the last page and realized what the initials actually stood for, it then made perfect sense for me why Broster wrote that way, though. It is definitely interesting how the word "glistening" was used by both an old writer and modern day's romance writer to describe a hot man. And how Broster described Ewen so much resembled present day's romance writers that I have to say, we have not changed at all the last one hundred years or so. The book is engaging but I can't say its focus on hyper-masculine values appeals to me.
I am currently reading The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles and Malory and I have read more than half of it. When I was about one fourth into the book, I was interested by one of the tale because I am a hopeless JSMN fan. In the tale, one knight had to fight his own brother and they both did not know the other person was their brother. The brother of the knight was stuck to the place after he defeated another person and had to fight any knight that came to the area. If the knight defeated his own brother, he would have to take up his brother's spot and got stuck there. There was also a castle in this story and the castle was filled with many people. (I am sorry with my very unclear description of the story, I did not want to scroll through the ebook and lost my current place in the book). This story resembled Lascelles's fate so much that I could not doubt that Clarke had been inspired by it especially when it is very well-known. It is always interesting to read stories and legends and come across one that definitely inspires Clarke.
I was surprised by how much I do not know about Arthur despite encountering him everywhere. For example, I definitely do not know he was supposed to be a Britton force that resisted Saxon's invasion into England. I always thought he was a mythical king that ruled a mythical Britain completely divorced from historical events.
