The Secret History is so funny
2024-09-07
One of my favourite things that Donna Tartt does with The Secret History is how she presents Richard Papen. She makes it very clear at the beginning that Richard is an unreliable narrator. Initially, he boasts to the reader about his ability to lie. Almost immediately on the next page, another character picks up on his lying. This happens several times, where Richard says something about himself but only to be contradicted by someone else soon after. It's great that Tartt does this but this also introduces something crucial about The Secret History: it's actually so funny. This act reveals that the books contents shouldn't be taken too seriously, and to ignore the dressed up appearances of the characters and the setting. It takes the picturesque academia aesthetic and pushes it to an extreme conclusion: murder, suicide, sexual taboos.
It's funny to think about it now, in hindsight, after sitting down to think about the book. However, in the middle of reading The Secret History, I completely fell for the aesthetic. As I read it, I, too, longed to part of the exclusive Greek club. I wanted to sit in the odd lectures that probably wouldn't make it into any curriculum today. I wished I could follow the group on their weekend excursions, just doing rich people things. I pictured myself staying up late in an old Victorian library, studying ancient texts in Greek. These college kids were so serious and so believed in what they were doing. I actually feel some resistance towards condemning them or towards any criticism towards this point, because, for a moment, I believed too.
But they are not to believed. Especially not Henry. That light-bulb moment Richard had when he realizes that the "always in-control" Henry was actually not in control made me stop. I re-read that passage several times. A terrifying feeling, to put all your trust in someone and then see that they're actually not reliable at all. But I think Henry is reliable, at the end of it all. He has an odd way of going about it, and isn't right every step of the way, but he gets the job done. It's ultimately his sacrifice that puts an end to Charles's rampage. His own extreme conclusion is suicide.
Henry is an interesting character. Throughout the 500 or so pages, I constantly moved between being disgusted by, in love with, terrified of, annoyed with, and amused by Henry. I rarely encounter characters that make me feel so many things about them. The weird thing is that Henry is, surprisingly, fairly one-note. Always serious. Always calculating. Always deliberate. Always moving towards a goal that he has in mind. He rarely cracks a smile. Rarely shows warmth, and even when he does, you can't help but wonder if he planned it that way. He is so fascinating and honestly is the reason why I love the book so much.
All this said, I don't blame those who fall for the picturesque. Ultimately, it's satire all dressed up in a pretty package. But it's a fun and riveting book and I already want to read it again.
Update on my "30 Before 30" list
2024-09-06
It's way past half-way through the year but I'm re-evaluating my "30 before 30" bucket list.
Since January, I've accomplished the following:
- Bucket list concert: Saw Green Day play both Dookie and American Idiot in their entirety in one night. It was amazing. I also have two other bucket list concerts coming up: Coheed and Cambria playing Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV: Volume One and Protest the Hero playing Volition.
- Travel within Canada: Had to travel to see Green Day and I explored Toronto for a few days. Most of it was eating at new restaurants, hah. But I did manage to wander around downtown and the harbour.
- Visit museum/art gallery: Earlier on in the year, I had plans to go with some friends but the museum was closed. Bummer. But! While in Toronto I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was a huuuge museum and I spent around 4-5 hours looking around. By the last hour I was kinda fed up so I may have rushed the last few exhibits, but otherwise, I enjoyed my time there.
- Go to a random gig without knowing who is playing: Some family friends invited me to go to a Benson Boone concert. I had no idea who he was but he was a fun show. He took his shirt off and did a lot of back-flips.
- Volunteer: Volunteered a few times. Sorted some books for a book sale and then did garbage cleanup along the river.
- Watch a movie in a theater: My cousins, brother, and I went to watch Dune part two together! It was such a cool movie. I was stunned by it. I also saw Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire with some friends and let me tell you... That was not a good movie. It was lighthearted but I just could not turn off my brain during it. I kept inwardly groaning through the cliches. Good excuse to be with friends, though.
- Go back to therapy: I did this! Am still doing this! Not going to lie, I kinda dread it every time. I know it's good for me. Growth is never comfortable.
I've also realized that there a few goals that I'm better off dropping:
- Get a tattoo: I am too indecisive. Can't think of what I would want on my body permanently. Actually, that's a lie. I have ideas of things that I want to get tattooed, I'm just overwhelmed by potential designs. Maybe one day I'll find an artist that resonates with me.
- Skinny dipping: As the days get colder, I think my window for this has closed.
- See a play in the park: The troupe that did this every year, cancelled all their shows this year. Big bummer.
The rest are still on the table but I know I won't be able to accomplish much more with around 100 days left of the year. I tried prioritizing them in terms of what I think are urgent, important, or both.
- Finish 100 days to offload: This is why you're seeing this blog post now. I just want to finally accomplish this and just be able to say I did it and forget about it. It'll be tight but we'll see how it goes.
- Go clubbing: I feel like my window for clubbing and not being an old fart is closing rapidly. Urgent, but definitely not important.
- Submit something, somewhere: Would this count if I submitted something that was utter trash somewhere? I'm trying to write more but I'm a little off the mark in terms of quality. Maybe I can scrounge something up.
- Learn to cook "my dish": This is still something I want to do. Important, not urgent.
- Finish first year of school: In progress! I started my second semester and it's already kicking my ass. I'm taking two courses and it's pretty rough.
- Stretch more: So simple and I keep forgetting to do it.
- Work towards figuring out my mystery ailment: I've been taking antibiotics and another form of medication that my doctor prescribed me. I think it's too early to tell if it works. But this is a journey I'm slowly making progress towards.
Everything else (13 items) I can live with not accomplishing. I'm always too ambitious when it comes to these things but I think it's okay that things don't always work out.
A week with Sterling Ink
2024-09-04
It is Hobonichi season! And you know what that means. It means it's time to buy more Hobonichis!
Or... Maybe not.
Recently I came to the conclusion that the Hobonichi Weeks doesn't actually work for me. I wish it did. I spent a few years with the Weeks and had mixed success. I always wished that I could use the horizontal week layout more effectively. My main gripe with it was the fact that the Hobonichi weeks is so narrow. I could never fit everything that I wanted to fit into the tiny space. What I really wanted was an A5 Weeks. Hobonichi is quite stable in their products so I had no hope of that happening any time soon.
Enter Sterling Ink.
I know Sterling Ink through their sticker collections. I'm not a big sticker person, so I kind of dismissed the idea of a sticker company creating planners. Until I actually looked at their offerings. This year, they have an A5 horizontal week planner, with enough pages for a page per day at the back. This is my dream notebook!! I need it, and badly.
But I was unfamiliar with the Sterling Ink format. So. I did what any rational person would do and bought one of their 2024. Yes, I bought a 2024 planner in August 2024. Thankfully, they provide half year books so I got a July-December 2024 planner. They only had the A6 size, but I just wanted to get a feel for the product.
First of all, I loooove the cover. It's a sophisticated, sleek, faux leather cover with minimal branding. It's a bit more in line with the aesthetic that I'm trying to cultivate nowadays as well.
Now, there's a lot about the inside of the planner that I haven't used yet. Such as the quarterly sections and the goal breakdowns. No pictures because I didn't really use them.
Monthlies and Weeklies
Speaking of not using. Or not using effectively. I never really know how to use the monthly and vertical weekly in a beneficial way. I put in my due dates for the courses I'm taking this semester and other random occasions in the monthly.
The vertical weekly never works for me. I used to time block in the Cousin but then I would never look at it again. I rely more on my calendar for hour by hour planning. Things change way too often for me to commit to something on paper. And I like how I can easily play around digitally compared to paper.
Towards the end of the week, I wanted to try something new. I wrote in astrological transits and events. But as you will see later, I like to write that information down in my dailies instead.
On Thursday, you can see that I tried writing down my distractions down at the bottom but then quickly abandoned that idea. I am fully aware of my own vices but I don't think this format is the best way to reflect on them.
Dailies
My daily spread is pretty consistent. I used a similar format in memo pages of the Hobonichi Weeks. The only change here is that for every heading you see, I would usually create a new page for it. I'm not sure why I'm trying to conserve pages when I often didn't use that many pages in the Hobonichi Weeks. So far I'm using around 3 pages per day. But also keep in mind that the A6 is quite small.
I did mention in the previous section that I don't like putting my time blocking on paper. However, I do this every morning to get an idea of what my day is like. The specific times don't matter too much.
The next page is a continuation of Wednesday and onto Thursday. I was playing around with the headings of each day because I wasn't sure how to make it stand out. I also do a little bit of journaling as well.
These next two pages are me trying to plan out September. I get pretty granular. For each item that's due, I try to estimate how long it will take me to accomplish that task. I even try to break down tasks to smaller tasks. I am pretty accurate when it comes to reading assignments but writing assignments, I tend to feel like I overestimate but often end up not estimating enough.
You can also see that I started writing in cursive. I feel like it just looks nicer.
Still trying to play around with headings. I like the little sparkle emoji and tried to replicate it. But I think it doesn't stand out quite enough for me. You can even see me meta-journaling about bullet points vs. check-boxes.
And on the other page, you can see me write out the criteria and steps for my next assignment.
How I feel about Sterling Ink so far
The paper is nice but I am noticing how much ghosting and bleedthrough there is with my pen and ink of choice (Platinum Century 3776 EF with DeAtramentis Document Ink Fog Grey). I suspect it's mostly the ink, because the lighter blue writing looks great (Kyo no Oto: Hisoku with a Sailor Pro Gear F nib).
I was worried about the unstructured blank pages at the end. But I never really had a problem with in it the weeks. I am missing the amount of page space compared to the Weeks. The Sterling Ink grid is 35x24 squares and each square is 3.7x3.9mm. The Weeks is 49x23 with 3.7x3.7mm but somehow each individual square feels smaller. That 0.2mm makes a difference, somehow. That being said, this is the A6 size which is obviously smaller than the N2 Weeks size.
All of my thoughts about the vertical weekly are my same thoughts about the Cousin weekly pages. I just cannot make it work. The structure makes me want to use it that way it's intended. Any dense writing in the small columns are a no go for me. I'm so excited for the horizontal weekly layout.
Either way, I'm quite happy with the book so far! After this little trial run, I have made the decision to buy Sterling Ink for 2025 but that's for a different post.
Misery May 2024 But IRL
2024-06-09
They say life imitates art. Well, I consumed a lot of miserable art last month. And last month also felt quite miserable. Only now, around 20% through the next month, do I finally feel somewhat recovered.
May was really stressful. A lot of overtime at work. And lots of days where I would come home (or, if I was working from home that day, log off) and go directly to my bed to have a nap. By the time I woke up, I would maybe eat dinner and then go back to sleep. I crammed most of my reading on the weekends and was generally unproductive throughout the week. Not all of my weekends were sacred, either. There were a few weekends when I had to be on call and jump onto an issue.
My therapist asked me if every May was like this. It made me wonder if my therapist is into astrology because part way through May, Gemini season began. Gemini is a Mercurial sign and Mercury is always busy doing one thing or another. Lots of stimulation and intellectual activity. I felt that to the core (and still do). But I wasn't able to harness all of that Mercury energy towards things that I would like to do (read, write, create). Instead, just a lot of busywork at, well, work. It left very little energy for non-work stuff.
Back to my therapist's point, thankfully, this doesn't happen often. It was the first time I had to do something like this for work. I understand that some people might have to do this all the time for their job. Some people might even like it. But it is definitely not for me. I don't like the stress of having to be "on" all the time. Nor do I like the stress watching my free time being lost to the bare minimum survival activities like sleep or eating. Or, because of how my brain is too mushy, losing free time to mindlessly watching YouTube videos or scrolling through Reddit.
I think the stress also manifested in stress eating. Usually when I'm in the office, I practice intermittent fasting. But I'm an emotional eater so every time I found myself in the office, I grabbed lunch. Sometimes I would grab dinner if I was only in for the afternoon. And almost every time, I would go buy a sweet pastry. As a result I gained 10lbs in the past month (realistically, maybe half of that is water weight). Now it's hard for me to stop eating like this. It's truly hard for me to stop. Sometimes I wish I could just eat and eat and eat without consequences.
And let me tell ya, there is a lot of family drama going on. Long story short, I really need to start penny pinching. At least that will curb some of my eating habits.
Anyway. Tomorrow is another day. There is still time to turn over a new leaf. Or at least look at a new leaf. Here's to a less stressful month.
Misery May 2024 Reads
2024-06-07
Scott, host of YouTube channel, "Gunpowder, Fiction & Plot" hosted a "Misery May Readathon" this year. I stumbled upon it by pure chance and committed immediately. Miserable reads are my favourite kind of reads. Within the main theme of reading miserable books, there were nine bonus categories.
- Animals: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I don't really see how this one fit but Scott himself suggested Crime and Punishment for this category. His reasoning was, "there is a, horrbile scene with a horse in it." It happens in just one chapter. Which counts, I guess? I'm glad we're playing loose with the rules. I really enjoyed Crime and Punishment and I think it's going down as one of my favourite pieces of literature.
- Host Pick: N/A
I was going to read Our Bodies, Their Battlefields by Christina Lamb. I had it downloaded to my Kindle and everything. But I had no time to read it, alas. But this is put on the "to read" list.
- Illness: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
I had high hopes for this book. But I really disliked it. I don't require main characters to be likable. In fact, one observation I made while reading Crime and Punishment was that I thought Raskolnikov was utterly despicable. Despite that, I couldn't help but root for him. Not so for the main character of this book. I think the main thing that turned me off is that they were just plain mean. Raskolnikov was pathetic, cowardly, and, yes, mean at times. But his meanness towards certain people felt justified considering his character. In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the main character was mean for really superficial reasons. I couldn't understand it. Maybe that was the book's main flaw: I couldn't understand the main character on an emotional level.
- Translated: Welcome Back, Alice (Volumes 1-7) by Shuuzou Oshimi
I count manga as books so I'm counting this towards the readathon. This was a really miserable read. It was like a pit of despair. But such a page turner. I finished it almost in one sitting. I also read this near the end of the month so it was a good lead up to Pride month.
- War: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
This is a masterpiece. Truly an epic novel. War is not the main theme of this book but there are several chunks of the novel that touches upon it. What this book is instead, is a wonderful survey of the history of a fictionalized town. 100 years of ups and downs and, yes, misery
- Immigrants: N/A
I planned to read "A Brief History of Seven Killings" by Marlon James for this category but I just couldn't get into it. Scott seemed to add the category for diversity but I already read quite a bit of immigrant lit. Or maybe I'm just tired of immigrant lit.
- Feminist: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
This was really miserable at points. But the characters were all so warm that it made the misery tolerable. I really enjoyed this one.
- Classic: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
This is a short story but still a "read" in my books. I don't read a lot of horror but this is my kind of horror. Powerfully feminist. It's a quick read and I definitely recommend it.
- Group Book: Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down
This was my favourite read this month. It was truly a very miserable read and I was glued from front to back. Not going to lie, after I finished reading it, I felt a little empty inside. On one hand, it felt like a journey left unfinished. On the other hand, I just wanted it to keep going on forever. But it was a good place to end it. I really just wanted more time with Maggie.
Ranking the books
Self explanatory, considering what I've written above. I'm really grateful for this readathon getting me to read Bodies of Light, as I would not have read it otherwise. It also bumped a few books (One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Yellow Wallpaper, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation) up my "to read" list. Felt nice to finally cross those off!
- Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- Welcome Back, Alice by Shuuzou Oshimi
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh