Gormenghast | 
I read this article and (despite shade thrown on JRRT) thought Burnside's love of Peake's "Gormenghast" and Powys's "A Glastonbury Romance" made him my "spirit animal". I was saddened, then, to see that he died earlier this year ?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/02/john-burnside-my-stoner-friends-we...
1. Kat. Katherine is my middle name. It‘s hard to get people who‘ve known you for a long time to call you by a new name😅.
2. Fushia. A French name like Sabine would be awesome.
#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView
When I first tried to read this series, years and years ago, I couldn‘t. I literally could not hold all the images in my head and still follow the story. I held on to the books though and one day I found I could read it and it was delightful!
pickTitus is growing up and we get several new characters, including the chamber of grotesques which is the Gormenghast school staff room, several of whose inmates reminded me not a little of the beaks of St Custards. As before, long descriptive passages are periodically interrupted by moments of tension and high drama, and there is even comedy, chiefly at the expense of poor Irma Prunesquallor.
panSighing with relief as we finish this one, but at least we can check it off the list. #1001books #bookpodcast #soundcloud #applepodcasts #googleplay
In Mervyn Peake's classic the titanic castle is just as important a character as any of the humans, so much so that this edition only has illustrations of the #building itself. #maylovesclassics @Sarah83 @Bambolina_81 #foliofreaks
Finished just in time for #bookclub this Saturday!
I liked this novel a bit better than Titus Groan, although it does have some pacing issues. Titus‘s story continues with him as a boy. Things got unexpectedly sad, although I shouldn‘t‘ve been so surprised because Peake obviously has no problem being cruel to his characters. Great villain in Steerpike and the castle is a great setting.
On to Titus Alone!
So my faith in the BBC is shaky after the City & the City but it's still news and perhaps with Gaiman at the helm there's a chance of something special. (Image is from the BBC adaptation in 2000, I can't believe that was 18 years ago!)
This news has made me so excited! I loved the BBC series, but confess I‘ve only read the first book.
The first thing I thought when I saw this? #Gormenghastbuddyread!😄🎉 Would there be any interest? I‘ve never hosted a buddy read so if anyone was interested in taking it on, that would be awesome, but if not, I might see if I can drum something up for May/ June? I‘m finding BR‘s a great way to get through my TBR & this is high on the list!
Subbing ISS today. Hopefully I'll get a good chunk of reading done. Steerpike is quite the villain.
Y'all. I've been making the best food lately!! I hope it keeps up cuz it's so depressing when you cook and cook it it's mediocre. Love audiobook cooking!! I didn't make the dumpling from scratch this time but I cooked them in a new way and it was 😋.
#ReadingResolutions #Monochromatic
@Jess7
The language in this book...the way the words form the story... 😍❤️😍
He is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast, bound for some pinnacle of the itching fancy - some wild, invulnerable eyrie best known to himself; where he can watch the world spread out below him, and shake exultantly his clotted wings.
One of my favorite books. The language is gorgeous, and this article explains the effect of encountering Titus' world, exactly how shocked I felt starting the book: you know it is going to be freaking great just by the first paragraph and you settle in for the ride. http://lithub.com/on-the-13-words-that-made-me-a-writer/
Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
"And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and the field-mice draw upon their granaries. The air is murky, and the sun is like a raw wound in the grimy flesh of a beggar, and the rags of the clouds are clotted. The sky has been stabbed and has been left to die above the world, filthy, vast and bloody."
bailedI really wanted to enjoy this book but the complex language just didn't make it fluid to read. Too many books on the shelf to struggle through this one. #bookworm
So I'm trying not to buy as many books as usual whilst I get through my enormous TBR list but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy the Folio Society edition of the Gormenghast trilogy! 😍😍😍
I had to get in on the #Shelfie action for #FunFridayPhoto. This is (part of) my Folio Society collection. Duckens, Gaskell, Dumas, Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie etc. They were broadly arranged by colour but that has mostly broken down now 😳
