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review
Bookwomble
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Pickpick

It took me a while to get through "The Man Whom the Trees Loved". It's a slow paced novella that I found rewarded my patience with it. There's an initial section focusing on the eponymous man, a retired forester whose cottage on the edge of the New Forest allows him access to the trees he loves, and which come to love him in turn with an inhuman jealousy that threatens to possess and subsume him into themselves.
⬇️

Bookwomble The following section focuses on his wife, which despite the patronising Edwardian overtones, tells of her devotion and love as she tries to free her increasingly distant husband from the toils of the forest.
It's either a slow-burn story of the devouring of two innocent souls by an impersonal and implacable natural force, or a study of the descent of a couple into monomania, depression and madness. Both interpretations interleave and both are ⬇️
(edited) 2w
Bookwomble ... melancholy and affecting.
I found the perfect musical accompaniment in "Watching the Snow Fall" by Bell Monks, released yesterday, with its slow, dreamy sound washes and nature imagery. #BooksAndMusic
You Tube video of opening track, Dim the Lights: https://youtu.be/MEx5HqRtBPU?si=jfaH4MMycxAR8yCQ
Bandcamp full album:
https://digital.waysideandwoodland.com/album/watching-the-snow-fall
2w
47 likes2 comments
blurb
Bookwomble
How to Listen | Thich Nhat Hanh
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11th October is Thich Nhat Hanh's birthday, in commemoration of which the Plum Village Band has released an album of devotional and contemporary classical music, chants and prayers, produced by Jack Penate (Mervyn Peake's nephew).
The track "Arrived" is gorgeous: https://youtu.be/wbtWMiz8nXU?si=wjPgcYu9dTkC5Z5m

I've a couple of Thich Nhat Hanh's "How to..." books, and it seemed appropriate to order "... Listen" ?

#BooksAndMusic

kspenmoll Thank you for this! 1mo
Bookwomble @kspenmoll You're welcome 😊 The album is available to download from Bandcamp, if you're interested:
https://plumvillageband.bandcamp.com/album/a-cloud-never-dies
1mo
35 likes2 comments
quote
Bookwomble
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“It's the aim of existence
to offer resistance
to the flow of time“

🎶I Believe🎶
📀A Different Kind of Tension📀
🎸Buzzcocks🎸
🎤Pete Shelley🎤

https://youtu.be/DRzScthaPOE?si=G6085Ylt31CXdfcU

#BooksAndMusic

Luke-XVX I don‘t really care much for 77 era punk these days but I‘ll always make time for The Buzzcocks 2mo
Bookwomble @Luke-XVX I still like that era of music, but, yeah, Buzzcocks are a bit special 😊 2mo
27 likes2 comments
review
Bookwomble
Damnation Alley | Roger Zelazny
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Pickpick

Lemmy! 🤦‍♂️ He's the obvious casting choice for Hell Tanner! And Motörhead the ultimate soundtrack! #BooksAndMusic
This was definitely a B-movie vibe, but amongst the general mayhem & violence, Zelazny slipped in some social commentary about war, human shortsightedness, & the brutalising effects of social deprivation. Writing in '69, he also anticipated the state response to pandemic being a mix of concern for the populace & profiteering off ⬇️

Bookwomble ... misery & death.
The thin plot is that nuclear war has created a radioactive wasteland separating the Nation of California from the city-state of Boston. The former has a vaccine for the plague devastating the latter, & Tanner can earn a pardon for his violent crimes & drug running, by delivering the medicine in an armoured vehicle through the nightmare of Damnation Alley. Definitely an inspiration for Judge Dredd\'s Cursed Earth saga. ⬇️
(edited) 2mo
Bookwomble There's a redemption arc of sorts, but Tanner remains an unlovable bastard!
A bubble gum book, but it is Napalm Flavoured!
2mo
RamsFan1963 @Bookwomble I've never read the book but I did see the God awful movie with Jan Michael Vincent and George Peppard. I still remember the lame effects, especially the giant scorpions. 2mo
Bookwomble @RamsFan1963 It's awful, isn't it! I remember watching it on VHS in the mid-80s and feeling disappointed as Zelazny was one of my fave authors. It says something that they've printed the name of a different film on the cover! As @The_Book_Ninja and I discussed in an earlier post, another 10 years and John Carpenter as director would have produced a much better movie. 2mo
35 likes4 comments
blurb
Bookwomble
Damnation Alley | Roger Zelazny
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Wow, the Casting team for the movie adaptation sure goofed when they cast Jan Michael Vincent as bearded, cigar-chomping, neo-nazi Hell's Angel, Hell Tanner. Even doing his best Clint Eastwood impression, he's too clean-cut. I had more a sense of him looking like Snake Plisken from the Escape from New York/Los Angeles films, but while he's a better fit, Kurt Russell is still too pretty. The perfect casting decision would definitely have been ⬇️

Bookwomble ... ? Ta-da!! Randall "Tex" Cobb's portrayal of Leonard Smalls, the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse from the Coen brothers' classic movie Raising Arizona! Unless I read something significantly to the contrary as I progress through the book, Cobb is playing the part in my imagination!
Soundtrack: Gotta be Highway to Hell by AC⚡DC!
#BooksAndMusic
2mo
The_Book_Ninja Good call. I‘m a missive fan of Carpenter/Russell. The Thing is a work of art 2mo
Bookwomble [Note to self: Don't listen closely to AC/DC lyrics 🫠😟☣️🗑️] 2mo
Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja Yes, I love his Escape From films, and The Thing is a horror masterpiece. Carpenter would have done justice to this book, I'm sure. 2mo
30 likes4 comments
blurb
Rome753
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Reading while listening to music. I don't always have music playing while reading. If I do, I usually like listening to either jazz or classical music.
What do you usually do? Do you like listening to music while reading?
#cats #catsandbooks #readingcats ##TuxedoCats #booksandmusic #readingandmusic

AnnCrystal ✨📚🎶🐈💫. Reading while listening to music is always grand 😎👍. 3mo
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks I like silence, but of course I rarely get it! 3mo
Bookwomble I have to have music playing while reading 😊 3mo
See All 8 Comments
rwmg Not often, but if I do have music on it has to be instrumental or sung in a language I don't know so that my attention isn't split between the words on the page and the lyrics. 3mo
rwmg Not often, but if I do have music on it has to be instrumental or sung in a language I don't know so that my attention isn't split between the words on the page and the lyrics. 3mo
Rome753 @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks It can be tough! 3mo
Rome753 @rwmg I know what you mean. 3mo
dabbe 🖤🐾🖤 3mo
17 likes8 comments
quote
Bookwomble
Viking DNA: The Wirral and West Lancashire Project | Stephen E Harding, Mark Jobling, Turi King
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"The Vikings were a fierce seafaring people originating from Scandinavia who long ago raided and traded with the British Isles."
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
It seems that while I wasn't looking, two of my current reads, The Prose Edda (Viking literature) and Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North, have spawned an offspring in the guise of Viking DNA: The Wirral and West Lancashire Project!

Bookwomble Listening to Led Zepp's "Immigrant Song" while reading feels appropriate after the past couple of weeks. #BooksAndMusic 3mo
26 likes1 comment
review
Bookwomble
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Mehso-so

The best thing about this GN was the excuse it gave me to listen to the original Blade Runner soundtrack, and as I actually don't need much of an excuse for that, my overall feeling for this one was - meh 😑 That's the same feeling the Blade Runner 2049 film gave me, so I won't be rushing to pick up any more adaptations based on the franchise, which rather saddens me on behalf of PKD's legacy.
#BooksAndMusic

The_Book_Ninja Agreed. I love Blade Runner but Villeneuve dropped the ball with his follow-up 4mo
Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja I love the original Blade Runner film so much, I was really disappointed with the sequel. I wish Harrison Ford had declined to take part. 4mo
31 likes2 comments
review
Bookwomble
I, Robot | Isaac Asimov
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Pickpick

#ClassicLSFBC
I enjoyed these stories more than I recalled, so an upgrade to 5⭐ for me.
The last couple of stories deal with the political and economic consequences of robotic contributions to human culture and governance, with the rise of a fundamentalist Pro-Human faction being harnessed to electoral manipulation and (kind of) culture wars that sparked with contemporary relevance.
I may read "The Rest of the Robots" before the year's end.

Bookwomble #BooksAndBowie #BooksAndMusic
The last story, “The Evitable War“ put me in mind of David Bowie's song “Saviour Machine“, though he had a more apocalyptic vision than Asimov: https://youtu.be/ZBO0gf27sl8?si=kfKl8TOMRxKPfIun
(edited) 4mo
The_Book_Ninja I‘ve very much enjoyed your bite-sized I, Robot reviews. The pics that accompanied them were also top notch. I have Rest of the Robots. Obviously it‘s less daunting than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so let me know when you start Rest.. and I‘ll join. Currently reading and enjoying Foundation and Empire. 4mo
Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja Thank you ? You are partly responsible for the quality of pictures once I'd run out of existing images I liked on t'internet. I was inspired by your AI image mashups of musicians reading books and found an image generator. The most I can claim is having thought of prompts: I'm particularly pleased with the results for this one, "Isaac Asimov standing in front of a giant robot brain". 4mo
The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble Good work, sir! And how appropriate to prompt a robot for robot art! 🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖 4mo
33 likes4 comments
blurb
Bookwomble
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This afternoon I'm sunburning my knees in the back garden with a previously unread edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in honour of the Persian tentmaker's birthday today, listening to Beth Gibbons's excellent new album, Lives Outgrown, with its matching themes of death and the transitory nature of life (I'm a happy bunny, really, honestly!🐰), and wishing I had another Twister ice lolly to replace the one I've just finished.
#BooksAndMusic