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Really exceptional storytelling in this. Gide is so spellbinding when his characters tell a story and some of the stories in this novel took complete hold of me. I'd say his conceit paid off, too. From beginning to end I really got the sense of being lead down the path of a character's transformation but without very much obtrusive telling and so naturally that by the end, when this self-indulgent protagonist has come into his own, all the guilt and cringe over his character had transferred completely to me, the reader. He pulls this off by using his pontification only to provide the bare amount of context for his detailed descriptions of people and places (and low key masterful dialogue).

I'm reading the companion novel, Strait is the Gait, now and the experience is only making my feelings for The Immoralist swell. Gide took on such an interesting project to explore notions he set forth in Fruits of the Earth. I've only read 2 1/2 of his works but they all cohere in such wonderful ways. I look forward to reading more.

I didn't read this to learn about psychotherapy, Freud's body of work has been mostly superseded in contemporary psychology as I understand. I did read this for his exceptional way of thinking and for his entertaining and enlightening prose. This book is based on a series of 28 lectures he gave to mostly non-professionals so it reads loosely and with plenty asides. I'll be honest, I'm less intrigued by his work on dreams than I am on his conception of the unconscious but what I really find interesting in these lectures is his work on transference. Freud comes alive when he is able to ground his theory into colorful examples. The man was a fantastic storyteller.

I'm not sure who I would recommend this to. Other writers going down similar rabbit holes, perhaps. I can say that as an introduction to Freud for anyone who is interested, there really is no better place to start than here.

I really wish I had looked further into this very interesting novel before I had started reading. I would have seen that it is the only one so far translated into English, which means I'll have to wait to read the next volumes and I hate that.

I don't read a lot of fantasy but I thought this was a refreshing and clever take on what genre books I have read. It does spend quite a bit of time leading up to it's ending and although I suppose that was necessary the final 50 pages of this novel are far more interesting than the first 350. Not that they this is a poorly written book, maybe just a little meandering. That said, the emotional availability of the characters is there and although I got a little impatient here and there for the most part this was a fun read and I look forward to getting the next volumes when they are available.

"For mostly, yes, we were silent - tired, as well, though as much out of boredom as for the need to stretch a bit, why not the rest on foot, we at last decided - and dismounting, each walked with his horse close beside him. We mapped our way north by the stars, old school, until there were no stars, just the weather of childhood, where it's snowing forever."
- from, Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors

I hadn't read anything else by Carl Phillips before picking up this book for a craft class so I didn't know I was about to read some of the most gorgeous lines I have encountered. The voices he uses in this collection are tender, surprising, intuitive and nothing short of inspired. For me, he strikes the perfect balance between philosophical engagement and plain spoken diction. These poems can float but they don't start out that way, you hardly notice what is happening until suddenly a line lifts you high enough to see.

"...Some - the luckiest -/arrived at, then clung to, that point in love where/to be understood entirely stops being the main thing,/or a thing at all, even. They could let the nights unfurl/before them, one after the other, each a seemingly/vast underworld of damage they didn't have to talk about, not anymore, they agreed/it was there now, they hovered over it, what light there was/was their own."
-from On Mistaking the Sound of Spurs for Bells Approaching

My only quibble with this book is a selfish one. It is very slim: 52 pages. I wanted more than the 34 poems. Not that this volume is incomplete but that I just met a favorite poet and now I'm a little bit obsessed.

"One day this world will pullulate in my dead mouth." - from Bataille's gravestone

I had only a vague idea of who Georges Bataille was before reading this highly recommended book. Something something naughty books... something something something provocative French intellectual... Well I have a much clearer picture now and I am so glad I trusted my intuition and dove into his fascinating life and work.

This is such a well written biography. In very readable prose, Surya balances stories and relationships from Bataille's life over time with a reasonable progression of his intellectual work and how one fed into the other. His life events are handled very well. There are no rosebuds here, no summing up, or getting to the bottom of the man, and yet I came away from this tome with a great sense of his ideas and influences and with more than enough context to tackle his oeuvre directly, which I am totally doing now.

It would be hard to recommend this book to anyone but hard not to recommend it to anyone with even a little bit of interest.