Justin Howe's Blog, page 30

Alleycon 2015

This past weekend I went to Gwangju for Alleycon, a fan con that wants to be a meeting place for local geeks, nerds, and dorks. A trifecta I identify with in variable proportions. It was a four hour bus ride, and overall a pretty good time, but a different vibe from last year. The biggest difference being due to the venue change from a university to a design building, which is the difference between 30 people filling a classroom and 30 people milling around a cavernous loft space. Not sure wh...

YesterWeird: The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Chapters 10, 11 & 12

I finished the book two months ago. I finish the posts now.

This has been a crazy book. Dracula’s got nothing on the Monk.

Chapter 10 and we’re back with the dudebros, Lorenzo and the Marquis. They’ve assembled a group of archers and are all set to apprehend the mother superior from the convent of Saint Claire at the big parade. And what a parade it is. Since this is an English man writing about the Spanish, the parade’s a long litany of sumptuousness atop a cake of voluptuousness with a garn...

Community Aches

You can probably spare yourself a lot of trouble when you join a community by determining as soon as possible what kind of community you’ve joined. I can think of three types of communities and each has their value, but each also breaks in a way peculiar to itself.*

Community of Interests: “You like dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs. Let’s form a dinosaur club!”

This is probably the most common type of community, and you’d probably think it wouldn’t suffer from any problems, but there’s always goin...

YesterWeird: The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Chapters 8 & 9

If you thought things were nutty before now, all I can say is buckle up, because from here on out things only get nuttier.

Chapter 8 returns us to Lorenzo and the Marquis moping around over Agnes’s presumed death. The only one not given over to the mopes is young poet Theodore who decides to don cape and eye patch and go begging at the convent with his guitar. As a dapper young lad he’s quick to work his way into the place and charm the nuns, which he does with a song from Denmark where the p...

YesterWeird: The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Chapters 6 & 7

Chapters 6 & 7 can pretty much be subtitled “The Making of an Anti-Hero”.

Ambrosio’s not so much the villain as the protagonist of the novel. Unfortunately for everyone, much of his protagging is of the downward spiral type. This fact gets hightlighted in these two chapters as Ambrosio completes his turn away from his ideals and embraces the dark side as introduced to him by Matilda, his demon lover.

When Chapter 6 opens the pair are still abed together, and Ambrosio has some guilt over what...

YesterWeird: Recommendations?

Do you have a favorite old, weird book?

Recommend it and I’ll probably read it!

But, I’m also looking for books to give the YesterWeird treatment to, like I’m doing with Matthew Lewis’s The Monk.

Old = written before 1930.
Weird = I leave up to you.

My definition of weird includes Fantomas novels, Cavendish’s The Blazing World, Scientific Romances, Dumas and his contemporaries, Gothic and Sensation novels, Apuleius, and P’u Songling… so it’s pretty broad, but limited. I’m not likely to do ano...

YesterWeird: The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Chapter 5

… and now we return to The Monk, chapter 5 to be exact.

Chapter 5: Raymond finishes telling Lorenzo the sad story of “How I Knocked Up Your Sister”. Lorenzo agrees not to kill him, and both agree that Agnes needs to get out of that convent. Lorenzo then brings up Antonia and her situation.

Part of that story is that Raymond is Antonia’s mom Elvira’s brother-in-law, but he never knew about it because his parents never mentioned it (they thought their son was too good for Elvira) and they lived...

Mysteries of Education

I’ve taught at the same school since 2011. For some these kids I’m the only English teacher they’ve had. One thing that’s fascinating to me this year is how utterly nice and good natured the current 6th graders are. Not that I’m complaining, but it puzzles me and I wonder if this was somehow created or if it’s just luck. Like, not every student is perfect or a great kid, but there’s no horrible bullies, which have been a problem in previous years, or kids prone to violent out-bursts (which is...

YesterWeird: The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Chapters 3 & 4

We return now to Matthew Lewis’s The Monk.

The deeper I get into this book, 1) the more I like it, 2) the weirder its fetishisization of Catholicism gets.

In the chapters 3 &4 we leave Ambrosio and Matilda behind and return to Lorenzo and Don Raymond the Marquis de las Cisternas. Lorenzo’s upset because Don Raymond impregnated his sister, Agnes, despite her being a nun, and if Don Raymond doesn’t talk fast, he’s likely to wind-up stabbed in all the worst ways. So Don Raymond tells his story,...

Move Your Head 2 Inches

One thing I hate in readers is a lack of curiosity. Often times folks devoted to a genre whine loudest about not having anything to read, when actually, if they just moved their heads a little in any direction, they’d find something great. Kindles have done away with that, although I’m not sure they’ve done much to improve reader curiosity. If anything Kindles have managed to speed everyone’s descent into a bottomless pit of their own choosing, only now that descent’s fueled by Amazon’s algor...