J.T. Wilson > Recent Status Updates

One of those where I was on holiday and idly picked up a badly printed paperback (one of the pages had the words printed almost diagonally across the page) that someone had left there, and then I was 100 pages in and I guess I had to admit I was reading the book and wanted to see how it ended.

This protagonist makes dreadful decisions.

Malign spirit takes over benevolent body in order to wreak evil havoc, only to succumb to the cosy life of the benevolent, is a funny angle to play out alongside the ‘Artemis Fowl’ magic tourism.

The same plot as always I think, but the Blandings world always a joy to return to.

Published in 2019, this is in fact quite an accurate portrayal of how people would respond to a pandemic. Three years after the pandemic in this book, people are rioting in the North West “because the government aren’t doing enough to protect our children”: also spooky.

Less than 50 pages in there’s a throwaway reference to ‘Loch and Ness’: Gottiewrites lives! Wren James Extended Universe!

Adding a false romantic lead: played out, predictable, obviously just spinning wheels

Adding TWO false romantic leads: adds suspense, no idea which she will actually end up with

All I need is a Jenna Miscavige

A book you suspect might be better in a film adaptation (if there was any chance it’d get made without litigious Scientologists preventing every step of the production).

Sort of an update on ‘Rebecca’, which is mostly a departure for Thomas.

The AO3 Of Forking Paths.
Livejournal.com/community/houseofleaves

Extremely my shit.

Well this is going down easily (I bought it yesterday with no prior knowledge of James’s output)

A twist of Mme Blavatsky for vibes elevating the book, as it often does.

Unsurprisingly the Lennon section (in conversation with Swami Prabhupada) is a bit more argumentative and critical than the Harrison section.

“If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality.”

This is a fairly short book so only 60-odd pages left and it occurs to me that I will miss watching Miller and his degenerate friends stumbling through the squalor and filth of the Parisian underbelly, crawling through the sewage like Andy Dufresne.

“Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions.” (p79)

In such a vicious and pessimistic book it’s odd to find something that reads almost like an affirmation.