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bearer of light, I believe obvious Promethean overtones or any deity who steals something - i.e. challenges the order in heaven - and is punished for it, or makes a self-sacrifice i.e. Odin sacrificing his eye (outer sight, physical self) to gain wisdom (inner sight, spiritual self) from...

that's maybe the quintessential example the morning star is another good one (tho that term is also used for Jesus iirc)

not naming cthonic deities so as to avoid invoking them is a common precaution across different cultures, I believe i.e. the innumerable euphemisms for the Devil

ah right I didn't know Binet was following in something of a European WWII metahistorical fiction tradition @droid 7th Function of Language was actually recommended to me recently independently of having read HHhH sounds like it's kind of in the Umberto Eco, Wu Ming, etc realm? tho French...

also if anyone has read The Sympathizer? that's definitely on my list, haven't gotten to yet

A pretty good contemporaryish book I read recently - HHhH by Laurent Binet a strange, kinda sui generis book - a postmodern metacommentary on what it means to write historical fiction built on the scaffolding of actual historical fiction, i.e. it's largely a novel about him writing the novel...

no, the Graves books are set in the mid-first century AD, about a century after the end of the Republic any sprawling historical novel, esp in ancient Rome, is probably going to involve a massive cast of characters, I just find the Republic much more interesting - they were still dickhead...

back on Marlon James I haven't read any of the new fantasy trilogy yet but I'm looking forward to it was going to wait until all 3 were out and then just read them at one go but maybe I'll read the first one

Mary Renault's novels are supposed to be quite good, and authentic, on Ancient Greece btw but I haven't read them so couldn't say

no. the Roman Empire and dynastic succession and palace coups interests me vastly less than the Republic. I probably should at some point, they're supposed to be good and canonical in the popular view of antiquity I guess. I did read Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series a couple years...

yunno thinking about it the book it most reminds of is maybe Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson the ability to produce something compelling out of a sprawling historical sweep with many threads, to bring very diverse characters to life as multifaceted individuals, and to get to some kind of insight...

in re sympathetic character - the obv one is the almost entirely off-page Singer (i.e. Bob) around whom the novel book orbits, tho you could probably look at some other characters (the older head gangster in the Tivoli Gardens equivalent comes to mind) as relatively sympathetic. mostly it's a...

been a minute but I recall Seven Killings being pretty great not only a postcolonial text, but very much a great postcolonial novel in the tradition of Things Fall Apart etc, tho a modern one in the sense that it deals with the consequences of both direct British imperialism and later indirect...

preferring late-era sans Wobble/Levene PIL is one of those takes so perversely contrarian that you have to respect its oddness iirc 9 is basically competent sub-U2/Simple Minds late 80s arena rock, marred by the absolute incongruity of that style w/Lydon's nasal warbling don't remember That...

first two only for me, w/Metal Box as obvious masterpiece Flowers of Romance is an interesting, truly unique record and I respect the effort but it's not something I want to listen to or would recommend

it's bc the American and British meanings of the adjective moot are strangely different (if not quite opposite) i.e. here it means irrelevant in the sense of not worth thinking/debating about bc it's not possible, or not necessary, to arrive at a conclusion in Britain it means an uncertain...

how do you think he'll do as a top dog? or I guess co-top dogs with Randle he's undoubtedly a good player and I like his game but he's also 6'1" w/o top-level athleticism or a Donovan Mitchell-type giant wingspin a Brunson/Randle/Barrett core is pretty uninspiring - like a 7 or 8 seed at best...

and Ben Simmons would be finally be embrace his inner Westbrook and put up crazy stats on a terrible team without worrying about the pressure of actually trying to win anything or getting schemed off the court in the playoffs

that may be true. I think they'd get a solid return on Durant, even if it's still just 0.65 or whatever on the dollar. long-term contract and his game should continue to age well so he'll probably be worth that contract (at least in NBA terms) for at least most of it Kyrie is a lot less...

that's what almost always happens with superstar trades tho it's almost impossible to get equivalent value back on a Kevin Durant bc in the NBA the sum of lesser players never equals a single great player when was the last time a team traded a superstar - one still playing like a superstar -...