Petricor's 2024 Reading Diary

Hello, I did one of these threads a year or two ago, but for 50 books (and that failed).
Instead of putting pressure on myself to hit an arbitrary number, I'll be keeping a diary of books read from now to the end of this year (I started late for 2024, clearly). Hoping to write my reactions to each of them here, too. May end up being retrospective as I mull over thoughts.

A quick intro. I'm Petricor aka Anna. More into film watching than book reading, so I'll need all the strength I can muster to persevere with a hobby I like but tend to ignore for other things (coming home late evenings or at night makes it far easier to switch on the telly and fall asleep early).

Feel free to recommend me books. (I'm particularly fond of Kurt Vonnegut and László Krasznahorkai to give an idea.) I won't be able to recommend a book in return as I'm but a mere spring chicken (I am ignoring CATs, DOGs, and KITs until I am better tamed). But I could probably recommend you a film back. So there's that, I suppose?

Image from promotional content for Arise, My Love (1940) with Ray Milland and Claudette Colbert.

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Emoji Codex
These are the anticipated categories. Will expand/delete as appropriate.
🐧 - a Penguin classic
🚀 - sci-fi
🕵️ - mystery
🎭 - poetry
🌍 - non-fiction
📖 - book format
🖥️ - electronic format (web, e-book, or Kindle)
🔊 - audiobook format

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Books Read

O1. 🐧 (🕵️?) 📖 Baron Bagge - Alexander Lernet-Holenia - ★★★★
O2. 🌍 📖 How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism - Diogenes, M. D. Usher - ★★★

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DNF

(currently none)

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Potential Reading List

More from Alexander Lernet-Holenia

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nts: what works - i, u, b, blockquote, hr, sub, sup, ul/ol/li

Baron Bagge by Alexander Lernet-Holenia - ★★★★
^{Translated by Clara and Richard Winston}

They say don't judge a book by its cover. Sorry, I do. Kudos to Penguin Modern Classics for including art by Gabriel Pacheco, because it immediately caught my eye.

Synopsis: Baron Bagge, an officer during WWI, instead of dying to the enemy during an ambush, emerges unscathed, meets the people his now dead mother spoke to him about in a nearby town in Hungary, including one Charlotte Szent-Király, and figures out that something uncanny is afoot while both stationed in the town and performing reconnaissance missions ordered by his commanding officer.

(warning: spoilers)

With no language but
A beating of wings toward Heaven. . .

(book quoted Stéphane Mallarmé's poem, "A Fan (Of Mademoiselle Mallarmé's", link to entire translated poem at Poetry In Translation)

I suppose there are no real relationships between human beings. How can there be? We are always only pretexts for one another, nothing more. Pretexts for hatred or for love. But love and hatred arise within ourselves. No real ties link people together. All that we can ever be to one another is a finer or viler pretext for our own emotions.

Lernet-Holenia on his book in letter correspondence to his friend Stefan Zweig, June 23, 1936:

Perhaps only form really matters, to the extent that it gives no clue as to what was originally formed, or allows no one to discern that. Or perhaps it makes no difference what is formed. The shape and configuration seem to be all, and the content carries weight only if it has become meaning. . .
In the case of Bagge, I really did not know what I was writing. Viewed superficially, the myth of the nine-day journey toward death. But the book's essence seems to lie elsewhere, and I, who wrote the book, still cannot put my finger on it. Actually this is a tragic situation: that even in this most intellectual of professions one's individual personality has as little influence as is i ncreasingly the case in other contexts; that just as someone else rules over us, 'something else' writes our books. Not we ourselves. Recognizing that has to make us very, very humble.

Baron Bagge hits hard, not because its destination takes one by surprise (it does not), but because of the emotions it produces in its protagonist. Baron Bagge, in his discomfort of the dream state he was in, strove to find reality, only to realise he missed the human connection he made in the dream state. And he could tell himself that it was not a true connection, because it wasn't to a true human being, only his perception of one, or death's transformation of a real human being, but he can't bring himself to accept objective reality. This very rational man becomes governed by his emotional state. And Lernet-Holenia doesn't want to pass a value judgment over this. So, I'm, in the end, left with a large hurting dose of bittersweetness.

Lernet-Holenia himself seemed to long for the old pre-war Austrian days of aristocracy. There's a clear tinge of nostalgia in Baron Bagge, the difficulty in accepting the transience of everything. Bagge shifts from being present and future focused to being past focused after his survival. And I can't help but feel sorry for him and his ironic fate. Being present/future focused helped him survive his dream state and being past focused helped him survive his reality. He is perpetually at odds with his world. Perhaps Lernet-Holenia is saying a degree of this tension keeps one going. Bittersweet, this.

I'm looking forward to his Count Luna next.

Welcome to the group!

>4 warriorcat77goon: You can read all about the group at the top of this page: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/24125/2024-Category-Challenge

>6 warriorcat77goon: No I don't, but you will find a lot of titles if you Google alpha male.