There’s a certain kind of person who, when confronted with the fact that someone doesn’t like something they like, will recommend more of it.
If someone says they don’t like Jimi Hendrix, the last thing they want is a recommendation of a Jimi Hendrix album! This doesn’t seem like a hard concept.
And yet, when I suggest that I’ve never enjoyed a book by a given author, people often say, “Oh you’ve got to read such and such.”1 I’m not in the habit of consuming the entire oeuvre of artists I dislike!
This is all to say that I’ve got about 5 episodes left in cowboy bebop, my first anime. So far my reaction is “it’s fine?” I prefer a tighter story, I think. If this is, as I’ve heard it described, one of the best animes ever made, the genre really might not be for me. And that’s okay!
I may give Full Metal Alchemist a try, we’ll see. But please do not leave comments with more anime for me to consume. I’ve watched half of Ghost in the Shell (1995), I’ve seen the first ten minutes of Attack on Titan. It’s not for me!
Elsewhere, I’ve been watching movies.
- You Were Never Really Here: Taken with ambiguous trauma.
- Phoenician Scheme: A Wes Anderson film about what to do if you suddenly have a father, instead of reckoning with the fact that you never have.
- Exit Through the Gift Shop: a cutting piece of satire that feels like a staple in the mockumentary genre… Except the authors insist it’s all real.
Bookwise, I’ve been reading Slow Horses which features one of the most poetic ways I’ve ever seen to describe someone getting shot:
The gun made a quiet cough. The trio dispersed. One fell to the ground, landing perfectly in a puddle which hand’t been there a moment before. It warmed, spread, and formed an inky stream to the gutter, hardly disturbed at all by the sounds of flight and fear and grief now gathering round it.
Speaking of poetry, I’ve been studying it lately, and have enjoyed reading with a lens for rhythm and style. More on that later.
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This is different than asking, “Oh, have you read X?” This can be the start of conversations like “I thought that was their best work, and I’d love to know why it didn’t land for you…” or “Huh, I guess we’re different people.” ↩