Helen De Cruz Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Helen De Cruz

@andytowne @nescio13 @gwen_h_marshall @medrenliza @KennethLPearce I still need to do the worm-men which did not quite work out in earlier sketches (I'm hoping to do a more naturalistic version of Lowly Worm). Here's Cavendish + Empress together with the Kabbalah the Empress wrote (sort of inspired by John Dee's) https://t.co/RtL6c2Yfoz

Helen De Cruz

Flowers for Algernon is the short story that made Daniel Keyes famous (he also wrote a novel about it). Overall an interesting narrative voice and device. Also seems to me stories about mental disability fall into two tropes: tragedy (as here) or secret wisdom (eg Forrest Gump)

Helen De Cruz

My daughter (a high school senior) has just begun listening to the excellent audiobook version of Piranesi and hope she enjoys it! Few books evoke a kind of 18th c sublimity and secular mysticism, but Susanna Clarke does it--what a read.

Helen De Cruz

Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. I only began to read him a few years ago when the deep prejudice against him I got from my background began to wane. He has a very interesting later strand of ecophilosophy in his writing which I'm exploring now

Helen De Cruz

@BlackestofLies True--I think that's a great loss. Many people will never read the classics because they believe they aren't educated enough. I love Thomas Hardy's tragic novel "Jude the Obscure" because Jude, in spite of humble class origin, just goes for it and aspires to educate himself

Helen De Cruz

Inquiries of various sorts (example: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations) 9/ https://t.co/r5yAlBHPAI

Helen De Cruz

It would be a lack to not include Aubrey Beardsley's elegant linework for Oscar Wilde's plays and Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, inspired by Japanese art, all from the 1890s. As Beardsley said "If I am not grotesque I am nothing.” https://t.co/JfpDAxtLst

Helen De Cruz

Re-reading Gulliver's Travels (Swift) for potential inclusion in an anthology, and I'm struck by the fact that the writing craft of old isn't quite up to standard of later works. Even e.g, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is so much better written and plotted.

Out of stock

Helen De Cruz

The very best referee reports I've received are those that give you reading recs of works you weren't familiar with (and this happens a lot, esp if it's a new topic). I'm now reading How Forests Think, by Eduardo Kohn, which among others draws on the weirder aspects of CS Peirce.

Helen De Cruz

Examples (books I've either read very recently or am reading, it could be a fluke they just all happen to use this trope) Marune: Alastor 933 by Jack Vance (1975) Amber chronicles by Zelazny (1970) The towers of February by Tonke Dragt (1975)