What an honor to be among your faves! Your videos are so well produced--I could never achieve such a smooth and soothing aesthetic. And I completely resonate with your words about being a better reader. All best to you!
Sorry - I missed this comment somehow. Ah! It's my absolute pleasure to include you - you're a big part of why I started making these videos. Thanks ever so much for the kind words!
I find watching this my new go to after a long clinical day. Immediately I feel my breathing slow and my mind clear. The second point is the value of challenging books that need interpretation…I know I need a guiding hand. Sam you remind me of finding a favourite teacher at school or university, one that engages you and opens doors of understanding.
Listening to this again, I think Sam’s thoughtful words summarise my perspective…..if Time makes me choose, I choose atmosphere over erudition, I choose immersing myself in the atmosphere of Conrad over posting a thousand pictures of my own work, and I fully accept the oneiric air of these videos over wordy narcissism I sometimes waste time on. Although it’s simplistic to impose these dualities, I do think there is a deep need being satisfied here in the quiet unassuming discussion. Thanks Sam.
Toni Morrison is wonderful. My favorite being SONG OF SOLOMON. Perhaps you should approach MISS MACINTOSH, MY DARLING by Marguerite Young. Another fine video. Thank you for this.
I'll second Miss Macintosh, My Darling enthusiastically. For me, it's the book that best approximates the kind of gentle, meditative strangeness in my favorite women minimalist composers like Eliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros. It's a vibe that requires an equally meditative patience on the part of the reader or listener. This makes some readers react with violent hostility against Young's book, but I absolutely love being invited into that frame of mind - especially in a world so replete with anxious distraction. New Directions is set to release a new edition in October. Although it has already been delayed twice (it was supposed to come out last August), hopefully this time it will actually come out, and could provide a great opportunity for those curious about it to dive in.
Thanks so much. Various people have been pushing me to read 'Wuthering Heights' throughout my entire life. I think that's why I haven't read it yet. I'll probably bite the bullet soon. ;)
Outstanding, as usual. As far as women writers go, I can't give a strong enough recommendation to read Rikki Ducornet's work, particularly her Elements tetralogy, with emphasis on The Fountains of Neptune and The Jade Cabinet. I'd also recommend A.S. Byatt's Angel's & Insects, which is criminally under-rated.
Cheers, Forrest. I've never encountered Rikki Ducornet, but I'm already sold after having looked her up. I've also never read 'Angels & Insects', but have wanted to for a while. Actually, I really loved 'Possession' - easily could have mentioned it in the video, but it slipped my mind.
@@SherdsTube I was about to mention Rikki Ducornet but @Forrest Aguirre beat me to it. I will highlight The Fountains of Neptune as well, it is delightful - my other favorite in the the elements series was Entering Fire. All four of them are playful and vibrant in language and tone. Very much recommended for fans of Angela Carter (who of course could also be mentioned on her own).
@@SherdsTube you are in for a treat! Ask me sometime about the phone call I had with Rikki. Oh, and that old Steely Dan song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"? It's about her. One of the band knew her when they attended Bard college together.
I reviewed Fountains of Neptune on Goodreads if anyone is interested: "Nostalgia, fairytales and saltwater. Rikki Ducornets tale of water is presented in two halves. The novel's first half is a deep dive into fantastical myths of the sea, absorbed with wonder by the wide-eyed young narrator, a child of about 10 years. In the local tavern, colorful characters tell the boy - an ever-attentive listener - of all sorts of pirate-laden adventures, exotic shanties and jewel-encrusted dreamscapes. The second half of the novel is told by this same boy, on the emergent side of a 50-year long coma - a child's mind wrapped in the cloth of an old mans overripe body. Like the two first books in Ducornet's 'Tetralogy of Elements', this one is almost worth reading for the inventive playfulness of the language alone. Every single page is soaking in aquatic metaphors, as was the case with fire in the former novel. However Ducornet has more to her writing. The novel drips with thematic underpinnings: the meaning of storytelling, the role of memory in identity, the immediacy of consciousness and the connection between dreams and reality. Not to mention: I was genuinely touched by a scene involving toy monkeys."
a few of my favorite women writers not mentioned in your video: May Sinclair (weird fiction), Katharine Burdekin aka Murray Constantine's Swastika Night a prediction of a future Nazi ruled Europe in the 1930s and her other stories play loosely with gender and gender roles, C.L. Moore's Shambeau is a masterpiece of early SF, Anne Sedwick's The Third Window is a subtle ghost story, and also Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is a perennial read for me, but YMMV. thank you for the fantastic videos as always.
Thank you for these terrific suggestions. Not so long ago, I read a May Sinclair story in the first 'Women's Weird' anthology. Would be interested to check out more. Thanks so much for the kind words. :)
really resonate with the delicious experience of a disorienting text, gets very addictive! Thanks so much for the mention, by a beast among the sherd ☺
New subscriber here! I’m ever more surprised and appreciative of this channel. It honestly makes me feel like I could pull off an attempt, and I’m encouraged by your reflections of the joy making and editing these has brought you. I recommend Eloghosa Osunde and her novel Vagabonds! as a great voice in queer literature.
I very much enjoy these Q&A videos. They always broaden my reading horizons and leave me with plenty to explore. A personal favourite female author I would recommend is Gabrielle Wittkop. Especially her short story collection, 'Exemplary Departures', which has exceptional prose and deeply moving stories that have really stayed with me.
Thanks for saying so, Carl. Yes, I've come across her name before - I'm sure someone recommended 'The Necrophiliac'. I haven't had a chance to try her yet, though. I'll try to get hold of a copy of 'Exemplary Departures'. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
@SherdsTube No problem. The Necrophiliac is a very good book, providing you've got the stomach for it. It's a deeply disturbing read, as I'm sure you can imagine from the title alone.
Excellent video and a list of recommendations that I will look forward to pursuing. Some recommendations for female authors - Lydia yuknoviches the chronology of water . House of psychotic women by kier la janisse are wonderful books . I would strongly recommend anything by Rachel cusk as well
I loved the auditory metaphor for reading that you developed early in the video, especially as it relates to how a book relates to the history of literature, to other instances of its genre, and so on. Also, I knew that you liked Wolfe but I had no idea how formative The Book of the New Sun was for you. I only read it a few years ago, but I'm sure that had I read it at a younger age, this would have been true for me as well. As if is, my bridge from a youthful preoccupation with science fiction and fantasy to a larger literary world was by way of Beckett, whose The Lost Ones I picked up as an adolescent and 'mistook' for a very oddball work of fantasy.
What an introduction to that world. Ha! It's hard to imagine what encountering Beckett's late prose would have done to my 13-year-old brain. I can understand that, though - there are some peculiar elements in Beckett's work that feel like secondary-world fantasy, aren't there?
Beautiful video. I just wondered... which languages do you speak? Also, a lesser known author that was recommended to me by a used bookseller in the Southern Swedish countryside when I asked him about the best modern Swedish author: Lina Wolff. Her books are meditations on the modern relationship between men and women -- I see her as a counterpart to Houellebecq. Especially her book The Polyglot Lovers reads as a response to him. I love some of her short stories in Everybody dies like you - especially year of the pig. Her latest book is about shame and the usage by men to assert control over women by it is something I thought about a lot and i appreciated a female perspective on the topic.
Thanks so much for the kind words and the recommendation. Lina Wolff sounds very interesting - I'll do my best to try something by her. As for languages, I'm planning on discussing my relationship with them in Part 4 of the Q&A series. :)
I very much appreciated your analogy of the organ and the cathedral as representing the relation of a single book to literature. By coincidence, when someone online asked recently to name the three books with which you would start a library for a child (of say, about ten), I named, The Book of the New Sun, Frankenstein, and Michael Ende's Neverending Story. Finally, on the question of women writers, might I suggest: Higuchi Ichiyo (not much translated into English, but worth it if you can get hold of the Robert Lyons Danly volume); Jane de La Vaudère (much published by Snuggly Books); Zdravka Evtimova (a contemporary Bulgarian writer); Mary Webb (by whose Precious Bane I was recently surprised. I would also like to recommend Hayashi Fumiko, but sadly cannot vouch for the quality of translations. At least the translation of Floating Clouds, which I compared directly with the original, was an act of butchery. Still, some of her short pieces are available here and there. There's a good one, for instance, in Tuttle's anthology, Modern Japanese Short Stories (ed. Ivan Morris and Seiji M. Lippit), and another in the Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories (ed. Goossen).
Thanks for the kind words, Quentin! Ha, what a coincidence. That's about as fine a start one could have on their journey with books. Thanks so much for all these excellent recommendations. I've just ordered a copy of 'Precious Bane'. I recall you talking about Zdravka Evtimova during the interview we did - her work seems tricky to come by. Do you have any experience with Kōno Taeko, by any chance? I recently acquired a book of her short stories.
Glad you think so. He has the same capacity to delight me now as when I first encountered him. Have you ever tried The Wizard Knight, by the way? I find myself intrigued by that one lately.
@@SherdsTubeunfortunately not, but I’m really keen on reading it -it’s next in my Wolfe list. Right now I’m making my way through ‘The Urth of the New Sun’ and it’s fantastic so far.
@@SherdsTube I reread The Wizard Knight earlier this year. A bit of an unpopular opinion, but I like it more than the The Book of the New Sun. It feels very heartfelt and avoids what I consider some of Wolfe's excesses. Also, it's interesting to read a Eurocentric fantasy in an authentic American voice: a bit like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Either of Ducornet's element novels might be a good place to start, or "Brightfellow" or "Netsuke". I somehow feel that there's a common vibe connecting Janet Frame and Anna Kavan, although I have not thought about that for long enough to be able to put my finger on why I feel that way ... They're both great in any case.
Yes, this is my own music. I make pretty much all the music for my videos. There are a couple of tracks made from samples etc. in other videos, but it's mostly my own playing.
@@SherdsTube I see. One of the interludes reminded me of the music Joe Frank used on his podcasts. Leaf by leaf is truly prolific, but to be fair, he doesn't make music like you hehe. Great video, thanks for your art!
@@Efesus67 I've thought about Joe Frank too when watching @sherdstube's videos. Joe Frank was the soundtrack to my college years. It's sad to me that he passed away: had he lived a while longer, he would have had such a career resurgence in the world of podcasting and UA-cam video essays...
This channel is such a gem.
Very glad you think so! Thank you. :)
What an honor to be among your faves! Your videos are so well produced--I could never achieve such a smooth and soothing aesthetic. And I completely resonate with your words about being a better reader. All best to you!
Sorry - I missed this comment somehow. Ah! It's my absolute pleasure to include you - you're a big part of why I started making these videos. Thanks ever so much for the kind words!
I find watching this my new go to after a long clinical day. Immediately I feel my breathing slow and my mind clear. The second point is the value of challenging books that need interpretation…I know I need a guiding hand. Sam you remind me of finding a favourite teacher at school or university, one that engages you and opens doors of understanding.
So glad u mentioned heart of darkness
Listening to this again, I think Sam’s thoughtful words summarise my perspective…..if Time makes me choose, I choose atmosphere over erudition, I choose immersing myself in the atmosphere of Conrad over posting a thousand pictures of my own work, and I fully accept the oneiric air of these videos over wordy narcissism I sometimes waste time on. Although it’s simplistic to impose these dualities, I do think there is a deep need being satisfied here in the quiet unassuming discussion. Thanks Sam.
If you're into horror and folklore and looking for a female writer you definitely should read Fernanda Melchor's novels.
She seems fascinating - thanks for the suggestion. :)
Very glad somebody brought up Melchor before me! I’ve only read her novel Hurricane Season, but she has already left a deep impression.
@@simeongranada8959 Páradais is a blast as well. I'm looking forward to whatever she's going to write next.
@@jan-willemvankaathoven914 it's going on my list! Cheers
Toni Morrison is wonderful. My favorite being SONG OF SOLOMON. Perhaps you should approach MISS MACINTOSH, MY DARLING by Marguerite Young. Another fine video. Thank you for this.
Thanks so much! Yes, 'Miss Macintosh, My Darling' is definitely on my radar. Waiting for the new edition to come out later this year.
I'll second Miss Macintosh, My Darling enthusiastically. For me, it's the book that best approximates the kind of gentle, meditative strangeness in my favorite women minimalist composers like Eliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros. It's a vibe that requires an equally meditative patience on the part of the reader or listener. This makes some readers react with violent hostility against Young's book, but I absolutely love being invited into that frame of mind - especially in a world so replete with anxious distraction.
New Directions is set to release a new edition in October. Although it has already been delayed twice (it was supposed to come out last August), hopefully this time it will actually come out, and could provide a great opportunity for those curious about it to dive in.
I like your list of women writers and I will add some of my favorites: Emily Bronte, Olga Tokarczuk, and Jane Austen.
Thanks so much. Various people have been pushing me to read 'Wuthering Heights' throughout my entire life. I think that's why I haven't read it yet. I'll probably bite the bullet soon. ;)
I love your videos, they're really calming, comforting and enticing at the same time. From a Portuguese fan :)
Thanks for saying so. Very kind of you.
Your videos are wonderful and this one was a delight. Thank you
The pleasure is all mine. Thanks so much for saying that.
I agree, how the hell do they do it? Even if one read all day, it’s still unbelievable
Yes, it makes me feel like I'm working at a glacial pace. I only have admiration for them, though. :)
Outstanding, as usual. As far as women writers go, I can't give a strong enough recommendation to read Rikki Ducornet's work, particularly her Elements tetralogy, with emphasis on The Fountains of Neptune and The Jade Cabinet. I'd also recommend A.S. Byatt's Angel's & Insects, which is criminally under-rated.
Cheers, Forrest. I've never encountered Rikki Ducornet, but I'm already sold after having looked her up. I've also never read 'Angels & Insects', but have wanted to for a while. Actually, I really loved 'Possession' - easily could have mentioned it in the video, but it slipped my mind.
@@SherdsTube I was about to mention Rikki Ducornet but @Forrest Aguirre beat me to it. I will highlight The Fountains of Neptune as well, it is delightful - my other favorite in the the elements series was Entering Fire. All four of them are playful and vibrant in language and tone. Very much recommended for fans of Angela Carter (who of course could also be mentioned on her own).
@@SherdsTube you are in for a treat! Ask me sometime about the phone call I had with Rikki. Oh, and that old Steely Dan song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"? It's about her. One of the band knew her when they attended Bard college together.
@@rottenfralort glad to find another fan of Rikki's work!
I reviewed Fountains of Neptune on Goodreads if anyone is interested:
"Nostalgia, fairytales and saltwater.
Rikki Ducornets tale of water is presented in two halves.
The novel's first half is a deep dive into fantastical myths of the sea, absorbed with wonder by the wide-eyed young narrator, a child of about 10 years.
In the local tavern, colorful characters tell the boy - an ever-attentive listener - of all sorts of pirate-laden adventures, exotic shanties and jewel-encrusted dreamscapes.
The second half of the novel is told by this same boy, on the emergent side of a 50-year long coma - a child's mind wrapped in the cloth of an old mans overripe body.
Like the two first books in Ducornet's 'Tetralogy of Elements', this one is almost worth reading for the inventive playfulness of the language alone. Every single page is soaking in aquatic metaphors, as was the case with fire in the former novel.
However Ducornet has more to her writing.
The novel drips with thematic underpinnings: the meaning of storytelling, the role of memory in identity, the immediacy of consciousness and the connection between dreams and reality.
Not to mention: I was genuinely touched by a scene involving toy monkeys."
Thank you for this.I have been waiting.
Hope it was worth it! Thanks for watching. :)
@@SherdsTube it was indeed worth it.Will soon be rewatching it.
a few of my favorite women writers not mentioned in your video: May Sinclair (weird fiction), Katharine Burdekin aka Murray Constantine's Swastika Night a prediction of a future Nazi ruled Europe in the 1930s and her other stories play loosely with gender and gender roles, C.L. Moore's Shambeau is a masterpiece of early SF, Anne Sedwick's The Third Window is a subtle ghost story, and also Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is a perennial read for me, but YMMV. thank you for the fantastic videos as always.
Thank you for these terrific suggestions. Not so long ago, I read a May Sinclair story in the first 'Women's Weird' anthology. Would be interested to check out more.
Thanks so much for the kind words. :)
really resonate with the delicious experience of a disorienting text, gets very addictive! Thanks so much for the mention, by a beast among the sherd ☺
My pleasure!
New subscriber here! I’m ever more surprised and appreciative of this channel. It honestly makes me feel like I could pull off an attempt, and I’m encouraged by your reflections of the joy making and editing these has brought you.
I recommend Eloghosa Osunde and her novel Vagabonds! as a great voice in queer literature.
I very much enjoy these Q&A videos. They always broaden my reading horizons and leave me with plenty to explore. A personal favourite female author I would recommend is Gabrielle Wittkop. Especially her short story collection, 'Exemplary Departures', which has exceptional prose and deeply moving stories that have really stayed with me.
Thanks for saying so, Carl. Yes, I've come across her name before - I'm sure someone recommended 'The Necrophiliac'. I haven't had a chance to try her yet, though. I'll try to get hold of a copy of 'Exemplary Departures'. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
@SherdsTube No problem. The Necrophiliac is a very good book, providing you've got the stomach for it. It's a deeply disturbing read, as I'm sure you can imagine from the title alone.
Love the channel! Curious on your thoughts of reading one book at a time vs reading two, three at the same time?
Thank you for your extremely distinguished content
Thanks for all your support! :)
Excellent video and a list of recommendations that I will look forward to pursuing.
Some recommendations for female authors - Lydia yuknoviches the chronology of water . House of psychotic women by kier la janisse are wonderful books . I would strongly recommend anything by Rachel cusk as well
Thanks so much - appreciate the recommendations. 'The Chronology of Water' looks cool - great title, too. :)
I loved the auditory metaphor for reading that you developed early in the video, especially as it relates to how a book relates to the history of literature, to other instances of its genre, and so on. Also, I knew that you liked Wolfe but I had no idea how formative The Book of the New Sun was for you. I only read it a few years ago, but I'm sure that had I read it at a younger age, this would have been true for me as well. As if is, my bridge from a youthful preoccupation with science fiction and fantasy to a larger literary world was by way of Beckett, whose The Lost Ones I picked up as an adolescent and 'mistook' for a very oddball work of fantasy.
What an introduction to that world. Ha! It's hard to imagine what encountering Beckett's late prose would have done to my 13-year-old brain. I can understand that, though - there are some peculiar elements in Beckett's work that feel like secondary-world fantasy, aren't there?
Beautiful video. I just wondered... which languages do you speak?
Also, a lesser known author that was recommended to me by a used bookseller in the Southern Swedish countryside when I asked him about the best modern Swedish author: Lina Wolff. Her books are meditations on the modern relationship between men and women -- I see her as a counterpart to Houellebecq. Especially her book The Polyglot Lovers reads as a response to him. I love some of her short stories in Everybody dies like you - especially year of the pig. Her latest book is about shame and the usage by men to assert control over women by it is something I thought about a lot and i appreciated a female perspective on the topic.
Thanks so much for the kind words and the recommendation. Lina Wolff sounds very interesting - I'll do my best to try something by her. As for languages, I'm planning on discussing my relationship with them in Part 4 of the Q&A series. :)
I very much appreciated your analogy of the organ and the cathedral as representing the relation of a single book to literature. By coincidence, when someone online asked recently to name the three books with which you would start a library for a child (of say, about ten), I named, The Book of the New Sun, Frankenstein, and Michael Ende's Neverending Story. Finally, on the question of women writers, might I suggest: Higuchi Ichiyo (not much translated into English, but worth it if you can get hold of the Robert Lyons Danly volume); Jane de La Vaudère (much published by Snuggly Books); Zdravka Evtimova (a contemporary Bulgarian writer); Mary Webb (by whose Precious Bane I was recently surprised. I would also like to recommend Hayashi Fumiko, but sadly cannot vouch for the quality of translations. At least the translation of Floating Clouds, which I compared directly with the original, was an act of butchery. Still, some of her short pieces are available here and there. There's a good one, for instance, in Tuttle's anthology, Modern Japanese Short Stories (ed. Ivan Morris and Seiji M. Lippit), and another in the Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories (ed. Goossen).
Thanks for the kind words, Quentin! Ha, what a coincidence. That's about as fine a start one could have on their journey with books.
Thanks so much for all these excellent recommendations. I've just ordered a copy of 'Precious Bane'. I recall you talking about Zdravka Evtimova during the interview we did - her work seems tricky to come by. Do you have any experience with Kōno Taeko, by any chance? I recently acquired a book of her short stories.
@@SherdsTube Kōno Taeko is good. I remember her stories as having some extreme psychosexual elements.
Gene Wolfe, despite being challenging at times, is a great comfort writer. At least in my experience.
Glad you think so. He has the same capacity to delight me now as when I first encountered him. Have you ever tried The Wizard Knight, by the way? I find myself intrigued by that one lately.
@@SherdsTubeunfortunately not, but I’m really keen on reading it -it’s next in my Wolfe list. Right now I’m making my way through ‘The Urth of the New Sun’ and it’s fantastic so far.
@@SherdsTube I reread The Wizard Knight earlier this year. A bit of an unpopular opinion, but I like it more than the The Book of the New Sun. It feels very heartfelt and avoids what I consider some of Wolfe's excesses. Also, it's interesting to read a Eurocentric fantasy in an authentic American voice: a bit like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Great list of female writers! But I missed my favourite, Rikki Ducornet; have you tried any of hers? Best regards from up north, Terje
Also, what about Unica Zürn or Janet Frame?
Yes, lots of people have recommended that I read Rikki Ducornet! I must get to her work soon.
Have never heard of Janet Frame, but I really enjoyed Unica Zürn's 'Dark Spring' recently. :)
Either of Ducornet's element novels might be a good place to start, or "Brightfellow" or "Netsuke".
I somehow feel that there's a common vibe connecting Janet Frame and Anna Kavan, although I have not thought about that for long enough to be able to put my finger on why I feel that way ... They're both great in any case.
What songs are these? Or is this your music?
Yes, this is my own music. I make pretty much all the music for my videos. There are a couple of tracks made from samples etc. in other videos, but it's mostly my own playing.
@@SherdsTube I see. One of the interludes reminded me of the music Joe Frank used on his podcasts.
Leaf by leaf is truly prolific, but to be fair, he doesn't make music like you hehe.
Great video, thanks for your art!
@@Efesus67 I've thought about Joe Frank too when watching @sherdstube's videos. Joe Frank was the soundtrack to my college years. It's sad to me that he passed away: had he lived a while longer, he would have had such a career resurgence in the world of podcasting and UA-cam video essays...