Weekly Roundup: July 17th - July 22nd
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
This Week’s Posts
Tuesday: My review of Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together continues my series on his movies. This is one of my favorite essays of recent memory and I think it works well enough even for those who’ve never seen the movie. Things get a bit personal and I attempt to use a handful of allusions to make myself clearer.
When people ask me what this newsletter is, at its core, about, I’ll point them towards this specific essay moving forward. Because it really is all right here.
I hope you check it out.
Wednesday: Paying subscribers received Chapter Eleven of Emrys the Fool and free subscribers received Chapter Nine. If you received neither, there are instructions here on how to get these in your email.
Also on Wednesday was my first story at
which came in the form of a found document. In this case, an illicit love letter.Thursday: My review of one of my favorite boardgames of all time: Fury of Dracula. I consider it a sloppy masterpiece.
Friday: Not posted at this here substack, but my children’s storytime podcast continues with Chapter Three of A Pirate’s Life. This is the story I’ve been telling my son for a few months and began recording for him on his Yoto Player. With that in mind, this is a story meant for children and so share it with a child.
A young boy named Carrot who wants to become a pirate. Chapter Three involves meeting the crew of the Blundering Beluga and beginning his pirate adventure.
Music by my good friend Bart Larsen.
Saturday: I published a previously published story, but this time it has narration! It’s a romance between a human and a star.
From the Archives
Since Iron Wolf comes out on Tuesday and writing this series is one of the most joyful experiences I’ve had writing, I thought I’d reshare my piece about writers complaining about writing.
Never read a book by someone who doesn’t love writing.
Listening
I spoke a bit about the devastating state of videogame preservation in my essay on piracy, but The Video Game History Foundation goes into a recent report outlining exactly how bleak legal availability of games is.
If you’d prefer to read about the study rather than listen to people talking about it, click this link.
The short of it is that about 13% of videogames are available through legal means. Which is, you know, not great.
Reading
Read a few more Beowulf and Gawain and the Green Knight translations, but also began a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer because why not. Pretty interesting so far!
Stumbled across this very good essay about children’s books: Let the Kids Get Weird: The Adult Problem With Children’s Books. Made me want to write children’s books, which I’ve dabbled with in the past.
I draw like a toddler so I’m always looking for an illustrator to collaborate with me. So if you know anyone, let me know. I got some good ideas.
For you political types, I have some strange topics here for you to peruse:
Watching
Still watching Malcolm in the Middle.
Watched Spiderman 2 last night. What a wild movie!
At one point Doc Ock rambles on about why he needs these insane arms fused to him spine while he fuses them to his spine. Then he goes, I bet youre thinking this will take over my mind.
Which is insane!
BUT THEN THEY DO TAKE OVER HIS MIND!
And weirdest of all: THEY CONVINCE HIM TO ROB A BANK!
Just bonkers. I love it.
Barbie is out and you may have seen it or even seen all the rave reviews about it’s boldness, its subversive nature. I don’t want to be a bummer here, but if a billion dollar toy company is paying someone to produce a multimillion dollar subversive take on their iconic doll, it stops being subversive and becomes, once again, just an advertisement.
It’s targeting you, the aging millennial parents, and not your children because you’re the one with the wallet.
What Else?
Iron Wolf comes out on Tuesday! Through some sort of cosmic accident, you can order the paperback now and it’ll probably arrive by Tuesday. So if you haven’t preordered the digital copy, I’d get the physical one if I were you!
This upcoming week has an author interview and my review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so keep an eye out for that.
That’s it from me.
Anyway, read my books that are currently out. Then review them.
Thank you.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl. Coming 7/25/2023
Some free books for your trouble:
Wolf.
Howl.
I think the thing that makes me so annoyed about Barbie is that, like... why isn't this film for kids? Do Gerwig and Baumbach think a kids' movie has to be shit? Have they not watched the Toy Stories? Shit, why not go to the multiplex right now and watch Spiderverse 2? Do they not know you can make a genuinely good, emotionally affecting, artistically innovative movie that's also high-key a toy commercial meant for five-year-olds? To tailor the film so strongly to the 35+ demo is to concede defeat before the first frame IMHO.
So I guess I share your linked article's frustration with children's books - I don't know where kids are supposed to turn these days for stuff in the vein of Gorey or The Phantom Tollbooth or even Goosebumps, the sort of stuff I just devoured as a child. And I like you have thought about writing books for kids - except I have your opposite problem, where I have some modicum of artistic talent but no ideas, LOL. (Perhaps this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Does Substack have DMs? :P)
Appreciated the link about children's books. As a father I can attest to my own kids' not caring one bit about the sentimental, "In Grandma's Garden" / "The Giving Tree" type of picture books. Instead they will go to the library and check out every book they can find on, for example, unicorns, or apples, or excavators. It's almost like they are doing research of some kind.
They've written books of their own; usually these books have absolutely no plot and are indescribably silly. So that is one data point in favor of the author's conclusion that kids should be allowed to look at things their own way.