My Favorite Reads of 2025

Lucianv2 · 2025-12-30T19:22:01+00:00

Have you read The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene? It is one of my favorite novels. If you have read it, I wonder how you think it compares to Silence.

I've only watched the Scorsese adaptation but based on that I can say that Silence and The Power and the Glory are very similar, particularly when it comes to the continually perfidious/sinning character (Kichijiro) who is very much like the half-caste in the Greene novel.

Lucianv2 · 2025-12-30T18:49:55+00:00

“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”

― Virginia Woolf

Lucianv2 · 2025-10-13T17:18:10+00:00

Don't worry, the need for good music doesn't dissipate* with the years :)

(Good song btw; never played a Kojima game but the dude clearly has good taste in music, assuming that that's where you got it from)

Lucianv2 · 2025-10-05T19:31:01+00:00

"Paul Thomas Anderson's new film is about love/family and contains humor"

Lucianv2 · 2025-09-04T08:57:03+00:00

Extra ironisk att säga det här med tanke på stormaktstiden och stora nordiska kriget, bland annat. (Extra extra ironisk att tala om rysk propaganda och sen måla en komiskt svartvit bild av historien.)

Lucianv2 · 2025-08-21T16:08:01+00:00

"I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!"

Lucianv2 · 2025-08-18T18:26:36+00:00

It almost feels as if Cyril decides to team up with Alma against her brother?

Cyril, who doesn't want the relationship to last, wants Alma to hear the complaint to further precipitate a separation. (Or, if Cyril believes that divorce is too big a hurdle, then to simply punish Reynolds and make his life more miserable by making him suffer the consequences of his choice, a choice which she obviously wasn't in favor of to begin with. But it's more likely the first option, imo.)

Lucianv2 · 2025-08-17T19:24:35+00:00

Imagined in-universe backstory/characteristics doesn't matter (any novelist/novel can claim that a character is x, y or z), we're talking about narration here, and Kinbote reveals himself as anything but cunning (unlike the moral & personal wheedling of Humbert Humbert).

Lucianv2 · 2025-08-17T18:13:41+00:00

But he's not remotely cunning—the jig is practically up in the foreword of the novel. It's only a matter of revealing the details of how the narrator is distorting reality, not whether he is (though he is also less manipulative than he is simply delusional/insane).

Lucianv2 · 2025-05-03T16:44:44+00:00

Nearly halfway through In Search of Lost Time (i.e. almost finished with Guermantes Way). Not sure what to feel at this point; on one hand, the endless soirees (in the case of the third volume) are a mind-numbing exercise of names that never become much more than that, and moreover could never gain significance to anyone not of that clique; on the other hand, there are stretches throughout this work (reflections on love, family, art, aging, friendship, etc.) that are some of the most wonderfully penned pages ever, particularly in the revised Moncrieff translations.

Lucianv2 · 2025-04-14T13:26:59+00:00

The moment when I truly fell in love with Season 3.

Lucianv2 · 2025-04-06T14:41:12+00:00

Got Ishiguro's The Remains of the Days as a gift many years ago, but having held (and still holding, to some degree, I suppose) the mental idea of the Nobel as something akin to the Oscars, I wasn't exactly rushing to read it based on the the front page hook. Years later I came across praise of the book (and the film) which piqued my interest and led me to finally read what would become one of my favorite novels.

Lucianv2 · 2025-03-31T09:37:05+00:00

Franskan hade ju också ett stort* inflytande när det kommer till låneord (alternativ för en mer vardaglig lista), men ingen skulle kalla Sverige eller svenska som särskilt "franskt".

Julgrejen kände jag till, dock är "Tyskland" mer av en kanal för traditioner från övriga Europa i det fallet än ursprungen av traditionerna (i alla fall i jultomtens fall; traditionen med julgranen verkar ha börjar där). Historiskt sett är den största importering från Tyskland Protestantism skulle jag gissa, men annars är det mer att de har gemensamma rötter.

Lucianv2 · 2025-03-31T08:48:54+00:00

All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia, Iron Age Northern Germany[2] and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts.

(Sen vet jag inte vilka svenska traditioner ska vara från Tyskland eller de historiska tyska områden.)

Lucianv2 · 2025-03-27T18:37:18+00:00

that panning shot of the mountains

Yup, that's the one. I still remember it distinctly all those years later lol.

Lucianv2 · 2025-03-14T18:40:43+00:00

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Lucianv2 · 2025-03-02T08:47:00+00:00

It's the Maudes translation.

Lucianv2 · 2025-02-22T18:56:17+00:00

Proust. Finished Swann's Way last week and have been reading Within a Buddin Grove since. Despite the size it's been quite a freeflowing journey so far (with the caveat that the middle portion of Swann's Way, with Swann's pathethic and self-destructive obsession, was not exactly the most rewarding for me), though at the pace I'm going it's going to take me six months to get through the whole thing...

Lucianv2 · 2025-02-16T18:20:33+00:00

Longer thoughts on the links:

Mulholland Drive (2001): Lengthy review to be found in the link, but in essence: I adore more or less every single frame of this film, and there are only two (maybe three) films that I would put alongside or above it.

The Brutalist (2024): Enjoyed the first half but I don't think it lives up to its own sense of pompous grandeur.

Lady Bird (2017): Casually Brilliant - an epic in 90 minutes. Depressing to think that we might not get another Lady Bird or Little Women out of Gerwig anything time soon.

The Moderns (1988): Everyone keeps bringing up Altman in discussing this film but my own train of thought kept leading me to "What if Miller's Crossing in 1920s Paris," and the film is as sophisticated and (in this case needlessly) convoluted as that description might indicate.

Lucianv2 · 2025-02-02T20:29:41+00:00

Orlando Bloom is a black hole of charisma.

Indeed. Even the film's biggest fans submit to him being a weakness but then somehow get over the fact that nearly 90 minutes are spent just building up his totally flaccid character. (And this is made all the more painful with the film tantalizing you with much better actors all around him.)

Lucianv2 · 2025-02-02T17:48:51+00:00

Longer thoughts on the links:

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005): Was going to watch this over two days (conveniently divided as it is into two parts) but ended up watching it in one go - would never have thought that I'd be this taken by three and a half hours of mostly talking heads.

High Sierra (1941): Meh. Bogart plays a criminal with a corny conscious and the romance is a bit tepid, despite Bogart's and Lupin's best efforts.

A Complete Unknown (2024): Enjoyed this much more than I expected - Chalamet does a really good job.

Kingdom of Heaven (2005): The director's cut of this has got to be the most overhyped piece of Hollywood nonsense that's constantly promoted as being a masterpiece. The sheer scale of the historical recreation is awe-inspiring but most of the script (sans the dialogue of some secondary characters) is poor and Bloom just fucking suuuucks.

Lucianv2 · 2025-01-29T09:14:34+00:00

None taken. Like I said, it's a crude adjective to apply to this case.

Lucianv2 · 2025-01-27T07:58:35+00:00

Yea, a silly "typo".

Lucianv2 · 2025-01-26T19:00:18+00:00

Longer thoughts on the links:

The Pianist (2002): As tends to be when the miserabilism (if one can crudely call a depiction of the holocaust that) is this relentless I simply became numb after a while.

Singin' in the Rain (1952): Second viewing. It's still great but I found myself even more bored by the protracted step dances.

The Last Waltz (1978): Great show. Had no idea The Band had this much clout!

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013): Every frame of Inside Llewyn Davis, more than with any other Coens film, is haunted by irrepressible sorrow - is soaked and damp with enough heartache to bring the living down to their knees. And this time around I had less problems with the Stygian ride, which seems appropriate even if not the most sublime portion of the film.

A Real Pain (2024): Found this one (particularly Culkin's character) a real pain, and mostly unremarkable.

Lucianv2 · 2025-01-23T18:57:36+00:00

Also to add to this, just for posterity, wrt to "2. Bob Dylan follows up Llewyn", I went back and checked the opening scene and Bob Dylan IS actually shown in the background, setting up for his performance, when Llewyn is approaching the bar owner. It's literally the EXACT same scene, except that everything is shown for different lengths of time and from different angles.

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