{"id":125091795,"date":"2023-06-02T12:31:15","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T12:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=125091795"},"modified":"2023-06-02T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T12:31:15","slug":"friday-links-nba-finals-and-flash-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=125091795","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: NBA Finals and Flash Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

“No reverting and no instant replay, but I remember what the air felt like at every major juncture.” – Sawako Nakayasu, “7.8.2003”<\/h2>

Happy Friday! It\u2019s my kid\u2019s second-to-last day of preschool! Time moves too fast!<\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading Lately: <\/strong><\/p>

Two quick reads this week, well\u2014quick in that they\u2019re short. Both these books are super dense, real full meals on the sentence level\u2014in the way that you want. <\/p>

\"Texture<\/figure>

Texture Notes<\/strong><\/em> by Sawako Nakayasu: <\/strong>I wanted to revisit Sawako Nakayasu after my sort of lukewarm feelings toward the last book<\/a>. You ever feel bad for not liking a book? I should\u2019ve liked nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she<\/em> more, and I\u2019m probably going to read it again in 5-10 years. In the meantime, I read Texture Notes<\/em>, which I liked a great deal! <\/p>

There is a music recording term, \u201clayering,\u201d that means basically what it sounds like: layering multiples of tracks on top of each other. Often this is done with one guitar part being tracked twice and then panned hard to each ear, which offsets little imperfections and lends a rounder sound. Sometimes, it\u2019s a bass line that gets doubled on a synth. Sometimes it\u2019s the choral effect of extra guitar\/piano that doesn\u2019t get played live. Sometimes it\u2019s \u201call of the sudden there are six singers.\u201d Great examples of thickly layered recordings are Earth Wind & Fire\u2019s entire discography as well as Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge<\/em> by My Chemical Romance. A great example of this kind of layering in poetry is Texture<\/em> Notes<\/em> by Sawako Nakayasu.<\/p>

Flowers For The Sea <\/strong><\/em>by Zin E. Rocklyn: <\/strong>Man, this book has a bunch of Shit Chris Likes. A village\u2019s worth of people, stuck on a boat because their land drowned. A commoner mouthing off to monarchs. The horrors of realizing you\u2019re a parent now. Sea monsters! Monstrous hybridity! Eyeballs that are swirling purple with no iris! A kind of wink and nod to Octavia Butler\u2019s Dawn<\/em> by way of Namor\u2019s Talokan in Black Panther 2<\/em>!<\/p>

All that adds up to a pretty compelling 100 pages that did<\/em> make me audibly go \u201cahhh nooooooo\u201d in front of my wife and child. If I have one nitpick, and this is again a \u201cnot the book\u2019s fault\u201d thing\u2014the prose is a touch overwrought for my personal taste. It\u2019s a gothic horror, and the tone is remarkably consistent\u2014you get this sense that this fictional people do<\/em> say things like \u201cmine eyes\u201d\u2014the book is doing its job, it\u2019s just a style different than what usually gets my hips a-swinging. But given the aforementioned [gestures wildly at first paragraph]<\/em>, I\u2019ll definitely be keeping this book on the shelves and revisiting it. <\/p>

LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>

  • There is new NxWorries, so let\u2019s go ahead and start with \u201cDaydreaming\u201d and set the vibes right for the rest of the column:<\/p>