{"id":151233098,"date":"2024-11-08T13:30:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T13:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=151233098"},"modified":"2024-11-08T13:30:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T13:30:50","slug":"friday-links-we-need-to-keep-reading-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=151233098","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: We Need To Keep Reading Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Caracas’ preferred modes are ‘infernal’ and ‘nightmarish.’ By day it torments and by night it terrifies.” – H\u00e9ctor Torres, ‘The Relentless City’<\/h2>

Shoutout to bilingual books. Love a bilingual book. One day I\u2019m gonna read the Spanish side. Shoutout to Siete Vientos Press<\/a>, a Chicago-based press dedicated to making sure Central and South American writers who otherwise wouldn\u2019t get published in English get a chance at a US audience. I loved seeing this press at the Glenwood Arts Festival this year and last. <\/p>

Not every link will have to do with the election. We\u2019re not ignoring, but we\u2019re not wallowing\u2014I presume for your sake and mine. <\/p>

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

A book that really lives up to its title. A book that has no problem falling into the Noirvember schedule. A novel-in-stories, like Invisible Cities<\/em> or Vine<\/a><\/em>. A book that, honestly, as a read in the lead-up to the election? Super appropriate! This book lives up to its title, revealed a lot of the worst of human nature, and made me afraid for the next four years! But I really enjoyed it! I\u2019m talking, of course, about The Relentless City<\/em> by H\u00e9ctor Torres.<\/p>

\"The<\/figure>

First, let\u2019s talk structure. Physically, as I alluded to, the book is in English, but if you flip it upside down, it\u2019s in Spanish. Caracas Muerde<\/em>, it reads en espa\u00f1ol\u2014literally, \u201cCaracas bites.\u201d Whatever language you\u2019re reading in, this book is 30 vignettes on how much it sucks to live in Caracas. There are no recurring characters, yet you get a distinct sense the book is being narrated, that you are being told these stories by an unseen Rod Serling type (there\u2019s nothing supernatural or Twilight Zone-y<\/em> here, I just kept picturing him\/hearing his voice, but, like, with a South American accent). The novel is almost like a walking tour, with a narrator whose bitterness and pessimism is hard-earned, and you\u2019re seeing a million shitty things that happen in the big city. <\/p>

Some of the things happening are shitty\u2014insurance fraud in car crashes, pickpockets, general assholes. Some of the things happening are genuinely terrifying\u2014roving gangs of casual home invaders, violent-because-they\u2019re-looked-at-wrong men, murder. Some of the things happening are terrifying in a more banal, enveloping, impossible-to-overcome way\u2014police corruption, violent-because-they\u2019re bored men, the general sense that leaving home in the morning and coming home at night is not guaranteed, the crushing weight of poverty. Like said, this was a wild<\/em> read in the lead-up to the election. What I know about Venezuela isn\u2019t much\u2014there\u2019s a great Venezuelan coffee shop on Granville and Broadway that I love with friendly people, Venezuela is a right-wing bogeyman because they nationalized some industry. What I\u2019m getting at is I don\u2019t know how much of this book is stylized and how much of this is how real life feels in Caracas, but this was a turbulent tour of a, ahem, relentless<\/em> city that left me feeling tired. A great Noirvember book. <\/p>

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

Something to listen to while you browse? Did you know there\u2019s a new Halloween special of the Lazy & Entitled podcast? And we got Chloe N. Clark, author of Patterns of Orbit<\/em> and Collective Gravities<\/em> and Escaping The Body<\/em>, teaching us about swamp creatures? Plus more Scream<\/em> talk than you\u2019d think possible, if you had a limited imagination, which you don\u2019t? <\/p>

\n