Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet (1887)

Books 31-40 of 2023 📖!

We don’t hear him in this trailer but apparently Stephen Dillane is narrating this documentary called The Gold Machine.

Nothing new under the sun? Why originality is always possible

Here’s something to think about. Around 97% of the time you ever spend with your parents will be before you are 18 years old. Maybe you’ve already heard this statistic, and apparently there’s more than one variation. But I heard it just this week. Dave heard it first, told me.   We boggled. Then, after a moment’s marvelling, we thought about it properly. Of course. That period 0-18 is so…

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COMICA’s 20th anniversary lineup unveiled

An amazing lineup of comic creatives celebrate COMICA’s 20th anniversary next month in London, including Lucie Arnoux, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Armando Iannucci, Dave McKean, Martin Rowson, Posy Simmonds, Lucy Sullivan and more

The full lineup of comic creators for Comica, The London Comics Festival, at The Century Club taking place in March has been announced, and includes appearances by Lucie Arnoux, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Armando Iannucci, Dave McKean, Martin Rowson, Posy Simmonds, Lucy Sullivan and more. Marking the 20th Anniversary of London’s long-running Comica Festival, and in association with VIP Brands…

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Iain Sinclair, "London Orbital".

I have just started listening to 33.3 FM in the last month so Unknown Armies has been on the brain a lot lately. Something I have always wanted to do and maybe it is a terrible hair brained idea but an Unknown Armies - Cthulhu Mythos settings sounds really interesting to me.

One of the Campaign frames for Trail of Cthulhu for the Bookhounds of London described it as "Unknown Armies meets Iain Sinclair or James Ellroy" and that image was so emotionally interesting to me. Later reading Bookhounds of London and expanding more on the feeling of what they called idiosyncratic magick, basically gutter magick from UA but in the frame of reference of the unnatural in the mythos was very interesting to me.

There was another part in Trail where it was said that the great old ones or any general alien horror in terms of human occult understandimg even if flawed, assigned values to the great old ones as physical incarcerations of fundamental forces in space-time. Cthulhu is gravity, Hastur is radioactive decay, etc

The Invisible Clergy is not taking place in the stratosphere but taking place in the Court of Azathoth, God-walkers have become such twisted alien things matching the archetypes of the great old ones. The great old ones are manipulating the collective unconscious to invent themselves into physical reality by rewriting reality into something that would allow something so horrid and alien.

You could take it another step further and include the outer dark from Esorerrorists and have a "occult underground" of "adepts" who are trying to invent or manifest fictional alien occult horrors from the unconscious into flesh or material.

Probably wouldn't fit that well and kind of comes across as very fanfic ish which I don't really like but it has been something I have thought about a lot.

tagged by: @sagiow (thank you and happy birthday!)

last song: Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald, though I will take any excuse to mention Ann Miller’s spectacular tap-dancing number from Kiss Me Kate 

currently watching: Ted Lasso (again), for fic reasons. I don’t watch a lot of TV because I haven’t got much time for it. The last non-Ted Lasso show I saw was American-Born Chinese, which I have a lot of thoughts about so please come yell at me if you want to hear about Chinese mythology, the nuances between different Chinese accents and the sheer unadulterated excellence of Yeo Yann Yann

currently reading: I read multiple books at once - I’m presently in the middle of London Orbital, Iain Sinclair’s account of walking around the M25 (great for him, I’m glad he did it so nobody else has to); I have just finished Natascha Bruce’s translation of Owlish by Dorothy Tse, a dark fable set in a phantasmagorical version of Hong Kong; and I am starting The House Of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, about a murder case in 1920s Penang

current obsession: Ted Lasso, Shakespeare and art in the apocalypse for all the men and women merely players, an object lesson in how the most random one-off ideas can balloon into ridiculous epics that have you tearing your hair out over rereading the Henriad and researching Manchester tunnel networks

tagging: @swallowtailed, @kiraziwrites, @eisoj5, @justplainsalty, @nagia-pronounced-neijia and anybody else who’d like to do it

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami Invisibility: A Manifesto by Audrey Szasz Bunny by Mona Awad Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kiš One Hundred Shadows by Jungeun Hwang Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto Whale by Myeong-Kwan Cheon The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone by Audrey Burges The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald The Overstory by Richard Powers Poison by Kathryn Harrison Bitter Orange by Fuller, Claire We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Fowler, Karen Joy The Edible Woman by Atwood, Margaret A School for Fools by Sokolov, Sasha Ferdydurke by Gombrowicz, Witold The Iliac Crest by Rivera Garza, Cristina Paris Peasant by Aragon, Louis The Making of a Marchioness by Burnett, Frances Hodgson Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Semple, Maria Hell by Barbusse, Henri The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Letts, Billie Find Me by Berg, Laura van den * Big Swiss by Beagin, Jen Mariana by Dickens, Monica The Lime Works by Bernhard, Thomas Dead Souls by Gogol, Nikolai Gargoyles by Bernhard, Thomas The Pachinko Parlour by Dusapin, Elisa Shua Lolly Willowes by Warner, Sylvia Townsend Rebecca by du Maurier, Daphne The Hearing Trumpet by Carrington, Leonora Jane Eyre by Brontë, Charlotte The Savage Detectives by Bolaño, Roberto Solitude: A Novel of Catalonia by Català, Víctor Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Moshfegh, Ottessa Heaven by Kawakami, Mieko Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo Convenience Store Woman by Murata, Sayaka Iza's Ballad by Szabó, Magda The Door by Szabó, Magda Phantom Limb by Berry, Lucinda The Night Journal by Crook, Elizabeth Faces in the Water by Frame, Janet Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Abgaryan, Narine The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Bronsky, Alina Eileen by Moshfegh, Ottessa I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Moore, Lorrie The Stationery Shop by Kamali, Marjan Breasts and Eggs by Kawakami, Mieko Milkman by Burns, Anna The Maid by Prose, Nita The Guest by Cline, Emma Hang the Moon by Walls, Jeannette The Secret of Ventriloquism by Padgett, Jon The Salt Line by Jones, Holly Goddard Perdido Street Station by Miéville, China The Accursed by Oates, Joyce Carol Occupy Me by Sullivan, Tricia Poison Study by Snyder, Maria V. The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Fox, Hester Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Fawcett, Heather Skylark by Kosztolányi, Dezső Blue of Noon by Bataille, Georges Ruth Hall and Other Writings by Fern, Fanny The Vegetarian by Han Kang Nadja by Breton, André Exquisite Corpse by Brite, Poppy Z. Ice by Kavan, Anna Kallocain by Boye, Karin Palimpsest by Valente, Catherynne M. Elena Knows by Piñeiro, Claudia Landor's Tower: Or Imaginary Conversations by Sinclair, Iain The Birthday Party by Mauvignier, Laurent The Magnolia Palace by Davis, Fiona Memories of the Future by Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund Under a Glass Bell by Nin, Anaïs Sugar by McFadden, Bernice L. Vintage Cisneros by Cisneros, Sandra Raising Hope by Willard, Katie Chodleros de Laclos Les Liasions Dangereuses by Various Daddy-Long-Legs by Webster, Jean Local Anaesthetic by Grass, Günter Don't Stop the Carnival by Wouk, Herman Confessions of Felix Krull by Mann, Thomas The House of Mirth by Wharton, Edith Radiant Terminus by Volodine, Antoine Shanghai Girls by See, Lisa The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, Mikhail (Translator: Mirra Ginsburg) Owlish by Tse, Dorothy

undue influence by anita brookner slip of a fish by amy arnold beside myself by ann morgan blue ticket by sophie mackintosh nostalgia by mircea cartarescu I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Crane, Marisa

smoky man (ed.): Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman (2023)

The Falconer (1998)

The Cardinal & the Corpse by Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair, 1992

Episode 576 - Aaron Lange

What is the meaning of Cleveland? Cartoonist Aaron Lange joins the show to talk about Peter Laughner & Proto-Punk In The Secret City (Stone Church Press), his breathtaking new graphic novel that weaves together obscure records, urban legends and psychographic history. We talk about Aaron's fascination with Cleveland's punk scene, why the musician Peter Laughner stood out to him, the way Cleveland's hidden landmarks pointed him toward this massive project. We get into the research and interviews Aaron conducted for Ain't It Fun, the process of editing this work into a looping, flaneur-like, discursive (but never aimless) narrative, and the influence of Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces, Iain Sinclair's Lud Heat, and Adam Curtis' documentaries. We also discuss post-Laughner Pere Ubu, using graphic design rather than panel-to-panel cartooning, visiting the zodiac circle by the Cleveland Museum of Art at all 4 equinoxes, chronicling the city's brutalist architecture, the constraints of the comics market on a book that defies easy description, and a lot more. Follow Aaron on Instagram and support Stone Church Press via Patreon (which doubles as Aaron's blog) • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show

Loving all the press for Control Room and the amazing pics that are coming along with them.