#the sparsholt affair
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from You Tube Geistesblüten - March 2022
Thank you for the links Tumblr ewinofthelake. 🌼
Alan Hollinghurst und Tom Wlaschiha - Die Sparsholt Affäre
(audio, about 1 hour)
from IG geistesbluetenmag - March 2019
Smile after reading! Alan Hollinghurst and Tom Wlaschiha were the perfect match for the German Premiere of „The Sparsholt Affair“. That was fun: Writer‘s talk with Christian Dunker @geistesblueten Thank you to our great colleagues of Blessing Verlag @randomhouse and especially to Tom, the evening‘s powerful voice! @tomwlaschiha #reading #lesung #literatur #lgbt #gay #gaywriter #literature #books #bücher #bornthatway
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4, 6, 14, and 20!🫶🫶
4. Movie of the year?
for. the second year in a row VELVET GOLDMINE!!!!! but for movies released in 2023 umm hmm 1) bottoms :D 2) may december 3) rachel hunger games movie :P
6. Episode of tv or webisode that defined the year for you?
i wish season 7 of riverdale was good so i could say a riverdale episode. anyway shadow and bone s2ep6 but only the parts with kaz and inej.. and thennn merlin s2ep8 the sins of the father.. SLAY ass episode yayayayyyyyy ok :)
14. Favorite book you read this year?
YAYAYAYAYYYY !!!!! wait um this is actually so hard.. wellllllllll my cassie answer is clockwork princess so far i cried so much at that. sword catcher is also quite slay so far. i swear i will finish lady midnight before the end of the year btw i just have to get thru this week of finals 😐. also i reallyyyyy liked banyan moon and umm the sparsholt affair btw if u are looking for literary books to read hehe
20. What’s something you learned this year?
learned how to be more sillayyy and have fun with myself and others and my interests btw i love to have fun and im at a place where i can YIPPEE!! um and alsoooo on a school note i learned soo much but the most puzzle complex one is the library of congress and dewey decimal classification :D you know i love sorting into groups its like my #1 fun ocd moment. thats not a joke im serious btw!!!!!!!!!
#ok hi beth for some reason this posted privately before i was done and then it only would let me edit on my ipad 🤨 but its here now btw#also i do not know what the word 'favorite' means i love to have fun :P#asks
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Thanks, @justthingsfromsarah (!!!) and @geesenoises (!!!)! It's always fun to learn weird little facts about your internet pals!
I'm not going to tag anyone because I am so late to this, but please know that if you see this and decide to do it, I would be *delighted* to get a tag!
Last song: Raingurl by Yaeji
Last show: Of the musical variety--also Yaeji (the show started at 10:45 pm I am too old for this my knees hurt 😭). Of the stage/theater variety--Angels in American Part 1.
Currently watching: I've just started Yellowjackets and hooooboy it is good and INTENSE. And gay 😌. I HIGHLY recommend Bridget Everett's show Someone Somewhere if you need a dose of queer found family, and I'm also perpetually watching Ted Lasso and Abbott Elementary.
Currently reading: I'm listening to the final book in the Raven Cycle, The Raven King (Ronan and Adam make me sob please), and I'm finally reading The Sparsholt Affair thanks to a rec from a trusted friend! It is VERY GOOD.
Current obsession: Did you know that there were members of the orchestra in the pit for The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway who played the same music almost every night of their lives for 35 years? That's 13, 981 shows! Can you imagine doing anything for that long, that consistently???
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Book Club Tag Game
Tagged by @wolfpants whose list of recs i am diligently nabbing for my future reads! Thanks wolfy, i absolutely love these things. Tagging anyone who fancies doing this and please tag me as i really really need lots of new books to look forward to!
last book i bought: Ordered The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar for my kiddo today, but the last book i bought for myself was... umm The Charioteer by Mary Renault and The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (got them on buy one get one free, bargain!)
borrowed: from the library? Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I don't tend to borrow books from people as I am a horror for creasing spines, turning down pages etc but I did nab Hamnet by Maggie O' Farrell from my mum recently (though that's more like stealing than borrowing as she probably won't get it back)
was gifted: my partner found The Spell by Alan Hollinghurst in a free library thing and brought it home for me. it's the only book of his i didn't already have a physical copy of.
gave/lent to someone: Heartstopper!! ahhh the joy I got from passing those along and spreading the love.
started: audio-wise I'm in the middle of revisiting The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst (i first read it back in the 90s when I was very young!) as am on a binge of all his works atm. Reading-wise I just started All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O' Donoghue... reserving judgement for the time being but so far i'm not hooked.
finished: audio? The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (i told you i was on a binge). reading - Release by Patrick Ness. This one probably suffered from being read alongside Hollinghurst tbh as I was so hugely moved by Line of Beauty and it didn't leave much space for anything else at the time.
gave five stars: The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst. This is the only book of his that I hadn't already read and I was not sure what to expect. Spanning a number of decades, from Oxford in WW2 to London in the 90s, and following members of a family rocked by a gay scandal (though the novel is very much not about the scandal at all), i both loved and really admired this one. I was bowled over by the confidence of the writing, and the way he really allows himself the indulgence of space to meander through (one scene with a car ride home on a Cornish holiday genuinely seems to happen in real time 😂). I cried when I finished this, just out of temper at not having it in my life anymore.
didn’t finish: I'm a horror for not finishing books - i do give them time but will absolutely nope out if i'm not grabbed soon enough. Most recently it was Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall. It's the first book of his I tried and I hated it - it felt (to me) not sharp enough to be a satire and not fond enough to be an homage. I have since tried Boyfriend Material by the same author when the copy i ordered from the library arrived, and i almost didn't after this one being such a big DNF for me. But I actually liked that one, in fact I read it in a day and found it funny and enjoyable... i obviously just had bad luck with my first foray into Hall!
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“Hereditary homosexuality” trope (Homo- or bisexuality runs in families)
*Reminder that all the media included here does not necessarily portray the characters as something positive, this is just about which media has this trope.
*Pls check parental rating if you’re a minor.
MOVIES:
MLM: Another Gay Movie, Giant Little Ones.
Lesbians: Crush, Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives, The Incredibly True Story Of Two Girls In Love, Maggie & Annie, Naomi And Ely's No Kiss List.
Bisexuals: Crush.
Gays: Naomi And Ely's No Kiss List, Uncle Frank.
LITERATURE:
MLM: Cyteen, The Sparsholt Affair.
Gays: Volle, Heralds of Valdemar (series), Just Juliet, The Lost Language of Cranes.
Bisexuals: Labyrinths of Echo, A Song of Ice and Fire, Call Me By Your Name, The Wicked Years.
Sapphics: Just Juliet.
TV:
MLM: Seinfeld, Come Fly With Me, We Are Who We Are.
Sapphics: Seinfeld, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Transparent, The Baby-Sitters Club (2020), She-Ra.
Gays: Degrassi: The Next Generation, Will & Grace, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 13 Reasons Why, Gossip Girl (2021), The Baby-Sitters Club (2020), Man in an Orange Shirt, Years and Years.
Lesbians: Will & Grace, 13 Reasons Why, We Are Who We Are, A League of Their Own (2022), The L Word, Years and Years, First Kill, Cardcaptor Sakura.
Bisexuals: Gossip Girl (2021), The L Word, First Kill, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2021), Avocado Toast.
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Book asks??? 😌
10, 5, 2??
10. do you have a guilty fav?
I generally feel that I have bad taste, so I probably like a lot of books other people might consider low-brow. I'm not a sophisticated person. I've been reading the Bridgerton books and enjoying them more than I care to admit.
5. where do you buy books?
I usually buy books either from the independent bookstore in my college town or half price books. Online, I order from Bookshop.org which is cool because they support independent bookshops.
2. top five books of all time. This changes a lot but this is what I came up with rn
Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
The Raven Cycle by Maggie Steifvater
If We Were Villians by M.L Rio
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Last month I read The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. Essentially, Brideshead Revisited set in the 80s with sex, drugs and Margaret Thatcher. In other words, I'm here for it.
The first novel I ever read by Hollinghust was The Sparsholt Affair. Though I enjoyed it, I felt like he was circling the story in that book instead of telling it. Thankfully, I had the opposite experience with The Line of Beauty. I was fully immersed in the protagonist, Nick Guest's, desires and anxieties as a gay man living with the straight, wealthy family of a conservative MP while not being any of those things himself. He's an aesthete, doing a PhD on the literary style of Henry James, and more concerned with beauty than the substance of a person's character. You know he's on collision course with the Feddens' who deep down see him as nothing more than a pet, but he is too enamoured with the idea of them to let go. This book is as much a celebration of the excess and materialism of the 80s as it is a critique of those values. Its portrayal of the upper class is handled with biting humour and Hollinghust doesn't shy away from the sex. Did I mention that it's sexy? It's SEXY.
This weekend I watched the 2006 adaptation, a BBC miniseries starring Dan Stevens as Nick Guest (PERFECT casting btw). It was very faithful to the book and unlike film adaptations, a miniseries has enough room to explore secondary characters and subplots without dragging out the story the way a TV series might.
It really captured the mood and decadence described in the novel, so much so that watching it felt like rereading the book. At first, I didn't think it had anything to add to the experience but Hollinghurst's prose is quite dense at times and the show allowed me to relive the most vivid scenes uninterrupted.
One issue I had with the adaptation was that it made the characters, especially Nick's wealthy lover Wani and Nick himself, more sympathetic than they are in the book. I admired that the more daring scenes were included, but the humour just didn't have the same bite.
The miniseries seemed to take a moral position that the book does not. Nick's struggle between living for the love of beauty or the love of people isn't neatly squared away in the book after his relationship with the Feddens' blows up and he is left with no one. The book ends on a melancholic note and posits that maybe a life lived for beauty is worth it.
I highly recommend both the book and the miniseries. Though the novel is a much richer and absorbing experience overall, Dan Stevens is fantastic as Nick and the scene where he gets Thatcher out on the dance floor is truly iconic.
#the line of beauty#alan hollinghurst#brideshead revisited#dan stevens#the sparsholt affair#book review#miniseries review#goodreads challenge#lgbt reads#first read of 2020
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#reading list#book rec#antoni porowski#a little life#call me by your name#the sparsholt affair#in my kitchen#ted allen
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Johnny, in the loneliness of difference, felt something subtler than their failure in bed, but confirming it, that someone who shared so little of his mood could never share his life.
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
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ummmm 6 11 and 17 🫶
6. 3 characters that inspire you
ough katniss and magnus and mandy slade :)
11. 3 books that you would recommend everyone to read
AH THANK U BETH LOOOVE THIS QUESTION
#1 no matter the wreckage by sarah kay my favorite poet everrrr
#2 the sparsholt affair by alan hollinghurst my book i just finished it was soooooo sosososososooo good :)
#3 banyan moon by thao thai i met the author she was so lovely and so nice :)
17. 3 tv couples you adore the most
MALEC NUMBER 1. then jabitha ok. then kanej 👍
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Currently Reading: Alan Hollinghurst, The Sparsholt Affair
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'The Sparsholt Affair' Confirms Alan Hollinghurst's Status As A Literary Master
Hollinghurst's new domestic epic leapfrogs across seven decades to examine how the laws of social propriety shape the destinies of a father and son. Critic John Powers says the novel is fascinating.
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7, 50, 68?
7. a book you did not finish
sooo many wait heres a few. i. american psycho by bret easton ellis: not enough things where happening. i get that it’s the point of the book, but consequences are the best part of murder
ii. the starless sea by erin morgenstern: pretty writing but the love interest who initially seemed like a dilf was not one and just had silver hair. i’m kidding that’s not the main reason. i dunno how to explain why i didn’t manage to latch onto it
iii. the folding star by alan hollinghurst: I’D KILL THE NARRATOR WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS FOR HORNY CRIMES. also i read hollinghurst’s sparsholt affair and cross-referencing i feel like he’s got. perhaps. some recurring Stuff re: younger people/age gaps. sparsholt was fine with it, folding star was heinous to the point where i just didn’t want to read it. i read a summary and i think the plot picks up later on in the book but within the first 80 pages i felt trapped in the driver’s seat of a truly unpleasant narrator man. that’s good writing in itself and the prose was dense and evocative but i couldn’t stomach 200+ more pages with that guy, no time for this clown
50. a book that made you cry a LOT
ahahahah ahah gotta be a little life by hanya yanagihara which. OK i did a goodreads review on it and i think it sums it up
[ID: Very well written torture porn. Full of great lines and understanding of the nature of living but also Hanya Yanagihara please consider. Before you speak. T.H.I.N.K. Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? End ID]
the sweet bits are sweet but the terrible bits are heavily, tremendously terrible
68. your favourite piece of classic literature
hey MJ. and everyone here. i don’t think this will shock you. but moby dick!!!! it’s true it’s ponderous and every not nice thing people say about it? yeah it’s true. this book is THE leviathan itself (herman melville addresses that in the text itself!!! he compares the whales to the sizes of printed books!!! novel is named after the whale and it is the whale case closed), it’s massive and i took about three months to get through it but i really have to say i think those months were worth it…reading its passages bit by bit i feel like i was undertaking my own whaling journey LOL but sticking to the metaphor i always got the spermaceti and the ambergris out of it because i’d get to the end of the chapter and herman himself would hit me straight in the face with a killer of a line
furthermore. unavoidably melville was a white man writing in the 19th century and tropes do appear even as he tries to make his own 19th century case for racial equality. here’s a great essay on that in general (i think, very good to read if you’ve read/are planning to read, perhaps essential even)
another one i loved is lord of the flies! it’s been about four years since i first read it and i think i’m due for a reread but it’s just glorious. i remember reading wuthering heights also sent me into a State even longer ago (i do think i was a bit too young to comprehend a bit of the prose. but i got the gist), other than that, i tend to like most of the stuff i read for school, so F451, to kill a mockingbird, some shakespeares, etc
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I finished cmbyn about a month ago, and I found myself longing for more time just as elio and Oliver did. Do you know any books similar to cmbyn?
You can find some cmbyn-like recs under my “best books” tag.
ALSO, Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel The Sparsholt Affair dropped last week. I haven’t read it yet but I’m recommending it in advance because it sounds like the lovechild of cmbyn and Brideshead Revisited, in other words everything I’ve ever wanted in a book:
In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others – particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Over the course of one momentous term, David and Evert forge an unlikely friendship that will colour their lives for decades to come …
You had me at Oxford.
It won’t be out in North America until March but it was published in the UK last week so I ordered it online. I need to read this immediately. Hollinghurst is a literary heavyweight and the book has already gotten rave reviews in The Guardian and The Independent. I have high hopes.
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don't we all...
#the sparsholt affair#read this scene right after describinng a boy as a greek statue and i can't stop projecting
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