Reading Wednesday
Jan. 8th, 2025 07:24 am Just finished: Faust, First Part, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And once again ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ioplokon is to blame for my first read of the year.
I don't know what can be said about this book that hasn't been said by a million people who are smarter than me but. After 20000 introductions (from the translator and then the Elizabethan style, "we apologize that you're now going to have to sit through a play," followed by God and Mephistopheles making a bet), we get Faust, and he's honestly so relatable. He has lost joy in life and sees no point because he's sick of teaching students. This too would drive me to make a deal with the Devil if any are available at the moment. I was entirely Team Faust until he fell for a 14-year-old girl and wrecked her life, at which point I was cheering for the motherfucker to die already (he does not die in Part 1, obviously).
Anyway, the most shocking thing about this play is how funny it is, given all the child-and-mother murder and philosophy. Mephistopheles is a total wine snob (he becomes the most relatable character after that scene). The Walpurgis Night scene is batshit and whips. It's a delight in a contrast to how ponderous the translator's introduction is.
Currently reading: Wolf's Path by Joyce Chng. Someone offered me an ARC of this and the cover slaps so I said yes, but I haven't started it yet.
ioplokon is to blame for my first read of the year.I don't know what can be said about this book that hasn't been said by a million people who are smarter than me but. After 20000 introductions (from the translator and then the Elizabethan style, "we apologize that you're now going to have to sit through a play," followed by God and Mephistopheles making a bet), we get Faust, and he's honestly so relatable. He has lost joy in life and sees no point because he's sick of teaching students. This too would drive me to make a deal with the Devil if any are available at the moment. I was entirely Team Faust until he fell for a 14-year-old girl and wrecked her life, at which point I was cheering for the motherfucker to die already (he does not die in Part 1, obviously).
Anyway, the most shocking thing about this play is how funny it is, given all the child-and-mother murder and philosophy. Mephistopheles is a total wine snob (he becomes the most relatable character after that scene). The Walpurgis Night scene is batshit and whips. It's a delight in a contrast to how ponderous the translator's introduction is.
Currently reading: Wolf's Path by Joyce Chng. Someone offered me an ARC of this and the cover slaps so I said yes, but I haven't started it yet.
