#bartimeaus

which isn't a lot, but FOUR?

THE DAY HAS FINALLY COME

I started reading them when i was kind of too young to and so now every time i read them they mean a lot more to me????? like at this point its a really familiar story but its so much darker and more complex than I originally thought.

In a way all the protagonists are shitty people (terrorist, corrupt politician, apathetic demon, you get it) but also those are our heroes, and their motives are really clear. I think that shows us that everyone is a shitty person in one way or another, and thats sort of ok. people are complex. (off topic, characters like this are so much more fun to read about. catcher in the rye would be an awful book if holden caulfeild wasn’t such a whiny asshole)

and the fact that Stroud created this societal structure and then explored it from all these different angles through the different characters just blows me away. A+++ world building

and you’re able to stomach a lot of political details and history lessons because the books are bloody hilarious

and the fact that there is no real romance is hella refreshing, but even if it wasn’t there’s all these incredible different dynamics between characters that can be interpreted in all different ways. there can be romance depending on how you read it.

Casting Away To Get (Mark 10:50)

The day started as many others. He awoke in darkness, arose from his bedding and began another day of begging. Staggered in the dark through the city, he found his spot by the gate. With his garments wrapped around him, he sat and waited. As the city stirred, he began to cry the same humbling words that he had for many years. In discouragement, he probably said yo himself, “How much longer can I…

SMS:“Learn frm blind Bartimaeus (Lk 18:39) 2 ignore d people dat are trying 2 discourage yu. God didn’t put His promises 4 yur life in dem, He put d promises in yu!”

Translation:“Learn from blind Bartimaeus (Luke 18:39) to ignore the [noise of] people…

I've been thinking a lot recently about language, and how much it says about a person, a life, a culture, right down to the minutest details.

After marathoning a bunch of crime dramas, for example, it occurred to me that there's cop shorthand for all sorts of things: hit and run, breaking and entering, angel of death. I'd never heard the term angel of death (except in a religious context) before watching s1e5 of Elementary just now. But not only did the cops in the episode knew it, the doctors did too. Like it was a thing. A pattern. Something that happens often enough that it warrants its own term, its own name.

And now it exists.

Human beings speak to their experiences. Language is so extremely telling of our focus, our values, our origins, and our cultures. It gave me a slight chill to realize that I live in a culture where an experience like someone hitting you with a car and then driving away is commonplace enough for it to have its own shorthand term. It's...worth some thought.

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Mind map for this post (i.e. things that sprang to mind that connect to this, in some way. I take no responsibility for my mind):

Names have power -- Neil Gaiman in the Books of Magic

Language -- podgram by Stephen Fry (**seriously incredibly good on this topic, listen to it*)