Booooks 16
S. K. S. come to visit! We went to the hills! Methane methane methane methane and Terry Pretchett Memorial
Heyyy!
Tonns happened last week. There were approximately a thousand people in my tiny flat, which was cool because they were fantastic.
In the Meantime
We dabbled in way too many things to produce a good and concise report. K. is looking for talented filmmakers to support his epic festival-grade movie about a guest worker in France. The same guy is looking for someone to get him a job with Polish Radio 2, so he can run his own classical music show, where he would just talk about Lutosławski. We went to an incredible vineyard in the hills and I took photos and some of them were even nice! The weather makes you think it's summer!
In other news, I am no longer a West Wing fan. Or maybe I am but in a different sense than I used to. I just realised how misogynistic and casually racist the show is, thanks to a fantastic podcast: The West Wing Thing, which I was addicted to before the weekend. Another episode of the business mumbo-jumbo podcast I am occasionally cohosting is out here:
N. got her exams scheduled and she is back to life, which will probably have a significant positive spillover effect on my life too! Here is a joyful meme she sent you this week:
Also, Flo has a new single and oh my:
On the News
Will we lose the vote?
So the methane thing I was talking about last week and spent a better part of the week dealing with is at its finish line. The European Parliament committees ENVI and ITRE are going to vote on a seemingly agreed-upon compromise:
https://twitter.com/JerzyBuzek/status/1648738304601227298?s=20
The compromise is dividing some of the climate-considerate groups according to people familiar with the matter. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of more newsworthy votes the public is largely uninformed and sometimes even confused. I don't know if you can trust anyone and in my industry it seems that the new motto is trust no one, but maybe... just maybe it might be the time to celebrate a bit.
Being on the green side of the force is super fun until it gets tremendously frustrating. Especially if you fell into a niche topic like methane. In most cases, it just seems that no one really cares about your thing, and if they do they are clearly just some industry lackeys in politics or academia. Another frustrating feature of that work is a large group of people who seem to have a very strong-headed take-it-or-leave attitude to regulation or nuclear power.
Finally, there is this typical double speak - it's easy to get confused trying to figure out whether the current legislation is a win, because of so many mixed positions that different sides took that I just don't know whether the compromise that, people are familiar with the matter called 'okay' really is okay.
I guess for the first time in my life I might've experienced the adrenaline of negotiations of a legislative solution: What if they know something we don't? What if my numbers don’t add up? I felt miserable as some of my tweets indicated, but at the same time, I just kept googling questions like How to work in policymaking?
On the Shelf
Terry Pratchett was born on the 28th of April 1948.
When I turned 14 my parents decided to lift the moderation of the books I read. It allowed me to explore an obscure fantasy series someone recommended to me on the tram in Kraków. The name was Discworld. I googled and found the starting point: The Colour of Magic. My dad took me to the library to borrow the set of the first two or three novels. Thus I began a 2-3 year period during which Discworld became my absolute staple, being read all year round with almost religious devotion.
The early books are particularly obscure because they are all implicitly, or explicitly mere retellings of classical tropes like Eryk is Faust or Wyrd Sisters is Macbeth. Later as Terry Pratchett became more comfortable with his world and characters he employed to mercilessly parody everything and everyone. At the same time, he remained very self-conscious and his characters are first and foremost critical of themselves.
I picked The Night Watch after a long long break from reading the Disc novels. But it feels great to accompany Samuel Vimes on the next adventure. The only "issue" is that as the series advances the world seems to lose the magic. In a literal sense - Ankh-Morpork has become a modern city with cinemas, labour laws, independent journalism, post and banking. Samuel Vimes is a rich duke and not a ragged cop.
Discworld novels are meant to accompany a reader as they come of age. The trope of "magic leaving the world" present in other books like The Witcher Saga or The Lord of the Rings is exactly how becoming an adult feels - elves seem to disappear and nothing lurks in the shadows. Ragged wood kids become corporate foot soldiers. There is no wonder left. Or is there?
I will be re-reading my favourites from the Discworld series and will report back whether I can find the wonder in books - reverse engineer youth.
Next Up
Thanks for reading! I will keep you posted on the methane thing via twitter (?) and maybe substack. I will be in Prague on the weekend and in London next week!
Programming note: Booooks will be out next week, I will be back with more booooks after the holiday!