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The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories by Saki (H.H. Munro), available at National Bookstores, Php599.

We love Saki, whose acid wit targeted the rich and fatuous. We love Edward Gorey and his beautiful bizarreries. And we love NYRB Classics, so The Unrest-Cure makes us very happy.

If you’ve never read Saki, here’s an introduction. Warning: Prissy adults and hypocrites are strongly dissuaded from attempting to read Saki. They get what they deserve.

Sredni Vashtar
by Saki

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin’s cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.
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A comment on current affairs, made 16 years ago. via 3QD.

Hell is Other People: Walk One from Scott Garner on Vimeo.

via The Daily Dot.

Of course if one were really antisocial she would not join any social networks at all.

Two great songs. Johnny Marr, NME’s Godlike Genius Awardee for 2013, recalls how he wrote “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “Girl Afraid” in a single afternoon. via Dangerous Minds.

James Gandolfini is Dead at 51—a Complex Mob Boss in The Sopranos.

It’s because of him and David Chase that television is so good now. TV takes the big risks that big-screen filmmaking has largely abandoned.

Tony Soprano was the first of the great antiheroes of the 21st century—a character so big that he could contain shocking contradictions. Gandolfini made him real.

These are the first three volumes of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. The bookends were a present from our sister. They look like Drogon and Rhaegal.

We’ve already gone through The Fall and Orphan Black (Both terrific). We got a year’s worth of eyeball-rolling exercises from Da Vinci’s Demonz (All Starz series should end in Z). We watched as much Hannibal as we could stand, then we started wishing Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal would eat the Will Graham character (tormented genius: baduy). Why are there so many serial killer shows on TV right now, is everyone finally sick of vampires and zombies? Fortunately for our pop culture consumption there are the final episodes of Breaking Bad later in the year, and the new episodes of Arrested Development.

Then we remembered the Lymond Chronicles, the historical adventure series by Dorothy Dunnett. Our friends have been after us to read the damn books for—eek!—20 years. We picked up the first volume but were too distracted to sink into its dense prose.

But now that we have ripped through A Song of Ice and Fire, we’re ready. Dunnett may have been an influence on Martin—the title of the first Lymond book, published in 1961, is The Game of Kings. At lunch we were telling Tina that one of our favorite Thrones characters spent a year in chains, taunting his captors; she pointed out that Dunnett’s hero Francis Crawford of Lymond was a galley slave for two years. Lymond is Scottish; Winterfell seems to be Scotland, and the Red Wedding is based on an actual event in Scottish history. (We’re reading a book on the Venetian empire—their sigil was a lion, their colors were red and gold, and they paid their debts. They certainly collected.)

Another thing the two authors have in common: the anxious fandom. Dorothy Dunnett’s readers worried about her health and whether she would get around to finishing the books. They were more polite than GRRM fans, though, and it was the pre-Internet era.

This weekend we’re starting on the Lymond Chronicles. You can buy the books online, or scour the bargain book bins.

How could we possibly pass up a book with the line:

“Drama entered, mincing like a cat.”

And when we’re finished with the six books in the Lymond Chronicles, The House of Niccolo!

Visit the Dorothy Dunnett Society.