#KAVANE CLOTHING | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

canarytry · 2 years

Text

the dudes of hallmark in no particular order

Tyler Hynes - You actually get two for the price of one, because when he shaves I literally think he’s a different person than when he has a beard. Throw in scruff and that’s three! My Noteworthy: Roadhouse Romance because it was actually really cute and that song was stuck in my head for a thousand years I even bought it. And It’s Christmas, Eve because it is proof that even if Niall Matter and Tyler Hynes are two different people Tyler Hynes is still a third when he shaves.

Niall Matter - … he is a different person these are two different dudes shit this list is off to a bad start My noteworthy: Christmas at Dollywood (because Dollywood) or Country at Heart

Cameron Mathison - Gets extra points because he has an interesting voice and despite being a fairly standard 6’2” he always looks like he’s towering over his love interest. Actually Danica McKellar is just really short in the Valentine botany one but it’s a cute look. My noteworthy: Very, Very Valentine and the Murder She Baked series

Brennan Elliot - I actually didn’t realize how many of these he’s actually been in until I pulled up IMDB and I’ve watched at least 5 of those with him in it, sorry dude. Gets bonus points because in a channel known for painfully cringe-looking movie posters, his are really really painful looking. My Noteworthy: The Perfect Pairing, and Christmas in Vienna(YEAH THAT’S HIM TOO! I KNOW, RIGHT?)

Kristoffer Polaha - 10/10 no notes, love his voice. Even my gay ass would follow him into 5,000 stupid-ass plots with limited complaints. Gets bonus points for being simply “Handsome Man” in the cringe-fest that was WW84. My Noteworthy: Double Holiday which is fantastic, and Dickens of a Holiday! Because it has acting within acting and I like that shit.

Kavan Smith - Look, I would die for Lee Coulter and everyone knows that, so every Hallmark movie he’s in gets an automatic watch from me because telling apart actors and characters is not my strength. My Noteworthy: Other than When Calls the heart? how about The Perfect Bride and Love on the Menu

Ryan Paevey - In addition to probably being shirtless in Hallmark movies the most out of any of these guys, he’s also one of the best actors of the bunch. Unfortunately, you don’t notice that because he is ridiculously soap opera handsome. My Noteworthy: A Timeless Christmas is actually fantastic and Don’t Go Breaking my Heart for something non-seasonal

Andrew Walker - he has been in so many of these but my Dad still refers to him as “Billy Hamilton” because of When Calls the Heart and, to be honest: same. My Noteworthy: My Christmas Family Tree because it was a fucking ROLLER COASTER and Christmas on My Mind sorry guys he does a lot of the Christmas ones so not many non-seasonal options.

Luke MacFarlane - I feel like the costume department must have to spend a LOT of time on finding clothes that don’t emphasize those fucking ARMS since most of his roles for Hallmark involve him employing soft sweaters and heart eyes and I Respect that and for the love of god if we don’t get a Queer Hallmark movie with him I will riot. My Noteworthy: The Birthday Wish and Just Add Romance

Paul Campbell - is NOT the lawyer from The Rookie / Iceman from the X-Men movies but sure does look like him. The Santa Heist movie was fun, but always going to be “he’s supposed to be a mechanic but he’s wearing fucking boat shoes in the garage” guy. My Noteworthy: The Santa Stakeout and Wedding Every Weekend

Victor Webster - I don’t have anything witty to say because I thought he was in the one where he’s a widower and there’s a woman with amnesia, but he’s actually in the other one where he’s a widower and there’s a woman with amnesia, so… My Noteworthy: The Wedding Veil Legacy and Five Star Christmas

Jesse Metcalfe - Gets extra points for Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries series because those are great, and extra points because I too suffered from Supernatural Brainrot for a long time but loses points for going over to GAC because we watched that weird music therapy valentines day one and they made him look shiny in a bad way. My Noteworthy: Christmas under the Stars was freaking adorable, and Christmas Next Door

Marcus Rosner - Gets bonus points because he has such a villain face but he keeps trying! Any time he gets a romantic lead I’m actually pretty excited for him. My Noteworthy: Romance to the Rescue and Love on Harbor Island because both of those also feature dogs even though neither of those movies really hits my top 25.

Wes Brown - is also a different person than Tyler Hynes and Niall Matter and I totally knew that (may be a little faceblind like my mom but it’s okay) My Noteworthy: Every Time a Bell Rings and A Nashville Christmas Carol where he looks like a different person but that’s okay

Kevin McGarry - Really hitting his stride but does have a bad habit of playing the first part of the movie where the leads don’t like each other and are a little petty a little too well that sometimes he doesn’t quite win me over in the end. My Noteworthy: Winter Castle and The Wedding Veil because of that Boston Accent I simply cannot get over.

Christopher Russell - Hits the niche that Greyston Holt left behind when he started getting other work though not quite as gravely. Does tend to be in the movies where we laugh out loud the most. My Noteworthy: Warming up to Love and Kite Festival of Love if only because 0 thought was put into that movie title and I think that’s wonderful. Bonus for being Sterling Masters in The Mistletoe Secret because that kind of role is hilarious and I love it.

EDIT TO ADD Will Kemp because I forgot about the precious accent boy who is so talented that I 100% believed he actually knew complex ballet and intricate chocolate-preparing techniques. My Noteworthy: Love, Romance, and Chocolate and The Christmas Waltz. I’m actually inordinately excited for the one coming up this year but I’m also a fan of Reshma Shetty so that could explain it.

72 notes · View notes

2015mai24 · 10 months

Text

GEKIROCK CLOTHING@RTプレゼント開催中！ on Twitter: "MUCC SATOち着用画像公開！【予約商品】 MUCC×KAVANE Clothing×ゲキ

#mucc #satochi

4 notes · View notes

foldingfittedsheets · 2 years

Photo

My update on my 3D Kavan is coming along? The clothes and armor are a bitch and I probably need to completely redo the belt to be honest. I feel like I’m limping through Zbrush because the professor goes over tools I need too fast to actually learn them.

#3d art #art #kavan #centaur #dnd #zbrush

2 notes · View notes

robotlearnstolove · 1 year

Text

2023-01-20

The Frozen Road ←1 2 3→

Much like her layers of woollen clothing protected her from the cold, the tinted goggles she wore protected her eyes from the light. People had lost their sight in the Wastes, sometimes for only a few days and sometimes permanently. Regardless, that wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. Swordship was her trade and if she wanted to continue plying it for the rest of her working life, she needed to keep all of her senses as sharp as she kept her sword.

Sitting across from her in the cart was Hanial, another mercenary. This was the third time that they had sat in the same cart together over the course of the journey and, the first two times, they had talked, sharing stories about their experiences crossing the wastes and as soldiers back home. A couple of days ago, however, Chanta had learned that Hanial had served in the Royal Davulian army during the Kavan War and they hadn’t really spoken since. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in this sort of situation. Working with other mercenaries, it was bound to happen. It was a shame though. They were had gotten along quite well up to that point.

#creative writing #practice writing #first draft #just keep writing #write anything #routine #fiction #ficlet #one hour #experimental #unedited #4/5 #The Frozen Road

0 notes

kavanchoksijs · 2 years

Text

Touring the World: Here's How to Travel Light

Kavan Choksi says that whether you're a photographer out for a 10-day shoot or a businessman on a week-long conference or even a fresh graduate going backpacking for an entire year, traveling light is one of the best things you can do.

Traveling light makes moving from one place to another more manageable and prevents you from bringing unnecessary clothing or items. In today's blog post, Kavan Choksi shares some valuable tips on how to travel light.

To pack light, you have to start with a smaller bag. The problem with using a bigger bag is that you might tend to fill it up with extra clothes, other items, gear, or equipment you think you might need for your trip. When you limit the space for packing, it stands to reason that you automatically stop yourself from overpacking.

According to Kavan Choksi, you should only pack necessary things and eliminate any just-in-case items. Some people have this compulsion to prepare for everything, while others like having more options when it comes to clothing, perfume, footwear, and other things.

Another tip from Kavan Choksi is that instead of bringing much clothing, get extra cash to buy clothes or anything you'll need for any special occasions on the itinerary if there are any. The extra luggage space you don't use may also come in handy when bringing home souvenirs.

Kavan Choksi also says that when packing clothes, apply the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle states that 80 percent of what you pack must be your clothing, and the remaining 20 percent can be your emergency kit, shower kit, other equipment, etc. It's also important to keep in mind, Kavan Choksi says, that when packing clothes focus on layers and not bulk.

Do you have any tips on traveling light? Please share them with Kavan Choksi in the comments section below.

#Kavan Choksi Japan

0 notes

genzento · 6 years

Photo

#acOlaSia #kavane clothing #ウタ丸

9 notes · View notes

valewright67 · 3 years

Note

Hey hey I had a Mama Mel thought. Do you think he’ll take the boys he adopted dragon hunting?

Y E S I ABSOLUTELY DO.

Kavan is 14 and Soren is 16 when he finally agrees to take the two of them. Zeldris, who had been very irritated upon finding he knew next to none of the royal spells, diligently drilled each one into his mind. So now it was no problem for him to give them a simple blessing, so that they'd be able to withstand the miasma of the Demon Realm. That's where the best hunting grounds were at, after all. They were VERY rare in Brittania, but abundant in the underworld.

Kavan had turned into... well, a bit of a gremlin, really. Mischief radiated from him and there was a spark in his eyes, a twist to his grin. He'd gotten very good at using his shadow magic to pull pranks.

That wasn't to say Soren didn't have his share of the fun, they were brothers after all. But he tended be a bit more responsible. Supposedly. In reality, he was just as much of a little shit as Kavan, but he hid it better.

It took about an hour, but eventually they decided on a dragon to hunt. Meliodas pointed it out. "See its wings? They've been scared heavily, so the poor thing is lame now and can't keep up with the rest of its Thunder, that's what a group of dragons is called, remember? Also, it's older, and has started slowing down. The other members will sometimes try and care for it, which puts them in danger of being attacked by Indura, or being underfed. And besides that, look at the way it moves. It's not healthy, and it's in pain. So we'll trim this one off the population to keep the rest of them healthy."

They stalked it for hours, until the rest of the Thunder was gone, and it rested on the ground before beginning the actual hunt. Meliodas made sure the boys were safe and showed them where to strike it with their weapons to shut off its nerve responses, so it wouldn't feel pain. "Do you want me to do the final blow, or would you rather do it?"

They exchanged glances, and Soren went to stand in front of the Dragon who had very quickly ceased its suffering. Meliodas’s eyes widened, worried he'd get snapped at, or scorched, but he put his hand on its nose and rubbed gently. "I'm sorry for taking your life, but you won't hurt anymore, at least. I'll make sure of that." It puffed a little breath of smoke at him and it ruffled his clothes as he smiled. He pulled its soul from its body as its eyes dulled, and Kavan used his shadows to crack its MASSIVE neck, cutting off its life force instantly.

Soren stood there for a moment, holding the blue orb with its little flame like tail in his palms. It was bigger than an average humans, by about double. Meliodas walked over and put his hand on his shoulder. (He was TALLER than him now, the AUDACITY.) "Id like to show you something that we do down here. May I?" He nodded and Meliodas took the soul from him gently. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then exhaled as he released it, nudging it gently towards the Dragon nesting grounds. It started to fade about 10 feet away from them until it was no longer visible. "It'll go on in that direction, and find a hatchling to be reborn as."

He patted them both. "Good job. Come on, let's get this back to the palace kitchens." He lifts it up and they start their trip back.

They're not exactly subtle. They don't purposefully put on a show, but they don't go out of their way to remain subtle either. Which means, especially as they get closer to the palace, where the population is denser, a lot of people see them. Meliodas has been seen around the underworld, and there's rumors he has children through overheard conversations with him and his brother. ("How are the boys?" "Oh, you know them. Getting into all sorts of trouble.) But they've never actually been SEEN, this is their first time in the underworld.

Meliodas dips his head to demons who stop to stare at their former heir and a couple of TEENAGERS, apparently. Kavan and Soren are laughing, chasing each other and wrestling, and Meliodas watches them with a fond look. When they do make it the palace, he knocks on the outside entry door to the kitchen. The door are opened by a servant and he smiles as he holds up the dragon. "The boys and I hunted a dragon, and we can't exactly eat the entire things ourselves. I'd offer to help cook, but-"

The boys immediately broke out in protests, yelling about how they did NOT feel like being poisoned by his atrocious dishes tonight, and he smirked. "That."

The dragon was placed on a large tarp like fabric, and the three of them got to work on skinning it. Kavan and Soren made some faces, but Meliodas had worked on building up their tolerance to this by teaching them how to skin deer, and other Brittanian creatures. A dragon was just... bigger. Once the scales were removed, he strung it onto a large frame and began to strip it. The kitchen workers began to prep the meat. "You can use the scales to make anything from armor and weapons to jewelry and dress garments." They were a lovely color, onyx black with silvery patterns and swirls scattered throughout it.

Eventually, they were finished, and he took them inside to bathe. They did make a stop in the throne room first, to say hi. Well, Meliodas was going to have them wait, but they ran off before he could say anything.

"Uncle Zel, guess what we just did??" Kavan said barging in with little wisps of shadows drifting off of him in his excitement. He was covered In dirt, ash, and some blood from the butchering. Soren came up behind him and threw his weight on top of his younger brother, eyes literally glowing as he shoved him down while he protested. "We just hunted a DRAGON!"

Zeldris blinked at them. "...That's nice. Where is your father?"

"Here!" Meliodas called, jogging up behind them and pulling them back as they yelped. "Boys, we're filthy, we need to go clean up. Besides your uncle has an audience right now, come on, be more observant." They blinked and turned back towards the room where, indeed, there was a small gathering of Demons. They both flushed bright red and started stuttering out Apologies while their father smirked. Zeldris chuckled and waved them off. "It's fine, I'll see you at dinner and we can talk then. Go clean up, you all really are filthy."

They took off immediately, and Meliodas snorted as they watched them retreat. "Sorry about that, Zel. They were excited to talk to you, and ran off before I could stop them. You know how they are."

He smirked. "I know, Mel. You're filthy too, get out of here, before you stick up my throne room."

"Yeah yeah, I'm going. See you in a few hours."

#mama mel

27 notes · View notes

justforbooks · 3 years

Photo

Fifty Great Classic Novels Under 200 Pages

We are now end of February, which is technically the shortest month, but is also the one that—for me, anyway—feels the longest. Especially this year, for all of the reasons that you already know. At this point, if you keep monthly reading goals, even vague ones, you may be looking for few a good, short novels to knock out in an afternoon or two. So now I must turn my attention to my favorite short classics—which represent the quickest and cheapest way, I can tell you in my salesman voice, to become “well-read.”

A few notes: This list will define “classic” as being originally published before 1970. Yes, these distinctions are somewhat arbitrary, but one has to draw the line somewhere (though I let myself fudge on translation dates). I did not differentiate between novels and novellas (as Steven Millhauser would tell you, the novella is not a form at all, but merely a length), but let’s be honest with ourselves: “The Dead” is a short story, and so is “The Metamorphosis.” Sorry! I limited myself to one book by each author, valiantly, I should say, because I was tempted to cheat (looking at you Jean Rhys).

Most importantly for our purposes here: lengths vary with editions, sometimes wildly. I did not include a book below unless I could find that it had been published at least once in fewer than 200 pages—which means that some excellent novels, despite coming tantalizingly close to the magic number, had to be left off for want of proof (see Mrs. Dalloway, Black No More, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. etc. etc.). However, your personal edition might not exactly match the number I have listed here. Don’t worry: it’ll still be short.

Finally, as always: “best” lists are subjective, no ranking is definitive, and I’ve certainly forgotten, or never read, or run out of space for plenty of books and writers here. And admittedly, the annoying constraints of this list make it more heavily populated by white and male writers than I would have liked. Therefore, please add on at will in the comments. After all, these days, I’m always looking for something old to read.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, tr. Ruth L.C. Simms, The Invention of Morel (1940) : 103 pages

Both Jorge Luis Borges and Octavio Paz described this novel as perfect, and I admit I can’t find much fault with it either. It is technically about a fugitive whose stay on a mysterious island is disturbed by a gang of tourists, but actually it’s about the nature of reality and our relationship to it, told in the most hypnotizing, surrealist style. A good anti-beach read, if you plan that far ahead.

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) : 107 pages

Everybody’s gateway Steinbeck is surprisingly moving, even when you revisit it as an adult. Plus, if nothing else, it has given my household the extremely useful verb “to Lenny.”

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945) : 112 pages

If we didn’t keep putting it on lists, how would future little children of America learn what an allegory is? This is a public service, you see.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) : 112 pages

A people-pleaser, in more ways than one: Sherlock Holmes, after all, had been dead for years when his creator finally bent to public demand (and more importantly, the demand of his wallet) and brought him back, in this satisfying and much-beloved tale of curses and hell-beasts and, of course, deductions.

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1933) : 112 pages

A 20th century classic, and still one of the best, most important, and most interesting crime novels in the canon. Fun fact: Cain had originally wanted to call it Bar-B-Q.

Nella Larsen, Passing (1929) : 122 pages

One of the landmarks of the Harlem Renaissance, about not only race but also gender and class—not to mention self-invention, perception, capitalism, motherhood and friendship—made indelible by what Darryl Pinckney called “a deep fatalism at the core.”

Albert Camus, tr. Matthew Ward, The Stranger (1942) : 123 pages

I had a small obsession with this book as a moody teen, and I still think of it with extreme fondness. Is it the thinking person’s Catcher in the Rye? Who can say. But Camus himself put it this way, writing in 1955: “I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: “In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game.”

Juan Rulfo, tr. Margaret Sayers Peden, Pedro Páramo (1955) : 128 pages

The strange, fragmented ghost story that famously paved the way for One Hundred Years of Solitude (according to Gabriel García Márquez himself), but is an enigmatic masterpiece in its own right.

Italo Calvino, tr. Archibald Colquhoun, The Cloven Viscount (1959) : 128 pages

This isn’t my favorite Calvino, but you know what they say: all Calvino is good Calvino (also, I forgot him on the contemporary list, so I’m making up for it slightly here). The companion volume to The Nonexistent Knight and The Baron in the Trees concerns a Viscount who is clocked by a cannonball and split into two halves: his good side and his bad side. They end up in a duel over their wife, of course—just like in that episode of Buffy. But turns out that double the Viscounts doesn’t translate to double the pages.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) : 128 pages

I know, I know, but honestly, this book, which is frequently taught in American schools as an example of early feminist literature, is still kind of edgy—more than 120 years later, and it’s still taboo for a woman to put herself and her own desires above her children. Whom among us has not wanted to smash a symbolic glass vase into the hearth?

Leo Tolstoy, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) : 128 pages

Another classic—Tolstoy can do it all, long and short—particularly beloved by the famously difficult-to-impress Nabokov, who described it as “Tolstoy’s most artistic, most perfect, and most sophisticated achievement,” and explained the thrust of it this way: “The Tolstoyan formula is: Ivan lived a bad life and since the bad life is nothing but the death of the soul, then Ivan lived a living death; and since beyond death is God’s living light, then Ivan died into a new life—Life with a capital L.”

Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (1968) : 138 pages

Brautigan’s wacky post-apocalyptic novel concerns a bunch of people living in a commune called iDEATH. (Which, um, relatable.) The landscape is groovy and the tigers do math, and the titular watermelon sugar seems to be the raw material for everything from homes to clothes. “Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar. I hope this works out.” It’s all nonsense, of course, but it feels so good.

James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) : 140 pages

Another early novel on the subject of passing—originally published in 1912, then again under Johnson’s name in 1927—this one presented as an “autobiography” written by a Black man living as white, but uneasily, considering himself a failure, feeling until the end the grief of giving up his heritage and all the pain and joy that came with it.

Thomas Mann, tr. Michael Henry Heim, Death in Venice (1912) : 142 pages

What it says on the tin—a story as doomed as Venice itself, but also a queer and philosophical mini-masterpiece. The year before the book’s publication, Mann wrote to a friend: “I am in the midst of work: a really strange thing I brought with me from Venice, a novella, serious and pure in tone, concerning a case of pederasty in an aging artist. You say, ‘Hum, hum!’ but it is quite respectable.” Indeed.

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) : 146 pages

If you’re reading this space, you probably already know how much we love this book at Literary Hub. After that excellent opening paragraph, it only gets better.

Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (1964) : 152 pages

Isherwood’s miniature, jewel-like masterpiece takes place over a single day in the life of a middle-aged English expat (who shares a few qualities with Isherwood himself), a professor living uneasily in California after the unexpected death of his partner. An utterly absorbing and deeply pleasurable novel.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Notes from Underground (1864) : 154 pages

Probably the best rant ever passed off as literature. Dostoevsky's first masterpiece has been wildly influential in the development of existential and dystopian storytelling of all kinds, not to mention in the development of my own high school misanthropy. Maybe yours, too? “It was all from ENNUI, gentlemen, all from ENNUI; inertia overcame me . . .” Actually, now I’m thinking that it might be a good book to re-read in pandemic isolation.

Anna Kavan, Ice (1967) : 158 pages

The narrator of this strange and terrifying novel obsessively pursues a young woman through an icy apocalypse. You might call it a fever dream if it didn’t feel so . . . cold. Reading it, wrote Jon Michaud on its 50th anniversary, is “a disorienting and at times emotionally draining experience, not least because, these days, one might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future.” Help.

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923) : 158 pages

Toomer’s experimental, multi-disciplinary novel, now a modernist classic, is presented as a series of vignettes, poems, and swaths of dialogue—but to be honest, all of it reads like poetry. Though its initial reception was uncertain, it has become one of the most iconic and influential works of 1920s American literature.

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962) : 158 pages

Only in a Ballard novel can climate change make you actually become insane—and only a Ballard novel could still feel so sticky and hot in my brain, years after I read it in a single afternoon.

Knut Hamsun, tr. Sverre Lyngstad, Hunger (1890) : 158 pages

The Nobel Prize winner’s first novel is, as Hamsun himself put it, “an attempt to describe the strange, peculiar life of the mind, the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body.” An modernist psychological horror novel that is notoriously difficult, despite its length, but also notoriously worth it.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956) : 159 pages

Still my favorite Baldwin, and one of the most convincing love stories of any kind ever written, about which there is too much to say: it is a must-read among must-reads.

Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (1913) : 159 pages

A mythic, proto-feminist frontier novel about a young Swedish immigrant making a home for herself in Nebraska, with an unbearably cool and modern title (in my opinion).

Françoise Sagan, tr. Irene Ash, Bonjour Tristesse (1955) : 160 pages

Sagan’s famously scandalous novel of youthful hedonism, published (also famously) when Sagan was just 19 herself, is much more psychologically nuanced than widely credited. As Rachel Cusk wrote, it is not just a sexy French novel, but also “a masterly portrait that can be read as a critique of family life, the treatment of children and the psychic consequences of different forms of upbringing.” It is a novel concerned not only with morals or their lack, but with the very nature of morality itself.

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (1924) : 160 pages

Bartleby may be more iconic (and more fun), but Billy Budd is operating on a grander scale, unfinished as it may be.

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) : 160 pages

Everyone’s gateway to Pynchon, and also everyone’s gateway to slapstick postmodernism. Either you love it or you hate it!

Franz Kafka, tr. Willa and Edwin Muir, The Trial (1925) : 160 pages

Required reading for anyone who uses the term “Kafkaesque”—but don’t forget that Kafka himself would burst out laughing when he read bits of the novel out loud to his friends. Do with that what you will.

Kenzaburo Oe, tr. John Nathan, A Personal Matter (1968) : 165 pages

Whew. This book is a lot: absolutely gorgeous and supremely painful, and probably the Nobel Prize winner’s most important.

Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936) : 170 pages

In his preface to the first edition, T.S. Eliot praised “the great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterisation, and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy.” It is also a glittering modernist masterpiece, and one of the first novels of the 20th century to explicitly portray a lesbian relationship.

Yasunari Kawabata, tr. Edward G. Seidensticker, Snow Country (1937) : 175 pages

A story of doomed love spun out in a series of indelible, frozen images—both beautiful and essentially suspicious of beauty—by a Nobel Prize winner.

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) : 176 pages

This novel, Rhys’s famous riposte to one of the worst love interests in literary history, tells the story of Mr. Rochester from the point of view of the “madwoman in the attic.” See also: Good Morning, Midnight (1939), which is claustrophobic, miserable, pointless, and damn fine reading.

George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861) : 176 pages

Like Middlemarch, Silas Marner is exquisitely written and ecstatically boring. Unlike Middlemarch, it is quite short.

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963) : 176 pages

The girls of Spark’s novel live in the May of Teck Club, disturbed but not destroyed by WWII—both the Club, that is, and the girls. “Their slenderness lies not so much in their means,” Carol Shields wrote in an appreciation of the book, “as in their half-perceived notions about what their lives will become and their overestimation of their power in the world. They are fearless and frightened at the same time, as only the very young can be, and they are as heartless in spirit as they are merry in mode.” Can’t go wrong with Muriel Spark.

Robert Walser, tr. Christopher Middleton, Jakob von Gunten (1969) : 176 pages

Walser is a writer’s writer, a painfully underrated genius; this novel, in which a privileged youth runs off to enroll at a surrealist school for servants, may be his best.

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) : 179 pages

Read for proof that Holly Golightly was meant to be a Marilyn.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958) : 181 pages

A powerful, clear-eyed, and haunting novel, which at the time of its publication was transgressive in its centering of African characters in all their humanity and complexity, and which paved the way for thousands of writers all over the world in the years to follow.

Leonard Gardner, Fat City (1969) : 183 pages

Universally acknowledged as the best boxing novel ever written, but so much more than that: at its core, it’s a masterpiece about that secret likelihood of life, if not of literature: never achieving your dreams.

N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968) : 185 pages

House Made of Dawn, Momaday’s first novel, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and is often credited with ushering in the Native American Renaissance. Intricate, romantic, and lush, it is at its core about the creaking dissonance of two incompatible worlds existing in the same place (both literally and metaphysically) at the same time.

Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) : 186 pages

Himes’ first novel spans four days in the life of a Californian named Bob Jones, whose every step is dogged by racism. Walter Mosely called Himes, who is also renowned for his detective fiction, a “quirky American genius,” and also “one of the most important American writers of the 20th century.” If He Hollers Let Him Go, while not technically a detective story, is “firmly located in the same Los Angeles noir tradition as The Big Sleep and Devil in a Blue Dress,” Nathan Jefferson has written. “Himes takes the familiar mechanics of these novels—drinking, driving from one end of Los Angeles to another in search of answers, a life under constant threats of danger—and filters them through the lens of a black man lacking any agency and control over his own life, producing something darker and more oppressive than the traditional pulp detective’s story.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) : 189 pages

All my life I have wanted to scoff at The Great Gatsby. Usually, things that are universally adored are bad, or at least mediocre. But every time I reread it, I remember: impossibly, annoyingly, it is as good as they say.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957) : 190 pages

Still one of my favorite campus novels, and short enough to read in between classes.

Charles Portis, Norwood (1966) : 190 pages

Portis has gotten a lot of (well-deserved) attention in recent years for True Grit, but his first novel, Norwood, is almost as good, a comic masterpiece about a young man traipsing across a surreal America to lay his hands on $70.

Philip K. Dick, Ubik (1969) : 191 pages

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly have more mainstream name recognition (thank you Hollywood) but Ubik is Dick’s masterpiece, filled to the brim with psychics and anti-psis, dead wives half-saved in cold-pac, and disruptions to time and reality that can be countered by an aerosol you get at the drugstore. Sometimes, anyway.

Clarice Lispector, tr. Alison Entrekin, Near to the Wild Heart (1943) : 192 pages

Lispector’s debut novel, first published in Brazil when she was only 19, is still my favorite of hers: fearless, sharp-edged, and brilliant, a window into one of the most interesting narrators in literature.

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962) : 192 pages

This novel is probably more famous these days for the Kubrick film, but despite the often gruesome content, the original text is worth a read for the language alone.

Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954) : 193 pages

Comyns is a criminally under-read genius, though she’s been getting at least a small taste of the attention she deserves in recent years due to reissues by NYRB and Dorothy. This one is my favorite, permeated, as Brian Evenson puts it in the introduction of my copy, with marvelousness, “a kind of hybrid of the pastoral and the naturalistic, an idyllic text about what it’s like to grow up next to a river, a text that also just happens to contain some pretty shocking and sad disasters.” Which is putting it rather mildly indeed.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) : 194 pages

In 194 pages, Janie goes through more husbands than most literary heroines can manage in twice as many (and finds herself in equally short order).

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911) : 195 pages

To be honest with you, though it has been variously hailed as a masterpiece, I find Ethan Frome to be lesser Wharton—but even lesser Wharton is better than a lot of people’s best.

Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) : 198 pages

The mood this novel—of disappeared teens and Australian landscape and uncertainty—lingers much longer than the actual reading time.

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967) : 200 pages

“The summer she was fifteen,” Carter’s second novel begins, “Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood.” It is that year that she is uprooted from her home in London to the wilds of America, and it is that year she comes to term with herself. “It is often the magical, fabular aspects of Carter’s stories that people focus on, but in The Magic Toyshop I responded to the way she blended this with a clear-eyed realism about what it was to live in a female body,” Evie Wyld wrote in her ode to this novel. “In a novel so brilliantly conjured from splayed toothbrush heads, mustard-and-cress sandwiches and prawn shells, bread loaves and cutlery, brickwork and yellow household soap, the female body is both one more familiar object and at the same time something strange and troubling.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS

30 notes · View notes

cirvat · 4 years

Text

Week 2- Creatober

Prompts: Awareness, Pressure, Fight, Sunrise, Burn, Bruise (I couldn’t seem to fit Intrigue in here!)

Kagura pressed her fist to her mouth to cover the yawn that betrayed just how tired she was. Beside her Leo was leaning over his fiancé’s shoulders, eyes closed and groaning into Shin’s neck. Shin was petting his hair as they scanned the line of guards that bracketed them.

The walkway was lit with the glare of streetlamps as a soft glow on the horizon carried the promise of a sunrise. The carriage that they stood in front of was an ornate thing, golden and giant with little dragons sewn into the drapery. It looked like those show boxes royalty would put pretty trinkets in.

Princess Ursula was anything but a pretty trinket.

Not to say that she isn’t pretty, she floundered in her own head. Her Highness is very beautiful! She's just not a trinket!

Achieving Runic mastership at the age of twenty was almost unheard of. The variety of properties behind each and every rune made the field notorious for its complexity. Kagura had to research some of the more common runes during her medical classes and it was like pulling teeth trying to understand them.

She really hoped she would get to see more of the Princess’s abilities in action.

“When are they gonna get here?” Leo groaned. “I could have gotten more sleep if all we’re gonna do is stand here for an hour!”

“It’s ceremonial, Leo.” Shin swept another hand through his hair. “Her Highness needs to be dressed in traditional clothing for her travels through the outer rings.”

“Also, she and Kavan need to talk mission details.” Kagura poked Leo’s side.

“But sleep!” Leo pressed into his fiancé even more.

“Leo.” Shin shrugged him off their shoulder. “You’re going to be riding on top of the thing anyways. Chill out.”

The ginger groaned and moved to lean on them again just as the guards parted. Kagura and Shin elbowed him up straight as Kavan led both the Princess and Empress Sakura forward. The three sunk into deep bows at their approach.

“Rise.” The Empress’s clear voice seemed to set pressure down on Kagura’s spine, forcing her to obey. “Dear guildsfolk, I entrust to you my daughter. Protect her and care for her.”

“We will, Your Excellency.” Kavan bowed, showing her the respect he would usually only show to the Vulcos Grandmaster.

“Ursula, my daughter.” Sakura turned to the Princess, her lips pursed in what could only be worry. “I wish you safe travels. Return to me swiftly.”

“Of course, Mother.” Ursula bowed her head, her face covered by the veil she wore. She turned to the carriage and her beautiful formal robes drifted across the ground as she walked.

Kagura was sure that her eyes were burning against the Princess’s back as she climbed the steps into the carriage. She just couldn’t help herself. The grace that her Highness moved with swayed the fish beaded into the fabric so that they almost looked alive.

Ursula settled into the carriage as her newly appointed guards took their positions. Shin took up the horses’ reins as Leo climbed up to perch on the guard post beside the sunroof window. Kagura and Kavan moved to their rear guard positions.

Their travel through the palace grounds and out into the Upper Ring was uneventful. Kagura spent her time checking her gloves and doing her fourth pocket pat down of the morning.

Once they cleared the palace walls it was another story entirely.

Whispers traced their path through the city.

Kagura hadn’t noticed it at first. She’d been caught up in staring at the tops of the monolithic buildings that towered over the streets when a small exchange caught her ear.

“Demon’s out to play again.”

Her eyes snapped down in time to see some lordly asshole bend over to whisper in another’s ear.

“I don’t know how Her Excellency can stand it. That thing living in her walls.”

“If it lived in my home you know I’d…” The voices became indistinct as they moved further away.

After that she was aware of every cupped mouth and averted glare. Her shoulders rose higher and higher and she cut a glance at Kavan only to see him shake his head. His hand nearest to her flipped palm out for a moment before moving back.

Don’t. Not worth it.

Her eyes flicked up to meet Leo’s and she let her head tilt forward.

Leo grimaced and tapped twice on the carriage roof.

Shin flicked the reins, cuing the horses to speed up.

They moved through the Upper Ring as fast as possible.

The gate between the Upper and Lower Rings was gaudy and unnecessarily golden. There were guards posted every yard along the wall. The ones closest to the carriage bowed as they passed, backing up as they did.

The Lower Ring was only marginally better.

The working class didn’t bother with whispering those foolish remarks, not ready to face the possible jail time for insulting royalty. They did, however, turn away from the carriage and clutch their children close.

The closer they got to the edge of the Lower Ring the less people seemed to care. By the time they reached the Parting Gate, the cityfolk barely batted an eye at the Princess’s carriage.

The guards of the Parting Gate didn’t bow. Instead, each one gave a nod, arms crossed and faces stoic. Kagura startled a bit when she saw Princess Ursula’s hand slide out of one of the windows and give them all a wave.

Beyond the Parting Gate, the mood around the carriage took a dramatic turn.

Along the Palace City walls were camps and small slums of those forbidden from entering. Instead of whispered words and averted eyes were people trailing behind them. Children ran alongside the carriage, calling out to the ‘pretty ma’am’ to play with them.

A sudden low whistle sounded from Leo causing the carriage to slow to a halt.

Requested stop. Kagura frowned, peeking around the side of the vehicle.

The Princess was leaning out of the window, veil trailing in the breeze.

“Hello, my friends.” She Whispered causing the clamoring children to quiet down. “How have you been?”

“Good!” The tallest girl chirped. “Our carrots are ready to harvest!”

“That’s good to hear.” Ursula’s voice was soft.

“How is your sister?” A small boy asked.

Which one? Kagura wondered with a small snort.

“She is well, thank you.” Ursula retreated for a moment. “I must be going, my friends.” Her hand reached out again, holding a coin purse and a small sack. “Please tell your parents of my absence.”

“Ok.” The children chorused as the tall girl took the bags.

“Please be safe, miss!” A few of them rushed to say.

“You as well.” Ursula gave them a parting wave. Leo tapped the carriage roof twice and they were off once more.

Kagura kept her eyes on the slumfolk as they made their way out and found herself smiling as they waved toward them.

Once they reached the slum limits the carriage paused to let Kagura and Kavan hop on their rear guard perches and then they were off. They moved at a fast clip over the merchant roads and Kagura marveled at the smoothness of their ride.

Time seemed to pass more slowly than usual. As Kagura scanned the horizon, she began to take more notice of the wild flowers that dotted their way.

About midday they stopped by a river to give the horses a break. Kagura and Shin busied themselves by unhooking the horses. By the time they had finished watering and feeding the animals they returned to the carriage to find Leo in the depths of storytelling.

“- and Kagura, she’s super scary sometimes, looked him right in the eye and told him to f- um… I mean, flick off! So he got mad, like super mad, and went to punch her so I-!” Leo was rocking back and forth on his perch, grinning like a loon.

“Leo!” Kagura yelped. “Are you telling her Highness about a bar brawl?!”

“She asked about what we do!” He grinned down at her.

“So tell her about one of our missions! Don’t tell her about punching out some ass-,” she stopped herself, “ahem, uncouth civilian. You’re making us out to be crooks!”

“There is no need to worry, Ms. Ohm.” Kagura flushed when her eyes met the Princess’s own through her veil. “It is refreshing. I do think the man deserved whatever he got.”

“A header through the table?” Shin whispered as they passed behind Kagura.

She bit her tongue to stop the snort trying to punch through her. Kavan, of course, did nothing to stop his own.

The two finished hooking the horse back in, but as they moved to return to their places Kavan suddenly let out a short, shrill whistle.

Danger.

Kagura froze and let her aura explode out from her. The energy traced through every nook and cranny of the space, stretching out wider and wider as she scanned.

When the taste of metal flooded her mouth she snapped back into her own head.

“Thirty!” She yelled and gripped her seat as Shin leapt to their chair. A snap of the reins sent them forward at a full gallop.

“Cover!” Kavan roared and Shin ran them through the brush and into the treeline.

Kagura heard Leo yelp and watched an arrow sail past him.

“Switch!” Kagura cried and reached up to grab the hand Leo was holding down to her. She clambered up to the roof and guided Leo down safely before nocking her bow.

She crouched on the roof of the carriage and looked back at the way she had sensed their pursuers. Black shapes rocketed toward them across the field, much faster than they should have been able to move.

“Mages incoming!” She felt her energy pool into her fingers as she pulled back her first arrow. Purple magic zipped along the wood just in time for her to loose it. The arrow flew true and speared one of the shapes right through. She watched with satisfaction as it toppled to the ground. “Twenty nine!”

“Shin!” Kavan was suddenly beside her. “We need to stand our ground!”

“Yes, sir!” They called and let out a cough before letting the reins go. They stomped down on the release mechanism and watched the horses leave them behind for a moment before turning.

“Ooooo! This is just what I needed!” Leo growled, his voice incredibly lower than it had been before. Kagura refocused in time to see him launch off of the guard perch, his blade already glowing.

“Damn it, Leo!” Shin jumped from the carriage. They flung off their cloak to reveal the contract marks all over their body. As they pressed their hand to one on their shoulder Kagura dropped down into the carriage.

“Your Highness, I need you to listen to me.” She moved to watch through the window closest to the action. “If they enter the carriage, please entrust me to defend us.”

“I cannot promise that, Ms. Ohm.” Kagura turned in time to see the Princess loosen her belts.

“U-uh! What-?” She flustered until she saw the hardened leather armor beneath the silken robes. On her hips gleamed two blackened silver daggers.

“I am not as delicate as I have led you to believe.” Ursula tugged away her veil and the wig she wore along with it. Her hair underneath was silky, black and twisted into a crown braid. Her blood red eyes, the trait that every single thirteenth child shared, seemed to stare right through her.

Kagura cleared her throat. “Good.”

The two women stepped out of the carriage and straight into the throws of the battle around them.

Kagura lost herself to the violence. She watched Shin launch their elemental magics as she stabbed their enemies with poison tipped arrows. She saw Leo cackle in the crazed manner of berserkers as she slammed her bow into weak points. She witnessed Kavan throw their enemies clear through the air, ducking underneath some to loose arrows at others.

The person that held her attention the most, though, was her Highness.

Ursula whipped her way through the battlefield, blood splattering over her armor, as the daggers in her hands ended the lives of those that sought to kill her.

Soon, there was no one left to fight, bodies piled on the ground around them.

Kagura let out a sigh and winced when her ribs protested. Probably bruised.

“Thank you.” Ursula murmured as they all collected themselves. “I apologize for any injuries you have sustained protecting me.”

“Ha!” Leo laughed as he collapsed on the ground, beckoning Kagura over to look at his dislocated shoulder. “There’s no need for such formal language anymore, your Highness! We’re siblings in arms now!”

Ursula’s eyes widened. “Wh-what?”

“He’s right.” Shin glanced over at her from where they were staunching Kavan’s bleeding forehead wound. “We are your guards now, your Highness. We will fight alongside you until our contract ends. That is the promise we made.”

“I…” Ursula stumbled over her words for a moment. Her red eyes darted around to each of them. “Thank you.”

“No worries.” Leo waved his hand. “We welcome you.”

Kagura took that moment to set his shoulder back into place. She smiled when his high pitched squeak caused a shy, little smile to crawl across Ursula’s face.

She had a good feeling about this.

#ursula #kagura #shin #leo #kavan #creatober #gtpatcreatober

6 notes · View notes

mikusuke0730 · 7 years

Photo

2017.08.06

＠国際展示場東京ビックサイト

真夏のデザインフェスタ

#デザフェス #国際展示場 #東京ビックサイト #KRY #KVN #TMCS #KRY CLOTHING #KAVANE CLOTHING #THEE MAD COUNTRY'S STORE #Lippi Tilbake #cymbal

0 notes

thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

Text

How slowly the minutes pass in the winter night: and yet the hours themselves do not seem so long. Already the church clock is calling the hour again in its dull country voice that sounds half stupefied with the cold. I lie in bed, and like a well-drilled prisoner, an old-timer, I resign myself to the familiar pattern of sleeplessness. It is a routine I know only too well.

My jailer is in the room with me, but he cannot accuse me of being rebellious or troublesome. I lie as still as if the bed were my coffin, not wishing to attract his attention. Perhaps if I don’t move for a whole hour he will let me sleep.

Naturally, I cannot put on the light. The room is as dark as a box lined with black velvet that someone has dropped into a frozen well. Everything is quiet except when the house-bones creak in the frost or a lump of snow slides from the roof with a sound like a stealthy sigh. I open my eyes in the darkness. The eyelids feel stiff as if tears had congealed upon them in rime. If only I could see my jailer it would not be so bad. It would be a relief to know just where he is keeping watch. At first I fancy that he is standing like a dark curtain beside the door. The ceiling is lifted off the room as if it were the lid of a box and he is towering up, taller than an elm tree, up towards the icy mountains of the moon. But then it seems to me that I have made a mistake and that he is crouching on the floor quite close to me.

An iron band has been clamped round my head, and just at this moment the jailer strikes the cold metal a ringing blow which sends needles of pain into my eye sockets. He is showing his disapproval of my inquiring thoughts; or perhaps he merely wishes to assert his authority over me. At any rate, I hastily shut my eyes again, and lie motionless, hardly daring to breathe, under the bed clothes.

To occupy my mind I begin to run through the formulae which the foreign doctor taught me when I first came under suspicion. I repeat to myself that there is no such person as a victim of sleeplessness, that I stay awake simply because I prefer to continue my thoughts. I try to imagine myself in the skin of a newborn infant, without future or past. If the jailer looks into my mind now, I think, he cannot raise any objection to what is going on there. The face of the Dutch doctor, thin and sharp and hard like the face of a sea captain, passes before me. Suddenly a cock crows near by with a sound fantastic, unearthly, in this world still locked in darkness and frost. The cock’s crow flowers sharply in three flaming points, a fiery fleur-de-lis blossoming momentaneously in the black field of night.

Now I am almost on the point of falling asleep. My body feels limp, my thoughts start to run together. My thoughts have become strands of weed, of no special colour, slowly undulating in colourless water.

My left hand twitches and again I am wide awake. It is the striking of the church clock that has called me back to my jailer’s presence. Did I count five strokes or four? I am too tired to be certain. In any case, the night will be over soon. The iron band on my head has tightened and slipped down so that it presses against my eyeballs. And yet the pain does not seem so much to come from this cruel pressure as to emanate from somewhere inside my skull, from the brain cortex: it is the brain itself which is aching.

All at once I feel desperate, outraged. Why am I alone doomed to spend nights of torment, with an unseen jailer, when all the rest of the world sleeps peacefully? By what laws have I been tried and condemned, without my knowledge, and to such a heavy sentence, too, when I do not even know of what or by whom I have been indicted? A wild impulse comes to me to protest, to demand a hearing, to refuse to submit any longer to such injustice.

But to whom can one appeal when one does not even know where to find the judge? How can one ever hope to prove one’s innocence when there is no means of knowing of what one has been accused? No, there’s no justice for people like us in the world: all that we can do is to suffer as bravely as possible and put our oppressors to shame.

Anna Kavan, Asylum Piece

#*#anna kavan #asylum piece

2 notes · View notes