Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ben O'Connell

@benjaminoc.bsky.social

990 followers 240 following 1.7K posts

Dad, husband, promiscuous reader, former music geek, wannabe movie nerd, Montanan, NE DC Canine Knucklehead Ward co-founder, C-SPAN director of editorial operations

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 2h

Please tell me

1 1

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 2h

No seriously

2 2

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 2h

I finished MOLLOY and boy oh boy wtf

1 7

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 4h

Oh, man. I’d love to know what you think if you get the chance to watch them.

1 1

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 4h

Horror, like most genres, offers such variety that it’s hard to answer that question. Three of the movies on my list are comedies; at least two are political allegories; most don’t contain any realistic violence. (Realistic violence bothers me, too.)

1 1

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 6h

I almost added American Werewolf. And The Witch would've been a good add for me had I thought about it.

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 6h

Which ones?

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 6h

10 horror movies to get to know me

Lake Mungo
Evil Dead 2
Island of Lost Souls
The Thing
Alien
Re-Animator
Near Dark
One Cut of the Dead
Witchhammer
The Descent

Lee Gardner @leegee.bsky.social · 7h

10 horror movies to get to know me

Island of Lost Souls
Cat People
I Married a Monster From Outer Space
Onibaba
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Thing
From Beyond
Pulse
A Dark Song
When Evil Lurks

grant @subterrene.bsky.social · 8h

10 horror movies to get to know me

Kill List
Under the Skin
Sauna
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
The Wicker Man (original)
In the Earth
Mandy
Beyond the Black Rainbow
It Follows
The Night Eats the World

2 6

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 6h

We are roughly 33% the same person.

1 1

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 1d

You got off easy. I was, and to some still am, "Little Ben." To be fair, the other Ben, "Big Ben," was 6'4", and I am not.

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 3d

I did not read this passage by a Nobel laureate aloud to the family because breakfast.

From Samuel Beckett’s MOLLOY: “A noise as of a waste recalled me to less elevated preoccupations. He stood up trembling all over. We bent together over the pot which at length I took by the handle and tilted from side to side. A few fibrous shreds floated in the yellow liquid. How can you hope to shit, I said, when you've nothing in your stomach? He protested he had had his lunch. You ate nothing, I said.“

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 4d

I hope you write something about your experience reading all of King in a year.

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 5d

I’ve been curious about Buzzati.

1 1

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 5d

Ending my work week back at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The head librarian showed us some fantastic artifacts: a 1594 quarto of Henry VI, court parchments from 1511-1631, and a justice’s handbook from 1575.

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 6d

Me: “May I read you a passage by a Nobel laureate?”
Elder Kid: “Oh, no.”
Wife: “I think you’re enjoying this book.”

Ah I was a precocious child, and then I was a precocious man. Now they all give me the shits, the ripe, the unripe and the rotting from the bough.

1 2

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 6d

@chrissteller.bsky.social Your thread on Peanuts reminded me: did you see this article on how Minnesota politics shaped the work of science fiction writer and Minneapolis Star journalist Clifford Simak? sciencefictionruminations.com/2024/09/13/e...

Exploration Log 5: “We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life”: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak

Cover art by Atun Purser My article on organized labor in the 1940s and ’50s science fiction of Clifford D. Simak went live! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve spent the last ha…

sciencefictionruminations.com

2 2 1

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 7d

“May I read to you the wisdom of a Nobel laureate?”—Me before I read Beckett aloud to my family

“So that I would have hesitated to exclaim, with my finger up my arsehole for example, Jesus-Christ, it's much worse than yesterday, I can hardly believe it is the same hole. I apologize for having to revert to this lewd orifice, 'tis my muse will have it ao.”

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 7d

Same! And especially given Frost’s TV history.

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 7d

Oops, I see someone else already mentioned her. Some others:

Nev March's Murder in Old Bombay
Mark Frost's The List of 7 (sequel is OK)
Harini Nagendra's Bangalore Detectives Club
Joe Gores's Hammett
Thomas Perry's Vanishing Act
Lori Rader-Day’s Death at Greenway

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 7d

Have you read Sarah Caudwell?

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 8d

Do you feel better now?

1 2

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 8d

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself (1973) is the grimiest of K. C. Constantine’s novels I’ve read, so far. It’s an early Rocksburg novel, and Constantine hasn’t yet hit his stride. There’s good character work, but he is still relying on plot rather than anthropology as the book’s engine.

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K. C. Constantine

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 9d

This is my favorite minor document that we saw: a page from the first U.S. Census in 1790 that documents both John Hancock and Samuel Adams, one right after the next.

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 9d

This is the version of the Treaty of Paris that King George III signed, ending the Revolutionary War.

1 1 2

Ben O'Connell @benjaminoc.bsky.social · 9d

King Louis XVI signed this finished version of the treaty, which now lives in the National Archives.