In addition to watching umpteen episodes of Buffy, I've been reading to Z this week. Since I don't want him to lose those neural connections that perceive non-English phonemes, I've been reading to him in French, German, and Spanish, along with English. He doesn't have any clue what I'm reading, but in the case of the German and Spanish, sometimes neither do I. Here's a sample of what we've been reading:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T. S. Eliot (illustrations by Edward Gorey, no less!)

The Space Child's Mother Goose - nerdy nursery rhymes, including such gems as

Possible-Probable, my black hen
Lays her eggs in the relative when.
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now,
Because she's unable to postulate how.

Frida - a picture book in Spanish about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. This is great not only bc of the language, but bc the illustrations are done in a style evocative of her artwork--and she did some pretty disturbing artwork. This may be creepier than the Edward Gorey illustrations.

Die Drei Kobolde - a German picture book about, as far as I can tell, three orphaned goblins who can control the weather. The level of German is much higher than the level of Spanish required by the Frida book.

Best of all, N'heures souris rames - Mother Goose rhymes rewritten in French--sort of. The French words are real, but translate to utter nonsense, bc they've been combined to sound like the original English words. Best of all, there are footnotes deconstructing the French "verses" as if they are from a historical manuscript, with commentary on the politics and events of the 16th century.

Ok, maybe this is only funny if you speak French. It cracks me up. And Z seems to like it

You know how much I hate people who ask me what I'm reading, when it's evident that 1) they are making random conversation and don't really care, 2) they clearly don't read recreationally themselves, and/or 3) they're interrupting my reading!

The lady taking my blood pressure at the midwife's office today was guilty of 1 and 2, but she managed an even more ludicrous offense:

BP Lady: What are you reading?
Me: [shows her book cover]
BP Lady: What's it about?
[Ok, how do you explain the plot of a Terry Pratchett novel smack in the middle of a series full of inside jokes only funny to regular readers?]
Me: Don't worry, you wouldn't be interested.
BP Lady: Is it related to your work?

Ok, here's what the cover of the book looks like. What exactly did she think I do for a living??

Has anyone out there (aside from vatavian) been borrowing my Harry Dresden books? I can't find book 3 (Grave Peril), but for some reason I've got two of book 6 (Blood Rites). Anyone who might have given me back the wrong one?

Attention, Bujold readers: meet psopcmaster.

First hit's free...

Bad hardly describes it--more like, dreadful, condescending, redundant, and absurd. The author begins with the assumption that his readers are half-wits (with, as one reviewer on Amazon noted, no access to a dictionary), and then demonstrates the origins of his belief: his characters, likewise, barely contain half a wit amongst the whole lot of them. I've known any number of 14-year old girls cleverer than Violet, 12-year-old boys smarter than Klaus, and there are probably toddlers out there more perceptive than Mr. Poe, Justice Strauss, and Sunny put together.

The whole tone of the book is a syrupy, twitchy, snide commentary on how bad things are, how much worse they'll get, and by the way, "bad" is meant here to mean "writing I wouldn't foist on my children if the only other book in the library was The Giving Tree." The author is clearly trying to channel Edward Gorey, and is not...quite...making it...even a little.

I am left wondering what age group this book is intended for: children young enough to not feel talked down to would likely need the dreary mess read to them--and I'd rather sit through endless repititions of Goodnight, Moon than subject myself to this drivel.

So I finally got around to reading it, and--eh. Not excited. It wasn't *bad*, just not what I was expecting from all the hoopla.

But as for it being an anti-church book...It seems to me that the conclusion turns that whole "anti-church" thing on its head.

( Spoilers )

Since coming home, I've read Frankie Manning's autobiography. It reads something like this:

I was born.

I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced.

Then I got drafted. War sucked, but there were some good times, too. I even danced a little.

Then the war ended.

I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced.

Then I got married, had a kid, and went to work for the post office.

30 years later, there was a swing revival. So I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced and I danced.

And you know what? I'M STILL DANCIN'!

Joyce, you've just finished five grueling weeks of research and writing--what are you gonna do now??

( I'm gonna read the new Harry Potter book! )

The Explaining Meme, from selenite. He picked three icons and three interests for me to explain. Comment and I'll pick three of each for you.

None of these are particularly obscure, but:

Icons



This is my travel icon; I really would prefer something a little more interesting and dynamic, but it works for now. I swiped it off a Google image search somewhere.



This is a picture I took at the historical museum on our trip to Oslo in 2004. The full picture, with caption translated from Norwegian (go me!) can be found here. I use it as an icon when I'm sick, which in itself is kind of sick.



I used this as my default icon for a long time. It's a shot Aaron took of me, that I then photoshopped purple. The pose reminds me a bit of the da Vinci drawing used in "Ever After."

Interests

codex alera - Series of fantasy novels by Jim Butcher. Astonishingly good stuff, esp considering they were written on a dare: someone bet Jim he couldn't write a good novel about the Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. My personal satisfaction with them stems from the underdog hero, who continually saves the day through multi-culturalism. There's unique.

sci-fi cons - Going to cons means never having to ask yourself, "But where would I wear this?" It's a world where it's perfectly polite to show off, stare, or bring a book or a laptop to a party.

square dancing - Square dancing evolved from European folk dances in much the same way as contra dance. In fact, they have a lot of steps in common. I happen to prefer squares to contras because the partner and position switches make them more challenging. Unfortunately, a square full of inexperienced dancers combines badly with an inattentive caller who can't rescue them. So, much as I like them, they tend to be frustrating when they come up.

Back in April, Stephen posted about reading To Kill a Mocking bird. I commented that I'd read it in 9th grade, and I must have had a very good teacher, bc I remember parts of it crystal clearly. It got me remembering what a good book it was, so I decided to re-read it.

Dear god. This book isn't just good. It's brilliant. It's mind-blowing. It's awe-inspiring. It is so beautifully significant, and significantly beautiful, it exceeds my feeble human capacity for expression.

And stupid, narrow-minded nitwits keep trying to ban it as a "filthy, trashy novel," because it does "psychological damage to the positive integration process " and "represents institutionalized racism under the guise of good literature." In other words, some people can't read past the word "nigger." Racial themes? Of course it has racial themes, you ignorant morons.

This summer's reading project: work my way down this list.

*whimper* The new Jim Butcher book is here. I asked at the Borders last night, and it's sitting in the back room, but they can't put it on the shelf til the official release date, next week. *sob*

Since there is a Borders directly across the street from the conference hotel (well, it would be if you could get anywhere directly in this benighted town, what with all the concrete barriers for the upcoming road race), I finally broke down and bought The Sharing Knife: Beguilement. I was just up to thinking, "hey this is darned good, it's fun, I like these folks," when the book ended.

Uh, where's the rest of it? I mean, I know it's got a sequel, but this isn't a novel, it's a bloody prologue. The only plot that even comes close to resolving is the romance--the rest of it, the meat of the main plot, for heaven's sake, barely gets started, before getting bogged down in a lot of admittedly fun but rather fluffy wedding preparations.

And you know, it's not like it's at all long. It tops out at 350 pages--another hundred or so wouldn't have been at all unreasonable. Heck, even 300 more. Or--hey, this is Lois, give me a nice, tidy 1000-pager, it would sure beat 900+ pages of listening to Harry Potter whine about how the grownups are all unfair to him.

When does Legacy come out, again?

Fascinating article on translating the Harry Potter books, courtesy of celticdragonfly.

*sigh* If I thought translation would always be this much fun, I'd have gone back to school for a certificate...but with my luck I'd get stuck translating Danielle Steele novels.

I recently finished two historical novels: Guy Gavriel Kay's Last Light of the Sun and the ponderously long A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon. Neither are precisely historical in the purist sense--the latter has a time-travel premise, and the former is a fantasy set in a world that bears an uncanny resemblance to early medieval Britain and pre-Christian Skandanavia. Which just goes to show that writing fantasy doesn't relieve an author of the responsibility to do some research.

Gabaldon and Kay are both noted for their meticulous research...and both novels left me a little chilly at their very accuracy. The more I read about the people of past cultures--medieval in particular--the more I am arrested by how utterly alien they were. They must have been somewhat like us--we came from them, after all--but the kinship is sometimes so distant as to be all but invisible.

( Lemme 'splain...No, is too long...lemme sum up... )

I like historical fiction, and read a fair lot of it. It's both a treat and something of a shock to the system to occasionally come across books like these: so carefully and minutely researched, that I am reminded how grateful I am that they are fiction.

Aaron bought me the latest book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, A Breath of Snow and Ashes. It's been so long since I read the last ones, and the plots are so complicated, that I really want a refresher course on what's going on with the characters--without having to re-read the last two or three 900+ page books. Not a horrible fate, but these are not really high on my re-read list. I like them an awful lot, but they do tend to go on and on and ON...besides, I re-read most of the series a couple years ago when I picked up The Fiery Cross and was faced with the same dilemma.

I haven't had a lot of luck finding detailed synopses online--most are just reviews or teasers, and don't actually reveal the plot. Which is fine, that's what reviews are supposed to do, but I need the plot revealed. Else it's plunge back into 2000 or so pages before I get to the new one.

Luckily, I came across The Reduced Gabaldon, each book in under a minute. Aside from being hysterically funny to anyone familiar with these novels, they've been surprisingly helpful.

Last night we went to visit kitanzi and autographedcat for dinner and a showing of the live-action "Hogfather."

It was much longer than we were anticipating--apparently it had first aired in multiple parts, so the whole thing came out around 3 or 3.5 hours. Watching it all in one go was a bit much. But it was marvelously true to the book, with lots of dialog directly lifted. The scenes with Hex were simply priceless. The flip side of that is that it was full of fannish in-jokes. This seems to have been made by fans for fans, and no one cared particularly about keeping anyone who hadn't read the book clued in.

Honestly, this is not the Pratchett book I'd have picked to make into a movie. It's smack in the middle of a series full of long-established characters and situations--those afore-mentioned in-jokes. It's also got a fairly complicated plot, and I don't really think the movie did a good job of connecting up all the various bits; to be fair, the book was a bit confusing, too, but at least you could flip back and go, "Wait, what's the Tooth Fairy got to do with...? Oh, right."

But it was *awfully* good. Trimmed down some, it would make a great holiday tradition.

Total: 51 (10 down from last year--I don't seem to have as much reading time lately)
Average per Month: 4
High: 6 (June)
Low: 3 (Jan, Apr, May, Aug)
Total number of authors: 22
Most books by a single author: 12 (Jim Butcher)
Total rereads: 12
Total new books: 39

( The Complete List, and Recommendations )

A Terry Pratchett novel is like a drawstring purse. You pull one bit, and everything else comes together.

I finished the second volume of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera last night...wow. I don't much like "swords and horses fantasy," as he calls it, but these are a sterling example of the genre. All the standard tropes are there, with just enough unique twists to keep it from being stale. And the worldbuilding is utterly original.

So naturally today I ran straight to Jim's website to start reading the sample chapters from book 3. Still the same fine writing, but I am amused by the occasional infelicitous turn of phrase:

"He could count the number of times he’d seen Hashat, head of the Horse clan, walking on her own feet with one hand."

She was walking on her own feet with one hand? That's gotta be something to see.