We are on our second of three forecast rainy days, although there is a bit of blue sky showing to the west just now, and this means that I can catch up on my inside work. Later. Just now I have a quiet house and lots of bits bottled up in my, alas, untidy brain.
Although June raced by in a blur of meetings, paperwork, gardening, trips to the city for JG's cataract surgery and similar delights, I can't exist without reading. I got a big box of new books from Amazon two weeks ago and have been reading them in every stolen moment since. The YD wanted to borrow one, but I hadn't finished it and she is waiting (patiently) for me to pass it on. Jaqueline Carey's third volume in the Naamah series, in fact. Fantasy, fairly well written but badly edited, and fun.
I got distracted by 'The Wild Girls', a new Ursula Le Guin, however. (Sorry, YD!). Just published by PM Press, it contains a short story - not one of her best - two essays and an interview. The first essay is a reprint from Harper's Magazine and it is a must-read, for anyone who loves books. Its title is 'Staying Awake While We Read' and it is at once a polemic against today's publishing industry and a paean to the joys of books. She makes what is to me a most enlightening argument for reading as a social art. 'The shared experience of books was a genuine bond,' she says, discussing the history of reading for pleasure. Yes! Look at the number of us who blog about what we read, post reviews for our blogging buddies, stick book lists in our margins, fill in endless memes about what we have and have not read. Le Guin says 'was', but where I hang around on-line, the bond is very immediate.
I also ordered two new books in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series that I haven't read. The second one came, but I am resisting reading it until the one before it in the series arrives. This is serious restraint, guys. Hambly is an amazing writer.
Mostly I grab up a new book,collapse into a chair and am gone until I read through it. Meals? Clean clothes? You'll have to wait - I have ninety more pages to read. This was an annoyance to my family, especially to the daughters as small children. In those days we went to the library in a group, all chose books and lugged the piles home. I have a clear recollection of one trip when, newly arrived home with her books, the YD asked 'Daddy, will you read to me?' and got the answer 'Not now, Daddy is reading his book'. Same question to mommy, same answer. Same question to big sister, wistfully. Same answer. Big sigh. ' I will have to read it minefelf,' she said, missing front tooth much in evidence. And she flopped down on the floor and did that.
These days JG and I get two papers in the mailbox each morning and one of us trots down the lane to retrieve them before breakfast so that we can read while consuming our toast and cereal. 'What a talkative pair we are,' said JG a few mornings ago when the only sounds in the kitchen for quite a while had been chewing noises and the rustle of turned pages.
The rain is now pelting down and the bit of blue has disappeared. No thunderstorm activity, though. Yet. It's forecast, though. I think I had better shut down here, just in case, and unplug the computer and internet box.
And finish the Carey book before the YD loses patience.
Showing posts with label on books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label on books. Show all posts
Friday, 24 June 2011
Friday, 8 April 2011
Officially Out of Reading Matter
Last week I received Jean Auel's latest book, a new book and new compendium of two older books by Elizabeth Moon, revised, and the latest in Cherryh's Foreigner series, all in one box.
Auel's stuff is repetitious, tediously didactic (but, sure, we all want to know Jondelar's techniques) and stiff. It is now at the top of the best seller list: and my cleaner has borrowed it, saying she is a huge fan.
Elizabeth Moon can write! I have read Surrender None and Liar's Oath before, but she has now tied the latter to the Paksennarion saga directly. I also burned through the latest in that saga, The Kings of the North and then read it a second time, just for the language.
Cherryh can write, too. The Foreigner series is all to a formula, but she manages to keep your attention, even when you know the fire fight is due up next.
I also got Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons for Little Stuff. Haven't reread that one, yet. Eyes are a bit blurry, somehow.
I did manage to change the sheets and do a bit of yard work, but the rest of the work all has taken second place. The downer is that now I have to wait at least another year for the conclusion of Moon's trilogy.
Best news of all - at least six yellow croci in the raised bed, three in bloom, three in bud. And the snow is off the lily bed. Over the next three days I think the last of the snow will melt.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Another Book Meme
This one is all over the place - and I love it.
1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?
As companion I'd take Paksanarrion from Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksanarrion. As tool, Bilbo's sword, Sting. The vehicle, Ozma's magic carpet. And I'm off to fairy lands forlorn.
2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?
I go to the Lord of the Rings. It is beautifully written, its detail and scope for the imagination is immense and it pulls you into yourself, away from your troubles or boring tasks.
3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Whom do you choose, and why?
Nicholas vander Poele from Dorothy Dunnett's series about thirteenth century Europe. No matter what viccisitudes he undergoes Niccolò is always tremendous fun and a good companion.
4) Jane Austen's Persuasion is my go-to book. It's like a snow globe, a tiny world in which everything glows.
5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?
Nancy, in Arthur Ransome's series about the Swallows and the Amazons. Your own sailing dinghy? A beautiful lake? Nirvana.
6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?
I don't remember ever being frightened by a book or film character. But I was made into a puddle of terror by a radio program called 'The Creaking Door', a program that featured half hour horror stories. I still recall one in which the protagonist was turned into a madman by a diet of fish; I faintly dislike eating fish to this day.
7) Every time I re-read L. M. Montogomery's edited Diaries I see something in them that I haven’t seen before. These books are a record of a transition period in the position of women in the first half of the twentieth century and are, in addition, a riveting story.
8) It is imperative that Diana Gabaldon's the Outlander be made into a movie. Sex! Sword Fights! Scotland!
9)is a book that should never be made (or should have never been made) into a film.
Can't do this one. Too many choices!
10) After all these years, Nevil Shute's On The Beach still manages to give me the queebs.
11) After all these years, Bronte's Jane Eyre still manages to give me a thrill. 'Reader, I married him.' Priceless.
12) If I could corner the author Rosemary Kierstein, here’s what I’d say to her in one minute or less about her books:
Finish the series before I explode!
13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to go and retrace his journey.
1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?
As companion I'd take Paksanarrion from Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksanarrion. As tool, Bilbo's sword, Sting. The vehicle, Ozma's magic carpet. And I'm off to fairy lands forlorn.
2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?
I go to the Lord of the Rings. It is beautifully written, its detail and scope for the imagination is immense and it pulls you into yourself, away from your troubles or boring tasks.
3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Whom do you choose, and why?
Nicholas vander Poele from Dorothy Dunnett's series about thirteenth century Europe. No matter what viccisitudes he undergoes Niccolò is always tremendous fun and a good companion.
4) Jane Austen's Persuasion is my go-to book. It's like a snow globe, a tiny world in which everything glows.
5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?
Nancy, in Arthur Ransome's series about the Swallows and the Amazons. Your own sailing dinghy? A beautiful lake? Nirvana.
6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?
I don't remember ever being frightened by a book or film character. But I was made into a puddle of terror by a radio program called 'The Creaking Door', a program that featured half hour horror stories. I still recall one in which the protagonist was turned into a madman by a diet of fish; I faintly dislike eating fish to this day.
7) Every time I re-read L. M. Montogomery's edited Diaries I see something in them that I haven’t seen before. These books are a record of a transition period in the position of women in the first half of the twentieth century and are, in addition, a riveting story.
8) It is imperative that Diana Gabaldon's the Outlander be made into a movie. Sex! Sword Fights! Scotland!
9)is a book that should never be made (or should have never been made) into a film.
Can't do this one. Too many choices!
10) After all these years, Nevil Shute's On The Beach still manages to give me the queebs.
11) After all these years, Bronte's Jane Eyre still manages to give me a thrill. 'Reader, I married him.' Priceless.
12) If I could corner the author Rosemary Kierstein, here’s what I’d say to her in one minute or less about her books:
Finish the series before I explode!
13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to go and retrace his journey.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Luxury -- a good book and dark chocolate.
I love to read. Whenever I can spare the time and frequently when I can't you will find me with my nose buried in a book. I read in the bathtub, in the intervals of getting meals, whenever I'm stuck in a lineup. I read last thing at night or I can't go to sleep. I borrow novels from the library at the rate of about three a week or borrow from friends and family or purchase secondhand or new, especially if the book is by an author I value. Being able to buy books when I want to is the greatest joy of a securely funded retirement.
Some books by authors I esteem I read again and again. I am on my second set of Jane Austen, for instance, having worn out the paperback versions I first bought. And my second set of Tolkein. I have hardcover copies of most of Nevil Shute that I inherited from my father. I think Shute's fiction is much discounted today, with the possible exception of On The Beach, but several of his other books are just excellent, if dated. Mary Stewart. Tad Williams. And others, that I am getting to.
I read historical fiction for choice or science fiction/fantasy. I want a plot that will hold my attention, characters that I believe in and, most of all, good writing. Well, I'll make exceptions if the first two conditions are met -- I own and reread Jean Auel, for instance, and Mercedes Lackey, both of whom are authors whose editors ought to be smacked across the knuckles. Mind you, you could say the same thing about Dickens, in my opinion. I read poetry and plays as well, but this post is about novels.
There are novels that I own in paperback that are no longer on the library shelves, although that is where I first found them. Novels that are wonderfully written and emotionally compelling. The author in this category that springs first to my mind is Elizabeth Goudge, who wrote both contemporary and historical fiction. My rapidly disintegrating copies of her work are stored in boxes in our sleeping cabin at the moment and I would love to replace them. Look for City of Bells, which I think is her best historical novel, and if you see any of her children's stories, grab them for your daughters. I gather that a lot of her work is still in print.
Another excellent author who still enjoys a loyal following is Georgette Heyer. Her detective fiction has dated, but her historical fiction, based in Regency England, is still available in paperback. The best of her work, for me, is An Infamous Army, a fictional account of the battle of Waterloo that is meticulously researched, and A Civil Contract. I am contemplating replacing my tattered copies of these, too.
I do own in hardcover all of Dorothy Dunnett's historical novels. She has two series, one about Scotland in Henry VIII's time (although the six books in the series range through France, the German states, Russia and Constantinople) and the second based in Holland a century earlier, although these books also cover a lot of geography. Again, the research is amazing. There is one stand alone novel, about MacBeth, called King Hereafter, which is maybe the best novel I have ever read.
And the last one I am going to talk about today, who is still writing and deserves every fan she can get is Barbara . Hambly. She writes science fiction/fantasy, books that are both funny and dramatic and whose casts of characters come alive and stay with you. Her latest two books are historical fiction set in the USA. But her best work for me is a six book series of historical detective fiction set in New Orleans in the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Her protagonist is a man called Benjamin January who is a Free Man of Colour (that's the title of the first book in the series) and the books explore the conditions of slavery and the place of African Americans in New Orleans society in depth and with compassion and outstanding intelligence. At the same time they are top notch detective stories. And Ben is real, I swear he is.
That's got to be enough of that! But if you need something to read, take a look at Hambly. I'm off to see if I can sneak a piece of my husband's mega chocolate bar.
Friday, 19 October 2007
October Song
This is the first time in over a week that I have had a chance to write a post, and I can hear thunder in the distance, signaling that I may have to shut down the computer or that I may lose the satellite signal that connects me to my virtual world. Bummer. In the meantime, though, it's beautiful. 
We still have a lot of gold and bronze leaves on the trees and the rain and wind are knocking them off -- they're swirling past my window, high contrast against the grey/black storm cloud to the south. There's a soft sibilance as the rain hits them and tiny splatting noises as they hit the deck. And as a counterpoint to that, there's the sound of clucking and squawking as a flock of fifteen turkeys straggles past the open window, chattering among themselves. 
As I write this, the sky is getting brighter and the gold leaves are glowing. No more thunder; I may even get this done and up.
I have just been playing around with Facebook, a toy world which the YD seduced me into several weeks ago. It's a champion time waster at the moment, but it is allowing me to get my trip photographs up and indexed so that the friends we went with can see them. I had meant to do a travel post, but this is easier. I may still get the post done as well because I have some really good pictures. Or at least so says my BIL, who is an amazing photographer and whose opinion I value highly. Plus he's a tech whiz and I now know how to shrink my photos to easily loadable sizes without hauling them through a photo paint program. Well, I'll get it done if I can refrain from adding things like Visual Bookshelf to my Facebook page -- fun but a real time eater.
Do they give out championships for procrastination? Is there a twelve step program? Timewasters R Us? Although I don't count time looking out the window at the world as wasted, exactly, it isn't getting the laundry done. Nor the six or seven documents sitting on my desktop waiting to be edited. Nor the letter for the Hall Committee. Nor the fundraising phone calls. I've got a pile of sewing and mending including Little Stuff's Hallowe'en cat costume. If it would ever stop raining, there are flowerbeds to put to sleep, and a lot of tidying up around the house. Wednesday morning it did stop and we raked leaves. You would never know it. But here I am, eating cookies and typing and thinking about the old joke about work. 'I'm not afraid of work! I can sit right here beside it and do nothing.'
Posting, for me, is not work. It's my virtual window to the world and time spent looking through it is not wasted. How I love to read about what all of you are doing and thinking. Pause there while I took some photos of the leaves pattering down.
The big sugar maple by the corner of the deck has a circle of gold below it and the wind is whisking more off all the time. And the sky is darkening again. More thunder. More rain now. There's a pair of soggy blue jays vacuuming up the corn that the turkeys left behind. And I have to stop for a minute and close the windows since it is really raining hard now. Wonderful. I get back and the satellite is now down.
Well that gives me time to download and edit the leaf pictures I just ran out in the rain to take so that I could illustrate this post. And to think about the flying feet of time, since I have just spent the morning writing this, playing with it and dealing with a series of phone calls. eheu! fugaces labuntur anni. Not to mention minutes, seconds and hours. I don't want to stop time. Nor even turn it back. But I would love to have more of it. Time to do things well, without scanting other things. Time to look out of the window without worrying about the unwashed clothes. Time to write really good posts about meaningful things, instead of babbling on. Well, this babble will have to do as the satellite is now back up and I have to get back to the real world. Always vowing to do better next time. To stop squandering the time I have. Hollow laughter. And that's not a noise the turkeys are making.
We still have a lot of gold and bronze leaves on the trees and the rain and wind are knocking them off -- they're swirling past my window, high contrast against the grey/black storm cloud to the south. There's a soft sibilance as the rain hits them and tiny splatting noises as they hit the deck. And as a counterpoint to that, there's the sound of clucking and squawking as a flock of fifteen turkeys straggles past the open window, chattering among themselves. As I write this, the sky is getting brighter and the gold leaves are glowing. No more thunder; I may even get this done and up.I have just been playing around with Facebook, a toy world which the YD seduced me into several weeks ago. It's a champion time waster at the moment, but it is allowing me to get my trip photographs up and indexed so that the friends we went with can see them. I had meant to do a travel post, but this is easier. I may still get the post done as well because I have some really good pictures. Or at least so says my BIL, who is an amazing photographer and whose opinion I value highly. Plus he's a tech whiz and I now know how to shrink my photos to easily loadable sizes without hauling them through a photo paint program. Well, I'll get it done if I can refrain from adding things like Visual Bookshelf to my Facebook page -- fun but a real time eater.
Do they give out championships for procrastination? Is there a twelve step program? Timewasters R Us? Although I don't count time looking out the window at the world as wasted, exactly, it isn't getting the laundry done. Nor the six or seven documents sitting on my desktop waiting to be edited. Nor the letter for the Hall Committee. Nor the fundraising phone calls. I've got a pile of sewing and mending including Little Stuff's Hallowe'en cat costume. If it would ever stop raining, there are flowerbeds to put to sleep, and a lot of tidying up around the house. Wednesday morning it did stop and we raked leaves. You would never know it. But here I am, eating cookies and typing and thinking about the old joke about work. 'I'm not afraid of work! I can sit right here beside it and do nothing.'
Posting, for me, is not work. It's my virtual window to the world and time spent looking through it is not wasted. How I love to read about what all of you are doing and thinking. Pause there while I took some photos of the leaves pattering down.
The big sugar maple by the corner of the deck has a circle of gold below it and the wind is whisking more off all the time. And the sky is darkening again. More thunder. More rain now. There's a pair of soggy blue jays vacuuming up the corn that the turkeys left behind. And I have to stop for a minute and close the windows since it is really raining hard now. Wonderful. I get back and the satellite is now down. Well that gives me time to download and edit the leaf pictures I just ran out in the rain to take so that I could illustrate this post. And to think about the flying feet of time, since I have just spent the morning writing this, playing with it and dealing with a series of phone calls. eheu! fugaces labuntur anni. Not to mention minutes, seconds and hours. I don't want to stop time. Nor even turn it back. But I would love to have more of it. Time to do things well, without scanting other things. Time to look out of the window without worrying about the unwashed clothes. Time to write really good posts about meaningful things, instead of babbling on. Well, this babble will have to do as the satellite is now back up and I have to get back to the real world. Always vowing to do better next time. To stop squandering the time I have. Hollow laughter. And that's not a noise the turkeys are making.
Thursday, 11 October 2007
More Book Stuff
In September Bub and Pie tagged me for a meme about books. Five questions about books, as a matter of fact. And then last week she produced a meme answer to a question created by Veronica Mitchell. The question:
B and P's book posts are always memorable, but she has surpassed herself with the 'Snoggably Delicious post. After I managed to stop laughing, I just had to do it. And so I am combining the questions.
Here we go.
Total Number of Books
I had to do this calculation for another meme I did a while ago. A bit over 1000 and still accumulating, in spite of the number I give away, sell second hand and lose when the YD raids my bookshelves. Augmented by about three a week from the library, those I borrow from a neighbour with a similar obsession about Sci Fi and Fantasy and those I borrow from the YD (and, mostly, return.) Number read. All of them, many more than once. Lenses on my glasses? really thick.
Last Book Read
A library book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, The conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. 432 pages, plus notes.
This is a somewhat overwritten and heavily layered treatise on left and right brain dichotomy and how it affects society. In spite of this rather turgid style, I found the thesis to be persuasive. Writing, he says, is left brained, linear and 'masculine' and societies that adopt it go through identifiable phases of austerity, misogyny and madness because they deny the right brained, intuitive and feminine parts of themselves. Our society, he says, has come through this and because of photography, typing and computer literacy is entering' a new Golden Age' with increased values of 'tolerance, caring and respect for nature' and for the rights of women. I love this prediction. The man is working on a macro time scale, however, and it is unlikely that I will be around long enough to see if he is right.
Last Book Bought
Teaching is a Learning Experience, A For Better or For Worse Collection by Lynn Johnston. This is a comic book.. Johnson has been putting out these collections for a long time and we addicts rush to buy each one as soon as it hits the shelves. If you don't know her work, I commend it to you. The best introduction is The Lives Behind the Lines. If you do know it, here's notice that the '07 collection is available.
Five Meaningful Books
1.) The King James Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1939 version. The language in these books informed and intoxicated me from about the age of seven upwards. I loved the sonorous, rolling periods, the antique words and constructions and the sheer opulence of the language. I read through the whole thing the first time looking for the amazing stories, skipping what I did not understand or what bored me. Then I started over again. And again. When I discovered that Jane's father, in LMM's Jane of Lantern Hill, also reveled in the language and stories, I felt a strong sense of identification. Speaking of LMM, I would have to put in a nomination for beddable character for Kenneth Ford's father, Owen Ford, in Anne's House of Dreams. He's far more fleshed out than Kenneth.
2.) Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read The Hobbit first, and when I discovered TLOTR, in my first year at university, I was hooked. The language, the world he created, the depth and colour. I had been reading all the fantasy books I could get my hands on all through high school, but this was so much more.
Beddable character? How about Gandalf? How cool would that be! Or if you want a slightly more approachable version, Barbara Hambly's Antryg in the Windrose Chronicles or Ingold in the Darwath Trilogy.
3.) The Last Days of Pompeii. I tried to take this out of my school library when I was, maybe, eight. It was not on my grade's approved shelf and the librarian made me read her a page of it before I was allowed to take it home. This, of course, meant that reading the whole thing was a point of honour. And I discovered classical Rome. And historical fiction. And the rest, as they say, is history. My favourite historical fiction series is Dorothy Dunnett's Chess sextet. Francis Crawford has got to be one of the most toothsome males ever created. And highly skilled, as Dunnett makes quite clear.
4.) Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. I read this when I was supposed to be revising Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for a final exam. A whole world of new things, places and ideas spread out before my enchanted eyes. I've never reread it, but I've been an avid consumer of natural history books ever since. And I failed the exam, needless to say. A snog connection? Lucretius and Darwin both strike me as having been dry old sticks and down on women. At a real stretch, however, I did a make up course in Latin which included Catullus. Milia basia, deinde centum? Hmm.
5.) Jane Austin. Persuasion is my favourite. There is not, for me, a beddable character in the lot, however, mostly because I don't think Austin took her imagination that far. Now if you consider Darcy after Elizabeth has been married to him for a while and has managed to loosen him up, I might be interested. If we weren't both married.
Snoggability
To catch my interest, a paper guy has to appear to know how to give a girl a good time. And not too overtly either. That's one of the best things about Lord Peter -- Sayers leaves the details to the reader. You can have Jondelar; he never varies his technique. In Bub And Pie's comments, Nikki mentions Jamie Fraser, which is a thought, but he is so married. It's not the good body thing that does it for me, either. I am struggling to remember the title of an historical fiction novel in which the heroine goes to bed with a man with a deformed spine, simply because he needs her so much, and is wonderfully well served. Sigh. Short term memory short circuit. It was set in Italy or Spain, I think? Ring a bell with anyone? Speaking of bells, I had an adolescent crush on Hemmingway's men, but I don't think I would be turned on now. The silent type could quickly pall. Which lets out Lawrence's Mellor, fascinating as I found it when the book was illicit. Illicit is a turn on. Anne Rice can sure do that. Better stop this!
Tags
I've been too disorganized to know who has done either of these memes. If you haven't, and like the idea, you're tagged. Please let me know, so that we can continue in this delightful vein.
Ten Literary Characters I Would Totally Make Out With If I Were Single and They Were Real But I’m Not, Single I Mean, I Am Real, But I’m Also Happily Married and Want to Stay That Way So Maybe We Should Forget This.
B and P's book posts are always memorable, but she has surpassed herself with the 'Snoggably Delicious post. After I managed to stop laughing, I just had to do it. And so I am combining the questions.
Here we go.
Total Number of Books
I had to do this calculation for another meme I did a while ago. A bit over 1000 and still accumulating, in spite of the number I give away, sell second hand and lose when the YD raids my bookshelves. Augmented by about three a week from the library, those I borrow from a neighbour with a similar obsession about Sci Fi and Fantasy and those I borrow from the YD (and, mostly, return.) Number read. All of them, many more than once. Lenses on my glasses? really thick.
Last Book Read
A library book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, The conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. 432 pages, plus notes.
This is a somewhat overwritten and heavily layered treatise on left and right brain dichotomy and how it affects society. In spite of this rather turgid style, I found the thesis to be persuasive. Writing, he says, is left brained, linear and 'masculine' and societies that adopt it go through identifiable phases of austerity, misogyny and madness because they deny the right brained, intuitive and feminine parts of themselves. Our society, he says, has come through this and because of photography, typing and computer literacy is entering' a new Golden Age' with increased values of 'tolerance, caring and respect for nature' and for the rights of women. I love this prediction. The man is working on a macro time scale, however, and it is unlikely that I will be around long enough to see if he is right.
Last Book Bought
Teaching is a Learning Experience, A For Better or For Worse Collection by Lynn Johnston. This is a comic book.. Johnson has been putting out these collections for a long time and we addicts rush to buy each one as soon as it hits the shelves. If you don't know her work, I commend it to you. The best introduction is The Lives Behind the Lines. If you do know it, here's notice that the '07 collection is available.
Five Meaningful Books
1.) The King James Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1939 version. The language in these books informed and intoxicated me from about the age of seven upwards. I loved the sonorous, rolling periods, the antique words and constructions and the sheer opulence of the language. I read through the whole thing the first time looking for the amazing stories, skipping what I did not understand or what bored me. Then I started over again. And again. When I discovered that Jane's father, in LMM's Jane of Lantern Hill, also reveled in the language and stories, I felt a strong sense of identification. Speaking of LMM, I would have to put in a nomination for beddable character for Kenneth Ford's father, Owen Ford, in Anne's House of Dreams. He's far more fleshed out than Kenneth.
2.) Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read The Hobbit first, and when I discovered TLOTR, in my first year at university, I was hooked. The language, the world he created, the depth and colour. I had been reading all the fantasy books I could get my hands on all through high school, but this was so much more.
Beddable character? How about Gandalf? How cool would that be! Or if you want a slightly more approachable version, Barbara Hambly's Antryg in the Windrose Chronicles or Ingold in the Darwath Trilogy.
3.) The Last Days of Pompeii. I tried to take this out of my school library when I was, maybe, eight. It was not on my grade's approved shelf and the librarian made me read her a page of it before I was allowed to take it home. This, of course, meant that reading the whole thing was a point of honour. And I discovered classical Rome. And historical fiction. And the rest, as they say, is history. My favourite historical fiction series is Dorothy Dunnett's Chess sextet. Francis Crawford has got to be one of the most toothsome males ever created. And highly skilled, as Dunnett makes quite clear.
4.) Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. I read this when I was supposed to be revising Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for a final exam. A whole world of new things, places and ideas spread out before my enchanted eyes. I've never reread it, but I've been an avid consumer of natural history books ever since. And I failed the exam, needless to say. A snog connection? Lucretius and Darwin both strike me as having been dry old sticks and down on women. At a real stretch, however, I did a make up course in Latin which included Catullus. Milia basia, deinde centum? Hmm.
5.) Jane Austin. Persuasion is my favourite. There is not, for me, a beddable character in the lot, however, mostly because I don't think Austin took her imagination that far. Now if you consider Darcy after Elizabeth has been married to him for a while and has managed to loosen him up, I might be interested. If we weren't both married.
Snoggability
To catch my interest, a paper guy has to appear to know how to give a girl a good time. And not too overtly either. That's one of the best things about Lord Peter -- Sayers leaves the details to the reader. You can have Jondelar; he never varies his technique. In Bub And Pie's comments, Nikki mentions Jamie Fraser, which is a thought, but he is so married. It's not the good body thing that does it for me, either. I am struggling to remember the title of an historical fiction novel in which the heroine goes to bed with a man with a deformed spine, simply because he needs her so much, and is wonderfully well served. Sigh. Short term memory short circuit. It was set in Italy or Spain, I think? Ring a bell with anyone? Speaking of bells, I had an adolescent crush on Hemmingway's men, but I don't think I would be turned on now. The silent type could quickly pall. Which lets out Lawrence's Mellor, fascinating as I found it when the book was illicit. Illicit is a turn on. Anne Rice can sure do that. Better stop this!
Tags
I've been too disorganized to know who has done either of these memes. If you haven't, and like the idea, you're tagged. Please let me know, so that we can continue in this delightful vein.
Friday, 6 July 2007
A Library Love Affair
Sort of.
This is getting ridiculous. I have managed to get two posts up in the last two weeks. And I don't have small kids home for the summer. And I don't work 'outside the home' as they say. Not for pay, anyway. So what the [censored] has been going on?
A lot of nothing. Plus, I have a post that won't work. And I keep going back to it like a tongue to a tooth with a chip out of it. And, yeah, I had one of those too, necessitating a day in the city. And visitors. And more visitors. And the younger daughter loaned me a new book in a series we both read. Eight hundred pages, and I stayed up until some insane hour finishing it. 'Kushiel's Justice' by Jacqueline Carey. It's a strange sort of alternate world drama and both the YD and I are hopelessly addicted to it. I am also reading something Worthy, just as an antidote, but it's not half as much fun.
There should be a Fiction Reader's Anonymous for addicts like me. All my life I have read voraciously, and often not too wisely, anything with print on it that comes my way. I love fiction the most, however. One of the schools I went to as a small girl had a library that we were allowed to check books out of. I trudged home three times a week with the maximum allowed number. Mostly story books. I read my way through the shelves for my grade level and started to inch upward. From time to time the librarian would look at me severely and make me read a page of something I had chosen before she would let me take it out, but mostly she just let me alone, bless her. In addition to these books, my parents took me regularly to the Carnegie Library downtown, and I again took out the maximum number of books allowed.
When I started to high school, the library was guarded by a miserable little dried up prune of a woman who would not let me take very many books out, but there was a branch library close to the school and somehow I persuaded the librarian there to give me an adult card. I also worked there shelving books, enabling me to find lots of fascinating stuff. And I discovered pulp science fiction; I needed the job to finance my Amazing Stories habit.
At university, the course I was taking allowed me to have a stacks pass. I also worked as a shelver and finder for students not deemed worthy of the honour. This enabled me to hide any book I particularly wanted in the depths of the Latin translations or early Canadian poets, so that I got first crack at assigned topics. I also signed up for the town library since Douglas Memorial Library on campus did not cater to my fantasy and historical fiction habit. There I discovered Tolkein, read 'The Fellowship of the Ring' and waited most of the second term for some evil critter to turn the second volume back in so that I could read the next two books in order. I think the scum stole the book because it never did come back and I finally succumbed and read 'The Return of the King' out of order and failed my Philosophy exam in the process.
After I was married and working I joined a library everywhere we lived, prioritizing it over joining the church or finding a doctor. I used to take the baby in a backpack until the day when she stood up in the backpack, reached for the books and managed to drop a large tome on my head. After that both daughters stayed home with their dad for a while until they were old enough to be trusted with books not their own. Then we all went to the library. I still remember with laughter one trip when the YD was just learning to read. We all got home with our pile of books and sat down to gloat over them. YD trotted over to her dad, lugging her choice.
'Daddy, read to me?'
'No, honey, I'm busy reading.'
'Mommy, read to me?'
'No, I want to look at my own books.'
'Sister, read to me?'
'No, I'm reading my own book'.
Big sigh.
'Well,' she said, ' I will just have to read to mine own self.' And she plunked down on the floor and did so.
One of the biggest days of my life was the day I finally had enough disposable income that I could buy (and keep!) books that I wanted when they first came out. Without waiting for the paperback. Without going on the library waiting list.
I now have a room full of books, and another roomfull in boxes waiting for the shelves to be made on which they will sit in glory.
I have a good start on my very own library.
This is getting ridiculous. I have managed to get two posts up in the last two weeks. And I don't have small kids home for the summer. And I don't work 'outside the home' as they say. Not for pay, anyway. So what the [censored] has been going on?
A lot of nothing. Plus, I have a post that won't work. And I keep going back to it like a tongue to a tooth with a chip out of it. And, yeah, I had one of those too, necessitating a day in the city. And visitors. And more visitors. And the younger daughter loaned me a new book in a series we both read. Eight hundred pages, and I stayed up until some insane hour finishing it. 'Kushiel's Justice' by Jacqueline Carey. It's a strange sort of alternate world drama and both the YD and I are hopelessly addicted to it. I am also reading something Worthy, just as an antidote, but it's not half as much fun.
There should be a Fiction Reader's Anonymous for addicts like me. All my life I have read voraciously, and often not too wisely, anything with print on it that comes my way. I love fiction the most, however. One of the schools I went to as a small girl had a library that we were allowed to check books out of. I trudged home three times a week with the maximum allowed number. Mostly story books. I read my way through the shelves for my grade level and started to inch upward. From time to time the librarian would look at me severely and make me read a page of something I had chosen before she would let me take it out, but mostly she just let me alone, bless her. In addition to these books, my parents took me regularly to the Carnegie Library downtown, and I again took out the maximum number of books allowed.
When I started to high school, the library was guarded by a miserable little dried up prune of a woman who would not let me take very many books out, but there was a branch library close to the school and somehow I persuaded the librarian there to give me an adult card. I also worked there shelving books, enabling me to find lots of fascinating stuff. And I discovered pulp science fiction; I needed the job to finance my Amazing Stories habit.
At university, the course I was taking allowed me to have a stacks pass. I also worked as a shelver and finder for students not deemed worthy of the honour. This enabled me to hide any book I particularly wanted in the depths of the Latin translations or early Canadian poets, so that I got first crack at assigned topics. I also signed up for the town library since Douglas Memorial Library on campus did not cater to my fantasy and historical fiction habit. There I discovered Tolkein, read 'The Fellowship of the Ring' and waited most of the second term for some evil critter to turn the second volume back in so that I could read the next two books in order. I think the scum stole the book because it never did come back and I finally succumbed and read 'The Return of the King' out of order and failed my Philosophy exam in the process.
After I was married and working I joined a library everywhere we lived, prioritizing it over joining the church or finding a doctor. I used to take the baby in a backpack until the day when she stood up in the backpack, reached for the books and managed to drop a large tome on my head. After that both daughters stayed home with their dad for a while until they were old enough to be trusted with books not their own. Then we all went to the library. I still remember with laughter one trip when the YD was just learning to read. We all got home with our pile of books and sat down to gloat over them. YD trotted over to her dad, lugging her choice.
'Daddy, read to me?'
'No, honey, I'm busy reading.'
'Mommy, read to me?'
'No, I want to look at my own books.'
'Sister, read to me?'
'No, I'm reading my own book'.
Big sigh.
'Well,' she said, ' I will just have to read to mine own self.' And she plunked down on the floor and did so.
One of the biggest days of my life was the day I finally had enough disposable income that I could buy (and keep!) books that I wanted when they first came out. Without waiting for the paperback. Without going on the library waiting list.
I now have a room full of books, and another roomfull in boxes waiting for the shelves to be made on which they will sit in glory.
I have a good start on my very own library.
Saturday, 31 March 2007
Blowin' in the Wind
We just got back from our monthly run to the dump (for city folks, note that no one comes for your garbage when you live 'in the bush'.) As usual I come back discouraged and a bit sick because of the mess that is our local garbage disposal site. Plastic bags festoon the trees and bushes all around, and especially downwind, the paper recycle has a huge pile of soggy cardboard outside in the mud, there is a lot of stuff in the actual tip that should not be there and the recycle shed has been closed because no one is prepared to look after it.
It's the plastic bag part I mind the most. For the last year or so all of the bigger 
stores in our shopping town have contributed to a cloth bag campaign. The bags cost a dollar, are available to buy in most stores and hold a lot of stuff. They fold flat when not in use, are washable and light. A lot of people have adopted them with enthusiasm, but you'd never know it at our waste site. Part of the problem is bears -- they get into the tip when the dump is not open, tear open the green bags and rummage through for anything good. The smaller plastic bags all get ripped open and scattered and then they blow. After the bears have had a good rummage the crows arrive, and loosen any bags the bears might have missed. Some of the township waste sites have electric fencing to keep the bears out, but ours is almost full and due to be closed so this improvement has not been made. And the bags blow.
When we built the house I persuaded JG that I needed a cupboard in the kitchen for recycle and I have capacity to store cans and plastic for about a month. Glass has to go into the tip, as the local recycle business cannot find a market for it, but at least it is inert, so I don't mind throwing it in there. I have two big compost bins, and we burn the clean paper. That leaves uncompostable scraps and plastic wrap to ditch. The other big item is newspapers -- we take two dailies and three local weeklies, plus an enormous number of coloured advertising fliers -- but that gets recycled, thus using up my cardboard boxes to pack it in. And I confess to the fact that a lot of the uncompostable but edible scrap gets dumped back in the bush, thus making the local raccoons plump and happy. So we lug boxes of paper, usually two bins of recycle and one small bag of the rest.
The waste disposal site at a hamlet not far away still has a recycle centre. This is a lot of fun as books, baby clothes, small appliances and lots of other fascinating stuff is all sorted and stored in an old trailer where you can go and add and subtract. There is also a local habit of plonking good junk down at the end of the laneway so that neighbours and passers by can see it and take it away if they like it. JG is enthralled with a jar of goodies one of our neighbours has set out, but so far has not succumbed.
He is a real problem -- you do not want to let him lose at an auction because he bids on boxes of mixed goodies and then keeps it all. He has lumberjack tools, a complete welding outfit, hardwood plank storage, building equipment and supplies and tools, automotive tools, and more. At present we have three storage buildings (one with two annexes) and a garage and the only reason the garage is not stuffed is that we only finished building it in December. Give him time and the cars may be back outside again.
Although I am not, blush, blameless myself. I can't bear to get rid of books and the cabin that we built here before the full time house is at present housing my paperback collection, because the hardcover books take up all the bookcase space in this fairly large house. There are probably 200 books in the office, some of which show in the photo behind the bag, and more bookcases in the living room and bedroom and TV room downstairs. And I need more bookcases. So, while I complain about JG the packrat here, I would not dare complain to his face. 'What about all your books?', he would say. Maybe I had better let him investigate that jar!
stores in our shopping town have contributed to a cloth bag campaign. The bags cost a dollar, are available to buy in most stores and hold a lot of stuff. They fold flat when not in use, are washable and light. A lot of people have adopted them with enthusiasm, but you'd never know it at our waste site. Part of the problem is bears -- they get into the tip when the dump is not open, tear open the green bags and rummage through for anything good. The smaller plastic bags all get ripped open and scattered and then they blow. After the bears have had a good rummage the crows arrive, and loosen any bags the bears might have missed. Some of the township waste sites have electric fencing to keep the bears out, but ours is almost full and due to be closed so this improvement has not been made. And the bags blow.When we built the house I persuaded JG that I needed a cupboard in the kitchen for recycle and I have capacity to store cans and plastic for about a month. Glass has to go into the tip, as the local recycle business cannot find a market for it, but at least it is inert, so I don't mind throwing it in there. I have two big compost bins, and we burn the clean paper. That leaves uncompostable scraps and plastic wrap to ditch. The other big item is newspapers -- we take two dailies and three local weeklies, plus an enormous number of coloured advertising fliers -- but that gets recycled, thus using up my cardboard boxes to pack it in. And I confess to the fact that a lot of the uncompostable but edible scrap gets dumped back in the bush, thus making the local raccoons plump and happy. So we lug boxes of paper, usually two bins of recycle and one small bag of the rest.
The waste disposal site at a hamlet not far away still has a recycle centre. This is a lot of fun as books, baby clothes, small appliances and lots of other fascinating stuff is all sorted and stored in an old trailer where you can go and add and subtract. There is also a local habit of plonking good junk down at the end of the laneway so that neighbours and passers by can see it and take it away if they like it. JG is enthralled with a jar of goodies one of our neighbours has set out, but so far has not succumbed.
He is a real problem -- you do not want to let him lose at an auction because he bids on boxes of mixed goodies and then keeps it all. He has lumberjack tools, a complete welding outfit, hardwood plank storage, building equipment and supplies and tools, automotive tools, and more. At present we have three storage buildings (one with two annexes) and a garage and the only reason the garage is not stuffed is that we only finished building it in December. Give him time and the cars may be back outside again.
Although I am not, blush, blameless myself. I can't bear to get rid of books and the cabin that we built here before the full time house is at present housing my paperback collection, because the hardcover books take up all the bookcase space in this fairly large house. There are probably 200 books in the office, some of which show in the photo behind the bag, and more bookcases in the living room and bedroom and TV room downstairs. And I need more bookcases. So, while I complain about JG the packrat here, I would not dare complain to his face. 'What about all your books?', he would say. Maybe I had better let him investigate that jar!
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The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day
I really wish that we wore poppies year round, or had regular days when we were grown up and open-handed and, yes, open hearted in support...
