Off the Cliff

What have you just finished?
Peter Dickinson, Merlin Dreams. Very nicely done, misty-dawn-of-human-time year kings and Gravesian Great Mothers and Golden Bough armed priests and Holdstockian heads onna wall segue into the familiar trappings of Never-never-middle ages knights at the ford and knights on quests and enchantresses in castles and you name it. Not enough dwarfs to be Malory, but Malory enough.

What are you reading now?
Kim Newman, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School. Very St Trinians jolly hockey sticks so far. We shall see where this goes.

Benjamin Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. I don't do reading challenges per se, but a number of people's reading challenges for 2016 inspired me to try certain categories (African fiction, a book you've had for over five years but never read , Chinese fiction, a book from your home town, author's surname starts with the same letter as yours, French fiction not from France, a book with only one colour on the cover, family relationship word in the title.) This is for biography/ memoir.

My twist is that these books must all come from the TBR pile bookshelves.

Though given my unsatisfactory history with Dr Dee (Liz Smith and Peter Ackroyd, basically) I'm not sure why I'm reading this. Nasty age and (quite possibly) nasty man.

Ovidia Yu, Aunty Lee's delights: a Singaporean mystery. I mean, a Singaporean mystery. How could I resist? (Has very little Singlish, alas. Everyone speaks standard, though as they're often talking to foreigners, I suppose that's to be expected.

Damn but Holdstock is creepy. His world is not a nice world-- basically, au fond, at the (occasionally literal) roots of it; and his people are really not nice people. He's not writing about civilization, I understand that, but about the bloody violent destructive Id thing that produces heroes-- produces both dragons and the warriors that fight them. But if the Hero smash! hero is so damned basic to the human construct, where did civilization come from? A time to break down gets the full treatment in his Ryhope Wood, but what about all the other people patiently building up? Howcum they don't get a look in?

The one good thing about Holdstock is he doesn't, or rather didn't, blog. The work is there, take it or leave it. No explication will be provided. There was a metafandom entry that touched on this last week some time. Authors are everywhere in blog space, talking about their work and presenting themselves as people to get to know. I understand it's necessary, in this latter degenerate age when authors must sell themselves because for sure the publicity dep't (what publicity department?) won't do it for them so that the writers can focus on what's supposed to be their job-- ie *writing.* But I find it a bit of information overload. In my world readers provide the interpretation, and wrangle gently among themselves over same if necessary, while authors remain serenely sphinx-like silent, saying neither yea or nay, like mangaka. True, it used to drive me bonkers when mangaka did it-- dammit, could you for once say something besides 'I'm very grateful to my fans and my editor and the producer of the anime that butchered my work'? but I've grown to appreciate the reticence. You're a big reader now; it's no hardship to be on your own with a text.

Reading Moonwise. Given how long it takes me to read normal prose, I shall probably still be reading this in June, like Proust or (more appositely) Joyce.

At the start I was all-- well, I was all how anyone would be in the face of stuff like this:

Hill beyond blue whalebacked hill rose lightward, transparencies of stone, all etched with runic woods, enduring. She had known their green unison, their tongues of fire; so read time past in bare notation. Winter had distilled.

As Dorothy Parker said, 'She can go on like this for pages. Can, hell-- does.'
( And yet, and yet )

Flypaper memory. Jane Austen noted somewhere 'I have read the Corsair, mended my petticoat, & have nothing else to do.' (In a letter. And while we're on the subject, is there anything more infuriating than google books, JSTOR aside? Google at least lets you see things, even if navigating within the book is an exercise in screaming frustration. JSTOR just shows up with the intro to exactly the quote you need, demands your academic credentials, and spits in your face if you don't have them.)

Thusly, I have read Engine Summer, roasted a turkey, & wish I had nothing else to do, but the Workplace of Perpetual Crisis has other ideas on the subject.
( Cut for digressions and reading )

Finished Mythago Wood sometime in the last few days, rather pleased by its outside-the-boxness. These days what one hopes for, usually vainly, in a fantasy is the unexpected, and the whole tenor of MW was certainly that, in that it did very little of what I thought it would and many things I'd never have considered. And ohh is it English. All those trees with all their connotations, assumed to be as familiar to the world as foodstuffs and weather phenomenon. Me, I can barely tell an oak from a linden. Beeches? What are they?
( Speaking of dead trees... )

Also read the last story in PMT2. Actually comprehensible the first time through- Ima is losing her touch- and as ever leaving deep confusion as to Saburo's feelings for Young Dork. Aru? Nai? To say nothing of Dork's feelings for Saburo. Sorry, I just don't buy all that 'Be mine!!' routine. The... flashiness/ shallowness/ whatever of it feels more and more like Detective Bluecat; and the stronger the feeling I get that what we're seeing is the same manga drawn by different mangaka. Ima's character's aren't normally shallow at all, but PMT's guys fail to convince. What other reason can there be than that she's drawing Motoni's series?