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( With irascible comments )

Happy birthday to

luxetumbra, wherever you are!

Have started The Janissary Tree. Bounce bounce happy happy ( for spoilerish reasons )

Have been rereading Waley's One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems- or possibly reading it for the first time, because I don't think I made it to the Po Chu'i (Bai Juyi) section last time. Nor do I have any idea when last time was, but I note that this book cost me $2.60 new, so it was a long way back.
( Cut for poetry and considerations of So much better than it is today )

I'm not much for music ordinarily because, like TV, there's very little I can do while listening to music except listen to the music. But I find I can read Pratchett (and do double crostics) to Christmas carols. Got out a CD from the library last night, sat down with Guards Guards, and... found myself back in Tokyo, oddly- seeing Nerima streets out the corner of my eye, just beyond the page's edge. Tantalizing, because I couldn't see it straight on, but if I was supposedly focussing on the English words, there it was down to the uneven sidewalks. I think it was the effect of three baritones singing the Kings.

And Pratchett is certainly a good read for those who will spend a maximum ninety minutes per volume. I spent three evenings, which strikes me as wrong. I'm reading Yuki Kaori faster than Pratchett. OTOH YK is turning out much better than vols 1-2 of Godchild had led me to expect. Quite the lovely romp, just as in the old days. Nonetheless I have a sinking feeling that when I return Pratchett to the library, I'll be taking out another volume of him just because he's a respectable subway/ waiting in line English read. And that's wrong too, because the default English read is supposedly reserved for Aubrey/ Maturin.

A dilemma for the meteorologically minded. We have 10 cm (4") of snow on the ground, to be followed by freezing rain this aft to be followed by rain rain this evening- quite a lot of it, in fact. Now good citizen me, mindful of my civic obligations and of the poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er they are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm on their way to work, school and the local supermarkets, would ordinarily don the many layers of the winter onion and go out to shovel-- my walk and my brother's walk because he won't and sometimes my brother's neighbour's walk because my b's n. will shovel my brother's walk if he's out early enough and one must return the courtesy periodically and my brother won't. Truly, the balance of neighbourly favours is quite as complex in Toronto as it is in Tokyo.
( But. But. )

( Pathetic; with comments )

My mind seems to be stuck in deja vue mode. Today's example: The Lake Ching Murders.
( Read more... )

Cleaning up yesterday I moved the sofa and found a couple of books that had fallen down behind it. (My bad habit is to put the book I'm reading face down on top of the sofa cushions. Of *course* they fall down behind.) One was Spence's The Death of Woman Wang that I'd been slogging through last September, disheartened by all these mortality statistics of earthquake, flood and Manchu invasion. People kept killing themselves in 17th century Tan-ch'eng? Gee I wonder why.

Decided to give it another run and was rewarded by, among other things, a number of retellings of P'u Sung-ling's (Pu Songling, 蒲松齡, 蒲松龄) stories. This gives me hope that my other Spence, Treason by the Book, will eventually stop being about the paranoia of Qing officialdom and start being about people I'm interested in, though I doubt it will do that soon. But something's bothering me about Woman Wang. ( Read more... )

Finished The Surgeon's Mate, wondering almost to the last when the person in the title was going to show up. Ha ha ha on me. Instinct is to reach for the next volume in the pile, as when one reads a manga series, luxuriating in the simple pleasure of More, available and to hand. (Pleasurable if it's a good series, natch, and not the kind that makes you think *How* many more volumes of this until I'm done? Normally if something's that much of a slog I won't start on it in the first place, or will abandon it instanter; but there are certain Manga Must-reads that have affected me that way, Wind and Tree Song most notably and Yuki Kaori most recently.)
( But )

Finished The Fortune of War (Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander series) and in my grasshopper reading fashion have begun Treason's Harbour, third along from Fortune. Having just moaned about being spoiled by other people's chance remarks, I agree it makes no sense that I spoil myself in this fashion. FortuneofWar spoiled the whole of Desolation Island- which is actually OK, since I can't read my copy of Desolation Island: the typeface gets between me and the words. Yes, princess and the pea. Treason's Harbour is currently spoiling The Ionian Expedition, and that's OK too. I shall read Ionian in any case because it sounds like the prototype of Black Powder War, or portions thereof.

This has all left me wishing Novik had borrowed more- much much more- from O'Brian than she did. Novik's settei is so lovely, I feel it deserves the same solid satisfying feel as O'Brian's work, the same weight of narration and unquestionable sense of place and period. I love Temeraire, yes, but there's a lightweight quality about it that makes me sad.
( Of O'Brian and Novik )

And this is last day of Diwali, I see. Does one wish people Happy New Year tomorrow? Happy New Year tomorrow, if so.

( With commentary. Cut to save FLs )

We Epicureans tend to get snitty when a promised pleasure fails to pan out. I am currently snitty. The problem is The Player's Boy, a book known to only one member of my FL. ( Therefore I shall spare the rest of you having to read the dreary details )

Ohhh, Rowling, Rowling, ~~Rowling on the river~~: 'tis too much prov'd, that Rowling appeals to thirteen year old girls because she *thinks* like one.

"ONE TRUE UNREQUITED LOVE AND HE HAD TO KILL HIM BECAUSE HE WAS EVIL. AND NEVER LOVED AGAIN!!!"

I feel I should applaud a western writer who's as sincere about her romance novel psychology as many mangaka seem to be in theirs, except I'm never sure if the mangaka really buy the Grand Opera view of the human character they espouse, while I know as God's own truth that Rowling does. 'You have your mother's eyes!' Argh.

( In other GO and Minami Megu news )

Have had a niggling feeling all year that something was odd. Off. Borderline wrong. Finally realized what it was. My English reading for 2007 to date- China Mieville, Patrick O'Brian, Garth Nix, Wilkie Collins, John Crowley, Peter Ackroyd, Wilfred Blunt, Robert Holdstock, Booth Tarkington and currently Neil Gaiman.
( What do these writers have in common? )

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?

ETA: Knew I was forgetting something. Happy birthday,

paleaswater. Congratulations and, uhh, congratulations. (Is technically the 4th now, but it's the thought that counts.)

Serendipity a few weeks back found me a copy of Mythago Wood. (I was looking for Quarrelling They Met the Dragon, and found that too, and started it, and... some day I'll do an entry about why I don't like sf intruding on my fantasy. If you've got a perfectly good fantasy culture, I prefer it left a perfectly good fantasy culture. My heart sinks when the author introduces space ships and underground computer centres where the Earthmen are controlling the planet and its inhabitants as part of some experiment or anthropological study or whatever. For one thing, Leguin apart, the Earthmen are invariably white, usually men, and nowhere near as interesting as the 'aliens' on the planet.)

But anyway I'm reading Mythago Wood. And finding it oppressive in undefined ways. I'm hoping he won't send it to hell in a handbasket with the romantic plot, but...

Also finished Mushishi 1 in English. It makes no more sense than in Japanese. Less, actually. Am almost finished my Beautiful Green Palace, a very fast Ima Ichiko, nice enough but...

However when this cough medicine reading is over, I have an anthology of pseudo-Chinese / silk road manga, with Ima Ichiko, Akino Matsuri, and the woman who does Konron no Tama. And the last story in vol 2 of Phantom Moon Tower. Roll on the weekend.

September stats. Essentially, GnS 10-14, Daisan no Teikoku 2-10, and an oddity of Shibata Ami's called Tambourine. In English, The Golden Road to Samarkand. A bit of Gingetsu, a bit of something called Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting. And wrote three fics and a slew of drabbles. Not so dusty.

The reading won't last. I have periods where I can read a tank a day and do everything else, and periods where any Japanese text resists comprehensibility, and the latter are more prevalent than the former. I also read Ima Ichiko, may be why this is so.

There's a certain sense of dislocation in seeing the Japanese names I learned before I could read Japanese written in kanji. There's a bunch in the afterword to Akizuki's novel, a list of Taishou-born and -active literary figures, that made me blink rapidly. When sounds become symbols one's whole sense of the man changes.
( Divine decadence: Mr. Mustard-river Dragon's Intervention )

So used am I to mangaka writing their own stories that I tend to forget that not all of them do, and that some manga are done from pre-existing novels. Partly because of that, partly because I tend to binge shop for Japanese books late at night when the brain and eyes don't work as well as they should, when I turned up this book in the middle of an amazon.jp search for Hatsu Akiko and saw it was a romance set in Taishou, I bought it with no more thought than 'My, the Ohchou Romanse mangaka draws like Hatsu Akiko.'
( The absence of 'comikku' might have tipped me off )

See, the magic kingdom in Genjuu no Seiza is one of those 'vaguely in the desert/ silk roads/ take a left at Nepal and keep going' places that I can't place for the life of me. Central Asia (as I discover it's called) is something I never got straight, even when I was a classicist and read about Alexander whooping it up in Bactria and Sogdiana, nor when I was in Japan and everyone had Silk Roads on the brain (complete with Bactrian mummies at the science museum in Ueno, lovingly advertised every day before my Touyama no Kinsan reruns.) I read Tanhuang and Loulan by Inoue, but damned if I knew where those places were except basically 'west of China somewhere'. We won't even mention Ima Ichiko's Central Asian AU series that has perplexed

paleaswater and myself so badly.
( When in doubt, take a book off the shelf )

( In which I have read, perfect tense )

amazon.jp pushes stuff at me, of course. Any time I go to them, they're doing 'wouldn't you like to look at these...?' Now, what I've bought from them is Ima Ichiko and Nemuki and Hatsu Akiko and Akino Matsuri, all in quantity. Do they offer me more ghostly and/or historical fantasy shoujo? They do not. They offer me FMA. I do read FMA, yes, but I've never bought it from them. O-susume no riyuu? (Why do we mention these?) 'Cause you bought Papuwa 12 from us so we're sure you'd love FMA 17. And this shounen Jump series over here as well, and...

Well, fine. But. ( *But* )

However,

paleaswater, the next Phantom Moon Tower is due out on the 25th. I have it on pre-order; but if Book1 gets it in maybe I'll try them instead, since careful squinting at their info suggests they send by mail directly to Canada.

In same-language reading, I finished Ackroyd's The House of Doctor Dee. *Now* I know where Mieville's coming from. ( Read more... )

I'm trying to read Liz Williams' The Poison Master. It's slow going. It's very slow going. I discover that she's not an American writer, she's British. She's a British writer who writes tapwater prose, fantasy characters with 20th century vocabularies and mindsets (and no difficulty in using words like 'paranoia' even though their world contains no psychologists that I can see) and gormless heroines of a singular romance novel vapidity. Needless to say, I am displeased.

The fantasy world story is interrupted by the periodic appearances of Doctor Dee, for reasons I'm sure we'll eventually find out. ( There was a jolly miller once... )

...because no one ever tells me anything.

Read the shorts that Lin Carter published in his anthologies (which I still have but cannot read because the pages crumble like flowers froma pharaoh's tomb.) Had the first book and lost it in a move. Would have missed this time around just because I don't cruise book stores any more. So. Yes. All set up now from amazon.ca (I love you, robust loonie) so I don't even have to worry about customs. My reward for making it through Poison Master, supposing I do.

July reading list is Kurotsubaki 6, Kaze no Toride 2, Rainy Willow 10 & 11, Jingai (bought five and a half years ago- eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume), a few pages of Soseki, nothing in English that springs to mind, and, umm, half of Papuwa 12. The interesting half. The silly half I sped-read. ( Time it was and what a time it was... )

So livejournal goes down, ohh woe what is there to do? Well, I spent ninety minutes yesterday morning working through three pages of Soseki's Sorekara and writing down all his obscure (to me) kanji for future reference. Parenthetically, I can't remember why I bought Sorekara. I think because of all his novels that's the one that impressed me in translation as having the least there there and I wanted to see how it looked in the original. The main character turns out to be as much a dweeb in Japanese as I remember him from good god was it really twenty years ago? only more so, obscure kanji or no obscure kanji. I bought the book a good eight or ten years ago, and I fancy it'll be another eight or ten before I finish it. Sometimes I feel like I operate in sidereal time. ( Pastime with good company )

Never mind Harry Potter. The new Dick Francis is out in paperback. And I'm all aaahhh arrghhh do I, don't I, do I, don't I, because late-written works are almost never good (the Greek of Oedipus at Colonus, I'm reliably informed because there's no way I'd ever try to read it now, is plain *weird*) and, you know, I want to remember Francis at his best. I shall argh a bit more about this and then buy it and not be disappointed if it's not good because actually the Halley books aren't among my favourites.

Us Epicureans are often faced with dilemmas like this. Which is it that gives the greatest pleasure and the least pain: reading 800 pages of Rowling's prose or reading other people's spoilers? ( The economics of enjoyment )

I have an earache and I feel lousy which means it's time to do what I never do and watch TV. Or rather, watch something *on* the TV. Or rather, go down to Honest Ed's video and rent some back seasons of Dr. Who, a series I've never seen. Tell me, ye that know, which Doctor do I want, supposing it's available? Take your time- Suspect Video doesn't open for ~~three~~ two hours yet. (Man I type slow.)

June reading list is pathetic: WA 6 all together finally, and finally finished Ima Ichiko's Five Box Stories. The latter is a collection of early(ish: mid 90's) mild BL stories, first published in a magazine that's long gone and then persistently shopped around by one of her editors for several years until someone agreed to print the collection. (Is now in bunko as well. Editors know what they're doing.) Ima has an afterword about how she thought these stories were safely gone and buried and now here they are in tank again, thank you for reading them and now please go and bury the book in a deep hole in the back garden mmkay? Proving that no one likes their early stuff.

( Ima Ichiko is not a BL writer )

incandescens mentions a James Blish short story in which Blish concocts a text for the non-existent play of the same name in Chambers' The King in Yellow. And I read it. And my reactions are as follows: ( Numbered for convenience )

I was going to do that self-indulgent 'if you had me in your power and could make me write anything you wanted what would it be' meme, so possibly it's a good thing my right shoulder suddenly went sproing this morning as I was innocently drinking coffee and reading volume whatever of Kurotsubaki in Second Cup. So I now can't type comfortably at all. This is good from the pov of dignity anyway, and expanding one's skills- I type with one hand mostly and it usually isn't the left one.
( More blasts from the past )

Clapotis is such an unfortunate term for anything, especially something as beautiful as a clapotis. It also sounds like one of those ground-cover plants. 'The clapotis have taken over the garden. I'll have to uproot them all this Saturday.'

I think I said that I'd had Little, Big on my shelf for twenty years. Turns out to be closer to a quarter century. And I can't tell you how odd that felt when I realized it. "Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume." I just started reading it. ( It gives me nightmares )

Shall link this old but classic entry from

bravecows afrai because it still makes me laugh so hard it hurts, especially

Oogenesis -- somebody really enjoying reading the Bible. (See oocorinthians, ooexodus, aarghrevelations.)

Carpel -- to complainl.

Histones -- kick 'im in ~.

( Semiotic despair and the inevitability of misreading )

Now if there hadn't been that huge mudfight recently over at metafandom about the bad manners of harshing someone's squee- which I agree with, of course- and the concomitant notion that you don't walk into strangers' ljs and make uncivil remarks, I would so be responding to

matociquala's dismissal of Jane Austen ("I just don't care about her characters") with "I understand that- I feel the same about yours." Which though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, at least not there.

And doubtless I've been reading too much metafandom- which I do on

mauvecloud's FL ('I friend metafandom- and metaquotes and kitty macros- so you don't have to.") Because I've been reading Nix's Keys of the Kingdom series lately and got bogged down around the Thursday book for oddly Harry Potterish reasons.
( Long story here so it goes under the cut )

I suppose anything 750 pages long wll leave its mark somewhere, though I notice my only reaction to finishing the equally lengthy Order of the Phoenix was Thank God that's over. But for three days now I find myself melancholy in the evening because there's no Perdido Street Station to read any more. However last night I found an unexpected antidote for Perdido's lingering mental images in, of all things, Chi-Ran's Imagine. That's a fast manga read with no surprises that's sat on my shelf for a decade, that I've unconsciously avoided because the seme looks like he's wearing blood-red lipstick, and that I only took down so as to be able to read and toss, as Thursday night I read and tossed the short story collection The Doom that Came to Sarnoth. Lovecraft is far far worse than I'd remembered-- than I could have imagined even. Gaseous bloat brings wincing annoyance around here, not frissons of horror. For that I need phrases like 'white hopping thing' aarghh whimper whimper *covers eyes*.
( Read more... )

Finished Perdido Street Station. Conclude that probably I should just leave male writers alone; but still... Mieville does do something really really interesting. He describes squalor and rot and decaying buildings in passage after passage and it never gets old. Even more: all this celebration of decay ought to read purple and overdone and vaguely silly. It doesn't: and that puts him one up, right there, on any decadent aesthete or decadent horror writer I can think of.
( City horrors, horrible civilians )

I've always had difficulty getting a grip on the UK word wet, its precise connotations and characteristics. In a moment of synapses finally firing as they ought comes the satori realization: wet = drip. Why won't my mind always do that?

Continue to swim through Perdido. Am bemused that

nojojojo could finish this and and not Jonathan Strange, though I'm sure it's a question of what you're used to. Perdido continues to be a more human funhouse mirror reflection of Gravity's Rainbow for which, trust me, I'm grateful. First night after reading it I dreamed I was in Shakespeare's London, tawdry garish smelly and energetic version of same. Thank you, China (which surely isn't his name? though given what other stuff my generation pulled on its kids, it might well be.)

So- I have Perdido Street Station from the library in a large and smooth-paged trade paperback. Pleasant to read and easy on the eyes: I think the over-heated adjectives might well oppress me in the smaller paperback format now out in the bookstores. OTOH I despair of reading this 700 page novel in three weeks, not unless the pace picks up pretty damned fast, which I don't think it will. I like to take my big dense novels slowly, and if that trade paperback were mine I could see me finishing it about the end of June.

The protagonists don't interest me greatly either. The fat bloke talks like a bloke, and Lin so far looks like a male's idea of a tough female. (Rukia Syndrome, a character I can live happily without.) Judging by the short stories, characterization isn't Mieville's specialty. But I'm still enchanted by the thing because it introduces a garuda who suddenly appears in the hero's house to tell him he's the heir to the sacred throne of a tiny eastern kingdom. No, of course not. But the echoes, which must must must be fortuitous, make me very happy indeed.

( Manga reading )

"The most basic thing to do in writing a not-this-world reality is refrain from this-NAmerican-society language. The next step is to have your characters think differently from us."
( Hm well, China Mieville. Pass/ fail )

Lord. I sort of thought my Japanese prints might bail me out in my old age, but obviously if I get really hard up I can sell my Antonia Forests. Someone's selling The Marlows and the Traitor- in paperback- for $255CDN. I have the hardcover. I thought I might pick up a second hand copy of The Player's Boy, since I'm sure it was reissued not that long ago, but no- another $250 for that one. Maybe I could just swap them? (We won't even talk about Run Away Home for $310.)
( Of mice and Mieville )

There's an lj community for Antonia Forest.

Only I'm a little scared to start reading it. Until the 21st century the only person I knew who'd read her books was me- not counting family and friends I pushed them on to, and none of them were avid the way I was. So, y'know- my own series à moi aka Papuwa Syndrome aka 'master am I of all I survey'. Do I wish to discover the mark of those other feet (in Papuwa, English-speaking- the Japanese footprints of course were everywhere) on my solitary island? Will I now be subject to regular attacks of NONONO you've got it all WRONG you're murdering my CHILDHOOD you blind blithering idiot? Am I at all put off by the fact that the second AF fan I found online is a flaming twit? Aarghhh... wibble wibble... somehow it's not so personal when it's molesworth but then all molesworth fans do is quote him at each other which is really the only way to be a molesworth fan.

(happily)
Grabber: Do you kno who you are talking to?
new bug: Can it be Stalin?

Fails. No manga moments and way too much Babylon 5 Syndrome.
( Or why J Michael expresses the ethos of a culture, alas )

ETA: Oh my god this is so COOL. If I could knit I'd be knitting boobs too.

Here I am with a day off and lo, the world singularly fails to entertain me as is the world's bounden duty. Not 'I have nothing to read' but 'I don't want to read the things I have.' It's either 'eeeevil middle-aged man preying on hapless youth OMG!' Hagio Moto, or 'eeeevil semi-Arab robbers preying on hapless middle-aged woman OMG!' Bujold.
( Cough medicine reading )

Finished Curse of Chalion. Not so dusty. Not something I'm likely to reread, or even keep on the shelves, but at the end of the day it registered decidedly on this side of Worth Reading ie Not A Waste of Time: and of how many books or indeed manga can I say that with confidence? Manga at least exercises my Japanese, but otherwise its 'new and useful' content is about as low as most English fantasy. It's just a faster read. Curse also had one or two manga moments, for lack of another term, that I'd like to have seen expanded, in amongst the rather bland main characters and action. Imagine what Higuri You would make of suspending the king's long-time lover head downwards over a vat of water in the bowels of the castle: to say nothing of the Roknarian Saint and his maimed umm whatever he was. Yaoi fanservice, guys: if shounen manga can do it, why can't American fantasy? (FTR the evil galley-master and the pretty young captive bit was handled to my perfect satisfaction.)

Now I may forge on with Paladin of Souls. And see if it says anything as useful about the habits (or possibly habituation) of demonkind as Ima Ichiko's 'You wouldn't expect someone to ask for hundred dollars in return for the loan of an eraser, but a youkai might. Their value system is just *different*.' ( Cut for mild v 14 spoilers )

( Infantile discourse )

There's a bathroom on the right. My mental muzak usually has some relation to what's happening in my life at that moment, and I'm currently in a grade-A snit, possibly even hormonally induced, so yeah. Still not sure why last week was all Beggar's Opera, 'Oh Polly you might have toyed and kissed/ By keeping men off you keep them on' but I'm glad it's gone.
( Snittery: Sooner come between a lioness and her cubs than an American and popular psychology )

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