flemmings | Entries tagged with reading

Another calm grey dry day, but brighter than before: like the best of civil November. The seasonal fantods withdraw for a spell, as they bloody well ought to when the weather isn't reinforcing them in the slightest. But their persistence bodes ill for any kind of retirement I might have had in mind (and that my twinging knees and back may be rooting for.) Psychologically I can take only so much of being left to my own devices without small people and perennial crises to draw my attention outwards.

Those with live-in partners don't have the problem. The reverse, probably, but not a solipsistic vortex.

Otherwise have been rereading what I own of the Parasol Protectorate, which is comforting feel-good stuff that, for no good reason, seems to belong to the same ethos as the Invisible Library. (Except that the IL is much less genial. Alexia has no reason for paranoia and Irene has only too much.) But as I go through the last volume to hand (#3), memories of my first reading start interposing themselves-- glimpses of a late summer Sunday afternoon down Spadina in a Burger King, a phantom impression floating just above the text. Distracting: I wish these temporal revenants would go away.

Guardian has got rid of coloured boxes, at least for today. Am pleased.

Little bento place has opened up Christie St. Bought little chicken bento there today. True Nihon no aji/ taste of Japan. Happy sigh.

Reading the next Tara French, all antsy 'this cannot end well.' Am speed-reading so as to get through the not ending well bit asap.

By way of balance, am also reading Medieval women : a social history of women in England, 450-1500 on a random rec, and finished the chapters on Anglo-Saxon graveyards and Anglo-Saxon abbesses last night. Had not realized how thoroughly my concept of early England had incorporated-- not exactly the memories, but the gestalt-- of the early 70s, as experienced by me in my sheltered Catholic fashion. But memories are there too-- descriptions of women's grave goods brought vivid flashbacks to St Michael's College Coop, the lounge at SMC, where I spent reading week of '72 writing a paper on Widsith; the names on the map of 7thC England took me to London that summer, peering at the Lewis chessmen; and in between are unplaceable impressions of grey skies and the smell of snow melting on the back campus and all those things half-noticed by someone who walks everywhere, because in those days I didn't bike. (That may be why Toronto no longer seems the Toronto of old: the sense impressions are different.) It's a weird sensation: forty years ago seems as distant and gone as the Anglo-Saxons themselves, but seems also as if the two once existed simultaneously.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/680322.html

Five volumes into the Rivers of London series and I finally have the secret of How To Read Aaronovitch. (But that's only because the back story has gone far enough that I can now discern its outlines.) So: read once to see what happens, read again to separate the main plot from the back story stuff, read a third time to fix the back story in one's head, read a fourth to fix the main story in one's head (because by now I've forgotten it), and read a fifth and possibly sixth time to note all the dropped threads and throw-aways that may impact the action several books down the road. Like, any interaction with the rivers themselves. Because seriously, why's Lady Ty got it in for Peter so badly?

Also make a list of those bland and infinitely confusible English names that Nightingale hung out with during the war, with notes as to who they are. You'd think by now someone would have done this on wikipedia, she grumbles. But google David Mellenby and they first want to change it to Mellanby, and then present you with a page of fanfic selections.

Saying this will probably jinx it, but for the last however-long-it-is I've been in bed well before 11 and occasionally before 10. A dozen years ago 11 was when I *began* working, just for comparison purposes. The upshot of course is that I'm awake at what the world regards as a reasonable time and don't suffer unduly when I have 8:30 shifts, at least as long as I can bike. Upshot also is that I get to go to the Shaw coffee shop that opens at 7 and have a latte and croissant in the bright empty white-and-concrete of the place. The early morning sky is the nostalgic bumpy cobalt and grey of so many airports in so many European cities, way-too-early flights from Amsterdam or London or, even farther back, Bordeaux; and the world seems a larger and different place. (Early morning airports to and from Japan had different kinds of skies even if the season was still the same.)

I like this season, actually: the dry early winter before snow. A certain timelessness to the subsiding leaf piles, ground to powder in the gutters (sometimes; and sometimes frozen lumps in the middle of the street) and the tidily or not so tidily raked yards, and the uniform grey, a designer colour that doesn't yet depress. Add precipitation and it depresses in spades, of course; but dry it references Tokyo and (for no good reason) the archetypal Japan-reading December of 1985, one of the happier periods in my life.
( Read more... )

Managed to finish Angela Carter's Wise Children the other day, another 'drag you in and drown you' book but a lot more cheerful than Tana French. Alas that it's so clearly a fantasy, because genki 75 year old women romping about with centenarians makes for a happy read: but for RL purposes it's up there with Genghis Cohen. Pipedream, no more. Certainly 100 year old men had better not be carrying three month old twins about in their overcoat pockets for any reason. The twins are not likely to survive.

You may surmise that I have no idea what Carter was doing in this book, aside from having lots of fun with Shakespeare. So I had lots of fun too, but the higher litcrit aspects I leave to Goodreads.

On the utterly mundane but satisfying side, received notices from gov't that my Old Age Pension and Seniors' Drug Benefit plan will kick in next February. Money is good. And that worry (did they get the application? will they approve it?) now settled.

Have been near-crippled by IT band sporadically turning to concrete these last few weeks. Not good, with snow and boots likely to happen in the near future. Knees also complain, and only stop if I wear Berks. Also a no-go if this winter is the way it looks to be. IT and knees *loathe* boots for reasons never fully understood: stabilizing my wobbly ankles makes everything else complain? Mentioned this to chiropracter, who whipped out a theraband loop and told me to fasten it around my ankles and then start walking sideways. Hoo boy yes. Fast strengthening exercise, here we are. I crab-walk the upper hallway twice a day and even in three days notice a difference.

That reading meme a while back asked if you'd ever had a reading hangover, and an amazing number of people said they had no idea what that meant. I have one from In the Woods, something ferocious, which Angela Carter is doing nothing to disperse. However I also have The Goblin Emperor from the library, and I trust that will do the trick. Before I go hang me over, all over again, with the next in French's series.

It's been years, or maybe decades, since I've become as lost in a book as I was in In The Woods. Tokyo, maybe, when I'd be in the English landscape of PD James or Dick Francis, and look up to find myself in Ueno or on the Odakyuu. But that was a cultural thing: the disjunct between the language and emotions on the page and the completely different ones around me was too complete for them to coexist. This was... just being someone else somewhere else for as long as I was reading. Only very persuasive first person voices do that to me-- not even Aaronovitch manages it, but then everything Peter says must be noted by Me-as-Reader because it's likely to come back to bite me. French's voice just sweeps you along.

It helped not knowing what kind of book I was reading. (This is why one should avoid blurbs, but then how can one tell if one wants to read the book in the first place? A problem.) Is it a mystery or psychological thriller or a horror story or a fantasy, or just a mainstream novel with elements of the foregoing? Will not say myself; one's reaction varies depending on what genre you think you're dealing with. The thing I thought was going to disappoint me did disappoint me, except I think that's possibly me being dense. And otherwise-- a fun if antsy ('this cannot possibly end well') two days in another country. Should be happy to repeat the experience again some time.

During the intestinal upsets of two weeks ago I moved into the side bedroom and have stayed there ever since. Warm, dark, quiet; the futon enfolds me in its thick soft embrace and I sleep like a baby. In transferring bedding I discovered my long-missing sleep hoodie hiding in the front room bed, and not a moment too soon. Ahh, warm ears on cold nights: what bliss.

However while slaying dust elephants in the front bedroom, I somehow mislaid my fuzzy sleep socks. I remember that morning thinking that I was taking them off in the wrong room and would I please remember what room it was. Didn't. Far as I can see they're nowhere in the upstairs at all. Like the hoodie, they've probably slid underneath something; I look forward to finding what it is.

Finished the final Rutledge yesterday, muttering to the last at the unlikely suspects these country policemen (and Scotland Yard detectives) fix on. I hope this isn't at all historically accurate, but I'm afraid it is: 'the chief inspector is pressing us to solve the case, here's a handy foreign national wandering the country, no reason for him to murder some chance strangers in the countryside with laudanum-laced wine but let's charge him anyway.' Motive, guys, motive: do you even know the meaning of the word?

Am now engrossed by In the Woods, with its pleasing echoes of Peter and Leslie. Am told the denouement is a disappointment but the trip there is all kinds of fun.

Blearily noted another grey greasy wet day out the fogged up windows as I got my breakfast ready. Sat down at computer, called up Environment Canada's wp (I can call ~~spirits~~ pixels from the vasty deep), see current weather is 'light snow' WHAT??? Look more closely out window. Snow flurries indeed. Oh I am so not ready for boots, especially this week when my right knee has decided to yell about the damp.
( October's sad stats )

It would have been a fine day even if I'd accomplished nothing, being one of those sunny blue and yellow October jobbies with red maples and big white clouds, whose mere beauty justifies its existence. But I also finally got to play about with the cement I bought a month ago, patching some of the earthquake-deep rifts in the back concrete pad so as to get an idea of the proper consistency. Two packages doesn't go very far and I'm not sure if this is what I need to brace the progressively more crumbling front stoop, but I bought two more packs and shall probably have a go at it tomorrow. Alas that my wooden form is a silly millimetre too high to fit on the side. OTOH, I'm obviously going to be doing this in stages, so can start with just an ordinary piece of wood.

Then watched two eps of Otougizoushi. Been two years since I used my DVD player and had to replace batteries in all the remotes. Begin to find my screen too small after all the huge flat screens people have now. But I'm so not a watcher that buying one is pointless, especially since I don't have cable or even a digital antenna.

Wish I hadn't learned that Charles Todd is American. Not to be chauvinistic, but now I'll be wondering more about things like that respectable woman in the 1920-set one who's walkng outside bareheaded. I know people get their own historical details wrong, but it's that much likelier when you write another culture.

Up: Acrobatic medieval babies. I like this more than I should.

Down: raccoon poo on my flat roof below the study window. Brother vows swift vengeance once they return from the cottage; I put more faith in chili flakes. As we alas know from work, once raccoons start using your roof as a toilet, they don't stop. On the plus paw, they don't live where they poo. On the pluser paw, my roof vents are at least theoretically safe from their intrusions, for which I suppose I must thank the good-luck bad-luck? intrusive squirrels.
( Will my sadness ever come to an end? )

I hope October is not going to be as grumpy a month as the first day would seem to indicate.
( Cut for sad September stats )

1. Thanks to my sister I knew there was an anime fleamarket at the central reference library here, fundraising for the Judith Merrill SFF collection at the library down the street from work. And because I note things on my calendar and then don't go, and because it's really autumn out there, I made myself bicycle over in the rain, through the 'changing, fearfully changing' Yorkville of my adolescence to condo-surrounded Yonge St.

A small venue-- this is your notion of an auditorium, TLS?-- with less than 20 tables, offering the usual used manga and used goods and other oddities, like a bunch of BBoy Gold magazines in pristine condition from 2000 that the vendor offered to sell in bulk. I probably have them, or had them, and politely declined; I'm nostalgic for many things from 2000 but BBoy Gold isn't one of them. (Nor do I know why, but the same old same old of BL and the frankly less than professional standard of many Biblos artists probably comes into it.) What I did buy for $20 was the six DVDs of Otogizoushi, that I saw random eps of ten years back, because I never figured how the modern episodes linked with the Heian ones, and because the modern eps were oh so exactly Tokyo.

Yes, I could probably see them on crunchyroll or something, but my OS and browser are both out of date. Also I got a trojan some years back from, I think, the Kohri no Mamono manga page, and have been antsy ever since about online fannish works.
( Read more... )

The Playwright Across the Street has gone the Front Lawn Library one better with a Little Free Library-- a box on a post, with a glass-fronted door, that's an exchange library: give a book, take a book. It's weather-resistant and thus a good idea in this weather-benighted town (like yesterday, with its night-long downpour and thunderstorm.) Discovered another Little Free Library last week on the other side of the block. (Japan has influenced me to the extent that I now register blocks as units of four sides, even as I still naturally think in terms of streets with two sides.) The Manning box had a Sookie Stackhouse err whatever they are: too small-town to be urban fantasy but with the same cast of vampires and werewolves and whatever. There are three UF writers I was determined to steer clear of- Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Harris; but Harris is the one I knew least ill of, so I nabbed the copy to see what she was like. And started reading it during that prolonged thunderstorm last night when I couldn't be online.

She's more than respectable. I shall read others in this series, while I try to figure out why Sookie's man-problem-beset heroine bothers me so much less than all the other man-problem-beset UF heroines. Not as dumb as the others is a part of it, certainly, and the men being (on the basis of half a book) warts and all guyz, not pure Id-figures, is another. Possibly it's just a matter of a modicum of style and a congenial voice.
( Cut for unexpected personal compliments )

My foray along Bloor looking for Dick Francis' The Edge (which no one has, including the public library, tsk tsk, since it's Francis' one Canada-set book) led me to Seeker's and a copy of S.M. Peters' Ghost Ocean, which I sort-of assumed was a sequel to Whitechapel Gods, that book I can never quite bring myself to buy from Bakka. It isn't, of course: neither Victorian nor steampunk nor even English-set (foolish me believed St. Ives to be, yanno, *the* St. Ives.) Genre I'm not sure of, being no reader of horror, but I suspect horror is what it is. Has the usual bunch of typos; has many CoCs but emh when you talk of African magic, sir, you do know Africa is a flipping continent with no one overarching culture? Also Babu the surname to me is Indian, and I'm not sure why you give it to an 'African' character.

I suspect Peters of being Canadian, and think he should know better.
( Cut for August stats )

I keep trying to impress my daily perceptions of the lovely weather-- deep blue skies, cool breeze, sun-- into the long-term memory, but my mind has no good-weather memory ability. Mug and heat haze, that I remember perfectly. Sad, because there have been a lot of splendid days this month. But I have been at work with new babies etc, and nothing much else registers.

Twelve days' worth of Shibata Ami takes its toll, so I give myself a break with Bill Bryson's Shakespeare- The World as Stage, which I was very happy to find until I realized it's not Steven Greenblatt's Will in the World. A fun fast read nonetheless. ( Cut for Shakespeare's vocabulary )

I've started two novels about Malaysia in the mid-20th century and can't bear to read either. It's obvious to me now why the Communist party should have been popular; I need to read some wiki to find out why it didn't succeed.

Meanwhile The old ways: a journey on foot is beautifully written and totally mystifying. That's because I'm a city child in a very large country where there are plenty of ways to get you where you want to go, not a single well-trampled narrow road to the deep north. Once out of the city I can certainly start walking, but there won't be old traces of old pathways, that I can still follow, leading across meadows to some paleolithic ring barrow. (This is why I maintain that Britain is a place where the past piles up and remains accessible.) Maybe there are old portage routes out there, but I suspect they lie under six-lane highways. Best one can do in TO is the occasional curvy break-the-grid and follow-the-landscape road, which was possibly a Mississauga Indian trail. Outside TO the landscape is concrete and undifferentiated and very hard to get anywhere on foot. (See: very large country.)

Maybe if there'd been photographs in the book, or more photographs, I might have had an inkling what he's talking about with his list of various kinds of pathways. As it is, I can only envy a land so deeply marked by human history.

(Oh, and here's a mention of my neighbourhood oddities. I did wonder about that elephant in the front yard.)

Am given to understand that T. Aaron Payne is T.A. Pratt. I liked the Marla Mason books very much; am less enthused by The Constantine Affliction. It ought to be fun but I found a distinct absence of there there. Possibly Payne/ Pratt was having too much fun himself with his easter eggs and shout-outs and what-all to give the book the kind of heft it needed. The result is lightweight and not even that engrossing to read.

Steampunk is an odd beast that requires a certain attention to both style and pastiche. Marla Mason's diction is perfect for what Marla Mason is: solidly American, solidly city. No flourishes there, but none needed: solid working narrative. 19th century London with frissons of Holmes and Wimsey require, seriously, some of the style of the period. And I really don't think you can combine Peter Wimsey and a hard-drinking American noir detective into the same person; they're very incompatible bedmates. What we're left with is just an alcoholic peer.
( In RL news )

1. My, bourbon is nice stuff.

2. Finished Full Fathom Five. Twisty-but-genial Gladstone as ever, and I think twistier even than the first two. Gladstone seems to require rereads of his oeuvre before one can proceed to the current work: similar to Aaronovitch if not quite that bad. Aaronovitch because he always has at least three balls in the air if not more, and the one you forget is the one most likely to be referenced in the sequel.

(Truly, am I the only person who never thought to wonder how Lesley taught herself magic all alone with no mentor, when it took Peter months and months of daily training under Nightingale to master the same tricks?)

3. Scott has a stopword- a phrase that recurs over and over again. It's (So-and-so) cursed under his breath.' I know it's Scott's because it recurs in Point of Knives as well as the first two.

Slow happy reread of Point of Hopes is now finished, alas. Perfect book for perfect weather, a rare conjunction. I do wish I could locate those passages that first, a baker's dozen of years ago, gave me the impression of Phillip being motherless and Rafe being-- I forget, son of a father his mother didn't marry? Which last seems wrong, after my ohh I forget, fifth or sixth time through Point of Dreams; and Phillip had a mother who had other kids and wasn't paying attention to the time of his birth, whatever happened later on. (I think that's in the early part of Dreams too. Must rererere-read.)

Smells like summer on the cool breeze out the window, meaning barbecues and hamburgers.

Oddity today as I walked out: wet sidewalks here and there along the block but grass dry. As I got closer to the corner saw splotches on the sidewalk, too dark to be ground-in plums from the plum tree. Blood stains, splattered quite thickly at the corner in front of the Greek Gardener's, who said the police had been by to look at them but couldn't say where they'd come from. Splatters grew less and less as one went up the block, but the fastidious had still washed their sidewalks. Someone could have been cut and then put pressure on the wound so the bleeding grew more sporadic, but my s-i-l suggests, more pragmatically, that it was a nose bleed. Not sure that nose bleeds splatter quite that way, but seems possible.

Left bicycle at work overnight, got called in for 9 am, worked all day thereafter. Rode it home at 6 racing a thunderstorm. Rang bell to alert car I was approaching. Bell did not ring, because the bell cap was missing. Am annoyed: bicycles get left for months unmolested in front of work; I can't leave mine for 24 hours. Will go back and see if bell cap just unscrewed and fell into grass but I doubt it. (Also makes no sense. This kind of nuisance thievery happens where high school jerks hang out. We're on campus, teenage jerks are out of school and living elsewhere, who the frack would mess with my bicycle bell?)

Everyone at work feeling kazegimi = like they're coming down with a cold. Kids all coughing with drippy tap noses. My throat is scratchy, but I think that's sinuses. Is long weekend, fortunately, and then only four weeks till Labour Day and summer's blessed end.
( Mindless summer reading )

If I get paid for all the unpaid time I'm putting in, I shall have money: and on that premise I went to Bakka and bought the new edition of Point of Hopes. Came home and decided to get my old version to mark up (or at least, insert sticky notes wherever throw-away details of stuff are given): and found that I already have the new edition. So exchanged it for another copy of Fairs' Point, because you never know when that will come in handy.

(Hadn't realized how small the print is in these editions either, even though I read Fairs' Point a mere fortnight ago.)

Meanwhile I would gladly read the next three Marla Masons, but they seem to exist only in e-format. Certainly the library hasn't got them. I could read them for free online but- I don't like reading my books on a screen. Cannot parse them correctly. Amazon seems to have book copies, but enh, Amazon.

Equally Amanda Sun's books look interesting but the prequel is, you guessed it, an ebook. I suppose I should investigate cheap ipad knockoffs, and what books can be read on same. But if I cave technologically, I think it should be a cell phone; which I will never read anything on if I value my sight.

Sent a note to the spam filter people who didn't respond. Nonetheless the regular 'two spam messages a day' ceased coming. May this trend continue.

The second Marla Mason book is stunningly good. Unfortunately the third and fourth don't live up to their predecessor.
( Cut for healthy eating )

In search of an elusive author whose works the library system doesn't have- or has only in unborrowable form- I succeeded in getting my hands on a thumpingly huge short story collection called The Weird. Heart fell when I saw that the ToC included M.R. James' Casting the Runes. James isn't weird: he's terrifying. But if that's an exception: if the other stories are indeed weird tales, it occurred to me I could try reading them as 100 Demons episodes. Which I do, generally to dismal failure. Hand's The Boy in the Tree, Gaiman's Feeders and Eaters, Tagore's The Hungry Stones, Chabon's The God of Dark Laughter, Utley's The Country Doctor (and stories I knew from before: Russ' The Little Dirty Girl, Kafka's In the Penal Colony, Akutagawa's The Hell Screen) are, well, SF or horror or what-have-you, but not the simply Odd that Ima does. With the possible exception of Mieville's Details, which is certainly looking like an Ima manga so far.

Alas, I can't remember what writer it is I want to read. Possibly Michael Cisco.

Alas also, the ToC is in chronological order, which makes finding anything very difficult.

I sigh for the purin of Japanese convenience stores. Crème caramel and excellent, for pennies; and can you get anything like it over here? Loblaws has a crème brûlée, and I bought it, only to discover that you have to caramelize the top yourself with an instrument I've never heard of but which Loblaws assumes you will but naturally possess. (Wikipedia recommends a blowtorch. I don't have that either.) Alternatively you can stick it in an oven to melt. (In July. No.) And there's no caramely syrup at the bottom either, which renders crème brûlée pointless, by me.
( As for the places )

There's still light to see by at 9 pm, but in a gloaming darkling way. A month ago this is what 9:30 was like, and I could still paint porch rails at 9- as I did the one summer I came home from Japan, and was stunned by the lateness of the light after a year in that perpetually benighted country. As time speeds up, the change from 'all the light in the world' to 'dark so *early*!!' seems to occupy days rather than weeks, and even weeks are shorter than they were.

Not so much when I'm working, perhaps, especially not early shift two days running; but I lost a couple of days this week to sickness or (oddly) holiday or simply the fact that it's July, when memory stops working anyway. Only that usually requires a hot July, and this isn't. What one of my casual LJ reads called 'the returned polar vortex' of this week left again without my forming a concrete impression of it; it sort of happened in the background as I was reading Astreiant. Now we're back to warm and muggy and overcast, as we were last weekend.
( Cut for thoughts on time travel )

Bakka didn't have the new Max Gladstone because Tor splits its shipments and the Gladstone was in part 2, due 'later today or tomorrow at latest.' Ah well. Was turning to go when I remembered to ask about Fair's Point, the new Astreiant, that the she-clerk had promised to find out if they could order. With Point of Knives the he-clerk had dismissed me with Nah small press we don't order go'way ya bug me kid, so I was delighted when she said 'Oh yes, we have them all.' Came home with it and began on a cool blue summer evening, throw-back to the cottage 60s-as-I-remember-them,* and find the book also to be a throw-back to Point of Dreams, much more than anything since. Lovely to be home again.

*Memory is famously not to be trusted because it says 'oh this is just like 2001 when you were reading Dreams.' I read that one in a heatwave, but memory simply won't accept the fact, preferring the perfect surrounding to the perfect book.

1. Super moon tonight is invisible because the clouds rolled in just before sundown. Better luck next month.
( Further mundanity )

A year to the day of the great Toronto monsoon we do it again. Not for two hours straight, thankfully, and arguably blinding downpours are what summer rain will be like from now on; but the kitchen at work flooded just the same, which it hasn't done during the other monsoons recently. Puzzling is that it didn't flood where it normally does, and no one can figure why it flooded where it did.

Clouds are still alternately apocalyptic and Hasui, and occasionally both.

In the Joy Proposed dep't: Max Gladstone's next comes out in a week and I get a discount with my full Bakka frequent-user card. The new 100 Demons came out today, and with SAL delivery I may well have it for the August long weekend.

1. M warns me, 'Friedman is very purple.' 'No matter,' say I, blithely. 'I read Tanith Lee.' I start in on the fairly matter-of-fact prose and wonder what M was on about. *Then* hit the passage where the hard-bitten fire-breathing local merchant- who has to be bodily restrained by two burly dockhands from roaring aboard his dilatory ship and breaking the crew's heads- is left cowed-- aghast-- appalled and shaking, because one crew member has completely lost the memory of his fiancee. Oh. *That* kind of purple.

2. "In the empty streets before the rain/ The evening air is autumn now." A moist dank night, oddly cool for July, as I rode home near midnight from the Little Girls'. Was exactly the feel of 3 or 4 am returns from parties in the early 80s. Ah youth, youth. And ah, now I think of it, the poor neighbours of those late night dance parties.

3. Remains misty moisty and gunk-eye weather, so I clean grunge from the stove fan filter, and hope I can get filter back in place. Last did this ca 2007 or so, I believe; but now I use vinegar and baking soda instead of Goof-off and bleach. Go me.

Ah well. I'm trying to be Buddhist about not clinging to happiness and not saying to God, 'Encore.' But it was nice having friends here and I'm sad they're gone. And because it was great talking books with M again and because she said Max Gladstone's settei, as described by me, reminded her of C.S. Friedman's, I've rousted out the first volume of the Coldfire trilogy from where I ~~hid~~ tidied it away (after thinking 'oh rats must have despaired of ever getting to it and put it out on the lawn sometime') and started reading it.

(Wish I could remember what I did with Point of Knives as well. This is what tidying does: makes things unfindable.)

Oh Internet, never leave me again. It's like missing a hand. I spent the afternoon walking Bloor St in the heat looking for a restaurant that had CNN news and weather on a screen so I could find out what tomorrow will be like: and every single one of them was showing soccer. Meanwhile all round me the cell-phoned mob were online on their phones: and I was all alooone unable to access any of my friends sob. Maybe I shall cave after all... or at least buy an i-pad.

Note that mindfulness meditation didn't help *at all*.

Finished reread of Three Parts Dead. Like it ever so much better than Two Serpents Rise, as being twistier and chewier and having rather more people I cared about; Serpents may have had multi-pov too, but not as immediately. Tara is just more fun than Caleb, who's oh argh a bit washy and weedy and prone to bad decisions. Also she has a better cover: the Caleb cover looks like stock Jim Butcher (I'm assuming the same artist?) white guy, not any kind of brown-skinned Mexican.

June reading was so sparse I'm not even going to post my stats.

1. My life is so indifferent, I can't even remember the mundane things I was going to talk about.

2. Stardust turns out to be practically perfect hot weather reading. 'Practically' because there are the usual Gaiman rough edges that are rough. Genre-breakers, which would be OK except I like my genres as they are, thanks.

3. Not as many cherries as last year, thank god, but now what there is are ripe and falling. Also the plums. Ohh the plums. *Next* year, or maybe this year in the fall, a bunch of those branches are going.

4. Last night was lukewarm- neither hot nor cold- so that the air from the window fan didn't chill my poor poor shoulders and toes etc as it usually does, just moved the neutral air around. So for a change I slept without a t-shirt, under a terrycloth sheet as in the 90s: which was a tangible body-memory reminder of what the 90s was like. Always wondered how I'd managed that bit.

5. Workman unaccountably failed to show up to cover my bannister rail. Called and left message; he hasn't called back. Maybe he's dead?

Rain yesterday evening, heavy and prolonged and leading to thoughts of flooded basements, which didn't happen, or at least didn't happen where I could see. Preceded all day by rainy season grey saturated clouds and cool muggy wind, which I can live with, sort-of. Better than the muggy sun we're having now. For some reason decided this was a good time to start Stardust, tattered copy picked off the boulevard, and as far as I got it was. Sort of Neil Gaiman meets Lud-in-the-Mist with a dose of Susanna Clarke. Whether it carries on the same I cannot say, because I had an 8 am shift this morning that required going to bed at 10:30. And waking irrevocably at 1 am with chest cramps that are actually a hiatus hernia and acid reflux. Got a few more hours after 4, before waking three minutes ahead of the alarm at 6:30.

Must go back for another 90 minutes. Am figuring how to caffeinate myself for this in view of said hernia being unhappy. Tonight I keep AC on and sleep the sleep of the overworked just, because I'm convinced muggy air coming in with the window fan is causing all this achiness and cramping.

My irrational but firm belief that Two Serpents Rise would make much more sense if I read the Acatl books first was in fact correct. What was dizzyingly mystifying last January (with a virus, true) became a fast fun read this weekend. Now I want to reread Three Parts Dead but lack a copy. Somehow I'd thought Bakka had a mass market edition; it does not, and $20 when the tax is included is something that must wait for the next paycheque. Luckily that's Thursday, when the grubby rainy mug may have lifted as well.

My memory of the first book does suggest that Gladstone has a theme of people making really bad people choices. However I'm more interested in the world-building and will let the bad choices slide. Especially as mine have never been any better.

Ganpo Abbey has a space open for a one week retreat in mid-August. Am so tempted to take it, just to demonstrate to myself that retiring to a Buddhist monastery is not at all what I want to do. Shan't, of course. Must learn to sit on floors first. But maybe next year, when the thought of being retired sings its siren song in my ear.

Finished the Acatl trilogy finally. I think I'm simply not on de Bodard's wavelength because I found it a confusing read from start to end, which either means the author isn't using the tropes I'm used to or is following a narrative line I can't. Here nothing seems to happen for a long time until suddenly there's a solution. This is not how mysteries are supposed to work.
( Read more... )

Weatherwise an irreproachable weekend: sunny, cool, clean air and deep blue skies. Alas that my property tax bill came Friday, so sun delights not me nor cool neither. (Though last night's cool wind at the study window was pleasant, in a timeless 'I have felt this before' fashion.) Or maybe it's the frozen shoulder I woke up with Friday morning, that even today's acupuncture could not relieve. Or maybe it's the perpetual threatening charley horse in the thigh, or maybe it's the sad recollection of babies left and gone*, or maybe it's the latest chapter of Saiyuki Reload Blast.

Next few days are set to be hot, wet, and thunderous, or IOW June.

*Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known
Happy field or mossy cavern
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have had that in my head since I was eleven or so and never realized it was Keats.
( Cut for May stats )

Really must start noting where I get my book recs from. The library system delivered A Burnable Book to me last week: the fact that I kept the hold active while several dozen other people finished it suggests I very much wanted to read it. And possibly I do, though my attempt last night was interrupted by the mysterious hideous thigh cramps that sometimes assail me while sitting on the couch. So I didn't get very far with it.

I may hope that not all the female characters will be prostitutes or mistresses or Woman As Sexual Being, as they have been to date. This is the drawback of reading male writers. They may turn out to be Frank Miller.

And then there are times one wants to slap Kipling but hard. Hissy fits at Indian juries being able to try white women. (And white men, of whom there were far more in the Raj, but that doesn't have the same sexual overtones.) Never met an Irishman he didn't despise, unless they were Anglo-Irish and thus *not* cunning, deceitful and full of hatred. Is pissed off at the Boers' hostility after the British spent so much money looking after their wives and children. Which they did: in concentration camps (the term comes from the Boer War.) Where they were starved. Which Kipling knew but didn't believe.

Argh.

ETA: Kipling was a dear friend of Cecil Rhodes', which makes one esteem Mark Twain all the more.

1. Lovely day, feeling much cooler than the purported temperature. Jacket weather, and in the morning's raw cloud, jacket and fleecy weather. Culminated in an evening of golden western sun and glowing purply clouds like those of the autumn preview, that brief cold spell in early Augusts in the early 70s. After July's heat and mug, five or six days of highs near 15 and lows near 6: not the way autumn actually looked when it came but a sort of ur-version or Platonic form. Remember the roar of the furnace turning on in the bowels of the house, and the cocoon of warm dry air blowing from the (really very odd) heating outlets we had at home.

Also the neighbourhood is presently awash in lilac scent because lilacs burgeon on every lilac bush-- except, of course, mine. Am of two minds here: lilacs are a lovely sensual experience, but the scent of fruit tree blossoms is much more restrained and therefore elegant. Also they're much briefer and therefore never go rotten rank the way lilacs and orange blossoms do.

2. Learned a new word today: epigone - an inferior imitator of some distinguished writer or artist of musician. This in a discussion of Tolkien. OTOH I only recently discovered that Tolkien has two syllables, not three. I cannot say how much this crushes me. Tol-keen? Really??

3. I should be liking The Eyre Affair better than I do. It has all sorts of pleasant Library overtones, and I'm by nature fond of punning names. But I can't follow the action if I stop reading for a bit, and I can't remember who everyone is. First novel-itis, perhaps?

1. Kipling's autobiography is quite fascinating except when he starts being Kipling. Which is not what you're thinking, though there's some of that there too. More, the 'wakaru hito wa wakaru' aspect ('those who know will understand'): opaque sentences referring to some aspect of Indian army life or newspaper editing under the Raj or even his school's headmaster. *He* knows what he's talking about; those who were in the army or the newspaper or the school know what he's talking about; the rest of us don't, and sucks to be us. (Off the top of my head, I associate this opacity most with Stalky and Co, where I never know what on earth is going on, or why. Thi is why Kipling so often fantods me.)

Kipling in fact wasn't bad at rising above his innate prejudices. But in minor details he loses my sympathy. Do not whine to me about the heat of India that drives a man mad, and in the next breath say no really it's an absolute necessity to dress for dinner and you'd like a word or two with those modern slackers who sneer at the notion of wearing waistcoats and jackets in the sweltering months.
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No, lj, I will not 'switch to new version.' Take your bloody green strip away from the top of my page. You annoy me.

I suppose I should be flattered when yet another person I knew in the 80s says 'I knew it was you at once! You haven't changed at all!' This time was a roommate from 1982, unseen for thirty years. But it does make me feel like Dorian Gray.

Haul from the used bookstore over the long weekend was Kipling's autobiography Something of Myself, the novelization of Farewell my Concubine, and A Natural History of Dragons; A Memoir by Lady Trent. Not bad at all.

It's cold, it's raining, the skunks are back, and someone is playing loud music with the windows open at 10:30 pm. These unsatisfactory elements intrude on the archetypal peaceful grey and green May, the garden world with blossoms and flowers and new leaves and catkins filling all the spaces. Like snow does in winter, I guess. (And a month ago exactly there was snow on the ground.) Snow however doesn't make me feel philosophical, and fruit blossoms do, even if they're already drifting down from the trees in the rain and any gusts of wind.
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As in 'labours for pay', not 'functions efficiently.'

April reading, just to be on time:
( Cut for same )

For the rest of this week I am once again a body that works and does little else. Most people are in this position all the time, so I can't complain. But it adds depth to those Buddhist strictures about one's ineffable good fortune in being born a human who is able to learn about the Dharma, which western Buddhists specifically say means a person with enough leisure to do so.
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1. I know I sneer at people who say Tolkien couldn't write. Must amend that a little. Was at The Little Girls' the other night. Elder LG is having LotR read to her at bedtime (after reading The Hunger Games herself, oy vey.) Is in the middle of The Two Towers, Pippin talking to the Aragorn-tachi at Isengard. I will say now that Tolkien couldn't write dialogue that I, at any rate, can read aloud. It's just so oddly paced and given to tag-on bits and... well, it doesn't flow, basically. Is still miles better than the SW novelization the younger LG is being read, but that's not saying much.
( More random within )

Handyman comes on a cold sunny morn. I have a new workable clothesline! I have raccoon baffles around the trifurcate of the cherry tree! I have new kitchen taps that don't leak! I have a newly caulked tub that we hope doesn't leak! There is no hole in the wall by the stairs where the plaster fell out! Have also lost the elephant's trunk at the bottom of the handrail, where the plastic covering broke higher up and slipped down. Not replaceable by anything as yet, but a good deal more sightly than it was.

Of course nothing is perfect. I have yet to meet a handyman who can do a smooth even caulking job, and this was no exception. The Affordable (and corner-cutting) Plumber could, but he didn't caulk the whole thing, is why I had to get someone else to do it. Also: should have supervised the baffling job, because if they'd put the first baffles higher they wouldn't have needed to add two more. But on the whole, very content.

Also: Bakka does indeed have Aliette de Bodard, in a door-stopping compendium of all three volumes. Am still thinking about this, because that's not a book that will travel at all.

I believe I said something about being seriously underwhelmed by Adele Blanc-Sec's narrative peculiarities and general narrative disorganization (beginning with, but not confined to, a failure to name the artist and writer on the front cover of the translation.) I mean, it had the sense of place and sense of time and the right kind of characters (intrepid adventuress, smooth sleuth, batty obsessed academics) and did nothing with them worth noting. Serious lack of there there. But still, I thought-- but still, I thought-- it's the right style for something: you just have to, I dunno, turn it a few degrees this way and then it's actually very familiar, what could it be-- no, *not* Claudine in Paris, not LoEG, something much more recent than that...

At which I realized that Adele Blanc-Sec looks the way I've been unconsciously envisaging the Invisible Library world. Perfect! Clearly the Invisible Library should be a bande dessinée; and if it isn't, I shall read it as if it was.

1. The Front Lawn Library is open for business. Copped a copy of Karen Armstrong's Buddha. The Front Lawn Exchange is likewise a go. Copped a small (8 in square) art deco mirror from across the street. Copped also three wooden louver shutters, hinged in the middle, maybe 10 in wide and three feet high. Probably custom made; if they were three inches higher they'd be perfect for that annoying study window whose left half I spend the summer trying to block. As it is they're almost perfect and I may look forward to not being dazzled/ broiled come July.

2. What a good thing I didn't try reading Adele Blanc-Sec in French, she says palely. It makes no sense in English. I fancy it's not supposed to make sense.

3. Jiro Taniguchi's The Walking Man is a lovely low-key manga whose plump and ordinary protagonist does nothing much except what I did- walk about the neighbourhoods of Japan. It's probably not Tokyo he's walking in, but it could be. (Unnamed protag also strips down and has a swim in a closed public pool, which is most enterprising of him.) I was a little put out that he was always coming home to his plump and ordinary stay-in wife, but then occasionally he runs into her while she's walking the dog, so evidently she gets out as well on occasion.
( Cut for potatoes )

Coldest March in thirty years, they say. I suppose: *consistently* cold, and the warmest it got to was 10C. I've been seeing blooming flowers here and there on my bike rides: ascertained today that they're in fact plastic, put out by people who are tired of waiting for the coldest March in thirty years to be over. Have actually seen real snowdrops in certain north-side yards; but the south-side yards still have snow hills in them.

Brainfried, couldn't read Two Serpents Rise on the weekend. Read A Distant Neighbourhood/ Haruka na machi e instead, manga by the Times of Botchan mangaka. Ah, Japan and trains... (Am bothered by the translation of machi as neighbourhood. In this context I suppose it's reasonable, but it feels like there ought at least to be a colloquial word for neighbourhood in English, and there isn't. Is *why* you have the 'hood, I assume.) (Also I feel like the Japanese is reaching for 'Another country' as in The past is, which you can't render in English either.)

Still brainfried (had to be reminded several times that today was Monday) went and got more translated comics- The Rabbi's Cat and Adèle Blanc-Sec. There's no excuse for the latter because I've had the French versions on my shelves for at least twenty-five years if not more; and never read them, of course.
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