| More rereads from the 80's! |
[May. 25th, 2012|02:03 pm] |
Druid's Blood (Friesner), 3+/5 - There is a lot going on on this Sherlock Holmes With Magic! alternate universe pastiche, complete with cameos by almost everyone you can imagine of interest in Victorian England (Arthur Conan Doyle, of course; Lord Byron; Ada Lovelace; Victoria herself). Written before racefail was even dreamt of, so, you know, complete culture!fail where brown people = Kali-who-eats-humans! Yey! I think, though, that from an entertainment standpoint, the big problem is that there's too much going on; there are some nice moments, but it sort of falls under its own weight.
The Hall of the Mountain King (Tarr), 4/5 - Another of those I might feel differently about if I read it for the first time today, but my principal feeling on reading it this time was holy cow how did I not realize that The King of Attolia has the exact same plot? Because the emotional plot is the same: peon that everyone else respects is called to be the reluctant servant to royalty who must prove himself to the world but also forge a beautiful friendship with the peon. Except with more magic and sex and plot and death than in Attolia. (And I really liked Moranden this time through.) And I really like that emotional plot, as it turns out. Although I like Attolia better. But I was pretty excited to reread the next book in the series after rereading this one.
Also, cool that everyone in this book is dark-skinned and it's not really a thing, but it's rather more descriptive about it than the Earthsea books (in the sense of, I didn't actually realize the Earthsea residents were not pale-skinned until the third book or so, whereas I was pretty clear on it in these; the covers helped).
The Lady of Han-Gilen (Tarr), 3/5 - Heroine hair color: red. I really liked this one as a kid, and I don't think it's bad now -- but I'm so over the bratty teenage kid thing and the love triangle thing. I mean, yes, it's nice that she gets called out for being bratty, I can't fault Tarr for her handling of it, I just don't particularly want to read it any more. I also kind of lost my momentum for wanting to read the third book, despite the big plot twist in A Fall of Princes blowing my mind as a naive teenager.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/68507.html. |
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| Short stories (reread/partial-reread) |
[May. 22nd, 2012|09:31 am] |
I am getting caught up on my backlog of posts/reading, finally.
Red as Blood (Tanith Lee) - 3 to 5. Reread. The title story is amazing, in my opinion, a tour-de-force of dark lush reimagined-Christian imagery. I'd forgotten exactly how good it was. The other stories range from quite good (I liked the Pied Piper one more than I'd remembered) to a bit silly (I'm sorry, I didn't find "Beauty" entirely convincing).
Going for Infinity: A Literary Journey (Poul Anderson) - 3+ to 4. Some of these stories were rereads. Poul Anderson is totally awesome, really: he's got the hard-science thing going and he also has the Scandinavian-myth thing going as well, and the stories where those things come together are made of awesome. "The Queen of Air and Darkness," complete with an actual ballad and a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, is a fantastic SF story (yeah, with that title and a ballad, were you expecting a fantasy story?), as are "Goat Song" and "Kyrie," all three of which have aged very well (okay, fine, occasionally one would wish for updated gender politics, but otherwise they are all very good). Some of the earlier stories are, well, they don't age nearly as well, but even those have interesting and well-worked-out ideas. The only thing is that his stories almost never viscerally grab me, but it might be impossible to do that with the careful working-out of ideas that is a hallmark of his stories.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/68221.html. |
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| Boston, take 1! |
[May. 21st, 2012|02:23 pm] |
Had a really lovely weekend in Boston, the vast majority with J-and-company as sort-of-semi-scheduled, but also with a detour to Cambridge to see K/B/D. The weekend involved a large amount of food, lots of sunshine, and lots of wonderful people (not just J and K/B/D -- all of J's friends are really lovely). Excellent.
Boston decided to be extremely beautiful and sunny and bright, as if it's trying, like J, to get me to move back. I was pleased to find that I still have deeply buried memories of the T -- there were a couple of times where I found myself thinking things like, "Okay, I am pretty sure that going up this flight of stairs is not going to get me where I want to go, even though it looks like the obvious choice," and I was right.
It was interesting, though: in all my previous visits to Boston, I've thought of it as coming back home. This trip -- both Boston and I have moved on. I'll always love it, but it's not a place I belong to anymore.
Though after five years away from Boston... will be back in one month! With D and E, and we'll have to take E to the Public Gardens so she can see what the pictures in Make Way for Ducklings look like in real life...
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/67927.html. |
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| Star Trek books from my past! |
[Apr. 27th, 2012|11:54 am] |
4/5 - My parents came to visit and brought me a whole buncha books from my room, thus starting me on an orgy of rereading... starting with all the Star Trek books, for some reason. Note that I totally revert back to my 12-year-old self when reading these books, so the fact that I seriously and unconditionally love them all does not actually mean they're any good, necessarily. I mean, they might be! But I cannot tell.
ST:TNG Strike Zone (Peter David) - Still the best ST:TNG novel I've ever read, although honestly that doesn't mean a whole lot (I think I read the first ten or so, as well as David's other work). It's better, I think, than David's other ST:TNG work, which veers into the maudlin; this is still simply funny with only an edge of seriousness, which is more his forte, and with an awesomely hilarious climax that, well, is kind of something I wish the show itself had done. Also, my family is really into the "if you prepare hard enough bad things will never happen to you" philosophy, and rereading, I suddenly remembered this was the first book I ever read that just came out and said, "No, that's a dumb philosophy," and that stayed with me even though I had completely forgotten that this was the book it came from. As a result, when I read it now, I give it a pass on Bechdel test failure, a general fail on portraying Troi, and what I imagine are probably a whole host of other things were I able to actually look at this book with a rational eye instead of a twelve-year-old eye.
ST:TOS Ishmael (Barbara Hambly) - Spock gets thrown back to 1800's Here Come the Brides. Hambly is a good writer, and I like this book very much, and the overall writing is probably stronger than the other two books here, but the only bit that really imprinted on me was the part where the woman doctor calls out everyone else (except Spock, who thinks it's normal) for thinking it's weird that a woman is a doctor.
ST:TOS The Pandora Principle (Carolyn Clowes) - Spock, for all practical purposes, adopts Saavik. I've seen people who both love this book (the camp I'm in) and people who think it's totally awful. I can see the awful side, I guess. The main plotline is sort of hilariously Rube-Goldberg (it hinges on the assumption that a starship, finding a strange box, will then... take it back to Earth before opening it? What?) and rather iffy-science at that; Spock is a total Gary Stu who's smart and patient and understanding and kind and a really great dad, all-around; Saavik, although I haven't watched the films in years, is I suspect out of character for the person portrayed in the film. And yet the writing is crisp and with that lovely edge of humor to it that livens the whole thing; and Saavik is, if not the actual character in the movies, personable and interesting both as a child and a woman (my favorite bit is where child-Saavik informs another little kid that it isn't logical to eat its own fingers, it would be more logical to eat someone else's!), and I can't help it, as an adolescent I totally imprinted, like a little bird, on Spock as the ideal dad who never gets mad or impatient. And it passes Bechdel easily. And it's got some lovely original characters. One of my favorite Star Trek books ever, and I wish I knew what had happened to Carolyn Clowes, because I'd surely buy any other book she wrote.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/67020.html. |
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| The Scorpio Races (Stiefvater) |
[Apr. 25th, 2012|06:51 am] |
(3+/5) - Heroine hair color: red. So this is an awesome book -- the writing is very good, rather better than most YA I read, and it's about evil horses! Yay! (Having been brought up reading about Valdemar Companions, I now in reaction have a total weakness for books about evil horses. See also Cherrryh's Riders duology.
The only thing is, the ending vaguely bothered me, and I am not sure I can articulate why. Not that this has ever stopped me from trying to do so! ( Cut for spoilers. )
Holly was totally cool, though. I'd so read a spinoff with him.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/66790.html. |
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| Thirteen Reasons Why (Asher) |
[Mar. 13th, 2012|07:42 am] |
Thirteen Reasons Why (Asher)
3-/5. Hannah, who committed suicide, leaves cassette tapes behind for the thirteen people who affected her decision.
Look. I generally think books on suicide are useful. And I generally find books about how, especially as a teen, one's actions have an impact on other people not just useful but also really interesting and valuable. I love Chris Crutcher and Sarah Dessen and Melina Marchetta and Cynthia Voigt and all those authors who are tackling these kinds of questions.
So I thought I would like this book, but I bounced hard off of it instead.
I think it might have been the near-complete lack of characterization. The only thing I learned about the narrator (Clay, the kid listening to the tapes) during the entire book is that he thinks he is very shy. Oh, also, he has a mom. Hannah herself comes across as whiny and entitled, and although we're clearly supposed to feel sorry for her that all these horrible things happened to her, it was kind of hard for me to care. I kept wanting to be all "Just stop complaining and get a grip, Hannah, geez!" which is exactly the sort of attitude the author was trying to lambast. It obviously just didn't work for me.
I actually think this is a natural problem of the way the story is told (the narrator listening to the tapes interspersed with the contents of the tapes themselves) -- I see how it's a narrative hook (and an effective one; after reading the description I did want to read the book) -- but it's very hard for a character to consciously tell her story (that is, not just first-person narration, but actually being conscious of writing it down (or speaking it) for an audience) without coming across as a little solipsistic (heh, see also In Spite of Everything, this might also have been my problem with that book) and very hard to complain in a conscious narration without coming across as whiny. I think this is because in such a conscious story, it's really hard to show rather than tell. You can't show by showing other people's reactions, because the story is being told by you, and you can't show by showing your own reactions without coming across as seriously over-self-analytical. So you just have to describe what you felt. "I felt like everyone was ignoring my pain." And that is not writing that's going to resonate.
Oh, and also, everyone gets to be very two-dimensional. There's Nice!Guy and NiceVeneerButActuallyCatty!Girl and Doesn'tRespectWomen!Guy and so on. Again, problem with the narrative structure. Of course from Hannah's perspective they're only going to be 2D, and she, of course, dies, so she never figures out if there's anything more to them. (Contrast, say, To Kill a Mockingird, which is consciously told as an older woman looking back on her childhood, and so she can see things that she wasn't able to see as a child.) Indeed, there is no character development in this book by anybody. Everyone's pretty much the same throughout the entire book.
(Hm, on second thought, I can see how this could have been helped. Since there are effectively two narrators, Clay could have been used to give another dimension to all the characters. But he wasn't used that way.)
And I think this is a problem. The whole point of a book dealing with suicide is to humanize both those who have committed (or are thinking about committing) suicide and those who may unknowing have contributed to that person's problems. It is to elicit compassion in the reader as well as thoughtfulness about our own actions, a sense of empathy that hopefully we will take out into the world. (In addition to the authors I mentioned above, Before I Fall, though I do not particularly recommend it, did a far better job in these respects.) If what you're instead eliciting is a sense of "Stop whining," you have failed.
Also, my pedagogical rant-o-meter going off: the English classes at this school seriously read a (bad) anonymous poem by one of their own high schoolers in class? And it was seriously compared to reading a poem by a famous dead person? I... don't even know where to start. The utter wrongness of this is never addressed, perhaps because Hannah had so many other things to complain about.
No idea why this book has been so recced around. I suppose they haven't read Chris Crutcher.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/65839.html. |
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| In Spite of Everything (Thomas) |
[Mar. 12th, 2012|09:10 pm] |
3/5. Ummm... okay. I was told this was a book about a Gen X woman who had divorced parents, swore she would never get divorced, especially after they had kids, and then got divorced. Well, that was exactly what I got. I mean, it's not badly written, I suppose (though like many other kiss-and-tell Gen-X memoirs I have come across, it is sprinkled heavily with pop science studies to give it the illusion of being more than a kiss-and-tell memoir, and it doesn't work and alienates me more than if they hadn't been there in the first place), but it reads like she wrote it as a therapy session, and publishing it was an afterthought.
She has these awesome theories about marriage, like her theory that because of equal parenting (both partners know what it's like to work, both partners know what it's like to take care of the kids), "we don't have much appreciation for each other's differences and separateness during those early years in our children's life." I, uh. Have found it to be exactly the opposite? Maybe this has something to do with why your marriage imploded? Also marriage is like incest because you're seeking the validation you didn't get from your parents! Um. I see what she's saying about validation, a little, but... um.
Also she has awesome theories about how divorce is to blame for any ills Gen X experienced, such as the housing bubble, misogyny, and helicopter parenting. Because as we all know, especially those of us in Gen X, misogyny didn't exist before Our Totally Cool Generation, Or At Least the Generation that Would Be Totally Cool if Only Our Parents Hadn't Divorced. (Where by "Our," I do not of course mean "my," as I belong to that lucky 50% who had parents who stayed together. Which may have contributed to my sense of alienation from this book, I don't know. Though most of the people I know with divorced parents tend to be a little more... um... personally responsible than Thomas comes across with her theories.)
I'd recommend Necessary Sins far more over this, as Sins is actually about a bit more than a therapy session. I mean... I have something of a weakness for this kind of book, so I did kind of snarf it down, but I also have a weakness for processed cheez dip, you know, and I'm not going around recommending cheez dip to y'all. I found a goodreads review that called it "mind-bogglingly solipsistic," and I have to say that's a good description.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/65748.html. |
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| TV thoughts |
[Mar. 10th, 2012|06:40 am] |
This month I've been mostly watching TV instead of reading books. I know, I know. I do feel quite ashamed of myself. (Though I am finally getting back to reading books again!) Usually I'm doing one show at most over any given six-month period, and somehow in the last couple of months I've watched five different shows. Eek. Anyway, because I'm that way, I thought I might write down some of my thoughts at greater length. In rough order of most liked by me to least:
( Downton Abbey, Once Upon a Time, Smash, Revenge, and ST:TNG )
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/65309.html. |
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| Fire (Cashore) |
[Mar. 9th, 2012|10:26 am] |
4/5. So I thought Cashore's first book, Graceling, was pleasant enough for me to pick this one up from the library, but not more than that. This book, I quite liked.
I also had the feeling while reading it that this was the book Cashore actually intended to write when she wrote Graceling, as in many ways it functions as a Graceling clone. Awesome female heroine who can dance circles around the men, check. Said heroine angsts About Her Powers And Using Them For Evil, check. Possessive, emotionally-clueless would-be boyfriend, check. Not-so-clueless-equal-partner romantic lead, check. Cute kid, check. Except that the execution of all the above is far better technically than in Graceling. Cashore has learned a lot since that book.
In particular, Graceling had a very limited set of relationships; several months after reading it, I cannot remember any of them except the major love interest and the would-be love interest (and the kid, a little) and their relationship to the heroine. But Fire is all about the relationships, familial and friendship and romantic all three, and not just the relationships involving Fire herself; and a major focus of the book is how Fire grows as a person through her participation and growth in those relationships. It says something about Fire that many of the most compelling relationships in it are not the romantic ones, including the relationships powering what (to me) was the most intense scene.
Also the plot was more interesting. Honestly, the plot was still a bit of a weak point, not least because this is the second book in a series, so there's the whole "we have to at least loosely tie it to the first book even if it holds up the action" thing, but at least there was a plot besides "big bad: go!"
It also reminded me very much of what I wanted the last book of the Hunger Games trilogy to be. Mild spoilers: Fire spends the first, oh, two-thirds of the book getting crushed down. That is, around the same fraction of the time Katniss is crushed down. They both have Issues resulting from this. And Fire fights back (partially because of that support network referred to above), whereas Katniss sits around moping (her support network mostly being dead at that point, I guess?). Not saying that sitting around moping isn't what someone in that situation would actually do, but it's just not interesting to read about, and I also don't find people without meaningful relationships interesting to read about as a rule. Fire was interesting.
Also, interesting stuff about reproductive choices. If I remember correctly, Katsa didn't want marriage or reproduction; Fire doesn't want (5-25-12 EDIT: this should be DOES WANT) marriage, but has very good reasons pulling her in both directions as regards reproduction. And I really liked that the text engaged with the fact that there are reasons both ways, and one can feel a strong pull in one direction without nullifying the reasons in the other directions.
(Also see ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) lightreads's review (grr link fixed), which I had to go back and hunt for after reading, and which I found quite interesting.)
So. I won't say it was perfect (there were still places here and there where it was a bit unsure of itself, or things didn't flow quite the way I'd have expected from a more experienced author, and although the beginning is light-years better than Graceling's it's still somewhat clunky), and you do have to read Graceling first unless you want to be mildly spoiled for it, but I do recommend it. I am really interested to see what Cashore does next, and I will definitely be picking up anything else she writes.
One more thing: julianyap reminds me that this is to be classified under heroine-hair-color: red.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/65067.html. |
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| NPQiYBM: overheard in our household |
[Feb. 25th, 2012|09:17 pm] |
At the end of National Put Quotes in Your Blog Month, it is traditional for me to post an unattributed list of quotations referenced by our household during the month of February for people to guess. So here you are! I'll add the attributions to this post on Monday. (I think that, for whatever reason, this year's are easier than those of other years', but we'll see.)
1. [redacted]'s domestic disaster was provably not [redacted]'s fault, yes!
2. [Redacted] was a much classier creation, [redacted] thought with a silent sigh of envy. [Redacted] could take the Admiral out to parties, introduce him to women, parade him in public almost anywhere...
3. And he found something sticking out of the snow that made a new track. It was a stick.
4. This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.
5. "I too have stolen a cake."
"You have burned fingers, then. And when you're starving on the waste water between the far isles you'll think of that cake and say, Ah! had I not stolen that cake I might eat it now, alas!—I shall eat my brother's, so he can starve with you—"
"Thus is Equilibrium maintained."
6. -Occasionally it seems to have... oh, how shall one say... How shall one say, Director?
-Too many notes, your majesty?
-Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.
-I don't understand. There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required, neither more nor less.
7. "Are two types of jokes. One sort goes on being funny forever. Other sort is funny once. Second time it's dull... Use it once, you're a wit. Use twice, you're a halfwit."
8. -These [balloons] blow up into funny shapes and all?
-Well no... not unless round is funny.
9. "...but have yeh seen anythin', Ronan. Anythin' unusual."
"Mars is bright tonight," Ronan repeated... "Unusually bright."
"Yeah, but I was meanin' anythin' unusual a bit nearer home."
10. Later... when is later?
All you ever hear is "Later..."
..."Oh, that lawyer's son, the one who mumbles.
Short and boring, yes, he's hardly worth ignoring,
And who cares if he's all dammed--"
I beg your pardon-- "Up inside?"
ETA: Sorry for the delay; answers ( here. )
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/64776.html. |
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| NPQiYBM |
[Feb. 14th, 2012|07:25 am] |
With apologies to Heather for using the same source (but hey, great minds think alike): Happy Valentine's Day!
I never have known love but as a kiss
In the mid-battle, and a difficult truce
Of oil and water, candles and dark night,
Hillside and hollow, the hot-footed sun,
And the cold sliding, slippery-footed moon--
A brief forgiveness between opposites
That have been hatreds for three times the age
Of this long-'stablished ground.
-On Baile's Strand, Yeats
And, on a sillier note: a video. My husband showed this to me on our anniversary last year, because we share his, um, slightly unconventional view of romance, probably because we know a little statistics...
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/64735.html. |
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| NPQiYBM (Amadeus) |
[Feb. 13th, 2012|09:04 pm] |
Salieri: Mozart, it was good of you to come!
Mozart: How could I not?
Salieri: How... Did my work please you?
Mozart: [hesitantly] I never knew that music like that was possible!
Salieri: [uncertainly] You flatter me.
Mozart: [getting into it] No, no! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... "Salieri."
-Amadeus (Shaffer)
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/64446.html. |
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| Smash (/Slings-and-Arrows-NPQiYBM) |
[Feb. 8th, 2012|01:31 pm] |
Cheer up, Hamlet; chin up, Hamlet; buck up, you melancholy Dane!
So your uncle is a cad who murdered Dad and married Mum.
That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become!
So wise up, Hamlet; rise up, Hamlet; perk up and sing a new refrain.
Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui.
Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see.
And by the way, you sulky brat, the answer is to be!
You're driving poor Ophelia insane.
So shut up, you rogue and peasant; grow up, it's most unpleasant;
cheer up, you melancholy Dane!
Richard: Geoffrey, I am worried about the future of the entire festival. Now: what is the point of putting on a play if no one comes to see it?
Geoffrey: Which would you prefer: an empty house with a great play, or a full house with a piece of garbage?
Richard: GARBAGE! GARBAGE! I want GARBAGE!
Darren Nichols: I must say, I've fallen in love with the musical genre. It's the art-form of the common man. If you want to communicate something with the proletariat, cover it in sequins and make it sing. It's noisy, vulgar and utterly meaningless—I love it!
Geoffrey: There will be struggle. There will be sacrifice. There will be tears, there will be the occasional fistfight. And in the end, there will be transformation.
-Slings and Arrows (assorted episodes)
You guys, I know I have talked about nothing else for months... I finally watched the pilot of Smash (it is on youtube and also on NBC's site) and just loved it. It's pretty clearly a not-particularly-deep soap opera, mind you, but a soap opera about Broadway WITH BROADWAY MUSIC; therefore, I loved it. (And I am incredibly bored by Glee.) Because, I guess, shows about serious putting-on-a-show really speak to me.
It isn't nearly as this is clearly really awesome as Slings and Arrows (from which all the above quotes are taken -- I could not pick just one) -- which you should all go watch right now, by the way; it's got the dialogue-and-humor awesomeness of the West Wing coupled with the creating-a-production themes of Smash as well as performances of Shakespeare. Smash has neither S&A's amazing dialogue and humor nor its deep treatment of performance themes (which is what I was really hoping for), and the Marilyn Monroe musical is fun but not particularly amazing (the Hamlet lyrics above are much more impressive than any of the Smash lyrics)... but the show speaks to the same parts of my psyche as S&A (it made me utterly bouncy to see how much all the characters clearly loved the musical world), and I actually liked it more than I liked the pilot of S&A, because the characters are more likeable, even if S&A's pilot impressed me a lot more.
There is some suspension of disbelief required to put Katherine McPhee on anything like the same plane in Broadway acting ability as Megan Hilty (who is gorgeous and wonderful and I just wanted to jump up and down every time she was on screen -- although to be perfectly fair her voice sounds a little hoarser than McPhee's, but it may just be an artifact of a naturally lower voice?). Hilty is perfectly, perfectly cast. Have I mentioned how much I adore her? Christian Borle was also perfectly cast. He gets to do a lot of very nice acting with a character who has his good points and bad points too -- it looks like he really has a much larger part than it looked like in the previews -- and he does not have to sing anything seriously, which is also a good thing. (But, since he's the songwriter, it looks like he will still get to sing on occasion, not seriously. Which is also a Good Thing.) Everyone else is really, really good, but I was really watching it for those two. (Although I never noticed before what a big nose Borle has!)
I loved Hilty's line "It was amazing getting the chance to work with you!" Just the way she says it, and her expression... it is totally clear what she means. Also, in breaking news, I love Hilty.
I WANT MORE HILTY/MCPHEE DUETS please thanks.
I am so pleased that the love interest gets to be a non-white boy!
Also, ahahahaha Spider-man jokes!
Why random house boy is in all the audition scenes, I DO NOT KNOW. That was the one extremely jarring note for me.
So, definitely going to keep watching it. It could get better, and it could also get a lot worse (especially if they start piling on the cliches -- there were definite directions that way in the pilot). We'll see.
(Also... I have to go back now to S&A and watch Richard Smith-Jones! And Anna! And Geoffrey Tennant! And who could forget Darren! It's been too long.)
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/64222.html. |
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| NPQiYBM |
[Feb. 7th, 2012|08:52 pm] |
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow...
-Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
I am ashamed to admit that this came into my head today because, well, my old boyfriend S. once had to read the LeGuin story "Vaster Than Empires, And More Slow," the title of which, not knowing the Marvell poem, he immediately assumed must refer to the post office... Anyway, I went to the post office today, and no guesses as to the relative swiftness of the transaction.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/63824.html. |
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| Habitation of the Blessed (Valente) |
[Feb. 3rd, 2012|09:25 pm] |
There are three things that will beggar the heart and make it crawl--faith, hope, and love--and the cruelest of these is love.
3+/5 (subject to sequel revision). I finished my first Valente! So this is a book that I would never have read except on iPod. I read this in dribbles and drabbles while getting my hair cut, in airports, while getting gas for the car, and so on.
I had sort of a weird reaction to this book. It took me a really loooong time to get into it, for one thing, which is why I had to read it on iPod. I don't know that I take well to Valente's style. I mean, she is clearly a good writer, but I think that writers with distinct styles tend to polarize people into "love" and "don't love," and I'm definitely in the "don't love" camp with respect to Valente. (McKillip, who has a similar lyrical style, is totally in the "love" camp for me, although I certainly know a number of people who put her in the "don't love" pile. I have no idea why I love one and not the other.)
Then, around the third-to-halfway point, I decided I was kind of in love with its strange Pentexoreans and their ways of dealing with immortality.
Then, a little more than halfway through, it decided to turn into a Polemic Against Christianity, and I was all... uhhh, okay, what? What upset me about this development was not the polemic itself, which was annoying but not particularly upsetting (annoying not least because the beginning of the book had me hoping for some at least quasi-deep theological discussion), but the part where it seemed to be putting itself forward as avant-garde and daring for pointing out the flaws in Christianity. Um, no. About seven hundred years too late to be avant-garde (the Divine Comedy did it earlier and better), and almost thirty years too late to be daring (in the 80's Mists of Avalon might have sort-of been daring for pointing out the patriarchial hypocrisies of Christianity, but these days... not so much). Also, it annoyed me that the Pentexoreans are basically sophisticated twenty-first-century voices. Prester John himself is extraordinarily irritating, because his character is basically that of Stupid Ignorant StrawmanFundamentalist!Christian who gets his mind blown. Part of my irritation is that apparently John had read pretty much zero theology, because any early christian church theologian worth his salt could have come up with way better answers than John did when the Pentexorians asked him theology questions. You can imagine that conversations where a twenty-first-century sophistication is asking a really, really stupid and ignorant guy questions are at best demolishing of straw men and at worst John sitting around stammering, "Uh, okay, guess you're right."
Then, a little further, and the book turned (well, somewhat; the Christian-bashing is still around; for example, the above quote is a beautifully done dark take on Paul -- but, um, sort of a set piece) into something else... a rumination on immortality and identity, and that part was really awesome.
Then I got almost to the end, and the Christianity part started to actually get interesting, and then... everything sort of ended in the middle and mushed into a pulp. (Actually, it mushes into a literal fictional pulp, but anyway.) ... I don't know what I think, because this is book 1 of a (three-part?) series, and I have no idea of how much of the stuff that abruptly ended in the middle is going to be taken up in subsequent books, but I suspect not the parts that I thought were really interesting... but maybe so, in which case I'll be pretty excited.
And then I got to the end, and Plot Happened, and Setup for Next Book happened, and, okay, whoa, yeah.
So in the end, I liked it, enough that I'll probably read the next two books. But it was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. And I suspect after reading the second and third books there will be backaction on my opinion of the first, though I do not know what it will be.
I think those who already love Valente will really love this book. I think those who have more than a passing familiarity with Christian theology will be annoyed by this book. I think that those who have no opinion on the first two things, but who like fantastical writing, will like this book very much, probably more than I did. I think (and am living proof) that it is possible to be annoyed by this book and still be impressed by it.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/63730.html. |
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| National Put Quotes in Your Blog Month (and other random things) |
[Feb. 1st, 2012|08:47 pm] |
First come I. My name is J-W-TT.
There’s no knowledge but I know it.
I am Master of this college:
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
-attributed to Henry Charles Beeching
I am pleased to participate in the fourth (whoa, already?) National Put Quotes in Your Blog Month (henceforth NPQiYBM), even though every year I intend to save up quotations for February, and every year I forget. Every post this month will have a quotation in it, though, so there.
In totally random news, just because I am so excited about it, I finally took my violin to get its stripped screw replaced, got it back today, and now I have a violin with working tuner pegs for the first time in my adult life. It is so awesome I cannot even tell you. I've only ever had the one full-sized violin, and the violin shop we used to take it to for tune-ups apparently didn't know the right thing to do, or lubricant to use, or something. I was vaguely aware that no one else seemed to have these kinds of problems, but then I kind of thought I was just awful at violin-tuning until the guy at the shop frowned and said, "Wow, this is really bad."
In other totally random news, ricardienne linked me to the Vorkosiverse Impromptu Poetry Battle! (The epigram above is satirized in that thread, in case you were wondering why it is here.)
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/63387.html. |
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| now we are two |
[Jan. 25th, 2012|10:18 pm] |
E celebrated her second birthday by contracting bronchitis. This turned out to be an ideal time to do so, in the sense that we went to the doctor for her two-year checkup before we actually realized she was sick enough to require more than extra-long naps (we've been exceedingly lucky in that although she's gotten quite a lot of colds, she previously hadn't gotten anything worse than that), and the doctor took a look at her and a listen at her lungs and immediately prescribed an inhaler and antibiotics. (This doctor is usually pretty good about our stated wish not to use more antibiotics than we can help -- for example, she rarely prescribes them for ear infections -- so you can see that she thought it was something to be concerned about.) She's much better today.
But mostly she is awesome.
( Cut for lots and lots of random rambling about small child )
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/63064.html. |
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| Best media of 2011 |
[Jan. 13th, 2012|05:36 am] |
Music: Stabat Mater, Pergolesi, Scarlatti (especially the Alessandrini recording, but also the Biondi recording). Also, a special mention to Legally Blonde, which is really not a great work of art but that really somehow tap-danced its hyper-adorable way straight to my heart, and which still works better than a shot of caffeine when I have to stay awake and get work done, and which, of all things, got me to dip my toes into fanfic. Also another special mention to Spotify, which changed the way I listen to music.
Movie: Inception. Yes, I know everyone watched this last year. I didn't. Yes, I know, everyone else loved it last year. Well, I did too. It made me happy. Yay dream physics!
Book(fiction): I really didn't read anything that bowled me over this year, but I did read a fair number of quite nice things. Necessary Sins (Darling) would probably be my pick as a favorite.
Book(nonfiction): I just sucked at reading nonfic this year, and none of the nonfiction I did read was much good. I'll say The Happiness Project (Rubin), which was at least a fun and quasi-useful read.
Book(reread): King of Paris (Guy Endore).
TV: Well, Revenge was the only TV I watched this year. Though clips of DS9 for the win!
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/62738.html. |
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| Sex at Dawn (Ryan and Jetha) |
[Jan. 8th, 2012|09:25 pm] |
3-/5. If grad school did nothing else for me, it showed me that just because someone shows a lot of evidence for his side doesn't actually mean that he's right. Even within my fairly small field of the hardest of hard sciences, there were controversies between different professors that it was impossible to know how to resolve unless you had carefully followed all the papers. The rest of us had to rely on knowing the general work of the characters in question; if L., for example, was involved, you could be sure he would be on the correct side because he was always scrupulous and rigorous with his physics, and if both G. and L. said something was so, while Y. said the opposite, you were pretty sure where you stood on the matter even if you had no idea what they were actually talking about.
And if you didn't know enough about the field to know that G. was always right, and that Y. was a bit of a crank? You might have taken Y.'s side, because he was awfully persuasive, and because he had done a lot of math to support his opinion, and the part where he made a poor assumption when he did the math was buried pretty deeply in there and fairly hard to tease out for someone with less than a graduate-school-level understanding. And, why, yes, after having followed the papers closely, and knowing exactly where the (multiple!) errors in Y's logic came in, I might still be just a touch bitter that an outside funding agency decided Y. was right and L. was wrong. Though I would like to stress that they did this not through stupidity or incompetence, but simply by not having a way to properly judge.
All this is to say that I don't generally trust science books. You read your string theory book, and then you go read Peter Woit's blog and he points out that the string theorist in question is engaging in a lot of wishful thinking...
But anyway. So, this book. I so wanted to like this book. I love science/social-science that takes on an established paradigm and breaks it down. Awesome stuff, right? And I was totally intrigued by its claim to take down traditional monogamy paradigms. (Full disclosure: there is no one who has been as thoroughly socialized into monogamy as I have! But I can see that it's not necessarily for everyone, either, and in addition, I can, actually, fairly easily imagine a world in which I'd been sexually-socialized differently, thus making me receptive to the book's message.)
The book purports to take down the "standard narrative" of monogamy, which is to explain monogamy as an uneasy compromise between female maximization of having a guy around to take care of kids, and male maximization of spreading his sperm around. Ryan and Jetha (henceforth RJ) say that this is totally bogus, that monogamy is not the human condition; that investigation of related species (bonobos), primitive foraging societies, and various physical considerations make it clear that humans were prehistorically, and are still wired to be, "fiercely egalitarian" and small-group-sharing both sexually and otherwise; and that it was the relatively recent rise of agriculture that brought monogamy with it. And this is why people have affairs so often.
So. This is a highly readable, interesting, and entertaining book. It also gave me a complete headache every time I picked it up, mostly from banging my head against the wall because the authors are needlessly inflammatory, sometimes they don't make sense, and worst of all, they have in general extremely poor logical thinking skills, to the extent that a great many of their arguments are seen to be completely stupid if you just think about it for a little bit. I am not exaggerating, every two-three pages or so I would howl in frustration because they would say something illogical or inconsistent, it was that bad.
And I still came away from it saying, "Well. Three quarters of what they said I can demolish as a logical argument. And yet they've found so much evidence that even a quarter of what they think they have seems pretty convincing." In particular, I thought that there was enough bonobo and foraging-society evidence that they were onto something.
( It's probably already too late to cut for length, but here goes: in which I find a critical review of this book that demolishes pretty much all of RJ's remaining arguments, critique the critical review, tell you about my total distrust and disdain for both RJ and their reviewer, claim to prove that vaccines cause autism using the same techniques Ryan and Jetha do, do my own research using primary sources to myself falsify many of the claims RJ have made to my own satisfaction, claim that I would want my husband to have hot sex with my sister, am bored with penis size, and use a lot of italics. )
Anyway. In summary: I do not dare recommend this book, because of the possibility that you will read it and think that RJ have a very strong case (I myself certainly thought they had a fairly strong case before reading the rebuttal and doing some research on my own, and I'm more cynical than most), when in my opinion they don't at all. At best I would say that there are some interesting ideas in this book that some extremely limited data suggest could be true. (Again, take my opinion for what it's worth as a layperson in this field, though one who does have a fair amount of scientific experience.) However, it does have interesting ideas, and it got me interested in the whole subject, and it did point out to me the lack of rigor in the field as a whole, so it's getting rounded up to a 3-. And there's a chapter on arousal that is a little random but that seems, almost by accident, to say some things that struck me as accurate. Anyway, if you do read it, at least be sure to check out the rebuttal to see some of the problems with it.
...I think I might swear off pop-science books totally. They just make me cranky.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/62242.html. |
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| Fast-Tracked (Rozzlynn) |
[Jan. 6th, 2012|08:16 pm] |
2/5. So the terrible thing is, I actually liked this book. Rozzlynn has the bones of a good, if shallow, story in here, the outline of a YA-dystopian Revenge-type deliciously catty backstabbing sort of story that I quite enjoyed from time to time. (And teen angst OH WOE IS ME! which I didn't enjoy, but whatever.) Unfortunately, it differs from Revenge in the execution, which in the case of Revenge is polished and pretty, and in the case of this book... really isn't. Rozzlynn self-publishes, and this book is a walking advertisement for WHY EDITORS ARE NEEDED FOR SOME PEOPLE. (Note: I do not mean to imply this is necessary for everyone who self-publishes, e.g., see below.)
I mean... I suppose it could be a lot worse, but the grammar just destroys my story immersion. Every time she says something like "with Avery and I," bam, my head goes against the wall (I don't mind nearly as much in speaking, and have been known to do it myself on occasion, but in writing that should have gone through beta it really bugs me), and she has severe, severe comma problems at least once a page. And quite a lot of telling-not-showing when she gets tired of writing conversations and needs to transition to another plot point; this is especially bad in the interminable first few chapters (the book doesn't really pick up until you get into the fast-tracked society).
It was interesting to read this about the same time as Graceling (YA hitting the same target audience) and Timepiece (not the same target audience, but also YA-ish and self-published), because while Graceling and Timepiece are also first novels and it's easy to tell this is the case, at least for Graceling (Graceling is a bit simplistic, has its own structural issues, and a bit unsure of itself from time to time; Timepiece is much more consistent throughout, but also has fairly simple arcs), and all three books have somewhat compelling storylines with spunky heroines, Graceling and Timepiece are just so much better in terms of craft and skill.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/62144.html. |
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| Adultery, murder, violence, sex, conspiracy, politics, awesome women: Hebrew Bible! |
[Jan. 1st, 2012|08:48 pm] |
So, I wrote a yuletide fic! Thank you awesome betas ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) thistleingrey and orichalcum!
(I also wrote a slightly cracky DS9 treat (thank you ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) infinimato!), which was lots of fun, and which I talk a little more about here, and this one has an entry here, but right now I want to talk about the awesomeness of 2 Samuel.)
2 Samuel is really awesome, which I always forget. The Samuel/Kings books in general pretty much are made of awesomeness, what with all the conspiracies and attempted revolutions and successful revolutions and murders and so on (seriously... even if you don't have a religious bone in your body it's worth reading, if only to gawp at the violence and sex... I recommend the ESV translation), but 2 Samuel, in my opinion, is the best, because it focuses in on one dysfunctional and yet awesome family: the House of David.
There's King David himself, and we are not talking about the plucky fresh-faced boy of David-and-Goliath fame, if we were ever (my one Hebrew Bible class, long ago, postulated those stories might have been tacked on later, though I don't know how prevalent that theory is) -- but a grown man who has been fighting gritty campaigns forever, and as a result can be ruthless as all heck when it suits him. Also, his conditioned response to seeing a woman: "Hey, let's sex her up!" Regardless of whether said woman is, you know, maybe married at the time.
And Joab, David's nephew! (I soooo wanted him to show up in my fic, but when both your betas tell you a scene has to go for two unrelated reasons, well.) I totally love Joab, because he so belongs in a G.R.R. Martin book. He's the completely amoral commander of David's army, and the go-to guy when David wants dirty stuff done. Possibly one of the best exchanges ever is between Joab and another random guy, while Joab is trying to beat down David's son Absalom's rebellion against David (David's son Absalom is another great character -- he's always plotting rebellion or sedition of some sort, and also he has hair that falls to his feet, which he's clearly quite proud of, and then he gets it stuck in a tree -- but let's move on):
RANDOM GUY: I saw Absalom hanging in a tree, defenceless.
JOAB: Why didn't you just kill him? I would've given you ten pieces of silver.
RANDOM GUY: Yeah... even if you actually paid me a thousand pieces of silver, instead of just promising them to me, I wouldn't, because when the king found out? You would totally be all 'who is this guy? I had nothing to do with this!'
JOAB [DIRECT QUOTE FROM ESV]: I will not waste time like this with you.
And he kills Absalom himself.
And the women! There's Abigail, who is one of the many Awesome Women in the Bible who basically does whatever she wants and is awesome doing it. Her (then) husband Nabal is an idiot who seems intent on getting all of them killed by totally insulting David (who, perhaps I mentioned, is rather ruthless, so he does not take well to this). Fortunately, Nabal's servants know that she's the go-to person, not her husband, and she quickly shows off her mad diplomacy skillz, pointing out to David that he really, really doesn't want to kill them, because everyone knows what a good guy David is! David's all "huh, yeah, you're right, I am a good guy!" and refrains from mass murder. Then Abigail is all "Husband? Did you realize I saved you and everyone who works for you from being totally killed?" Nabal promptly has a stroke and dies, and Abigail marries David, and yes there is a story there, quite possibly one where Abigail isn't perhaps so squeaky clean as she is depicted in exegesis, but that's a story for another time. Though regardless of whether you think she's squeaky clean or not, you have to hand it to her: the woman is smart, and tough.
There's Michal, who is also totally awesome in the little chinks she gets in between being defined by the men in her life. Michal is the daughter of Saul, who is the king of Israel before David and who, understandably, hates and despises David (who has been anointed to be king after him). They eventually get married anyway, and when her dad comes after David, Michal helps him escape out a window. Go Michal! Then Saul gives Michal to another guy entirely. When Saul dies, David arranges to get her back, but her then-husband follows her all the way to David, weeping. So clearly Michal is awesome! Then, later, Michal points out to David that he's making a fool of himself dancing in the street, and David is all defensive and self-righteous and "Michal... had no child to the day of her death," which of course is code for "No sex for you anymore!" I imagine Michal didn't like Abigail much at first, but obviously Abigail and Michal would make the greatest team ever, and I totally now want to write fic about them fighting crime together.
And Bathsheba! I love Bathsheba, but it is impossible for me to read 2 Samuel/1 Kings and not think she is the biggest clueless ditz ever. (Perhaps that's why I love her; I'm a clueless ditz too! Also, to be fair, she must have been quite young when the whole David thing went down, and there's a big power disparity to boot, and I can't honestly say I would have done things differently than she did, having grown up clueless and quite sheltered myself.) I mean, every time she shows up she does something extremely stupid. That whole going to David when she finds out she is pregnant by him and not her husband -- what did she think was going to happen, really? And then there's the time David's son #4, Adonijah, decides to declare himself king even though Bathsheba's son Solomon is supposed to be king and David is still alive anyway, and Nathan the prophet (totally my favorite character ever, but I'm running out of space here) has to be all "uh, don't you think you should maybe ask your husband to do something about this, Bathsheba?" Or the time when Adonijah asks Bathsheba to ask Solomon for David's last wife, and Solomon is all "uh, mom? Do you not realize he's making another bid for the throne by doing that?" (To compound the ditziness, David's son Absalom tried the exact same thing ten years back, after Bathsheba was already David's wife, so Bathsheba really should have known better.)
This rather begs the question: how did Bathsheba's son Solomon get to be known for his wisdom with such a ditz for a mother?
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/61920.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! |
[Dec. 31st, 2011|12:38 pm] |
And, of course, I had a Christmas besides Yuletide. It was a nice but involved trip this year. It first involved seeing D's family for a week, including the three nephews and rambunctious small dog, all of which E loved, or at least tolerated because they had really cool toys (a relief; she burst into tears every time she saw Youngest Nephew last time we visited; either our efforts to socialize her since then have paid off or she is a year older, probably the latter). E learned from her cousins the idea that things under the Christmas tree might be Presents for Her that Require Unwrapping, thus leading to her trying to unwrap her grandmother's presents. I got conscripted into all the music at D's family's church, including my first bell-playing stint ever, and salved my conscience a bit for blowing off all the Christmas music I'd be doing had we not gone out of town.
The trip then involved catching the tail end of my dad's family's first family reunion since I was a teenager, which was certainly quite lavish (having been thought up and mostly organized by the most epicurean member of my dad's family). For tax purposes, all of us had to give presentations, which turned out to be much more interesting than I had anticipated (basically, my relatives are really cool and do lots of cool things -- speaking of which, my cousin is looking for an iPad programmer, if any of you know anyone who is interested in working for a small dubious startup -- dubious in the sense that I have no idea whether his business plan is viable, not dubious in the sense that I think it is not viable at this point). E is the only toddler in my extended family, as my cousins almost without exception fall in the ten-years-older or ten-years-younger categories, and was made much of and would have been relentlessly spoiled had she been old enough to understand the fuss that was being made over her. Unfortunately, my sister came down with the worst stomach flu she's ever had and had to miss it :(
The traveling was without event until we came back home, at which point we found all the flights, as far as I can tell, all up and down the West Coast had been canceled, except for the really big cities; fortunately, we were able to rent a car and drive home from the nearest big city. E. was a very good traveler, all things considered, and bore with fortitude the twelve-hour journey, though it did help that it was punctuated by shuttle buses, airport shuttle trains, and her absolute favorite, the escalator.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/61494.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Merry Christmas and Happy Yuletide! |
[Dec. 30th, 2011|09:46 pm] |
So, I did Yuletide. And it was awesome and it kicked my butt, and the only way I managed to survive was because I had approximately one-third of the workload at work and music-wise that I was expecting this year, and all of that extra time went into Yuletide. I... had an extremely good time, and I adored writing both my assignment (which was the best assignment EVER) and the random slightly-cracky treat that I started writing while waiting for assignments to go out, and I bow down to the complete awesomeness of my betas (both in how much they improved things and in how much time they were willing to put into it, in a devilishly busy month), and I adored seeing what everyone else had done, and I am loving getting comments. I am, however, rather amused that the humorous treat I knocked together in half the time of my serious assignment, and which caused me rather less than half the wordsmithing and storysmithing angst of my assignment, has gotten much more praise (not surprised, though, as the treat is in a much more popular fandom. Now, I did spend quite a lot of time thinking about that one as well, and I'm happy with how it turned out, but I really did spend a lot more time structuring and polishing the assignment, and I'm rather more proud of that one).
I have Things to Say about what I wrote on -- I had forgotten what an awesome book it was -- and I shall on reveal, but on the principle of in for a penny, in for a pound, I have posted some recs here.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/61210.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Graceling (Cashore) |
[Dec. 24th, 2011|12:20 pm] |
3+/5. I liked it! I was expecting not to (I suppose mostly because of having read so much praise for it -- I am a contrary beast), but I got drawn in. It's pretty clearly a first book. The opening scene is full of action, but following it is a lot of somewhat-boring exposition where we are told a lot of things about How and Why the Characters Are Who They Are, though a stronger book would have mucked around with the structure a little and shown instead of told. (To be fair, this isn't nearly as bad as in the book I'm going to be reviewing next, and the reason I'm a little hypersensitive to this right now has to do with doing yuletide -- which yes, I ended up doing, and had a really great time, but more on that later -- and realizing that I have precisely this problem of wanting to tell instead of show; it's a common problem, I imagine. But this is also why I critique!) I found it quite slow in the beginning, partially because of the exposition problem and partially because Katsa has a lot of angst in that section, but by the midpoint couldn't put it down.
I like Katsa a lot for being sort of non-introspective, brawn-over-brain, and somewhat dense, but in a way that's sympathetic and believable. It's a nice change from the bookish super-smart heroines you get a lot (not that I'm complaining -- I love the bookish super-smart heroine -- but it's nice to see something different).
Mild spoilers: Katsa enters into a consensual sexual relationship outside of marriage. That was interesting to me because I paused a bit to see how I felt about that, having been thoroughly socialized into marriage myself, and having had a history in the last couple of years of "OMG CAN'T GIVE THAT BOOK TO MY DAUGHTER WITHOUT OUR HAVING A TALK" (I mean, E. is not 2 yet, but since she's been born I've had a couple of these experiences when reading something, and it always kind of bothers me when my head does this, because I read all kinds of things while growing up without any parental control (mostly, probably, because they had no idea), and it was good for me). (sarahtales also pointed out gently that people tend not to think this about boys, and I am guilty as heck, and of course it's a bit asymmetric because I don't have a son, but I am trying to be a little more even-handed in thinking things are good or bad for boys as well, especially since D does have nephews.)
And... my response was something along the lines of, sure, well, we could talk about this: how awesome it is. No pressure on either side, a power-balanced relationship, a lot of friendship and support, a lot of careful communication about their relationship. Sooooo much better than no-premarital-sex with icky 100-year-old stalker guy, I can't even tell you.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/60948.html. |
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| No more Revenge recaps |
[Dec. 15th, 2011|09:05 am] |
Not sure anyone is actually reading these, but anyway, I've been informed that there are going to be five more episodes, not three, to get back to the pilot time, and I... just don't have the patience. Plus which I don't tend to watch TV unless liuzhia is actively poking me, and I think she lost interest even before I did. Although she is now poking me to watch Once Upon a Time (watched the pilot, was bored, am told it gets better), so who knows. And I'm still holding out for Smash (preview here) in Feburary, because Megan Hilty! And Christian Borle! And Broadway songs! And belted duets! How could it go wrong?
...many ways, honestly, but I'll reserve judgment until then.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/60802.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Crossed (Condie) |
[Dec. 3rd, 2011|10:01 pm] |
3-/5. This is the second book in a Hunger Games Lite series. Teen romantic angst like whoa, eeeeevil dystopia, love triangle, but without the trenchant reality-show commentary that made Hunger Games worth reading. Whee. It was better than the first book in the series, Matched, in that we didn't get any horrible villain speeches that made no sense, and even some tentative arguments pointing out the dystopia has some points about it, but really, only recommended if you are into teen romantic angst. (It might just have been that I read this book right after reading Timepiece, which is refreshingly free of teen romantic angst, but Crossed drove me crazy with the constant angsting. Or maybe I'm just getting old and curmudgeonly.)
Predictions for the third book, which I'm required to read when it comes out: Ky (primary love interest) will die heroically; Cassia (heroine) will tearfully get together with Xander (secondary love interest and all-around Nice Guy); we may get a handwaving explanation of the nebulous Enemy and the War that is a topic in this book; we will never have it explained why exactly the dystopia does all the stupid things it does.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/59719.html. |
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| Timepiece (Albano) |
[Dec. 1st, 2011|06:44 am] |
3+/5. I was pleased by this book: a historical YA-ish (I don't think it's marketed as YA, but it can be thought of that way) alternate-history-time-travel-steampunk-SFF that actually seems to take some pains to get the history right. YAY. (Full disclosure: I know very little about the 1800's except through reading Austen and Dickens, so my thoughts on this should not be given the same weight as someone who does -- but my gosh, it is way better than the vast majority of YA historical-ish fic out there, which even I can tell has problems (*cough*Jennifer Donnelly, twice.) In fact, if there's any flaw in the history, it's an eagerness to show off how realistic the history is, so there's a slight bit of as-you-know-Bob that's apparent if you know a lot of about the period, but isn't if you don't. (That is to say, I noticed it in the Austenesque descriptions of titles and clothing, and not at all in the war descriptions, and I suspect it's because I have rather more literary experience with the former than the latter.) (A review on amazon notes that the French is a bit jolting for a fluent speaker, but it's clearly better than Revolution, which even this only-high-school speaker objected to.)
The book satisfied my prime requirement for a fiction book, which is that I got drawn into the story so much that I really wanted to know what happened next, and didn't get thrown out by any glaring flaws or weird prose lapses (which again, puts it way ahead of most, if not all, of the YA historical fic I've read recently). I also really loved the descriptions of Wellington; it also satisfied my prime requirement for historical fiction, which is that I want to go learn more about that period of history when I am done. Also, for a story which involves two young-adult leads, it was refreshingly free of teen romantic angst.
Caveats: The (human) characters are not particularly three-dimensional; the character that is being developed with the most care, as I've said, is the historical background, and the human characters are really in some sense only there to set off the history. Elizabeth is your stereotypical spunky tomboy too-feminist-for-her-time heroine, and she goes from spunky and naive to spunky and idealistic, which is not all that much of a character arc. William gets a little more of a character, though not a whole lot of an arc. There is a Mysterious Arc regarding Maxwell which appears to me to be totally guessable (though I guess I could be wrong). Along the same lines, there isn't much here in the way of Deep Philosophical Thoughtfulness. This may be a benefit, as it's very easy to put in Deep Philosophical Thoughts that turn out to be totally stupid (which is the case for quite a lot of YA out there), and I'd much rather not have them at all than have stupid ones, but it does put an upper limit on what the book is able to achieve.
It ends on a cliffhanger, which with its combination of triumph and despair is really just perfect, but anyway, warning to those of you who don't like cliffhanger endings. Sequel out in 2012. Hopefully the sequel will address where the timepieces came from, which is not talked about at all in this book (although one can certainly guess based on the information available).
Timepiece is still available (as of today) for 99 cents (ebook only as far as I know, but for most formats of interest -- Kindle, epub (from Smashwords), B&N), and is really a bargain, and recommended, for that price. It's not trying to do everything, and doesn't; it's just trying to be an entertaining and historically-grounded adventure, and it succeeds well in that. I shall definitely be buying the sequel.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/59398.html. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 19th, 2011|01:46 pm] |
My grandfather, my dad's father, died this morning. Those of you who know a little about my family will know that I'm not particularly upset or moved at all to first order.
To second order, I've been thinking a lot about my own dad, who is a great human being, and an awesome dad, despite having a horrible role model. I know he loved his father even if none of the rest of us did. I don't know what he feels about it. He's not a particularly introspective guy, so I am not at all convinced that he knows what he feels about it. I talked to him this morning and he seems okay, though. And his father was 93 and was in the hospital for septic pneumonia, so it wasn't exactly a surprise.
My Thanksgiving plans -- I was going to write, have been canceled, but in fact will probably involve a good deal of the same set of people (probably minus husbands and kids), but in a different state and planned around a funeral, if I can get tickets for anything like a reasonable price (as of today, looks like I can as long as I don't expect to fly on Wednesday).
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/58671.html |
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| Either I am crazy, or soon will be. |
[Nov. 16th, 2011|09:20 pm] |
You guys.
I kind of wanted to do Yuletide, which I've never done before, except I seem to have gotten bit by the fic bug recently but hard. I told myself I was waaaay too busy. I am way too busy. In the next month I have to write two huge reports and give a final briefing and this week I have to make photobooks and I have tons of Christmas stuff and I don't even know how crazy my music life will be but probably crazy times two for reasons I'll talk about in a separate post if I ever have time again. And my parents are coming in December. And so I was virtuous and ignored nominations, though to be fair I was helped by having a deadline at work at the same time nominations closed.
Aaaaand... now that they're out, there are three fandoms I desperately want to write. Well, there's one I desperately wanted to write, one that I desperately wanted to write once I read a person's Yuletide letter, and one that I would dearly love to write if I can't write either of those. All three of those will also kick my butt (one of the reasons, I suspect, I want to write them).
I think I might sign up. AGH. And regret it around the 20th of December. (and, hopefully, not regret it come Christmas).
But, you know, I should have known this was going to happen, and now I'm really annoyed I ignored nominations, so I can't ask for a Turandot non-fail fic :)
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/58416.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| In the Bleak Midwinter (Spencer-Fleming) |
[Nov. 10th, 2011|05:52 am] |
4/5. Mystery. (Male) cop and (female) priest, and together, they fight crime! Okay, that's a very simplified summary, but this is what D got out of my slightly hysterical summary of it late at night after finishing it.
I... really liked this book. Part of it was how it pushed all my buttons; the story of an abandoned baby that gets hung up in Department-of-Human-Services land, and the drama involving the would-be adoptive parents (possibly singled out by the birth mom, but was she coerced?) who also become suspects once some murders get added into the mix -- well, I have two friends who recently adopted out of foster care in what was (in both cases) a long-drawn-out custody battle with the clearly-unfit bio-relatives, and not to mention my friend L. who made the decision not to adopt out of foster care (possibly because of our mutual friends' experiences) and who is still hung up in the whole adoption system (though happily she is now pregnant), and so I was going to get drawn into the story anyway.
But the central emotional core of this book is of two people that are thrown together, and get to know each other, and spark off each other's minds and souls, and learn more about themselves from each other. And this is a story that gets me every time. It's the way relationships (romantic, friendship, whatever) work, at their best. It's what I like to read about, whether it be through friendship, family, romance, whatever. (For extra bonus points, friendship-turning-to-romance-to-family!)
And... maybe they're falling for each other. And he's married. And, ow. And I am pondering whether I can last the week before I can get back to the library to get the rest of the series, or whether I am going to have to buy them so I can read them Right Now. (this is all lightreads fault!!)
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| Stabat Mater (Pergolesi, Scarlatti): Alessandrini/Concerto Italiano, Mingardo, Bertagnolli |
[Nov. 9th, 2011|08:25 pm] |
5/5. Small string orchestra, but at least it doesn't flaunt it, and besides that is the most intelligent recording I've listened to of these pieces; I just get the impression that everyone involved has put a lot of thought into the musicality, and as a result it is always interesting, never boring, and honestly often breathtaking. The Scarlatti is also awesome, if not more awesome; I don't know why this one isn't recorded more. (I love Scarlatti, though, so not exactly impartial.) Although I still have this massive soft spot for the Biondi recording of the Pergolesi, this one is consistently stronger and the one I would overall recommend if you wanted just one recording of the Pergolesi, or of the Scarlatti, for that matter.
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| In which I talk about The Fountainhead and fanfic (no, relax, not about Fountainhead fic) |
[Nov. 8th, 2011|08:38 pm] |
3+/5 (reread) Okay, so, you guys, there's a lot of fanfic out there, and some of it is quite good. And some of it is terribly, terribly indulgent. (These two categories are not mutually exclusive, though they tend to be somewhat.) Now, especially when I'm busy, sometimes I get in a rut of reading extremely indulgent fanfic. And I was doing this recently, and in the middle of it started reading The Fountainhead, which I do every five years or so, because I like it (the non-(stultifyingly-boring-and-a-little-silly)-philosophy parts) and because it's an easy fast read (when you skip the philosophy), and because of another reason that I articulate differently every time. Last time I said the reason was "it's a great red-headed trashy romance."
This time, I will say about that same reason... The Fountainhead totally struck me, on this reading, as an incredibly indulgent fanfic of itself. Seriously, it totally reads to me as if there were some ur-text somewhere with a perfectly nice reasonable Peter Keating, Howard Roark, Dominique Francon, and Gail Wynand, having vaguely realistic characters and interacting like grownups and stuff... but who somehow got twisted in an extraordinarily indulgently fanficcy sort of way into AlphaMaleGaryStu!Roark, BetaMalePuppyDog!Keating (I swear to you, if Ayn Rand lived right now and knew about slash, instead of living decades ago and being homophobic, Keating would be so slashed with Roark), MakesNoSenseButIsTragicallyBeautifulAndLivesForHerMan!Dominique (who actually poses for a goddess sculpture halfway through the book, yes, thank you for that subtle symbolism Ayn!), and TragicallyFlawedAndEvenMoreTotallyRoarkSlashyThanKeating!Wynand.
With, of course, that awesome Roark-Dominique-Wynand love-friendship triangle With Oodles and Oodles of Angst, mostly on Dominique's side (and notice how Dominique is the only one who is called by her first name? Yeah, I did too), and a Manly Man Friendship that is just so girly. (Well. Roark mostly grunts or Is Concisely Wise, as befits an Alpha Male Superman, but Wynand is all about talking about his feeeelings! In a manly way, of course!) Ayn Rand also wrote all the deleted scenes another book might have left out (part of the reason the book is freaking 1500 pages -- the other reason is all the Objectivist junk, which I always skip, it being not useful for the indulgent reading I'm looking for). It turns out pretty much no one has written any actual fanfic for this book (oh, the research I do for these posts!), and my theory is that it's because Rand already wrote it.
Anyway. I find this book hilarious, as you can tell. As super-indulgent fanfic goes, it is well-written and quite entertaining. As original fic, of course, I'd recommend a whole load of other stuff rather than this, but sometimes what you want is the super-indulgent fic, and this hits all those buttons.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/57442.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Revenge: Intrigue (1-6) |
[Nov. 5th, 2011|09:28 pm] |
Yeah, so, I have for the first time in ten years been watching a TV show around the same time (within a week of) the actual air date! I blame liuzhia, the Kid (both of whom are watching it with me), and the ABC iPad app.
Also, since I have way too much to do, I've been writing down my response to the episodes. Here's last week's, which I didn't like at all. This week's to follow.
( Spoilers, obviously, for Intrigue, otherwise known as Ep in Which People Almost Without Exception Act Really Stupidly and Kind of Annoy Me. )
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| T.H. White: A Biography (Sylvia Townsend Warner) |
[Nov. 4th, 2011|09:23 pm] |
4/5. I thought this was a very good book, and I had an extremely hard time with it. I read the first several chapters, set it down, and it languished around the house for eight weeks. The library, you see, will let one renew books for nine weeks as long as there's no one else who wants it, and on week nine I finally sat down and dug into it.
The thing is, T. H. White is exactly the sort of person you would expect from reading The Once and Future King. He's kind of every character in that book rolled up in one: you can see that he must have been ferociously intelligent, quirky, compassionate, and unhappy, because that's what the characters in TOFK are like. And that really comes through in this biography. And at the same time, I almost didn't want to know the details of how he was that way. I'm glad I read it, now, but there were definitely times going through when I wasn't sure if I would be glad I'd read it, even though I was sure all the way going through that it was a very good book. If that makes any sense.
Anyway, go read skygiants's review, which convinced me to read this, because she says it all a lot better than I do, and she talks about White's grand passionate love affair with his dog. (No, really, the one great love in his life was his dog Brownie. Go read it.)
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/56613.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Stabat Mater (Pergolesi): Biondi/Galante; David Daniels, Dorothea Roschmann |
[Oct. 9th, 2011|08:29 pm] |
5/5. The thing I love about Spotify is that if I want to listen to five different recordings of something, it will let me do that. So recently I overdosed on Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, which last week I had only vaguely heard of but now I have practically memorized. Um. Lots of good recording of this piece. But this one, the first one I listened to, imprinted me and is by far my favorite.
I have a giant love this big for countertenors , and I already very much liked David Daniels, who is a consummate musician -- Daniels was why I checked this recording out to begin with -- the "O Clemens," where Daniels so perfectly matches the timbre and line of the violins that sometimes you aren't sure which is which, would have sold me on it to begin with -- but he and Roschmann together with the extremely-small (two violins, viola, basso continuo) instrumentalist group (the way it's done here, it's much less like the instrumentalists are accompanying the singers, and more like all the musicians are performing a chamber music work, instrumentalists-singers all partners, all moving together like one entity though in different lines, and I cannot tell you how gorgeous I think that is -- early imprinting from instrumentalist background and college choir, yes) -- anyway, flailing long sentence aside, Daniels and Roschmann and the instrumentalists all taken together make me want to either cry or call up all the people I know who would be willing to sing duets with me. Or maybe both. The solos are okay (it's only Daniels' "O Clemens" that makes me shiver and drop whatever I'm holding, the rest are just nice), but it's the duets that just knock the breath out of me.
It's a highly idiosyncratic recording, mind you, and so although I love it like whoa, I'm not even sure I recommend it unless you share my extreme bias towards small-group music. It's the only recording I know of this piece that is so very reminiscent of chamber music, and I can imagine it coming across as too theatrical, although personally I love the theatrical element as well. Also, I have no desire to listen to Roschmann in any other setting, as her voice is a bit on the warbly side, but it goes very well with Daniels' voice and with the timbre of the instruments.
For a less idiosyncractic introduction to this piece, I also highly recommend two other recordings. The Rousset/Les Talens Lyriques with Barbara Bonney and Andreas Scholl sounds like it's using a larger string orchestra, and is a quite beautiful conventional interpretation (and, in a vacuum, I would much prefer the pureness of Bonney's and Scholl's voices to Roschmann and Daniels). Even more, I recommend the Il Seminario musicale recording with Veronique Gens and Gerard Lesne, which sometimes I actually like better than the Roschmann/Daniels, depending on what mood I'm in. It uses (I think) a small string orchestra. Gens and Lesne are totally gorgeous together; like Bonney and Scholl, their voices are quite a bit purer than Roschmann and Daniels (although I love Scholl's voice, I think I prefer the blend of Gens/Lesne); and the interpretation is much more calm and contemplative.
However, I really, really like the scaled-down instrumental group in the Roschmann/Daniels; using an orchestra, even a small one as in Gens/Lesne, gives me a distinct vibe of "instrumentalists accompanying singers" rather than the "singers and instrumentalists as partners" vibe that I love so about the Roschmann/Daniels.
(I have also heard good things about the Michael Chance/Gillian Fisher recording (and I do adore Michael Chance, who sings one of my favorite tracks in the entire world, the "Agnus Dei" on the Gardiner recording of the Bach B Minor, which have I mentioned is quite possibly my favorite piece ever?) and the Alessandrini recording, neither of which Spotify carries. Both of these, I think, are also string-orchestral.)
ETA 11/9/11: Spotify got the Alessandrini recording, which is indeed quite wonderful and has replaced Biondi as my go-to favorite (although I still have a sweet spot for the Biondi). Review here.
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| Mistborn (Sanderson) |
[Oct. 4th, 2011|08:00 pm] |
(3+/5) Um. So. I thought I was done with epic fantasy. But, you know, there's the Wheel of Time, which I am physically incapable of reading more than a quarter of a book of without dropping it in sheer and utter boredom, but which I have vaguely fond memories of, in that sort of "oh, yeah, I used to read that" sort of way. So I've been keeping up with WOT news, even though I don't think I'll ever even try to read a book again. (I even got bored with the tor.com recaps! Although Adam Robert's reviews are wildly funny to me, and you should check them out even if you hate WOT. Actually, you should check them out in particular if you hate WOT.) It's sort of like... that ex who it turns out was really boring and whom you would be happy to never see again, but you don't mind looking him up on Facebook every five years or so to see how he's doing. Like that.
Anyway. So along those lines, I was listening to this Sanderson podcast on how he got to be writing the last WOT books, because I find that interesting even if WOT itself is dead boring, and Sanderson happened to mention the McGuffin of Mistborn, and I thought, hm, that sounds kind of interesting. And around the same time ferretbrain.com reviewed it approvingly. So I picked it up.
And... I liked it! It's, you know, epic fantasy. It's like Robert Jordan, only more streamlined (by which I mean three fat books instead of twelve or however many it is fat books) and with fewer really really annoying cat-fighting female characters (although the first one at least has only two female characters out of n-where-n-is-a-large-number, and they do cat-fight). But sometimes one is just in the mood for a competent epic fantasy that is a fast read but not horribly annoying. And this one fits.
`
I do sort of wish I hadn't known the McGuffin before reading it, but then again I wouldn't have read it otherwise, so there you go.
That being said, I'm currently bouncing hard off the second one -- it's not recognizably worse than the first, just that currently I apparently have a tolerance for epic fantasy of no more than one book, and also maybe that I'm out of my epic-fantasy mood from last month.
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| In which I listen to soundtracks of Disney musicals, but why? |
[Sep. 24th, 2011|08:15 pm] |
Mary Poppins (Musical soundtrack: 2/5): Way to stomp on an icon of my childhood, there. OW. Okay, so, I adore the original movie. I am aware that much of this love has to do with having watched it over and over again when I was, oh, four, but also the movie is another of those high-energy absurdity-filled things that succeeds through not ever taking itself seriously. (Though again, the characters are often taken seriously.) And the musical does Take Itself Seriously, which I hate. (One of the low points for me is when Mrs. Banks has to sing a Moving Song about How Being Mrs. Banks Is So Hard Because She Is, Like, An Oppressed Woman, where she is apparently trying to channel Ragtime and it Does Not Work. Now, I adore Ragtime, too, but Ragtime turns high over-the-top angst into an art form by Always Taking Everything Seriously, and never hinting, even for a moment, that the super-angst could possibly be ridiculous -- you can't have it both ways.) AND it took out all the actually good songs from the movie ("Sister Suffragette," "The Life I Lead," "Stay Awake," "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank") (K and I had this hilarious conversation recently where it turned out neither of us had the faintest idea what a suffragette was when we watched this movie as children) and replaces them with stultifyingly obvious super-sugary-Disneyfied songs. (Occasionally it keeps a song in, and does its best to ruin it by disneyfying the accompanying instrumental, but you can still hear how much better the original songs were, even so.)
The Little Mermaid (Musical soundtrack: 3+/5): In contrast, Little Mermaid started its movie life as a super-sugary-Disneyfied confection, so there wasn't much more they could do to it. Some of the new songs are simply filler, but some aren't bad. I'm always a fan of songs that have more than two singers, so of course I enjoyed the quartet "If Only" even if it is a trifle indulgent. On the other hand, Ursula's voice character is far more compelling in the movie version.
Beauty and the Beast (Musical soundtrack: 3+/5): The musical soundtrack, happily, has Terrence Mann, whom I have been in love with since, uh, sixth grade (that being when I first heard the cast recording of Les Miz). (Except, um, a little creepy because the fact I remember him from my childhood means he must have been in his 40's when doing this, and then Belle is supposed to be high school-age... erk. Although, actually, I guess the way the fairy tale goes, the Beast is probably supposed to be really old, huh? Hm. I may just have ruined a perfectly nice fairy tale for myself. And to be sure, Mann is a good enough actor that he comes across in this character as having a mental age of 15, so there's that.) Sadly, it does not have Angela Lansbury. That's about all I have to say about that.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/55961.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Random shallow responses I've had recently |
[Sep. 23rd, 2011|07:39 am] |
-Why did no-one tell me that the voice of Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame is Tom Hulce, who played Mozart in Amadeus? Did everyone else know this but me? It's... a weird mental image in my mind, now.
-The Murder at the Vicarage (Agatha Christie) is, I think, not one of the better Christies, but the one thing that made it hilarious to me was that one of the characters is a mysterious "Mrs. Lestrange." I spent the entire book, whenever she showed up, inventing ways to reconcile the character with Bellatrix Lestrange. (Alas, she did not, in fact, turn out to be a sociopath Death Eater. But that would have been awesome!)
-Tangled is a much more entertaining movie if you watch it thinking of a sort-of alternate Eugenides (from the Megan Whalen Turner books) as the main male character. (I know i'm not the first to think this. Still.)
-I was rereading Tam Lin, which I adore (I blame it for leading me to believe everyone in college spouted random Greek and Shakespeare -- turns out, not so much for physics majors), for various nefarious reasons. I think when I first read it, in high school, I might have found the college sex hijinks vaguely titillating. This time around, I was all "OMG ARE YOU PEOPLE SERIOUSLY NOT USING CONDOMS AND USING HERBAL TEA BIRTH CONTROL WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?" Okay, yes, it's set in the 1970's when people didn't worry about HIV, but still! I was rather amused by my change in reaction over the last twenty years (as well as slightly appalled that it wasn't my reaction as a teenager :) )
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/55777.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Necessary Sins (Darling) |
[Sep. 9th, 2011|09:15 pm] |
4/5. I must confess that I read this book for the wrong reasons. It's a memoir of a woman, a journalist, who had an affair with another (married) journalist, who eventually divorced his wife and married her. Some years later, he died of cancer. That's the book I thought I was reading.
The book I actually read had that basic plot, but it was about love and building a family (and breaking one, too), and most of all, life. And it had that quality of truth, of both telling the truth and discerning the truth, that makes me fall in love with a book.
Here is one example, something that just hit me as yes. Yes, this is the way things are:
The next day he slept late, and I left the house early, determined to find fresh sorrel leaves. I had recently bought a cookbook, my first, and in it I had come across a beautiful photograph of cream of sorrel soup, green and elegant in a gilt-edged cream-colored bowl. I had never even heard of sorrel. I can't explain it now -- I couldn't explain it then -- but I had this idea that if I could just make the perfect bowl of cream of sorrel soup, then I would be the kind of person who could fit into this new life, I would be competent and know the things it was important for adults to know.
This book is somewhat excruciating to read. I mean, refer to the first paragraph to see why. But it is extremely lovely.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/55396.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Okay, fine. I have finally moved over to DW. |
[Sep. 7th, 2011|08:16 pm] |
I've had this account for a while (thanks lightgetsin!) but I kept delaying moving over. Well, finally all the little irritations got too much for me. So here I am (username cahn, if you're reading this on LJ). I'll keep cross-posting to LJ, though.
ETA: I am going to try to add people who I know are posting on DW and whom I haven't added already, just in case you are all "who is this strange person"?
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/55260.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Turandot |
[Sep. 6th, 2011|07:58 pm] |
Okay, so, this opera is really kind of horrifyingly full of feminist fail. Not only does it fail Bechdel like whoa, but. Okay. Where do I even start? The frigid princess, Turandot, has declared that any prince wanting to marry her must answer three riddles, and if he doesn't answer correctly, he loses his head. This isn't so bad as a storyline (although kind of... unhealthy for all parties), but meanwhile, prince Calaf finds his long-lost father and a servant girl, Liu, who has stuck by him because Calaf once smiled at her. I am not making this up. Calaf is so in love with Turandot (because she is beautiful, which of course is the only important thing about a woman, and not (for example) whether she will cut your head off!... I think we can safely assume that Liu is not beautiful) that he will brave the riddle test.
It gets worse. I will pass over Liu and her completely predictable fate FOR LOVE (that being the only actual aspect of her personality), at no time during which does Calaf give her any sign of... well, anything. (Think Marius and Eponine, only way worse.) Way to have any self-respect at all, girl. And even worse than that, after Calaf answers the riddles correctly (the riddles are incredibly stupid, but that's another subject entirely.)... oh, I can't do it, here is the Wikipedia synopsis. "[Calaf] then takes her in his arms and kisses her in spite of her resistance... after he kisses her, she feels herself turning towards passion. " OH GIACOMO PUCCINI NO. (To be perfectly fair, the Wikipedia page points out that the overwhelming problematic-ness of this may have been the reason that Puccini did not actually finish the opera, so it's a little mean to criticize him for something that he wasn't actually putting out to the public Perhaps I should rag on Alfano, who finished the opera.)
Um. I kind of love it. Puccini is some kind of freaking genius, apparently, to get me to like this even through the failiness. (To be fair, a great deal of this has to do with it being in Italian so that I can block out what they're saying and just concentrate on the emotions. And some of this may be low expectations. Lucia di Lammermoor, for instance, has almost this much genderfail PLUS all the characters are seriously as dumb as rocks.) Also, the three ministers are awesome. Also great use of choruses. Also, Nessun Dorma! There is a reason this is THE aria standard. Also, Liu gets some seriously awesome music as long as you don't know what she's singing.
Decca is the gold standard and the one I'd recommend as a first recording (4/5). Pavarotti is a quite golden-voiced Calaf, Joan Sutherland is a beautiful Turandot, and Montserrat Caballe, to my ears, totally steals the show as Liu. (That silvery voice with those amazing pianissimos... wow.) The EMI recording (3+/5) has Jose Carreras as Calaf, whom I really like -- he's slightly subtler than Pavarotti -- and Caballe as Turandot, which... I don't think she's as suited for as she is for Liu, and not as good as Sutherland either, but she is perfectly adequate. And honestly the real reason I love this recording is Paul Plishka as Calaf's father -- he is simply amazing, even though it's a bit part.
But what I really want is for someone to write a fic, or for that matter, a book, that retells this in a less completely awful way. Perhaps Liu and Turandot could be friends! Perhaps Calaf could, I don't know, have fallen in love with her internet blog postings. I sort of feel like almost anything would be an improvement, here.
(Here I have to mention that Diana Wynne Jones, who wrote everything, wrote a story, "Little Dot," in the Firebirds anthology, that is a riff on Turandot, with cats. So there's that.) |
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