heliopausa

This year has flashed past, and I've read hardly anything in the way of serious whole-book reading, and now I'm turning to in an attempt to better that poor record.  The book in hand (ie on screen) is The Prime Minister spurred thereto byblueinkedfrost 's comments on some preceding Trollope novels, most recently The Eustace Diamonds and Phineas Redux.  I've enjoyed her thoughts so much!  And the interesting scraps of side-knowledge she finds, as for example that Trollope's publishers jibbed at the title of Phineas Redux, thinking that the novel-buying public wouldn't understand it - which shot to ribbons my notion of how much Latin middle-class Victorians would know.  (I thought lots, but evidently not.)
One of my plans for this year was to read all the Palliser novels right through in order - a plan which blew away like leaves before the wind, but which now I can at least part-meet, with this one book.)  Trollope - he barely makes it into the Big Victorian Novelists list (Dickens! Thackeray! Eliot! and oh, okay, maybe Trollope if you insist).  Maybe because he's too comfortable a read?  Or maybe I just haven't read the tougher Trollopes - though the end of Sir Roger Scatcherd is pretty grim. And Sir Louis, too.  :(

My reading has of late just been posts here and on LJ - and thank you all very much for such interesting posts! - and in newspapers, which I check every morning to see if things have blown up yet.  (That's probably a joke.  Or might as well pass for one, anyway.)  But excitingly, I found the other day this item of news, announcing that an examination of cicada wings has revealed that the wings' physical structure is an effective destroyer of bacteria, that the "wings represents the first example of a new class of biomaterials that can kill bacteria on contact based solely on its physical surface structure" - i.e. possibly all sorts of things, but in amongst others, a counter to antibiotic-resistant golden staph, which I think would be brilliant.
(I was never the alert, scientific Australian child they mention, who took different species of cicadas to school, though; I was the regrettable kind who found the wings and pretended they were fairies' wings.)

So that's reading.  I've been listening to things as well, though.  Lots of Lord of the Rings, which has alerted me to:
( Meanderings about LOTR )
And I've also been listening  to Paradise Lost.  I was hoping that a long Miltonic poem would be just the thing to lull me to sleep, but the Youtube version I found has dramatic growly demonic voices, punctuated as appropriate by bursts of high wordless heavenly song, not at all the mildly interesting drone that was needed for my purpose.  Even so, I did manage to fall asleep, or asleep enough to think I was hearing bits of "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan..."; I thought I heard "sinuous rills" and "fertile ground" and more, but it was just a semi-dream.  "Fertile ground" is there, actually, but nothing else - though there is mention of: "the destined walls/ Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can", which I was pleased to find.

This gadget sounds really useful!  I have a coconut scraper made like a small stool, with the scratching part sticking out one side.  This is fun (in a mild way) but the sharp teeth sticking out at shin level aren't the best plan for kitchen furniture.  A bench-mounted, relocatable, had-whirled scraper sounds just the ticket!

I've been reading quite a bit, here and there -

• reading the book Nation by Terry Pratchett, and thinking (so far, three chapters in) that it's very good, but erratic and a bit patchy.
• have read the book Olive, by Mrs Craik, which interesting as a record of thinking on various matters (women's art being marginalised/suppressed, physical "deformity" cutting a woman out of the marriage market, race, religion) - but is not particularly worth much as a novel.
• reading The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, which sketches out much fascinating material, so far, but isn't really catching fire (bad metaphor, in the circumstances).

And beginning to brace myself for March, which is shaping as a pretty full-on month.

This was also a test-post on cross-posting to LJ; it seems to have worked fine.

Recently I saw on tielan's journal a meme, which involved asking for a letter, and, being given it, thinking of five fiction characters for that letter, and offering comments and ideas about each one.  I liked the idea, so I asked her for a letter - she gave me... F: 

Fanny Price (Mansfield Park):  I love how her strengths shine in adversity - the Portsmouth scenes are just brilliant, showing her coping wonderfully with a shamingly (and deeply disappointingly) rowdy, quarrelsome, slovenly family.  And I like her steadiness when she's the more-or-less downtrodden nobody, too, and her clarity of vision.  Oh, and I really like the genuine affection between her and her brother.  I guess constancy and a kind of gallantry could be the words that come to mind.  But in prosperity she loses some of her virtues, I think - she is never guilty of any charity to her cousin-sisters that I can see - and she and Edmund end up, after all, replicating the pettily smug life once led by the Norrises  - safely ensconced in a family-held living, close to the big house - and profiting from plural benefices as well, despite the earlier high-minded talk about how only an on-the-spot clergyman can hope to do his duty adequately.

Friedrich Bhaer (Little Women series): Awfully worthy, of course, and I take the author's word for it about their long and happy marriage, but as a matter of fact, I can't really come at him, for Jo.  I try hard to explain it as the lure of a great mind - I could see that all right, easily!  Jo is just the sort of person whose mind could be set ablaze by great new ideas, brilliant intellectual debate, new worlds opening... except he doesn't ever actually show it.  (He gets argued to a standstill in the one philosophical debate we see him undertake.)   I wish the author had written him more compellingly intellectual, actually.  I wish she'd written him as revolutionary, as political refugee.  Ah well - he is what he is - lumbering, inelegant, beery, good-hearted, Jo's perpetual moral leader and guide (bleugh - I would like her to straighten him out, for once!)  .

Falstaff (Shakespeare): The most terrifically multi-sided supporting character in the whole of Shakespeare.  We see him roistering, cunning, cowardly, despicable, pitiable, using, used, rejected, despised, resilient - he's Blackadder and Baldrick both - and like them, suddenly inside-outs the comedy to end in grim death.  Liking him, not liking him - doesn't apply.  He blasts past like a windstorm.

Fantine (Les Miserables): I hate how much she loses and loses and loses, to the extent that it starts to seem wilful.  She seems to go out of her way to have the most horrible time she can.  Yes, devoted mother, but (sorry about this) stupid.  I mean - when her looks are her one great asset, to sell her teeth?!  So not bright, Fantine!  The first betrayal is pretty intolerable, though - I mean that rich men's stunt at the restaurant.  But come on, Fantine!  Take a bit of control for a change!

Miss Flite (Bleak House): She's a most unsettling character.  Her sudden, stabbing insights, and fluttering ways make her seem one of her own birds - her name's not accidental, I guess - and of course she's as caged as they are, fluttering against the bars, and will be freed, like them, when Judgement is delivered (ha!).  A caged bird, or a captive blind prophetess, maybe - a Sibyl, who spells out dark truths in riddles, or Cassandra, dismissed as mad by those around her who cannot hear what she believes she is saying plainly.  All of which makes her a tragic figure as well as an unsettling one.  (But then I find the whole of Bleak House unsettling.)

If anyone would like to play, I'll gladly give them a letter!

(I'm abashed to see, on reviewing what I've written, that I'm not wholeheartedly admiring about any of them.  Oops.)

I've been work-travelling!  which involved another hotel, another swimming pool, and the chance to swim at six in the morning, as well as in the afternoon, and then again between the last session and catching the bus back home.  Bliss!  Because summer's ebbing, but hasn't gone yet.

So what can I post about, before the month finishes, and another two months begin?  Well, in the comments on a post by asakiyume, the book Harding's Luck was mentioned, so here's a bit of a ramble about it, and its fellow-travelling book, The House of Arden. 

( Read more, if the inclination strikes you. :) )

Something I read: I finished the book The Just City  - I've already tipped my main reactions to the book, but in sum, I do feel positively about it - I found myself putting off finishing it because I was enjoying the ride -  but not stunningly so.  I liked the idea of it more than the execution, I guess.  Minor point:  ( behind a cut, in case spoilery. )

Something I began to read: I saw on oursin 's blog a mention of The Last Man, a story by Mary Shelley set in 2073 (there's so much around that I've never heard of!) and dashed off to find it, because fascinating thought, the view of 2073, from1826.  ( Read more... )

Something I won't get to see:  I like the sound of this exhibition in Cambridge about illuminated manuscripts. 

Something I did actually see: I saw another episode in the eighteenth season of <i>Doctor Who</i>!  I'm seeing them in order, very slowly, as life permits.  This was the one about Meglos, ( Read more... )

On Sunday, there were signs of great weariness from my laptop - it's been just about two years since I was told it could go at any minute.  ( Not exciting, really... ) So - a happy ending.  :)

Who does the internet think I am? Why have I been bombarded for weeks with an ad for bunk beds? and one for a military-grade torch? (Should it be banned? the ad asks.) and today, $99 sports shoes. I think the internet thinks I'm running a kids adventure camp, with exciting night activities, which I'm so not!

I don't have any great news stories to link to, but I enjoyed this metafilter discussion about who rules canon, or whose canon rules, beginning with Harry Potter, but taking off from there to discuss more widely.

In other non-news, it's Year of the Pulse! This weekend's celebratory pulse-focused meal at my place: Chickpea patties, served with yoghurt and the mango chutney I made a little while ago, and lettuce etc. Huge success. :)

More about W&P:
It's getting better and better! (Not to say it's flawless, though). ( Read more... )

I'm a little anxious about the coming election at home, especially about how the changes to the Senate voting will play out. (More than a little, actually.) But not to end on a morose note, here's a campaign ad (30-second youtube, not haranguing) put out by the classical music arm of our national broadcaster.

I'm envious of those Australians who will be at home this week to see the first episodes of the new show Cleverman. It does look like it could be a bit tough, i.e. with depictions of violence - I usually steer away from such. (Here's the youtube trailer - it's a bit over two minutes long.)
Still, I'd like to see it; it'll be the first big Aboriginal-led futureish dystopian fantasy action show (and heavy on the social commentary) on television. Though it's not true, as is asserted in this Guardian article, that this'll be the first Aboriginal superhero; I remember the AIDS-inspired Condoman - don't be shame, be game! - even if no-one else does.
If anyone sees it, I'd love to hear what you think.

Two cheerful pieces of environmental news - from the giant karri forests of Pemberton, WA, and
from the tiny wastewater treatment plant in Jamestown, SA.

One pleasant indicator of social change, perhaps: a clue in the Friday crossword this week was She classifies Chinese religion, not film.
(The answer was taxonomist; the X was part of a larger pan-crossword clue.)
True, as a clue it's not especially exciting, but what I thought was pleasant was to see "she" used to mean "ordinary human", and not meaning something different from the default male.

War & Peace is back - I'm pushing determinedly for the end now, since the friend I was reading it with most unfairly gallopped ahead while I was away doing other things. I've just finished about the battle of Borodino, ( Read more... )

So... War and Peace! Volume Three opens with a stunning and sobering meditation on War, where does it come from?.
He's just spinning out in public thoughts that have been implicit all along, or at least since Prince-andrei-looks-into-the-sky in Volume One, but now he's really hitting stride with them and they are - well, arresting, to say the least! (This doesn't mean I let him off the hook for the totally dismissive way he writes women.) It's the Big Thoughts - in the midst of which he sketches out, just lightly in passing, the whole Great Man school of history, then skrunches it up and tosses it away as hopelessly naive.

and having done that he launches straight into several recreations of Great Man historical happenings, beginning with the scene when the Tsar learned that Napoleon had breached Russia's borders (I don't count that as a spoiler) but throwing in as well the thinking of one minor, fictional, prince, which acts as a sidenote on the aforesaid meditation, i.e. showing at ground level one tiny fragment of the process he'd just zoomed over at a great height. This was, as far as I know at this point, a totally unimportant fragment - minuscule, microscopic - but depressingly real, and crushingly illustrating the opening meditation.

Two questions for the collective wisdom out there:
- Is Tolstoy the first person to actually put his finger on the Great Man school of thought in history?
- Is Tolstoy the first person to point out explicitly that all it would have taken*, in those pre-drone days, for wars to stop was for every single soldier to refuse to fight?

I think he was, in both cases, but what do I know?

*(all it would have taken :( "he that will not when he could-a, will find he cannot when he would-a", as I read in a children's book long ago - probably written by a Tolstoy fan, now I come to think of it.)


(Tiny side-note: Hello, there marmota_b! I note your country's new name. :) are you pleased or doubtful?)

Half-way through War and Peace, and finding it pretty fascinating - not just in itself (oh, but the flaws!) but as a major and influential nineteenth-century artefact.  ( Reaction to W&P, so far ) 

The SF classic which I was reading very late indeed was The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin,1974. I was rivetted partly by the boldness of the concept, partly by the thinking, partly by the truly engaging characters/relationships, but also very much kept enthralled just marvelling at her artistry - how on earth did she manage to keep the reader (this reader!) interested, with such a thin, dry thread of story spun around such vast ideas?
However she did it, it worked.  I was interested, or more than interested - things got so razor's-edge at one point that I had to stop reading, because I could see so clearly that disaster was about to break, and I couldn't take the tension of it all.   (I started again, after a break. :)  )   Definitely recommended, with the proviso that it's on the dryish side - more politics than pizazz.

and I've bought a heap of books, and have been reading most variously, but time in the work-day presses, so I'll post the rest of this reading update tomorrow.  :)

I'm a bit stunned, right this minute. I was going to post today about the books I've read this month:

Peter Dickinson: King and Joker
( Read more... )

Celia Blay: Margaret Bisset: Maiden of Bradley 1158-1242
( Read more... )

Nevil Shute: Pied Piper 
( Read more... )

and the one I've just this past hour finished reading
Christopher Duggan: The Force of Destiny: a history of Italy since 1796
( more; warning for violent death. )