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seldearIt's September already! I start my RTW trip in just over three weeks. I think that calls for an EEEEK!
I put a USB drive through the wash - it was in my jeans. Seems to have survived without trouble, though!
Yesterday, I discovered that I can write 2000 words in a day, cook, do the washing and washing up, surf a little internet, (mostly) resist Facebook, and fall asleep in the bath without drowning.
The falling asleep was unexpected.
--
Okay, this is kinda weird because I haven't written much about reading lately, but I've been on a reading kick as far as books that aren't Nora Roberts or Georgette Heyer romances go. (Georgette Heyer is really quite good - her characters are distinct, I haven't caught her repeating too many phrases, and the situations and interactions are unique to the characters. This woman does not write cut-out romances - and she's written over fifty period novels - mostly Georgian and Regency.)
Anyway, after years of eyeing it off in the bookshops, I finally went and borrowed CJ Cherryh's Foreigner - Bren Cameron and his life as a paidhi or cultural-interpreter for the alien atevi.
The Stargate PTB really need to read this series. Because the aliens are really alien, the humans are very human, and the two are not instantly compatible. Plus, there's no glossing over language, culture, cultural values, cultural value differences, or the fact that the human race is not awesome, amazing, and totally kickass but has a tendency to be sneaky, political, and divisive in their dealings with 'anyone who isn't us'.
I'm still only halfway through, it's possible that it may disappoint, and her writing's rather dry. But it's still an intense, impressive read.
Last night, I finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy.
I'm...divided.
On one hand, Northern Lights/The Golden Compass is awesome. It held me all the way through until the end, when I closed the books and went, "Wow. Ouch." From the whole concept of Dust to Lord Azriel's (Azrael, anyone?) mission, to Lyra's childish self-centeredness and the way she just yammers on at times, to Mrs. Coulter's cunning... The child whose daemon had been severed... *shudders*
It was good writing, good characterisation, powerful. It reminds me a little of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series in tone: the protagonists are children/adolescent, but the concepts are older teens, if not adults. Heck, I can still read her stuff at past thirty and then reread it to work out what the hell is going on.
On the other, The Subtle Knife was a bit of a letdown. Still interesting, but not as strong as the first. Understandable, it suffers the 'second story' curse: rather like Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back - it's on the way to somewhere else. Still, Will and his essential pre-adolescent boyness was well done and I read it pretty much in one sitting.
And then The Amber Spyglass. Which laboured and wallowed and petered out. Maybe it's the whole "killing God" concept, maybe it's just that too many things were happening and keeping up with them all was more than I could be bothered doing given that they didn't grip me and I found the concepts rather...old-fashioned. I don't have a lot of patience for the whole "original sin = sex" angle, or "organised religion = wholesale evil" or "faith = checking your brain in at the door".
Does anyone remember Patricia Kennealy? She authored the Keltiad series in the late 80s, early 90s, starting with the Tales of Aeron, going through the Tales of Arthur, and finishing off with Blackmantle. (I never read her last attempt The Deer's Cry.)
I was completely into the Keltiad at first: The Silver Branch, The Copper Crown, and The Throne Of Scone (Aeron's Tales) started me writing my first grand-scale fantasy characters.
The Tales of Arthur were still good, although I much preferred the first two (The Hawk's Grey Feather and The Oak Above Kings) to the third (The Hedge Of Mist). She seemed to be losing something in the third book - possibly because the book was more about the hunt for the grail than the characters themselves, and it seemed to mostly be filling time and preaching a little.
And then Blackmantle was the story of...another Queen of Kelts. And it was pretty damned preachy. I read it, but it didn't have the zing the others had.
I didn't bother doing more than reading the first few pages of The Deer's Cry. It started off set on Earth (the Kelts were pretty much the Tuatha de Danaan of Irish myth and ledged) with the onset of Christianity in Patrick's Ireland. And after she pretty much stamped, "Wicca/Celtic Paganism = good, Christanity = evil," all over the first few pages, I decided I couldn't be bothered reading through what I figured would amount to a rant against all things Christian in the western world (as though Western society had developed entirely secular and Christianity just happened to co-opt everything sometime in the fifteenth or sixteenth century).
Anyway, that was the feeling I got from The Amber Spyglass, as though Pullman had an axe to grind, and by god and whatever deities and forces exist, he was going to grind it!
For the record, I don't have much patience for Stephen Lawhead, either, who apparently comes at it from the other direction: Christanity = good, Celtic paganism = evil.
Writers can't help our innate beliefs coming through in our writing. We write from a referential point that we know and understand - and our own comes most naturally to us. I think that the danger exists when an author's own worldview becomes totalitarian in attitude towards others in their writing. So "all Christians, churches, and biblical authorities are evil, corrupt, and irrelevant", or "all pagans are feelgood and misguided and foolish" - or even something as simple as "all Slytherins are self-serving" which is something that JKR intimated when not a single Slytherin student remained behind to battle against Voldemort.
As in real life, no group of people are entirely one thing or the other. All Christians are not hypocrites. All Elizabeth-fans are not rabid idiots. All Americans are not arrogant. All black people aren't criminals. Isn't such generalisation stereotyping at its bigoted worst?
Even in fiction, I think there should be exceptions. At the least there should be allowed the possibility of exceptions - the hope of "redemption", however 'redemption' may be defined.
I'm a big believer in the possibility of 'redemption'.
--
I put a USB drive through the wash - it was in my jeans. Seems to have survived without trouble, though!
Yesterday, I discovered that I can write 2000 words in a day, cook, do the washing and washing up, surf a little internet, (mostly) resist Facebook, and fall asleep in the bath without drowning.
The falling asleep was unexpected.
--
Okay, this is kinda weird because I haven't written much about reading lately, but I've been on a reading kick as far as books that aren't Nora Roberts or Georgette Heyer romances go. (Georgette Heyer is really quite good - her characters are distinct, I haven't caught her repeating too many phrases, and the situations and interactions are unique to the characters. This woman does not write cut-out romances - and she's written over fifty period novels - mostly Georgian and Regency.)
Anyway, after years of eyeing it off in the bookshops, I finally went and borrowed CJ Cherryh's Foreigner - Bren Cameron and his life as a paidhi or cultural-interpreter for the alien atevi.
The Stargate PTB really need to read this series. Because the aliens are really alien, the humans are very human, and the two are not instantly compatible. Plus, there's no glossing over language, culture, cultural values, cultural value differences, or the fact that the human race is not awesome, amazing, and totally kickass but has a tendency to be sneaky, political, and divisive in their dealings with 'anyone who isn't us'.
I'm still only halfway through, it's possible that it may disappoint, and her writing's rather dry. But it's still an intense, impressive read.
Last night, I finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy.
I'm...divided.
On one hand, Northern Lights/The Golden Compass is awesome. It held me all the way through until the end, when I closed the books and went, "Wow. Ouch." From the whole concept of Dust to Lord Azriel's (Azrael, anyone?) mission, to Lyra's childish self-centeredness and the way she just yammers on at times, to Mrs. Coulter's cunning... The child whose daemon had been severed... *shudders*
It was good writing, good characterisation, powerful. It reminds me a little of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series in tone: the protagonists are children/adolescent, but the concepts are older teens, if not adults. Heck, I can still read her stuff at past thirty and then reread it to work out what the hell is going on.
On the other, The Subtle Knife was a bit of a letdown. Still interesting, but not as strong as the first. Understandable, it suffers the 'second story' curse: rather like Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back - it's on the way to somewhere else. Still, Will and his essential pre-adolescent boyness was well done and I read it pretty much in one sitting.
And then The Amber Spyglass. Which laboured and wallowed and petered out. Maybe it's the whole "killing God" concept, maybe it's just that too many things were happening and keeping up with them all was more than I could be bothered doing given that they didn't grip me and I found the concepts rather...old-fashioned. I don't have a lot of patience for the whole "original sin = sex" angle, or "organised religion = wholesale evil" or "faith = checking your brain in at the door".
Does anyone remember Patricia Kennealy? She authored the Keltiad series in the late 80s, early 90s, starting with the Tales of Aeron, going through the Tales of Arthur, and finishing off with Blackmantle. (I never read her last attempt The Deer's Cry.)
I was completely into the Keltiad at first: The Silver Branch, The Copper Crown, and The Throne Of Scone (Aeron's Tales) started me writing my first grand-scale fantasy characters.
The Tales of Arthur were still good, although I much preferred the first two (The Hawk's Grey Feather and The Oak Above Kings) to the third (The Hedge Of Mist). She seemed to be losing something in the third book - possibly because the book was more about the hunt for the grail than the characters themselves, and it seemed to mostly be filling time and preaching a little.
And then Blackmantle was the story of...another Queen of Kelts. And it was pretty damned preachy. I read it, but it didn't have the zing the others had.
I didn't bother doing more than reading the first few pages of The Deer's Cry. It started off set on Earth (the Kelts were pretty much the Tuatha de Danaan of Irish myth and ledged) with the onset of Christianity in Patrick's Ireland. And after she pretty much stamped, "Wicca/Celtic Paganism = good, Christanity = evil," all over the first few pages, I decided I couldn't be bothered reading through what I figured would amount to a rant against all things Christian in the western world (as though Western society had developed entirely secular and Christianity just happened to co-opt everything sometime in the fifteenth or sixteenth century).
Anyway, that was the feeling I got from The Amber Spyglass, as though Pullman had an axe to grind, and by god and whatever deities and forces exist, he was going to grind it!
For the record, I don't have much patience for Stephen Lawhead, either, who apparently comes at it from the other direction: Christanity = good, Celtic paganism = evil.
Writers can't help our innate beliefs coming through in our writing. We write from a referential point that we know and understand - and our own comes most naturally to us. I think that the danger exists when an author's own worldview becomes totalitarian in attitude towards others in their writing. So "all Christians, churches, and biblical authorities are evil, corrupt, and irrelevant", or "all pagans are feelgood and misguided and foolish" - or even something as simple as "all Slytherins are self-serving" which is something that JKR intimated when not a single Slytherin student remained behind to battle against Voldemort.
As in real life, no group of people are entirely one thing or the other. All Christians are not hypocrites. All Elizabeth-fans are not rabid idiots. All Americans are not arrogant. All black people aren't criminals. Isn't such generalisation stereotyping at its bigoted worst?
Even in fiction, I think there should be exceptions. At the least there should be allowed the possibility of exceptions - the hope of "redemption", however 'redemption' may be defined.
I'm a big believer in the possibility of 'redemption'.
--
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 03:09 am (UTC)Glad you didn't drown. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 07:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 03:32 am (UTC)Those are some interesting points you make about your reading, though - I'll have to check out some of those. But I thought the same thing about the Slytherins in DH!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 07:11 am (UTC)But a lot of people seem to be switching to facebook, I've noticed.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 07:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 03:48 am (UTC)I've nearly done that a half a dozen times. It's kinda scary how innocently relaxing a warm bath is!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 07:12 am (UTC)Never had it happen to me before, no matter how relaxing the bath!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 07:15 am (UTC)