Liza Lee all on my knee

[sovay]

Today's book-type discovery: a new translation of a novel I hadn't even known Jules Verne wrote. The Green Ray (Le Rayon vert), 1883. It appears to be non-genre, a romance, and to involve some of the same geography as Powell and Pressburger's "I Know Where I'm Going!" (1945) This should be interesting.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How weird. I was just thinking about Jules Verne tonight, and, well... I almost never think about Jules Verne. But I was thinking about Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Huh. Well. Enjoy!

[sovay]

How weird. I was just thinking about Jules Verne tonight, and, well... I almost never think about Jules Verne. But I was thinking about Journey to the Center of the Earth.

What were you thinking about it?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking about motifs of Above and Below, and how this gets developed in science fiction in stories (or movies) with giant skyscraper buildings, sometimes so tall that the people in them have no sense of their bottoms or tops--but I was thinking those are just a variant of the /netherworld--this world--heavenly world/ progression. Instead of three states with a boundary, it's like you get a spectrum. ... i'm going to try to write this up coherently for a blog post for Apex.

... Anyway, by train of thought I was thinking of stories with an underworld, and that got me thinking of Journey to the Center of the Earth

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'd never heard of that one either, although admittedly I'm no great follower of Verne, beyond the standard childhood classic readings.

Luath publish some interesting books. I hope you enjoy this one.

[sovay]

I'd never heard of that one either, although admittedly I'm no great follower of Verne, beyond the standard childhood classic readings.

He was ridiculously prolific; I almost never remember the number of novels for which he's responsible. I haven't read most of them, either.

Luath publish some interesting books. I hope you enjoy this one.

Thanks. Who else do they publish that you like?

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

He was ridiculously prolific...

So I'm told. I suppose he's probably somewhere up there with Dumas, maybe.

Thanks. Who else do they publish that you like?

You're welcome. My favourite book from them is Matthew Fitt's But n Ben A-Go-Go (2000). It's a cyberpunk novel in Lallan Scots, set in 2090 after a global warming-induced catastrophe has forced virtually all of Scotland's population onto floating cities. The Drylands, which used to be called the Highlands, are the only Scottish land left above water, and are largely forbidden to the ordinary folk, being either reserved for vacation homes belonging to the super-wealthy or inhabited by bands of American "rebel tourists."*

I'd like a copy of Luath's learning Scots book (can't recall the name of it the now), but it's apparently out of print.

*The few of them we meet speak in a slightly anglicised Scots larded with Yiddish words and American slang. I'm not sure if this is intended as a sign that the rebel tourists have been there so long they've become partially assimilated to Scots culture despite living as guerrillas hiding in the bush or if it's meant as an equivalent of the slightly scottified English used to represent the speech of Scots-speaking characters in some books written in English.

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

Hadn't known there were new translations going on. I'll have a gander. I liked a lot of his mystery and thriller stuff, like Michael Strogoff, The Courier of the Czar.

Martin Paz is the only romance of his that I remember reading.

[sovay]

Hadn't known there were new translations going on.

I think only of his Scottish books in this instance, but I am glad that someone's doing new translations of Verne; they're badly needed.

I liked a lot of his mystery and thriller stuff, like Michael Strogoff, The Courier of the Czar.

So noted. Cool.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Perk me right up! Please let us know what you think of the Verne. I loved I Know Where I'm Going! and Skye and the Hebrides are places I've long longed for. I spent the night on Skye during a far-too-brief December sojourn in Scotland in 2003 and was very moved, had a deeply trance-forming walk the next morning that I later wrote of in an essay on ancestral memory for Black Clock 4. Have you been there? Are there other works (of art or of explication) about that region of the world that you are particularly fond of? I've not yet properly searched out such works, but will mention the presence of a lovely, as yet unread book on my shelves called Seasons on Harris: A Year in Scotland's Outer Hebrides (HarperCollins, 2006), written and illustrated (quite beautifully) by David Yeadon, which I strongly suspect I will love when at last I turn to it.

Please forgive my delay in answering your question about Inception; the work on Little, Big has been particularly intense in recent weeks, and the heat has been a keen thief of sleep.

[sovay]

Have you been there?

Never. Ireland, yes; Scotland, no. I would like to someday.

Are there other works (of art or of explication) about that region of the world that you are particularly fond of?

I will think about that question. A lot of folktales, I think; folksongs; Michael Powell's memoir of making The Edge of the World (1937), which he originally called 200,000 Feet on Foula.

Please forgive my delay in answering your question about Inception; the work on Little, Big has been particularly intense in recent weeks, and the heat has been a keen thief of sleep.

No apologies necessary! I hope the weather turns enough for you to sleep soon.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Now that is an interesting thing.

I woke up this morning with the title "The Stockholm Knife Fight" in my head and the notion that it features fan death, which is something, AFAIK, uniquely Korean.

[sovay]

I woke up this morning with the title "The Stockholm Knife Fight" in my head and the notion that it features fan death, which is something, AFAIK, uniquely Korean.

Please write this.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

As soon as I figure out how.