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A Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe
Things at the end of my week.
1.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaudior sent me this to cheer up with: hundreds of unit war diaries from World War I are now available to read online.
2.fleurdelis28 sent me a porcupine eating a pumpkin. I had no idea they sounded so much like Muppets in real life.
3. On the subway to and from my dentist's appointment this afternoon, I read E.M. Forster's Pharos and Pharillon: A Novelist's Sketchbook of Alexandria Through the Ages (1923). I have mixed feelings about the success of his characteristic irony when applied outside of Edwardian England; he writes so lightly and wryly of Philo and the Ptolemies, the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Arianism, the cotton trade and the Canopic Way, that it is easy to come away from both halves of the book with the sense that Forster is enthralled by the composite myth of Alexandria, rather less so with the cultures that actually went into it. (I freely admit he also alienated me at the conclusions of each half, Pharos with the statement that "The Copts still believe, with Timothy the Cat, in the single Nature of Christ; the double Nature, upheld by Timothy Whitebonnet, is still maintained by the rest of Christendom and by the reader," Pharillon with the apparently sincere "Alas! The modern city calls for no enthusiastic comment." I'd gathered quite clearly by that point that I was not Forster's assumed reader, but that was a particularly blatant reminder, and I feel there may be a place reserved in whichever hell is thematically appropriate for travel writers who exalt the past and lament the present, because people live in the present, too.) He loves Cavafy unreservedly and without self-consciousness, which I take as a redeeming feature. When he quotes Cavafy's poems, he gives full credit to the translator. Perhaps he should just have written a monograph.
4. The Guardian has been turning up some nice poetry lately. I was particularly struck by Kit Wright's "Lament for Stinie Morrison" and Pascale Petit's "My Father's Wardrobe."
5. I have now seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). Gaudior came over on Wednesday night and we watched it in between fettuccine alfredo and Boston brown bread pudding. (Baked this time in an actual oven! It took half an hour instead of fifty minutes! I love our oven!) I cannot promise to write any sort of post on it, but will happily discuss in comments if anyone's interested. Ditto Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword (2014), which delighted me by being a completely functional novel that just happens to be the second in a trilogy.
Tonight appears to be Autolycus' night for leaping onto things he should not. So far, his most notable transgressions include the hutch in the dining room and the topmost shelf of my contributor's copies. Both of those are a solid no. The amount of clawing and kicking he does when removed indicates to me that he simply does not agree.
Hestia, on the other hand, is curled peacefully beneath the lamp on my desk and looks very relaxed and happy.
I am petting her a lot.
1.
gaudior sent me this to cheer up with: hundreds of unit war diaries from World War I are now available to read online.2.
fleurdelis28 sent me a porcupine eating a pumpkin. I had no idea they sounded so much like Muppets in real life.3. On the subway to and from my dentist's appointment this afternoon, I read E.M. Forster's Pharos and Pharillon: A Novelist's Sketchbook of Alexandria Through the Ages (1923). I have mixed feelings about the success of his characteristic irony when applied outside of Edwardian England; he writes so lightly and wryly of Philo and the Ptolemies, the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Arianism, the cotton trade and the Canopic Way, that it is easy to come away from both halves of the book with the sense that Forster is enthralled by the composite myth of Alexandria, rather less so with the cultures that actually went into it. (I freely admit he also alienated me at the conclusions of each half, Pharos with the statement that "The Copts still believe, with Timothy the Cat, in the single Nature of Christ; the double Nature, upheld by Timothy Whitebonnet, is still maintained by the rest of Christendom and by the reader," Pharillon with the apparently sincere "Alas! The modern city calls for no enthusiastic comment." I'd gathered quite clearly by that point that I was not Forster's assumed reader, but that was a particularly blatant reminder, and I feel there may be a place reserved in whichever hell is thematically appropriate for travel writers who exalt the past and lament the present, because people live in the present, too.) He loves Cavafy unreservedly and without self-consciousness, which I take as a redeeming feature. When he quotes Cavafy's poems, he gives full credit to the translator. Perhaps he should just have written a monograph.
4. The Guardian has been turning up some nice poetry lately. I was particularly struck by Kit Wright's "Lament for Stinie Morrison" and Pascale Petit's "My Father's Wardrobe."
5. I have now seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). Gaudior came over on Wednesday night and we watched it in between fettuccine alfredo and Boston brown bread pudding. (Baked this time in an actual oven! It took half an hour instead of fifty minutes! I love our oven!) I cannot promise to write any sort of post on it, but will happily discuss in comments if anyone's interested. Ditto Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword (2014), which delighted me by being a completely functional novel that just happens to be the second in a trilogy.
Tonight appears to be Autolycus' night for leaping onto things he should not. So far, his most notable transgressions include the hutch in the dining room and the topmost shelf of my contributor's copies. Both of those are a solid no. The amount of clawing and kicking he does when removed indicates to me that he simply does not agree.
Hestia, on the other hand, is curled peacefully beneath the lamp on my desk and looks very relaxed and happy.
I am petting her a lot.
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Nine
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Very likely. May I take it you'll be there?
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And I love Teddy Bear. It's so funny how everyone hears him talking in their own language.
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I like that it's a different genre from its predecessor—Ancillary Justice is space opera, Ancillary Sword is a multicultural mystery taking place partly on a space station and partly on a planet, which there isn't a single-shot term for. Leckie seems to have fine-tuned her examination of privilege for Sword and it shows in the structure: the way it starts on the planetary level and steadily microscopes down to a conversation with a single family belonging to an ethnic group hailing from a particular region of an annexed planet, then telescopes out to the medium distance of a ship again, always with the macroscope of the Radch beyond. It's looking at identity, too, in ways not already explored in Justice. And it's a novel! It has the shape of a novel! It's not just a chunk of plot hacked out of the middle between the start of the trilogy and its finish! That doesn't happen as often as it should!
Plus I always enjoy books where the protagonist is my favorite character, because it's so rare. I like Seivarden a lot. But I really like Breq.
And I love Teddy Bear. It's so funny how everyone hears him talking in their own language.
Honestly, the thing he most reminded me of was the voice I heard the benshi Ichiro Kataoka do for Chaplin's Little Tramp in 2012. The porcupine doesn't sound like English to me, but he sounds like an intent and eloquent little character talking to himself. And I had no idea porcupines made any noise at all!
(. . . although as I type that, I realize I should have known from a childhood of singing Bill Staines: and the porcupine talks to himself.)
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Glad to know it's not just me--there are so many times when the main character is so bland and there's a really cool character right there that the story could be so much more interesting by focusing on, only no.
Tanya Huff's Blood and Smoke books drive me nuts that way.
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It is sadly my default relationship with most literature. I am always pleased when it goes some other way!
Tanya Huff's Blood and Smoke books drive me nuts that way.
So noted, if I ever read them. Who do you like better than the protagonist?
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I shared "My Father's Wardrobe" with
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Nine
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I like Cavafy.
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It was in a bookstore in front of me! I think you will like it very much.
I shared "My Father's Wardrobe" with wakanomori--he was surprised to learn the Guardian does poetry.
Oh, yes.
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