Authors and authority
I’ve noticed this before, but it struck me anew this morning.
Authors have authority.
Those with authority are authors in some way, too.
It puts an interesting spin on the whole Barthes of the author is dead thing, I think – an idea I have never subscribed to anyway – and also means an interesting way of thinking about the place of authors and how we think about them and who can/should be ‘an author’.
I have no answers to the questions raised, but I like pondering the issues.
So many books
I’ve read heaps over the last while. Lots for ASif!, but all of those have been ones that I’ve enjoyed too, so it’s not like it’s a hardship!
Days of Allison by Eric Shapiro – robots, as partners that you can programme, basically. A novella, so you don’t really have time to get jack of Louis, your utterly spineless (for most of the book) protagonist. I guessed one of the twists, but not the last.
Monster Blood Tattoo by DW Cornish, which it turns out girlie jones hated; there you go. I really liked it – an interesting take on monsters, where they’re pretty much like the Huns or Goths: barbarians at the gate, to be kept away, but not all of whom might be bad. It’s the start of the series, and I don’t mind that there will be more – I hope they’re as good as this. Rossamund (male; a bit of a Boy Named Sue thing happening, I think) is a fun little hero.
There have been others, but they escape me right now. And I just found out yesterday that Lady Friday has been published!! Hurrah!!!
Joy joy joy
Oh yes, joy joy joy: Lady Friday has been released! Woohoo! I thought I was going to have to wait until June or so, but turns out I can buy it this weekend! Yay!
Unless, of course, Readings is stating what will be published this month, meaning I have to wait another couple of weeks… oh, that would make me sad sad sad.
Zero, and all that
I’m reading Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea at the moment. It’s spinning my head a little bit, and I have to admit that I am skipping the serious maths bits. But it is enjoyable, and it is truly bizarre to think about the consequences of zero and infinity in maths, physics, and… everything else…. I should finish it tonight; I’ll write more about it once my brain recovers.
Kit Marlowe
I’ve just finished reading a book I picked up in Cambridge called The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. I’ve always loved Kit Marlowe and the stories and conspiracies around him; one of the best college plays I ever saw was a take on his Faust, done with 1930s clothes and a very dark theme song (the Garbage song from Romeo and Juliet done only with sax and bass).
Anyway, this is Charles Nicholl’s attempt to find as much as information as he can about the people who were actually present at Marlowe’s death (Frizer, Skeres and Poley), their various connections and dealings iin life, and make some sense of them. He’s also found as much information as he can about Marlowe and his possible/probable spying efforts.
There is a lot of information gathered here. Some of it at least may have been more suited to a book on spies in Elizabethan times, which I still would have read anyway, although I can see the point of including most of it here – good background, shows just what sort of people were involved, and lends weight to Nicholl’s idea that it wasnt just a drunken brawl over the bill that left Marlowe with a dagger in his eye.
I’m not entirely convinced by Nicholl’s final ideas, which is that Marlowe was being set up in order to discredit Walter Raleigh (who was indeed jailed for treason about a decade later – Marlowe was killed in 1593). Marlowe’s connections to Raleigh seemed a bit tenuous, and even more so did the reasons for wanting to bring Raleigh down. Maybe I am too straight-forward a thinker that I can’t get my head around the convolutions that seemed to be involved in Elizabethan politics (and probably are today, in the murkier side of things).
I enjoyed it as a book. It’s easy to read, although I got lost a few times trying to keep up with who was who and how they were connected, although Nicholls does a fair job of keeping the reader up to speed with little reminders about info that has come before, which was most welcome. As I said, not entirely convinced that Raleigh was ultimately the reason for his death, but I am definitely willing to believe that there was some dastardly conspiracy behind it all.
On a related note, the last board you read as go out of the Globe in London is about the whole Shakespeare and authorship issue. Marlowe is, of course, mentioned… and there are leaflets for the Marlowe Society next to the board. I love that.
Bridge to Terabithia
They’re making a movie of it! Amazing. Another of the books that I grabbed from school the other day, which I haven’t read in a long while – I definitely read it in primary school, and I can’t remember if I’ve read it since. Anyway, I’ll have to read it again before I see the movie, I think. From the trailer, it looks very different from what I remember about the book – I thought the imaginary stuff was just that, imaginary – but the movie seems like it will make those things ‘real’.
What I really wonder is how they will deal with the ending. I know some kids’ movies don’t shy away from tragedy, but that far? It will be interesting to see.
Ivanhoe
I am in the middle of Ivanhoe, the TV show. I thought it was much older than it is – it was made in 1997! And there was me thinking there were parts that looked like Monty Python’s Holy Grail! Oops.
I am definitely enjoying it… I got Scott’s book at a second hand book sale ages ago, but haven’t got around to reading it yet. Of course. The romantic entanglements have me very confused about exactly how it will all be resolved in the end. Well, one of them is dead, so I guess that helps… .
Isobelle Carmody
I’ve never read any Carmody except The Gathering, which I didn’t really like. I got Obernewtyn from school, and read it… in a day or so. I called my friend Krick, who has been bugging me to read them since, oh, college. She has also been complaining about the last not having been written, but I forgot that part when I started reading them. Anyway, she has given me the next three, and I am a third of the way through the fourth. I am, obviously, loving it. I had never realised it was post-apocalyptic; if I had, I would have read them long ago.
Then again, since the fifth – and God willing, final – was rumoured to be coming out the end of this year and Penguin now tells me (through Readers Feast) that it will be out in July ’07, there is less time for me to pull my hair out waiting.
Hanging out for this and Garth Nix may be the death of me.
Richard Pipes
I’ve just finished his Concise History of the Russian Revolution, preparing for next year. The book as a whole is fascinating, and glaringly showed up my lack of knowledge, but the end in particular is interesting, for its ruminations – and, to some extent, attack – on historians and thinkings about history. He says that historians should not be passionless in dealing with their subject, that we should not always be scientific in our thinking about historical events.
He says a lot of other things, but right now I have to both make a cassata and get busy with my reports, so I am going to leave this half-thought-out and do those… because my brain really isn’t on theoretical things at the moment.
Books up for grabs
We’re having a minor clean-out, and these are the books I’ve decided I can bear to part with!
Fantasy/scifi:
Till we have Faces, by CS Lewis
House Atreides, by Brian Herbert
Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle
The Misplaced Legion, by Harry Turtledove
The Skystone, by Jack Whyte
Run to the Stars, by Michael Scott Rohan
The Galactic Milieu trilogy – Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, and Magnificat – by Julian May
Hal Spacejock, by Simon Haynes
Time Storm, by Gordon R Dickson
The Deep Range, by Arthur C Clarke
The Deepest Sea, by Charles Barnitz
Titan, by Stephen Baxter
Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card
ThiGMOO, by Eugene Byrne
Eragon, by Christopher Paolini
Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse
“Literature”
Three Jacobean Tragedies
Unnatural Fire, by Fidelis Morgan
Le Morte D’Arthur, by Malory (translated)
Box, by Penelope Todd
The Lost German Slave Girl, by John Bailey
Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks
The Lost King of France, by Deborah Cadbury
Other (mostly action/adventure)
Wings of the Storm, by Susan Sizemore (!)
The Guns of Navarone, by Alistair MacLean
Ice Station, by Matthew Reilly
I, Claudia, by Marilyn Todd
The Little Lady Agency, by Hester Browne
Atlantis Found, by Clive Cussler
Warriors of the Dragon Gold, by Ray Bryant
True Polar Adventures, by Paul Downswell
The Summer of my Greek Taverna, by Tom Stone
Rule No5: No Sex on the Bus, by Brian Thacker
There’s also some old travel mags. Interested in any of them? Let me know! In the comments, or alex@ the url of the site.
Randomly Yours, Alex 