Wildwood Dancing
I started this… Monday I think. Read more last night. Took it to school because we had a lesson in the library: read a bit before school, then in the library period, then a little at recess, then a bit at lunch, then a little in my one period off… and then I had to finish it before I came home, because I couldn’t bear to think of it sitting there unfinished.
I haven’t felt like that about a book in a while. It was fantastic. I’ll do a better review of it sometime soon… I’ll be writing a review for both VATE and ASif!
Fagles
I had no idea that Robert Fagles was still alive, let alone that he was working on The Aeneid. Must admit that I prefer the Lattimore translation of The Iliad – I have to get hold of his Odyssey, and I must write about my re-visiting of Troy sometime soon too. Anyway, with a new – and apparently fantastic – translation, maybe it’s time I revisited Aeneid… I didn’t like it at uni, thinking it far inferior to Homer, but maybe it was a bad translation. Plus I was influenced of course by all those contemptuous ideas that he was simply Augustus’ lapdog (the ideas aren’t contemptuous, they express contempt…).
Thud!
Lashed out last night – bought U2 by U2, and Thud! by Pratchett, since it is at last in paperback. Am reading it at the moment instead of Catch 22, which I am meant to be (re-)reading for a kid at school.
I am particularly, and peculiarly, taken with one of the poems at the start of Thud!. I know it’s there for context etc etc… anyway, I’m not going to justify it, I’ll just copy it out:
Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
I just like it.
Nobel Prizes and historical writing
I found out just now that Theodore Mommsen won the 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature for the three volumes of History of Rome, and remembered that Winston Churchill took it out sometime after WWII for his History of the English Speaking People. I find it quite amazing, and highly admirable, that historical writing is able to win this prize.
I also frequently get Mommsen and … now I’ve forgotten his name; someone else who wrote about Rome – oh yes, thanks Wikipedia, Edward Gibbon. Don’t ask me why; could well be because they are both giants in Roman history and I haven’t read either. Bad me.
Somewhat related to this, there’s an interesting article in The Age about Making a fiction of history… – Kate Grenville has written some book (called The Secret River) which includes some ‘real’ events but out of their correct context (geographically, chronologically, and personally). There’s a dispute raging about whether novelists are allowed to claim that their stories are ‘history’ in some sense. Inga Clendinnen is fuelling the fires with a will…. I’m not sure what I think of the whole furore. I think I agree with Clendinnen’s words at the end of the article:
“You’re allowed to play games if you’re clearly on your side of the ravine,” she says. “Thousands of people will read The Secret River and get some knowledge of their past. That’s great – as long as it’s kept in the fiction section.”
Yup. I learnt an enormous amount about Roman history from Colleen McCollough (sp?) and her Rome series – to the extent that I knew stuff at uni that impressed my tutor, always a good thing – but I had to keep in mind that the motivations and emotions she attributed to the characters were her invention, no matter how well researched they were. I like empathy in history, I try hard – althoguh perhaps not ahrd enough – to get my students to feel empathy – but somewhere, there is a line where empathy does not and cannot help, and may be misleading.
Yeh, really not sure where I’m going with all of this.
Children of Men
…is great. Clive Owen is great. Of course.
It’s a very clever movie: it’s set in 2027, and women have been infertile for 18 years or so. The world seems to be going to hell in a handcart, the implication being that without children, there is no hope, so people give up. It’s a world that is very recognisable: not as London or the UK in general maybe, but Baghdad – Belgrade – Srebrenica – absolutely. In fact, the world as a whole and the ideas are very close to 2006, just taken to a slightly further extent – refugee camps that are like concentration camps, Britain closing its borders…. The movie doesn’t explain very much about the situation, which I think is a good part – there is no huge exposition of the situation to bore you stupid, you’re just meant to pick it up as you go along – which you can indeed do.
It’s a good flick. Go see it!
New book!!
My friend B is wonderful. We’ve had a bit of a tradition that she organises my birthday present months in advance, and in the past she has taunted me with this for said months. Not this time, though, so opening a package to discover Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans (by Luis Fernando Verissimo) was a delight. She did the IB, and had to read Borges, which she didn’t really like; I borrowed it from her and loved it – absolutely loved it, and I can’t think why I haven’t gone out and invested in more of his stuff since then. Anyway, it’s perfectly apt from her to me.
I can’t wait to read it… I haven’t heard of the ‘Eternal Orang-utan’ before, so whether this is an invention of Verissimo’s put into John Dee’s mouth, or not, I am not sure… but if it is Dee’s original, I wonder if this is where Pratchett got his idea of the librarian being turned into an orangutan from?
Books read in the last three days…
More as a remnder to myself that I really must post more substantial reviews, I read The First Crusade on the weekend – at last – and last niht finished My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Not at all my normal read – am doing it for a programme at school – but it certainly surprised me….
Delano R Franklin
…is one of the cleverer names I’ve heard recently in a story. This is from “Paradox and Greenblatt,” written by Kevin J Anderson, from EscapePod (episode 74). This was a very, very clever story – well worth streaming or podcasting!
New reviews
I’ve read Deucalion and The View from Ararat recently, both by Brian Caswell. I’ve read the first before, but not the second. I do love Caswell, but I’m actually reading these with a purpose – to review them for ASif! Which I have done.
I’ve also read and reviewed the stories currently up at New Ceres. New Ceres is a fascinating idea: it’s a world created by a couple of people, and other people are able to write stories about the place. A lot of time and effort has gone in to this already – the planetary system is completely worked out, the basic history is there… it’s very impressive. And the most interesting thing, I think, is that the culture is resolutely eighteenth-century. This, of course, allows for interesting things like coffee houses, highwaymen, and High Culture. Anyway, people can write both fiction and pseudo non-fiction: this first issue includes a travel piece, originally written for The Martian Eye, and a column on decorum and politness. The point of all of this, though, is that I am very much looking forward to reading more articles about the world… who knows, maybe I will even write something sometime. The idea that I could write non-fiction about a fictional place actually stirs my creativity a bit, which nothing has in a while.
Deaths
Bit of a morbid title there, I realise… the reaction of people to Steve Irwin’s death has been a bit over the top, I think. Particularly twinned with Colin Thiele’s death on the same day, and the distinct lack of matching grief or accolades from the public or politicians. Beattie’s “oh, we could have a national park or award named after him…” thing is great, but seriously – millions of books sold, Storm Boy for heaven’s sake, and nothing for Thiele??
Randomly Yours, Alex 