I wanna be like Dan
OK, so it doesn’t rhyme, but it does tell you that Dan Simmonds is my latest literary hero. I read Endymion early this year, having got it second hand and not realising – because it was not made clear on the front or the back – that this was a “500 or so years in the future of [other series]” type book. It wasn’t completely necessary to have read the first – I muddled along quite well – but it would have made life a bit easier. And also not meant that as I read the first two, Hyperion and Hyperion Falling, that I had these weird deja vu things happening (which, if you know the book, is quite a funny little in-joke). Nonetheless… I read what was effectively the third book; almost cried when I finished it because it was so beautiful, because there were two before and one after to read, and because the second-hand bookshop had none of them. I got the first two at Borders a little while ago, and I just finished the second… it is magnificent… I actually don’t think they’re quite as good as the third, but maybe that’s my rose-tinted nostalgia; I’m going to read it again soon anyway, before I read the fourth and because it will make so much more sense now.
Anyway. Highly recommended. I comes under fantasy/scifi, but is not tech-heavy (a few weird concepts, but they’re not vital to understanding), and personally I don’t think the story itself is all that fantastic, in the genre sense of the word.
Kids’ books
I took advantage of Borders and their 3 for 2 sale yesterday. I got The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, Possum Magic, and Animalia! Very exciting. They’re not entirely for me, of course… at least one of them will go as a present to the Nankervis clan on Wednesday since I didn’t send a present when Aidan was born (like a year ago or something). However, it is a great deal of fun to read them. And of course I also bought Avocado Baby ages ago… that was a good purchase; no one is getting that one as a present any time soon.
On a completely different note, I think I might have misplaced my Bowie CD.
Later: they forgot to take a book! I’ll have to send them one now.
Also: this is what I like; talking via comments on the blog, rather than email or some other media.
Class distinctions
I’ve been thinking about class distinctions and their representations.
Actually, I started by thinking about war. How is this for degrees of separation?
— Reading Tomorrow, When the War began with my Yr9 class
— Doing war poetry at the end of this semester, to get them thinking about the realities
–Someone suggested watching something like Toy Soldiers, because it’s about a school taken over by terrorists.
— Sean Astin stars in it
— Sean Astin is also Sam Gamgee
— Thinking about explaining the relationship between Sam and Frodo, because I’m sure some would see it as at least hinting at homosexuality (“It’s me, Mr Frodo, your own Sam…”).
— Deciding I would say something like “It’s a sentimental, nostalgic take on the ideal relationship between a man and his closest servant” – which, thinking about it and then remembering Biggles, is often also attributed to an officer and his batman.
— “A MAN and his servant”?!?!
That’s when I realised that that phrase completely de-sexualises, and disempowers, the lower class. Quite a realisation.
As well, of course, I’m sure that it was mostly an upper-class idealisation; I wonder if the lower class visualisation would have had the two on a more equal footing?
Odd Book Shop
A very lovely little store in Adelaide Mum took me too.
Night Watchmen
One of the most recent Terry Pratchett. I’ve left it in Adelaide for Kathryn and Mum to read first – aren’t I nice?
The True Story of the Novel
Should be interesting; by Margaret Anne Doody. “This book sets out to prove something worth proving, that the novel is an ancient and protean form…” I wonder if it will include that Egyptian official who got exiled for something and moaned about it and then got recalled?
From the Beast to the Blonde
“On fairy tales and their tellers,” from the beginning to Angela Carter and Walt. Highly Exciting. By Marina Warner.
Hmm… more books
Went to Borders before church; browsed their 75% off table. I don’t know whether I was actually meant to get 75% off the sale price marked on the front of the books… but I did.
Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?
Love it. Tom Holt is often funnier than Terry Pratchett. So literary… so wonderful… look out for the Milk Board… at the price, could simply not be passed up.
A Parrot in the Pepper Tree
I’ve been looking around a bit for this, because I have read Driving over Lemons, Chris Stewart’s first, and I really liked it. It’s about an English couple who decide to go and live on a farm in Andalucia (hmmm… trend… travel-ish books… not that I’m unhappy here, of course).
The Botany of Desire
“A plant’s-eye view of the world,” apparently – apples, potatoes, marijuana (is that really “integral to our everyday lives”?) and tulips, and how they have “survived by satisfying one of humankind’s most basic desires.” I’m a little sceptical of this, but interested to read the histories of the four.
Drinking Midnight Wine
Simon Green… again, love it… have read part of one of his series, Deathstalker, but reluctant to continue because someone (Kate) told me it has a tragic end. Eventually I will have to, because it keeps plaguing me. This promises to be dark and magicky too.
Hyperion
Dan Simmons. I’ve read a book set after this one, not realising it was an ‘after the first set’ book, and I loved it – I almost cried when I finished it, knowing I had both books before and after to find and read. Sad but true. He’s excellent. Actually not a sale book, but I suddenly thought of it and had to get it.
The Lost Kingdom of Lantia
Picked this up for $5; I knew it was going to be a kids’ book, but that’s partly why I got it – I’m realising I should teen fiction so that I can genuinely recommend books – current ones – to my students. Anyway; it’s by Maggie Hamilton, and I actually thought it was set in Melbourne, until at the end I read she’s based in Sydney so I guess it’s actually set there, although there was no mention of a bridge or Opera House which I thought was odd in a book about kids on holidays.
Overall I guess it was OK; as I read it I thought using the name Lantia was a bit dumb since it was quite obviously about Atlantis (magical kingdom destroyed by volcano) – at the end she does indeed say the book was inspired by her fascination by Atlantis, so I’m relieved the name wasn’t just a really poor way of covering it up. The writing was all right; I found it a bit basic, but I am well out of the target audience. The one thing I found incredibly annoying was her use of rhetorical questions all the time, and in italics. Why did she feel the need to do this? (Ha ha). It really, really got on my nerves.
I think I would recommend it to a kid; one who wasn’t a totally avid reader, but was looking for something fairly engaging and possibly a bit challenging, for younger teens.
Tim Severin is my hero
I’m reading his Genghis Khan at the moment, and it’s as fantastic as the others. Different, though: he’s not in charge of this one (it got hijacked by other people). Still fascinating… so much to know about Mongolia, and so little people seem to care.
The first I read was Marco Polo, which was good since that’s the first he did. I’ve also read his Jason and the Argonauts – it would be awesome to find the doco of that to show Yr7 students as we did mythology; Sinbad, which might be my favourite so far; and Moby Dick – both following Herman around, and finding out about Great White Other Animals and their myths. What a legend he is.
I’ve got Mum reading him too. She’s got about 10 at her uni library, of which I am fairly envious. She’s reading the one where he follows the Crusades right now, which is immediately before his Genghis trip.
Science Fiction
Currently reading a critique of SF as a genre, from the New Cultural Idiom series. It’s quite interesting; the first chapter is an attempt at a definition of SF, and a survey of others’ definitions. I’m in the chapter on the history of the genre at the moment, and looking forward to the chapters on race, gender, and technology. It reminds me again that as a female I am quite an unusual reader of SF. It also talks about a lot of SF I’ve never heard of, let alone read, which is exciting if a little daunting – there’s quite a bit here I would like to try and find. I really appreciate a book like this that takes SF – perhaps the epitome, in some minds, of popular or pulp fiction – and treats it as a serious subject, worthy of analysis, and not just in terms of what it ‘lacks’. I got sick of this during a subject at uni called Popular Fiction, which often felt like a comparison between ‘literature’, which has ‘blah’, and ‘popular fiction’, which has not. It is always salutory to remember that Shakespeare was written for mass consumption, and the theatre was looked upon as a rather vulgar form of entertainment.
Anyway. Enough rant. SF is a valid form of fiction and says some fascinating things about the society that produces it. And it’s fun to read.
Guitar Highway Rose
GHR is the book I’m doing with my Yr9 class at the moment. I’d not read it before, but I was surprised and impressed when I read it – I like it a lot. Don’t know that much of the class does, at the moment, but that may be more of a factor that it’s a class text + they’re in Yr9 than a reflection on the book itself.
It’s Australian, which is nice – by a woman named Brigid Lowry – largely set in Perth. It’s written in a really interesting way, which I think is largely its appeal: you get the perspective of lots of different characters throughout the book; there are no chapters as such, just different sections with revealing titles. Asher, the main boy, writes his parts as a flow of consciousness; no punctuation, etc (much like an email, really…). The characters all go through interesting changes, and there are some rather interesting insights into teenage Aussie culture, I think (it was written almost a decade ago, so I wonder if it has lost/is losing some relevance?). Anyway – at the moment I’m trying to think of how to encourage the kids to engage with the themes etc, and I’m finding that particularly difficult
