So Many Books...
Nov. 9th, 2009
09:23 pm
I have such a backlog of books read and not talked at this point, that it's becoming overwhelmingly daunting. Tonight will not be the night on which I really cut into the backlog, but instead, a bit of book news (plus query), a contender for the title of worst cover ever, a contender for the title of most appallingly ill-conceived (ahem) merchandise ever, and a super-quick run-through of two books read recently.
First the news: Jaclyn Moriarty has a new book out, Dreaming of Amelia - another set in the Ashbury school world! Unfortunately (pause for teeth-gnashing), it's only out in Australia atm, and will be out in the UK in April 2010, and the US and Canada in June. (I hope this news is news - it was to me, and I was excited enough to check Dymocks' shipping rates - though not enough to pay them. It's via her blog.) The query is whether anyone knows of an Australian online bookshop with cheaper shipping rates.
I don't need to label that one, do I? Here's the link, so you can examine the full WTFery of it. The pearls?! Her face?!?! Words fail me.
Words are also failing at this one, a good day after I saw it ( on Bookshelves of Doom, I think - I was on a mad catch-up bloglines read, and lost track of what wonders were found where). Be warned, you may want to avoid this, if you don't have brain-bleach handy, or blench at TMI of a gynaecalogical variety. If you're ready though... check it out.
The book is Lily St. Crow's Strange Angels, which is one I'd seen on the shelves around for a while, and never bothered to pick up, given the huge number of dark and edgy looking YAs of a supernatural nature. But I saw great reviews on Finding Wonderland and Killin' Time Reading (or perhaps it was Lazygal on Goodreads that I saw.) So, finding myself without book and in a bookshop the other day (imagine!), I picked Strange Angels up, and was very glad I'd had those two readers to give me the push. It was dark, snarky, had a heroine who really cried (like the messy, ugly kind of crying) when it was appropriate for her to do so and had hair that continually frizzed or otherwise misbehaved, and a lovely sidekick/romantic interest-to-come. In fact, it was oddly similar in some story elements to Hush, Hush, which I also read recently. But it worked for me, while Hush, Hush emphatically fell down on the annoyance of repetitive repetitions (yes, *I* did it on purpose) of the 'I'm so attracted to him, but I KNOW I should stay away, but I'm so attracted, but he's DANGEROUS, but I'm ....' Understandable in a lot of ways, but didn't make it much fun for me to read anyway. Also, I'm sorry, but I want angels to be different. Not just high-school jerks with wings, which is what these ones seemed to be. Anyway, everything Hush, Hush didn't deliver for me, Strange Angels did - and the sequel is due out this month. Nice timing!
Oct. 28th, 2009
02:23 pm - Cats purr, dogs ... snuggle?
Becca and I were discussing the fact that there's no easy, one word description of the behaviour of a happy dog that can be used in a parallel manner to the 'If I were a cat, I'd be purring' line. Rolling over on your back with feet up in the air so your belly can be patted just doesn't work the same way. But this picture of Doug (it was supposed to be a picture of the fingerless mitts that I finished yesterday for posting today, but Doug loves soft woolen knitted garments, people's laps and photo-shoots equally) pretty much expresses my readerly rolling over on my back with etc... - Though perhaps mine is a little bit less soulful-looking! 
This readerly happiness is easy to understand: I have in my possession and unread: Kathleen Duey's Skin Hunger; Linda Buckley-Archer's Time Quake; Oisín McGann's The Wisdom of Dead Men; Gail Carriger's Soulless; Dene Low's The Entemological Tales of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone, and Maggie Stiefvater's Ballad. (The latter arrived this morning, after both Better World Books and Book Depository did me grievous wrong by promising they'd send it right off to me but lying!) And I just started listening to Marcelo in the Real World as well. AND I'm loving the beta reading (of a sort) I'm doing!
If this weren't enough, last night I started (and stayed up way too late to finish) ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sarazarr's Once Was Lost, which was just wonderful. Still too close to it to do much beyond a bit of raving, but it's at least somewhat quote-enriched raving.
( Once Was Lost )
Oct. 17th, 2009
10:17 pm
Have I expressed my rage at the setters-off of (ILLEGAL) fireworks round here in the past? Yes? Right, well it deserves repeating anyway - as last night's debacle (combine Bell's bedtime visit outside and some loud explosions and you arrive at a 2 am visit instead, after which the dogs went quickly back to sleep, and me not) has given me a cracking headache and cost me yet another day's brain functioning. Not a great time for writing a few thoughts on Mary E. Pearson's The Miles Between, but I'm going to forget everything I thought about it soon, so will do it anyway. (And diceytillerman asked so nicely!) Mostly what I liked out here, and what I wasn't keen on, which involves complete spoilers, behind a cut.
Many people probably know about the basic plot of The Miles Between, if they haven't read the books months ago, but for those who don't, it's a fairly simple one to outline: Destiny Faraday is a teen living in a very exclusive boarding school, as she's been abandoned by her parents, although she probably won't be there much longer, given hints that she might be starting to get even the least bit attached to the place or any of the people there. That's what she does - refuse to get attached, and cause herself to be moved to a new school if she starts to. But this one day, a day when she should have been getting a visit from her aunt who has to cancel, she starts acting impulsively and breaking all her routines. Happening to stumble across a beautiful pink convertible sitting outside school, with keys in it, and happening to find next one of her classmates who can drive (two others classmates are picked up) Des takes off on a road trip, in search of just one fair day. One on which 'the good guy wins and everything adds up to something just and right'.
Initially extremely reluctant even to have the others along on the trip, Des very slowly is able to accept them as friends and allow them their fair day, and finally to open up fully to them. That sounds very sappy, but the road trip is mostly wonderful - especially the baby lamb they find on the road and bring with them. Lucky, as Seth promptly names him, is brought - seemingly just by their treating him as a dog - to the most winning of dog-like behaviour (without the tedious house - or in this case, car- training necessary for most puppies!)
I have to say that I felt a little bit of ennui at the beginning of Des's (first-person) narrative: yet another ill-treated, emotionally scarred narrator who can't trust or let anyone in ? But the story of this search for the one fair day was unusual enough to get me over that fairly quickly. I especially loved the generic boundary-slipping around all the 'coincidences'. Some of them weren't coincidences at all in a perfectly realistic way and some were left beautifully open as being either just one of those extremely rare but possible happenings or fantasy. I also liked the other characters and how they got their fair day. Well, except for Aidan, the Pee and the President. That was just a bit silly.
Of course I was very moved by the big reveal scene - hard not to be. I liked this book a lot, despite the problems about which I can't talk without spoiling.
( TOTAL SPOILERS BEHIND HERE )
Oct. 9th, 2009
10:21 pm - Just 10 minutes a day to a -- better brain?
I'm SO EXCITED. This afternoon I heard on the radio (BBC Radio 4) that there was an experiment to see whether or not brain training programmes were actually effective, and I almost ran to my computer to check if, as I expected, it would be only for British residents. And it wasn't! I could register on the BBC Lab UK site and was all enrolled in minutes flat. They do an intake test, provide training exercises which they hope people will do for at least 6 weeks at 3 times a week, but can be done however much you feel like doing, and the test will go on for a year.
I'm not sure how rigorous the experimental protocols are, but I *do* know that there's a serious need to find out a) whether these types of brain training programmes (some of which are extremely expensive) actually work and if so, whether they just train you to do better at the exercises but have no lasting effect and no real life effect on memory or information processing. Seriously - I was just reading an article on this in the latest edition of Scientific American Mind.
If anyone else is interested in having a look, the webpage is here. Nothing was asked about residency, although the ethnic background details were heavily British orientated. Never mind. I did my ten minutes today, and am looking forward to tomorrow's dose of helping science while helping my brain (maybe!).
Oct. 6th, 2009
06:03 pm - It's fun to live with a writer, v. 3.0.1
Waste water now flowing as it should once again, I've been able to add the odd thing into consciousness other than the calculations of how long it'll be before I dare flush a toilet, and how bad might be the bad consequences of doing so too soon. So, beccadelarosa and I had a nice session going over a story she wrote a while ago which we hadn't discussed yet. Great story, and the snippets of info about light she worked into it are fascinating.
One of the things I enjoyed on reading it first was seeing the infestation of moths we had in our house appearing - transformed, of course - in the story. I wouldn't have treated her story moths to the Vacuum Cleaner of Doom as I did the RL ones. This often happens with Bec's stories - once I told her about a piece I'd heard on the news reporting a study showing that magpies were capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors as themselves, rather than thinking it was another bird. She thought that was really interesting too, and it was much fun to see it turn up in a story - a story which is just up on Farrago's Wainscot, as it happens.
This isn't just a plug for that story or the last issue of Farrago's Wainscot, though, but also reporting on a cool (for me and Becca) but ever-so-slightly disturbing 'coincidence' . A while ago Becca wrote a long story called 'Poison', in which the main character works in a hardware shop. I immediately recognized the shop as one in Dun Laoghaire, a few miles away. I had to go in there to get a key cut for my next-door neighbour a few days ago, and while I was there, a tall guy with a thick, French-sounding accent came in and asked for poison. I could hardly wait to text Bec and tell her this, because -- well, that's how the main character gets to meet the other characters, with a French guy going in to his shop to buy poison. Whoa! (Needless to say, or at least needless for those of you who know Becca's writing, it's fantasy, rather than a murder-mystery type poison purchase.)
That story hasn't yet been taken by anyone, probably because it's too long for most zines, but I'm certain this sign from the universe means it will be published someday! Or else it's just the universe giving a cheer for writers, which is good too.
Oct. 3rd, 2009
04:53 pm - Life - oooh life. (Sung in the key of Moan.)
So, came down the other morning and noticed there was a really bad smell in the kitchen. No point detailing the hapless hopes I fabricated of reasons which would be less horrible than the most likely culprit: the drains blocked again. Because it was, of course, the drains. And *this* time is the time they have to dig up my next door neighbour's back garden in order to fix the problem in our house. Yes, the next-door neighbour who was robbed in her house last week.
You know things aren't good when you ring DynoRod in a complete state a year after last contact with them and the person answering the phone says 'Oh yes of course, I remember you well - you were dealing with Alan' without a second's hesitation or need to look up records. Alan also remembered me, and that they'd marked the spot in next-door neighbour's garden over the break in the pipe, and said they'd be out Monday morning early to start the fun. Which wasn't bad, except it means minimal water use in the house for us until Monday (this happened on Thursday) and as the opening to the drain is right outside the kitchen... Nuff said. *And* this morning the trash company came in my front garden and took my wheelie bin and green bin. Apparently they meant to replace the bins in the middle house in the terrace with the half-sized ones, but took mine instead. So I have nowhere to put trash or recycling *AND* Dougie seems to have decided that the stress is getting to him and he must pee everywhere all the time.
It's particularly cranky-making as my brain has completely packed up and left the location - would I could do the same! And I have many things to write, and books to talk about, and no brain with which to do it. Seriously - have recently read Jackson Pearce's As You Wish, Mary E. Pearson's The Miles Between and Sarah Cross's Dull Boy, among others. Want to talk books!! (Also have over 2000 unread posts in Bloglines.)
Quick Pollyanna though: my wonderful friends Hirondelle and Katayoun have alerted me on Goodreads to the release date for the new, proper, full-length Connie Willis novel! I've been waiting for this since 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow. Speaking of which, Younger Daughter is going off to a Pixies concert in Glasgow tomorrow and it turns out it's in the SECC, where we all went to the 2005 Worldcon. Serious nostalgic moment there.
Sep. 26th, 2009
05:30 pm - Uh oh, it's the "Ooh the drama!" userpic
Happily not a tragedy, though it came pretty close.
Last night, having considered the idea of LJing Jackson Pearce's As You Wish, read on a fairly epic journey to IKEA with younger daughter (very good it was too!) (the book, not the journey), but not having enough energy, I was watching an episode of Bones with Becca when the phone rang at 9:30. It was my elderly next-door neighbour, who often rings if she can't open something or the like, but this time she was frantic and told me someone had come into her house and had run upstairs and she couldn't find her keys to get out. Number one nightmare scenario! I immediately rang the guards and gave my mobile to Becca to ring a neighbour whose number was on the mobile, but he wasn't in. As soon as the emergency line had got all the details I went out and knocked on other neighbour's door, but he wasn't in either, so I went to the house across the road - all in search of one of the guys to come with me into the house (I have a key, but was too chicken to go in by myself). In the few minutes it took to get him, and meet yet another neighbour who'd been rung after me, the guards arrived and we got her to take the chain off the door so we could get in.
Apparently she'd either left the keys in the door outside or not pushed the door quite over, and this fellow had come in to her living room, where she was sitting eating in front of the TV, grabbed her bag and gone out the back, rather than upstairs. When we got in she was still gasping and panicked, unsurprisingly, and I was really worried she'd have a heart attack on the spot. At first I think the guards thought she might have had a nightmare, but when they found the back door locked from the outside, realised it had happened exactly as she said.
Bottom line was she wasn't hurt, *didn't* have a heart attack from the shock, and only lost a very small bit of cash (and a card, but I rang and that was canceled immediately), but none of those was the likeliest outcome at all. Another guard was sent around this morning (forensic expert! Just looking for anywhere there might be a fingerprint or two really, but it's more fun to call him a forensic expert) and he said there's a fair amount of this kind of thing going on, with people taking the train out from town and looking only for drug money. Still and all if her bag hadn't been on the sofa right by the door, she might easily have been knocked down or beaten to tell where cash or valuables were, which doesn't bear thinking of.
Only funny part was after I got back home, at almost 11 the girls said - despite the two barkiest dogs in the world, an inaccessible back door and it being obvious nobody had come in the front door - that they'd gone around the house with the dogs and a crutch (left over from one of Becca's numerous ankle-sprainings) to check the bedrooms. And then Becca solemnly announced "I stand up in an emergency", with finger pointing ceiling-ward. Younger Daughter and I looked at her in puzzlement and Y.D. asked if she meant she rose to the occasion, and she repeated that she stood up. Several times, always with the finger gesture. It was a very drunken pronouncement for someone who was totally sober, and today, she still had no idea what she'd been trying to say.
There wasn't much sleep had on our road last night, again unsurprisingly. But I phoned the locksmith as soon as the guard - forensic expert - had gone, and he was out in less than half an hour and neighbour was feeling much calmer after new locks were in. As soon as I put the new keys on her key-chain she went to put them in a (very crowded) drawer, which freaked me the hell out. I asked her wouldn't she leave them in the door (on the inside, in the Chubb lock, obviously) in case she needed to get out in a hurry and couldn't find them in the drawer, as had happened last night. It had never occurred to her - I suppose we all have our own little collection of worries, but having a door dead-bolted and not being able to find the keys is definitely one of mine!
And now to put together IKEA furniture with Y.D...
Sep. 24th, 2009
04:27 pm - A Traveller's Tales, Part -- Whatever
So, last weekend it was off to the UK for a wedding in Cambridge - steepholm's cousin's son, whom I'd never met, being the one whose marriage was being celebrated. (The couple had actually had a civil service on a beach in Honolulu, and the wedding invitations had the pictures to prove it.) I know many of you will have been waiting anxiously to hear that the €125 bottles of water have been selling like -- well, like €1 bottles of water on a hot day. I duly kept an eye out while passing through Dublin airport this time, and spotted someone in lengthy conversation with a woman working in the area. I rushed closer to eavesdrop when the potential customer had left and the woman was reporting on the conversation with someone who seemed to be a manager. The report was that he had never seen anything funnier in his life (score!) and then the woman said she thought he was someone on television. As I couldn't catch up with him to check this, there it stands for this UK trip!
The day before flying to London, I caught one of my favourite campaign posters for a long time. ( Behind a cut for to spare those uninterested in EU/Irish politics )
Flying to Gatwick, I had to put away Shiver, which I was rereading for review purposes, as I started crying again, in the aisle seat, with no tissues. Fail. (Me, not the book.) But I did manage to catch a picture of ( this great warning sign on the way out of Gatwick )
Wedding went off very well, and a lovely chance to spend some time with steepholm's mum and other family members, though it is a bit embarrassing to be seriously drunk and partied under the table by his 93-year old aunt. All right, anyone could drink me under the table (were I to try to keep up), but the out-partying is more shameful.
Two things indicated how very different this circle was from the ones in which steepholm and I normally pootle around. One was the meal at the reception, which was pork. A whole pig's worth of pork. (Not the apple-in-mouth presentation of a French feast, but still, it was a full-sized pig.) And the second dish? Where you might find the vegetarian entrée? Sausages! Seriously - vegetarian, Jewish, Muslim, just don't like pork - doesn't seem to have been an option for the guests.
The second ( behind a cut for photographic evidence )
We got to meet emmaco and talisen and potter around Cambridge the next day, which was lovely, and - of course - involved bookshop-visiting. I was pleased to see Wishing for Tomorrow out on prominent display and was anxiously starting to push emmaco towards belief in its wonderfulness, but she already has it ordered, so that was okay! I had audiobook listening to get me back to Bristol on the bus(es) that night and picked up -- maybe stole -- steepholm's copy of the just-published Paradise Barn by Victor Watson for the flight home on Monday. Victor Watson gave a talk at an IBBY conference I went to a few years ago, and included a really interesting section on Hilary McKay's Saffy's Angel (he was a big fan of the Casson family books), so I was very pleased to like Paradise Barn so much. More book reports soon.
Sep. 13th, 2009
10:03 pm - Because we all need another time-sink, right?
Discovered via myntti this morning, this wonderfully weird site: Awkward Family Photos.
Many of them are just funny, but this is horrifying *and* hilarious. Possibly the horror comes from the fact that *many* people authoritatively identified that as a real gun rather than a toy, and a loaded one at that. With the baby's finger on the trigger. Good reason to say once again that Tom Lynn had it all right in saying that people are strange...
Sep. 11th, 2009
08:58 pm - And all I got was a bottle of water...
Younger Daughter and I went away for a short break earlier this week, and had a wonderful time. She was patient with my occasionally higher-than-normal maintenance level (as in: 'I think he brought me regular instead of soy milk, but don't want to ask him again if it's soy, as it might seem rude since he forgot last time... Can YOU taste it?') and need for industrial strength tea at regular intervals.
We didn't get out of Dublin before I felt the need to catch evidence of something I still find gobsmackingly ludicrous, despite having seen it 4 or 5 times now. 
This is in the snazzy new shopping and eating area the far side of security in the airport. There's a large Boots, which makes sense, and a few new cafes, but also a caviar -- bar? Whatever one calls a place they sell caviar around a bar-style set-up. Who'd want caviar in an airport? (Or anywhere.) But the Waters of the World really takes the biscuit in the 'are they having us on?' category.
( behind a cut for a close-up of some of the waters being sold, and a few *nice* pics )
Sep. 4th, 2009
06:25 pm - Wishing for Tomorrow
It's Hilary McKay's Wishing for Tomorrow, not an update on my emotional state. This nearly broke my heart even before reading, as I've been waiting for it for what seems like ever. It was due to be published the 3rd of September, but I noticed it was shipping from Amazon (UK) before going away to Cornwall with steepholm, so checked the 3 bookshops nearby(ish) the day before (one by phone inquiry). After some time and searching, I found it and carried it home with great rejoicing. Which rejoicing stopped as soon as I started trying to pack my bag, and realised there was no way I'd be able to bring it. Everyone feels my pain right? New Hilary McKay in my hands and forced to leave it unopened in my room.
Weep no more, as it's read and LOVED. Have to say that my first reaction to a Little Princess sequel was a slightly bemused one, but that had long been put behind in trust that a Hilary McKay A Little Princess sequel would be wonderful. Even that trust couldn't have quite led me to the gorgeousness of Wishing for Tomorrow though. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.
That said, I should perhaps elaborate just a little bit, which is difficult when all one wants to do is quote and quote. Short version is it's what happened after Sara went off happily to live with the Indian Gentleman, and the main character is poor Ermengarde, who of course didn't get to go off and live happily ever after. There's also plenty about the youngest at Miss Minchin's, Lottie, and about Lavinia and Miss Minchin too. And I think that's what made it so wonderful for me - there's all the emotional payoff that you get in true Victorian style in A Little Princess (yes, I know about novel publication date, but it's still a truly Victorian novel in essence, right?) but coming from a different angle. I love A Little Princess, but the 19th century (I *know*) type of class-laden morality about not being snobbish, and a degree of avoidance of social issues other than the simple black-and-white ones wouldn't really work well in a novel written today. But don't worry - it's not a ham-fisted 'updating' of a last century classic! Rather it's a beautifully done re-visiting of that classic, with all the humour you'd expect from a McKay book, and an effective broadening of perspective. It may just be me, but I found it much more fun to see what made Miss Minchin the horror she was than to see her get more come-uppance. And Lavinia! If I'd been told before that I'd come to like her enormously and root for her while still feeling she fit with the nasty little cow she had been, I'd never have believed it possible.
There are a few new characters - Alice especially (the replacement for Becky, who comes from Epping where there's lots of fresh air, refuses to sleep in the attic and won't be called a scullery maid), and Ermengarde's Aunt Eliza (who'd always been considered the family fool, by her brother and then by her husband, and whose fate is one that could easily have befallen Ermengarde as things were going) - and they fit in perfectly with the story and add immeasurably to the fun. I won't say anything more about them or the others, because I'm very afraid of giving away something about the ending, and I defy anyone to predict the gloriously satisfying (and funny!) ending. A few quotes behind a cut, just for self-indulgance, and aside from that, just that I thought of Jane Austen while reading, than which higher praise, etc. And - in a completely un-crazed fangirlish way, of course, I think what Hilary McKay doesn't know about friendship might not be worth knowing. (ET remove a silly being-a-crazed fangirl-line, as it occurred to me that authors DO get crazed fangirls, even 50+ year old, very quiet ones.)
( Just a few quotes, really (though not necessarily very short ones) )
Aug. 23rd, 2009
10:53 pm - The old triangle
steepholm was reading Middlemarch when I was in Bristol last time, and I picked it up and read some random sections, with one line getting stuck in my head. It's about Mary Garth, and Mr Farebrother and Fred's both being in love with her. 'What could these two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch", as Mary called herself?'
I'd just been reading Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars, which has a kind of classic YA triangle, with the main character having one dependable, good friend (who's obviously in love with her) and one (possibly) bad boy with gobs of appeal who may be in love with her too, or may have other motivation besides his attraction to her, and is wounded in some way. This is NOT sniping at the book, BTW - I thought the characters in Eyes Like Stars were great, and Ariel especially incredibly well done.
I also said at the time I wrote about Maggie Stiefvater's Lament that the triangle in that blew me away, as she managed to keep the wounded Bad Boy newcomer totally sympathetic while at the same time also ratcheting up the love for the Dependable Best Friend (who's in love with the heroine). (The DBF is James btw - you'll want to remember that name, if you haven't read Lament yet.)
I mentioned this to steepholm the other night, as he was reporting on where he was in Middlemarch at that point, idly tossing off the question of whether Mary Garth was the mother of these YA heroines with the two guys vying for her love - and he replied that it had a long tradition in literature - mentioning Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. At that I started talking very fast about how they weren't allowed a place in my collection, because I hated that part of the Arthur story, and it was the Arthur story, not the Guinevere story, and did I mention I'd always hated that and the triangle is *always* from the girl's POV and lalala, not listening. Despite all that, I heard something about 'special pleading', but nothing more said about Them, so I didn't argue it.
I can think of lots of recent YAs with this kind of triangle, but didn't get much farther than adding a few of Jane Austen's books, if a bit tentatively, to the list. Elizabeth sort of fits the pattern, if one allows Wickham as the Bad Boy, but Darcy doesn't work for the dependable friend type then, so it's not really right. Marianne is better, though her not appreciating Colonel Brandon at all kind of works against a proper triangulation. I guess Anne Elliot has her moment of triangledom, though Captain Wentworth spends so long not realising he's still in love with her it's brief. (Not that she ever asked for Mr. Elliot's attentions, of course.)
Oh no - just thought of Jo and Laurie and the Professor. But that's too depressing for words and they're not concurrent anyway (and Laurie goes off with Amy). Anne of Green Gables - though Roy Gardner - no. Just no. (Gilbert makes up for any lack in Roy by the length of his devotion, maybe!)
Others I've missed? Or someone want to clue me in on why these girls have such amazingly great male best friends? Seriously, James, in Lament? (And in Ballad too, when it's finally available!)
Aug. 20th, 2009
02:30 pm - And it was just 26 hours....
26 hours of communication-deprivation, in the form of no internet and no phone, though, can pack quite a punch. Particularly when it's affecting the whole town in which you live, meaning one bank closed completely, its ATM out of service, the other bank's ATM runs out of cash and none of the shops can take cards of any kind. And your two daughters are in serious need of Sterling currency to go off to Wales.
Becca and Younger Daughter are well on their way to The Green Man Festival by now, and though the sight of Becca weighed down by an enormous backpack and the heavy rain that fell last night and this morning didn't encourage much jealousy, the line-up is fantastic and it seems like a truly wonderful event. I was especially impressed when I saw that Green Man has teamed up with the mental health charity Mind - this is such a great idea. Fundraising, of course, but possibly even more important is raising people's awareness of mental health issues.
Even closer to home - in all senses of the word - Becca is now enrolled in the Open University, taking A275- 'Reading classical Greek: Language and literature'. I got nostalgic and jealous both, when she got her Personal Identifier and first mailing! One thing I hadn't experienced first-hand before was how well the OU does at making study as easy as possible for people with all kinds of disabilities. Becca - who has bipolar and anxiety disorders - got a booklet with all the various services offered - from the obvious, like captioned DVDs or braille texts - to ones that I hadn't thought they'd be so flexible on (exams at home for people who could be seriously upset by going to a new centre, or being in a room full of other students, for example). And it's really written well, so you feel sure the conditions are truly understood, rather than the offer being a sort of hoop-jumping exercise because they have to do it.
That's my psa for the day. I had planned to spend the most unusual weekend with the house to myself (and the Hell Hounds, of course) to catch up on book raves: I mentioned having read and loved lisamantchev's Eyes Like Stars, while in Bristol, and now I've also devoured m_stiefvater's Shiver and E. Lockhart's Treasure Map of Boys. All wonderful, which I hope to say at a bit more length as soon as I finish catching up on unread internet stuff. (1168 unread posts on my Bloglines now. Help?)
Aug. 15th, 2009
10:38 pm - Every Progress must have an end
Remember the beautiful blue skies seen in yesterday's installment of Aslan's Progress? All gone for the final stage, taking us back to Bristol. steepholm kept optimistically repeating that the BBC had said the weather was better in the west of the country and we were driving westwards, but the optimism proved a bit more on the hopeful than the realistic side of things. No matter (though trying to juggle umbrella and camera didn't make for great pictures at times). 
You can just make out part of the Cerne Abbas Giant there on the hill, but lack of clarity was entirely due to an oncoming rain-shower rather than prudery.
( You know what's behind the cut, right? )
Aug. 14th, 2009
11:25 pm - And even more Progress
More landscape in tonight's installment - and all of these pictures are clickable if you want to see bigger versions on my Flickr account. (There are some more there which I haven't pasted in the post too, but not all of them are public yet.)
We'll pick Aslan up the next morning, on the road through the New Forest, where we promptly got stuck in a traffic jam. Pleasant place for one, though every time we stopped, as below, it would be in a less scenic stretch than all we'd just passed through. 
( Many more pictures behind the cut )
Aug. 13th, 2009
10:49 pm - Progress on the Royal Progress
When I blithely promised a post with photos as soon as I got back home, I hadn't quite realised that I took 99 photos while away. And this from the person who's quite capable of bringing a camera on a trip and never once taking it out of the case.
A taster, of what's to come in tomorrow's - or the day after's - batch, when I've done more editing, organizing, deciding.... (Check back then for identification of the setting.)
( More pictures behind the cut... )
Aug. 10th, 2009
Aug. 9th, 2009
03:55 pm - Gone, but not Forgetting
After a week in Dublin with steepholm, during which the house did its best to drag every bit of useful waking braincell into the Pit of No Return, precluding my reading most of my flist posts, we came to Bristol together, to a splendidly smooth-running house, in which I've managed to read no LJ whatsoever. However, there has been:
1. A Royal Procession
Everyone knows that steepholm haz Aslan, right? Well, Aslan was brought the length and breadth of the country - or at least from the box in which he traveled to Bristol out and over to Romsey in Hampshire (steepholm's childhood home), and back, via various interesting bits of Dorset, including the New Forest and Lyme Regis. I have photographed the Procession devotedly, and will put photos up as soon as I'm back at my computer. (Had the brilliant idea, managed to remember to bring my camera this trip, but forgot to pack the cable. Sigh.)
2. Reading
Unfortunately, much of it has been reading our own writing, as we're trying to get the Roman Britain chapter of the History Book done and dusted before the end of summer, so nothing like as many books to babble about as usual. Still, read Dust of 100 Dogs (did not like, and shared that on a pagely basis with steepholm as usual) and just finished Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars, which I loved, and will probably say more about at some point. Also bits and pieces of books set in Roman Britain (rereads and new to me both) and sections of Persuasion aloud, as we drove back from Lyme Regis to Bristol. Partly it was the descriptions of Lyme Regis (watch out for the Cobb in the photos-to-come!), but also it was bits relevant to the characters of Anne and Captain Wentworth, which we'd been discussing. Much fun.
3. Good food, good company, and good (sometimes) crossword puzzling
The good company is not only steepholm, but provided in Dublin by beccadelarosa and Younger Daughter, and in England by steepholm's mother, with whom we had a lovely visit. We got very caught up in sort-of playing a literary game she'd heard about on Radio 4 earlier in the day, which involved remembering the ending line or two of books. Harder than you might think, though between us we came up with close approximations of several of Jane Austen's (mostly from me), Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights (steepholm and his mother, as I've never read it - sshhh!), Great Expectations- ish (I've still to check the existence of the earlier, now not-published version in my Oxford World's Classics ed at home), House at Pooh Corner (steepholm), 1984 (steepholm again) and Peter Pan (can you guess who?). I contributed the end of Joan Aiken's The Teeth of the Gale, though as the other two didn't know it, my success was a bit dulled. It haunted Becca when we read it though, and is memorable!
We do the Telegraph crossword (online, so we don't have to buy the paper, whose political stance is not ours) in the way people take their daily constitutional. Or at least we do when together - not sure what it says of the success of this brain-preserving exercise that we forget when not together! Now, thanks to Becca's discovery, we have Big Dave to help us out if we can't figure out why an answer we got is right. (Okay, okay, or sometimes to help us get it in the first place.) The idea of a daily blog devoted to the explanation of and commentary on the Telegraph's crosswords pleases me enormously.
I will catch up on everyone's posts when I'm back home next week, and the promise of photos to come will have to serve as my apology for seeming to ignore all the interesting things being said in the meantime.
Jul. 24th, 2009
11:29 pm - Two growls and a gulp
It's happened that I'm reading two books atm which have some part of the story set in Ireland (I put the first aside to read the wonderful When You Reach Me, which I'll write up properly soon), and both have caused some puzzlement to outright annoyance.
The first is not a highly serious book, and no need to name it, though the nosy could find it on my Goodreads shelf. She's a clever writer, and often very funny, but the Irish stuff so far is pretty cringe-worthy. A young Irish guy (said to be 22 at the most) calling the van he drives 'the gas-guzzling rogue', calling the heroine he's just met 'lass' or 'bonnie Morgan' all the time, saying she shouldn't worry about the van as 'I've been drivin' since I was a boy-o'. And the owner of a successful company (which apparently caters for the most part to foreign tourists, though I suppose there might be the odd Dublin Jackeen) - asks the British woman who's just complained about the lack of vegan food which she requested on the booking form - would chicken do for her. Then there's the word 'feck', which is taken up enthusiastically by the heroine, but is always spelled 'fek'. I think it's more used by people a few generations older anyway, though I'm not sure about outside Dublin, but it just doesn't seem hard to have checked that spelling.
The other book has me more puzzled, as it seems from what I've read to be attempting much more. (It *could* turn out to be alternate history, but nothing has indicated it so far.) The main protagonist's mother is telling about her early childhood in Ireland in the late 50s, and there are a few things that are just odd. She's from a big family (of course) with a good-for-nothing alcoholic father (of course), but when the father left the family 'the nuns' put a huge amount of pressure on the mother -- to go to England. Say what? The family is at 'the docks' in Dun Laoghaire and one of the youngest boys talks back to the nuns, who slap him and then he runs off and jumps off the dock. Nobody does anything to save him because the nuns tell him not to, so he drowns. All the others go off on the mailboat to the south of England where they work like slaves - they're 'property' because the mother 'signed the papers' and they never see their mother again. When the protag asks her mother how they got away with it (telling the other people on the dock to do nothing and let a 4 or 5 year old child drown) she just replies that they got away with whatever they wanted to and 'still do' (this is 1985).
Now, it would be hard to live in Ireland and not know about the truly appalling things that were done by some in the religious orders in Ireland in the past and up until far too recently. And the terrible things done in overlooking or turning a blind eye to the abuse, by those supposed to be overseeing the schools and orphanages. I'm not attempting to deny or white-wash any of it, but this still is pretty strong stuff. For one thing, there is no dock in Dun Laoghaire. The mailboat (which I've taken! It's been replaced by a hovercraft, which I've also taken) used to sail from Dun Laoghaire harbour, but there isn't the kind of docks which this scene would suggest - require. And much more unbelievable is that the nuns would have been forcing the mother to take her family to England. If there was a country in which the Roman Catholic church had far too much power and influence, and one in which it had little, no great credit goes for knowing that Ireland would be the first. If anything the nuns would have been more likely to try to persuade the good woman not to move to that heathen Britain. Why not just keep all those kids here where they had all the power, if they wanted the slave labour?
Most importantly though, it's quite shocking to write a scene set in 1958 in Dublin, in which a bunch of normal Irish people stood around while a young child drowned in front of them. Because a bunch of nuns - controlling everyone how? - told them to? No closed doors, no possibility of pretending you didn't know what was happening, but essentially murder in plain sight of everyone. I was born in 1958 (in the US as it happens, but we were back living in Dublin before the year was out) and that's - well, I have a very hard time buying that as a fair accusation.
To change mode completely, though the setting is still Ireland, the gulp was a story I heard today (while getting reflexology - no headache now - bliss!). A friend's father was in a nursing home and he'd been complaining quite a bit about feeling unwell. He told her his chest and his arms hurt and he felt weak and wasn't eating. She went to the staff and they said they didn't think it was anything too serious, but she was still worried and took him to Loughlinstown hospital. They checked him over, did a lung x-ray in case he had pneumonia, and blood tests. While he was in the hospital his daughter put his false teeth in her bag so they wouldn't get lost. After nothing was found wrong with him she was still not satisfied and took him off to the Beacon Clinic (newish private place) where they found -- a set of false teeth lodged in his trachea. Nobody knew whose false teeth they were, or how they'd got there, but there they definitely were. (I would have thought this an urban myth, if only for the comfort of believing it impossible to do that, but not considering the source.)
Jul. 20th, 2009
12:16 am - Fever Crumb
Nobody could say I had anything against Philip Reeve. I gave Here Lies Arthur an awed write-up after reading it, and got it as soon as it came out here, having been so impressed by his talk at the IBBY conference in 2006 that -- Well. A lot of people may not have been on my flist back when I wrote that up - I was highly embarrassed to have my description of Philip Reeve as 'geeky hot' picked up by Achuka with a link to my write up of the conference. Anyway, I liked Larklight a lot, and also Mortal Engines, when I finally read it this year, if not quite as much as I expected.
Becca got Fever Crumb a while ago, but stopped reading after getting annoyed by the puns - I think B@ersea was either the final or the next-to final one for her. As I liked Un Lun Dun much more than she did, and enjoyed the puns in that, I wasn't put off by her having bounced off Fever Crumb. But the puns in it? Yeech. Subtle - or meaningful - they're not. B@ersea, as I said, and Ox-Fart Circus, and the Moatway around London... Liver Pill Street, Hamster's Heath, Effing Forest. 'Blog off' as an insult. As usual, I get sniffy and start wondering why Oxford Circus has become Ox-Fart Circus sometime post thirtieth century, but London is still and always London! Or get annoyed at the idea of the Harry Potter books having led to a religious procession with 'celebrants in robes and pointed hats whirling and clapping and chanting the name of some old-world prophet, "Hari, Hari! Hari Potter!"'
I also felt some weariness at the structure, with the set-up of introducing our protagonist, setting her into danger and promptly introducing a more downtrodden and abused character (of roughly the same age) to be the agent of endangering protag #1. Neither of the girls had a clue what I was talking about, though I was sure this happened in lots of books - but possibly it was just Mortal Engines I'd been remembering. It seemed especially dispiriting as a structure when chapters kept ending with lines like 'If she had only looked behind her, she would have seen the black car following.'
Wasn't enjoying it terribly much, and then I hit a line that really finished it off for me. This was at a moment of high tension, when our heroine is inside a burning building which is about to collapse - on top of the agent-of-danger and his horrible master Ted. '"Cheesers Crice!" Ted shouted (it was the name of some obscure cockney god) and knocked Charley sprawling in his hurry to get away.' Even if Reeve hadn't previously made a point of jibing specifically at Christians in a way which rather ruined his 'obscure cockney god' line ('Even Zagwa, the crazy Christian empire which had conquered most of Africa and southern Europe and banned all technology there...'), this seems just childishly nasty. I'd have thought Reeve would have been content that he'd shown his disdain at religious belief in writing that Ruan 'closed his eyes and held [his sister]'s hand tightly and prayed to Poskitt, Lud and Mama Cellulite ....' (Of course, the 'Mama Cellulite' seems more than a bit pointedly gendered in its mocking too.)
It's not that I expect everyone to share my beliefs - I don't expect that of those closest to me, let alone Reeve, and it's not lacking a sense of humour either. I pretty much only get annoyed when people too obviously show disgust at the stupidity of anyone holding any kind of religious belief. This is that and then some, and it's hardly the kind of satire that shows off a supposedly superior intelligence.
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