Friends
Nov. 9th, 2009
08:18 pm - "You go about the school so exactly like Minerva!"
Off being an Angel in the House, so I've loaded up the iPod with Edwardotorian light reading—it makes a spiffy torch for those secret passages!—and I've been flicking my way through golden-age Angela Brazil, up to 1922. Of course, I'd much rather have the books—nice, chubby, fluffy things with cocoa stains and awfully jolly plates—but the pixels will have to do. Heaven knows, I'd hate to wake up in a girls' school, but the stories are utterly comforting, smooth and sweet: like bowls full of floating island. Even the titles make me smile: The Madcap of the School, The Jolliest Term on Record. They're all the same and all different—seaside schools, moorland schools, Georgian halls, dissolved abbeys with optional ghosts; shy girls, snobs, hoydens, madcaps, malaperts, twenty girls or two hundred. Mind you, Brazil can't plot for toffee, but she knows fourteen. There are misunderstandings, meannesses, masquerades, undying crushes, ghosts which aren't, and the occasional uprising in the Fourth. (She has rather a pash for gipsyish brunettes.) There are censorious or adulated mistresses; there is frolicking with garlands on the lawn, in Attic attitudes. There is real landscape, done in watercolor—and not only English. Much to my surprise, there are jaunts to Sicily. She must have visited and fallen madly in love, pressing flowers, taking note of the picturesque:
"You can always tell a brigand because he never carries an umbrella."
So, what featherweight reading do you like?
Nine
06:58 pm - 1. Imago, by Octavia Butler
Apparently this is the conclusion to a series, which I didn't realize when I read it, and leaves me vaguely distressed now, since I like to read things in order. I felt it stood okay alone, obviously, but in retrospect it explains some things- like how quickly the beginning moved.
( Many spoilers, nattering. )
Still, I enjoyed the book a lot, and now I will go seek out the prequels, and then read this one again and see if my thoughts change.
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thoughtful02:33 am - "Our experiment killed 20 million people. What more is there to say, Simon?"
FlashForward
On a certain date, everybody (or so it seems) around the world falls down in a dead faint and has some kind of a dream or image about what's going to happen to them on a certain date in the future. A lot of people are killed just by the initial blackout and then by then by the way people react to their remembered flashforwards.
This leads us to the main people in this series: a couple of doctors, one of whom was contemplating suicide before the event and another who got a major shock by seeing herself with another man in her home.
Then there were the agents who are going to be investigating the case. Doctor lady's husband saw himself drunk (he's a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for 7 years already) and threatened by masked assassins, his colleague saw nothing, etc. And doctor lady saw herself living with another man, who later turns out to the father of one of her clients.
Slowly these various people try to gather facts and experiences from the blackouts and try to figure out what happened and what cause it. And, of course, whether the flashforwards really are true.
I really get the comparisons to Heroes, even though I've only seen a couple of episodes of that series, since there are quite a lot of questions, but not that many answers.
( Spoilers up till and including Episode 6 )
This series seems entertaining enough, but I just can't get over my amusement of Joseph Fiennes speaking with an American accent. It just seems so totally incongruous to me at all times XD. Still, the cast is really good, with the aforementioned Joseph Fiennes, Jack Davenport, John Cho, Sonya Walger, Christine Woods, etc.
I look forward to finding out more about the various mysteries surrounding the flashforwards.
05:12 pm - Face wash recommendation for those with sensitive skin.
I had been using Aveda's acne face wash, for about 9 months. It worked great but didn't want to dish out the money for the refills every month. Whole Foods sells a brand called Collective Wellbeing ($12), and I decided to check out the Oatmeal & Raspberry cleansing paste a week ago. This is the best face wash I've ever used. It smells nice, cleanses really well, and doesn't have acne medicine in it. I have eczema so I've always been a fan of oats in the bath & the occasional face mask. For my budget, I'm super happy with it. So far it's keeping my skin clean, clear, and more moisturized. I still use a small amount of EveryDay Shea lotion on the super dry areas of my face, but overall it does not dry out my skin.
x-posted to naturaliving
03:26 pm
Someone just sent me this link for the Anne Taintor page. The magnets give you the best overview. Some of my favorites:
"she was one cocktail away from proving his mother right"
"I believe we have an opportunity to make some extremely poor choices"
"it would, of course, have to look like an accident"
"the secret ingredient is resentment"
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!
03:05 pm - Maggie, in Music & Pictures
Back from AASL in Charlotte, NC. There's more to say on this, but I'm about to word-war with Tessa for my neglected NaNo novel. So we'll let some pictures and music say it all.
1. Music from the Ballad video is now up for download for my site. (up for down, did you catch that?)
2. Some sketches from the Sketchbook of Doom. These are from the way to and from AASL.
3. My current musical obsession: "Percussion Gun" by White Rabbits. The whole album rocks. I can't stop listening to it. It's like if Vampire Weekend had babies with The Bravery. (also, if that happened, could I watch?)
12:38 pm - Lions are . . .
The New York Times Best Illustrated Books list is out, along with my review of The Lion & the Mouse. What a great book--I wish they had given me twice the space. When I sat down with it and my two young neighbors, the two year old boy announced, looking uncertainly at the cover, "lions are scary." His more intrepid four-year-old sister took over the narration from there ("Look out for the bird!") until the end, whereupon the two-year-old said, "lions are NOT scary." Now it's his favorite book, so we gave him a copy for his birthday, along with a little plastic lion he can carry around in his hand. What's your talisman?
05:24 pm - Hurray for all manner of things!
Happy November, oh internet of my heart. I have many exciting things to tell you.
The first and most important is a very happy thing. On Friday I went onto twitter, where I am www.twitter.com/sarahreesbrenna, as an oppressive twitter system denies me my last, delicious 'n.' And I saw people were congratulating me.
Since I had not even managed to get dressed for the day and was indeed cocooned in a fuzzy blanket, this struck me as odd.
When someone told me that The Demon's Lexicon had been nominated for a Carnegie award, I became hopelessly entangled in my blanket and almost fell down.
The Carnegie Medal is the British equivalent of the Newbery and the National Book Award. Richard Adams won it for Watership Down. Margaret Mahy, being a writing goddess, has won it twice. It is indeed an honour to be nominated, especially in the company of such people as Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Laurie Halse Anderson, and R.J. Anderson for her awesome book Knife.
When you have a book out, you spend a lot of time trying to find out what people think. A bad internet review can make you lie down in the floor cuddling a cup of hot chocolate and murmuring 'You are my only friend, Mr Cuplington.' (All right, maybe that's just me.) So something like this just transformed my day, and made me wander around in a daze of joy all weekend.
My book. Nominated for a Carnegie. Mr Cuplington and I are so happy.
In other news, Cassandra Clare's lovely fansite Mundie Moms have been so very kind as to make Demon's Lexicon their Book of the Month. There's a forum up where people are already discussing it, and on November the 12th, 9 PM EST, there will be an online chat. I will put up the link to it in this post on the day - hope to talk to some of you then!
And a present for you all: here is the first chapter of the second book, The Demon's Covenant, which will also be up on the website very soon. I hope you enjoy!
( The Demon's Covenant, Chapter One )
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happy06:00 pm
You can have health care as long as you give up your right to abortion.
I may have read this wrong. I don't think so.
Thank you ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
opalnipotent.
12:52 pm - New and improved lightning... now with antimatter!
Some lightning flashes apparently contain antimatter. Think on that a moment. Lightning is already one of the coolest phenomena under the sun, and now it's just that much cooler. It's positively positronic.
The story, which I found out about from nancylebov, is here.
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excited12:24 pm - Topic of the Week: What makes a strong hero/heroine?
When talking about fantasy, we often focus on the heroes and heroines: their personalities, their motives, the actions they take. How much we believe in the unreal elements of the story has a lot to do with how much we believe in the characters taking part in that story. And one of the biggest complaints a reader can make is that a protagonist was weak. But what exactly makes us see a hero or heroine as "strong"?
As soon as I started thinking about this question, I realized how subjective it was. When most people hear the word "strong," they first associate it with physical strength, but clearly there are many fantasy protagonists who are much admired yet physically the smallest and/or weakest in the cast, all the way back to Frodo in Lord of the Rings. What about other physical skills? Fire may not be the most muscular character in Kristin Cashore's Fire, but she's an expert with a bow and arrow. How about mental strength? Eugenides of the Attolia books solves most of his problems with his wits.
Curious to find out what other readers thought made a "strong" protagonist, I posted a poll on my blog a week ago, asking people to pick from eleven different characteristics. The results turned out to be quite interesting.
By far, the most commonly chosen attributes had nothing to do with a character's skills, of any type. What seems to make most readers see a hero or heroine as strong is not what they're capable of, but what they're willing to do. Will power and perseverance, courage, and passion were picked significantly more often than any other quality (although mental smarts were not too far behind). Will power and courage were seen as nearly twenty times more important than physical qualities, six times more important than social skills, and nearly twice as important as intelligence or creativity! (See full results here.)
What does that mean? Well, it suggests to me that as readers we tend to value factors that are under a character's control (like whether they're going to summon the courage to go into that scary situation, or the will to stick with a difficult problem) than those they may have simply been lucky enough to be born with (like physical strength and beauty). Otherwise "weak" characters, like Miri in Princess Academy or Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle, who stand up for themselves and do whatever they can, appear stronger to us than those who can accomplish a lot without as much effort. Perhaps this is why, as last week's TotW discussed, so many people cheer for the underdog.
But how does that fit in with the fact that so much traditional fantasy is focused on characters who do have inherent benefits (e.g., who are or discover they are royalty), and so much urban fantasy has protagonists who discover special abilities that raise them above the average person? Do we actually prefer to read about characters who have some sort of natural advantage, even if we're not conscious of that? Or perhaps should writers of fantasy leave behind those tropes more often, because readers are more concerned about seeing heroes and heroines who try than those who always can?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Megan Crewe
Author of Give Up the Ghost
01:01 pm - Top 10 Books of 2009 (Girls Need Not Apply)
By now, I imagine many of you have seen Publishers Weekly’s roundup of the ten very best books of 2009, a list which just happens to only include male authors. Sure, the girls made it into some of the secondary lists, but the ten best? All boys.
I would also check out Lizzie Skurnick’s response at Politics Daily, which included this bit from PW: “We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration . . . We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz . . . It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male.”
So here’s my question: What should PW have done when they realized they had come up with an all-male list?
We pause now for the predictable response.
“You keep your quotas off of us, you damn, dirty PC police!”
Right. Moving on, the thing I don’t get is that the folks at PW say they were disturbed by this, but they don’t appear to have done anything about it. Did they ever take that next step and ask, “Why, if we were truly ignoring gender, did we still come up with an all-male list? We’re talking less than a 1 in 1000 chance of this happening purely at random*, which suggests maybe we weren’t as gender-blind as we thought.”
Our own biases are hard to face. It’s easier and safer to turn the blame outward or make excuses:
- It’s just one list, and we have girls in some of the others!
- Maybe more men published good books this year.
- It’s the story that counts, not the gender/race/etc. of the author.
- Women helped to make this list, so it can’t be sexist!
- Maybe women should be proactive and start writing better books!
I could go on and on listing reasons that basically amount to “It’s not my fault,” and “I’m not sexist!” We could spend the whole month debunking most of those reasons.
But in the end, Publishers Weekly published this list. They were aware enough to recognize something wasn’t right, and I give them props for that. But that’s much easier than actually taking responsibility. We can say, “Oh look, a list of all men. That’s gonna be a problem, because those bloggers are going to raise hell that we didn’t include a token woman.”
Or we can stop making excuses and try being accountable for our own choices and behaviors. We can say, “I tried to be gender-blind about this, but ended up with an all-male list. Huh. I didn’t consciously try to pick only male authors, but maybe I’m not as gender-blind or unbiased as I thought.”
Nobody’s asking for quotas. Me, I’m just asking people to grow up and take responsibility for their choices. Yes, we’re talking about an industry-wide issue that affects publishing on many different levels. But the industry is made up of individuals, and every one of us, myself included, has our own biases and prejudices. We can ignore them and make the same tired excuses, or we can face them and try to do better.
We all mess up. I just wish more folks would own up to it when it happens.
—
*Assuming a 50/50 breakdown of male and female authors.
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
09:09 am
Hoping hurricane Ida doesn't cause much trouble.
We had a great weekend, and got to spend Saturday night and Sunday morning with a friend who came into town unexpectedly. She's going into surgery for cancer towards the end of this month, so if you have any positive vibes to spare, please send them her way.
Something fun:
Stormtroopers 365 A year in the life of tiny plastic stormtroopers.
08:59 am - I went to North Carolina and all I got was this major award nomination
This past Thursday I flew down to the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) conference in Charlotte, NC to meet some fellow ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
debut2009 authors, hang out with my agent, drive up to visit cesario, and maybe, if all went well, get to sign a few of my books at the AASL PitStop. Those were my expectations, and they were modest and practical ones, and I had no idea that there was even the possibility of anything more. Especially since I'd left my laptop at home, my Canadian cell phone doesn't work in the US, and I wouldn't have access to e-mail or Internet until I got back Sunday night.
So I was wholly unprepared, when I met the Debs for breakfast on Friday morning, to find out from carrie_ryan that Knife has been nominated for one of the most prestigious children's book awards in the English-speaking world. The Carnegie Medal. We are talking the British equivalent of the Newbery or the National Book Award, people. C.S. Lewis won it for The Last Battle. So did Richard Adams for Watership Down.
I may have stared blankly at Carrie for about thirty seconds before I started flailing. And then I spent the whole weekend in a happy daze and I haven't come down since.
Congratulations to my fellow nominees sarahtales (The Demon's Lexicon) and halseanderson (Chains)!
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ecstatic06:47 am - Mayflower 1620 A New Look At A Pilgrim Voyage
Mayflower 1620 A New Look At A Pilgrim Voyage by Plimoth Plantation with Peter Arenstram, John Kemp and Catherine O'Neill Grace; Photographs by Sisse Brimberg and Cotton Coulson. National Geographic. Library copy.The Plot: A look at the myths and legends of the Mayflower voyage and founding of Plymouth. Full of gorgeous photos from some of the sailing done by the Mayflower II.
The Good: How do you bring to life a time in the past that existed before photography, let alone color photography? By well done recreations, including the ones done by the Plimoth Plantation organization that are based not on wish fulfilment, myths, or legends, but on research. And the actual journey wasn't redone in the new ship; but the Mayflower II has traveled up and down the East Coast of the US.
This book is full of interesting details, and always sticks to the facts. It explains, simply, that "history is complicated. People sailed on the Mayflower for different reasons." A list of provisions is included, but it's clearly noted that the list is from a 1629 ship making a similar voyage with a similar number of passengers and mariners. It sorts myths from reality; and yes, it clearly states that the corn was stolen. The chronology starts 4,000 to 1,000 years before 1620.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, as I've mentioned before in My 2006 Thanksgiving Post. I like the turkey; I like the history. But even with a favorite, one has to acknowledge its faults and consider the whole picture; the bigger picture; and what it means to people besides me.
So, must-reads for keeping attitudes and teaching about Thanksgiving real are American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving (10/2009) from Debbie Reese (aka the blog American Indians in Children's Literature); American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving, PDF, from National Museum of the American Indian (link from Reese); for use year round, Teacher and Librarian Resources for Children's and YA Books with Native Themes from Cynthia Leitich Smith; and Native Youth Literature widget from JacketFlap; thanks to Cynthia Leitich Smith for reminding me of this widget, which is on my sidebar for the month of November.
Nonfiction Monday is at Abby (the) Librarian.
Nov. 8th, 2009
08:07 pm - Gay Imperialism
15. Jin Haritaworn, with Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem, "Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’".
Racism is the vehicle that transports white gays and feminists into the political mainstream.Haritaworn et al discusses the interaction between gay rights and the "war on terror" -- namely, how some white gay activists have struck a mutually-beneficial bargain with neoimperialists, such that "concern" for Muslim queers is used to gay-wash Islamophobic agendas, in return for sexual rights being elevated to the status of a core social value, on par with "freedom" and "democracy." As a result, the social position of white gays is improved, while the position of queer Muslims is worsened. Haritaworn focuses the discussion on Germany and the United Kingdom, and draws parallels with similar neoimperialist bargains struck by white feminists.
There are a lot of rhetorical maneuvers here that are familiar to me. For instance, despite Muslim queers of color being the alleged central figures of the narrative, their voices are written out of the narrative (white gays speak "for" them) unless they are willing to testify in ways that are useful to the imperialist frame:
...the journalists wanted me to respond to the ‘difficulties’ of being gay and Muslim, as well as to the homophobia of Muslim communities in Britain and abroad. I often suggested shifting the focus to the considerable work being done within liberal and progressive Islam. Journalists reacted with silence when I asked them to report on progressive Imams who have conducted Nikahs (Muslim marriage contracts) for same-sex couples, or on parents who had supported their gay children.Other rhetorical attacks white gay activists include framing people of color as straight oppressors of white gays and as possessors of unique privileges ("imagine someone getting away with saying that about a black person"). Meanwhile, within Muslim communities, since gay-rights rhetoric so often acts as a carrier/justifier for Islamophobia, gay rights becomes equated with anti-Muslim racism, thus worsening the position of Muslim queers.
Some maneuvers detailed by Haritaworn et al are new to me. Most audacious, in my mind, is equating Muslim anti-gay rhetoric with the neo-Nazi anti-gay rhetoric of the British National Party, a move that paints Muslims and neo-Nazis as allies (!?), and thus elevating gays to the ever-coveted "most oppressed" status.
The article is fairly heavy in academic language (I found it rough going in places), but it was well worth my time. Unfortunately, you'll notice that the link above goes to a Google cache of the original article: one of the white gay activists discussed in the paper appears to have successfully pressured the publisher into declaring the original anthology out of print.
(hat tip)
05:38 pm - Well, maybe a piglet
Still not feeling up to much. Better than yesterday, for sure, but still a bit off-colour. Just tired and achy with a bit of a sore throat and a bit of trouble breathing and a headache. I wish it would either develop into something dramatic or go away, because now I'm in something of a dilemma about work. Normally this would not keep me away, but we've been given pretty strict instructions to stay at home with a hint of anything. I'll see how I feel tomorrow. In some ways, I hope this is the swine flu, and it's just a very mild case; then I won't have to worry about getting it more badly at some future date.
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