Another mystery this Friday! Graveyard Dust is the third in Barbara Hambly's series of Benjamin January mysteries, set in New Orleans of the 1830's.

(A note: according to last week's poll, historical mysteries were far and away the most popular subgenre - among my flist, at least. This does not surprise me at all! Historical mysteries are AWESOME. Half the time the mystery is just an excuse to poke around in the world and show off research and that is exactly what I like. When I'm reading the Benjamin January books, it doesn't matter so much to me who actually committed the murder - it's the incredible fascination of the world, with all its complex and bizarre and often grotesque social rules, that pulls me in. The mystery is incidental.)

I was a little nervous about this one, because it is ~the one with voodoo~ and I know how often that is mishandled as a bundle of stereotypes. And I am still in no way qualified to talk about how accurately Hambly portrayed it, but I was glad at least that she really made an effort to show multiple perspectives. And this one had a bunch of my favorite characters getting more screen time! (Though, still not enough Livia and not enough Shaw. On the other hand: AUGUSTUS MAYERLING CAMEO *_* That is a character I never thought we would see again and I was super excited!) Also, it didn't feel like Barbara Hambly was trying to cram as many plots into one book as in Fever Season, which made the whole thing hang together much better. And the court scene was excellent high farce.

(Though is it just me, or are SECRET TORTURE ATTICS becoming kind of a trend in these books? Seriously, how many of those can one town have?)

The next one is going to be super depressing! I have to confess though, I am way looking forward to the one set at the Opera House. In my head, it is called BENJAMIN JANUARY: LOVE NEVER DIES!

Yesterday my company went to the racetrack for a Company Outing! (Corporate America is weird sometimes.) I did not wear a big hat and I did not drink a mint julep, but I did bet money on the races, which marks my Very First Time Gambling! That is two dollars I will never see again. :( Gambling is clearly the devil's work.

Due possibly to lack of big hat, I have also burned myself an exciting neon pink color that matches well with the purple shirt I am wearing today. SUMMER IS HERE AT LAST.

Anyway, I have books to write up, but for one reason or another I wish to hold off on them for now, so instead I am stealing a meme from furikku and shoroko:

Give me a character from any fandom you know that I know and I will tell you:
a. My favorite thing about that character.
b. My least favorite thing about that character.
c. One person I would ship them with in their own verse.
d. One crossover ship for them I think would be neat.
e. One crossover universe for them I think would be even neater.
f. Their ship from hell.
g. Their song.
h. The title of their biography or autobiography.
i. The last bad dream they had.
j. How they're gonna shuffle off the mortal coil, if they haven't already.

This is an awesome meme! It combines all my favorite things: character analysis, cracktastic crossovers, making playlists, and killing off characters in exciting ways. Feel free to ask me lots! :D

A couple weeks back, genarti, rushin_doll and I went to go see Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera.

First of all, it was 100% amazing and I am now totally bitten by the ballet bug - which I can already tell is going to be a tragically expensive passion, but I DON'T CARE. The swan chorus: beautiful! Odette dancing her transformation into a swan: insanely beautiful! Villainous Von Rothbart being a total pimp with all of Siegfried's ladies and Siegfried's mom and then literally SMOKEBOMBING his way out of the scene: insanely HILARIOUS! (And, uh, that is not even factoring in how I was clutching Gen's arm every ten minutes hissing "that's the music from the bit that Kraehe dances to with Mytho! And that's from the bit that Tutu does her solo to, and HEY LOOK that's the exact choreography oh man!" I am not proud of being that ridiculously obsessed, but Princess Tutu remains my One True Fictional Love at this point in time and I can't help it.)

Anyway, after seeing the show, I had an overwhelming urge to reread Mercedes Lackey's retelling, The Black Swan, which I first read during my Lackey-devouring phase as a thirteen-year-old. Basically, the story of The Black Swan is "It's Swan Lake . . . IF ODILE WAS AN AWESOME YA-STYLE HEROINE AND SAVED THE DAY. Also I guess Siegfried has a story of personal redemption somewhere in there too."

To be honest I didn't care much about Siegfried's story of personal redemption or his evil mother or his and Odette's true love, which is kind of shoehorned into the last hundred pages anyways. I wanted the whole book to be about Odile bonding with Odette! And learning about the ~*~power of friendship!~*~ And, you know, enough of it was that I was happy.

It was also super fun reading it right after seeing the show - Lackey spends a lot of time describing set pieces that are taken straight from the traditional ballet's stage settings. The lake itself is the big one ("and there is this GIANT DRAMATIC CLIFF right next to the lake! Funny how that is!") but the party scene with all of the visiting princesses doing their national dances is also pretty notable.

(It did not, however, give me many Princess Tutu associations - the two stories are both working off Swan Lake, obviously, but taking it in completely different directions. Um, unsurprisingly.)

According to the Smart Bitches, Laura Kinsale writes THE BEST MOST AMAZINGEST ROMANCE NOVELS EVER, bar none! So, I decided that I was going to foray into romance novels, I should start with a Laura Kinsale and got out Midsummer Moon from the library.

I - okay, I am feeling the need to summarize the plot for you guys in GREAT DETAIL, so bear with me.

CAST:
MERLIN: Our heroine! A GENIUS INVENTOR who has devoted her life to inventing the airplane! Along the way she has absentmindedly invented the short-wave radio! Did I mention this is Regency England and she's also a drop-dead gorgeous orphan of noble birth with a formerly tragically deaf and currently tragically dead mother, raised by eccentric twin servants? Did I also mention that she is conveniently completely ignorant of sexual propriety due to aforementioned eccentric upbringing? Did I also mention the constant presence of the pet hedgehog?

RANSOM: Our dashing, noble hero, a Duke who spies for the crown! He is assigned to protect Merlin from EVIL FRENCH SPIES! He would be perfect for Merlin the would-be daring aviatrix, EXCEPT that he is TERRIBLY AFRAID OF HEIGHTS! His backstory angst: he stuttered as a kid. (No, really, that's it.)

RANSOM'S FRIENDS AND RELATIONS: A wacky cast including a spendthrift gambling brother, his dramatic opera singer French wife, his uptight sister, her prim priestly suitor, her less prim super-Irish suitor/Ransom's subordinate spy, and several adorable moppets of nieces and nephews.

EVIL FRENCH SPIES: Periodically enter the book, drug Merlin, carry her off, and stash her somewhere where she can be conveniently rescued, and then disappear again for large swathes of plot.


( THE PLOT; cut for extreme length and hilarious spoilers! )

Snark aside, there really were a lot of genuinely (and intentionally) funny scenes, and there's the core of a book in there that I could really quite like if separated from the romantic plot. But I continued to get bored every time Ransom and Merlin went off into rhapsodies about each other's eyes/hair/breasts/muscles what have you and started acting like morons, and I was not convinced they were actually very good for each other and did not really want them to end up together.

But the hedgehog was awesome.

After my last read, I felt desperately in need of some escapism.

- which is what I am reading now! (I am in fact making my first foray into a non-Heyer Real Romance Novel, guys. It's . . . interesting. But MORE ON THAT LATER.) But first, I took a detour in the complete opposite direction from escapism and read the third one in Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlin series, White Butterfly. I really get more and more impressed by these books as I read further in the series. I feel like a lot of ongoing mysteries tend to return to a status quo with every book in order to keep the comfort level of the reader - and I have no objection to that, mind; many of my favorite mystery series do this! - but every book in the Easy Rawlins series actually affects Easy's life in significant ways, and Mosley is really not afraid to shake things up. ( Cut for mild spoilers. )

Anyway. Like I said, the Easy Rawlins books are really not characteristic of most mystery series I have read. (Also, it feels like almost all mysteries are long series - I wonder why that is?) But some of you read lots more mysteries than me, and between that and the official launch of the WEST IS DEAD MURDER MYSTERY PLOT, I am getting curious about what you like to see! Therefore: POLL TIME.

Poll #1427811 Mysteries!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Do you read mysteries?

What kind of mysteries are best?

Okay, so how about long ongoing mystery series? (This question is tricky for me to phrase because I do not remember how to pluralize 'series' . . .)

The mystery/mystery series that I am devoted to above all others is . . .

As part of my resolution to read more nonfiction, I asked my dad to recommend me some of his nonfiction books when I went home for the 4th last weekend. (For background: my dad is an infectious disease specialist who treats a lot of AIDS patients.) He pulled out his copy of Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic and said, "didn't I ever make you read this before?"

The answer being 'no', I read it.

This book is . . . brutal. As you're reading, it starts to feel like just about every chapter ends with a sentence that boils down to "and this INCREDIBLY STUPID DECISION was going to cost thousands of lives later on!" It would come across as melodramatic if it weren't so obviously true. The number of criminally self-interested, oblivious, or just well-intentioned and dumb decisions that lead to the spread of the epidemic is pretty staggering. (The blood banks' utter refusal to admit that AIDS could be spread through blood transfusions until 70% of US hemophiliacs, among others, were infected with HIV is just one blatant example. Of many.)

Randy Shilts was one of very, very few reporters who was assigned to cover AIDS in the early years of the epidemic; the book carefully reports pretty much everything that happened from the time the first people in New York City started falling inexplicably ill until Rock Hudson confessed that he had AIDS in 1985 and all of a sudden - after four years - the US media finally got majorly involved in the AIDS story. (Shilts is scathing about just how ridiculously much of a turning point the first case of official celebrity AIDS was in the fight against the disease, and rightly so.)

Shilts was also a relatively prominent member of the gay San Francisco scene in the 70s and 80s, and although he does his best to keep himself out of the story, it shows. He does an incredible job showing the staggering impact on both the gay community and on the individuals within it, with in-depths portraits of many of those who were infected, and doesn't go into as much detail on several other groups hard-hit by the virus. This is half-fair - at first, AIDS was completely perceived as a gay disease in America, and most of the politics centered around this - and half-not; there's not much at all on the epidemic among Haitians, and when Africa is (sparsely) discussed the focus was almost always on the Brave White Doctors Risking Themselves in language that made me cringe a little.

I was born in 1985, when this book ends (though there's an epilogue updating for 1987, written I think for the second edition.) I only knew the very top layer of this story; in 2009, AIDS is kind of a matter-of-fact reality. Among all the other reasons this book is kind of a gutpunch, it's incredibly chilling to read about the epidemic from the start and realize how much it's affected the society I've lived in my whole life.

Before I read the Young Miles omnibus this weekend I was convinced that I hadn't read The Vor Game before . . . but, um, that turned out to be a lie! It seems that I have in fact read all of Young Miles before, because I remembered almost everything about the Kyril Island bit, and apparently I just managed to completely and utterly blank out the second half of the plot of The Vor Game to the point where none of it when described to me rang any bells at all.

Anyway, some brief thoughts on what, it turns out, is a complete reread of Miles Vorkosigan's early, hyperactive years:

- Gregor never stuck in my head much before as a character, but despite several acts of idiocy, he really grew on me this time! I think it is an automatic fondness for characters whose main descriptor is 'glum'; I found myself just wanting to pat Gregor on the head and introduce him to Eeyore, Puddleglum and Marvin the Paranoid Android for a tea party.

- Ivan remains my favorite from the beginning, but it is very interesting to watch him growing on everyone else after being initially introduced as highly unsympathetic.

- The much-invoked concept of 'forward momentum' is also a good way to describe the zippity readability of the prose in the series. I always zoom through the books much more compulsively than I expect to.

- I like Tung, but - and I might not have noticed this if I hadn't been reading with an extra eye out for race stuff due to recent incidents - it disturbs me that he is constantly referred to as 'the Eurasian' like he is the only one in existence. (And as far as I can tell, in this universe, he is . . .)

The stories in Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others have been praised a lot, and with good reason - they're a really good demonstration of what sci-fi at its best does. Each story carefully takes a 'what-if?' idea and extrapolates it out, step-by-step, considering the ramifications that don't necessarily occur to you on the first consideration of the "HEY SO COOL" premise. Even the stories that aren't explicitly science-fictional have sort of this attitude to their premises, which is what makes them work so well.

So, story-by-story, we have:

Tower of Babylon -- so what about a tower that reaches all the way up to Heaven? How do you actually construct something like that when it takes months to get a third of the way up it? There's cool cosmology stuff in here, but what's unique is the description of how the Tower of Babel works.

Understand -- the notes say this was a very early story, and it sort of shows, but cool to read anyways. Everyman gets smart. Then he gets super-smart. Then he gets MEGA-ULTIMA-SUPER-smart.

Division By Zero -- mathy types, beware! This story is about the worst thing that could possibly happen to a mathematician. :O

Story of Your Life -- this is a lot of reviewers' favorite story in the collection, and though it wasn't my favorite, I can see why. Alien linguistics, physics equations, relative perception of time, and parenthood. (The alien linguistics are AWESOME.)

Seventy-Two Letters -- steampunk bringing together two premises: 'what if a lot of the stuff the Victorians believed about reproduction was actually true?' + 'SCIENCE OF GOLEMS!' The ending felt a little abrupt to me, but it was fun getting there.

The Evolution of Human Science -- super-short, but I kind of loved this one. Written in the form of a scientific journal article querying the point of scientific journals when no ordinary human scientists can understand what super-genius-meta-human scientists are saying in their articles anyway.

Hell is the Absence of God -- this one was absolutely my favorite. In this cosmology, angels regularly appear like natural disasters, miraculously healing some and damaging or killing others. The story is about a man who loses his wife in an angelic manifestation, and is beautiful and chilling and touches on a lot of my own personal Religion Issues which I am not getting into at this time.

Liking What You See - A Documentary -- I really liked this one also! Controversy on a college campus about a technique that allows you to turn off your perception of faces as beautiful or ugly.

Most of the stories in the book, though very good, were thinky/intellectual stories for me; "Hell is the Absence of God" is the only one that I felt like was talking to me. But I suspect this would vary person-to-person.

Okay, guys - I have a confession to make.

I didn't like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I KNOW. I'm shocked at myself too! The mere concept fills me with delight! And yet! I have been trying to figure out why, and I think maybe the biggest problem for me was just that Zombie-Slaying Ninja Master Elizabeth Bennet did not feel like Elizabeth Bennet, and Elizabeth Bennet is a character that I love enough that OOC Lizzie makes me irritable. Is a review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the place for in-depth character analysis? No, but I am going to add one anyways, SO THERE.

To my mind (though I welcome argument, as always), here are the things that make Elizabeth Bennet, Original Flavor an awesome character:

1. She has a fabulous sense of humor, and is just as good at laughing at herself as she is at everyone else.
2. She is independent within the confines of her society, which means that she knows how to navigate the rules to allow for her own freedom without being completely shocking (or Unbearably Spunky, for that matter). This is extremely important for Austen, and is what shows her to have good sense as well as an independent spirit.
3. She loves her family. Yes, even the silly and stupid ones.
4. She is not particularly accomplished, and what accomplishments she does have she is mediocre at. That really is important! First of all, it saves her from being too perfect, but more essentially, it means that the focus is not on what Elizabeth can do, but who she is. We like her - and so does Mr. Darcy - because of the force of her personality, not because of her zippity fingers.

Contrast this with Elizabeth Bennet, Ninja Master:

1. Grahame-Smith keeps a lot of Elizabeth's jokes, but because her own sense of WARRIOR HONOR is so easily offended, it is hard to read her except as taking herself crazy seriously. That is no fun! And makes her jokes at others' expense a lot more mean-spirited.
2. I . . . can't even quite figure out what the social rules of zombie-infected England are so I can't really comment on this one. (But I wish I did! That would be such a fascinating read!) I have to say, though, while I love the kickass ladies, this book totally pinged my "the only way for girls to be awesome is if they can beat up everyone!" senses - especially considering all the comments Elizabeth makes about being ashamed of showing any 'feminine weakness' when she is sworn to the sword, etc.
3. She dreams about beheading Lydia. D: D: D: D:
4. I really wanted Elizabeth just to be a mediocre ninja master, and not the best of the best. That would actually have been really cool! As it is, her mad zombie-slaying skillz pretty much overshadow everything else about her, and . . . I just didn't care! I wanted Original Flavor Lizzie back. :(

Other things: the truly ridiculous levels of Orientalism (oh god, the disposable ninjas and constant appropriativeness of everybody, WHY). And all the vomiting and soiling is really not as funny as Seth Grahame-Smith thinks it is. Which is not to say he doesn't get off some great lines! Or that there weren't some scenes that, by all rights, I should have thought were awesome, if I was not so cranky at the book already. Sadly, I was cranky, and though the end was better than the beginning, by that point I was unsoothable.

(Also: Charlotte Lucas' plotline. D: D: D: D: CHARLOTTE.)

Last time I wandered over towards the Ys in the children's room at the library, I was intending to pick up one of Laurence Yep's Newbery-award-winning novels. Then, out of curiosity, I picked up and flipped over the first one of his Chinatown mysteries, The Case of the Goblin Pearls and read the following words:

What if your aunt thought she was still the famous action heroine Tiger Lil and decided to catch the thieves? What else could you do but become her sidekick?

WHAT ELSE INDEED! Yes, that's right: in this book, a shy twelve-year-old and her wisecracking movie star great-aunt FIGHT CRIME! Also injustice and racism in Hollywood! I am 100% charmed and I need to read every other mystery Laurence Yep wrote in the series, because so many warm fuzzies!

It is true that Yep is not so much a subtle writer - there are a lot of hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-message-here moments - but the message-ness is pretty well balanced with ~wacky disguise hijinks~ and madcap chase scenes and a formerly awkward group of kids bonding over how totally awesome Great-Aunt Lil is in her 50s action movies. She hits people with her purse and leaps rooftops in a single bound! <333333 How, how I wish these movies had actually existed!

My favorite part, however, is totally the bit where Aunt Lil is talking to a cop after some impromptu-justice hijinks, and he eyes her darkly and says something along the lines of "We don't tolerate vigilantes in San Francisco anymore," because what this basically means is that AUNT LIL IS BATMAN and now forever in my heart San Francisco's main costumed vigilante is going to be a wisecracking sixty-something Chinese-American film star with a genius for publicity. *_* WHY HAS NOBODY MADE THIS COMIC YET.

I had such success in my last experiment with historical LJs that I decided to pick up The Diary of Samuel Pepys, a rising figure in Restoration politics who is most famous for, well, his diary! Before picking it up all I knew about Pepys is that he was one of the first men to survive a kidney stone operation and carried the stone around with him much of the time afterwards to show off, and that fact came from Neal Stephenson so I was not sure how accurate it was. But it was enough to intrigue me anyways.

The version I read turned out to be seriously abridged, which normally I would be sheepish about, but on the other hand it began with a hilarious essay by Robert Louis Stephenson in which the thesis is basically 'Pepys is so awesomely immature, he is like a ten-year-old, I love it!' No, seriously, I quote: "So, to come rightly at the spirit in which the Diary was written, we must recall a class of sentiments with which most of us are over and done before the age of twelve."

Stephenson is maybe exaggerating a little, but . . . he's not hugely wrong. The Diary is not a Great Work of Deep Literature; it's survived because it's an incredible eyewitness account of a lot of what was going on at the time, including the Dutch Wars, the Black Plague of 1666, and the Great Fire of London, all of which Pepys was there for and involved in. As far as Pepys himself, he spends most of his time bitching about those morons at the office, worrying about the state of his periwig ("is it too much? will the guys at the office talk about it? oh crap, now it has nits!") and making resolves to do less partying and more work, without much success - Pepys was clearly a smart guy, but he was also a total frat-boy. My favorite entry is probably the one where he cheerily writes about the months of the plague that it has been an awesome time for parties! Also, he is totally allowed to drink wine as much as he wants, even though he promised his doctor that he wouldn't, because hey, his doctor is dead of the plague now so his promise doesn't count anymore and IT'S ALL GOOD.

Also, about a third of the diary is Pepys being super sketchy and molesting random women. To be fair, he is very honest with himself about this! But, I mean, I'm just going to quote here: "I walked towards White Hall, but, being wearied, turned into St. Dunstan's Church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand and the body; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again--which seeing I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design."

IN CHURCH, guys. Not only is Pepys That Guy - the one who won't leave you alone until you are like, 'dude, I will kick you in the FACE' - but he does not even stop the molesting in church! I am not even anything approaching Christian or religious, and I am thoroughly scandalized! Which makes it even more hilarious when Pepys himself is scandalized by everything going on at Court and all of Charles' mistresses.

In conclusion, I have come away with this read with the general impression that the Restoration was a time full of sketchitude.

There are definitely times when it kind of sucks having girlbits. (Emergency drugstore run on a day when I was already 20 minutes late for work: UNHELPFUL, body!)

On those days, I find, it is helpful to remember the things that most of the time make me pretty happy to be female-shaped. Therefore, in no particular order: five reasons I think it is generally awesome to be a lady!


1. It is socially acceptable for me to wear skirts in summer! And in winter too, of course, but in summer is when it is most important. Guys, if you were smart, you would overturn that social stigma about guys in skirts right now, or at least invest in kilts, because I cannot even express how much more comfortable it is not to have fabric wrapped completely around your legs when it's hot out. If nothing else, this is evident proof of how sexism is bad for guys as well as girls.

2. I get a ton of totally awesome role models, real and fictional.

(Not quite as many that are as well known or as popular for dudes, it is certainly true, but here is the secret: because of the privilege system that means they have to work harder for it, it makes them all awesomer than their dude counterparts. Sorry, guys, it's just the truth.)

3. I get to have girlfriends! I am not dissing my friends who are guys here either, obviously, but - seriously, you don't know how angry I get when I hear people say that girls are always bitchy and backstabbing with each other, because not only is it misogynistic, it is just a flat-out lie. I honestly do not know what I would do without all my amazing female friends. Including, of course, most of you guys.

4. I can reach the high-pitched notes necessary for proper shrieking in glee without having to have had important bits of my anatomy removed in childhood!

5. I do not have the cooties I would have had, had I had the misfortune to be born male.

I encourage people to add things to the list!

Meme thieving time!

Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.

I think you guys can guess pretty well what I know, and if I don't know the fandom, I will totally make some up. John Sheppard does not love Rodney; his true love is a piece of cheese!

The Grand Sophy is on a lot of people's lists of Favorite Heyers. It is not my favorite, I think - so far I still love Cotillion and Sprig Muslin best - but it is still pretty hilarious!

The Grand Sophy is basically The One With The Force Of Nature, i.e. Sophy. Sophy sweeps into her cousin's lives and promptly decides that they are all engaged to marry the wrong people and everything is quite wrong and that she is going to set it right! Cunningly! And with some horse theft! In true Heyer fashion, this necessitates a good many hijinks and culminates in a slapstick grand finale involving every major and minor character, a mustard poultice, and a basket of ducklings. There is also an oblivious and terrible poet and a Spanish countess whose idea of entertaining visitors in a grand fashion is to invite them to take a nap with her.

(This is another Heyer where I don't actually ship the main romantic couple at all, but then, I would find it hard to ship Sophy with anyone, because she's terrifying. Except maybe Francis Crawford of Lymond. The mental image of her setting calmly out to right all of his backstory angst gives me kind of a lot of joy!)

WARNING: There is a really awkwardly anti-Semitic scene smack in the middle of the book that I was glad to have been forewarned about, involving an Evil Jewish Moneylender in the good old Victorian style. :\ Though . . . . now I think about it, it is not that substantially different from the Jewish diamond dealer scene in Sarah Connor Chronicles, except that Sophy does not actually kill the guy . . .

I expected to love Orhan Pamuk's The New Life, given how much I enjoyed My Name is Red and The White Castle, and the fact that the plot summary I saw basically consisted of "a dude reads a book. It transforms his life and sends him on wild adventures as he tries to enter the world of the book!"

This is . . . not an inaccurate summary, exactly, but the novel itself has sort of a different slant. Our protagonist becomes obsessed with the mostly-undescribed book, and then, in short order, with The Girl who introduced him to the book and her ex-lover who introduced the book to her. They ride buses all night long in hopes of getting into a car crash and seeing a mysterious Angel alluded to in the book and have a series of allegorical and bizarre encounters with pro- and anti-book factions as our protagonist becomes increasingly unhinged. Embedded in the story is a philosophical debate about the current state of Turkey and the pros and cons of Westernization, which was really interesting, but I kept wanting to read a straight essay on the topic instead of this particular abstraction of it filtered through a character I wanted to hit over the head most of the time. (I am sorry, but I have close to zero tolerance these days for "I MUST POSSESS THIS MYSTERIOUS CIPHER OF A GIRL." And I know Orhan Pamuk can write interesting characters! But he is not really interested in writing characters here.)

In general, The New Life veers far too much towards abstract postmodernism for my taste - though I've had luck with Pamuk so far, I often have trouble with that style of writing at the best of times, and 'on a bus, after an incredibly hectic week' is probably not the best of times. (I am also not sure how great the translation was - phrases kept hitting me oddly, and I do not know if that was deliberate or the weirdness of the translation.) I don't anti-recommend it, and people with more brain than I had at the time for absorbing postmodernist allegory probably will enjoy it.

(Also, at least I have taken another step forward in the Orhan Pamuk reading competition that schiarire and I are apparently having. Other Colours will be soon, Ji!)

So, in between the million other books I have on my backlog, I am still sloooowly making my way through a reread of the Cadfael books. I had forgotten that The Virgin in the Ice introduces [spoiler character]! Alas, it also involves a classic example of the "selfishness and complete lack of judgment means APPEALING AND SPUNKY!" heroine, oh man, I am thoroughly on her small brother's side throughout the whole book. ( Mild spoilers. )

While The Sanctuary Sparrow also featured an instance of ridiculous behavior from the Young Lovers that had me tearing my hair out - look, I get that you are young and impetuous, if you want to have sex that is fine, but DON'T DO IT BEHIND THE ALTAR WHILE THE MONKS ARE HAVING SERVICES - I really liked the complicated family dynamics and the darkness of the ending; more importantly, it features probably my favorite murderer of the Cadfael series so far. There are a lot of reasons why and most of them are spoilery, but I can give you a quote: "If I must pull the roof down upon myself, I'll pull it down also upon as many of the innocent as I can contrive to crush with me and not go alone into the ark." Man. I - I am pretty sure that metaphor is ridiculously mixed, and yet I don't even care, so great is the hardcore!

I have to say, I kind of love villains who are so angry at the world that they can face complete and utter defeat and still stick to their furious guns, in full understanding of what they did and their likely fate. My ultimate example of this is probably Aaron in Titus Andronicus; whenever I see a production and they reach the line "If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it to my very soul" -- I seriously get chills down my spine, in the good way.

What about you guys? We all love a well-done villain . . . but what counts as well-done to you? Who are your favorites?

Sei Shonagon was a Japanese Court lady of the Heian era; not much is known about her except that she served the Empress Sadako, Lady Murakami (of Tale of Genji fame) was bitchy about her in a footnote, and she wrote a famous Pillow Book of musings, diary-ish entries, and lists that has survived in various different organizations and translations to the current day.

The Pillow Book is cool because of what it reveals about the culture of the time, but honestly, it's also just really entertaining to read! Shonagon was moderately well known around court as a talented poet from a literary family, and she spends a reasonable amount of time being suitably poetic about the weather and the moonlight - which is lovely, don't get me wrong - but she is totally not afraid to let loose. Her famous lists include Hateful Things ("a certain gentleman whom one does not want to see visits one at home or in the Palace, and one pretends to be asleep. But a maid comes to tell one and shakes one awake, with an expression on her face that says, "What a sleepyhead!" Very hateful."), Embarrassing Things, and Annoying Things, which are all just about as fun as they sound. Other highlights: the part where she complains about how awkward it is when your lover comes to visit you when you're staying at someone else's house (especially awkward when one is staying with one's in-laws!); the time when she and a bunch of other ladies go on a special trip to hear a bird sing and forget to write poems about it, much to everyone's embarrassment; the time when an ex-boyfriend comes to visit her after she blew him off the night before, and she keeps thinking about how the scene would be incredibly romantic if only she was not having a bad hair day. I feel you, Sei Shonagon!

I also love the bit where she's talking about the super-secret code that she and a friend have to gossip about people's love affairs - it's essentially baseball code, except instead of baseball it's centered on a bunch of very subtle and witty metaphors around the game of go - and some other dude finds out about it and comes to visit her, all, "HEY SEI SHONAGON, I CAN PLAY GO PRETTY GOOD, WANT TO FIND OUT HOW?" *wink wink nudge nudge* and Sei Shonagon is just like "Oh honey. First of all, no. Second of all, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG."

Despite the boys coming and going, however, it is pretty clear that Sei Shonagon's most important relationship was with her teenaged Empress. There are a lot of poem-exchanges between the two of them that essentially boil down to "I LIKE YOU. DO YOU LIKE ME? YES/NO CHECK ONE." The footnotes are very helpful here in pointing out the political turmoil that she edges around. They are also helpful in calling attention to the parts where these exchanges of poems of undying love were really quite normal for Heian ladies, no seriously, you should not take it as implying anything LESBIAN! Which, I mean, I am sure that it was quite normal for Heian ladies! All I am saying is, if you want to ship gorgeous, intelligent, politically endangered young Empress/slightly older, famously witty, famously romantically experienced Court lady-in-waiting who is devoted to her but also POSSIBLY has connections with a rival faction, it is a free country and you should therefore feel free to do so. In my opinion. :D

Okay, so Dorothy Dunnett and me, we have a History.

We met in a library when I was fifteen, and - as you do, when you are fifteen - I fell into a great and probably unhealthy passion, specifically with the Lymond Chronicles. Thoroughly researched labyrinthine Renaissance politics! Sparkling banter and elaborate twisty prose! Ridiculously brilliant and tortured super-geniuses whose bucketloads of angst were so truly epic that they could only be alluded to through literary quotations, often in other languages! Tragic games of human chess! This was basically like porn to my teenaged self.

. . . and okay, I will sheepishly admit, is still quite a bit like porn to me now, although these days I am significantly more able to take a step back and laugh at some of the more melodramatic bits. But my pure and true fifteen-year-old Dunnett-love is far too great to ever put it behind me, and every so often I need to go back and get my fix.

Last time around was midway through college, with a reread of the Lymond books; this time, I decided it was time to give the Niccolo books another shot, which I never quite imprinted on the way I did the Lymond books. They're a bit more difficult, I think, and a lot less straightforward action porn-y - instead of dramatic political scheming, the Niccolo books also involve a lot of economic and trade scheming, which I find harder to follow. On the other hand, Lymond as a character creates great inner discord in me, because my adult self is like "oh good LORD, superhuman superwitty super angsty golden god, HAVE A NORMAL CONVERSATION EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE" while my inner fifteen-year-old is happily doodling "Lymond x Philippa and Danny x Becca 4EVER! <33333!" all over her mental notebook, and then there are bitchfights in my soul and it is all very awkward. But I did not crush on Niccolo as a kid, and - as I have discovered from a reread of Niccolo Rising - we get inside Niccolo's head a lot more than we do Lymond's, and see him screwing up a lot more, which makes him a lot less frustrating to me. And Dorothy Dunnett's gorgeous prose and her dry, sly humor, and occasional madcap ostrich chases through Bruges, are still kind of like porn to me. As it happens. So.

- what, you want a plot summary? Okay, here it is: at first, our protagonist looks a lot like a manic bastard child of Carrot Ironfoundersson and the Tenth Doctor, dropped into fifteenth-century Bruges to cause havoc. Then you start to figure out that actually, Niccolo is the bastard child of Carrot Ironfoundersson and Kyouya Ohtori.

Does that terrify you? IT SHOULD.

Basically Niccolo Rising is a book about Renaissance economic pwnage and the growth of a merchant empire, which of necessity also involves mercenaries, the Medici, and assassinations, and, because it is Dorothy Dunnett, also involves near-incestuous family relations, various degrees of severe emotional damage, and a lot of legitimately hilarious hijinks and caustic mockery of people's silly hats. Also it is educational! I suspect I have learned more about Renaissance politics from Dorothy Dunnett than I ever did from a textbook. I am for the most part very much looking forward to a leisurely reread through the rest of the series, and I am excited for the eventual introduction of the bitter revenge-driven heroine and the hatesex! o/ (Although I am faintly dreading the one set in Africa. :\)

I had actually just finished reading the library copy of the light novel version of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya when I found a $1 copy for sale at the Housing Works Book Fair. Which I bought, because for $1 it is a book I am more than happy to own!

It is hard not to make this a compare/contrast with the anime, just because the anime so closely follows the plot of the first book. I actually can't think of any major plot differences at all. And yet, despite the fact that they were near-identical, I actually think I liked the book a little bit more! These are my reasons:

1. I really like Kyon's narration, and you get more of it in prose! I think my favorite is the part where he is faced with a situation of extreme and immediate peril and is sitting there thinking, "pictures of this need to go on our website." Because if I were in the middle of an epic alien battle, my first thought would totally be, "I need to talk about this on LJ!" I feel sure I am not alone in this. In fact, I provide a poll:

Poll #1413865
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

You are in a situation of extreme and immediate peril! Your thoughts:

2. The fanservice, while definitely still there and hugely problematic, feels a little less egregious to me because instead of being visual it's centered in Kyon's head. I still don't love the fanservice aspects, but I can cope better with the male gaze when the owner of the gaze is always explicitly a teenaged boy and I-the-viewer am not necessary expected to feel like part of the appreciative audience.

3. Also, Asahina annoys me a lot less in prose, because I can read her dialogue as more competent and I don't have to hear the baby voice.

I am looking forward to the next one when it comes out in translation in - October, I think? Depending on the wait after that, I may cave and start reading online, but we'll see.

IN OTHER NEWS: there is a fire inside me that won't stop burning . . . FOR THIS VID.

So I liked the first two of Catherine Jinks' Pagan books a lot . . . but I kind of fell in love with the second two, Pagan's Vows and Pagan's Scribe, in the way where I actually had serious difficulty putting them down to go do other things.

Pagan's Vows has squire Pagan following his Super Noble - and now seriously emotionally damaged - knight Roland to a monastery after they decide that whole way of the sword thing is not working out so well for them. For the first time in the series we get an actual cast of semi-sympathetic characters in the rest of the novice class, though Pagan is so used to forming a Me And Roland Against the World bond that it takes him a while to accept a friendship with anyone else, which is a really interesting dynamic to watch occurring. Also there is a mystery! That Pagan must solve! While dragging around with him at all times an enormous book of rhetoric to teach him about Logical Arguments! Also this book rachets up the slashiness to a kind of hilarious level, especially in the scene where Pagan drags Roland outside to try and talk about his feeeeeeeeeeeelings.

Sidenote: it is possible that reading this book and realizing just how much Latin I had forgotten was one of the spurs to actually put Project Relearn Latin into action.

Pagan's Scribe, on the other hand, takes place twenty years later and is told by a new character, bookish, bitchy Isadore who becomes Pagan's new scribe. And I - okay, I loved pretty much everything about this book. I loved how realistically narrow-minded Isadore was at the beginning, and how angry he was; I love that Pagan basically grows up to be a more ethical version of Joseph from Kage Baker's Company books; I loved that Catherine Jinks does not shy away at all from the utter brutality of late medieval politics. But most of all, I loved the complex dynamics between Pagan and Roland and Jordan and Isadore, and Pagan and Roland's continued codependence, and Pagan and Jordan's weird fraught friendship, and Isadore's growing respect for all three of them.

( Spoilers! )