For a twelvemonth and a day

In the past week, there was running around like some combination of a headless chicken and a blue-arsed fly; a job interview*, some getting-up-early-to-go-running-barefoot-on-beaches - I need running for my sanity, and I enjoy it, but I'd forgotten how painful running is when you haven't been in practice, and how bruised your feet can get if you land hard on the wrong shaped stones - a small shipment from Amazon and a trip to the library.

From Amazon:

Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword. Having read The Hero and the Crown and very much enjoyed it, I went straightaway to get my hands on this one.

It is, alas, very much Not For Me. Lovely, lyrical language, smooth prose and progression, an interesting setup... And I felt not an inkling of connection with Harry Crewe, the heroine, who seems to spend the entire novel floating along on the road that Destiny foreordained for her, and not making decisions about her own fate. In that respect she seems like an anti-Aerin, and doesn't do much protagging for a protagonist in her own right.

Naomi Kritzer, Turning the Storm.

This always happens to me. Always. I pick up the second book in a series/trilogy/duology, promising myself that I'll wait, I'll wait until I have the first book... and yet, somehow, I never do.

With Turning the Storm I have completely spoilered myself for the first book, Fires of the Faithful (which, with any luck, will arrive before next Friday), but it doesn't matter**, because Storm - see here for book description - works very well on its own, I think.

And I will admit it: I love this book as much or more than I loved Kritzer's Dead Rivers trilogy, and as such am incapable of seeing any flaws. She seems to have the knack of hitting all the right spots for me. Loyalty, bravery, peril, treachery, that sort of thing. It works.

From the library:

Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand. Interesting, intelligent and nuanced beyond my usual experience of YA fantasy. The djinni Bartimaeus makes for a fascinating narrator, and Nathaniel is young enough and arrogant enough to make an interesting*** foil. Both of them get in over their heads in a plot against the government. The footnotes were occasionally irritating, though.

Manda Scott, Boudica: Dreaming the Serpent Spear. The final book of the Boudica sequence.

There are very few books that have made me cry. All four of the Boudica books have done so. Scott is very, very good at what she does. Very, very good. She writes with power and passion and a clear, sparse lyricism, and each book of hers I've read has left me quiet inside.

If you haven't read the Boudica books, you should try them. Really.

In non-fiction, I'm working my (slow, steady) way through Wolfram von Soden's 1985 German work (translated in 1994, which is the version I am reading, of course) The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East. I am learning many new things, including the dubious historicality of Semiramis (Semu-rammat) and the complicated nature of attempting to piece together three millennia of layered history when all that's left are shards and fragments and philologists' nightmares. Next up is probably Plutarch's Roman Lives and possibly Marc van der Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East after that, with a possible sidetrip through the biography of a Polish countess in WWII.

Yes, I'm still avoiding Thucydides. Why do you ask?


*for which I will not get the job, but if I don't keep trying to get one, then this winter I'll have a choice between a new pair of runners and food. That's not a choice I want to have to make.

**Not for enjoying Storm, anyway, and Kritzer's style is such that I imagine I'll love Fires anyway. She hits the right places for me.

***Words of the day: interesting, fascinating. Someone clobber me with a thesaurus, quick.

For a twelvemonth and a day

In the past week, there was running around like some combination of a headless chicken and a blue-arsed fly; a job interview*, some getting-up-early-to-go-running-barefoot-on-beaches - I need running for my sanity, and I enjoy it, but I'd forgotten how painful running is when you haven't been in practice, and how bruised your feet can get if you land hard on the wrong shaped stones - a small shipment from Amazon and a trip to the library.

From Amazon:

Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword. Having read The Hero and the Crown and very much enjoyed it, I went straightaway to get my hands on this one.

It is, alas, very much Not For Me. Lovely, lyrical language, smooth prose and progression, an interesting setup... And I felt not an inkling of connection with Harry Crewe, the heroine, who seems to spend the entire novel floating along on the road that Destiny foreordained for her, and not making decisions about her own fate. In that respect she seems like an anti-Aerin, and doesn't do much protagging for a protagonist in her own right.

Naomi Kritzer, Turning the Storm.

This always happens to me. Always. I pick up the second book in a series/trilogy/duology, promising myself that I'll wait, I'll wait until I have the first book... and yet, somehow, I never do.

With Turning the Storm I have completely spoilered myself for the first book, Fires of the Faithful (which, with any luck, will arrive before next Friday), but it doesn't matter**, because Storm - see here for book description - works very well on its own, I think.

And I will admit it: I love this book as much or more than I loved Kritzer's Dead Rivers trilogy, and as such am incapable of seeing any flaws. She seems to have the knack of hitting all the right spots for me. Loyalty, bravery, peril, treachery, that sort of thing. It works.

From the library:

Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand. Interesting, intelligent and nuanced beyond my usual experience of YA fantasy. The djinni Bartimaeus makes for a fascinating narrator, and Nathaniel is young enough and arrogant enough to make an interesting*** foil. Both of them get in over their heads in a plot against the government. The footnotes were occasionally irritating, though.

Manda Scott, Boudica: Dreaming the Serpent Spear. The final book of the Boudica sequence.

There are very few books that have made me cry. All four of the Boudica books have done so. Scott is very, very good at what she does. Very, very good. She writes with power and passion and a clear, sparse lyricism, and each book of hers I've read has left me quiet inside.

If you haven't read the Boudica books, you should try them. Really.

In non-fiction, I'm working my (slow, steady) way through Wolfram von Soden's 1985 German work (translated in 1994, which is the version I am reading, of course) The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East. I am learning many new things, including the dubious historicality of Semiramis (Semu-rammat) and the complicated nature of attempting to piece together three millennia of layered history when all that's left are shards and fragments and philologists' nightmares. Next up is probably Plutarch's Roman Lives and possibly Marc van der Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East after that, with a possible sidetrip through the biography of a Polish countess in WWII.

Yes, I'm still avoiding Thucydides. Why do you ask?


*for which I will not get the job, but if I don't keep trying to get one, then this winter I'll have a choice between a new pair of runners and food. That's not a choice I want to have to make.

**Not for enjoying Storm, anyway, and Kritzer's style is such that I imagine I'll love Fires anyway. She hits the right places for me.

***Words of the day: interesting, fascinating. Someone clobber me with a thesaurus, quick.

In which we indulge in contemplations of the social paradigm, and other such flights of fancy

Today, much like yesterday, was not a day of doing useful things. It was a day for curling up and lashing out and wanting many things I do not have - like a job, for example - or cannot have, like the season 2 boxset of Battlestar Galactica, or season 1 of Farscape - which has been recommended to me now more than twice, from separate sources - or the many, many books I want to read.

Today was a day of wanting. I dislike wanting: it feels too much like greed, when the list of things I am fortunate to have stretches to infinity. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing I can turn off on cue. Contentment has never been the easiest state of mind for me to achieve.

I'd like to be wealthy. It would make things so much easier. But what is wealth, really? On any absolute scale, I'm already on the rich end. I have access - free and regular - to potable water, I have at least one meat meal daily, a new pair of decent shoes at least once a year*, access to university education under the free fees initiative, free (if haphazard) healthcare, and a family who (whatever they might think of me) are unlikely to ever let me starve or sleep in the street. (Though I do spend more than I can afford on books. Wanting more than one a week is an unreasonable vice. Even one a fortnight seems to be an excess of profligacy, lately. But I'm an addict, and the library is insufficient to my desire.)

On any absolute scale, that's wealth, right there. But relative to my society?

It's not poverty.** Nor is it, on the other hand, quite comfortably middle class.

My impression of the comfortably bourgeois section of society is that it is shrinking, and as part of that shrinkage, many of the (formerly) comfortably middle class are entering that nebulous socioeconomic bracket, 'lower' middle class, and many of those who formerly laid claim to that position are joining the struggling middle class. You know, the ones who would never dream of calling themselves poor, but dread the week at the end of the month when the last paycheck has worn thin and they're living on the overdraft, and live in horror of the unexpected expense.

The wealthy (and I include among these the unmortgaged-to-the-hilt owners of more than one sizeable property and the discreetly wealthy with hundred-thousand-euro-plus annual incomes, as well as the more obvious million- and billionaires), however; the wealthy seem only to get wealthier.

And I wonder whether my perception of the squeezage of the middle class is a true thing, or a new thing, or an inevitable thing, or all three combined.

----

A hedgehog has been visiting our back garden. I caught him (her?) tonight eating chopped egg from the cat's bowl, small and brown and spiky. He (or she) turned and ran when the light fell on him (or her). Now we shall have to leave out teabags, and other folkloric hedgehog foods.

The world changes. The world stays the same.

Herr Hedgehog came back later, but refused to pose for the (mobile phone) camera. He (or she) will never make a model.

-----

And from katallen:

If there are one or more people on your friends-list who make the world a better place just because they exist and whom you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this sentence in your journal.

Well, there are.


*Once a year rather than more frequently because a) I hate shopping, and b) as a result of this, I try to pick shoes that last. :)

**The fact that poverty has nearly as much shame and stigma attached to it as mental illness, and for, as far as I can see, much the same reasons, is a topic for another day.

In which we indulge in contemplations of the social paradigm, and other such flights of fancy

Today, much like yesterday, was not a day of doing useful things. It was a day for curling up and lashing out and wanting many things I do not have - like a job, for example - or cannot have, like the season 2 boxset of Battlestar Galactica, or season 1 of Farscape - which has been recommended to me now more than twice, from separate sources - or the many, many books I want to read.

Today was a day of wanting. I dislike wanting: it feels too much like greed, when the list of things I am fortunate to have stretches to infinity. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing I can turn off on cue. Contentment has never been the easiest state of mind for me to achieve.

I'd like to be wealthy. It would make things so much easier. But what is wealth, really? On any absolute scale, I'm already on the rich end. I have access - free and regular - to potable water, I have at least one meat meal daily, a new pair of decent shoes at least once a year*, access to university education under the free fees initiative, free (if haphazard) healthcare, and a family who (whatever they might think of me) are unlikely to ever let me starve or sleep in the street. (Though I do spend more than I can afford on books. Wanting more than one a week is an unreasonable vice. Even one a fortnight seems to be an excess of profligacy, lately. But I'm an addict, and the library is insufficient to my desire.)

On any absolute scale, that's wealth, right there. But relative to my society?

It's not poverty.** Nor is it, on the other hand, quite comfortably middle class.

My impression of the comfortably bourgeois section of society is that it is shrinking, and as part of that shrinkage, many of the (formerly) comfortably middle class are entering that nebulous socioeconomic bracket, 'lower' middle class, and many of those who formerly laid claim to that position are joining the struggling middle class. You know, the ones who would never dream of calling themselves poor, but dread the week at the end of the month when the last paycheck has worn thin and they're living on the overdraft, and live in horror of the unexpected expense.

The wealthy (and I include among these the unmortgaged-to-the-hilt owners of more than one sizeable property and the discreetly wealthy with hundred-thousand-euro-plus annual incomes, as well as the more obvious million- and billionaires), however; the wealthy seem only to get wealthier.

And I wonder whether my perception of the squeezage of the middle class is a true thing, or a new thing, or an inevitable thing, or all three combined.

----

A hedgehog has been visiting our back garden. I caught him (her?) tonight eating chopped egg from the cat's bowl, small and brown and spiky. He (or she) turned and ran when the light fell on him (or her). Now we shall have to leave out teabags, and other folkloric hedgehog foods.

The world changes. The world stays the same.

Herr Hedgehog came back later, but refused to pose for the (mobile phone) camera. He (or she) will never make a model.

-----

And from katallen:

If there are one or more people on your friends-list who make the world a better place just because they exist and whom you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this sentence in your journal.

Well, there are.


*Once a year rather than more frequently because a) I hate shopping, and b) as a result of this, I try to pick shoes that last. :)

**The fact that poverty has nearly as much shame and stigma attached to it as mental illness, and for, as far as I can see, much the same reasons, is a topic for another day.