between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Books 2008: 124.

124. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games.

I read buymeaclue's post on this, and almost immediately thought, this is a book I have to read.

Well, yes.

The basic concept of the 'Hunger Games' is familiar, practically old: I mean, gladiators, arena, deathmatch-type-contests in the future; who hasn't read a book that involved one or the other of those?

But the story falls into the grooves of that particular trope as though it was made just for this, and the voice and arc of the narrator, sixteen-year-old Katniss, makes it something fresh. The tone, the voice - those are note-perfect, or nearly so.

I read it, last night, between eleven and half-past one a.m. And could not stop until it was done.

And yeah, everything I want to say about this book, buymeaclue has said already, and better. It's good.

---

Running: Bad ankle morning. 30 minutes, a little over 2 miles. Damnit.

Miles treadmilled since 10-09-08: 33

Climbing: Not the best climbing night either. But what can you do when your last lecture ends at seven o'clock? It was half seven by the time I got into the wall, and I was already tired.

With much - and I mean every second move - dogging on the rope, I managed to get to within three moves of the end of the red 5+. Next time, sucker. Next time I'll warm up first and you won't kill my arms.

Improvement was also noted on white 6a#3, to the tune of about three or four moves. No improvement on white 6a#1, although I did figure out how to do the first part of the route - after three tries - a little more straightforwardly than I have been. We'll see if it sticks. Made of fail on white 6a#2: couldn't do more than get it started tonight.

And the orange 5+ strikes again, kicking my ass with the very last move. It's all about balance, worse luck. Balance, and strength.

---

Not a bad college day. I have a good few essay titles and deadlines, so I can get cracking on my assignments before the end of the week. Which is really great: soonest started, soonest done. :)

Books 2008: 120-123

120. Michele Sagara, Cast in Courtlight

121. Michele Sagara, Cast in Secret

These are... pretty good books, all told. Quite light, but fast, and with sufficient meat and mystery to keep me reading. All night, in fact.

Yeah, going to have to stop doing that.


122. Jennifer Rardin, Bitten to Death.

Like Cadbury's chocolate, having very little objective virtue. And yet, I enjoy it anyway.


123. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Duainfey.

The first book of a projected duology. I trust Lee and Miller, and thus am less disappointed in this than I would be otherwise. It's set-up, and I hope the next book, Longeye, brings the payoff, because well done, interestingly peopled, and set in an intriguing world as it is, set-up without much payoff is not what I read a hardcover for.

Achievements:

Running: Mile in 8.75 minutes, and after that, suckage. 2 miles in 21 minutes, 2.5 miles in 30 minutes.

Miles treadmilled since 10-09-08: 29.75

I'll have to get support for my ankle, since ankle pain was a major contributary factor in the suckage. I hate that.

Climbing: Spent about an hour bouldering, because there was no one there to top-rope with. It sucked, because I was looking forward to getting out of my own head, and I didn't really get to do that. I did, however, notice some technical improvement.

---

Another piece of suckage: Max Allan Collins, Criminal Minds: Killer Profile.

Anyone out there who likes Criminal Minds and thinks one of Collins' tie-in novels might fill a hole between episodes? Save yourself, and put all thought of it from your mind.

I mean it.

This book - the first two chapters, which are all I managed, and I only managed that out of a sense of utter unbelief - is bad. Head-hopping. Clunky sentences. Auctorial heavy-handedness to the tune of I will tell you everything about this scene including what you are supposed to think of it. Bad writing. First, second and third order clichés. POV problems.

Bad fanfic is better than this. Bad Garcia/Rossi fanfic is better than this, because at least in fanfic, the writer has an emotional investment in the characters, themes and topoi.

You know that thing that CM does so well on screen, getting the point across by ellision, misdirection, allusion, white space, everything that isn't said, doing it with style and grace and assuming the viewer is smart enough to keep up?

Yeah, well. You won't find it in this.

I've read tie-in novels for Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargate. Star Trek ones seem to be directed at twelve-year-olds, much like the thing itself - it was never really my scene, but as YA, it mostly didn't actually fail as such. Star Wars has had some truly terrible tie-ins, and some truly excellent ones (Zahn, Stover, Williams, Traviss): a number of authors who've done work there have won critical acclaim for their other novels. Stargate's tie-in novels seem to be written primarily by and for fans, and while varying in technical competance (although some of them are quite good indeed) remain very close to the feel of the show.

Criminal Minds: Killer Profile fails on pretty much every level I can think of. And I say that as someone, who, as a fan of the show came to it prepared to forgive it some flaws, if it delivered a reasonably satisfying episode-like experience.

Books 2008: 119

119. Sabine C. Bauer, Stargate Atlantis: Mirror Mirror.

I read media tie-in novels more out of hope than expectation. But Bauer is actually quite good, and Mirror Mirror is a very entertaining book.

Books 2008: 118.

118. Richelle Mead, Frostbite.

YA, sequel to Vampire Academy. A pretty good book, with a reasonably interesting spin on the vampire phenomenom. There's decent character development, but the teenage angst may well have been laid on with a shovel. If not a bulldozer.

A decent hour's light reading.

Books 2008: 117

117. Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals, Cambridge, 2007.

This book sets out to survey the relationship between the Roman and Persian empires between the third and eighth centuries CE. The authors make a point of, as much as possible, giving Persian sources and Persian perspectives as much space as Roman ones, which, sadly, scholarship can't always be counted upon to do.

It's divided into two parts. Part one is relatively brief, giving a chronological sketch of the development of relations between the two empires. Part two, "Sources and contexts", is significantly longer. It comprises nine chapters, covering such topics as warfare, diplomacy, Arabia between the great powers, information exchange, and the link between religion and kingship in each empire.

As an overview, it's clear, well-presented, and - usefully! - uses as many primary sources as possible. But it is an overview, spanning several centuries: necessarily there are a number of points and themes over which it passes but lightly.

I feel, also, it would have benefitted from a chapter dedicated to a discussion of the sources and their merits: many of these are sources that, as an undergraduate or someone familiar with the Roman writers during the Principate, but not a specialist focussed on Later Rome or Byzantium, I haven't necessarily come across before.

It also has an impressively extensive bibliography, a glossary of names, and a chronological table.

A version of this book was published in German in 2001. This edition, however, is, in the authors' own words, a 'revised and expanded translation'. Occasionally one notices a choice of words which may indicate that English was not the writer's first language, but such moments are rare.

It's a decent book, but not exactly riveting. Still, I know an awful lot more now about Rome and Persia than I did when I started.

Achievements:

Running: 3 miles in 35 minutes, 3.5 miles in under 43 minutes, 3.6 miles total.

Miles treadmilled since 10-9-08: 7.2.

Climbing: A lot of people down tonight. I improved on the grey 5+ route, flailed at the black 5+, got - again - two-thirds of the way to the top of the black 6b, flailed twice at the white 4+ (still, managed the slightly-overhung part at least once) and also flailed at the blue 5. The orange 5 I all but sent. All but the last three moves.

I'm getting better at technique, slowly. And at stamina: I remember way back in the spring it all but killed me to attempt three or four routes, and two hours was major workout. (Now, of course, I'm rarely down there less than an hour and a half, and I don't go home without trying five climbs, if there's someone there to belay.

Strength, however, remains my tragic flaw. So it is decided that the new program of affairs will include pushups and pullups, the better to improve.

---

Books 2008: 113-116


113. Sandra McDonald, The Stars Down Under.

I was foolish enough to pick this up in hardcover. Don't get me wrong: it's not a bad book. But it is a less coherent and ultimately much less satisfying one than its predecessor, The Outback Stars. Definitely should have waited for the paperback.


114. Lilith Saintcrow, Hunter's Prayer.

I was disappointed by Saintcrow's Dante Valentine books. I'm rather the opposite with the Jill Kismet ones. This book is very solid dark urban fantasy, with something of a hardboiled detective/noir element, and best of all, the 'romance' elements which curse so much of modern urban fantasy to mediocrity or worse? They're very firmly in the background.

Decent book.


115. Michael Reaves, Star Wars: Jedi Twilight.

Yeah, I'm still picking up Star Wars books in the hopes of another read like Timothy Zahn or Matthew Stover or Karen Traviss. This one is not made of utter fail, but it is definitely not made of win. Bored now.


116. Terry Pratchett, The Nation.

This is not a Discworld book. Despite that, or because of it - I lean towards because - it may well be his best work yet.

It is complex, moving, incredible: it's about the end of the world and building your world again from there, about the nature of humanity and the nature of myth and the nature of duty.

And in the end, like all Pratchett books, it's about people.

---

I have no comment on the news. Except this: I will be eternally glad that I live in a country, and at a time, which affords me free third level education, free medical care, and some government money which helps me to eat.

Because otherwise I would be looking at the state of the economy and going gobble gobble panic gobble.

Your mileage may vary.

Books 2008: 105-112:


105. Chris Moriarty, Spin Control

Moriarty writes with confidence of espionage, politics, evolving technologies and emergent AI. Her touch with human relationships is slightly less deft, but this is a very interesting novel, full of energy and complexity and science.


106. Jack McDevitt, The Engines of God.

Archaeology in space. No one else does it that I've found, not as well as McDevitt, and his prose ain't nothing to sneeze at, either. He knows the archaeological mind, that man.


107. Jack McDevitt, Chindi.

...Okay. Are we sure this is the same McDevitt? Because, man. Hello problemmatic issues with gender. Hello loaded vocabulary about women and men and femininity and should the guys go first into danger? I mean, this is all sideline to the actual story, which is more of the same archaeology in space that he does so well, and there's enough counter in there that I get the feeling that McDevitt is probably not a girls-should-be-girls guy.

But, um. There were a couple of moments that were kinda weird.


108. Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

A deserved classic. Delany is, of course, a master of the use of language, and one day I must get my hands on Dhalgren and the Neveryon books. But really, a deserved classic. By a master. What else is there to say?


109. John Scalzi, Zoe's Tale.

To be honest, I don't remember an awful lot of what went on in The Last Colony. Doesn't matter. This is a perfectly readable science fiction not-exactly adventure book.


110. Terry Pratchett, Making Money.

This is not Pratchett at his best. It's not up to the same standard as the last half-dozen Discworld installments. Vetinari appears to have had a personality transplant, and there are half a dozen little oddments that don't add up. But it is still Pratchett, and it stars Moist von Lipwig, and it is Discworld. And Pratchett on an off day is still better than ninety percent of the world at their best.


111. Publius (or Gaius; no one's quite sure) Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, translated by Michael Grant. Non-fiction, for classical values of 'non-fiction'.

Well, this is one of our very important sources for the early Principate. The surviving manuscript has most of the reign of Tiberius, part of the reign of Claudius, and most of the reign of Nero. Gaius (Caligula) is missing; a pity, really: he sounds like the kind of... interesting character you wouldn't want to meet.

Tacitus's style is to enumerate the more important decisions of the senate and the emperor, religious matters, and campaigns, yearly, except for the campaigns, where he sometimes compresses the events of several years into one narrative. His animus against Tiberius and Agrippina Elder is fairly obvious; also his dislike of the imperial freedmen and wives of Claudius. Under Nero, the Annals becomes something of a catalogue of executions. It makes for interesting reading.

There are whole commentaries on Tacitus, so I won't venture to say more than this. As for the translation, mine is the Penguin edition from 1996, with Grant's translation, which largely dates from 1956. It's a clear, readable translation, though his avoidance of the term 'freedman/woman' occasionally seems stretched, and his use of modern names for some geographical features slightly jarring. The index and 'further reading' section are reasonably extensive: there are also maps, list of placenames and their modern equivalents where known, and a family tree for the imperial family's main branches over several generations. Although most of those branches end under one emperor or another.


112. Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations (London and New York, 2007). Non-fiction.

Despite the subtitle, this is not a book about how Judea and Rome were complete opposites in every respect. Instead, it's a thoughtful assessment of the many similarities and occasional differences between the Judeans and the Romans, and how, in the final summation, the destruction of the Temple and the prevention of its rebuilding, and the demonisation of the Judeans, owed more to the internal politics of the Roman elite, the incompetence of the procurator of Judea in 66 CE, and how the Flavians and their successors needed to legitimise their claim to power by looking back to the military victory in the Judean War of 66-70 CE.

It's a very thorough assessment of both cultures, and also of how the responses to the revolts and disturbances post-70CE, including the revolt of Simon Bar Kosiba, and the growth of the Christian church among the gentiles before Constantine and the Christianisation of the empire under Constantine and his successors, led to the position of the Judeans as a people without a homeland and a group within Roman and later Roman Christian society which was looked down upon.

Books 2008: 104, non-fiction

104. Munro Price, The Perilous Crown: France between Revolutions 1814-1848.

I'd never read anything about the Bourbon restoration (1814-1830) or the Orléanist monarchy (1830-1848) in France before I picked up this book. Intellectually I knew there had to be something between the First Republic and First Empire and the Second Empire and Third Republic periods (another republic, if nothing else) but I hadn't the first clue what that was.

Well, now I do.

This is a very interesting book. Drawing on a number of private and published papers, including those of Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans and later king of France, and his sister, Adélaide, Price puts into context the interesting thirty-four year period that was France's experiment with limited (not quite 'constitutional') monarchy. Price's main focus is Louis-Philippe and Adélaide and the Orléanist monarchy: out of eleven chapters, only about three to three and a half concentrate on the Bourbon kings, Louis XVIII and Charles X.

Price treats his main subjects with great sympathy, perhaps too great. (It seems a common failing among biographers to avoid extensive analysis of their subjects' flaws, and for all this is a history of France, at times it reads more like a biography of Louis-Philippe et famille). This is, however, only a mild criticism: it's fairly evident that both Louis-Philippe and Adélaide were somewhat remarkable people, and that there's enough material in the period to fill a dozen books, at least.

(You have to wonder, too, what might've happened in 1848 if Ferdinand-Philippe, duc d'Orléans and Louis-Philippe's heir, hadn't cracked his head open in a carriage accident in 1842.)

It's certainly a compelling and very readable introduction to the period, and if I longed for a just a little more analysis... well, it seems I say that a lot. It appears not every historian is a Marcus Rediker or a Sarah B. Pomeroy or a Martin Goodman, alas.

#

Next up in the not-ancient history reading (straight from the bargain basement!): Adam Zamoyski, Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871. The preface does not encourage me to hope for analysis, but the subject matter should at least prove fertile ground for more damned b&!k ideas.

Books 2008: 103

103. Elizabeth Bear, Hell and Earth.

Um. It turns out I was in a humour for some good fiction after all. To the extent that I had an oh, hell, it's after half past two in the morning, isn't it? moment when I finished this one just now.

Back when I finished Ink and Steel, I think I said something along the lines of: I admire the hell out of this book. Same goes for Hell and Earth.

I could lavish superlatives, but I always get embarrassed doing that. I'll just say that it's probably - taking I&S and H&E to be one book - the most excellent single work of fiction I've read all year. On several levels.

Not really able to articulate much right at the moment, due in part to the aforementioned book and in part to the aforemention nearly three am issue.

So, yeah. I think I'm going to go try to sleep now.