between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Books 2011: 147-150


147-150. Barbara Hambly, The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, The Armies of Daylight, and Dragonsbane.

Ebooks. Further commentary should eventually appear at Tor.com, and I'll try to remember to linky to it when it happens. Suffice to say, I like these books very much.

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I need to stop living on sugar, caffeine, and meat. It can't be healthy. On the other hand, today in the gym I ran 1.5 miles in 14:30 minutes, no stopping for a breather, and 2 miles in 21:40, which is getting towards where I want to be. (I need to shave another two minutes off my times, which I suppose means more training for running faster, and more training for running longer.)

I also cycled, rowed, and made with the lifting of the weights. And tomorrow, because I need to hit something, I'm going to karate again.

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I have learned that Dublin has an Occupy protest of its very own. This makes me happy. Thank you, New York, for helping show the world a place to stand.

I'll head down next week. This weekend I need to crank out another thousand words on the thesis, or my supervisor will make I Am Disappoint face. And right now, my supervisor's goodwill is the only thing I have going for me.

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Sleepy now.

Running tonight: 2 miles in 20:20, which is pretty close to a personal best for the last two years. (If I were desirous of precision, I'd check my "running" tag on here and be more specific, but I haven't managed 2 miles in under 20:00 since 2008 at least.) 2.5 miles in 27:40.

Jujutsu tonight was stick drills and forty minutes of Intro to Knife-Fighting. I now know - theoretically - how to avoid being stabbed.

In practice - well, it's a good thing we were using rubber knives, is all I can say. That shit is hard. Hack, trap, slap, slice, with a mad German (okay, so he's not mad, but he's entirely too gleeful when talking about slicing people open) telling us Three seconds! You want the fight to be over in three seconds!

Bruised now.

Apparently there's a multi-discipline martial arts club up by Magennis Place, so I might have to look into that if Kali-influenced weapon work goes away during term time. I like the stick drill lots. It has a peculiar brutal elegance, like nothing else I've ever done. But it's definitely designed more for slashing weapons - like machetes, or scimitars - than stabbing ones.

I still hate groundwork, passionately. Years of Shotokan-trained instinct screams at me that being that close in, being down, is just like being dead. Except more painful.

That's a feeling that it's hard to argue with. I still want to fight with basic oi-zuki & gyaku-zuki combinations, with a front snap kick to the knee or a side snap kick to the belly for variety: hit fast and hard, and get the hell out of range.

This is not a very effective strategy for fighting people who are faster and better able to get inside your guard. Alas, I keep having to remind myself that I'm not really allowed to kidney-punch people who get inside my guard and go straight for the grapple in sparring: back when I trained in karate, our sensei emphasised maintaining the sphere of personal space, being able to break contact and use distance as defence, over takedowns and Massive Damage.

Shotokan. Beautiful and elegant, but not that much use if someone's really trying to hurt you Real Bad For Serious in a spot where you can't duck back and run away.

Anyway.

I climbed yesterday. I'm a fairly irregular climber these days, and consequently back to being terrible at sending 6As, and without the stamina to lead for very long. Saturday, I colonised the empty Common Room with a friend to watch The Lion in Winter for the first time. The film is carried entirely on dialogue and the actors' performances - and man, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton were pretty when they were young - and the contrast between the intense intelligence of The Lion in Winter and the last few more recent films I've seen - Captain America, HP7.2, The Mummy - is shocking.

In case you're wondering, I loved The Lion in Winter. More! Now!

("Hush, dear. Mummy's fighting.")

Gym tonight. Ran 2 miles in 20:30 minutes, which may be a personal best, or very nearly: a continuous run of 1.75 miles is actually a personal best of the last year and change.

Also, I climbed and bought birthday presents for the parent. This counts as work, Y/N?

Books 2011: 95-97


95. Chris Wooding, Retribution Falls.

Spoilers.

First published in the UK in 2009, and re-released earlier this year for the US market, Retribution Falls is a tale of airships and pirates, double-crosses and ne'er-do-wells, Cool Shit (tm) and banter, and Things That Go BOOM! in the most entertaining possible way.

Darian Frey, rakehell, screw-up, occasional smuggler and small-time pirate, is captain of the airship Ketty Jay. His small and highly dysfunctional crew is composed of alcoholics, terminal fuck-ups, and people with nowhere else to go. So far, they've managed to keep scraping a living together, and when the chance for a really big score comes along - a cargo airship, allegedly carrying jewels - Frey can't resist.

But the airship is rigged to blow, and when it explodes, Frey finds himself at the top of the Most Wanted list. Because what the ship was carrying wasn't jewels, but an Archduke's only son. In order to survive, he needs to find the person truly responsible, all the while avoiding the Navy, the Century Knights, and hired bounty-hunters - whose number includes the terrifying pirate captain Trinica Dancken, with whom Frey shares something of a past.

This is a tight, fast-paced book. It hooks you from the opening pages and just keeps racing along in hails of bullets, bloody fights, and banter, in an atmosphere remniscent of some 19th-century frontier. We're introduced to all of Frey's crew in short order: the wanted daemonist Grayther Crake, the new navigator Jez - who hides a dangerous secret - Malvery the alcoholic surgeon, Silo the engineer, the flyboy Pinn and the terrified pilot Harkins, and the golem Bess - and almost as soon as they appear, they're involved in a firefight.

There's a lot of interesting detail hiding in the background. Daemonism - magic, but practically outlawed - and the recent history of this world of airships and politics, pirates and Century Knights. The characters are well-drawn, rounded people. And Frey, while he starts out as a charismatic amoral rogue, undergoes significant character growth. He doesn't end up as admirable, by any stretch of the imagination, but I liked him rather more by the end than at the beginning.

Retribution Falls is really quite brilliant - it even deserves the adjective rollicking, because it's one hell of a ride.

(And if someone ever makes a miniseries of it for the television, I am so there. Because Cool Shit. And explosions!)


96. Chris Wooding, The Black Lung Captain.

I'm supposed to review this properly in this autumn's Ideomancer, so for now I'll content myself with saying that, as a sequel to Retribution Falls (which could easily stand alone), it is another step up in impressive, pacey Cool Shit with good characters.


97. Kevin Hearne, Hammered.

Third book in the Iron Druid series. This time, druid Atticus Sullivan is taking on the Norse god Thor in another fast-paced, amusing urban fantasy, complete with ominous omens and battles in Asgard. Entertaining, though light.

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Today, I triumphed over the evil that is clothes shopping and successfully purchased shorts that fit. I celebrated this by going to the gym.

Running: 0.6 miles in 5 minutes, 1.75 miles in 20:50. Cycling: 4K in 16:00. Ten minutes of bouldering.

Before I get started with the talking-about-books, I want to mention something. From now on, I'll be providing links to The Book Depository for the books I mention here.

Confessional disclaimer: I've joined their affiliate program. All far as I can tell, they aren't particularly evil, and I've been very happy with their customer service on my own orders with them so far.

Right! On to the -

Books 2011: 86-92


86. Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Blessing.

The third and final volume in Carey's most recent Terre d'Ange trilogy, Naamah's Blessing follows Moirin, our half d'Angeline half-Maghuin Donn narrator, in her return to Terre d'Ange with her husband Bao, and the trials that confront her there. The royal family is broken: the king is grieving the death of his second wife, Prince Thierry has disappeared in a trade expedition across the sea, and the young princess - daughter of Moirin's former patron, the late queen Jehanne - is precocious but neglected. When Moirin accepts a charge from the king to serve as the princess's protector, she is drawn into d'Angeline politics -

- Just in time to be forced away across the ocean in search of Prince Thierry, a journey which brings her, Bao and their companions through the new and strange lands to the west, finally to confront unfinished business with Raphael de Mereliot.

There's a lot to like here. While Blessing suffers very slightly from the diffusion of focus in terms of unifying theme which the trilogy's preceeding volumes also possessed (or perhaps I simply find Moirin's voice less compelling than Phedre's or Imriel's), the characters are well-rounded and often brilliantly drawn. Carey draws on indigenous South American culture in her depiction of the New World, and walks a fine, delicate line in juxtaposing the beautiful and the brutal to make human sacrifice seem understandable - at the novel's climax, even sympathic.

The climax comes a little far from the novel's end, however. While the wrapping-up of threads is elegantly done, it does drag a little towards the finish.

Enjoyable book, and a solid addition to the series.


87. Gail Carriger, Heartless.

Fourth Alexia Tarabotti novel. The pace in this is uneven compared to its predecessors, and the humour less full-bodied. However, vampire assassination attempts, werewolf liaisons, and rampaging mechanical contrivances in the streets of Queen Victoria's London make for an entertaining combination.

Fun.


88. Erin Hoffman, Sword of Fire and Sea.

An entertaining fantasy debut, containing an overabundance of cool shit, and possibly an underabundance of connective tissue. I enjoyed it, and I hope to have more to say about it later.


nonfiction

89. James Kelly, The Liberty and the Ormond Boys: Factional riot in eighteenth-century Dublin. Maynooth Studies in Local History, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2005.

A very short - ~60 pages - book discussing the phenomenon of faction-fighting in Dublin city in the 1700s. The primary factions comprised the Liberty boys - the weavers of Thomas St. and the Coombe - and the butchers of Ormond quay and the Smithfield market. For all its brevity, it's an interesting and illuminating work considering the causes and manifestations of factionalism, and the trends that led to its demise.


90. Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues. Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. Translated with an introduction and notes by Robin Waterfield.

This volume comprises the four dialogues Charmides, Laches, Lysis, and Meno. The first three concern themselves with self-control, courage and friendship, while Meno is concerned with the nature of excellence, and whether excellence is an attribute that can be taught. This particular dialogue concludes with the self-professed bafflement of both Socrates and his interlocutor, Meno.

They make for interesting reading, and are very slightly useful to my thesis.


91. Stephen O'Shea, Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World. Walker Publishing Company Inc., New York, 2006.

This is a very accessible survey of the encounter between the Islamic and Christian worlds in the Mediterranean. O'Shea casts an admirably wide net, beginning in the lifetime of the Prophet and concluding with the siege of Malta, touching on everything from Medina to Morocco, Byzantium to Sicily, Templars to Ismailis, Saladin to El Cid.

It's a brilliant book, immensely knowledgeable and immensely readable. I have the impression that O'Shea is privileging accessibility over pettifogging detail, and I really don't mind, because I vastly enjoyed reading this.


92. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness. Routledge Classics, Routledge, Oxford and New York, 2004.

This book should be required reading. For everyone.

Bertrand Russell was, of course, a prominent intellectual and philosopher in the first half of the 20th century. In Praise of Idleness collects some fifteen of his essays, which the copyright page of my copy informs me were first collected and published in 1935. They have aged surprisingly well, all things considered: Russell is a very accessible prose stylist, and while occasionally his cultural assumptions have me saying hell, no, much of what he writes is extremely thought-provoking. A lot of the time I found myself saying hell yes.

Of the essays collected here, the first two, "In Praise of Idleness" and "'Useless' Knowledge" are substantial, and remain radical and thought-provoking the better part of a century after their first appearance. "The Case for Socialism" is also a thoughtful defence of a political philosophy that remains derided. "The Ancestry of Fascism" is a lengthy piece which is very much of its time, a trait which it shares with "Scylla and Charibdis, or Communism and Fascism," but both these essays are interesting for the insight into the world of the nineteen twenties and thirties. "Western Civilisation" partakes much of sardonicism, and one or two of the shorter essays - "Men vs. Insects," for example - may be a little lightweight.

Nonetheless, the essays are a fascinating and provoking discussion of themes which remain relevent even today.

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We shall pass over without mention the bits-of-books I have read for thesis work. Blergh, I say. Blergh.

Although I think I'm almost getting to the point where I can make a decent beginning on actually writing the bloody thing.

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Yesterday's minor freakout was followed by productive emailing. And today, much exercise. Cycling 10K in 38:45, followed by running. 1 miles in 11:02, 2 miles in 24:30.

Oh, insanity. I wish you were more... amenable to regulation.

Gym today. Running, 1.5 miles in 15:00 minutes, 2 miles in 21:50. Cycling, 7.25km in 32 minutes.

Jujutsu.

Rolling around on the mats with boys who are bigger, fitter, and more experienced in the ways of wrestling does much to reconfirm me in my belief that in a real fight? I'm a lot more likely to get killed or seriously injured if I get taken to the ground than if I stay on my feet.

The more I learn, the less likely I am to get maimed or dead in such a situation. Also, it's fun. Sweaty, wet, disgusting, exhausting - but fun.

For the record, I am mighty.

This afternoon, after photocopying (oh, photocopying, so necessary and yet so dull), I hied me to the gym, and proved my mightiness upon the bodies of my foes the treadmill and the exercise bike.

1.2 miles in 11:10 on said treadmill. Seven (7) kilometers in under 30 minutes on the exercise bike.

It's not a triathlon, but I had to head to a two-hour jujutsu session afterwards, and I also succeeded in not being completely dead by the time I got home. So I think that counts as a win all around. Jujutsu involved a lot of rolling around on the floor with pretty boys.

I believe that painkillers and sleeping are now called for, though. So I'll get right on that.

I am behind on everything.

Sadly, this seems like a situation which may continue for the foreseeable future. I may have to bite the bullet and admit that.

On the other hand, I managed a run of 16.5 minutes this evening, with additional running-like things happening for the next six minutes, so that's something, at least. (It seems that sea chanteys are good for keeping time when I run out of actual energy. "Heave ho stamp and go, round Cape Horn we're bound to go," actually matches the rhythm of my stride. Although I'm fairly sure that innocent passers-by may have been rather confused.)

Right now, I'm hoping that copious amounts of tea will help me get through writing up these notes before midnight. I may need something stronger. Possibly black tea, instead of rooibos. Perhaps some nice Margaret's Hope Darjeeling...

Books 2010: 73


73. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Chaos.

Sixth book in the "Chronicles of Elantra" series, in which each book works pretty well as a standalone. In this one, the protagonist, Kaylin Neya, has grown up a bit. Also, it might be the end of the world. Again. Desperate conferences and measures ensue.

I started reading this series a while back, and with each new book I've read, I've grown to like it more. The secondary characters develop in interesting ways, and in each new book we see more - or different angles on the same parts - of the city of Elantra.

I hope the series goes on for a long, long time to come.

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I ran-walked 2.75 miles today, and bugger, do I hurt now.

...semi-perpetual humidity, intermittant rain, and the occasional thunderstorm.

I appear to have recovered somewhat from the urge to run screaming from all social contact. And the annoying suicidal ideations have taken a hike for the time being as well. I'm interested to note that this correlates with the government finally ponying up my unemployment/jobseeker benefits and making the future look just a little less impossible and bleak. It seems that feeling trapped and powerless and being deadbeat broke go very well together. Who knew?

Anyway. I'm almost starting to get a grip on where my thesis next year might be going. Yeah, I know, I haven't even got my letter of acceptance yet, but I'm a compulsive worker, what can I say? I've been spending quite a bit of time in the library, and a couple of books - one by a guy called van Eijk, and one by a lad called von Staden - have me thinking that Alexandria might be the place to start. While there's no evidence associating the Alexandrian anatomists, Herophilus and probably Erasistratus (who practised human dissection and - allegedly! - vivisection) with the Library and the Mouseion, or indeed with the temple of Serapis, which had healing associations, the co-existence of all these elements in the one city might be worth examining to see if it can shed light upon the inter-relation of healing cult and surgeons. Or whether in fact any such relation can be defined.

Which means that I have to go back and read P.M. Fraser's history of Alexandria, the which I managed to avoid doing last year, on account of it being dry as dust and dreadfully long.

That's the price you pay for wanting to be a historian, I suppose.

I think it's time for me to go now, though. Last night I walked eight kilometers and went to karate, and today I've been climbing: my muscles hate me and want me to die, and tomorrow I'm plotting to do more exercise. (I'm thinking about training for 5Ks. Well, it's the first step on the way to 10K, right?) The climbing was weak. But better than last week.