between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Books 2011: 57-59


57. Suzanne McLeod, The Sweet Scent of Blood.

First book by this author. Urban fantasy set in London. Entertaining, and relatively surprising, but I am perhaps a little down on the appearance of vampires of late. (Fortunately, the vampires do not appear as the love interest. Indeed, there does not appear to be a Main Love Interest, which is quite quite marvellous.)


non-fiction


58. Liza Picard, Dr. Johnson's London: Everyday Life in London 1740-1770. Phoenix, London, 2000.

An interesting and varied description of 18th century London. I was particularly interested in the description of London's water. For a work of history, light, lively, and entertaining.


59. Ian McBride, Eighteenth Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves. New Gill History of Ireland, Gill & Macmillan Ltd., Dublin, 2009.

An interesting overview of the century between the Williamite settlement and the risings of 1798. The eighteenth century in Ireland is often passed lightly over, save for brief remarks upon penal legislation and 1798: to read a serious overview of the century is enlightening, to say the least.

This book places Ireland in a European context, both in terms of the Jacobite diaspora and connections with the Catholic hierarchy, and the educated Anglican and Presbyterian connections with wider European Enlightment thought. It discusses penal legislation (mostly finally repealed by 1793) and agrarian unrest in reasonable detail, and is concerned to place the unrest of the 1790s in its European context, and connect Irish thought to the influence of the ratification of the American constitution in 1788 and the actions of the National Assembly (former Third Estate) in Paris the following year.

McBride assumes a degree of knowledge concerning relations with Westminster throughout the century, wider European wars, and Grattan's parliament at College Green from 1782, that I don't possess. But much is clear from context, and in a book already 430 pages long, more detail can hardly be expected.

I enjoyed reading this more than I had expected to, and learned much that I did not know.

---

My reading seems to have slowed down lately. That's probably because I'm choosing to read lengthy histories of 400 pages, or more: one might legitmately find oneself slowed by that kind of endeavour. (Imagine here an image of a Dalek, but instead of a speechbubble reading EXTERMINATE, this one says EDUCATE.)

I'm presently reading Joanna Russ's The Female Man, and finding it hard going. So much of what must have been radical in 1970 seems... well, obvious, or even a little (by my lights) conservative. True equality, unthinking equality, is still, of course, a radical proposition. Nonetheless, there's a odd sort of cognitive dissonance in reading a book written as a shocking work of literature, one intended to provoke, (and moreover, a book which is conscious and intentional in attempting to provoke) and being unshocked and unprovoked.

Book, I am glad you were written. And I find your weird slipstream-style narrative interesting, and in terms of technique, fascinating. But I cannot read you and say Yes! This!, for it is wonderful how much things have changed in forty years.

Some things haven't, and in some ways you are still immensely... no, intensely relevant. But you are a piece of cultural history now, interesting book! And it is because of the weight of cultural history that I intend to read you right through to the end, rather than stopping on page 145 of the latest Gollancz edition, because - to be frank, O interesting book! (for I'm sure you'd appreciate frankness) - you don't pull at my heart.

Almost, despite the forty years that lie between us, I wish you did.

Books 2011: 46


46. Petronius, The Satyricon. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997. Translated with an introduction and notes by P.G. Walsh.

In this fragmentary ancient novel, generally ascribed to the Petronius who was Nero's contemporary and, as Tacitus says, 'arbiter of taste,' sexual hijinks abound. The lustful interludes are interrupted by a long, lovingly-described dinner party, the famous dinner of the vulgar (and obscenely wealthy) parvenu freedman Trimalchio. It's entertaining, but its humour is mean-spirited when directed at anyone but the protagonist, the rather hapless Encolpius, and the litany of debaucheries grows rather wearing. Also, hello, humorous rape! Bloody Romans.

---

Climbed this afternoon. My capabilities have diminished considerably since this time last year: I'm struggling on 6As, and 6Bs are for the most part beyond me. Sigh. I need to get the discipline together to drop ten kilos, which should make hauling my heavy bones up eleven metres of wall slightly less difficult.

It was fun, though. Climbed three 6As, a 5B twice, another route whose rating was either 5B or 5C, and flailed off of three 6Bs at approximately four metres up. One of the 6Bs was rated a 5. It wasn't a 5. It really wasn't.

Sample conversation:

Me (singing, off-key, while belaying): At the sickbed of Cuchulainn, we'll never say a prayer, for the ghosts are rattling at the gate and the devil's in the chair!

M. [my climbing partner](pausing halfway up the wall): You do realise most people here probably think we're mad?

Me: They're climbers. We're climbers. Sanity is kind of an optional extra around here.

M.:...

M.: Point taken.

Books 2011: 30-31


30. Plato, Phaedrus. OUP, Oxford, 2002. Translated with an introduction by Robin Waterfield.

A short dialogue concerning love, lovers, and beloved in Classical Athens. The famous analogy of the chariot with the charioteer and the two horses, one obedient, one unruly, occurs herein. It is diverting and occasionally thought-provoking.


31. Patricia Briggs, River Marked.

Fun, tense and well-constructed. Interesting monster. Interesting Native American mythological appearances.

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I have a cold. Do not want.

Books 2010: 127


127. Lucian, Selected Dialogues. Translated by C.D.N. Costa, Oxford, 2005.

Lucian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, wrote in Greek during the second century CE. His prominence is literary, not political: after a career as an orator, it seems he turned to comic dialogue and literary satire.

Much of his humour is opaque to me, since it relies on contemporary references and classical allusions, but his work rarely fails of being interesting. And I would seriously recommend everyone to read the two books of his 'A True History' (full parallel Greek/English text available at that link), the story of Lucian's voyage to the moon, the way between the Selenites and the Heliots, his stay in the belly of a whale, and his sojourn on the Isles of the Blest.

The Oxford Classics edition has several dialogues, a couple of encomiums - "In Praise of a Fly," a humourous one, and an encomium on the philosopher Demonax - a very scurrilous attack on the philosopher Empedocles, Lucian's "How to Write History," a piece of advice to historians of the recent Parthian Wars, the "True History," and selections from the "Dialogues of the Courtesans."

All in all, very interesting. And! It even mentions doctors!

Books 2010: 125-126


125. Rowena Cory Daniells, The King's Bastard.

It appears to me that there has arisen a specifically Australian tradition of High Fantasy - Trudi Canavan, Jennifer Fallon, Karen Miller - and it is this mode which The King's Bastard, the first book of a trilogy, follows.

Byren is the second son of the king of Rolencia. Minutes younger than his brother the heir, he has no ambitions whatsoever, and is baffled by the tension that begins to grow between them, a tension which is exacerbated after the arrival of a royal cousin (under the bar sinister) at court. Tensions are also evident in the lives of his younger brother, Fyn, who is pledged to a monastery, and his sister Piro, who has no desire to marry for politics. Piro is also hiding a dangerous secret: her talent for "Affinity," an ill-defined sort of magic, much as Byren's disinherited friend Orrade is hiding his (in Rolencia generally reviled) attraction to men.

There are several problems with this book, leaving aside how superficial I find the worldbuilding. (How many people actually look at how complex pre-industrial societies are? Never mind politics in a court of any size.) The worst problem is that Byren is Too Stupid To Live. Given every indication that he should not trust certain persons, he continues to do so. In addition, he is TSTL in other ways.

The second problem is the Random Seer. Random Crazy Seer is random, and pops up all over the place in the first fifty (?) pages, for no apparent reason other than the auctorial convenience of heavy-handed foreshadowing. The third problem is the fact that the treatment of gender made me want to bite someone.

I'm not, in general, well-disposed to High Fantasy unless it's thoughtful about its themes as well as its construction. (There was a time when I was younger when this was not so, but we all change in time.) Much of it seems tired and hackneyed to me, drawing far too uncritically on the shallowly-received tropes of the European middle ages. In Bastard's case, this is compounded by its position as the first part of a trilogy. The setup is insufficiently compelling for the limited amount of payoff available, and while I'm mildly curious about what happens next, I don't have much emotional or intellectual investment in actually finding out.

...Well, that was curmudgeonly of me, wasn't it? *may in fact be annoyed today*


nonfiction


126. Thomas J. Csordas, Body/Meaning/Healing, New York, 2002.

I don't imagine it's Csordas' fault that the jargon-laden language of anthropology gives me a headache. Nonetheless. Diverting as discussions of healing in contemporary Christian Charismatic and Navajo cultures are, I, for one, would have preferred a rather more accesible style of book.

Books 2010: 116-120


116-117. Gail Carriger, Changeless and Blameless.

The first book in this series, Soulless, was shallow, and I found the worldbuilding superficial. In these sequels, the heroine Alexia - now Lady Maccon - grows a little depth, and the curtain is pulled back on the vista of a steampunk late 19th century Europe, complete with secret laboratories underneath milliners' shops, dirigibles, mad scientists, and Egyptian mummies.

Changeless involves metaphysical shenanigans, intrigues, and werewolves in a Scottish castle. Blameless is predicated upon a vast misunderstanding, and involves an extended chase across Europe and a mad-Templar version of a reunified Italy, among other things.

I do not love werewolf romances, although many of my objections can be overcome absent the "new relationship" aspect of romances. The werewolf love interest remains a bit of an arsehole, to be honest. On the other hand, the most enjoyable element of these books, for me, is the comedy element. Witty rejoinders accompany slapstick, and the broad stereotypes are hardly worse than in costume drama. (I've just been watching the BBC's Scarlet Pimpernel, which is somewhat more full of gender-dynamics fail.)

There is no universe in which I can take thses books seriously. But damn, they're good fun.



118. Walter Jon Williams, Hardwired.

I was a little out of it while reading this book, if I'm honest, which is probably not the best state in which to a read cyberpunk-esque balkanised-USA SF thriller novel.

On the other hand, it glitters. It's sharp as knives, prose sparse and lucid, the main characters - Cowboy and Sarah - deftly drawn. It struck me as a novel about hard choices and the myths we build in order to survive. In many ways, this is not a nice novel.

But it is quite brilliant.



119. Sherwood Smith, Coronets and Steel.

I'll say up front that I have very mixed reactions to this book.

Kim Murray's from California, a champion fencer who's come to Europe in order to find her grandmother's - mysterious and little-spoken-of - family. Ghosts, hijinks, mistaken identities and potential romantic entanglements ensue.

The novel opens in Vienna, but swiftly removes to an imaginary European country called Dobrenica. And the thing that broke - that kept breaking - my suspension of disbelief was the geography. This imaginary country presently shares - apparently - a border with Russia and yet fell within the Austro-Hungarian empire before WWI? Romania or Bulgaria I could believe. (Stick a teeny country between Serbia and Bulgaria, and I would have very little problem believing tense neighbourly relations. Particularly with Macedonia [FYROM] and Greece looking on and wondering what their angle is if the wheels come off the crazywagon.) (Although history in that particular neck of the woods also has Ottomans to take into account.) But Russia?

Where Russia and the Hapsburgs used to meet is the Ukraine, Belarus, bits of Poland. You put a teeny country on the eastern side of the Ukraine, and you're going to have to explain to me why it existed as a country up until WWII. And why anyone from the ruling elite survived 1917 and subsequent years-long bloody aftermath of conflict as anything other than an exile.

So. Wandering Russians aside (and they must have been very lost, but I'll stick my fingers in my ears and pretend the historical communists are Tito's, and the present-day Russians... aren't, and make sense of the geopolitics that way, shall I?), and leaving aside Kim's rather clueless assumption that no one who mistakes her for her long-lost cousin will actually hurt her (seriously. Anyone sane who is asked to impersonate a member of the political class who's been missing for months should run away very fast, and not stop running until they're on another continent) and underdeveloped sense of cynicism, this is a reasonably swashbuckling adventure in fancy dress.

I give the internal politics of Dobrenica a pass for being a made-up country. (But, I mean, seriously? Seriously? Hapsburgs and Russians, but no one even mentioned the EU once? [I thought everyone in Europe, inside the eurozone or out of it, bitched about the EU and its meddling. {Except when they bitch about it not meddling.}])

But if you want a Prisoner of Zenda that wears its Regency debt proudly on its sleeve, and throws in ghosts to boot, it's a damn good read.

Not a very conclusive conclusion, but a damn good read.


nonfiction


120. Plato, Gorgias. Translated by Robin Waterfield, Oxford, 1994.

atheilen? What do you think of this one?

Ostensibly - at least initially - a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, on the value of rhetoric, it works its way out towards an argument that only virtue can bring happiness.

Worthwhile for me, as there are a couple of bits regarding doctors and the function of medicine. On the whole, an interesting articulation of two sets of unconventional moralities (though Callicles' is probably even less rare than it is conventional) from ancient Athens. I'm not entirely sure Plato succeeds in sufficiently defining his terms - "happiness" is left, on the whole, rather vague, contra "love" in the Symposium - and the atmosphere of the Gorgias is on the whole rather more earnest and rather less relaxed than Symposium - well, it's a dialogue, not a set of encomiums mixed with a little bit of dialogue.

Also, dear Plato: terrible state of body =//= terrible state of life. I think I'm with Seneca on this one.

But I enjoyed reading it rather more than I expected.

Books 2010: 87-91

87. Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat.

Been meaning to read this since I read Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. I found it amusing, if far from hilarious.


88. Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates.

A very impressive book, combining magic, time travel, 19th century English poets, Egyptian gods, excellent characterisation, and one of the most atmospheric London underworlds I have ever had the pleasure of reading.


89. Ursula K. LeGuin, Lavinia.

This is a hard book to talk about. LeGuin is rightly known as a luminary of the genre, and Lavinia displays all the customary hallmarks of her skill and talent. I found it lyrical, and the central conceit both extraordinarily moving and thought-provoking. LeGuin's Latium is skillfully drawn, mingling a convincing Bronze Age with touches of the more imperial attitude of the Aeneid. It is possible to read it as an interesting meditation on the process of creating myth as well as the fantastic story it presents in itself.


90. Ursula LeGuin, Voices

Powerful, moving, magnificent: lyrical in an understated way, and as so often with LeGuin, full of the numinous.


nonfiction

91. Gaius Plinius Secundus, Letters.

Interesting and full of incidental detail about the world of the early Roman empire.

Books 2010: 72

non-fiction


72. Mirko Grmek, Disease in the Ancient Greek World, trans. M. & L. Muellner, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore and London, 1989. (French edition 1983.)

The late Mirko Grmek pioneered the concept of pathocenosis in the history of medicine. This book takes ancient Greek medicine and discusses it primarily in terms of the diseases and the possible diagnoses available from the material - mainly the Hippokratic Epidemics, but with some reference to Aristotle and others. I'd have had more use from this book if I'd had a medical dictionary to hand throughout my reading, but it was interesting and informative, particularly the sections on purulent infections and tuberculosis.

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Today, climbing. Tonight, karate. I have burises like you would not believe.

Books 2010: 64-67


64. Jim Hines, Red Hood's Revenge.

Fun. Very good fun.


65. Aaron Allston, Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast.

Fun. There is something to be said for fun with no redeeming value whatsoever and a pretty decent supply of one-liners.


66. Christie Golden, Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Omen.

See above.


non-fiction


67. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, Vintage, London and New York, 2006.

The history of the nationalists is all about false continuities and convenient silences, the fictions necessary to tell the story of the rendevous of a chosen people with the land marked out for them by destiny. [p439]

This isn't that kind of history. This is a marvellously well-researched history of Ottoman and then Greek Salonica (Thessaloniki), from the denuded streets of the conquered medieval city to the bustle of its early modern heyday and the frankly cataclysmic discontinuities of the early 20th century.

Greek Salonica is a modern creation, born of the great fire of 1917, the forced exchange of populations with Turkey in 1922-24, and the extermination of the city's Jewish population in 1943. Today the largest university in Greece lies over the unmarked site of the 53-hectare Jewish cemetary, and where dozens of white minarets existed only one remains.

It's a fascinating book and, I think, a very valuable one.

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Due to critical lack of give-a-damn, I appear to be mostly on hiatus from the internet and possibly from other people in the actual physical sense as well. Feeling like a babbling idiot is not conducive to good social relations.

Books 2010: 56

non-fiction

56. Valerie M. Hope, Eireann Marshall, Death and Disease in the Ancient City, London and New York, 2000.

A series of essays on responses to death and disease in ancient Greece and Rome. The first half of the volume concerns primarily Greek matters, the latter half Roman: but it's a short volume, less than two hundred pages.

I wasn't especially impressed with the Greek papers, but they provided information which was largely, if not stunningly new to me: I knew a little about the Greek concern with pollution but not in detail, nor the way in which concerns for pollution can be put aside for high-status dead, such as heroes. And the chapter comparing the description of plague in Thucydides to the plague in Homer was illuminating.

The Roman papers, on the other hand, were quite fascinating. They focussed on death rather than disease, and the essays by Patterson and Bodel in particular concentrated on the experience of the lower classes; unclaimed bodies, public graves, mass graves, the status of funerary workers and executioners - really, truly, honestly fascinating. Bodel's essay, "Dealing With the Dead: Undertakers, Executioners, and Potter's Fields in Ancient Rome" is a tidy, well-researched little piece of social history which I especially recommend.

BMCR review here, for anyone who wants more in-depth analysis.

(I may, in fact, be in love with the BMCR. They are most marvellously useful.)

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In other news, apparently not taking my fish-oil pills turns me crazy. This is good to know, if a rather belated realisation: I could've done without the week of bad brain chemistry. But, having taken my fish pills, I managed to get me to the gym and actually exercise for the first time since I buggered up my shoulder. 22 minutes for 2 miles: not bad, but still not a marathon.

I'm also reading Aristophanes. You know something? People really haven't changed. Politicians, especially. Also the electorate.