between the rock and the cold, cold sea

I traveled to town, with the estuaries thick with fog. Followed up with the bank regarding some paperwork. Made a few rounds for family presents - Carluccio's seems to be the best place for edible presents, although it's a little pricier than I'd wish.

Now am unable to concentrate on all the notes I should be taking. And so on.

Anxiety continues. The mere mention of fitness gives me tightness of the throat and diaphragm, which is nice when one's parent is asking if one is thinking of going back to the gym with relative lack of judgemental-ness. And by nice I mean unpleasant.

Made it to town today. Library. Collected a book. Went to see supervisor and help set up for an evening of Music and Culture in association with an embassy. Faked normal, and even enjoyed self during music. Succeeded in not puking from anxiety. Came home. Answered email. Succeeded in not puking from anxiety. Ate two scones with jam and cream. Succeeded in not puking from self-disgust at own lack of self-restraint, and also anxiety.

Am now become excessively anxious over interacting with other humans as a result of faking normal levels of confidence earlier. Second-guessing self.

Equilibrium: definitely not achieved.

I am failing to be a perfect competent human. Need exercise, have no motivations to get some: need to get on with thesis, completely distractible today.

The thought of getting on the train and going to town is giving me shortness of breath. I suspect some lurking anxiety interferes. I suspect anxiety is understandable, given... circumstances relating to family health.

The mechanisms I developed to manage my mental health are not are present in functioning train. So. In conclusion.

SIGH.

And last night the parent took me to The Phantom of the Opera at the new(ish) theatre down by Grand Canal Dock. The dock space is gorgeous, even with all the redevelopment, and the theatre is a lovely space that still has that new car smell, all glass frontage and clean toilets.

It wasn't just me, it was the parent's friend and whitewaveraven as well. We were up the back of the theatre, in the vertiginous Upper Circle, practically as high as you could be and not be on the roof. Staring down into the stalls and the forced-perspective aspect of watching the action on stage was weird and slightly queasy-making: I have never before been in a theatre so large that the actors' faces were indistinct even with my glasses on.

It was, however, an excellent performance, vibrant and energetic, and I had one of the best nights of my life. (It's right up there with visiting Toronto, going gothing with Bear and Amanda - when I was too jetlagged to really appreciate it - wandering around Thessaloniki in the dark with all the craziest lovely Serbian and Russian and English girls on the language course, and at-home dinner parties in Athens with the best mad archaeologists.)

Then, on the way home, the parent slipped in the rain and fell on her wrist. (Today the hospital diagnosed Colles' fracture. Tomorrow, MRIs and bloodtests to check suitability for a general anaesthetic and manipulation of fiddling bones. All taxpayer-funded. Dear American friends: I hate to say this, but I am so glad we don't live in your country, today.) So that put a damper on the evening.

While Mum was getting her man to keep her company in hospital waiting rooms ("No, no," she says to me, when I offer to go with. "It's bad enough I need someone to drive me to the plague house. You go away and have fun."), I went to town and met two of my favourite people for lunch.

...And they gave me presents.

I may have been unnaturally delighted when a copy of Beyond Binary was pressed into my hands. And brownies! And a book voucher!

So the birthday haul, this year (she said, gleefully) (thanks to the best friends and the Aunt Formerly Known As The Wicked Godmother) is:

Beyond Binary, edited by Brit Mandelo (Yay!)
Mechanique, by Genevieve Valentine
The Killing Moon, by N.K. Jemison

(whitewaveraven immediately said, "Echo and the Bunnymen!" when we were browsing the bookshop, all three of us geeks together. The killing moon! It comes too soon!)

And!

Mark Hodder's Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, which I did not exactly realise was number three in a series. So now I need to acquire copies of the first two. Someday. Eventually. (The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack and The Curious Case of the Clokcwork Man will be mine, along with Many Other Books. Someday.)

---

Receiving books for review is like getting birthday presents without a birthday. Strangely - oddly! - an unsolicited review copy of Jay Kristoff's Stormdancer ("Japanese steampunk") from Tor UK arrived in my door yesterday morning. (I am sure either through some kind of mistake or because every book reviewer Tor UK ever heard of is getting a copy.)

But it is like an extra present, because books are shiny. Very shiny!

(Boooooooooooks. My precious!)

I am still unpleasantly sick. The worst now, however, is the fact that the skin of my nose and upper lip is chapped and abraded from the constant nose-blowing of the last two days. Since I forgot to get either Vaseline or chapstick in my run to the chemist earlier this morning (and am extraordinary reluctant to go out again today), I am raiding my small knowledge of ancient medicine what is alleged to work, and applying a mixture of honey and oil to decrease the dry flakiness.

This is doubtless more information than you ever wanted concerning my nose.

In other news: I watched Immortals today. Plot aside, it is a beautiful film, visually striking, very stylish. Well-acted, with dialogue that did not often descend to cliché. The plot is utter nonsense, although the progression thereof actually manages a tense arc. It's worth watching for the pretty, though.

I also watched Underworld for the first time in years, and remembered why I loved it: it is tailor-made to hit a great many of my narrative kinks in the shortest possible space of time.

And since I'm out of things to say, go read Jim Hines being smart and funny again.

Contrary to expectations, today has not, so far, involved college work. Instead, I spent the vast majority of the afternoon attempting to turn my bedroom (where more than half of the books live) into a slightly more respectable and significantly less dusty sanctum sanctorum.

I still haven't quite been able to manage shelving by subject. But there is much less shit scattered everywhere. And most things are, in fact, on shelves.

Tired now. But still have college work to do. Perhaps I will be able to do it. But on the whole, I think perhaps not.

My bibliography is 35 items long just on ancient sources, so far.

I'm very slow at typing it up, mostly due to typographical error. Ofxord Uinverstiy Press, Oxfrog requires fixing. It seems my fingers go a little too hastily, and the more haste, the less speed, as all know.

When I have the bibliography done, I can hand the whole mess over and go back to trying to do the work I want to do. I hope.

Books 32-40


32. Elizabeth Bear, The White City.

Don Sebastian in Moscow. A beautiful little book, fascinating and painful.


33. Barbara Hambly, Dead and Buried.

The ninth Benjamin January book. An accident reveals that the Faubourg Tremé Free Coloured Militia and Burial Society are about to bury the body of an unknown white man - unknown, that is, except to Hannibal Sefton, fiddle player and January's friend. Blackmail, family secrets, and lies abound. Hambly's 1830s New Orleans has a very dark and at times almost claustrophobic atmosphere, and as usual is brilliantly described.


34. Elizabeth Moon, Kings of the North.

Dorrin Verrakai has successfully become Duke Verrakai in Tsaia. In neighbouring Lyonya, King Kieri Phelan must deal with matters of his succession and the apparently arbitrary caprice of his mysterious co-ruler, the Lady of the Ladysforrest. Meanwhile, Captain Arcolin encounters a brutal warlord claiming descent from ancient kings. All this is complicated by the reapparence of provenance-less royal regalia. Which talks.

Meh. Pick a point of view and stick with it, dear author. The leaping around leaves the resulting narrative with a strange feeling akin to aimlessness.


35. Laura Anne Gilman, Hard Magic.

CSI with magic. Fluff.


36. Mercedes Lackey, Trio of Sorcery.

A short novel and two novellas. The short novel features Di Tregard and is set in the early 1970s, the two novellas feature characters I haven't encountered before and are set in the mid-90s and approximately now, respectively. Engaging, and significantly better than anything else I've read by Lackey recently - this is far closer to Phoenix and Ashes or Black Swan than Foundation or Reserved for the Cat.


37. Steven Brust, Tiassa.

A distinctly bizarre book, stylistically, even by the standard of previous Vlad Taltos novels. I... Well. Hmm. I'll need to read it again to come to any verdict on it (which I will, because I'm supposed to be reviewing it properly for Ideomancer), but I'm far from sure, right now, if it's being perfectly clever apropos to its purpose, or whether its cleverness is the authorial equivalent of singing an opera while standing on one's head, juggling knives, in the rain, for the pure hell of it.

Either way, relies on one's previously familiarity with and affection for the characters in greater degree than previous offerings. I doubt it stands alone very well.


38. Douglas Hulick, Among Thieves.

Are we sure this is a debut novel? I mean, seriously? Because it's damn good. Thieves, imperial relics, gang warfare and politics and friendships made and broken apart - Not to mention some really tight writing.

I recommend it.


non-fiction


39. Plato, Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, and Crito. Oxford World's Classics, OUP, Oxford, 1997. Translated with an introduction and notes by David Gallop.

Justly famous dialogues concerned law and justice, worth reading even if one disagrees with them completely.

This translation is lucid and readable, and the introduction (unlike Waterfield's to Plato's Timaeus, for a contrary example) is not only helpful for contextualising the dialogues, it's short.


40. Sandra R. Joshel, Slavery in the Roman World. Cambridge Introductions to Roman Civilisation, CUP, Cambridge, 2010.

Intended as an introductory treatment of slavery in Roman society, Joshel's work here is lively, accessible, and illuminating in useful ways. The high quality of the numerous illustrations - which are helpful without being intrusive - is an added plus.

The book is a short one, only a little over 200 pages long. It is divided into five chapters, with a glossary of commonly used terms at the back. The first chapter, "An Introduction to Roman Slavery" sets Rome and slavery in their broad historical contexts. The second chapter, "The Roman Social Order and a History of Slavery" attempts to trace the development and social role of slavery within Roman society over time. The third chapter, "The Sale of Slaves" discusses the legalities and the potential experiences involved in the sale and purchase of slaves. The fourth chapter, "The Practices of Slaveholders and the Lives of Slaves" attempts to use the available evidence to cast light on what the Roman slave, urban, elite, or rural, would actually have experienced during slavery. The fifth and final chapter, "Slaves at Work: In the Fields, the Household and the Marketplace," discusses pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, slavery and work.

As an introductory book, some of the discussion is necessarily basic, and due to the nature of the available evidence, areas of Roman social life including life as relates to slavery remain understood only sketchily. Nonetheless, I feel that this is a very solid, very readable introduction to the topic.

---

At the moment, in between my stressful, panicked moments*, I'm reading Beckwith's Empires of the Silk Road - and matociquala? Thank you for mentioning this book: it's brilliant - and looking forward to reading Flanders' The Invention of Murder. Life could be worse.




*I confess, I've taken the last three days completely off. I need a clear head to think about this progress review, and relaxation appears to be the only way to get one. Caffeine certainly wasn't working.

I have been to Belfast, where I encountered many fine people who are very much geeks like me. This is reassuring, in a disturbing sort of way. My paper appears to have been comprehensible, at least, which is rather comforting.

Queen's University Belfast has an interesting gingerbread gothic thing going on with its main hall. Sadly, I saw no other part of Belfast, but, well. There's always another year.

To do, 27 Feb - 6 Mar edition.

( Save yourselves. Run. )



Yeah. I think that's enough to be getting on with. At least for now.