Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye Unbuttoned: Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries, selected by Robert D. Denham.
I love spending time with Frye. Denham's done a good job of selecting a number of intriguing statements, any one of which is worthy of careful thought & reflection.
The problem I had with this book is the problem I have with any collection of aphorisms: one doesn't run into the next, the way the ideas do in Frye's own published work--and one of the thing's that's exciting about Frye is the way each idea produces the next, in a fun interplay that may be the best reason to read him. So: a collection of aphorisms is slow to read, and leaves one with little memory of specific ideas (despite 30+ Book Darts), unlike what a coherent argument produces in me by sympathetic vibrations.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Diana Wynne Jones, Deep Secret.
This book that precedes The Merlin Conspiracy. Do you know, as decent as Deep Secret was, I liked its sequel far better? While both are very much of Jones' milieu, the other one seems to have more of a real concern for the lands and the worlds that the stories tread upon.
Still, this was a fun diversion.
I suppose I really need to finish Zhivago.
This book that precedes The Merlin Conspiracy. Do you know, as decent as Deep Secret was, I liked its sequel far better? While both are very much of Jones' milieu, the other one seems to have more of a real concern for the lands and the worlds that the stories tread upon.
Still, this was a fun diversion.
I suppose I really need to finish Zhivago.
Diana Wynne Jones, Mixed Magics.
I did a search the other day, and discovered the existence of two Chrestomanci books I'd not read before. I had my favourite children's librarian obtain this one for me.
Mixed Magics is a collection of four short stories: "Warlock at the Wheel," "Stealer of Souls," "Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream," and "The Sage of Theare." All but one of the stories involve calling out the name and having that dapperly dressed Enchanter (well, when he isn't in a dressing gown, but even that'll be quite nice) show up and help out with the situation.
I don't think any of the stories are all that exciting: they're too much the writing of someone not content to leave stories off in places that invite readers to wonder. All the same, it's fun to spend time with Cat again, and in the worlds of the honourable Mr. Chant.
I did a search the other day, and discovered the existence of two Chrestomanci books I'd not read before. I had my favourite children's librarian obtain this one for me.
Mixed Magics is a collection of four short stories: "Warlock at the Wheel," "Stealer of Souls," "Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream," and "The Sage of Theare." All but one of the stories involve calling out the name and having that dapperly dressed Enchanter (well, when he isn't in a dressing gown, but even that'll be quite nice) show up and help out with the situation.
I don't think any of the stories are all that exciting: they're too much the writing of someone not content to leave stories off in places that invite readers to wonder. All the same, it's fun to spend time with Cat again, and in the worlds of the honourable Mr. Chant.
Labels:
Children's Lit.,
Chrestomanci,
Fantasy,
Fiction
James Patterson and Andrew Cross, 3rd Degree.
Fluff. An explosion. A friend being beaten by her husband. A liaison with the deputy director of Homeland Security. Some more death, some sadness, and a solved murder with ends neatly tied up in string.
My palate was cleansed; it certainly wasn't stimulated.
Fluff. An explosion. A friend being beaten by her husband. A liaison with the deputy director of Homeland Security. Some more death, some sadness, and a solved murder with ends neatly tied up in string.
My palate was cleansed; it certainly wasn't stimulated.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Thomas Lynch, Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality, 2000.
I've mentioned Lynch's earlier book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. I quite liked the earlier one, and while this newer book doesn't seem nearly as startlingly original as The Undertaking, I enjoyed the time that I spent reading this book.
This book is a collection of essays that muse about what it means to live, and what part death plays in life. The same concerns of the earlier book are reproduced, perhaps with yet more careful reflection about Lynch's position. Given that, then, why read this book? My answer to that question is that Lynch spends more time thinking about and talking about language, and its role in life and death. While that concern was far from absent in The Undertaking, it's front and centre here: he conveys his deep respect for language and what it can accomplish. And that's an idea I'm always happy to read about.
From "Y2Kat":
"I am a slave to words. I am their servant. The acoustics and meanings, their sounds and sense, sometimes make me shiver--the precision, the liberties, the health and healing in their meanings. Language is the first among God's many gifts. To name and proclaim makes us feel like gods. To define and discern, to clarify and articulate, to affirm--surely this is what our maker had in mind when we were made in that image and likeness. Not the beard or lightning bolts or bluster. It was no big bang. It was a whisper. It was a word made flesh--our Creation. And the real power of Creation is the power of words to guard us like angels, to protect and defend and define us; to incite, and excite, and inspire, to separate us from the grunting, growling, noisome, wordless, meowing things. ..." ( 217-18)
I like reading Lynch's pieces not because of any concern of my own about mortality, but because his own sober reflections encourage reflection on my part--about words, about life, about death, and about what it is to think.
I've mentioned Lynch's earlier book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. I quite liked the earlier one, and while this newer book doesn't seem nearly as startlingly original as The Undertaking, I enjoyed the time that I spent reading this book.
This book is a collection of essays that muse about what it means to live, and what part death plays in life. The same concerns of the earlier book are reproduced, perhaps with yet more careful reflection about Lynch's position. Given that, then, why read this book? My answer to that question is that Lynch spends more time thinking about and talking about language, and its role in life and death. While that concern was far from absent in The Undertaking, it's front and centre here: he conveys his deep respect for language and what it can accomplish. And that's an idea I'm always happy to read about.
From "Y2Kat":
"I am a slave to words. I am their servant. The acoustics and meanings, their sounds and sense, sometimes make me shiver--the precision, the liberties, the health and healing in their meanings. Language is the first among God's many gifts. To name and proclaim makes us feel like gods. To define and discern, to clarify and articulate, to affirm--surely this is what our maker had in mind when we were made in that image and likeness. Not the beard or lightning bolts or bluster. It was no big bang. It was a whisper. It was a word made flesh--our Creation. And the real power of Creation is the power of words to guard us like angels, to protect and defend and define us; to incite, and excite, and inspire, to separate us from the grunting, growling, noisome, wordless, meowing things. ..." ( 217-18)
I like reading Lynch's pieces not because of any concern of my own about mortality, but because his own sober reflections encourage reflection on my part--about words, about life, about death, and about what it is to think.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Diana Wynne Jones, The Merlin Conspiracy, 2003.
Jones was one of my favourite authors when I was younger, thanks to books like Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant. She's a brilliant, imaginative & exciting author--far worthier of being read than JKR, in my humble opinion, but oh well.
This latest novel twins the stories of Arianrhod & Nichothodes as they try to save the world of Blest, and generally make sense of their own lives. Like all of Diana Wynne Jones's books, the kids are far more willing to recognise the world for what it is while working for its betterment than the adults. Roddy & Nick have to make sense of their respective magics, and work together to stop the takeover by the evil person whose name I'm not going to tell you (so as to not ruin the surprise).
It's not her best book, but it's riveting & fun, & I like coming back to her writing.
Over a library in one of her stories, she put an inscription about the books inside that I think I'd like above my books one day: "Monuments more lasting than brass..."
Jones was one of my favourite authors when I was younger, thanks to books like Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant. She's a brilliant, imaginative & exciting author--far worthier of being read than JKR, in my humble opinion, but oh well.
This latest novel twins the stories of Arianrhod & Nichothodes as they try to save the world of Blest, and generally make sense of their own lives. Like all of Diana Wynne Jones's books, the kids are far more willing to recognise the world for what it is while working for its betterment than the adults. Roddy & Nick have to make sense of their respective magics, and work together to stop the takeover by the evil person whose name I'm not going to tell you (so as to not ruin the surprise).
It's not her best book, but it's riveting & fun, & I like coming back to her writing.
Over a library in one of her stories, she put an inscription about the books inside that I think I'd like above my books one day: "Monuments more lasting than brass..."
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising, 1986.
It's always nice to reread some pulp.
Red Storm Rising is a gedankexperiment. Back in 1985/86, in the height of the Cold War, Clancy wondered what a modern war would like. This book details a potential cause (albeit with the USSR as the aggressor), and a war plan for the Soviet side.
He posits the need for a severe resource grab, and in this case chooses oil. Clancy (or his main character, Jack Ryan) is fond, in later novels, of arguing that all wars are just examples of "grand larceny writ large." The Soviets try to achieve surprise before attacking Germany--in an effort to capture Europe--in order to prevent NATO from interfering while the Soviets would attempt to capture the Persian Gulf and its oil.
At any rate, the novel is vintage Clancy. It's fun, it jumps all over the place, and it presents a neat bird's-eye view of tactics and strategy for war in a modern environment. Except that it's twenty years out of date now. And there are no longer any modern states for the United States to worry about...
A pleasant distraction that's mostly just light fluff, the book still disturbs you, as any book about war is likely to do.
It's always nice to reread some pulp.
Red Storm Rising is a gedankexperiment. Back in 1985/86, in the height of the Cold War, Clancy wondered what a modern war would like. This book details a potential cause (albeit with the USSR as the aggressor), and a war plan for the Soviet side.
He posits the need for a severe resource grab, and in this case chooses oil. Clancy (or his main character, Jack Ryan) is fond, in later novels, of arguing that all wars are just examples of "grand larceny writ large." The Soviets try to achieve surprise before attacking Germany--in an effort to capture Europe--in order to prevent NATO from interfering while the Soviets would attempt to capture the Persian Gulf and its oil.
At any rate, the novel is vintage Clancy. It's fun, it jumps all over the place, and it presents a neat bird's-eye view of tactics and strategy for war in a modern environment. Except that it's twenty years out of date now. And there are no longer any modern states for the United States to worry about...
A pleasant distraction that's mostly just light fluff, the book still disturbs you, as any book about war is likely to do.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Lisa Moore, Degrees of Nakedness, 1995.
I've forgotten why Ms. Moore's collection of short stories was recommended to me; that's one of the unfortunate disadvantages of meaning to blog about a book, and then putting it off for three-ish weeks.
So. Her book is weak. It has flashes of description and characterization that are quite good, but for the most part, she's far too concerned with sex and far too little concerned with trying to tell an interesting story well. The stories reflect an obsession on the part of the narrators, an inability to fully comprehend what sex means--if it does--and what role it should play in their lives.
There are, as I said, a couple of moments that work fairly well.
From "Sea Urchin":
This is the sad thing about loving. It's a skill, like working up a clay pot on a wheel. As though the form is slipping to life by itself, the hands slicked with juicy mud are doing all they can to contain it. Just the tiniest squeezing of muscles in the hands keeps the pot perfect. It's such a shock to throw a pot for the first time and see how unsimple it is, to have it skew, deform and collapse in seconds, against what you expect.(30).
It seems to me that while this passage doesn't share a new analogy, it spells out the analogy well. It's a simile that really does work, and invites repetition: it shares the messy delicateness that is trying to love, trying to maintain a relationship, and it does so simply and without over-elaborating upon the idea.
A real problem with these stories is evident just after the point that this passage comes from: the slipshod nature of the jumps from one idea to the next, intended to create juxtapositions that ask the reader to make sense of some oddly related ideas, instead are jarring and startling to the reader. I wonder if perhaps the speaker hasn't fully made sense of the relations herself, and so the disconnects remain disconnected, rather than linking smoothly.
In "Haloes," Moore uses a line that I find intriguing: "the haiku is like a finger pointing at the moon. It's important that it's not a bejewlled or perfect finger. It only points to something" (136). While it seems to me that this is the idea behind each of Moore's stories, I'm inclined to argue that the person pointing needs to have some sense of the "why" behind the pointing, and I'm not convinced that that "why" is present in these stories--or, in fact, that the finger is pointing at something worthy of consideration.
I've forgotten why Ms. Moore's collection of short stories was recommended to me; that's one of the unfortunate disadvantages of meaning to blog about a book, and then putting it off for three-ish weeks.
So. Her book is weak. It has flashes of description and characterization that are quite good, but for the most part, she's far too concerned with sex and far too little concerned with trying to tell an interesting story well. The stories reflect an obsession on the part of the narrators, an inability to fully comprehend what sex means--if it does--and what role it should play in their lives.
There are, as I said, a couple of moments that work fairly well.
From "Sea Urchin":
This is the sad thing about loving. It's a skill, like working up a clay pot on a wheel. As though the form is slipping to life by itself, the hands slicked with juicy mud are doing all they can to contain it. Just the tiniest squeezing of muscles in the hands keeps the pot perfect. It's such a shock to throw a pot for the first time and see how unsimple it is, to have it skew, deform and collapse in seconds, against what you expect.(30).
It seems to me that while this passage doesn't share a new analogy, it spells out the analogy well. It's a simile that really does work, and invites repetition: it shares the messy delicateness that is trying to love, trying to maintain a relationship, and it does so simply and without over-elaborating upon the idea.
A real problem with these stories is evident just after the point that this passage comes from: the slipshod nature of the jumps from one idea to the next, intended to create juxtapositions that ask the reader to make sense of some oddly related ideas, instead are jarring and startling to the reader. I wonder if perhaps the speaker hasn't fully made sense of the relations herself, and so the disconnects remain disconnected, rather than linking smoothly.
In "Haloes," Moore uses a line that I find intriguing: "the haiku is like a finger pointing at the moon. It's important that it's not a bejewlled or perfect finger. It only points to something" (136). While it seems to me that this is the idea behind each of Moore's stories, I'm inclined to argue that the person pointing needs to have some sense of the "why" behind the pointing, and I'm not convinced that that "why" is present in these stories--or, in fact, that the finger is pointing at something worthy of consideration.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Glenn Yeffeth, ed., Seven Season of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show.
This collection of twenty-two essays begins with some degree of promise, examining certain aspects of Buffy. In particular, Nancy Holder's "Slayers of the Last Arc," is a piece that argues that the final conclusion of the show works well both artistically and in the context of the show as a whole. While I'm more tempted by its seductive appeal to Joseph Campbell's outline of the quest myth (from Hero with a Thousand Faces) as an explanation, it is one of the few pieces that doesn't fall into the trap that most of the rest do. That is to say, it has a clear argument and it doesn't just follow a story--it uses quotations from the show to argue a point. It's a real essay!
The other extreme--and I won't pick on a particular author or essay, here, are the pieces that say, wasn't Buffy great? Don't you miss it when X happened? Who really was Buffy's best boyfriend?
So. Some decent essays, some crap. Much like those essays that you'll find online--and in short, spend your time looking for interesting pieces there; unless you can get this Yeffeth book from the library, it's not worth the price of purchase.
This collection of twenty-two essays begins with some degree of promise, examining certain aspects of Buffy. In particular, Nancy Holder's "Slayers of the Last Arc," is a piece that argues that the final conclusion of the show works well both artistically and in the context of the show as a whole. While I'm more tempted by its seductive appeal to Joseph Campbell's outline of the quest myth (from Hero with a Thousand Faces) as an explanation, it is one of the few pieces that doesn't fall into the trap that most of the rest do. That is to say, it has a clear argument and it doesn't just follow a story--it uses quotations from the show to argue a point. It's a real essay!
The other extreme--and I won't pick on a particular author or essay, here, are the pieces that say, wasn't Buffy great? Don't you miss it when X happened? Who really was Buffy's best boyfriend?
So. Some decent essays, some crap. Much like those essays that you'll find online--and in short, spend your time looking for interesting pieces there; unless you can get this Yeffeth book from the library, it's not worth the price of purchase.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Ian Fleming, Casino Royale.
When I was a kid, I loved the idea of James Bond. I'd heard of him--and even seen a couple of the movies--and still wasn't allowed to take the books out of the library. Not their restriction: my mom's. She thought it wasn't yet age-appropriate material. Or so she always said: she never mentioned that they're poorly written, unexciting books, too.
Casino Royale is where Bond made his first appearance in print. It's a slow, plodding book--the first half deals with Bond trying to beat a Russian spy at Baccarat, and the second half is him recovering from being tortured--and setting up SMERSH as his future antagonistic agency. The entire book is a plodding exploration of the philosophy and psychology that Fleming creates to explain Bond. That is to say, the whole book sets up the rest. Whether they're better, substantially, is hard to say: the extensive descriptions that are so much a part of Fleming's style do not provide a background of excitement necessary to a spy/thriller novel, in my opinion.
Stick to the movies.
When I was a kid, I loved the idea of James Bond. I'd heard of him--and even seen a couple of the movies--and still wasn't allowed to take the books out of the library. Not their restriction: my mom's. She thought it wasn't yet age-appropriate material. Or so she always said: she never mentioned that they're poorly written, unexciting books, too.
Casino Royale is where Bond made his first appearance in print. It's a slow, plodding book--the first half deals with Bond trying to beat a Russian spy at Baccarat, and the second half is him recovering from being tortured--and setting up SMERSH as his future antagonistic agency. The entire book is a plodding exploration of the philosophy and psychology that Fleming creates to explain Bond. That is to say, the whole book sets up the rest. Whether they're better, substantially, is hard to say: the extensive descriptions that are so much a part of Fleming's style do not provide a background of excitement necessary to a spy/thriller novel, in my opinion.
Stick to the movies.
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