Tohu Bohu

Gentle Readers will want to be aware that tomorrow, April 17, is Poem In Your Pocket Day. The Academy of American Poets suggests that you “select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.”

Your Humble Blogger passes this information along without prejudice, for what it is worth.

Well, and for those who are worried about a long night paging through the Holy Tango for the right title, may I suggest Opine, Pout, Mockery, which I’ll just excerpt here:

It is more blessed to be governed than to govern
When I am Dean of Men
Which, if there were any justice in this world
I should long ago have become
I will make you sorry you were ever born.
Dreary old highbrow?
Hubert, my dear, where DID you get that scarf?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

So, Your Humble Blogger is reading a book set in, oh, 1950 or so, in an alternate universe, English Country House Murder after WWII doesn’t happen, and the following comes up:

Then here he came, tramping in police boots to disturb the hierarchies as they were laid down by bringing in an entirely orthogonal power.

And my immediate reaction was Orthoganal? Who the hell would have described the police and the aristocracy as orthagonal in 1950? My second reaction was How the hell do you spell orthaganal anyway? Then I went to a couple of dictionaries and found out that the use of that word in that manner seems to have come from computer programmer jargon, which, you know, not so much in 1950. Now, it’s possible that a Scotland Yard Inspector who was interested in statistical mathematics and other branches of the higher philosophy would have independently invented the metaphorical use of the term, particularly in an alternate universe. I don’t mean to suggest that the author is flat-out wrong, here. Just that Your Humble Blogger was thrown out of the book by it. Possibly given another chance to look at it the author would defend the word, and possibly they would conclude that it could be more perfect. It isn’t a big deal, either way, except for the delicacy of the window through which we look at the book.

Um, that is, in books such as I take this one to be, where we are supposed to fall in to the story, rather than stand back and look at the window. There are different levels of transparency that writers aim for and readers achieve; it would be silly to discuss Finnegan’s Wake in terms of the author getting in the way of the story. But I don’t think that applies here, and I’m going to continue not telling you the title and author, out of a misguided sense of fairness, so you’ll have to take my word for it, or do your own damn research, Pomeranz.

Where was I? Oh, the clunker in the sentence. I am no writer of prose fiction. I’ve written a bit of dialogue, trying to make voices consistent, individuated, appropriate, interesting and beautiful (or ugly, depending), and I find it very difficult indeed. And I’ve spent five years or so creating the Voice of Vardibidian, the which I’ve managed to throw in a bit of everything, so that I can eschew consistency if I want to. And, you know, it’s a blog. And a Tohu Bohu besides. There’s a lot that I slide into this thing that upon later reading appears to be badly composed. Ah, well.

I imagine it must be very difficult to work the historical novel thing, or in fact any novel thing at all. The writer has to balance the reader’s experience of hearing (or “hearing”) the speech patterns of the type of person in the story with the actual researched type, with the reader’s own expectations of his own context, with the writer’s limitations and talents, and the whole house of cards is built on guesses, trust and instinct. And here I come and pull the whole thing down because I don’t like orthogonol.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

It occasionally happens that Your Humble Blogger sees some sort of blogging challenge or contest, and thinks I would enjoy doing that, if only I didn’t have to follow the rules. And, of course, I don’t, as long as I don’t, for instance, enter the contest. In the case of Insert a Zombie, Win a Prize, that means I won’t, you know, win the prize, but then I wouldn’t have won a prize, anyway. Fine. I don’t like prizes. Sour old prizes. Who needs them?

Except, of course, for the prize of your Gentle Readership. Anyway, I have, as the contest suggests, inserted a zombie, although I utterly failed to keep to 250 words, or even to 1,000 words. More than 900 of the words, I think, are those of P.G. Wodehouse, which has got to count for something. The rest are mine, and you are welcome to them.

Arrived at the hotel and standing in the lobby, Psmith perceived the existence of further complications. The lobby was in more than its usual state of congestion, it being a recognized meeting-place for those who did not find it convenient to go as far east as that traditional rendezvous of Londoners, the spot under the clock at Charing Cross Station; and “the writer,” while giving instructions as to how Psmith should ornament his exterior, had carelessly omitted to mention how he himself was to be recognized. A rollicking, slap-dash conspirator, was Psmith’s opinion.

It seemed best to take up a position as nearly as possible in the centre of the lobby, some distance from the walking dead, and stand there until “the writer,” lured by the chrysanthemum, should come forward and start something. This he accordingly did, but when at the end of ten minutes nothing had happened beyond a series of collisions with perhaps a dozen visitors fleeing the hotel, he decided on a more active course. A young man of sporting appearance had been standing beside him for the last five minutes, and ever and anon this young man had glanced with some fear at the slavering horde. Psmith tried the formula on him.

“There will be brains,” said Psmith, “in Northumberland to-morrow.”

The young man looked at him, not without interest, certainly, but without the gleam of intelligence in his eye which Psmith had hoped to see.

“What?” he replied.

“There will be brains in Northumberland to-morrow.”

“Thanks, Zadkiel,” said the young man. “Deuced gratifying, I’m sure. I suppose you couldn’t tell us how to still the undead as well?”

He then withdrew rapidly, dragged off by young woman in a large hat who had just come stumbling through the plate-glass window. Psmith was forced to the conclusion that this was not his man. He was sorry on the whole, for he had seemed a pleasant fellow.

As Psmith had taken up a stationary position and the population of the lobby was in a state of flux, what with the barricades and the occasional incursion, he was finding himself next to some one new all the time; and now he decided to accost the individual whom the reshuffle had just brought elbow to elbow with him. This was a jovial-looking soul with a flowered waist-coat, a white hat, and a mottled face. Just the man who might have written that letter.

The effect on this person of Psmith’s neurological remark was instantaneous. A light of the utmost friendliness shone in his beautifully-shaven face as he turned. He seized Psmith’s hand and gripped it with a delightful heartiness. He had the air of a man who has found a friend, and what is more, an old friend. He had a sort of journeys-end-in-lovers’-meeting look.

“My dear old chap!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you to speak for the last five minutes. Knew we’d met before somewhere, but couldn’t place you. Face familiar as the dickens, of course. Well, well, well! And how are they all?

“Who? said Psmith courteously.

“Why, the zombies, my dear chap.”

“Oh, the zombies?”

“The disgusting old zombies,” said the other, specifying more exactly. He slapped Psmith on the shoulder. “What times those were, eh?”

“Which?” said Psmith.

“The times we all used to have together, fighting off the zombies.”

“Oh, those?” said Psmith.

Something of discouragement seemed to creep over the other’s exuberance, as a cloud creeps over the summer sky. But he persevered.

“Fancy meeting you still alive like this!”

“It is a small world,” agreed Psmith.

“I’d ask you to come and fend off the damned,” said the jovial one, with the slight increase of tensity which comes to a man who approaches the core of a business deal, “but the fact is my ass of a man sent me out this morning without a weapon. Forgot to give me my axe. Damn’ careless! I’ll have to sack the fellow.”

“Annoying, certainly,” said Psmith.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the jovial one, inspired. “Lend me your sword-stick, my dear old boy. That’s the best way out of the difficulty. I can send it round to your hotel or wherever you are this evening when I get home.”

A sad, sweet smile played over Psmith’s face.

“Leave me, comrade!” he murmured.

“Eh?”

“Pass along, old friend, pass along.”

Resignation displaced joviality in the other’s countenance.

“Nothing doing?” he inquired.

“Nothing.”

“Well, there was no harm in trying,” argued the other.

“None whatever.”

“You see,” said the now far less jovial man confidentially, “you look such a perfect mug with that eyeglass that it tempts a chap.”

“I can quite understand how it must!”

“No offence.”

“Assuredly not.”

The white hat disappeared through the swing doors, and Psmith returned to his quest. He engaged the attention of a well-rotted man in snuff-coloured rags who had just come within hail.

“There will be brains in Northumberland to-morrow,” he said.

The man peered at him inquiringly.

“Uuurrrrrgh?” he said.

Psmith repeated his observation.

“Brains!” said the man.

Psmith was beginning to lose the unruffled calm which made him such an impressive figure to the public eye. He had not taken into consideration that the object of of his search might be dead. It undoubtedly added to the embarrassment of the pursuit. He was moving away, when a hand fell on his sleeve.

Psmith turned. The hand fell to the ground and was stepped on by an elegantly dressed young man of somewhat nervous and feverish appearance. During his vigil, Psmith had noticed this young man standing not far away, surrounded by zombies, who had looked at him with distaste, as if to say, if these were brains, they didn’t want any.

“I say,” said this young man in a tense whisper, “did I hear you say that there would be brains in Northumberland to-morrow?”

“If,” said Psmith, “you were anywhere within the radius of a dozen yards while I was chatting with the recent dead duck, I think it is possible that you did.”

“Good for the damned,” said the young man. “Come over here where we can escape.”

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Repression of War Experience.

Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it’s bad to think of war,
When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you’re as right as rain…

                                           Why won’t it rain? …
I wish there’d be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they’re so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There’s one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they’re in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

You’re quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You’d never think there was a bloody war on!…
O yes, you would … why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I’m going crazy;
I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns.

Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

Posted by Vardibidian at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Just to break up the Book Reports a little, how about an AtoZ? Courtesy of my LibraryThing, which makes it easier.

A is for Alice in Wonderland, which isn’t too surprising.

B is for Beowolf, because it’s becoming culturally hot for no particular reason.

C is for Catch-22, although it’s a tough choice, because The Chosen and Chicken Soup with Rice have each been my Favorite Book, for a time.

D is for Dombey and Son, because I’m halfway through rereading it, and it’s wonderful.

E is for The Essential Calvin and Hobbes.

F is for Fire Watch, because for some reason we own two copies.

G is for Galileo, the Bertolt Brecht play, although I also am very fond of The Garden Party and other plays by Vaclav Havel, both of which maintain a certain political vibrancy.

H is for Hop on Pop, a drastically underrated book, up there with Dr. Seuss’ most magnificent creations.

I is for I Am the Messenger, which I haven’t read yet, but which comes very highly recommended.

J is for James and the Giant Peach. We own two copies of that one, too.

K is for Kind Hearts and Coronets, the screenplay, which actually isn’t as good a screenplay as one might think, but since it’s impossible to read it without recalling the wonderful movie, the experience is up to snuff despite itself.

L is for Leave it to Psmith, a perfect novel in every way.

M is for The Mask of Apollo, which is my oldest friend.

N is for The Norton Anthology of English Literature, because how could it not be?

O is for One for the Morning Glory, which you really should read.

P is for Pirke Avot, which doesn’t so much begin with a P as a pay, but I am not doing an aleph to tav, nor do I have books that start with more than four or five of those letters.

Q is for Queen Zixi of Ix, because the only other Q book I have is Quiddith through the Ages.

R is for Red Harvest, which I once read aloud at story readings, a chapter every other week, was it? Or maybe once a month? No, that couldn’t have been possible.

S is for Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, soon to be a Major Motion Picture, with limited release on December 21 and wide release in ... January 2008. Curse them.

T is for The Tale of Two Bad Mice, which is actually an odd and disturbing story of domestic violence, and which resolves itself, if it can be said to resolve itself, in a way that is even more disturbing than the rest.

U is for Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices, which (a) is a wonderful thing in itself, and (2) was a Happy College Experience for YHB.

V is for Vita and Harold, of which you have heard me speak.

W is for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, because my Perfect Non-Reader loves the Oz books (although not so much the first one).

X is for Xenocide, because it’s the only book I own that starts with an X.

Y is for Yo! Yes?, an excellent picture book that is easy to read, charming, and instructive.

Z is for Zen Shorts, because I don’t own a copy of The Z was Zapped, and isn’t it good to have Zen Shorts?

I’ll add that these aren’t necessarily the finest books that start with those letters, nor even the finest such books that happen to be in the house, but they are in the house, and they do start with those letters, and that’s enough for one note.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More about the Library Thing... What I’m stuck on is that even the most popular books aren’t terribly popular, with the most popular being in the area of fifteen thousand out of two hundred thousand, call it one out of every twelve or fourteen Thingers. Surely half of all book-owning people own Harry Potter or Pride and Prejudice? No, not so. Even assuming that half the libraries are essentially empty, people who signed up for a free thing and never bothered entering the bulk of their books, that’s still a lot less than I’d imagine for the popular books. And once you get down to the less popular books, the spread is immense.

So YHB did a little gadabout, by taking five random books (from the random-books-from-your-collection widget) and looking at who else lists them in their LT library, and what those libraries are like.

• The Tyrannosaurus Game, by Steven Kroll. Owned by YHB and piseco, who also owns 25 other books to be found in my library. This is clearly a collection of only children’s books. Fairly large, but still, between piseco’s 486 books and my 366 children’s books, we have in common only 26, with eight hundred unshared books between us. Looking at our total, out of 1500 books, 27 are shared, for a total overlap of a little over 1.8%. piseco’s median obscurity: 20.
• Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1: Charmed Life / The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones. Owned by 455 members. Clicking at random to hoopmanjh, I find that we share 32 other books, including several Oz books, some Asimov, some Bujold, some Card, etc, etc. This is clearly a sign of shared taste, yes? But his library contains 1,684 books, so our total overlap is 33 out of 2,665, or about 1.2%. hoopmanjh’s median obscurity: 64.
• The King Must Die, by Mary Renault. Owned by 389 members. Again, I clicked at random, and wound up with fictiontheory, who has a collection of 122 books, with lots of specfic. We share 15 books, which is a pretty big chunk of her collection (her LT collection, of course, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all she owns), but a pretty tiny chunk of mine. Overlap: around 1.3%. fictiontheory’s median obscurity: 277.
• The Fox and the Stork and Other La Fontaine Fables, by Roberta Sewal. This is from a series put out by Grolier in the 1960s, and nobody else anywhere has a copy of it. Total overlap: none. SilverCircle has a different book of Ms. Sewal’s retelling of the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, so counting that library of 1,153 with 17 overlaps, that’s 0.8%. That’s stretching, of course, because that particular work has a 0% overlap. SilverCircle’s median obscurity: 22.
• Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a hugely popular book in LT, 212th on a list of more than two million. It’s the Nth most popular book in our collection. I clicked on maddiegreene, who has a tidy collection of 486 books. We share 33 of those, mostly specfic. Overlap: 2.2%. maddiegreene’s median book obscurity: 269.

Looking at the list of “users with my books” weighted for book obscurity and library size, we see franny(overlap 2.3% entirely in Dick Francis books, median obscurity 140), redheadread (overlap 7.6%, median obscurity 381), sayyid (overlap 7.7%, median obscurity 441), paperclypse (overlap 6.2%, median obscurity 286) and tuxable (overlap 5.9%, median obscurity 294). In just the raw how-many-books list, we have gwyneira (overlap 3.9%, median obscurity 78), ginaruiz (overlap 2.2%, median obscurity 47), SeriousGrace (overlap 3.1%, median obscurity 74), bookstopshere (overlap 1.8%, median obscurity 30), and jalual (overlap 2.6%, median obscurity 7).

In other words, the most I could possibly expect is to share one out of twelve books in a library that was a real outlier in being close to mine. More likely, among people who share my tastes in books, would be that thirty-nine out of every forty books we own would be different. And it’s not unusual for half a person’s library—a person picked specifically because they share books with me—to be shared with one-tenth of one percent of people with collections on LT.

What I’m saying is that people are different, one to another, even people who are pretty much the same. Although it seems, now and then, like our culture is a homogenous mass of best-sellers and series mysteries, when it comes down to details, it’s more complicated than that.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

As I was ruminating on Girls’ Books and Boys’ Books yesterday, I put the question to my Perfect Non-Reader: Are there Girl Books and Boy Books. She answered affirmatively without hesitation. When I asked for details, she thought a bit, but said that Girl Books were about princesses magic, and Boys’ Books were about fighting “and other rough stuff”. Hmm. I asked about a few other topics. Horses? Girl Book. Indians? Boy Book. Rockets? Boy Book. Buildings? Neutral. (I explained that that a book that was neither a Boy Book or a Girl Book could be called neutral, and she responded that “yellow is a neutral color!” which, I then recalled, was a direct quote from a playground mother in regard to the Youngest Member’s cute little ducky hat. But I digress. Sorta.) I asked if girls could enjoy Boy Books, and boys enjoy Girl Books, and she effectively said duh, of course. Then we moved on to individual books and series.

The Oz series are girl books. Charlotte’s Web is neutral. The Droon books are Boy Books, but the Magic Treehouse books are neutral. Alice is neutral. Which Witch is neutral. The Just So Stories are neutral. In fact, when we got down to specific books, it emerged that (a) she considers most books she reads to be neutral, and (2) the sex of the protagonist(s) is weighted very heavily. So when asked generally what makes a book a Girl Book, the sex of the protagonist didn’t come up, but when I asked specifically, it was pretty nearly determinative. Although, there was the weird Alice thing, because Alice seems to me to be very much a Girls’ Book, but evidently not so much. Although I’m not sure she remembers Alice very well, athough for a while it was her favorite book. So was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, now that I think about it, but I didn’t ask her whether it was a Boy Book.

Anyway, I note that Mary Ann Mohanraj just this morning wrote about sexism in specfic, and I think she overdelineates the matter. I mean, I’m sure she would acknowledge overlap, but what was interesting to me was the extent to which the criteria we use when we slap gender labels on stories are not the criteria we think we use. At least when we’re five years old, but I think it’s true well beyond that.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, if it’s OK with y’all, Gentle Readers, I’m just going to fling at you a bunch of things I thought were interesting to post about, but which I haven’t actually written a post about:

• There are some interesting things over at Matthew Yglesias’s’’ses proudly eponymous site about the War Powers Act. I am becoming even more entrenched in my belief that the War Powers Act, for all that it was intended to limit the power of the Executive to engage in undeclared wars, in fact hands the war power to the Executive to use at the whim of whoever happens to be President. We should repeal it and start again, ideally with an incredibly restrictive law that makes it clear that the war power belongs solely to the Legislatures, and that the President must not invade any other sovereign nation without a proper declaration of war. I know, I know, as Commander in Chief, the President has to respond quickly and whatnot. No, he doesn’t. There is no reason why the President should be able to invade without first getting a declaration of war. He can command our military within our borders and within the borders of our allies and generally play defense by himself, great. If we have an invitation from a sovereign government (an officially recognized sovereign government) to bring in peace-keeping troops and military advisors, well, we can work something out in a bill to allow for retroactive permission, but pretty quick. Not three months, or two, or one. Is our national transportation system so bad that we can’t convene a special session to deal with a crisis?
• Robert Gallucci makes a terrific point in a short interview with Foreign Policy when he says “this theory that Bolton apparently operates on, that we’re in a situation where we have to worry about rewarding people or not rewarding people is not a useful construct for international relations. It’s probably not bad if you’re trying to teach your kids about the playground, but [it doesn’t work] for international politics.” I have a sense that Our Only President and his cabal of incompetents and crooks somehow think of non-westerners and not-quite-grupp, and that they have to be Taught Lessons. I think there is a question of maturity, but I don’t think the point of that question is away from the White House.
• I’m not all the way through it, but I can already recommend Mary Robinette Kowal’s series of posts about reading aloud. There is a lot of stuff there that is just technical enough to be actually useful.
• I understand that the point of a recommended reading list is to, you know, recommend books that I have not actually read before, but I was surprised to see how little of Locus magazine’s recommended stuff from 2006 I had read. Or, frankly, am interested in reading. I believe I have only read one of the grupp novels and one of the first novels, and none of the YA books. I have read some good things from 2006, haven’t I? Or have I? It was interesting to see Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon and James Morrow on the list—I usually complain about books that are clearly speculative being kept out of talk about specfic, but in the case of The Last Witchfinder I am skeptical about its place on the list at all.
• From Zadie Smith on Litchrachoor in The Guardian January 13th, an essay called “Fail Better”: “[G]reat writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.” The essay appears to have disappeared from The Guardian’s site, but it has been cached for those who are interested and have mad skillz. Mostly, though, I just liked the description there.
• There have been a lot of notes in Left Blogovia about the various candidates’ positions on Iran, and whether they should take military strikes off the table. Just to be clear, if Larry King or the buffoon Chris Matthews asks you about military strikes, you say “They would be a mistake.” If he asks if that means that they are off the table, you say “They would be a mistake.” If he persists, and insists that he must know if they are off the table, ask him “what table? I’m talking about foreign policy and the possibility of a tragic and unnecessary war; what are you talking about?” If you become President and circumstances compel you, in your judgement, to order military strikes, you will have the power to do so (with the prior approval of the Legislature, yes?) whether they were on the table or not.
• Travis Daub mentions a six-year old interview with Lori Wallach, during which she used her line about “two ships passing in the night. One ship is loaded with chopsticks cut from wood in the Pacific Northwest and being shipped to Japan. The other ship is loaded with toothpicks cut from trees in Malaysia and packaged in Japan on their way to California.” Mr. Daub is reminded of this by the news that “Producing and shipping one bottle of Fiji bottled water around the globe consumes nearly 27 liters of water, nearly a kilogram of fossil fuels, and generates more than a pound of carbon dioxide emissions.” Mmmm, water.
• Remember the Maine!

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Your Humble Blogger read 118 books in 2005, down from 119 in 2004. Neither number is likely to be accurate within five or so, actually. Still, those numbers are close enough, and the monthly totals I’ve bothered to look at are close enough, that I think it’s reasonable to say I read about two books a week. Or at least that I’ve read two books a week over the last two years, during which time I have not been revenue guy for the house. When I go back to work someday, that will probably go down quite a bit, both because I’ll have less ‘free time’ and because I’ll be more tired during what free time I have. Still, that’s pretty consistent, right?

Except ... evidently other than reading two books a week, my habits appear to have changed somewhat. I re-read fewer books this year (32, down from 44 last year), which means that I read one new book a month more than last year. New, by the way, in all this connection, means new to me, that is, something I hadn’t previously read, rather than something that was newly published. In 2004, I read a lot of essays and nonfiction; this year, I read only 9 non-fiction books, and that includes Overheard at the Museum and At Knit’s End, neither of which have much in the way of content. In 2004, I read 20 new specfic books; this year, I read 32; one a month more. This year I read 14 Young Adult specfic (in addition to the 32 specfic-for-grups mentioned previously), up from 6 last year. In addition, in 2005 I read 3 YA books that I couldn’t (or didn’t) classify as specfic, up from 1 last year. So although I read the same number of books, more or less, I read a lot more easy stuff and a lot less hard stuff. Perhaps, in the New Year, I should make a point of browsing the non-fiction side of the new book shelf in the library.

On the other hand, there were a lot of areas that were more or less the same. 2004, nine mysteries; 2005, eleven. 2004, six graphic novels; 2005, five. 2004, seven nongenre novels; 2005, eight. I think fundamentally the change is simply a change in what comes to hand in the library when, as opposed to a change in what interests me or even in what I feel up for. James Thurber at one point dismissively refers to people who read ‘to get to the end of the book’; that’s Your Humble Blogger. I like reading, and what I read is secondary at best.

Anyway, once again, for those Gentle Readers who made it past all the numbers, here are Ten Or So Books Your Humble Blogger Enjoyed in 2005:

• Airborn: pirates, zeppelins, etc, etc.
• Anansi Boys: I am reluctant, for some reason, to include this on a Ten Best list, but also reluctant to leave it off. So there are more than ten on the list, and I am including it, but still reluctantly.
• The Autobiography of God: A deeply blasphemous book about theodicy, which I read at the right time for me to read it. I don’t know if I would enjoy reading it again at this point in my life, but at the moment it provoked thought and emotion in more or less the right manner and proportion.
• The Case of the Singing Skirt: This was not only a good read in itself, but a introduction (for me) to the actual writing of Erle Stanley Gardner, and therefore to a whole bunch of books I will likely enjoy.
• Crux: niftiness in time-travel is still entertaining to me, even though I can’t actually recall what was nifty about it.
• Dragon Rider: Yes, for the second year in a row, one of my favorite books was one of Cornelia Funke’s tween-aimed fantasies. Wanna make something of it?
• Fire Sale: A VI Warshawski book, and a good one, too.
• Futureland: This summer, some months after reading this one, I had the opportunity to buy a copy used and cheap, and passed on it. Now I sort of regret that choice, although I don’t want to read it again now, and don’t think I will soon...
• The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists: The second book does, in fact, exist now, and I haven’t brought myself to look at it for fear of disappointment.
• Slaves of the Mastery: looking back, I seem to have liked this book a lot; perhaps I should re-read it, because I can’t recall just why.
• The Star of Kazan: Neither science fiction nor fantasy, but a nice historical romance for tweens.
• Thirteenth Night: I should dig this out and reread it; I seem to have only been warm about it on finishing it, but my recollection is that it is quite a good book.

I suppose I will continue logging books in 2006. When I started two years ago, it was a one-year plan, and I am starting on the third year. Habits are hard to break, even (possibly) good ones.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Your Humble Blogger happened to surf over to a Washington Monthly essay by Christopher Lehmann called Why Americans can't write political fiction. Um ... they can’t? What Mr. Lehmann means, I think, is that there aren’t very many political novels to his taste: naturalistic, modern, dealing specifically with legislative or executive negotiation. I dunno. I think most good political fiction is either specfic or historical. I also think that for all that Mr. Lehmann likes novels, or for that matter for all Your Humble Blogger likes novels, I’m not sure that the novel is the quintessentially American form of fiction. I think the screenplay is. And there are clearly loads of political movies of various kinds. Now, Mr. Lehmann might not like them, but then you have to call the essay “Why I don’t like a bunch of stuff”, and that’s not as catchy.

Anyway, it wasn’t worth blogging the essay (although of course any Gentle Reader that wants to let me know about American political fiction worth reading, please do), but he quoted at length from Walt Whitman’s essay Democratic Vistas, the which YHB had never read. Mr. Whitman is, as Gentle Readers will be aware, something of a guiding inspiration for this Tohu Bohu (do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am a blog.). At the risk of offending Mr. Whitman’s shade, as he explicitly says he wants the whole essay to hang together and not be picked apart, I’ll blockquote a single magniloquent sentence, also quoted in part by Mr. Lehmann:

Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, literatures, far different, far higher in grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than the popular superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the elections of Presidents or Congresses—radiating, begetting appropriate teachers, schools, manners, and, as its grandest result, accomplishing, (what neither the schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto accomplish'd, and without which this nation will no more stand, permanently, soundly, than a house will stand without a substratum,) a religious and moral character beneath the political and productive and intellectual bases of the States.

Oh, um, I forgot to preface that with my usual Whitman warning: Read Aloud. There’s no point in reading Whitman silently. Oop, here I go again:

We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government, (having, of course, provided for the police, the safety of life, property, and for the basic statute and common law, and their administration, always first in order,) to be among the rest, not merely to rule, to repress disorder, &c., but to develop, to open up to cultivation, to encourage the possibilities of all beneficent and manly outcroppage, and of that aspiration for independence, and the pride and self-respect latent in all characters. (Or, if there be exceptions, we cannot, fixing our eyes on them alone, make theirs the rule for all.)

How many times has Your Humble Blogger attempted, fumblingly, to say that? That the object of civilization is civilization, and that to withdraw from that struggle the might of the government is to fight with one hand tied behind our national back? And that the struggle of civilization is to bring its fruits (sweet and tart) to everybody, to make everybody able to climb up and pick, and to make everybody a botanist to breed new fruits and a cook to make pies and preserves and those things with the crunchy brown-sugar topping? And all the rest of it, too. Yes, it’s coming up to election day again, and the day after tomorrow YHB will, again, post Mr. Whitman’s wonderful reminder that it is not the chosen but the choosing. But now, while you, Gentle Reader, have yet a day to mull over the whole process, let Mr. Whitman remind you that democracy is about today, too, and will be about Wednesday, whoever wins your local. I love elections, as did Mr. Whitman, but it takes Mr. Whitman to remind me (and perhaps me to remind you) that the Great American Experiment was not whether a government could be stable—we will never pass the Romans for stability—but whether we could bring forth onto this continent a people capable of governing ourselves. It is not a people who make democracy, but democracy that can, perhaps, make a people. And at any rate, what counts at the end of the day is the people.

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs -- in religion, literature, colleges, and schools -- democracy in all public and private life, and in the army and navy.

The essay has a lot in it about literature that I disagree with, and a lot more that is simply out of date. We have, for what it’s worth, a distinctively American literature now, and I suspect Mr. Whitman would have loved it, explosions and all, but it isn’t the one he wanted. But, as the man says, history is long, long, long. The poet, under a president who surrounded himself with a cabal of incompetents and crooks, coming out of a war far more awful than anything I can imagine, and fully aware of the ignorance, brutality and indifference of much of the voting population, hollers out to me, and tells me that the response to an electorate that is ignorant, brutal and indifferent is not the easy misanthropy of clean hands, but the long struggle of democracy against feudalism, totalitarianism, fascism, fanaticism, and whatever the next thousand years bring. He couldn’t have imagined Our Only President, but faced with him, he wouldn’t have given up hope. And neither should I.

And neither should you. Take an hour today, take an hour tomorrow, and prepare your vote, Gentle Reader, for your vote is as good as any man’s. And on Wednesday, prepare your democracy for the long haul, for your soul is as good as any man’s.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Your Humble Blogger was not altogether surprised to discover that the total book count for 2004 was over a hundred; that’s only two a week, after all. I was surprised, however, that of that hundred (actually 119) only 44 were re-reads. I think that the ratio is due to keeping this public log of my reading. The observer changes what’s observed, particularly when it comes to this sort of thing.

Anyway, I was also a bit surprised by the breakdown within those 75 new books. The top category was speculative fiction, of course, with 20 entries (plus another 6 Young Adult specfics), but the second was essays. Well, and we could get into a lovely conversation about genre here: of the eleven books I’ve called essays, only The Best American Essays 2003 and Critical Essays on Charles Dickens's Bleak House are clearly books of essays, although Apostrophes & Apocalypses and The Meaning of Swarthmore couldn’t really be anything else. I’ve also counted two book-length essays, Bleak House: A Novel of Connections and Eats, Shoots & Leaves, rather than create a separate category for monographs. I’ve also put the two Studs Terkel books (Hope Dies Last and Coming of Age) as well as the Studs-esque Voices from the Federal Theatre into essays, although I could make a good argument for putting them into memoirs (which consists of A Kentish Lad, West with the Night and, for lack of a better category, The Thurber Letters). The other toughie on that score was Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor, and Himself, but it is mostly essays, or ‘casuals’, which are more like essays than anything else. I also threw in From Narnia to A Space Odyssey, which certainly isn’t a memoir and, despite containing specfic short stories, is mostly a non-fiction book. On the other hand, I put Dating Your Mom into the humor category (which it shares with Holy Tango of Literature) rather than in essays. I also put Pitching My Tent and The Screwtape Letters into religion rather than essays, as they are for the most part essays on religion, and they seemed more comfortable with Does God Have a Big Toe? and Nothing Sacred than with the essays.

I would have expected to find in second place mystery novels, but even tossing in thrillers brings that only up to nine. That’s only just ahead of non-genre novels at seven. Not that those don’t have genres, but on first glance they would all (According to Queenie, Bandbox, Moo, The Charioteer, The Cider House Rules, The Magic Christian, and The Tidewater Tales) be shelved as ‘fiction’. Or so I surmise; I hardly ever go to those shelves in bookstores.

I also read six graphic novels (or whatever they are) over the year, which is likely higher than in most recent years, although I didn’t think it was that high this year. Since I’ve never kept track before, I have no idea how many I’ve read and forgotten. Only two of this year’s stuck in my mind, and one of those was written by an old buddy.

The rest were a scattering of non-fiction on policy, history, and home improvement, and one chapter book, or whatever it’s called when it’s beyond ‘easy reader’ but not ‘young adult’. Altogether, it breaks down to two fiction books for each non-fiction book. I would have expected the non-fiction to be even smaller; I suspect the eyes of my Gentle Readers have something to do with that as well. For which many thanks, as I’ve enjoyed them.

Anyway, if any Gentle Reader has made it past the numbers and categories, I’ll put in as a reward my Favorite Books of 2004. Remember, this is books I read during 2004, not books that came out. I’m also ignoring re-reads, which for the most part I know I like, as it isn’t fair to the new crop. OK, here are ten Books Your Humble Blogger Enjoyed:

• Inkheart: Probably my favorite book of the year. Good enough that I actually miss the characters (Dustfinger, Meggie, Basta and Fenoglio) and want to go back to them.
• The Maquisarde: I was surprised to find this on the top of my specfic list. I liked it and all, and it is well-plotted and suspenseful, but I would have thought there was some specfic book I liked better, and there wasn’t. It’s a distopian future, with lots of political stuff, which might turn some people off, but not YHB.
• The Game: This is another one I wouldn’t have expected to top my list, but it was good fun. Holmes and Kim. Also, it puts something on my list that actually came out in 2004.
• The Screwtape Letters: I don’t know if I would actually recommend this to Gentle Readers all. I suspect, though, that if you like it, you’ll like it a lot. I did.
• Hope Dies Last: If you haven’t read any Studs Terkel, start with Working, but if you like him, and haven’t read this one, do yourself a favor.
• West with the Night: Hunh. I’m pretty sure I read the Beryl Markham short stories in 2004, but they don’t show up in the Tohu Bohu. Did I not finish the book, and decide I hadn’t read enough to include it? Or did I just let it slip? Anyway, this was better.
• Pitching My Tent: This is a sweet, sweet book. I should really read her novel.
• Ten and a Kid: I know how unlikely it is that any Gentle Reader will find this book, but it’s worth keeping an eye out.
• Ombria in Shadow: Actually, I had almost no memory of this book until I looked at it again, and it really is very good. I can’t remember the ending at all, and so don’t remember what I disliked about it. Anyway, it makes the top ten list.
• Grim Tuesday: Is the next one in the series out yet? Why not?

Well, and that’s ten, I think. Not the most stellar list, when I look at it. Still, that was the year that was.

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, and when I started this blog thing I told myself that I mustn’t let it degenerate into a constant litany of complaints against the various annoyances of life. As a rule, I said, for every hatchet job I write, I need to write a puff piece. Over the months, this has meant that I don’t write very many hatchet jobs (or at least not as many as I start to). On the other hand, I don’t write very many puff pieces, either. So having given in to the weakness to complain about a New York Times piece, I’ll plant a big kiss on the web site of Operation Homecoming. Operation Homecoming is a NEA/DoD program that runs writing workshops for returning soldiers as part of the debriefing. The program was recently expanded to increase the number of workshops and locations; I’ve seen a variety of numbers but it looks like the total cost is less than a million dollars and most of that is picked up by corporate sponsors.

Now, I don’t want to get too romantic about returning soldiers, and if you are interested, you should probably read opposing articles such as Aleksandar Hemon’s Operation Homeland Therapy in Slate as well as admiring articles such as Dennis Ryan’s dcmilitary.com note. I happen to have a soft spot for the World War One “war poets”, and I think that it’s breathtaking to suggest that Americans want to invest even a trifle of money in the possibility of a few gems in uniform.

Digression: If you happened to read a new specfic novel set in some world that had as part of the background the fact that the military, for whatever reason, recruited its officers from the universities’ top-ranked historians, poets and mathematicians, and that a really first-class translator of dead languages was pretty much guaranteed a commission, would you dismiss it as implausible or what? And then for the poetry coming out of the war experience to be a separate and highly valued subgenre? End Digression.

I also happen to like the Library of Congress’s Veteran’s History Project. I understand those people who find this all to be a glorification of the military life, but mostly I find it to have a refreshing sense of respect for the individuals who wear the uniforms, as well as for writing itself. I don’t care if anybody ever reads the anthologies, nor do I expect ever to read them myself, or if I do to like anything in them. I just think it’s a great idea.

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)