Smṛti-Śruti

Castle In The Air by Diana Wynne Jones

2011-04-20T05:16:00.000+10:00

After yonks of having Howl's Moving Castle on my reading list, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy.

I had borrowed all three books from the Castle series: Howl's Moving Castle, Castle In The Air and House Of Many Ways; the intention being to read them in order, one immediately after the other. Unfortunately, through sheer laziness Howl's had to be returned before I even started.

A peek at the wiki for the second book in the sequence told me that it was merely "loosely related" to its predecessor. So after asking the library to reserve me a copy of the high rotation Howl's, I leapt straight into Castle In The Air.

I wouldn't recommend it. The work is not exactly a sequel but the characters from the first novel have progressed in their respective storylines a sequel's-worth. And so, when they do feature, heavily, in the second half of the book, spoilers abound.

Castle In The Air itself is excellent. A proper work of comic fantasy, it has a spiffy plot and nicely woven too; is terribly well written; rife with humour and wit; with characters that are splendid to barrack for and against. (There is also at least one mention of 'settle', object of my burgeoning peculiar obsession...)

Certainly, few characters have had as their attribute a
...ruthless low cunning.
and been quite as deliciously summed up
The man might be a bare-faced sponger and a thundering bore ...
Nor indeed with such succinct finality

She had been a dreamy and timorous woman, and a great disappointment to everyone.

The first half is set in a fairy tale Middle Eastern world and there are the familiar elements of that classic source of fantasy; magic carpets, djinns, princesses in peril and suchlike. There is also the lovely flowery language of the haggle. In one spiffy example Abdullah's trade with a carpet seller plumbs the depths of florid self-deprecation. Splendid stuff.

Our protagonist is a dreamer whose philtrum is as bare

... Abdullah was still scraping together the six hairs on his upper lip and hoping they would multiply soon.

as his fantasies fertile. The palace of his dream girl, for example, could be approached

... along an avenue lined with angelic statues and entered by way of seven marble courts, each with a fountain in the middle more precious than the last, starting with one made of chrysolite and ending with one of platinum studded with emeralds.

As you do.

Fortunately the princess (and princesses actually) aren't the hand wringing sort. Despite Flower-in-the-Night's sheltered existence (and her name) and her hilarious difficulty with accepting Abdullah's gender, she has a lovely bit of steel in her spine.

The influx of characters from the first book means that the second half of the plot becomes a lovely twisty thing and the dénouement is a pleasurable unravelling of all the threads to great satisfaction.

Castle In The Air is such an excellent work of comic fantasy that I couldn't help comparing it to the works of my favourite fantasy writer. Sentences such as this:

[in a fight] Of the two facing the soldier, one received almost at once an interesting injury, which he doubled up to contemplate.

read much like Pratchett lines to my mind. I was thrilled.

I make this comparison with the greatest respect to the merits of both individual authors and to my own selfish ends only:

Where this to be a tad darker, it would be most Pratchett-ian and if Pratchett wrote proper YA (instead of the YA he does write which I've never been able to distinguish from the regular stuff), this would be it, so warm and humourous.

The HarperCollins 2001 edition that I read had
chapters headed by some pretty spiffy illustrations by Tim Stevens; bleeding difficult to find them online though.

The cover art "by Katmo" is not my favourite of the many covers the various editions have had but it does have its charm. The design - the colours, the arrangement of the clouds, the castle floating above the text - is great. There's just something about that foreground figure though that's ... not quite right.

His expression? It is almost ... disdainful, in a 'Think you can follow?' way but I rather appreciate the challenge.

I think, absurdly enough, it might be his nose. Or rather the cartoony suggestion of a nose along with the suggestion of a mouth but overly large eyes that engenders an uncanny valley response from me. If that is possible ...

Castle In The Air is an excellent introduction to Diana Wynne Jones and I look forward thoroughly to reading, perhaps even in the right order, the rest of her many works.

Diana Wynne Jones

2011-04-18T07:43:00.000+10:00

Diana Wynne Jones is dead.

'Tis a strange feeling; learning about the death of a writer one has just started getting to know, to read and to fall in love with. A selfish and bitter and utterly abysmal feeling.

I only read my first Jones at the end of last year. She had been on my reading list since I'd read up on Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle but I had postponed reading her. I figured, after the grandeur of Miyazaki's work, hers could only be a disappointment.

And wouldn't you know it, as exquisitely beautiful a film as Miyazaki's was to watch, Jones's work was a better read. The movie, I was delighted to find, almost did the book justice.

I have since read just a few of her stories. But ah, what stories they be... She leaves behind a most wonderful legacy.

^"But there are masses of stories left to tell, I'm just sorry I won't live long enough to write them all."

Diana Wynne Jones, diolch yn fawr.

Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews.

2011-01-25T22:49:00.001+11:00

Serenity: Better Days, a 2008 comic book, is part of the Firefly universe. It is impossible to discuss the former without discussing the latter.

Firefly was a 2002 space western television program written and directed by Joss Whedon. Unbiased fan opinions have it that broadcasting issues pretty mush buggered its chance for success ... Though shortlived, it has since acquired a cult following and acclaim enough to warrant a 2005 movie and 3 comic book miniseries. The movie helpfully tied up quite a few loose ends left by the abrupt cancellation of the show and the comic books are essentially tributes for the fans; a chance to inhabit once again their beloved Firefly universe and see how it was intended to expand.

It might be possible to enjoy the comics even if one isn't a fan of the series; I imagine the experience would be immeasurably enhanced for the fan. I would personally recommend giving it a go if only to see if it might whet your appetite for a really smashing, most excellently entertaining series.

Better Days, in nuce, is a heist gone right for the Serenity crew and their subsequent fantasies about their new lives of luxury. 'Course all this is accompanied by the trademark gunfights, violent beatings and sex ... -ish

And humour.

Following an introduction by Adam Baldwin, who played Jayne Cobb on the show,

The characters not only cussed in Chinese, they were also fluent in sarcasm.

there is a most succinct but excellent summarisation in the prologue which includes a gem of an understatement

The central planets formed the alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule. There was some disagreement on that point. After the War, [...]

The humour was a key aspect of the show and it's wonderful to see that the comic is absolutely faithful in dialogue and tone.

Zoe: It's chasing us.

Mal: Is something ever not?

The writing is great, the plot is fine, the artwork spiffy enough; there are some lovely landscapes and some excellent use of perspective, but the highlights are the individual fantasies of the Serenity crew.

The Serenity comics have been accused of being somewhat inaccessible to readers unfamiliar with the franchise. Perhaps.

Jayne's fantasy, for example, has Captain Jayne Cobb, resplendent in a uniform full of finery (including epaulettes with a fringe of gold), aboard his ship the Radiant Cobb. He is being addressed by a member of the apparently all-gorgeous-all-female crew as

Your manliness [...]

Deservedly, every aspect of this is greeted with derision by the rest of the crew.

It is funny; a study in ego. It's funnier if one knows that the Hero of Canton, having already furthered his ill-gotten reputation earlier in the comic, whilst attracted to wealth and power is generally a philistine of questionable intelligence as well as, in the sweetest sense of the term, a complete mama's boy: the Radiant Cobb is named after Mother Cobb.

Wash's fantasy is of course beautifully heartwarming; bittersweet given the movie's conclusion. To fans, the toy dinosaur will hearken back to the earliest introduction to him.
Simon's in the same vein is bittersweetness of what could have been. Preacher's will elicit the same results from every fan: the dull thud of the lower jaw hitting the floor.

Kaylee's too is sweet and funny and perfectly perverted. The gargantuan complex that is the 'little shop' she'd open for her father and herself, a goodly inventory with a lovely visual in-joke - 'Compression Coils' are stored next to 'More Compression Coils' - and of course there's Simon helping her really get 'em engines humming.

River's is ... River's is just an utter visual delight and I wish I could get my hands on a proper copy; it would make one spectacular poster, wallpaper etc. Here's one I nicked earlier from Fandomania (their review of the comic also has Preacher's fantasy and the crew's reaction to it - go on)

As I said before, newbies might enjoy Better Days, but fans will positively relish it.

On a side note, having recently read the Sociological Images post on the sexual objectification of women in comics using art from Rosalarian's riotous post on the same topic, I found myself paying particular attention to the women of Serenity. Granted it's not a superhero comic and therefore far less likely to have the women standing with their chests thrust out so far, you'd think their nipples were attached to a pair of charging elephants. (Tvtropes also has its usual entertaining and comprehensive look at this 'Stripperiffic' trope.)

Now, one of the characters, Inara, is a courtesan. The comic's most erotic scene is just a single panel from Inara's imagination. A side shot of Mal, the muscles on his back and arms defined, atop her. Inara, an arm across his back and a hand on the back of his head, pulling him into a kiss. The space between the two nude figures is in shadow, a blanket lying teasingly across their hips just shortly before where the panel closes. Über sexy but not gratuitous. Elsewhere, Inara's clothing is as befits her status; sensual eastern exotic. Still nothing inappropriate nor a-thrusting.
Now, for me at least, Zoe Washburne is by far the sexiest woman in the Firefly universe. And again, for me anyway, the comic reflects that. She a vision of strength and beauty - curvaceous and amazon. Perfect. Perfectly woman, perfectly superwoman, I'd advise.

Better Days is an excellent read, well worth a gander.

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on [...]

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: general editor Peter Boxall

2010-11-14T15:53:00.003+11:00

A while back ago, Feed Your Reading Habit had a giveaway of a secondhand copy of the prodigiously titled 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: A Comprehensive Reference Source, Chronicling the History of the Novel. I managed to snag it.

Now, while I have rifled through quite a few book-list books and have currently got my eye on a particularly spiffy fantasy encyclopedia at the library, this is not the sort of book I'd ever actually buy. For starters, they are generally a work in progress. Even when they are not, I'd feel a lot better buying a book from the list rather than the list itself; seems more ... sensible for some reason.

The book arrived in a weighty little package, kindly cushioned inside completely wrapped in cardboard offcuts. I forget who, but a bookseller on one of the boards was once inquiring whether it was appropriate to use recycled material to protect the books they sent out; whilst they wished to be environmentally friendly, there was the chance that customers might think it shoddy. I loved it.

Perhaps it was only because it was a secondhand book. Were it, say, a brand spanking new copy of a cherished work that arrived covered in anything other than bleached-white pristine packaging, my instinct would be to make sure there was nary a single smudge anywhere. But here it was somewhat like a present coyly hiding 'neath unassuming layers. Accompanying it is the sense of wonder, both immediate and long term: trash or treasure?

The book is gorgeous, the cover perfect. The spine has the title followed by an image of a stack of books and you can see at the tail that it is meant to be straight; at the top the strain of 960 pages in softcover is beginning to show. A few sections have already started to come away from the adhesive and there is a distinct bulging at the foredge. From a binding perspective, it's poor news. But there is something almost sensual about the copy. Nearly a handbreadth fat, it is real tactile pleasure to be able to run one's palm along the edges of the glossy pages, knobbly but smooth enough to easily distinguish the knife marks from the guillotine machine. Or thumb the as yet gentle bulge of the foredge ... which frankly seems hinting at bare restraint.

But enough of that lover's interlude.

The first thing I looked for was to see how many Pratchett's had shown up on the index. Let's see: he's written some thirty odd Discworld books so that'd leave about 970 spots for every other book ever to fight over.

Imagine my astonishment, pure astonishment, that there was not a single listing for him!

As my eyes tried frantically to find where exactly they might have misfiled his name, I admitted that perhaps not every single Discworld book was perfection itself; the first two were more setting up and I didn't really like Unseen Academicals, but good grief! None?! What imbecilic criteria was this tome judged according to?

Which just goes to show my fan myopia. This is also part of the second reason why I'd probably never buy such a book: it is nothing but an exercise in ego.

We readers are a varied lot but like the spines of our favourite works, we tend to get quite cracked. We might often be guilty of being quick to make recommendations. In weaker moments we might even deign to listen to someone else's recommendations. Still, our opinions are set in concrete. As someone waxes lyrical about a work we find ... disagreeable, we may mentally place them somewhere between lout and troglodyte, knuckle dragging. And it would not be too surprising to find a mouthy bookworm at a violent bookburning, berating the murderous crowd for being utter philistines with no redeeming qualities or taste, even as they get hoicked onto a pyre - likely continuing their rant still, pausing only when hit by a loathed work to pick it up and appreciate that, "Ah yes, now that deserves to burn."

Therefore to the opinionated amongst us, a book such as 1001 Books You Must Read (the Before You Die bit has always seemed vaguely threatening and, though the introduction explains the need for the urgency, muchly redundant to me) is an exercise in ego - building, destroying and realising the enormity of.

The ego building comes from every book listed that one has read. These are nothing more than occasions to say "Yup, read that" and give another buff of the nails on the old lapel. Frankly those entries are read merely to ensure that the contributors noted the plot details right ...

Of the 1001 books, I've only read about 15. Which is about 1%. And includes one graphic novel, assorted short stories and a few works that were a compulsory part of the school curriculum. The number might have been higher if I had completed say Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote or Moby-Dick, not read the abridged versions only of say The Thirty-Nine Steps and Around the World In 80 Days, and the theatrical only of Treasure Island. I've also forgotten whether I've actually read The Yellow Wallpaper or just read a lot about it ...

In smaller part, it's easy to get stoked to see the books one hasn't read but already intended to read anyway. Quite a number of books listed are already on my reading list; the works of Douglas Adams and Jane Austen, Jules Verne and HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Philip K Dick, HP Lovecraft, Christie, Tolkien, Melville, Dickens, Grossmith and so on and on. And on.

I was stoked to see Jonathan Swift's name and immediately puffed up, thinking that here was the recently read Gulliver's Travels. It wasn't. I know nothing about A Tale of a Tub.

Which leads to the titles that batter the ego. There are the books unread and those authors ranging from not overly familiar to unheard-of:
Evelyn Waugh? Yes, of course. I've read all her works.

There were far too many examples here of books I'd never even heard of; Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle, Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote etc. Then there are those I only knew as their cinematic adaptations; The Man With the Golden Arm, Tarzan of the Apes etc

The last part that is realising the enormity of one's own ego is something of a mixed bag. There are books that should be included but aren't. That they should be included is my opinion hence ego related but I think a very impartial argument can be made on this account.

None of the religious texts are included. I would assume these would be pertinent in any list of books which simply must be read. Ah, but the subtitle does state that this compilation chronicles the history of the novel. Fair enough. So fiction only then. And in novel form. Explains why Shakespeare didn't make the cut. Or Homer. Or Chaucer.

Yet Ovid's Metamorphoses, the second 'novel' listed is regarded as a narrative poem. And amongst some of the other 'novels' are short stories, collections of short stories, a comic book, a pamphlet and an autobiography!

The trouble, admitted in the introduction, is that 'novel' is a difficult term to define. The entry for Poe's The Fall of the house of Usher reads
It seems to be stretching the definition of the word to its very limits to describe The Fall of the House of Usher as a "novel." [sic]
I'd say ... past breaking point even.

The introduction intimates
Rather than defending its borders against that which it excludes, this book offers itself as a snapshot of the novel [...]
Still, you've got to wonder at some of the exclusions. Bridget Jones, The Millennium Trilogy, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Wind in the Willows, And Then There Were None. There's no Enid Blyton and, would you believe it, no J.K. Rowling.

Two thirds of the list is twentieth-century onwards, over 60 in the five years from 2000 to 2005; the book obviously has its biases.

As do the contributors. There are points where a contributor's opinion may be too far to the contrary of one's own. Olaudah Equiano, for example, may have faked his origins. Opines the contributor, the fact that he may have

[...] constructed his African identity, only enhances the remarkable insights the text [The Interesting Narrative] offers into the ambiguities of such experience. As a result, it is as relevant now as it has ever been.

I don't get it. However perchance 'insightful', literary forgeries are forgeries still. Or is that the selling point here?

There are some books here that I have no intention of reading. For various reasons, I simply do not expect to ever read any of the ponderous dramas, any of the beat generation works, Little Women, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, A Clockwork Orange etc. The Handmaid's Tale too is bound to be far too depressing. I always feel awful when I read dystopian, usually future post-apocalyptic stories, with such themes because they are so easy to envision and that sort of abuse manifests ever so readily..

I also never intend to read American Psycho. And it's mildly aggravating to find that apparently therein lies
[...] a longing that speaks of a kind of innocence, even in the midst of depravity, and for this reason alone, American Psycho must continue to be read.
I can't imagine caring a whit for poor Bateman, whose only escape from fragile isolation in a life of wealth and luxury, is to inflict unimaginable pain and cruelty on others. As for
[...] Bateman struggles to understand why he has been summoned to this particular damnation [...]
...
There is an X-Files episode Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose*. This bloke, Puppet, has been going around killing fortune tellers, always imploring them beforehand to explain why he does the things he does. At the end when he asks the psychic Clyde Bruckman that. The conversation that follows:

Puppet: So there's something I've been wanting to ask you for some time now. You've seen the things I do in the past as well as in the future.

Clyde Bruckman: They're terrible things.

Puppet: I know they are. So, tell me, please, why have I done them?

Clyde Bruckman: Don't you understand yet, son? Don't you get it?

(Puppet shakes his head and shrugs.)

You do the things you do because you're a homicidal maniac.

(Puppet thinks about it for a moment and smiles.)

Puppet: That... that does explain a lot, doesn't it?

Ah well, different strokes for different folks, eh? And certain entries do a most spiffy job of enticing readers, like this regarding Moby-Dick in which
[...] one can find abstruse metaphysics, notes on the technicalities of dissecting a whale's foreskin, and searing passages of brine-soaked drama.
Now how can anyone possibly turn that down?
(You had me at abstruse. Or did you? Wait, I'm not quite sure ... it's a bit complicated.)

And then for the wonderfully titled The Melancholy of Resistance
It is a novel of long shadows, bitter cold, and sinister whispers-all rendered in treaclelike prose.
Sigh.

So other than the scarcity of pre-twentieth as well as non-Western classics, the issue of defining a novel, clashes in opinion of what is left out as well as what is put in, 1001 is a wonderful resource.

The first 'novel' listed is Aesop's Fables. Given the high regard that the ancient Greeks had for it and that these were the people who laid the foundation for Western civilisation, it is most fitting. Most entries are accompanied by images. There are famous illustrations from the works, pictures of some of the more smashing bindings and early editions, engravings, woodcuts and loquacious title pages, paintings and pictures of the authors, posters and photos related to the theatrical adaptations. There's a photo of a young Stephen King in which he looks positively debonair and the image to the right is amusingly but faithfully captioned:
Eager purchasers of Lady Chatterley look for the dirty bits after the obscenity trial that cleared the book for sale in Britain in 1960.

Some of the entries are also accompanied by little quotations, such as this from Eabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel

The appetite grows by eating.

Which immediately landed this work on my reading list; yonks ago I'd read a quotation to that effect and have thereafter been unable to recall, or find, it in its original. Fingers crossed ...

Books that I am adding to my reading list solely at 1001's incitement would be Cloud Atlas, The Yellow Wallpaper (to make sure I have read that classic), The 13 Clocks, The Melancholy of Resistance and The Riddle of the Sands, which I assume I'd have found while going through another book already on my list: The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-Come.

I've already read Camilla from Le Fanu's collection of short stories In a Glass Darkly but I think the other stories in the collection might be worth a gander too. It's also given a secondary surge to my desire to read John Wyndham's works particularly his The Kraken Wakes. I had borrowed The Day of the Triffids some years ago but had had to return it unread.

There are a number of reasons why 1001 and books like it are not exactly for me.
I flit from topic to topic; at one point being completely mental over sci-fi, then biographies, then YA and so on. And so require and acquire reading lists accordingly. I also read slowly and have such a glut of books that I already want to read on a list composed by myself to my taste that, as haughty as it may sound, I don't quite have the time or need for another's, however edifyingly intentioned, arbitrary list.

It is of course still pretty spiffy to have this nifty tome at hand when in the mood for something completely at random. I'd recommend it for anyone not already trailing a gargantuan reading list behind them. And perhaps even then too; most readers would enjoy adding a title or 900 to their lists however outwardly resigned they may appear to the prospect.

The preponderance of reading lists is testament to how universally enjoyable an endeavour it is and very many readers enjoy lists by which to whittle down their bookcases with notches. This book would be perfect for them. It will also suit the voracious reader constantly on the lookout, a reader with a wide scope of interests or a burgeoning reader trying to find a rounded-ish list of recommendations. It is, all in all, a good book of books.

* X-Files transcripts are available from the excellent site InsideTheX

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

2010-10-19T04:19:00.176+11:00

I was going through a few of my favourites from Miyazaki's gorgeous collection when I came upon Laputa: Castle in the Sky. While I loved Laputa's visuals, it killed me to see what

became of its wealth of knowledge. Which is why I've only ever seen the film once.

But it is indeed an extraordinary piece of work and after taking another gander at it, I thought I'd take a gander at the inspiration as well.

Miyazaki's Laputa is based on a floating island of the same name from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It is, of course, a classic of English literature and has long been in my 'I really should get around to reading' book-list. Reading it, I thought, would not only cross it off that list but I'd get to see the splendid inspiration for Miyazaki. So I read it

... and I thought, "Bloody weird."
Short review you'd imagine but my perusal of the book ought be divided into two sections; what I thought immediately after reading it and what I thought after reading about what I'd read.

Published in 1726 and remaining solidly in print thereafter, Gulliver's Travels is a perennial favourite. To me its flaw was as follows: it showed its age.
I was aware that the work is essentially a satire and a lot if not all of the satire is contemporary to Swift. An understanding of early 18th century Great Britain is paramount to getting the satirical humour. Otherwise insights, entertaining and engaging if one knows the subject, become just odd little happenstances.

Additionally, I was expecting Gulliver's Travels to be similar to Robinson Crusoe; adventurous. But it is a satire and for the most part beyond me. Needless to say the parts I enjoyed most were those involved in the travelogue adventure side of things.
Incidentally, I haven't ever finished reading Robinson Crusoe; it too remains in the aforementioned list. I assume it to be adventurous ...

I've also rather been snobbish about the size issues in the book. Having read a long time ago about the square-cube law and its biomechanical ramifications, I expected that when I did read this book, it would be with a touch of scorn. Fortunately though, as with any great writing, it was very easy to suspend disbelief.

And the writing is great. The chapters have those spiffy summarising headings and I did rather like the to the point preamble that opens the book.
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons.
Sentence structure differing as it does from the modern, the brevity of the opening is countered by the second sentence more representative of the work, constructed as it is with seven commas as well as a semicolon. A later paragraph even runs for seven pages.

One of my favourite parts was the inventory made by the Lilliputians of Gulliver's items. I've always enjoyed the almost archaeological aspect of trying to decipher what a familiar object may be when seen and described in an unfamiliar manner. I've always found it entertaining although I am an abject failure at it. I was able to guess Gulliver's handkerchief and snuffbox, but his pistols were beyond me
[...] a hollow pillar of iron, about the length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the pillar; and upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron sticking out, cut into strange figures [...]
and I wouldn't have been able to concur as the Lilliputian searchers did that
[...] a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty long poles, resembling the pallisados before your majesty’s court [...]
was wherewith
[...] the man-mountain combs his head [...]
The Laputa lodestone was too is interesting to visualise and draw, and I wish I could find a proper image of it ...

It was humourous of the searchers to conclude that his watch was
[...] the god that he worships [...]
based on Gulliver's assurance that
[...] he seldom did any thing without consulting it [...]
and saying, rather reasonably, that
[...] it pointed out the time for every action of his life.

There is also the matter that when the Lilliputian troops marched under him as he stood with his legs spread, the poor condition of his breeches afforded those who looked up
[...] some opportunities for laughter and admiration.
I can only assume admiration refers strictly to being viewed and not ogled.

Swift doesn't shy away from 'necessities of nature'; matters scatological are well addressed. Besides his own needs and the greeting of the Yahoos, there is even an incidence of a bizarre form of colonic irrigation and how he puts out the palace fire had me aghast. Besides the surprising means of the endeavour, it was so obviously a terrible idea, I could not believe the drunken idiot was daft enough to do it. Mind you, intelligence is a virtue our boy Gulliver seems not too encumbered by sometimes; having been spared his life in a pirate attack, he finds the gumption to mouth off at one obviously murderous pirate.

Gulliver's forays into sea voyages despite how they progressively and inevitably degenerated reminded me of something from Retromancer: Our protagonist is listening to a salty recount his various adventures; the many ships he had sailed on, how they came to misfortune and how he always managed to escape. Our protagonist concludes that this was a most extraordinary man and were the protagonist ever to board a ship, he would immediately check the passenger list to see if the good fellow was on board. Whereupon the protagonist would disembark posthaste; the ship being, obviously, doomed.

Gulliver too degenerates. Earlier in his adventures, he would boast humanity's accomplishments against any harsh criticisms where even despite a purported
[...] extreme love of truth [...]
in his responses to the king he
[...] artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the strictness of truth would allow.
I felt an immense sense of loss when later he loses that utterly human vice of telling porkies.

I was unfamiliar with the meaning of the following:
[...] I married Mrs. Mary Burton [...] with whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion.
Does that refer to dowry?
Nor was I aware that English women of the period wrote

[...] aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other [...]

Which apparently they didn't. Swift is rather harsh on women and though I'm unaware of what writing aslant is meant to indicate, elsewhere and frequently in the book women are charged with the utmost frailty. Among the Lilliputians he gladly notes the punishments for gossipy nurses, a Lapution example is given for what I can only assume is an allusion to womankind's nostalgie de la boue and as for the Brobdingnag maids of honour
They would often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms [...] they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked bodies [...] Neither did they at all scruple, while I was by, to discharge what they had drank [...] The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks [...]

I think my lower jaw remained on the floor for a solid minute after dropping down with a clang. Good grief! I wasn't sure what to say. Why do readers not say anything about this, do they not pick on it and ... wonder, gossip, guffaw? Freud would have had a field day with it! ... Did Freud have a field day with it? How could this be in a children's book?!
Except that despite its many adaptations as such, this isn't a work particularly, if at all, for children.

Finding in the female Yahoos, essentially primitive women,
[...] that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct in womankind.
he is saddened but unsurprised. Against that kind of censure I did not even bat an eyelid when he gets jumped by an eleven year old female Yahoo who sees him starkers and is
[...] inflamed by desire [...]
although I did think 'In your dreams, mate'.

When railing against vices, Swift, a preacher if ever there was one, makes good mention of prostitution and whoring. Hardly bothersome; in the book it is a profession no more maligned than politicians, lawyers or physicians. What is bothersome is the following:
[...] prostitute female Yahoos acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones of those who fell into their embraces; that this, and many other diseases, were propagated from father to son; so that great numbers came into the world with complicated maladies upon them [...]
As one can well see, the malady harms the prostitutes not, nor is mention made of the wives who'd have acquired the malady the same way as the whores. At least men are acknowledged partially as the vectors of disease unlike even to modern days.

Wives don't fare well either. Other than his own whom he oft abandons to go a-gallivating, they are alluded to as a load, doubling the miseries of their husbands amongst the immortal
Luggnaggians. And even though his own wife is a most benign creature, as in fact are all of the wives he meets personally, one of the benefits of remaining stranded amongst the Houyhnhnm is the lack of
[...] ranting, lewd, expensive wives [...]

Amongst the groups he denigrates are the scientists. The scientific achievements of Laputa are immediately cancelled out by myopia on the part of the scientists and the science academy on Lagado is utterly cringe-worthy. Scientific endeavour, when not outright harmful, is pointless.

The Laputian theories regarding the sun are fascinating though
[...] the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more light to the world [...]
though I wonder if there are any particular actual comet/s being referenced in the following
[...] the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us.
Halley's?

There's also a theory of evolution regarding the Yahoos
[...] whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea [...]
and a mention of longing to

[...] see the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions, brought to the utmost perfection.
Roughly three hundred years but we managed to get one done.

There was also lovely insight on obeisance, the kind one seldom sees acknowledged by parents ...
[...] the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed.
The summations of war and colonisation too are excellent.

Still, I could only imagine that for the large part the book remains popular not so much for being a work of satire but because of the captivating nature of (the sanitised versions of) the lands Gulliver visited, particularly Lilliput.

Thereafter began part two of my reading of the book: reading about it.
There are places where the satire is biting and obvious; when referring to the political intrigues and paranoia, Swift is sarcasm itself.
[...] ‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,' [...]
would likely be rendered by a skilful decipherer via the anagrammatic method
[...] ‘Resist ---, a plot is brought home—The tour.’

Still, understanding the subject of the satire explains quite a few of the mysteries. The attention to scatological matters may be mocking the lack of mention of such necessities in travelogues of that era. I presume Robinson Crusoe makes no mention of it? The case of the palace fire may have been a metaphor for a well intentioned but poorly executed political manoeuver. The Lagado scientific academy, a parody of the experimentations of the Royal Society at its start. Isaac Asimov noted the rebellious Lindalino was composed of double lins - Dublin. Lindalino's rebellion is seen as an allegory of the Drapier's Letters.

I needed a guide to appreciate the nuances of this story. Wikipedia was very useful in giving a quick overview of the allusions in the book. It mentioned something I hadn't even thought to consider: I had read the book as though it were a diary of Gulliver's written concurrent as he adventured but it is instead Gulliver's memoir. The entire affair is related by an author grown bitter and twisted, a self loathing poison pen.
It is a fascinating theory which improved my opinion of the book immeasurably.

My edition lacked the introductory letter to the reader from the fictional publisher of the work, R Sympson, as well as the subsequent letter from Gulliver to him. Having read them I find it strange that any proper edition of the work would leave them out. Not only is the exchange useful to see how the author addressed the responses to the book including the sycophantic publications such as unauthorised sequels, parodies and guides as well as the original unauthorised editing but it reinforces the Gulliver character even more firmly.

In the book proper, when not a fawning toady, Gulliver is shown to harbour delusions of grandeur
[...] often apt to amuse myself with visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great lord [...]
who has already given his hand away
I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms.
And with such obviously vested interests, Lemuel Gulliver is a thoroughly unreliable narrator who may well have made up all his travels to suit his end!

There is one thing regardless that is very dodgy about Gulliver. Despite acknowledging that the Yahoos are essentially humans, he has no issues with using their hair to make snares, but to make his canoe he covers

[...] with the skins of Yahoos [...] My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; [he also stops] all the chinks with Yahoos’ tallow [...]

! There's more than misanthropy afoot.

On the topic of women, there is at least one positive. There is an argument to be made that the book advocates education for women. Given Swift's high regard of Sir Thomas More and More's own views on the matter, I imagine the following to be Swift's opinion on the matter
[...] my master thought it monstrous in us, to give the females a different kind of education from the males, except in some articles of domestic management; whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world [...]
with of course, Gulliver's classic twist on it :)
[...] and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of brutality.

In terms of history it is also interesting to the literary antecedent of h-dropping; any 'hundred' or 'heap' for example is preceded by the article 'an'. It didn't bother me here but oh, it grates so when the newsreaders keep saying 'an historic'.
There were a number of things I still haven't been able to understand:
what the dash represents in the following
[...] a cod's-head a – [...]
and the translation for
[...] Nec vir fortis, nec foemina casta [...]
It was interesting to translate the following
[...] battering the warriors’ faces into mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs [...]

I'm also unsure whether this is a queer reference
I expected every moment that my master would accuse the Yahoos of those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us. But nature, it seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason on our side of the globe.

And speaking of things sexual, seems Gulliver's interactions with the Brobdingnag women fired off other imaginations as well; a subgenre of interest for its most extraordinary exploiter, one Edmund Curll. A right proper bastard he sounds but ingenious, utterly ingenious.

Amongst the other imitations and sequels that have cropped up in the years following publication, the following sound highly intriguing:
A Lilliputian ODE on the Engine with which Captain Gulliver extinguish'd the Flames in the Royal Palace: This 1727 work promises excellent bawdy fun but the trick would be to scrounge up an edition of Gulliver's Travels which might contain it.
Mary Gulliver gets her moment in both Alison Fell's The Mistress of Lilliput which sounds a riot and Davy King's short story The Woman Gulliver Left Behind; available online and is a pretty fun little read.
Incidentally Miyazaki's connection to Gulliver extends even further than Laputa; in the 1960's a young Miyazaki worked on the animation Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon.

To truly appreciate Gulliver's Travels, I'll have to read an annotated version, to properly chew on all that delicious mental gristle. For now though, I'll simply appreciate the ingenious tale; a right proper classic.

[Have a gander at the online version with the introductory letters, available at Project Gutenberg, and the very fine Art Passions site from which I've nicked the splendid Arthur Rackham illustrations. Pleasant perusing.]

The Field Guide: Book One of The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

2010-10-04T16:15:00.003+11:00

The first I heard of The Spiderwick Chronicles was in relation to the number of children's fantasy adventure books cropping up on the coattails of Harry Potter. It's part of a number of famous books of that ilk that I've been meaning to read. Bridge to Terabithia, Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the Lemony Snicket series are others.

It's Lemony Snicket's work that The Spiderwick Chronicles are often compared to. Unfavourably.

One of the comparisons regards the similarity in the packaging. The Field Guide is a very neatly bound hardback. The covering material is grey and slightly textured, having the look and feel of smooth pitted iron. A very lovely visual and tactile aspect.

Additionally, the spidery font in Spiderwick has the appearance of knapped obsidian - just spectacular.
Illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi cites Arthur Rackham as his inspiration and one of the display types is set in Rackham. Spiffy.

The artwork in the book is almost consistently great - from the scrollworks, the neat little map, the character portraits, the various other illustrations and particularly the cover image where it is almost possible to feel the warmth of the candle glow. Mind you, it is difficult to reconcile the illustration of the charming old Victorian house as something that looked as though
[...] a dozen shacks had been piled on top of one another.

The only design flaw would be the blurb, with both the maple leaf and the colour of the lettering on it rather below par, although the Simon & Schuster logo is splendid.

As for the story itself ...
It is ... perfectly adequate.

It's not bad but it's not spectacular either.
Kids move into a new house, find a secret world of 'Fey'. When they speak to their first magical creature, it replys in rhyme. I was desperately hoping for it not to but convention alas ... It didn't even begin well for my taste given that it works under the Literary Agent Hypothesis.

One criticism might be the length. At roughly a hundred pages, it is a short read. However the authors counter that it is the perfect length for their originally intended audience:
[...] the six-to-seven-year-old (or reluctant reader) [...]
The above quote is from a rather comprehensive interview at Kidsreads.com

Be that as it may, the ending is a letdown. The
End of Book One
is incredibly like the end of chapter one. It has an abrupt, truncated feel with the result that while The Field Guide may be a good instalment, it is not a good (stand-alone) book.

As an introduction it lacks enough substance to sustain my interest in the series. Ultimately the book may be best suited to a younger audience.

When Findus was Little and Disappeared by Sven Nordqvist

2010-09-27T22:51:00.000+10:00

I saw this book in the junior section of the library and a skim through showed such charming illustrations that I just had to borrow it.

Though this was the first I'd heard of either him or his work, writer and illustrator Sven Nordqvist's Pettson and Findus series has won substantial international acclaim.

And no wonder. The plot itself is simple enough; Pettson is re-telling a favourite story of Findus' about how the latter once got lost. But the illustrations ... the illustrations are chock-a-block with entertaining details, colourful and beautiful and very charming.

There are framed pictures of cows in various compositions scattered throughout; a goggle-eyed cow portrait hangs sideways; another wears glasses; one stares into the camera with its arms/forelegs folded in front on it; there's a lovely group of cows bunched up together against a gorgeous farmstead background ... liberally dotted with cow pats; another group portrait has just a strip of green and is otherwise all brown cows squeezed in tight.

Chickens too appear similarly; drinking coffee from tiny cups and having buns (mind you, one of each item appears to have been spilled onto the ground); there's a sleeping trio with two propped up against one another and a third lying comfortably flat on a pillow.

There are gorgeous little details all over the book from visual gags like a suspiciously neon yellow-green cheese wedge, a most practical hourglass with a chime and a modest little birdhouse with Corinthian columns to the sweeter things like Aunt Bertha, who has a great smile and looks the perfect little old lady, drinking her coffee from the saucer which I just bet she slurps from. There's Pettson’s grungy but comfortable looking socks propped up on his bed post like pennants of home.

Pettson's homestead shows lovely images of a simple, whimsical life. There's a homely looking settle; an item of furniture that I've positively started having a strange passion for since finding out about them from The Wind in the Willows. The breakfast table may be set with an old enamel jug alongside one ornate in gold and porcelain. There's also a braided bread with a scrumptious golden red crust. In the overgrown yard outside the skeleton of an old tricycle rests nestled in grass and in a barrel full of clear water a tiny sailboat floats; the drainpipe leading down into the barrel having been thoughtfully plugged up.

His workshop areas are a madhouse of clutter filled with all sorts of bits and bobs and inventive devices. This creative aspect is also beautifully reflected in the living quarters; a cruet stand functions as a pencil holder.

My favourites illustrations are the ones most filled with clutter although a young Findus fiercely biting Pettson's finger with one eye screwed shut with effort is almost too adorable for words.
The green stripes of Findus' pants that make the background of the cover, in a lovely touch, make bold and colourful flyleaves.

I did find Nordqvist's mice odd, almost aardvark-like. But a spider with Pettson’s head was right disturbing.

Pettson with his floppy hat strikes me as exactly how an older Rincewind might look and actually does bear rather a resemblance to Pratchett...

Although the plot is the standard stuff of children's books, fairly simple but warmly told, it is a very lovely and touching tale of companionship. The text is quite a bit long and complex for the very young reader but it is a perfect book to read aloud to a young one. Better yet if you both laze together delighting over the details in the drawings; the large format of the book is particularly suited to this.
All by your lonesome works just as well.

The book is a lovely read and the illustrations a riot of details. Heartily recommended for children of all ages.

The Black Book of Secrets by F.E. Higgins

2010-09-18T16:30:00.001+10:00

I saw Higgins' other book at Basement Books. It looked terribly interesting and so I tried seeking it out at the library. They didn't have it but they had this The Black Book of Secrets.

I can't say I cared particularly for either the cover or the blurb; rather disliked it actually. Though the artwork on the lettering is great, the size and the colouring just wasn't to my taste. The blurb too - the lost and found manuscript, not the author's own work etc - hackneyed.

Fortunately the inner blurb is splendid.
The empty cowl 'A' from the front cover; 'dead of night', 'deepest, darkest secrets', 'fiendish confessions' highlighted red against the black of the dust jacket itself again contrasting against the red of the endpapers; and the fitting copperplatish typeface.

Not only that but the plot summary contained therein is most intriguing too; our protagonist escaping from his own dark past, becomes the assistant for a pawnbroker who trades in people's aforementioned 'deepest, darkest secrets' for cash, noting them down in an ancient leather-bound volume: the black Book of Secrets. Reminded me somewhat of King's Needful Things and I avidly expected gruesome things. Of YA proportions of course.

The story opens with a blinder, immediately jumping into the brutality of the protagonist's world. After getting its hooks in with an intense start, the story almost pauses for a little breather, a great little roller coaster ride, before continuing thereafter at a more sedate pace.

The plot is great. The writing is engaging and though the ending might seem a little weak, things are pretty much squared away.
Perhaps the highlights are the confessions Ludlow and Joe record; stories within stories, they are a wonderful read.
My name is Obadiah Strang and I have a terrible secret. It haunts my every waking hour, and at night when I finally manage to sleep it takes over my dreams.

There is humour too; one character's corpse sold to an anatomy school was found to have such a small heart for its bulk that it made the medical men wonder if perhaps it wasn't the liver to which the source of life should be attributed as in the days of old. Medical progress thusly was thought to have been set back by at least a decade.

The hall of the Pawnbrokers is especially beautifully described, seemingly endless with an arched roof, huge grooved intricately carved pillars, copper ceiling, white marble plinths shot through with silver and a floor decorated with images
Within these I saw monsters and angels, fairies and small folk, scaled creatures of the sea and the air, some hideous, some alluring, all spectacular.

Although I loved the concept of the Secret Pawnbrokers - their lives, their rules, the spectacular hall - two things bothered me, both to do with housekeeping shall we say. For starters, and what made me literally flinch, was the following:
I opened it carefully, for it was ancient and the leaves were crumbling into dust.
One would, at least I would like to, imagine that books would be better preserved despite their vast age. Surely an element of magic is involved in this world - could not that have been used?
It irks especially because of the value of the written word expressed elsewhere in the book
On the leather cover in gold leaf were the words 'Verba Volant Scripta Manent'.
and
"What is spoken flies, what is written never dies." Remember those words, Ludlow.
Antithetical, isn't it?

Still ... however magical their world may be, it is still bound by rules. Perhaps the ultimately ephemeral nature of books is supposed to be a deeper reflection - all things fade away.

The other is more of a paranoia: the hall of records is lit by
[...] shallow dishes of flaming oil [...]
atop plinths.
Fire, library ... Just worries the bibliophile in me. I assume the ancients lit their libraries exactly thus, I wonder what failsafe they had in place and whether the poor librarians were nervous wrecks.

There is some great use of language starting from the dedication:
For Beatrix
Non mihi, non tibi, sed nobis
a most lovely sentiment. Also
His ears filled with a soft noise, like the sea on a shingle beach [...]

And then there's the city
[...] dark, enclosed streets [...] broken pavements littered with rotting food, dead animals, dogs and putrefying rats [...] pools of rancid water and the swarms of flies that hovered in clouds [...]
where hangings are as good as holidays, and about the City river, Foedus
[...] her slow moving waters thick as soup [...] her unrelenting stench [...]
and how after dragging them under and sucking the life out of them, she disgorges them days later
[...] bug-eyed and bloated with lethal gases, ready to explode.
Even the bridge across it is

[...] lined on either side with taverns and inns and hostels of the vilest kind and in these dark and smoky dens of vice all men [...] are equal; they fight, they gamble, they drink, they murder.

Polly, who's had a rough life but becomes a friend to Ludlow, [SPOILER] takes off to the City at the end of the book
[...] still believing it couldn't possibly be as bad as Ludlow made out.
Poor Polly. I don't expect good things ...

Human nature comes out understandably ugly in the book. Aside from the city dwellers, the townsfolk - both rich and poor - are quick to take advantage of a situation and turn traitors. Ludlow too isn't above biting the hand that feeds him ...

Even though both Ludlow's parents were vile it was difficult to not feel some sympathy, however shortlived, for the mother
Ma cowered in the corner.
'Don't hit me,' she begged. 'Don't hit me.'
How many times, do you reckon, to how many others must she have made the same plea ...

The ending is a little weak. Most of the little loose ends are neatly tied away but the biggest loose end is Joe Zabbidou. There is nothing explained about him. Granted perhaps it might have been best to keep everything about him under wraps especially if a sequel is in the works but it has the unfortunate effect of making him difficult to relate to. Who or even what is he really? Is he the good guy? Frankly till the very end I expected him to turn out a Leland Gaunt. I'm still not sure he may not be; it is difficult to see how someone can be at all surprised that things have gone to pot exactly as they had, presumably many times, before. If Joe's shop had been called 'Needful Things', is it not incredibly easy to imagine that the new one will be called 'Answered Prayers' sowing the same seeds of discord anew...
Eh, then again he may just be Destiny's patsy ...

In the included addenda there is information on some of the dark deeds contemporary to the setting; Sweeny Todd gets a mention on the business of pie-making, Count Karnice-Karnicki and a Mr Martin Sheets on live burials.
Reading these brought The Bradford sweets poisoning to mind. A tale such as it would have been perfect for this book and I can easily see the Goddard character confiding the following:
My name is William Goddard and I have a dreadful confession ...

Although the cover isn't too my taste, the book design is actually pretty spiffy.
On the black inside of the dust jacket, the phrase
I have a dreadful confession ...
a third of the book's height runs end to end across the centre in stark white copperplatish font. Gorgeous.
The artwork on the lettering is the work of the splendid David Wyatt. Considering how often his work appears in really great reads I have a good mind to find and read every series he has worked on.

To whet one's appetite an extract of the opening is available on Higgins' website. Well recommended.

Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel by Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett

2010-09-06T17:19:00.003+10:00

Five Wounds stood out beautifully in the library's new arrivals section; hardbound in deep red and the yellow-orange of aged paper with gold foiling. The spine had the title as well as the author and illustrator names separated by five unique coats of arms. On the back, the blurb and publishing details encased in scrollwork.

The subtitle on the front had said 'An illuminated Novel'. And the blurb in bold capitals read

On an unnaturally dark night,
an unnaturally black dog
took a baby from its cradle.
Behave, child, or the same might
happen to you!

I took the book home without even opening it.

I should have though. The blurb on the cover endpaper introduced the characters in greater detail and although all five are deathly interesting, one is

[...] a leper trying to distil the essence of death as an antidote to dying.

A leper. The first I learned about leprosy was in some social science class in primary school. There was the story of a leper colony where some bloke's preaching was greeted by the inmates ... let's just say they rubbed off on him. Disturbing but I hadn't given the topic any thought at all until a few years ago. There is some character in a Stephen Donaldson series who is a leper and a fan of the series asked me if I knew that leprosy had no known cause and that anyone could get it and that there was no cure, hmm did I? ... Sweet, blissful ignorance how I wished I didn't.

Still the plot was very intriguing and desperately hoping to be spared any gruesome details, I ventured on.

There is gore ... of a kind but fortunately no leprous limbs go asunder (on that note, perhaps I ought include some facts regarding leprosy for a change). As for the story itself ... I'm not quite sure how to describe it actually. The closest in similarity would be a work of say Jeanette Winterson.

The endpaper blurb actually sums it up most perfectly.

In a cruel and arbitrary world, where disturbing lapses in logic are commonplace [...]

It's a world where the leaders of the city 'employ' dogs to carry out ritual assassinations and manage the city's moral character via a manner of sin-eating that is positively sinful in its execution. A world in which one character has a face of wax, another is literally an angel. It is a smashing read.

All five main characters are deformed in some way and each one is fascinating.

There's Cur, snatched from his family as a babe by the aforementioned sect of dogs and initiated into the group by the pack leader who intends the boy to be his heir. His is the opening chapter and it is immediately arresting. His tortures are described most vividly, his dream with exquisite horror

But the really frightening thing about the dream was that it carried on beyond the point where nightmares are supposed to stop [...] Cur expected to wake with a jolt at the shock of the wine-dark sea entering his mouth and lungs, but he did not. He expected to wake [...] as he began to lose consciousness within the dream itself [...] with fingers of fluid gouging his eyes and ears, but he did not. Cur died over and over again in the dream, and he bumped blindly along its under-side like a keelhauled sailor [...]

His heightened senses are a wonder

As they passed through the crowds, Cur could smell the savoury folds squeezed and strained inside cloth.

which sounds hunky dory until you realise immediately after

The people around him were just so many walking sausages. He didn't want to eat them. It was just that he was conscious of them as meat.

His reactions to the smell of colour are described excellently as is his synaesthesia.

'Verdigris,' he said, and felt vinegar in his teeth and tongue.

and even the his descriptions of sound are just spot on

[...] bird droppings hitting the ground with soft, plosive smacks.

Gabriella's life is almost sedate. By comparison. She is born an angel - a great inconvenience to her father - and her bane in life is the receiving and delivering of heavenly messages. Heaven's got systems in place - an irreverent lapse in logic - that make this a not so simple task.

Cuckoo and Magpie are interesting in their way but it is the leprous Crow who really ... fascinated me. There is an almost dastardly aspect to his character which I can't help enjoying even though, or perhaps because, he is such a magnificently twisted bastard. His disease is thankfully only mentioned thus:

Crow's body was already well on the way to white sterility and black liquefaction. The skin on his hands and feet and lower legs was flushed and shiny, hardened and varnished like the shell of a beetle, but soft and unstable underneath. Sometimes the coarsened skin flowered with ulcers.

and although it is an important motive for him, it is exceedingly easy to forget about; Crow, I imagine, would well be contemptible regardless

Then Crow stole away on tiptoe, exaggerating his movements precisely because they were invisible to the butt of his joke.

Biblical allusions feature heavily. Aside from the prophesies to Gabriella the angel who also gets called three times à la Samuel, the two column chapters divided into verses typesetting, even the title five wounds and particularly the phrase Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. I've always found that interpreting mysterious writings to one's own end aspect rather dodgy, somewhat akin to Joseph Smith Junior's. Here too translation is the key.

The story is brilliantly written. A strong attention-getting start, introduction to each character and their individual storyline and then weaving those threads together in a most intriguing plot on to a satisfying conclusion.
Well, the last depending on the ending one chooses; the book has two.

One thing I was grateful for was the plot ending - that even though there are two of them, they are 'conclusions'. I don't generally read Winterson's works even though I've found extracts from them beautiful because I too dearly love the comfort of 'proper' endings. I was glad for this nod to convention.

There are a number of elements in the book I particularly liked. The writing is great. Besides the wonderful way one character is tied to another via certain brilliantly worked in recurrent phrases, there are some pretty excellent descriptions

The ground had opened up and swallowed him, before closing again with a sulphurous belch.

or when referring to the composition of a particular daguerreotype

[...] it gave them a headache and made their eyes water. It was like looking at the sound of nails scraping down a blackboard.

or the wonderfully romantic

Outside the room, she hesitated, holing her soul to the flame of his memory, and feeling it melt a little, grow soft and dreamy.

There is even humour here; in the maid's attempt to seduce Cuckoo and at the banquet for the new treasurer engineered by Crow, a most dark and devious plot hosted by a Master of Ceremonies who is so splendidly pragmatic that he outshines even Crow's cavalier evil. Absolutely darkly comical.

The banquet actually has some lovely descriptions of food

[...] Scotch collops [...] mutton fried in butter, with claret, nutmeg, anchovies and horse-radish.

that would be mouth-watering except that they fall tragically victim to the book's running theme of disrepair and decay.

The artistic aspects of the book deserve a lot of mention. The book itself is illuminated and written in the style of a bible. Every chapter and every line within it are numbered and the numbers, along with any occurrence of the five protagonists' names, are highlighted in red.

The opening five pages have the aforementioned coats of arms with captions contained in scrollwork. Shields top most of the right hand pages thereafter. All the heraldry actually reminded me of an old joke I first heard while reading about Feet of Clay: Heralds don't pun; they cant.
Tee hee priceless ... Ahem as I was saying.

The sixth page simply has the words
To whom it may concern
This slightly worrisome note is part of a number of annotations throughout the book. There is the appearance in the text that someone has done a bit of editing, intermittent corrections like crossing out a few words; nothing of consequence really. But their annotation/translation of the mene message on page 113, more so because of how mundane their contribution has been hitherto, is incredibly creepy.

Gabriella mentions that one of the treatises she's reading is a guide to heraldry with the monochromatic shields coloured in by a previous reader.

This alteration - which was both a defacement and an enhancement, both a wound and an insight interested Gabriella.

I wonder what it is supposed to mean - the coloured in shields, the editing in the text, the translation, the consistent defacement of any image of Cuckoo - as though the book is someone's personal copy. But whose copy and whose hand?

There are also two quotes following the contents page; one particularly smashing one from Kafka's The City Coat of Arms reminding me yet again that I have still to read any of the renowned author's work.

Aside from glossy plates inserted in the middle of the book, there are illustrations proper. Those in relation to Cur are the stuff of horror but there is one that is different. The image of the foundry where Cur lives is a work of intricate detail and beauty; the background with its tall straight columns topped by arches with the metal fretwork, trailing ivy, girders etc. Cur is there. In the foreground. He's almost negligible, small and lost against the grandeur of the background. He looks fairly unkempt, nondescript except he gazes straight out at the reader. It is the lack of expression on his face that is bothersome. There is no terror unlike the first image of him. Here he is at his 'normal' and his direct gaze is suddenly discomforting. The eyes look away to focus on anything else and that is when you notice those shadows on the foundry floor. Vaguely canine shadows.

Images and little details within: the excellent cartouches throughout; the Solomonic columns with spectacular capitals and how almost inky black the foreground column is; the Rota Fortunae of characters with Crow in his appropriate place; Cur's harrowed reflection on the blade; pipework winding through the text during the banquet; the curlicue of the candle holders and the efficient linework used to indicate the direction of light outside Cuckoo's bedroom door; the fencing diagrams; Cuckoo's seduction scene; Gabriella a replica of a classical Venus in Magpie's dream - excellent.

My favourite piece of art is the beautiful bit of marbling, a mushrooming red blotch against the milk white of the page particularly because it was such a simple but bold and perfect visual analogue for the text.

The library with the splendid columns shows a number of books which are influences for the scene that follows and the novel as a whole as well: Eliot's The Waste Land, Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Winterson's The Passion, Dummett's The Game of Tarot, Dostoevsky's The Gambler, Cardano's The Book of My Life, Arentino's The Speaking Cards.

Five Wounds has very many resources online. Besides a preview on the publisher's page, and assorted interviews (including a most illuminating one at Alien Onion), there are the websites and blogs of the author Jonathan Walker, and the blogs of the illustrator Dan Hallett and the book designer Zoë Sadokierski.

Meanjin has a great post by the author about the making of the novel. More of this collaborative information is also available in the blogs of Walker and Hallett. Hallett's blog includes a very interesting look at the creative process including briefs, roughs, storyboard sketches, artwork and reference materials for illustrations. Spiffy stuff.

One of Sadokierski blogs is her online folio which is a nice look into book designing, the other has her thesis Visual Writing: A critique of graphic devices in hybrid novels, from a Visual Communication Design perspective. If you fancy a gander it's a very informative, interesting read and it's got squidmen.

Walker's website and blog have, of course, the most revealing details about Five Wounds. Recommended reading, various symbolisms and codes, mathematical formulae, the "puzzles, riddles and allusions". Added to the revealing interview in The View From Here about the twin major influences on the novel of the Bible and auto-plagiarism, a reader can find within this wealth of information solutions to a number of mysteries: Why the novel is set in bible style; why the annotations; why the corrections for some of the heraldic shields which also explains one of the puzzling annotations.

I read The Art of Grief, the autobiographical backstory to the novel. It's not necessary to do so to appreciate the novel but it does function "as a key [unlocking] hidden meanings". Perhaps I am way off the mark and as daft as it sounds, it seemed to me that the novel in my hands was a bible owned by the author of The Art of Grief and the annotations were his; his copy, his unsettled hand...

Overall this is a great read with great graphic elements, a fantastic illuminated novel. It utterly depresses me that I missed the May signing of the book in Sydney, what a smashing opportunity gone begging...
Well recommended.

[Hardback: Allen & Unwin (2010). Squareback, decorated covers in red and gold, black headband, satiny red ribbon bookmark, different endpapers on front and back; parts of an image from the story based on Tintoretto’s Paradise.]

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

2010-08-29T16:14:00.000+10:00

The title captured my attention. Mortal Engines. So promising. I was unaware then of where the phrase was from but I thought it might be science fiction. I hoped it was steampunk.

The cover was tired looking, an older library copy. The picture was nondescript; two kids in a hot air balloon, like something out of a generic children's adventure story. With low expectations, I quickly flipped over to the first few lines and read the astonishing opening words:
It was a cold, blustery afternoon in Spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.
I immediately re-read it and turned to the blurb, highly intrigued to see what I had stumbled onto. The blurb was just as much a tease but reading on I found that what I had stumbled on was treasure.

I'd actually borrowed this when I'd borrowed Philip Reeve's Larklight and had to return it before finishing the review because of a sudden increase in demand at the library for the book. Apparently it had been put on the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge. Inopportune timing but deserved recognition for this excellent work.

The story is set in an alternate timeline in which, following a cataclysmic event, entire cities and towns become essentially mobile organisms. Scarce natural resources mean larger cities and towns literally prey on the smaller settlements. Society is still the same though with the nobs living on the top tiers of the cities away from the noise and grime of the engines, and the plebs both live near and eat, recycled ... whatchamacallit
"What is that stuff?"
"Detritus, Miss Valentine." said Nimmo, sounding proud. "Effluent. Ejector. Human nutritional by-products."
"You mean ... poo?" said Catherine, appalled.
"Thank you, Miss Valentine; perhaps that is the word for which I was groping." Nimmo glared at her.

In contrast to these mobile cities called Traction Cities there is the Anti-Traction League; a conglomeration of static cities which by themselves would be easy meals but whose united front continues to repel attacks.

The basic plot itself is brilliant and if the main characters were merely just decently written, I think I may well have still liked the book. But what makes it an absolute standout is how well the characters are written. It is incredibly easy to hate the baddies and barrack for the good guys but they are not one dimensional.

The younger characters whose point of view we share are beautifully fleshed out. Their is very much, a brave new world
She thought at first that they were crying out in horror, the way she wanted to - but no, they were cheering, cheering, cheering.
But right there besides it is the tender naiveté
She was as lovely as one of the girls in his daydreams, but kinder and funnier, and he knew that from now on, the heroines he rescued in his imagination would all be Catherine Valentine.
and wonder of first love
Was this what falling in love was like? Not something big and amazing that you knew about straight away, like in a story, but a slow thing that crept over you in waves until you woke up one day and found that you were head-over-heels with someone quite unexpected...

Even though this is YA fiction, it isn't dumbed down. Generally any wound that a romantic lead suffers affects their appearance only in that it makes the, generally male, character more dashing. A 'disfiguring' wound here is exactly that
She was no older than Tom, and she was hideous. A terrible scar ran down her face from forehead to jaw, making it look like a portrait that had been furiously crossed out. Her mouth was wretched sideways in a permanent sneer, her nose was a smashed stump and her single eye stared at him out of the wreckage, as grey and chill as a winter sea.

There is wonderful use of language such as in the spiffy descriptions
[...] Crome was as thin as an old crow, and twice as gloomy.

and
[...] A gentle old man with long, mournful face of a kindly sheep.
as well as in the impressive
[...] the Tesla Guns crackled like iced lightning, wrapping him in fire until his flesh began to fry on his iron bones.
There is also the brilliant simile
[...] the blood that had spattered her mother's star-charts, like the map of a new constellation.
and an imaginative personification which is simultaneously romantic and, perhaps unintentionally, amusing

[...] a fat moon heaved itself over the eastern cracks.

The bleakness of the plot is cut through by these and some nice examples of humour, both situational such as
The second town was upon them almost at once. It was bigger than the first, with vast, barrel-shaped wheels. On its gaping jaws, some wag had drawn a toothy grin and the words, "HAPPY EETER".

and
He cut through the 21st Century gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal-headed gods of Lost America.
and otherwise
He drew himself up to his full height (which was only slightly more than his full width) [...]

Even outside of these little gems, the writing has an understated elegance about it. There's an almost economy of words and the simple, succinct sentences capture images just spot on.
The old curator of ceramics lay near the door, looking indignant, as if death was a silly modern fad that he rather disapproved of.

This is by far one of the best YA fiction novels I've ever read. Excellent plot, characters and writing. Hopefully I'm never going to read another book in the series again ...
I know to be grateful for the space after the ending of one book and the beginning of another, where the reader can imagine the characters being together and happy because when a book is written with such heart and realism and it ends with
You aren't a hero, and I'm not beautiful, and we probably won't live happily ever after, she said, but we're alive and together, and we're going to be alright.
you know they are not going live happily ever after.
I feel as though by not reading on, I'm doing a great disservice to the author and to this work which is why I'll try my hardest to grow a backbone...

The original cover was done by David Frankland and I called it unexceptional, a generic children's adventure story cover. Which though sounds it, is not meant as an insult at all; David Wyatt's undated cover would perhaps just as easily be called generic steampunk. Frankland's cover has more of an impact after reading the story, when the reader can pick out all the little details that tie in so well. And unexceptional does not mean poor; I loved as a child and do still the kind of stories that Frankland's picture represents and there is a gorgeous nostalgia in it. And Mortal Engines is really just a bloody good children's adventure story.
I believe when looking for steampunk Wyatt's cover would better attract the attention but having read the book without that expectation, the earlier cover is sweeter.

Wyatt has done some spiffy Discworld art in the past and he also did the excellent artwork on Larklight. His collaboration with Reeve seems likely to extend to a Mortal Engines based graphic novel, fingers crossed.

Apparently Peter Jackson intends to make a movie out of Mortal Engines (Larklight too is supposedly getting the theatrical treatment). Although I'm sure he'll have the budget and talent to make it look good (aside from the really dodgy slow motion zoom thing he does that's just irritating), and casting no aspersions on Hollywood, I think it's a safe conclusion that they'll fuck it up. Stuck up fan reaction aside, in that eventually at least the glut of exposure will garner more appreciation for this excellent book.

There will almost certainly be boxed set releases of the books too. I think I'll wait till then to buy the entire Mortal Engines quartet (known in the US most vapidly as the 'Hungry City Chronicles' dear gods).

And I certainly would like to get my hands on any of the exquisite figurines that Weta is bound to produce although since I can't barter off an arm and a leg, I shan't be able to afford any... But hope springs eternal and perhaps more affordable artisans might create something I need only hack half a liver off for ...
Artist Kris Kuksi has amongst his amazing art collection a series of sculptures called Churchtank which, but for tiers, recalls traction cities to my mind. Particularly considering that the traction city of London has St Paul's Cathedral in place of prominence.
But if it is McDonalds pumping out little toys well then ... buggerit, I'm just going to have to start liking Happy Meals.

Reeve's short story Urbivore which provided the basis for the Mortal Engines universe is online to whet the appetite if need be, for this most excellent stuff; couldn't recommend the book highly enough.

Retromancer by Robert Rankin

2010-08-22T15:01:00.000+10:00

The cover caught my eye as I was approached the loans desk at the library. Standing propped up in the new arrivals section, the almost lurid mauve, the Retromancer title and what appeared to be an airship hovering over the Chrysler Building. 'Steampunk!' methought. A quick read through the blurb confirmed it ... and explained, in a footnote, what a retromancer was
That's a magician who can channel his awesome powers to travel through time. So now you know.

To be honest, the blurb, though very promising, left me a little hesitant. I can't recall the last book I read with a female protagonist. There was A Hive for the Honeybee at the end of last year; splendid story but YA and she was a bee. Monstrous Regiment in October last year was the last good book with a woman in a solid leading role. Yonks ago then, and I was deeply craving it.

Additionally, is it just me or is there a real dearth of female leads in both YA and steampunk? In general fiction in fact? How much bias is there in actuality along gender lines? I remember the reason I put off reading the Harry Potter series, despite hearing the rave reviews, was the disappointment that here was just another male lead. And by a woman author too. But I also recall a female writer saying that unless she consciously made the decision, her lead was always naturally a bloke. She ventured that perhaps it was a reflection of the fact we are conditioned to have the gender default button set on male ...

There are some pretty good discussions online on different forums and websites, like Sociological Images, and I read through some great discourse. Other than a writer not wanting to be pigeonholed, it might be that women are more empathetic and thus willing to take to a male voice easier than vice versa. The main character's gender also tends to be genre and period specific while classics are also more likely to have both a male author and protagonist so reading selection also makes a difference. There's also a very illuminating aside regarding The Smurfette Principle in literature.

Whatever the reasons, I like the attitude that awareness on the part of both readers and writers, can and hopefully will, chip away at our ingrained sexism in this respect.

Back to the book then. Despite the bummer and that the plot setting not exactly being my cup of tea, the blurb's proclamation of Rankin being
The World's Leading Exponent of Far Fetched Fiction!
led me to think that at least it might be something outlandish mixed with steampunk; an entertaining read at the very least.

It starts off splendidly. Hugo Rune sounded a most intriguing bloke
[...] reinventor of the ocarina, Best-dressed Man of Nineteen Thirty-Three
having once
[...] jogged alone to the South Pole*, clad in naught but his brogues and shooting-tweeds [...]
and had conquered Everest, again in his tweeds, with George Bernard Shaw on piggyback.
Mr Rune had been there, done that and invented the T-shirt.

*The Pole journey had been for the benefit of Scott of the Antarctic's less famous sister, Dot. Dot of the Antarctic was the founder of TSFTFSOTF, the unpronounceable and instantly forgettable acronym of The Society for the Forgotten Sisters of the Famous. In its heyday TSFTFSOTF numbered amongst its members not only Florence of Arabia, Fay Guevara and Sharon Munchausen, but also Jordon of Khartoum and Julia Caesar.

Rune has a few foibles however. One
[...] an all but pathological aversion to paying for the inordinate quantities of gourmet food and vintage wine that he consumed.
His rejoinder that he offered the world his genius, asking only in return that it cover his expenses, reminded me of a most interesting titbit I heard a while back about George Washington. Whilst serving as commander in chief he apparently offered to claim his expenses only and not a salary, According to George Washington's Expense Account
[...] Washington brilliantly turned his noble gesture of refusing payment for his services as commander in chief of the Continental Army into an opportunity to indulge his insatiable lust for fine food and drink, extravagant clothing, and lavish accommodations.
Wonder if this was the inspiration for Rune's character...

Rune's other fault
[...] the brutality he meted out to cabbies, who he would smite with his stout stick upon the flimsiest of pretexts and with next to no provocation.
His rejoinder to this:
'I have no comment to make at this time, you honour.'

The protagonist and narrator, Rune's sidekick has his own quirks
I took to flapping my hands just a little. Flapping my hands quite a lot and turning around in small circles has always been a habit of mine when I find myself in severe peril. It helps me to concentrate. To focus. And should in no way be confused with a display of terror and blind panic. Certainly not.
and a way with words
'A Krupps cooker? Surely this is new. What happened to the old grey jobbie that you always assured me would see you out, if not the returned Messiah in?'
which was at times almost romantic
[Brentford] lies west of the capital, lovingly cradled in an aqueous elbow of Old Mother Thames. It is home.
and

We had drunk and we had ambled home, the borough bathed by moonlight of the fullest. Such beauty as to make a fellow sigh.

Okay stuff then. More than okay really so what goes wrong?

I'm not really sure. Once the story moves into the main plot it quickly became boring to me. I had the sense more and more that after such a stellar opening I must somehow have lost the thread. A quarter of the way through and I started to feel that perhaps it might have been useful to have read the earlier books in this series.

Turning to Rankin's bibliography, I noticed that his The Brentford Trilogy comprised of an understated seven books. I also noticed that he had earlier written The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse. I remembered having read that. I borrowed it solely for the title and the plot was of the altered fairytale genre. I remember also, feeling distinctly ho-hum at the conclusion of it.

I was ho-hum at this book's conclusion too. I definitely should not have picked a book with a plot I knew I had little interest in; I really cared little what happened next, merely how it would end.

Rune is perhaps the biggest problem for me. He quickly gets tiresome. Think a glutton for a Doctor Who, whose only reason to have a companion is to have someone to preen to, to impress; name-dropping like a directory and only able to solve mysteries due to foreknowledge. A wanker really.

Perhaps I judge him too harshly. It may well be that in one of the earlier books he is shown to be a good guy really. The characters in this book do have a very long history so fans of this series would probably have a lot more fun with the return of popular characters and the gags that apparently run throughout the series. Rankin has a dedicated following and his works (The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse particularly, wouldn't you know it) have won him accolades.

The rest of the book does continue with some literary gems of marvellous gluttony,
[...] Mr Rune and I were recovering from the after-effects of a particularly heroic five-course breakfast. Waistcoat buttons had been undone, and bellies gently massaged.
and metaphor including
[...] searchlights were windscreen-wiping the sky.
and,
There was a great world map on the far wall, acupuntured all over by myriad coloured flag-pins.
as well the particularly useful advice
When attacked by a grand piano, you had better not play for time.

There is still plenty of humour too. There is the song title
'My Love for You Is as Inappropriate as a Grocer's Apostrophe, Yet Sweeter than a Butcher's Turn-Up'
the mention of the deity
[...] Demeter, Goddess of allotmenteers [...]one of my favourite one liners
'Is this a mirage? [...] Or am I seeing things?'
and Mr Gardner's technique at the inter-pub competition, brilliantly understated, had me rolling in the aisles.

There were, however, quite a few things that went right over my head.
Words that I can't seem to find outside of this work such as 'pehuverance' and 'Feuerquirl' and because certain jokes run through the series and not just the book, I'm uncertain if the apparent errors such as 'Stirling work', 'Orffyeus' and using 'mustachios/mustaches' as a singular
A gentleman of military appearance with spectacular mustachios steered [...]
are not part of a running gag instead.
And though I'm not sure whether it was supposed to be 'disdaining' instead, I'd love to have seen how the entrants went about in the pub competition titled
[...] Distaining the Vulgar Classes [...]

There is a dual effect here of feeling that I'm missing the joke and then overcompensating by reading too much into things. Take the following for example regarding Princess Roellen of Purple Fane whose
[...] realm extends from the Mountains of Ffafiod to the Sea of Garmillion, encompassing the forests of Caecomphap and Pemanythnod.
If there is a gag there, I don't get it. But I'm sure it is there which is why I keep seeing weird puns in there. The result is a strong sense of being nonplussed.

Which is a real shame because when those little details hidden in the prose can be picked up, they are a delight such as when the sidekick mentions feeling certainly not comfortable about some detail of a plan whilst

[...] just sitting there, amongst the potted aspidistras and late-flowering triffids.

There isn't much of steampunk in the work outside of the airships but there two lines which are steampunk itself
Complicated contrivances, wrought from burnished brass, heavy on the cogwheels and ball-governors. Constructions resembling the interiors of mighty clocks, clicking and clacking as wheels slowly turned and curious business was done.
And the origin story through the book of names is a most intriguing concept.

I found the story more interesting when the characters weren't actively involved in the main plot. Which is only natural since I had little interest in that plot line before beginning the book even. Although I simply could not get engaged in it, there is no reason not to enjoy this book. I think perhaps Rankin just isn't my cup of tea. He might be yours though...

Dubious Deeds: Book One of The Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens by Philip Ardagh

2010-08-15T15:26:00.000+10:00

Isn't there such an embarrassing glut of spectacular looking children's and YA fiction in bookstores lately - excellent covers and titles and such promising blurbs - honestly it's like being a ... kid in a bookstore.

I borrowed this book from my library for three reasons: (primary because) Basement Bookshop had an interesting looking book of the series and I wanted to know if it was worth buying, the author's surname (for some reason I found myself exceedingly taken with the 'Ardagh'-y (perhaps because it looks a bit like 'argh' so you know something worth note will happen ... don't ask)), and because the blurb mentions a 'stuffed stoat'.

It's a good start.
Philip Ardagh gets to write this blurb himself, so whatever you read should be taken with a pinch of salt. The average person's recommended daily intake of salt is 150 tonnes. See? I warned you.

Each chapter or episode starts with a lovely summary of the sort I'm becoming increasingly enamoured of. Episode 1, for example, is titled The Tartan Tiger and summarised thusly
In which Eddie sets foot in a strange country and in warm horse manure.

There's humour aplenty
Scotland was nothing like Eddie Dickens had imagined because Eddie Dickens had never imagined Scotland.
and
[...] what the lawyer described as 'crofters' cottages': they were small, often round, and usually roughly thatched; the cottages, that is, not the crofters.

The narrator's interjections are ... illuminating
[...] requires a little more explanation but, have no fear, one of the characters will do that later, thus saving me the bother of having to do so now. (I have plants to water and cats to feed.)
and
[...] the whole clan - has died out?' asked Eddie, obviously amazed. 'I'm amazed,' he added, which he needn't have done. (I said it was 'obvious' that he was, didn't I?)

There are a few illustrations throughout which are done very nicely
Hasn't that nice illustrator David Roberts done a lovely job, as always? He should think about taking up drawing professionally.
I concur.

Relevant historical facts are both nicely weaved in the story and offered up as above by the author. There's tartanry, the assassination attempts on Queen Victoria, the Queen's physicians, Victorian inheritance laws and their love of puns.

[...] his name was 'Iain with two 'i's, unlike that English Lord Nelson who only had one.'

And this about the British Empire reminded me of something I read in Evolution's Captain
[...] shown on maps and globes in pink, as though all these foreign countries were blushing with pride at being ruled over by Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria.

On the food front, there were the scrumptious
[...] a large slice of cold game pie and some cold potatoes.
and
[...] she served up some biscuits which she called bannocks and some potato cakes, all to be washed down with a big steaming mug of tea.

Overall, it's a lovely little book, light-ish on plot (though just perfect for the younger ones) but excellent story-telling. It's not a series I'd follow outright, but it's definitely something I'd enjoy reading. A highly recommended dawdle.

Oh and 'Ardagh', 'high field' in Irish apparently. And I'd highly, highly recommend you read the bio on his website and definitely don't forget the disclaimer.

How Bad are Bananas?:The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee

2010-08-09T16:08:00.002+10:00

I managed to grab this book through an Allen & Unwin Book Review competition. After Jared Diamond's Collapse, I was looking to improving my environmental awareness, so I was pretty stoked to get it.

If I had seen this book on a shelf, I'd have very likely ignored it. 'How Bad are Bananas?' sounds to me like a lite comedy. I'd have been much more interested if the subtitle 'The Carbon Footprint of Everything' had been the header, particularly if the actual title was then added as the subtitle instead ...
So I'd probably have missed what turns out to be a pretty darn good read.

This book is meant
[...] to give you a 'carbon instinct'.
In the introduction Berners-Lee states
Although I have discussed the footprint of just under one hundred items, I hope by the time you have read about these you will have gained such a sense of where carbon impacts come from that you will be able to make a reasonable guesstimate of the footprint of more or less anything you come across. It won't be exact, but I hope you'll at least be able to get the number of zeros right most of the time.

There are two things there that irked me immediately.
'Guesstimate'. I loathe that word. Why when there is the perfectly adequate 'estimate' would one need to use that Frankensteinish term. It is meant to suggest a more educated guess or a rougher estimate but there are terms for those - 'an educated guess' and 'a rough estimate'. Vile portmanteau, nothing but a muddler.
In my opinion.
'Tis merely a pet peeve and 'guesstimate' is, unfortunately, a perfectly cromulent word.

My second and far more serious issue was the implication that the whole thing was a work of fiction. The reason I wanted to read this book was to learn about carbon footprints. Why read something that professed to give me the footprints of everything except that the entire thing is conjecture? There are indeed many cases of 'assume', 'typical', 'average', 'provided that', 'guess', 'guesstimate' and 'back-of-the-envelope calculation' in the work and as such it can be very easily disregarded if not dismissed outright.

This matter thankfully is well addressed in the book.

Carbon footprints are notoriously difficult to calculate, involving as they do not just direct emissions, such as from the manufacture and transport (and here too the country of manufacture and the mode of transport have differing impacts), but indirect emissions as well. The true carbon footprint of driving a car, for example, would include exhaust emissions in addition to emissions from the oil being extracted, shipped, refined and transported to the petrol station as well as the emissions from the production and maintenance of the car.

Hard yakka then. So much so that the author terms it
The essential but impossible measure.

'How should we deal with a situation in which the thing we need to understand is impossibly complex?'
He counsels
[...] making the most realistic estimates that are possible and practical, and being honest about the uncertainty.
Where the numbers he uses are blurry, his desire is to
[...] get the orders of magnitude clear.
and he is emphatic that
[...] the uncertainty does not negate the exercise.
that choices made with the information proffered would invariably be superior to those made with no guidelines at all.

It isn't quite the Drake Equation it sounds to be. Even though there is much speculation about the finer details, especially concerning the ripple effects from any footprint which are nearly impossible to quantify, the groundwork is sound. It is very much a case of standing on the shoulders of giants. The world is already talking in carbon footprints. It's a living language; in flux, but things are moving and moving fast.
To use the author's analogy
This book is just an early map. Better ones will follow.

On the cartographic theme, let's see what this book en-compasses ... Ahem.

Carbon footprint here is expressed as CO₂e i.e. the impact on the climate of all the greenhouse gases caused by an item or activity combined in terms of the equivalent value of CO2 would have had the same. A 10 tonne per year lifestyle is used throughout the book as a comparative measure. It is not the advocated figure. The world average is around 7 tonnes and everyone switching over to 10 tonnes will actually cause an increase of 40% in global emissions. It is however a good starting point for the average UK person who currently emits 15 tonnes annually.

The book is UK orientated. There's a guide to UK seasonal fruit, footprints for 'A newspaper' list values for the average weekend 'quality' paper that is sent to landfill (4.1) and the same recycled (1.8), alongside the values of the recycled UK publications like 'Guardian Weekly' (0.3), 'Sun' (0.39), 'Daily Mail' (0.48) and 'Guardian' (0.82), and for the benefit of UK readers, at the back of the book is a handy tear-out for the UK Mailing Preference Service for opting out of junk mail service. There's even a Monty Python reference.

The author proposes two ways of looking at emissions per person by nationality: the official direct footprint
[...] all the greenhouses gases released inside a country's borders [...]
and his estimate for the consumption footprint
[...] adjusted to take account of imports and exports, giving a total that represents all the goods and services ultimately consumed by a typical person in each country.
It was no surprise to learn that the average North American's consumption footprint came in at 28 tonnes but the average Chinese value of 3.3 I found surprisingly low. I'd have imagined it to be nigh on par. Chinese direct emissions are actually 6467 million tonnes (2007 figures). In a list of 60 countries, this is second only to the US's value of 7065. China, however, has its figure divided by its vast, stratified, population of around 1.3 billion. Additionally because 1/3 of their emissions is in exported goods, their consumption footprint is only about 2/3 of their direct footprint.

What really caught me off guard was the 30 tonnes of the average Aussie! And it isn't the only place we get dishonourable top marks. A unit of heat, 50g CO₂e using solar and 600 from the UK electricity grid, is 1060 from the Australian grid. And although aware that energy is lost to the grid itself, I was frankly astonished to learn that in using electricity just for heating
[...] more than half the energy in the [fossil] fuels is lost in the power station or transmission grid.
Even an old gas boiler at 55% efficiency produces only 400g CO2e.
A unit of electricity again has the same UK and Australian value as above. The Chinese grid has it for 900 whereas Iceland, courtesy of its spiffy geothermals, a mere 60.

On the positive side, there's the Aussie invention Eco-Cement which as an alternative may help lower the emissions from producing 1kg cement from the global average of 910g to just 100.

I always feel guilty using the really spiffy Dyson Airblades at Central Station because they are so easy to use and so efficient and ... fun that I always assumed they must guzzle electricity. I was stoked to learn that because it's the heating of the air that uses up a lot of energy, standard electric hand driers come in at around 20g CO₂e, one towel of paper at 10g and the Dyson Airblade a lowly 3g. So I look forward to the replacing of the stodgy older hand driers with glee and now reserve my guilt for the paper towel rack dispenser.

The numbers such as on 'Drying your Hands' are given as a statistic. The author advises a sense of perspective, picking one's battle so that the best return for one's effort is given. It's perfectly sensible to quibble over such an obvious daily routine as washing but consider: there's a saving of 10g CO₂e switching over from electric hand drier to one paper towel; from a large latte to a large cappuccino would be a saving of 105g; a 250g pack of local, seasonal asparagus rather than the same air-freighted from Peru to the UK, over 3kg; buying a Ford Mondeo as opposed to a top of the range Land Rover Discovery, 18 tonnes. Perspective.

Ironing a shirt comes in at 14g CO₂e for
'a quick, expert skim on a slightly damp shirt'
compared to 70g for what would be the more accurate scenario in my case
'a thoroughly crumpled shirt ironed by unskilled hands.
Just when you thought that cursed chore couldn't possibly be worse ...

'A few people allegedly enjoy this activity, almost as a hobby [...] I have also heard ironing described as having meditative value. I can only assume that this goes something along the lines of 'a deep reflection on the resentment you notice inside yourself at spending your time in this way'.
Too right.

Another humourous line refers to the reason that
[...] the London Underground is almost as low-carbon [0.16kg CO₂e], per passenger mile as Intercity trains [0.15], despite stopping much more often [...] is mainly because people are packed in so tightly - almost tessellating, nose to armpit.

As a fervent dairy lover I was disappointed to learn what an impact milk in tea had - more than doubling the CO₂e from 21g in plain black to 53g with milk.
A pint of milk is 723g and requiring about 10 litres of milk to make 1kg of hard cheese gives the cheese a footprint higher than many meats even.

Cows get a pretty bad rep too. Animal products are usually carbon intensive anyway but as ruminants, cows nearly double the footprints of the food they produce. Additionally, soya from which an alternate to cow milk is made is actually driving deforestation, not because of its consumption by humans but because most of it is fed to, yep, cows.
It was also a downer to see that lamb is about par with beef and that baby corn, which I don't love but do like a lot, is a low yield variety of the crop which ought rather be avoided.

Two things in this book reminded me of something from Collapse. One is the question I've been pondering considering ruminants - what the best farm animal to rear on an industrial scale is, all pros and cons combined - and the second regarding survival based on the keeping and discarding of certain values. One study suggests that from a climate change perspective, organic eggs come out about 25% worse than battery eggs, and cows too would be most efficient intensive farmed. Berners-Lee uses similar language to Diamond's in saying that
This just goes to illustrate that if responding to climate change sends us into a blinkered drive for efficient production, some other values are going to have to suffer.
His suggestion in this instance, if animal welfare and climate change are important to you, perhaps buy fewer eggs but make those that you do, organic.
Regarding ruminants, they are apparently native to all continents except Australia and Antarctica. Why not Australia I wonder ...

I've never heard anything outstanding about bottled water but I have heard plenty of bad so it was gratifying to see the 0.14g of CO₂e for a pint of tap water compared to 160g for the average 500ml bottle of water.

'Leaving the lights on' concludes with
[...] there's no truth in stories you may have heard that the act of turning a light on uses the same energy as leaving it on for half an hour.
Mythbusters actually tackled a problem in the same vein. They concluded that it was almost always better to turn the lights off.
In my family anyone who leaves a light unnecessarily on, is mercilessly taunted with cries of 'Oo la-di-da, aren't we fast, gonna rush back in 23 seconds, are we hmm?'
... Or words to that effect. Verbally tarred and feathered thus, the culprit slinks back to the scene of the crime, makes amends and slinks back into company to jeers and hisses of which I've managed, mostly, to be on the dealing end of.
I concur with the Scientific American article which states that
[...]the real energy-crunch savior has been there all along: the light switch[...]
Incidentally, there actually used to be a light bulb cartel.

Another factoid dealt with is that volcanic emissions dwarf ours.

Amongst the odder footprints are those for 'Walking through a door', 'Spending £1', 'A mortgage' and 'Having a child'.
Oh and there's a website called ToiletPaperWorld.com. I ... really shouldn't be surprised.

I was surprised to learn that biodegradable plastic isn't a panacea. I always assumed that because of the 'biodegradable' everything was hunky dory and phasing them in was the only issue. I never bothered to read up on it in depth. It turns out that it can in fact be [...] a well-intentioned disaster area.

The Wikipedia article on that topic mentions the neat sounding Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater. I'd love to get my hands on that. Amongst material for further reading recommended in this book are Waste by Tristram Stuart and Richard Feynman's What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Where climate change in Europe is concerned I've had my attention solely on the Gulf Stream shutdown. Other than the Greek Fires which I noted, the potential desertification the Mediterranean I'd managed to remain utterly unaware of.

This book is printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, a scheme last seen getting glowing recommendations in Collapse. Another example of change in action that is very encouraging to see is Booth supermarkets sourcing products from more carbon friendly options.

The study that caused that response is one of the references that highlights both potential vested interests and the transparency of sources that the author uses. In any work of such value, references are of prime importance. When a source such as a Cranfield University study has controversial aspects, they have been explained. The sources are varied, ranging from those obtained through the author's clients including Booths, models used in his company and collated from publicly available data including Wikipedia ('A space shuttle flight'). The uncertainty involved in all footprint estimates is also reiterated.

There are some errata: Table 4.1. is missing a parenthesis. Table 4.2., although correctly called so in the text, is mislabelled Table 4.1. In 'Notes and references', note 3 on page 215 is the same as note 4 on 228; I think the former might be an error. The caption for Figure 6.2. could have had included '(kg CO₂e)' for pedantic consistency alone but Figure 11.1. rough percentages at least.
A few notes within the text regarding which pages to refer seem a bit off. On the hot housing of tomatoes in 'More about food', the suggestion to 'see page 86' leads to the footprint of 'A burger' rather than say that of '1kg of tomatoes' on page 97. Similarly a note on page 172 suggests 'see Refrigeration, page 53' regarding improvements in refrigeration and though page 53 does have the footprint for 'An ice-cream', the relevant information is actually found under the topic 'Refrigeration' on page 181.

I would have liked to know why 'Misc. combustibles' in Figures 4.5. and 4.6. have negative values for 'forcing unnecessary virgin production'. Larger, more detailed copies of Figures 11.6., 11.7. and 11.8. would also have been most welcome. Data represented as such is always highly intriguing to me and I could easily have spent a long while studying them. Space permitting, in a later edition perhaps ...

Lack of space also causes one case of figures looking run on in the table on page 197.
And I wasn't quite sure how to interpret this note
The figures come from a study I was involved in for a pool in a town in Scotland in 2007. I can't say which because, even though I'm sure they wouldn't mind being named, I haven't asked them whether they would mind.
Am I missing something here?

One thing I definitely have missed. For the first time, I saw the following on the copyright page
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
I admit I was a tad alarmed by the sound of this newfangled concept which turns out to be embarrassingly old news.

Overall, this book is a great little work of popular science. The information is set out in a most accessible manner, is well indexed and supplemented by graphs and tables. A very engaging and informative read. Well worth it.
Oh and bananas ... perfectly splendid apparently.

Doctor Who: The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier, The Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale, Peacemaker by James Swallow

2010-08-01T16:38:00.001+10:00

So, feeling the need for some Brit lit, I chanced upon a Doctor Who book. The only other DW book that I'd read (Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons) I remember being highly entertaining and very British. 'Splendid,' thought I and sought out the library's two other DW books.

All three books - The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier, The Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale and Peacemaker by James Swallow feature the Tenth Doctor and I haven't actually always been a fan of his ... Don't get me wrong, David Tennant is brilliant in the role and there are many who share the opinion that Baxendale expresses in his acknowledgements
David Tennant - the Doctor for a new generation.
and I very nearly hated him. But let me explain.

Aside from the fact that it was a (very famous) British show involving time travel, I knew very little about Doctor Who. So it was with wide-eyed anticipation that I started the watching the new series.

I was hooked from the get-go. Even though I wasn't a fan of Billie Piper, even if the special effects weren't groundbreaking and that plot ending could be seen from space, I liked it. And the reason was the Ninth Doctor. He had me since he cheekily rejoindered as to why he had a Northern accent that 'Lots of planets have a North.' His eyes shone, he strode like a giant and he held promises of fantastic wonders. I loved him instantly. I even liked Rose.

The episodes as they progressed got better and better. Involving plots, the obvious camaraderie between the Doctor and his companion, great supporting characters, the most gay-friendly mainstream scenes I'd ever seen on TV; hugely entertaining. Watching the splendid Rowan Atkinson, another favourite of mine, as the Doctor in the excellent the Curse of the Fatal Death only made the series more endearing to me.

I had had my concerns about the Daleks - just how scared can one be of an enemy that looked basically like an amalgamation of kitchen utensils? But the Ninth Doctor's perfectly maniacal response was right on the money. And then when it came to farewells, I said goodbye with a full heart but looked hopefully towards the future and its Tenth Doctor.

It was not a good start. Terrible in fact. In his very first episode he is the downfall of my favourite DW character, second only to the previous Doctor himself: Harriet Jones; yes, you know who she is. His tenure was marked by some very dodgy decisions and some spectacular acts of hubris.

As for his companions ... With Rose, the earlier camaraderie twixt Doctor and companion became romance and I've always despised that seemingly requisite pairing off of the leads. Martha Jones, beautiful and intelligent has to leave him and Donna Noble, for all her faults, is consigned the saddest fate.

But he grows on you. He looked the larrikin and acted it too, his comic timing was excellent, and that cheeky grin ... The affection and regard his companions always had for him were testament to how well he cared for and about them in turn. His was a tempered rage and towards the end when I think the burden weighed too heavily on him, he acted out in a most careless, selfish, human way. And though I still think he was wrong about Harriet Jones, he was a brilliant incarnation. By the time his tenure came to end ... I too, loved him.

I started with The Pirate Loop because it had the most interesting looking cover; a multi masted ship with full sails (including a ventral sail set in the hull) set against electric white ripples in the blues and blacks and fiery solar flares of outer space. The image of The Doctor and Donna is also nicely superimposed over a smashing looking planet. Very spiffy.

It also has the best opening
Six thousand robots danced through the streets of Milky-Pink City. They had never been programmed with dance lessons but what they lacked in style they made up for with their enthusiasm. All around, metal limbs twisted with abandon. Tall robots did something that looked like a rumba, lifting robots did the Mashed Potato. And weaving in and out between them raced the Doctor and Martha Jones.

That simple but rivetting line sets up a prelude that is nothing short of brilliant. An interesting little back-story that is told with humour and glee. I could quote the 3 pages that start the book as a most perfect opening; nary a word out of place and it perfectly encapsulates the TARDIS' occupants as well as the headiness of their lives. It is thus with splendid anticipation of fun adventure that the reader progresses past the spiffy
Six thousand robots lived happily ever after.

And immediately thereafter it begins
'Honestly, it'll be fine-' began Martha.
But the huge explosion cut her sentence short. She was thrown off her feet, hurled head over heels across the TARDIS console to crash hard into the metal mesh floor.
Typical, she though, as everything faded to black.

The series has a serious funny bone so it's lovely to see the author reflect that here. Not groundbreaking mind you, but tried and very true. Most enjoyable.
'[...] I'm Mrs Wingsworth. My friends call me Mrs Wingsworth.'
'I'm Martha,' said Martha, holding out her hand.
Mrs Wingsworth peered at it suspiciously. 'Is there something the matter with your paw?' she asked.

The books are perfect single seating reads I think, so there isn't a lot to write about them. Suffice to say that this one starts with a great cover, has a fun and engaging plot with lots of action and lovely humour, and is all in all extremely enjoyable.

Wishing Well was second. The well on the cover bugged me a tad because in the book it specifies
It looked to have once possessed a little roof of some sort, but no longer.
Eh, small matter. And if one assumes that the cover refers to the well in an earlier rather than the current setting/time, it's an easy enough solution.

A couple of times within the book the spacing of the text changes (to less rather than more), making the words look rather run on, but not enough times for it to be a concern.

The tone here is very British. There's the 'Miserable old sod', the 'jolly exciting', the 'old girl', and the 'gormless' nicely scattered throughout along with a smashing sounding 'dandelion and burdock drink'. There's also an instance of a phrase that I've always found particularly interesting in its wording
[...] I thought you'd bought it [...]
which apparently might be of American origin.

The plot itself is 'Who Goes There? set in 21st century England' Doctor Who style. There are great supporting characters, spritely old women with interesting back-stories of their own (and a bit of nice resolution therein).

There's less humour here
'[...] She says she's woken up with a terrible hangover in Henry Gaskin's bed. I think she's more traumatised by that than being turned into an alien monster [...]'.
but the Doc and Martha are again spot on.

Peacemaker was last as I wasn't keen on either the American West that the cover promised or the cover itself. How good the story itself was therefore, came as a very pleasant surprise. It was actually the one with the most, shall we say heart, and the most suspense and horror.

The prelude closes with the great twin visuals:
They stood, their heads tilted back slightly so that their mouths were open, allowing the fly-buzz sounds from deep in their throats to resonate through the air. It was a quicker and far more expedient manner of communication than the more clumsy use of teeth and lips and tongue.
imbuing the usually (relatively speaking) generic sounding
After a meal of raw meat [...]
with grue.
Great use of language and great setup.

The former, I was pleased to find, extends throughout the book
'A weapon is only a tool,' said the Doctor carefully. 'I've heard a lot of people say that over the years. But so is a hammer, and if that's the only tool you have, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.'
and
That touch brought a bitter cold to his marrow, a chill of such power that it felt like every winter the Pawnee had lived through all made into one.
particularly in the back-story of the Clades.
[...] any time capsule attempting to venture into their past would be burned from the continuum.
The wonderful visual of
[...] in slow jags of comprehension [...]
and the brilliant
'[...] I can hear the echo of war that clings to your coat-tails.' He closed his eyes and smiled, relishing the moment, 'Such dark glory. I envy you.'

Such great use of language which is why the (few) hackneyed clangers stand out so
[...] sent him to meet his ancestors.

Whilst the story is told from an 1880's character's point of view, there is a description of
[...] the tang of hot ozone [...]
Considering the then relatively recent discovery of ozone, how likely is that?
'Tis only a nitpick and I might even have gotten the narrative mode wrong there so it's not a big deal.

The books are a splendid format. The compact dimensions make for a spiffy little book that is very comfortable to hold and the length of text makes for the perfect one seating reading. The backs are rounded and the adhesive bound pages open easily and nearly flat which adds to the comfort factor but I wonder how stable this'll be in the long run; one of the books is suffering from loose pages but it is a library copy... They really are perfectly made to encourage buying entire libraries of these pretty little pieces. Which is exactly why I can't buy them; buy one and I'd be impelled to buy the lot and there's a lot of 'em. I'm tragically too poor.
The Doctor Who Reference Guide has very, very detailed plot summaries, so if one positively cannot get their hands on a copy of the books, these can be read as highly concentrated short stories.

Overall, all three books have great plots and are very well written. The splendid manner isn which each author captures the spirit of the series and the essence of the protagonists is very gratifying as a fellow fan of the show; frankly on each occasion, the end of the opening chapter set the theme music playing in my head automatically. And reading these three together, with their vastly different settings makes for a very satisfying three episode marathon of Doctor Who. They also are actually sequential in the series, though The Wishing Well is the first of the three.

For any fan, anyone missing the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, and anyone up for three excellent little reads.
Wish the library had more ...

[Hardcover; BBC Books (Dec 2007)]

Etcetera: Creating Beautiful Interiors with the Things You Love by Sibella Court

2010-07-12T17:06:00.002+10:00

Etcetera is one gorgeous book. I confess I borrowed it only for its looks ...

My own interest in interior decoration extends to little beyond the usual looking at those 'Better Homes than Yours' pictures. But I do have a tendency to hoard. Were I unrestrained in my magpie like reaction to all the pretty shiny things, I would have long since been found buried under many a collapsed heap of ill-guarded ephemera. The reason I have not, is my warning myself of exactly that outcome.

As it is, I merely have one jam jar chock full of pencils. Only a single shoebox full of greeting cards. Barely half a ~~Werther's~~ Whitman's sampler box full of seeds and stones. Just one miserly, perfectly adorable snowglobe (with a plump little chicken inside and on stand tiny planks of wood, nails, rocks, a sheaf of wheat, a coil of rope and a wee little shovel). I haven't even gotten one other, even one of those with music or motors that spin the snow themselves. Despite the fact that this one is becoming disturbingly murky. I dare not.
... heed that siren call ...

But bookmarks are my failing. Thankfully at least cost curtails me here but I just can't say no to a free bookmark. Cut a piece of card vaguely oblong and my eyes glaze over. I have more bookmarks than pages in all the books I have. I also have several hundred thousand ebookmarks but that's a topic for another day's therapy.

And as a hoarder of the magpie calibre, the subtitle's promise of help in Creating Beautiful Interiors With The Things You Love was both of interest and need to me. Still I borrowed the book merely because it looked good.

I don't think I ought to be too harshly judged. Have a look at a copy; it is beautiful. A neat brown paper cover decorated with stamped letters and a postcard perfect picture over a stripes of colour. Underneath the plain grey board is decorated merely with a jumble of words stamped in black. And not just the outside; a quick skim reveals a smorgasbord of pictures which if they had a story behind them, I would have liked to know.

Thankfully my superficiality was well rewarded.

The book comprises of tips on decorating; themes and palettes, mixing up old and new, antiques and otherwise etc. There's some biographical information; Court apparently took bookbinding courses at the Center for Book Arts in New York which explains the spiffy setup of this book. There is a lovely homage to the author's mother who sounds a most intrepid character. Mostly though, there are photographs. I am glad that these aren't just helter-skelter but nicely flows with the text.

As a novice to interior decoration, I can't offer any useful critique of Court's style though I do however think it's a perfect coffee table book. As someone who isn't actually looking to do any decorating, the tips aren't particularly relevant to me but they are all interesting if only in an abstract way.

There are some things she suggests which I'd love to have - the lovely thought of inscribing the inside of a lampshade perched above the bed, with a bedtime phrase (or other relevant such); something sweet to see you off to sleep with a smile every night.

And I get mightily chuffed when she suggests something I am already doing - the jar of pencils for example. Heartily recommend it; lasts longer and less hassle than a vase of flowers plus it's functional (there to pluck a pencil for use when the mechanical pencil that you needn't sharpen and therefore keep by the bedside for ready use, buggers off as it is wont to do ...).
There's also the using a horseshoe as decoration. Mine's perched in my bookcase for general all around luck ... and in the pathetic attempt to procure more books I'm ashamed to admit...
I also use empty frames to positionally frame things.
And while I'd kill for those laboratory bell jars the closest I've got is a lovely lidded hexagonal jam jar housing two fake red felt roses. Still, looks alright I think ...

There are equally some things I won't be trying in a rush. I really dislike the idea of being surrounded by bones. They are beautiful and very interesting specimens to look at; one of the bones, a segment of vertebrae perched by its lonesome on a frame, looked very much a splendid bony white caterpillar. Still a tad to mortuary for me. I don't even keep any feathers and I'd love to have a feather quill.

Similarly there are the bird and wasp nests that she utilises.

There are also items of clothing hung up that are a mite to scarecrow-like for me to personally employ as decoration but they do look very neat otherwise.

And barbwire, which though attractive would just be begging for an accident where my clumsy self is involved.

Court also uses sombre old portrait photographs as/in art. In essence this would be no different to keeping an oil pportrait one enjoys but whose subject one never had an acquaintance with. For some reason though because it is a photograph, it seems that much more personal and somewhat invasion of privacy.

It should be said though that Court too admits to being a hoarder and all these items are items of value to her. I imagine the point she'd try to impress on others is not so much to use the things she uses, but how she uses them; displayed, within sight and feel and not squirreled away. There's no need to rush out and collect bagfuls of seashells and bung them about the place but say you do have a small collection of precious tiny cowry, why not have them laid out in stoppered test tubes in a shallow lined box. Use as decoration those things that one loves and treasures, each piece individual, personal and (this is where she comes in) with style.

I must admit, I'm more a fan of the minimalistic look. But while I'd love the rest of my house to have a clean, neat and airy look, I'd love to have just the one room, perhaps the reading room, that would be as deliciously cluttered in comfort. Mind you I couldn't maintain the place if every room in the house was intricately done up; it'd be a bloody nightmare to dust and clean. Frankly, were I too visit such a house, I'd be much more impressed by the housekeeper than the decorator.

I took enormous pleasure in trawling through the photo of Court's bookcase. Some lovely and intriguing titles. Methinks, I saw Collapse but perhaps a truncated title ... Still there were the very interesting sounding 'Afterimages' and 'Mr Darwin's Shooter'. Court does harbour an appreciation of Darwin; his precise cataloguing inspired her own.

Aside from these books the author mentions Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping and recommend Vic Finlay's Colour: Travels through the Paintbox and Ashley Book of Knots.

The book concludes by giving links to stores and websites that may be of interest to burgeoning decorators. The list is international and yes, I was juvenile enough to have to suppress a giggle at Hyman Hendler and Sons; perfectly legitimate purveyors of ribbons.
On the subject of purveyors, amongst the list of arcane trades Court lists (bonesetter, cobbler etc) there's the 'innkeeper' and the 'fish monger'... arcane?
She does redeem herself with describing the motto of the Royal Society - nullius in verba - motto as

[...] deliciously suspicious [...]

There are plenty of links for Australian fans and I would recommend Reverse Garbage. I coincidentally found out about it just a week or two prior to reading this book and while I haven't actually visited the establishment yet, I have heard nothing but good about them. Additionally they'll be opening in the city soon; seriously recommend a visit.

And while in the city you can drop in on 'The Society Inc', Court's Paddington store. Bound to be as much a sensory delight as the book.

As I said Etcetera is a disgustingly good looking book with style and substance. Use it to inspire and indulge a passion for interior decorating and decorations or just have it around to stare lustfully at all the pretty pictures.
The book is perfect for the posh packrat, proud to parade its predilections. Peruse at you pleasure.

[Hardcover; Murdoch Books (April 2010). Decorated brown paper dust cover with attachment, cover plain grey board stamped in black]

The Annotated Wind in the Willows: edited by Annie Gauger

2010-07-07T17:31:00.002+10:00

I saw this annotated copy of The Wind in The Willows whilst browsing through the library shelves and it was beautiful enough to grab my attention. As I had only recently read another annotated version of Grahame's work, I was actually not intending to borrow this one. It occurred to me however that this was an opportunity for me to contrast two guides on the same subject.

Whereas Lerer's copy was a work of art, this has a more traditional but still very attractive binding. The cover is white with red foil lettering and embellishments and includes a number of illustrations from the various artists who have been involved with the work; there is a most charming image of the Toad scaling down one of the letters of the title in the centre of the page while Mole and Rat in pajamas are standing holding candlesticks.

The title page and a few of the pages preceding also have very nicely embellished framework as well as a lovely retro looking muted green colour making the borders. One of the artworks is a map of The Wild Wood and surrounding country in a similarly green hue. Beautiful and most covetable.

So, lovely start. The introduction however by a Brian Jacques though meant in good spirit, did rather take me aback

Fie upon those dullards who scorn anthropomorphic animals, a plague upon their houses, say I!

A mite too bombastic.

Still an interesting and enthusiastic introduction wherein a lot of fun can be had finding out whether his soundtrack for the book meets one's own version of such. His Wind in the Willows starts with Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and ends with the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly, with a number of
Anarchic arias for an absurd amphibian!
heralding the Toad; one of which is Offenbach's galop infernal - a piece most easy to imagine playing whilst Toad is horsing about in the washerwoman's costume.

All annotations are given in red and start with the text being referred to in italics. This is very helpful particularly when reading just the notes; there is no need to, as with the earlier book reviewed, scan the text for what is being referenced.
The notations act as a simple dictionary
voluble: Talkative.
There are the relevant historical titbits
The Sunbeam-Mabley, looked like a Victorian sofa on wheels and travelled sideways.
as well as literary ones, such as
The hedgehog is apparently so named
for its preference for hedgerows and its pig-like snout.
and the most interesting
The increase in popularity of motoring saw a similar rise in automotive mystery novels.
Hadn't even realised there was such a genre ...

Another point of note
The History of Jason was the first book printed on English soil, by William Caxton in 1477.
regarding which I found a lovely little Discworld fact; Wynkyn de Worde was the historical basis for the character William de Worde.

The jeer of

"Onion sauce! Onion sauce!"

is here explained as a threat and a joke at the rabbits' expense.
Onion sauce was always served with baked rabbit.

This isn't as morbid as it sounds; rabbits are portrayed as dimwits and even Toad later says to the barge woman
"[...] A nice fat young rabbit, I'll be bound. Got any onions?"

A lot of the information given in the book, including the annotations chiefly, is biographical in nature. One of the things explained is why women are generally so poorly regarded in the text of The Wind in the Willows; Grahame is incredibly nonchalant when Alastair, who the Toad is partially based on, is found to have slapped a girl - answers my queries regarding the conversation between the Toad and the barge woman.

Another was the ambivalence of size.
As Peter Green discovered, Grahame was well aware of the inconsistencies: "When asked specifically (apropos the escape on the railway train) whether Toad was life sized or train sized, he answered that he was both and neither: the Toad was train-size, the train was Toad-size, and therefore there should be no illustrations"
Excellent answer.
But illustrations there were, varied and beautiful. It is wonderful to see quite a few of these, including their exposition and comparison, liberally scattered around herein. My preference was for Shepard's work and though I initially disliked Payne's version, I grew to find a beauty in these too. Rackham's work is beautiful and intricate of course but I find Shepard's animals rounder, softer and more lovely. His 'Mr. Toad in a scull' - very funny and perfectly spot on and even his rough pencil sketch of Otter is beautiful.

Bramsom's I find too naturalistic to be what I have in mind, but they offer a version that might be someone else's. Barnhart's animals have a certain creepiness about them specifically because of the claw like hands but they do capture the essence of the characters perfectly; Mole and Rat sitting joking and looking so relaxed that they seem ready to pour off of the lawn chairs just as I'd assume they'd be wont to do following the fight for Toad Hall - brilliant. And her lovely little chapter front/tailpiece illustrations are very charming.
The carol scene as illustrated by Payne, by Barnhart, by Shepard in black and white and then in colour, is a real highlight. As is the Christmas card Shepard draws with the river bankers as band members playing outside a cottage - wonderfully splendid.

Also included are numerous photographs as well as a few drawings of relevant prints, people and scenes, with two simply splendid works by E. W. Haslehust, alongside letters from Alastair's governess Naomi Stott to Elspeth Grahame which makes a lovely record of the boy's earlier, seemingly happier days during the book's formative year.
We called on Mrs Luke, & found her sitting out on her sunny terrace. Mouse asked her if she had the brains to write something for his magazine. I softened matters down by saying how his friend (Miss Pasey) at home says "Oh, but I have not the brains, you see they escaped when I was a child." He will learn one day that however much brain he has, he has not the monopoly.
I am rather intrigued by Alastair's governess Naomi Stott; she seems (from her writings) a most interesting character with a lovely sense humour. I wonder whatever became of her...

There is much about Alastair and his occupations such as The Merry Thought which is wonderful reaffirmation on his influence on the The Wind in the Willows. I concur with the author that
The Wind in the Willows owes as much to Alastair Grahame, its first editor and coauthor, as it does to to his father, the man who first whispered the adventures of Mole, Rat, Toad, Otter, and Badger to his son over one hundred years ago.
An extra is a letter from father to his twelve year old son containing the story of a treasure hunt. Regarding the contents of the recovered treasure chest, supposedly Captain Kidd's
Box containing ladies rings, most of them with fingers still inside them. Kidd when collecting rings, was generally in a hurry.
The text of Grahame's letters to his-wife-to-be however, written in what Gauger calls 'baby talk', are so difficult to read, the eyes skip the passages in self defence.
Once e ad got is mouf well stuffed wif brednbutter ee sed softly "now tell me about the mole!" So the ole time I ad ter {s}pin out mole {s}tories. Eeee is cummin on tremenjus both in ideas & language, & missus nuffin [...]
... shudder ...
Although it is mentioned that
In Grahame's time, the upper-middle class often affected indifference to grammar.
Still, brutal.

There are a number of extracts most interesting in nature, from Graham Robertson's lovely description of the his dog Portly - the inspiration for the baby otter in the book, to the solemnity of the interaction between children and parents as recalled by Elspeth Grahame's brother.

Aside from the ambivalence of size, Gauger also highlights the ambivalence of species; Rat is bipedal but becomes a quadruped, paws become hands and vice-versa, Toad combs his hair! The latter even Beatrix Potter was confounded by.
She also picks an anomaly in the text; pockets in Toad's dress where there initially were none. There is some thought given to the homocentric nature of the (author and his) work, as well to any sexual subtext within the work.

Amongst the wealth of information contained in this work are the appendices: Appendix 1 is a list, catalogued by Alastair circa 1911, of his books. It is a most excellent addition; a snapshot of essentially YA literature about a century ago. I'm tempted to scan these pages (I have) and see if I can find and read them all (highly doubtful). I've only read at best two out of the entire lot. Still ... there is an insane sense about the idea, of connecting over time and I am sorely tempted to give it a go ...

There also a number of books mentioned throughout the work that I'd like to add to the list:

Peter Hunt's Children's Literature: An illustrated History and Alternative Worlds in Fantasy Fiction
Jerome K. Jerome's Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince
George Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody (at Project Gutenberg)
Jan Needle's Wild Wood
G. Sidney Paternoster's The Motor Pirate (at Project Gutenberg)
Richard Jefferie's Wood Magic (at Project Gutenberg)
Tome Hughes's The Scouring of the White Horse
Evelyn Lidderdale's The Forget-me-not Clock

Appendix 2 contains reviews from the time of the initial publication of The Wind in the Willows. There is the confused
The puzzle is, for whom is the book intended? Grown up readers will find it monstrous and elusive, children will hope, in vain for more fun.
the supportive
[...] a storehouse of glowing prose, gracious observation, delicate fantasy, and life-like and even humorous dialogue .
and the prophetic
The book is not easily classified-it is simply destined to be one of those dog-eared volumes which one laughs over and loves. Which should be quite enough for any book to achieve.
Hear, hear.

Appendix 4 is Grahame's essay The Rural Pan. Not spectacular but interesting to note for the foreshadowing of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
In the hushed recesses of Hurley backwater where the canoe may be paddled almost under the tumbling comb of the weir, he is to be looked for; there the god pipes with freest abandonment.
It also contains the quote
"[...] a green thought in a green shade"[...]
last seen in Larklight.

(On a related note, the man who shot at Grahame, George F. Robinson, was later committed to Broadmoor.)

All this exposition about Pan has actually made me more appreciative of chapter seven. In fact reading the annotations have actually made me more appreciative of the entire book including the bits that I cared little for. I wonder if the effect is temporary or whether it'll prove to be long lasting...

The acknowledgements are the usual stuff, with humour and sweetness regarding Gauger's family. There is also an invitation to readers to correspond with her with the idea that an emended edition will be published some day. On that note must be included the few errata in the book:
On page (l) that Alastair 'went up to Oxford in 1818 [...]
On page (294) the text reads 'A Typical Englilsh [sic] Squire.'
and I'm not entirely sure footnote 14 in the preface is in the right spot.

I've also had great pleasure in learning the following things, in no particular order:

Sir Ian McKellen had a role in a 1961 stage production of Toad of Toad Hall and had this to say in reminiscence

As Chief Weasel (my first stage villain) the national newspaper, The Guardian, reported that mine was one of 'the most engaged performances' and the Coventry Evening Telegraph that I was 'a perfectly hateful Weasel' — Kind Critics!"

Though Toad is not a favourite of mine I'd love to read A. A Milne's above work, sounds very promising ...

The far-reaching influence of the works of Grahame's contemporary Edith Nesbit, credited as the inventor of the children's adventure story.

These lines from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol

For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
Great poem. Give it a read ...

The Ancient Greek parody of the Iliad - Batrachomyomachia.

Overall, this is a most splendid edition, chock full of loads of information and leads and addenda that is most delightful. A definite recommendation for all lovers of The Wind in the Willows and I would advise fans of this work to do get in touch with Gauger and help make any future copy even more spiffy. Happy reading.

[Hardback; W. W. Norton & Co.; Annotated edition (19 May 2009)]

The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words by Simon Winchester

2010-06-21T16:38:00.001+10:00

It was the dust jacket that caught my eye; the moody black and white of the imposing building and gloomy sky on the front, and on the back, against an olive background, an aged OED column with 'mysterious' in bold. The blurb excellently summarises ~~the~~ the intriguing tale and the portraits of the protagonists on the endpapers are a nice touch.

The story, spiffily summarised in the blurb, is centered on the making of the OED and two principal participants involved in that venture; the editor James Murray and W. C. Minor,
[...] a millionaire American Civil War surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder [...]
That description of Minor would probably be enough of an enticement to most readers. Add to that the connection to the OED and I for one was fully hooked.

I bought the book a few months ago and it has been nestled in my bedside 'to read' pile. And there it would have remained but for the frequent references in Lerer's Annotated The Wind in the Willows to the OED which reminded me of this potential gem. Ergo here it is:

As I don't generally read non-fiction, I'm still unsure how exactly a historical biography is to be read i.e. how strictly to take the genre word for word. For example, take the following
The horses did their best, their hoofs striking fire from the cobbles as they rushed the victim to the emergency entrance.
there is such, to borrow a phrase from the author, 'certitude of tone' there compared to the uncertainty of
There was another shot. Perhaps another.
I understand of course, that not everything can be written moderated by maybes and perhaps' but how much is purely artistic licence? When I imagine the scene, I can't help pausing over whether there are or aren't sparks flying off the cobble stones ...
Ah, well. It's probably best; just helps reinforce a questioning mind.

As I said, the subject is riveting and the story is well, and imaginatively, told
There was a brief pause, an air of momentarily mutual embarrassment. A clock ticked loudly. There were muffled footsteps in the hall. A distant clank of of keys. And then the man behind the desk cleared his throat, and he spoke.
Lambeth Marsh is particularly well described
[...] a place as louche and notoriously crime-ridden [...] a jumble of slums and sin that crouched, dark and ogre-like [...] a robustly violent part of town [...] Fagin, Bill Sykes and Oliver Twist would all have seemed quite at home in Victorian Lambeth: this was Dickensian London writ large.

The author has a nice way with words
[...] a sentence still passed occasionally today, and that has a beguiling charm to its language, despite the awfulness of its connotations.
and
Chesterfield had the elephantine hide of a true aristocrat and brushed off the criticisms as good-natured, which they were not.
although, the following - despite the grim subject matter - felt somewhat over the top
[...] paid a pittance to perform pointless tasks for pitiless masters.

Each chapter opens with a relevant OED entry akin to that on the dust jacket and it makes a great running thread. As the central theme of the book, a most engaging history of the OED is given, including its birth, its praises and criticisms, and a few of its quirks.
[...] to Oxford's undying shame there was even one word - though only one - that all admit was actually lost during the decades of its preparation [...]
I particularly like that it is still an edifying work in progress for faithful readers
German scholars in particular are constantly deriving much pleasure from winning an informal lexicographic contest that aims at antedating OED quotations: at last count the Germans alone had found 35,000 instances in which the OED quotation was not the first; others less stridently, chalk up their own small triumphs of lexical sleuthing, all of which Oxford's editors accept with disdainful equanimity, professing neither infallibility nor monopoly.
(I think actually even Lerer had a notation antedating the OED though I failed to make a note of it to my chagrin)
There's something so satisfyingly ... scientific about the continuing endeavour somewhat analogous to refining a lens; every change making the picture clearer although absolute clarity is perhaps theoretical.

There is an ample amount of discussion on earlier English dictionaries. There is the 1604 dictionary A Table Alphabeticall compiled
'for the benefit & help of Ladies, gentlewomen or any other unskilful persons [...]
Huzzah for equal rights!
And despite the prodigious title of Nathaniel Bailey's work link, it is Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language that I want to read. According to the author
Few who read the volumes today can fail to be charmed by the quaint elegance of the definitions, of which Johnson was a master.
What follows is indeed a most engaging and charming description of 'elephant'.

I must admit though that the voice in my head narrating the description was that of Robbie Coltrane; Blackadder's Samuel Johnson. (I was going to write that as 'Blackadder's Johnson' ...but propriety dictates otherwise. Mind you, if I do read Mr. Johnson's work I'm probably going to chuckle at the 'sausage'... Crivens, this just keeps going filthy ...)

On the topic of the fixing of the language and the maintenance of its purity, Swift (who apparently was agelastic) and others thought to maintain the purity of the language under the impression that the English language
[...] had by the turn of the seventeenth century become sufficiently refined and sufficiently pure that it could only now remain static or else henceforth deteriorate.
Certainly its evolution may well take a direction that one dismays of, but since the only static language is a dead language, that is a burden that has to be borne. However like Swift, I believe in 'firm orthography' and 'equally firm orthoepy'.
Language should be accorded dignity and respect. If one has the impetus to utilise a tongue, then surely there must be employed the courtesy to follow its precepts to the best of one's ability. Why is it that defending a language is considered pejoratively regimental whereas its calculated murder is a thing of pride? Ought not 'Grammar Nazi' be a term for those that wilfully commit acts of atrocities against knowledge? Books were burned on Nazi ethos.

I do try. I understand that accuracy is often sacrificed for the sake of expediency in online communication and that moreover, there are reading disorders and such like which too must be allowed for. And I grit my teeth when someone 'lays' instead of 'lies' but don't comment because granted, some rules are difficult to remember and follow. But there are those who wear it as a sign of pride. 'Bloody butcher of the English tongue' lacks the punch (preferably physical) of 'Grammar Nazi' but if the latter must be, why then ... 'Achtung'.

I apologise for the soapbox moment but it is quite the pet peeve. Listen to the well worded sometimes; there is so much beauty and richness there... Listen to the unctuousness of Nigella Lawson for example, compared to the grating repetitiveness of Jamie 'I'm just literally gonna' (as opposed to merely figuratively) Oliver. I am personally of the opinion that food and appearances aside, it is her beautiful use of language that is so thoroughly satisfying about Lawson. I actually have a most pleasing mental vision of a roomful of Oxfordian scholars in tweeds and specs, guiltily gathered around an old-fashioned wireless listening to the luscious aural porn of Nigella.
Indeed a regular dose of purple prose ought be compulsory.

The author at one point mentions that those who endeavoured to preserved the 'pure' English language shared the belief of the Forty Immortals that the national language needed to be
[...] chased in silver and carved in stone.
...
There is the matter of the world's largest book... would you have it, (that was) chased in gold and carved in marble :)

Back to the story though...

W. C. Minor has a particularly interesting background; a brother who disappeared on a canoeing expedition whilst mayor of Seattle and a father with the singularly splendid name of Eastman Strong Minor. Minor's involvement in the American Civil War provides an opportunity for great insight into the event. Though that conflict is of little interest to me, it was fascinating to learn about the brutal conditions, the desertions, the Minié ball, the dodgier medical personnel, the brush fires during battle and the roughly 150,000 Irish soldiers who fought for the Union side... I've actually got a desire to learn more ...

There is something that the author says in regards to the war though that ... bugs me. Incessantly.
Here was an inescapable irony of the Civil War, not known in any conflict between man before or since; the fact that this was a war fought with new and highly effective weapons, machines for the mowing-down of men, but at a time when an era of poor and primitive medicine was just coming to an end. It was fought with the mortar and the musket and the Minié ball, though not with anaesthesia and sulphonamides and penicillin. The common soldier was thus in a poorer position than at any time before and after: he could be monstrously ill treated by all the new weaponry, and yet only moderately well treated with all the old medicine.

Where to start ...
Both the 'before or since'/before and after' sentences are inherently too grandiose. I can't help feeling that such conditions (vast improvement in weaponry with little in medicine) surely arose periodically throughout the ages. Certainly the American Civil War is said by some to be the first modern war but the Crimean War has an equal (if not stronger) claim to this. Additionally, though the Minié ball was more extensively used in the former, it had been used in the earlier Crimean War. The American Civil War also enjoyed what little improvements battlefield medicine had gained courtesy of the Crimean War. As for anaesthesia, from what I've read elsewhere, though in short supply, it was used in the American War.

Another 'irony' of his that I disagree with is the following:
One must feel a sense of strange gratitude that [Minor's] treatment was never good enough to divert him from his work. The agonies that he must have suffered in those terrible asylum nights have granted us all a benefit, for all time. He was mad, and for that we have reason to be glad.
Is that not rather too ...
argh I haven't studied philosophy and so I lack for the proper term ... What if perhaps instead if he had been sane, he would have contributed even more? Not just to the dictionary but elsewise. His contribution to history was commendable but was it exceptional enough that his madness being key, its ramifications- his suffering and the murder of George Merritt - were warranted; does the end justify the means?
The book is actually dedicated to Merritt
[...] offered as a small testament to the late George Meritt [...] without whose untimely death these events would never have unfolded [...]
What exactly are we celebrating here, Merritt's life or his requisite death ...

Additionally, I must say that while it must certainly have been true for Minor, I doubt that for Murray his
[...]only outlet [was] his correspondence [...]
and the author's apologies, in the acknowledgements, to Anthony
[...]who complained [...] that he was denied romantic favours one summer morning because his fiancée was bent on completing the reading of Chapter Nine [...]
is not something I ever wished to know.

But something that bothers me even more so is the almost insidious use of fiction to bulk up the work. The tale that had been used at Minor's trial - that mysterious
[...] act he had been forced to commit while in the US Army.
is strongly told in the book in about 2 ½ pages.
This story, the author mentions, was routinely rehashed to explain the cause of Minor's madness
'He branded an Irishman during the American Civil War,' they used to say. 'It drove him mad.'
Which is hunky-dory until there is the addendum that the branding remained
[...] one of the leading probable causes of his insanity.
until 1915 when in an interview he
[...] told quite another story.
What this story, and presumably more probable cause of his condition was, is not at all explained outside of that one line. Why offer up the branding story in such detail yet only hint at the alternative?
There is something similar in recounting the meeting between Murray and Minor wherein the faulty story of that meeting is rehashed twice (thrice if the blurb is counted).
The known facts are themselves so interesting, adding the rest feels at best like unnecessary padding. Which is a sorry thing because the book has such a splendid basis and is otherwise extremely well told.

I would have liked to know more about Dr Fitzedward Hall, who shared many parallels with Minor. His seems a most interesting tale to be told ...
I also loved the story in the author's note about the printing plate, and I would have dearly loved more about the extraordinary sounding printer as well as an image of the work she did for the author.

Amongst the 'Suggestions for Further Reading' are
'The Battle of the Wilderness',
'the elegant giant of a book 'The American Heritage New History of the Civil War'
and the most intriguing sounding
[...] ill-tempered 'Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED [...] which offers a politically correct revisionist view of Murray's creation - albeit from a somewhat admiring stance. It is worth reading, even if just to make the blood boil.
I'd also like to read Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia which sounds very worthwhile, if only for the "Be not too hasty...to trust or to admire, the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men." quote.

In terms of literary degrees of separation, Furnivall is mentioned here as a significant figure in Murray's life - Furnivall being of course, a mentor of Grahame as well at least partial inspiration for the Rat. And one of Minor's fellow inmates at Broadmoor was the artist Richard Dadd, whose The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke was the inspiration for Pratchett's The Wee Free Men.

Two further items of interest may be the following terms:
nostalgie de la boue; most wonderfully explained at The Virtual Linguist, and bugger grips; used in a description of the facial hair of both Murray and Minor, I looked these up because they sounded very ... suggestive, shall we say. Martin Van Buren's is considered a thing of beauty...

I come off entirely too critical about this book but in truth it is such a good story that the flaws are unfortunately magnified. I have actually re-read parts of it and it reads just as well the second time around and I see no reason why this won't remain so for subsequent reads as well. This is a good book, its story and the stories around it are of worth and note; most of the quibbles I have with it probably pertain to me and my reading alone. I do recommend it heartily.

The Wind in The Willows: An Annotated Edition. Edited by Seth Lerer

2010-05-17T23:16:00.003+10:00

This is one of the most beautiful books. Just beautiful:

The dust jacket has the reproduction of a soft and simple and splendid drawing by E. H Shepard. The book itself is covered in lovely khaki book cloth (a real treat to the touch), headbands of yellow and olive gold, with lettering on the spine and a demure dragonfly centered on the front both in green foil. The endpapers, oh the endpapers ... they are exquisite; lime green with vertical crimps and tiny leaf-like flecks throughout, the overall effect is that of a dense bamboo grove. The crimps, like the cloth on the cover, again offer a lovely tactile sensation. Beautiful. Additionally the pages inside are a pleasant cream. In terms of design, the use of colours and materials this is simply one spectacular work. Kudos to the responsible (who in this case I assume is the book designer Annamarie McMahon Why); most excellent work.

As for the contents:

The introduction has a few interesting details such as the views of John Locke's (1632 – 1704) regarding the way children treated animals as a moral test; a most forward thinker, as well as Grahame's appreciation of marginalia; a man after my own heart.

The inserts include the beautiful cover and spine of the first edition Methuen and the evolution of the artwork regarding The Wind in The Willows including pieces from Ernest H Shephard, Rackman and Charles van Sandwyck.

The annotations are a mix of literary, historical and biographical; mostly the former. There is a lot on the etymology, usage and meaning of words and phrases, often referring to the OED; extracts from Grahame's other works; other works on The Wind in The Willows; works that it may have influenced including The Hobbit and Winnie the Pooh and those that influenced him including Shakespeare and Gilbert and Sullivan.

For example, the annotation of 'picked' (to highlight with colours, a splendid use I'd love to see more often) from
[...] they saw a gipsy caravan [...] painted a canary-yellow picked out with green, and red wheels.
gives the word's definition from the OED, etymology and English history of caravans, two 1893 quotations using 'caravan'; one from Grahame's Pagan Papers, as well as the Victorian context of Toad having a caravan and one that is yellow.

It works as a standard dictionary such as 'pettishly'
In a childish and bad tempered way.

etc which can interesting if you find something new; I hadn't even realised 'pattering'
Here, a light tapping sound, and not the sound of voices.

could have the latter meaning, having only used/seen it used in the first sense.

Otherwise, it can be rather boring and in one case, confoundedly unnecessary: apropos Toad's statement to the Rat and the Mole I want you badly-both of you.

Toad does not desire Rat in any sense [...]

However in light of a quote on the back from Ellen Handler Spitz

Lerer's annotated edition [...] seeks to respond to every possible question a contemporary reader (of any age) might pose [...]
it is a fair enough annotation.

The quote continues
[...] it does so [...] in a graceful prose of its own that matches the gleaming poetic style of Kenneth Grahame himself and thus honours him both in form and content.
He does so indeed, for example with the bargewoman
Grahame [...] shapes this bargewoman as a weaver of tales, a canal Penelope for the Toad Ulysses.
which is testament to his admiration of the author.
As is his solemn statement regarding the early unfavourable reviews of The Wind in the Willows
We need not dismiss these reviews as simply foolish or unfeeling (in Peter Green's words, "jejune and wrong headed").
Admirably presumptuous methought :)

One of the things the notes explain is something I had previously been very curious about: Mole's jeers of 'Onion-sauce!' to the rabbits. Here it is said to be
The Mole's equivalent of 'hogwash'.
apparently a familiar Victoria colloquialism...

Chapter 6 (Mr. Toad) has a lot of psychoanalytical and legal notes and chapters 7 (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn) and 9 (Wayfarers All) an abundance of literary sources. While it is a good thing to see Grahame's inspirations, it does rather take away the novelty of the purple patches in The Wind in The Willows for someone unfamiliar with the work of the Romantics. Which is fair enough, his contemporaries and predecessors deserve their just adulation too and if anything Grahame ushers one towards the works he held in esteem as evidenced by both his emulation and his earlier works.
Like "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,[sic]" this chapter is an essay in Romantic sublime. Keats, Wordsworth, and Coleridge jostle in allusion and evocation to reveal the poetic sensibility behind Grahame's prose.

It might make the book seem in parts, a hodge-podge of bits nicked off of earlier, better Romantics, but I imagine for the true lover of the language and reading, as well as for the better read amongst us, it would be akin to 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' and picking up on all the embedded allusions. It'd probably a source of great delight.
[...] riddled with poetic allusion, layered with social allegory [...]
[...] bristles with leaned allusion.
I do wonder if Grahame was ever criticised in his own lifetime for it though...

Amongst the interesting historical notes there's the emergence of the distinctive English breakfast or the luncheon basket
The luncheon basket was a Victorian invention, first appearing in the 1850s and then appropriated by the railways as a service to customers.
a very interesting look at the relative worth of Edwardian currency in terms of certain wages. And the interesting tidbit that
In 1894, the booksellers Smith and Mundie

I can't find much information on this and I'd like to ...

On the literary front, there is a lot of usage made of the OED
"The term [Anzacs] was at one time associated in the Press with so many highly coloured, imaginative, mock-heroic stories of individual feats .. that its use ... was ... irrevocably damned by the force"
OED, s.v. mock-heroic, def. B)
The phrase "turn over a new leaf" has its origin not in plants but in the act of reading: turning over the page and starting anew.

There is a a great amount of potential reading material mentioned here and I look forward to getting my hands on some of these:

Winnie The Pooh
Three Men in a Boat
The Water Babies
The History of Pompey the Little
Household Gods: The British and their Possessions
Hints on Household Taste
Hints on House Furnishing
The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-Come
The Yellow Book and The Reluctant Dragon (including all of Grahame's books) are available online.

The works of Thomas Bridges seem particularly promising (a most humorous bit from his The Adventures of a Bank-Note is mentioned).

I have also started wanting to read the famous Paul Clifford; aside from the object of its infamy, it must have some other merit.

I'd always thought Gilbert and Sullivan utterly insipid, mostly I think based upon something I read regarding Ruth, but the references to The Yeomen of the Guard have me intrigued ...
There is also of course the lot of splendid romantic poetry alluded to.

Reading the annotations only, and looking for the text indicated I stumbled upon this splendid line
The reserved rustic road was presently joined by a shy little brother in the shape of a canal, which took its hand and ambled along by its side in perfect confidence, but with the same tongue-tied, uncommunicative attitude towards strangers.
and the absolutely scrumptious
A fire of sticks was burning near by, and over the fire hung an iron pot, and out of that pot came forth bubblings and gurglings, and a vague suggestion of steaminess. Also smells-warm, rich and varied smells-that twined and twisted and wreathed themselves at last into one complete, voluptuous, perfect smell that [...]
Ah, perfection.
It also made me rethink limiting the book when I'm re-reading to just the first five chapters; I may not like the Toad but there is splendid stuff there...

The concluding sentence, in the afterward is somewhat unimpressive
For, unlike Toad, trespassers into the Wild Wood or the River Bank will never be prosecuted, but will always be rewarded for the eagerness and energy with which they pursue Grahame's inhabitants.
I was expecting something a bit more ...magical.
The introduction too, a perfectly splendid penultimate sentence
Toad may be faking it at the end, but anyone who reads The Wind in the Willows cannot help being charmed and moved, amazed and swayed by the beauty of its prose, the wit of its farce, the sentiment of its domesticity.
I thought was rather let down by the platitude
If anyone is altered at the end, it is ourselves.
But perhaps I am too heartless ...

Overall, this is a lovely annotated copy of The Wind in The Willows that'll certainly make a most welcome present for any lover of that work.

[Hardback; The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; Annotated edition (May, 2009)

Square spine, printed dust jacket, green foil on khaki book cloth, excellent endpapers, yellow and green gold headbands, cream coloured pages.]

The Teach Your Chicken to Fly Manual by Trevor Weekes

2010-04-19T17:28:00.002+10:00

The Teach Your Chicken to Fly Manual is a slim hardback of 28 pages. It is roughly that many pages of straight faced insanity.
In 1940 it had reached a point for the lowly common fowl to follow its true calling and take to the skies, and so an inventor, sympathetic to their plight, put forward a theory to the Society for Rights for Inferior Birds that, if the common fowl could be trained from an early stage, it could develop wing muscles sufficient enough to enable it to fly at high altitudes like its feathered counterparts.
What follows is
[...] a selection of drawings, details of construction and theory relevant to launching this earthbound bird.

There are about ten pages of approved construction plans for the Teach your Chicken to Fly Kit drawn by T. Weekes for his client The Society for Equal Rights for Non-Flying Birds. These were actually my reason for buying the book, splendid pages of pseudo technical drawings and spiffy anatomical details, most of which are given an aged and distressed paper look. It is a daft reason to buy the book, pretty drawings of chickens, but they are marvellous to look at. Why, Fig. 6 (showing the wing form patterns in flight) is practically a fowl Vitruvian.

Trevor Weekes is apparently an artist of some renown and examples of his work can be found here. Perhaps this image

is most representative of the artwork in this book.

There is actually very little to read here; the roughly eight pages of text relates mostly to the structure and use of the training machine. The machine itself, with photographs of an apparently full scale model in action, is a thing of simple beauty. With a bullseye target at one end to act as
[...] a goal for the bird and [...] something to aim at as it flies along the track of the structure.
and along its base, cutouts
[...] designed as an aid for the bird to familiarize itself with the landmarks [...]
The cutouts feature a line of trees followed by a line of terraced houses, then the Harbour Bridge, and finally a cityscape. Great stuff.
I assume the cityscape is Australian being unfamiliar with the outline of Sydney circa the date of publication, but it does appear to contain the outlines of the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building so I might be underestimating, severely, the flying prowess of the common fowl.
Other photos show some of the highlights of the entire endeavour; there's the first chicken to fly - Gregory Peck, as well as one of the early pioneer owners - Chook Faulkner.

The only concern I have of the book is it sounds ever so plausible. It actually is extremely sensible in its madness and I had to look up whether there were indeed such societies with such agendas (no ... well, as far as I can tell) for the noble creature considered
[...] an egg-layer and good all-round meal.

I bought it for a dollar because the drawings were cool. I can't imagine what the retail price must be but I probably wouldn't have bought it at anything higher. If you find a copy, definitely give it a gander (heh chicken, gander ... never mind). If you can find a cheap copy, definitely buy it.