January: A Valediction
Feb. 1st, 2007 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielSo.
I haven't been updating much this month because I'm a lazy sock.
Also, I said that I'd post a list of the books I'd read at the end of each month, because I tend to forget half of them at the end of the year, and certainly don't manage to comment on them, at any rate.
I'll kind of wrap up the literary and other achievements (or lack of) in this.
The South, Colm Toíbín
A frustrated Irish protestant painter by the name of Katherine Proctor leaves her husband and son and goes all the way doin Soith to Spain where she falls in love with a civil war veteran (of the anti-Franco side) and painter by the name of Miguel. She also meets Michael Graves who is from the same Irish town as she is but happens to be on the RC side. Miguel and Katherine move into the Pyrenees and paint and sex happily. But Franco's still ruling, and Miguel still hates him, and the shadows of the past catch up with them and destroy their mostly content life. Katherine returns to Ireland to more or less reconcile with her son. And paint.
This was the fourth book we had to read for the Reading Course lecture, and the one I liked best. Its characters were strange but credible and somehow understandable. The plot basically revolves around art and reality, dealing with the past and dealing with relationships, all written in a sober but not too distanced style. Quite enjoyable even if your knowledge of Irish and Spanish 20th century history is, like mine, fragmentary.
Wächter der Nacht ("Night Watch"), Sergej Lukianenko
I didn't watch the movie even though the trailer intrigued me, because I didn't see most of the movies I wanted to see anyway. But I decided I'd give the book a try.
And I quite enjoyed it. The writing style is fairly simple, but the story itself is fascinating, even though, after the first two parts of the book, I was a little frustrated with Anton, thinking "Dammit, boy, they fucked with you. They totally fucked with you. WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING ANGRY?" - luckily, he did in the third part and it was good. Also, I read the third part on the train/bus while Kyrill was being busy. Nothing like a literary hurricane accompanied by a real one. Now I have to get the sequels.
What fascinated me most, however, was the Russianness of the story. I mean, what you got to glimpse of parts of just normal Russian life. Being drunk as a prerequisite for becoming a plumber. Militia. Hitch-hiking with rich businesspeople. Dachas. It fascinated me with Trouble of the Rings, and it fascinated me here again. I guess my mother was right after all when she noted that my brother's and my way of reading and discussing books at changed completely since we went to university.
Meisterwerke der Buchmalerei ("Masterpieces of Book Illumination"), Ingo F. Walther & Norbert Wolf
I bought this one on a whim because Taschen had a warehouse sale, and how can I resist a book on book illuminations? I mean, all the inspiration for my Silmarillion project! And anyway! This is non-fiction, obviously. It is also absolutely fascinating. And there are lots of pretty piccies! Also some hilariously bad, especially on the anatomical side, which make me feel SO much better about my own art...
Tainted Blood, Arnaldur Indriðason
Welcome to Iceland, where autumns are dark and rainy, murders are usually squalid, pointless and committed without any attempt to hide them, where the judicial system is ridiculous and people address each other by first names only. [I figure that makes sense, considering their nomenclature system; if people addressed me as Miss Ulrichsdaughter all the time, I wouldn't find that particularly polite either. My mom, being Mrs Ernstwilhelmsdaughter, would be even worse off. On the other hand, of course, my dad would be Ulrich Heinrichson, and Heinrichson - or its platt version, Hinrichsen, at any rate - is a perfectly normal German surname, just like Petersen, Hansen or the like, so I guess it's just a matter of habit really. But I digress.] This murder case is a little deeper than that, though...
As mentioned before, I really only bought this book because I couldn't resist an author who ended in -ldur and who had an eth in his surname. The writing style is nothing special, really; very simply structured sentences, no stylistic means to speak of. Some of the usual murder mystery clichés - badass loner detective with broken family, that kind of thing - and some cursing that feels like the author never cursed in his life and just doesn't get the hang of it. Perhaps the Icelandic language is just like that, I wouldn't know. The plot is pretty deep (and not for the overly faint of heart), though.
And again, it's the anthropological level that fascinates me most. Just like Night Watch had this persevering Russianness, this book has a persevering Icelandicness. People still living mostly off fishing, eating mutton head, skidding from the highway onto fields of lava, speaking of Jesus not as "Lord" but as "good brother", National Statistics, what have you. It's simply fascinating. And of course there are the involuntarily funny moments like when one of the officers asks, "Marion Briem? What kind of name is that? Is it a man or a woman?" and you go "... says someone whose name is Sigurdur Óli [enter male name]son?!", because in Germany, Marion is a perfectly normal (purely female) name, Briem is a reasonably normal surname, whereas nobody in their right mind would ever name their kid Sigurdur Óli.
Or Elínborg.
Or Erlendur.
I really like Erlendur.
Europa, Tim Parks
This was the fifth book we had to read for the Reading Course lecture.
Don't read this book.
Seriously, don't.
Unless you really like James Joyce.
Or rampant stream of consciousness sentences that start at one end and - after passing through the love life past, present and future of the narrator, an English teacher stranded in Milan but currently on his way to the European parliament in Strasbourg with a bunch of co-teachers and students, mostly female and fuckable, for a cause he neither cares for nor believes in - perhaps may or may not, eventually, if you are particularly lucky, reach the other and hopefully somewhat less frustrating - but who can guarantee that if the purpose of the narrator's journey is so obviously frustrating that he has to mull over this utter frustratingness of life, the universe and everything - other end, where perhaps we will finally get to the point of the story, if there is such a thing as a point to a story which is in so many ways a mirror of life, which rarely if ever has a point, at least one discernible to us mere mortals, if we are so bold as to attempt to discern point and/or meaning of anything, but who cares for that, if there are always totties (with or without tits, plaster casts, umbrellas or dogs) to think about, or one tottie in particular, who betrayed the poor, poor narrator, who he still hasn't gotten over and who, to all intents and purposes, is the lone reason of his being on this journey in the first place, unless you would like to take on the narrator's firm belief that there are really gods and they're tricking people all the time, and nothing has been explicable since Descartes determined that there must be a God and as a benevolent God He would never trick people, but what can you expect from the French, a people that practically were among the first to invent a modern Europe, because fraternité obviously is just an old-fashioned way of saying "solidarity", so there we go, in general.
Seriously, the entire book is written exactly like that. It's painful, and not in a cathartic way.
Also, it's about nothing but sex and more sex and some more sex for good measure and jealousy and selfishness and whining and being the most intelligent guy on board and surrounded by idiots who don't recognize a quote from Thukydides and prefer Spinoza to Nietzsche, and did I mention sex? The only temptation stronger than kicking the narrator in the balls or strangling the author was just throwing the book into the waste-paper basket.
But the cats would have fished it out of there, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
allamistako said that if I gave that horrible book to the cats, he'd call the humane society.
The only solace was that the lecturer came into the first class dealing with that book apologizing for having read only 25 pages due to her Ph.D. examination and explained it was the only book she hadn't read before, but her dad had reccommended it to her, and normally her dad and she have the same taste in books, but well, she started on this one, "and I went like, 'Och, is that stream of consciousness?! I don't like stream of consciousness!' - Those of you who have already finished it: Will it get any better?" [Irish accent not included]
In conclusion: DON'T READ THIS BOOK.
Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indriðason
This was published two years after Tainted Blood, and goodness, it's worlds better (and I liked Tainted Blood). It's deeper and has a better grip on the characters. It works on several levels, two of them past, two of them present, and all of them are gripping and painful (in a good way) and intense. Even though this time, you can see the resolution of the mystery coming earlier than in Tainted Blood, it still keeps you hanging on and wibbling. I mean, I'm really not into murder mysteries, but I read this one in one go. Just because it's so fascinating.
Amusing tidbit on the side: My brother saw me reading this before class (yes, we're both in the same Creative Writing class, shut up) and asked where the hell I got Elvish murder mysteries from. ♥♥♥ Erlendur.
Also, reading these book made me realize that the -vík in Icelandic (as in Reykjavík, Husavík, Keflavík and the like) is just the same as the -wich (Ipswich, Norwich, and so on) in English place names. ^______^
Unfortunately, they only started translating these books into English from the third book onwards (Tainted Blood, that is). The first one at least has been translated into German; I haven't found out about the second yet.
And that's that.
Otherwise, this January has been disgustingly warm, and I can't even begin to say how depressing it is to read about people complaining about snow on my flist when all I have to wipe off my car here is POLLEN, for someone's sake. Oh, true, we got some snow last week. Lasted a whole day, too. And even four days of frost before that, hurrah! The good news is, I suppose, that the frost didn't even manage to kill the cherry and other blossoms freelancing their way through this so-called winter, but it might still have sufficed to satisfy those fruits that need a few days of frost in order to bud at all. This will be an interesting year. Full of midges, too.
Oh well, winter might yet come and surprise us all. And probably last well into May once it comes.
Before the ridiculous three days of cold we got a hurricane, or European windstorm (... windstorm. WELL NO WAY A STORM WOULD HAVE TO DO WITH WIND) as they call it. It bore the pretty name of Kyrill, which means 'lordly, masterful' in ye olde Greek, and killed a bunch of trees, half a dozen people and unroofed a few houses. Kyrill threw over two trees in my parents' garden, too. Luckily, they didn't fall onto anyone and didn't hit any houses, either.
Uni-wise, I had one presentation and some more meetings for that Eruforsaken museum project. The presentation went all right. I can't say how tired I am of the museum project. I have to go to another interviewing appointment tomorrow, without the presentation partner who has to help her boyfriend move house to Hamburg, so I'll somehow have to manage interviewing, recording and photographing at once, and then prepare the presentation which we have to do on SUNDAY. Insert colourful curses here.
Creativity-wise, it hasn't been an overly exciting month. I finished another prompt for fanart_100, started another chapter of my Silmarillion, did two tentative sketches, wrote a very short story for Rabbit Hole Day and wrote the first chapter of that Maedhros plotbunny that's been gnawing on my toes all through last year's NaNo.
And that's that.
Thanks tokaneda, I discovered the Complaints Choirs. Helsinki rules. Other people's complaints cheer me up. At least in this form.
And that's all I have to say about January 2007.
PS: YAY GERMANY MADE IT TO THE HANDBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP FINALS. ... barely.
Jörg was honoured by the town of Wermelskirchen for having become German champion in Goshin-jutsu no kata three years ago, and vice-champion four, two and one year ago. Go figure. The ceremonies were the most embarassing, worst organized thing in the history of ever. Eight lost sportsmen and -women being honoured, some local politicians celebrating themselves, and a place fit for training but not for what was supposed to be an official celebration. I can think of about a hundred things I'd have preferred to watching people embarass themselves there. Like, oh, sticking rusty nails through my hand. Or reading Tim Parks' Europa again.
I haven't been updating much this month because I'm a lazy sock.
Also, I said that I'd post a list of the books I'd read at the end of each month, because I tend to forget half of them at the end of the year, and certainly don't manage to comment on them, at any rate.
I'll kind of wrap up the literary and other achievements (or lack of) in this.
The South, Colm Toíbín
A frustrated Irish protestant painter by the name of Katherine Proctor leaves her husband and son and goes all the way doin Soith to Spain where she falls in love with a civil war veteran (of the anti-Franco side) and painter by the name of Miguel. She also meets Michael Graves who is from the same Irish town as she is but happens to be on the RC side. Miguel and Katherine move into the Pyrenees and paint and sex happily. But Franco's still ruling, and Miguel still hates him, and the shadows of the past catch up with them and destroy their mostly content life. Katherine returns to Ireland to more or less reconcile with her son. And paint.
This was the fourth book we had to read for the Reading Course lecture, and the one I liked best. Its characters were strange but credible and somehow understandable. The plot basically revolves around art and reality, dealing with the past and dealing with relationships, all written in a sober but not too distanced style. Quite enjoyable even if your knowledge of Irish and Spanish 20th century history is, like mine, fragmentary.
Wächter der Nacht ("Night Watch"), Sergej Lukianenko
I didn't watch the movie even though the trailer intrigued me, because I didn't see most of the movies I wanted to see anyway. But I decided I'd give the book a try.
And I quite enjoyed it. The writing style is fairly simple, but the story itself is fascinating, even though, after the first two parts of the book, I was a little frustrated with Anton, thinking "Dammit, boy, they fucked with you. They totally fucked with you. WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING ANGRY?" - luckily, he did in the third part and it was good. Also, I read the third part on the train/bus while Kyrill was being busy. Nothing like a literary hurricane accompanied by a real one. Now I have to get the sequels.
What fascinated me most, however, was the Russianness of the story. I mean, what you got to glimpse of parts of just normal Russian life. Being drunk as a prerequisite for becoming a plumber. Militia. Hitch-hiking with rich businesspeople. Dachas. It fascinated me with Trouble of the Rings, and it fascinated me here again. I guess my mother was right after all when she noted that my brother's and my way of reading and discussing books at changed completely since we went to university.
Meisterwerke der Buchmalerei ("Masterpieces of Book Illumination"), Ingo F. Walther & Norbert Wolf
I bought this one on a whim because Taschen had a warehouse sale, and how can I resist a book on book illuminations? I mean, all the inspiration for my Silmarillion project! And anyway! This is non-fiction, obviously. It is also absolutely fascinating. And there are lots of pretty piccies! Also some hilariously bad, especially on the anatomical side, which make me feel SO much better about my own art...
Tainted Blood, Arnaldur Indriðason
Welcome to Iceland, where autumns are dark and rainy, murders are usually squalid, pointless and committed without any attempt to hide them, where the judicial system is ridiculous and people address each other by first names only. [I figure that makes sense, considering their nomenclature system; if people addressed me as Miss Ulrichsdaughter all the time, I wouldn't find that particularly polite either. My mom, being Mrs Ernstwilhelmsdaughter, would be even worse off. On the other hand, of course, my dad would be Ulrich Heinrichson, and Heinrichson - or its platt version, Hinrichsen, at any rate - is a perfectly normal German surname, just like Petersen, Hansen or the like, so I guess it's just a matter of habit really. But I digress.] This murder case is a little deeper than that, though...
As mentioned before, I really only bought this book because I couldn't resist an author who ended in -ldur and who had an eth in his surname. The writing style is nothing special, really; very simply structured sentences, no stylistic means to speak of. Some of the usual murder mystery clichés - badass loner detective with broken family, that kind of thing - and some cursing that feels like the author never cursed in his life and just doesn't get the hang of it. Perhaps the Icelandic language is just like that, I wouldn't know. The plot is pretty deep (and not for the overly faint of heart), though.
And again, it's the anthropological level that fascinates me most. Just like Night Watch had this persevering Russianness, this book has a persevering Icelandicness. People still living mostly off fishing, eating mutton head, skidding from the highway onto fields of lava, speaking of Jesus not as "Lord" but as "good brother", National Statistics, what have you. It's simply fascinating. And of course there are the involuntarily funny moments like when one of the officers asks, "Marion Briem? What kind of name is that? Is it a man or a woman?" and you go "... says someone whose name is Sigurdur Óli [enter male name]son?!", because in Germany, Marion is a perfectly normal (purely female) name, Briem is a reasonably normal surname, whereas nobody in their right mind would ever name their kid Sigurdur Óli.
Or Elínborg.
Or Erlendur.
I really like Erlendur.
Europa, Tim Parks
This was the fifth book we had to read for the Reading Course lecture.
Don't read this book.
Seriously, don't.
Unless you really like James Joyce.
Or rampant stream of consciousness sentences that start at one end and - after passing through the love life past, present and future of the narrator, an English teacher stranded in Milan but currently on his way to the European parliament in Strasbourg with a bunch of co-teachers and students, mostly female and fuckable, for a cause he neither cares for nor believes in - perhaps may or may not, eventually, if you are particularly lucky, reach the other and hopefully somewhat less frustrating - but who can guarantee that if the purpose of the narrator's journey is so obviously frustrating that he has to mull over this utter frustratingness of life, the universe and everything - other end, where perhaps we will finally get to the point of the story, if there is such a thing as a point to a story which is in so many ways a mirror of life, which rarely if ever has a point, at least one discernible to us mere mortals, if we are so bold as to attempt to discern point and/or meaning of anything, but who cares for that, if there are always totties (with or without tits, plaster casts, umbrellas or dogs) to think about, or one tottie in particular, who betrayed the poor, poor narrator, who he still hasn't gotten over and who, to all intents and purposes, is the lone reason of his being on this journey in the first place, unless you would like to take on the narrator's firm belief that there are really gods and they're tricking people all the time, and nothing has been explicable since Descartes determined that there must be a God and as a benevolent God He would never trick people, but what can you expect from the French, a people that practically were among the first to invent a modern Europe, because fraternité obviously is just an old-fashioned way of saying "solidarity", so there we go, in general.
Seriously, the entire book is written exactly like that. It's painful, and not in a cathartic way.
Also, it's about nothing but sex and more sex and some more sex for good measure and jealousy and selfishness and whining and being the most intelligent guy on board and surrounded by idiots who don't recognize a quote from Thukydides and prefer Spinoza to Nietzsche, and did I mention sex? The only temptation stronger than kicking the narrator in the balls or strangling the author was just throwing the book into the waste-paper basket.
But the cats would have fished it out of there, and
allamistako said that if I gave that horrible book to the cats, he'd call the humane society.The only solace was that the lecturer came into the first class dealing with that book apologizing for having read only 25 pages due to her Ph.D. examination and explained it was the only book she hadn't read before, but her dad had reccommended it to her, and normally her dad and she have the same taste in books, but well, she started on this one, "and I went like, 'Och, is that stream of consciousness?! I don't like stream of consciousness!' - Those of you who have already finished it: Will it get any better?" [Irish accent not included]
In conclusion: DON'T READ THIS BOOK.
Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indriðason
This was published two years after Tainted Blood, and goodness, it's worlds better (and I liked Tainted Blood). It's deeper and has a better grip on the characters. It works on several levels, two of them past, two of them present, and all of them are gripping and painful (in a good way) and intense. Even though this time, you can see the resolution of the mystery coming earlier than in Tainted Blood, it still keeps you hanging on and wibbling. I mean, I'm really not into murder mysteries, but I read this one in one go. Just because it's so fascinating.
Amusing tidbit on the side: My brother saw me reading this before class (yes, we're both in the same Creative Writing class, shut up) and asked where the hell I got Elvish murder mysteries from. ♥♥♥ Erlendur.
Also, reading these book made me realize that the -vík in Icelandic (as in Reykjavík, Husavík, Keflavík and the like) is just the same as the -wich (Ipswich, Norwich, and so on) in English place names. ^______^
Unfortunately, they only started translating these books into English from the third book onwards (Tainted Blood, that is). The first one at least has been translated into German; I haven't found out about the second yet.
And that's that.
Otherwise, this January has been disgustingly warm, and I can't even begin to say how depressing it is to read about people complaining about snow on my flist when all I have to wipe off my car here is POLLEN, for someone's sake. Oh, true, we got some snow last week. Lasted a whole day, too. And even four days of frost before that, hurrah! The good news is, I suppose, that the frost didn't even manage to kill the cherry and other blossoms freelancing their way through this so-called winter, but it might still have sufficed to satisfy those fruits that need a few days of frost in order to bud at all. This will be an interesting year. Full of midges, too.
Oh well, winter might yet come and surprise us all. And probably last well into May once it comes.
Before the ridiculous three days of cold we got a hurricane, or European windstorm (... windstorm. WELL NO WAY A STORM WOULD HAVE TO DO WITH WIND) as they call it. It bore the pretty name of Kyrill, which means 'lordly, masterful' in ye olde Greek, and killed a bunch of trees, half a dozen people and unroofed a few houses. Kyrill threw over two trees in my parents' garden, too. Luckily, they didn't fall onto anyone and didn't hit any houses, either.
Uni-wise, I had one presentation and some more meetings for that Eruforsaken museum project. The presentation went all right. I can't say how tired I am of the museum project. I have to go to another interviewing appointment tomorrow, without the presentation partner who has to help her boyfriend move house to Hamburg, so I'll somehow have to manage interviewing, recording and photographing at once, and then prepare the presentation which we have to do on SUNDAY. Insert colourful curses here.
Creativity-wise, it hasn't been an overly exciting month. I finished another prompt for fanart_100, started another chapter of my Silmarillion, did two tentative sketches, wrote a very short story for Rabbit Hole Day and wrote the first chapter of that Maedhros plotbunny that's been gnawing on my toes all through last year's NaNo.
And that's that.
Thanks to
kaneda, I discovered the Complaints Choirs. Helsinki rules. Other people's complaints cheer me up. At least in this form.And that's all I have to say about January 2007.
PS: YAY GERMANY MADE IT TO THE HANDBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP FINALS. ... barely.
Jörg was honoured by the town of Wermelskirchen for having become German champion in Goshin-jutsu no kata three years ago, and vice-champion four, two and one year ago. Go figure. The ceremonies were the most embarassing, worst organized thing in the history of ever. Eight lost sportsmen and -women being honoured, some local politicians celebrating themselves, and a place fit for training but not for what was supposed to be an official celebration. I can think of about a hundred things I'd have preferred to watching people embarass themselves there. Like, oh, sticking rusty nails through my hand. Or reading Tim Parks' Europa again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 11:59 pm (UTC)And yes, the light ones just love to get screwed over, don't they? And (I think I won't spoil much of Dnevnoi to you) this is not going to change too much. They have Dnevnoi at the local library, by the way :)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 12:08 am (UTC)I was afraid of that. Or not afraid, really. ;)
I figure they would have it, but I have this annoying habit of absolutely having to own books, especially books I like, so if I wake up at 3 am with a need to look up a passage in that book, I can do so. Don't laugh! That has happened before! It's especially annoying when you can't remember the title or the author or either, just fragments of story and perhaps the colours of the book cover, and you know it'd come back to you if you could just stare at your bookshelf until you saw the book - except it isn't there, because you got it from the library ages ago, and even if you could find out the title, they probably sold it years ago to make room for Die wilden Kerle # 2398723794612. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 12:50 am (UTC)Glad you enjoyed the mysteries.
"whereas nobody in their right mind would ever name their kid Sigurdur Óli."
XD I think a lot of parents around here during the late 1970s weren't, then, because I knew a lot of kids with Scandinavian first names. It's Minnesota. We're weird.
Oh, I love it when your instructors assign books that they themselves haven't bothered to read. h8^10.
It's -11°C out now here. Highs of -18 forecast for all weekend with wind chills of -33!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:48 am (UTC)I really can't compete ... I got only three books done.
Re: Wächter der Nacht
I absolutely agree about the Russianness. That's what I most enjoyed about the series (well, I still have to finish up the second books and buy the third ...). It's different and it has a distinct voice. I like that.