Footnotes
I went to the library the other day and grabbed a couple of nonfiction books and a Discworld book I'd read, but I don't think my brother has read¹ and a couple of books entirely new to me. One of these was a novel from the kid's section that I've shelved fairly often called The Amulet of Samarkand part of The Bartimaeus Trilogy. It was good. A fast, fun read set in something very like modern day England. Parts are in 3rd person, parts are 1st person from the point of view of Bartimaeus, a djinn, who is a smart-mouthed, sarcastic son of a gun and quickly won me over. The human protagonist is a complete brat and I rather liked him too. There were a lot of footnotes in which Bartimaeus chattily explained things that didn't quite fit in the flow of the general narrative². I expect the 2nd and 3rd novels in the trilogy will get altogether too cute, but I'm going to read them anyway.
My other new novel was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's one of those novels that people either seemed to be really impressed with or really bored by. I easily can understand why people would be bored with. It's written in a vaguely old-fashioned style and rambles through little accounts of this character of that and at page 192 I still have no inking of the shape of the plot and no character that I especially care for. Frustrating, especially after the pace of the book I had just finished. And I'm only about a sixth of the way through the book. Anyway, it's one of those books which pretends to be an account of actual happenings in some alternate version of our world and is full of footnotes referencing fictional books, fictional historical facts and other bits of information. On some pages there is more footnote than there is actual text. I don't mind this, it's just slightly silly.
However, this means I took home three books by British authors who have a fondness for footnotes. I'm afraid to see if my nonfiction books are also chock full o' footnotes. Very weird. Is there some sort of trend in British fantasy fiction that I'm unaware of? Is this the new thing over there? Or was this just a weird coincidence?
In other news, went to work and went through the pen drawer, testing the huge variety of pens therein. My life is almost too exciting to bear. Briefly talked to someone about redoing a bit of one of the flannelboards that wasn't working. I get to draw a tree. Whee!³ I'll go back next week, hopefully still like my drawing and transfer it to flannelly stuff and color it with markers. Somewhere in there I hope I get to order more markers and stuff as the budget allows. (Please be a big budget. Please. Please. Please.) I have to work again tomorrow. Eh. I really don't dislike work, I just prefer to spend all my time hangin' out at home pretending to accomplish things. I don't want to grow up and work according to hours set by The Man. I want to work my own hours, dammit. Flexible schedule. Working in my jammies. That's the life.
¹ I may or may not have mentioned previously that I have got him hooked on Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. He's read everything I own and now I'm erratically picking up books I don't own for him at the library. If anybody has recommendations of books like what Pratchett or Douglas Adams have written, we'd both be glad.
² Rather like Pratchett's footnotes. That same sort of informative and entertaining aside which I am completely unable to mimic.
³ I've come to like drawing trees, which is a big change from skipping out of class early when I'm supposed to be drawing trees. I must tell my Basic Drawing teacher. I think he'd be glad to see that I've matured as an artist or something. I bet he'd be even more impressed if I finally went away and got a degree. Maybe I'll wait to talk to him...
My other new novel was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's one of those novels that people either seemed to be really impressed with or really bored by. I easily can understand why people would be bored with. It's written in a vaguely old-fashioned style and rambles through little accounts of this character of that and at page 192 I still have no inking of the shape of the plot and no character that I especially care for. Frustrating, especially after the pace of the book I had just finished. And I'm only about a sixth of the way through the book. Anyway, it's one of those books which pretends to be an account of actual happenings in some alternate version of our world and is full of footnotes referencing fictional books, fictional historical facts and other bits of information. On some pages there is more footnote than there is actual text. I don't mind this, it's just slightly silly.
However, this means I took home three books by British authors who have a fondness for footnotes. I'm afraid to see if my nonfiction books are also chock full o' footnotes. Very weird. Is there some sort of trend in British fantasy fiction that I'm unaware of? Is this the new thing over there? Or was this just a weird coincidence?
In other news, went to work and went through the pen drawer, testing the huge variety of pens therein. My life is almost too exciting to bear. Briefly talked to someone about redoing a bit of one of the flannelboards that wasn't working. I get to draw a tree. Whee!³ I'll go back next week, hopefully still like my drawing and transfer it to flannelly stuff and color it with markers. Somewhere in there I hope I get to order more markers and stuff as the budget allows. (Please be a big budget. Please. Please. Please.) I have to work again tomorrow. Eh. I really don't dislike work, I just prefer to spend all my time hangin' out at home pretending to accomplish things. I don't want to grow up and work according to hours set by The Man. I want to work my own hours, dammit. Flexible schedule. Working in my jammies. That's the life.
¹ I may or may not have mentioned previously that I have got him hooked on Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. He's read everything I own and now I'm erratically picking up books I don't own for him at the library. If anybody has recommendations of books like what Pratchett or Douglas Adams have written, we'd both be glad.
² Rather like Pratchett's footnotes. That same sort of informative and entertaining aside which I am completely unable to mimic.
³ I've come to like drawing trees, which is a big change from skipping out of class early when I'm supposed to be drawing trees. I must tell my Basic Drawing teacher. I think he'd be glad to see that I've matured as an artist or something. I bet he'd be even more impressed if I finally went away and got a degree. Maybe I'll wait to talk to him...