wednesday reads n' things
What I've recently finished reading:
In audio, The Story of Gösta Berling by by Selma Lagerlöf. The linked stories in this book felt to me like the forerunner of Garrison Keillor's tales of Lake Wobegon, with a hint of John Steinbeck and a somewhat gentler O. Henry and a streak of magical realism. The titular Gösta Berling is a defrocked priest who comes to live among the pensioners at the Ekeby estate - a group of mostly old men who are given a home by the mistress of the estate. In one of the first stories, on Christmas Eve the men make a deal with (perhaps) the devil to gain the estate; the rest of the stories tell various tales of the pensioners and their lives, and the women around them, as the year progresses around the seasons, ending with Christmas one year later. The tales vary: some are moralistic, some humorous, some are realistic, some have elements of the fantastic, some are romantic, some are pragmatic. It seemed to me as though they gathered sophistication and depth as they went on, though partly that may be because the later stories call back to the people and events of previous ones. There is a great deal of tremendously evocative scenery description, and as I listened on my exercise runs, I imagined the dark forests and clear lakes of Värmland.
Reading (listening) in translation I can only imagine that the original was beautifully written, for the translation is lovely and melodic. The translation by Pauline Bancroft Flach was made not long after the original publication in 1894, and she preserved what to a modern reader seems old-fashioned phrasing, but it helps set the scene, I think - and after all, the stories are set even earlier, in the 1820s. The cadences are meant to be read aloud, and so it was a joy to listen to the Librivox recording. The narrator, a volunteer as all Librivox readers are, has a pleasant voice, though it's a bit sing-song (I suspect because of his native Swedish intonations), and his voices for the various characters are well-done and clear. The only issue is that he mispronounces a number of English words (I particularly noticed 'cradle' and 'fatigue'), but if you can overlook this, it's really a great listen. (Both audio and ebook versions are available for free online via Librivox and Gutenberg respectively, as this work is in the public domain.)
In eyeball-book, The Round House by Louise Erdrich. A barely-teenage Obijwe boy and his extended family and friends coping with a brutal attack (rape and attempted murder) on his mother; it's sharp, harsh, and emotionally wrenching to read. It's set in 1988, and Joe and his friends pepper their talk with Star Trek references - the chapter titles nagged at me until I looked one up and realized they are all ST:TNG episode names - which helps throw the weird dichotomy of modern rez life, modern aspects butting up against historic and traditional ones, into sharp relief.
Erdrich weaves together modern reservation issues with tribal folklore and the quotidian difficulty of being a thirteen-year-old boy. One important thread is the patchwork of police enforcement jurisdiction, where the agency in charge of investigating a crime will vary according to whether the suspect is or is not a tribal member, ditto for the victim, and whether it took place on tribal, city, county, state, or federal land. (Incidentally this is a real issue where I live as well, near the Southern Ute reservation.) Another is the views of Indians toward the whites living on their land, and vice versa, and the human impulses and desires that drive us all. It's a tremendously well-crafted book, but it's also unsettling, and I'm not sure I would say I liked it exactly, more that I appreciated reading it.
What I'm reading now:
In audio, I have just started listening to Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. In text, I have just started reading Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.
What I've just finished watching:
We finished S4 of The Expanse! I think they really knocked it out of the park with this season; it's a nonstop ride from start to finish. Also, it is so, so illustrative of (my takeaway) of the general theme of the series, to wit, "humans are so tribal that it takes an external threat to get us to even consider stopping squabbling to band together, and even then, chances are we will just keep throttling those who we consider Other rather than actually unifying." I love the diversity of the cast and the way the smaller side stories play against the main plot, and as someone who read the books first, I really like the way they have incorporated bits from the novellas and even invented subplots and characters in order to make it a more coherent narrative. (In particular, both Bobbie Draper and Chrisjen Avasarala are mostly absent from the main book the season is based on, and so giving them both side plots to keep them in front of viewers is a good choice, since they have major roles in later books.)
What I'm watching now:
I have watched four episodes of The Untamed. I am entertained, so far, though I don't feel particularly fannish about it. The fact that I keep forgetting to include it in my media posts probably says it all, heh.
We will probably start another series tonight. What will it be?
What I'm playing now:
I'm still playing Obduction! I've gone to two other planet-pieces! I'm sort of stuck right now because even my hint page doesn't give enough information for me to solve the particular puzzle I'm on - I think I'll fiddle with it some more and then look for an actual walkthrough if I can't get it. But in general it's fun, and really pretty, and the logic puzzles make sense. One really cool part that made my geeky mathy heart happy is that one of the alien species uses base 4, and there's a panel that you use to input the digits that is not in any way remotely like Arabic numerals, but - I just figured out the actual digit patterns, and it's lovely, it's clever and it's so non-anything-human that it makes a perfectly plausible alien math thing!
What I saw last night:
Some friends wanted to go see the Choir of Man so we all got tickets for their performance here. I made dinner and then we went over, but alas we were a little too late and missed the free beer(!) on stage before the performance. It was...a thing, anyway. The music was mostly not really to my taste (with a few excellent exceptions) and the high-energy scripted joking and playing onstage felt kind of, well, scripted and stagy. I think my overall feeling was that this was a boyband for the gray-haired set.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
In audio, The Story of Gösta Berling by by Selma Lagerlöf. The linked stories in this book felt to me like the forerunner of Garrison Keillor's tales of Lake Wobegon, with a hint of John Steinbeck and a somewhat gentler O. Henry and a streak of magical realism. The titular Gösta Berling is a defrocked priest who comes to live among the pensioners at the Ekeby estate - a group of mostly old men who are given a home by the mistress of the estate. In one of the first stories, on Christmas Eve the men make a deal with (perhaps) the devil to gain the estate; the rest of the stories tell various tales of the pensioners and their lives, and the women around them, as the year progresses around the seasons, ending with Christmas one year later. The tales vary: some are moralistic, some humorous, some are realistic, some have elements of the fantastic, some are romantic, some are pragmatic. It seemed to me as though they gathered sophistication and depth as they went on, though partly that may be because the later stories call back to the people and events of previous ones. There is a great deal of tremendously evocative scenery description, and as I listened on my exercise runs, I imagined the dark forests and clear lakes of Värmland.
Reading (listening) in translation I can only imagine that the original was beautifully written, for the translation is lovely and melodic. The translation by Pauline Bancroft Flach was made not long after the original publication in 1894, and she preserved what to a modern reader seems old-fashioned phrasing, but it helps set the scene, I think - and after all, the stories are set even earlier, in the 1820s. The cadences are meant to be read aloud, and so it was a joy to listen to the Librivox recording. The narrator, a volunteer as all Librivox readers are, has a pleasant voice, though it's a bit sing-song (I suspect because of his native Swedish intonations), and his voices for the various characters are well-done and clear. The only issue is that he mispronounces a number of English words (I particularly noticed 'cradle' and 'fatigue'), but if you can overlook this, it's really a great listen. (Both audio and ebook versions are available for free online via Librivox and Gutenberg respectively, as this work is in the public domain.)
In eyeball-book, The Round House by Louise Erdrich. A barely-teenage Obijwe boy and his extended family and friends coping with a brutal attack (rape and attempted murder) on his mother; it's sharp, harsh, and emotionally wrenching to read. It's set in 1988, and Joe and his friends pepper their talk with Star Trek references - the chapter titles nagged at me until I looked one up and realized they are all ST:TNG episode names - which helps throw the weird dichotomy of modern rez life, modern aspects butting up against historic and traditional ones, into sharp relief.
Erdrich weaves together modern reservation issues with tribal folklore and the quotidian difficulty of being a thirteen-year-old boy. One important thread is the patchwork of police enforcement jurisdiction, where the agency in charge of investigating a crime will vary according to whether the suspect is or is not a tribal member, ditto for the victim, and whether it took place on tribal, city, county, state, or federal land. (Incidentally this is a real issue where I live as well, near the Southern Ute reservation.) Another is the views of Indians toward the whites living on their land, and vice versa, and the human impulses and desires that drive us all. It's a tremendously well-crafted book, but it's also unsettling, and I'm not sure I would say I liked it exactly, more that I appreciated reading it.
What I'm reading now:
In audio, I have just started listening to Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. In text, I have just started reading Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.
What I've just finished watching:
We finished S4 of The Expanse! I think they really knocked it out of the park with this season; it's a nonstop ride from start to finish. Also, it is so, so illustrative of (my takeaway) of the general theme of the series, to wit, "humans are so tribal that it takes an external threat to get us to even consider stopping squabbling to band together, and even then, chances are we will just keep throttling those who we consider Other rather than actually unifying." I love the diversity of the cast and the way the smaller side stories play against the main plot, and as someone who read the books first, I really like the way they have incorporated bits from the novellas and even invented subplots and characters in order to make it a more coherent narrative. (In particular, both Bobbie Draper and Chrisjen Avasarala are mostly absent from the main book the season is based on, and so giving them both side plots to keep them in front of viewers is a good choice, since they have major roles in later books.)
What I'm watching now:
I have watched four episodes of The Untamed. I am entertained, so far, though I don't feel particularly fannish about it. The fact that I keep forgetting to include it in my media posts probably says it all, heh.
We will probably start another series tonight. What will it be?
What I'm playing now:
I'm still playing Obduction! I've gone to two other planet-pieces! I'm sort of stuck right now because even my hint page doesn't give enough information for me to solve the particular puzzle I'm on - I think I'll fiddle with it some more and then look for an actual walkthrough if I can't get it. But in general it's fun, and really pretty, and the logic puzzles make sense. One really cool part that made my geeky mathy heart happy is that one of the alien species uses base 4, and there's a panel that you use to input the digits that is not in any way remotely like Arabic numerals, but - I just figured out the actual digit patterns, and it's lovely, it's clever and it's so non-anything-human that it makes a perfectly plausible alien math thing!
What I saw last night:
Some friends wanted to go see the Choir of Man so we all got tickets for their performance here. I made dinner and then we went over, but alas we were a little too late and missed the free beer(!) on stage before the performance. It was...a thing, anyway. The music was mostly not really to my taste (with a few excellent exceptions) and the high-energy scripted joking and playing onstage felt kind of, well, scripted and stagy. I think my overall feeling was that this was a boyband for the gray-haired set.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth