“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

Ah. I think I owe myself one of these.

Work — where I read stuff that’s not really that interesting

So. Haven’t been reading much. At first it was because I was busy with work — editing/proofing a 440-page book takes a lot of time, and leaves you feeling like not wanting to read anything ever again, at least when the day ends, and it’s really annoying when the final proof comes from the printers and you notice a full stop is missing. Noooooo. (Don’t be anal, says my team leader. But I can’t help myself.) But anyway. Haven’t been reading much, that what I was saying.

New books

I don’t even have library books checked out at the moment, partly because it’s the fasting month and the library closes early, and I was feeling a bit doubtful that I would manage to return/renew books on time, knowing how late I was staying at the office at times. So I returned the last batch about three weeks ago and haven’t checked out anything since, but maybe I’ll pop in for a visit the next Saturday the library is open.

I do have some new books, though! It’s a debilitating weakness, this, wanting to own so many books. My books on the “to read” shelf is slowly taking over my “favourite books” shelf, and this, surely, should be a cause of alarm. Among new books acquired (hee!):

• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• and a new copy of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman!

Currently reading

I’m currently reading Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter and getting a headache trying to parse it. A short summary: it’s about Macbeth. I don’t think it’s the language; it’s more of the unfamiliarity of the setting and trying to get the characters sorted out right. I don’t understand anything that’s going on in Rome at the moment. (11th century Europe! What was I thinking?) I think I’ll wait for the reading group (at GoK) to catch up and see if the discussions will help with my comprehension. I’m reading ahead and I’m two-thirds finished — discussion is only up to Chapter 4 at the moment.

I’m trying to read other books as well between gnashing my teeth as Thorfinn (aka Macbeth) goes about talking to bishops and the Pope — I want him to go back to Orkney now, where things made more sense to me — but I haven’t latched on to any book in particular yet. I think I’ll go back to YA SF/F and try Philip Reeve’s Predator’s Gold again. Or perhaps I’ll start reading Cloud Atlas.

Weekly Geeks, etc

No new reviews have been posted since Possession (yes, I’m a slacker) and I still haven’t answered all the questions for Weekly Geeks #12! (Slacker!) I think I’ll try to get those as much as I could done for WG #18, which is about catching up, as well as go about updating my TBR list and challenge lists and blogrolls and whatnots. For WG #17 I posted quotes from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (it’s an obsession. I’m sorry. And Checkmate isn’t even my favourite book!) and included some links I found useful when I was looking for more information about the quotes.

Here’s my last quote for WG #17, still from the book Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (and omitting names and a few phrases for the sake of avoiding spoilers). Lymond is saying he’s already pledged to someone, something his companion doesn’t expect:

She saw that, looking ahead in the fog, his profile contained a curious and suspended calm, the smiling mask of a state far from peaceful. “Not her,” he said. “But for my lifetime.” And walking still he offered her, smiling again, four lines of verse, lightly spoken.

“Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera
Pour nulle vivante, tant sout elle bonne ou sage
Forte et puissante riche de hault lignaige
Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. It was a half-truth. Subconsciously, she had always known. She said, “It’s my turn to beg your pardon. I only wanted to assure you that I have nothing to tender but friendship. But if you want it, there is a great deal of that, going cheaply.”

That verse has to be the most famous one in the series. Or infamous. I don’t know any more. It makes an appearance again (among other places) in an incident that involves an oboe in a flowerbed, but of course you have to go read that yourself.

It’s also one of those rare verses where the author actually gives a translation. (I can read fluently only in two languages. French is not one of them.) Pages later, but still a translation:

Long as I live, my heart will never vary
For no one else, however fair and good
Brave, resolute or rich, of gentle blood.
My choice is made, and I will have no other.

The last line is emphasised in bold in my copy, and I found that both touching and a teeny bit ridiculous at the same time. The original source (which contains more than this one verse) is unknown, but they appear in the poetry album of Margaret of Austria.

And this is the end of WG #17 for me! Just in case anyone wants to go through the previous quotes, a summary:

1. gems of lapis lazuli
2. strange birds cry Today! Today!
3. horns of unicorns
4. snails within the shell
5. free of all shadow
6. perfume of cedars
7. tant que je vive

Hopefully I’ll get more inspired to post after doing this for seven straight days! All posts for WG #17 are tagged as misc: weekly geeks #17. Yes, I’m a bit anal like that.

I didn’t actually mean to do this at the start, but I ended up quoting passages with quotes in them, either in the narrative itself or where the characters (notably Lymond, since he has a barrage of quotes stored in his head) are quoting something. Also ended up with quite a few verses of poetry and a lot of links.

All quotes are from Dorothy Dunnett’s Checkmate, the sixth and last book in her Lymond Chronicles. The first book in the series is titled The Game of Kings — if you like historical fiction, you might want to give the books a go. Even if you’re not much of a fan of historical fiction, you might still want to give it a try; nothing beats good storytelling, people!

Extra information appended to the quotes I either found through Google or Wikipedia or through the Yahoo Groups Game of Kings and Marzipan, though I didn’t take anything directly from the groups. (It’s just hard to attribute stuff when groups aren’t public. You should join if you have any interest in discussion — some of the stuff there is just fascinating. A warning, though: GoK especially is a minefield when it comes to spoilers, so you might want to tread carefully.)

Maybe I just like lapis lazuli? As Joanne observed on the first quote, it is a gorgeous gem.

Anyway. This is still from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett. Some names were omitted from the quote to protect the uninitiated etc. XD

The scent of the small room was pleasing. Moonlight limned in grey in the story of Psyche on the finely arched window, and alighting within, touched upon nymphs and garlands and roses, and upon lines of silver, glittering by the chimney-piece:

I will harness thee a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold
Come into our dwelling, in the perfume of the cedars . . .

Where are the links of the chain, glimmering there: joining us to the past? The perfume was pleasing because it was familiar to him. The other presences, in the silence, were older.

The two lines looks like they came from the Epic of Gilgamesh, particularly from Tablet VI. It’s what Ishtar, the goddess of love, is offering to Gilgamesh, but he rejects her. I think I am slightly agog at what’s implied behind these quotes.

Also, I like the line about the glimmering chains, joining us to the past. I think it’s fitting that “Where are the links of the chain . . . joining us to the past?” is what is written on Dorothy Dunnett’s memorial stone.

Somehow I accidentally got onto the poetry train. Ah well. As before, this is from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett.

This one I love because of its resonance in the story. And the importance it plays in the relationship between the characters, whom I shall not name because I was so clever to choose the last volume to quote from and I am still hanging by my fingertips to my “no spoiler” policy. And it’s beautiful on its own.

Aşk Olsun sang the plaintive, sweet voices to the undulating airs one had heard inside Zante, through Thessalonika, within the gates of Topkapi itself. Aşkin Cemal Olsun . . . Let there be love. May thy love be beautiful. May thy beauty be light.

The truth is that thy body is free of all shadow.
To soul and brain from thy abode comes the perfume of Paradise.
O thy beauty!
The brightness of the day and the night!
Are made timid by thy hair . . .

The words used by the Bektashi in the ceremony of the tekke: how could a group of student singers know these?

Notes (to self): I took some liberties with the formatting. Zante, Thessalonika and Topkapi are places (right?) we stopped at or passed through in Pawn in Frankincense (Book 4).

Aşk Olsun is a song in Turkish. The Bektashi is a Sufi order; the tekke is a building the Sufi gather in for ceremonies now I am not sure what a tekke is because I just reread the quoted sentence and realised that I was being redundant. I probably should reread Pawn in Frankincense, but reading that will probably cause me to burst into incoherent tears at parts, so I’ll refrain doing so for the the time being. XD

You know, I’ll just stick with this one book this week: Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (surely you would not have expected anything less from me?). I chose this is one simply because I found the verse curious. Francis Crawford (aka Lymond) is throwing down barrels rather systematically down rooftops as he’s trying to dissuade what looks like the whole of Lyon from coming after him and his companion (”No one could say we hadn’t brought ourselves now to the attention of this majestic metropolis,” says Lymond later).

Towards the end he found some boules and bounced them down as well: they hailed upon barrels and footpads and trilled, with ringing reproach, on the rising helmets of the pikemen beyond them.

“As Snailes do wast within the shel
And unto slime do run
As one before his tyme that fel
And never saw the sunne . . .

“Whoops! That was Adam,” said Francis Crawford, watching open-eyed the progress of his latest invention. “Serve him bloody well right.”

Poor Adam, to be caught in that — I am rather fond of Adam and I didn’t really relish the image of him being crushed like a snail in its shell. (Nothing bad happens to him here, though I must say no one suffers Lymond’s company unscathed.) I found the whole scene hilarious.

This one is from Psalm 58 in English metre. I was quite surprised to learn that! I was wondering why Lymond would have verses about snails handy. Then again, he has quotes about everything in his head, I suppose.