“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

The way things are going, this year could end up being The Great Year of Re-reading!

OK. I haven’t been posting much. Rather, I haven’t been posting anything here. I’m feeling rather vague and not very committed to doing anything at the moment, but not writing anything here leaves me feeling cranky. I want to join challenges and make lists, but I keep making excuses, so here I am rambling about nothing.

Uh.

The Great Year of Re-reading! There’s where I was. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

It’s the end of January, almost, and I still haven’t read much. Not as much as I want to, and I haven’t been paying attention much to the blog or the community lately. I am ashamed. Weekly Geeks have started again (we miss you, Dewey) and I still haven’t participated. I’ll try to cook up a post and visit after this!

Books in January

I finished a few books. Here we go with short recaps with very little chance of a longer, critical review coming forth. I’ve decided I’m bad at reviews! Links are to the respective editions at GoodReads.

1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

I think this is the first Rushdie book I finished. I think I started The Moor’s Last Sigh but got nowhere with that one. The story is about one Salem Sinai (and his family, and more) and his overly large nose who was born at midnight on the day of India’s independence. Yes, there’s more to it than that.

I liked the book, but it took me so long to finish it. It was partly because I was busy and partly because it was a bit hard to parse.

2. Royal Escape by Georgette Heyer

This one I picked up on a whim. I saw Heyer’s books at a bookstore and thought, “Hey I know some people who love Georgette Heyer,” and their tastes were quite compatible with mine, so I stopped at the shelf. Then I noticed that Heyer was a very prolific writer and I was overwhelmed and my mind drew a blank — I couldn’t think of a single title that came recommended. I was about to walk away from the shelf when I steeled myself and looked through the books, and ended up with Royal Escape because it sounded like it had action and adventure.

And it had a lot of adventure, if not much action. The story is about the escape of Charles II from Oliver Cromwell (this is where my history fails me; I have no idea what caused what and why Charles was escaping from anyone and I’ll admit, to my shame, I didn’t really look things up even after I finished the book). It was an easy read — I finished it in two nights, reading it before I went to bed. I shall look up what actually comes recommended by Heyer and tackle that next.

3. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones

On the preliminary pages there’s a list of other Tough Guides. Which I don’t think actually exist. I saw one title: The Tough Guide to Transport in the Multiverse (mostly by Telephone Box) which made me snort with laughter — and I hadn’t even started the book proper at that point!

Despite ending up literally laughing out loud while reading the book, this one took even longer to finish than Midnight’s Children. It was funny and really, really fun . . . in small doses. It gets a bit repetitive after a while since it’s formatted like an encyclopaedia and all, especially if you read every entry. Skipping about makes it more fun, I think. (Just look up Eternal Quest; you’ll end up groaning at the definition.)

If you’ve read a lot of fantasy novels (like I have) you’ll find yourself chuckling at the clichés. Probably a good guide to have if you’re writing a fantasy novel (or trilogy, or, heaven forbid, a twelve-book cycle and die just before you finish the last one) just to make sure you’re not repeating the same things everyone has said before. XD

4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick

I am glad I liked this! I end up so frustrated when I read these so called “cult classics” or “ground-breaking novels” and end up thinking, “Well, that was OK, but what’s the fuss about?” that I’m beginning to lose faith in lists and recommendations. I like lists with many, many books in them. I like it even more if I know I can trust those lists! (Yes, I know they don’t account personal tastes and all, but I don’t really have that many friends who read who can recommend me books.)

I’ve never watched Blade Runner. Should I?

5. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

I love this book. I have no other excuse. I don’t remember how many times I’ve reread it, but I’ve blogged about it at least once. Howl is perfectly ridiculous. Sophie being a cantankerous old lady is great fun. Calcifer and his hints — goodness, he gave a lot, didn’t he, it was just that Sophie had no idea what she was supposed to look out for.

And I’m pretty slow on the uptake. Some pieces just clicked this time around — I’ve just realised how old Howl is (a little over 27) not that it’s important but it should’ve been obvious if I had paid attention; now I wonder if we were actually told who cleft the devil’s foot. (What devil?) I am rambling. Never mind. Perhaps I’ll post again about Howl’s Moving Castle, comparing the film and the book, since I watched it the nth time with my siblings and still couldn’t make much sense of it.

What d’ya mean, re-reads?

Back to my original point about it being a year of re-reads — I’ve already re-read one book: Howl’s Moving Castle. I’m currently re-reading both Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. I’m tempted to add more but I already have too many new books on my plate.

But. BUT! Looking at the re-read for Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series going on here is leaving me tempted to re-read the books. It will probably take forever, though the target is to finish the rereading before the last book, Memory of Light, is published this fall. (Also the snark in the discussion delights me. These people love RJ and the series, but they’re willing to make fun of it and of themselves while still being analytical, and not kill each other when they’re trying to determine whether Nyneave or Egwene is the more annoying of the girls. Also there will probably be a count on how many time someone crosses her arms beneath her breasts.)

I can’t find the tenth volume of the series, Light (that’s the right terminology, yes?) help me if I could get the titles of the fifth book onwards straight. We own all the books. It’s not with any of my siblings and no one in his or her right mind would be borrowing just the tenth book in the series without reading the previous nine, so we’re kinda stumped to where it went missing. I hope it turns up when (or if) I ever get to it in the process of rereading. Which, I am gloomily predicting, will probably end up being the process of skimming-through-the-chapters-very-fast-and-getting-really-annoyed-at-the-female-characters. Jordan seems to equate “strong female characters” to “female characters who bully the dudes” and it sets me off sometimes. A lot of times. Most times, I guess. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, if ever.

Too ambitious, this rereading project. That’s what I think. But hey, why not give it a go? XD;

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Gong Xi Fa Cai, by the way. Have a good year of the ox. :)

Possession: A Romance by AS Byatt
Random House 2002 (first published 1990)
500+ pages

Possession: A Romance is the story of two contemporary scholars, Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, who are researching the lives of two Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Roland finds a draft of a letter from Ash to a lady friend and soon learns that Ash might had had an affair with LaMotte, which leads Roland to Maud, a LaMotte scholar.

. . . Okay, it’s actually more exciting than that. Roland and Maud’s story unfolds along with Ash and LaMotte’s story as they go on a literary treasure hunt digging up old letters and we end up reading those letters, and journals, and epic poems, and a lot of other stuff besides. Uh. This description is not going well.

The book was made into a movie in 2002, staring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. My library seems fond of acquiring movie tie-in versions of books, hence the cover you see here. I haven’t watched the movie. Does anyone know whether it’s good?

Anyway. Let’s move on to the questions from this Weekly Geeks post.

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Here’s one from Suey:

» My main question for anyone that’s read Possession, and be honest here . . . did you skip the poems? (I did . . . and hopefully there was nothing big and revealing in them!)

Haha! The question made me laugh. I did read most of the poems, actually. Well, “read” might be too strong a word — “skimmed” was more like it. Especially Ash’s poems — I kept feeling like he just wanted to show off how clever he was! I did like some of Christabel LaMotte’s poems, though . . . I can’t remember what it was called, but it was about the woman and her lover and uh, the sea that was about to submerge their city? (It is obvious that I don’t really pay attention to these things!)

What usually happens is this: I am enjoying the story and the narrative and ka-blam! Here comes a six-page poem! A sample of an epic greater than anything ever written before! And yet I have no idea what Ash’s talking about! So I usually set the book down at this point and go off to read something else. I come back, I skim through the whole thing, and sigh in relief when I get back to Roland and Maud. If there were anything revealing in the poems, I wouldn’t know — I was marvelling too much at the language to actually try to understand what the poets were saying!

Julie says she didn’t read the poems either — so you are not alone! ;)

Some questions from Christine:

» How did you like Possession? Any favourite moments? Did you see the ending coming, or not so much? Would you recommend it?

I liked it quite well! I wish it was a bit shorter, though — or the poems were a bit shorter, at least! It was able to tide me through a weekend with distracted parents and noisy kids, which says quite a bit about capturing my attention. I was reading the book at a gathering with some university friends at a beach. They all gave me this amused look and told their kids not to bother me — I am glad I didn’t have to read any of Ash’s poetry to two-year-olds. I have nothing against kids; it was just awkward that I was the only one without one, something I only noticed when the boys were being all manly and setting up the barbecue pit and the girls were busy pacifying their children — goodness, when did we grow up? — and I was left with nothing to do.

I don’t have any particular favourite moment, I guess. It was a library book, and I keep wondering: the next time I find it again on the shelves, which pages would I flip back to?, and I couldn’t think of any. (I have odd ways of rephrasing questions, I guess.) The ending — I did not see it coming at all, if you meant the very last chapter/epilogue with Randolph Ash walking down that country lane. I felt terribly, terribly sorry for Christabel then.

As for recommending it: I would, but with some reservations — you really do need patience to get through the book!

And here are the questions from Joy Renee again (I skipped/combined some of the questions, sorry!):

» How was point-of-view handled? Was there a single POV character or did it alternate among two or more? Was it always clear whose eyes and mind were filtering?

It changed. A lot. It was still mostly third person limited, and it was pretty clear who’s thinking what, but that’s not all. There are pages and pages and pages of poetry, a whole section containing letters being sent back and forth between Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte, excerpts from journals, excerpts from books written by (fictional) leading researchers about the (fictional) poets.

To me, the best thing about the whole book is how I keep thinking “Oh, Ash thinks he’s so clever!” and “Is Christabel LaMotte ever happy?” and “Why would anyone want to read such a pretentious autobiography!” when I read the excerpts, like they were real people with distinct writing styles instead of all of them being a creation of AS Byatt. That’s one heck of an accomplishment.

» How was language used to set tone and mood?

The Victorian part was very Victorian. I am no Victorian scholar, but it sounded authentic. The different poets/letter writers/people who kept journals/people who wrote books all sounded distinct from each other. The parts set in the modern day England (around late 1980s, I believe) were lighter and easier to read.

» Was the prose dense or spare? Were sentences generally simple or complex?

It’s a mix of both, depending which part you are reading at the moment.

» What was the central or organizing theme? How does the title relate to the story? Was it fitting?

Possession, I’d say. Possessing someone, possessing stolen letters, possessing trinkets from long-dead authors, possessing the past. A lot of possession going on. That’s the title, after all.

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Possession won the Booker Prize in 1990. It’s also the first book by AS Byatt I’ve read, and I’ll probably read her other works if I come across them. This was also read for the Man Booker Challenge.

This isn’t a specific review of any of the Dunnett books listed here, since the questions were general. I’ll cover the whole series generally then, since starting with the first un-reviewed book, The Disorderly Knights which is the third book in the series, doesn’t really make sense.

Here’s an overview: The Lymond Chronicles is a series of six books, following the journey of one Francis Crawford of Lymond beginning with The Game of Kings in 1547 Scotland and ends in Checkmate in 1558.

I’m actually quite nervous to answer the questions on these books! I’m afraid I’ll do Dorothy Dunnett an injustice or scare people away with my adoring fangirling!

Okay. Here we go. Here’s a question from Marg:

» I am interested to see that you are reading the Dunnett books. I intend to read them at some point but I must also confess that I am somewhat intimidated by them. I have heard that the language takes a long time to get used to. Did you find that to be the case, and do you have any advice for any of us scaredy cats who haven’t read Dunnett yet.

Oh, please do read them. The language took a little time to get used to, but I think it’s more acclimating to Dunnett’s style than it being “difficult” language. And that wasn’t really my main hurdle. I had a problem of being unable to figure out what was happening in the first thirty or so pages, but that resolved itself in time. My real problem was the quotes scattered around — everyone seemed to be quoting someone else (when I first started the books it seemed like the whole of Scotland was inhabited by people blessed with a classical education and with photographic memories which they used to throw quotes at each other in five different languages) and I got frustrated because I couldn’t understand what they were saying or what they were referring to. I also wasn’t familiar with the time period, so references to events went over my head.

My advice: don’t let that scare you! You can just ignore the quotes and the text that aren’t in English — it’s not that they don’t matter, but the story doesn’t rely on you understanding everything. Besides, it makes for interesting discussion later! Not knowing the history of Scotland didn’t cause all that much trouble to me; you find yourself piecing together things after a bit. Also, if you find yourself bewildered by the many characters who appear in the first few chapters, don’t worry too much. I think that happens to everyone, and most people are able to reconcile who did what when the characters appear again. Also it’s okay to feel like you want to throttle Lymond every now and then — especially at the beginning when you have no idea what the heck he is up to — he could be very frustrating at times. ;)

And if you’re the type who avoids spoilers at all costs, I’d advice skipping reading the back covers. Especially if, say, you’re on book three, don’t read what’s on the back of the next volumes. Don’t even read any of the blurb on The Disorderly Knights, even when you’re reading that volume. Seriously.

And a question from Joy:

» Re Dorothy Dunnett: I’ve never read anything by her but I’ve heard things that make me lean towards trying one. You seem to favor her, what would you say to me to cause me to lean harder towards her? If your comments relate to storytelling technique no much the better.

I favour her very much. Very. I’ve never been much of a historical fiction reader (the historical fiction book everyone and her mother has read — The Other Boleyn Girl? I still haven’t read it), but after picking up her books, I’ve been searching for other books in the same genre. I think Dunnett sort of spoiled me — now I compare the books I’m reading (historical fiction or not) against her work, and a lot of them fall short. Seriously. She’s that good a storyteller!

So I am using the rest of Joy’s questions with hopes that I’ll be able to explain myself better:

» How was Point-of-View handled? Was there a single POV character or did it alternate among two or more. Was it always clear whose eyes and mind were filtering?

The books are all in the third person. POV changes quite often, sometimes within a few paragraphs. It’s still limited third person POV, though. And it’s not quite clear, sometimes, whose POV it is — some of the more interesting and entertaining discussions over at the related Yahoo!Group at Marzipan/Game of Kings are about trying to determine who’s thinking what! (I’m pretty sure Dunnett did that on purpose, with a twinkle in her eye. Just to leave us wondering.) Surprisingly, Lymond is the one we get the least time from his POV — very rarely we get to see what Lymond actually thinks about what is going on — most of the story is “filtered” through the eyes of the people around him.

» How was language used to set tone and mood?

The first book, The Game of Kings, opens in 1547 Scotland and the six books span across more than ten years, from Scotland to France to Malta to the Ottoman Empire to Russia and back to Scotland again. I felt like I actually went to those places with Lymond (yes, I know I sound like a cliché). Dunnett writes everything in painstaking detail, and her research about the period is meticulous. As for the mood, well. There are scenes I keep rereading in delight, savouring the details. The funny moments are still funny, even when I reread them. And then there are chapters I can’t bear to reread because I know it’ll send me this close to tears (and I don’t cry easily) and leave me sad and miserable the whole day.

Yes, she’s that good a writer.

» Was the prose dense or spare? Were sentences generally simple or complex?

(It’s hard to answer these questions when I’m not sure what I’m comparing the books against.) It’s not really that dense, honest. The language isn’t really that hard to get into, despite contrary things you might hear. Here, have a sample from the opening of The Disorderly Knights:

On the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey marrying his aunt.

News of the English attack came towards the end of the ceremony when, by good fortune, young Scott and his aunt Grizel were by all accounts man and wife. There was no bother over priorities. As the congregation hustled out of the church, led by the bridegroom and father, and spurred off on the heels of the messenger, the new-made bride and her sister watched them go.

“I’m daft,” said Grizel Beaton to Janet Beaton, straightening her headdress where her bridegroom’s helmet had knocked it cockeyed. [. . .]

Who wouldn’t want to read a book with an opening like that?

» How was metaphor used? Were associations fresh or did they tend toward cliché? Did they add to your understanding of the theme?

Not often enough to make me notice, so I guess they were used sparingly. And I don’t know about clichés, I can’t remember any. And it adds to understanding, I’d say, especially after I read the discussion on the Yahoo!Group about leitmotifs and associations Dunnett used consistently throughout the series, though I can’t say I really noticed it when I first read the books.

» What was the central or organizing theme?

Redemption, I think. A lot of other things factor in, like love and loyalty but . . . well. It’s one man’s journey to redeem himself (to himself?) and to reconcile himself and, uh, a whole lot of things that would be spoiler-ish, with his country and his family and the ones he love and, well, himself.

. . . A lot of sense that made.

» How does the title relate to the story? Was it fitting?

Yep, they fit all right. The whole series has a chess motif to the titles, in order: The Game of Kings, Queens’ Play, The Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle and Checkmate. Lymond is also a master chess player, and um, there’s a lot of strategising involved. Also, there’s a really important chess game somewhere in the books. Um.

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Okay. Now I think I have scared away half of my six-people readership. XD

Postcards from No Man’s Land by Aidan Chambers
Definitions (2007) (First published 1999)
334 pages

My initial thoughts, some of which I typed into a text document while I was reading the book: Oh. That’s a surprising start. And I remember wondering: Will there be boys kissing later on? You can just see the good influences of certain online friends creeping into my thought process, XD. The answer, by the way, is “yes”, but it’s more incidental than being something actually important to the plot.

I don’t really know much about the Second World War. The only parts that are really familiar are often the parts where my country is involved, thanks to the (compulsory) Malaysian History subject I took when I was in school. I know the major events, and some of the major battles, but when it comes down to it, I know very little of the whole thing. (It makes me wonder: whatever did I learn during that one year of World History when I was in the Fourth Form? I vaguely remember chapters about the ancient civilizations and the rise of Christianity and Islam and the Renaissance period. Surely it didn’t stop there?)

Postcards from No Man’s Land is partially about World War II. The story begins with Jacob Todd, an English boy in the present-day (1995, I think?) Amsterdam, who’s there to visit the family that had taken care of his grandfather during the Battle of Anhem, and it’s the fifty-first anniversary of the battle. Jacob, travelling alone for the first time, finds himself facing unexpected situations and having to make difficult decisions.

Parallel to his story is the story of Geertrui, the young woman who takes care of Jacob’s grandfather during WWII. The narrative switches between Jacob wandering through the streets of Amsterdam and Geertrui struggling for survival during the war, and the stories eventually come together.

I mostly liked the book. It’s well written, a bit slow at points, but the shifting narratives between Jacob (in third person) and Geertrui (in first person) didn’t bother me, which is a really good thing because the first person POV often gets on my nerves, and the last book with dual narratives — that would be Diana Wynne Jones’s The Merlin Conspiracy — left me gritting my teeth in frustration. The ending is a bit clunky and perhaps a little hasty, but it still works for me. The later parts of Geertrui’s narrative reminded me — very sharply, actually — of Daisy in Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now: there was something similar in the desperate, we-only-have-this-moment tone in both of the girls’ voices.

I found Jacob’s story more interesting than Geertrui’s. His self-consciousness and shyness and his trying to accept himself is rather endearing. And I rather liked following him around Amsterdam as he discovers the city (and himself) than reading about the hardships of war; besides, he ends up having rather interesting conversations with Daan, Geertrui’s grandson, one of them about art history. Curious stuff.

More than anything else, this is another coming-of-age story — about sexuality and discovering yourself, finding your way, making choices, falling in love. The book also touches on other issues such as euthenasia and fidelity and adultery and bisexuality, and you’re pretty much left to make up your own mind at the end of it.

This book won both the Carnegie Medal (1999) and the Printz Award (2003). Apparently the book is part of a sequence called The Dance Sequence, and this is the fifth book. Other books in the sequence are: Breaktime, Dance on my Grave, Now I Know and The Toll Bridge. The library only has the sixth (and last) book, This Is All: the Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, which I’ll probably borrow one of these days. Not any time soon, though. It’s really, really thick! And so many frustrated reviewers. Hm. We’ll see.

Starcross: A Stirring Tale of British Vim upon the Seas of Space and Time! by Philip Reeve
Illustrated by David Wyatt
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (2007)
380 pages

Oh, this left me giggling almost the whole way. Maybe it’s because the last few books I had read before it were so serious, and it was a relief to read about the more light-hearted adventures of Art and Myrtle. I loved the narrative here as much as I loved it in Larklight, and that’s saying something because stuff in the first person often rubs me the wrong way.

My copy had three lines of titles (Starcross or The Coming of the Moobs! or Our Adventures in the Fourth Dimension — A Stirring Tale of British Vim upon the Seas of Space and Time!) and I had grinned just looking at those. What other narrator could be as droll as Art? And who else would ever use the word “amanuensis” on a title page of a book? I love the title pages and the ads on the inside covers and the chapter titles — I spent a lot of time on both Larklight and Starcross studying those inside covers and the illustrations and having a laugh over them.

As for the story itself, I enjoyed Starcross better than Larklight, though I think the story was stronger in Larklight. In this instalment, we find Art and Myrtle and their mother visiting the hotel Starcross, where strange things are happening. Some old friends make a reappearance . . . and disappear in forms you won’t expect them in. The family vacation ends up with Art and Myrtle having to save the universe. (Again.)

The patriotism and the Victorian sensibilities were absurd and relevant and fun at the same time. I love Myrtle best when she forgets to be “sensible”, and her decision at the end made me cheer. I spent some time reading this book sputtering at Jack. Pirate or not, you better learn how to treat a your lady, young man! And I wonder how Art could be so smart and yet so dense when it comes to Jack/Myrtle. The footnote about how Jack must be using How to Write Love Letters: A Guide for the Perplexed to prop a wobbly table sent me choking with laughter. The joys of being young.

There will be a sequel to this, obviously. I have reliable sources saying that the sequel, Mothstorm, will be out this year. One does not leave his readers gaping at a pirate’s behaviour towards his lady friend, when said lady friend has declared Ambitions of her own. How could you leave us with such a cliffhanger, Mr Reeve!