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highlyeccentricWhat Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
Well, of the ten or so things listed on goodreads as 'currently reading', what I brought away with me and am currently consuming consists of:
Serge Brussolo, Lina et la forêt des sortilèges: Tome 1, la tombola des démons. Lina, 15, citizen of a semi-magical kingdom, has enrolled in a vocational program as a vetinary nurse for monsters, and has been assigned to the care of abandoned imaginary friends. Fierce beasts! Thus far she has, predictably, come to question the orthodox stance on the violent monstrosity of these creations of the infant imagination - I gather she will soon escape into the Forest of Spells and be forced to make Important Decisions. This is very important and serious language practice, I assure you.
Stephen C. Jaeger, Ennobling Love - continues fascinating. I've just read the chapter 'Women' and there are useful things in it.
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - I'm finding this moderately interesting and at times charming, but not as engaging as I'd expected. I wonder if it's not well-suited to ebook format? Certainly my malfunctioning Kobo screen isn't helping matters.
I'm also about 1000 lines further on in Of Arthour and Merline than previously. It took a surprisingly long time for anyone to accuse Blase of impregnating the young lass. By this time I think Merlin was about four and gave his mother's accusers what for.
What did you recently finish reading?
Just this afternoon I finished Judith Weiss' translation of The Romance of Horn. I now have a lot of transcribing to do when I get back to Geneva and my edition: current workplan is to transcribe relevant stanzas only and give up the line-by-line translation quest. Pretty sure I can use this text as evidence for transactional / alliance-based cross-sex friendship, and also something about male messenger-intermediaries in courtship. Meanwhile, I shall put the rest of The Birth of Romance: An Anthology aside to real with later.
Just before leaving Geneva I finished reading Chaucer's Roman de la Rose, but will have to go back over it to distill Thoughts.
Over Christmas, two Fun Books, reviewed below - Pratchett's 'A Blink of the Screen' and Muriel Spark's 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'.
What do you think you'll read next?
Academically, I have a small stash of articles to plough through next week. For funsies, the two above will keep me occupied until I get back to Geneva, but I think I'll make Dr J happy and read his copy of 'Cold Comfort Farm', if only so he'll shut up about how I ought to read it.
Aaand the last two book reviews for 2013. Including these two, I've logged 35 reviews for 2013, including two novellas, one stand-alone short story, and two four-book series. \o/ Go me?
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this up from the 'free books' shelf at work, noting that it was about the right size for a single short plane trip. And lo, that's about how long it took me. It was... interesting. I think one was supposed to be attracted to Miss Brodie's character from the start, but I wasn't - her disregard for curriculum in favour of talking about her own life irked me, and her obvious narcissism. Those threads remained, but over the course of the book I started to see her as frustrated - *she* thought her great passion was teaching, but she could've been so much more than a manipulator of young girls. Perhaps if she'd done as was suggested and moved to a 'new' school. Perhaps if her lover hadn't died. Perhaps perhaps.
I found myself agreeing with Sandy: Miss Brodie DID have to be stopped. But in my eyes, the slip-up with the student who went to fight for Franco on Miss Brodie's advice was far more heinous than the sexual misdemeanours (though that was all screwed up, too).
IN SHORT: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS. TEACHERS NEED THEM.
I really can't make up my mind on the quality of the human insight in the novella or any of that, but the narrative threading, past-present-and-future was very well done.
Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen:
A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was quite a romp - I particularly appreciated the inclusion of 13-year-old-Pterry's first foray into published fiction. It was a jolly good read, that one. I think overall I liked the non-discworld stories best, although Vetinari's speech on the twinning of Ankh-Morpork with I can't remember which small English town was pure gold.
"Twenty Pense, with Envelope and Seasonal Greetings" was a fine story - I am eyeing off the robin on a Christmas Card across from me with some suspicion even now. I was most fond of the computer who wanted a teddy, although I can't recall which story that was in now.
"Once and Future" was great and rattles around in my head even now. Somewhere in my future I suspect there's a course on Merlin > Medieval to Modern or something similar. I was most upset, though, that Merlin in this story asserted that he'd spoken Middle English with Gutenberg. GUTENBERG LIVED IN GERMANY. Pfah.
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
Well, of the ten or so things listed on goodreads as 'currently reading', what I brought away with me and am currently consuming consists of:
Serge Brussolo, Lina et la forêt des sortilèges: Tome 1, la tombola des démons. Lina, 15, citizen of a semi-magical kingdom, has enrolled in a vocational program as a vetinary nurse for monsters, and has been assigned to the care of abandoned imaginary friends. Fierce beasts! Thus far she has, predictably, come to question the orthodox stance on the violent monstrosity of these creations of the infant imagination - I gather she will soon escape into the Forest of Spells and be forced to make Important Decisions. This is very important and serious language practice, I assure you.
Stephen C. Jaeger, Ennobling Love - continues fascinating. I've just read the chapter 'Women' and there are useful things in it.
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - I'm finding this moderately interesting and at times charming, but not as engaging as I'd expected. I wonder if it's not well-suited to ebook format? Certainly my malfunctioning Kobo screen isn't helping matters.
I'm also about 1000 lines further on in Of Arthour and Merline than previously. It took a surprisingly long time for anyone to accuse Blase of impregnating the young lass. By this time I think Merlin was about four and gave his mother's accusers what for.
What did you recently finish reading?
Just this afternoon I finished Judith Weiss' translation of The Romance of Horn. I now have a lot of transcribing to do when I get back to Geneva and my edition: current workplan is to transcribe relevant stanzas only and give up the line-by-line translation quest. Pretty sure I can use this text as evidence for transactional / alliance-based cross-sex friendship, and also something about male messenger-intermediaries in courtship. Meanwhile, I shall put the rest of The Birth of Romance: An Anthology aside to real with later.
Just before leaving Geneva I finished reading Chaucer's Roman de la Rose, but will have to go back over it to distill Thoughts.
Over Christmas, two Fun Books, reviewed below - Pratchett's 'A Blink of the Screen' and Muriel Spark's 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'.
What do you think you'll read next?
Academically, I have a small stash of articles to plough through next week. For funsies, the two above will keep me occupied until I get back to Geneva, but I think I'll make Dr J happy and read his copy of 'Cold Comfort Farm', if only so he'll shut up about how I ought to read it.
Aaand the last two book reviews for 2013. Including these two, I've logged 35 reviews for 2013, including two novellas, one stand-alone short story, and two four-book series. \o/ Go me?
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel SparkMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this up from the 'free books' shelf at work, noting that it was about the right size for a single short plane trip. And lo, that's about how long it took me. It was... interesting. I think one was supposed to be attracted to Miss Brodie's character from the start, but I wasn't - her disregard for curriculum in favour of talking about her own life irked me, and her obvious narcissism. Those threads remained, but over the course of the book I started to see her as frustrated - *she* thought her great passion was teaching, but she could've been so much more than a manipulator of young girls. Perhaps if she'd done as was suggested and moved to a 'new' school. Perhaps if her lover hadn't died. Perhaps perhaps.
I found myself agreeing with Sandy: Miss Brodie DID have to be stopped. But in my eyes, the slip-up with the student who went to fight for Franco on Miss Brodie's advice was far more heinous than the sexual misdemeanours (though that was all screwed up, too).
IN SHORT: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS. TEACHERS NEED THEM.
I really can't make up my mind on the quality of the human insight in the novella or any of that, but the narrative threading, past-present-and-future was very well done.
Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen:
A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction by Terry PratchettMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was quite a romp - I particularly appreciated the inclusion of 13-year-old-Pterry's first foray into published fiction. It was a jolly good read, that one. I think overall I liked the non-discworld stories best, although Vetinari's speech on the twinning of Ankh-Morpork with I can't remember which small English town was pure gold.
"Twenty Pense, with Envelope and Seasonal Greetings" was a fine story - I am eyeing off the robin on a Christmas Card across from me with some suspicion even now. I was most fond of the computer who wanted a teddy, although I can't recall which story that was in now.
"Once and Future" was great and rattles around in my head even now. Somewhere in my future I suspect there's a course on Merlin > Medieval to Modern or something similar. I was most upset, though, that Merlin in this story asserted that he'd spoken Middle English with Gutenberg. GUTENBERG LIVED IN GERMANY. Pfah.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-15 01:53 pm (UTC)But Sam Vimes owns my heart. AMCW No. 177, Forever!
"The Prim of Miss Jean Brodie" sounds interesting. Is "the Birth of Romance" about the development of chivalry or similar?