Books: another update
Jun. 23rd, 2013 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricMy non-work reading pace has picked up spectacularly, I see! In part, this is an effort to read or re-read particular books before giving them away as I move.
The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde: On the whole, these were charming, and surprisingly conventional in their morals and overt christian features (consider the selfish giant's visitation of child-Jesus). I did enjoy having a context to put to the oft-quoted Wilde line about enjoying talking to oneself, that being the only way to have a decent conversation.
What spoiled the book for me was "The birthday of the Infanta", which seemed to have no particular point other than to detail the exotic wonders of far-off spain, and featured a dwarf who died of a broken heart upon realising he was ugly.
Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictonary: This was a fantastic and fascinating read. I enjoyed it for the character insights into great names and serious institutions - Henry Sweet, W.W. Skeat, the Philological Society, Clarendon Press - with which I am already familiar. Turning a page and finding Sweet or Skeat is somewhat like finding an old friend or relation. Some of the personages featuring in this story were entirely new to me: the prickly and many-hobbied Frederick Furnival, and the etymological powerhouse, James Murray, among them. I particularly enjoyed the chapter which sketches information on some of Murray's volunteer quote-collectors and proofreaders - most notably, a hermit and a murderer, but also many strange characters and some names about whom nothing more is known.
I am also delighted - but unsurprised, familiar as I am with the dictionary - to find that all the Dictionary's founders and editors believed firmly in descriptive, rather than prescriptive, lexicography (although they were understandably conservative when it came to new-fangled terms which might go out of fashion or might not yet be fixed as lexemes - Murray's first edition did not, for instance, include the word 'radio' - nor, perplexingly, 'African'). Already I find myself hot under the collar when persons on the internet accuse the OED of being a "prestige" record of the language (this also suggests they are in sufficiently familiar with the OED and some of the coarse language therein). I don't doubt it's an imperfect record, especially of modern usage, but that is a product of the sheer number of words and depth in which they are recorded, and the slow progress of updating.
In lieu of further commentary, have some Henry Sweet insulting august institutions: "I know something of Oxford, and of its low state of morality as regards jobbery and personal interest'
And H.L. Mencken's postulations as to the celebrations Oxford had hosted when the dictionary was complete: "military exercises, boxing matches between the dons, orations in Latin and Greek, English and the Oxford dialect, yelling contests between the different colleges and a series of medieval drinking bouts"
Tamora Pierce, Circle of Magic Quartet: I re-read the whole series while on a trip to take them (and other cherished YA books) to the family abode for my little sister to grow up with. I appreciate the level of skill in plotting and characterisation - and integration of social/life messages - in this series more and more every time I read them. They're never preachy but always morally sound. The social fabric of Emelan and surrounding worlds actually *works* (unlike Tortall). The good sides and potential problems of a closed society such as the Traders is handled, I think, very well.
I still don't see Lark and Rosethorn as a lesbian couple, though. Co-parents and caregivers and partners in a way that no one else in Winding Circle seems to be, but if sexual relationships were encouraged or endorsed in Living Circle monasteries, then we *would* see more such couples, surely? *shrug*
Douglas Coupland, Player One: What is to become of us?: I did not like this book. The person who gave it to me found it thought-provoking and said it raised questions they found interesting, but I found the whole thing to be forced. Like it was going OUT OF ITS WAY to raise questions, and the questions it raised were boring ones. *shrug*
Oh, and the characterisation of its neuroatypical character was kiiiinda skeevy. One thing I did like was another character's comment to her, that no one is really normal, that we're all the product of assorted experiences, including but not limited to any medications we may be taking.
Benjamin Markovits, The Syme Papers: This was an infuriating book. I wanted to sympathise with the protagonist, a strugging historian with writers' block on a collision course with academic failure. But I couldn't, because he was a dick and he deserved to fail and his wife should've bloody well left him years ago.
So I kept reading for the alt-history which Our Protagonist was researching. Markovits has invented, and inserted into the history of geological research, a character named Sam Syme, a university dropout who may have come up with - embedded in a completely mad scheme of a hollow earth - the idea of continental drift. Markovits' work here, retelling the history of "geognosy" and weaving his character into it, is fascinating. And I really fell for it when another character, a German aristocrat with some background in geology sent by his father to investigate the prospect of funding this mad Syme creature, showed up. Muller I loved: a dandy, a loner, strangely in love with Syme but nevertheless unconvinced by his theories. So I kept reading for Muller, in the hope that Muller might achieve some kind of interesting character development. And he did, to some degree, but he never told Syme that Syme was a dick and also completely bonkers about geology. That was aggravating.
By the end of it, ALL the characters, including the historian's wife and Muller and EVERYONE annoyed me.
The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde: On the whole, these were charming, and surprisingly conventional in their morals and overt christian features (consider the selfish giant's visitation of child-Jesus). I did enjoy having a context to put to the oft-quoted Wilde line about enjoying talking to oneself, that being the only way to have a decent conversation.
What spoiled the book for me was "The birthday of the Infanta", which seemed to have no particular point other than to detail the exotic wonders of far-off spain, and featured a dwarf who died of a broken heart upon realising he was ugly.
Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictonary: This was a fantastic and fascinating read. I enjoyed it for the character insights into great names and serious institutions - Henry Sweet, W.W. Skeat, the Philological Society, Clarendon Press - with which I am already familiar. Turning a page and finding Sweet or Skeat is somewhat like finding an old friend or relation. Some of the personages featuring in this story were entirely new to me: the prickly and many-hobbied Frederick Furnival, and the etymological powerhouse, James Murray, among them. I particularly enjoyed the chapter which sketches information on some of Murray's volunteer quote-collectors and proofreaders - most notably, a hermit and a murderer, but also many strange characters and some names about whom nothing more is known.
I am also delighted - but unsurprised, familiar as I am with the dictionary - to find that all the Dictionary's founders and editors believed firmly in descriptive, rather than prescriptive, lexicography (although they were understandably conservative when it came to new-fangled terms which might go out of fashion or might not yet be fixed as lexemes - Murray's first edition did not, for instance, include the word 'radio' - nor, perplexingly, 'African'). Already I find myself hot under the collar when persons on the internet accuse the OED of being a "prestige" record of the language (this also suggests they are in sufficiently familiar with the OED and some of the coarse language therein). I don't doubt it's an imperfect record, especially of modern usage, but that is a product of the sheer number of words and depth in which they are recorded, and the slow progress of updating.
In lieu of further commentary, have some Henry Sweet insulting august institutions: "I know something of Oxford, and of its low state of morality as regards jobbery and personal interest'
And H.L. Mencken's postulations as to the celebrations Oxford had hosted when the dictionary was complete: "military exercises, boxing matches between the dons, orations in Latin and Greek, English and the Oxford dialect, yelling contests between the different colleges and a series of medieval drinking bouts"
Tamora Pierce, Circle of Magic Quartet: I re-read the whole series while on a trip to take them (and other cherished YA books) to the family abode for my little sister to grow up with. I appreciate the level of skill in plotting and characterisation - and integration of social/life messages - in this series more and more every time I read them. They're never preachy but always morally sound. The social fabric of Emelan and surrounding worlds actually *works* (unlike Tortall). The good sides and potential problems of a closed society such as the Traders is handled, I think, very well.
I still don't see Lark and Rosethorn as a lesbian couple, though. Co-parents and caregivers and partners in a way that no one else in Winding Circle seems to be, but if sexual relationships were encouraged or endorsed in Living Circle monasteries, then we *would* see more such couples, surely? *shrug*
Douglas Coupland, Player One: What is to become of us?: I did not like this book. The person who gave it to me found it thought-provoking and said it raised questions they found interesting, but I found the whole thing to be forced. Like it was going OUT OF ITS WAY to raise questions, and the questions it raised were boring ones. *shrug*
Oh, and the characterisation of its neuroatypical character was kiiiinda skeevy. One thing I did like was another character's comment to her, that no one is really normal, that we're all the product of assorted experiences, including but not limited to any medications we may be taking.
Benjamin Markovits, The Syme Papers: This was an infuriating book. I wanted to sympathise with the protagonist, a strugging historian with writers' block on a collision course with academic failure. But I couldn't, because he was a dick and he deserved to fail and his wife should've bloody well left him years ago.
So I kept reading for the alt-history which Our Protagonist was researching. Markovits has invented, and inserted into the history of geological research, a character named Sam Syme, a university dropout who may have come up with - embedded in a completely mad scheme of a hollow earth - the idea of continental drift. Markovits' work here, retelling the history of "geognosy" and weaving his character into it, is fascinating. And I really fell for it when another character, a German aristocrat with some background in geology sent by his father to investigate the prospect of funding this mad Syme creature, showed up. Muller I loved: a dandy, a loner, strangely in love with Syme but nevertheless unconvinced by his theories. So I kept reading for Muller, in the hope that Muller might achieve some kind of interesting character development. And he did, to some degree, but he never told Syme that Syme was a dick and also completely bonkers about geology. That was aggravating.
By the end of it, ALL the characters, including the historian's wife and Muller and EVERYONE annoyed me.