HSU IT Department

Alan Rickman reads Sonnet 130

::melts into puddle of lustful goo::

A couple of weeks ago, on my mom's recommendation, I read Dave Eggers' The Circle. Like Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, it's more of a fable than a novel, social criticism rather than great characterization and plotting, but rather chilling in that this awful world is yet so very close to where we already are, and very likely where we're headed absent some sort of epiphany in our love affair with technology. In a sense he is preaching to the choir (the choir, in this case, being those who worry about the ubiquity of social media and Big Server rather than Big Brother), but it was engrossing. The ending was surprising; I think his message is that no big deus ex machina is going to rescue us from the constant stream of friending-tweeting-liking-pinning-statusupdating-rating-networking-linking-sharing-sharing-sharing-MUSTSHAREALLTHETHINGS!!! We have to rescue ourselves. I sympathized very much with Mae's friend who makes lamps out of antlers and just wants to be left alone.

Then today I ran across this rather apt quote from Neil Postman (written in 1985!!):

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

I fear very much that we're a good way down into Huxley's world: "a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy." (Honey Boo Boo or Ashley Madison, anyone?) The problem is that if 99% of the world is living in Huxley's version of the future, it's incredibly easy for a very few people to operate it like Orwell's version without anyone noticing. When everything is digital, it's easier than ever to edit the past. Or the present.

Top-notch historical fiction is hard to find. Top-notch adventure fiction is hard to find. Well-written witty anti-hero protagonists are hard to find. Good historical adventure fiction with a well-written witty anti-hero protagonist is...well, you see where I'm going with this. Game of Kings gets two thumbs up and five stars -- once I started it I couldn't put it down. I can't remember who told me I should read these books; I wish I could because I would send them lots of presents in deepest gratitude.

The story arc is not entirely original: a brilliant but dissolute younger son and a stolid older one with bad blood between them, dissolute younger son turns out to be not so dissolute after all (I shall say no more for fear of spoilers). But Dunnett executes the tale with flair, energy, inventiveness, and a remarkable level of historical detail. The 1500s is one of my favorite time periods for historical fiction -- so much going on in politics, religion, philosophy, science, an immensely active and fertile time so she's got lots to work with.

Part of my love for the book is of course due to the main character, Francis Crawford of Lymond, Master of Culter. Accused traitor and leader of a band of outlaws, yet somehow one can never quite believe the worst of him; one suspects there is more (oh how I do love a misunderstood hero). If the facts did not prove me wrong I would suspect Dorothy Dunnett of being Dorothy L. Sayers, because Lymond is very much like Lord Peter Wimsey. Lymond is less high-strung and more physically active (as you'd expect in the 16th century!), but both are aristocratic, highly (perhaps over-) educated, single-minded in pursuit of a goal, prone to quotation, chronically underestimated by their opponents, and exceedingly intelligent with a fierce sense of honor and loyalty. Both are also excellent musicians and their own harshest critic.

The supporting cast is just as much fun, particularly Will Scott, younger son of the Earl of Buccleuch, whose evolving relationship with Lymond forms one of the more interesting strands of the book. Will has been off at school in France with detrimental results:

"Moral Philosophy, that's the trouble," said Janet with gloomy relish. "They've taught poor Will moral philosophy and his father's fit to boil...He's quoting Aristotle and Boethius and the laws of chivalry and the dreicher spells of the Chevalier de Bayard on loyalty and the ethics of warfare. He's so damned moral he ought to be standing rear up under a Bo tree. And he won't keep his mouth shut. I grant," said Lady Buccleuch with a certain grim amusement, "that the pure springs of chivalry may be a little muddy in the Hawick area, but that's no proper excuse for calling his father an unprincipled old rogue and every other peer in Scotland a traitorous scoundrel."

As you can perhaps tell from Will's mother's speech above, the book's female characters are also excellent: intelligent, active, strong-willed, sensible, and perfectly willing to go behind their menfolk's backs if that's the most efficient route to the most sensible solution. (Mary Queen of Scots has a cameo as an inquisitive four-year-old to whom Lymond teaches a naughty riddle!)

The interweaving of the adventures of the Master of Culter as he tries to clear his name with the Byzantine twists and turns of Scottish, English and French politics makes for a swashbuckling story complete with duels, spies, pitched battles, cattle raids, explosions, murders, archery contests, mysterious lovers, and more. There's at least one death that will make you cry and the conclusion -- which is in doubt up until about the last ten pages -- will make you cheer.

And yay, there are five more!!

The subtitle is "unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened" and yup, they're all here.

I've been a regular visitor to Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half blog for several years and many a visit has ended with me in tears and unable to speak for laughing so hard, so I was delighted to hear she was publishing a book. I was not disappointed :)

About half of the stories had been previously published on her blog, the other half are new for this book. "Depression" parts one and two, where Brosh recounts her struggle with depression, introduces a more serious note than, say, "The God of Cake" but manages to be both funny and poignant, particularly in its blunt illustration of why well-meaning friends and family are so often utterly unhelpful in the case of true depression.

As always, Brosh's artwork (done in Paint, which if you've worked with it you will know the crudeness of the medium!) is primitive but energetic and engaging, at time truly hilarious -- much livelier and more original than the vast majority of graphic novel/comic artwork which all looks very much the same. Nobody would mistake Brosh's alien-looking self-portrait, with its bug eyes, tentacular arms, pink dress, and blonde horns of hair for anyone else's work, ever, likewise her dogs with their tilted heads and mildly panicked gazes.

The stories that accompany the illustrations are endearing, funny, self-mocking, and most of all very human -- her foibles, flaws and difficulties are easy to identify with. Unfortunately I recognized a lot of myself in "This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult"!

Eerie, atmospheric, almost Victorian, Aickman's stories are all about hints and omens, tension and suspense. Very few of the mysteries in these stories are solved; instead one is left with an uneasy sense that there are some Very Nasty Things out there. Just around the corner or down the alley. In the dark.

I think my favorite was "The View," in which a man recovering from some unspecified illness goes on holiday, on his doctor's recommendation. On the boat over to the island that is his destination he meets a young woman who invites him to stay with her in her huge estate; he accepts and, although initially installed in a guest room, they are soon sleeping together. However, the ony fly in the ointment is that the view from his window keeps...changing. Between one day and the next things appear and disappear, or move from on place to another...

This collection also includes a classic "living dead" story ("Ringing the Changes"); a ghost story ("The Houses of the Russians"); one, or possibly two, "monster children" stories; the title story, an unnerving tale of a painter, an old woman and her daughter; and several more.

Aickman's stories share with those of H.P. Lovecraft a delicate balance between too much information and not enough -- too much and you get gore/splatter with nothing left to the imagination, too little and you get ho-hum, a story that doesn't compel or intrigue. There is a difference between horror and terror; Aickman is a master of the latter. He takes you by the hand and leads you to the very doorstep of seeing what's lurking out there in the dark...and then turns out the light.

(Bonus: The dust jacket is illustrated by Edward Gorey!)

This was a beauty of a book, a mix of myth, fairy tale, love story, and cautionary tale. The kitsune, the fox-woman, is a well-known figure in Japanese folklore and myth; here, Johnson places the story of a fox who wishes to become a woman against that of a young couple whose marriage is faltering under the weight of artifice and constraint. Above, in the house, Yoshifuji and his wife Shikujo communicate by writing each other haikus open to multiple interpretations, neither knowing what the other wants or thinks; beneath the floor Kitsune, the young fox, comes into season and mates with her brother because, well, that's what animals do. Kitsune wants (or thinks she wants) the trappings of humanity: to learn to read, to write, to understand art, to wear beautiful clothes and speak from behind a screen. Yoshifuji watches the foxes from his window and wishes he had their freedom.

Telling the story in diary form allows you to see through the eyes of each of the three main characters in turn, which gives the story both the immediacy of first person and the complexity of a multiple POVs.

Of all of them, though, I felt sorriest for Kitsune's mother and brother, dragged into this transformation mostly against their will; if I had one complaint about the book it's that Johnson doesn't offer a compelling explanation for why they have to pay the price for Kitsune's obsession with Yoshifuji.

Although the ending is left open, leaving me uncertain as to what if anything Yoshifuji or Kitsune learned from their experience (are they wiser? or more determined?), this was a real pleasure to read. Johnson is an artistic writer with a gift for description, evoking seasons, settings and the life and attitudes of Old Japan with a light touch and a painterly eye for detail.

...for me to contribute my mite to the Influential Books Post Meme, following in the able footsteps of kellychambliss and perverseidyll among others, you might enjoy this discussion of 10 Reasons Why Le Guin's Earthsea Books Can Still Change Your Life. Some of the comments are interesting, as people go into detail about what the books meant to them.

Spoiler alert: yeah, Le Guin will be on my list :)

...are up, so I can now cop to being the author of Untidy Beginnings! I was immensely pleased to get this prompt, partly because Minerva as headmistress is an area I like to see explored, and partly for the double challenge: how to make Dudley a sympathetic character without taking him completely out of character, and how to make Minerva, who obviously cared very much for Harry, feel any sort of warmth for one of the people who was cruelest to him?

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this odd, rather fraught, relationship between Minerva and Dudley, and in working through it I discovered more than one point of connection.

This year's fest was an excellent one with many top-notch stories, and I'm proud to be in such fine company. Unfortunately I was insanely busy the past few weeks and have had almost no time to read the other Minerva Fest entries; I'll be on a train for a good chunk of next week and hope to catch up then.

Title: Untidy Beginnings (on LJ) (on AO3)
Original Prompt: #47. I would like to see how Headmistress McGonagall informs Dudley Dursley and his wife that their child has been accepted to Hogwarts, and what that means. How do each of the family members react? Do they have any contact with the Potters? Bonus if we see the shopping trip to Diagon Alley and the Sorting.
Rating: G
Characters and/or Pairings: Minerva, Dudley Dursley and family, cameos by Severus Snape and Hannah Abbot, two original characters
Description: When Minerva finds the name of Dursley written in the Book of Admittance, surprises ensue for everyone.

My short SSHG piece Poetic License has been nominated for Best Comedy!! I'm so tickled. This is the first time I've been nominated, and it's quite the thrill :) Thank you, mystery nominator!

THE HP FANFIC FAN POLL AWARDS - FALL-WINTER ROUND 2013
Rules, Timelines, and How to Nominate a Fic
To Make Nominations/Ask Questions: hpfanficfanpollmod@gmail.com
Nomination period: October 1st - October 28th, 2013
Voting period: November 1st - December 31st, 2013
Winners announced: by January 10th, 2014

"I saw one once," said Piglet. "At least, I think I did," he said. "Only perhaps it wasn't."
"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of the year," said Pooh.

Lots of elephant-y things have crossed my path lately. A recent issue of The Economist focused on biodiversity and conservation included a fascinating piece on the success of a demand-side approach to reducing elephant poaching. Back in the 1980s Japan was the largest importer of ivory, at something like 500 tons a year. A group called Traffic launched a campaign to basically make ivory uncool:

[Traffic] worked on the newspapers and helped persuade them to write anti-ivory editorials. But the big breakthrough...came when Britain’s Prince Philip gave a rousing speech at an event organised by the World Wildlife Fund, which encouraged Japan’s crown prince to speak out. “It was the first time that Japanese royalty had taken a stance on a wildlife issue. It was an amazing moment,” says Mr Milliken. Ivory became uncool.

Japanese ivory imports today are down by 90%, to roughly 5 tons a year. Isn't that incredible?? ::does happy dance::

So after that the elephant population rebounded pretty well, but in recent years two things have caused elephant killings to go up again. One is demand in China. To combat this, a group called WildAid is trying the same approach as was done in Japan, only using celebrities, sort of the Chinese version of royalty, I guess. (The picture of the giant basketball player next to the baby elephant is just adorable!) WildAid was really successful in a recent campaign to reduce demand for shark fins in China, so there's a good chance this could help. ::does hopeful dance::

The other problem, though, is terrorists -- Al Shabab, for example, who killed all those people at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. They're using poached ivory to fund their activities. And these aren't some local yokel with a 20-year-old rifle. These guys are organized and they have higher-tech equipment, like night vision goggles and laser scopes, and their effect on the elephants is devastating. The LA Times and Huffington Post both recently ran stories about the ivory/terrorism connection. If there were no market for ivory, these guys couldn't make money on it and they'd leave the elephants alone. Sadly, this also has an indirect death toll because it leaves orphan baby elephants who aren't old enough to survive on their own. ::does sad dance::

This is the sort of thing that makes me wish that homo was more sapiens, or at least that our position at the top of the food chain was automatically accompanied by compassion and rationality...

Well, then yesterday I got a newsletter from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an elephant rescue operation I've contributed to for years in honor of my grandparents. The DSWT is an organization in Kenya that rescues/raises orphan baby elephants and then returns them to the wild. They're a fantastic organization, founded by a British woman (Dame Daphne Sheldrick) but staffed and run largely by native Kenyans, and the work they do is incredibly important. The newsletter mentioned that they're currently doing a fund-raising campaign -- sponsored by Kristen Davis of Sex and the City, of all people! -- on crowdrise, including a video with some beautiful footage of elephants in the wild. This gave me mixed emotions because yay! publicity and they're doing well with their campaign, but sad :( that they are busier than ever with so many orphaned elephants to care for.

Christmas is coming -- maybe you know somebody who's hard to buy for? You could contribute to the campaign in their name, or foster a baby elephant in their honor!

Snagged from igrockspock. Looks like a good time to catch up on my book reviews.

Immediately upon finishing Windeye, I added three or four more of this author's books to my to-read list. That should tell you something.

A collection of did-that-happen-or-didn't-it? and what-just-happened? stories, the tales in this book range from the odd and eerie to the downright horrifying. The author's command of language and range of styles are remarkable, from fairy tale to classic monster/demon to magical realism to the completely surreal, and there's a nice sprinkling of unreliable narrators which are always fun.

In the title story we're not sure whether or not the narrator had a sister, and in a later one a man may or may not have a brother; there's a classically sinister monster tale and a very peculiar piece about what I thought was a spacesuit, but on googling it found out it's actually an old diving suit ("The Sladen Suit", whose nickname apparently was "Clammy Death"!!). There's an fairy tale about a young man whose inheritance of a fabulous horse turns out to be not quite what he expects, and a short-short about bees. All are very different in tone, style, setting, and narrative voice, but all are equally high quality. I highly recommend it.

I'm not sure what to say about The Children's Hospital. It's...extremely odd, a combination of surrealism, post-apocalypse, religious rapture, and a really really long, boring boat ride. It was published by McSweeney's, which should tell you something right there. There are so many things about this book that should have turned me off: it's overloaded with medical jargon, the main character is annoyingly passive and her fear that anyone she loves will die is completely irrational, every single thing about the apocalypse is completely opaque, most of the characters are one-dimensional and wholly unlikable, and weirdest of all everyone in the floating hospital seems to just Keep Calm and Carry One despite the seven miles of water and the loss of the ENTIRE PLANET...

And yet, and yet....

I was sucked in. I felt Jemma's brother's pain, even though I didn't comprehend it. I cared about these people, even while I didn't like them very much and was not infrequently irritated by them. And I cried at the end, surprising even myself. (N.B. According to the Washington Post, the author is a pediatrician studying at Harvard Divinity School. That explains a lot.)

Ah, The Necromancer's House. Been waiting for this for MONTHS. I got hold of an advance reading copy of this, so was lucky enough to read it before it was officially released. Well, actually Mr Psmith got the ARC and I had to wait until he was done with it before I could get my greedy little hands on it. Longest two weeks of my life.

Given that the author's previous two books were "period pieces" -- although from wildly different periods -- I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, a very contemporary story complete with classic cars, AA, chat rooms, and the interwebz. Happily, I was not disappointed. The main character, Andrew, is a complicated man with a strong sense of integrity but, one quickly suspects, certain secrets in his past that are coming back to haunt him. This turns out to be true, but in more ways than are at first obvious.

I do love non-obvious.

There was quite a bit of non-obvious in this book which meant that I was frequently surprised -- and for somebody who reads as much as I do, that's not easy to do. The surprises were not so much in the broad arc of the story, which is a classic (and I mean that in a good way) tale of redemption, as in the details and the execution, and in what one might call the inflections of the ending, the way it’s shaped and carried out.

Two things I particularly liked about the book's treatment of magic. First, magic isn't free. One doesn't simply shout some garbled Latin and wave a wand -- this magic takes some serious effort, both mental and physical, to learn, to control, to use (safely), in some cases simply to understand. And there's no question that magic is potentially very dangerous stuff in this world; it can blow up in your face if you're not careful. Second, the story didn't get bogged down in the mechanics of the magic -- recipes, spells, how you do it, how it works. There's just the right amount of detail, and nicely modernized (Andrew’s particular skill is with cars and film footage, for example, while chicagohoney85’s are with computers), that the flavor permeates the story without overwhelming it.

Which is good because, despite the fact that magic is wound thoroughly about this tale, in the end it’s all about the people. And I like these people, Andrew and Anneke (and Chancho and Michael and even chicagohoney85), enough that I want to know more about all of them. (Here’s where I admit that I’m hoping for a sequel, or maybe Michael’s backstory...shhhhh...) They aren’t perfect, but like most of us they’re good people doing their best to muddle through, and deal with their past mistakes in a stand-up way without compromising what they believe.

Oh, and he made my cry over Salvador. Thanks, buddy.

Buehlman’s novels have all been billed as horror, but clearly they aren’t horror for horror’s sake. It’s not about a high body count or creative methods of killing people off (although he’s good at that, and Between Two Fires had a lot of them!). It's about applying horror to characters -- putting them in horrifying situations -- to see how they respond, the way an engineer applies heat or pressure to a substance to see if it will break. "Test to destruction" is how you learn what something is really made of, and this seems to be a recurrent theme, first with Frank Nichols in Those Across the River, then Thomas in Between Two Fires, and now Andrew and Anneke.

I'm looking forward to his next test.

Alas, everything about Regina's Song annoyed me, and I do mean everything. The dialog is flat and artificial, crammed with cliches and bad/outdated slang, despite the fact that the narrator is supposed to be a PhD in English [1]. The characters are one-dimensional and uninteresting, and the male characters consistently demonstrate a condescending 1950s-era attitude towards women (and others) [2]. The plot is full of holes and irrelevancies [3], and a fairly appalling lack of any sort of moral or ethical sense is exhibited across the board [4]. Examples hidden to prevent spoilerage. Although really I'm sure it wouldn't matter to anyone.

[1] "It's not as if we're going to rat him off...He knows that he can trust us to keep our mouths shut. I'm not all that interested in cop-shop secrets when you get right down to it. But we need to know what Burpee's up to. Bob's cut him off at the pass on this case and Burpee's probably eating his own liver by now. Let's face it guys, Bob stuck his neck way out with that protective custody scam, and Burpee's most likely trying to blindside my big brother. If we want to keep Bob on our side, we're going to have to help cover his buns."

That's eight, count 'em, EIGHT, in one speech. And that's fairly typical. If I never read the phrase "hit the bricks" again it will be too soon.

[2] male characters (the good guys, whom we are supposed to like) call female characters "babe" and "sweet-cakes" and "Mama Trish" to their faces. And the girls don't object. Also the girls aren't allowed in on the investigation and do all the cooking while the menfolk do the home and auto repair and come up with good ideas and hunt down killers. Oh, and the one Japanese character is referred to as "an oriental gentleman." Please.

[3] the license plate, the curare, the dogs/wolves (wtf?), a vast plethora of legal irregularities, and the presentation of DNA as a Big New Technology -- in 2002. Srsly? Also, there is no villain. Or mystery. Or song, which made even the title of the book annoying.

[4] The fact that the residents of the boarding house collude to protect a psychotic killer is a little unnerving, but when a priest hears about a murder and actually cheers the killer, you know something is seriously amiss.

Most vexing of all is that all of this derailed an excellent premise that had a lot of potential. The first few pages, with the backstory between the narrator and the twins, is pretty gripping. But it deteriorates pretty fast from then on.

I also read The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson, which was excellent but I haven't written a review for it yet, so maybe next week. And yay, I will at last be able to use my "fox sex" tag again!! (It's the little things that can make your day...)

This is the most amazing -- and sensual -- pair of dancers I've seen in a very long time, if ever. Their athleticism is astonishing, and yet it doesn't detract from the beauty of their movements by turning it into a gymnastic exercise (and wow, is she bendy!). I was spellbound by their performance; it made me want to cheer and cry at the same time.


(skip to about the 1-minute mark if you don't speak Russian!)
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“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is
translated through you into action, and because there is only one of
you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it
will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham