HSU IT Department

As a reward for having finished my story for the first week of SSIAW on Friday, Mr Psmith and I went out to hear lovely traditional Irish music on Saturday -- fiddles, penny whistles, bodhrans, tambourines, tight harmonies and singable tunes and step dancers. There was rain but it passed leaving a double rainbow, so all was well and all was well and all manner of things were well. Today I did my readings for class -- more Gargantua and Pantagruel -- and answered correspondence (for which read, not morning rooms with engraved stationery, but rather blog trolling/commenting!).

A bunch of random things of interestingness have crossed my path in the last couple of days, so I thought I'd share them.

First and foremost (and in honor of which I have created the new userpic featured in this post), Sir Patrick Stewart is on Twitter, as SirPatStew!!! This is almost (but not quite) enough to make me get a Twitter account. His first tweet? "Hi world." His second? "My brain hurts." Best so far? From Sep 4, "Scotch/Soda. Sunset. pic.twitter.com/RjSaUhmq ." I want to be the person who took this picture.

Next up, a fascinating poem by James Hall entitled Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too. Whether you're a superhero or just the girl next door, it's easy to get locked into one persona: "So maybe dat's youwr pwoblem too, who knows / Maybe dat's da whole pwoblem wif evwytin / Nobody can buhn der suits, dey all fwame wesistent." Who among us hasn't wanted to burn their suit and reinvent themselves from scratch? (You can also read the author's thoughts on it.)

Third and fourth are both writing-related items. (3) Yale Law professor Stephen Carter wrote a great piece, It Is to Be Hoped That Proper Grammar Can Endure which argues that precision in writing is necessary for precision in thought. He even brings in the venerable Adam Smith: "The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar...Morality should be modeled on grammar...so that we may have “certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.”

(4) I stumbled across two excellent Mary Sue Litmus Tests here and here. The first one has separate sections for fan-fiction and original fiction, while the second is for original fiction only. They provide an interesting window into the various character features that have become commonly viewed as Sue-ish -- of course, each of these things individually are fine, it's just when one character features lots of them that things start to get dicey. A good reality check for my own writing!

Finally, from io9.com comes my nominee for Dad of the Year. When his daughter wouldn't eat her lunch at school, this guy started drawing silly Avengers and other superhero cartoons and putting them in her lunchbox. My favorite is Batman :)

And that's it for Sunday!

Not that it's any different from The Demon's Lexicon as a real book with pages and all. But now I can say I've read an entire book on a Kindle and talk knowledgeably and at great length about how Real Books Are Still Better. Which I think they are, in most cases, though if I were going on holiday I admit I'd rather take one Kindle loaded with sixteen books and my subscriptions to the New York Times and the Economist, rather than lugging 10 lbs of books around with me and having to find a news-stand for the paper every day. Two things struck me about the experience. First, the book seemed to go really fast (though that could just be because it's a YA book therefore a quick read for someone in their forties!). Second, good as the Kindle's technology and interface are, I found it harder to "get lost" in the story. Mainly I kept getting distracted by the little progress bar at the bottom that tells you what percentage done you are. That was weird. That never entered my mind before, in my entire reading life -- I guess you kind of notice as the bulk of the pages slowly moves from the right-hand side to the left-hand side, but only because the weight shifts and you have to hold it differently so it doesn't fall on the cat. It isn't something that stares you in the face, not to mention updates each time you turn a page (will this page get me to 75%? No...maybe the next one?)

I didn't like the percentage bar. I wanted it to go away. I resented it sitting there smugly measuring my progress. I get enough of that in my life. Reading isn't supposed to be measured in percent complete but in the joy and pleasure it gives, and the goal isn't to hit 100% but to enjoy the trip. (Will teachers start making assignments that way? "For tomorrow please read the first 10% of the book" ??)

So, 'nuff said about that. The book itself? Well, it's tough to say; perhaps the most concise summation is that her fanfic roots are still showing. The book suffers from a lot of the problems that fanfic -- even some of the good stuff -- does: logic problems, erratic behavior, thin characters, etc. None of the characters act their ages consistently, shifting from teenage to much more mature seemingly at random (or at authorial necessity?). On the other hand, the world she's created of demons and magicians has real potential, and she drops a couple of big twists -- one about halfway through, which I wasn't expecting, and then another right near the end, at which my eyebrows shot so far up they nearly fell off the top of my head -- which do serve to explain some of the oddities in the earlier part; the problem is when you come at it for the first time, it's a little hard to tell that those oddities are intentional and not just a result of the author not paying attention. I nearly gave it up about a third of the way in (at 39%, according to the Kindle's progress bar -- aha, there's a use for it!) As is too often the case with YA books (and fanfic), the characters are tad underdeveloped and the final confrontation is a bit of a fizzle, though still WAAAAAAY better than the pathetic limping finale that is Breaking Dawn LOL!! There are some wonderful bits that I wish could have been much expanded (the Goblin Market, for instance) and she has moments of really excellent wit and originality, so I have hopes that she'll improve as she goes along.

Oh, and the title doesn't seem to have any relationship to the story. That always bugs me.