Look, Listen and Love
Jan. 2nd, 2013 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyHaving unsubscribed to those Notes from the Universe I used to get, I then went and subscribed to a different thought of the day newsletter, one that doesn't annoy me nearly as much as the Universe. I had quite a few waiting for me when I got back to work this morning; two in particular, I liked.
Scalpel. Flame-thrower. Hoe. Which of these will you use today?
I think it was the hoe I used today, doing sturdy yeoman's work ploughing the fields, but, yes, some days you just need that flame-thrower.
Aethelred the Unready. Conan the Crooked. Charles the Lame. All great kingly names from times past. What might your title be?
I'd be Alicia the Bemused. What about you?
December 2012 books read
* Cotillion - Georgette Heyer
* Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell
* A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin
* Phantom - Jo Nesbo
* I, Coriander - Sally Gardner
* A Clash of Kings - George RR Martin
* A Storm of Swords - George RR Martin
* The Secret Life of Musical Notation: Defying Interpretive Traditions - Roberto Poli
* The Musician's Way - Gerald Klickstein
Cotillion may be the most darling book ever written, f-list. It is raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens. That's how delightful it is. It is the story of Kitty, an orphan whose guardian gathers all his great-nephews together and promises to leave Kitty his fortune only if she marries one of them. That sounds terrible, I know, but bear with me; the guardian revokes this silly will by the end, so it's really just a way to get the plot moving. The only one of the great-nephews Kitty wants to marry is Jack, who has, and here I quote, 'powerful thighs', but he doesn't turn up, so she instead talks another great-nephew, Freddie, into pretending to be engaged to her to make Jack jealous. And hi-jinks ensue.
In one chapter Kitty makes Freddie take her on a tour of London's attractions, where he is unimpressed by the Elgin Marbles. ('Dash it, they've got no heads!' he protested.) He also expresses the opinion that someone might have sustained a hit on the head by saying that person has been 'dicked in the nob'. Five times he says that over the course of the book, and it never gets any less funny. Also, people are maced of their blount by hell-kites. I thoroughly and unironically recommend it.
I watched the TV series of A Game of Thrones, which made me wonder what the book was like. Good, it turns out. (Although I felt I didn't really get to appreciate the shock of... the thing that happens near the end, since I'd already seen it on TV). I started reading the rest of them, but they were blurring together, so I've put off the other two until January.
I wasn't keen on Phantom. It was trying too hard to be gritty, while at the same time being unbelievable. For example: in one section, the hero, Harry Hole, gets his throat slit in a bar by a Russian mobster, kills the mobster, walks out of the bar, goes back to his hotel room, sews up his bleeding neck with the sewing kit from his bedside table, goes to a cemetery to conduct an unauthorised exhumation, gets a DNA sample from the body, is shot at and chased by person or persons unknown, breaks into an old lady's house and takes a shower, and wraps it all up with a shoot-out before getting the DNA sample to a friendly forensic examiner for an unauthorised report. As you do. *And* it was unnecessarily long-winded. Faceless Killers was much better, in that it was shorter and more believable and Kurt Wallender just moped about without needing to sew up his own throat.
I thought I, Coriander was going to be historical, and it was, I suppose, being set in the 1650s. But it was a version of the 1650s in which there was a chest that could send people to Narnia (or a facsimile thereof), so that was a surprise. Not a bad surprise, necessarily, but I thought the historical bit was stronger than the fantasy part. Roundhead soldiers chasing our heroes are much scarier than an evil queen trying to kill a magic fox. (I could apply this to A Game of Thrones too, since I am more interested in the civil war and political intrigue than I am in the dragons and the ice zombie demon things, but I think - or hope - that they will all intersect eventually.)
As for the two music books... The Musician's Way was good, even beyond music-related stuff. Useful advice and comments about deep practice and, oh dear, performance anxiety, which has ever been my bête noir. One of them, at any rate. I've got a veritable menagie of bêtes. I thought the musical notation book was going to be a light-hearted romp through the history of the treble clef or such, but it turned out to be a serious tome by a professional pianist about the use of several different musical notations by different composers and what that means for modern musicians. If you are curious about how Chopin's use of sforzando changed over his lifetime, this is the book for you. I was a bit out of my depth, I must admit.
Scalpel. Flame-thrower. Hoe. Which of these will you use today?
I think it was the hoe I used today, doing sturdy yeoman's work ploughing the fields, but, yes, some days you just need that flame-thrower.
Aethelred the Unready. Conan the Crooked. Charles the Lame. All great kingly names from times past. What might your title be?
I'd be Alicia the Bemused. What about you?
December 2012 books read
* Cotillion - Georgette Heyer
* Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell
* A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin
* Phantom - Jo Nesbo
* I, Coriander - Sally Gardner
* A Clash of Kings - George RR Martin
* A Storm of Swords - George RR Martin
* The Secret Life of Musical Notation: Defying Interpretive Traditions - Roberto Poli
* The Musician's Way - Gerald Klickstein
Cotillion may be the most darling book ever written, f-list. It is raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens. That's how delightful it is. It is the story of Kitty, an orphan whose guardian gathers all his great-nephews together and promises to leave Kitty his fortune only if she marries one of them. That sounds terrible, I know, but bear with me; the guardian revokes this silly will by the end, so it's really just a way to get the plot moving. The only one of the great-nephews Kitty wants to marry is Jack, who has, and here I quote, 'powerful thighs', but he doesn't turn up, so she instead talks another great-nephew, Freddie, into pretending to be engaged to her to make Jack jealous. And hi-jinks ensue.
In one chapter Kitty makes Freddie take her on a tour of London's attractions, where he is unimpressed by the Elgin Marbles. ('Dash it, they've got no heads!' he protested.) He also expresses the opinion that someone might have sustained a hit on the head by saying that person has been 'dicked in the nob'. Five times he says that over the course of the book, and it never gets any less funny. Also, people are maced of their blount by hell-kites. I thoroughly and unironically recommend it.
I watched the TV series of A Game of Thrones, which made me wonder what the book was like. Good, it turns out. (Although I felt I didn't really get to appreciate the shock of... the thing that happens near the end, since I'd already seen it on TV). I started reading the rest of them, but they were blurring together, so I've put off the other two until January.
I wasn't keen on Phantom. It was trying too hard to be gritty, while at the same time being unbelievable. For example: in one section, the hero, Harry Hole, gets his throat slit in a bar by a Russian mobster, kills the mobster, walks out of the bar, goes back to his hotel room, sews up his bleeding neck with the sewing kit from his bedside table, goes to a cemetery to conduct an unauthorised exhumation, gets a DNA sample from the body, is shot at and chased by person or persons unknown, breaks into an old lady's house and takes a shower, and wraps it all up with a shoot-out before getting the DNA sample to a friendly forensic examiner for an unauthorised report. As you do. *And* it was unnecessarily long-winded. Faceless Killers was much better, in that it was shorter and more believable and Kurt Wallender just moped about without needing to sew up his own throat.
I thought I, Coriander was going to be historical, and it was, I suppose, being set in the 1650s. But it was a version of the 1650s in which there was a chest that could send people to Narnia (or a facsimile thereof), so that was a surprise. Not a bad surprise, necessarily, but I thought the historical bit was stronger than the fantasy part. Roundhead soldiers chasing our heroes are much scarier than an evil queen trying to kill a magic fox. (I could apply this to A Game of Thrones too, since I am more interested in the civil war and political intrigue than I am in the dragons and the ice zombie demon things, but I think - or hope - that they will all intersect eventually.)
As for the two music books... The Musician's Way was good, even beyond music-related stuff. Useful advice and comments about deep practice and, oh dear, performance anxiety, which has ever been my bête noir. One of them, at any rate. I've got a veritable menagie of bêtes. I thought the musical notation book was going to be a light-hearted romp through the history of the treble clef or such, but it turned out to be a serious tome by a professional pianist about the use of several different musical notations by different composers and what that means for modern musicians. If you are curious about how Chopin's use of sforzando changed over his lifetime, this is the book for you. I was a bit out of my depth, I must admit.