Little White Doves of Love
Jul. 31st, 2013 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyI won't finish the book I'm currently reading by tonight, so I can post this as complete:
July books read
* Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman - EW Hornung
* The Global Pigeon - Colin Jerolmack
* The Unbreakable Spell - Barbara Cartland
* William Shakespeare's Star Wars - Ian Doescher
* The Secret Pilgrim - John le Carré
* Miss Hargreaves - Frank Baker
I don't just read Victorian-era rubbish. Sometimes I venture into Victorian-era quality, and so it was with Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman. I'd heard of Raffles, the gentleman thief, before, but that's pretty much all I knew: Raffles, he's the gentleman thief. So I decided to fix that, and I enjoyed it immensely. The stories are narrated by Raffles' friend and accomplice, Bunny. All the way through, I kept thinking that they were a sort of bizarro-world Holmes and Watson; then I read the foreword, which revealed that EW Hornung was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, that Raffles and Bunny pre-dated Holmes and Watson, and that Raffles, like Holmes, was based on a real person. The chap writing the foreword went on to say, irately, that Raffles is most definitely not Holmes-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-law; he had reasons (reasonable reasons at that), and I eventually decided that I agreed with him, although my point of difference was that I generally liked Raffles while I've always found Holmes annoying. I thought there was a fairly obvious subtext that Bunny was in love with Raffles, so I was pleased to read that the chap Raffles is based on, George Cecil Ives, was, among other things, a prominent homosexual rights campaigner in his time. Also, this is possibly the only work of classic fiction in which the small Australian town of Yea (pronounced Yay!) plays a prominent role. All up, I enjoyed the stories, and look forward to reading the sequels at a later date. (Also, the footnotes in my Penguin edition were excellent and I enjoyed them very much too.)
The Global Pigeon is a sociological study of the modern relationship between humans and pigeons. It started life as the author's thesis, which is fairly obvious at various points when it reads like a handbook for aliens explaining basic human behaviour. Also when he talks about 'non-human actors' when what he means is 'pigeons'. That aside, it was really good. It looks at how we interact with pigeons and the difficulties they pose for us as wild animals sharing space with us in modern cities. The best chapters were the keeping and racing chapters. I honestly thought all pigeons in lofts were racing pigeons, but it turns out some people keep them for pigeon wars, releasing their flocks once a day to try and win some pigeons off others. I liked the racers better. And it turns out there is a new thing in pigeon racing: one-loft racing, wherein fanciers send their pigeons to a central loft for six months to be trained externally and race to and from a single point, as with South Africa's Million Dollar Pigeon Race. Proponents say this evens the playing field (playing sky?), and gets around the increasing difficulties of keeping pigeon lofts in major cities, and brings money and prestige to the sport; opponents say it takes the fun out of looking after and breeding your own pigeons, and prices the sport out of the reach of normal people. So now we're all up on developments in the world of pigeons.
If you have ever asked yourself what Star Wars would be like if it had been written by William Shakespeare, well, William Shakespeare's Star Wars is the book for you. It is the script of Star Wars re-written in iambic pentameter. It's a one-joke book, obviously, but it works surprisingly well and I enjoyed it. I think I'd also enjoy seeing in on stage. Oddly enough, the parts that I thought didn't work are the lines directly stolen from Shakespeare – Alas, poor stormtrooper , and so on – because they reminded me that I was reading a conceit, which was unnecessary because it could stand up pretty well by itself. Here is C-3PO's soliloquy on believing that Luke and the others have been squashed in the garbage compactor:
No heart within this golden breast doth beat,
For only wires and circuit boards are here.
Yet as I hear my Master's dying screams
No heart is necessary for my grief.
A droid hath sadnesses, and hopes, and fears,
And each of these emotions have I felt
Since Master Luke appear'd and made me his.
No Master have I e'er respected so,
Thus at this moment grave I do declare:
There is no etiquette for shedding tears,
No protocol can e'er express my woe.
Beautiful. Do ask if you're interested in knowing how any particular scene was treated.
Last year I went through a John le Carré phase. It must have been before I started doing this, because I don't remember writing anything about it, and I would have had to. There'd have been months and months and months of it. The Secret Pilgrim is one I didn't get round to reading at the time. It's about an old spy called Ned, who is working out his time before retirement training new spies, and he invites his former mentor, George Smiley, to address the trainees. Each chapter, except the last, begins with Smiley offering a little pearl of wisdom about the spy business, which leads Ned to remember an event in his own career that illustrates what Smiley said. So even though it's pretending to be a novel, it's really more a series of short stories, all on the theme of international incidents being caused by people misplacing documents and such. It all takes place at the dinner after Smiley's speech, so it sort of had a feeling of winding down, and at the end, Smiley actually tells Ned not to ask him again, as his time is over. In the final chapter, Ned, now retired, is asked to deal unofficially with a troublesome businessman, during which he specifically notes that it's is a different game now, dealing with rogue capitalists internally rather than the good old days of the Cold War. It's one for the completists, rather than one of the essential works in the le Carré oeuvre, I think, but I enjoyed it well enough. (About half the stories run parallel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and it gives away the endings of both that and Smiley's People, so read them first if you're inclined to read any of them at all.)
The Bloomsbury Group reissues of vintage novels have distinctive covers, and I have found that seeing one of those covers means I am likely to enjoy the book within. And so it was with Miss Hargreaves (pronounced Har-GRAVES, not Har-GREEVES, as the book goes out of its way to tell us). I enjoyed it, but not as much as I hoped. It's set in the 30s and is about a young man called Norman. While on holiday, Norman and and his friend Henry go into a church to make brass rubbings, where they meet the local vicar. To get out of an awkward situation, Norman invents a friend, an old lady called Miss Hargreaves, and the boys are so taken with her that they continue to make up things about her once they get back to their lodgings. She's in her eighties, and she was the niece of the last Duke of Grosvenor, and she has a parrot, and she writes poetry, and she plays the harp, and she travels with a bath, and she stays at the same hotel in Bath every year. They go so far as to actually write her a letter at the hotel in Bath, inviting her to stay with Norman. When they get home, they are shocked to discover that she has written back to them, accepting the invitation. So she comes to stay, and hijinks ensue. The beginning was good and the end was good, but it had way too much middle. In short, I liked it, but didn't love it.
The Cartland novel poses something of a dilemma. I've been using the titles in chronological order, and I'm currently in the 1980 titles. The Unbreakable Spell is from 1983, so my thoughts on it are not due for another 80 entries or so. Or should I live on the edge and post the summary now?
[Poll #1926722]
July books read
* Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman - EW Hornung
* The Global Pigeon - Colin Jerolmack
* The Unbreakable Spell - Barbara Cartland
* William Shakespeare's Star Wars - Ian Doescher
* The Secret Pilgrim - John le Carré
* Miss Hargreaves - Frank Baker
I don't just read Victorian-era rubbish. Sometimes I venture into Victorian-era quality, and so it was with Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman. I'd heard of Raffles, the gentleman thief, before, but that's pretty much all I knew: Raffles, he's the gentleman thief. So I decided to fix that, and I enjoyed it immensely. The stories are narrated by Raffles' friend and accomplice, Bunny. All the way through, I kept thinking that they were a sort of bizarro-world Holmes and Watson; then I read the foreword, which revealed that EW Hornung was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, that Raffles and Bunny pre-dated Holmes and Watson, and that Raffles, like Holmes, was based on a real person. The chap writing the foreword went on to say, irately, that Raffles is most definitely not Holmes-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-law; he had reasons (reasonable reasons at that), and I eventually decided that I agreed with him, although my point of difference was that I generally liked Raffles while I've always found Holmes annoying. I thought there was a fairly obvious subtext that Bunny was in love with Raffles, so I was pleased to read that the chap Raffles is based on, George Cecil Ives, was, among other things, a prominent homosexual rights campaigner in his time. Also, this is possibly the only work of classic fiction in which the small Australian town of Yea (pronounced Yay!) plays a prominent role. All up, I enjoyed the stories, and look forward to reading the sequels at a later date. (Also, the footnotes in my Penguin edition were excellent and I enjoyed them very much too.)
The Global Pigeon is a sociological study of the modern relationship between humans and pigeons. It started life as the author's thesis, which is fairly obvious at various points when it reads like a handbook for aliens explaining basic human behaviour. Also when he talks about 'non-human actors' when what he means is 'pigeons'. That aside, it was really good. It looks at how we interact with pigeons and the difficulties they pose for us as wild animals sharing space with us in modern cities. The best chapters were the keeping and racing chapters. I honestly thought all pigeons in lofts were racing pigeons, but it turns out some people keep them for pigeon wars, releasing their flocks once a day to try and win some pigeons off others. I liked the racers better. And it turns out there is a new thing in pigeon racing: one-loft racing, wherein fanciers send their pigeons to a central loft for six months to be trained externally and race to and from a single point, as with South Africa's Million Dollar Pigeon Race. Proponents say this evens the playing field (playing sky?), and gets around the increasing difficulties of keeping pigeon lofts in major cities, and brings money and prestige to the sport; opponents say it takes the fun out of looking after and breeding your own pigeons, and prices the sport out of the reach of normal people. So now we're all up on developments in the world of pigeons.
If you have ever asked yourself what Star Wars would be like if it had been written by William Shakespeare, well, William Shakespeare's Star Wars is the book for you. It is the script of Star Wars re-written in iambic pentameter. It's a one-joke book, obviously, but it works surprisingly well and I enjoyed it. I think I'd also enjoy seeing in on stage. Oddly enough, the parts that I thought didn't work are the lines directly stolen from Shakespeare – Alas, poor stormtrooper , and so on – because they reminded me that I was reading a conceit, which was unnecessary because it could stand up pretty well by itself. Here is C-3PO's soliloquy on believing that Luke and the others have been squashed in the garbage compactor:
No heart within this golden breast doth beat,
For only wires and circuit boards are here.
Yet as I hear my Master's dying screams
No heart is necessary for my grief.
A droid hath sadnesses, and hopes, and fears,
And each of these emotions have I felt
Since Master Luke appear'd and made me his.
No Master have I e'er respected so,
Thus at this moment grave I do declare:
There is no etiquette for shedding tears,
No protocol can e'er express my woe.
Beautiful. Do ask if you're interested in knowing how any particular scene was treated.
Last year I went through a John le Carré phase. It must have been before I started doing this, because I don't remember writing anything about it, and I would have had to. There'd have been months and months and months of it. The Secret Pilgrim is one I didn't get round to reading at the time. It's about an old spy called Ned, who is working out his time before retirement training new spies, and he invites his former mentor, George Smiley, to address the trainees. Each chapter, except the last, begins with Smiley offering a little pearl of wisdom about the spy business, which leads Ned to remember an event in his own career that illustrates what Smiley said. So even though it's pretending to be a novel, it's really more a series of short stories, all on the theme of international incidents being caused by people misplacing documents and such. It all takes place at the dinner after Smiley's speech, so it sort of had a feeling of winding down, and at the end, Smiley actually tells Ned not to ask him again, as his time is over. In the final chapter, Ned, now retired, is asked to deal unofficially with a troublesome businessman, during which he specifically notes that it's is a different game now, dealing with rogue capitalists internally rather than the good old days of the Cold War. It's one for the completists, rather than one of the essential works in the le Carré oeuvre, I think, but I enjoyed it well enough. (About half the stories run parallel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and it gives away the endings of both that and Smiley's People, so read them first if you're inclined to read any of them at all.)
The Bloomsbury Group reissues of vintage novels have distinctive covers, and I have found that seeing one of those covers means I am likely to enjoy the book within. And so it was with Miss Hargreaves (pronounced Har-GRAVES, not Har-GREEVES, as the book goes out of its way to tell us). I enjoyed it, but not as much as I hoped. It's set in the 30s and is about a young man called Norman. While on holiday, Norman and and his friend Henry go into a church to make brass rubbings, where they meet the local vicar. To get out of an awkward situation, Norman invents a friend, an old lady called Miss Hargreaves, and the boys are so taken with her that they continue to make up things about her once they get back to their lodgings. She's in her eighties, and she was the niece of the last Duke of Grosvenor, and she has a parrot, and she writes poetry, and she plays the harp, and she travels with a bath, and she stays at the same hotel in Bath every year. They go so far as to actually write her a letter at the hotel in Bath, inviting her to stay with Norman. When they get home, they are shocked to discover that she has written back to them, accepting the invitation. So she comes to stay, and hijinks ensue. The beginning was good and the end was good, but it had way too much middle. In short, I liked it, but didn't love it.
The Cartland novel poses something of a dilemma. I've been using the titles in chronological order, and I'm currently in the 1980 titles. The Unbreakable Spell is from 1983, so my thoughts on it are not due for another 80 entries or so. Or should I live on the edge and post the summary now?
[Poll #1926722]