the night has a thousand saxaphones

( Linkspam appreciates George R R Martin )

( Borgias, which you should watch )

Question for fandom at large: You will soon be providing me massive amounts of kinky intense conflicted unbearably loyal fucked up Cesare/Michelotto porn, right? I can't be the only one wanting this.

( I am in lust with Rachel Maddow )

The only thing that keeps that from being a full-blown sexuality crisis is that obviously, I mostly want to be her but just know I'll never be that awesome.

I have things to say about Whispers, and a ton of SGA plot bunnies and such. But, later.

( Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami )

The Golden Compass, Phillip Pullman

( Finally picking this up because it's got it's own blockbuster trilogy coming out (what doesn't?) )

( Connie Willis is my new favoritest author. Time travel! I want to hug her and squeeze her and call her George... )


( Clark does dying earth and seedship. Cool. )


( Martin's world has become familiar and comfortable, like a favorite sweater. )

Beowulf

One of those things that I should have read a long time ago, and have read, and don't think I got as much out of as I should have.  In any case, it does indeed have that particular feel of oral heroic epic, which appeals, and I'm going to read more and try to get into what I know I missed, and I'm glad I did.  There's obviously some incredible play of language in the original, and I think the translation I read was good.  The history is fascinating and the linguistics certainly would be if I had a clue, and the glimpses of heroic culture are both very familiar and in some ways quite foreign to a classical mindset. 


Tales from the Expat Harem (Foreign Women in Modern Turkey) edited by Anastasia Ashman and Jennifer Gokmen

This was charming and wonderful and sweet and made me desperately, desperately long to see Turkey.  More than that, it made me long to be a braver person than I am- to be the sort of person who travels the middle east alone and learns Turkish and lives in a stone house in the Cappadocian mountains and...  a braver person than I am.  Maybe someday. 


Game of Thrones, George R R Martin

Ah, what delightful fluff.  I re-read this one on a whim, and had forgotten how enjoyable door-stop fantasy can be, if it has any tinge
of originality.  Martin's refusal to fall into the traps of an utterly black and white world with strangely invincible characters is
refreshing.  This series might have more truly memorable characters per pound than any doorstop fantasy I've read.

What really makes it good, though, is the strange amalgamation of sources.  The political struggle in the South is two-thirds War of the
Roses and one-third Hundred Years War.  Daeny's struggle across the sea comes half Ghengis Khan and half Anne McCaffrey.  And the Wall and the north is part Hadrian's wall but mostly Germanic myth.  You never could have convinced me that these elements could come together for an enjoyable whole (in fact, they don't really come together, and I am still withholding judgment on whether Martin will be able to pull that off), but they sure do work here.


Clash of Kings, George R R Martin

Yea verily, more of the same.  Martin can be brutal- he tears hard at your emotions, challenging you constantly to face what he gives you
without shutting it out.  Many people think he is just too unpleasant to read- I think it's about damn time one of these high-fantasy
mideaval authors took a hard look at the historical setting they've chosen and face it.


The Crucible, Arthur Miller

Oh my.  What an incredible and tear-jerking thing about honesty and integrity and hypocrisy and goodness.  More than that, about community and hysteria and vengeance and repression and.. oh my.  Quite something.

Tolkien and the Invention of Myth (various).

I have an overwhelming urge to read Beowulf, and the Finnish Kalevala, and the old Norse Eddas and Sagas, and Gawain the Green Knight, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and, you know, everything ever written about any of them. Most of all I am impressed with what one essay in here identified as the specific tone and flavor of Norse mythology- that the gods are mortal, that the inevitability of defeat does not in any way change the moral quality of the fight- and what it said about the Elegiac tone, that very particular emotional tone that seems so very powerful. I just want to devour all of this material. I want that light-headed, crystal-clear, soaring, free, aching feeling brought on by really powerful myth. Apparently there's a lot of it to be had in the Finnish and Norse and Old English, while I've just been putzing about with the classics. Dammit, I want to bottle that feeling. I want to be able to read it all in Finnish and Norse and Anglo-Saxon. I want to be a hell of a lot smarter than I am. That is all.