Ever Bethany

seeing charismitaine geeking out over the Lord Peter Whimsy (on Tumblr and elsewhere) as well as wanting to get a better edumacation

I read Gaudy Night yesterday.

Allow me to backtrack. I was very interested in the series, it seemed like the hero was quite my favorite type. So i got a copy of "Whose Body" and...just couldn't get on with it.

There was a glimpse of the appeal I'd been expecting, but the syntax was cloudy and maybe I also wasn't quite in the mood.

At the library some time later, though, I was in a rare mood for mysteries (though this rare mood has settled more and more frequently until it's becoming more an alter-ego--my mom's genre finally emerging in my blood!) and since the local library I don't love as much as my Heart Library over toward Tulsa has a section full up of them, I looked for one of the series with Harriet Vane

this is actually cleverly put in this edition's heading, for the series "Lord Peter Whimsy mystery with Harriet Vane"

But I looked this one up, and while it wasn't the first book with her, it was the first mystery she's helping to solve that's not her own personal problem, and the opening was less muddy, so I took it home.

Have His Carcase was much better reading, though I found some of the descriptive passages glazed my eyes over. (It's a problem with me. The writing was not problematic, except for my preference.)

I enjoyed it, though I found the Agatha Christie, with Miss Marple, a bit lighter-going.

Gaudy Night was mentioned as a favorite by several people, though, so I went into it quite optimistically, having ordered it because I was in the mood. Also, I was promised a resolution to the love-line, which I must say weighs quite heavily with me...
Now I've read it I'm ready to go back and read all the others.

It is DELIGHTFUL.

And I'm definitely going to say, there's a competence difference. In fact, it reminded me of The Bee-Keeper's Apprentice books, which are some of my top favorites of recent reads, across any genre. Part of this lies in the college-setting. The charm of Oxford becomes a charm of the book, as well as its personality.
If I were to hear Laurie R. King say that Gaudy Night did not influence her series at all I would be very surprised...and a little skeptical.
The Bee-Keeper's Apprentice was the work of a practiced writer, where Whose Body has the feeling of a writer with a definite style in mind but a rather heavy hand with it. In both Guady Night and Have His Carcase, the style works, but is lighter, more natural and fluid. Whimsy's style of speech is an idiosyncracy that does not fool Harriet by this point, so maybe that helps.

I think Harriet is a great point-of-view character for Sayers, too. She's got a different vantage point on Whimsy, and while I had to put together pieces of how that came about, I enjoyed the tension of their close relationship that was to an extent an undesirable for her...and him, too, at times.

I loved the philosophical digressions, so necessary to a room full of professors (and again, one of the things I loved most about A Monstrous Regiment of Women.)


Wanted to write up my thoughts, in case anyone else wanted to discuss any of them! Or just the series in general. I'm going off to order an earlier volume...

Several more of the people on my F-List have come around to sense and read some of Megan Whalen Turner's work, so I've been skipping around making verbal parries about Tricksters, and love of rascals, and all sorts of things. Golden days, really!

rhinemouse  made some excellent, excellent points over at her post about characters Smarter Than Everyone Else
including:

"It's partly because, when a character is portrayed as Smarter Than Everybody Else In The Room, I empathize with Everybody Else and not Mr. Smarter."

She goes on to make a much more profound point, about what mostly else makes her not *like* (even if she is interested) in these characters, but sadly, I am not going to address any sort of moral ambiguity and my rationale for enjoying it. [Yet. yet?]


It made me realize that this is exactly the same reason I love them.



:cue great clashing, crashing sound:

Why, yes, I do identify with being the Smartest One in the Room.
No, not really.

In fact, I've spend most of my life tagging along with my brother, or having him tagging along with me, and feeling inferior. He's not so much smarter as more adept at expressing his knowledge, of acquiring actual facts and trivia that I only remember as broad-strokes, pieces that become part of a weave of understanding in abstract terms.

What I identify with is having only intelligence as a weapon, of prizing it as my best possession. Being quick on the uptake, sensitive to nuance. What I long for, that they have, is being quick on the draw, shameless about using it to their advantage.



Robert Downey, Jr. makes both of the above characters more identifiable to me because he talks like several of my relatives, with the same brittle gloss of wit and obvious core of insecurity. People who take this to an extroverted place, instead of, like me, creating the characters to say the outrageous things I think would be funny to say.

A lot of these characters also have physical expertise, a martial art or something similar. I think a common trait, though, is that it's one honed with grace and effort, discipline, not a brute capability. Smaller, or lankier, or less traditionally athletic than is ideal, is probably how they view themselves.

Spiderman, for example. He gets powered up, sure, but he still uses his wit to compensate for his view of himself, and if he and Superman collided in mid-air, Superman's not the one going down like a ton of bricks. (More like tumbling like a rag-doll. To be kind of cruel.)


This is what separates them from a Gary Stu, really.

There's an illusion of effortless to them, but I can see through it--because even if I have no outward resemblance, my internal landscape is very similar.




Okay, this still sounds like an epically egotistical statement. And unlike these guys, I can't just pull it off, so I guess I'll just have to apologize...

Nah.


Curious, though. Characters you've found quite lovable when they struck other people sour?
Am I completely alone in being all, "Ahahah, sheeple, TAKE THAT FOR BEING THE MAJORITY and sneering at our verbal subtlety!"



[I also really identify with the characters like Magus and the Minister of War who are more reserved, can keep up, but are left to clean up messes from these sparklingly brilliant characters. I crush on them all the harder for it.]

I got a picture book out "for Merriwether" the other day. He is feeling oppressed, and leery of my motives:


Little does he know we are grooming him to be a knight-in-shining-armor-bear!
The royal "we" are.



With my overabundance of pastels it *finally* occurred to me to do a Candyland inspired series a couple of ... well, maybe it's months ago now.

So my latest, The Frostine Sea!
This is fabricalchemist 's piece, which I am relieved to see is indeed in similar blue shades, since she was part inspiration...
Queen Frostine

This yarn is completely gorgeous, though there is a dubious lavender streak that was supposed to link it to the pink one I plan to do. But WHATEVER as they say in the New World.

I'm going to tell you about this book I am reading, tho' I haven't even 3/4ths finished it yet, and am not going to do it today, as it is the kind of day for reading Pride and Prejudice or Howl's Moving Castle* which involve no intense physical duresses or particularly gritty life situations.

Also a day for looser pants than what I am wearing, la.


The Game of Sunken Places



M.T. Anderson dedicates this book:
To all those authors who showed me that evil could be fought while on vacation, wearing knee socks.

Like Holly Black's dedication on White Cat, this neatly sets the tone for the book to follow.


It is set in Vermont, but one in which the details are carefully selected to give an air of the old fashioned children's gothic. A bit more like the America of E.L. Konigsburg than any other I have encountered.

It also swiftly gets even more like the predecessors when a crazy uncle who has invited his nephew and a friend up for the break, demands they wear Victorian schoolboy clothes, and then they get wrestled into playing a board game acted out on his property--where fae forces are setting it up and interfering.

That's where it goes oddly sideways into Spiderwick territory, retaining it's delightful tone, but with action much more like a modern boys' adventure.



...nevermind, I've talked myself into reading it now. I love this book very much. In a way that I think it doesn't matter how it ends, actually. It's just writing I am happy to see.




*which has inspired one of my theoretical Revised *Obsessive* Booklovers Meme questions

I seem to have read about 50 proper books this year. That sounds about right--not very many for me, because I was a bit slow this year, but enough to count toward a fairly long list. Last year I claimed 128, 98 being full novels. But I may have been confused?

I think I had more of a job this year, too.

Without further ado, eschewing preliminaries, and moving right along:

2008 in Review, Book Edition

Book that made my year:

Skulduggery Pleasant

 

Best Book To make the Writer DESPAIR:

The Bee-Keeper's Apprentice

 

Most Under-Pressed Good Fluff Read:

Beastly (Alex Flinn)

 

Best Kept Secret of YA fantasy:

Runemarks by Joanne Harris

 

Most Famous Book I cleverly avoided Reading:

Twilight by Stephanie Mayer

(I read Glass Houses and skimmed Marked just to fob it off—I'll probably see the movie, too, as a clincher)

Best Book I have Read All Year—no, like, I'm still reading it:

Women who Run With Wolves

 

Graphic Novel of Note:

this one is hard, because I'm still acquainting myself—I flipped through Holly Black's Good Neighbors, by the way, and it looks fabulous.

But I'm going to say I was most impressed/astounded/pick a feature:

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

(I think I read more comics this year, and that is part of the sad size of my book tally.)

I have to say there seems to still be room for my own fantasy Regency. I read quite a few of those without being much impressed....

If you want to see last year's awards, the post is easily accessible via This Internetish Wormhole

Draft of Seditious Intent done! Though it's a really crappy one, I've decided that's okay. I've got Story, we're good for the moment.

Two books I think everyone who ever drops through here should read:

The Face in the Frost (John Bellairs)
one line press? I just finished reading this and am now insanely eager to OWN a copy. Munnies must come first, munnies must come first...

Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes)
a book about love, life, and stories from all over that teach us (especially women) about it.

I'll add reasons here once I'm done reading the chillens more Skulduggery Pleasant.
ETA~ I's back! So, without any further ado,

I had one of those awesome days that isn't anything but a string of good incidents which included:

~ sitting in the midafternoon sunshine on a stack of pallets (for scrap wood) with a fluffy cat in my lap and a fun book to write at hand
~ watching a tear-jerker movie in a tiny box and enjoying it
~ getting things done! Like planting spiny poppies.

People need to share more about these kind of days, as a Xanga-keeping friend reminded me.

It's the rants that give people something to comment on, though; noted that in the entries from last April.
So.
Rant for the day...
Why did I hold off on The Game just because it sounded so run-of-the-mill? It's Diana Wynne Jones! She's never doing run-of-the-mill--it's never been one of her faults, and I should have realized it.
This isn't quite the right sort of rant, since I enjoyed it all the better for waiting until it grabbed me off the pile.

There should be a special word for the agony a writer goes through when they realise what that other person is hearing/reading is No Good. Not something funny sounding (enough phrases for that already). Something that sounds excruciating.

In happier news,

I remembered a part I didn't write lyrics for in my Tribute Favorites poem of my last post, so here is what I made up when watering goats today:

Every cold dawn
On a long road
Winding on and on
I remember illusions
That I have loved
And I want to create
Some more!

[The tag...]

40 books for 32 dollars is worth a lot more hassle than I had to get it. Look upon my riches and weep:



The stuff on the right is clutter collage, or riches from Panama with a backdrop of friends to find homes with all the other orphan books.

This could have been YOU at the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Friends of the Library Book Sale!
I could have spent only $30 by avoiding some repeats, but mostly it wasn't worth having to sort somewhere a volunteer would have to shag me out, or lugging my books much farther.
Blessings be upon the volunteer who decided that despite the thirty or so books in my bag, it was worth thinning out the regular check-out line to send me off to the Express Lane. I think I also looked pitiful. My arms were sore, and I had two sacks I was dragging along the floor like broken legs.
It is a tribute to my water-carrying side career that I'm not actually sore today.

Though I hate to play favorites I have to admit this was what got my blood pumping...



I really meant to buy a hardback. I even had one picked out (I should have kept it and taken the time to get rid of the extra Wind in the Door or Hobbit--$1.00! For a hardback of those dimensions, that soul, the probable historic import--) but this was too pretty to give up and carrying around two Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrells was by that time a glimpse of Perdition.

Someday a more perfect copy will come along. For now, I have this one--which, by the way, seems to be in perfect condition, why it was in the "Collectors" area with slightly higher prices.

I also now own Harry Potter books. I've never owned any except the Goblet of Fire I bought in Narita for my trip back out of Tokyo and then sent to Sofi, who I'd just dropped there to return to...Panama.