Zeborah

I had a dramatic downturn in my reading in the second half of the year, I think because I started getting some energy back and being able to think about creating again (fanfic, fanvids, pottering at original fiction, etc). So might as well glom these months together:

( 15 books read in 5 months )

Stats for 2011 as a whole:
Total books read - 89, of which
71 by women;
35 by people of colour;
3 by LGBT authors (! okay, I need to do more reading here)
17 by New Zealand authors
22 science fiction
12 fantasy
8 "unfantasy" which is a tag I use when I don't think/don't know that the author would call it fantasy (eg it portrays spirituality or cultural beliefs) but I think fantasy readers would enjoy it for the same reasons that they enjoy fantasy. Or something like that. It's a very subjective thing.

Skullcrusher Mountain a Doctor/Master crackvid. The Doctor's expressions are fantastic. And the long moment where the Master pauses in his evil scheme to lovingly study the Doctor's sleeping face. And the... the whole verse about the monkey/pony monsters is... I don't think I'll ever get tired of that bit of spectacularly wonderful WTFery.

My other favourite Master fanvids are both from Ten's era:

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better - is another Doctor/Master fanvid, just as hilarious, not quite as much "...What did I just see?"

Don't Stop Me Now - a joyride through the Master's life as Saxon.

( 11 books read in April (including 8 print, 3 ebook) )

Of the month, my favourites were Lud-in-the-Mist and Cereus Blooms At Night.

I suddenly recalled today not only that I'd been planning to post my "books read" each month, but also that February ended a wee while ago. (I may have mentioned a few times that time is weird at the moment. The other day I was on the bus and heard people talking about the end of daylight saving coming up sometime. I blinked several times. It was like the conversation implied that time was actually moving on in an orderly fashion, unaffected by trivialities like geology.)

Anyway, so here they are:

( 8 books read in February )

And one book I didn't finish (in fact barely started):

Orphen
My attempt to introduce myself to manga by picking the first one I see at the library that says "volume 1" was probably doomed to failure even before 95% of the libraries in town were forcibly closed. I think I'll find it easier to get used to the manga format if I first identify a story that wouldn't annoy me no matter what format it was in. I managed a couple dozen pages, I think, before deciding that not only did I have very little idea what was happening, I was pretty sure that if/when I did figure out what was going on I'd only hate all the characters.

I've never actually read Dickens' book. In fact I'm not sure I've read any of Dickens' books in their entirety. I was assigned Great Expectations in school and I must have soldiered through at least half of it, and I did look at the very end which was my favourite part (I enjoy minor ambiguities like "We never said farewell again"), but it's quite possible I skipped the rest. I've tried Oliver Twist and Tale of Two Cities and others at various ages, but it just comes down quite simply to the fact that I don't enjoy reading Dickens' novels.

So everything I know about A Christmas Carol I learned from the general societal gestalt, inhaled from bits of TV movies and duck-filled cartoons and fanfic pastiches and the Blackadder parody and YA novels involving children putting on plays and a multitude of slighter references. A Lamb Chop episode once argued that people are born knowing "Three Blind Mice" because who can remember not knowing it? The story of A Christmas Carol is like that for me. A Dickens fan would grimace and say I really should read the book, of course, but there's lots of things that should happen and won't.

Because of my utter lack on fanning over Dickens, then, I was disappointed to see that the title of this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special was A Christmas Carol. We've already met Dickens, y'know? and moreover, the story's been done, in movies and cartoons and fanfics and parodies and novels about plays and and and.

But ( Doctor Who makes everything better, even earthquakes )

Ripples on the Lake by Dawn Rotarangi (Pākehā, though she's married to a Māori guy)
Older-young adult fantasy (marketed as "paranormal adventure").

The point of view characters are Pākehā (white New Zealanders): Saffron, eldest of five siblings, who's drawn into events by trying to protect her youngest brother from the results of stealing some tapu (sort of sacred/taboo - anyway, dangerous) coins; and Nick, a press photographer with a penchant for taking photos of anything that's bleeding. With her whole family at risk, Saffron has to put things right with some help from local Māori and eventually Nick.

(The story subverts the "Magical Negro" trope in that the Māori helping her aren't so much taking a backseat to the white heroine because she's the heroine, but rather because they're way too smart to mess with these things if they don't have to. In some cases they're explicitly using her so they can keep a distance.)

I like the British superstition as a backdrop to what the Pākehā characters scorn as Māori 'superstition'. It's part of what gets Saffron involved (her father inculcated all his kids with a strong sense that it's a good idea to avoid cracks in the pavement, the number 13, black cats, etc, just in case, so she plays along with the whole tapu thing long enough to find out that yeah, this stuff's real) and thematically it makes a nice compare-and-contrast.

Trigger warnings: (skip) Refers to suicide of Saffron's father. Contains graphic descriptions of two of her siblings' deaths and of a massacre of women and babies.

( Cut for my irritable judgement of some of the male characters, involving MANY spoilers )

Beak of the Moon by Philip Temple
Young adult; Watership Down with kea; myxomatosis is replaced with fire and sheep.

I read it mostly because I'm researching kea, in aid of hopefully writing a short story about them. It was okay I guess. Makes an interesting compare-and-contrast with Sil: A Novel by Jill Harris which is the same thing but with tui and a different plot - Sil is about a singing contest and the threat of magpies rather than the whole "Must leave dictatorial home to establish a new utopian colony. Oh noes, we forgot the females!" thing. In fact both Sil and Beak of the Moon have scenes where Our Heroes attempt to fly over a large body of water (Sil is trying to flee to an island in his grief at losing the singing contest; Strongbeak of Beak of the Moon hasn't quite figured out that Australia is more than 16km away from New Zealand) with disastrous results.

In terms of anthropomorphisation, Watership Down does the least and Beak of the Moon is pretty close to that (particularly because if you know anything about kea you'll be ready to believe pretty much anything about them); Sil has more and I particularly go squinty-eyed at the tui plot to imitate magpies in order to annoy the humans enough that the humans will shoot all the magpies. But as books for that age groups go, it was a book for that age group.

The compare and contrast of Beak of the Moon with Watership Down is a bit more interesting but also makes its failings the more obvious. The first two thirds of the novel follow the Watership Down plot pretty closely, though it's slower to get started, there's more infighting among our intrepid adventurers, and in the last third they come back home and deal with the problems there; and then they establish their colony in the last chapter. I did like that it was more rooted in the home and that the book considered it important to solve the problems there, but... Strongbeak's wavering between determination-bordering-on-recklessness and Hamlet-like indecision made it all drag a bit.

Kea mythology isn't quite as fun-filled as rabbit mythology, though it's competent and plausible.

But what really irritated me were:

1. In chapter one, Our Heroes meet humans for the first time. Humans who wear different coloured hats, and ride horses, and leave out bread for them to eat (and later in the book start fires and bring sheep and shoot the kea with guns). And kea have never before even heard of humans. Apparently Māori don't exist in this New Zealand. I... I guess that could be why the kea meet moa on their journeys? In short: Oh Philip Temple no.
2. He's clearly done some research on kea, but has equally clearly failed to do research on their history. Part of the reason I read the book was that I am doing research on their history. I didn't find it too hard at all to discover that the early history of kea/human relations goes like this:
   • Māori and kea know about each other. Māori know that kea come further down the mountains in colder winters. There's a reference to some Māori training them as pets.
   • Pākehā naturalists arrive, observe and describe kea. (1856 at the latest.) There's more interaction over the next few years. A topographer knocks them down with stones for food.
   • Pākehā drive sheep into the areas where kea are spending cold winters. Kea investigate the shepherds' huts and discover the joys of pecking at sheep skins and other remains of humans butchering sheep. Some get captured (most promptly escape).
   • Kea discover they can get awesome tasty food from sheep killed in accidents.
   • Kea discover that you don't even need to wait for the sheep to be dead.
   • Pākehā think for months (if not years; I'm not sure if I've seen an exact chronology of the early years) that the resultant wounds are some new kind of sheep disease, until one shepherd in 1871 notices what's actually going on (almost half-way down the page).
   • At some point kea start outright killing the sheep (rather than nomming on them alive and the sheep sometimes dying later of their wounds) but this mightn't be until the 1880s.
   • From 1878 on, Pākehā work out new and increasingly exciting ways of slaughtering the kea to protect their sheep. (I concede there was probably some of this going on from 1871 on smaller scales.) By 1883 beaks are taken as trophies as the government pays a few shillings a beak.
   Temple's history, by contrast, appears to be:
   • There are no Māori.
   • There are no naturalists.
   • In the space of a single year, Pākehā meet kea for the first time ever, set fire to the mountain, and bring sheep (which the kea call "pinkfaces"! Philip Temple, have you ever seen a sheep? if there's any pink quality it's not exactly the first impression a kea would have) to feed on the new growth; in the same year the rest of the book takes place and then, in desperation, a kea discovers a nommy sheep carcass and within a week some more kea learn to kill them; next day the humans shoot at and kill several of the kea, after which the story would have us believe all the kea swear off meat forever.

So that was kind of irritating for me.

(Buller wrote a decent overview of what Pākehā knew about kea by the late 19th century. I can give references to anything not mentioned there.)

Firefly gave me something to do during the early weeks of the quake, but I never got around to telling the world my view on it.

My view is simply this:

It could have been quite a decent show if they'd removed all the men and replaced them with some actual plots.

( Okay, I lied, I have other views too. )

So the best part of Firefly/Serenity, in my opinion, is the fanvids. And with that I segue smoothly into:

Three fanvids about words
(This was going to be "three fanvids about words from shows I've never watched, except I only had two of them, and while I waited to come across a third I watched Firefly. Also the third one I came across was from Star Trek, which I had watched. Also technically I've seen bits of episodes of SGA too. So I just gave up on that part.)

Verb (Star Trek Reboot) by lapillus
Nice fun educational fluff. --I feel the need to clarify that 'fluff' isn't a bad thing, it's just not narratively or thematically deep, and that's okay because it's fun. And also in this case educational!

Language (Stargate:Atlantis) by newkidfan
I know who the people are, more or less, but not what's happening, and it doesn't matter a bit. The silence this speaks about is almost tangible. It makes me hold my breath straining to hear what isn't actually in an auditory mode. And that tension is held throughout, never resolved.

Sequence (Firefly/Serenity) by Lim [warning for some strobe effect]
Again I knew a bit about River Tam before watching, but nothing about the plot, and this vid worked just as well for me before I'd seen the series as after. And again, oh, the tension. It's coloured differently than that in Language but the shape is very much the same.

Anno Domini 2000; or, Women's Destiny (1889) by Sir Julius Vogel

Vogel bases this utopia on three principles, which he helpfully lays out in the epilogue:

1. there's no reason women can't do everything men can [except for a telling blind spot he has regarding participation in and leading of the armed forces];
2. there's no reason the various British colonies shouldn't form a British empire;
3. there's no reason we shouldn't eliminate poverty [on the grounds that a) it's easy enough to give everyone basic sustenance and lodging, and b) this won't eliminate ambition but rather stoke it because ambition increases the higher up the foodchain you get, and the poorest people are actually too poor to have energy for ambition].

Having fixed all these things, the various colonies force Britain to give Ireland the same self-determination they have, people stop learning Latin and Greek and with the time no longer thus wasted advance the sciences instead, and the House of Lords becomes ashamed of holding their position due only to their birth so dissolves itself.

The plot hinges on the remaining inequality of sexes - that is, the fact that the emperor's heir defaults to his male before his female progeny. Two reasons oppose any change to this: a) it would mean changing the Constitution, and this seems a dangerous precedent; and b) the heir has to be ready to lead the armed forces so obviously it can't be a woman. [You see what I mean about this being a blind spot. It never once occurs to Vogel that a woman could actually lead the armed forces.]

Our Heroine has purple eyes, is beautiful and intelligent and an up-and-coming 23-year-old politician, and everybody loves her. Unfortunately "everybody" includes "Nice Guy" Reginald who's sure she'll eventually love him back if he stalks, slanders, commits treason, and kidnaps her enough. Spoilers: (skip) She thwarts the treason, inherits a stunningly successful gold-mining operation, becomes universally adored, and (after being made a countess and then the Duchess of New Zealand) marries into the position of Empress. Because she's just that awesome.

Oh, and there's artificial magnetism, self-acting elevators, silent telegraphs, sustainable energy, and a potted history of the development of the aircruiser. When Vogel writes, "Strange to say, the inventor or discoverer [of the final stage of the aircruiser] was a young Jewish woman not yet thirty years of age", the "strange" part is almost certainly her youth; most of the awesome scientists mentioned in the book are female, and the awesomest guy is Jewish.

While pro-Irish and pro-Jewish (ah! just found he was Jewish himself), he's pretty silent on non-white folk. The Jewish guy was possibly partly "Asiatic" or possibly that was just a synonym for Jewish; the description was confusing. A Lord and Lady Taieri are mentioned, but I'm not sure whether they're Māori or just named for the gorge (cf a "Lady Cairo") as they get no description at all. And the inhabitants of Antarctica are, alas, described as "docile, peaceful, intelligent" and "unsophisticated" "Antarctic Esquimaux", related to the Māori and assimilated to the climate with "a thick growth of short curly hair" covering both faces and bodies.

But we must not forget Antarctica itself! "A large island, easily accessible, which received the name of Antarctica, was discovered within ten degrees of the Pole, stretching towards it, so that its southern point was not more than ten miles from the southern apex of the world. From causes satisfactorily explained by scientists, the temperature within a hundred-mile circle of the Pole was comparatively mild. There was no wind; and although the cold was severe, it was bearable, and in comparison with the near northern latitudes it was pleasant." Also, they dig up bountiful supplies of ivory there.

Read more on Sir Julius (contains spoilers, not all of which are accurate) and the novel itself. (ETA: Wrong link; try this one instead - on the right nav bar it lists various formats.)

Update the dialogue (keep the Victorian costumes) and I reckon this would make an awesome movie.

This was going to be a pseudo-review of Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) but I got distracted in the middle.

So it turns out I can be tricked into watching a biopic if a) I don't even know it's a biopic because it's about someone I never heard of and b) it's free (both libre and gratuit) on the internet and c) it's full of songs and d) I can look things up on Wikipedia during the boring bits.

Because face it, it's taken a while for movies and tv to ratchet up to their current fast pacing. Watching Old Who, for example, is an exercise in alternating hilarity and impatience. "The Leisure Hive" in particular starts with this really slow pan across a windy beach. We see a couple of deck chairs, and then the back of a tent. And when I say slow I mean it. For six seconds we see nothing but the back of the tent, and then finally we emerge to some more deck chairs and then just when you think we're going to see something interesting we're panning across the back of another tent. Five seconds, and remember these are only the seconds where there's nothing in the frame but the back of a tent - if you count from when we first see it to when we can't anymore it's eighteen seconds. So, finally we see more deck chairs. And we keep panning, and we keep panning, and then we reach -- a third tent. This one we escape a little more quickly and there's the sound of snoring, so I'm thinking something's about to happen, maybe in the next deck chair? The next? What about this one? Or maybe-- Noooo, not another tent!!!!

I don't use multiple exclamation marks lightly, people. The opening credits faded onto the beach at about 00:35 (the cross-dissolve takes a couple of seconds itself) and we don't see the Doctor until--

Um, this is embarrassing! I forgot to mention that right after tent number four we actually get treated to tent number five. And then we see the TARDIS (at 02:08), and then the Doctor snoozing (02:13) but the camera mocks us by coming to a rest with the corner of tent number six just in frame. So it takes well over a minute and a half just to pan across the beach, and I... I'm pretty sure that in 1980 this coyness must have been the height of comedy because otherwise why would you bother? Please someone tell me this was funny at one stage.

Which reminds me I watched Charlie Chaplin's The Rink (1917) a few months ago. Again, I'm pretty sure it was meant to be funny because I gather Chaplin was known for being quite a card, but I was sitting there watching it thinking, "Wow, how fascinating that some ancient human civilisation used to watch things like this for entertainment. I suppose that guy's caricaturised black eye makeup had some tremendous cultural significance at the time; I wonder what it was."

Anyway, back to Till the Clouds Roll By. It's a pretty straightforward plot, if "plot" is the right word. There's this songwriter, and he's having a hard time breaking onto the stage. He gets a mentor, he goes to England because English stuff's all they're buying, he falls in love, show business continues to be hard, he breaks onto the stage, he gets married, his mentor's daughter disappears, his mentor dies so he goes into a funk, someone finds his mentor's daughter for him so suddenly he's out of the funk, he writes stuff with Hammerstein (I've heard of Hammerstein!), his stuff gets produced at Hollywood sung by his mentor's daughter, the end. --By the way, the mentor and the daughter were invented for the biopic; this guy must have had a really boring life.

I actually started watching it a year or so ago and fell asleep half an hour in. But today I started watching it on my iPod when I was waiting in the takeaway shop with nothing else to do, and the songs were pretty good. I particularly liked Lena Horne's "Can't Help Loving That Man", and then later at a boring spot I looked up her bio and... in case I'm not the only person who did not know this let me quote:

"[She] was never featured in a leading role because of her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be re-edited for showing in states where theaters could not show films with black performers."

"Horne wanted to be considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but lost the part to Ava Gardner, a personal friend in real life, due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships in films."

I think it might be possible to trick me into watching a biopic about Lena Horne by saying, "Hey, Zeborah, this is a biopic about Lena Horne."