Category: books

Still reading those Morland books!

Posted on by Liz

I’m on about book 26 or so. World War I is about to start, a bunch of damn Morlands just got onto the Titanic, and one of them is getting arrested at protests for women’s suffrage and force-fed in jail. Fairly intense!

Again… if you read these I recommend just skipping the U.S. Civil War one as it’s a hot racist mess. Go right back to England where this series belongs….. whew! Though, well, not like she doesn’t also manage to somehow have the Boer Wars be lily white as well (how?)

I had 2 days of conference-going after an active weekend of concert-going and I’m now having just a bit of a flare up feeling in various joints so I spent the day in bed. Sucks but I hope to be up and around quickly! But I don’t feel much like writing. Tired and achy.

A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age

Posted on by Liz

I’m enjoying Henrietta Dugdale‘s utopian SF, A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age. Millions of years in the future, we and the disembodied narrator follow along as highly evolved humans discourse on education and the history of the Christian Blood Age. Australia sank into the sea and a new continent, Alethia, rose, though Melbourne is rising again and has this giant museum/school exhibit hall built on it with what sound like fancy study carrels next to elaborate dioramas of “torture instruments” ie corsets, low necked dresses, and high heels; or just like, men being sexist while drinking the Demon Alcohol and denying women a right to education whilst cheering on their various wars and not doing any of the housework.

The evolved teenagers (2 per family) gratifyingly listen to the smiling lectures of their evolved moms, then we weirdly follow one of them, Veritée, to her private study where she divests herself of our rational dress outer garments (loose trousers with a tunic and a short jacket, none of which are constraining in any way) to reveal her silk undergarments (similar to the top ones), does calisthenics, studies next to her giant pet tiger-dog, has some vegetarian food (delivered by the one family servant who is educated, evolved, and only works till noon after which she goes off for recreation and philosophizing, and who emerges bearing the trays of fruit and bread from a weird mirrored pillar with a spiral staircase). Veritée then has a bath (slightly creepily we see her beauteous form in the bath – better than any Blood Era statue of beauty since unconstrained by Torture Instruments and well calisthenicked.)

Some of the teenagers then fly off in an aircar (run by some sort of power plus kept safe by the Repelling Engine) to the beaches of the West Coast at 80 miles per hour. They frolic, have a picnic, and probably discuss Evolution some more. In one interlude we are treated to a description of the inventresses of the Repelling Engine (inspired by the corpses which used to rain down from aircar crashes!) They go on a test flight and then are welcomed by parades, honors, costly gifts, job offers (which they refuse unless they both get the job together) as the cheering crowds celebrate the new age of safer air travel.

Space travel is mentioned as a possible future but not really given much thought.

Henrietta does not seem to like church or the organized religion of her time, or the “myth-men” who run it, much.

I have returned to our earth. Oh, what cruel disorder here reigns! Truth crashed and persecuted! “Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone,” flaunting in every myth temple! howling in every community! checking progress at every avenue.

Fools and rogues! You who profess so much love and reverence for your skeletons. I tell you it is all useless that you noisily rattle their offensive bones before my vision. That bright light of truth from the far-off age shines to me through your blackest screens! Go, hug your loathsome relics of a loathsome era in privacy—if you can—and say not again to my ears what you dare not utter to the Infinite in your solitude.

Ha! I see I “obey” and do the “work” that was commanded, for the light shines more brightly!

A dream? What is dreaming? Some explain most learnedly how it is caused by certain conditions of the body. May not some dreams cause those certain conditions?

Dream, or what else it has been, I see always the beautiful light bright with truth and hope. No one can extinguish it!

Hot springs here I come!

Posted on by Liz

I’m so excited to go to the hot springs, it’s all I can think about!

I re-read Sorcerer to the Crown recently & The True Queen by Zen Cho & heartily recommend them! They’re so much fun. I hope there will be more!

NOw reading Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World, by Miguel León-Portilla, and some other books – Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature, pretty interesting (the footnotes are where all the action is – I wish the footnotes were on each page instead of at the end of each work.)

What else. I’m pretty brain dead today. Milo is back from his 3 day camping LARP so I’m sure I’ll hear all about that soon! I’m going out for a drink and then plan to read until Danny gets home from LibrePlanet later tonight.

Spent some time looking over this May First stuff. Also reading about Cooperation Jackson.

Midnight descent to nothingness

Posted on by Liz

I had an intense dream where I was one of the last people left in the universe. We were leaving things behind as we went toward nothingness. It was especially hard for me to leave my glasses, shoes, and sleep meds behind, as that seemed so final. We had to say goodbye to various experiences and aspects of life, like “Well, that’s the last time I’ll do THAT!” Very Inanna’s descent to the underworld feeling.

Four or five of us were trying to accept what was happening as we went through the process together. I kept resisting internally but persuading myself again that struggling for just a few more years was silly when the whole universe was ending. Then I’d start drawing on the desk I was sitting at with a sharpie little hearts and stars and I hoped Danny would see it and know it was a message to him.

Some of us wondered if we could stay for the birth of the new universe even if it would be lonely and painful to have survived it. I was trying to comfort a woman who was regretting this journey to say even if we fix it so that we come back it won’t really be us as we are now and we will never exist again because every factor that has made is who we are would have to be in place in the new universe. And, that is normal and just part of our existence and we have to accept mortality and the beautiful and sad aspects of how ephemeral everything is.

Thanks, weird dream, I guess! It’s very strange to be here this morning after experiencing that process so intensely.

I woke up at 1am and read various forums and tumblr for a while, until I felt less unsettled. Back to sleep.

I wonder if this dream was from finishing reading Zen Cho’s The True Queen just before bedtime?

The Stack

Posted on by Liz

Danny just handed me a giant book called The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, saying, “Just open that anywhere and start reading.” 20 seconds later I squawked OH MY GOD!!! WHAT IS THIS! WHAAAAAT!!!!!??!!!

He always brings me good things!

It’s very interesting! I kind of want to re-buy it on kindle (it’s too big for me to hold up in bed) and dig in. This is going to be a wild ride.

Derailed by my free bookshelf

Posted on by Liz

Someone put a faded booklet on my free bookshelf called “The Hope Slide Story” by Frank W. Anderson (Frontier Book No. 12). Looks like maybe the mid 60s though there is no date. The back of the booklet lists some great stuff in the series – Murder on the Plains! The Lost Lemon Mine! Regina’s Terrible Tornado! Reminds me of stuff I used to unearth in the basements of various libraries I worked in, in the 80s.

I settled in just now to eat dinner over this book. It starts out introducing its innocent victims or survivors, not sure which are which yet; they’re farmers, truckers, factory workers. I assume something dramatic is going to happen to these trucks. Are these Russian names? What’s up with that? Then I hit,

During the disturbances of 1953 in the Kootenays, Mary Kalmakoff had been one of the 103 Doukhobor children taken by the government and put in a special dormitory opened at New Denver. She was then in Grade 3. . . . On February 28th, 1958, 5 days after her 15th birthday, Mary left the New Denver internment camp and returned to her parents.”

I had to stop and look this up. What disturbances? Doukhobar?

So, Ukranian/Georgian/Russian Christian pacfist sect who believe in communal living and who emigrated in an enormous swoop to Saskatchewan where they formed special communal homesteads and, while non violent, were strangely into sectarian fighting via midnight arson. The Freedomites (Svobodniki or Sons of Freedom) also seemed to be into nude protest marches against the Community and Independent Doukhobors. Unclear who was bombing whom and why but a lot of it seemed to be protest against the government. They were still bombing railway bridges while naked in 1961…. wow. Well, I guess I’d bomb things naked too if they took my kids off to a prison camp and called it “Operation Snatch”. How horrible! But, they were originally marching naked to protest being given land that was too cold for crops (and other issues, like not wanting to sign a loyalty oath or register births and deaths, and I think also over not wanting to split their communities to register individually for land ownership.)

The Hope Slide Story certainly breezed right past this bit of history in its rush to bring together the cast of characters on the highway, “unaware that somehwere on the dark road ahead a yellow convertible, a hay truck and an oil tanker were rapidly moving towards a tragic rendezvous with fate.”

Very fried from a long day at work, I’m going to chill out with this amazing booklet and look everything up as I go.

Spoilers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Slide

UPDATE:

I’m back just a few pages later as there was another breezy mention of the Japanese internment camp prisoners “evacuated from the coastal cities” forced to build the very road the Hope Slide is about to slide down on top of. Why do Canadians have a reputation of being “nice” again?

Further update: The Japanese prisoners also were brought out to do some woodland firefighting.

SILENT HELL: Uh oh. the yellow convertible has run into a small snowslide about 15 feet high that went across the highway. The oil tanker guy, Stephanishin, is walking over there with his 6 volt lamp. I love this book! Then, a new chapter: SILENT HELL. Seismographs jump in distant laboratories! Explanation of the hillside and its 60 million cubic yards of dirt, rocks, snow, and trees, hanging above the heads of the innocent 4 people below!
They all go to warm up in the oil tanker. The hay truck guy pulls up and hangs out under the avalanche some more! The young guys try to go free the convertible. I think they are toast. I would not be messing with that baby avalanche! Its mama might come next!

OMG now a whole Greyhound bus. Another bus! Uh oh. They are going to go have a look at that yellow convertible. But Bernie, Mary, Dennis, and Thomas the hay bale truck driver were still alive at this point, in the oil tanker with the motor running for heat.

The landslide has now swooshed past and then splashed backwards lifting up the trucks and carrying them away.

An hour later everyone else shows up and starts to realize how big the slide was. Search and Rescue to the rescue! A helicopter arrives! A mountie dog named Prince! They built up the rescue a lot but only pulled out one dead body and never found the others. THE END.

Reading The Tiger’s Daughter

Posted on by Liz

I am in the middle of K. Arsenault Rivera’s The Tiger’s Daughter, an AWESOME book set in fantasy-not-quite-Mongolia and fantasy-not-quite-China. The super fierce and brave, aggro, teenage heir to the imperial throne with fantastic sword powers who also makes flowers change color (!) and her soul-twin who is a horse riding brilliant archer with so many complications which I shall not divulge. They grow up together! Mysterious troubles beset the land!

Oh my god I love this book! The writing is good!

It’s understatedly swoony with philosophical moments, like reading Mary Renault, but with horse-riding divine magic wielding teenage bandit-killing lesbians! AND THEIR FIERCE WARRIOR MOMS. I may cry just thinking about that bit.

Joy… it’s a trilogy!

Books inhaled lately

Posted on by Liz

I’m still pecking away at the Morland Dynasty books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles and still recommend them! If you like Regency romances, or anything Napoleonic War related, Master & Commander, or whatever, you might like this series a lot. It has solid historical research behind it, which I find very satisfying and also alluring (It leads me to fall into giant Wikipedia sinkholes.) I’m on #16, The Devil’s Horse, which is very exciting as railways (tramways really) are just starting to be a Thing. There are more scenes in Manchester & some mention of Castlereagh (and his wife Emily or Lady Castlereagh, who you may recall from your Regencies was a Lady Patroness of Almack’s who could get you vouchers) and Canning. Lady C: “Her own parties were considered dull, and her manner was somewhat eccentric: guests described her conversation as an endless flow of trivial information delivered in an oddly detached manner.” I like her already. I hope she had a lot to say about trains.
There are lots of scandalous and miserable events – affairs, deaths (maybe murders – I have THOUGHTS about Flaminia).

Also reading How Long ‘Til Black Future Month, which is great! More details when I finish it.

I also re-read Archivist Wasp and the sequel to it, and T. Kingfisher’s Swordheart. Not reading quite as much as usual lately because I’m thinking about Inform7 so much.

Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?

Posted on by Liz

Reading George Clinton’s book Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?: A Memoir & it’s so entertaining. Of course Clinton can tell a great story, just a fantastic writer. I’m listening to Funkadelic as I read.

I spent the afternoon working from Noisebridge & then stayed a little to work on my game. Wrestling with the rules for rideable vehicles and elevators that are also vehicles (ironically, FIXING AN ELEVATOR in a game partially set in Noisebridge where I can only get in when the elevator is fixed, which it was, which I hoped would be good mojo for my game-elevator conumdrum) Wandered around answering the door, taking pictures of the walls, of signs, finding old things in new places and new things several layers deep, admiring the projects and wondering what everyone is into these days. It got so I could tell looking someone over whether they were there for the whiteboarding practice workshop group (fresher faced, in sweaters), Noisebridge regulars of one sort (scruffy with bikes and several duffle bages – to the consoles and beanbags!) or another (sinking deep into their laptops, muttering about Electron) or some intersection, and also I clocked (silently but to my entire satisfaction) the European hacker tourists (As if fresh off the mothership, straight out of CCC). The giant laser cutter hummed in its lair, there is most definitely a tiled, fire-shielded welding corner, the NGALAC hulked in its corner by the window, a crapton of nice looking musical equipment set up by what used to be the kitchen and a Virtual Reality tent of some sort in the back classroom. Everyone was nice. It even smelled ok.

I have a cold and worked kinda long hours and feel a bit… muted…. head splitting … so tired. So that’s all I have to say for now. Hope I feel better for Friday as I want to go to the Internet Archive celebration of free culture, the Grand Re-opening of the Public Domain.

Satirical fake newspapers

Posted on by Liz

I just pre-ordered my copy of The Ventriloquists, a novel that tells the story of Faux Soir, a Belgian satirical newspaper slamming the occupying Nazis.

In this triumphant debut inspired by true events, a ragtag gang of journalists and resistance fighters risk everything for an elaborate scheme to undermine the Reich.

Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s entire world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network publishing dissident underground newspapers.

From reading the Wikipedia entry on Faux Soir it’s amazing and beautiful how satire can be such a strong point of resistance.

Seems relevant given the satirical Washington Post put out today by “trickster activist collective” the Yes Men & their previous New York Times special edition.