sitrep

[fahye]

I am at home in Canberra, it is of course COLD (-3 predicted for tonight) and my parents have run off to the coast for my father's birthday, so my siblings and I are kicking around the house full of the delighted spirit of being ON HOLIDAYS. My brother is regaling me with the tale of how he asked his old Modern History teacher for a reference for an internship, and found out about how said teacher and half the boys in the current class (some of whom Rob tutors) had a long discussion about him, culminating in the agreement that he will be running the world one day.

Rob and I agree that this is not very likely and he will probably in fact be sitting on the sidelines reading Boris Akunin novels and sending the world-runners pointed notes with suggestions for improvement.

Lauren is cooking spag bol and telling me in the same breath about how her Latin class is reading Ovid, and what she thought of the use of Nick as a narrator in The Demon's Lexicon (TEN POINTS TO ME FOR EXCELLENT BIG SISTER MIND-SHAPING THERE).

It's almost like they're GROWNUPS, what is this nonsense.

~

I have decided to spend the first two of my nine days of holiday not-studying, and so I have of course plunged headlong into some frantic reading. There is a pile of eight books sitting hopefully on my bedside table and my notebook standing in for a commonplace book is stuffed full of exclamation marks comparing the ideas of Pat Barker and Erich Maria Remarque*. HEAVEN. I have just started Mrs Dalloway and intend to follow it immediately with The Hours. But Rob has bought two new volumes of Fables! But I have an unread Connie Willis! But my mother has shoved the latest Jasper Fforde into my hands!

Really what I need is a YEAR off.


*If anyone has any recommendations for other novels about WWI, throw 'em my way.

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

Your sister sounds like a superior sort of individual!

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I am trying to entice her onto LJ with promises of excellent geeky people and places where she can capslock about Doctor Who.

[themis.livejournal.com]

I've only read parts of In Parenthesis (David Jones), but what I read was amaaaaazing.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

What manner of story?

[themis.livejournal.com]

It's a very complicated prose poem (it's not quite an epic, but it is novel-length) based around Jones' experiences in the war. This is a bit from it, with inexact formatting:

Immediately behind where Private 25202 Ball pressed his body
to the earth and the white chalk womb to mother him,
Colonel Dell presumed to welcome
some other, come out of the brumous morning
at leisure and well-dressed and all at ease
as thriving on the nitrous air.
Well Dell!
and into it they slide . . . of the admirable salads of Mrs. Curtis-Smythe: they fall for her in Poona, and it's worth one's while - but the comrade next to you screamed so after the last salvo that it was impossible to catch any more the burthen of this white-man talk.

There's nothing about Arthur or the Mabigonion in this bit, so it's probably not so representative of the novel, and in some ways this part is like other war poets. But I love "catch any more the burthen of this white-man talk."

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Touchstone by Laurie King deals with the world post-WWI, and one of the main characters is an extremely shell-shocked veteran trying to deal with the world. It's half a political/spy drama, and half character study.

And if you want something lighter, Phoenix and Ashes by Mercedes Lackey is a retelling of Cinderella set in WWI England. Reginald Fenyx is a pilot (and a fire-mage) who's now afraid of flying after being shot down.