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ahem
To everyone who never told me of the existence of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin:
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Why did nobody sit me down and say, here is a book, it is perfect for you, read it now? It is:
a) extremely American in a way that's making me half bemused and half wistful, and
b) making me feel drastically under-read! and under-educated! I am not used to these feelings!
~
Anyway, flist, let's talk books! What are you reading? What have you enjoyed recently? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU AMERICANS BEEN HIDING FROM ME?
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Why did nobody sit me down and say, here is a book, it is perfect for you, read it now? It is:
a) extremely American in a way that's making me half bemused and half wistful, and
b) making me feel drastically under-read! and under-educated! I am not used to these feelings!
~
Anyway, flist, let's talk books! What are you reading? What have you enjoyed recently? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU AMERICANS BEEN HIDING FROM ME?
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I'm also, in my non fiction reading, reading Faeries, Bears and Leathermen. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=5772551
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Also squid.
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Also, have you read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas? If not, stop what you are doing and read it immediately.
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The entire book is a thinly-veiled excuse to talk about books. In essense. Wait, I am going to type an extract up for you.
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"Do you think Hamlet's the best choice to show your brother he's wrong?" said Janet to Diane.
"Yes, I do. Or at least, if the reviews of this production are right, this production is the right one. The guy in the paper said that productions of Hamlet usually cut all the political stuff -- Fortinbras, and all the speeches about usurpation and disease in Denmark, but this one leaves it all in."
"What does it leave out, then?" said Thomas.
"He said a lot of the antic disposition gets cut."
Robin uttered a dismayed cry at such a volume that the bus driver looked over his shoulder and said, "No fighting back there!"
"It's intellectual distress," called Thomas.
"Hasn't your brother got ears?" said Molly to Diane.
"He's sulking," said Diane.
"How can they cut the antic disposition?" said Robin heatedly. "Are they mad? Do they want to gut the play? Don't they know Hamlet must be his own clown?"
"Are you going to behave yourself?" said Molly.
"Let him rant now," said Thomas, "or there's not a hope he'll be quiet in the theatre."
"I've got a canvas bag," said Molly. "Suppression will occur on demand. Or provocation."
"And did they also cut all the references to Hamlet's madness?" Robin demanded of Diane.
"No," said Diane, backing off a couple of steps and catching hold of the back of a seat as the bus rounded a sharp corner, "the review said that Hamlet is simply assumed to be truly mad."
"Oh, for God's sake," said Thomas, over a renewed cry from Robin. "If I'd known that I'd have gotten tickets to something else."
"There, there," said Janet. "We can have a nice malevolent discussion about it afterwards."
"The only comfort," said Thomas, gloomily, "is that companies that fuck Hamlet up invariably do an impeccable job on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."
oh did I mention one of them is called Thomas?
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I mean, of course, it's been sitting around waiting for me to read it, but! Oh my GOD IT IS PERFECT.
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(Read the Connie Willis first though! It is so unbelievably happy-making.)
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Or in other words, to talk sensibly, Tam Lin is one of those books that is extremely flawed in ways that make it perfect for me. Plot entirely jettisoned in favor of wish-fulfilment-y literary discussion? Entire large sections that are thinly-veiled excuses to talk about Shakespeare and Christopher Fry? YES MORE PLEASE. I feel it is possibly redundant for me to talk about other books I'm reading, given that is all I ever post about anyway, but as a sidenote, I saw another Christopher Fry play that I had not seen the other day, which reminds me to tell you that if you haven't read The Lady's Not For Burning before, READ IT, READ IT NOW.
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REMEDY THIS AT ONCE. CHRISTOPHER FRY. <33333333 The Lady's Not For Burning contains my all-time favorite Thomas. For the record. From the opening scene:
THOMAS:
Dear boy,
I only want to be hanged. What possible
Objection can he have to that?
RICHARD:
Why no, I ...
To be ... want to be hanged? How very drunk you are,
After all. Who ever would want to be hanged?
THOMAS:
You don't
Make any allowance for individuality.
How do you know that out there, in the day or night,
According to latitude, the entire world
Isn't wanting to be hanged? Now you, for instance,
Still damp from your cocoon, you're desperate
To fly into any noose of the sun that should dangle
Down from the sky. Life, forbye, is the way
We fatten for the Michaelmas of our own particular
Gallows.—
What a wonderful thing is a metaphor!
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Dark Road to Darjeeling is the fourth in the Lady Julia Grey mystery series - don't read the synopsis if you don't want a spoiler to hit you! The series begins with her husband dying; the first lines of Silent in the Grave are: "To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor."
(Raybourn's stand-alone novel, The Dead Travel Fast, didn't quite work for me, but there were some lines in there that I really loved. She's got a gift for first and last lines, especially in that book.)
Jane is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre (Rochester is a rock star!), which has me intrigued. It's got a gorgeous cover and it's been getting some glowing reviews from various book blogs.
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