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larryhammerThings I read the first few days after I bought an e-reader*:
Cain: A Mystery, Byron - In brief: already rankled by having to till the earth outside the gates of a Paradise he's never seen, Cain is ripe for manipulation by Lucifer's "evidence" of the Creator's inhumane nature, and when Abel gets priggish on him the result is a lost temper and a dead younger brother. Despite its scandalous reputation, I see why this one isn't as well-known as some of his other closet dramas -- because honestly Byron's all but phoning it in with this one. A completely linear plot and hardly any histrionics make it less interesting than Manfred, which I actively don't like but, significantly, has more in the way of good poetry. Skippable unless you're being a completist.
Heaven and Earth, Byron - "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" -- one such chosen being Anah, beloved of Japhet, son of Noah. This is also not a good closet drama, in part because the story is unfinished (Byron left off at a point where the only direction it could go is crash-and-burn, which is not very dramatic). However, unlike Cain it's actually interesting -- Byron stuffed several bits of Biblical mythology into his id vortex and set it to Puree. Rewritten as an American high school AU, you'd have an excellent standard YA urban fantasy -- or age it up, the plot skeleton for an erotic novel (assuming erotica is up for Byronism direct from the tap instead of diluted through cultural transmission (teens who dig Huthering Heights already are)).
Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster - Orphanage girl goes to college thanks to a mysterious benefactor with the condition that she write him regular letters -- this text. I'd long avoided this based on the premise and time period as likely to be somewhere between squicky and sentimental. There's some squick, but it's very light and mitigated byJerusha Judy's maturing independence. It also helps that in the end she's a 23-year-old college graduate marrying her erstwhile anonymous sponsor, as if you couldn't guess that, a man in his early (?) thirties. Which anyway isn't the reader's payoff -- that, instead, is Judy Jerusha's impudent letters with voice perfectly tuned to her maturation. My only, minor complaint is that while, for Jerusha Judy's sophomore year, Webster gives us the smug sophos side but not the messing-up moros side. (I'm sure I'm declining that wrong.) Highly recommended as an alternative to Dean's Tam Lin.
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery - Spinster brother and sister accidentally adopt an energetic orphan girl (they'd wanted a boy to help on the farm) and hijinx ensue. It's hard to avoid knowing the outlines of this story when one is somewhat steeped in Japanese popular culture,** but not the sort of story where spoilers matter, being an extended series of comic and heartwarming incidents -- for as TV Tropes notes, Montgomery has a lively sense of humor making this a delight. One odd thing I noticed: aside from Anne-with-an-E herself, the adults have more fully realized characterizations than the children -- even BFF Diana is much of a cipher, with only Gilbert Blythe (despite Anne's refusal to pay him any attention) having any color at all. There's no point in recommending this, because if you're going to read it, odds are you already have. As for me, on to Anne of Avonlea.
Endymion, John Keats (reread) - It's young Keats, which means it was written before he'd learned to harness the pretty language in ways that produced fruitful tensions. Not to mention long and languidly paced. But it's very pretty.
Poems of To-Day - A pedagogical anthology, intended for schools, of contemporary verse from 1915. If you can overlook the not very muted English jingoism (mostly expressed as a sort of smug localism, though there's also the likes of Brooke's "The Soldier") this is in fact a collection of Edwardian and Georgian poetry at its best, along with healthy dollops of late Victorians in sympathy with contemporary aesthetics. The formal craft is almost universally superb, and while the tonal palette is a bit limited and the sentiments are often uncomplicated (in part, I suspect, because of the intended audience), sometimes there's ironies running underneath that you might miss if you doze. And then there's discoveries like the astonishing "Shadows and Lights." Recommended to the interested. (Which ought to be a larger set than it is: the Edwardian/Georgian poets do not, in the Story Of Modernism, get much credit for their innovations in purging their language of Victorian poeticisms and in adapting their meters to conversational rhythms. They were not Victorians warmed over but the first stage of Moderns.)
Now reading: complete Robert Herrick and an early Wodehouse. Which two alternate surprisingly well.
Anyone have recs for what next?
* A Sony PRS300 Pocket Reader, which I'd already been eyeing when it went on deep discount for being replaced by a touchscreen model. The smaller size means I have to be picky about text formatting (too much indenting or non-proportional typefaces mean too much line-wrapping for poetry) but it really does fit in a pocket, being the size of a thin, if inflexible, American mass-market paperback.
** And, in fact, I've read one of the manga adaptations.
---L.
Cain: A Mystery, Byron - In brief: already rankled by having to till the earth outside the gates of a Paradise he's never seen, Cain is ripe for manipulation by Lucifer's "evidence" of the Creator's inhumane nature, and when Abel gets priggish on him the result is a lost temper and a dead younger brother. Despite its scandalous reputation, I see why this one isn't as well-known as some of his other closet dramas -- because honestly Byron's all but phoning it in with this one. A completely linear plot and hardly any histrionics make it less interesting than Manfred, which I actively don't like but, significantly, has more in the way of good poetry. Skippable unless you're being a completist.
Heaven and Earth, Byron - "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" -- one such chosen being Anah, beloved of Japhet, son of Noah. This is also not a good closet drama, in part because the story is unfinished (Byron left off at a point where the only direction it could go is crash-and-burn, which is not very dramatic). However, unlike Cain it's actually interesting -- Byron stuffed several bits of Biblical mythology into his id vortex and set it to Puree. Rewritten as an American high school AU, you'd have an excellent standard YA urban fantasy -- or age it up, the plot skeleton for an erotic novel (assuming erotica is up for Byronism direct from the tap instead of diluted through cultural transmission (teens who dig Huthering Heights already are)).
Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster - Orphanage girl goes to college thanks to a mysterious benefactor with the condition that she write him regular letters -- this text. I'd long avoided this based on the premise and time period as likely to be somewhere between squicky and sentimental. There's some squick, but it's very light and mitigated by
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery - Spinster brother and sister accidentally adopt an energetic orphan girl (they'd wanted a boy to help on the farm) and hijinx ensue. It's hard to avoid knowing the outlines of this story when one is somewhat steeped in Japanese popular culture,** but not the sort of story where spoilers matter, being an extended series of comic and heartwarming incidents -- for as TV Tropes notes, Montgomery has a lively sense of humor making this a delight. One odd thing I noticed: aside from Anne-with-an-E herself, the adults have more fully realized characterizations than the children -- even BFF Diana is much of a cipher, with only Gilbert Blythe (despite Anne's refusal to pay him any attention) having any color at all. There's no point in recommending this, because if you're going to read it, odds are you already have. As for me, on to Anne of Avonlea.
Endymion, John Keats (reread) - It's young Keats, which means it was written before he'd learned to harness the pretty language in ways that produced fruitful tensions. Not to mention long and languidly paced. But it's very pretty.
Poems of To-Day - A pedagogical anthology, intended for schools, of contemporary verse from 1915. If you can overlook the not very muted English jingoism (mostly expressed as a sort of smug localism, though there's also the likes of Brooke's "The Soldier") this is in fact a collection of Edwardian and Georgian poetry at its best, along with healthy dollops of late Victorians in sympathy with contemporary aesthetics. The formal craft is almost universally superb, and while the tonal palette is a bit limited and the sentiments are often uncomplicated (in part, I suspect, because of the intended audience), sometimes there's ironies running underneath that you might miss if you doze. And then there's discoveries like the astonishing "Shadows and Lights." Recommended to the interested. (Which ought to be a larger set than it is: the Edwardian/Georgian poets do not, in the Story Of Modernism, get much credit for their innovations in purging their language of Victorian poeticisms and in adapting their meters to conversational rhythms. They were not Victorians warmed over but the first stage of Moderns.)
Now reading: complete Robert Herrick and an early Wodehouse. Which two alternate surprisingly well.
Anyone have recs for what next?
* A Sony PRS300 Pocket Reader, which I'd already been eyeing when it went on deep discount for being replaced by a touchscreen model. The smaller size means I have to be picky about text formatting (too much indenting or non-proportional typefaces mean too much line-wrapping for poetry) but it really does fit in a pocket, being the size of a thin, if inflexible, American mass-market paperback.
** And, in fact, I've read one of the manga adaptations.
---L.
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no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 03:57 pm (UTC)LM Montgomery wrote a couple of books in the Anne series much later than the main sequence, which are pretty thoroughly skippable. However, _Rilla of Ingleside_ never fails to make me cry copiously.
Oh, and for public domain stuff, the first of Agatha Christie's Tommy & Tuppence books is at Project Gutenberg, and is surprisingly charming.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 04:11 pm (UTC)I haven't gotten to the Rilla books, but they're in the queue -- am 2/3 though of Avonlea. The written-later Anne books will be easy to skip, as they're not yet PD.
*notes down Christie* I saw Gutenberg had two of hers, but had passed them over as first novels -- will remedy this.
---L.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 05:17 pm (UTC)You can set default font sizes or give it a default CSS stylesheet and then reconvert ePubs so that they'll use those settings. And since you're doing that to the existing ePub, you'll keep your TOC. It does batch converts, too.
(ISTR that that Reader wouldn't let you sort by author last name by default, which Calibre will also let you do (if it doesn't do it by default, then preferences/advanced/plugins/device interface plugins/Sony/Customize Plugin/"use author sort for author"). That alone made it worth using Calibre for me.)
For the heavy indents, it probably depends on how they're doing it. If it's CSS, you can override it with Calibre's conversion settings. Or if you need to edit as RTF, you can save as HTML and open in Sigil, http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ , which will create TOC links for things that are HTML headings (H1, H2, etc.) and then you can re-save as ePub. I do a lot of home-rolled e-books (downloaded fanfic) and use Sigil for that. (Calibre also autodetects HTML headings as TOC links, but last I tried it didn't do them hierarchically, which Sigil can.)
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 05:33 pm (UTC)*goes off to play*
---L.
help?
Date: 26 March 2011 09:24 pm (UTC)Take this book for example: in the HLTM source, the verse is set in <pre> tags, and in the EPUB version this becomes Courier (even though the HTML displays in Times, go fig). But on the Look & Feel page, in the Extra CSS field, if I enter
PRE {font-family:Times New Roman}
(or any other font) this has no effect in the EPUB. Is this the wrong place for that? Syntax error? Or ... ?
---L.
Re: help?
Date: 26 March 2011 11:13 pm (UTC)1) Put "Times New Roman" in quotes;
1a) put "!important" at the end
pre { font-family: "Times New Roman" !important ; }
1b) oooh, try this
pre { font-family: "Times New Roman",serif !important ; }
and see if it falls back to whatever its default is;
2) check how it displays in Sigil or the ePub reading addon for Firefox,
3) if it's showing as TNR in those then there's some problem with the 300 that I would have to look further into.
Re: help?
Date: 26 March 2011 11:58 pm (UTC)But, no, that doesn't do it.
And playing around in Sigil, IT is ignoring all style definitions for PRE in the HTML file -- the definitions that Firefox displays correctly.
Time to walk away for a bit ...
---L.
Re: help?
Date: 27 March 2011 01:51 am (UTC)pre {
font-family: serif !important;
}
worked for me.
Oooh, and here's a neat trick which, again, may not work for your model, but
pre {
white-space: pre-wrap;
word-wrap: break-word;
}
wrapped a deliberately long line I created.
. . . sorry. Shiny things.
I suggest creating a test HTML document with a short snippet of pre text (& regular text if so inclined, whatever) but nothing else, importing that into Calibre, running a convert on it, and seeing what it looks like on your device. Then you'll know what the device is capable of, and can debug from there--maybe there are funky things in the HTML file that aren't immediately obviously, maybe the 300 requires further hacking to be useful (there are actually a bunch of alternate firmwares that are really neat and easy to use, I installed one to give me a clock in the corner and let me turn pages with 7/8), etc.
Re: help?
Date: 27 March 2011 02:49 am (UTC)---L.
Re: help?
Date: 27 March 2011 10:44 pm (UTC)a) The serif not taking was a display not refreshing thing.
b) Hanging indents don't work, or at least are pointless, on text where each stanza is a p/pre with lines broken with br.
c) Serif is working better for me for editing existing ePub files than Calibre, but the latter still has some uses.
d) That white-space + word-wrap hack is shiny. (I'd not met those attributes before, not having actually studied CSS3.)
Thanks -- this has been most helpful.
---L.
Re: help?
Date: 28 March 2011 02:40 am (UTC)d) Isn't it? I hadn't either, but on a whim, thinking about what might be useful even if you got a proportional font to work for poetry, I googled it and was tickled to find that it worked.
no subject
Date: 3 April 2011 08:40 pm (UTC)If you read Daddy Long Legs in a text-only version you are missing half the fun.
Another recommendation along these lines (although it's actually written for elementary school kids) is "Wheel on the School". The characters are charming.
mss @ Zanthan
no subject
Date: 3 April 2011 09:52 pm (UTC)I'll have to look for Wheel on the School. Elementary school audience doesn't particularly bother me -- I like middle-grade novels.
---L.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 04:09 pm (UTC)So many good books at PG. I've downloaded their First Folio (though I also plucked just about all the plays from a clean version U of Virginia links to), and the Rubaiyat, and Spoon River (which I ended up supplementing with poems from the expanded version that I found elsewhere). They have Father Brown stories too, and lots of Twain (including earlier versions of the autobiography and letters). If I list too many, you'll probably blur over all of them.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 04:15 pm (UTC)I already have Innocents Abroad queued up. :-)
---L.
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Date: 26 March 2011 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 06:13 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 26 March 2011 07:29 pm (UTC)I have to second Kate's opinion about the later Anne books...and, yes, Rilla is well worth reading. Interesting war-time snapshot.
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Date: 26 March 2011 09:13 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 March 2011 02:50 am (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 March 2011 04:27 am (UTC)And Wodehouse is funny. I'm even more forgiving when the material is amusing.
no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 04:41 am (UTC)Wodehouse does froth very well indeed.
---L.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 07:51 pm (UTC)Oddly, this did not at all hinder my enjoyment of the book when I read it at eight (or nine, ten, eleven, twelve—I read it yearly for some good length of time, up until my middle teens—which probably explains a good deal about me, actually).
The sequels decline in quality, but they do so gradually enough that they're still worth reading for a good while, in my opinion, and even the poorest are a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. (I think, honestly, part of the problem is that the older Anne gets, the less ridiculous she is, and the greatest charm of Anne of Green Gables for me was watching Anne be over the top and get into trouble.)
I never got into books about Anne's children, or Emily of New Moon.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 09:17 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 March 2011 06:49 am (UTC)I've reread all of her stuff about yearly and well, it was very formative. :)
My favorites (so hard) are: Rilla of Ingleside, Anne's House of Dreams (I love the Leslie story), The Blue Castle, Kilminey of the Orchard, and... um... I'll stop there. (I'm a hopeless romantic ;) )
no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 03:38 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 March 2011 02:54 am (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 08:47 pm (UTC)Told by the Death's Head (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34770) by Mór Jókai
The Man Who Laughs (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12587) by Victor Hugo
The Red Thumb Mark (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11128) by R. Austin Freeman
The Nest of the Sparrowhawk (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12175) by the Baroness Orczy
Tutt and Mr. Tutt (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10440) by Arthur Train
The Tracer of Lost Persons (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13180) by Robert W. Chambers
The Treasure of the Isle of Mist (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34410) by W. W. Tarn
Perils and Captivity (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22792), Comprising the sufferings of the Picard family after the shipwreck of the Medusa, in the year 1816; narrative of the captivity of M. de Brisson, in the year 1785; voyage of Madame Godin along the river of the Amazons, in the year 1770. Translated by Patrick Maxwell.
I haven't worked on anything by Rafael Sabatini, but of course all of his work is wonderful.
no subject
Date: 26 March 2011 09:18 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 26 March 2011 10:07 pm (UTC)It's a biit mind-boggling to imagine encountering these books for the first time as an adult bloke!
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Date: 26 March 2011 10:20 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 March 2011 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 02:47 am (UTC)I have Dear Enemy queued up, but got distracted by the dulcet warbles of Wodehouse.
---L.
no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 March 2011 04:37 am (UTC)Poking at some of the other anthologies of the period available on Gutenberg, I'm even more impressed at the skill of the editorial skill in Poems of To-Day. They did a fine job of picking out some of the best of the time.
---L.
no subject
Date: 28 March 2011 01:04 am (UTC)If you haven't already read it, you'd probably get a kick out of The True Meaning of Smeckday.
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Date: 28 March 2011 06:07 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 28 March 2011 05:03 pm (UTC)Don't bother with the sequel, Dear Enemy, as it's a watered-down version of the same-but-less-so, with Judy barely in it at all.
no subject
Date: 28 March 2011 06:07 pm (UTC)---L.
Recommended Reading
Date: 28 March 2011 10:00 pm (UTC)How are you doing?
Re: Recommended Reading
Date: 28 March 2011 10:15 pm (UTC)I'm doing well enough. Still scribbling verse, and getting it occasionally published. Have gotten partially distracted into learning Japanese and translating classical Japanese poetry.
How have you been?
---L.
Re: Recommended Reading
Date: 29 March 2011 02:21 am (UTC)Have you published any verse online?
Re: Recommended Reading
Date: 29 March 2011 10:23 pm (UTC)Plus the odd verse-fic or two.
* See also my translations tag here.
---L.
no subject
Date: 30 March 2011 08:09 pm (UTC)I didn't realize Anne of Green Gables was such a phenomenon in Japan. Fascinating. Is there a particular reason why?
no subject
Date: 30 March 2011 08:48 pm (UTC)A minor FAQ to get one started, an a CBC story on it all.
---L.