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larryhammerVarious books recently read:
Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold - Around half-way through, I said to Janni, "Around this point in a Miles Vorkosigan adventure, things should be falling apart on him for the second time. We still haven't gotten to the first time." Which is not necessarily a problem in a novel, but it is in an adventure. Smoothly written, discursively paced, disappointly straightforward plot, with two main stories that dovetail together so badly that more than once Miles tries to handwave the connection to himself. It does not help that Kibou-daini's societal obsession with delaying death with cryonics does not seem to arise organically from the culture as depicted, which means that its Japanese heritage feels very much pastede on yay.
The Trumpeter of Säkkingen, Joseph Victor von Scheffel, trans. Francis Brünnow - German Romantic narrative poem, which caught my attention for its setting along the upper Rhine (between Basel and Constance) and the southern Black Forest around Feldberg -- where we'd recently spent time touristing, though we didn't stop in Sakkingen itself. The story is a romance set shortly after the Thirty Years War, and von Scheffel is very much a Romantic in the Pushkin mold -- he especially learned Pushkin's management of flippancy. Recommended in particular to those who enjoyed The Golden Gate.
Delia, Samuel Daniel - As Elizabethan sonnet sequences go, it's at the top of the second tier. Daniel doesn't attempt to give either the sequence, as Sidney, or his sonnets, as Drayton, a dramatic structure -- so no plot and no dramatic monologues. Instead, we get a series of meditations on the mindset of a Petrarchan lover. Daniel is an exceptionally smooth versifier, and while there's not much passion, when he hits upon a strong conceit for a poem, the result can be powerful and lovely. If not very loverly.
Poems and Ballads, First Series, Algernon Charles Swinburne - I want to go up to people on the street and grab them by the collar and tell them "READ THIS. Yes, ALL of it, not just the anthology pieces. Yes, it's long. Yes, it's built up entirely out of dichotomies -- pleasure/pain, life/death, light/dark, and heaven knows how many more besides -- but he does it SO WELL. And the POETRY -- good gods, the poetry, the meters and what he does with them, the soundscapes he creates. Just -- just -- READ IT already!"
But the rudeness would be counterproductive.
Maha-bharata, translated and abridged by Romesh Dutt - This is an extremely abridged translation -- as in, about 2000 of the original's nearly 100,000 verses. But it's an actual verse translation, using long-line couplets modeled after Tennyson's in "Locksley Hall," at least metrically. (In control of sound ... not so much.) Except for the climactic battle, Dutt translates whole episodes stitched together with prose summaries, a strategy that falls apart when confronted with the sheer size of that 18-day battle and he is forced to abridge instead of extract. Significantly, that's the least interesting part of his version. A good text if you want a plot summary (as well as a guide to what parts to avoid, such as the acreted masses of legal code), but not entirely successful for reading pleasure.
Shadow Unit seasons 1-3, Bull, Bear, et al. - Absurdly sexy crime-fighting units are not my sort of television show, which made me delay taking this up. As it is, I'm only into it for Chaz and Daphne, really. The ensemble of authors do a good job of writing to a common style, but the best-written episodes are those Emma Bull has a hand in. Not sure what to make of that, but there it is.
The Spell of the Yukon, Ballads of a Cheechako, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, Robert Service - An uneven poet with the reputation of being the Kipling of the Yukon, but is both more and less than that. These deserve more than a short paragraph, of which anon, but for now I'll note that his first collection, The Spell of the Yukon aka Songs of a Sourdough, is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry of the 20th century for a reason. Also,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oracne, Red Cross Man should be of special interest to you.
... amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.
---L.
Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold - Around half-way through, I said to Janni, "Around this point in a Miles Vorkosigan adventure, things should be falling apart on him for the second time. We still haven't gotten to the first time." Which is not necessarily a problem in a novel, but it is in an adventure. Smoothly written, discursively paced, disappointly straightforward plot, with two main stories that dovetail together so badly that more than once Miles tries to handwave the connection to himself. It does not help that Kibou-daini's societal obsession with delaying death with cryonics does not seem to arise organically from the culture as depicted, which means that its Japanese heritage feels very much pastede on yay.
The Trumpeter of Säkkingen, Joseph Victor von Scheffel, trans. Francis Brünnow - German Romantic narrative poem, which caught my attention for its setting along the upper Rhine (between Basel and Constance) and the southern Black Forest around Feldberg -- where we'd recently spent time touristing, though we didn't stop in Sakkingen itself. The story is a romance set shortly after the Thirty Years War, and von Scheffel is very much a Romantic in the Pushkin mold -- he especially learned Pushkin's management of flippancy. Recommended in particular to those who enjoyed The Golden Gate.
Delia, Samuel Daniel - As Elizabethan sonnet sequences go, it's at the top of the second tier. Daniel doesn't attempt to give either the sequence, as Sidney, or his sonnets, as Drayton, a dramatic structure -- so no plot and no dramatic monologues. Instead, we get a series of meditations on the mindset of a Petrarchan lover. Daniel is an exceptionally smooth versifier, and while there's not much passion, when he hits upon a strong conceit for a poem, the result can be powerful and lovely. If not very loverly.
Poems and Ballads, First Series, Algernon Charles Swinburne - I want to go up to people on the street and grab them by the collar and tell them "READ THIS. Yes, ALL of it, not just the anthology pieces. Yes, it's long. Yes, it's built up entirely out of dichotomies -- pleasure/pain, life/death, light/dark, and heaven knows how many more besides -- but he does it SO WELL. And the POETRY -- good gods, the poetry, the meters and what he does with them, the soundscapes he creates. Just -- just -- READ IT already!"
But the rudeness would be counterproductive.
Maha-bharata, translated and abridged by Romesh Dutt - This is an extremely abridged translation -- as in, about 2000 of the original's nearly 100,000 verses. But it's an actual verse translation, using long-line couplets modeled after Tennyson's in "Locksley Hall," at least metrically. (In control of sound ... not so much.) Except for the climactic battle, Dutt translates whole episodes stitched together with prose summaries, a strategy that falls apart when confronted with the sheer size of that 18-day battle and he is forced to abridge instead of extract. Significantly, that's the least interesting part of his version. A good text if you want a plot summary (as well as a guide to what parts to avoid, such as the acreted masses of legal code), but not entirely successful for reading pleasure.
Shadow Unit seasons 1-3, Bull, Bear, et al. - Absurdly sexy crime-fighting units are not my sort of television show, which made me delay taking this up. As it is, I'm only into it for Chaz and Daphne, really. The ensemble of authors do a good job of writing to a common style, but the best-written episodes are those Emma Bull has a hand in. Not sure what to make of that, but there it is.
The Spell of the Yukon, Ballads of a Cheechako, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, Robert Service - An uneven poet with the reputation of being the Kipling of the Yukon, but is both more and less than that. These deserve more than a short paragraph, of which anon, but for now I'll note that his first collection, The Spell of the Yukon aka Songs of a Sourdough, is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry of the 20th century for a reason. Also,
oracne, Red Cross Man should be of special interest to you.... amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.
---L.
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no subject
Date: 26 June 2011 03:21 pm (UTC)http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/daniel02.html
I agree with you about the lack of passion in his sonnets, which is what kept me from loving this sequence. I didn't believe he really loved her or was pining away, or was hurt in any way.
I will have to check out the Swinburne. :)
no subject
Date: 26 June 2011 09:15 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 26 June 2011 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 June 2011 09:17 pm (UTC)(But I doubt it.)
---L.
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Date: 26 June 2011 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 June 2011 01:12 am (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 June 2011 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 June 2011 03:12 am (UTC)---L.
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Date: 26 June 2011 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 June 2011 09:18 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 26 June 2011 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 June 2011 01:11 am (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 June 2011 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 June 2011 02:26 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 27 June 2011 02:53 pm (UTC)Meta-comments?
no subject
Date: 27 June 2011 02:58 pm (UTC)ETA: Which, he finally realized, is why Sol was the first to notice the Anomaly, and not Reyes. Huh.
---L.
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Date: 27 June 2011 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 June 2011 06:13 pm (UTC)---L.