Collection

Every now and then, Blogger stats provide an interesting rabbit hole, or at least a blast from the past. Today, I happened upon this referral link. This makes me smile bittersweet smiles - firstly, because I have not seen The Lady Herself in far, far too long. But also because she talks of our writing group, and a particular story prompt which has never left my brain. The story is above 3500 words, but I've never found a finish - though its ghost has teased me more than once over the years.

This is why my main/long-form writing is historicals. It's never so hard to find an ending! (Just titles.)

Yes, Donna, I am thinking of the conversation we had, where you have no problems with titles and I take years to find them!

(T)he legitimation of cruelty, prejudice, falsehood, and corruption is the kind of thing, one would think, that religious people were born to oppose, not bless.

It's not a short read, but it's *splendid* writing. As all the best writing is, it's open, intelligent, and honest in viewing shortcomings from the inside ... as well as the margins. Because those who were once in are out, in many ways, and no single outlook can be said to typify perhaps any label anymore.


OH NO, NOT MORE TBR. Both the paean and the lament of any reader, the song of More Yummy Delicious BOOKS. I must-must-must have After the Death of Ellen Keldberg, not least because it sounds like an awfully good book, but also because the cover is a grabber, and at the link above you will find some thoughts on its design. By way of The Caustic Cover Critic. "Enjoy the crocuses." Excellent advice.


Am I the only person who enjoys the heck out of a good scholarly argument? I choose "argument" over "debate" because one of the joys of This Theory versus That Theory is witnessing how partisan participants can be (and indulging the luxury of not having any interest in either side, thus being open to many arguments). Here we have a great example of the genre, in anthropology. Archaeological/anthropological arguments often provide the best enjoyment, because these disciplines after all tell the story of humanity, and we certainly do like talking about ourselves. This sort of thing, for me at least, provides great exercise in critical thinking, which happens to be one of my favorite things. And this particular argument, centering on a volcanic winter, touches on phenomena which actually come into play in my own WIP, wherein the plagues and climatic changes post-535 AD loom large in the plot. I don't actually, necessarily, fully buy into the Catastrophe theory. But it sure makes a good story.

Collection

Surface tension linguistics - how cities and bubbles build dialects. This is an article about population centers and the creation of dialects; fascinating research for *most* writers, I might say.

A very cool look at developmental spelling science, because there is NO SUCH THING as too many linguistics links, and kids' brains are neato.

Can you imagine a policy that prohibits white girls, many of whom are born with straight hair, from wearing their hair straight? Absolutely not!

White readers: imagine having your hair policed. It's all but inconceivable to you, right? The politics - and systemically discriminatory policieis - of hair. For anyone who finds themselves distracted by braids - the problem is not the hair: it is your perception of the person whose hair it is. It is you.

Okay, a lighter note. Now imagine a world without windshield wipers! Well, that's messy. Score one for the woman who invented them - thank you, Mary Anderson! "She didn't have a father; she didn't have a husband and she didn't have a son. And the world was kind of run by men back then."

Kind of.

History! Now that we've had time to cool off about the U.S. election (or not), how about a look at another electoral upset that was so profound it ended an entire type of democratic process? The fact that ostracism is still practiced - just not with pottery - doesn't lessen the interest of this story! Courtesy of Gary Corby.

And a click beyond worth a little blurb all its own here in Collection-post town, a little further reading in Gary Corby's blog took me to the Met's FREE ONLINE DIGITAL BOOK COLLECTION. Holy drooling reading/history/art nerd Heaven! FREE BOOKS, y'all! Available to read online (Google Books), for download to PDF, or print-on-demand. A look at the very first title displays a good, clear digital copy, too. So: free and clear. Literally. (So many puns...)

"I'ma Send You to TIMBUKTU!" and Other Stories ... (or) ... on Literature Itself

When I was a kid, there were a few mythical experiences in life that never, somehow, lived up to their hype. Snipe hunts amounted to a load of pointless wandering and taunting, often with a group of kids who didn't even like each other (see: taunting). Opposite days - where every word was an argument against itself. Pediatric exercises in negation and frustration, that was all the "magic" I ever understood.

Then there was Timbuktu. I don't know how prevalent this was outside my little slice of the world, but there was a magic by which my brother used to "send me to Timbuktu" - and I think other kids would say or do this to each other, too. To be sent to Timbuktu meant some hand gesture, perhaps, or a magic word - spoken by some hapless exilee, or by the ones wanting to send them away - and an instantaneous disappearance the victim never could perceive.

When my brother sent me to Timbuktu, he evinced the most astonishing inability to see or hear me anymore. Indeed, one might even say his imperception of me was overacted, almost. Now and then, other people might be present and play along as well.

Again: the ultimate in frustration. "I'm RIGHT HERE!" is perhaps the most pointless piece of dialogue between kids or in science fiction, in recorded (or invisible/inaudible) history.

So Timbuktu, to us, was no real place, it was just a neato sounding word some kid had appropriated to be mean, and its geography was simply the delineation of disempowerment of some poor other kid. Usually not for too long.

They lectured the townspeople on the evils of their cult of protector-saints, then began to smash the intricate carvings with pickaxes and metal crowbars.

It's a joy, then, to read a little history/politics/culture/reality/hope ... about Timbuktu, today.

Timbuktu is a rich skein in the cultural history of the world, and its treasures have been imperiled. But there are people who save our shared human legacy.

Imagine the Library of Alexandria, with allies covertly preventing its obliteration. Imagine an alternate ending to The Name of the Rose.

Imagine your TBR pile growing by just one more volume of narrative nonfiction.

Conserving, and protecting, the material evidence of human innovation, ingenuity - art.

We are worth saving. We are worth studying. We are worth questioning, and maybe sometimes revering. Humanity is like a field of corn, constantly shifting and perhaps too-rich with vermin or smut, or maybe too try to grow - but as a whole, absolutely hypnotizing to view, as the wind lifts some eddy and draws undulating patterns. As we contemplate what grows before us.

And ...

Let's not forget that we also lecture and smash and destroy the artifacts of culture when it hits our prejudices.

TROUT Again!

Funny I should run into this today, after yesterday's musing about Brautigan et al. Could be one to hunt down.

Image: Wikipedia, of course

Collection

In tech news, a really interesting aftereffect of virtual reality - the dispiriting re-emergence from god-hood into the real world. Courtesy of The Atlantic.

Oooohhh. Neato technology again - and more queasy questions about it. "What outstanding performances from young actors will we miss in the future" ... ? Vanity Fair takes a look at the looks of ageing actors - and de-ageing actors. Complete with poignant irony.

Ars Technica looks at cooking ten thousand years ago. And no, it wasn't all spitted meat directly over a fire! On the first kitchens in the world, human migratory habits, and a kind of stone soup. Yum!

NPR's All Tech Considered has a look (well, listen) into the world of a child. It is far, FAR creepier than it sounds. On the absolutely horrifying doll listening in on your kid. There is a similar post here, on the gimcracks supposedly wiser grownups voluntarily bring into their homes to harvest their lives for marketers.

Cover-age ... The Caustic Cover Critic has been doing a year-in-review of covers (not of 2016 novels, but of his 2016 reading), and post #3 of 3 provides some truly intriguing TBR offerings. The other review posts are worth a click, but this series for me provided the most thought-provoking descriptions along with their covers. Proof that judging a book by its cover can be a mixed bag; keep an eye out for older books the CCC missed out on thanks to indifferent cover art!

All the Books

All the books I've bought lately have had their own distinctive, incredibly satisfying feeling in my hands. Of one book, I bought four copies. Its pages enchanted me. The resonance, when you tap the stack of them, that echo inside the minuscule spaces between them, the space inside the books, their universe.

Image: Wikipedia

Of another, I bought two. These are older books, hardcover, each of them with the mylar slipcover. One is a first edition, a gift. The other is for me. The instant I opened it, and my hand touched its cover, and I felt that soft vibration, heard the sound of its thump - that soft thump when you pat a book, that satisfying thump as warm as the thump I give Penelope on her furry, deep chest ...

That book had the best thump I have felt in a long time.

Penelope has good thump.

I knew I had to buy another copy of this book for someone I love. And that one, when I found it - that soft, quiet, warm sound. Of a book.

That glorious sound - when you *have* opened a book, when you've been using it as G-d intended, filling yourself with it - and you have to close it again. That sound, of closing a book. Closing a hardcover. That soft, soft, but definitive closing, the almost invisible sound of the mylar, the indescribable movement of paper against itself, and the covers coming together, protecting it, saving the rest of the pages for you, saving them all for you.

What is the best-feeling book you have held lately?

Collection

My mom recently learned the phrase "food porn", and she has had the slightest bit of fun and a certain moral consternation at the use of a dirty word (porn itself is a dirty word) to describe an apparently wholesome, if pointless, exercise. This one's for you, mom: The Arrant Pedant on how to tell a hot dog isn't porn ... or a sandwich.

... and, if you're the type who'd like that musical moment wiped out of  your brain, how about a run through the Prelinger film archive, digitized home of an eye-popping variety of clips, from advertising, to what my mom could legitimately call porn (vintage) to instructional films of the quaintest kind. Watch out, some of the 1961 prom kids are dancing AWFULLY close! (Semi-obscure cultural aside, some of the young ladies in 1961 gripped their long skirts in exactly the same incorrect way the generally-perceived-to-be-tacky women on reality shows do today with their would-be formal wear.)

Dena Pawling brings us more legal hilarity - on Citigroup's suit against AT&T for the use of "thank you." More proof that lawsuits are EVEN stupider than people sometimes. And we know how stupid people are.

I'd swear I wasn't sharing this link because it touches on Snorri Sturluson, which is one of my favorite names in the history of ever - but yeah, Snorri is right up there with the surname Snoddy and Hoyt Axton for OSUM names. Okay, okay - and the story here, which is about Vikings and a famed ivory chess set carved by a woman now called Margret the Adroit, intrigues me. Her name is bad-motor-scooter too, and I am officially fascinated with her as a character. Bonus name: Gudrid the Far-Traveler. (For those who ever find themselves in mind to buy me books, feel free to click through for a couple of ideas.)

TBR

Cincinnati Public Library
Image:  Retronaut (1874, photographer unknown)

Reasons I fear the Kindle app ... and embrace it ...

Small Collection

Eighteenth century women shipwrights.  Fascinating history I had never heard of before.

Intriguing possible TBR fodder - the cover design is beautiful.  Hard, as a costume/period snob, not to take a little exception to the glamour model and her fake eyelashes, in the trailer, but the subject matter is exotically interesting.  If it's done without exotiCIZing the female characters, could be good stuff.  Given that it's written by a woman of color (which is, sadly, almost surprising in this genre - though I have become a bit acquainted with Lisa Yarde's work online), hopes are high.  Certainly the review is promising.  And the research looks delicious.

Finally, an exploration of sibling marriage in history including a great look at the Ptolemies, in service of Nyki Blatchley's new fantasy, The Triarchy's Emissary.

Seven Attempts on Victoria

Did you know that Queen Victoria received seven assassination attempts through her reign?  I didn't.  This fact is a fascinating starting point for the book Shooting Victoria, reviewed here (and reviews at Amazon look good as well, but those tend to be take-able with a grain of salt often).  Just what we ALL need - more for the TBR pile!

Image:  Amazon.com

Jane C. Louden

Someday, I need to read this.  I also need to read a bit more about the author, Jane C. Louden - a woman who produced 22nd century mummy sci-fi in 1827.  In which women of the future are posited as wearing *trousers* and having hair ornaments with flame.  In which no man plays god.

Did I mention she (SHE) wrote this close to 200 years ago?  And married one of her own fans?  And became one of the most famous horticulturalists of her century?  Excellent.