For me, at least:
The Red Hot Chilli Pipers are returning to Pipes in the Valley this year.
Saturday, September 28, Riverfront Plaza, Hartford, CT. Miss it, and I pity you.
Maybe I’ll wait and buy their upcoming album (due out in August) there.
And get it signed.
I’m so bloody happy right now.
Sometimes when you kneel in prayer to the god of drums your prayers are answered.
This has been a good week.
No, really, I’ll actually, you know, write something soon.
In the meantime, because I really really miss them, here’s some Red Hot Chilli Pipers. I do miss these boys.
I do love these boys.
I have no idea where this month has gone. Poof, even. It’s a good thing, in one way at least: Twelfth Night is coming!
Well, it’s there now, at the Hartford Stage:
- – And I’m going on Saturday. And I’m excited. Their Tempest last year was everything perfect and wonderful, and as some reading this may know I’m … rather fond of Twelfth Night. (Search it on the blog. You’ll see,)
But it’s sneaked up on me! Now all I have to do – by Saturday – is go back and read all my blog posts, watch the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production, write my piece on it, watch one or two other productions I’ve acquired since I let the Project peter off, write about them, and in all other ways refamiliarize myself with the play.
No problem.
Oh, and my sister just invited me to West Side Story at the Shubert next weekend. The theatah, my friends! *squee*
Right, so that was a couple of weeks ago already. Time flies when you have no points of reference. So I guess by “back” one could say I meant “no longer a quivering heap incapable of stringing together coherent thought” and instead “capable of stringing together coherent thought but not yet able to do anything with it once strung”. Or something. I’ve been basically watching stuff on my laptop, screencapping it, and – having discovered Tumblr – blogging it. (Yes, I’m cheating on WordPress.)
One good thing about being part of Tumblr is that – given the geeks and nerds whose blogs I have chosen to follow – I’m a little more cognizant of what’s going on in the geeky nerdy world. (A little too cognizant, when it comes to spoilers for Game of Thrones and such, but c’est ça.) And one thing that came under my eye today (probably in the wee hours, because I’m still fighting against reverting to vampire hours) was a gifset: Remember May 2, 1998: The Battle of Hogwarts.
So I decided to watch (and, yes, cap) the two Deathly Hallows movies.
See, here’s the thing. I think I tend to underplay how important the Potterverse is to me, as though it means less than some of my other obsessions. But it is important. I don’t believe any other book release has meant as much as The Deathly Hallows. I know there’s not another book in my reading life that I have needed to read so badly, or which I took off away alone and opened and did not close – apart from necessary breaks for things like bathroom and water – until I reached the last page. I think it was six straight hours? Something like that?
But I never saw the last film. Deathly Hallows Part 1, yes – I think. I honestly don’t remember, and didn’t remember big chunks. (The dragon! Surely I’d remember seeing the dragon on the big screen?) But other chunks I do. (Which, thinking about it, could be because those parts adhered so closely to the book…?) Regardless, I never saw Part 2, because I refused to go when my family went, because … Did I mention there are going to be Harry Potter spoilers here? There are. Because of Fred. And Remus and Tonks, and Colin Creavey, and that’s just what I knew about going in; there were other things I didn’t take into account, and what it all adds up to is that the reason I gave for refusing to watch the film in the theatre is that I didn’t want to cry that much in public.
For the record, I was very wise.
This isn’t going to be a blow-by-blow review of The Deathly Hallows. I can’t do that right now, if ever. It’s just me maundering on about how utterly right I was.
It started in Part 1, of course. Hedwig. I remember while reading the book that I was positive Hagrid wouldn’t last the ride, and was so on edge that I barely registered Hedwig’s loss. And then of course there was Mad-eye – but that happened “off-stage” – and George’s ear – but he was joking about it almost immediately. And then Dobby… But I’ll be honest. JK forgive me, I hated Dobby, especially in the movies. I’ll acknowledge the awfulness of that, admit I welled up a l
ittle when they got to Shell Cottage, not mention how little, and move on, shall I?
No, I managed all that in public, with probably a sniffle or two. But I knew Part 2 would be different. “It wasn’t that bad,” my sister told me later; “They didn’t linger on it.” And she was right. They didn’t, as it turned out.
It didn’t matter. I was still a wreck. Because I knew anyway, and because the whole damn Weasley family was standing around a prone figure trying to comfort each other … and because I’d gotten a head start.
What I didn’t expect to hit me like it did was not the death of any person. One of the worst moments – in the first movie, at least – wasn’t a death at all, though; it was when Ron left. That was … hard. But I don’t think even the shot of Remus and Tonks bit quite as hard as … Hogwarts. Beautiful, idyllic Hogwarts, where help is given if you only ask, where most of six fat books and seven long movies took place, the safe and sure place, bastion of Right and Good, and above all Magic … first, surrounded by dementors … and then in ruins. Every shot of someone running through halls piled with rubble, every shot of broken arches and shattered towers – it broke my heart.
I didn’t cry over Snape. Not until the Pensieve and “Always”.
Being as I’m just lucky that way, lots of emotions bring tears to my eyes, so fierce pride in Professor McGonagall and Molly Weasley – two of the biggest badasses in the story – had me grinning damply. Best not to even talk about Luna, much less Neville.
But I wonder if I instinctively knew something that, while watching just now, I didn’t predict: most of the tears came at the end. “19 years later”, and the Weasleys and Potters seeing their kids off to school at Platform 9 3/4, and … that was it. For me, and … for the series. That was the end. Seven books, eight movies, sixteen years of my life … I’d delayed it two years, is all. And now it’s over. No more new Harry Potter.
That’s when the tears really came. So, again: good decision, past-me. I do prefer not crying in public.
To end on a lighter note – the effects were terrific in both movies. The battles were suitably intense. The story of the Three Brothers was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen on film. The story as a whole was a bit gutted – e.g. what was the importance of Gellert Grindelwald, or rather did it come across to muggle movie-goers? – but with the pace of it all it was hardly noticeable till afterward and time to think. And finally, if I knew, I’d forgotten that Ciarán Hinds made an appearance. I spent five minutes completely distracted by trying to figure out who was under all of Aberforth’s makeup; I knew the voice, and I knew the mouth. That was kind of fantastic.
Oh – and for the record, I was sorted into Hufflepuff. Pottermore. It’s not altogether over, I suppose…
After all, Finch is on the job already…
Well. It’s been a while. See, on March 15 I lost my job, and had to fight for unemployment benefits, which took until mid week last week – so nearly a month passed without income. So I have spent the past month pretty much curled up in a depressed, embarrassed, angry, scared ball. However, now I am getting the stipend, such as it is, and can actually do things like breathe and sleep and buy groceries, and maybe I can claw back a little of my life and start writing things again. That would be cool.
And until I get a review or anything else useful written, there’s this that I just received in my inbox:
I have free time. When do I leave?
There’s a trailer. I’m excited.
I won this novella through LibraryThing’s Member Giveaways, and since I had just read Yamada Monogatari it seemed like a natural next read.
In keeping with my confusion over what “Monogatari” meant, I expected “Tsuki” to mean “story” or something along those lines. But it doesn’t. It’s not a literary term at all, at least according to my limited search: it means “punch” or “thrust”. Perhaps it refers to the twist in the tale, which ought to come as a shock equivalent to a kendo attack. Because there certainly was a twist. Of sorts.
ETA: My mistake; my reading for content is sometimes lacking, and I apparently missed it, but the author assures me it’s explained. Apologies!
As the synopsis says, Tsurugu no Kiyomori is a sort of magic-using private eye, hired to protect a warlord’s new bride from a kitsune (often malicious fox spirit) they believe is near, and threatening. Kitsune can and often do take human shape in order to work mischief (and worse), and it could be anyone – or no one. And – again, as the synopsis says – a PI in ancient Japan doesn’t have the leeway a classic American gumshoe would, since a mistaken accusation against, say, the bride herself could end in very ugly, very painful, possibly very fatal results.
Tsurugu is partnered – against his will – with a warrior named Shishio Hitoshi, who makes up in grit and determination what he lacks in magic. They become a good team, until they aren’t any longer, and that’s the problem I had with this story. I’ll come back to that. It was well done, with several factors that made it both a very good and a very bad followup to Yamada Monogatari – there were surprising similarities (which is why it was both good and bad). I’m not in any way suggesting anything hinky about either book – just surprise at a superficial resemblance. This is a quick tale (wouldn’t it be fun to write stories about kitsune in sets of three? Three tales? Geddit??) which encompasses a pair of mysterious twins, a dog hunt (which was, I felt, an unnecessarily ugly scene, but at least it was not graphic or detailed), and a beautiful bride who may not be what she is supposed to be.
The twist in the tail tale was very much a surprise, and so was effective in that way – but it was so very close to
the end of the novella that I think I was still thinking “What … just happened here?” when I hit the last sentence. With the fast pace of the story, it felt like flying along on a bobsled, hitting a wall, and continuing to fly along without the benefit of the sled for a while until I came to a spinning stop several yards away. (This would be one of those rare times I wish I knew where to find a gif that would illustrate that better.) Once I stopped blinking in surprise, I think I was just unhappy about the whole thing. It was clever – I just didn’t like it.
But, to end this at least on a positive note, I do love kitsune. I love that the fox-as-trickster trope is as strong in Japan as it is in Native American lore. I love that the creatures can be malice personified or merely mischievous, can fall in love with human and be willing to kill anyone else. They’re a fascinating class of being, and it’s fun to see them as much as I have lately. And they have three tails – how cool is that?
Let me start off by listing the strikes against this book. It’s apparently self-published (not, of course, an automatic guarantee of Bad, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that self-pubs are more prone to editorial quality issues). Its author’s name is suspiciously similar to an Austen character; I hereby sincerely apologize if “Anna Elliott” is indeed the author’s real name, but if not I do wish she had come up with a different pseudonym. It’s frequently (always?) free on Amazon. (There’s a “however” coming up – go ‘head and get it. I’ll wait.) It’s a continuation of Pride and Prejudice, which sparks off a list of its own: it’s basically fan-fiction (and while yes, there is some very good stuff out there, it cannot be denied that most of it is utter dreck); the last “continuation” I read was not very good although it was by an author I know and love; and trying to echo a literary voice like Jane Austen’s can only end in tears. Any of these is worrying; all together should be horripilating.
However. (See?)
From the introduction: “I can’t begin to match Jane Austen’s immortal writing style, and wouldn’t even pretend to try. … I would never aspire to imitate Jane Austen or compare my work to hers. Georgiana Darcy’s Diary is meant to be an entertainment, written for those readers who, like me, simply can’t get enough of Jane Austen and her world.” Well. That’s promising. Humility and self-awareness in an author – I’m not Jane Austen and won’t pretend I can be – is wonderful. This is, Ms. Elliott states, the reason she chose the format of a journal written by a character Miss Austen did not give much dialogue to: Georgiana Darcy. That’s kind of brilliant. There’s no going back and comparing a paragraph from the Diary to a paragraph from P&P, no window to complain, really, about much short of massive missteps of language or anachronism.
There were, as I recall, a few scattered typos – and one bit of an editorial whopper: mention of, I believe, a hat “died to match”. (There was a terrible accident at the milliner’s one day, you see …) Apart from that, the voice was very well done. I don’t know how it would stand up to a sterner scrutiny, or to a highly critical eye in terms of historical accuracy, but I was happy to believe it was the narrative voice of not only a very young woman of 1814, but in fact of Georgiana Darcy. (It does help that Georgiana was seen so little in Pride and Prejudice, of course, and that the years between 16 and 19 inevitably change a person.)
Ms. Elliott did something with this book that the late, great Joan Aiken failed at in her sequel to Mansfield Park: getting the original main characters out of the way. In Mansfield Revisited, Fanny and Edmund were whisked away to the Indies very early in the book, never to be heard from more till the very end, thus clearing the path of extraneous already-happy-ever-aftered people so that Fanny’s sister Susan could get down to the business of HEA. Here, though, not only did the diary format allow the author to evade the question of whether her third-person narration would live up to Jane Austen’s, it also allowed her to fix the point of view solidly behind Georgiana’s eyes – Georgiana, who doesn’t spend every minute with Lizzie or Darcy.
Actually, she did two things that Joan Aiken did not: she also made me care about the characters on whom she was focusing. Georgiana in The Original is a figure of some pity and sympathy – she went through something terrible with bloody Wickham, and otherwise serves almost entirely as a foil for Darcy, giving him depth, providing an avenue for Lizzie to see the relaxed, affectionate side of him. The sympathy carries over to this Diary, but the sympathy deepens as the girl becomes a well-rounded character in her own right.
Was it perfect? No. But it was much better than I anticipated. It was very good.
This book came from Netgalley for review (a long time ago – sorry about that) – thank you to NG and the publisher.
I seem to say this a lot lately: this was not what I expected. It’s a Dickensian, Dumas-esque, dark mystery with fantastic elements … I think that covers most of it. That The Count of Monte Cristo is in the book’s genealogy is without doubt.
It all begins with a tussle in a tavern, as Thaddeus Grainger defends the honor of a young working-class woman against someone who sees her as fair game. Thaddeus saves the girl, Cassie Redruth, and earns himself a duel with her aggressor, to her dismay. By the next evening, Thaddeus is nursing his wounds – but his rival is dead, and not from their duel. Thaddeus knows that, and his friends believe it, but the constabulary do not, and he is arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned – he never stood a chance.
And there’s where The Count of Monte Cristo comes in – except that the conspiracy behind the scenes of The Raven’s Seal is much bigger and more impersonal. They don’t care about Thaddeus, or Cassie, or even much about the murdered man. The latter had to be put out of the way, and Thaddeus was a convenient scapegoat. As a larger entity, this shadowy force is harder to discover, harder to get at, and harder to overcome – especially when the troops arrayed against it consist of a young housemaid, a man in prison, an impoverished writer, and an old man. Goliath, meet David.
The description on Goodreads for this specifically states that it is set in late 18th-century England – and that surprises me. I don’t know if I failed to pay attention at the right times, but I had this pegged as being set elsewhere entirely, a setting that looks and sounds and smells like but isn’t quite 17-something England. I think that’s my only real problem with the book, is that the setting – Bellstrom Gaol – is fictional, yet it was supposed to be England. I could have wished for either more of a footing in reality, or a complete disconnect from reality. It isn’t a fantasy, really, at all – but it feels like it ought to be. In fact, it feels a great deal like Ellen Kushner’s fantasies of manners – and that isn’t in any way a bad thing.
Spoilers be nigh.
I read this in high school (sort of), which may explain why I hated it so passionately. I think the only thing I ever read in school that I didn’t hate with a passion was Romeo and Juliet (and I was apparently very lucky about that – I understand school usually does a number on Shakespeare for people, too). I remember reading R&J upside-down in the living room armchair, enraptured by and a little drunk on the language. (The latter might have been partly because I was upside down, of course.) All I remember about Tess is the sick feeling of depression when I finished. (Which, given the circumstances, means that this was a remarkably poor choice of books for me at that moment in my life. Why did I never have a decent English teacher? Where was Robin Williams when I needed him?) I remember that, and had a vague presentiment that Tess would hang at the end of the book, but I was fixed on the idea that she must kill herself – somehow I completely forgot about the murder of Alec D’Urberville. And never have I been more delighted by a bloodstain in my life. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I chose audio format for this buddy read with Kim and Hayes and Simran and Jemidar (thank you, my friends!), and I’m glad I did. Not only do I think the world of Simon Vance (whose voice for Angel Clare almost seduced me into forgetting how worthless he was and made me want to forgive him. Almost), but the dialect in print was very likely one reason I loathed this book lo! those many years ago. Vance’s compassionate reading was very likely one big reason I did not loathe this book this time. His feminine voices aren’t the cringe-worthy things many male narrators produce – his Tess, light and with just the right amount of accent for whatever circumstance, became Tess for me.
The men in this book remind me of Ricky’s film about the plastic bag in American Beauty, without the beauty: a gust of wind, and the bag soars up; the air stills and the bag drops. A breath, and it skitters to one side; a draft, and it slides to the right. Every change in the wind sends these men in another direction, with another disposition – ecstatic, righteous, lust-filled, angry, depressed… sometimes several of these in one chapter. Alec D’Urberville seems to go from lusty jackass to proselytizing jackass in the blink of an eye, converting like an impressionable child based more on the demeanor of Parson Clare than on what he said – and then, of course, one look at Tess flips him right back again like a light switch: up = hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, down = creepy, creepy rapist. Angel Clare … Oh, where to begin? His treatment of Tess – and then his change of mind, and then his change back, and then back again, and his offhand devastation of Izz Huett … his flip-flopping makes your average politician look like a model of unswerving determination. The man up and sailed to Brazil on the strength of a travel agency sign. Brazil. It’s not like going to Brighton.
There is one man in the tale who has a more consistent character: Tess’s father. He’s a lazy stupid drunk, and that never changes. He seizes on a straw in the wind to – in his and his wife’s minds at least – lend countenance to his innate laziness. His concentration never wavers from the skellintons in the ancient tombs and all that is, he thinks, due him as the descendant of same. He’s an ass, and worthless as a father, a husband, and a human being, and I hate him deeply. I think I hate him more than the other two, even.
The person I don’t hate, and this shocks me, is Tess. Poor Tess. She didn’t want to be put into the position her parents shoved her into – which resulted in her rape. She certainly didn’t want anything to do with Alec D’Urberville, but unfortunately she fell asleep, poor little bint, and unfortunately he was a thorough-going bastard. Throughout the book she does the best she can to prevent situations – but it’s an ineffectual best, and she is overruled and overpowered and left bleeding by the worthless men in her life, father, “cousin”, beloved.
There were several aspects of her situation that I was surprised at, because it was as if Hardy smoothed the road for her a bit. I was surprised when the Durbeyfield neighbors did not shun Tess after the birth of the baby; I fully expected her to be spat on. They were not wholly forgiving (as witness the family’s eviction after the father dies), but much better than I expected, to her face at least. I was shocked when the baby died – I fully expected him to be a growing millstone around her neck, much harder to get past than a history including a dead child. I was surprised once more when, Izz and Retty and Marian having all also fallen in love with Angel Clare, they decided that they did not and could not hate Tess for being the chosen one, and – whatever damage they did her accidentally – all remained her friends throughout. Even Clare’s parents became more kindly disposed to her (which is made into 
a point against them, in a satirical way, but would have been a good thing for Tess if she could have taken advantage of it). It seems to me that a great many authors would have chosen to isolate Tess, make it their poor beleaguered lass against the world, saved only by the love of a weak man who then also turns away from her; that Hardy chose a more realistic route is a huge point in his favor.
There are times when it’s nice to have a faulty memory. I re-read this book as if it were the first time, and I’m glad of it – I had no idea how everything would turn out, and I was freed to hope for the best even while I (with that one partial memory in mind) feared the worst: I did know it was not a happily-ever-after book, but the details were drowned in the past. The language, while slightly purple in places, was beautiful; the story genuinely moved me. I could not be more amazed. (Buddy reads FTW!)
"I refuse to be a bowl in a gold of fish." – Ginger Rogers in "Shall We Dance"
Note:
Wherever possible, images used are actual covers or are from Wikimedia Commons. If I accidentally use something of yours and you'd like me to take it down, please let me know and I will be happy to do so.
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