Snow day reading

Suzzallo Graduate Library in the snow (and Hi there, crazy guy in shorts on the right)

The last time it snowed worth a mention, I wrote a post about books I thought should be read on a snowy day. Since the snow is here once again to inspire me, I figured I'd do another such post. They're chosen not necessarily because they're about winter, but because I think they'd be good choices for curling up with a blanket and a cup of tea on a snowy day.

Nameless by Sam Starbuck
This one actually does involve snow, but it also involves magic and mask-making and small town life, and it would go very well with a nice calm day. Read more here.

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
I associate cosy winter afternoons with big dense books, and The Children's Book is probably the epitome of a big dense book. It's magical and historical and glorious. Read more here.

Farthing by Jo Walton
Alternate history plus murder mystery--you've got to have at least one mystery novel on the list of snow day books, and this is a particularly interesting one. Read more here.

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
This one certainly isn't big or dense, but if you wanted to spend your snow day reading a series of short books, this one and its sequel, The Haunted Bookshop, would be perfect. Read more here.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
I realize this is mostly set in the summer, but I still think it would be a good book for a snow day. It's about books and history, which qualify as cosy for me, and it's an extremely satisfying story. Read more here.

On the Table: Books

Still plodding along in The Children's Book. Not that it's at all an unpleasant sort of plodding, but it is a book one has to read deliberately, and it is very long. But I do have a lot of other exciting books I'm looking forwards to.

First up is Past Imperfect, by Julian Fellowes. I know the fellow, of course, because he's an actor, notably in Monarch of the Glen. I can see him being a good writer, though, and the subject of the book sounds intriguing. The narrator is contacted by his old friend Damian, from whom he has been estranged for 40 years, asking for help. The narrator then revisits the summer of 1968, when the friends became estranged, in order to help Damian, and the book sounds particularly interesting to me because it takes place in the side-by-side and occasionally meeting worlds of the upper class, debutantes and such, and the "Swinging Sixties."

Also tempting is The Lodger Shakespeare, by Charles Nicholl. I originally talked about it here, so you might remember it.

I also have Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë (the Oxford University Press edition). I love reading letters, but I don't tend to get through them all at once so I'll probably read this bit by bit. The Brontës are always fascinating, and I'm sure Charlotte's letters will offer an interesting look into her life.

Ages and ages ago, I read Jo Walton's Farthing, and started Ha'penny, and then school started and I got distracted by all sorts of other things. I'd love to get back to Ha'penny.

Last, Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock. I read some of this years and years ago, but I'm sure I was too young for it. The Children's Book brought it back to mind, and it's been on the to-read pile for a while, so hopefully I can get around to it soon.

So all that ought to last me at least until Christmas, at which point I will probably acquire more books that need to be read. Something from Persephone will have to be read at some point fairly soon, and I'm feeling a Jane Austen reread coming on.

The essentials

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Beowulf
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice
Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott
The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce
The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

These are the books I am taking to college. They are the books I consider indispensable, whether because I am likely to have a sudden urge to read them or because it simply feels wrong to be without them. Bear in mind that this stack would be a lot taller if I were going farther away from home. Also consider that all of Jane Austen would be on there if I had not decided not to bring anything I know I can find online. The Complete Works of Shakespeare might actually get added to this pile, I haven't decided yet. Schott's Original Miscellany isn't really indispensable, I suppose, but it's the sort of random useful little thing that I think it might be nice to have. The Amber Spyglass would be in this pile also, except that I can't find it, I only have a hardcover (which I was trying to avoid bringing), and if I actually read the first two that'll give me time to find the third one.

The Clouds of Witness and Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
Ha'penny by Jo Walton
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje

These are my selections off my to-read pile that I think I might actually have a chance of getting around to. The Dorothy Sayers because they're short reads and will be a nice change from all the books I'll be reading for classes, Ha'penny because I'm in the middle of it, the Obama book because it's the university common book and I haven't read it yet (but I think it might be my next house book), and The Cinnamon Peeler because I might feel the need for some poetry.

I find it interesting to have it put to the test which books I think I can't live without. There is, for example, pretty much zero chance of my reading Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. Tolkien's an old love for me, a little faded and diverged more into reading his letters and essays. But despite the fact that the books are just going to sit in by tiny dorm room taking up space, I can't live without them. The others are all comfort books, which given a college reading load is likely to be the only thing I get around to reading (though we'll hold out hope for the unread pile).

Those photos, by the way, were taken in my back yard, and look how sunny it is. Oh, Seattle, rain in August and 85 degrees on the autumn equinox.

Next you hear from me, I'll be typing from my dorm room!

More small change

It seems I've finally got back into the swing of reading. Reading all the book blogs I go through daily, visiting bookstores, starting a new book, all these things help. Mostly it's just the fading of the terrible week I had, things calming down a little, still not perfect but at least now books manage to distract me again. The new book I started, which is mostly what got me back into it, is Ha'penny, sequel to Farthing. I like it already. It's got many of the same charms Farthing had, without being a repeat. It preserves the back and forth first person main female character's chapters alternating with Inspector Carmichael's third person chapters. This time the woman telling the story is Viola Larkin, who has a sort of similar storytelling manner to Lucy Kahn of the last book, but who is definitely her own character.

The story basically begins when Lauria Gilmore, a middle-aged, well-respected actress, is blown up by a bomb in her own house. Inspector Carmichael and Seargent Royston of Scotland Yard are called in to investigate, and once again the two worlds of the alternating chapters are very related but have yet to quite meet.

This book adds another layer of my interests, with Viola Larkin being a member of an aristocratic family who has estranged herself from her parents in order to go on the stage. I've yet to reach anything much about the theatre in the book, but it begins with Viola agreeing to play Hamlet. And you know how I feel about Hamlet. So the discussions of how the play would work with Hamlet as a woman are very interesting.

I'll say more about the book when I've finished it, but it's definitely begun well what with getting me back to reading and in the course of that even to picking up Brideshead Revisited again.

I read this book on the internet and now I really want the hard copy

After reading Farthing, I read the Wikipedia article about Jo Walton, curious both about her and about the other books she's written, and she's now doubly interesting to me because it seems she's an advocate for professional writers' work being available on the internet. In 2007 Howard V. Hendrix stated his opposition to professional writers posting their writing for free on the internet, his idea being that this makes them effectively strikebreakers. Jo Walton named April 23rd International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, when writers are meant to publish their writing freely online all at once. Not necessarily whole books, even, just a few chapters.

What do you think of books being available on the internet for free? To me, it seems that if people haven't stopped buying paper books just because they can pay to download lots of books to a Kindle or similar, they're not going to stop buying paper books just because they can have them on their computers for free. It's less convenient to have to sit in front of a computer to read a book than to have a more-or-less pocket-sized book you can carry anywhere, whether or not you have to pay for it. Anyway, I like it when authors put their work up on the internet because to me it says that they're willing to come into closer contact with their readers, which always seems like a good thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this Howard V. Hendrix fellow is the sort of author who's afraid of that. Also, I have personal proof that this sort of thing isn't going to stop sales--I read Nameless on the internet and now I really want to order the hard copy and am determined to do so at some point.

I think maybe I've been reading too much of Sam Starbuck's thoughts on internet-publishing--you can find most of this here, though you might have to dig a little for the really interesting stuff. (And I recommend his blog in general as both interesting and very funny--that link is just the publishing stuff, click on the recent entries link at the top of the page for the rest of it.) However you look at it, it's a fascinating and very immediate topic.

Small Change

Farthing is a perfect combination of things for me. By Jo Walton, It's alternate history, wherein Britain made peace with Hitler before the US entered the war, now moved on to 1949, and I've always loved alternate history. It's a murder mystery, which I've been meaning to read more of. The detective, Inspector Carmichael, is gay, which I always like encountering in books because it's interesting to see literature's treatment of it, especially in historical contexts. Plus, it's well written, alternating chapters between Lucy Kahn, who narrates her own story with a very distinct voice, and Inspector Carmichael, whose chapters are always in the third person. The inside of the book jacket makes it sound like the book is solely focused on Lucy and David, so I was pleasantly surprised that every other chapter belongs to Carmichael, since this makes a nice change. Lucy is the daughter of Lord and Lady Eversley, members of the Farthing Set, the political group which negotiated the peace. She has married David Kahn, a Jew, despite her parents' protests, and when her mother insists they come down for the weekend and a murder happens, David becomes a prime suspect.

This is, to put it lightly, a terrifying book. Not terrifying in a suspense horror film way, terrifying in imagining what the world would be like now if history had happened like that. For the same reason it's so worth reading, both because it's a good book and because it's certainly enough to make you thankful.

All things considered it's a good ending, at least in that it's the proper wrap-up to the book and it's not hopeless, though one can't help but wish it ended better. Fortunately the book has two sequels, Ha'penny and Half a Crown, so in that way this is the perfect first book ending. Anyway, no matter how the book ends I liked it very much (and read most of it in one day, always a good sign), and am glad for the recommendation of it.