Fri, 14:22: RT @GaryLineker: Still think we can get out of the relegation zone with a change in tactics. If we remain solid and don’t leave our defence…
Fri, 16:05: YAH v Medway NHS Foundation Trust (rev 1) [2018] EWHC 2964 (QB) (05 November 2018) https://t.co/rTHUE9I38F Moving and compassionate.
Fri, 17:17: RT @JoJohnsonUK: With great regret, I’m resigning from the Government – I have set out my reasons in this article and the video below. http…
Fri, 18:08: The first reference to poppies on a Flemish battlefield – Lord Perth’s 1694 letter about the 1693 Battle of Landen… https://t.co/DmlbRlbGxF
Fri, 21:28: RT @nick_gutteridge: Michel Barnier’s deputy Sabine Weyand tonight briefed EU ambassadors that there has been no significant progress on th…
Fri, 21:59: RT @pmdfoster: One final observation about tonight’s #brexit Coreper readouts… The closer the sources are to ‘the tunnel’, the gloomier…
Sat, 01:49: RT @IanDunt: “To present the nation with a choice between two deeply unattractive outcomes, vassalage and chaos, is a failure of British st…
Sat, 10:10: RT @AlbertoNardelli: Brexit latest: EU27 diplomats were told today that EU and UK negotiators are exploring a backstop architecture that se…
Sat, 10:45: For millions of Europeans, the war did not end in 1918 https://t.co/2STzvOG1A7 With good quote from my friend Markus Meckel.
Second paragraph of third chapter of “The Badblood Diaries”, by Mags L. Halliday:
Yes, I know, I know. She’ll see all of this once we get back home. By then I’m sure we’ll have become fast friends who will laugh over such foolish first impressions and recount them at each other’s weddings or some such. I hope.
Second paragraph of third-ish (depending how you count) chapter of “Possum Kingdom”, by Kelly Hale:
He could just make out the sea, a flash of white and gold in the setting sun. And stretching towards it was now a landscape made of flesh, bone, and blood; an undulating, noisy mass of young beating hearts and awkward shuffling feet that had sprung up virtually overnight, overflowing the streets, the bogs, and fields beyond. These were the child crusaders led by another of God’s chosen: the shepherd Stephan of Cloyes in the Orléanais. According to the inn’s proprietress, Dame Merveaux, the people of the Orléanais were prone to fits and visions: ‘They see the face of Christ in every horse dropping and puddle of water. It’s the mountain air, young sir. Goes straight to the head. Likely the reason they have so much trouble with the walking dead, I suspect. Indecent the numbers of people won’t stay buried in the Orléanais.’
Second chapter of third part of “Predating the Predators”, by Philip Purser-Hallard:
She was a friendly, motherly person, and the first Lavellan I have met. Not having investigated her species before I arrived on Murigen, I had been expecting a biology akin to that of Earth’s amphibia, but the Lavellans I have observed since my arrival are covered with sleek black or russet fur. They look more like otters or beavers than frogs or salamanders, though far more closely adapted to their waterborne lifestyle.
A set of three novellas featuring Bernice Summerfield and vampires (she has met them before). The first of these was fairly standard stuff (archaeology expedition suffers mysterious deaths; who is the vampire?) but the other two I thought were excellent. The second story features a time-travelling quest through pocket universes and the history of vampirism, and the third has an aging Benny attending an academic conference where things start going horribly wrong. Two out of three ain’t bad (and it’s not that the first is awful, just not as original as the other two). You can get it here.
Next in this series: Secret Histories, ed. Mark Clapham
Thu, 12:02: Juncker describes the period just before he became President of the Commission as “the last happy period of my life”. #EPPCongress
Thu, 12:14: Merkel starts her speech by reminding us that 100 years ago this week, Germany was negotiating with France for an a… https://t.co/TusskovJwO
Thu, 12:25: RT @a_maehl: Do you picture him kissing the Belgian PM on the forehead? Do you imagine him being bluntly honest about the miserable job it…
Thu, 19:02: RT @davidallengreen: The story of UK’s policy failures on Brexit is the direct line from Gove’s “I think that the people of this country ha…
Thu, 19:19: RT @davidallengreen: 1558: “When I am dead and cut open, they will find Calais inscribed on my heart.” 1941: “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over)…
Thu, 19:22: RT @tony_nog: @RogerHelmerMEP How on earth did the EU27 get the better of us when we were fielding diplomatic giants like Davis & Raab, it’…
Thu, 19:28: It’s kind of like the Bourbons post-1815, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Except for the remembering… https://t.co/e4wssGELA9
Thu, 20:06: RT @emanumiller: This is brilliant. May 1981. President Ronald Reagan is giving a speech at an Air Force base in West Berlin when a balloo…
Fri, 07:12: RT @alexstubb: Day after. All smiles. A memorable journey. Full of gratitude and thanks to all of you. We touched a lot of hearts and minds…
Kim: No, Amos, I’d prefer to jump right in [in French, “to jump right into the bath”]. Come on!
Lynn: Are we having a bath, Mum? I bathed this morning!
Amos: It’s just an expression, Lynn…
I was delighted to discover that Leo has started a new story cycle in Les Mondes d’Aldébaran, the comics series which has been going for two decades. The French don’t do things by halves; here’s the official trailer.
The storyline is that Kim, heroine of the previous series, has returned home to become the key interlocutor between the humans of Aldebaran and the alien Tsalterians (one of whom is father to her child Lynn); and has also become a celebrity, dealing with some very unwelcome attention. The Tsalterians invite her to help them assess a peculiar huge hovering cube, which turns out to be a portal to yet more lushly forested worlds, where both human and inhuman dangers await. (And there’s a bit of freshness to the lush forests, because Leo has handed over the colours to Florence Spitéri rather than do it himself.) Meanwhile Kim has two new allies, an Earth couple who are trapped in perpetual youth. All good stuff and set-up for another few albums. You can get it here.
This was my top unread non-English comic. The only one I have left now is Lambik, by Marc Legendre. Time to stock up, particularly perhaps on Survivants, the Aldebaran series I haven’t read yet.
Wed, 18:45: RT @RTorvelainen: .@alexstubb Thanks Weber in German and then gives a very clear & concise answer on where Europe has not succeeded: 1. Pea…
Wed, 19:10: #Up2EU @alexstubb: Leaving the European Union is like leaving the internet, you can do it but it’s kinda stupid.
Wed, 19:13: RT @EuroCelt: Brexit is like leaving the internet – you can do it, but it’s better to stay in and influence it : great quote by @alexstubb…
Wed, 20:40: RT @JenniferMerode: “Leaving the European Union is a bit like leaving the internet,” says self-declared pragmatic Nordic @alexstubb “You c…
Wed, 20:41: RT @JenniferMerode: @alexstubb The only good thing about Brexit, said Stubb, is that “Michel Barnier is doing a fantastic job. Everything e…
Thu, 06:54: If the EPP has a future, it surely looks more like Alex Stubb — and his minimalist yet refreshingly pan-European an… https://t.co/PtMwKbRwwO
Thu, 07:30: RT @Tallpoppy8: Couldn’t agree more. @alexstubb walked the talk – met people across Europe, debated real issues, made a clear statement of…
Thu, 08:00: RT @alexstubb: It has been a fantastic five weeks. Thank you ever so much for your support. Today we have the final speeches around 10.00 a…
Thu, 08:00: RT @handklaver: Yes. “The key lesson from the rise of authoritarian populism, Brexit and Trump is that the West is dealing with a new poli…
Thu, 09:33: RT @bbcnickrobinson: Trump’s attack on @CNN’s Jim Acosta is an attack on the right of all journalists everywhere to ask tough questions of…
Thu, 09:38: RT @kokoomus: ”For me, the year 1989 was a year of hope. Then things started to change. And my message to the European leaders nowadays is:…
Thu, 10:03: RT @damonwake: ‘I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this’ — can’t think of a better motto for DEXEU. Can we get Jacob Rees-Mogg t…
Thu, 10:11: RT @Andreas__Rinke: “Der Ministerpräsident erzählt einen Witz, der nicht zu übersetzen ist. Aber bitte lachen Sie – jetzt.” Lustigste Pass…
Thu, 10:45: Heaven and hell https://t.co/MuHHmzGejH Great account of the Wakhan valley in northeastern Afghanistan – much more than a line on the map.
Maeth and Ross were doing different courses, but would be on the same campus in Europe Central. Issette, Cathan and Keon would be together on a campus in Europe South. The other tour of us would be heading off alone. I’d always known I would be, of course, since Pre-history Foundation classes spent the year working at some of the major dig sites.
This is a rather good YA novel, which I picked up as a freebie at Loncon and have only now got to. In the future, humanity has discovered how to travel across and between planets using “portals”; a small minority cannot use them for genetic reasons and are doomed to stay on Earth, stigmatised as “apes”. Jarra, our heroine, joins a mixed group of young people on a study mission to dig up the remains of New York (abandoned when technology meant that cities became obsolete). She proves herself to herself and also to her classmates. It’s fun but also serious; obviously Jarra’s stigma is one that doesn’t apply in our world, but perhaps that makes it easier to apply the parallels. She is perhaps a little too talented and lucky, but this is a novel after all. I’ll look out for the sequels. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next is Perilous Dreams, by Andre Norton.
Tue, 18:18: RT @alexstubb: Lots of smiles when our @EPPGroup MEPs landed in Helsinki and we were waiting for them at the airport. You never get a secon…
Tue, 20:48: Backstop breakdown is a product of the oldest Brexit lie https://t.co/wbzceIw86A If you are going to lie, do it convincingly!
Tue, 20:57: RT @tconnellyRTE: Quick thread on the question of a review clause to the backstop, which raised the temperature in the Dail today: 1. The…
Wed, 04:07: RT @BrettArends: Indiana’s newly-elected Republican Senator Mike Braun just used his victory speech to complain about the nastiness of poli…
Wed, 06:54: RT @alexstubb: A friendly soul sent this one from today’s paper. A pick from the past. My dad was and is an ice-hockey man to the bone. htt…
Wed, 10:38: So far this morning three different people have recognised me and said to me, “What are you doing here???” I would… https://t.co/VudOmPaQ8d
Wed, 11:08: RT @simoncoveney: Alex, congrats for running a great campaign. Positive, smart, modern, challenging people to think differently about EU +…
In her cabin, Shallan read by the glow of a goblet of spheres, wearing her nightgown. Her cramped chamber lacked a true porthole and had just a thin slit of a window running across the top of the outside wall. The only sound she could hear was the water lapping against the hull. Tonight, the ship did not have a port in which to shelter.
Second in the trilogy of Very Long Books by Brandon Sanderson, following on from The Way of Kings which I read earlier in the year. Our three viewpoint characters, after long journeys for two of them, end up together in a factionalised court facing existential threats from mysterious fantasy entities. Shallan is the best of the three, but the two chaps both have interesting enough character arcs as they deal with conspiracy and constant threat. Both the society and the rules of the magical world are mapped out convincingly through the protagonists’ learnings. I still felt it was way too long (at 89 chapters and 1087 pages), but if you have the patience, it’s a good read. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired so far this year, and my top unread sff book. Next on those piles respectively are And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hossaini, and Grimm Tales, by Philip Pullman.
Mon, 12:56: Driver, 54, who is going blind served eviction notice after DWP lose his sick note, suspend his benefits and deem h… https://t.co/S6YlrfA5P4
Mon, 23:56: RT @tconnellyRTE: A senior EU official tells @rtenews tonight there will be “no breakthrough” on the backstop this week. This is not just b…
Current The Prisoner and The Fugitive, by Marcel Proust Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams Burr, by Gore Vidal
Last books finished The Vampire’s Curse, by Mags Halliday, Kelly Hale and Philip Purser-Hallard Doctor Who: Twelve Angels Weeping: Twelve Stories of the Villains from Doctor Who, by Dave Rudden Hybrid, by Shaun Hutson Baptism in Blood, by Jane Haddam
Next books 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, by Ruth Padel The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
Sun, 18:36: RT @AngusLapsleyFCO: Return to work in a new role tomorrow, but Whitehall will be a different place without Jeremy Heywood. Twice my boss,…
Sun, 18:36: RT @AngusLapsleyFCO: A lesser known footnote on Jeremy Heywood. Almost a decade ago he grasped the importance and potential of UK-Ireland…
Sun, 22:04: RT @gavinworby: It was a bit blink and you missed it, but I loved all the other monsters that the control panel scrolled through before set…
Mon, 09:55: RT @brusselsred: Fellow #U2 fans: I have one spare Red Zone for tonight, Monday 5 November, in Dublin. I’m offering 40% discount because I…
Second paragraph of third section (Tony Lee’s reminiscences):
You see, all my childhood I wanted to be a Time Lord. I wanted to travel in time and space and fight Daleks and the Master and do all that cool stuff I saw the Doctor doing every week. Doctor Who was much better than Star Trek, or Star Wars — an argument that caused much dissension in the playground — but I didn’t care. Unfortunately, as I grew up, my formative teenage years had no Doctor. He was on hiatus or, dare I say it — cancelled. But I never gave up. Even after the McGann wilderness years I soldiered on in time writing for TV, radio, comics — and waiting for the chance when I could write the Doctor’s stories for real.
This was a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s Research UK, complied in 2012 and updated in 2013, which does what it says on the tin – 100 celebrities with one or two pages each about their own ealiest memories of Doctor Who, with an introduction by Terry Pratchett (who is much politer about Doctor Who than I remember him being in person). I think the standout for me is Anneke Wills’ reaction to one of her old episodes being found, not quite what was requested but very moving in terms of recovering lost memories, which is the hope behind the compilation of the book. But it’s all very nice, and I think non-Whovians might enjoy it too.You can get it here.
Sat, 15:39: RT @jasonomahony: Huge point from @nwbrux. David Davis on Marr after the phase one negotiations a case in point. Can’t be underestimated th…
Sat, 16:05: How Vilification of George Soros Moved From the Fringes to the Mainstream https://t.co/mMxhqancFz A grim story fo the rise of the Right.
Sat, 17:34: RT @alexwilcock: OTD 1963: #TheAvengers November Five Mrs Gale stands for Parliament (and doesn’t think much of Steed’s speechwriting)! The…
Moon suspected that Stone could have easily made twice the distance, but he seemed content to glide along at Moon’s fastest pace. Moon was just glad Stone didn’t press to go faster; he was used to spending most of the day as a groundling, and it had been more than half a turn since he had stayed in his other form so long, or flown this far at one time. By afternoon, his back ached as if he had been hauling rocks all day. At least it distracted him from thinking about the Cordans. Every thought of Ilane was like poking an open wound, but he hoped Selis was all right, that she had found a home or at least someone to live with whom she could tolerate.
I wasn't totally impressed by the Books of the Raksura as a Hugo Best Series candidate, ranking it fifth on my ballot, and indeed the voters were only a little more impressed than me, ranking it fourth. This first novel in the series is a Bildungsroman, setting us up for more adventures, of a chap who grows up as a shapechanger in a society where people are frightened of shapechangers; and then becomes part of the shapechanging elite into which he was born and from which he was then removed as a young child. This does mean that we get plenty of justification for exposition of the worldbuilding; but I wasn't really convinced by the psychological dynamics of our hero's hourney, or by the social economics of the Raksura world. I am not going to rush to the other books. But if you want to try it, you can get it here.
This was, believe it or not, my top unread book by a woman. After a re-audit of my bookshelves, it turns out that Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin is next on that list.
Fri, 16:35: There’s a parallel universe where the UK realised the day after the referendum that they needed to get Ireland and… https://t.co/T9WsUPnY9G
Fri, 19:14: RT @ChairmanYaffle: Another argument for serious spending on para-dimensional transportation. Everyone could choose the reality they want.…
Sat, 11:46: RT @paddyashdown: I have been so moved by all the lovely comments here. But PLEASE this does not merit a fuss. Many go through this. The NH…
Second frame of third story ("The First", by Dan McDaid and Martin Geraghty, in which the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones encounter Shackleton's polar expedition):
This is a collection of Tenth Doctor comics, mostly from Doctor Who Magazine (a couple from the Storybooks), four written by Jonathan Morris, three by Rob Davis, and one each by Dan McDaid and Ian Edgington; with art in three cases by Martin Geraghty, two by Rob Davis, and one each by Mike Collins, John Ross, Roger Langridge and Adrian Salmon. Of the nine stories, the two standouts for me were the title story, The Widow's Curse, by Davis and Geraghty, a creepy Caribbean story that brings back the Sycorax; and The Time of My Life, by Morris and Davis, a rather lovely farewell to Donna as a companion. I'll also note The Immortal Emperor by Morris and Davis, which I was a bit dubious about previously and remain dubious about; and Death to the Doctor, by Morris and Langridge, which features a bunch of second-rate adversaries getting together to exact revenge, including the vaguely Irish Questor who was defeated by the First Doctor, Stephen and Dodo, I think the only explicitly Irish character in Whovian comics continuity. The only way is up.
I resolved to start blogging every book I read in November 2003. It’s proved to be a really good discipline; I recommend to all of you to at least keep a record somewhere of the books you have read, and if possible notes of what you thought of them. I have archived all of my reviews, on this blog and elsewhere, on LibraryThing and Goodreads. LibraryThing has only a small fraction of Goodreads’ users, but I still like the interface a lot more. If you are reading this and are on either, feel free to add me (though do say who you are).
This was my first bookblogging post, a rather brief impression of two Neil Gaiman works. Since then I have read about 3,860 books, an average of 257 per year or 21 per month. This peaked in 2008 (371) and 2009 (348), when I had a new job with a long commute and lots of work travel as well. More recently my annual total dropped to 221 in 2016, when I was very distracted by real-world politics, and rose only slightly last year to 243, thanks to the distractions of the Hugo awards. In the first ten months of this year I’ve already read almost as many books as in the whole of last year (236). I still have a long commute, slightly less business travel (though still quite a lot), but have allowed myself to be overfed by the information firehose of social media of late.
My personal top book for each (calendar) year that I’ve been reviewing is as follows (with links to my end-of-year round-ups once I started them):
(I am struck by how few sff books I have put on the above list, and how many non-fiction books.)
I count almost 2000 authors in those 3800 books (there are about 60 rereads). The author I have read most books by in that period is veteran Doctor Who writer, Terrance Dicks, with 80 (if I count correctly). Tied for second place, at 40 each, are another Doctor Who writer, Justin Richards, and some guy called William Shakespeare. The woman who I’ve read most books by is Lois McMaster Bujold (19), followed by another Doctor Who writer, Jacqueline Rayner (17). My two top non-white writers are both authors of particular series of graphic novels that I enjoyed, Keiko Tobe (8) and Bryan Lee O’Malley (7).
It’s been fun. I am not sure how much longer I will continue to use Livejournal, which is showing all the signs of creeping decay, but whatever happens I hope to continue bookblogging in one form or another.
Wed, 12:38: RT @BrunoBrussels: A great memorial at Gare Centrale that marks the sacrifice of Belgian railway workers not as victims but as heroes of re…
Wed, 12:56: RT @AllieRenison: Really worth reading transcript from @PoliceServiceNI chief’s most recent evidence this year to Northern Ireland Affairs…
~5,000 pages (YTD ~62,300)
6/15 (YTD 96/236) by non-male writers (Hobson, Springer, Wells, Edwards, Dee, Halliday/Hale)
1/15 (YTD 24/236) by PoC (Mancham)
2/15 (YTD 20/236) reread (Ringworld, Sodom and Gomorrah)
Reading now Hybrid, by Shaun Hutson Baptism in Blood, by Jane Haddam Doctor Who: Twelve Angels Weeping: Twelve Stories of the Villains from Doctor Who, by Dave Rudden
Coming soon (perhaps): Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams Burr, by Gore Vidal 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, by Ruth Padel The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon Fools, by Pat Cadigan Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin The Name of This Book Is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch Perilous Dreams, by Andre Norton A Cold Day in Hell, by Alan Grant Factfulness, by Hans Rosling Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
“The Queen of Air and Darkness”, by Poul Anderson Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O’Driscoll Grimm Tales: For Young and Old, by Philip Pullman Lambik, by Marc Legendre The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition, ed. Rich Horton In Another Light, by Andrew Greig Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, ed. Kevin J. Anderson Secret Histories, ed. Mark Clapham
Second paragraph of third chapter of Larque on the Wing:
Emergency bells were ringing in Larque’s bones. She had to find Sky.
I confess I had never heard of Nancy Springer before reading this novel, which shared the 1995 James Tiptree Jr Award with “The Matter of Seggri”. It turns out that she is much better known for her YA novels about Sherlock Holmes’ smarter younger sister. I found Larque on the Wing a complete delight. The viewpoint character, Larque Harootunian, undergoes a mid-life crisis similar to that in Doris Lessing’s The Summer Before the Dark, with the important difference that she is able to create doppelgangers of people she interacts with more or less by accident, and that her conservative mother is able to blink away undesirable characteristics of the people she interacts with. Larque reinvents herself as a young gay chap, to the dismay of her husband, and everyone needs to do some readjusting. The tone is comic but the foundations are hard. One of those cases where the awards system identified a good novel that might not otherwise have got much recognition from the genre. You can get it here.
Second paragraph of third section of “The Matter of Seggri”:
Anyhow I understand better now what I was seeing at the Games in Reha. There are sixteen adult women for every adult man. One conception in six or so is male, but a lot of nonviable male fetuses and defective male births bring it down to one in sixteen by puberty. My ancestors must have really had fun playing with these people’s chromosomes. I feel guilty, even if it was a million years ago. I have to learn to do without shame but had better not forget the one good use of guilt. Anyhow. A fairly small town like Reha shares its Castle with other towns. That confusing spectacle I was taken to on my tenth day down was Awaga Castle trying to keep its place in the Maingame against a castle from up north, and losing. Which means Awaga’s team can’t play in the big game this year in Fadrga, the city south of here, from which the winners go on to compete in the big big game at Zask, where people come from all over the continent – hundreds of contestants and thousands of spectators. I saw some holos of last year’s Maingame at Zask. There were 1280 players, the comment said, and forty balls in play. It looked to me like a total mess, my idea of a battle between two unarmed armies, but I gather that great skill and strategy is involved. All the members of the winning team get a special title for the year, and another one for life, and bring glory back to their various Castles and the towns that support them.
This is a late great Ursula Le Guin story, set on a planet where men are a small minority, pampered and constrained to athletics rather than anything intellectual. Le Guin takes us through Seggri’s history in a series of (mostly) external accounts, as integration with galactic society brings about the crumbling of traditional gender roles. It’s a parable, of course, but it’s very powerful as well. You can get it most readily as part of the Birthday of the World collection.
“The Matter of Seggri” was on the ballot for Best Novelette for both Hugo and Nebula, beaten in both cases by “The Martian Child”, by David Gerrold. Ursula Le Guin’s novella “Forgiveness Day” was also a finalist for all three awards. “Cocoon” by Greg Egan was on the Tiptree shortlist and the Hugo ballot, as was Le Guin’s “Solitude”. Temporary Agency by Rachel Pollack was on the Tiptree and Nebula shortlists. North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones, was up for the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke Awards, but did not win any of them. This is the only SF award that Nancy Springer has won to date; the Tiptree folks rewarded her by making her a judge the following year.
This was the year that the Nebula for Best Novel went to Moving Mars, and the Hugo to Mirror Dance. In this sequence I am also tracking the Clarke and BSFA awards, which that year went to Fools by Pat Cadigan and Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks respectively; I shall take them in that order.
Tue, 09:19: RT @JSLefebvre: Si jamais vous lisez une analyse dans la presse britannique, qui vous explique que l’affaiblissement de Merkel va être une…
Current The Vampire’s Curse, by Mags Halliday, Kelly Hale and Philip Purser-Hallard Hybrid, by Shaun Hutson Baptism in Blood, by Jane Haddam
Last books finished Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who, ed. Steve Berry Gentleman’s Agreement, by Laura Z. Hobson Words of Radiance, by Brandon Sanderson Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards Retour sur Aldébaran, tome 1, by Leo
Next books Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams Burr, by Gore Vidal The Prisoner and the Fugitive, by Marcel Proust
Sun, 12:56: RT @Hanna_Jameson: There was a throwaway sentence in a textbook I was reading: “In 1793, the French actress Olympe de Gouges was guillotine…
Sun, 16:05: Last week a senior source from one of the EEA/EFTA countries told me very clearly that EEA/EFTA membership cannot b… https://t.co/pnNm0fPJsZ
Sun, 20:17: RT @JunckerEU: 100 years on from the birth of an independent Czechoslovakia we celebrate today with all Czechs and Slovaks, friends united…
Sun, 20:20: “Something’s wrong with the spider eco-system in South Yorkshire…”
Sun, 20:52: RT @ACLU: We mourn the loss of life of peaceful worshippers in yesterday’s unconscionable, hate-fueled violence in Pittsburgh. We also voic…
Sun, 23:28: So did the bad guy get away? And what about all the smaller spiders?
Leuven is commemorating the contribution to the city of the Arenberg family, local bigwigs for centuries who are still around despite all their property being confiscated in 1918 because they were too German. A big chunk of that property is the forest which starts less than five minutes' walk from our house, the Meerdaalwoud/Heverleebos, and this weekend saw various events to celebrate the Arenberg heritage.
I went yesterday on a historic walk explaining how the Arenbergs had managed the forest over the centuries, led by a chap in partial costume:
I confess that I didn't absorb the details of the history very much; it was a fine day and I got a great picture of some Fomes fomentarius (aka tinder fungus or hoof fungus) on one of the trees.
After the walk we were treated to a little dramatic re-enactment of the Duke's justice against a young man caught breaking the laws of the forest.
This was followed by a musical performance, of which more later.
Today Anne, F and I went on another walk, this time explaining how the woods are conserved now. Rather than a docent-led tour, there were various booths placed strategically along a decent long walk, where we could gather info from the experts. We were a bit taken aback at our first stop when we were asked to estimate the height, age and thickness of a particular tree. It was a big tree.
At least we weren't asked to cut it down with a herring. The crowd-sourcing of estimates produced some amusingly varied results:
In fact it is 65 years old, 32 metres high and 45 cm thick. The kids watched in amazement as one of the researchers took a dendrochronological sample. (Took me back to my days at the Institute of Irish Studies in Belfast.)
The next stop featured the legendary @Boswachter_Marc, a huge advocate for the forest on social media, explaining to us in detail how the trees and wildlife interact and the role of humans in facilitating that. I found some extra wildlife that he doesn't have to manage.
It was quite a long walk. There was horse-drawn transport but we missed it.
A good day none the less. I'll leave you with the band which performed after yesterday's walk.
Time for another Oscar-winning film, and it’s another one I hadn’t heard of before starting this project. Gentleman’s Agreement won Best Motion Picture for 1947, and got another two Oscars in other categories (which is low by Best Picture standards), Best Director for Elia Kazan and Best Supporting Actress for Celeste Holm as Anne Dettrey. The other Best Motion Picture contenders were The Bishop’s Wife, Crossfire, Great Expectations and Miracle on 34th Street, none of which I have seen. Here’s the poster:
Gentleman’s Agreement ranks 8th on both IMDB measures of the top films of 1947 (here and here). Ahead of it in both IMDB systems are Miracle on 34th Street, Out of the Past, The Lady from Shanghai, Black Narcissus and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I have not seen any of them. The only other film from 1947 that I have seen is Odd Man Out, which I enjoyed more than Gentleman’s Agreement, but I can also see why it was less appealing to Oscar voters.
This trailer interestingly leads with the Oscar win and then with the success of the novel. I wasn’t able to track down a trailer from before the Oscar ceremony (but admit that I did not try very hard).
It’s the third consecutive Oscar winner to tackle a gritty social issue, after The Lost Weekend and alcoholism, and The Best Years of Our Lives and demobilisation. This time it is anti-Semitism, with Gregory Peck playing journalist Phil Schuyler Green, who has been given the assignment of writing about it; after much agonising, he decides to pretend to be Jewish for six months and to recount his experiences.
I am sorry to say that this film did not particularly grab me. Anti-Semitism is a very serious issue, in 2018 as much as 1947. The film-makers deserve credit for taking it on. But it’s not a brilliant film. As usual, I’m going to go through it starting with the things that bothered me most.
Whitewashing: The setting of the film varies between New York and posh parts of Connecticut and Vermont. I may be misremembering, but I don’t recall seeing a single black face in the entire film, not even in the street shots and crowd scenes of New York which establish the setting; there is certainly no black actor with a speaking part. Much is made of the magazine where Phil works being reluctant to hire Jews; there’s a much more noticeable lack of diversity amongst its staff (though Phil says he doesn’t want to hear the word “n****r”, it’s not clear that there is anyone around who he could mean). The most visible possibly non-white extra is a chap with a moustache in the very first scene.
Being Earnest: Our hero spends what seems like ages agonising over the creative process – what will his angle be? – before he finally comes up with the idea of passing for Jewish. The creative process is difficult, as I know from my writer friends, but it’s not very interesting to watch, and the praise he gets from colleagues and family for trying hard and being clever isn’t good cinema. (Here is Anne Revere as his mother, though she was only 13 years older than Gregory Peck.)
The issue itself: I am not an expert in ani-Semitism, and for obvious reasons don’t have a lot of personal experience of it. But watching the film I kept feeling that, so soon after the Holocaust and in the year when the state of Israel was created, there might be a bit more to say about the subject than commentary about daily micro-aggressions and being barred from posh hotels? I was very glad to find a piece in Tablet (the American Jewish magazine, not the British Catholic one) by Saul Austerlitz going into this in great detail, with the un-pithy but cogent title “When Hollywood Was Scared To Depict Anti-Semitism, It Made ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’”. One key quote from the article:
This is a hard-hitting movie about anti-Semitism, unafraid of specificity in its choice of targets, that nonetheless depicts anti-Jewish sentiment as being primarily confined to the types of people and places a well-heeled Manhattan journalist might encounter.
It’s a film much more about afflicting the comforted than comforting the afflicted. No harm in that, of course; but it’s a choice with consequences, notably a rather wooden performance from Peck, whose character is on the right side of the argument all the time. His best moment is when he confronts the hotel where he had planned to honeymoon about their refusal to admit Jews, where his continual seething is appropriate and in character.
There are three really Jewish characters, Phil’s friend Dave Goldman, played by John Garfield (of whom more later), his secretary Elaine Wales, played by June Havoc, who turns out to be a Jew passing as a Christian, and Professor Fred Lieberman, played by Sam Jaffe and obviously modelled on Einstein, who gets one of the best lines explaining Jewishness to Phil:
Lieberman: Millions of people nowadays are religious only in the vaguest sense. I’ve often wondered why the Jews among them still go on calling themselves Jews. Do you know, Mr. Green? Phil: No, but I’d like to. Lieberman: Because the world still makes it an advantage not to be one. Thus it becomes a matter of pride to go on calling ourselves Jews.
The romance: In parallel with the rather forced drama of Phil’s journalism, he has a romantic plot with his publisher’s niece, divorcee Kathy Lacy, played by Dorothy Maguire, and a potential alternate option in his colleague Anne Dettrey, played by Celeste Holm, who won an Oscar for it. I found it very difficult to believe in the chemistry between Phil and Kathy. McGuire is very good in the role, and indeed Kathy probably has the best arc of any of the characters, since the anti-Semitism story is her idea in the first place and then she is forced to confront it in her own family and in herself. Holm’s character gets a lot of good lines (perhaps her best is, “some of your other best friends are Methodist, but you never bother to say it”) and although like Phil she is always on the right side of the argument, she is more interesting than he is.
The kid: Phil’s character is widowed, and his mother runs his household. His son Tommy is played by none other than eleven-year-old Dean Stockwell, the future Al Calavicci on Quantum Leap and John Cavil, aka Number One, from Battlestar Galactica. He had already been acting for three years.
Feminism: Oddly enough, for a film ostensibly about anti-Semitism which incidentally drops the ball on race, I think it scores rather better on gender issues. The major women characters are all rounded, have agency and get most of the good lines. (The exception perhaps being the secretary Elaine Wales.) In an early scene where Phil first talks about Kathy to his mother, she delivers a zinger:
Phil Green: Funny thing, that girl, Mr. Minify’s niece suggested the series on antisemitism. Funny. Mrs. Green: You don’t say? Why, women will be thinking next, Phil.
The real Jew: For me the standout performances in the film were Dorothy McGuire, noted above, as Kathy, and John Garfield as Dave Goldman, Phil’s childhood friend who turns up in New York after being demobbed and has difficulty finding a job and accommodation. Kathy’s friendship with him is essentially her path to redemption. Dave is not at all sure that an expose on anti-Semitism is going to be much help for him personally, but he goes along with it anyway, requiring a lot in a supporting role from Garfield, which he delivers. Garfield was one of those worst hit by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and died in 1952, aged 39, of a heart attack.
Next up is Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, with not one but two future Doctor Whos in minor roles.
I am now twenty years into this project, as it were. I’m ranking Gentleman’s Agreement ahead of Gone With the Wind and behind Going My Way. (Gone With The Wind is better cinematically, but politically disastrous. Going My Way also features a protagonist who is right all the time, but is more fun.) My ranking all of the Best Picture winners so far is as follows, from bottom to top:
In terms of source material, we’ve had ten out of twenty based on novels (though perhaps Mrs Miniver should be considered a short story collection); three based on stage plays (two successful, one not producedone based on a short story, one based on an epic poem, one based on a non-fiction biography, and four which were original material. In terms of geography, six of the twenty are set more or less entirely in New York, four largely elsewhere in the USA, four in the UK (three England, oneWales), four elsewhere in Europe (two largely in first world war France, one each in pre-war France and interbellum Germany), one in the Pacific and one in wartime Africa. In terms of history, fourteen are set in the twentieth century (two during the first world war, the others more or less contemporary), four straddle the ninteenth and twentieth centuries, one is set entirely in the nineteenth century and one in the eighteenth century. If the magic formula is therefore a screen adaptation of a novel set in contemporary new York, the two films that tick all those boxes are The Lost Weekend and Gentleman’s Agreement.
Gentleman’s Agreement is based on a novel of the same name by Laura Z. Hobson, published the same year (book in February, film in November – a very quick turnaround). The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
“Sure are, gettin’ a cab this far downtown,” the driver said amiably. “It’s the doormen all along Park, flaggin’ us down for them rich Jews.” With that, he snapped the butt of his cigarette through the window of the cab and began whistling a tune.
As with Cimarron, a rather good book has been delivered to the screen without the same bang. In the novel, Hobson is able to take us into the heads of Phil and Kathy, and Phil is a lot more nuanced on the page than on the screen. It’s a case where telling rather than showing is the way to go; the novel makes it clear that Phil and Kathy’s relationship is physical, and likewise that Dave and Anne have an affair. It feels more fair to Kathy and makes Phil more interesting than the screenplay does. Some of my criticisms still stand – there is no obvious black character in the book (the editor, Minify, employs a maid called Berta who is described as “husky”, but that’s not the same as “dusky”). The Holocaust is referenced in passing, but the emphasis is still on anti-Semitism as experienced by the East Coast upper classes. But the story came alive for me on the page as it had not done on the screen. It was originally serialised in Cosmopolitan. You can get it here.
Laura Z. Hobson, like her character Elaine Wales, was a Jew who used a non-Jewish surname (that of her Protestant ex-husband), so she knew what she was writing about, and it shows. Her son Michael Z. Hobson became a senior executive for Marvel comics in the 1980s and 1990s, and then became head of Parachute Publishing which made R.L. Stine a household name. There’s always a genre connection if you look for it (cf. Dean Stockwell above).
Ireland has had a president since 1938, and today is the 14th presidential election in that time. Almost certainly, the winner will be the incumbent, Michael D. Higgins, aged 77, poet, former sociology lecturer, former Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, former Mayor of Galway, genial left-wing icon.
Young F and I were lucky enough to visit Áras an Uachtaráin, the President's official residence in Phoenix Park, last summer. It's a remarkable place, and the current resident is a remarkable person.
SF fans should note that President Higgins sent a special welcome note to next year's Worldcon, which will be held in Ireland, here read out at Worldcon 76 by Dublin 2019 Chair James Bacon.
The president has a seven-year term; keen mathematicians will note that while 80 years have passed since 1938, thirteen seven-year terms would normally take 91 years. The discrepancy is because there were two very short presidencies in the 1970s, one cut short by death and the next by resignation. (Mary Robinson also resigned a few weeks early in 1997, but the resulting election was more or less on schedule.)
Of the 14 elections, six have been uncontested. In three cases (Sean T. O'Kelly in 1952, Patrick Hillery in 1983 and Mary McAleese in 2004), an established incumbent sought re-election and nobody could be bothered to oppose them. In the other three cases (Douglas Hyde in 1938, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh in 1974 and Patrick Hillery in 1976) the major political parties agreed on a candidate in unusual circumstances (the first president of the lot, and resolving the two curtailed presidencies of the 1970s).
If there is an election, there are three ways you can become a candidate. If you happen to be the incumbent president, you can nominate yourself for a second seven-year term. (You are only allowed two terms.) This is what happened in the three cases of 1952, 1983 and 2004. (Éamon de Valera could have nominated himself in 1966, but chose to take a different path.) The current President, Michael D. Higgins, has also nominated himself for re-election. 2018 is the first time that a self-nominated president's re-election has been contested.
If you can persuade 20 members of either house of the Irish Parliament (the Oireachtas) to nominate you, you can also qualify as a candidate. The Dáil (lower house) currently has 158 members, though under the current constitution its size has varied from 138 to 166; it must have at least one member per 30,000 of the population, and at most one member per 20,000. The Seanad (upper house) has 60 members, fixed in the constitution. So to go the parliamentary route you need around 9-10% of parliamentarians to back you, which in practice means at least one medium-to-large political party, or several small ones. All of the candidates in the 1938, 1945, 1959, 1966, 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1990 elections were nominated by this route (including the uncontested elections of 1938, 1974 and 1976).
The third path to nomination is to get at least four county councils to propose you. Until 1997, this had always been thought to be a poor relation of the Oireachtas route. County councillors are also members of political parties, and councils don't have a lot of power. However, in 1997 there was some dissatisfaction in the main political parties about the way their candidates had been chosen, and two outsiders (a former Eurovision winner and a retired senior policeman) successfully appealed to local government to broaden the field. This established a degree of independence for the councils which hadn't been there before. The councils nominated two out of five candidates in 1997, four out of seven in 2011 and four out of six this year, a record proportion. Normally candidates nominated by the councils are non-party, though last time round one of them was regarded as being close to Fianna Fáil.
Today's election is very unusual. As noted above, it is the first time that a self-nominted incumbent has faced opposition. It has the highest ever proportion of candidates nominated by county councils. The only candidate nominated by Oireachtas members is a representative of Sinn Féin, the two larger parties having decided to support the incumbent. And it also looks like it will deliver the highest ever winning margin for a successful candidate.
Seven of the previous elections have been contested. Three (Éamon de Valera's two wins in 1959 and 1966, and Erskine Childers' short-lived victory in 1973) featured only two candidates, Fianna Fáil vs Fine Gael in all three cases, Fianna Fáil winning each time. The largest winning margin to date was Éamon de Valera's 56.3% in 1959. The other two straight fights were much closer – Dev won by less than 1% in 1966, and Childers by only 4% in 1973.)
The other four have been multi-candidate affairs, with nobody winning more than 50% of the first preference votes on the first round. Like all other Irish elections, the presidential election uses the single transferable vote, with voters numbering the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate has more than half of the votes, the candidate (or candidates) with fewest votes is eliminated and their votes transferred to their next preference, until someone has a majority of all remaining valid votes. That delivered victory for Sean T. O'Kelly in 1945 (he was only a hair's breadth below 50% on the first count), Mary Robinson in 1990 (the only case of a candidate who did not get the most first preference votes winning on transfers), Mary McAleese in 1997 and Michael D. Higgins in 2011. Robinson and Higgins are the only two official Labour candidates to have won the presidency so far. O'Kelly and McAleese were explicitly Fianna Fáil candidates. Fine Gael have never won a presidential election.
The polls look very good for President Higgins. His percentage is consistently in the high 60's. This is even better than Finland's president Sauli Niinistö, who got 62.7% against seven opponents in January this year. Although elected as the Labour Party candidate last time, he is running this time as an independent, effectively with backing from Fine Gael as well as Labour. The strongest criticism made of him during the campaign has been that he had originally said he would serve only one term. However, I think people are entitled to change their minds.
The other five candidates are remarkably weak, in my subjective view. The only Oireachtas-nominated candidate is Liadh Ní Riada, a Sinn Féin MEP for the southern part of Ireland. She has not previously been one of their most visible figures. Three of the other four, and I am not making this up, are businessmen who were nominated by county councils after becoming well known through their appearances on the Irish version of the reality TV show Dragon's Den. (Shark Tank in the United States.) The last is a mental health activist; she and Ní Riada are the two women among the six candidates. As the polls currently sit, Sean Gallagher, one of the Dragon's Den candidates who was in fact the runner-up in the 2011 election, is in second place, but a very long way behind at roughly 11%. Candidates can get up to €200,000 of their election expenses reimbursed if they have more than 12.5% of the vote when they are eliminated. None apart from President Higgins seems likely to pass this threshold.
At the same time, there is a rather odd referendum today on removing a single word from the Irish constitution. The word is "blasphemous", and it is in the final sentence of paragraph i of subsection 1º of Article 40.6:
The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.
The reasoning behind it is rather technical, but the basic argument is that Ireland does not have an established religion to blaspheme against, and that the law has anyway never been used. Polls suggest that it will be carried by a large margin.
Results should be out by tomorrow afternoon, Irish time.
