lookingland

i hope everyone has celebrated a safe new year's eve and is starting their new year with cheer and optimism. be gentle with your resolutions if you are prone to make them: you don't want to trap yourself with obligations you can't or don't want to fulfill and find yourself grumpy and disappointed before the first quarter is even over!

for me, i've written my list of the year's goals. last year i didn't get as much done as i would have liked, but i feel more focused this year (or at least have been more recently). so i am hopeful.

in reading: last night i considered challenging myself to finish reading Quicksilver (i had said i would), but instead i read Enid Blyton's The Enchanted Wood (or at least the beginning of it). Blyton's style is rather simplistic (it's a children's book after all, and definitely a product of its time), but i am reminded of how prolific she was. she was a natural storyteller, i guess. that's something i have never been. i can weave a charming anecdote, but writing has always leaned more to the technical side for me.

i will finish Quicksilver this year at some point, but at the moment i have so many more exciting things on my night stand. you will be hearing about them along the way, no doubt.

in writing: in 2009 Reconstruction will celebrate 20 years (officially in August). i guess i ought to polish off the writing of the old thing, shouldn't i? i mean, the sequential version will keep just fine running as it is (and it is!), but the narrative text it scattered over so many places right now. this will be a year of gathering it up and trying to put it into some sort of order.

anyway, i am celebrating this milestone (and semi-resolution) with a bottle of absinthe today (because what could be more appropos?).

in writing (cont.): the last thing i wrote in 2008 was the annual Christmas story. clocking in at a little over 30 pages, it turned out rather amusing, though has a lot of rough edges and a couple of dropped threads that need to be basted back in. but i managed to write it without any pressure whatsoever of feeling like it had to be the least bit good or feeling like i had to defend it. i honestly don't think i have enjoyed something so much for a long, long time. i am hoping that this bit of liberation will free me up to be more productive in the coming year.

i haven't given up on In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy either, by the way. i am trying to figure out how to fit it into my schedule (it's going to be a tight race if i want to get it going by april). i just need to clear some other unfinished business off of my desk.

finally, The Orchard debuts today and will be posting weekly on thursdays. yay!

okay, enough potpourri from me: tell me one thing you want to try this year that you've never done before ~ and one thing you really want to focus on accomplishing!

: D

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guess i have gone into hibernation mode. days away from my final presentation (which i have somehow managed to make about J. F. Hartranft ~ yes, i amaze myself sometimes), i am not thinking much about anything except finishing school and getting to the holiday. so i am sorry for my absence, though i can't promise i will be much better in the coming weeks.

for the

bookchallenge:

no. 63 ~ Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. i had tried to read McCarthy many years ago and couldn't get beyond the first four pages. had better luck this time, though with mixed results. loved the writing, but the story was rather, hmmm, gross? basically it's about a sorta crazy loner who, increasingly isolated, becomes a serial killer who practices necrophilia with his victims. lots of beautiful language for such an ugly story. i feel sort of meh about it overall in the end. not recommended for the squeamish.

i have a couple more books i would like to finish before the end of the year, but overall i am pleased that i read as many as i did. i know some of you out there read a gazillion books a year, but i am a pretty lazy reader and while i can occasionally read a really good book in one sitting, i am more inclined to take weeks and weeks to get through something. i've been reading Quicksilver since last Christmas and i may or may not finish it by the 31st (i am thinking "not" at the this point, but miracles do happen).

as with every year, i want to write a Christmas story. i have one in mind (nothing fancy), but i will prolly get started on it this weekend. in the meantime, here's a nice holiday picture for you to enjoy!

Troika on St. Petersburg Street
19th Century
Carl von Hampeln (1808-1880 Russian)

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the weekend is almost here, but that's no relief to my ears since i will be buried in homework during the whole of it. i am trying to visit lj at least once a day and make an update if on nothing else, the reading that i am doing (which may be totally blah to most of you).

i am reading the second book in the Baroque Cycle, King of the Vagabonds and it's not going well 60 pages in. if anyone plans to read it eventually, you might want to just skip these posts because my opinions are hugely subjective and i think you ought to experience it for yourself. also, i'll be posting spoilers upon spoilers.

anyway, so in the second book, stephenson has done 187 annoying writerly things and the only reason i am pressing onward is the hope that eventually we will come back to daniel waterhouse and things might improve. to enumerate the crimes:

1. invented a country from which Eliza comes ~ how convenient now, she doesn't have to conform to any particular mores of 17th century europe and can be just as "modern" as he pleases. yuck. and she's beautiful and clever ~ smarter at Jack's game then he is ~ total dullsville.

2. introduced technical language into the 17th century sphere in a bid to be ~ oh, i don't really know what. i mean, i guess i can see that it's intentional (and that this will later tie in to the whole "systems of the world" thing, but it's annoying when we're been so nicely ensconced in the past until now.

3. Jack and Eliza have now conversed for about 40 pages about their pasts. boring boring awful. not only are both characters these ridiculously rich storytellers (they're all sounding like stephenson now), but he finds the most ridiculous interruptions to cliff-hang their tales. Jack will suddenly say: oh, i don't want to hear anymore ~ just at the most interesting part. oh brother! it literally feels like stephenson was making stuff up as he went along (a lot of it is also repetitious), then he would get tired and stop. and no one ever bothered to edit any of it.

honestly, were it not for my prurient interest in 17th century plagues and disasters, i doubt i would still be reading. i will say, however, that stephsenson as a storyteller is still generally pretty good and i think most people would really love this and love getting away from the political and scientific blithering of the Royal Society which preceded it for 300 pages. it's active and campy and even though they are endlessly talking and walking, it moves well enough. it's just everything i hate about an adventure story; your mileage may vary.

finally, and this is just a personal thing: i am not liking the anti-religious bent emerging in the book. while it waffles for and against one or another church (or all of them, perhaps), it's a little heavy-handed in the whole "religion is the enemy of science" (which is lame, though i have to concede that this was more likely true in many circles in the 17th century).

ah well, the picture of the day is something i found browsing for 17th century manuscripts, from an article about the "cult" of the Sacred Heart (to which, i suppose, i am a card-carrying member). i am saving the site here because this is a theme that comes up in my own work. the article is really interesting. good grist for you metaphorists out there.

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i have been trying to write this entry for days.

i am still reading the Baroque Cycle. i finished the first "book" (of the seven). we've at long last encountered pirates and that's fun (it only took 300 pages ~ sheesh). i feel like i might be able to get into a rhythm with it and possibly push through to the end (only about 600 pages to go!). the first book ended with an off-stage war won by the dissenters (led, in part, by isaac newton if i understand correctly), random pirates, daniel washing out of religion and natural philosophy to become a political whore, and leibnitz tossing his calculating machine to work on solving euclidian mysteries.

if i had the energy i would explain why all of this makes for just about the most depressing end of a book ever (excepting The Painted Bird, which will never be eclipsed in my mind). suffice it to say, it's only the first book of seven, though, so i fully expect stephenson to get daniel (at least) to rebound. there are things about stephenson's writing that grate on me a little. his occasional lapse into old english spellings (when not in the dialogue) is kinda obnoxious and pretentious, i think ~ particularly because it seems pretty inconsistent. but i feel more or less grounded in the story finally (and there seems to be a plot forming), so i will push on through the next book even though it does that supremely irritating thing of starting fresh with a whole new set of characters who will eventually dovetail with the first, but not for another 300 pages or so. grrrrr.

i am making a tag for this nonsense because i have a feeling you will hear more about it along the way. that, and i'm studying the book's structure as an experiment, so i might make the occasional comment about the style, etc.

: o p

in writing: this is going to seem completely random, but i am working out a disaster scenario. i need a fire and a flood, but i need to figure out how to work them into the mix. feels a little crazy to be adding something like this so last minute. i mean, i always knew i wanted it in there, but never really saw how it fit in and now that i am trying to mega-outline, i see that it's sorta necessary after all if i can somehow work it. i dunno. this may be the last platform on my departure from any vestiges of sanity. as i try to work out the details, i'm researching the johnstown flood. i don't want anything of quite these proportions, but it's a good place to round up grisly details.

of the more than 2,000 people who lost their lives at johnstown,
one third (nearly 800) were never identified.
maybe i picked a disaster because that's how i feel about my life. also, plots need active conflict and most often my conflict is too internalized.

i hate plot. plot will be the death of me.

i had other stuff to share about stephen crane and james joyce, but i don't have the wherewithall to try to articulate any of it.

school has caught up to me, life has caught up to me.

i'm off to make soup and might not be back for a long spell. i still have a bunch of prompt illustrations to post, but i may not get to them until december. sorry all.

: o p

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so this weekend i got this wild hair that i wanted to read dalquist's Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (check out a review here), but then i remembered that i haven't finished reading stephenson's Baroque Cycle. so i sat down with Quicksilver last night and turned a few chapters (it's been a year since i started the thing, so my goal is to finish the first book before 2008 ~ it may be the last thing i read this year ~ or ever. the thing may yet kill me).

but once again i was struck by the intricacy of stephenson's world ~ his writing is so detailed, so specific to the period, and his characters so alive and lively (envy envy envy). and yet, 300 pages later i still can't tell you what the hell this book is about. money and science (but i can get that much from the amazon review). i enjoy his portrayal of isaac newton and the goings-on of the royal society, but a "plot" escapes me and the bouncing back and forth in time hasn't helped clarify anything. well, there are pirates on the horizon, so i am hoping maybe something will happen shortly.

stephenson's original manuscript for the Cycle:
ye gods and golliwogs!
i keep coming back to stephenson, thinking: gee, i could do that. sure. but who on earth would read such a monstrosity? lots of people have braved the Baroque Cycle, but perhaps it's not exactly got the sort of following one might hope.

and why would i, who loves a little book more than anything, write something i would be daunted to read?

: o p

in other reading: i had started mitchell's When all the Woods are Green, but didn't get past the first ten pages. he's not the sort of writer who employs an effective hook. his longer novels take about 30 pages to get going. i did order John Sherwood, Ironmaster (found a first edition for a couple bucks online). i think i have everything i want by mitchell. i wish i had an earlier edition of In War Time, but i have a readable copy at least (it's a hard one to find for a reasonable price). i didn't buy any of his Washington books (maybe i will read them later when all of the ones i have are read). i don't think i have ever faithfully read an entire collection by anyone. not even dickens or dumas. but i have a feeling there are a few of mitchell's i won't read (like Dr. North and his Friends and Circumstances, both of which seem like chatty parlor devils and not to my tastes).

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i stayed up, rang in the new year by telling the dogs to stop barking at the firecrackers, then promptly went to bed. 2006 was a year full of trials and blessings. more blessings than trials. i have much to be grateful for.

: D

yesterday was a good writing day (13 pages, 4,000 words). i have a feeling very little of it will make any sort of cut, but it was good to just write and fill my head and pages with ideas and explorations.

it also snew ~ a good proper snew of a few inches, which had a nice becalming effect. i went out and drove in it, of course.

today is a day of ordering out of chaos. i doubt i will do much cleaning proper, but i would like to organize a few piles and maybe have a short geography lesson (i couldn't, for the life of me, remember where Laramie is yesterday ~ that's pretty pitiful).

i was going to read a bazillion books this weekend to race toward the end of the

50bookchallenge but instead let it go. i suppose i could count the three Giacomo books i read (i said i would last year when i bought them, and i read them, and they are in french, so twice the work). and i didn't count the one library text that i read (matthew battles's An Unquiet History), and i didn't count john ransom's diary because it was mostly a re-read. so if i wanted to be picky, there's my last five.

( the short review of the year's books )

i've already got a pile up for the coming year (and yes, i am counting the leftovers from this year into the new year. i think it's fair.) dunno how well i'll do in 2007 because i hope to be writing tens times as much as last year.

: D

happy new year, friends!

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still chipping away, ever so slowly, at Quicksilver. i'm less than 200 pages in and continue to feel that it is heavy-handed, but entertaining.

meanwhile, i thought i ought to log a few books i read this month as research for NaNo. nothing terribly exciting here, but every book counts toward the

50bookchallenge!

no. 38 ~ The Patapsco: Baltimore's River of History by paul j. travers ~ didn't like the way this book was organized. it had some interesting and useful information, but required churning through a lot of stewage to get to it. someone remarked in some other review (i think on amazon) that this is like a bunch of essays thrown together, and i agree.

no. 39 ~ The American Tintype by floyd rinhart, marion rinhart, and robert w. wagner ~ the most interesting thing about this book is that it opens with the line: "There is no tin in a tintype". beyond that it strikes me as almost a vanity press volume (put out by ohio state university press), with a substantial sampling of images, but nothing particularly spectacular. it has detailed chapters on the photographic processes, but the history is rather dry here and the lackluster images are poorly described. i had been curious about this book because it sells on amazon for a whalloping $78! but there's really nothing here to justify the price tag. it's neither comprehensive, nor visually stunning enough to make any sort of impression. boo.

i picked up Flashman and the Angel of the Lord by george macdonald fraser. i want to read this and geraldine brooks' pulitzer prize-winning March in between the long haul of stephenson's cycle.

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i watched kubrick's Barry Lyndon this weekend.

it was pretty to look at (fabulous costumes).

it was long.

that about sums it up.

the aquaria-like quality of this film makes it
pleasantly fascinating and mind-numbingly boring
depending on your state of mind
~ * ~

i'm on page 91 (of 3,000) of The Baroque Cycle. i like it, though it does tend to go on a bit much. the writing is good enough that i haven't gotten bored with it, though i am beginning to get a wee fussy for the plot to move forward (after 91 pages, i think i have been patient enough).

~ * ~

i'm hosting Thanksgiving dinner, turns out, which has me excited and distracted (and all-over-tired too).

i finished NaNo on monday. did i already mention this? whatever.

i feel pestered lately and cannot shake the feeling. prolly because there are so many things need doing and they're not getting done. (the usual).

and that's pretty much all there is to report. tomorrow is a long day of dentistry and errands and house cleaning. relatives visiting this weekend, so i may be signing off from posting for a while, but i'll try to continue reading along!

happy holidays to my american f-listers!

: D

for all the gifts and blessings of the year,
may we all be truly thankful!

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i went to see The Prestige yesterday. i feel very ambivolent about most of it, so i won't bother trying to articulate my opinion too deeply. no spoilers here (i don't think).

the short impression: it was entertaining. it was predictable. it broke one of the canons of storytelling in a way that i think might have worked in the book, but not on film. it's mostly unmemorable (except for David Bowie, who kicked major butt ~ that man gets cooler all the time). though the two movies are nothing alike, this one begs a comparison with The Illusionist. i think this one can beg all it likes. the former is the superior film. i want to stress that The Prestige is highly entertaining. it just suffers from weak character development and a bend in reality that's both fascinating and disappointing.

science, magic, and illusion are all relative here

afterwards J and i went to B & N because she had coupons and i had a gift certificate and after some green tea chai and a double chocolate cupcake, i was so jacked on sugar, i bought Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.

the books weigh about 11 pounds. there's over 3,700 pages between them. apparently they clock in around 2 million words. perhaps needless to say, but i dunna expect to finish them for the

50bookchallenge.

part of why i bought them was because i wanted to see how they sustain. the reviews on the second part of the cycle were middling (it suffered, they say, from excessiveness and rambling ~ but then what sequel doesn't?). but apparenty, for those intrepid fans who went on to third installment, everything pays off in spectacular ways ~ and that's what i want to see.

(insert long ramble about this idea i had about how to solve the world's problems through story structure).

and that's about all i have energy for this morning ~ my head is too busy spinning on the axis of ideas.

happy sunday all ~ !

: D

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Par grâce! Quelle charité!

happy 2009 ~ !

bobbling on by ~

the cycle is currently in rinse ~

a glurge of a bunch of random things ~

need to read ~

bye bye 2006 ~ hello 2007!

a report on the reading ~

(no subject)

a lame, sort of indifferent post ~

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