Review up on Spiderwatch

Today's review, a look at Dan Greenberg's Spiders, a non-fiction children's book, is up on Spiderwatch.

The Haunted House edited by Charles Dickens, A Book Review

I was excited to read this one for the Readers Imbibing Peril challenge. The short stories in here include work by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins, some of my favorite authors ever, and, judging by the title, it fits the challenge perfectly.

The Haunted House is a collection of works first commissioned by Dickens for one of his famous Christmas annuals, this one for All Year Round. It has work by Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell), and by lesser-known (to me, anyway) authors Hesba Stretton, George Agustus Sala, and Adelaide Anne Proctor. Promising!

It didn't quite fulfill my hopes. For one thing, it is not really RIP material. The frame story establishes early that the house isn't really haunted. The "ghosts" the guests face are those of memory or make-believe and fairly benign.

The stories also failed to live up to my literary expectations which were, as I said, high. Consider: Collins is the author of Moonstone and Woman in White, two books I cannot rave enough about. His other books don't move me to raving, but I've still enjoyed them. Dickens inevitably manages to suck me into his stories, even when I want to remain aloof (Esther in Bleak House irritates me to no end. Does this stop me from getting drawn in? It does not.) Gaskell wrote Cranford, another of my favorite books. I didn't know the other authors, but was willing to meet new winners. But... not here. Of the authors, only Colllins troubles to make his tale at all suspenseful. George Augustus Sala writes a humorous dream tale that failed to amuse. The others were lackluster to irritating. Hesba Stretton wrote a "frivolous woman reformed" tale that had me gritting my teeth (Victorian literature is full of such tales, and they are often irritating). Gaskell's tale of the judge haunted by a long ago choice was the only one that at all deserved the epitaph "haunting."

Conclusion? Read something else by Dickens, Collins, or Gaskell and give this a miss.

Dracula by Bram Stoker: A Book Review

The Readers Imbibing Peril challenge gave me the extra incentive to reread Dracula. As I mentioned before, it reminded me how much I enjoy Victorian novels.

I'm not going to give a summary; I think most people are familiar with the basic premise, or even much of a "review" as such. Dracula is so much a part of popular and literary culture that it is hard to stand aside and view it objectively; there's too much wound around it. I will say, though, that I don't think it is, on its own, the best Victorian novel. If you want to read one and only one Victorian work for Readers Imbibing Peril, I'd suggest Woman in White.

Instead, I'll mention a couple of things that particularly struck me this read through.

It's a novel about communication and information. The protagonists are determined to record every event. Even before Dracula appears on the scene, Mina is keeping her nightly journal as a discipline and Lucy strives to emulate her. The men, too, keep their records; Seward has his phonograph and Harker his journal. They also collect every scrap of record they can find about Dracula; the novel has several newspaper clippings included. Ultimately, they hope the records will help track the count, and he seems to share that fear since he burns the original clippings and journals, leaving them only the copies. Yet, for all their insistence on sharing, with Mina distributing multiple copies of everyone's work, they singularly fail to communicate at crucial points and that leads to Lucy's death (and undeath) and very nearly dooms Mina to the same fate.

Most of this is due to Van Helsing, the "good doctor," whom I wanted, more than ever, to shake. It's his idea that knowledge has to be planted like corn and left hidden for a while, unrevealed (To paraphrase a very long, elaborate, and ornate explanation) that dooms Lucy, several times over. Granted, he's not in a position right away to say "I'm looking for vampires," but he fails to tell Seward what sort of intruder he's guarding against, and the result is Seward has no idea that he should be awake and in the same room as she is. He strictly forbids anyone to tell Lucy's mother the purpose of the garlic flowers, so of course the woman throws the flowers out (Garlic is all very well in a dish, but a roomful of flowers? One can only imagine the stench!), and so it goes. Mina is nearly the victim of the same secrecy; it is Van Helsing who tells the men that she must no longer be a part of their councils, so she is cut out of the information exchange, and no one notices her growing lethargy as the count switches his attentions to her--not until it is almost too late. The strange thing is, the book gives no evidence of uneasiness with this, no sense that perhaps the "good doctor," whom the characters all admire and reverence, is part of the problem.

There's a strange discordance between science and superstition as well, but this is clearly something the characters and author are aware of. On the one hand, the characters use all the modern devices--typewriters, phonographs, steamships, railways--in their fight against the count, but at the same time, their ultimate weapons--garlic, the crucifix, the wooden stake--come straight out of old folklore (some of which Stoker invented), and the Count's invasion is made possible by the modern banking and shipping techniques. Ultimately, the battle between science and superstition must, I think, be declared a draw.

A side note: I read the Norton Critical Edition which highlighted the difficulty of footnotes. On the one hand, they're handy. They give extra bits of information. They point critical moments out. And, in this edition, they are footnotes, not endnotes. At the same time, I found myself wondering, as I have before, whether or not I might have noticed these things on my own, and wouldn't it have been more fun if I had? Ah well. I suppose I will always have a love-hate with extra-textual information.

I did enjoy the contemporary reviews reprinted at the back of the book.

The Broken Hourglass: Tiny Update

Not a whole lot of stuff to say about The Broken Hourglass today. I'm still proofreading. It takes a surprising amount of time even for short quests. There are all the possible lines of dialog to read, plus any item descriptions, plus any stringhead tags or special spell descriptions.  And this is only the first proofread, the one to make sure things are consistent and to fix really glaring comma errors.

Someone is still going to have to go back through the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb when we're finished and fix all the remaining comma problems, grammar glitches, and whatnot. Preferably, it would be several someones, but we haven't got that many people, and I'm assuming you all want to see the game before the century is out.

Now, off to read "Look Up in the Sky."  It's another of the quests I have not read yet, so I'm looking forward to finding out what it's about.

By the way, I don't know how much you'll see of the quest titles when we're finished. Certainly they won't show up in the game; I don't know if we're keeping the separate folders or not. Right now, they're handy for prefixing, coding, and proofreading purposes.

Signs that Summer is Over

Spiderwatch

Ok, I gave up on the slow, careful adding of posts to Spiderwatch. There are a bunch of backdated posts starting when I took the pictures and moving forward. Enjoy!

SpiderWatch

As you know, I really enjoyed Lynne Kelley's Spiders: Learning to Love Them.

I loved it enough that I started looking at spiders and taking pictures. Thing is, I know at least some of you really don't like spiders, and really don't want to have pictures of spiders jumping out at you when you go to check book reviews, and there's no way I know to make them optional.

So, I've gone and started a new blog, just for spiders--especially those in my yard. Head on over and check SpiderWatch. It's going to be pretty busy just at first because I'm introducing all the stars of the show: Big Spider, Milady, Fleck, Cousin Sal, Legs, etc.

Otherwise, probably I'll post once a week for as long as I'm watching, keeping this as my main blog.

Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison, a book review

I made it about a third of the way through Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time before I gave up.

I wanted to like it. I'm interested in science, I'm interested in time and views of time. I like books about the development of our world.  I do not, however, particularly like math, and that is where Galison lost me.

I'd be reading along, enjoying his description of the maneuvering between different nations as they tried to establish just who would get to hold the one, true meter or  which country would have the Prime Meridian, and then Galison would throw in a chunk of math to show that this or that country had already established this or that theory.

I would tell myself "I can follow this. I really can," and would dutifully plunge into an account of squared this and subtracted that while all the while in the back of my head a voice was saying "I don't care about this. I don't care about this. I don't CARE about this," until I'd give up and start skimming in search of more exploration or attempts to keep clocks synchronized, and then, blat there would be another huge chunk of numbers.

The writing between the numbers was good enough--almost good enough to keep me going--but there were other books in the book bag, and I kept putting this one down in favor of those others, and eventually, when the due date came, I did not renew.

The Broken Hourglass: Proofreading

So no great big exciting news. Work on The Broken Hourglass continues to continue. Right now, mostly we're working on revision and overhaul.

Jason's fixing the endgame and doing a ton of checking on items. Theoretically the focus is on the finale, but of course everyone carries weapons and various Cool Named Gear, and then that gets checked and then he says "Oh, there are better ways of doing it" and then he's back at item-making.

Wes Weimer came out of retirement (Retirement from the game, that is. I wouldn't really describe a teaching job as "retirement" in the broader sense) to do some engine adjustment.

Paul is working on making combat more exciting.

Me? I'm reading through the quests, more or less in alphabetical order, doing quick edits and making notes. It's interesting--there are a lot of quests I have not read, some I haven't even seen summaries of--and very time-consuming. Like most things, it's taking more time than I planned. It's small stuff, mostly, but it needs doing. For example, fairly early on, an emperor was changed to an empress. The first quests still call her a him. And so it goes.

How many quests are there? That depends on how you define "quest": Some are definitely Quests with a capital "Q," long, sprawling, multi-part creations that are spread out over any number of files. Others are short encounters with very basic results and choices. They all have dialog, though, and it all needs proofreading.

There's some further writing ahead, but right now, I'm heading back into initial proofreading work.

Til next time!

The Mountain of Adventure and The Ship of Adventure by Enid Blyton, a mini book review

Having recently been reminded of Enid Blyton, I'm working my way through the selection available at nearby libraries; it's not a very big collection, unfortunately. The one carrying the Adventure series has the first four but not the last two.  At any rate, I've been enjoying them.

In The Mountain of Adventure the children go off on a camping trip in the Welsh mountains, lose their way in the fog, and find themselves on the side of a mountain that mysteriously rumbles from time to time. They find their way inside to a series of secret passages (there are always secret passages) to a strange kingdom where a scientist "king" is attempting to create gravity-defying wings and testing them on a group of reluctant paratroopers. The children are caught and soon Phillip is chosen to test the disastrous new invention, and they all hope Bill will come to the rescue in time.

In The Ship of Adventure, Mrs. Mannering (mother of two and adoptive mother of the other two (formal adoption or not? It's never clear)) takes them on a cruise on the grounds that it will be fun and the children cannot possibly get involved in any dangerous adventures while safely on board the Viking Star. These being the Adventure kids, the four of them manage to find an ancient treasure map, tangle with villains who want the same treasure and, oh yes, get lost in a maze of secret passages (Yes, they're formula, but I rather like secret passages).

Up til my recent (re?) read of Five on Kirrin Island Again, I hadn't read any Blyton for years, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them. Sure, they're formula, but they're fun formula. Phillip's ability to instantly make friends with any and all animals is unbelievable, but who doesn't wish they had that ability? And the girls are far more active than I had remembered; I do think Dinah would have long ago stopped screaming when she saw snakes, but she's ready for adventure, all the same, and Lucy Ann really gets to shine in these two: She offers to take Phillip's place in Mountain of Adventure and seems quite used to adventures in Ship of Adventure. I'm interested, too, in the role adults play in these books--they are very relaxed about letting the children go off alone on camping trips or island exploration, often conveniently disappearing just when an adventure is about to begin, but they, Bill in particular, are always reliably there when rescue is needed, providing a security not often found in children's adventure books.

Incidentally, both the The Mountain of Adventure/ The Ship of Adventure and The Island of Adventure/The Castle of Adventure combination books had a note saying they were modified in 1988. I did a quick search and found that, yes, there are definite textual changes to reflect changing social mores, so the current changes to the Famous Five are not without precedent.

A note on illustrations: The same web search turned up evidence that a number of Blyton's books, including some editions of the Adventure series are lavishly illustrated. Unfortunately, that is not the case for the omnibus editions.

A Sudden Wildl Magic by Diana Wynne Jones, a book review

I enjoyed A Sudden Wild Magic more than I expected, but not as much as I love most Diana Wynne Jones books.  Part of this  may be because this is the first time I've read the book and, as Jenny remarks, most of Wynne Jones books are better the second time around, but I suspect it never will be one of my favorite books. I don't like the basic premise.

As with many Wynne Jones books of late,  it has multiple protagonists and a single plot with many interlocking branches.  The basic premise is that Earth has an alternate, Arth, which has been using Earth as a laboratory for sometime. They cause problems and watch to see how the "primitive" peoples here solve them, then use the solutions for their own difficulties. They have both caused and stopped wars, were responsible for Chernobyl, and have recently taken to dabbling in Global Warming.  Our Earth, though not immediately aware of their meddling, has a group of highly trained magic-users, mostly centered in England, though the network is spreading, who have defused these problems. Finally aware that someone is causing them, they send a crew over to Arth with instructions to stop the experiments. Arth, meanwhile has its own problems--we're not solving global warming fast enough for them for one thing, and there are a number of interpersonal struggles going on.

My problems with the book start with its central premise: Someone Else is causing our problems, magically, and they can be dealt with magically. I can believe six impossible things before breakfast, but not that the meltdown in Chernobyl was caused by outside, magical meddling and contained partly through inside magical meddling. This is not a problem solely with A Sudden Wild Magic; a lot of urban fantasy loses me with this type of premise. I wish Wynne Jones had chosen something less immediate and problematic for her sampling of problems.

Tucking that aside--and it was a big tuck--I liked the book well enough. The plot was intricate enough to hold my attention, there was a lot of "and then what?" to contend with, and I mostly liked the characters, or else didn't like them for reasons that made sense. I appreciated the fact that the people of Arth were not, by and large, terrible monsters. They respond humanely to the approach of the Earth-people's craft, save their lives, and do their best to help the "lost" travelers return to their homes.

But I also quibble with the method the all-woman crew of the invasion force uses to disrupt matters. Surely the woman who scorned the notion that "nunneries are for sacking" should not have written a book with the premise that "monks are for seducing"?

There was, I will admit, also some first-class cooking and a conga line involved, and that last was definitely a high point.

So--interesting enough, but not Jones' best.

Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition, translated by Seamus Heaney, a minor book review

I figured that, as long as I was on an "all things Beowulf" trend, I might as well take a look at Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition. Actually, I was looking forward to it with great excitement; the only reason I didn't do my initial Heaney reading in this edition was that it was checked out when I first went in. So, I put it on hold (I love libraries!) and picked it up with great anticipation and excitement.

I admit, the letdown I felt was partly my own fault: I did not think to look ahead to see what kind of illustrations were in the book. I was picturing lavish artwork, maybe some pen and ink, maybe some marvelous watercolors.

Instead, the book has photographs of artifacts an, occasionally, scenery (one of the sunset photographs was taken in Maine and chosen because it was reminiscent of the sort of sunset that might have happened over the mere).  To me, this has the effect of distancing me from the poem: It's no longer an immediate epic but a study of Viking culture. I'm not opposed to the study of Viking culture, I think it's interesting, but having the photographs and museum-type commentary under them mixed in with the poem was disconcerting.

The Afterwar by John D. Niles discusses the reason the different photographs were chosen, and it even addresses the question of photographs vs. artist illustrations. It looks to be a thoughtful article, and it makes it clear that a lot of care went into the selection of the illustrations which are meant to "supply a visual counterpoint to the text, rather than to illustrate it in the usual sense," but I'm afraid I skimmed it rather badly and very unfairly. I was too disappointed by the absence of the expected illustrations.

Conclusion: None, really. If you want an illustrated edition that focuses primarily on ancient Viking artifacts and has a couple of woodcuts and an occasional scenery photograph thrown in--this is fine; in fact, it's excellent--there are some great informative blurbs under the different images, and you'll learn a lot about Viking jewelry. If you were hoping for gorgeous, modern illustrations, it will be a tremendous letdown.  Probably the moral of the story is "Do your research before you get all excited" and maybe also "Don't believe titles."

Spiders: Learning to Love Them by Lynne Kelly: A Book Review

Spiders: Learning to Love Them is one of those books that makes me realize I have been walking around half blind all of my life.

Sure, I know there are spiders around--this time of year, it's hard not to, what with running into their webs every evening. The thing is, I've never really looked at them, or their webs. There's an amazing world out there I've never seen--dozens of kinds of webs, hundreds of kinds of spiders. How do I start?

Lynne Kelly combines three qualities I love in a writer: Humor, love, and research. Spiders is, in part, an account of her own progress from arachnophobe to arachnophile, and her (new-found) love for spiders and for the world they reveal is clear in the book. The detail and intricacy of their world and the level of research Kelly has done is also clear without the book ever becoming pedantic.

The book is lavishly illustrated as well, which is always a plus. There is a nice selection of color plates, including a gorgeous section on the progress of a spider weaving an orb-web and numerous black and white photographs or drawings all through the book.

Of course, for some, this could be a drawback: My local arachnophobe refuses to pick the book up on the grounds that "spiders are evil" and there is a close-up of a spider on the front--and, to be honest, I'm not including a cover on this one because I have had aracnophobic friends scold me for springing spider pictures on them without warning in the past.

Me? I'm not terribly reassured by the news that widow spiders only attack when they feel trapped because how do I know when I'm trapping one? Believe me, I wouldn't provoke one on purpose!  All the same, I can't wait to grab my flashlight and go out spider hunting some night.  The array of webs I've already seen, just starting to look, is already fascinating.

Rereaing Dracula--Some meandering about the Victorian Novel

The Readers Imbibing Peril challenge finally made me move from vaguely wanting to reread Dracula to actually doing so.  I've only just started, so I've no business writing, really, but the beginning made me realize all over again how much I love Victorian novels.  Novels generally, yes, but there's something special about the Victorians. Right now, Jonathan Harker has just begun his journey to Dracula's castle. He's busy writing in his journal describing the clothes everyone is wearing, the food at the inn, the strange scenery outside the windows. He's even got a polyglot dictionary so he can check what people are saying and in what languages.

Sometimes, I know, people find the detail excessive, sometimes I find the detail excessive, but all the same, I love the Victorians and the great care they take in world building. There's Dickens trying to shove all of London into Bleak House and then, having worked at that, moving out into the English countryside and trying to cram that in as well. There's George Eliot stuffing an entire village into Middlemarch, overwhelming the  reader with the richness of detail, Elizabeth Gaskell lingering lovingly over tiny details of life in Cranford or overseeing the housekeeping in  Mary Barton.  And, yes, Bram Stoker making sure we know exactly how his monster managed travel arrangements. 

I have some more Gothic literature lined up for the RIP challenge, including some 18th century stuff (Those novelists really love their detail!), but I think after this I may have to go on a Victorian rampage.

And this blog entry was going to go somewhere very intelligent (maybe), but it's late, and I'll just stop here and say "Hurray for the Victorians!" and get some sleep.

Never fear, there shall be a more orderly review of Dracula later.

Incidentally, I'm hopscotching between the 1997 Norton Critical Edition (I love the footnotes) and Librivox, version2 (Different readers for the different parts). If anyone has comments or recommendations on versions, I'm interested.

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbot, a book review

I first read Flatland many years ago (High School? Junior High?) on the grounds that it was early science fiction and, as such, something I really should look at and probably ought to like.

I found it dull, but mercifully short.

Recently, the science fiction book club I'm a part of selected it as our book for the month. I didn't object--after all, I've had several years (Nope, not going to say how many) and a great deal of education since my first attempt, my opinion should be different. And, look at the number of editions out there and the amount of praise lavished on the book!

I just finished and...

I found it dull, but mercifully short.

Oh, the years and education mean that I can, intellectually, place a slightly greater value on it. I have a greater knowledge of Victorian society, so I can see what is being critiqued better, and I can add more labels to the description--not only "science fiction" but also "travel narrative" and "social satire." Probably there are others worth noticing.  I can slot it historically and lecture myself on its value.

All of which makes me feel slightly guilty for not liking it but does not persuade me of its charms.

The square is flat in personality as well as physique, the variations of belief and unbelief are still quite uninspiring (For some reason, everyone "thunders" at everyone else, despite the fact that it never proves even slightly persuasive), and the book might be worth studying but is not something I'll voluntarily curl up with on a rainy day any time soon.

The cover I picked--and there are lots of covers--is from the Dover Thrift edition. I still like the Dover Thrifts. Yeah, they have cheap paper and almost non-existent margins, but they are inexpensive, easy to carry, and easy to shelve.

Readers Imbibing Peril--another challenge.

Well, Jenny's done it again--started me off on another blog challenge. She's not the host, this time; the Readers Imbibing Peril challenge is over at Stainless Steel Droppings.  The challenge runs from September 1st through October 31st and the plan is to "celebrate and share... love of the elements of gothic fiction" by reading and reviewing

Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Dark Fantasy.
Gothic.
Horror.
Supernatural.

And, of course, to have fun. There are several levels of challenge, and I have not decided yet what level I'll be aiming for, myself. I do know that I want to reread Dracula, and I suspect that at least one of these free audio book sites will have it, so I can double the fun--reacquainting myself with the book and trying a new site. Oh, and I have a couple actual Gothic gothic novels I want to read or reread--I haven't read The Monk in ages, and while I am pretty sure I read The Romance of the Forest (I wanted to see what Harriet was talking about in Emma), and I have a very nice copy sitting on my shelf,  I don't remember it at all, so that's on my "maybe" list. Otherwise, we'll see.

Anyway, I do suggest going and reading up on the challenge yourself.

Egret

The Electric Universe by David Bodanis; E=MC2 by David Bodanis, a dual book review

David Bodanis is going on my list of must-read authors.

The Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity is an overview of all things electric, both the commercial elements like the electric light and basic, world-shaping ones, like the way atoms are held together.

E=MC²: A Biography is an overview of the famous equation, a biography that covers each part of the equation--When and how did people first think of energy? In what terms? Who defined it the way we now understand it?  What about mass?

Bodanis presents things clearly and in a fascinating, enjoyable way. He describes both the way things work and the people who made them work or who described them to us. He is pithy and, sometimes, merciless, as in The Electric Universe when he describes Shockley as "an inadvertent innovation machine. The bright people his reputation attracted quickly bonded with one another when they realized how awful he was, and kept their bonds when they were flung out to create their own firms nearby."

In short, he can talk about things in a way that makes me want to find out more about them.

Electric Universe pairs well with Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes and The Age of Wonder by Richard Harris. There is an overlap of subject between the three--electricity--but also a variation of approach. Jonnes is looking at the people involved in the early commercial development of electricity, mostly in America; Harris is examining the general attitude toward science in the same time period, but primarily in Britain, and Bodanis is writing about electricity over a longer time period and a broader range of applications.