Book Logs: Children's Fantasy

I finished two children's fantasy classic-y things recently, and thought I'd write about them together, although it probably won't turn out to be dreadfully matchy.

The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis

Sir Laughs-a-lot and I have been working our way through the Narnia books together, although the order has got a little muddled (we did at least start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). His childhood, unlike mine, was not filled with rereading the Narnia books over and over and over (they're short - I could get through a couple in an afternoon) which meant we came at it from quite different perspectives. He wanted to know what would happen next and was surprised by the surprising bits. I was bundled up in a sort of anticipation that's almost worse than suspense. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it - but I think reading aloud and reading together made it more obvious how much my mind was other places in the story than what we were actually reading. It takes a bit more effort to relax into the moment than otherwise, perhaps. Having said that, if I haven't read a book, I spend a fair bit of brainpower on second guessing what'll happen next, so maybe that's just me.

I think I have read the book too many times to write a brief impression post without being either dreadfully specific or taking more time away from my mathematics than is quite wise. I think it may be my favourite of the Narnia books, though we'll see as we read further!

Redwall by Brian Jacques

This is also a book that I first read as a kid, but I can't say I'm nearly as nostalgic about it. I read it because I needed a light read and it was on my Kindle app from months ago when Amazon had been offering it free. I enjoyed reading it and was drawn into the story, but I remain a little bemused as to why people get so very emotional over the series.

The setting - an abbey of mice sheltering various woodlan creatures, attacked by a horde of evil rats - is admittedly quite awesome. In "On Fairy Tales" (I think!) Tolkien draws a distinction between fantasies involving talking animals and "beast tales", which are essentially stories about everyday life, acted out by animals. (He points out that this allows for rather harsher points against some animals than wemight be comfortable with against actual people.) Redwall certainly has elements of that. But it has ancient prophecies and legendary sword and visions in dreams too, which seem to make it fantasy anyway. The combination works well. I will freely admit to spending chunks of time reading Redwall cookbooks and otherwise revelling in the setting.

I think what bothers me about the book is what I'm tempted to call Heaviside character development. In maths, a Heaviside function is zero up to a certain point, and one everywhere after that. It's not continuous. A lot of character development in Redwall feels to me - I think, maybe - like a series of Heaviside functions. Matthias is a bumbling Redwall novice. Oh no, Cluny the Scourge is coming! Level him up to inexperienced warrior, quick! It's not implausible that the change would happen - the change is a big part of a good story, for me - but I'd have liked to see a bit more of the internal turmoil and growth and not just a Heaviside archetype function. The plot felt a little like that too - different elements didn't always seem like consequences of what had gone before. They just kinda happened.

That said, I definitely enjoyed reading the book. I would certainly be less nitpicky if I didn't know other people adored the series. I liked the book (and the rest of the series), but I think it gets a bit too Heaviside-ish (and perhaps formulaic) for my liking.

Book Log: Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

("Good night" seems like two words to me, but it's one on the cover. Oh well.)

One of my criticisms against 'Skull in Shadows Lane' was that it read like a children's book (which it was, so it's not a terrible thing). Goodnight Mister Tom, which is also about children in wartime England, did not read like a children's book. I think this is a good thing (certainly, I enjoyed it), although part of me wonders if it really is a children's book.

William is evacuated from his meagre home in London to a surprisingly pleasant place in the country, where he stays with a crusty, but kind childless old widower: Mister Tom. Will blossoms in the wholesome new environment and it's a delight to watch his character unfold. Part of the delight, certainly, is being able to see things coming when he can't. I'm not sure how much that would change between an adult and a child's perspective.

It's a little odd to realise that I just don't know. As I write now, looking for an example that's more adult-oriented than kid-oriented, I can't think of a specific example. It's rich - I found some of the Heidi parallels rather fun, especially when somebody mentions the novel in a different context, but I don't imagine every reader would notice/appreciate that. The division probably doesn't have much to do with age, though. Some of the topics it deals with are horrible, but it does handle them well. I guess I wouldn't read it to small children, but that doesn't mean it's not a children's book at all.

I think I'll take it as this novel correcting the fault I found with 'Skull in Shadows Lane'. It has as much depth and colour as I could ask for, without particularly moving out of the realm of children. There's lots going on, but it's understandable. And if it takes more than one read to get all the goodness out of it - well, that's a sign of a good book, isn't it?

'Goodnight Mister Tom' is a coming-of-age novel that looks at some relevant topics of varying difficulty (abuse; discrimination; "gifted" education; interactions of family and state) rather well. The author loses herself very well, so that I'm not thinking about gender equality in education, but only wondering whether or not Connie will be able to go to high school. Which may lead me to the same topic, but lets me think about it in my own way. And I think these topics deserve some thought.

I enjoyed this. I'd like to read it again at some point.

Book Logs

I've finished a handful of books in the last couple of weeks (mostly the last week, which was a holiday from lectures, if not university work) and since it seemed unlikely I'd write posts for all of them, I'm going to put a snippet about each here.

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

I am always impressed by the immensity and grandness of this story by the time I finish it. It starts out merely cheerful and exciting - by the end it makes me wonder if I could ever do anything so worthwhile. Then I remember Frodo telling Gandalf that he wished he needn't have lived in such a time, and Gandalf's response about having to live through the time we are born into (although I've a feeling he phrases it more eloquently). I can thus convince myself that I don't need to be a Frodo or a Samwise or an Aragorn or an Eowyn.

It's harder to justify why I shouldn't strive to create as magnificently as Tolkien did. Exactly what that means is a little fuzzy, but I come away feeling inspired; like it's no good if all the book does is make me sad and happy and incredulous and awestruck. One needs to do something, whether it's a trip to Mount Doom, making sure Gaffer Gamgee has enough to eat, creating something to reflect the glory of our world, devouring knowledge like it's gong out of fashion or - just something. It doesn't seem enough to let life happen to one, after that account. One must do something.

OpenIntro Statistics
openintro.org

It's been a while since I read a textbook from cover to cover. It's nice having work that's focussed enough to make it worth the investment. This was very accessible, but covered a fair amount of ground (at least it felt that way to me - I don't have much to compare). It was, at least, enough to springboard me from high schoolish level into a more specialised textbook with a fair degree of confidence. (I'm currently reading Christopher Chatfield's The Analysis of Time Series: An Introduction)

The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis

I read this and thought "Hmm, that's interesting, but there's nothing particularly mindblowing about it." But since then I've been remembering this quote or that idea in a bunch of different contexts. I'm not sure there's an exciting core message that the whole book works to convey - although it's all thematically consistent - but there are fascinating insights scattered throughout. I was a little disappointed that so much of the book seemed to address men only. I see Lewis's point that he doesn't have any other experience, but I still didn't like it. Nonetheless, this was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

A Skull in Shadows Lane
Robert Swindells

From the title, the back cover blurb, and what I've previously read from Swindells, I was expecting this to be a light-hearted five-find-outers-style mystery story. Instead it was a rather thoughtful look at post-WWII life through the eyes of eleven year old Jinty Linton, her brother Josh and their cohort, in a little English village where "nothing ever happens". I think Swindells exploits that ordinariness very well - this connected with me in a way that war stories generally don't. It felt like a children's book (which it is), but I still enjoyed it and have found a new way of seeing that time period.

Book Log: The Two Towers

Okay, confession: I get confused by this title. The two towers that spring to mind are Minas Ithil and Minas Anor, towers of the moon and sun. The latter doesn't really feature though. The former is probably sufficiently featured to earn a place in the title, although not in its capacity as one of Gondor's pair, but as Minas Morgul of the ringwraiths. The second tower is presumably Orthanc, which features noticeably, if sometimes indirectly, pretty much right through Book III. So the two eponymous towers are only related by, well, being eponymous. And in the book, I suppose.

The titles of the three parts are kind of curious that way, actually. The Fellowship of the Ring is only half about the fellowship proper and The Return of the King is not in my mind the most exciting part of the third volume - although it is a kind of culmination. I'm not entirely sure how much should be read into those titles anyway. Hmm.

Last time I blogged about The Lord of the Rings I wrote a fair bit about the loyalties of the fellowship. Boromir's loyalty to Gondor seems to be somehow twisted into a desire for the ring. Certainly the ring uses that loyalty. But having met Faramir in the second part of the story, we encounter a much purer loyalty. Early in the fifth book Gandalf comments to Pippin that the blood of the Numenoreans runs truer in Faramir than in his brother. Faramir, unlike his brother, resists the temptation of the ring. I think his loyalty to Gondor and her ideals helps him; it's the other side of the coin, perhaps.

At the end of the fourth book, outside Shelob's lair, Sam's struggles with his loyalty to Frodo and the need to see the task through; to make sure right is done. In the end he berates himself for trying to go on with the task and acting out of something other than his loyalty to his master. But it seems to me that his loyalty would be misplaced if it didn't have some sense of the greater purpose and good it serves. I think the very title of the final chapter of Book IV "The Choices of Master Samwise" reflects this dilemma. Tolkien seemed to like the phrase too, judging by its inclusion later in the text.

Faramir and Eomer both aid the Fellowship, thereby disobeying at least the letter of the law issued by their "masters"; Sam would have abandoned his master to complete the quest too, but realises that this is the wrong choice - although with the information he had, it certainly seemed like the best decision.

Sam's status as an obedient follower almost seems inferior to those who thought for themselves and made decisions contrary to instructions, but he gains a peculiarly high position from the fact that he doesn't seem particularly affected by the ring. Only Bombadil comes to mind as being notably less so. Nobility of heart is not, of course, the same thing as holding a noble title or being admired among men, but Sam is a peculiarly concrete example of it. I admire Sam, but I suspect I understand him less than Aragorn, for all his apparent simplicity. Hmm. This probably says as much about me as it does about him!

There's certainly plenty to ponder in this book! I intended to consider a handful of other characters, but this post seems to have grown long and rambly enough already. I think I'll end it here. (Pretend it's not abrupt, okay?)

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

Book Log: The Lord of the Rings Part 1

We all know that Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is one novel and not a trilogy, right? It was only published in three volumes because of paper costs and such. So I can just write about the three parts as I read them without ranting about how the first two parts do not have proper endings because they're actually middles and it's a pity so many recentish novels seem to think they can end as incompletely? Awesome.

I've read The Lord of the Rings too many times to want to write a proper reviewy thing as I read it. I get a bit too excited about details like when exactly the reforging of Narsil is first mentioned and will forget to say anything about the obvious and crucial aspects. So I thought instead I'd sort of pick out the theme of fellowship from The Fellowship of the Ring and talk a little bit about loyalties and motivations. (I shan't try to avoid spoilery things, since if you haven't read the book you've probably seen the movie.)

The most obvious at the end of the first part is perhaps Borimir's loyalty to Minas Tirith. I don't think it's just loyalty that makes him so desire the ring, but certainly the loyalty nearly gave the ring a path to being used as it wished. It's interesting to contrast Boromir with Aragorn, who shares a strong loyalty to the city, but tempers it with the counsel of the Wise, a better sense of scale and somethin akin to greater maturity (not that Boromir's immature by any ordinary standard). It's also interesting to compare Sam to Boromir, since he's loyal to Frodo in a way that strikes me as similar to Boromir's loyalty to Gondor. Sam's big tests of character are much further on, though, so there may be more to say later.

Legolas and Gimli are fiercely loyal to the elves and the dwarves respectively; but in Lothlorien and Moria both have to face up to certain shortcomings of their own races and merits of the other's. Ultimately their loyalties don't seem to lessen so much as to mellow into something wherein they can appreciate other civilisations along with their own. They grow, perhaps. I'll try to remember to revisit this thought at Helm's Deep.

Merry and Pippin follow Frodo, although Gondor and Rohan will, I think, claim their loyalty later. Gandalf is rather mysterious; I am inclined to think that he answers to Illuvatar. Gandalf the White may shed some light on that when I get there.

Frodo goes through an interesting change that pretty much frames the first part of the novel. Early on Bilbo says that Frodo still loves the Shiore too much to leave it. Although Frodo thinks of following Bilbo, he never does. It is eventually the threat to the Shire, through the ring, that motivates Frodo. But by the time Frodo sits upon Amon Hen, he is wrestling with fear and his knowledge of what he must do. The Shire isn't particularly a player in his decisions any longer. His new loyalties are perhaps to Middle Earth a a whole; I'm tempted to say to what's right, but I think there are right and wrong ways to express loyalty, which may be the difference between Boromir and Sam.

Frodo is beginning to gain some of the perspective that tempers Aragorn's actions and which Boromir never found. But "the finest hobbit in the Shire" is made of sturdier stuff than Boromir from the start, I think. Even Gandalf and Galadriel are sorely tempted by the offer of the ring; Boromir would take it by force; Bilbo only gives it up with much assistance from Gandalf. Frodo, even after bearing the ring and after the Morgul wound freely offers to give it away. And that, I suppose, is why he must be the ringbearer.

Book Log: Griffin's Castle by Jenny Nimmo

I first read Griffin's Castle in primary school for the Battle of the Books competition. It was an awesome source of good new titles and I read loads of books from those reading lists for years after I was eligible to enter. When I found my only slightly battered copy in a second hand bookshop for less than the price of a chocolate bar, I -- well, I would've jumped at the opportunity, but by the time I left that shop I was carrying too many books to make that wise.

Griffin's Castle is a bleaker story than I remembered. Dinah Jones is a tall, serious eleven-year-old who is very nearly both unloved and unwanted. Her young, single mother hopes she isn't a genius or something similarly horrid. Things might've been looking up when Dinah and her mother move into a proper house for the first time ever. But the house is falling apart and the landlord, Dinah's stepfather-to-be, perhaps, can't stand the strange girl, so unlike her mother, who hangs a handmade "Griffin's Castle" sign on the gate after finding a stone griffin in the garden and wants to visit his elderly mother.

That's what's so awfully attractive about Dinah. One could understand if she were sullen and sorry for herself, but instead she's fiercely independent. She papers her dingy attic room with cut out pictures and poetry. If she refuses to be friends with the children at school, she pushes them into friendship with each other. And then there's a little bit of magic that makes Dinah's independence scarily concrete. I think her not-quite-a-friend Jacob puts it best. [Fair warning: this might be very mildly spoilerish.]

"Dinah Jones is different. She's seen things, been in places that are horrible. But she'll never, never tell. They've got right into her, like, right deep into her and she can't get away. And the animals are the same. They can't talk about what it's like to be hunted and chained and to have your claws and teeth pulled out, or to starve very slowly. So she's invited them into her garden, where they'll be safe together. Safety in numbers. But Griffin's Castle is falling down. And supposing all the animals come. Maybe she'll never get out again. [. . .] Perhaps a desperate person, like Dinah, can make things happen. Things that could never normally happen, in real life, I mean. D'you think that's possible?"

At first Dinah welcomes the fantastical animals. She doesn't want to leave Griffin's Castle, which is, she persists in believing, going to be a beautiful family home. But soon she finds she can't escape them - she very nearly dies trying. I don't think words like "depression" or "suicide" ever occured to me when I read the book about ten years ago, but they do now. I think I'm glad; the animals were freaky enough then as it was, but seeing more of the symbolism now makes the book well worth rereading.

Dinah can't escape the animals on her own, but fortunately, in the end, she doesn't have to. And then she cries. Which, oddly enough, might be the happiest moment in the book.

I said at the beginning that the book was bleak, but I didn't find it depressing. It's a story about light in darkness, not about darkness. About a spark that, just as it seems about to be snuffed out, is kindled into flame. I expected to enjoy it and it surpassed my expectations.

Book Log: Shakespeare's The Tempest

We read The Tempest over the Christmas holidays. It was a lot of fun. I've read it before - a couple of times, in fact, since I wrote a high school final on it - but Shakespeare can usually stand a reread. A bunch of the fun, though, was due to that pronoun at the beginning of the post: we read the play as a family, assigning parts as we went along and mostly avoiding having to converse with ourselves. (In fact, the only case where that happened was where we'd tried to assign parts at the beginning rather than on-the-fly.)

Two of us are somewhat inclined towards Shakespeare nerdery, had read the play before, expected to thoroughly enjoy it with the added bonus of fun family times and certainly did. Two of us are somewhat inclined towards general nerdery, don't generally read Shakespeare for fun, while approving of it in principle and enjoyed it enough to be keen to do it again (sadly we ran out of time - maybe next holidays, since it does take several hours to get through). Two of us are somewhat inclined to general nerdery, but seemed slightly surprised at how understandable the bard could actually be and enjoyed it enough to think it'd be nice to read one/some of the other famous plays. I think the first two of us found this somewhat satisfying. In general, a good time was had by all.

This was definitely a case where ereading devices were awesomely useful. Everybody had their own copy of the play, downloaded (for free!) from Project Gutenberg or Many Books or other ebook source of choice. (Some of us paid to get notes at the back, but I'm not sure how much those were used.) This was mostly on Android apps, but also a Kindle and a lone hard copy. It could probably be got to work using laptops too, although mobile devices are really convenient. This was way more effective than times we've tried to share hard copies, although there were a few educational moments when we discovered that different editions of the play may attribute the same lines to different people, so everybody is waiting for someone else to speak! I think it'd be worth trying to get the same edition across the board if we do it again, but the mix-ups were not the end of the world.

The play, of course, was good. The acting was frabjous. The entire exercise was loads of fun, less effort than slogging through reading it oneself and more doable than going to see a live performance in several dimensions (although I still want to do that, one day). I'd certainly like to do it again; and if you can find a handful of people willing to read Shakespeare out loud, I think you should do it too.

Book Log: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

So many other people wrote so little about The Night Circus when it was first published, many moons ago, that I'm a little uncertain when it comes to saying much myself. However, the desire of inflicting my opinions upon the world at large seems to have overcome the uncertainty and here we are.

Many descriptions of The Night Circus have been along the lines of "It's otherwordly and wonderful and you have to read it yourself to understand." I would guess that a large chunk of that is because the book is written in present tense. And parts of it are even in second person. It's weird. It definitely gives an immersive effect, but it did feel a bit gimmicky at times. The confusion of time is definitely part of the circus itself, though. That confusion is enhanced by the three interwoven but distinct plot threads which progress at different speeds. It's quite possible to follow, but it does mess with your sense of time - which is the nature of le cirque des reves.

Morgenstern does, in my opinion, a fantastic job of conveying atmosphere. Le cirque des reves is, as the name suggests, whimsical and wondrous. It's as if a dream you didn't want to wake up from has somehow been committed to paper. Despite that, I don't think the novel is about its setting in the way that something like Gulliver's Travels is. The circus is a medium through which various characters can express themselves - particularly Celia Bowen. Celia has a love interest, but the novel isn't a romance. Likewise, she has a life's work, but if the novel were about the circus in itself, it would need a quite different frame. We meet little Miss Bowen very early in the novel and by the end - well, you wouldn't want me to ruin that for you.

The novel follows Celia Bowen's life in a bildungsroman fashion that I tend to associate with Dickens, although it's certainly been used by any number of authors. Celia's growth and the development of her interactions with the world - although it almost seems more apt to say the world's interactions with Celia - form the substance of the book. When one of those interactions is le cirque des reves, that's fairly substantial.

I very much enjoyed The Night Circus. The characters were vivid (or strikingly not so) and fascinating, I found the plot compelling and the themes of atmosphere and illusion thought-provoking as well as beautiful. This is definitely a book I would recommend.

What You Will

You can't see that Malvolio's cross-gartered stockings are bright yellow.

I have been lucky enough to recently come into possession of an Android phone. One of my favourite things about having such a clever phone is the Kindle app. I can put so many beautiful books in my pocket and there are many many many of them for which I don't even have to pay. A consequence of this is that this morning I (re)read Twelfth Night. I first read it in high school, inspired, I think, by Shakespeare in Love, which was our grade twelve English film study. (I know I wrote an essay comparing the film and the play, but I don't remember exactly why I chose that topic or if I read the play specifically for the essay.) I realised recently that I haven't touched Shakespeare since starting university and today I remembered just why that really is a pity.

Plays are fun to read and Shakespeare is just plain clever. I can fly from my cosy curled-up armchair spot to the Globe theatre; to the private showing at Candlemas 1602; to a performance in a modern theatre; to the director's chair at rehearsals; to the tech crew's  scaffolding and lighting board; to that half-enchanted land of Illyria where, ghost-like, I anxiously watch Viola extract herself from the horrible mess that Sir Toby and Fabian have taken it upon themselves to create. It's quite glorious. I daresay I miss some things and misinterpret others; but the stuff wasn't written, I don't think, so much to be analysed as to be enjoyed. Analysis will inevitably proceed from the enjoyment and some folk will carry that out in great detail. That is one good thing. Also a good thing is those of us left feeling awfully lucky that there's another play and another and another to be downloaded at the click of a button.

Music – Poetry

Recently, I have been learning (or trying to learn) to play classical guitar. I had piano lessons years ago, so I have some grasp of basic musical theory, but everything is still pretty new. I can see that the music wants me to play an F and a D together, but I end up staring at the fretboard wondering how to play both of those at the same time. It forces me to slow down and think about which notes I'm playing; gives me a chance to wonder why.

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The first poetry I remember enjoying is the dwarves' songs at the beginning of Tolkien's The Hobbit. I read them more as poems than as songs, but they carry music in their wording and are generally delightful. They did not, however, give me much cause to think about what poetry is all about, since they follow every convention of structure and metre and rhyme that I understood at the time. Those, it seemed to me, were poems. The newfangled free verse stuff that my English book went on about was not.

It worried me that the great fount of wisdom that was Comprehensive English Practice: Grade 6 said (or seemed to say) that breaking writing up onto lots more lines than were needed made it poetry. (It doesn't, of course, but what does make it poetry is rather subtler.) Somewhere in the middle of that textbook is Seamus Heaney's Storm on the Island. I don't think it's exactly a difficult poem. It works at face value; it is not the kind of poem that describes a ship without mentioning the ship and is not in fact about a ship at all. It is quite a complicated poem, because it largely describes what isn't there. (Which is rather the point.) It hits a balance point that eleven-year-old me had to think about, but could understand.

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I am learning to play an étude by Dionisio Aguado. It is not, in the grand scheme of things, very difficult at all, but it is quite a challenge for me. I am pleased when I work out how to play another bar and delighted when I can pick up the patterns of the music. Oh, this is the same chord, but with the A an octave lower and I keep playing this sequence because it's the broken-chord A minor triad and the piece is written in A minor! I can't find a melody line in my étude, but when I have to slow down to think about it, I can find patterns in it. And then, hopefully, I can take those patterns back to the sweep of the music played as quickly and flowingly as it should be, so that I can see the weave without forgetting the warp and the weft.

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Sometimes art is at least as much thinking as feeling.