Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

Some time ago, during a book club for which I'd read "Airborn" (which I highly recommend - an excellent YA SF read) I complained that I was getting a bit tired of the Hermione trope - the brainy female sidekick whose main role is to be the walking encyclopedia, while also being somewhat naive about certain things, who is often destined to fall in love with either the hero or his sidekick but spends a lot of time needling them before that. At the time, I could come up with only two such characters - the one in Airborn and Hermione herself.

I've found a third. I'm reading Rick Riordan's "The Lightning Thief" and there's another very similar type of character in it. I haven't figured out yet exactly how far they'll carry the trope, but she's definitely a Hermione type. She's the daughter of the goddess Athena, for heaven's sake.

I'm enjoying the book. Having figured out the Greek Gods trope, and having taught Greek Mythology to ten-year-olds (read: superficially) for six years, I'm finding it's not too hard to guess who the monsters are before it's made explicit in the book, but it's interesting nevertheless. It plays like a Champions game with some D&D magic items that are just a little too high a level for the characters - "Why does the guy with one hit die get to carry the best toys?" would be an easy complaint to level at it. But it's readable and fun and the fight scenes are well-paced. I'll probably keep reading through the series.

A couple of weeks ago while wandering through Smithbooks, I picked this up. I didn't buy it then - but I came home and searched for an epub version, and found one. I finished reading it last night.

( Does historical fiction have spoilers? Just in case, a cut. )
I had never read much about the Wars of the Roses (Lancaster Red and York White) so it was nice to fill in the gaps in my knowledge there. The wars ended when Henry Tudor, great-grandson of one of the last of the Lancastrian Plantagenets, married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Elizabeth Woodsville, and together they founded the House of Tudor. Their son was Henry VIII. Gregory's research is excellent, her portrayal of the times she writes about is neither overly romanticized nor overly harsh, and her ability to paint believable characters who do some questionable things and are yet sympathetic is unsurpassed. It was a very good read.

I have a lot of very literary people on my friends list, so surely we can manage this amongst us.

I want to rewrite that meme I posted this morning.  Not edit it, but completely rewrite it.  I don't want to go with bestsellers, or any other arbitrary appeal to authority when it comes to what books should be on it and what should be left off.  I also don't want to include a certain laundry list of the "best" books by certain authors, while leaving out books by other, equally good authors.  I'd like to, for example, ask people to give themselves one point for each book they've read by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or Mark Twain.  I'd like to develop a sub-list for young adult literature.  In the interests of brevity, I'm limiting this to novels, which means many well-read people will not see themselves in it.  That's a cultural bias I'll acknowledge and address some other time.

So, if you were to make a list like that, what books or authors would you keep from the old list, and what ones would you add?

I'll start.

Under the authors category, I'd let people give themselves points for any book written by the following authors that were left out of the first list:
Madeleine L'Engle
Arthur C. Clarke
Carl Sagan
Mark Twain
Margaret Lawrence
Michael Ontdaatje
Robertson Davies

Your thoughts?

First, there's Good books? It's a humanist seeking to find books to enrich his child's life and give him skepticism in the face of his mother's deep beliefs.

Then there's this, where the author argues that children need a basis in faith before they are able to accept uncertainty.

I have a rebuttal forming for the second, but I don't have time for it now so I'll come back later. I suspect my rebuttal will involve concept from this video, first seen on Piet's journal and since spreading rapidly on my friends list:

I'm reading "Airborn," by Kenneth Oppel. It's excellent. I'm fairly sure that if I let myself pick it up again tonight, I won't actually sleep much. It's exactly the kind of SF I like the best - an alternate parallel universe, with differing technology that nevertheless holds together and makes sense.

And yet, the feminist in me can't help but notice that this excellent author, writing for the youth market and winning awards doing it, STILL isn't writing female protagonists. The story is told in the first person, from the POV of the cabin boy, and the female in the story is a wilful, bookish rich girl on a quest who pulls him in.

In other words, she's a smart, capable princess, in a secondary role. Her main job seems to be to get the protagonist in trouble that he can then get them all out of - or at least, the secondary plot is about him getting them out of that trouble.

There aren't a lot of young adult books written in the last thirty years with a female protagonist. (The His Dark Materials trilogy is one, though a boy comes into prominence in the second book; the Kate Pearson books are others. And the author of Ella Enchanted is another, but her protagonists are based on fairy tales and are either princesses, or destined to become princesses. I'm not sure if it counts.) Most of the others - The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke's books, Harry Potter, etc, etc - all male protagonists, even when the author was female. There are strong girls there - but they're always bookish supporting characters like Hermione. She's just as much a literary trope as the princess - in fact the bookish princess is not limited to Belle in the fairy tale world.

Maybe I should start writing for teens after all. Mind you, I'd be likely to simply cast a Hermione type in the starring role, because my favourite female characters are always like her. Annarisse was, Velvet less so, Eklaa in the new book is a lot like that. I understand that character type very well.

It's depressing. We've come so far on the road to equity, but our literature still has a glass ceiling hiding behind its historical genre roots.

That was a very satisfying read, such as I haven't had in a long time.

The book was Pompeii, by Robert Harris, and I'm sure that if I hadn't been at work today, I would have read through the night and finished around one or two. As it was, I just finished now.

Though it was somewhat annoying that so few characters survived, I wasn't really surprised by this - after all, I've studied a bit about Pliny the Elder and Younger, and I knew something of their fates, and I knew that Pompeii and Herculaneum both ended up so deeply buried as to be a treasure trove for archaeologists in the relatively recent past. I kept having that urge of foreknowledge to scream at the characters what was about to happen - "Don't go back to Pompeii! It's about to be buried under white-hot ash!" or "Actually, the Aquaduct won't be flowing by noon, or if it is, it won't be giving water to anyone in that town." One way of keeping suspense is not to know what happens next. Another is to have characters move through a somewhat familiar scene in a way that is alternately novel and fated, and Harris used this technique to great effect.

I highly recommend the book, especially to lovers of historical fiction, but really to anyone. While the details may not have been 100%, they were certainly good enough to evoke vivid images for me, and I love learning about real events or places through the eyes of a well-drawn character.

I read romance novels.

There, I've said it. *turns in literary geek card*

Seriously, though. Some of it is total tripe; I rarely read those. Some of it is less awful; I got my fill of those a few years ago, and rarely read them now. Some romance authors get into plot and/or character ruts, like a role-player who only ever plays clerics, and I've gotten quite sick of some of those. (Nora Roberts is the worst offender - if she writes one more trilogy with the tough-as-nails sister, the abused sister, and the feminine mystique sister, all of whom find their ideal matches while solving whatever mystery or killing whatever bad guy she presents for them, I think I'll vomit. I certainly won't buy it.)

No, when I read romance novels, I try to pick the good ones. These are the ones with characters who are distinguished from each other by more than just their titles; the ones with good historical research to back them up; the ones that explore the darker sides of human nature, and the ability of humanity to overcome them; in short, the ones with substance.

My favourite authors are Mary Jo Putney and Joan Wolf. When these two write Regency romances (every romance author has to put in their time writing Regencies; Britain was at war, so there are dashing military heroes, titles, and skimpy dresses without big bustles, all in the same era) they set them in the midst of the Battle of Waterloo, or as spies during the Congress of Vienna or the Treaty of Paris the following year, or in small principalities that are rebuilding after Napoleon's occupation. When they write about India, they do their research and go in-depth about the Silk Road, the Hindu and Muslim principalities that dotted India at the time, the customs of which they would run afoul, the plots that could, and in some cases did, lead to continent-wide conflagrations - the depth of historical research makes them intriguing even without the steamy sex scenes. (I like the one with the forty yards of sheer sari silk, myself. . .) Did you know that the reason for the revolts in India in the middle of the nineteenth century, that led to huge massacres of anyone British, were caused because of a rumour that their cartridges of ammunition contained both beef and pork tallow, making them unclean to Hindu and Muslim alike? After reading that in Putney's books about India, I checked it. Some history books state it as fact, some as rumour, but it's there and it was indeed a factor.

What Joan Wolf doesn't know about horses and classical riding techniques probably isn't worth knowing. At least three of her books have that as a central theme, and two more have it as an aside. Little details, like the British refusing to train women in the classical riding style, while European females were engaging in real training and becoming experts in those styles, are very intriguing to me.

And then of course, there's the steamy sex scenes. They're like a granola bar. Plenty of healthy cereal, fruit filling, and other good-for-you stuff - but you know you really eat them for the chocolate chips.

To make a good author even better, Putney has recently started doing historical fantasy - the kind where magic is overlaid into an actual historical setting. One of these was about the return of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the way a weather mage could have played a role in his march down into England - and back up into Scotland. I've just picked up the next of this series, and I'm about to start it.

Which means this particular confession is now over. I'm about to read about a young lord who happens to be a mage, who meets a young lady while trying to escape from some hunters. He happens to be wearing the form of a unicorn at the time.

Brain candy? Definitely. But if you're going to read brain candy, you might as well go for the Godiva.

EDIT: American sword-and-sorcery fantasy authors shouldn't try to set books in Great Britain. They might do all right for an all-American audience, but the rest of us are going to catch the mistakes. For example - Mrs. Lackey, you write very good fantasy, but your history needs a refresher course. Queen Victoria's father never sat on the throne; he died before she was born, and she took the throne from one of her uncles, William, I believe. He's the one who sired a dozen kids on his French mistress, but when married to his nice little German princess, couldn't get an heir. Anyhow. Good book - not enough research.

Apparently, there is a release date for the seventh Harry Potter book. It's coming out on my birthday next year - that is, 07/07/07.

The birthday celebration plans for my thirty-second birthday have officially begun, folks.

First of all, my wonderful husband knows exactly what to get me for my birthday, but may need some reminders about how to get it. Forget mail-order - the mail in Canada doesn't come on Saturdays. No, I want it ordered from the bookstore in the mall, so that he can slip out fairly early that morning (don't worry, I won't make you hang out there at midnight, Piet) and pick it up that very day.

Second, there will be no big birthday parties that day. I will give a couple of hours to my kids, but not to the rest of my family. They can have a party for me the night before, and one on Sunday night - I should have had time to read the whole book by then.

Third - I'm thinking we should have a party the week before. Canada day will be the previous Sunday, which makes the stat holiday the Monday. I'm declaring a barbeque or some other entertainment that weekend, for everyone within driving distance. Don't worry, you don't have to RSVP for nearly fourteen months. :)