Riba Rambles Search Results:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:05 PM

As long as I'm writing about YA fics, I'll just point y'all to a plug I wrote for the Lemony Snicket series, which I highly recommend as good, weird fun (I still haven't seen the film).

Also, a couple years ago, I wrote the following on Usenet, which I think still holds true:

The best YA book I've read in a long time is Holes by Louis Sachar, which I find entertaining and technically impressive, with intertwining stories across three points in time, nobody acting out-of-character stupidly for the sake of the plot, and as far as I could tell, no dangling plot-holes or unexplained coincidences. It was a very satisfying tale. The movie (amazingly enough) does it justice, but the book is better (more detailed) than the film.

Finally, among the fluffier YA reading I've done this year, I've been working my way through library copies of the Princess Diaries series. I've been curious since the first film, and knowing that Tamora Pierce likes and works with the author, implies that the series can't be totally lacking in redeeming value. As a matter of fact, they're actually quite fun, and even Ian's enjoyed them.

Ignore most of what you see in the trailers. The lead character is a 14-year-old high school freshman, and she's a geek! The book abounds in Star Trek references and other asides of that sort. I mean, get a load of this passage, in which a friend challenges Mia to "[n]ame a boy that you could see yourself commit to for all eternity." Here's what she came up with:

Okay, I just found that passage entertaining, and have wanted to share it for a while...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:32 PM

Ian brought his laptop along, and blogged about the weekend Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday afternoon. He summed things up well enough that I don't feel like repeating what he wrote, even when my recollection or phrasing might be slightly different.

Seeing relatives was good, and something I have to do more often. I chose to live in Boston because I fell in love with the area, but none of my relatives^* live in the area. My family is in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and the Chicago/Milwaukee vicinity. Since my parents and nephew/godson are near Tampa, I generally see them at least once a year, but this was my first trip to Chicago in at least four years. Far too long.

In addition to visiting with family, we also saw a bit of the city and took in a show.

About 7pm Sunday, while doing online checkin with the airlines and waiting for our boarding passes to print, I noticed the Goodman Theatre was running a production of Shakespeare's Pericles -- one of his plays we had never seen, and one that's rarely performed. It was Sunday night and most theaters don't offer Sunday night shows, but we checked the theater's website and discovered they had a 7:30pm curtain. I sent Ian back up to the room to grab our jackets while I went down to the lobby to find out where the theater was.

A hasty dash ensued and we arrived at the stroke of showtime (by my watch). Huffing and puffing we made our way to the box office, where we managed to get two seats in Box 9 above the mezzanine. That close to showtime, we even got the tickets half-price, and had just enough time to catch our breath before the show started.

I think I'll write up my review in a separate post to avoid getting too bogged down here. [And why am I finding it easier to write about this play than the ones where I've gotten press tickets?]

For various reasons, we ended up having much of Monday to ourselves. So we went for a walk around the city. After several drives past the statue of Washington on Wacker Drive, I had to get a closer look to see who he was standing with. Turned out to be a tribute to religious tolerance, showing him arm-in-arm with Robert Morris and Hyam Salomon.

Then we headed over to Marshall Fields. We looked at the archives and architecture (in our ongoing Midwest v. Massachusetts debates, Ian was mollified to discover Field was originally a local boy) and hung around to have lunch at the Walnut Room.

Ian has often observed that good food is more filling than mediocre or bad food. I'll say. We weren't hungry again until breakfast this morning. Somewhat a shame, since I'd been hoping to grab a Chicago dog in the afternoon to tide us over before our flight, but I had no appetite left.

Unfortunately, the Chicago Public Library was closed for the MLK holiday. And maybe, if I'd looked at the visitor guides earlier, we might've noticed the Pompeii Exhibit at the Field Museum in time to go there.

But honestly, I have no regrets about what we did or didn't see during our time in Chicago.

In further good news, these trips are gradually convincing my husband that travel outside New England doesn't have to be TEH EV0L!!! and that there does exist other civilized places besides Boston where he might be able to live.

PS: Realized too late that I missed the submissionsdeadline for the She's Such a Geek anthology I discovered in November. D'oh!

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 PM

As it turned out, I only bought four books this Boskone (plus garnering another two from the freebie tables). Budget just won't permit me to spend as much on books as I'd like.

That's not to say that I didn't see or hear about books I desperately wanted -- some mentioned in panels, some from book covers used as party decorations (great suggestive sales method, btw!), some inspired after meeting the authors in person, and many from the dealer room -- it's just that I expect to get most of these from my local libraries.

Anyway, I apologize to the authors of these works for not contributing to their royalties directly, but hope that posting this list here may indirectly inspire others to buy their own copies.

Listing them alphabetically by author, current and older books which caught my eye:

• Just a shade too late for Valentine's Day, Happily ever after -- a collection of Charles Addams most romantic cartoons
• Bruce Alexander's series of mystery novels featuring Sir John Fielding (18th century)
• Dawn Cook, The Decoy Princess: sounds like a fairy tale setup, wherein the royal family hides the princess and raises an imposter in her place. But what happens to the imposter when the switch is revealed?
• Cory Doctorow's Someone comes to town, someone leaves town and Charles Stross' The Atrocity archives both struck "intriguing but eerie" notes
• An older work by Esther Friesner, Yesterday we saw mermaids, which (partly) involves Jewish refugees of the Inquisition escaping to the Americas with Columbus
• Haley Elizabeth Garwood was in the dealer room showing her series on historic "warrior queens" that I thought might appeal to certain of my readers. The series contains The forgotten queen (Matilda, daughter of Henry I), Swords across the Thames (Ethelfled), Ashes of Britannia (Boadicea) and Zenobia.
• Shelf life, an anthology devoted to bookstores.
• The Alchemist's door by Lisa Goldstein features the Elizabethan Dr. John Dee and Rabbi Judah Loew. How did I miss this? For my eventual Elizabethan fantasy list (I may as well stop pretending with the "if"s)...
• Ursula K. Le Guin's The Ones who walk away from Omelas garnered praise in the "Genius Loci: How Setting Influences and Structures the Story" panel for exemplifying the topic
• Paul Levinson's The Plot to save Socrates looked intruiging, and one of the panelists in "Reviewing Without Spoiling" called it one of Levinson's better efforts.
• Sarah Monette's Mélusine has been hovering around my to-read list since I first saw it mentioned. Meeting the author raises it in my queue.
• Two by Mike Resnick caught my eye: Dragon America and Lady with an alien: an encounter with Leonardo da Vinci
• Leigh Richards, Califia's daughters and Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price feature gender imbalanced futures where males are rare. [One risk regarding promotional postcards in the freebie table: I didn't realize Spencer's book is already available.]
• A YA fantasy trilogy by E. Rose Sabin: A School for sorcery, A Perilous power, and When the beast ravens
• Delia Sherman's The Porcelain dove comes strongly recommended by Lis Carey
• Maria V. Snyder Poison Study -- instead of immediate execution, a convicted criminal is offered a "reprieve" as food taster for a likely target of poisoning. Hm, just noticed it's listed as "first in a series"...
• Christopher Stasheff's Saint Vidicon To The Rescue. Looks interesting from the cover, though somebody in the dealer room gave it a mixed review
• Clive Woodall, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy -- back cover blurbs compare it to Watership Down but avian.

Also, overheard, somebody suggested that Heinlein's Double star and Vonnegut's Mother night were the same book from opposite points of view. Might be worth checking out...

YASID: ID requests

At a previous convention, I remember hearing Delia Sherman talk about a work-in-progress involving the fantasy imagery surrounding absinthe. Has this been published?

During the panel on food in SF/F, several panelists mentioned Mike Resnick published two books set in the Medici kitchens, but no titles were given. Audience members were urged to nag Resnick to write more in this series (was it an incomplete trilogy?), and there was some rumor that he gained ten pounds writing the first book, just in research. Sounds delicious.

During the animation panel, Esther Friesner mentioned a book (nonfiction) that explained the cultural indicators in manga. Not only how to read the foreign conventions for conveying various emotions, but how they developed. Anybody have a clue what this might've been referring to?

Naomi Novik

Future forthcoming fiction

I also saw or heard mention of several forthcoming books that sound incredibly promising.

Books bought

PS: One late addition from a promotional card found buried in my bag: Elaine Isaak's The Singer's crown, a fantasy novel about a usurped prince who survives as castrati singer.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:10 PM

So Saturday morning, Ian and I hit the road to New Haven to see the "Searching for Shakespeare" exhibit at the Yale Center for British Art.

We left extra early to catch the museum's general tour (at 11am) and exhibit tour at noon, both of which provide good overviews of their subjects. The general tour, in particular, pointed out numerous details I wouldn't've caught on my own.

As I already mentioned, the Corpus Christi portrait (purportedly of Marlowe) is not on display. And looking through the exhibit catalog afterwards, I noticed many other prominent works which other archives were willing to loan Britain's National Portrait Gallery, but not Yale. So no handwritten leaf from Sir Thomas More. No costume sketch from Titus.

But you do get the drawing of the Swan Theatre stage, Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia open to the page listing Shakespeare's plays, a handwritten costume inventory from one of the theatres, parish registers, Shakespeare's coat of arms, his will, and more pamphlets and first printings than you can shake a stick at. Three-dimensionally, they had some period clothes and shoes, pins and buttons and a bannister found at the Rose Theatre site (though not my ring), a bear skull from the baiting pits, memorial rings, a scale model of the Globe Theatre, and I forget what else...

If you've done any reading in Shakespeare biogrpahy or Elizabethan theatre, you will recognize many of these artifacts from book illustrations. Yet their physical presence definitely adds something. Often book reproductions are divorced from their context or reduced in scale.

As The New York Times states:

Facts about Shakespeare's life are in scant supply, and it's probably safe to say that virtually every single bit of primary documentation about it is in this show. There may not be much, but it's a banquet.

[Hm. That quote got me thinking of items not on display or in the catalog. Neither Greene's Groatsworth of Wit -- first somewhat-coded reference to Shakespeare in London, albeit an unflattering one -- nor Passionate Pilgrim -- an unauthorized publication of several sonnets from 1599. While they're probably about as rare as any other Shakespeariana from the London book trade. I'm also surprised they didn't get some of the hazelnut shells from the Rose dig, since I was led to believe those were common as dirt.]

Of course, the focus of the exhibit are the six putative portraits of Shakespeare, brought together for the first (and only?) time, alongside reproductions of Droeshout's engraving (from the First Folio) and the effigy from Shakespeare's tomb.

Again, you've probably seen most of these reproduced in books, which may diminish their impact somewhat.
Still, it's marvelous standing up-close to such significant works, where you can walk from one to another and (for example) compare eye-color or other features.

Those aren't the only portraits on display, however. To provide context, they've gathered paintings of other notables, including monarchs (Elizabeth, James and a period rendition of Richard II), nobles (Essex, Southhampton, DeVere) and Shakespeare's colleages. No Marlowe, but Ben Jonson did make the trip across the Atlantic, along with Richard Burbage and Nathan Field. And Ian was particularly taken by the portrait of John Fletcher.

If you've got extra time, they've even provided a bookshelf in an adjoining room with biographies and other texts to provide additional depth to what you're seeing.

This is the only American venue for this exhibit, so it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! In fact, I hope to go back once more before it closes, just to really cement the memories in my brain.

Following the second tour, we decided to grab something to eat before examining the exhibits in more detail. After a short walk around the area, we came across Istanbul Café, where we had an utterly exquisite lunch.

We then returned to the museum to look at the other temporary exhibit and the permanent works.

The museum's other current temporary exhibit is Britannia & Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars.

England apparently had a marvelous silversmithing tradition. Unfortunately, during the English Civil War, most British silver was melted down, leaving few examples for historians and art-lovers to appreciate.

However, ever since the founding of the Muscovy company in Elizabeth's reign, diplomatic voyages to Russia were often gilded with presents of silverwork, which thus avoided destruction.

This exhibit shows some of these pieces of ornamental silver.

Wow!

Context is provided by relevant documents (maps, formal diplomatic letters from Elizabeth, James and Charles) and other Russian artefacts of the period. They also have two displays of ornate firearms, embellished with inlaid mother-of-pearl and precious metals. [Ian found these particularly fascinating, just from a mechanical perspective.]

After the exhibit closes in New Haven, it will travel to London's Gilbert Collection at Somerset House. New Haven and London are the only venues for this exhibition.

Last, but certainly not least, the permanent collection.

The museum's foci include William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, Joseph Wright of Derby, J. M. W. Turner, and William Blake (though most of his works are too fragile for everyday display).

I am such a tremendous geek. When I walked into the room of Tudor portraits, my eye immediately lit on one of Sir Robert Dudley. It took me a moment to find the identification, and I first thought it was Thomas Seymour -- something I consider a reasonable mistake, since Liz did have her "type".
Likewise, in another hall I accidentally mistook this for Charles I. It was a Van Dyck painting, so again I consider it understandable.

I don't know much about art (despite a survey course in college), but I know what I like. The docent took great pains to explain all the in-jokes in Hogarth's "Beggar's Opera" and details of craft in other works. Philippe Mercier painted a series devoted to the five senses, and be sure to take a close look at how he represents "Touch". And I think The Blacksmith's Shop by Joseph Wright of Derby has been frequently cribbed for fantasy book covers.

The building's architecture is neat, too. I usually don't care much for the naturalistic poured concrete look of the early 1970s (not sure whether this qualifies as Brutalism), but the interiors are magnificent. Wood paneling, removable walls to allow reconfiguring of the space, filtered skylights and windows maximize sun and natural light without fading... The rooms simulate classic British halls, with works often displayed above one another, instead of putting everything in a row.

To close our trip, we spent some time in the museum shop, where I treated myself to several books: the two titles associated with the exhibit (the exhibit catalog and Shakespeare and His Contempories by Charles Nicholl), along with Shakespeare's songbook, which Ian and I had been discussing in the car on the drive down. [I described the book's concept here]

Ian bought a couple postcard-sized prints of several works he particularly liked, and a boxed set of table skittles, which he proceeded to play around with all Sunday.

The Yale Center for British Arts is located in New Haven, CT. [Hours and directions.] It's about a two to 2.5 hour drive (each way) from Boston with under $5 in tolls (we got on and off the Pike at 128, so if you go all the way into the city, it may cost a little more). Admission to the museum is FREE and we actually found plenty of free onstreet parking (the spots are metered on weekdays).

Searching for Shakespeare, now through September 17
Britannia & Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars, now through September 10

October 5, they'll be opening an exhibit on Art & Music in Britain: 1730-1900

I will definitely be back!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 PM

Cymbeline is one of the more rarely performed of Shakespeare's plays.

It may be difficult -- the story is certainly complex -- but it was a most satisfying experience.

David Collings' Cymbeline:

Gwendoline Christie as Queen

For those unfamiliar with the story (which is most people), here's the setup:

The title character was king of England during the reign of Augustus Caesar.

As the play opens, two suitors vie for his daughter's affections. Imogen is expected to marry Cloten, her stepmother's son, but she prefers the lowborn Posthumus.

And from that simple start, Shakespeare pulls out all the stops.

The play includes:

rustics, royalty, royalty raised by rustics, Britains, Romans, Britains in Rome, Romans in Britain, evil queens, foolish kings, loyal servants, suspicious husbands, wronged wives, unreasonable fathers, headstrong daughters, wicked stepmothers, ambitious cads, malicious gossip, falsified evidence, imagined cuckoldry, divine visitations, magic poisons, false identities, faked deaths, failed diplomacy, crossdressing, estrangement, banishment, decapitation, ghosts and apparitions, jealousy, romance, ambition, deception, warfare... and a song.

In other words, everything but the kitchen sink.

Truly a magnificent tour de force.

Ian and I gaped in awe, marvelling as each new device was revealed. [The closest analogy to the experience would be watching a plate spinner or juggler, wondering how many items they could keep in the air, holding one's breath in awe.]

On our way home, we tried to think of any tropes Shakespeare left out, and finally came up with one: Cymbeline lacks a malaprop-spouting clown (a common omission in later plays, after Will Kemp left the company). Indeed, there are no fools at all in the story. Then again, it really doesn't need one.

But that's all Shakespeare's doing.
     How was Cheek by Jowl's production?

Flipping through a copy of the play afterwards, they definitely streamlined certain aspects.

I don't know how much of the play was cut, but most of the edits I noticed would belong in a DVD's deleted scenes -- generally additional exposition that didn't advance the plot.

We don't need 20 lines in the first scene explaining Posthumus' upbringing (I.1.34-60), particularly since the relevant information is revealed elsewhere (I.1.185). Details about Imogen's assumed identity were snipped, as were Posthumus' dream sequence. Nothing which really impacted the plot.

And, the story flowed. A brief dumb show added some color and interest to the introductory exposition. And as I said above, we were delighted by the twists and turns Shakespeare threw into it.

Tom Hiddleston as Cloten

Tom Hiddleston as Posthumus

Despite the title, the true star of the show was Tom Hiddleston, playing a double role as the cad Cloten and gentle Posthumus.

He was astonishingly good.

Costume-wise, the only difference between the roles two were a trenchcoat and a pair of glasses. All the rest he managed with voice and body language alone.

And yet, whether he played Posthumus, Cloten, or Cloten disguised as Posthumus, we didn't experience the slightest confusion over which character was onstage at any particular moment.

As a matter of fact, the characters were so distinct that it took several scenes before Ian or I realized they were played by the same actor -- and Hiddleston changed outfits onstage! That's talent.

Superman's Clark Kent disguise doesn't seem so implausible anymore.

Hiddleston plays Posthumus as a sweet and stammering innocent, who toughens up over the course of the play. I can see why Imogen fell for him. Cloten is smarmy and polished -- an arrogant rich snot who can't handle having his desires thwarted.

While no other actors played quite as ambitious a role (Hiddleston was the only actor playing doubles, aside from some of the minor servants/lords), the whole cast was solid.

Jodie McNee was a passionate Imogen. Like Cloten, she started as a rather demanding child of privilege, but her tribulations through the play mature her.

Gwendoline Christie made a fine fairy-tale villain as Queen. She's appropriately beautiful and polished -- you can see how she won the king -- but it's a brittle shell over a heart of pure ambition.

Guy Flanagan's Iachimo stood out as a suave seductive Italian. While in the role of Pisanio, Richard Cant embodied the perfect valet while avoiding the trap of imitating Jeeves.

Geek aside: When I saw Richard Cant's biography in the program, I immediately noticed his appearance in Doctor Who and filled with curiousity to know when and where. [He'll be in a forthcoming episode.] But looking up the rest of the cast in IMDB, my jaw dropped at David Collings' credentials, which include three episodes of Dr. Who (including the titular undead Mawdryn), Blake's 7 and (I know at least one reader who may find this interesting) Sapphire and Steel. Kyool!

In an odd directorial decision, the lost princes were portrayed less like the rustics Shakespeare described and more like noble savages.

Also, I noticed no gender or racial cross-casting in the company -- which is getting rare enough to be worthy of comment.

But the plot was engaging enough to overlook any such lapses.

I'll just sum up this way. Ian and I spent about nine hours on the bus -- effectively dedicating an entire day -- to see this production of Cymbeline. We both agreed, it was well worth our time.

PS: In the audience, I met a Toronto actor in town for some auditions. I apologize, but I forgot your name. If you happen to find this, drop me a note, because I'd love to see you on stage. Thanks!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:10 PM

Since I enjoyed Michael Dobson's The Making of the national poet: Shakespeare, adaptation and authorship, 1660-1769 so much, that got me looking for related books.

One of his other books goes onto my must-read list: England's Elizabeth: an afterlife in fame and fantasy, coauthored with Nicola J. Watson.

Searching the booklists (chaining from the LC subjects) turned up quite a few promising leads.

Subject-wise, next month's Marketing the bard: Shakespeare in performance and print, 1660-1740 by Don-John Dugas seems the most obvious successor in terms of scope and theme, but there are many other interesting books out there (sorted by publication date):

1. Modern Shakespeare offshoots by Ruby Cohn
2. His exits and entrances: the story of Shakespeare's reputation by Louis Marder
3. How Shakespeare won the West: players and performances in America's Gold Rush, 1849-1865 by Helene Wickham Koon
4. Shakespeare's America, America's Shakespeare by Michael D. Bristol
5. Shakespeare domesticated: the eighteenth-century editions by Colin Franklin
6. Shakespeare's other lives edited and introduced by Maurice J. O'Sullivan
7. Gender in play on the Shakespearean stage: boy heroines and female pages by Michael Shapiro
8. Shakespeare and the politics of culture in late Victorian England by Linda Rozmovits
9. The Romantic cult of Shakespeare: literary reception in anthropological perspective by Péter Dávidházi
10. Americans on Shakespeare, 1776-1914 edited by Peter Rawlings
11. Shakespeare and appropriation edited by Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer
12. Heirs to Shakespeare: reinventing the Bard in young adult literature by Megan Lynn Isaac
13. Performing Shakespeare in the age of empire by Richard Foulkes
14. Not Shakespeare: bardolatry and burlesque in the nineteenth century by Richard W. Schoch
15. Novel Shakespeares: twentieth-century women novelists and appropriation by Julie Sanders
16. Shakespeare and modern popular culture by Douglas Lanier
17. Constructing a world: Shakespeare's England and the new historical fiction by Martha Tuck Rozett
18. Reimagining Shakespeare for children and young adults edited by Naomi J. Miller
19. The Taste of the town: Shakespearian comedy and the early eighteenth-century theater by Katherine West Scheil
20. Imagining Shakespeare: a history of texts and visions by Stephen Orgel
21. Shakespeare and the American nation by Kim C. Sturgess
22. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography edited by Takashi Kozuka and J.R. Mulryne
23. The Globe Theatre project: Shakespeare and authenticity by Rob Conkie
24. Collaborations with the past: reshaping Shakespeare across time and media by Diana E. Henderson
25. Hamlet's heirs: Shakespeare & the politics of a new millennium by Linda Charnes
26. Shakespeare and youth culture by Jennifer Hulbert, Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., and Robert York
27. Shakespeare and the mismeasure of Renaissance man by Paula Blank
28. Shakespeare and Elizabethan popular culture by Stuart Gillespie
29. Shakespeare and technology: dramatizing early modern technological revolutions by Adam Max Cohen
30. Shakespeare and the American popular stage by Frances Teague

Richard Burt has written a lot of fascinating material around these topics:

• Enclosure acts: sexuality, property, and culture in early modern England
• Shakespeare, the movie: popularizing the plays on film, TV, and video
• Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares: queer theory and American kiddie culture
• Shakespeare after mass media
• Shakespeare, the movie II: popularizing the plays on film, tv, video, and DVD
• Shakespeares after Shakespeare: an encyclopedia of the Bard in mass media and popular culture

And while browsing Michael Dobson's other writings, I came across a review of Reforming Marlowe: the nineteenth-century canonization of a Renaissance dramatist by Thomas Dabbs. Sounds promising, but unfortunately Dobson summarizes it thus: “This is fascinating material, and there is undoubtedly a rich and important work of cultural history to be written around it, but Reforming Marlowe, sadly isn't it.”

I'm now regretting having missed this spring's exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare for Children; Must try to get there for next year's exhibits: Shakespeare in American Life and Marketing Shakespeare 1789-1805.

On a related note, two recent biographies on the Tales from Shakespeare coauthor:

• The Devil kissed her: the story of Mary Lamb by Kathy Watson
• Mad Mary Lamb: lunacy and murder in literary London by Susan Tyler Hitchcock

My searches also turned up James Shapiro's Rival playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare. While it seems like a more traditional biography, rather than the look into the afterlife like these other titles, this seems a likely pick. It's a bit outdated (1991) and I already know the more recent revelations about Will and Kit. However, I've liked everything I've read by Shapiro and have been wanting to learn more about Jonson.

OMG! I'm a groupie for certain academic authors!

And, yes, if I had the time and money, I'd love to travel from school to school to take classes with them. I'm not actually interested in pursuing a PhD, but just want the learning out of intellectual curiousity...

What was Henry Jenkins (blog) saying about fannish behavior towards high culture? [My reply] [Which reminds me, he recommended Highbrow/lowbrow: the emergence of cultural hierarchy in America; and yes, I could easily fangirl Jenkins (I already blogged a list of his and related works); at least I can follow along with MIT OpenCourseWare]

Sigh... such a geek...

[Obviously, there's no way I'll read these all. I have to pace myself and get a few from the library at a time. Further suggestions (for or against) always welcome. And I definitely invite contributions from ego-googling authors! Anybody got a pre-existing syllabus for a course of independent study?]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:08 PM

Between the Shakespeare Theatre's Edward II and PBS rebroadcast of The Lost Prince, I decided to pick up Philip Ziegler's biography of Edward VIII

I got as far as page 85, and this description of Prince Edward's love letters to an early paramour:

These letters strike the notes which would become familiar to anyone who studied the correspondence in full: genuine and passionate devotion marred by a strident self-pity that bores and sometimes repels. In almost every letter he bemoans his uniquely unhappy lot: the miseries of being Prince of Wales, trapped in a routine that was wearisome and futile...

Familiar notes, indeed.

WWI was a constant complaint about how the prince wasn't allowed to do anything interesting and his unworthiness compared to those who took a more active role in the fighting.

Needless to say, I abandoned that book unfinished, and also returned Plato and a platypus walk into a bar: understanding philosophy through jokes to the library barely halfway thru.

My head just doesn't seem in the right place to appreciate the social sciences.

Instead, I just finished Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in code: two dozen programmers, three years, 4,732 bugs, and one quest for transcendent software -- an up-close narrative of Mitch Kapor's Chandler project.

Several years back, while conducting where-are-they-now searches for fellow ex-Loti, I found a several Organizer coworkers on the Chandler wiki. I've vaguely followed the project ever since, and it caught my eye again when Cory Doctorow blogged about it last week.

So, to better understand the program, I decided it was time to pick up the book.

The author's note explains the premise:

The shelves of the world are full of how-to books for software developers. This is not one of them. [... This book] poses a question and tells a tale. Why is good software so hard to make? Since no one seems to have a definitive answer even now, at the start of the twenty-first century, fifty years deep into the computer area, I offer, by way of exploration, the tale of the making of one piece of software

And so, we get an up-close and personal look in the offices of OSAF as the team worked on the Chandler project.

And Rosenberg uses that framework to provide perspective -- a chapter on methodology trends over time, or on various metaphors of art and science used to describe programming, or the origins of the term "software engineering."

As I tried to describe the book to Ian, the story is at times fascinating and depressing, boring and familiar.

[Ian noticed the contradictions in that statement: "Fascinating and boring? Is it also exhilarating as well as depressing?"

After a moment's thought I replied, "Pleasure that I'm not working on this project."]

Or, as the author recognized halfway through the book:

By now, I know, any software developer reading this volume has likely thrown it across the room in despair, thinking, "Stop the madness!"

For a less-painful example, an early paragraph that caught my attention:

Returning to the field's favorite analogy, the one between software making and bridge building, the 1995 report [CHAOS, by the Standish Group] argued that the problem with software wasn't just a matter of too many midstream course corrections and late design changes that would never be tolerated by the builders of bridges; it was also a problem of failing to learn from mistakes: "When a bridge falls down, it is investigated and a report is written on the cause of the failure. This is not so in the computer industry where failures are covered up, ignored and/or rationalized. As a result, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again."

And sure enough, the book provides quotes from the 1950s and 60s which sound like they could be describing... well, every software project I've ever seen.

I will confess a certain disappointment that the book never once mentions Lotus Organizer.

Quick history lesson: Lotus' original PIM product was Agenda -- Mitch Kapor's baby which had a devoted following and provided the genesis for Chandler. After difficulties in porting the DOS product to Windows, Lotus bought Organizer from a British company named Threadz. I was part of the project team for four years and many releases. Damn fine piece of software, if I do say so myself.

One of the reasons this omission feels so glaring is that many of Chandler's stated goals and/or obstacles were solved-problems in Organizer.

Want a repeating appointment on an irregular schedule (even to the extreme of Jewish holidays on a Gregorian calendar)? Organizer can do that. Want to take one copy of your data home, leave one at work and synchronize them? Organizer can do that. Share a calendar or addresses read-only with a team or enable an assistant to manage a supervisor's schedule? Organizer can do that -- and even allow the manager to keep certain calendar items private.

A paragraph on the enormity of Microsoft Exchange architecture concludes with the comment, "There had to be a better way. ... Why did you have to invite Microsoft to the party? Why couldn't the calendar on your computer talk directly to the one on your coworker's machine?"

Lotus Organizer wasn't peer-to-peer, but could use any email system for scheduling. Busy time could be made visible to all, sections could be shared over a standard LAN.

But Organizer, like Agenda, is abandonware. IBM may still be selling it, but they're no longer updating it, much less adding enhancements to keep it up-to-date.

At any rate, as I neared the end of the book, I've been trying to decide whether to recommend this book to my manager and a couple other higher-ups in my department. On the one hand, I'm finding the perspective and context extremely valuable. But they might consider it a waste of their time. While it very clearly lays out many of the hazards inherent in software design and development, unlike more typical business books, it doesn't provide much in the way of suggestions or solutions.

The situation is what it is, and it's been that way for a long time.

Meanwhile, I've also started reading Will the vampire people please leave the lobby?: true adventures in Internet geekdom. Though the author's background and focus are in media fandom, most of its observations relate to my own experiences with fandom and online communities. I like the writing style (I hadn't heard the term "Munchausen by Internet" but it makes such perfect sense that I'll probably use it from now on) and find it a lot of fun.

I'll try to post back once I've finished, but it looks like it could be useful in explaining the fannish lifestyle to mundanes. Obviously, read it yourself first, to gauge appropriateness, but so far I'm liking it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 AM

While Ian was at work, I rented and watched Derek Jarman's 1991 Edward II. Odd film. Christopher Marlowe's words (mostly) with full frontal male nudity. One thing that puzzled me, though, is that I couldn't figure out who was the intended audience. It seemed too... altered from the text for purists and scholars, yet too tied to it to be comprehensible to those unfamiliar with the play. [I've really only read the text once, and though I enjoyed it, I had trouble with who various characters were.]

Another question raised by the film: what kind of tropism does Annie Lennox have for Christopher Marlowe? Not only is the only song in the film hers, but she actually appears to sing it, in a sort of music-video-within-the-film. And there's also her contribution to When Love Speaks an entire album dedicated to renditions of Shakespeare -- with one track of Annie Lennox singing Marlowe.

My third observation was a line near the end, when somebody says "Feared am I more than loved; let me be feared" This is obviously straight out of Machiavelli's The Prince. Marlowe has often been associated with Machiavelli, both within the text (Machiavill delivers the prologue to Jew of Malta and as a slur was used in accusations against him). But, as I recall from my research into Ian's Elizabethan GURPS campaign, The Prince wasn't translated into English until much later, and was (I believe) banned in England. Machiavelli was more myth than man (one of the reasons "Old Nick" became a term for the devil). And yet, the line I quoted above makes it clear that Marlowe must've actually been familiar with the work. Marlowe had a Master's degree and I've often wondered what subjects and languages he would've learned while getting his education. Latin is a given, particularly since he was a divinity student. French always seemed plausible, given the proximity. So, given his ability to read Machiavelli, did he know Italian, or did he derive it from Latin, or did he see a translation into another language he knew? Curious.

While describing the film to Ian, I read him one passage that amused me:

The mightiest Kings have had their minions
Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,
The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept,
And for Patroclus stern Achilles droop'd.
And not kings only, but the wisest men;
The Roman Tully loved Octavius,
Grave Socrates wild Alcibiades.
Then let his grace, whose youth is flexible,
And promiseth as much as we can wish,
Freely enjoy that vain lightheaded earl;
For riper years will wean him from such toys.

Ian replied with incredulity, "and the director added gay subtext to that?" "Actually," I replied, "he added domtext. The subtext was already there; Jarman just made it blatant."

Another line I read him from the play uses the term "Greekish strumpet."
     Ian said, "doesn't that sound like a dessert?"
"Sounds to me like a male prostitute."
     "That's what I said."
"Ahhh. A twinkie."
     "Exactly."

I was born well after Kennedy's assassination (either of them), though I do remember where I was when Reagan was shot and when the Challenger exploded. Be that as it may, this weekend marks another 40th anniversary of something that means much more to me. Doctor Who. With everybody writing about where they were when they first heard Kennedy was shot, another friend suggested sharing one's first encounter with the Doctor. Impressively enough, I do recall.

During the 1981 recession, my father moved down to Florida to look for work, while the rest of the family stayed up in Wisconsin. In that time, my father discovered Doctor Who and became a fan. When the rest of us finally came down to Florida, he tried to introduce me to the show. I'm afraid I didn't take to it rather well. I was put off by the bad special effects and wasn't of an age where I was too interested in anything my parents might try to push on me. That said, I can still recall which episode it was -- "The Sontaran Experiment," with the fourth Doctor, Harry and Sarah on a futuristic primitive Earth.

Eventually, though, I fell in love with the show. The quality of writing distracted me from the bad effects -- to the point that I didn't notice most of the things others laugh at today, and still get annoyed when people point them out while I'm trying to watch.

High school was the peak of my attraction. I bought the books, from novelizations of episodes I loved (and novelizations of important episodes I'd never get to see) to expensive anniversary hardcovers, and other merchandise (still have the "Doctor in distress" charity single!). Doctor Who was my entry into SF fandom, even if it was solely media fandom. I joined the Doctor Who fan club (and still rue my best friend's father for dumping the first issue of the newsletter she was borrowing when he cleaned up her room into the trash) and attended local conventions.

High school was a rather depressing time for me in general. I'd rather not go into all the nasty details, but I was geekish and unpopular in a very status-driven school. You know those PSAs that ask "what's your anti-drug?" I've come to think of Doctor Who as my anti-suicide. I probably never would've actuallycommitted suicide, but Doctor Who was one of the mental crutches that kept me going until things got better. There was always one more cliffhanger that I had to see how they'd resolve. And week after week, it gave me reasons to hang on. That's how much it meant to me.

When I got to college and neither watched so much TV nor had a channel showing the program, I started to drift away. And then, the show drifted off the air as well. I never really got into the original novels or audio shows or the other means the series has kept itself alive over the last decade. I did see the Fox TV movie and the Comic Relief "Curse of the Fatal Death" (which I recommend more highly than the FOX movie), but other than that, we seem to have drifted apart.

If rumors of a new Doctor Who television series are true, I'm looking forward to it with trepidation. For me, Doctor Who was always about the stories. But nowadays, television seems to be more about the special effects. I noticed that with the FOX movie and with the few seventh Doctor shows I've seen, where the visuals seem to overshadow the writing. For a time, when Hercules and Xena were popular, I hoped that Raimi might get the rights to Doctor Who. He could fit in with the larger-than-life fictionalized history of the Raimiverse. And the hour-long weekly episodic format seemed well suited to Doctor Who. But it didn't happen, and now the Beeb is bringing it back. I wish the producers of the new series well; here's hoping for much more to celebrate the next anniversary.

Anyway, I'm off to the FSD seminar that I mentioned a few weeks ago. Bye for now!

So, this past weekend was the ALA Midwinter Meeting. I talked my company into paying for membership to the exhibit hall, ostensibly so I could see the kinds of things our competitors were up to. I'll confess, I primarily wanted it just to browse around, and had the company not paid for it, I would've bought it myself, just for browsing purposes (indeed, we did pay for an exhibit hall pass for Ian to accompany me).

At any rate, let me first describe the exhibit halls. Those of you who were at Worldcon: picture the space used for the dealers' room and the nearby space used for exhibits. All of that space was occupied by ALA vendors, plus the equivalent amount of space upstairs. Four times the dealer space of Worldcon.

Now, to be fair, ALA vendors often required much more floorspace than Worldcon vendors. For example, there were a lot of furniture companies with seating and shelves, or tech companies with demo workstations and seating areas for presentations.

But on the whole, most of the floorspace was given over to books, and oh how I enjoyed browsing...

I made it through all the aisles on Saturday afternoon, seeing everything but my competitors' displays. I went back (alone) on Sunday for that, which I supplemented with more time looking at books. On Monday, many of the book dealers were offering huge discounts (and even giveaways) on the floorstock (it made sense -- you want to display as wide a range of products for browsers to see, but don't necessarily want to ship it all home) and I was somewhat tempted to go back on Monday for good deals. But, (a) three days seemed excessive, (b) I had already said I'd be in the office Monday morning, and (c) Ian was planning to go anyway for a medieval combat manual he saw on Saturday that would be $10 on Monday. More on that in a bit.

As I walked through the aisles, I jotted down titles that looked interesting -- ones I might want to go out and find (at the library or bookstore) to read sometime in the future. And now I find myself struggling for how to list them: by publisher (which was generally how they were displayed) or by release date (for those in the future) or what... Well, I'll start with:

Best schwag: a ceramic Jane Austen bobblehead by Greenwood press to promote their All things Austen

Most unusual vendor reps: One booth had everybody wearing black with bowlers. I saw somebody in pseudo-medieval garb, passing out canvas bags. But the winner goes to the booth with an Elvis impersonator, singing Elvis songs modified to have library themes.

Most impressive book seen @ ALA Midwinter: a facsimile of the Domesday book. Wow. Apparently, it sells for around £12,000, so you may want to save up. I felt awed just to see it and touch it.

Scariest book seen @ ALA Midwinter: LSAT for Dummies -- there are enough stupid lawyers; do we really need to encourage them!? I just checked online, and as far as I can tell, nobody's published an MCAT for Dummies, so they have some standards, at least.

As at Worldcon, one of the first publishers to really catch my eye was McFarland Press. Among their titles on display:

• Booze and the private eye : alcohol in the hard-boiled novel
• The library book cart precision drill team manual
• The Trojan War : literature and legends from the Bronze Age to the present

  Compares how the story is portrayed in various works, chronologically from Homer: including Virgil, Shakespeare's Troilus & Cressida, all the way to recent works like MZB's feminist Firebrand. Unfortunately, the book was published before this year's blockbuster epic turkey, because I'd love to see what the author would say about it.

• Storytelling in the pulps, comics, and radio : how technology changed popular fiction in America

  Joe: I saw this and thought of you. In fact, you may want to take a look at the rest of McFarland's catalog; they publish a lot of books on the pulps and radio serials, and (here & at Worldcon) they had a prominent sign: "tell us your book proposal"

And the more I wandered, the more I found:

• Youth information-seeking behavior : theories, models, and issues
• When Congress makes a joke : congressional humor then and now
• A funny thing happened on the way to the White House : foolhardiness, folly, and fraud in presidential elections, from Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush
• Strange angel : the otherworldly life of rocket scientist John Whiteside Parsons
• Please bury me in the library -- a gorgeous-looking children's picture book
• Shlemiel Crooks

  This forthcoming children's story was in a display of storytelling books. And honestly, I read about one page of it silently and wanted somebody should be reading it aloud to me. Clearly effective.

• Touch magic : fantasy, faerie & folklore in the literature of childhood by JAne Yolen
• The Cambridge world history of food
• The Cambridge Old English reader
• A profane wit : the life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (he's the author of the first known printed pornography I described last month.)
• Founding myths : stories that hide our patriotic past
• The Polar bear waltz and other moments of epic silliness : classic photographs from Outside's Magazine's "Parting Shot"
• Hip hop hares and other moments of epic silliness : more classic photographs from Outside magazine's "Parting Shot"

  The above two are collections of nature photos, and just too funny!

• Hachiko waits
• A Book About Design : Complicated Doesn't Make It Good -- not out yet, but really impressive. It's officially a kids' book, but I think most people could learn a thing or two from it.
• Five quarts : a personal and natural history of blood
• Delivered from distraction : getting the most out of life with attention deficit disorder
• Black Ships Before Troy : The Story Of The Iliad

  A children's book with gorgeous artwork

• Murder In Shakespeare's England
• Turning the tables : restaurants from the inside out

  The publisher had several proof copies in their booth. If I had realized that the release date was over six months away, I might've asked about getting a copy.

• Doing Our Own Thing : The Degradation Of Language And Music And Why We Should, Like, Care
• Science fiction television : a history

Whoever arranged the exhibit hall put all the comics dealers in the same corner. Nicely done. Lots of manga, Diamond distributors, DC comics...

• Terry Moore of Strangers in paradise was onhand, handing out a sourcebook with bios and timelines. I've been following the series since the first miniseries was released as a GN, and it's gotten so intricate that it's hard to explain. They're reissuing the series in a new set of trade-paperbacks: manga-sized, but Cerebus-phonebook thick (if that makes sense).
• Also got to meet Bill Barnes -- half the team behind the library comic strip Unshelved. I already had a copy of the first collection, and Ian just knew that I had to own the second collection, which I bought and got signed. I finished reading it Saturday night, and when I went back on Sunday, I told him that I thought the slogan in this strip belonged on merchandise. And, I guess I have good taste, because they had been talking about it, but so far vetoed it as too long.
  Then more potentially paying customers came over and I left him to try to make sales from them. Every subsequent time I came past the booth, he had a crowd, which I suppose is good for him, but I wished we had a chance to chat. See, in the back of What would Dewey do?, Bill Barnes mentions his favorite book is Fredric Brown's What mad universe -- and I just don't meet too many other Fredric Brown fans.

Other nifty finds:

• Remember the classic kids' book There's a nightmare in my closet? Mercer Mayer has a new book coming soon: There are monsters everywhere, which looks equally precious. [Hey! did you know Mercer Mayer illustrated the Great Brain books!? Neither did I until I started looking up the ISBNs for this comment.]
• Puffin Graphics is launching a new series of GNs (manga-sized) that are effectively another attempt at Classics Illustrated. I saw a galley excerpt of Macbeth by Tony Leonard Tamai and Arthur Byron Cover: Shakespeare's language with space opera artwork. I wish it well.
• Far too rich for my blood, but Greenwood Press has a six-volume Encyclopedia of Daily Life. I've seen and read other books in their Daily Life series (such as Daily life in Elizabethan England), but those too were a bit pricy for purchase. And apparently they now produce Daily Life Online. When I have a little more time, maybe I'll try their 30-day free trial...
• In a similar vein for younger readers, I thought Compass Point Books had some nifty series, including Changing Times: four books about Shakespearean England, and Blue Earth -- Exploring History Through Simple Recipes, both of which I thought were clever ways of making history come alive.
• This should thrill some of you (if you're still reading this far): Newmarket Press, which publishes movie scripts in nice illustrated formats, has two volumes of the complete Freaks & Geeks and West Wing Script Books, covering seasons 1 through 4.

What else...

• The ALA and Nextbook had flyers promoting a reading & discussion series on Jewish literature, titled Let's talk about it! I'll confess, the specific books didn't interest me terribly, but I liked the sound of the themes, which included: "Your heart's desire: sex and love in Jewish literature" and "Demons, golems, and dybbuks: monsters of the Jewish imagination." But I think my group of friends could come up with more interesting titles than they did.
• Just discovered that the BPL has been holding a monthly lecture series on John Adams and his books & papers (which are held by the BPL) since October. I've already missed half the lectures <frown>, but at least I found out in time for the next one, which really pushes my buttons:

  "Adams in Opposition: In the Margins of His Books"
  Though it is no longer common for readers to leave personal notes in the margins of books, we are singularly blessed that John Adams did just that.  Heather Jackson will address the idiosyncratic and often argumentative and oppositional nature of Adams' marginal notes in the context of common eighteenth-century practices. Book historian Heather Jackson is a Professor of English at the University of Toronto, the editor or coeditor of several volumes of Coleridge's works, including four volumes of marginalia, and the author of Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books and forthcoming Romantic Readers.
  Tuesday, Feb. 15 at 6 p.m. in the Rabb Lecture Hall. (617-859-2386).

• Attended a fascinating lecture by Andy Smith, of Oxford University Press' Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America. I wish I could afford the book; the website has a few nifty tidbits and excerpts.

  Did you know that Mexican beans and rice was originated in a California Mexican restaurant that catered to Chinese workers? In early America, cider was far more popular than beer -- beer only became prevalent through German immigration.

• I noticed a series of mathematics textbooks titled Life of Fred written by Stanley F. Schmidt. Is this the SF writer, or a different author with a similar name?
• My other major purchase was a nifty little gizmo called a Bookflip; but anything I write on it will get buried, so I think I'll save that for a subsequent post.

At any rate, those are only the books I saw but didn't purchase. Then there comes the books that I did get:

• Somebody was handing out free copies of an English Qur'an. It claims to be a "simplified translation" to suit "reading and comprehension of 6-16 year old individuals." Better than nothing, which is what we had before. It's going on our comparative religion bookcase.
• Advance reading copies of several YA books, listed in order of release date:
  • Boy proof
  • The Slash -- no, I don't think it has anything to do with fanfic
  • The Printer's devil
• I got an autographed copy of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink -- boy, he didn't look anything like what I imagined.
• I got an autographed proof of A Perfect red : empire, espionage, and the quest for the color of desire. I had it signed to Ian, since red is his color. The author has gorgeous handwriting (and used an appropriately red pen), but somehow I suspect that her signature will degrade as she attends more and more signings...
• This morning, Ian picked up (and got signed for me) Outwitting history : the amazing adventures of a man who rescued a million Yiddish books

And I'm not even going to go through and list all the books Ian picked up, though I will mention Stevermer & Wrede's Grand Tour (which probably means I should reread the original Sorcery and Cecelia), a version of Twelfth Night adapted by Bruce Coville, and Hans Talhoffer's 15th Century manual of Medieval Combat, which was what drove him to come back on Monday in the first place.

And that's probably about all I have to say, except for writing about the bookflip, which I will make a separate post. I did do some snooping around our competitors' booths, but that's not really suitable subject for blogging.

Anybody still with me?

Well, at the very least, I now have a list of books to read if I should ever get bored...

Now what to read next...