Black Dog Blog

Archive for the ‘books’ Category

No, I'm not talking about gay boys, although you could say I am something of a fairy in that sense (and vaguely proud of it), and also sometimes quite boring.

No, I mean the other fairies. The little winged gobshites.

So some people love cute little fairies. Some other people are into the dark, sinister side to fairies (which, when you think about it for more than a second, ARE bloody scary).

I just don't engage with the concept of fairies/faeries/fae/fairfolk on any level. They bore me and – well, they do repulse me, but in an unemotional way (since even hating or being scared of them would still be some kind of reaction, whereas they don't grab me in any way).

I suppose it's partly the "small humanoid" angle that totally turns off any sympathy, interest or engagement that I would have in abundance for any animal creature. I don't know. I've just never had any interest in fairies.

I actually stopped reading the Harry Dresden books because they degenerated into "whee, fairies fairies fairies and more bloody fairies I'm so cool, oh and just to turn Mutt completely off, let's add a knight prat who's so pure and Has Faith and wields a Magic Sword of Faith". (Well, that and it got boring seeing Harry get beaten half to death every book without fail and still pull some magic whupass out of his arse.) Shame, because the writing in the books is really pretty OK, the wisecracks are excellent and I do like the hardboiled genre.

But yes, fairies. They don't do it for me. I tend to hate anything with them in. The one exception I've found is Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, which is at least a very complete and competent treatment of the idea, explicitly drawing them as personalityless (an important angle for me) as well as the usual cruel, feline flibbertigibbets.

(Next time, maybe: why Tolkien-D&D-style elves are boring. Or maybe why prats with swords are boring. Then, that selection probably leaving basically nothing in the genre of fantasy for me to read, I'll have to think of some sci-fi things I find hackneyed.)

(Oh, and just in case: I don't actually expect other people to change their interests/writing styles based on my opinion. Hell, somebody go off and tread some genuinely new writerly ground with the idea and I promise I'll be happy you've made boringness into a topic that I can actually enjoy…)

Found a cool new real-time blog, like the Dracula one but non-fiction.

Lolz, we're gonna pwn the Antarctic!

Dog 'saves' sleep condition woman

Ooh, here's one for the wishlist next to Cold Reading by Ian Rowland…

And now, Windows tips via someone on Yammer.

Clicking Start > Run (or pressing Windows key + R if, like me, you are a keyboard man) and typing the abbreviation "clipbrd" will bring up the clipboard viewer.

Clicking Start > Run and typing "flipbrd" will bring up a picture of Bill Gates giving you the finger.

Egypt to become den of vice and harlots with visible eyes

Saudi to become den of vice, mixed-sex conversations and literate car-driving harlots

Witch schools. I wonder why this upsets me so much less than Christian missionaries doing the same. Probably some ill-defined idea of cultural naturalness.

World's oldest POWs returned home

These people are spawning 10+ mini-mes and imbuing them with their Invisible Magic Friend disease while Brits raise one or two apiece and teach them about things like open minds. Something's going wrong here. Something's going very wrong.

In shock news, several gay Conservatives have been found to be able to live with themselves.

The latest craze to hit New York: Text My Beaver.

Another book meme. Is it just me or do these keep morphing?; I'm sure I see some here that I haven't on previous ones. Also, this meme is nothing to do with the BBC, whatever you've read.

Mark off the books you've read with an X.

1 Pride and Prejudice X [Don't believe the haters. It's good. If you smile at the first few lines, it's a good indication that you'll like it. I find comedies of manners so darkly funny. My late kitten was nicknamed Mr. Arsey. Anyhow, what I really want to read next is Pride and Prejudice With Zombies.]
2 The Lord of the Rings X [You've got to read LotR For Great Heritage if you're a fant writer. No desire to read it again, though, and I didn't see the films.]
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X [read for school, it's worth reading]
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee X [read for school, it's very good]
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman X [first book is stand-out fabulous]
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

Read the rest of this entry »

Goosebumps: The Barking Ghost by RL Stine
I've read this one already: it's a children's book, and not particularly noteworthy, but has an amusingly silly twist and a bonus shapeshifting angle. Not scary for me. (Goosebumps is a churned-out series of scary books aimed at young readers. I sorta admire Stine's ability to put out so many words.)

Ghost Dog by Eleanor Allen (Young Hippo Spooky)

The Dog who Knew Too Much by Carol Lea Benjamin
and A Hell of a Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin
(These are billed as "Canine Murder Mysteries", no joke; if these two are good I'll collect the rest)

Dogs (1976) horror film

The Ghost Dog by Pete Johnson

Ghost Dog by Dick Cate

My library, let me show you it.

Reviews shall come. At present I've almost finished reading Hellhound Magic, which deserves an entry to itself.

WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF!

Nooo, Watson, I'll protect you from the nasty Madonna-toyboy.

I dreamed we were setting up a new board game, but I was tired and knew I wouldn't be able to take in the rules.

This dream confirms two things:

1. My Tuesday night activities are seeping into my subconscious,
2. I am feeling professionally insecure.

I also recall someone in the dream saying this was a cooperative game (i.e. "players against game", not "players against each other" – e.g. Pandemic), which tantalised me, because I've never played a co-op and would very much like to try one. If only to keep from inadvertently pwning Phil.

Currently reading: Women's Work for Weft. Just finished Elizabeth Bear's Dust, about which I hope to post more in future.

Currently wondering: if it makes sense for a hypothetical humanoid, pre-industrial silk-based economy to make some kind of toy that was a hybrid of spindle and yo-yo.

Even now, in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness.

"Phosphorus," I said.

"A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal.

Glow in the dark pups aid science

("Critics argue it's playing god, but scientists point out that what we're looking at is in fact playing dogs.")

A Buddhist preacher in Thailand has announced plans for new guidelines aimed at curbing the flamboyant behaviour of gay and [male-to-female] transgender monks.

Oh Buddha, not… effeminately-shaped eyebrows!!1onetynine11!!!

Children's Laureates choose best books of all time. Just William ++, Treasure Island of course, Harry Potter nowhere on the list.

Also, I want a Psammead. They're rewarding companions. Just don't get them wet or feed them after midnight.

What is swine flu?

Israel renames unkosher swine flu

Yes! I want to be a slush reader while I work on one or another of my embryonic novels. :D

(Actually, I like my current job a lot.)

I've just spent I don't know HOW long going through Project Gutenberg's children's extexts for my brother, who's doing some work to do with children's books for my mother. Urg. MUST SLEEP. Suspect also that he'll be too lazy to deal with most or all of them. Hrrrnh!

The Velveteen Rabbit for the win.

Wincanton, the Roundworld twin town of Ankh-Morpork, steps further into geekdom (join us, come with us, we will teach you things).

So Monday night was Werewolf night, this time at the Space bar (I still can't work out if that's an intentional pun) off Oxford Road. A new chap turned up there; he goes to a gaming group that meets on Tuesdays at a place a short walk from Slen's house. This is games in the board-game and cards sense; they play lots of obscure things straight out of Essen that I've never heard of. Which is ace.

So I went along, stayed over at Slen's house and dragged him to the group. We played Tribune, which that dark equus of a brother of mine won, and then a few minutes of Master of Rules before the end. The others were playing some kind of Battlestar Galactica board game.

Lots of fun, lots of serious geeks there. Apparently they sometimes play MTG and often Werewolf. I'll give the MTG a miss, because I'm opposed to things you have to keep paying for, but Slen owns a starter deck which he's never opened, so that'd be fun for him.

edit: Miss Nobili told the BBC that the transformation from lap dancer to nun happened gradually.

I have finished the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie because I woke up naturally at 0400 this morning and was too confused by this practically unheard-of circumstance either to get up or to go back to sleep. Fanbloodytastic books. Superb. Delightful. Honestly, by rights Abercrombie and KJ Parker should have so many mindbabies.

Abercrombie, you see, is quite much like Parker – cynicism, nasty things happening, a variety of deliciously morally-confused narrating characters – but with added magic (yay, kabooms!), demons (heh), and also Lost Old Empires and Magic Leaking Out of the World (two pet hates of mine, but not a deal-breaker given the good writing).

One nice thing about Abercrombie's writing is how he paints a very different picture depending on the narrating character; his whole style shifts, or shifts enough that after a scene switch it's recognisably Dogman or Ferro talking now even before he or she thinks of him/herself by name. (All right, Ferro's habit of referring to the lighter-skinned characters as "stupid pinks" helps.) It's especially much fun when one of his narrating characters meets another and we get to see them described through other eyes, seldom flatteringly.

Sand dan Glokta may be one of the finest characters I've seen in a long time. (He'd no doubt be not at all amused to know that this puts him in a highly exclusive collector's case also inhabited by Arnold Rimmer.)

During tram journeys, I've been continuing a little more reluctantly with Jim Butcher's Summer Knight, the fourth in his Dresden Files series. They're snappy, fast-paced, easy reads, at least if you don't bother trying to work out the mystery before the main character Dresden does (which I've never had any desire to do, not being all that engaged, unlike with the Abercrombies, where I was having a fine old time guessing at traitors and such). Nothing objectionable to Butcher's books, and so far I've found them a cut above your average fantasy-noir popcorn, while still being unabashedly books of that sort.

The reason I almost gave up on Summer Knight (not that I ever really leave a book unfinished except in extreme circumstances, but I threatened this one with it) is that it's stuffed full of blooming sidhe. On persevering with the plot, my usual suspicions about them have been justified in spades, which is sort of satisfying (if not surprising, in a book where ghoulies and dames are contractually obliged to betray the mule-headed protag several times in the course of a chapter), but, well, I just don't much like reading about fair folk. It's like, well, Arthurian myth, Life-affirming Coming-of-age Journeys or the abovementioned Fantasy Kingdoms in which Technomagical Progress Inexplicably Runs Backwards. Pet hates. Pet boredoms.

Ah well. If I get into the spirit of a book I can engage and hate the giggling point-eared twits as characters, rather than "oh ffs, this was a promising series, why drop bloody elves into it?", but this time it was a close call. Anyway, the book's ok; some new revelations about backstory and stuff so I can't recommend you give it a miss. Just grit your teeth past the omg!bondage!evil dark fairies and omg!happy!ponies light fairies bits: I promise it does get a little more complex than that.

I might, however, look up the next book before buying and check if Michael's in it. I can't take any more of that boringer-than-thou sword-wielding twonk, not on top of the fairies. Why do people think that putting big guys with swords into things will make them cooler… yawn.

(Oh, and <3 Jezal dan Luthar! He's so dreamy!!!one11!!)

(edit: Previous parenthesis is a joke because Jezal is a guy with a sword. He's wonderful in the first book.)

So, on the downside, a total LEGEND is retiring. He's been the kind of overboss of my team since I've worked in Religion, boss of my immediate manager (I think; never been shown an actual map). And he's a great dude, esoteric, brilliant, equally at home converting philosophical texts to plain English and working around SQL Server's inanities. Would come into our office, back when we still worked physically in the Religion department, and ask us random ethical questions from whatever article he was writing. Great dude.

I'll miss him. On the plus side, I got to rifle through the skip(!) of books he's chucking out in preparation for leaving. Adoptees are sitting on my desk by the names of The World of the Polynesians, Dominion, The Art of Deception and On the Art of Writing Copy.

I also have a slim paperback named Geometric Patterns from Churches and Cathedrals, quite rightly wondering why I picked it up. If none of my artsy offliners wants it, I'll offer it to you lot.

Tomorrow there will be goodbye luncheons and drinkypoos and presents and speeches, which'll probably embarrass the poor sod. If I ever stop working here, there'll be very specific instructions…

The "original" ending to The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Quite good, if silly. The Americanisms hardly show. The various neologisms are rather more pronounced.

Also, Sirius > Betelgeuse.

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. (If you've done it before, feel free to add a link so I can avoid duplication.)

Altivo gave me the following five:

Doggerel [heh heh, make of it what you will]
The dictionary definition of doggerel is comic verse of irregular measure. I am not quite sure what this means, and my working definition of doggerel is "rhyming poetry written in little time, not (necessarily) any good".

The reason I wouldn't ever mind my poems being described as such is quite simple: it has the word "dog" in it.

I do enjoy poetry, reading and writing it, but it has to rhyme and scan impeccably and not be what I consider 'up itself' or 'pretentious'. It helps also if something happens in it and it's funny. Poetry written for children tends to be good for these qualities.

I've been criticised, within a small writing feedback group I've frequented, for my overadherence to rhyme scheme and meter. I don't particularly want to move away from it, though. Those are what I like about the stuff in the first place.
Otherwise it
tends to feel
like prose
with
unnecessary
line breaks.

Doggerel! Doggerel is when people rhyme fire with desire (or, worse, higher), love with above (or, well, love with anything that rhymes with love; it's all over-done) or alone with [on my] own. When I hear these, I want to smite things. A good one I heard once, from Shania Twain I believe, was optimistic rhymed with pessimistic.

A doggerel might also be a cross between a dog and a cockerel. It could comb its own fur, but it might give you some rather sharp pecks on the cheek.

English
I am, I suppose, what one might call very English. I am not talking about being born in Chester, but more about such things as dry and ironic humour, honesty, fair play, dislike of making a fuss, excess of reserve and not doing sex. Oh, and liking dogs. A lot. However, I never drink tea, don't think all that much of the Royal Family or the Church of England, loathe cricket and football and am chronically disinterested in the weather.

I like the English language, though am aware that it's a pig for non-native speakers to learn. (Something about a Great Vowel Shift, which always sounds vaguely scatological to me.) I have no ear for accents and sometimes have trouble telling what people with thick accents (of any sort) are saying. Perhaps for this reason, Received Pronunciation accents — posh English, also called BBC or Queen's English — are the most pleasant on my ears. My own accent might be described as modern RP or BBC English with the edges knocked off, or… well, perhaps I'll record it someday and let others judge. I've lived in the North all my life, but don't have much of a local accent, if any at all.

I find the Heroes character Mohinder Suresh's Indian-tinged (or… less) accent extremely attractive, and was most peeved to find it was fake. Still good, though! The actor talks about it here.

I'm extremely weak to wordplay, too. Puns aren't the lowest form of wit. They are de rigeur, even obligatory, at least when one is handed the perfect set-up.

I'm also a pedant when it comes to those parts of English grammar that I fully grasp, which aren't necessarily all of it. I do have the reputation as go-to guy within the office for matters of spelling, punctuation or usage. What surprises me is that people are so nervous and unsure of some really very basic conventions. What might surprise people is that I didn't study English beyond the mandatory level (GCSE; 14–15 years of age) at school. And I learned nothing from those lessons beyond parroting someone else's interpretation of a poem. (This is what I think of the analysis of poetry by classes of 14–15-year-olds.) My secret? Genetics and upbringing, sad to say. I came into the world hard-wired to read; the usual autistic difficulties with language passed me by quite. I learned to read when I was about two years old (apparently it wasn't a question of being taught by a pushy parent; Small Me decreed that I jolly well would be taught) and didn't stop for many years.

There, I used the phrase "jolly well" as an intensifier. What more proof of Englishness do you need?

Sang-froid
The dictionary definition of sangfroid is "coolness of mind; calmness; composure". A quality I much wish I had. On the other claw, a less neutral and more negative definition — 'cold-bloodedness' in the sense of not caring about people — might easily be applied to me. I wish mankind no specific ill. Let's leave it there.

I also write a character known for both sides, coolness and coldness. (He means well. The problem may stem from the fact that he means well in an entirely theoretical and abstract sense.) However, in my writerly universe, your Captain Kirks and your headstrong princesses tend to get themselves killed out of clear incompetence and what we might call excessively glandularly-oriented decision-making, to the benefit of chaps like him; in other words, I deeply distrust people who claim to be led by their 'hearts' or 'gut feelings', which generally means "prejudices and guesses I don't want to bother to substantiate", and so I do not do things like setting up such rather reptilian sorts of fellows as cheap fall guys to 'prove' emotional humans are superior to thinking ones. Calculating people tend to succeed. At least ones who know how to play the socio-political game.

I actually have a character called Sangfroid, too; she is the great-grandmother of the character I've been talking about. She was a military general. It's said her legendary composure only cracked once, when her infant twins were in danger of death. (I bet whoever said that wasn't present at the birth. "More morphine, darling?" "Only half a glass, thank you; I'm driving.")

Twine [not string]
There was once a little installation of UseModWiki, hacked a little bit to include a 'boilerplate' text functionality, which was rather an achievement considering its owner didn't actually know any Perl. Its name was Twine Encyclopaedia and it was and is is the main publically-accessible repository of information regarding the HellMutt's writing characters, not to mention those of des co-writers at Profusion.

The little UseMod that could is named Twine because Twine is a word associated with Profusion's shared universe — though in exactly what manner remains to be seen. That's the nature of shared universes. The idea advanced so far is that it is the name of an interplanetary organisation that sets itself up as some breed of self-declared police force, tasking itself with applying and upholding interplanetary treaties and laws.

According to current plans, The Twine Encyclopaedia shall eventually apotheose and become some manner of wiki add-on in an installation of Drupal, which shall be database-driven and PHPish and Chaotic Good. Its owner does not currently know any PHP, except phpinfo(). You may be sensing a pattern here.

Kitties
As aforementioned, I like dogs. In actual fact I grew up with two exceptionally good-natured and well-trained Golden Retrievers. The stupider one knew upwards of 100 words in three languages plus sign language. This is why I don't believe in stupid dogs, only unambitious (one might even say inhibiting) owners.

I do not, however, currently enjoy the necessary honour of living with a dog, instead being drooled and occasionally sat upon by a fat, eleven-year-old, somewhat toothless cat.

They say write what you know, and so far I have a character, and to a lesser extent an entire species, based on or influenced by my inept observations of the feline nature. According to my fair and unbiased assessment of catkind, the character is murderous, spiteful, graceful, hateful, extremely fast, distractible, equal parts cynical and naïf, excessively interested in moving objects, rather dim, insecure, almost impossible to keep hold of if he wants to escape, utterly convinced of his own species' superiority to all other forms of life, and obsessed with balls of yarn. (In addition, he loves high places, can't bear to have his tummy touched and really hates getting wet.)

The character fiercely denies being kittyish in the least. He does not have fur, pointy ears or a tail and never wears bells around his neck, so we will have to believe him.

Good stuff coming up on Beeb radio: Sci Fi Season

Particularly Iain M Banks's The State of the Art (Culture novel squee, even if it's his least well-regarded one), Robert Rankin (lunatic ♥)'s The Brightonomicon and Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (artificial cylinderworld).