Cool, and Chaucer

I got another audiobook! Canterbury Tales, unabridged, listening pleasure, mine, for the purpose of. I feel rich.

All happy families are alike

As I’m typing this, Anna Karenina is being downloaded to my computer as 712 mp3 files. (Part 156 coming down right now.) I bought it for EUR 12 from the site emusic.com where we buy a lot of excellent music. It’s a very good music store, with a LOT of good music, cheaper by far than iTunes store and without any limitations to how many devices you can play the music on (there’s two people in our family, we have one computer each at home, J has another computer at work, and we both have an iPod. This doesn’t exceed the number of times you can play an iTunes store bought track, but I think it comes close. And I like not supporting that kind of stupidity by buying from them, anyway.) And if a track you’ve once bought is lost for some reason, you can download it again from emusic.com without any extra fee.

This wasn’t going to be a sales pitch for emusic, though I do recommend checking them out, for anybody who is interested in music or audio books. I look forward to listening to almost 34 hours of Anna Karenina. I’ve never read it, as a matter of fact, just excerpts. An audio book is a very different animal from a regular book, not only for the obvious reason that it’s mediated by a person narrating it but also because there is no skimming, and the reading pace is set by another person. The narrator is very important, of course. As I wrote a few days ago, I wouldn’t want to listen to an American voice narrating Jane Austen - though that would depend on the person’s accent. Too-flat narrations are no good either, not if I’m paying money to listen to them, and I’m a bit sensitive to overly theatrical performances as well. A while ago, somebody read his own book on Swedish radio and it was just really painful to listen to, because he was trying to do various regional accents. Which is not a good idea unless you are a genious at accents.

There are enough excellent narrators in the world to keep me happy, though. Torgny Lindgren, as I mentioned before, and also my grade 7-9 Swedish teacher who taught us the history of literature partly by reading parts of the classics to us, making them come alive to us in a way that mere reading of the works wouldn’t have done (and I say this, who has always been fond of reading silently to myself.) Unfortunately neither of those gentlemen is available through emusic, which limits itself to English-language literature. I’m looking forward to discovering the best English narrators; I know of a few I like very much, but there has to be hundreds and hundreds that I would like if I’d heard them.

The download is complete and J is setting the table for lunch, so I’ll wrap this up. Keep listening to books.

Dunnett

I really enjoy reading Dorothy Dunnett. The first time I read Niccolò Rising I found it slightly hard going, but this time I was better prepared, both for the prose style which is lovely but demanding, and for the setting which is rather alien: Flanders in the 15th century. I very much look forward to reading the next book, now.

And tomorrow I’m going to get my eyes checked for new glasses. About time, too.

You’d love to buy a nice egg beater, wouldn’t you, fuzzy face?

It is rather bizarre to hear an American narrating Pride and Prejudice. She’s not at all a bad narrator. On the contrary, she reads very competently and the recording is a labour of love. The problem lies with me - I just can’t listen to that book read in an American accent. I got as far as “Have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?” before switching it off. I suppose this is terribly narrow of me, although of course P&P is a special case, because I have seen the BBC series from 1995 so many times that those actors are become the real people in the book. (I will listen to her narration of Huckleberry Finn however.)

Do other people think about accents like that? To the point where the “wrong” accent really jars and makes an audio book, a movie or a play less enjoyable? Frodo in the Lord of the Rings movie, Elijah Wood, is another example - his accent (as well as his age) was so very wrong for the part and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I would not be able to listen to a Scanian narrate a book by Torgny Lindgren, either, i somebody would come up with the bizarre idea of recording such a thing. I really take these things too seriously, don’t I - it makes me enjoy things less! But then on the other hand, hearing Torgny Lindgren himself read one of his books, or David Case read P G Wodehouse, is such a pleasure. I guess it is related to listening to a lot of a particular kind of music and losing the ability to enjoy an inferior recording.

The title of this post? It’s not at all related to the contents.

Robert Jordan and face strategies

This is something I have surely mentioned before, but for me, there are three main components to a book that can make me like it or not: style, plot, and characters. Of these, style is probably the most central. There are books I know are really good that I just really dislike because of the style.

At the moment, I am reading Dorothy Dunnett and, for some reason, Robert Jordan. Yes, I am indeed reading the Time Wheel series, skipping as much as possible of the dialogue and the descriptions of people, not to mention inner monologues; some chapters I avoid entirely. Jordan could really plot a story, and I am curious to see what will happen. I have read the first six books before, as a matter of fact, and even rather liked the first four of them, then. Not so much this time.

There are some rules about how people in Jordan’s books behave. All people, without exception. Most important of these rules is that if a man is talking to a woman or a woman to a man, the main purpose of the conversation is to score a point of some kind. This is usually also true when women are talking to each other, and occasionally when men converse with each other. However, many men are able to carry on a conversation that is at least reminiscent of something two real people could have. Never, ever so in discourse between people of different genders. Of course there are people like that in real life, but in Jordan’s world it is true of everybody. My theory is that Jordan was overly obsessed with the strategies that sociolinguists refer to as positive and negative face, strategies that people use quite unconsciously to negotiate communications (at least this is true for English, and also for Swedish and many other Indo-European languages. It is always dangerous to assume that a feature of language is universal.) But Jordan’s characters don’t do it unconsciously, they think about the negotiating strategies all the time, the same way we do when we meet people from a very different culture, for instance, or our new boyfriend’s parents, or some other situation where we are very anxious not to offend and to say the right thing. Or, on the other hand, there could be situations where we consciously use these strategies with an aim to say the wrong thing; my point is that the normal case is not to pay this much conscious attention. Even people like me who often feel quite awkward around other people including people I know well, don’t think about the face strategies that much. Jordan’s people do, though. All the time.

They also sometimes ignore the basic face strateies in a rather unrealistic way in order to score points. Communicating is a game played to win. Again, yes, there are peple like that, but there are also people - the majority - who are not like that, in the real world.

And that is the heart of why his characters are so unrealistic, unlovable and all-out annoying, I think. It’s not primarily that no men can ever understand a woman, and no woman ever understand a man (although all women understand one another perfectly even when they are from radically different cultures. The men are again somewhat closer to real people, but only somewhat.) It is not primarily that every single person acts and thinks like an extreme stereotype of a moody teenager, and that none of them develops or matures - they are still very young 13-year-olds, mentally, by the end of book 6. It is not primarily that values and morals are American conservative values and morals, everywhere on the supposedly very huge continent and outside it. All these things are annoying, but the obsession with face, and the underlying premise that communication is a game where you win or lose, that’s what makes the dialogue and characterisations jar so much that I have to skim rather than read them.

And yet I do read these books, for the story. And I read Dunnett at the same time, as a balm for the soul.

Mythaxis Magazine

Mythaxis is a new online short story magazine, which publishes fantastic fiction (that is, science fiction and fantasy) in English. There is one issue, just published, available at the moment; I have read two of the stories and enjoyed them, so have no compunction about linking to the site. Good quality writing by people I’d like to read more from; mostly previously unknown names but also one story by HG Wells. They welcome submissions of sf/fantasy stories and artwork, btw.

I know the editor of Mythaxis, he is gil of MCiOS fame. I knew he was into sf related activities, and his writing is on par with his widdershins strile. Read Mythaxis Magazine.

Oh, and also you might want to read the writings of Cedric Walker. He wrote for Slant and Operation Fantast and all those famous fanzines, back when.

Gosh wow. We received four Unshelved albums in the mail today — a gift from our friend Jay the Librarian. And all four albums were signed — with a dedication to me!

The envelope was gorgeous, too, covered in stamps, one each in the Wonders of America series.

Gosh and, if I may say so, wow. Thank you so much, Jay.

Recent reads:

* The entire Aubrey-Maturin series (apart from the unfinished one), 20 novels. It wasn’t the first time I read the series, and I predict that it won’t be the last time either; though next time I probably won’t read all 20 in a row without other reading in between. The books are exciting, they are well-researched, and they are laugh-out-loud funny. They contain some of the most memorable characters in any fiction I’ve ever read — as well as very vivid portraits of life aboard a ship during the Napoleonic Wars. I can’t believe I ran out of Aubrey-Maturin books. Waah!

* Santiago by Mike Resnick. It’s a tall tale, a yarn in the tradition of Paul Bunyan or Joe Magarac, with larger-than-life characters livin’ on the frontier — except the frontier is the edge of the civilized parts of the galaxy. It’s a fun story, the kind of story where the plot holes don’t matter, and it was an enjoyable read if not at all in the league of the previous novels I read.

At the moment I’m reading Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines, a young adult SF novel which is quite excellent. I can’t believe I hadn’t even heard of it before.

The Husband and I read aloud to each other, most evenings (that is, every evening unless we are completely knackered). Here is a chronological list of the books we’ve read so far; either I reading to him or he to me:

Frans G. Bengtsson: Röde Orm, 2000
Tove Jansson: Kometen kommer, 2000
Tove Jansson: Trollkarlens hatt, 2001
Tove Jansson: Muminpappans memoarer, 2001
Tove Jansson: Farlig midsommar, 2001
Tove Jansson: Trollvinter, 2001
Tove Jansson: Det osynliga barnet, 2001
Tove Jansson: Pappan och havet, 2002
Tove Jansson: Sent i november, 2001
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten: Bock i örtagård, 2002
Eric Linklater: Det blåser på månen, 2002
Eva Ibbotson: Den stora spökräddningen, 2002
Nils-Olof Franzén: Agaton Sax klipper till, 2002
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten: Historier från Färs, 2003
Rudolf Raspe: Baron Münchhausens märkvärdiga äventyr, 2003
Stig Claesson: Vem älskar Yngve Frej?, 2003
L. Frank Baum: Trollkarlen från Oz, 2003
Nils Holmberg (transl): Tusen och en natt 1, 2003
Eva Ibbotson: Hemligheten på perrong 13, 2003
Nils Holmberg (transl): Tusen och en natt 2, 2003
Nils Holmberg (transl): Tusen och en natt 3, 2004
Irmelin Sandman Lilius: Enhörningen, 2004
Torgny Lindgren: Bat Seba, 2004
J. R. R. Tolkien: Ringens brödraskap, 2004
Håkan Nesser: Barins triangel, 2004
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten: Bombi Bitt och jag, 2005
Edith Unnerstad: Kastrullresan, 2005
Eric Lundqvist: Ingen tobak, inget halleluja, 2005
Kenneth Grahame: Det susar i säven, 2005
Erik Granström: Svavelvinter, 2005
Michael Ende: Momo eller kampen om tiden, 2005
Håkan Nesser: och Piccadilly Circus ligger inte i Kumla, 2005
J. R. R. Tolkien: De två tornen, 2006
Jerome K. Jerome: Tre män i en båt, 2006
Jules Verne: Till jordens medelpunkt, 2006
J. R. R. Tolkien: Konungens återkomst, 2006
Jaroslav Hasek: Den tappre soldaten Svejk, 2006

At the moment, J is reading part 4 of Tusen och en natt - which is 1001 Arabian Nights, by the way - as you can also see in the left-hand margin of this blog.