Road to High Saffron

One of my favourite books of all time is one I "read" (kind of) in 2011:  Shades of Grey:  The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde.

Japser Fforde is one of my favourite authors.  I've kept up with his Thursday Next series, even though I'm pretty sure it should have stopped at book four.  I've been waiting patiently for another book in the Nursery Crimes series, although I'm beginning to think I won't get one.  I've only read the first book in the Last Dragonslayer series, but that's just because I haven't finalised my birthday list yet...

... and I loved the first book of the Shades of Grey series, and would dearly love to believe there's going to be a second (although, as I have recently noted, sometimes books are better off without sequels).

I say I "read" (kind of) the book because I haven't actually read the whole thing from start to finish.  I listened to the audiobook version one holiday and asked for the print copy for Christmas that year. When I got it, I had a few other books to read as well, so I didn't actually re-read the book, just read bits here and there to remember key lines.

So, I heard the book, more than I read it.  I still loved it.  I still love it.  It's possibly the best post-apocalyptic story I've ever read (if for no other reason than it's set so far beyond the "something that happened" that Fforde can comfortably make a post-apocalyptic story based around a guy who lied about seeing a rabbit).

I've been thinking about it in the light of the whole Hunger Games thing, recently.  There are a lot of strange similarities between the Colourtocracy and the Capitol.  Mostly, though it's the excellent world-building and way everyone is just getting on with life in this "completely normal" place, in a future that's both simpler and more complex (technologically speaking) than our present.

Plus, both books involve a game where blood will be spilled (although, in Road to High Saffron, it's just the boys v girls hockey match...)

When I have time to re-read books, I'll have to go back to that one - if only to spend some quality time in a universe where everyone knows the hex codes for colours (it could save your life) and people say things like "Munsell's hoo-haw!" when they swear.

Many died, and some survived

I just read these sentences at the beginning of an LPLP article by Humphry Tonkin (2011):

"The Holocaust had a profound effect on the Esperanto movement. Many of the
leading members of the Esperanto language community perished, and some
survived."

My first instinct was to say "well, duh."  It seems redundant to say "some survived" - after all, he didn't say *everyone* died, did he - just "many"...

But, on reflection, those are two very different tragedies which both deserve acknowledgement.

Many scientists and scholars died in the Holocaust.  So did a lot of other people, but the scientists and scholars had their ranks thinned rather considerably.  Losing your thinkers in a bloody war is a tragedy for any field of study - I think you can't look at any area of scholarship in Europe without wondering how it would have progressed if so many of the researchers, inventors and ground-breakers hadn't been stripped away.

But... some survived.  Living through the Holocaust and losing family, friends and colleagues has got to have an effect on the way you see the world.  The scientists and scholars that survived would have been altered in ways we can't even begin to imagine.  How did that alter the paths they chose, the things they studied and the conclusions they drew?

Many died, and some survived.  Both the deaths and the survivors had a profound impact on the way their fields were researched and the way the science moved forward.

Mockingjay

Okay, I'm talking about the ending of the last book in this post, so anyone who doesn't want spoilers LOOK AWAY NOW.


So, I've just spent the last week hot-housed in Katniss Everdeen's head, more or less, and it's feeling a little hard to shake.  I read the first half of Hunger Games over the course of a week or so, whenever I had time to get in a bit of free reading and enough head-space to deal with something more complicated than a magazine.  Then, for the week I had free over Christmas, I finished the rest of the book in a couple of evenings, and grabbed the second book.

I blitzed through the second book and immediately reached for the third, which I practically read in one day (I actually started it the night before), whilst holed up in a house taking care of a dog who hates storms.  With the storms coming and going outside and the dog trying to figure out how to climb onto my lap, I followed Katniss down the rather desperate and depressing path she was on - and came out the other side of the book feeling incredibly bummed out.

The third book of the trilogy is terrible.  And, by association, the second book in the trilogy is also terrible.

The first book was one of those "wow" books - the ones that make you sit up and take notice.  No matter what you may think of the characters or the settings, it lodges itself firmly in your brain and makes you want to follow the characters wherever they may take you.  The first book in the Wheel of Time series was like that.  Same, unfortunately, with Twilight.

And, like both of those series, the second book is something that pushes you forward to whatever will follow, even if (in hindsight) nothing much happens in the grand scheme of things.

What these series all have in common was the fact that I followed the characters further than I really wanted to in the subsequent books.  At some point, I realised I was hating it.  I no longer liked these people.  I no longer cared about them the way I did when I started - I just wanted to see what happened to them in the end.  The Twilight books made me want to punch all of the characters in the head (and then track down the author and smack her around a little).  The Wheel of Time series just dragged on for so long that I realised it had lost everything that had drawn me to it in the first place.

As for The Hunger Games series?  Well, the first book was something magical.  The second book built you towards something that could be very, very good.  The third book lost the plot towards the end and left you feeling sad, depressed and surrounded by loose ends - loose ends which were kind of tied up, but just not satisfactorily.  No closure.

Whatever drew me to the characters and the story in the first book was either dropped, killed or maimed by the end of the third.  I could see how it could all come to this - there was an extent to which the story really couldn't end well.  It was like the author had grabbed the tail of a snake, and there was no way she could put it down without either killing the snake or being bitten.  The ending was always going to be tinged with sadness...  But I couldn't figure out why it felt so "blah".  Then I realised:  I still wanted to know what happened to the "star-crossed lovers from District 12", and they hadn't been properly acquitted.

It felt like Suzanne Collins gave up on that story, by the end.  Actually, it kind of felt like she gave up, full-stop.  After following Katniss in almost real time for the first two-and-a-half books, the end of the third flagged into a different kind of story-telling, glossed over things that would have (and should have) been given more attention if they had happened earlier in the piece.  So many things suddenly mentioned, given little attention, and then dismissed.  So many times when someone should have thought of or remembered a key detail (to help connect the past with the present) and didn't.

Back when I used to try to write books, I always struggled with getting past the fifth chapter (or, for short stories, the first third).  My attention span could only keep me going for so long, and then I felt like I really couldn't continue to put the same level of effort into finishing it off.  Most of the time I just didn't finish the next chapter at all, but I would occasionally find myself "getting it over with" - like I was just trying to get to the finish line, but was seriously flagging.

I'd throw in a few half-hearted ideas and then try to pad them out to make it look like I actually had a plan, rather than just an idea of what I wanted the last line to be and a flaky concept of how to get there that I really couldn't flesh out properly.  This is probably why I hardly ever finish things - I hate the downhill slope I inevitably find myself on.  Well, that, and I'm rather crap, really.

It felt like this happened in the last few chapters of Mockingjay.  Like Collins starting concentrating on a way to get it to the finish line and ended up going for impact, rather than resolution.

Sure, war is hell and people you love will die.  It did feel a little bit like we were killing characters off just for the sake of the "oh, no, not her!" moment.  The fact that no one (and I mean no one) commented on the fact that the entire series of events was triggered by saving this character, so killing her off at the end pretty much made everything in the middle pointless, seemed odd.  I would have thought a moment of reflection - even of the "why am I alive and not her?" kind - would have been in order.

And the thing with the presidents?  "I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him.  I'm going to ignore the deaths of people close to me so I can kill him.  I'm going to push on against all the odds so I can kill him... I'm going to have one conversation with him that I don't really think about quite as much as I would have, if I had had this conversation in the last book, and then I'm going to kill someone else.  Oh, he died too.  Well, there you go."

And after so much angst over figuring out what she does and doesn't feel about Peeta, she never even spares a thought for how he'd feel if she succeeding in killing herself?  And then never feels bad about not giving him a thought?

Which brings us to the star-crossed lovers thing.  In the first book, there was basically an A plot and a B plot.  The A plot was a coming-of-age-under-challenging-circumstances thing.  Girl who tries to shield her heart from harm meets Boy who would do anything to touch her heart; they struggle together against a challenge, and will he win her in the end - will she connect with her feelings in order to feel something for him?  The B plot was post-apocalyptic-world-where-maybe-it's-time-for-a-rebel-uprising.  Will the Girl defy the powers-that-be and live?

In the first book, the B plot was an undercurrent that made the A plot a little more interesting.  In the second book, both plots took equal space.  In the third book, the B plot took over almost entirely, then beat the A plot to a bloody pulp.  Who has time for love stories when we have war and cruelty and reluctant heroes falling apart?

So, by the end of the book, the love story is almost completely trashed and abandoned and has become a story about damaged people trying to work out if what they once felt for each other (whatever that might have been, since Katniss never did work it out) is going to stop them from killing each other.  Oh, but wait!  Here, at the very end, are two paragraphs saying that they eventually got a bit better and lived the rest of their lives mostly-okay-ever-after.

In the end, Collins gave more attention to the food served in the Capitol and District 13 than she did to the resolution of the "star-crossed lovers" plot.

Given how much we invested in them in the first book, I feel we deserved more.  We needed that moment where she realises she really does love him to be more than a pithy handful of lines thrown in at the end to tidy things up.  It warrants a whole scene, dammit!

So, you could say I'm not happy with the third book in the trilogy.  Since the second book was building up to the third, and isn't worth reading on its own, I'm not happy with that one, either.  The first book was brilliant, though.  I'd recommend it to anyone.

Nothing Special?

"It doesn't really feel like Christmas, this year, does it?"

I've heard that from a few quarters.  I've heard a few different reasons for behind the lack of festive feelings, too:

• It's not the same without small children
• We've all been so busy, it's just kind of snuck up on us
• It's become such a bother - so much to *do* and not really much fun...

The last time I felt really Christmassy was a few years ago when I decided to make all of the decorations myself, out of paper.  It was back when my grandmother was still at home, and my mother and I were living with her to take care of her.

I don't know why I came up with the idea, I just felt I needed to actively do something for Christmas.  That, and all of the traditions we used to have when our family was bigger than four people (the youngest of which being 29 or 30) had pretty much atrophied and died.

We no longer "all got together" for Christmas - we were "all together" more or less full time.  My uncle was the only one who had to come over - and he came over three or four days a week, anyway.

We used to get dressed up and go out for Christmas lunch, and then come back to my grandmother's house for Christmas dinner.  Now, we just ate lunch at home, stayed there and ate the exact same food for dinner (and then ate it again the next day, because we don't eat much, but we still have enough food to feed a family of ten).

My grandmother used to make Christmas themed food for most of December - shortbread, fruitcake, that sort of thing.  She wasn't up to cooking any more, and my mother and I were both so busy with work and things that neither of us really remembered to do simple things like baking.

And, then, the food we did eat?  Well, apart from the prawns, there was nothing we couldn't or didn't get any time during the year, if we felt like it.  Heck, we could get the prawns whenever we wanted, too, we just didn't.

So, I thought I'd make a new tradition.  A tradition where we took the time to make things for Christmas.  I encouraged everyone to join in with me, bought enough coloured paper for us to deck out the whole place and found some easy designs to make (paper chains, paper angels, paper snowflakes, paper baubles, paper water-balloons-that-could-be-baubles...).

My family did not take to the idea.  In fact, my mother and grandmother both acted like I was somehow insulting them.  Not only did they not try to join in, they also both glared at me for asking them to.  Oh, and they steadfastly insisted on decorating the house with the plastic baubles and tinsel that they already had in the Christmas decorations box, and made it clear that *my* paper decorations were just silly, thank-you-very-much, but we'll include them anyway to make you happy.

Apparently, in my house, things should only be handmade by small children.  In the absence of small children, they need to come from a store and be shiny.  Actually, I think it had more to do with my family's inbuilt hatred of anything that seems fake.  They probably thought the idea of imposing a "new tradition" was tacky.

I didn't try it again next year, which was a bit of a pity because I really enjoyed it.

It was something that I just didn't do every other day of the year.  It was pretty pathetic (I'm about as dexterous as a trout), and quite frankly a small child might have done just as well... but it was still me going out of my way to make an effort to celebrate something.

I think that's what has been missing from most of my Christmasses.  I don't know about yours.  The lack of a special effort.

I don't feel very festive, because I turn around one week before Christmas and say:  "hey, it's Christmas - I should do something..."  and then I throw something together that takes no real time or effort on my part, is only there for a week and then gets thrown back into the box.

I don't make or find or do anything special for Christmas - and I don't look forward to seeing the effect of things I make or find or do.  We just go through the motions and get it over with.  Even the gifts we buy seem more like a chore than anything else:  "Oh, gawd, Christmas is coming.  What do you even want for a gift?"  "I have no idea".

So, this is my theory on why Christmas doesn't feel special or festive any more:

I'm doing it wrong.

Angela Harding

Discovered a new artist today, courtesy of Slightly Foxed:

Angela Harding.  She does this sort of thing:

Which seems pretty darn awesome to me.

Van

You know how, occasionally, you get to certain points of your life and want a thing?  Like getting to age X and thinking "why don't I have a house?"  Or age Y and thinking "Damn it, I forgot to secure a family to take care of me in my old age!"

I've been feeling a need to stave of my impending mortality by buying a new car.  I've never owned a new car.  Every car I've had has either been on loan, an ancient hand-me-down or a second-hand car that was at least eight-years old when I bought it.

My current car is actually my mother's old car.  When she bought a new one we used my car (which was older than hers) as a trade-in, and I inherited hers.  Technically, it still belongs to her - we never bothered transferring anything into my name.  I don't actually own anything at all.

Now, maybe my complete lack of property is a good thing - it fits in with my desire to be a stateless nomad.  It doesn't fit in with my desire to pack my life up into the back of my combi van in order to be that stateless nomad.

It also doesn't fit in with my desire to own a large farmhouse where I can raise six kids on a diet of fresh apple pie and make jam and vinegar for the local markets - but then again nothing in my real life does.  I'm not entirely convinced that's even my dream.  I think I borrowed it from a version of myself from an alternate reality.

Anyway, over the years I have often felt a desire to at least own a new car for a little while.  I know the car will age, but it seems as though it would be nice to have a brand-new car at least once.  However, I keep meeting some strange resistance on this front.

I have this conversation with my family on a semi-regular basis that goes a little like this:

Me:  I'm thinking of buying a new car.
Them:  You don't need one yet.  Drive the car you have into the ground a bit more, first.
Me:  I'm thinking of fixing up the car I currently have.
Them:  Why bother?  It's so old it's not worth repairing.

Which, to my mind, translates as:  "you don't deserve nice things.  Keep your bomb and be happy about it."

But, you get that.

Anyway, due to the fact that things have been slowly disintegrating on my mother's old car, I'm slowly convincing my family that they don't need to keep talking me out of buying a new one.  The fact that every single other member of my immediate family has bought a new car over the past few years might also have something to do with it.

So, now the conversation has taken a similar, but more peculiar turn.  I am at a point in my life where I want boot space.  I don't want to scale down from the station wagon I'm currently driving - I want to scale up.  A ute would be nice - a van would be better.

Utes and vans aren't cheap.  They also aren't what my family have in mind.  Both my mother and uncle bought smaller cars when they upgraded, and they don't quite understand why I would want a larger one.  My uncle knows a thing or two about cars, and I keep asking him what he thinks about Ute A or Van B - to which he answers "why don't you just get a hatchback and learn to tow a trailer?"

It seems vans and utes cost money (duh), and are expensive to run (duh, again) and come with all sorts of features that don't interest him at all (I can live with that).

I think he's starting to finally take me seriously, though, and give me some real advice about the kind of cars I actually want to own.  You never know - by the time I can actually afford one of these things, my family may have finally made peace with the fact that I want it.

English was my first love...

...but will it be my last?  English of the future, or English of the past?

I've noticed, lately, that I've been dismissive of English.  I've been having such an interesting time exploring other languages that I've fallen into the trap of seeing the baggage of English rather than the magic of it.

There was a time when I was spell-bound by the linguistic possibilities that English could offer - and the intricacies of the language throughout time.  I studied Old English, Middle English and Jacobean English at university and loved every minute of it.  I loved the poetry of the language itself, but also the joy of the literature.  Plays, poetry, novels...  I revelled in the written word of my native language.  I used to write sonnets just for the pleasure of playing with the rhythms and structures of the language.

I seem to have left that somewhere.

When I started learning German I was excited by what it could teach me about English - English is a Germanic language, after all.  Then I started to get enough of a grip on German and Estonian that I began to see the poetry in those languages, and I'm so hungry for these shiny new words that I've forgotten the joy I used to find in my own.

Also, I'm so caught up in the global language debate that I tend to see English as something holding people back, rather than a source of wonder and poetry.  I feel so strongly that everyone should try to learn another language, that I've almost begun to hate the English language purely for its hegemony.  It's such a shame that people who speak English don't feel the need or desire to learn anything else - and such a shame that most speakers of other languages see learning English as the best use of their time.

Granted, anything is better than having French as the international language (that has to be the worst spelling system known to man), but I don't think English should be the ultimate lingua franca of the world.  I don't think it's good for native English speakers - it makes us lazy and gives us a sense of cultural superiority that we don't deserve.

But...

But I used to love English.  I used to love exploring the nooks and crannies of the language - the ebb and flow of the grammar, the endless possibilities and nuances of the vocabulary.  I used to cherish the way a word like "cherish" could add a completely different colour to a sentence than, say, "adore".  I used to love seeing how we gathered together words from all over the world and piled them up in an almost reckless order, like a bowerbird gathering shiny things for his bower.

I loved the way you can say "a gaggle of school girls" to evoke a mental comparison between school girls and geese.

Evoke.  Such a beautiful word.

I guess I still love English, but I've stopped appreciating it.

I have finally decided to take the TESOL subjects for my Master of Applied Linguistics next year.  It took me a while to make up my mind.  I knew that, with my background as an English teacher and my recent acquisition of a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching, the TESOL subjects would be useful, logical and relevant.  I could probably get a job anywhere in the world teaching English...

But I wanted to play with different toys.  For some reason, even though all of the projects I want to do for a PhD could easily be done from a TESOL perspective (and the TESOL subjects would be useful grounding for that), I wanted to look at them from different angles.  Two years ago I would have jumped at the chance to learn about TESOL, but right now the idea of teaching English almost bores me.

Language is such a big, big pie, and English is just one slice of it.  A rather large slice, but only one slice none-the-less.  Yet I will never know another language as well as I know English.  And at the end of my days, when all my knowledge bleeds away, I will have Shakespeare and Yeats long after Liiv and Goethe have gone to dust.

And that's okay.