Skellig decoded

So, for those of you who just sighed at the sight of a post in poorly written German, allow me to elaborate on the last entry.

Skellig is a book by David Arnold.  I had seen the telemovie a few months back and I thought I should probably read the book at some point... but then I simply forgot it existed.  About a week ago on of my friends mentioned it on Facebook as a highlight of a recent reading club thing, so I decided to borrow the copy in my library and read it myself.

It was a really good book.  I can thoroughly recommend it - especially to people looking for something a young teenage boy wouldn't completely hate (but isn't full of bum-jokes or "warriors of the whatever").  It's something I consider a good stretching book in that it half straddles a few different genres, so it can move you out of reading the same thing all the time.  It's a little bit fantasy, and little bit family drama, a little bit kids-own-adventure.  Once upon a time it would have been classified as "fantasy", but these days I guess it would be "speculative fiction".

The lead character, Michael, narrates the story, which takes place over a few days in his life.  His family has just moved house to a complete wreck of a place.  The previous owner was too old and infirm to take care of the house (he basically moved into one room on the ground floor in the end - even having a toilet installed), and the place needs a lot of repair work in order to get it ready for the new baby...

Except the baby came early.  Too early.  Everyone is trying to fix the house and worry about the baby at the same time.  Michael feels incredibly out of sorts.  He isn't sure what he should or could be doing, and he's worried that the baby might die.  He isn't worried without reason - the baby really might die.  He hopes he can make her better just by thinking about her - and getting other people to think about her as well.  Even the weird man he found in his shed.

There's a weird man in the shed.  He's just huddled in the back corner, behind piles of junk stored by the previous owner, apparently living off bugs, mice and the occasional Chinese takeaway   He's grumpy, crotchety, stiff with arthritis and waiting to die.   This distresses Michael no end, as he doesn't particularly want anyone in his house to die - even the weird people his parents don't know about.

Speaking of weird people, Michael's new neighbour, Mina, is the kind of girl who would no doubt be the weirdest kid in the school - if she actually went to school.  She's home-schooled, which perplexes Michael initially, but then turns out to be very useful.  She helps Michael get the strange man out of the shed (which is very unsound and might collapse at any moment), and in the process they discover something quite remarkable.

Let's just say the strange man might definitely be strange, but he might not necessarily be a man.

The book consists of very short chapters (most only two pages long), which are quite easy to breeze through.  It's the sort of book where you just want to read "one more chapter" before you put it down.  It gets oddly hypnotic, in places, but vocabulary is, by and large, true to the character.  It sounds like something a "Nothern" boy might say.  I'm not sure exactly where the book is set, but it seems to be somewhere in the North-East of England.  I'm also not sure exactly what age Michael is, but I'd say somewhere between 9 and 12.

One of the things I really liked about the book was the relationship between Michael and his father.  They clearly love each other very much and get along quite well.  There are a few fights and scuffles, but you always get the sense that Michael can see that his father cares about him and is concerned about him.  It makes a pleasant change from the kids' books where the parents are the obtuse people who are getting in the way, or the jerks who just don't understand.

Now, I obviously didn't say all of this in my last post, but I did, at least, say this:

"It was very good, and quite interesting"

Practice German Journal: Skellig

Ich habe das Buch Skellig von David Almond gelesen.  Es war sehr gut und ganz interessant.  Der Held des Buch (auch der Icherzähler) ist ein Junge, der Michael heisst.  Seine Familie hat eines neues Haus gekauft, und Michael ist nicht froh.  Das Haus is alt und heruntergekommen - es braucht viel reparieren.  Aber, das ist nicht warum Michael nicht froh ist.  

Michael ist nicht froh weil seine kleine Schwester sehr krank ist.  Sie war zu früh geboren.  Sie ist sehr klein und sehr schwach.  Er ist besorgt wegen sie.

Aber...  Etwas seltsam ist in seine Garage.  Ein Mensch?  Ein Mann?  Eine Kreatur?

Ein Engel?

Mit seine neue Freundin, Mina, helfe Michael der Mann.  Michael und Mina finden etwas erstaunlich, und lernen viel.

Michael ist eines sympathisch Charakter.  Er scheint meistens realistisch - jedoch manchmal ganz unwahrscheinlich.

Die kurzer Kapitels des Buch gefällt mir.  Das Buch war sehr einfach zu lesen. Ich fand es schwer zu anzuhalten.  Ich empfehle dieses Buch Ihnen.  Es war gut.

Cheese smuggling!

Something to warm the heart of every Thursday Next fan:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19751695

The journal

Every now and then I realise I haven't been following my own advice.  I was flicking through George Kutash's book on learning skills for language learners (very late-80s/early-90s, but still worth a look) when I came across a chapter where he talks about replacing action with substitute action (or something like that - the book is in my house, this computer is in my office).

He talks about how we frequently focus on the tasks we're good at to act as a substitute for the tasks we actually need to work on.

It's something I do far too often.  I will often do something where I can see quick and obvious improvement instead of taking the time to work on something harder and slower going.

It's also very similar to one of the study skills techniques I often recommend to my students:  the "what am I avoiding" question.  At some point, you will notice that you are actively avoiding doing a particular task.  That's the task at which you are probably weakest, and the one that probably needs to be directly addressed.

For me, it's writing (well, producing).  I'll happily read another grammar rule to avoid actually producing a sentence.  Seems strange, given that I would probably write underwater if I felt the urge...

...which is probably the reason why I avoid doing it in my target languages.  Because I don't have the skill to write the kinds of things I usually write, it doesn't feel enjoyable to me.  I have to rethink and "simplify" everything I want to say to the point where it isn't what I want to say anymore.

I had plans to write a journal in both languages, and I let it all go while I distracted myself with reading other things instead.

It's time to face the music and dance, though.  Yes, I will write poorly.  Yes, I will get the sentence structure wrong.  Very, very wrong.  Yes, I will struggle to find the right vocabulary (especially since I really should stop looking things up in Google - it's not a good habit to get into).

And, yes, I will occasionally post my ugly, ugly journal entries on this blog.  I see no reason why I should suffer alone.

Maybe I am - just a little

Learning Esperanto, that is.

I really shouldn't.  I'm wasting valuable time that I could be spending on revising and shoring up my German and Estonian.  But...

But it's like a cross between a language, a game and a cult.  It's just so much fun to play with.

And, apparently, I *am* the average Esperanto speaker.  I read a blog post that listed the following people as the folk who are most likely to learn Esperanto:

• Travellers
• Geeks
• Language Lovers
• Vegetarians/Vegans

Now, I'm pretty sure those are meant to be separate categories, but the only description I don't match is vegetarian... and I have a habit of ordering vegetarian meals at restaurants anyway.

So, apparently it's fate.  Nothing for it - I'm going to have to learn Esperanto.

And the word of the day is...

...dubitative

It means means using a modal verb that indicates "showing doubt about whether an event will occur" (LING550 lecture notes): You might make it on time

The other modals also have fun words:

Obligative = must (you must pay the rent)
Permissive = may (you may be excused)
Abilitative = can (but I can't pay the rent!)

In prescriptive grammar, "can" would always be abilitative, I suppose, but in descriptive grammar "can" can be used for permissive moods

Hey, wait a minute... "I'll pay the rent!"

Were does something like shall/will come into this?  That's not in my notes...

The Ultimate Solution

Of course, if you really want to avoid the problem of having to fend of vampires from the unreliable safety of a vampire-proof bunker that's bound to fail eventually, you could just jump the cue and become a vampire earlier in the piece.  No messy, being-pulled-to-pieces-by-vampiric-hoards scenes, that way.

Ever since I read Matheson's I Am Legend, I've found the movie adaptations a bit, well, wimpy.  They completely chicken out on the ending.  Both The Omega Man with Charlton Heston and I am Legend with Will Smith insist on bringing in a real live human girl (forgive the spoilers, but I can assure you there ain't no human girl in the book) and a promise of an enclave of human survivors.  Neville's great contribution to the world is helping humanity.

Pfft!

In the book, it turns out that he's pretty much the last man standing - and he had the situation all wrong.  He wasn't a lone human holding out against mindless monsters that were trying to eat him (although they kind of were trying to eat him); he was a scary serial killer murdering innocent vampires in their sleep.

In the book, everyone who survived the plague became a vampire.  Everyone.  Neville was really the only exception (that we know of).  What was left of society went a little crazy for a short time (well, wouldn't you if you had died and suddenly everyone was a vampire - including you?), and then they got over it.

It's such a brilliantly simple idea.  If everyone is a vampire, then vampires are the normal people.  You get over it and get on with it.  You form yourself a nice little vampiric society where you don't have to worry about being attacked by the vampires.  The only thing you have to worry about is the occasional human serial killer who goes around staking vampires in their sleep.

But those Hollywood types do like to hold out hope for humanity...