9 posts tagged “books”

So, yesterday, I finished reading the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy by Pamela Aidan. The books in this series are An Assembly Such as This, Duty and Desire and These Three Remain.  They were recommended to me and I thought I'd try them out, as I do enjoy the occasional Regency romance.

My impression?  Well, mixed.  Ms. Aidan is a good writer, although she tends to get a little repetitive and could use a good editor.  And why not re-interpret the novel Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's point of view?  But upon reading the books, I felt that the idea fell a bit flat.  The Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy was originally written as fan-fiction and reflects some of the pitfalls of that genre.

Mr. Darcy, for one thing, comes over as somewhat of a "Gary Stu." He's too perfect, and that in fact takes away from some of the appeal he has in the original novel.  Let's not mince words here: Mr. Darcy is somewhat of a jerk in Pride and Prejudice.  He snubs the heroine and her family (and just about everyone else in their neighborhood), he tries his best to separate his friend Mr. Bingley from the girl that he loves because he doesn't believe she loves him enough, and he's really, really full of himself.  Which is half the fun of the character, and it makes it all the more sweeter when this priggish snob finds himself head-over-heels in love with the heroine despite his best efforts to the contrary.

However, in this trilogy, Darcy always has a reason for being the way he is.  He isn't a snob, he's just devoted to his family and his duty to his estate.  He's religious, he's nice to his sister, he helps out his friends and is kind to his overly-annoying relatives.  He also dresses to perfection, fences like a pro, and generally is too perfect.  And boring.

I think the mistake the author made here was becoming too enamoured with the character.  She always wants to show Darcy in the best light, even when he's making mistakes.  This does not make for good literature.

The saving grace of the book was the supporting characters that the author either made up or fleshed out from spear-carriers in the original novel.  Fletcher the valet, Lord Brougham, Colonel Fitzwilliam all shine and are a heck of a lot more interesting than the moping Mr. Darcy.  The added plot of Irish rebels was a bit overdone, but made me think that the writer might have been better off just writing an original Regency Romance and leaving Pride and Prejudice out of the picture entirely.

The trilogy was an entertaining-enough read, but I admit having to struggle to finish it because I was getting bored.  I'd probably not recommend it, unless you are a very big Pride and Prejudice fan.  As for myself, I'm passing the books on to my Mom to see if she might have a different opinion.

So I have these two books out via inter-library loan (ILL), mainly because they're so pricey I can't afford them.

Japanese Women Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, edited by Chieko Mulhern is an interesting dictionary showcasing Japanese female writers.  There's a huge time-gap between the writers of the Heian and Kamakura eras, and then a skip to the Meiji era.  I don't agree with the writer's claim that there were virtually no women writers during the Edo period, particularly since I have translations of some of their poetry and Donald Keene notes some diaries written by women during this period in his book Travelers of a Hundred Ages, which I know that Mulhern read because she quotes it in some of her footnotes!

Setting that aside, the book did have some excellent essays regarding the following Heian and Kamakura era writers:

Ono no Komachi

Ise

Fujiwara Michitsuna's Mother

Sei Shonagon

Izumi Shikibu

Sugawara Takasue's Daughter

Sanuki no Suke

Fujiwara Shunzei's Daughter

Ben no Naishi

Abutsu-ni (the Nun Abutsu)

Nakatsukasa no Naishi

Junii Tameko (Kyogoku/Fujiwara Tameko)

Go-Fukakusa'in (Lady Nijo)

Eifuku Mon'in (Dowager Empress Eifuku)

The essays are excellent, reflecting both biographical information and some critical examinations of these writers' major works.  I'll probably photocopy them (for personal use!  It's allowed!) to refer to later.  If the book were not so expensive, I'd buy it.  There are also many excellent essays on Meiji and Taisho era female writers, but I'm just beginning to dabble in those waters.

The other book is Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Pre-Modern Japan, edited by Barbara Ruch.  This book is a treasure and I hope to be able to afford a copy one day.  As the title reflects, it is a collection of essays (many translated from the Japanese) regarding the subject of women, particularly nuns, and their relation to the Buddhist faith.  The essays include:

Burning Iron against the Cheek: A Female Cleric's Last Resort

Empress Komyo's Buddhist Faith: Her Role in the Founding of the State Temple and Convent System

State Buddhism and Court Buddhism: The Role of Court Women in the Development of Buddhism from the Seventh to Ninth Centuries

Vicissitudes in the Ordination of Japanese Nuns During the Eighth through Tenth Centuries

Tonsure Forms for Nuns: Classification of nuns according to Hairstyle

Buddhist Convents in Medieval Japan

"Nun Shogun": Politics and Religion in the Life of Hojo Masako

Nuns and Other Female Devotees in Genko Shakusho (1322), Japan's First History of Buddhism

Where the Bones Go: Death and Burial of Women in the Heian High Aristocracy

The Original Bomori: Husband and Wife Congregations in Early Shin Buddhism

And these are a portion of the essays--others go into subjects such as Divorce Temples, Scriptural Issues and Iconagraphy, as well as Tokugawa-era practices.  It sounds dry, but actually, it's been very exciting reading so far.  The subject of Women and Buddhism is very new to scholars (even in Japan) and there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.  Makes me wish I could go to graduate school, finally learn Japanese properly, and be able to help in the study of this field! 

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in medieval Japanese women's lives.

Finally finished Everyday Things in Modern Japan, which was excellent.  It really engrossed me in a subject matter (historical demographics) that usually comes out quite dry.  The emphasis is on the Edo period (better records for that time), but the author transitions from the late Sengoku period and also brings in some early Meiji period as well, as her thesis is that traditional Japanese home life didn't really change all that much (from Westernization) until WWII, except among the very rich or the intellectual class.  Highly recommended.

I had two books come in this week that I'm really looking forward to reading, both examples of Heian literature.  (Wait, don't look at me like that, I know we're poor, but they were used ex-library copies and they were cheap!)

The first was The Changelings (Torikaebaya monogatari no kenkyu), translated by Rosette Willig.  This is a story about a brother and sister who decide to "switch places" and each live as the opposite sex.  Yes, it sounds like shoujo manga (wait, it IS shoujo manga!), but the story was actually written by an anonymous author sometime between 1196 and 1202.  They're not sure if the author is male or female.  The writing seems female, but evidently poorly done, so it may be a man imitating a woman, in the same way that Ki no Tsuriyuki did in his Tosa Diary.  Anyway, I've been looking for this book for a long time, but just recently found it at a price I was willing to pay.  It looks like it will be entertaining.

The second was one I stumbled across recently: The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu (Kenreimon-in Ukyo no Daibu shu), translated by Phillip Tudor Harris.  Set during the same time period as the Tale of the Heike, it features some of the Taira clan in a very different light.  Lady Daibu's (not her real name, btw) birthdate is unknown, but scholars put it somewhere between 1150 and 1160. She is last heard from in 1232, when she is approached for a couple of her poems to be included in an imperial collection, the Shinchokusenshu.  I lucked out on this one and only paid $5 (plus shipping, which made it like $9)!  I've only read in about 50 pages so far (all introduction--there's like three introductory essays before the actual translation begins), but so far, so good.  Great, concise information about the end of the Heian era, court life and how to put the work in its historical context.  Also, the next SCA project I wanted to do (besides all the sewing, which comes with the territory) was a shu (poetry collection), and this book is exactly the format I wanted to emulate.

Damn, I'm such a geek!

I've seen some previews of the new movie, The Mist, which looks really good and horribly depressing.  As I have been in poor spirits lately, I decided to forego the movie for now (catch it on DVD later or something) and read the original Stephen King story instead, published as a novella in the collection Skeleton Crew.  It being Stephen King, of course the library had it.  So the night before last, I settled in for what I thought would be a pleasant read.

Yeah, right.

Word to the wise:  Never, ever, EVER stay up until 2 am reading a scary story by Stephen King.  Particularly  one of his short stories written in the heyday of his talents.  Oh, man, I barely slept, and when I did, I dreamed of fogbanks, giant insect-thingies and the small-town grocery store that I used to go to back when I lived in Lanesville, Indiana.

Oh, the story was good.  It was can't-put-the-book-down good.  Hence my staying up way past my bedtime, curled up in the comfy chair with my knees raised up so I could perch the big hardback volume of the book on them.  But dayum, it was freakin' scary!

Some of the story is rather dated. It was written in the early 1980's and some of the plot points (like the protagonist's four-wheel drive car) are not issues nowadays like they would be then.  From spoilers on the internet, some things were updated and evidently the end of the story was changed as well, making the movie in the words of one reviewer "the most depressing thing I have ever seen".  Not that the original ending was all upbeat or anything, but still...

There are some excellent movies that are brilliant, like Schindler's List or Se7en, which I thought were wonderful examples of the filmmakers' craft and which, having seen once, I refuse to watch again because they're so damn depressing.  I have a feeling that The Mist is going to fall into that catagory.  Maybe my old bud from the Elitist Bastards, Mightygodking, will do one of his famous reviews for us?

Anyway, last night, my bedtime reading consisted of a half-chapter from Donald Keene's Seeds in the Heart, which is like being with a good friend who is showing you all the cool things about early Japanese literature.  And is not scary at all.  I am happy to report there were no giant insects in my dreams last night, although there might have been a tanka or two from a guy swathed in layers of silk who looked remarkably like Sanada Hiroyuki.

 

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One of the things that really makes me appreciate the life I have (well, besides watching COPS, which is enough to make anybody happy that they're not on camera with The Men and Women of Law Enforcement) is to read books about The Great Depression of the 1930's.  I grew up hearing stories from my grandparents about how hard life was back then and quite frankly, it doesn't hurt to go back and remember those times and realize how very spoiled we are.  I recently read an excellent book on the subject of the Dust Bowl. 

I picked up The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan on a whim at Borders awhile back and just got around to reading it.  Unlike many history books, this one wasn't a boring rendition of names and statistics, but focused rather on the lives of a handful of people who lived through the Dust Bowl.  Egan gathered a lot of his information through interviews, and then rounded out the stories with rich detail about prairie life during the first part of the 20th century.  He focuses on a few communities in the Texas Panhandle, western Oklahoma, eastern Colorado and western Kansas--the areas hardest hit by the dust storms. 

What's amazing is how this preventable tragedy was just permitted to happen, all in the name of greed.  People were getting rich on wheat crops and land speculation, left and right, and then the drought came (right as the Great Depression hit) and everyone was struck down.  If there hadn't have been a depression at the time, maybe people would have been able to just leave, but in those times, jobs were scarce all over the country.  And what was scary about these circumstances was that you could see the present problems in the American economy being reflected in the mirror of the past.  We have repeated history's mistakes, just in a new fashion.

Egan is a superior writer, and the reader really gets to know and love the people he portrays.  I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in American history, or just in historical writing.  It sounds cliche, but I literally had a hard time putting this book down.  It was a brilliant work of non-fiction.

I also had a chance in the past couple of weeks to sit down and rewatch Twin Peaks, which has been released in a "definitive Gold-Box edition".  It had been awhile since I last saw it and it was just as good as I remembered.  What was really amazing to me was the high quality of the transfer.  I had a copy of the videotapes from way-back-when and had only seen the series in rather low-quality form.  It was a delight to be able to notice new quirky details after all this time.

Twin Peaks first aired when I was still living down in Texas, and I remember meeting up with my co-workers at the mortgage company in the break room every Friday morning to discuss the previous night's episode.  I didn't really care who killed Laura Palmer, but enjoyed watching Agent Cooper work his way through the quirky little town.  I do remember thinking that the high-school kids all looked like refugees from the 1950's most of the time, although watching the series now, it's funny to see that the characters who were more modernly dressed are the ones that seem horribly dated.  Has fashion changed so much since then?  I guess it has.  Dang, where did the time go?

Strangely, even in these days of shows like Heros, Lost, House and the Sopranos, Twin Peaks still stands up as excellent television.  It only goes to show how far ahead of its time the show was.  I really enjoyed my little trip back in time while I watched the series again.  It was like being 24 years old again all over.

The set has plenty of amusing extras (including a set of postcards), although a commentary track might have been nice.  Still, well worth the money, especially if you can catch it on deep discount.

Next up: Honey and Clover (anime version).  I've been meaning to watch HachiKuro for a while now, but now that there's a live-action version coming out this winter, it seems high time.

Recently read a couple of books that were quite good.  The first was Letters of the Nun Eshinni by James C. Dobbins.  Eshinni was a nun who lived during the Kamakura era, and who was married to the monk  Shinran , the founder of the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) school of Buddhism.  In 1921, a cache of her letters was found amongst the belongings of a temple that her great-grandson had founded.  Most of them are fairly mundane, talking about her daily life, transfer of servents, that sort of thing, but she does go into some details about Shinran's life, which is what makes the letters historically important.  However, Dobbins' assertion is that Eshinni's letters also reflect how people actually followed the Buddhist teachings in their everyday life, and that historians often have a fallacy of applying religious texts (which are ideals) to actual practices (which are...um...doable?).  The meat of the book regards Dobbins' outlines of what everyday life was like during Eshinni's time, especially for women, and how everyday people integrated the Buddhist faith into their lives.  Very interesting reading!

Another book in the same genre is Zen Sanctuary of the Purple Robes, a history of the Tokeiji Convent from 1285 to the late 19th century, when it was subject to persecution by the State Shinto cult.  The nuns left and the convent was put under the administrative rule of another temple.  It still exists today.  Tokeiji was one of the so-called "divorce temples" because during the Edo period, women could take shelter there and (eventually) dissolve their marriages.  The book covers some of the early period (especially during the schism of Japanese Buddhism during the Kamakura era), but focuses quite a bit on the Edo period.  Still, it is a fascinating look at women's lives and religion during Japan's medieval and early modern age.

Actually felt like reading fiction recently! I picked up Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Ogiwara Noriko recently and was quite impressed.

The story is vague about the setting, but from the clothing and customs it is certainly very early Japan. (In the afterword, the author admits she never specifically names Japan because she wanted the story to have a more universal feeling to it.) In this world, there is constant warfare between the forces of the God of Light (never named) and the Goddess of Darkness (likewise, never named). GoL and GoD were once married and in love, but after GoD had her children, she died and went into the underworld. GoL tried to follow her, but when he saw her, he was so disgusted by her uncleanliness that he fled, imprisoning her beneath the earth with a large stone.

GoL's twin children, Princess Teruhi and Prince Tsukishiro, now battle the forces of GoD on his behalf. One would think that the forces of Light would be the heroes, but that's not quite the way things work. The heroes in this story are actually those who fight for the forces of Darkness.

This all was just background. The actual story begins with 15-year-old Saya, a village girl who had been adopted after being found wandering in the mountains. She has awful dreams involving a burning village and a mysterious Shrine maiden, but is otherwise pretty normal. Midsummer is coming and the village is gearing up for its Kagai festival, which consists of dancing, songs, and men and women hooking up. Saya promises her friends not to answer the songs of certain young men, and jokingly says that she wants to hook up with Prince Tsukishiro instead.  As it happens, Prince Tsukishiro does show up and takes Saya off to be his handmaiden.

I typed up a long summary of what happens next, only to realize that it was full of spoilers! So I'll just say this: the story is very complex, involving demigods, a magic sword, a boy disguised as a girl who turns into a dragon and a lot of battles.  Saya can be a bit of a Mary-Sue, but she has some flaws which keep her somewhat likable. The story feels like a cross between a fairy tale and a myth.  It took a little bit to get into the story, but after a few chapters, I was hooked and couldn't put the book down.

Supposedly, this book is the first of a trilogy, but I'm not sure if Viz plans to translate and release the two sequels in English or not.  The translation is pretty smooth, although there is definitely a Japanese "feel" to the prose.  It's hard to explain what I mean, but I'll try: works actually composed in English tend to have a different feel than Japanese translated prose. English is extremely rich and evocative, Japanese tends to be heavily nuanced. There is a passivity in Japanese prose that just doesn't ring true in English, even when translated well. It's still a good read, but it does feel odd at times.

The author, Ogiwara Noriko, is interested in Western fantasy and how it adapts Celtic themes for its purpose.  She wanted to do the same thing with Japanese mythology in this book.  Dragon Sword and Wind Child is an extremely imaginative fantasy and well worth being on the reading list of any fantasy enthusiast.  

Man, I think I slept most of this weekend!  Must be fighting off something...

Just finished up reading Cthulhu 2000, an anthology of writings utilizing aspects of Lovecraft's mythos.  There are 18 stories, most good, a few stellar, and a few that just didn't work at all.  Standouts include "Fat Face" by Michael Shea, "Black Man with a Horn" by T.E.D. Klein, "The Last Feast of Harlequin" by Thomas Ligotti and "The Barrens" by F. Paul Wilson.  Well worth reading.  It's interesting to see Lovecraft's creatures and concepts in different prose styles.  I've got a number of Lovecraftian anthologies on hand which I intend to devour in my not-so-free time.  I've got a story in mind that I'd like to write, but I want to make sure someone else hasn't already written something similar.

Next up is Night Voices, Night Journeys, a translated collection of short stories by Japanese writers taking on the Cthulhu mythos.  Should be interesting to see their take on the subject.

I also got around to reading the English translation of Cipher--at least the 7 volumes now available.  *blinks*  I'm trying to decide who's bright idea it was to publish this series now?  Why?  Because it dates back to 1984!  My head spun as I kept reading the mangata's gushing about groups like Culture Club and the Thompson Twins.  And Wham!  And the characters were all stylin' in their 80's styles tight pants, long shirts and very short shorts.  And mullets.  OMG, the mullets were everywhere. 

Once you get past the whole time-warp factor and the outdated art style, the story is pretty decent.  Anise, a regular girl at a New York high school, introduces herself to "Siva", a very handsome actor/model who happens to go to the same school.  She wants to be friends.  "Siva" decides to mess with her a bit and goes along with the friendship.  Eventually, Anise discovers that "Siva" is actually two twin brothers named Roy and Jake who take each other's place every other day.  (Later in the series, Roy explains why).  "Siva" is actually Jake's stage name.  Roy's is "Cipher", and it was in fact Roy that Anise met on the first day, and Roy is the twin that falls in love with her.

The early volumes set up the series and introduce the cast of characters.  As the story progresses, the emphasis changes from the love story of Roy and Anise to a drama about the two brothers and how they start growing apart as they reach adulthood.  Warning: twincest, drug use, and very bad fashion.  I was in high school during 1984, so my impressions of this series are probably clouded a bit by my not-wanting to relive the 80's, but if you were too young to remember that era, this might make an interesting period piece.  Although, if you want an 80's era manga, Maison Ikkoku is a better all-around story.

The last volume of Basilisk: the Kouga Ninja Scrolls came out recently.  This series really was a brilliant adaptation.  The art was fantastic and the story gripping and very, very dark.  Manga at its best, so READ THIS SERIES!!  There's an anime that has just finished being released in English as well, but I'm waiting for the box set, so I haven't seen it yet.  Looks like Del Rey is going to release another adaptation from Yamada Futaro's Ninja series: the first volume of The Yagyu Ninja Scrolls: Revenge of the Hori Clan is being released in late October.  No word yet as to whether they'll release the novel as well, like they did with Basilisk.

Not sure what I'll read next.  I'm going to be reorganizing my bookshelves this week, so maybe something will pop out at me as I sort through my collection.

I've been slogging my way through S.T. Joshi's Lovecraft: A Life for the past few days.  It's a brilliant biography, but honestly, I wouldn't recommend it unless a) you were doing research on Lovecraft or b) you really, really, really are a devoted fan.  Why?  Because it is one of the most tedious books I've ever had the misfortune of reading.  And as a history major, I am intimately familiar with dry texts, I assure you.  Thank goodness I didn't buy the thing!  It was an interlibrary loan, so I'm only out $1.

Another disappointment has been the Asian Horror Encyclopedia by Laurence Bush.  One reviewer on Amazon said that it reminded him of a fanzine, and I think that's a pretty fair assessment.  If this work had been a fanzine, I would have been impressed, but as a professional work, it falls far short of the mark.  The layout is poor and there are a number of typos.  The premise is good (a lexicon of horror elements unique to Asian culture), but the author spreads himself too thin by making the work pan-Asian, rather than narrowing in on one culture (say, Japanese or Chinese).  The result is a lot of Japanese terms with a few Chinese and Korean ones thrown in.  I don't recall seeing anything from the rest of Asia.  He includes in the work several Japanese and a few Chinese authors who have written in the genre, as well as a very incomplete listing of horror manga.  Unfortunately, there isn't much available in English regarding Asian horror culture and literature, so we are left with this very poor effort.

I also managed to finish Edogawa Rampo's Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a collection of his non-detective short stories.  It was interesting reading, creepy rather than actually scary.  The prologue by the translator was worth reading as well.  Evidently, the translator spoke Japanese but didn't read kanji, while the author could read and understand English, but couldn't speak it.  So over a period of five years, the two would meet and painstakingly translate the work together, with the author actually correcting the translator's English in places.  There are nine short stories in this volume.  All of the prose has a sort of "pulp" feel to it, but that's understandable given the time period in which they were written (not to mention, the translation itself dates back to 1956).  A few seem a bit hokey ("The Red Chamber" and "The Twins") but on the whole, these are well-crafted stories with some wicked twists.  "The Hell of Mirrors" is downright Lovecraftian, while "The Psychological Test" reminds me of something that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have written.

A recent acquisition that I'm still making my way through is On Writing Horror, a collection of essays by several well-known authors about the horror genre.  Hit and miss so far.  There's some interesting stuff in there, but also some pointers that honestly could be found in any book about writing.  Generalities about developing character and plot are easy to find, but what I am interested in concerns the subject of writing issues specific to the horror genre.  While some of the essays focused on this point, others were  very bland and not worth my time.  There were a few essays concerning the writing of comic books and screenplays as well.

My concentration has been poor lately (damn lithium!), so that's why most of what I've been reading have been short stories, essays or manga.  I've got some longer books here that I want to tackle, but I guess they'll have to wait until I'm less spacey.  @_@