Reading/Writing
10/12/05 17:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienI was going to finish the post about CS Lewis, but have not yet done the research into children's television programming that I must. That may wait for tomorrow.
Instead I am going to talk about books.
I am currently reading:
"House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. Occasionally I may mistype this, calling it "House of Blue Leaves," simply because that is the way the title has written itself in my head (the word "house" is actually printed in blue througout the book, so it's a semi-understandable mistake).
I am halfway through Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Ninety percent humidity and the Napoleonic Wars stopped me two summers ago; constant moving and no access to the unabridged paperback version stopped me until this September, when I snagged a copy off of the cheap cart in front of the Harvard Bookstore for a dollar. It is now cold enough that I will finish it this time, reading it on the train and in chunks at lunch.
I also have three new volumes of the manga "Please Save My Earth" to tackle this afternoon.
I am currently re-reading Prince Harweda for the 30th time or so; I realized last week what had first unsettled me about the little house and rejoiced. Though it, too, might also go into the next category, which is:
I am always reading:
I am not 'currently' reading Titus Groan--I finished it mid-August--but I am waiting for the copy of the next book in the series to be unearthed (or for the proper used copy to be found and bought: I am looking for a specific set of covers which, when put together, form a continuous panorama. I have the correct volumes one and three, off of the same cart as Les Mis, but no two seems to be forthcoming). Nevertheless, bits of it, language and scenes, have incorporated themselves into my brain. It is in there as thoroughly as Tolkien (my brain seems to accrete things in the same way as sedementary rock). Years later the shale splits; you find an idea pressed there between the stones like a flower in a dictionary. I briefly considered carving my Halloween pumpkin with the Room of Roots, then decided the design was complicated enough to wait for next year.
I am not 'currently' reading Curdie and the Princess--my actual readings must be up to somewhere around the 40 or 50 mark now; God help me--but I might as well be, since I keep running across remarks about Irene in nineweaving's journal.
I am not 'currently' reading any alchemical texts--my last phase of actual reading in that area was five years ago--though they have been turning up in dreams with astonishing clarity and unsettling regularity.
"Watership Down," though that will have its turn when my cat and this year die, most likely over Christmas. It is such a joyful-in-its-intensity/"sharp" book that in many ways it has become the start and whole of my mourning process; I finish it and feel infinitely cleansed.
What I am currently writing:
One short review of the MIT Gilbert and Sullivan Players' Mikado for the New England Gilbert and Sullivan Society's newsletter. If they want it. If not I shall likely post it here.
One essay on CS Lewis, children's television programming in the 1950's and early 60's, and anthropomorphisim as it relates to the Christian concept of blasphemy. This is waiting only for a few hours of research, I think, into the programming, and then perhaps a week of straight writing. I believe this might end up with an actual bibliography, or notes at the very least.
The sestina on Nikola Tesla is waiting for me to finish getting an apartment so I can work on the poem obsessively without also worrying about where I will live next month; after that, it is simply waiting for me to go back to it and finish.
"City of the Dead" is waiting for me to finish my current novel, I think: its prose style is very like that of the fey novel, but its narrative structure is tricky, convoluted, compressed into short-story form, and in an unreliable second-person narrative voice. The novel will let me get the style down and will make me plot. I am viewing that as a prep exercise for this short story, which I think will be much, much harder to plot, and denser beside, and will likely turn out anywhere from 10 pages to 100, a length I have never written before.
I am currently writing the fey novel. It is going well; I write it a lot on the train in tiny scribbly handwriting on the backs of things, probably terrifiying any passengers who happen to read it over my shoulder. It is currently reminding me that I really like books as physical objects (which leads me once again to musings on museum work, illumination and calligraphy, and library preservation as ideal career fields); it is sometimes painful to write for that same reason. I will say not too much more about it here, likely; most of what I have to say about it I think will be in the actual book.
I also need to finish the tune and part-lines--three, or perhaps four?--for the "Fire of Roses" madrigal.
Instead I am going to talk about books.
I am currently reading:
"House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. Occasionally I may mistype this, calling it "House of Blue Leaves," simply because that is the way the title has written itself in my head (the word "house" is actually printed in blue througout the book, so it's a semi-understandable mistake).
I am halfway through Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Ninety percent humidity and the Napoleonic Wars stopped me two summers ago; constant moving and no access to the unabridged paperback version stopped me until this September, when I snagged a copy off of the cheap cart in front of the Harvard Bookstore for a dollar. It is now cold enough that I will finish it this time, reading it on the train and in chunks at lunch.
I also have three new volumes of the manga "Please Save My Earth" to tackle this afternoon.
I am currently re-reading Prince Harweda for the 30th time or so; I realized last week what had first unsettled me about the little house and rejoiced. Though it, too, might also go into the next category, which is:
I am always reading:
I am not 'currently' reading Titus Groan--I finished it mid-August--but I am waiting for the copy of the next book in the series to be unearthed (or for the proper used copy to be found and bought: I am looking for a specific set of covers which, when put together, form a continuous panorama. I have the correct volumes one and three, off of the same cart as Les Mis, but no two seems to be forthcoming). Nevertheless, bits of it, language and scenes, have incorporated themselves into my brain. It is in there as thoroughly as Tolkien (my brain seems to accrete things in the same way as sedementary rock). Years later the shale splits; you find an idea pressed there between the stones like a flower in a dictionary. I briefly considered carving my Halloween pumpkin with the Room of Roots, then decided the design was complicated enough to wait for next year.
I am not 'currently' reading Curdie and the Princess--my actual readings must be up to somewhere around the 40 or 50 mark now; God help me--but I might as well be, since I keep running across remarks about Irene in nineweaving's journal.
I am not 'currently' reading any alchemical texts--my last phase of actual reading in that area was five years ago--though they have been turning up in dreams with astonishing clarity and unsettling regularity.
"Watership Down," though that will have its turn when my cat and this year die, most likely over Christmas. It is such a joyful-in-its-intensity/"sharp" book that in many ways it has become the start and whole of my mourning process; I finish it and feel infinitely cleansed.
What I am currently writing:
One short review of the MIT Gilbert and Sullivan Players' Mikado for the New England Gilbert and Sullivan Society's newsletter. If they want it. If not I shall likely post it here.
One essay on CS Lewis, children's television programming in the 1950's and early 60's, and anthropomorphisim as it relates to the Christian concept of blasphemy. This is waiting only for a few hours of research, I think, into the programming, and then perhaps a week of straight writing. I believe this might end up with an actual bibliography, or notes at the very least.
The sestina on Nikola Tesla is waiting for me to finish getting an apartment so I can work on the poem obsessively without also worrying about where I will live next month; after that, it is simply waiting for me to go back to it and finish.
"City of the Dead" is waiting for me to finish my current novel, I think: its prose style is very like that of the fey novel, but its narrative structure is tricky, convoluted, compressed into short-story form, and in an unreliable second-person narrative voice. The novel will let me get the style down and will make me plot. I am viewing that as a prep exercise for this short story, which I think will be much, much harder to plot, and denser beside, and will likely turn out anywhere from 10 pages to 100, a length I have never written before.
I am currently writing the fey novel. It is going well; I write it a lot on the train in tiny scribbly handwriting on the backs of things, probably terrifiying any passengers who happen to read it over my shoulder. It is currently reminding me that I really like books as physical objects (which leads me once again to musings on museum work, illumination and calligraphy, and library preservation as ideal career fields); it is sometimes painful to write for that same reason. I will say not too much more about it here, likely; most of what I have to say about it I think will be in the actual book.
I also need to finish the tune and part-lines--three, or perhaps four?--for the "Fire of Roses" madrigal.
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Egad!
11/12/05 05:00 (UTC)B
(no subject)
11/12/05 07:43 (UTC)Re: Egad!
11/12/05 18:29 (UTC)Good to see you!