in Life's name and for Life's sake

At some point in the next few days, I'll have a post up about what it means that the last Harry Potter movie is out, and that I don't have another good excuse to wear a cloak and a Gryffindor scarf, and why the books are so much more than just books. It will also involve lots of links to other things I've been writing about Harry Potter and other wizards who are not Harry Potter but actually better, and something about how weird it is to feel grown-up enough to have my own credit card without my parents having to co-sign.

For now I will just say, does anyone have recs for fic taking place at Hogwarts during Deathly Hallows? I was always said that we never got to see Neville and Ginny and McGonnagal kicking ass and keeping the castle safe during the school year, and seeing the movie has just reinforced this sadness. Also, would love to see any Neville- or McGonnagal-centric stuff, long or short, during or after the series. FLIST I AM COUNTING ON YOU.

Eventually there will also be some thoughts about what I use this journal for, and why I'm seriously considering making it friends-only despite the fear that this might make me even less of a presence in fandom than I already am (though, let's be honest, Young Wizards is pretty much my only fandom, and most of my really fandom-y stuff on LJ takes place on youngwizards or myriadwords or -- more recently -- the YW fic comm I'm somehow quite happily co-modding, dai_stiho).

But right now, I really just want to get back to enjoying my summer afternoon, reading Red Glove and admiring how Holly Black refuses to pull her punches, and just keeps hitting her characters with blow after plot-propelling blow.

(Also, if anyone realized that the title of this post is actually a Young Wizards reference, please let me know so I can profess my undying love/propose marriage/bake you a cake.)

[Error: unknown template qotd]

As usual, this is a question that demands multiple answers, because it's me we're talking about, and I rarely read one good book per year. But this past year, I've done a lot of re-reading (both in school and out), so my new books intake has severely dropped. Thankfully, that's what next year is for...?

I feel that in order to appropriately answer this question, I have to give three answers. Maybe four. So stick with me.

When I first saw this question, the answer that immediately sprang to mind was Possession by A. S. Byatt, in which two modern academics discover the lost letters of two (fictional) Victorian poets, and follow the literary clues therein on a detective hunt through Great Britain and parts of France. Oh, and did I mention that they may or may not have something like a love story of their own throughout? I purchased Possession from a small used-and-new independent bookstore down the street from the hotel my grandmother stayed at in London this spring (right by the British Museum, where one of the characters actually works). I began reading it on the Eurostar train from London to Paris, and finished it in a small hotel room overlooking a tiny street between the Louvre and the Opera Garnier; I read with the kind of energy that a book hadn't evoked from me in far too long. Possession felt a little bit like the story of my life-as-it-could-be told back to me as a fiction: a collection of various texts (the novel includes third-person omniscient narration, snippets of poetry and academic prose, the discovered love letters, and various other ephemera) meandering over a wider ground than entirely necessary (it's been compared to a Victorian novel), questioning and testing but ultimately affirming the relationship between literature and love.

The other important books of this year (for very different reasons!) are ones I've talked about elsewhere: Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg and A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane.

The rest of the texts I'm going to mention are very, very literary. But they're also very important. I think that Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion all belong on this list because the time I've spent with them, starting this summer with my SURF research, has really launched me into the thesis of a lifetime. Although Northanger Abbey is the only one out of these that I actually read for the first time this year, I've become increasingly close with the others, to the point where I have a bordering-on-brilliant fifteen-page Pride and Prejudice paper ready to be sent out to various graduate schools as we speak. My experience as a reader of Austen has changed so much since I was a freshman in high school disdainful of Emma, and I couldn't be happier about it. More and more, I feel like I've chosen (or been chosen by) the topic and the time period that are just right for me.

New Doctor Who. As I've only seen one episode it's totally possible that I will have to revoke this sentiment but something makes me doubt that, so here goes: Matt Smith has what it takes to make it. He's not David Tennant but he knows it and he's not trying to be. He's just being his own kind of Doctor and obviously having good fun with it. EDIT: Just watched second ep and while it doesn't make me like Matt Smith any more or less than I previously liked him, it does make me like Karen Gillan lots and lotses. I like that she's feisty and that it seems like, unlike previous companions, she's going to actually challenge the Doctor and argue with him and stuff. Not just sit there with puppy eyes when he's about to destroy the world and tell him to stop. I read an interview where Karen said Matt was like her annoying older brother, and I think that sort of shows in this ep, in a good way. Why do I have to be out of the country for the next one??

Torchwood. I have heard it is not on par with Doctor Who but seriously, John Barrowman. Need I say more? Also, awesome Welsh accents. I am seriously in love with the breadth and variety of British accents, and not just with that singular concept of "the British accent" (which almost always means the Oxford accent to Americans, including me before I lived here).

Changes by Jim Butcher. The most recent Dresden Files book, which just appeared in my mailbox and promises to be completely game-changing. I'm almost afraid to read it because I know I'll breeze through it in six hours and then be left waiting another year for the next one.

A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane. The most recent Young Wizards book, which also just appeared in my mailbox in the same shipment from Amazon and is only the book I have been waiting for ALL MY LIFE. Seriously. It's been FIVE YEARS since the last YW release and I've waited oh so patiently. This is worse than waiting for Harry Potter because a) there are no movies and b) the fandom is much smaller, so there are fewer people to understand your pain (however, the small-but-dedicated fandom is generally one of the things I love about YW, so I shouldn't complain). I'm definitely afraid to read this one because I have no idea how long it'll be until the next one appears, and I do not know what I will do with myself in the meantime and with the waiting. This isn't like Jim Butcher where I know he'll pop out a book a year, no sweat (which allows me to read them so quickly when they come out). Diane Duane is meant to be savored, in slow but intense portions. I would almost say it has to be read casually, except there's nothing casual about it. In fact, I don't even remember what it's like to read one of her books for the first time anymore. The last time I had that experience, I had only just gotten a livejournal and certainly didn't blog about it. I just emphatically don't want it to be gone.

Preparation for spring break trip will probably take more time/effort/energy than I give it credit for. I mean, I'm gone for 16 days which I'm spending in 5 cities in 4 countries in 2 time zones (though only one continent this time). By the end of the month I'll have seen where the Thirty Years' War started, the Cold War (symbolically) ended, the great temple to Athena was built to command an entire city, a man named Freud revolutionized our perception of selfhood, and the small Greek island immortalized courtesy of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It will be AMAZING. But try packing enough stuff for all of that in a small suitcase and you run into some issues (or at least I will...when I finally start packing the night before I leave).

Finally, it's sunny outside. Why in the world would I want to get things done when I could sit outside in the sunshine and just revel in the world being such a beautiful place?

Post a sentence (or two) from as many of your WIPs as you want, with no explanation attached. Meme from araine. Perhaps as expected, very few of these are actually one sentence.

--

“How did you two deal with going off to college?” Nita asked.

Tom and Carl shared a look that was one part nostalgia and one part “I told you this question was going to come up and that when it did, I didn’t want to be the one to answer it.”

--

“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You,” he pointed a finger at her, “want me,” he poked a finger into his own chest, “to help you learn how to act like a man. You want me to give you lessons in being a man, and then you want me to lend you a few sets of clothes and keep the secret that this mysterious man who’s just become engaged to your best friend is, in fact, you--dressed as a man, of course.”

Gil nodded. “Yeah. That pretty much explains it.” She paused for a second, then added, “And the sooner the better. We’d like to announce our engagement next week.”

--

Much has been said on the subject of universal truths, to the extent that a modern author, upon attempting to annex another aphorism to this collection, must be circumspect to say the least; but to the compendium of factual evidence thus sanctioned, I find it profitable to append one truth more: that is, that a man who does not know what it is like to be laughed at, cannot possibly have a wife, or cannot have had one for long.

--

For a moment, it’s all that Carl can do to look at Tom, wide-eyed and wondering which Power to thank. For safety’s sake, he decides to thank all of them. “You’re sure?” he asks breathlessly, in a voice so faint he can barely hear it.

“Carl,” Tom says, and there’s something new in his voice: impatience, and need. “Do you really think I’d have bothered with asking if I wasn’t?” He reaches up a hand to Carl’s face and traces the curve of his jaw with tentative fingers, his eyes never leaving Carl’s, not for a second.

--

It’s twilight when I open my eyes and find myself in the cemetery.

--

Everyone knew the witch’s house by its roses.

--

“Beautiful,” she heard him say, barely above a whisper. “Don’t you think?”

“Dangerous,” she returned.

“The fire warms as well as burns, you know.”

“It’s all a function of how close one gets,” she replied. “The closer you are, the greater the danger.”

“But the greater the warmth.”

“I don’t think I’m cold enough yet that I’d be willing to endure the pain of the burn for those few moments’ heat.”

Suddenly, he was looking right at her, his eyes cool and piercing. “Are you sure?”

--

Gah, going back through and looking for these quotes makes me really want to write the stories they belong to! Aaaaand now I have to stop procrastinating and actually get some work done. Less fun, but more productive than the alternative!

“Your people do have the idea of being ‘just good friends?’”

He gave her a sidewise look. “For so high and honorable an estate,” Roshaun said, “‘just’ seems a poor modifier to choose.”

--Wizards at War by Diane Duane

Day one • a song
Day two • a picture
Day three • a book
Day four • a site
Day five • a youtube clip
Day six • a quote
Day seven • whatever tickles your fancy

Conveniently, I have come across another meme that allows me to sort of answer this one by providing a whole lot of stuff about books!

1) What author do you own the most books by?
Not having my bookshelf in front of me at this moment (it being in another country and all) it's hard to say, but probably Anne McCaffrey, simply because she is so prolific. I own all of her Dragonriders of Pern books (multiple copies of some of them) plus assorted others. She takes up a jam-packed half-shelf.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
This is probably a toss-up between Jane Eyre and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. For Jane Eyre, I have the first copy I read (a falling-apart-at-the-seams $0.25 library bookstore purchase), the first critical copy I bought (because I really liked the introduction), two copies of the one with the killer engravings (yes, two, they were only $1 a piece), and the copy that I bought in London this semester to read for my Fiction and Narrative class. As for Sorcerer's Stone, I possess it in paperback, hardback, UK paperback, special edition (leather-bound and gold-edged pages), and the Latin translation. But I am the kind of person who thinks it's awesome to have multiple copies of the same book, particularly if they possess different cover art or have some interesting distinguishing feature, so there may well be some other book that I possess five copies of.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Considering I just ended my last response with a preposition, I'm going to say no.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I can't give one answer. Remus Lupin is mostly an intellectual crush. I love Mr. Darcy but more because I identify strongly with Elizabeth. Same goes for Mr. Rochester -- I like him because I am so attuned to Jane. I feel guilty loving fictional characters who are already (fictionally) attached! Also, of course, I love Nik from Julie E. Czerneda's Species Imperative trilogy and Enris from the Stratification trilogy.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
I feel like it's probably one of the Harry Potter books or a Young Wizards book, simply because those books were my favorites long before I read any of the other books that are currently my favorites. I feel like I've read Jane Eyre a million times but the truth is that I've just listened to my audiobook a million times; I've only read it cover-to-cover maybe three or four times.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Probably Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -- I know I read it before I turned eleven because once I turned eleven I kept waiting for my owl from Hogwarts to come...

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Breaking Dawn. Enough said.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Usually the answer to this would be a Julie E. Czerneda book, hands down, but Rift in the Sky was such a traumatic experience that I'm not sure I can say I liked it that much. I probably don't have a 'best' list, but I really came to like Neil Gaiman (mostly for The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere), George R. R. Martin redefined 'epic' for me with A Game of Thrones, and most recently Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca sent chills all up and down my spine.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. Her books have changed my life and I can't imagine not having them in the world.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
J. K. Rowling. Her books have done more to unite the world under a banner of peace, love, and understanding than any author now alive.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Probably Diane Duane's Young Wizards books. There was actually a project to do this a while back, and Duane herself was going to write the script (before becoming a fiction writer she wrote for film and television).

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Paradise Lost. Despite the fact that at one point last year there were two projects (one studio, one independent) attempting this. I don't know why.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I was talking with Julie E. Czerneda and she got mad at me for not having made Rebecca read her books. Another time Diane Duane told me that I was being cocky because she overheard me tell my dad that I really wanted to be published by a particular sff imprint.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
The more expensive variety of paperback romance...actually, the Twilight books are probably worse. And I read fanfic, so do with that what you like.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner is the first that comes to mind because it's difficult to get the story, much less something of the deeper meaning. But Paradise Lost might be the book where I've had to do the most digging for insight and meaning -- and where it has been most worthwhile.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Probably Love's Labours Lost -- I have read more obscure Shakespeare plays than I have seen.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Oh man, my favorite revolutionaries. It's hard to pick (the Russians have Chekov!) but in the end I have to go with the French. As long as you understand that they're rarely meant to make sense, you'll be alright.

18) Roth or Updike?
No idea who these people are.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Managed to never read either of them.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Milton, hands down. See the part where that man consumed last semester at Berkeley (in a rather painfully joyous way).

21) Austen or Eliot?
Um, since when is that a question? Austen. Definitely.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I have never read anything written before Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For non-English majors this is not at all a gap, but for me it means I haven't read Homer, Virgil, or Dante, only some of the most alluded-to authors that I've never encountered.

23) What is your favorite novel?
The Wizard's Dilemma by Diane Duane

24) Play?
Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, The Last Five Years (score by Jason Robert Brown), Metamorphosis (not by Ovid!)

25) Poem?
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds" by Shakespeare; "When I consider how my light is spent" by Milton

26) Essay?
"Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story" by Michael Chabon

27) Short story?
I don't really like short fiction -- either reading it or writing it. "Skin So Green and Fine" is an odd Beauty and the Beast retelling that makes the cut; "Attached Please Find my Novel" is a tale of intergalactic publishing escapades that's in it for the title alone.

28) Work of non-fiction?
Erm. I don't read those?

29) Graphic novel?
See above. Although I recently read Maus and thought it was fantastic.

30) Who is your favorite writer?
Aargh hatred for this question. But it's down to Diane Duane, Julie E. Czerneda, and J. K. Rowling.

31) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
I wouldn't know, I haven't read him!

32) What is your desert island book?
Tough question, but probably A Thousand Words for Stranger or The Wizard's Dilemma. Both are narratives of hope and connection in the midst of a chaotic world. But Paradise Lost might make the list because I could use all that time I was stranded to get all my Milton ideas out of my system and onto some paper.

33) And ... what are you reading right now?
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

So, instead of eating my dinner or doing any one of the numerous homework assignments that are bound to crush me to a pulp between now and Thursday, I have been accosted by a short story. I am actually rather pleased by this -- I have been waiting for this particular story to make itself work for me ever since reading the Book of Job (yeah, the one from the bible) last semester for my biblical poetry class. And as a result, I'm writing a short story about Satan. Or rather, "the Satan" (long story that will get outlined elsewhere). It's set in the modern world, and thus far opens with the following line:

"The Satan had known coming into this job that it had a high turnover rate, but leaning back in his leather swivel chair and observing the view out the window of his 66th story corner office, he really didn’t understand why."

(For the record, this is currently the ONLY sentence. But the ideas are still in the process of accosting, so I figure I'll give it some time.)

What I require from you, dear readers, is further inspiration. I know I have my own personal favorite portrayals of Satan or the Devil in literature, from Satan in Paradise Lost to the Lone Power in Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, but I want to play around with figurations of the character of the devil and what his work actually entails. What does your favorite interpretation of the devil look or act like? What are some interesting names for the Devil, or for evil figures in general? (I'm looking for everything from Pluto to Prince of Darkness.) What can I do to make this awesome?

...yeah. Well. Now I should maybe go eat that dinner and work on that paper and problem sets and chapters worth of reading that are all due within the next two days. That seems like an intelligent idea.

Ohmigod so I just finished the best book written in the English language (see previous post for more unnecessary squeeing). And seriously, Julie has outdone herself here. The end of the book had me crying because I was so happy. Now, I cry a lot for books, especially good ones. In fact, my current favorite book of all time, The Wizard's Dilemma, has earned that distinction at least in part because of its consistent ability to bring me to tears. But those are oh-my-god-the-main-character's-mother-is-dying-and-there's-nothing-she-can-do-about-it tears. Very different from nothing-could-possibly-be-so-joyful, true-love-requited, heart-so-full-to-bursting tears. The former are cathartic, it's true, but I am just now learning that the latter are absolutely delicious. It's like the feel of being so in love with someone that you can't help but shed tears of amazement and glory and wonder that the world has chosen to present you with something so perfect as this.

My friends aren't the only ones who remind me that true love exists. I get those reminders from fiction, especially Julie's fiction, on a regular basis. But there's nothing quite like the first read through a marvelous story. It is its own kind of first love--the intensity, the drama, the potential for deep heartache, the unfathomable reward awaiting those who triumph.

I am so brimming with words and with smiles, with unself-conscious giggles that escape me at the strangest moments, with an overflowing gratitude for the existence of love in this universe. I need to do, to be, to create. I need to sing a new song and dance like I actually know how (or like I don't know how and don't care). I need to spin around under the stars and absorb the wonder of the universe.

And, most of all, I need to write. Because if writing can do all of this, can there be any calling higher?

I am again overcome by a great love of Diane Duane. I'm sure I've told you all a million times that you should read her books because they really will change your life, but I mean it. So much of who I am and who I want to be -- not just as a writer, but as a person -- is within the pages of her books, specifically the Young Wizards series that she began more than twenty years ago.

I just finished listening to the audiobook of Deep Wizardry, the second book in the series and one of my favorites. This is how good it is: even listening to the audiobook made me cry, in all the right places and for all the right reasons. Maybe that's more of a reflection of my current emotional state than it is of the book itself, but I don't like to think so. I'm really mad I don't have my own copy of it here, because if I did I'd fill this entry with quotes from it that make me feel more myself. Because there are so many of those...

I read Deep Wizardry for the first time the summer after sixth grade, when I was on vacation in the Caribbean for a week. I'd read the first book in the series, So You Want to Be A Wizard, sometime before, but whenever I read Deep Wizardry I'm brought back to that catamaran that I lived on with my family for a week, the feel of sailing and the ubiquity of the sea. I took it for granted that I had these beautiful warm waters to swim through, dive in, live off of. And then I got stung by a jellyfish pretty badly at Virgin Gorda, five or six days through the week, and I was belowdecks for a while trying to ignore the pain, and reading. I picked up Deep Wizardry and it couldn't have been more appropriate. It was all about the ocean, it turned out, featuring sharks and whales as important characters. But it was -- and is! -- about so much more than that. Whenever I look at the cover of my slightly-battered copy of Deep Wizardry, I'm transported back to Virgin Gorda and Marina Cay and Tortola, reading in beach chairs that had been pulled down into a few feet of water so that I reclined within the rolling-in of small waves.

But the book is so much bigger than that. There are questions from Deep Wizardry that the series still hasn't answered -- pretty impressive considering that it's now going into its ninth book (which I of course cannot wait to get my hands on). And it's not just the questions. It's the everything. Deep Wizardry is about how friendship grows and changes, how children interact with their parents, telling the truth, sacrifice and redemption, facing your death, making mistakes, defying evil, the environment, magic, love, loss, life. It's about people and wizards and whales and a shark or two. It's got a visit to the moon -- the one that I wrote my college entrance essay for Stanford about, the one that sticks with me today so that everything I think about space travel and wizardry is informed by it.

I don't know why I'm writing this. It's not particularly eloquent. But I just love how this book -- these books, really, anything she writes -- can always make me feel alright about the universe. Her explanation of life, death, and afterlife comforts me more than any other one that I've run into. And her idea of wizardry, the purpose of which is, pure and simple, to serve Life, and make sure it keeps on going, is fundamental to my understanding of creation and the world around me. I find it hard to believe that she's an atheist; I get a greater sense of spirituality from her writing than I do from a lot of other people. Not only is there a Creator, but there is an afterlife where "what's loved, survives." This principle seems like a pretty sound one to me.

Now I'm just rambling and I've got a bunch of things I should be doing, like getting ready to go to the book signing in San Francisco later this afternoon (yes, Katherine, I am getting Jim Butcher to sign something for you). I just needed to talk about this, for whatever reason, even if it's talking to no one.

And I lied. I'm gonna leave you with some quotes after all.

***

It hurt, she said.

We know, the answer came back. We sorrow. Do you?

For what happened?

No. For who you are now--the person you weren’t a week ago.

...No.

***

“It must be a crippled life your people live up there, without magic, without what can’t be understood, only accepted--”

--Ed (he's a shark!)

***

But Nita’s mother was looking up at the sky with a look of joy so great it was pain—the completely bearable anguish of an impossible dream that suddenly comes true after years of hopeless yearning. Tears were running down her mother’s face at the sight of that sky, so pure a velvet black that the eye insisted on finding light in it where light was not—a night sky set with thousands of stars, all blazing with a cold, fierce brilliance that only astronauts ever saw; a night sky that nonetheless had a ravening sun standing noonday high in it, pooling all their shadows black and razor-sharp about their feet.

***

What they saw was part of a disk four times the size of the moon as seen from Earth; and it seemed even bigger because of the Moon’s foreshortened horizon. It was not the full Earth so familiar from pictures, but a waning crescent, streaked with cloud swirls and burning with a fierce green-blue radiance—a light with a depth, like the fire held in the heart of an opal. That light banished the idea that blue and green were “cool” colors; one could have warmed one’s hands at that crescent. The blackness to which it shaded was ever so faintly touched with silver—a disk more hinted at than seen; the new Earth in the old Earth’s arms.

So I have found t-shirts that I want, and I have found them in a very odd manner. You see, I have this friend who reads this webcomic and today he linked me to it in a comment, and after reading the comic I decided to browse around the site. Which led me to merchandise, which led me to the shirts.

I want them.



This one reminds me of a book I read (and loved) wherein a wizard really does turn people into whales (or more accurately, wizards turn themselves into whales with the help of other wizards who actually are wales). Deep Wizardry owns you all.



This one I want for more sentimental reasons. It's because it's so true for me. I wanted to be an astronaut (part of me still wants to), but I also want to be a writer, and that passion is stronger. Still...that doesn't mean that it's easy to give up on something you'd truly like to do...this shirt says a lot to me.

Only downside is that they cost real money (oops) and I'm a spendthrift. But I really want them!!!

Because I'm bored, there are a few other shirts I also want which I shall now post images of.



You can't see the text real clearly, but it's the Wizard's Oath from Diane Duane's Young Wizards books. I think it's a credo to live by, in many ways, and it would be awesome to have it on a shirt!



Also from Diane Duane's site. Shannen, I think we should get these.

And I'm going to stop being random now...though I must say, it's fun!

And Luke: I want a pants shirt when you make them.