Charloween

So! Because being near my family and my birthday won't overlap this year, I hinted* that all I wanted/needed was a Kindle. The Nook is probably superior but you can only access the B&N store from within the US (with reliable results) and it has a touchscreen bit (which - believe me - gets annoying fast if you're in a climate that needs gloves).

*The way I hint things, with extensive research and unambiguous statements.

Since waiting and surprises are for patient people, I've been playing with my new Kindle for a week, and I've glutted on novels. For someone like me, who'll happily sit down, start a book, finish a book and then wonder where the day went, this is dangerous stuff. Dangerous but amazing.

That's why I haven't put the Dublin pictures up yet: I've been reading.

I've read: ( too many books! )

I've also knit most of a shrug since the weekend: turns out you can prop up a Kindle like a paper book (but it's easy to balance, so you can keep knitting), and read outside and be able to see the screen in the sunlight (and the wind won't turn pages for you, so you can keep knitting), and if the darn yarn splits again you don't need to hunt for a bookmark for the Kindle (and you can keep knitting!). Magic.
Next test is seeing if graphics in pdfs of knitting patterns reproduce well...

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In other news, this area's TV broadcasting is going digital as of next week. Most stations have switched over, meaning the analogue transmitters are being switched off. My parents' televisions are analogue-only, because the lowest-quoted digital aerial they could get was stupidly expensive.

Though perhaps all that's lost is convenience: Mum watches most of her television through her laptop, anyway.

ETA: Just saw an online ad for the Stratford Festival. It said, "From the director of Jersey Boys: Jesus Christ Superstar." I do not understand. Please someone explain to me why this is popular/going to Broadway/exists. I don't really get Jesus Christ Superstar in the first place, but still. This is not the kind of crazy I want from my internet.

I could go into a rant about how much I like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books, how I recommend them and re-read them and like them too much to even look up the cast list for the miniseries adaptation, how I even bought the trilogy for a friend's birthday once (because that's how I roll: I'll never give someone a novel as a gift if I don't love the book first).

But, what I like about the books is the language. These are words that want to be read.

From the second book, called Gormenghast (the first is Titus Groan and the third is Titus Alone), the beginning to chapter 5:

"Fuchsia was leaning on her window-sill and staring out over the rough roofs below her. Her crimson dress burned with the peculiar red more often found in paintings than in Nature. The window-frame, surrounding not only her but the impalpable dusk behind her, enclosed a masterpiece. Her stillness accentuated the hallucinatory effect, but even if she were to have moved it would have seemed that a picture had come to life rather than that a movement had taken place in Nature. But the pattern did not alter. The inky black of her hair fell motionlessly and gave infinite subtlety to the porous shadow-land beyond her, showing it for what it was, not so much a darkness in itself as something starved for sunbeams."


That is a passage written by someone who has loved every word he's put down, who's looked at every syllable as if it was rare and special, and, jeez, "not so much a darkness in itself as something starved for sunbeams."

All I'm saying is you don't need frickin' dark elves to write fantasy. All you need is a crumbling castle, a cast of characters who are at once medieval and Victorian and neither, and an absolute gift for language.