quillori

For Poetry Monday:

“One word is too often profaned,” Percy Shelley

One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

Another poem Shelley wrote in 1822 that was posthumously published with the editorial title “To ——.” In this case, —— was Jane Williams, with whom he did not in fact have an affair—he wrote several poems to her, all professing deep friendship, but he seems to have truly kept things at that level (with his history, that’s not a given). Jane Williams and her husband, Edward, were close friends with both Shelleys, and Edward died in the same boating accident that killed Percy. The word is, of course, at the end of line 9.

(That rhyme of accept and reject gets a side-eye.)

---L.

Subject quote from My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own, Connie Francis.

Another theme week -- following on 'all' prefixes with 'large' prefixes, and following on the universe with the:

macrocosm (MAK-ruh-koz-uhm) - n., the universe considered as a whole; the total or entire complex structure of something; a complex structure, such as a society, considered as a single entity that contains numerous similar, smaller-scale structures.

Coined in Medieval Latin (and taken into English via French around 1600) from Ancient Greek roots makrós, large/long/far + kósmos, the universe -- which sounds like a redundancy: The universe already contains all, so why additionally specify that it's large? That last sense is the key one, as they needed words for the concepts of macrocosm and microcosm, that the whole is reflected in its parts -- that as on earth so in heaven, and that there's correspondences between, for example, the human body and the heavens:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

This is a very common concept in ancient philosophies worldwide, including Ancient Greece, and theorizing about it continued in the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. Other words with macro- include macrobiotic ("prolonging life") and macrometer ("large/long measurement"). (I was going to use macron, but that's not a prefix but rather noun use of the neuter of makrós, and not prefixing anything.)

---L.

"Yes, Israel is arming militias in Gaza, and yes, some already know about Yasser Abu Shabab. But what’s still missing is the full picture: the criminal records, the aid looting, the strategy of engineered chaos, and what this means for Gaza’s future. A thread."

In addition, if you want to track the Madleen, here's the link. Until it's blocked like the first tracker link was.

ETA: Don't bother with the link. The Madleen has been attacked and boarded. Connections cut. Crew kidnapped.

Tags:

gaza

1) The Shortest Way to Hades, Sarah Caudwell. Light, bright, a lot of fun, and a clever mystery. Also a pleasant change to have a detective story that doesn't involve sexual violence. I found myself thinking partway through that the most 80s thing about this 80s book is not the absence of email or mobile phones and that documents are typed, the boozy lunches, the fact that every single character with the possible exception of Hilary* is undoubtedly a Tory, but a relatively junior barrister not only owning a car but driving it through central London in the afternoon as apparently the quickest way to get anywhere.

2) Silent Parade, Keigo Higashino. Not lacking sexual violence (though no detailed description), but very good, and the thing that was annoying me as I was thinking "but why aren't they all doing X" turned out to be a twist, so that was fine. I'd not read any Higashino before and this was clever, readable, and I'll read more. I just wish that UK translations of Japanese novels would indicate at the beginning which way round they are putting the family name and given name. Either is fine, but since it seems to vary which is chosen in different books, I would like it to be made clear so I know.

3) Simon Boccanegra, Verdi. Opera North semi-staged production at the Royal Festival Hall, which means comfy seats, excellent sightlines, and much cheaper prices than otherwise in London. Rather tortuous trains, which the presence of

antisoppist made more endurable. The performances, vocal and orchestral, were fantastic and it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, but it's not going to join the list of my favourite operas because while the music is great, the drama isn't so strong. Too much of the plot happens off-stage with characters then reporting to others, ultimately I wasn't moved by the piece as a whole in the way I want to be by the operas that really work for me.

*Possible Liberal Party?

Tags:

books,
opera

universe (YOO-nuh-vurs) - n., all of spacetime and all it contains; a hypothetical spacetime-and-contents that supposed to exist simultaneously with but different from this universe; whole world in the sense of perspective or social setting, a sphere of interest, activity, or understanding.

And other extended meanings, including a set of stories/films/etc. that share a continuity. Dates to a little before 1400 (insert Chaucer citation), Middle English form identical to Modern English, from either Old French univers or Italian universo, from Latin ūniversum, all things/as a whole/the universe, noun use of the neuter of ūniversus, all together/whole, literally "turned into one," from uni-, combining form of unus, one + versus turned (perfect passive participle of vertō, to turn). Other words with uni- include uniform ("having one form/shape") and unibrow ("having one [eye]brow").

And that wraps up a week of all prefixes -- er, 'all' prefixes.

---L.

This sequel to one of my favorite books of last year, a young adult post-apocalypse novel with a lovely slow-burn gay romance, fell victim to a trope I basically never like: the sequel to a romance that starts out by breaking up the main couple or pitting them against each other. It may be realistic but I hate it. If the main thing I liked about the first book was the main couple's dynamic - and if I'm reading the sequel, that's definitely the case - then I'm never going to like a sequel where their dynamic is missing or turns negative. I'm not saying they can't have conflict, but they shouldn't have so much conflict that there's nothing left of the relationship I loved in the first place.

This book starts out with Jamison and Andrew semi-broken up and not speaking to each other or walking on eggshells around each other, because Andrew wants to stay in the nice post-apocalyptic community they found and Jamison wants to return to their cabin and live alone there with Andrew. Every character around them remarks on this and how they need to just talk to each other. Eventually they talk to each other, but it resolves nothing and they go on being weird about each other and mourning the loss of their old relationship. ME TOO.

Then half the community's children die in a hurricane, and it's STILL all about them awkwardly not talking to each other and being depressed. I checked Goodreads, saw that they don't make up till the end, and gave up.

The first book is still great! It didn't need a sequel, though I would have enjoyed their further adventures if it had continued the relationship I loved in the first book. I did not sign up for random dead kids and interminable random sulking.

Tags:

holocaust (HOL-uh-kawst, HOH-luh-kawst) - n., a sacrifice that is completely burned to ashes, burnt offering; complete destruction by fire, the thing so destroyed; (usually as the Holocaust) the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II; any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life esp. by human agency.

A lot to unpack here. :deep breath: The burnt offering sense dates to the 1300s, used to translate Hebrew ‘ōlâ, "that which goes up [in smoke]," in Biblical contexts, from Late Latin holocaustum, from Ancient Greek holókauston, neuter of holókaustos, wholly burnt, used of sacrifices burnt to ashes rather than shared with the celebrants, from holo-, whole/entire + kaustós, burnt. The first extended sense developed in the 1600s, and was broadened in the 1900s to encompass other types of catastrophes, a usage now deprecated. It was first applied to what the Nazis did in 1942, but the proper noun doesn't appear until the late 1950s and wasn't widespread until around 1970. Because of that specialized use, the application to other destruction has become mostly restricted to human agency. :exhales: Other words with holo- include hologram ("whole stroke/line [i.e. drawing]") and holistic ("pertaining to the whole").

---L.

pandemic (pan-DEM-ik) - adj., (of a disease) epidemic over a large area, prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the world; (in general) widespread, general. n., a disease prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the world.

This prefix, pan-, is from Ancient Greek, where it was also a prefix meaning all/every -- the stem here is also from Ancient Greek, dêmos, the common people/the population, and put together pándēmos meant "of or belonging to all the people." Its application to diseases in English dates to the 1650s (the noun use is from the 1830s). Closely related is epidemic, meaning prevalent throughout a community, so more localized than a pandemic, and endemic, meaning constantly present at a baseline level, so occurring at lower levels than a epidemic/pandemic. Other words with pan- include pandemonium ("all the demons") and panacea ("all-healing").

---L.

A historical children's novel by a Ukrainian-Canadian author, based on Ukrainian teenagers and children forced into slavery during WWII. After watching her neighbors and finally her family getting dragged off by the Nazis, Lida, a Christian Ukrainian girl, is kidnapped along with her younger sister. They're immediately separated and Lida is sent to a horrendous work camp. She's skilled at sewing, which keeps her useful and so alive for a while. But then the Nazis need bombs more than uniforms...

This book is an impressive feat of walking the line between being honest and straightforward about how terrible conditions are while not being too overwhelming for children to read. Lida and the other girls endure and try to support each other. Lida gives a Jewish girl her crucifix necklace to help hide her identity, and an older girl advises Lida to lie about her age so she isn't killed immediately for being too young to work. The German seamstress Lida works with (an employee, not a prisoner) is occasionally casually kind to her, but also gets a gift of looted clothing from a probably murdered French woman, and gets Lida to meticulously remove the woman's stitched-in initials and re-sew them with her own. A Hungarian political prisoner, who gets better soup than the Ukrainians, advises Lida to say she's Polish, as that will improve her her food. Later, Lida muses, It seemed that just as there were different soups, there were different ways of being killed, depending on your nationality.

( Read more... )

The book is interesting as a depiction of an aspect of WWII that isn't written about much, a compelling read, and a moving story about some people trying to keep hope and caring - and rebellion - alive when others are being as bad as humans can get. It's part of a trio of books involving overlapping characters, but stands completely on its own.

The afterword says that Skrypuch based the book on her interviews with a survivor.

Tags:

In conversation, I was about to mention that no matter what color the cat, their hairballs are always grey—but then I realized, I’ve never lived with a white cat. So a question for anyone who can confirm:

Do white cats have white or grey hairballs?

---L.

Subject quote from Snow on the Beach, Taylor Swift ft. Lana Del Rey.

Tags:

fluffing

omniscient (om-NISH-uhnt) - adj., having total or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding.

Our next all prefix comes from Latin omnis, meaning all. Also a noun, one who is all-knowing. This word was originally coined in Medieval Latin as omnisciēns, from omni(s) + sciēns, knowing (from scīre, to know) -- English as usual took on the stem form omniscient-. The original context was theological. Other words with omni- include omnivore ("eating all [the things]") and omnibus ("for all").

---L.

For Poetry Monday:

The Kraken, Alfred the Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Published 1830. Critics generally agree that a) this is best described as a variant-form sonnet of 15 lines and b) the kraken is likely symbolic of something, but they have no consensus on what that something might be.

---L.

Subject quote from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot.

Theme week: all prefixes. Or maybe that would be better written as 'all' prefixes -- words with a prefix that means "all," starting with "all" as a prefix:

always (AWL-wayz, AWL-weez) - adv., at all times, invariably; all the time, continuously; for all time, forever; at any time, in any event.

This form (spelled more like alwei/alwaye) appeared in the 14th century as a contraction of Old English ealne weg, where ealne is the accusative (indicating space or distance) of eall, all, and weg is way -- so literally "all the way." The genitive -s, acting as an adverbial suffix, was added around 1400 (even though it was already an adverb) but alway was retained as an archaism. Other words with al- include almighty ("entirely mighty") and altogether ("completely together").

---L.

In a magical version of the medieval Middle East, a middle-aged single mom, who was once the notorious pirate Amina al-Sirafi, is dragged out of retirement for one final job.

This book is a complete and utter delight from start to finish. It has all the pirate tropes you could possibly want - sea battles! sea monsters! quests for magical objects! loyal crews! tossed overboard! marooned! - and sly twists on others. It's got great characters. It's got hilarious dialogue and character interactions. The world is wonderfully detailed and varied, full of plausible historical details and with a lovely faux-historical feel. There are stories within stories. It's all marvelous.

As a child, I had a book called Muslim Saints and Mystics, which was a translation of parts of the Tazkirat al-Awliyā, a collection of stories about Muslim saints written around 1200. It was funny and magical, and some of the stories-within-stories in Amina al-Sirafi have a similar feel. The novel neatly toes the line between dialogue that feels fairly contemporary and a plausibly historical mindset. Amina is horny as hell, but a serious Muslim who believes in not having sex before marriage; as a result, she's had five husbands. There's a major trans character, in addition to several gay characters; Amina has come across people before who prefer to live as the other sex, and takes it in stride without resorting to Tumblr-esque labels or attitudes.

I loved every moment of this book, and was delighted that though it has a reasonable ending, it is the start of a trilogy. It's the first book I've read by Chakraborty, and I'm excited to read her City of Brass series.

( Read more... )

Tags:

barmy (BAHR-mee) - adj., containing or covered with barm, the foam that forms on malt liquors while fermenting; bubbling with activity or excitement; (chiefly UK) crazy, odd, strange, foolish.

The first senses are easy to deal with: it goes back to Old English beorma, both the head/forth on a beer and the yeast that ferments it, from a Germanic root, exact PIE source unclear. That last, though, is much debated -- most authorities hold that it's either a non-rhotic-speaker's respelling of balmy in its sense of crazy/odd/foolish or a respelling influenced by barmy in the frothy sense, but some that it's an alteration of St. Bartholomew, one ward of the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, which last word also gave us bedlam (and Green's Dictionary of Slang notes that there was an asylum in Barming, Kent). So, like, 🤷🏼

---L.

The Giro d'Italia has by far the most evocative competition jerseys of the three grand tours of cycling. Forget France's yellow or Spain's red, what could beat the rosa, ciclamino, or azzura?

Tags:

sport

A few important bird links, plus a beautiful one:

OwlsInTowels.org. (via)

How to pick up a duck. (via)

Woodblock prints of Hasui Kawase, an artist who was a major influence on Hayao Miyazaki.

… in a wonderful balloon

---L.

Subject quote from Joyride, Roxette.

Tags:

performant (per-FOR-muhnt) - (jargon) adj., performing at an acceptable or excellent level.

So far this recent coinage is pretty much only used in computing contexts, and I can only hope it at least stays there until it withers away. Such passages as "... eliminating such failures helps ensure that software is more predictable, maintainable, performant, and trustworthy" (to quote a Microsoft KB article) do not strike me as performant prose. Derivative of perform, obvs, with the agentive adjectival suffix -ant (as in informant).

---L.

Sciona, the first woman ever admitted to the University of Magic, takes on Thomil, a janitor from a discriminated-against culture, as her lab assistant, and they both learn dark secrets about their world.

Thomil is introduced when his clan makes a desperate run across deadly ground to get to the safety of a city surrounded by a magical shield. The shield protects against bitter cold and the deadly Blight, which randomly zaps and dissolves people, but the area around the city is particularly Blight-infested. Only Thomil and his baby niece survive. When they arrive, they find that the city natives hate their race and has consigned them all as a permanent underclass.

Ten years later, Sciona, a well-to-do young woman in the city, is preparing for her magic exam to try to get into the sexist magic university, which no woman has ever passed. Though she does pass, all the male mages but her mentor hate her and hassle her. The only other person who's even remotely nice to her is Thomil, the janitor, who is assigned as her lab assistant as a cruel joke. But though Sciona is racist and classist, and Thomil is mildly sexist in an oblivious way, they find that they kind of get along...

Wang has an engaging, easy-read style for the most part, the intros to the two main characters are quite compelling, and despite the heavy-handed axes of privilege themes, Thomil and Sciona have a nice dynamic.

I said "for the most part." The exception is the magic system, which I think is basically computer programming via magic typewriters (spellographs). The wizards program a spell to access a specific area of the magical Otherrealm (which they can't see or sense in any way, so they're just plotting points on a grid) to grab magical energy or matter from it. But we get MUCH more detailed and lengthy descriptions of it, from long explanations to actual spells:

CONDITION 1: DEVICE is 15 Vendric feet higher than its position at the time of activation.

ACTION 1: FIRE will siphon from POWER an amount of energy no lower than 4.35 and no higher than 4.55 on the Leonic scale.

ACTION 2: FIRE will siphon within the distance of DEVICE no higher than 3 Vendric inches.

If and only if CONDITION 1 is met, ACTION 1 and ACTION 2 will go into effect.

The first half is Sciona and Thomil working on various spells, interspersed with very heavy-handed commentary on colonialism, sexism, and how Sciona totally gets feminism when it applies to her personally but is oblivious to all other isms. Sciona is an awful, self-centered person and Thomil is mostly perfect. Almost exactly halfway through, there is a shocking reveal. At least, it shocked many readers. It did not shock me.

( Read more... )

Despite what the plot description sounds like, Sciona and Thomil do not have a romance beyond occasional sexy feelings. It's a magical dystopia/dark academia, I think similar to Babel (which I could not get very far into) but less anvillicious in that it does not have literal footnotes saying stuff like "This is a racist comment and racism is bad." (In the bookshop, I have Blood Over Bright Haven tagged "If you like Babel you will like this.") Sadly for M. L. Wang, this comparative subtlety got them some reviews on Goodreads accusing them of condoning Sciona being a bad person and endorsing her beliefs.

I did not care for this book but I can see how it would work for many readers, especially if they're shocked by the twist at the halfway mark.

Tags:

binnacle (BIN-uh-kuhl) - n., a case that supports and protects a ship's compass.

Also, by extension, the cluster of instruments and switches mounted in a circular casing on or near the steering column of a car, though honestly I've never heard that usage. The binnacle is traditionally a small stand placed by the helm so the steersman can consult it, and made of wood or a non-magnetic metal to avoid interfering with the magnetic needle. Often it included a lamp so bearings can be read at night, and later refinements included iron masses to adjust the needle to point closer to true north. Attested from around 1620, alteration of earlier earlier bittacle, from either French habitacle, obsolete Spanish bitácula (modern spelling bitácora), or Portuguese bitácula, all three from Late Latin habitāculum, little dwelling place.

---L.

“i told this heart of mine our love could never be / but then i hear your voice and something stirs”

macrocosm

(no subject)

Stories of violent death: novels and opera

universe

The Only Light Left Burning, by Erik J. Brown: DNF

holocaust

pandemic

Making Bombs For Hitler, by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

“it’s fine to fake it till you make it till you do/ till it’s true/ now it’s like snow on the beach”

omniscient

“does anyone know where the love of god goes / when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

always

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

barmy

Racing in the pink

“she has a train going downtown / she’s got a club on the moon / and she’s telling all her secrets”

performant

Blood Over Bright Haven, by M. L. Wang

binnacle

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