The Aviary

Tomorrow is the Glorious 25th of May, so I have been relistening to the Night Watch audiobook this week.

The one real problem with Night Watch is that I know several people that I think would love it but it is, alas, really the only Discworld book that you can't start with. I mean, I guess you can - it's presumably comprehensible without reading the previous Watch novels - but the emotional texture isn't there. It's not even just the big stuff, like seeing younger versions of characters you know and love from previous books. It's little things like reading the roll call of watchmen who don't even get lines and realizing that their names match up with the list of widows and orphans from way back in Men At Arms.

Any of my other favorites I can hand to someone and say, "You would like Discworld and more specifically you would like Small Gods/Going Postal/The Truth/Feet of Clay/etc." With Night Watch, it's like, "You would love this book but first I need you to read five other Watch books and also probably Thief of Time first and then you can have this one. And a handkerchief." That's a bit of a hard sell, really.

Anyway. Happy early Crying About Lilacs day to all of you who celebrate.

The vast majority of my reading these days happens via ebook - there's a wider range of them that I can access from my various libraries, they deliver themselves straight to me, I can carry multiple books with one device, I can take notes without my absurd but unshakable guilt about writing in books even if I own them. Ebooks are great and I love them.

However. Books I really love? I have to own those in print. Even if I already own an ebook copy! Even if I know I would prefer to reread the ebook copy the next time I read the book, because it will already have all my annotations from last time. Buying a print copy of the book feels like the only appropriate expression of my love. (Not usually a fancy print copy though - beyond ebooks, my preferred format is gently used paperbacks.)

Anyway. Despite having a perfectly good ebook copy that I'm enjoying very much, I have just ordered a physical copy of the Raffles stories. It can sit on the shelf next to all my Holmes stuff, as is only right and proper.

I've been reading a lot of scifi and mysteries so far this year - I've only this weekend finished my first horror novel of 2023. Unfortunately, it was The Spite House by Johnny Compton, which was a huge disappointment. I wanted to like this book so much! Alas.

( Spoilers )

Now I'm going to have to go find myself a better horror novel to wash the boring out of my brain.

My library doesn't have Cyteen and there appears to be no available ebook edition, so I've bought a used copy from thriftbooks. Now, due to that purchase, thriftbooks is sending me long emails for things I might like "since I'm interested in C J Cherryh". That is, of course, perfectly normal. What's funny is that the email was mostly just a long list of all of Glen Cook's Black Company novels, with maybe three other books thrown in.

I don't really see a huge number of similarities between Cherryh and Cook other than "spec-fic published in the 80's" but okay, thriftbooks, I have actually been meaning to get around to rereading/finishing the Black Company series and now I find myself actively missing Croaker again, so good job. You guessed correctly.

I have ebooks of those, however.

Things:

- The spring choir session has started! I usually enjoy the spring session more, because there's more variety in the music we sing (it doesn't all have to be Christmas-related or -adjacent). This session, most of music looks like it's going to be pretty good, which is nice.

- My library is switching to the web-based version of its library software starting in February, so we're all practicing with it now. The switch isn't really going to be that difficult but none of the keyboard shortcuts I know are going to work any more and I resent having to move the mouse more. I resent almost any time I have to use a mouse rather than the keyboard, really.

- I've started doing a thing where, instead of getting up in the morning and dinking around on the internet for an hour before breakfast, I'm getting up in the morning and reading a book instead. I like it, though it does mean selecting some of my reading specifically for qualities like "readable when I am not quite awake yet". More difficult books are for later in the day.

- It's not a morning book, because it's an audiobook, but I'm currently listening to the second volume of Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong and it's great. You can tell that the novel was originally serialized because there are occasional slightly awkward recaps of the story so far, but the serial nature gives the story one of its greatest strengths which is that there Always Something Interesting Happening. Whether that something is a long kung fu demonstration, a tense political scene in which Genghis Khan's generals are challenged to fight a leopard, or the dramatic reveal of somebody's relative that they've thought was dead for years, it is Interesting and it is Always Happening. I have some slight quibbles with the translation (why are you literally translating people's names?) and the audiobook reader (who consistently mispronounces the word "gallant") but in general I really enjoyed the first volume and the second seems like it's also going to be amazing.

As previously mentioned, I have been rereading Pet Sematary. I finished it today, and have mostly learned that my vague 10-years-ago impression was correct and that I don't really care for it. I mean, it's not bad - certainly readable and entertaining enough. Just doesn't quite work for me. However! It has allowed to figure out a way to articulate why it doesn't work for me, which is useful.

So, a work of horror fiction is trying to produce certain emotions in the reader/viewer/whatever: suspense, dread, disgust, shock, horror, terror, etc. These all fall broadly under the larger umbrella of "fear", but different works mix them together in different ways and proportions, so you get a different-tasting cocktail of fear every time. Pet Sematary has a little horror, a little suspense and disgust, but it mostly runs on dread. Which I'll define for my purposes as "a Bad Thing is inevitably coming, there is no possibility of avoiding it, but we're going to drag out the time between now and the Bad Thing arriving as long as we can, because that will create tension in the reader."* With a side of "the Bad Thing will be brought about by the protagonist making a Bad Decision, and you get to feel dread about that too".

Pet Sematary wants to make the reader experience dread and it's very good at it. And that's why it doesn't work for me - I hate dread. The rest of the fear emotions I listed are things I enjoy experiencing in the context of horror fiction. They're why I'm a horror fan. But I don't find dread enjoyable on any level. Dread sits in my stomach in the same place that I experience real-life anxiety. It's not fun at all.

Contrast that with Misery, which I read right before Pet Sematary. Misery runs mostly on suspense (with a little horror and disgust) and that was fun - I tore through the book, I chose reading it over other activities, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Pet Sematary, on the other hand, felt like a slog. I had to make myself read it, because the fear emotion it produced was so different and so dread-ful. There were a couple of times that I almost decided to stop reading - had it not been Stephen King, who is always engaging for me even when I don't care much for the particular book I'm reading, I would have. I've definitely given up on books before because they contained too much dread** and I couldn't make myself turn the page.

(Also the ending is anticlimactic and resurrected!Gage is uninteresting. Timmy Baterman, in the flashback, was interesting - Gage is a baby with a knife, like something out of a not-very-good slasher film. You get the silly slasher stinger ending too.)

Anyway. Just doesn't work for me. Also, again: none of the horror in this book would have happened if the characters were responsible pet owners who kept their cat indoors. Keep your cats indoors! It's better for the environment, it's better for the cat, and it lessens the possibility that you might try to resurrect your dead son as a horrible slasher movie monster.







*The difference between dread and suspense, to my mind, is that suspense is "a Bad Thing might be coming - is the protagonist going to be able to escape/prevent it?" Suspense allows the hope, however miniscule, that the dice will roll in the protagonist's favor. With dread, the protagonist can only roll a nat 1.

**The particular flavor of "I know this character is going to make an awful and self-destructive decision and I have to specifically dread that for age" will make me drop a book quicker than basically anything else.

So, I'm finally getting around to reading Jackson Crawford's translation of the Poetic Edda. I just started it - tonight I'm reading the Voluspa.

For those who haven't read it*, the Voluspa is narrated by a seeress who has been consulted by Odin. It starts by talking about stuff at the beginning of the worlds - the creation of the worlds, the creation of humans, the first war, etc - and ends with a prophecy about Ragnarok and what leads up to it. Several of the verses end the same way - it's a sort of ritualized question, the seeress asking Odin if she should continue talking.

Most of the other translations I've read translate that question as something like "Would you know more?" It often feels like an invitation (though often an ill-intentioned one - the seeress doesn't seem to want to be talking to Odin), a lure to draw Odin along and keep him interested.

Crawford has translated it as "Have you learned enough yet, Allfather?" And it's amazing how much that changes the tone of the end of the poem. Coupled with the increasingly terrible events the seeress is describing, it feels like a hammer, pounding at the end of the stanza. "Your sons are going to murder each other - have you learned enough yet, Allfather?" "Your friend lies bound in a cave while his wife weeps over him - have you learned enough yet, Allfather?" "The world is going end in fire and war - have you learned enough yet, Allfather?"

It's really an amazing effect. And when it comes back, when the poem starts talking about what happens after Ragnarok, it still has that bite to it. "Your sons will live again, but you won't be there - have you learned enough yet, Allfather?" "The world will be peaceful and you will be gone - have you learned enough yet, Allfather?"

It's a fucking amazing choice and it makes me so excited to read the rest of his translations.



*While I recommend the Crawford and the Hollander translations, there are also free public domain translations of the Voluspa available online, if you want. However, there is also a candle company called Voluspa, so you may want to add "poem" or "edda" to your search terms. Unless you want candles, I guess.

Things:

- I have a new toy! I bought a ring distaff from an etsy shop to use while spinning and I've been playing with it today. I haven't quite figured out how best to use it yet - holding it means I have to hold the fiber differently than I'm used to and I can already feel that it's going to be, like, ergonomically better, but it's still an adjustment.

- Also, it's purple and has a dragon head on the top, because that's fucking rad.

- I checked out the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier from the library last week because the art was pretty and now I'm three volumes in and trying desperately to convince myself to wait for library copies rather than buying my own. I don't have shelf space to start buying manga, you guys, even if I am currently obsessed with it.

( - I am also resolutely ignoring the fact that I could buy electronic copies instead, as that renders my shelf space argument moot.)

- Relatedly - every time I read black and white comics with pretty art, I find myself thinking of buying copies not just to read but to color. I used to want to do that whenever I'd read black and white reprints of Silver Age DC comics too. I suppose I should just find scans online and print out my own coloring pages, really.

Things:

- The saffron buns are delicious and I'm very pleased with them. Definitely adding them to the yearly holiday food list!

- So, this year I made myself a reading challenge, where I assigned myself certain books to read every month. I am now discovering that there are problems with this approach. I'm pretty good at finishing books (as long as I don't hate them) but I'm flighty and distractible and my reading is very much influenced by my current mood. Thus, I'm often "reading" three or four (or more) books at any one time - a few of them are actively being read, but a few are also on temporary hiatus until I'm in the mood for that particular flavor of story again. (I had one book last year that had three separate months-long hiatuses, but I always considered myself to be currently reading that book.) Therefore, I am altering the rules to say that I have to start the book assigned to each month in that month, but it can be finished any time in 2022. That works much better.

- This is also why I set up my (ridiculous) Christmas crafting schedule to include multiple simultaneous projects, both gifts and for myself. Unless I am extremely excited about something or I finish it very quickly, working on the same project for days on end eventually ends with me putting that project away for several months. But! Working on a different project every day means I don't have time to get properly tired of any of them. Plus, all the monthly goals are extremely achievable and are all broken down into multiple steps, so I get to cross things off a list fairly frequently, which is very satisfying.

- I started playing Pokemon: Shield again last night (I had bought when I bought my Switch, played till the first gym, and then got really obsessed with Hades for several months) and you guys, pokemon games are great. So now it's time to do nothing but that (when I'm not knitting) for a few weeks.

After a several-month hiatus, tonight I started listening to the audiobook of Children of Ruin again, picking up where I left off. Which was right at the point where ( spoilers ).

That sequence, combined with some of the climax of Children of Time and everything involving the Rat in the Echoes of the Fall trilogy, makes me really want to see Mr Tchaikovsky write a straight-up horror novel. I'd be really curious to see what he would do in that genre - I bet it would be pretty rad, because that spoiler-cut bit above was one of the most effective horror sequences I've read in quite some time.

(Hell, the dude has written about sixty million books - maybe he has written a horror novel and I haven't stumbled across it yet.)





*The problem with listening to this book rather than reading it is that I have no idea how to spell many of the human characters' names, which makes the characters slightly difficult to talk about.

Going through my bookshelves, I am discovering just how many times I have purchased redundant Lovecraft stories.

One expects to pay for say, "Call of Cthulhu" or "Shadow Over Innsmouth" more than once in the course of buying various collections, but I resent the fact that I have paid money for "The Horror at Red Hook" or "The Outsider" more than once.

I just finished reading Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. About which two things:

1) Y'know how sometimes you finish reading a book you loved and are immediately seized with the very particular sadness of knowing you can never read it for the first time again? That's where I am right now. After being at least vaguely disappointed by basically every horror novel I read in 2020, it's wonderful to start out this year with a book that was exactly everything I wanted it to be. I need to buy myself a copy.

2) I find the discussion questions for book groups that are occasionally included in books irritating at the best of times, as I feel compelled to read them and they're nearly always bad but there is something especially infuriating at getting to the end of a perfect beautiful ghost story to find that one of the discussion questions is "was the haunting real?" That's just - it's the least interesting or important way to talk about a ghost story, please stop.