Sunday, 09 May 2010
Look! New thing! (this article description belongs to Jamie)
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So quite some time ago now, there was a bit of discussion about the “Tournament of Books” which took the basic concept of a literary awards program and cast it as a no-holds-barred to-the-death cage match. Never one to pass up an opportunity to steal a halfway-decent idea, I thought it might be interesting to try something even more stupid and arbitrary.
As a result, we give you:
Ferretbrain Presents: The TeXt Factor
Starting with a selection of twelve titles, our team of expert reviewers will read one chapter a week, and then vote out the one which we judge to be the worst (or once we have eliminated all the things we hate, the least best).
The books we shall be reading and judging over the next twelve weeks (give or take) are:
Score! - Jilly Cooper: “Many men hated Roberto Rannaldini. Many women, after loving him passionately, hated him even more.”
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown: “Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and knew it was his own.”
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson: “It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday.”
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett: “Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.”
A Kiss of Shadows – Laurell K. Hamilton: “Twenty three stories up and all I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind.”
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel: “ 'So now get up.' ”
Furies of Calderon – Jim Butcher: “Amara rode atop the swaying back of the towering old gargant bull, going over the plan in her head.”
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins: “This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.”
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy: “May in Ayemnem is a hot, brooding month.”
The Dreaming Void – Peter F Hamilton: “The Starship CNE Caragana slipped down out of a night sky, its grey and scarlet hull illuminated by the pale iridescence of the massive ion storms which beset space for lightyears in every direction.”
Drood – Dan Simmons: “My name is Wilkie Collins, and my guess, since I plan to delay the publication of this document for at least a century and a quarter beyond the date of my demise, is that you do not recognise my name.”
South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami: “My birthday is January 4 1951. The first week of the first month of the first year of the second half of the twentieth century.”
The whole exercise, as you may have noticed, is kind of silly and arbitrary, but the vague kernel of validity in the whole thing is that a lot of our panel of expert judges are the sorts of people who feel really, really uncomfortable not finishing books, and so (we hope) there will be something new and liberating a format that mandates us to put things aside if we don't like them.
In addition (we hope) the serialised format should help us look at old texts in new ways, which might help us see things in the texts we would otherwise overlook.
That's the introduction, we hope you enjoy Ferretbrain Presents: The TeXt Factor
Warning: is quite long (1.5 hrs), contains loud noises, strong language, and nuts.
Vague Sort of Timeline:
00.00 - Introduction, Firstlines, General Preambling
08.05 - Drood
10.47 - South of the Border, West of the Sun
13.25 - The Malteese Falcon
15.57 - The Woman in White
19.20 - The God of Small Things
24.40 - Score!
30.01 - Wolf Hall
38.25 - Angels and Demons
59.01 - The Dreaming Void
1.01.30 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
1.06.33 - A Kiss of Shadows
1.16.44 - The Furies of Calderon
As a result, we give you:
Ferretbrain Presents: The TeXt Factor
Starting with a selection of twelve titles, our team of expert reviewers will read one chapter a week, and then vote out the one which we judge to be the worst (or once we have eliminated all the things we hate, the least best).
The books we shall be reading and judging over the next twelve weeks (give or take) are:
Score! - Jilly Cooper: “Many men hated Roberto Rannaldini. Many women, after loving him passionately, hated him even more.”
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown: “Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and knew it was his own.”
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson: “It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday.”
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett: “Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.”
A Kiss of Shadows – Laurell K. Hamilton: “Twenty three stories up and all I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind.”
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel: “ 'So now get up.' ”
Furies of Calderon – Jim Butcher: “Amara rode atop the swaying back of the towering old gargant bull, going over the plan in her head.”
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins: “This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.”
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy: “May in Ayemnem is a hot, brooding month.”
The Dreaming Void – Peter F Hamilton: “The Starship CNE Caragana slipped down out of a night sky, its grey and scarlet hull illuminated by the pale iridescence of the massive ion storms which beset space for lightyears in every direction.”
Drood – Dan Simmons: “My name is Wilkie Collins, and my guess, since I plan to delay the publication of this document for at least a century and a quarter beyond the date of my demise, is that you do not recognise my name.”
South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami: “My birthday is January 4 1951. The first week of the first month of the first year of the second half of the twentieth century.”
The whole exercise, as you may have noticed, is kind of silly and arbitrary, but the vague kernel of validity in the whole thing is that a lot of our panel of expert judges are the sorts of people who feel really, really uncomfortable not finishing books, and so (we hope) there will be something new and liberating a format that mandates us to put things aside if we don't like them.
In addition (we hope) the serialised format should help us look at old texts in new ways, which might help us see things in the texts we would otherwise overlook.
That's the introduction, we hope you enjoy Ferretbrain Presents: The TeXt Factor
Warning: is quite long (1.5 hrs), contains loud noises, strong language, and nuts.
Vague Sort of Timeline:
00.00 - Introduction, Firstlines, General Preambling
08.05 - Drood
10.47 - South of the Border, West of the Sun
13.25 - The Malteese Falcon
15.57 - The Woman in White
19.20 - The God of Small Things
24.40 - Score!
30.01 - Wolf Hall
38.25 - Angels and Demons
59.01 - The Dreaming Void
1.01.30 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
1.06.33 - A Kiss of Shadows
1.16.44 - The Furies of Calderon
~
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I'll be interested to see if the book is as rapey as the movie. Because holy crap was that movie rapey.
Bring on the rapes!
Has anyone here read any of Roy's non-fiction? You get the same sort of thing you guys were talking about: some brilliant uses of metaphor and beautifully constructed language used to convey stark, terrifying situations. Except a bit more so, because it's real life :-(
Sounds like Mr Brown confused the Dirty Brown Folk from the Middle East with the Dirty Brown Folk from India.
And the Illluminati ambigram does only work with a triple-L. When I read this, it was summer and I was thoroughly bored and it was easy and diverting and so-bad-it's-good. So I thought I'd try Digital Fortress. And then I wanted to puke.
I think too much Mr Brown would induce nausea....
Also: is that actually what I sound like? Whoa.
Sadly, I do--he's talking about damage resistance, from Dungeons & Dragons.
I've always thought that the 3.5e way is kind of confusing, where you have resistance to everything EXCEPT whatever you specify, as well as magic, silver, epic weapons, and so forth (except Resist 20/Magic is...I don't even know, 3.5 is a wreck.)
Possible conclusion #1: the number of times you have met and talked to Dan is inversely proportional to the extent to which you think he sounds like Mark Lawson.
Possible conclusion #2: my memory is rubbish.
I also like the little games you play with the theme music (is that from the Carmina Burana?
Just one thing. Because of my computer's crappy sound system, I generally have to listen to this with the headphones on. Which is fine, except that then Carmina Burana comes on at about five times the volume of your voices and nearly fries my eardrums.
Another small issue: any chance of a cast list? I've got Kyra, Dan, Arthur, and Jamie, and someone who've finally identified (tentatively) as Shimmin. And the sixth person, I keep missing her name. “Shanie”? “Shania”? Is she a contributor?
I haven't read most of the books you're reading (though I'm going to have to check some of them out now), so I'll only comment on two of them:
Angels and Demons
I probably would've “yayed” this. I listened to it on audio this past fall/winter and enjoyed it. Not as much as The Da Vinci Code but well enough. I hardly ever recognize awful prose, even when it walks up and slaps me in the face.
Yes, the science is crap, and the explanations are often condescending; seriously, what seventeen-year-old in the industrialized world (let alone a PhD professor of symbology) has never heard of “anti-matter” or “the big bang”? Sure, Dan's worked out that the story apparently takes place in 1978, but this was high school level physics back in the 60s, maybe earlier.
And yes, Vetra's thought of “proving” the events of the Bible could have literally happened as a scheme for reconciling science and religion (guess the Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, and other world religions are still out in the cold) makes about as much sense as a toffee cradle.
Still, I find the idea of spontaneously generating random matter/anti-matter pairs by just flooding a room with a shitload of energy rather compelling for a story premise.
I find Brown handles tension pretty well; his stories are exciting. I also appreciate his characterization. I always liked Doctor Kohler—sure he's grouchy and over-the-top (and, as Arthur points out, unrealistic), but I wouldn't compare him to Emperor Palpatine.
I especially find Brown's villains compelling. He does a lot better than many authors at making his villains genuinely understandable and sympathetic … with the unfortunate exception of the hashashim. There, I can't argue with anything you've said—it's racist and awful. I must have been blocking out all the implications of his portrayal in order to enjoy the story. Which is the recourse of the coward and the enabler, of course, but it is one that I do resort to at times. I guess it's a coping mechanism to help me deal with living in a world with as many messed-up things in it as, e.g. our own.
I think it'd be interesting to compare the Villainous Minority Assassin from the next book, The Da Vinci Code. Silas is an albino, but he's a lot more sympathetic and likable than the hashashim; he recognizes his actions are horrible, but you can really understand why he believes them to be necessary for the greater good. It's probably still pretty un-PC, but maybe Brown has improved in that regard … somewhat.
The God of Small Things
I wouldn't rate it any higher than a “meh.” Roy and her nonfiction writings have a pretty high standing among the far-left circles I habituate in the US. That, plus the book's acclaim raised my hopes for it when I finally got it on audio from the library a couple months ago.
Granted the narrator probably did a rotten job (I didn't even notice all the lovely prose you all rave about), but even so, I couldn't get into the characters or even really find the plot, much less enjoy it. All of which probably goes to show how much I Just Don't Get It, but there you are. Now I suppose I'll have to go back sometime and read the bloody thing on processed tree bark as nature intended and see if I do any better.
So far, only one essay from An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, but I look forward to more. I'm still excited by her non-fiction, even if her fiction so far leaves me cold.
(Fun fact: I actually finished listening to this episode about the time "Part 3" came up. The intervening five weeks were taken up by drafting this response.)
*('On the show' - check me out talking like a media personality!)
Umm, you realize that this is almost exactly how particle accelerators work in real life? You take two beams of particles, and smash them together at high speed, and some of their kinetic energy gets converted to matter, which appears in the form of random particle-antiparticle pairs.
As Mr Brown would put it: FACT
<---- Like that one.
Thank you, Arthur.