Sarah Monette's Blog, page 78
January 4, 2010
UBC: The Gulag Archipelago
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, I-II. [Arkhipelag GULag.:] Transl. Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.
This is only the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago , meaning of course that vols. 2 & 3 have been added to my infinitely expanding book list. It is, in no particular order: massive, passionate, funny, bitter, astounding, appalling, fascinating, heart-breaking. Periodically, especially in the chapte...
This is only the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago , meaning of course that vols. 2 & 3 have been added to my infinitely expanding book list. It is, in no particular order: massive, passionate, funny, bitter, astounding, appalling, fascinating, heart-breaking. Periodically, especially in the chapte...
January 2, 2010
A tisket, a tasket, a queen's head in a basket.
I have encountered a shining example of the moss-troll problem in the goblin book, viz. and to wit, the word "guillotine." Instead of merely brooding about it, I decided to burst into song make a poll.
View Poll: Sans Docteur Guillotin ...
Feel free to expound in the comments if you need to.
---
*From the Turkey City Lexicon:
View Poll: Sans Docteur Guillotin ...
Feel free to expound in the comments if you need to.
---
*From the Turkey City Lexicon:
"Call a Rabbit a Smeerp"
A cheap technique for false exoticism, in which common elements of the real world are re-named for a fantastic milieu without any real alteration in t...
Elder Saucepan + Radiator = OTP
Elder Saucepan + Radiator = OTP
January 1, 2010
another day older
Got unstuck (by the expedient of skipping the scene I was stuck on, which I almost never do, but the deadline loometh), and am feeling weirdly cheerful and optimistic. Possibly because I got to describe a goblin traveling coach, and it's completely awesome. I want one.
But since that's not likely, I'm going to bed. First day of 2010: not too bad.
But since that's not likely, I'm going to bed. First day of 2010: not too bad.
December 31, 2009
Happy New Year!
As a New Year's present, here is the foreword I wrote for the forthcoming Chinese edition of Mélusine:
This Chinese edition of Mélusine is the first translation of any of my books to be published. I am delighted simply by the fact of translation--and translation into a language of which I cannot recognize a single character. It is, in all seriousness, a kind of magic for my words to be able to reach you. And I have further been invited to write a foreword to introduce you, the reader, to the b...
This Chinese edition of Mélusine is the first translation of any of my books to be published. I am delighted simply by the fact of translation--and translation into a language of which I cannot recognize a single character. It is, in all seriousness, a kind of magic for my words to be able to reach you. And I have further been invited to write a foreword to introduce you, the reader, to the b...
UBC: Hitler's Army--and an accounting of books read this year
Bartov, Omer. Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
This book is obviously influenced by the Historikerstreit (as Dr. Bartov is the first to point out), as it is in large part a refutation of the German-soldiers-as-Hitler's-noble-and-innocent-victims thesis, that thesis being what started the argument in the first place. Bartov disproves this thesis with primary source evidence, particularly the letters of the soldiers on the Easte...
This book is obviously influenced by the Historikerstreit (as Dr. Bartov is the first to point out), as it is in large part a refutation of the German-soldiers-as-Hitler's-noble-and-innocent-victims thesis, that thesis being what started the argument in the first place. Bartov disproves this thesis with primary source evidence, particularly the letters of the soldiers on the Easte...
December 30, 2009
Grump.
I am grumpy today. Because:
1.
2. Laundry. It had to be done before the laundry shoggoth got ambitious and ate a cat, but nobody can ...
1.
2. Laundry. It had to be done before the laundry shoggoth got ambitious and ate a cat, but nobody can ...
December 29, 2009
December 27, 2009
an inconvenient truth about my process
80,053 words. 29,947 to go.
Sometimes, when I don't know how a scene goes or what it's doing, and I keep writing, I end up getting stuck because the words wander into a dead-end, or onto a path that the book doesn't want to follow. That happened to me last week, and it took me several days to regroup.
Sometimes, when I don't know how a scene goes or what it's doing, and I keep writing, after some blundering through the underbrush, I come out onto the path, and it's the right path, the place whe...
Sometimes, when I don't know how a scene goes or what it's doing, and I keep writing, I end up getting stuck because the words wander into a dead-end, or onto a path that the book doesn't want to follow. That happened to me last week, and it took me several days to regroup.
Sometimes, when I don't know how a scene goes or what it's doing, and I keep writing, after some blundering through the underbrush, I come out onto the path, and it's the right path, the place whe...
UBC: The Hitler Youth
Koch, H. W. The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development 1922-1945. New York: Dorset Press, 1975.
In a nutshell, this book is about the way in which Hitler and the NSDAP exploited--and betrayed--the energy and idealism of German youth for their own benefit. Koch was himself a Hitler Youth--and a survivor of the Volkssturm--and his occasional, bitterly sarcastic, personal comments are some of the book's most enlightening moments on the thoughts and experience of the boys themselves. (I wish he had...
In a nutshell, this book is about the way in which Hitler and the NSDAP exploited--and betrayed--the energy and idealism of German youth for their own benefit. Koch was himself a Hitler Youth--and a survivor of the Volkssturm--and his occasional, bitterly sarcastic, personal comments are some of the book's most enlightening moments on the thoughts and experience of the boys themselves. (I wish he had...
