bloodygranuaile

My goal for 2011 is to log at least something about each book I read. This might slow down the 50 Book Challenge for the year, but I will do it anyway. I failed 2010's 50BC, which is particularly egregious since I was actually going for the 100. (In 2007 I beat the 100BC; in 2009 I failed it but I at least hit 50.)

Anyway, this blog gets devoted to books, movies, TV shows, vampires, and Nightwish videos. Not necessarily in that order. Particularly not today. Today the order is:

Vampires (also books)

The first book of 2011 for me was Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which is about Dracula. Specifically, it is about Vlad Tepes, known as "the Impaler," a Wallachian prince in the fifteenth century who was nasty even by princes-in-the-fifteenth-century standards. It's an amazing combination of really well-researched stuff about Eastern European medieval history and Vlad Tepes, and more modern elements of a vampire story. It also has many of the tropes that are particularly near and dear to my heart, including:

-kickass ladies (Helen Rossi is the main one; also the narrator and Aunt Eva are pretty cool)
-vampires that actually are really scary and drink blood
-lots and lots of churches
-letters
-book nerdery
-WACKY LIBRARY HIJINKS

I am so not kidding about the wacky library hijinks. The basic plot of the book is that Dracula really does not like people researching him and trying to find his tomb, so the people involved in researching him keep getting attacked by vampires in university libraries and stuff. It's amazing.

The book is very much in the nineteenth-century-novel tradition of being long and deliberately paced, although it has avoided most of the ways in which long and deliberately paced nineteenth century novels suck; namely, the plot does show up fairly near the beginning of the book. (If you've read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which you should, you'll have an idea of what I mean by "stylistically very nineteenth-century except not bad.") It also uses my favorite framing device EVER, which is "giant packet of documents format." I don't know if this format actually has its own name or if it is considered a derivation of epistolary format (which I personally tend to think of as "a letter or packet of letters from one character to another, or a letter correspondence between two characters only"), but it is the format used in some of my favorite nineteenth-century novels ever, like The Woman in White (which is framed as a police "case file" for the mystery), and is--something which I find particularly delightful and most people probably don't care about--also the format used in Bram Stoker's Dracula. (The book even copies his notice about all the documents being put in the order that makes the most sense.)

Anyway, if you like vampires,  history, books about books, and stories about scholars being all action-hero-y, you should drop whatever you're doing and read this immediately.

Books

My second book of 2011 was tammypierce  's Bloodhound, the second book in the Beka Cooper series. This is Tamora Pierce trying her hand at pseudo-medieval police procedurals. The awesomeness potential of combining all the awesomeness of pseudo-medieval fantasy stories with all the awesomeness of cop shows will not be lost on anyone familiar with Terry Pratchett's Night Watch subseries of Discworld books, and I am glad to say that Tamora Pierce does not waste this potential. Beka is a hilarious narrator; her magic powers are cool and creepy but she's still a clever and resourceful heroine in her own right, not in any way a passive cipher for "wouldn't it be cool if I had those powers; I wouldn't have to ever try to be an awesome person in regular ways again" fantasies (I am looking at you, Bella Swan... and 90% of pulp fantasy). This series takes place a century or two before the Song of the Lioness series starts, and the differences between the two settings are fascinating--similar enough to be definitely the same place; different enough to show a marked change in history and social progress. The really interesting thing to me about the Beka Cooper series is the way in which it clearly demonstrates that sometimes society "progresses" in ways we think of as "progressive"... and sometimes it backlashes. In Beka's world, slavery is still legal in Tortall, something that has been outlawed in most of the Eastern Lands by the time Alanna shows up (although not in Carthak or the Copper Isles, which always have fascinating imperialism/colonialism storylines). However, gender roles are much freer in Beka's time--Bloodhound hints at the emergence of a "cult of the Gentle Mother," a sort of Victorianesque angel-in-the-house type of thinking that Beka mostly ignores but makes the reader, if the reader has read all the other Tortall books, go "NOOOOOO NOT THAT IT IS GOING TO RUIN EVERYTHING" and what's really interesting is, that is kind of true. The Victorians were much more restrictive than a lot of times and places in history before them, for all that the Victorian era was relatively recent. Beka's world still has lady knights as a matter of course (a bit rare, but perfectly legal and definitely in existence), as well as female police officers, female heads of organized crime syndicates, female mercenaries, and gender-neutral public bathhouses. And for most of the book, this is presented as completely normal. Pretensions towards femininity, and the apparently "new" idea of female modesty (a passing mention of nobles "starting to" have sex-segregated bathhouses), are luxuries of the very uppermost classes.

Pierce's books, looked at in the order they're written rather than the order they take place in, are actually a pretty solid case study in phases of feminism (and probably most social justice movements in general, these just happen to focus on women):

Song of the Lioness Quartet: very much Wave 1: "I can do the same things the boys can do, and you're wrong to tell me I can't." Dealing with very blatant (including "enshrined in law") issues of being restricted from doing things on the basis that girls are lesser and can't do the cool stuff. Straight-up fight-the-patriarchy. (Also crazy plot about necromanced dukes and throne-stealing and stuff! Man, I need to reread that series.)
Immortals Quartet: Deals with women and power that's not been coded specifically masculine. Daine has animal magic, something that is pretty rare in the Tortall books, but a lot of the aspects of "wild magic"--including its first manifestation of "talking to animals," and particularly "I have a pony and I can talk to it and it's my best friend"--are, out in this universe, basic Disney Princess powers. The Immortals quartet revisits "feminine" coded tropes and instead of eschewing them for being feminine, it develops, expands and explores them to create  story in which "talking to animals" magic is the first stage of seriously crazy powerful magic that results in shape-shifting abilities and saving the world from horrible things that want to suck it into the Chaos Realms. It's also seriously deromanticized--Daine's animal magics result in her spending time running around the woods thinking she's a wolf, and stuff like that.
Protector of the Small is the book for what happens when you've stopped being specifically barred from stuff because you're female, but you're still facing non-legal hurdles: Kel gets put on probation for a year for no reason whatsoever, and, while only a few seriously cranky old misogynists will flat-out argue that she shouldn't legally be allowed to be there, she is very much not welcome. She is othered, alienated, judged extra harshly, doubted and singled out, etc., and has to deal with all of that. This is also the first series where Pierce begins talking substantially about other social justice issues, such as homosexuality.
The Trickster quartet deals somewhat less with femininity and a lot more with colonialism. Intersectionality is very important. There are some interesting scenes between Aly and her mom that have some parallels to issues of intergenerational/"waves"-of-feminism conflicts, though. But mostly: racism, colonialism, class warfare! These are all important things for feminists to know about, since gendered power is only one facet of a dominance-based social order and all the other types of power dynamics all play off each other in weird ways. (In a word: kyriarchy.)
And then we get Beka Cooper, where we have: NORMALIZATION. Where we get to stop invoking stereotypes (and stereotype threat) altogether; we get to stop saying "Prove you can do what the boys can do" and it's just portrayed as perfectly normal that you can, why would you bring up the idea that you couldn't? Beka doesn't have to be the groundbreaker or the pioneer or the martyr For The Cause. The Provost's Dogs are predominantly made up of male-female pairs, but Beka spends most of Bloodhound with Clara Goodwin as her partner (Tunstall's injured for a good chunk of the book), and... they fight crime. They are allowed to focus on fighting crime and having an awesome adventure trying to break counterfeiting rings and shit instead of having their gender made a focal point of every page. This series also introduces (who I think is) Pierce's first transgender character, Okha. (Okha's awesome, btw.)

The one downside to this series: The language is a little different than the other books, in that it takes place two hundred years earlier and as such the "medieval" street slang is two hundred years more medieval. If you ever laugh at modern American authors using terms like "lads and lasses," be prepared to bust a gut over "lads and gixies." It's actually a fascinating set of vocab (cove, mot, spintry, doxie, bardash, honeylove, looby, pox, murrain... God they are so much fun to say) but it definitely starts to remind you of the awkwardest people you run into at Ren Faires.

Movies

I am afraid I gotta let you guys down on this one. I've had Scarface sitting around for a week. I'll watch it soon!

TV Shows

Castle is awesome, as always, and the latest episode, Nikki Heat, was no exception. Watching somebody make Beckett uncomfortable is way more fun than it should be; I usually love that Beckett is all cool and in control and basically awesome in every way, but seeing other sides of her definitely humanizes her a lot. And uncomfortable-Beckett is really, really funny because Stana Katic just does everything about the character so well. Also: Ryan and his girlfriend are so adorable I almost cried. Also also: I forgot Esposito's first name was Javier and for some reason I found it really jarring to hear Ryan call him that, probably just because mostly he never does.

Nightwish videos

I Wish I Had an Angel is one of my favorites.

"In case de curse does not succeed, dis is me lucky stake. I have killed many vampires wit it. I call it Mr. Pointy."

I have certain too-cool-for-school biases that I am learning, slowly, to get over. They have caused me to deprive myself of too many of the wonderful things in life. Like Joss Whedon shows.

One of the unfortunate things that tends to happen to people when they discover Joss Whedon is that they get very, very excited and, regardless of whether or not they'd first mention Buffy or Firefly if someone merely asked them "What's the best television show ever made?", the moment they find out you haven't seen it they go completely evangelical berserk on you. Any militant nonconformist, like many of us styled ourselves in high school, have a knee-jerk bad reaction to this sort of enthusiasm. As such, I put off watching Firefly for a very long time. How was I supposed to know people were actually *right* about how awesome it is?

I had similar snobbery issues with Buffy, for many years. Got sick of people always bringing it up when someone mentioned vampires; developed a sort of "hexcuse me, I am busy reading Montague Summers here, I do not have time for the crappy 90s television version of this myth" *FLOUNCE* attitude. Also, highly biased against the recent development of vampires completely transforming their physical appearances to feed--in books, they look like what they look like. Any physical changes are limited to eyes flashing red (very old old demonic trait) or their fangs getting longer (logical, biting's sort of a big thing with vamps). When was the last time you read a book that was all "and then his eyes flashed red and his fangs grew longer, and his skin turned sort of green and his nose got all squished, and his forehead grew bigger..."? Yeah, didn't think so. Also, WTF sort of name is "Buffy"? Dumber than "Sookie," seriously.

And I still, actually, think the vampire makeup and the name "Buffy" are kind of dumb. But this is more than outweighed by the fact that the show is awesome.

Some people have compared Twilight to Buffy. Actually, no, that's not true. People have said that they'd ASSUMED Twilight would somehow compare to Buffy, but NOBODY with reading comprehension can draw more than superficial similarities. I mean, you can compare anything, and you can especially always compare one paranormal romance to another. You can compare True Blood to Twilight, and not just 'cos they're both popular. But they're nothing *like* each other. And Buffy really reminds me a lot more of True Blood, mostly in that the main character has a personality and is not so militantly emo-ly Outside Teh Shallow Cultural Mainsteam OMG Aren't I Better Than Everyone Else? I mean... seriously, I'm a Goth, I probably *have* more in common with Bella on the socially awkward not-going-to-school-dances end (and CERTAINLY did in high school!), but I really LIKE that Sookie and Buffy *aren't* dark and brooding. Sookie and Buffy are strong, with the occasional appreciation for being "girly," like wearing no pants, ever. Bella covers being a stereotypically weak female by being concerned with ~deeper things~ than girliness. MAN UP and LIGHTEN UP, Bells. This is almost making me want to go blonde.

The vampire boyfriends in all three stories are still dark and brooding; it's apparently necessary. (Only Edward is a CHRONICALLY PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE MANIPULATIVE CONTROLLING ARSEHOLE about it, though.) The Buffy/Angel thing did clear up part of what looked like inconsistency in Twilight for me, though (because OF COURSE it can't be Stephenie Meyer being inconsistent!), the whole bit where Edward was like BUT I CANNOT SHAG YOU, IT WILL BE FATAL but then does anyway and it doesn't kill her? It is not fatal because he will squish Bella with ~vampiric manliness~, it is because if he shags her, he will NOT BE EMO FOR TEN SECONDS, and this is the kiss of death for melodramatic vampire boyfriends of human chicks. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.

The show also has a nice balance of vampire-related plot to other-paranormal-stuff plot, although as the show is progressing they're getting more and more interrelated to form a recognizable plot arc, which I guess is standard for most shows--more episodic at first, more cohesive as it progresses. But it stops the vampires from getting to be too much. And all the other weird shit they run into is just so much fun. (My favorite episode so far is still when Xander and some other kids get possessed by hyenas, partly because hyena-Xander has so much more class than normal Xander. Also they ate the principal. Which... made me hungry?)

I supposedly have to wait until school starts again to get season 3 from Simon, although I might have to find a way around that. Or I could chill out and read the next three Sookie Stackhouse books. I should probably do that. (And watch the Sopranos. Variety is good.)

In other news, the gym Mom joined is ridiculous. I'm very glad to have a gym to go to over break, since I always eat too much and spend most of the day reading/watching movies, for three weeks, which is bad. Paul has agreed to take me for an "advanced driving" lesson on Saturday, and I'll be taking a defensive driving course sometime this break, and then maybe we'll be able to start looking at replacing my car and having me actually be prepared to not crash it this time. (Have been trying to deal with the anger and embarrassment by looking at this as a learning experience. I have learned that sometimes I'm *not* just being a wimp when I'm not comfortable with something, that grown-ups aren't always right and copying them is not the way to learn things, and that some things are dangerous to learn by mucking about by yourself. Next, I'm going to learn to drive better.) It's almost Christmas: I love baking, I hate sappy Christmas music (Make cake, not love!). I am still being antisocial and haven't seen any of my friends since I got home. Hanging out with Mom is fun but if she's not around I'd rather it just be me and my mood swings. I never thought I'd write that sentence, ever. Crate & Barrel is selling those adorable half-size martini glasses they have at Moynihan's, and I am coveting them for post-Christmas shopping, even though I have a ridiculous number of martini glasses already (and all from Crate & Barrel). And that is about the most exciting stuff going on in my life right now. It's so good to be on break.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4492238.ece

Considering all the fun I've had completely snarking the Twilight series at every turn, I never really thought I'd say this, but... Stephenie Meyer *so* does not deserve this shit. This might be the most ineptly written interview in the history of ineptly written interviews. Offensively so, but I'll get to that in a minute.

We can start with the fucking HEADLINE (and that's a bad sign): "News Review interview: Stephenie Meyer. A Mormon housewife’s bestselling tales of a gallant ghoul are fast filling the void left by Harry Potter". Okay, I have enough issues with Stephenie referring to her sparkly wonderpeople as "vampires," but... GHOUL? There is only one instance in which a ghoul and a vampire are the same thing, and that is when the speaker is AN ILLITERATE AND CULTURALLY SHELTERED IGNORAMUS WHO DOESN'T EVEN REALIZE THAT "HORROR" *IS* A GENRE AND NOT JUST THE FEELING YOU GET WHEN YOUR TEA COSIES DON'T MATCH. Fifty bucks says this reporter doesn't let her children celebrate Halloween.

Also, the reviewer has clearly not read "Breaking Dawn" yet. She/he/it happily dithers on the series "boil[ing] with desire that all goes unconsummated" (emphasis mine), and that "even though her characters never have sex...". Um, that was true of the first three books, but part of the reason so many people hate BD is that Edward and Bella are constantly sexxin'. CONSTANTLY. Especially in the third segment of the book, which I'm only halfway through, and I am so god damn sick of it already. I'm going to vomit next time I she uses the word "physically," I swear.

Most importantly, by which I mean the punishment for the other two should have been being locked in a library for 10 years each but the punishment for this one should involve electroshocks and waterboarding, there is the following evaluation of Stephenie Meyer's literary genius:

"She’s a roundish, bouncy figure who disguises her weight well in smart black pants and tailored shirt."

As much as I am a nosy bitch and want to know absolutely everything about everyone, Stephenie Meyer's weight has absolutely NOTHING to do with her writing ability, or lack thereof, depending on what camp you're in. NOTHING. And it is not nice to call people fat. It is especially inappropriate to call people fat when it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what you're talking about. And as much as I do believe that being able to dress yourself is a skill (I go to a hippy nerd school... there's actually people who can't around here), it's not a writing skill. Also, I am extremely skeptical as to whether this comment would still have been made if Stephenie Meyer were a man.

This article does contain some helpful insight into why the Twilight books are... um... bad, as far as I'm concerned. Point the first:

"Even her husband was doubtful, once she confessed what she had really been doing all those nights when she came to bed late. “He wasn’t very enthusiastic, because he was trying to protect me,” she said. “He knew how hard I would take rejections and I think he was concerned I was going to get hurt. And nobody would want to live with a rejected Stephenie.” "

Score! My number one problem with the Twilight series, Edward's particular dickheadedness-- "protection" at the expense of supporting your girlfriend/wife's ability to be a god damn person. At the expense of supporting her right to take chances, make mistakes, try new things, face the big bad real world and its meen ppl. God forbid you encourage your wife to develop her artistic talents and express herself! Somebody somewhere might not think she's good, and that would hurt her feelings, so you should just beat them all to it instead.

Interview also mentions that "before she started writing, [she] had never read a vampire book". YOU DON'T SAY. No wonder her vampires' mythology is so awkard and, um, NON-VAMPIRIC. No wonder there's all these awkward scenes where Bella goes to check out vampire myths, and only finds the *myths*, and then dithers about how the Cullen vampires are "sooooooo different than the stories" even on the points where their differing from Dracula and pre-Dracula myths are, in fact, extremely common points of modern vampire mythology. If I read one more vampire novel where, upon discovering vampires, some human character goes "But I thought vampires couldn't go out in sunlight?" and the vampire is like "ALL TEH STORIEZ ARE RONG!!" I will BURN IT. So many modern stories have adopted the idea of "the vampire that can go out in the day and there's just (x) reason why they usually don't" that most of us have freaking heard that notion by now. Did Meyer really think she was making her own change to the mythology? When I actually review BD, I will go on my own rant as to why the modern changes to the vampire myth are being made (any why they suck!), but I am now going to shift my focus onto the changes that Meyer made that actually *are* original, and why *they* suck.

1. Individuated superpowers. Um, this one sucks because it betrays how little you know about traditional vampire powers. Since you have absolutely no idea what has ever constituted "vampire powers" except for superstrength, you gave them each individual ones, making them more like a bunch of superheroes than a single race. Mythologically, even in modern vampire stories, vampirism is generally *opposed* to one's individuality, which gets sort of tied in with the being human business, ie, being "you". Part of the existential angst facet of most modern vampire stories is that the vampirism thing basically irons out bits of "you", and you have to struggle between being "you" and being "vampire." The idea of an individuated superpower doesn't fit in too well with that theme.
2. Sparkly vampires. Actually, the whole 'inhumanly marble-like' skin thing being conspicuous is old. It's just the addition of the literal word "sparkle" that makes it dumb. SPARKLE. Seriously.
3. Vampires don't sleep. First of all, it just seems really Mary-Sue-ish. Second of all, it sounds like it'd be twice as big a curse as being immortal and sleeping through half of it, but no, it gives them extra time to be ~awesome~! *eyeroll* Third of all, and probably the weakest argument, it just departs SO completely from all other mythology, from the primevial horror image of rising out of the grave, that it very much bothers the folklorist in me. Vampires don't have to actually crawl out of their grave every evening to make me happy. There just needs to be SOME shred of a tie left to that original idea. Fourth, vampires aren't *robots*. They still need sustenance, why not rest?
4. Okay, the big one. Vampire "venom." Is DUMB. Why? Because they're VAMPIRES. What bodily fluid is most closely associated with vampires? BLOOD. If the vampire's power therefore resides in one of their bodily fluids, what fluid would it be? BLOOD. What is it in every single other motherfucking vampire story where a vampire's bodily fluid changes the victim? BLOOD. Why do some canons have vampires sweat or cry blood? BECAUSE THE VAMPIRE MYTH... IS... ABOUT... BLOOD. Now, WHY would you have a vampire's power reside in one of its bodily fluids that is absolutely unrelated to blood? There are two possible answers: one, you're stupid, two, you don't know what a vampire is.

Oh, and one more major, apoplexy-inducing pet peeve for the entire world of douchewagons who want to praise SMeyer without stopping to think if what they're saying makes any sense or not: STOP COMPARING THIS TO HARRY POTTER. Yes, they're both series, they're both popular, they're both fantasy. This is where it ENDS. The stories have radically different tones, setups, and characters. The world-building bears no similarities. Mythologies are interpreted radically differently. Hell, the idea of the power of love is interpreted almost COMPLETELY differently. Meyers' books are ridiculously conservative in terms of their social mores and evaluations of relationships between people (find Prince Charming, do what he says, everything else is secondary); Rowling has a strong hippie-liberal bent (stick by everybody, be dependent on none of them, challenge authority, be yourself, tolerance, etc). Meyer is deliberately writing about mythologies she knows nothing about; Rowling's books are deeply colored by more old mythology and folklore than you will ever be able to uncover. Meyers' books are mysogynistic, despite her female protagonist; Rowling has a male protagonist but also has a share of ass-kicking and sometimes even single women who are considered as individual characters, not halves of pairs, and certainly not in need of the protection of their men. (I would put in that HP is legitimately good and Twilight is just fun 'cos it's crack, but all know that.) JUST STOP COMPARING THE TWO ALREADY.

Meyer majored in English, too. >.< Inexcusable. But God... the fact that she writes crack has nothing to do her *weight*. And at least she writes; I respect that enough to believe she should get an interviewer who at least *reads*. Writing is hard; reading is easy. Poor Stephenie.

Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring (almost done); Norse Mythology: Great Stories from the Eddas (Halfway through, which is almost done as is less than hundred-page book).
Writing: Three vampire stories. Yes, THREE. One I have been working on, on and off, for years. One I just started, and have only bits and pieces of ideas anyway. One I am writing with Kat; we wrote six pages of notes this weekend and she is starting the first draft of the first few chapters and will be sending it to me soon. This last one is going to be unabashedly absurd; it was inspired by The Fearless Vampire Killers.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck) is a wonderful silly stupid movie. It should be more well-known.

Um, I feel kind of bad since I keep cancelling plans with people, and have no intention of making plans with other people that I had originally intended to hang out with before going back to school, and am generally being hermity and antisocial, and refusing to see people or talk to them if I don't absolutely have to. And one of these days this feeling of isolated literary-mindedness is going to wear off and I'm going to be bored and lonely, and I will look back on this time and get very angry with myself for ignoring the people insane enough to want to hang out with me, because by the time I feel like dealing with people again all the people will have gotten pissed off and will no longer want to deal with me. And then I will get all emo and mopey because I will know it is all my own fault for neglecting my friends. But still, for the moment, I'm still being all "I don't want to go have fun, I want to stay home by myself!" because if I DO go out and have fun with people, but I don't want to be doing so, then they will also be offended that I am tired and impatient and not sufficiently happy to be hanging out with them, so either way I am basically being intolerable and I will not be surprised if people soon stop tolerating me.

In the meantime, I read and write and pretend I am nine years old and enjoy my solitude. (And set things on fire.)

( If you picked up a book in a bookstore and the first two pages was this, would you keep reading? )

I have so many things to read and write! Good-bye.