L is for Lust, Love and the Learning Curve

L

Remember that first aching sweep of passion?
Remember the gaping hole that opened up in your mind and devoured everything but whatever it was?
Remember how hard it is to recreate that feeling?  How you can't believe how absorbed you were?  What lengths you went to to find the object of desire?

Welcome to lust.  I've always been prone to it.

I'm not talking here about lust in the sexual sense.  I'm talking about those wild lusts that seem to be a form of insanity, as the longing to know, to find out to discover EVERYTHING is so compulsive.  Even if it isn't, technically, madness, it often feels like that in the aftermath. 

Take, for example, my own first, passionate lust object.  Ponies.  I was five. 

I drove my mother mad.  I behaved like a pony.  Walked like a pony, trotted and cantered like a pony, and was with difficulty restrained from eating my cereal straight from the bowl like a pony.  She drew the line when I started to whinney.  Drew the line and took a lot of time to make sure I met real ponies as often as possible.  Got me riding lessons.  Gradually found ways to make her slightly demented daughter find ways to integrate pony into her life.  I'm not sure I've completely forgiven her for not letting me keep one in our tiny back garden.  It didn't help that we had friends who did keep a pony in their back garden.  In a stable. 

It passed.  Or rather, the boundaries of the lust for all things equine expanded.  One day I found a book about racehorses with some superb photos in it.  Another lust was born. 

Hyperion (T Weston up).  1933 Derby winner and all around excellent genepool addition

Hyperion lead onward to an compulsive interest in racehorse pedigrees.  Books and books piled up.  I had (still have) card indexes detailing the bloodlines of every pattern race winner I could lay hands on.  Nothing and nobody got in the way of me and my race watching.  That lust became a long-term love and still lingers (although I no longer book Derby Day off to spend all morning scouring the Racing Post).

Then, aged 12, I read a book by Nigel Balchin.  The Borgia Testament.  Quite what it was doing on the bookshelf in the school library I don't know, but it got into my hands at just the wrong age.  Let others devote their passions and lusts and crushes towards the living.  Nothing but Cesare Borgia would do for me.

Cesare Borgia by Melone (contemporary)

I still think I showed quite good taste there.  I learned so much about 15th century Italy, the popes and the man himself that I could have gone on Mastermind.

I've generally been very lucky in my lusts.  What has happened is that the initial surge of NEED TO KNOW, NOW has evolved into a longer term interest.  I've kept all of them in some form or another and  they've continued to be an important part of my life.  And I've learned from them. 

One thing I learned is that the racehorse pedigrees, the pony obsession, and the fascination with Cesare and his world were inter-connected to some degree.  I need to find and understand the patterns.  It is part of how I operate and impacts on everything I do.  All that lust goes to a good cause in the end. 

I know I'm still quite capable of going head over heels into lust with something.  I'm looking at the two shelves of gaming material sitting on the shelf behind me.  That is lust alright.  Lust with a vengeance, because these were new systems with different ways of building worlds and how could I not want them?

Lust leading to love on a learning curve.  It's the kind of lust I need. 

Kicking myself, Konigsburg, Kipling

After the famine, the feast.

Wouldn't you just know it.  Hours after I put up a short and simple "K" post, the above walks into my brain.  I don't know how I could have forgotten either of these completely kickass authors, but there you go.  And another K as well.

E L Konigsburg is more likely to be familiar to US audiences.  As far as I know she is a fairly regular staple in American schoolrooms (that's how I found her), but From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler is well worth a look.  It won't even take you long.  Her books (children and YA with only a few exceptions) are extremely economical.  Don't let the length deceive you.  She packs a lot into those pages. 

The basic premise is wonderful.  Claudia decides to run away from her unappreciative family and picks the Metropolitan Museum of Art as her hideout.  This appealed to me hugely at the age of about 12.  She selects her brother Jamie to accompany her and they do exactly what they plan.  Once in the museum, she becomes obsessed with a small statue of an angel and Claudia's search for the artist becomes the story's focus.

Illustration from the book by E L Konigsburg.

Kipling is an obvious literary giant, but he isn't much in fashion today as he wrote in and about the colonial era and we all tend to prefer that never happened.  In the interests of redressing the balance a little, I draw your attention to the following:

The Jungle Book
The Second Jungle Book
Just So Stories
Puck of Pook's Hill
Rewards and Fairies
Kim

Technically all the above are children's books, but really, give them a try.  Disney did a great take on The Jungle Book but the original stories are another thing entirely.  Plus the man gives a flavour of India like nobody else I've ever read. 

More on Diana Wynne Jones

Following up from my earlier "J" post, a quick run down of some of Diana's books.

Virtually all of her books can be read and enjoyed as stand alone novels, but she does have some recurring characters and settings.  The jokes are funnier if you know a bit about some of her characters, but with few exceptions, there isn't really a suggested reading order.

Here we go: 


Dalemark Quartet
These four books are set in Dalemark - a kind of northern slightly steampunkish Europe.  They can be read in any order, but chronologically they go like this -
The Spellcoats - set in the far past of Dalemark and telling the story of the mythic first family from the perspective of Tanaqui (a member of that family).  In common with a lot of Diana's work, the story uses a first person perspective, so for a lot of the book, Tanaqui is unaware of how important she and her siblings are.

Cart and Cwidder - centuries later (possibly thousands of years, it's been a while since I read it).  Travelling minstrel's son finds an artifact from the earlier age.

Drowned Ammet - set slightly after Cart and Cwidder and deals with an uprising seen through the eyes of Mitt.  He also appears in The Crown of Dalemark.

The Crown of Dalemark  is set in modern Dalemark but takes its heroine back to Mitt's time two centuries before.  It links all the four books together and makes better sense read that way, but stands as a good story in its own right.

Crestomanci series
These are by far her best known books.  When Harry Potter burst onto the scene, Diana was reprinted as she deals with some of the same things as J K Rowling - i.e. young wizards and their education.  Crestomanci is an extremely powerful nine-lived magician with a penchant for flamboyant dressing gowns.  He is a civil servant whose job is to maintain the balance of magic throughout the worlds.

Charmed Life
The Lives of Christopher Chant
Conrad's Fate
Witch Week
The Magicians of Caprona, and
The Pinhoe Egg

all include Crestomanci at various stages of his life.  There are many recurring characters and the above list is Diana's recommended reading order.  Witch Week and The Magicians of Caprona are set in other worlds and feature Crestomanci, although neither is strictly about him.  Witch Week uses alternate history and The Magicians of Caprona  is set in a wonderful pseudo-Florence.

Derkholm
Dark Lord of Derkhelm
Year of the Griffin
Two books which specifically pinpoint and make enormous fun of traditional fantasy settings.   These books really are best read in sequence.  In Dark Lord the land is infested with tourist parties who have paid to go on fantasy adventures.  It also draws heavily (and hilariously) on The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land - a must read for anyone addicted to fantasy.  Once the mess at the end of Dark Lord  is resolved, Year of the Griffin takes place at a university shortly afterwards and takes a cheerful swipe at academia.

Howl
Three books feature the side-stepping Welsh wizard and his family. 
Howl's Moving Castle  turns fairy tale conventions on their head.  Castle in the Air features many of the same characters and has an Arabian Nights setting.  The House of Many Ways has a more northern feel and includes kobolds and lubbokin as well as some royal politicking.  The heroine is one of Diana's many quirky, clever and unknowingly gifted girls. 

Magids
Another two which can be read separately but are linked by a couple of characters.  Deep Secret takes place at a SciFi/Fantasy convention and is a personal favourite for obvious reasons.  The Merlin Conspiracy uses Arthurian legend in a modern setting.  Both books use multiple protagonist voices.

Apart from the books that fall roughly into sets, there are a large number of genuine stand alones with no crossover characters.

Eight Days of Luke - norse myth
Dogsbody - Sirius the star is banished to Earth as a dog.
Homeward Bounders - a great one for gamers. 
Hexwood - another great one for gamers, but has the most complex plot I've ever encountered.
The Game - novella and another of my personal favourites.  Myths from the outside in.
Archer's Goon - wizards trapped in a town and farming its various resources.  Also features writer's block.
Time of the Ghost - this one always seems to have been drawn specifically from Diana's own childhood.  Do not make midnight bargains with ancient goddesses.
Fire and Hemlock - Tam Linn

I don't know how many of these are in print at the moment, but the most likely would be the Crestomanci and Howl series. 

J is for Diana Wynne Jones

J

If anyone epitomises the kind of writer I would like to be, it is Diana Wynne Jones.  She combined extreme intelligence, intricate plotting, humour and fantasy in a unique mixture and she did it consistently over four decades.

I found her by accident one summer holiday when the library had a copy of Eight Days of Luke.  It drew some neat parallels between the highly disfunctional Aesir and a modern day Midlands family without being in the slightest bit preachy.  It also made me laugh hugely and sent me out on a marathon hunt for every other book of hers I could find.

Diana died last year and although I happily re-read everything she wrote, I still hate the thought that there will be no more from her.

She was that rare thing - an author who simply did not seem to know how to write badly.  She always makes me laugh, wince and look over my shoulder.  I understand exactly how her characters work and love the worlds she creates.  She's also driven me round the bend trying to follow the ramifications of her plots.   Hexwood  remains a thoroughly enjoyable enigma, to name only one.

Luckily she was prolific as well as consistently good and her bibliography is long.  If you have not encountered her, please try reading some of her work.  If you have, share your favourites.

Guilty pleasures - curling up with The Chalet School

Despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise,  my annual trawl through the Chalet School oeuvre does not count as curling up with a good book.  More like a tin of Quality Street than designer chocolate. 

The thing about the Chalet School series is that over the course of 57 or so books, not a great deal happens.  Nearly 30 years pass and the school moves from the Tyrol to Wales via Guernsey and St Briavels Island and finally to Switzerland, but somehow remains in a glorious time capsule.

WWII prompts the move from the Tyrol and is genuinely dramatic, but the other moves come about mostly because of poor drainage.  The parents must have been the most forgiving bunch ever.  Their girls are constantly being uprooted and plunked down in new buildings, but nary a word is spoken of inconvenience.  Nor do any of them protest when Miss Annersley announces two weeks into one term that half term has been moved.

On the whole, the following will happen in any given book:-

There will be a prefect's meeting by the end of chapter 2.  In the course of this there will be in depth discussion of who should be in charge of the Stationary Cupboard (often a source of trouble with naughty middles demanding more than their proper allocation of blotting paper).  Someone will always be pleasantly surprised to be voted into a post they didn't expect.

We will meet a new girl.  She will have some slightly interesting backstory which will emerge piecemeal through the book.  By the end she will either have been sidelined in favour of someone more interesting, or she will have become a proper Chalet School girl.

In the course of each book, someone will inevitably do something stupid.  In the early Tyrol books, this usually means getting stuck up the Tjernjoch or falling through unsafe ice.  St Briavel's island also offered unrivalled opportunities for getting stuck on seaweed clad rocks with a rising tide threatening doom.  Switzerland  has a lovely array of dodgy cliff edges for people to fall off during moss-gathering expeditions.

One noticeable difference between early and late stage Chalet is that these accidents become less and less likely to have a tense near-death scene with a delirious pupil being anxiously eyed by the staff.  By the back end of the books, most accidents have been reduced to a swift visit to Matron and a few thoughtful days in the sick room.

The Sanatorium is always a major player.  The San is closely linked to the School and always has been (and oddly, follows the school in its journeyings).  This is because the founder, Madge Bettany, married a San doctor somewhere around book 2.  As a result, the greatest reward for any Chalet School girl is to marry a doctor.  Quite a few do, and then send their offspring to the Chalet School (of course).  A side effect of this is that any given book will include long sections updating us on the activities, families and accidents of past pupils.

"Oh, I have some wonderful news!  Bernie and Kurt will be moving to Innsbruck!"

What can I say?  A guilty pleasure but mine own.

The reading pile - more brain mapping

As we settle in for the great family blob, I am looking forward to my reading pile.

By the bed and dotted strategically around the house are the following:

Printed versions of character creation rules for the RPG formerly known as Runequest and Elric of Melnibone.  This in anticipation of a Google+ game intended to enliven the festival.

The Popes - John Julius Norwich and Saints and Sinners by Eamon Duffy

Reader's Digest book of British folklore

High Spirits by Robertson Davis, because what is Christmas without a ghost?

How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson - because who knows when the bakery urge may strike?

A random selection of Chalet School stories.  I love these.  If anyone knows where I can find a copy of Redheads of the Chalet School - just tell me.

Heroes of Shadow - D&D 4e handbook to update my bard with

As many plays as I can lay hands on, because being prepared is good.

The Lord of the Rings - an annual re-read.

Dracula - another one.

Everything I can find by Diana Wynne Jones and Georgette Heyer.  Never failing delights the both of them.

This list is pure joy.

Books: if you can find it, it isn't disorganised

A lot of our house looks like this.  We love books.  The smell of them, the feel of them, the history of them.  All those bent corners and worn spines have a story to tell.  Kindle has no place in our lives as yet.

We have books.  Lots of them.  I can find most of them with some ease.  My memory works like that.  So is it disorganised?  If the aim of organisation is to allow someone else to find things with ease, then yes, clearly it is.  But for us, it works.  Very, very rarely have I been unable to find something I wanted at the time I wanted it.

Want volume two of the Belgariad?  It's on the top shelf in the library to the right above the radiator between a Spanish dictionary and a book about molecular biology.  Need that elusive Asterix book?  Downstairs bathroom corridor, three shelves down, in among the Tintin.  Have to look up the pedigree of the 1835 Oaks winner?  Be my guest, far left, fifth shelf down, propped up bookcase to the left of the lavatory.

I think this might be a kind of map of my entire brain.

Virtue has its own reward

Managed a bit of painting between the virtuous tasks like recycling cardboard and taking son to piano lesson.  Painting, in this case meaning painting minis.  I'm not good at this as I haven't been doing it for very long, but slowly, slowly I'm building up technique.

There is something deeply satisfying about prodding about with a tiny paintbrush and filling in a belt buckle the size of a pinhead.  Hard to explain, but nonetheless true.

The painting was a reward for actually removing some of the mountainous piles of rubbish from around the house.  I'm a firm believer in carrot and stick, but I'm much better at the carrot end of the equation.  This time though I did a thing I've found impossible in the past and actually took some books down to the charity shop.  They were all duplicates, so it wasn't too bad, but it was still a real wrench and felt like such a huge betrayal.  I apologised to them all the way there.  Still feeling a bit guilty.