My thoughts on that new Guy Gavriel Kay book, Ysabel, may be summed up adequately by the following communications:

4:30pm - wherein Sarah calls and mentions she's like 50 pages or so in, and by the way it's really good.

1:42am - wherein I respond to Sarah's email and mention that I am like 50 pages in or so, and by the way it's really good.

From: Erik
Subject: Re: Late-night encouragement
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 05:17:06 -0400
To: Sarah

So it's a pretty good book, yknow? All tapeworm-evokey and stuff.

---Erik

About 4 hours or so for 421 pages. One sitting, no breaks. Haven't done that in a while. Felt pretty good. Needless to say, and I don't really want to say too much for fear of giving anything away, you should go read it right now. Your prompt attention to this matter is encouraged and appreciated.

Let me close with the thought that the number of things in that book that might be construed as Sarah/me in-jokes, or just me in-jokes, is slightly disturbing. You shall see why.

First, I should like to acknowledge Tali and Laurent, who should be rather married at this point in time. I think this is a perfectly great and excellent thing, and couldn't have happened to two better people. So congratulations, you two.

Now, I was not on the other side of the continent yesterday (teleporter broke again...sigh), but I WAS in New Haven with Sarah, celebrating birthdays, watching plays (Our Town = good), playing frisbee, hanging out, and generally Enjoying Life, which I also think is a perfectly fine and excellent thing.

However, a certain imbalance in the present giving arose. Among other things, I got our resident Great Artist, Suzanne, to do me a couple of drawings, which can be generally seen by all and sundry here.

On the other hand, Sarah picked up for me these:

which are, in a word, awesome, and officially win the month of April. I must plot and scheme, so as to make up for this reckoning. Yes.

Now if I could just get to Powell's in time for John Scalzi's signing. Alas.

With a nod towards my dad's comment on the previous entry, which can be found here,

I think, for the record, that this marks the first time anyone related to me has posted here, so let's just all pause and appreciate it for a moment.

Because I started writing this as a comment and said "Actually, there's a post in here..." let's just talk about this for a bit.

Starting with Hemingway, the comment relating to whom amuses me greatly, since hey, who else in the family wears flannels? ;) I understood, at the end of the month or so we spent reading Old Man and the Sea, pretty well what Hemingway was trying to say, and how he was trying to say it. My issue with it is that the act of reading it was so insanely boring that it scarcely mattered what he said, I wasn't in the mood to listen. I think the same thing about The Pearl. Steinbeck's a great author, but that story was horrendously bad. It's all very good, as I've said, to write stories about Great And Important Subjects In Life, but great literature should be MORE than that - there should be a deep and compelling plot to go along with it, which neither of them had, IMHO.

By contrast, I'm thinking of, say, Catcher In the Rye, which would have been directly relevant to a bunch of HS kids. I think Gatsby has a lot less universal appeal at the age, but it was fun. I'm sure Ender's Game would get some reaction. I'd love to see something like Starship Troopers or The Forever War taught well. We'll come back to that in a bit.

If I'm picking on Mr. Elliott, I don't mean to be...much. It's just that there a couple of things he had an irrational love for, poetry among them. He has a little speech, along the lines of:

"Stories are like coffee. Take novels, which are like Folgers. You drink them for the caffeine, not the taste. Short stories are like brewing your own coffee to get better, more refined taste. But poetry is like espresso - just the pure essence of coffee."

He tells it better. He should, it's his.

Now, I disagree, as it happens, since I like my longer stories more (also I am a Coke drinker, and hate coffee, just to carry it further). My issue with most poetry is that, much like a lot of literature these days, is that it's trying WAY too hard to be something, when it really isn't. Of course, then sometimes you get Thomas or Kipling.

In any case, I don't place a lot of blame on Mr. Elliott's head, since I thought he was actually one of the better teachers at MHS. With the exception of Mrs. Hall in 7th (that lady sure could teach), and my 207/208 prof at OSU whose name I forget, he was the best of them. The less we say about English/Reading classes in grade school, the better, perhaps.

I hated (and hate), The Old Man and the Sea and The Pearl, but I learned some fairly useful skills from them. I certainly got a lot more from English than I did from Social Studies (which to be sure was what it was - no HS history book is going to teach ME about WWII) or, dare I say, Health (which gave me an abiding hatred of 1980s after school specials).

No, my real issue is that so much of the material is just so bad, badly presented, or both. I haven't the foggiest idea who to blame for those HS lit books, but they were pretty awful. And a few points on that.

1. The books in question were used 1995-1999, and I'm pretty sure all of them dated to something more like 1988 or a bit further back. I believe the latest thing we read in any class dated to 1959 (Alas, Babylon), which was a good 30 years prior to the book's date, and getting closer to 40 by the time I got there. Considering what has come since 1959, that's something of an issue. Salinger would've made that cutoff, but Heinlein and Haldeman would not. All of that literature from the civil rights movement, from Vietnam, and so much else, that was lost to us. At least in the first two years, it was like being forever stuck in the 1940s.

Too, how much of it was so dissimilar to anything I might actually read for myself? Sure, we read the Hobbit, and half of us got Alas, Babylon while the other half got Day of the Triffids, but aside from that, you've got Mark Twain and Shakespeare and Beowulf. And I've got so much more expansive tastes than most, too. Again, this is where we start talking about Heinlein and Haldeman. James Clavell and Alex Haley were probably too large for an HS class (although Roots or the Autobiography of Malcolm X would've been pretty useful), but Tim O'Brien, or Ender's Game. I hesitate to recommend Lord of the Rings because I find them dry, but you know, something.

At least for the first two years. I understand that you can't do much about American Lit, because it is what it is, and for as much as I despised all of it, there's a certain value in learning that body of work. Similarly with the British Lit we got as seniors, only it doesn't really need the help, because when you have Shakespeare, King Arthur in general, and Beowulf, you'll do ok. In fairness to my English texts, I was actually fascinated by my British book, because all the stuff was actually GOOD.

We could make it that way ALL THE TIME, is what I'm saying. It's just that hardly ever happened.

2. Too, touching on both the system and on something Suzanne said here, there's this whole thing set up in academia where literary form is pretty much trapped in the 1940s with a bunch of dead white guys and can't get out. The writing half of OSU was really atrocious about it, in fact (yes, lectures about "thou shalt not writeth genre fiction," I mean you). It's kind of like one of those horror things where you get trapped in a house with zombies, only none of these people would stoop to write like that (well, maybe they WOULD, since Poe did it first).

I suspect, though I don't entirely know because I never got far enough in my English classes to know, that there's a secret initiation ceremony in your junior year where you are forced to burn a bestselling fiction book while swearing on a copy of Moby Dick that you shall enjoy and espouse nothing written after 1960, and anything after 1950 only grudgingly respect. My own classroom experience bears evidence to this, but too, I found my English Praxis II, the test designed to judge your fitness to teach unto the youth of tomorrow, quite telling. Either you had read the Six True Books, or you had NOT read the Six True Books, and you failed the test.

Fortunately, The Great Gatsby (along with, IIRC, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, To Kill A Mockingbird, a collection of poetry I have never heard of, and a novel I have never heard of) was one of them, and I had just read it for fun and because I didn't get it in school, so I did reasonably well.

And it wasn't just "pick one of these books and write an essay on it" (although there was that), it was "In Book That Nobody Has Ever Heard Of, what happened when the protagonist's sister did that one thing with the stuff?"

It strikes me as impossible that a test this important could be this badly written, meaning that it was expected that you had read the books in question. Which I find both irresponsible and indicative of a much larger problem.

3. It may be, that had I become an English teacher, I would have reversed that trend amongst my students. Perhaps not. It is not, after all, just up to me. Those pesky creatures, parents, have their say, as do school boards. Maybe the school, as I suspect was a problem for MHS, just doesn't have the money.

I suspect, though, from having talked to a rather younger breed of English teacher in years since, that we may be escaping this. We shall see.

Teacher Man (not to mention Angela's Ashes and 'Tis) WERE truly amazing books. Could have used them in school. Alas.

Too, Sarah's commentary on all of this would likely be instructive, as someone who seems to have experienced nothing like the wasteland us public school types went through.

I invite, as always, comment.

I realize I'm behind the curve having just finished this yesterday, but I'll make up for that by being the first Alsherok blog to review it. Or something.

Thar's spoilers in them thar hills!

Now then.

1. Graphics. I trust that you won't be surprised when I say that they're really great, really supurb, because it's Oblivion. Bethesda's art people basically conquered the Internet with Morrowind, and have ruled it with an iron fist ever since. We exist as slaves to worship their greatness. It's ok, we like it. Our screenshot posts tell us this.

Speaking of Morrowind, SI sure does make me want to go load up some Morrowind and play my Telvanni guy. Little Diablo II Act 3 vibe off some of the ruin architecture. I kept waiting for the blowguns to hit.

The transition scene when you first enter the portal? That's amazing. In ways it's even more amazing than Oblivion's endgame, which right there all by itself sets new standards for amazing. You've done something right in your game when I see that, pause, alt-tab out, and then proceed to rave to everyone about how awesome that thing I just saw was.

2. Plot/Setting. Now, to be honest with you, SI wasn't what I really wanted in an xpack for Oblivion. I mean, there's so much that could be going on in Cyrodiil after the main game. You've got all these rumor topics talking about all the other provinces, some of which we've seen, some of which we haven't, but come on. You hear about all the stuff going down in Morrowind, and who doesn't want to go see what's up with that? Much like in Tribunal, which was very closely integrated with the main Morrowind storyline. Sheogorath? Who expected that? Pretty left field. Not what I expected. I'd still rather see the Morrowind revisited thing.

That having been said, they sure did a good job with it. Shivering Isles is a fucked up place with fucked up people in it, and that's cool. I like it. I mostly liked the plot, too, though with a few caveats:

A - SI was in no way suited for my Knights of the Nine Crusader character. In no way, shape, or form, plotwise. "I am a champion who has restored order, goodness, and light to the land! I shall...become the champion of an insane Daedric prince? And fight minions of Order? What?"

B - Being able to join Jyggalag would've been cool. Alas.

C - There are, and let me be quite serious here, only so many dungeons full of gruumites that I can stand to go through to do anything. Especially as a heavy armor melee fighter. Spending 5 minutes fighting the same dude is pretty tiresome, when I have to repeat it constantly for an entire dungeon. I realize that's an Oblivion interface quirk, but seriously, Morrowind wasn't nearly that tiresome to fight through.

3. Odds and Ends.

- Sheogorath sure was cool. Although Jason never gets to play it, because if he does, we will never hear the end of his utterly bizzare not-really-Irish accent. EVER. And you have no idea the kind of dread that fills me with.

- While I did like the forged equipment, I do have to say that finding the matrices was a serious pain in the ass. Very very serious. Very annoying.

- The magic gear in general was tight, though. Duskfang/Dawnfang, thanks for showing up. I appreciate it.

- I really hate clutter quests. I TORE SI APART LOOKING FOR TONGS AND ALL I FOUND WAS CALIPERS. ANGER. DWIP SMASH.

- Also, if I need a sweetroll for your goddamn quest, I should not have to scour the world for one. I still need one.

- I could go on, but I should be sleeping. Just go play it.

You get the reference, and you know you do.

So I was doing my homework for my public libraries class today, which dealt with youth/outreach services. And I started thinking about it, because I kept reading all these articles which were along the lines of "Wow, young adult lit these days has themes like death, and sex!"

Wow guys, who knew.

I just turned in a homework assignment with about that same level of sarcasm, if not worse. And, well, lots of reasons for that, really. Let us examine:

1. I'm pretty seriously out of touch with the normality of this whole YA lit thing. I mean, the first time I read Shogun, not to mention Roots, I was like 7 or 8. And I understood them pretty well, actually. And let's do a theme check, here: Death? One of those from disease on like page 2 of Shogun. A bit later some random guy gets his head cut off, and let's not even mention the very strong sepukku themes. Roots has some fairly intense rape stuff, not to mention Kunta Kinte getting his foot chopped off with a freakin' axe.

So yeah, seeing Spot run never quite did it for me. I was reading Old Yeller concurrently with The Indian In the Cupboard and stuff like The Jungles of New Guinea and Give Us This Day, one of them a history on one of the worst theaters of World War II, the other a prison camp memoir by somebody who was on Bataan. I once shocked my grade school librarian by asking if we had a copy of Mein Kampf, which I wanted to read when I was reading The Rise And Fall Of the Third Reich.

1a. And let's digress for a moment. The Jungles of New Guinea. That book was cool. They used to sell these paperback history books, and I mean pocket book sized, in supermarkets back in the day. Jungles of New Guinea, Glory of the Solomons. Raider 16, which may be the coolest book ever ("Ok guys, we're going to put a bunch of guns on this ship, make it look like a freighter, and then sail around and either pirate people or blow them up." How is this not awesome?). I read a lot of Edwin Hoyt that way. Train trips to California, you understand. Mom had to keep me busy, so I read all this WWII history when I was like 10.

2. Going back to the whole "Ohnoes death and sex!" thing, parents, seriously, grow the fuck up. We can handle it, if you let us. Honest we can.

3. On the other hand, it's not exactly like what we got in school was at all related to normality, either. Everyone says all this shit about Harry Potter, but seriously, we were all reading David Eddings and FR/Dragonlance tie-in novels, not to mention Star Wars and such, back in like, 1992. I am fully in accord with the character in My Teacher Is An Alien who burns his 6th grade English book, because holy shit were those things bad. I mean BAD. And that really deserves some examination, so let's do that:

A) Ever notice how English textbooks all have stories by a bunch of guys who wrote shit 40 years ago? I used to wonder at that. I used to actually get excited when the guy who wrote whatever forgettable short story it was, you know, STILL ALIVE.

B) Besides that, have you ever noticed how an awful lot of non-genre literature is over-artsy, overpretentious shit? I mean, on the one hand, knowing what metaphors and allegories and such are is a good and useful skill, so you should include things that teach that, but reality check here. The Pearl sucked. The Old Man and the Sea sucked. That short story we read once in the yellow freshman English book where that guy climbs out of his apartment and wanders around for no reason? That sucked.

The Most Dangerous Game was pretty cool, though, but half of that was because I had just read a Dirk Pitt novel (Dragon, fwiw), which had a homage to it. But that ties in to another point, which is

C) Ever notice how non-genre lit is on the decline, and genre lit is on the rise? Because, well, let's think about that for a moment. Contrast people having weighty moral issues and physical travails while fishing with people having weighty moral issues and physical travails on spaceships. You should be keeping a simple fact in mind here, which is that fishing, to be perfectly honest, is REALLY FUCKING BORING, and that flying around in spaceships fighting aliens is REALLY COOL.

D) Seriously, though, I'm probably never going to read another Hemingway book because Old Man And the Sea scarred me THAT deeply. Which is sort of sad, really.

E) There are about 5 pieces of poetry that are good, and the rest is crap. These 5 pieces vary by person. This makes teaching poetry hard. Also, nobody actually gives that much of a shit about iambic pentameter. Sorry, Mr. Elliott. I wish I could break that gently. But I think you knew that from the lengthy poetry units we did.

My list, for the record, is comprised mostly of JRR Tolkein, Rudyard Kipling, Dylan Thomas, and that one Robert Frost poem I can't remember.

F) If you're putting together an English compilation, and you realize that you've extracted one scene from a classic work, and it's like, one of the main scenes, but it only works at all if you've read the entire work, just stop, collect all your pages, and burn the book. Because there's no way that's going to work out well for anyone.

Yeah, our American Lit book featured, for James Fenimore Cooper, Natty Bumpo's death scene. Thanks, assholes.

G) Also, on the subject of American Lit. ...wow. Seriously, wow. That's the best we can come up with? It's like...Mark Twain and...Mark Twain. I admit to liking the whole Sinners In the Hands of An Angry God thing, because hey, RAAAAAARG, but Emerson? Thoreau? Shoot me. Just SHOOT ME.

Yeah, sorry Mr. Elliott. I know you love them.

I think it's pretty indicative that I can't even remember who else we read in that class.

H) But at least British Lit was cool. Because, let us contrast again:

Thoreau: I'm going to go live in this cabin. This will be a very important mental and spiritual journey for me. I shall ponder many things.

Macbeth: I'm going to kill this guy and jack his kingdom. This will be a very important mental and spiritual journey for me. I shall ponder many things. I'm also going to have a fucking awesome sword fight.

In one of these, things happen. This is inherently more exciting than books where things do not happen. Just saying.

I) All I'm saying is, English majors are a huge danger to effective teaching of and enjoyment of reading. I'm totally serious about that, and I'm all prepared to talk about the English Praxis II in support of it.

Anyway.

Because I've been playing a stupid amount of Oblivion lately, I figured I'd share with you all and post some screenshots. I realize that most of you PLAY Oblivion, and so have seen things like these. However. To you people, I say, post your own screenshots. We can get at least three blogs in on this! We can RULE THE INTERNETS!

Anyway. Pictures.

Baurus, who has been shot by an arrow. I'm not sure how he managed to get shot like that, but I bet it hurts a lot.

My Crusader character, who, dare I say it, looks utterly ridiculous in that pose. But he looks awesome otherwise. Some of the best-looking armor in the game right there.

As we all know, there are various interesting ways to kill people. Take this guy, for instance. It'll be great in the movie, trust me.

But you really came here for the awesome landscape shots, didn't you? Because Oblivion can provide those. Let us examine:

Sometimes, you have the little things, like this waterfall at night.

And sometimes you find those random landscapes that just look cool.

The Imperial City is always fun to look at.

And sometimes? Sometimes the whole world is on fire.

And then there's Shivering Isles. I haven't made it very far yet. But there's one thing I thought was very, very cool. The night sky. No, really, I it looks very cool.

[EDIT]

Also, you should look at this, because it is cool. Your attention to this matter is appreciated.

[/EDIT]

You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice, I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."
---Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex