half-real worlds of paper and ink

December
The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Thud! by Terry Pratchett


November
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene


October
Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina by Robert Graves


September
. . . No books finished. (Maybe I was swapped with a pod person and no one noticed.)


August
Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
Deep Fathom by James Rollins
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
Voices of a Distant Star by Mizu Sahara (manga)


June and July
No books finished! (Seriously, what.)


May
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson


April
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor


March
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson
All Clear by Connie Willis


February
No books finished!


January
Blackout by Connie Willis
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

A few things, in no actual order of importance:

• There is a style class being conducted over at style_system; the first session starts here, and the syllabus is here. If you want to learn how to modify or make a layout, that is the place to go. It starts from the very basics, so even without any knowledge of CSS or S2, you'd be able to follow.

I guess I actually already know most of the things listed in the syllabus, but it'd be great to actually properly learn S2 this time around. XD

• There's an April Showers Challenge over at Archive of Our Own, where the challenge is to upload your fanworks. Which reminds me, I still have a few fics I had meant to upload but kept . . . putting off. (I'm not even entirely sure I want my name attached to some of those any more, ahaha. We'll see.) If you don't have an AO3 account, I have an extra invite. PM me your email address and I'll send it your way. :)

• I've been taking the bus to work lately so it's been giving me something like an extra 1.5 hours a day to read. (For some reason I can't seem to fall asleep on the bus despite knowing that it's quite impossible for me to miss my stop.) So I've been reading instead. I'm awfully flighty about reviewing stuff, but my Goodreads profile is here if you're interested. I also try to keep an updated list here in this journal.

What I'm still grappling with right now: Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver and I curse the thickness of the book every time I try to stuff it into my bag. Woe. I've been reading it for almost a month (a month!) on and off, and I'm only around two-thirds done with it asfdfljg;flg. A good thing it's interesting. If nothing else it gets an A+ for diagrams annotated in Latin.

• What I should be doing: writing fic for Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange. I haven't started yet! It is far too early to panic, but I am terrified of the tonberry.


Apparently there are only four things! I'm getting worse and worse at this updating thing.

The books I'm reading: I just finished Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger at around midnight, and that book seriously gave me the creeps. I ended up sleeping in the living room with the TV on because going up to my messy bedroom felt too spooky for me.

I have Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Commstock somewhere midway through, and for some reason I've been stuck there since the end of last year.

I haven't picked up the next book to read yet, though I've been eyeing AS Byatt's The Children's Book and the latest two books of The Wheel of Time series (my brother actually has them in hardback!).

The books I'm writing: Uh. No writing going on for now, books or otherwise.

The book I love the most: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, quite possibly. It's hard to choose favourite books. Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings is another one I love.

The last book I received as a gift: Probably Diana Wynne Jones's House of Many Ways, given by arianur years ago. I picked the book myself at the bookstore, and I'm pretty sure that's the only reason she actually dared to buy me that book. People generally don't gift me books unless I ask for a specific title, probably because they can't be sure whether I've read the book and have no idea whether I'd like it.

The last book I gave as a gift: Matilda by Roald Dahl, given ages ago, incidentally, to arianur. Though if you count "books I bought for my siblings but not actually calling them gifts" it would be Conn Iggulden's Wolf of the Plains, simply because my brother couldn't seem to find a copy of it on his own.

The nearest book: I'm sitting in the living room facing whole shelves of books, but there's one on the floor there, probably my brother couldn't be bothered to put it back on the shelf, silly boy. It's Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which is one absurdly long book about Thomas Cromwell.

The last book I bought myself: Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. I wanted a copy for myself.

Saya rasa ini novel Bahasa Melayu pertama yang saya baca sejak sekolah menengah.

(Eh, mungkin tidak. Rasanya ada terbaca -- dan "ter" di sini memang bermaksud tak disengajakan -- sebuah novel cinta remaja berjudul Cinta Marissa (saya cuba Google tapi tak jumpa; mungkin saya salah ingat tajuknya) yang saya terjumpa di rumah nenek saya sewaktu pulang ke kampung. Mungkin kepunyaan sepupu saya. Segala klise kisah cinta remaja ada dalam buku tu -- lari dari rumah, cinta tiga segi, cinta tak berbalas, diperkosa kemudiannya insaf (hish, yang terakhir inilah trope yang paling menyakitkan hati saya) -- tapi sekali dah mula membaca, teruskan juga sampai habis. Lagi pun dah tak ada buku lain masa tu; yang dibawa dari rumah semua dah habis dibaca.)

Ini juga kali pertama saya cuba menulis dalam Bahasa Melayu di sini. Rasanya macam tidak berapa berjaya -- bunyinya kekok, kan?

Berbalik kepada novel ini: 1515 oleh Faisal Tehrani. ( ulasan pendek )

*


Here is where I lose all coherency to write in Malay. I lack the words, and whatever I say will sound harsher than I mean it, especially with that somewhat formal tone I was employing. (No, I do not sound like that when I speak.)

Quick notes for English-only readers, since the book's summary on Goodreads is in Malay apparently there's no summary there at all: the book presents an alternate history of Malacca, where in 1511 it isn't conquered by the Portuguese. It's told in a non-linear fashion, going back and forth from the past to the present where a young girl called Nyemah Mulya who had lived in Malacca around 1511 asks for help from a modern day historian to help her prevent Malacca's fall. Slightly mind-bending, I guess, and breaks as many rules of causality as The Terminator did. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

I checked the Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia's (Malaysian National Institute of Translation) website; it doesn't seem like there's a translated version of the book.

( other problems I have with the book )

Wow, this place is full of cobwebs, pretty much like my brain.


---

I'm watching TV. NCIS is on, and it's the episode where Tony gets obsessed over a reporter gone missing. That basic premise is really similar to an episode of Numb3rs where Colby, well, obsesses over a missing reporter. He keeps watching footages of her, thinks he knows her better than anyone else. Tony is doing the same thing. The NCIS episode bugs me as much as the Numb3rs episode did, and I can't really pinpoint what it is that bothers me so much -- I think it's the stalking. It creeps me out.

. . . Oh. That didn't end happily. Poor Tony.


Now Criminal Minds is up (that probably won't end happily either). And then there's the NCIS: LA season finale.

I think I'm watching too many police procedurals.


---

I finally finished Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea and I can't remember having so many unlikeable characters in one book -- I'm mildly amazed that I got to the end. Then I read Lev Grossman's The Magicians, which borders somewhere between interesting and slightly annoying and made me wonder whether the whole point was to rewrite and deconstruct Harry Potter. Also it had one of those endings that made me wonder whether it's just there to prove that hey, life sucks, that's just the way it is, or it's a set up for a sequel.

I've been reading more fic than anything else lately, though.

So, a quick one:

• I've been busy and tired and horrible lately, especially at commenting and keeping in contact. I'm taking three days off work starting Wednesday, though I can't promise I'd actually do anything useful within that time. Plans right now mostly consist of going back to my hometown to see my parents.

• I don't think I've read a single book this month. I am rather aghast by this. Despite being aghast, I still haven't managed to concentrate on anything for more than a few pages, and this scares me somewhat. I seem to be reading more fic, though. The more interesting ones are linked up at delicious.com.

• Too much TV hurts your brain. I should know this. I've been watching I don't know how many episodes of FlashForward on the new channel, though like most things that deal with time travel (admittedly no one is time travelling per se in this one, but still) it takes an effort from me not to let my head explode.



And now I disappear again! Good night!

December
The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

November
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Back Home by Michelle Magorian
Coraline & Other Stories by Neil Gaiman
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones
1515 by Faisal Tehrani
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

October
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Changeling Sea by Patricia A McKillip

September
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

August
Red Shift by Alan Garner
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

July
Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
Crooked House by Agatha Christie*
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart

June
No books finished! :(

May
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

April
Z for Zachariah by Robert C O'Brien
Lord Sunday by Garth Nix
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

March
Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn*
Star Wars: Specter of the Past by Timothy Zahn*
Star Wars: Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly*
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Ragwitch by Garth Nix
I, Claudius by Robert Graves

February
Star Wars: Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn*
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

January
The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman
The Sandman Volume 6: Fables and Reflections by Neil Gaiman
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster



---
* denotes a reread

I've never been much of a reader of historical fiction. Most of the problem came from the fact that I didn't have much grounding in world history; it seemed like my education began with the ancient civilisations and skipped straight to World War II. (Well, the Renaissance was in there somewhere, I vaguely recall the pictures in the textbooks, but it went by very fast and didn't grab me much.)

Then came Dorothy Dunnett. I read her Lymond Chronicles and loved the books, and The Game of Kings, the first book in the series, is one of my favourite books ever. But that story (or the retelling of it) is for another time.

I started her House of Niccolò series this year. The series is a prequel to the Lymond Chronicles, following the adventures of one Nicholas de Fleury, an ancestor of Lymond in mid-fifteenth century Europe, who started as a lowly apprentice and rose to become a merchant trusted by kings. ( I spent almost ten months, on and off, reading these books. )

What can I say? The lady was a magnificent writer.


Below are some thoughts about the series, and some knee-jerk reactions especially to the last book, Gemini, since it's fresh in mind and I am somewhat boggled about a number of things. They are not in any particular sequence. None of them are very coherent.

( spoilers for both House of Niccolò and the Lymond Chronicles )

And it's a Sunday night!

This week I was supposed to do some sewing (curtains -- will have to explain in another post) and work on bug 1813. Not much progress on the bug; I was doing the fixes alphabetically and right now I am still at, uh, Bases. Yay progress? But I did Tabula Rasa first, honest! So that all the layouts based on it will have the icon placement thing fixed or partially fixed. Perhaps I should submit the ones I'm done with first.

I probably shouldn't have picked something so CSS-y, huh. Not my strongest suit, CSS.

As for the curtain, no progress on it at all! It's still on my floor, alas.

I worked on my own layout for a bit, based on some feedback I received, and ended up making some modifications of my own. I'm beginning to dislike the colours, which probably means I've been looking at it too long, XD.

Other things I've been up to: I've been reading the House of Nicolò books and have finished book seven, Caprice and Rondo. I started the last book, Gemini, but I have been rather slow at getting through it, mainly because Caprice and Rondo ended on a somewhat happy note and while there are tons of things unresolved, I'm just glad that the main characters are reconciled about a number of things. Also the writing in Gemini seems a bit more low key and toned down -- I don't feel like I need to rush through it as I did for the other books.

Re-watched Howl's Moving Castle (the Miyazaki movie) with my brother, who hasn't seen it, and now I feel like rereading the book. I love the movie -- it's so pretty! -- but I'll always love the book better.


I had also just realised, with dawning horror, that November is here and I have signed up for Nanowrimo and I have nothing to write! I don't know what foolishness makes me attempt to write 50,000 words year after year. We'll see where this will go. (My prediction is nowhere.)

So. I'm participating in Dewey's Read-a-thon, which simply means I will be stuck in a nook somewhere, reading, for the next twenty-four hours. Official start is in less than an hour!

Here's a list of books I might read in the next twenty-four hours:

( a list of books! )

I won't be posting hourly updates -- it's more likely I'll update using Twitter, and probably add comments to this post instead of making new posts.

Fifteen minutes to go!

(The only downside to this is I won't have time for bug fixing *looks at bug 1886 woefully* but I'll try to get it done by tomorrow night. It's mostly done, but done in the wrong places, heh. It shouldn't take much work to get it fixed, I think.)


P/S: OpenID works on Dreamwidth -- you can log in with your blog's URL if you're using a blogging service that supports OpenID, like Blogger and WordPress. :D