A poem for the Valentine's

Here’s a brief interlude for the Valentine’s Day, a poem by John Donne. It’s somewhat cynical take on love, but I like the imagery. Plenty of analyses exist about the poem. Mostly it’s seen as an analogy on how the search for spiritual love is futile. Donne doesn’t have a great notion about women in love either. They are “but, Mummy, possest”, a body without mind.

Loves Alchymie 

Some that have deeper digg’d loves Myne then I,

Say, where his centrique happinesse doth lie:

I have lov’d, and got, and told,

But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,

I should not find that hidden mysterie;

Oh, ’tis imposture all:

And as no chymique yet th’Elixar got,

But glorifies his pregnant pot,

If by the way to him befall

Some odoriferous thing, or medicinall,

So, lovers dreame a rich and long delight,

But get a winter-seeming summers night.

Our ease, our thrift, our honor, and our day,

Shall we, for this vaine Bubles shadow pay?

Ends love in this, that my man,

Can be as happy’as I can; If he can

Endure the short scorn of a Bridgegroomes play?

That loving wretch that sweares,

’Tis not the bodies marry, but the mindes,

Which he in her Angelique finds,

Would swear as justly, that he heares,

In that dayes rude hoarse minstralsey, the spheares.

Hope not for minde in women; at their best

Sweetness, and wit they’are, but Mummy, possest.

John Donne, c.1595.

Around the world, Verne style

Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days was published on this day in 1873. It’s a busy date. Charles I was beheaded in 1649, Oliver Cromwell likewise, though posthumously in 1661, Hitler came to power in 1933, Ghandi was assassinated in 1948, and Churchill was buried in 1965. Verne didn’t make it on Clement K. Shorter’s list of a hundred best books from 1898, because he was still alive at the time of its compiling, but since the date fits so nicely, I’ll write about the book anyway.

I’ve already written about my favourite Verne novel earlier, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Around the World would be my second favourite Verne. But I have only read it once. The story in all its variations is more familiar to me from films and TV series.

Like the Three Musketeers I wrote about last week, an animated series first introduced me to the story in the early 80s. In Around the World with Willy Fog, Phileas Fogg – the fearless adventurer – was depicted as a lion named Willy Fog. All characters were anthropomorphisms of various animals; the good guys were felines and all the crooks were canines. It was shown once a week, and woe if I missed an episode. (This was before we had a VCR.)

I was a bit older, twelve or so, before I read the book. It turned out to be quite different from the animated series with themes I was too young to fully comprehend. Some plots, like saving Aouda from the funeral pyre, were changed in the cartoon. And while it’s perhaps natural to avoid that topic in a children’s series, it’s actually very rarely used in other adaptations I’ve seen either. The woman is rescued, but from various other perils.

Around the World in 80 Days was a wonderful book to read as a child. All those exotic countries, the adventures, and the excitement of the chase, as the detective Fix from Scotland Yard tries to keep up with Fogg, tickled my imagination perfectly. Not all adaptations I’ve seen have managed the same, but they are rarely so bad I wouldn’t watch them. And nothing beats the cartoon. Perhaps not even the book.

Here are the opening credits – the English version, which I have to say is not as good as the version of my childhood. You can also watch full episodes on YouTube.

The magic of the musketeers

I’ve been slow to start the blog this year, but let’s hope I’ll continue with regular posts now that I have. The first book of the year is The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas for no other reason except because there is a new series based on it. The book is also number 55 on Clement K. Shorter’s list of the hundred best books from 1898 so it will serve two purposes at the same time.

Choosing a TV series as a prompt for a book blog post is apt, because my relationship with the Three Musketeers is mostly based on TV and movies. There was a cartoon in the early 80s (Dogtanian and the Three Muskethounds in English, but with a different name in my country) that first introduced me to the characters and the story. I loved it, and watched every episode religiously. There was also a TV series from the 70s with Richard Chamberlain as Aramis, which I saw when I was a little older that made an impact.

The influence of these series was so strong that when I finally read the book I couldn’t recognise it. The names were different than in the cartoon, and the makers of both series had taken liberties with the story. So the reading experience was as much about unlearning things that I had learned incorrectly as it was about the story itself.

There was an article on the Guardian last week that pretty much stated the same. The Three Musketeers has long been free game when it comes to artistic interpretation. Some of the adaptions manage it better, some less so. I’ve generally enjoyed most of them – even the bizarre steam punk version that the article maligns. But I’ve allowed these interpretations to mess with my head, and I’m not sure, which stories belong to the original and which are modern inventions. However, as long as I enjoy the story, I don’t really care.

The best book I’ve read in 2013

In the spirit of the end of the year, I take a break of the list of the 100 best books Shorter made in 1898, and look at what I’ve read this year. It turns out to be a woefully few books. I’ve been so busy writing that I haven’t had time for reading. It seems I won’t even make my Goodreads reading challenge of thirty books. I’m still three books short.

Most of what I’ve read does not merit a place in any top of the year list. I’ve mostly caught up with all the urban fantasy series I’ve followed for years. I listed the top ten of those on my other blog.

I did read some meatier fiction too. I wrote about re-reading Shikasta earlier this year, but I’m not entirely sure I’d name it my top read of the year. Interesting though it was, it didn’t really excite me the way some other books did.

I read other sci-fi too – however you want to define the genre. I read the second book in Lessing’s Canopus in Argos: Archives series, also a re-read that felt like I was reading it the first time. I read the critically acclaimed Dark Eden by Chris Beckett that I found slightly dull for some reason. In addition, there was This Land by L. S. Burton, an independently published book I enjoyed very much.

Great though all of those books were, they aren’t my top readings this year. I’ve written elsewhere about the Lover at Last by J. R. Ward. It’s a strong book in a long-running UF series, but what makes it stand out is that its romantic focus is two men, fierce vampire warriors one doesn’t usually see in the same-sex romance in urban fantasy. I thought Ward’s book was important, but it fell slightly sort on my expectations. Another interesting read was The City & The City by China Mièville. It’s unique enough to stand out among my otherwise mainstream urban fantasy readings, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with it either. I constantly kept expecting it to become something ‘more’.

So, it would seem that my top read for the year is a book I haven’t actually finished reading as I write this. The City’s Son by Tom Pollock is a young adult urban fantasy set in London. It’s adventurous from the beginning, it has a unique world, it’s narrative doesn’t follow the conventions – one character is described from the first person point of view while the rest are in the third person – and it doesn’t shy away from the difficult topics like sexual harassment. I found the book captivating from the start and the only reason I haven’t managed to finish it yet is that I’ve been insanely busy doing other things. Those are done now and I can concentrate on the fantastical London of Tom Pollock.

It’ll be Christmas next week so I’ll retire for the holidays and return in January. Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you all.

The obscure

This week’s post about the 100 best novels compiled by Clement K. Shorter in 1898 is filled with even more obscure books than the last. I have to skip seven books before I come to an author I recognise. Of those seven, five are delightfully written by women. All books were written in 1860s. Their literary value, however, is largely forgotten.

First one is Sweet Anne Page (1868) by an English poet and author Mortimer Collins. Nothing is said about the book in Wikipedia, but as a poet, his lyrics with their “light grace, their sparkling wit and their airy philosophy” were unequal to anything of their kind in modern English, according to Encyclopædia Britannica in 1911. And I’d be interested in reading his Transmigration (1873), “a fantasy of multiple incarnations of which the middle one is set on a utopian Mars.”

Amelia B. Edwards was an English novelist, journalist, traveller and Egyptologist. Her book, Barbara’s History from 1864 is a “novel of bigamy” that made her fame. Uncle Silas (1864) is a Victorian Gothic mystery-thriller novel by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish writer. Uncle Silas is “notable as an early example of the locked room mystery subgenre.”

Next on the list is Lost and Saved by the Honourable Mrs Norton (1863), an English feminist, social reformer and author who seems to have achieved a lot. Among other things, her campaigning led to the Custody of Infants act in 1839. Her book, however, is completely unknown to Wikipedia. Nor does it say much about The Channings (1862) by Ellen Wood. It does mention, however, that she is best remembered by her earlier book East Lynne. Why Shorter chose this one from her rather substantial work is unknown.

Margaret Oliphant is another largely forgotten woman writer, a Scottish novelist and historical writer, whose works encompass “domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural”. Salem Chapel from 1862 is only one of her numerous novels, but Wikipedia doesn’t reveal why that would have been the best she had to offer.

It’s not until the book number 86 that I recognise the author: Gustave Flaubert. From him, Shorter has chosen Salammbô (1862). Modern lists usually go with Madame Bovary, but Shorter liked a book set in Carthage during the 3rd century BC better. No wonder. It’s described as “an epic story of lust, cruelty, and sensuality” and is held to be one of the best French novels. I haven’t read the book, but I think it’s a good one to end the post with. More next week.