Unthinkable Wings

A splendid book meme, from aedh, via naraht.

Pick a number to get an answer from me. Or give your own answer to someone else's question. Or just borrow the meme – it would be amazing to see this one get some traction!

1. A book that haunts you

2. A book that was an interesting failure

3. A book where you really wanted to be reading the "shadow" version of the book (as in, there are traces of a different book in the work and you would have much preferred to read that one)

4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you

5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold

6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work

7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately

8. A book that feels like it was written just for you

9. A book that reminds you of someone

10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber

11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time

12. A book that came to you at the wrong time

13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that

14. A book balanced on a knife edge

15. A snuffed candle of a book

16. The one you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers

17. The one that taught you something about yourself

18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion

19. A book that started a pilgrimage

20. A frigid ice bath of a book

21. A book written into your psyche

22. A warm blanket of a book

23. A book that made you bleed

24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to

25. A book that answered a question you never asked

26. A book you recommend but cannot love

27. A book you love but cannot recommend

28. A book you adore that people are surprised by

29. A book that led you home

30. A book you detest that people are surprised by

The james_davis_nicholls 100 SFF books to read meme

Italic = read it. Underlined = not this, but something by the same author. Strikethrough = did not finish.

( Books below the cut )

That number/character meme:

( Silly scenarios ahoy )

For aris_tgd.

The whole fic is here.

( This is long, but I could have done the whole fic.... However, these two scenes are probably my favourite bit of the whole thing - or at least the bit I most enjoyed writing. )

( Books read in 2014 )

Meme Questions
How many books read in 2014?
102, assuming I counted right (and remembered to log everything). That is a bit disappointing. I have read less since I got married and watched more telly (I have also watched more telly since ordination, which I think is down to tiredness, but is still disappointing). Admittedly some of the novels were pretty long, but still...

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
fiction: 60. (I read less fiction and more non-fiction than I thought!)
poetry: 1 (I read more poetry than that implies, though: I have a tendency to pick poetry books up and read a few poems, then put them back).
non-fiction/memoir: 32
(The bulk of this was travel literature, which I read a lot of and may be my favourite genre at the moment. I also read 3 of what might be termed spiritual memoirs. All blokes - two of them very good (Cron and Coles), the other hideously over-written though interesting on Oxford - but perhaps I should look for some by women. If such things get published).
plays: 0

Male/Female authors?
female: 33 and three half books by women. Lower than I would have guessed....

Most books read by one author this year? 7 (Bujold). I also read a fair bit of Raban, Fermor, Lindsey Davies, Elizabeth Peters, and Tony Hillerman.

Any in translation?
Antoine Laurain, "The President's Hat"
Edelgard Abendstein and Jeaninne Fiedler, "Berlin: an architectural guide" (2013).
John Chrysostom, "Six Books on the Priesthood".
Gosciny and Uderzo, "Asterix the Gallus." (translated into Scots!)
Also, I read three books in German.

Favourite? Oh gosh, I can't pick one. The stand-outs were the Catherine Fox novels, Richard Cole's autobiography, and Red Plenty. I also loved Red Mars and felt the rest of the series, though enjoyable, didn't quite live up to it. I enjoyed "Foxglove Summer" a lot, too.

Honourable mention to "The Girl With All The Gifts," because I never thought anyone could make me read and thoroughly enjoy a zombie apocalypse novel. I wasn't entirely convinced by the ending, but it really is very good.

Also, should it be relevant to your interests, "Pastoral Care for the Dying" is superb (and the medical background bits on the end of life would, I should think, be helpful for people who are not involved in pastoral care but want to know something about dying).

Least Favourite? I can't decide whether the Elizabeth Peters novels are "mildly diverting" or "meh," but they're definitely at the bottom of what I finished last year. (I picked them up cheap second hand. Not sure if I will bother to read any more. Possibly, if sufficiently cheap, and then re-Oxfam them, as they don't take much mental energy to read, and sometimes you want that).

In terms of books by a writer I do definitely enjoy, "Sure of You", because I began to get both very impatient with Mary-Ann, and also to suspect that Maupin was Flanderizing her in a way that felt ever so slightly misogynist).

Oldest? John Chrysostom, "Six Books on the Priesthood"


Newest? "Unseen Things Above", which Catherine Fox published as a serial on her blog. (I will buy it when it comes out).

Longest Title? (Funny thing to ask!) Discounting subtitles, either "Dandy MacGilvarray and an unsuitable day for a murder" (does that count as a subtitle?) or "The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark" (which I read to children). My favourite title was also a contender - "Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me."

Shortest Title? Peter Groves, "Grace".

Book that most changed my perspective:. The Rev'd Richard Coles on of dogging (summary: he doesn't any more, but found it surprisingly healing).

Favourite character: Jane, in "Acts and Omissions" and "Unseen Things Above".

Favourite scene: Well the one that remains most vividly with me is the bit in "Fathomless Riches" when he sneaks away from a family Christmas to go and look for casual sex and meets a guy who takes off his coat to reveal that he's naked apart from a piece of tinsel round his cock. But that's more because I can't shake the image...

Favourite Quote: Nothing springs to mind.

What do you want to read in 2015? I want to finally get hold of Least Heat Moon's book on driving around America on small roads (Blue Highways? Lost Highways?). I love his prose style and he writes the sort of thoughtful, history-heavy Americana I really enjoy. I want to read Catherine Fox's "Benefits of Passion" and "Love For the Lost" (I'm less sure about her YA stuff or the judo memoir). And I keep meaning to get hold of "Ancilliary Justice" (and to read more SF in general).

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Cleric (4th Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-11

Dexterity-9

Constitution-13

Intelligence-17

Wisdom-13

Charisma-11


Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.


Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.


Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)




Well, yes...

Recently Read

The Cambridge Companion to St Paul, which is a useful introduction to the subject.

Currently Reading

Peter Ackroyd on Venice.

Also trying to teach myself some phrases of Spanish from Say it In Spanish, although I cannot concieve of ever needing to say "Can you recommend a good cook?", and I sincerely hope I won't need "I have typhoid fever"...

Reading Next
Heffers had a sale of fiction in translation, so I shall probably read Bulgakov, Diary of a Young Doctor next.

Read recently

Fred Secombe, How Green Was My Curate

Slender but amusing fictionalised memoir of life as a curate in the Valleys by the older brother of ex-Goon Harry Secombe. Ended rather abruptly on the incumbent's death - which of course meant all kinds of professional and emotional complications for the protagonist, so that was rather frustrating. Though apparently there is at least one sequel, so I suppose it's more of an unexpected cliff-hanger...

Reading
Have stalled a bit on The Line of Beauty.
Am enjoying Diane Purkiss' The English Civil War: A people's history, though it is rather grim reading.

The headcanon meme, swiped from dolorous_ett:


1. Pick a pairing or a character
2. Ask me my particular head!canon regarding something about them
3. Post to your journal to share your own head!canon!

You know my fandoms, Watson...

Embolden the ones you did before you were 11 ¾ (as far as you can remember!)
Italicise the ones you have done since then.

In passing, I detect a definite southern-centricity to these questions.

1. Climb a tree - Um. Sort of. I never got very far....

2. Roll down a really big hill Well. Assuming that we mean by this "hills I thought were really big when I was seven...

3. Camp out in the wild I'd been camping with the Guides - just - by that stage, but only to the county campsite, though as they'd been running cattle on it the week before county camp, I still managed to come home with huge infected horsefly bites, which I remember as one of the most disgusting moments of my childhood. Nevertheless, I was not put off camping, though I was a student before any wild camping actually happened (I never did the Duke of Edinburgh award, because it was sold to us on the basis of "This will look good on your CV!")

4. Build a den. No, unless we're counting blanket forts, or the shelter I made for the Brownie "Survival in the Wild" badge...

5. Skim a stone. Not that I can do so reliably

6. Run around in the rain Look, I went to school in Scotland, what do you think? I can't say I remember it with joyous fondness, though.

7. Fly a kite

8. Catch a fish with a net. No. Any amount of water beetles/ pondskaters etc, and tadpoles in a jar. (I always put them back, though).

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree. No. The furthest south I regularly played outside as a child was Westmoreland, and while there were apples, they were crabs, and I wasn't completely daft.

10. Play conkers

11. Throw some snow

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging Best thing ever

16. Bury someone in the sand - my parents refused to co-operate in that sort of thing....

17. Set up a snail race - No. I had lots of books and therefore was not terminally bored.

18. Balance on a fallen tree - Yes. Badly.

19. Swing on a rope swing Oh yes. It was my favourite place to sit and read.

20. Make a mud slide. No, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have seen the appeal.

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild. Yes, lots, although usually this was in the context of brambling expeditions for jam, and the amount I could eat before someone said "in the tub, not your mouth!" was strictly limited.

22. Take a look inside a tree

23. Visit an island

24. Feel like you're flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet - well, tried it, and failed every time, however often Granddad demonstrated it. God did not intend me for an oboeist.

26. Hunt for fossils and bones. I wasn't keen on collecting bones, but I had a collection of fossils displayed in cardboard boxes with lovingly written labels, some of which were even accurate.

27. Watch the sun wake up - As I said above, I grew up in Scotland. In January, the sun rises at about quarter to nine. Of course I saw the sun rise. I sometimes went to school before the sun had risen and, once I was at secondary school, came back as it was setting. Again, not a joyous aspect of childhood. There are few things more gloomy than spending all the hours of daylight in school.

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall

30. Feed a bird from your hand

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net - I was always afraid I'd damage them. I'd keep very still and hope they'd land on me, instead (sometimes this even worked).

34. Track wild animals Well, if we mean, look for tracks of deer and rabbits, yes. I also recall several attempts to sneak up close enough to a squirrel to get a really good photograph. This never worked.

35. Discover what's in a pond

36. Call an owl If you mean 'call like an owl', then I must admit that, like Peggy Blackett, they always came out like ducks.

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool Crazy?

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab - neither in the literal or rowing related sense, though I have done the latter since.

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it Although it was only cress. I helped plant and harvest peas and beans and potatoes in the garden, but that was really my parents' initiative, so probably shouldn't count.

42. Go wild swimming

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches

45. Find your way with a map and compass Although only under parental supervision, and to be honest, always in circumstances where, if you could read the map, you didn't actually need the compass.

46. Try bouldering

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling

49. Find a geocache - did they even exist when I was 11? I'd never heard of it if they did.

50. Canoe down a river