Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 PM

Guess the Dictator and/or Television Sit-Com Character: A twenty-questions style yes-no guessing game in which you think of a sitcom character or dictator, and the computer will try to guess who it is.

Ian and I have just played it three times, and it has correctly identified Reverend Jim from Taxi, Mork, and Queen "Bloody" Mary of England. This is fun! We're going back to play again, but I just wanted to share the joy...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:15 PM

Sometimes, when reading histories, I look at the idiotic risks people took and wonder how humankind ever survived. And David Riggs is quite the master of understatement:

On 19 November, 1587, Squire Philip Gawdy wrote to his father about a theatrical 'device' that sounds suspiciously like the shooting of the Governor of Babylon in 2 Tamburlaine. Here is what Philip reported:

My Lord Admiral his men and players having a device in their play to tie one of their fellows to a post and so to shoot him to death, having borrowed their callivers [muskets] one of the players hands swerved his piece being charged with a bullet missed the fellow he aimed at and killed a child, and a woman great with child forthwith, and hit another man in the head very sore.

Even if this strange passage refers to another play, it reveals that the Admiral's Men were firing loaded muskets in performance. Since the bullets coming out of sixteenth-century firearms often strayed a long way from their targets, this practice was bound to produce a sensation of real anxiety among the spectators. The mayhem that came to young Gawdy's attention could even explain why the Admiral's Men failed to receive an invitation to play before Queen Elizabeth that Christmas.

From The World of Christopher Marlowe, page 221.

I'm dealing with some serious melodrama in other parts of my life right now, so I've put the Marlowe book on hold for the moment and have returned to some comfort-reading instead. You have any idea how frustrating it is to be unable to find book two in the series -- even if you've read them all before??? I skipped over it to read book three, but I feel annoyed about it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 AM

I just saw that it has been raised to 147,000. We're talking the population of Syracuse. (source)

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 PM

If you haven't heard the news yet, Alan Rickman will be providing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the film version of Hitchhiker's Guide [Warwick Davis will be in the suit.]

He's certainly got the right voice for it, but I'm now terrified, because such casting can only lead to a wave of Marvin slash. <covers eyes>

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:20 PM

Sorry things have been so silent here. Been really busy with some things I can't (or don't particularly want to) write about.

But I did find a quickie meme I can share with y'all, courtesy of RedBird:

Summarizing 2004 with the first sentence of the first post of each month:

For no good reason, Ian and I haven't been sleeping well this week... I've noticed that other people will list the books they read in the previous month with commentary. I've now posted variants of this entry twice as comments in two other journals ^1&2, and thought I ought to write this up once and for all in one place for everybody. This morning, Jim Henley wrote: "I think Glenn Reynolds said about what there is to say about yesterday's Fallujah riot, which is very little." Sorry for the last several days' silence. I forgot how much I hate writing cover letters. Dear goodness! Hello. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be economic girlie men!" I was kind of hoping you'd (task omitted to protect the guilty) As a distraction from more serious matters, I decided to compile as complete a list as possible of all Percy Weasley/Malfoy fics out there. Another night I woke up around 4 AM and couldn't fall back asleep.

Well, that was rather abstract. I wish I had the time and patience to compose a more coherent year in review, but this is probably the best I can do under current conditions.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

As seen on Is That Legal?:

In Vino. Veritas!

Over the break, while in the liquor section of a supermarket in the Dominican Republic, I saw this ad. Either you will find this funny without my explaining it to you, or no amount of explaining will do the trick.

Apparently, the Dominican Republic welcomed hundreds of Jewish refugees during WW2 and still has a small Jewish community today.

Who knew?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:50 PM

I saw two articles on LISNews today that I thought you folks might appreciate:

Library Closes Last Vertical File in America (link)

From BBspot: "The Vincent McGraw Library [Shelby Co., Ala.] has closed the last vertical file in America, and with it, the end of an era." Says acting head volunteer librarian Binda Lue Hickman, "'Children used it in the old days - you know, like back in 1981 - to do school reports. ... Nowadays, you've got the Internet. ... We put a soda machine in its place.'" [BBspot]

Wow. I remember browsing through my school library's vertical file for reports... Of course, other librarians have commented to the in the comments other librarians say that their vertical files still exist. And, really, how would one go about determining whether one has the last vertical file, or who else has them?

Okay, that was fairly library-geek-y, but I think this one should be relevant to many more of you:

Whatever your taste in pornography, new library has room for more (link)

The folks at the library of the Center for Sex and Culture (San Francisco) are always looking to add to its collection of thousands of erotic books, adult videos, magazines, etc. "This is not about titillation; it's about research. In the growing field of human sexuality, erotica is an indicator of people's desires, community standards, aesthetic and artistic expression and the intersection where all those things come together." They're particularly interested in donations of that old stash of porn you haven't told your family about. "'The thing you see more than anything is just how individual everyone's sexuality is,' Queen said. 'It never ceases to amaze me.'" [San Francisco Chronicle] via

So now you know. Weeding your porn collection? These folks may want it. And according to their website, donations can be written off for tax purposes! How's that for doubling your pleasure: more room and a tax writeoff!

Just for curiousity's sake, let me know if you (or anyone you know) actually donates them based upon this post. Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:45 PM

As I mentioned yesterday, my manager is planning to travel to London later this spring with her family. Since she's got a seven-year-old daughter, what better way (in my opinion) to help the daughter get engaged with the sights than by reading some books to provide a better understanding and something to look forward to.

Of course, given my interest in Shakespeare and Marlowe, my recommendations focus on a somewhat narrow slice of history. Still, if they should decide to see the reconstructed Globe Theatre (which is one of my top tourist destinations in London), some of these books might help <ahem> set the stage.

1. Royal biographies:

   • Mary, bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer:

   Mary Tudor's childhood, a good and entertaining biography of her childhood, though some Amazon reviewers have criticized it for daring to hint at a sympathetic motive for the burning of heretics.

   • Beware, princess Elizabeth by Carolyn Meyer:

   Elizabeth's childhood through accession. The flip side and continuation of the previous book.

   • Queen's own fool by Jane Yolen & Robert J. Harris:

   A sympathetic story of Mary, Queen of Scots, as told by one of her jesters. I've since read nonfiction biographies of Mary geared towards adults and, though I've seen differing interpretations, nothing's contradicted the facts presented here. That deserves a huge mark of respect.

2. Theater history and Shakespeare:
   The use of boy actors to play women's roles provides an easy access point (and leading character) for YA storytellers:

   • King of shadows by Susan Cooper:

   A modern boy in a Shakespearean acting troupe finds himself thrown back in time as part of Shakespeare's theater company. Focuses on Midsummer Night's Dream. If you read only one, I'd probably recommend this as the most accessible. I think it's also one of the most popular.

   • Master Rosalind by John & Patricia Beatty:

   1974 book about a girl who disguises herself as a boy and becomes an actor. Rather dated, but I'm including it for completeness sake.

   • The Shakespeare stealer by Gary Blackwood:

   A literate young boy is sent to the Theatre to transcribe Hamlet and ends up joining the company. But who really holds his allegiance?

   Two sequels exist: Shakespeare's scribe, which I've read, and Shakespeare's spy, which I haven't.

   • The Playmaker by J.B. Cheaney:

   A desperate young boy joins Shakespeare's theater company. Offstage, he's gotten embroiled in a mysterious, and possibly deadly, conspiracy.

   A sequel exists -- The True prince -- though I haven't read it.

I know much more adult fiction set amongst the Elizabethans, including several ongoing mystery series, but these are all the YA titles I came up with offhand. Further suggestions always welcome.

By the way, just as a tagline on Hey, YA!, while I was reviewing old posts for my (aborted) year-in-review post, I found the perfect quote in yet another article on why adults read kidlit:

[M]aybe grown-ups like children's entertainment simply because it's better than their own. Since writers can't fall back on sex, romance or profanity, the storytelling has to be dramatic and clear.

Notice the author doesn't say that "children's entertainment" lacks these aspects, just that it doesn't wholly rely upon them.

Rereading that quote today, I thought about blogging about the following sentences about "compelling stories currently missing in adult fiction," but then realized I already wrote what I wanted to say about this last year.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

Slashdot is reporting:

James Bond Peelable Automobile Paint

"Akzo Nobel has developed a unique temporary paint system which can peeled off after use. Known as Maskin, the product can be applied to any non-porous surface, such as a vehicle body or windows, without risk of damage to the original finish. Maskin (a combination of the words mask and skin) is available in eight basic colors, plus one transparent film, and can be mixed to create a wide spectrum of shades. When no longer required, the film can be peeled and disposed of using standard paint waste removal methods."

My immediate reaction (and Ian's, too, when I read this aloud to him):

That wasn't James Bond. That's Johnny Dangerously.

Sheesh.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 PM

As long as I'm on this YA kick, I've got an essay to recommend:

I found it in a 2002 nonfiction essay anthology, The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: perspectives on a literary phenomenon, which I got from the local library network.

The article compares and contrasts the original British editions of Harry Potter (published by Bloomsbury) with the American English translations (published by Scholastic).

Ian and I have two copies of all the Harry Potter novels: we first bought the American editions, and later the British. Since they started simultaneous worldwide releases with Book Four, our habit has been to preorder the British version from an online bookseller, while buying the American edition on opening night for immediate gratification. But once we've gotten the British edition, I haven't gone back to reread the American. And Nel's essay just provides further justification, describing aspects I noticed, but hadn't previously been able to articulate in a comprehensive manner (beyond just pointing to compiled lists of the differences).

A couple excerpts that caught my eye: [I'm omitting the parenthetical page numbers in the article.]

Scholastic tends to emphasize commodity more than Bloomsbury does. In Bloomsbury's first Harry Potter book, the characters eat "jelly" for dessert, but in Scholastic's, they eat "Jell-O". The change from "jelly" to "Jell-O" emphasizes the product name over the food itself: "Jell-O" is not just flavored gelatin, but a specific brand of flavored gelatin. Even when the item in question is purely imaginary, Scholastic is more likely to capitalize its name, an alteration which suggests a brand name instead of just a generic, commonplace item. Harry eating a big "stack of cauldron cakes" differs from Harry eating a big "stack of Cauldron Cakes" because the capital letters in the latter emphasize Cauldron Cakes' status as product. Similarly, changing a "grow-your-own-watrs kit" to a "Grow-Your-Own-Warts kit" makes this novelty item appear more as a branded, marketed novelty item.

and

Beyond the loss of poetry are shifts in meaning that appear inconsequential, but turn out to be important. [...] Dumbledore's affection for "sherbet lemons," the "Muggle sweet" for which he admits a fondness in Philosopher's Stone, turns out to be the password to his office in Chamber of Secrets; so, when Harry urgently needs to reach Dumbledore in Goblet of Fire, he tried "sherbet lemon" again as a possible password. Yet, in the Scholastic editions of Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, "sherbet lemon" becomes "lemon drop": Dumbledore claims "lemon drops" as a favored sweet in Sorcerer's Stone, and "lemon drop" admits Harry to Dumbledore's office in Chamber of Secrets. Yet, in Scholastic's Goblet of Fire, "sherbet lemon" remains unchanged, which might confuse the careful reader of the American versions of the novels.

There's also a lengthy comparison between differing imagery between a "Quidditch pitch (as it appears in the British books) and the Americanized "Quidditch field."

Fascinating stuff.

I found the author's academic website, and it includes an impressive and quite comprehensive page of Harry Potter links. Unfortunately, this particular article isn't available online, which is a shame, because I really think it's worth reading.

The subsequent essay, by Nancy K. Jentsch, explores a similar vein. "Harry Potter and the Tower of Babel: Translating the Magic" looks at the French, Spanish and German books. It explores the added nuances when taking the texts into languages with formal and informal "you," how puns and wordplay are preserved or lost (such as the French Tom Elvis Jedusor)

I don't know if I'd recommend buying the book, but you should be able to get it through your libraries. But I definitely think Nel's essay is worth reading for the serious Harry Potter fan, and I'd love to hear further comments from anybody else who has read it and wishes to share their insights.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:05 PM

As long as I'm writing about YA fics, I'll just point y'all to a plug I wrote for the Lemony Snicket series, which I highly recommend as good, weird fun (I still haven't seen the film).

Also, a couple years ago, I wrote the following on Usenet, which I think still holds true:

The best YA book I've read in a long time is Holes by Louis Sachar, which I find entertaining and technically impressive, with intertwining stories across three points in time, nobody acting out-of-character stupidly for the sake of the plot, and as far as I could tell, no dangling plot-holes or unexplained coincidences. It was a very satisfying tale. The movie (amazingly enough) does it justice, but the book is better (more detailed) than the film.

Finally, among the fluffier YA reading I've done this year, I've been working my way through library copies of the Princess Diaries series. I've been curious since the first film, and knowing that Tamora Pierce likes and works with the author, implies that the series can't be totally lacking in redeeming value. As a matter of fact, they're actually quite fun, and even Ian's enjoyed them.

Ignore most of what you see in the trailers. The lead character is a 14-year-old high school freshman, and she's a geek! The book abounds in Star Trek references and other asides of that sort. I mean, get a load of this passage, in which a friend challenges Mia to "[n]ame a boy that you could see yourself commit to for all eternity." Here's what she came up with:

Okay, I just found that passage entertaining, and have wanted to share it for a while...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:50 PM

In response to my Books read wrapup, somebody asked:

You appear to read more YA fiction than adult fic. Why is that? I'm very curious.

I began to respond in the comments, but thought the subject might actually make an informative entry on its own.

First thing to understand about my reading tastes is that I grew up reading the SF magazines. My father subscribed to Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine and kept them all in the den near-ish my bedroom. So that's where I picked up a lot of my tastes. I was young, so gravitated towards the shorter stories. And those were the glory days of the short-shorts and pun wars. I've developed an attitude that in many ways, short fiction is superior to longer forms, because there's much less room for lesser quality writing to hide. Short fiction is more focused, often just conveying one central idea. Through Asimov's and a later acquisition of Analogs, I've read many stories and novellas that were later turned into novels -- including "Ender's game," David Brin's "Postman," "The World next door," (and other titles that escape me at the moment) -- and I've overwhelmingly found the shorter original stronger than the expanded book.

Secondly, for about a decade now, I've been unhappy with the directions I've seen in SF/Fantasy books. It seems as though almost everything I see among new books can be divided into three categories: (1) subject-based anthologies, (2) media tie-ins, and (3) multibook series. Unlike mystery series -- which usually consist of a connected set of self-contained books, which can be read independently, without too much loss of context -- SFF series are often one long story broken up into books, incomplete unless one reads them all, and in order. [I tend to differentiate works like Discworld as a set of relatively independent sequels, while something like Wheel of Time is a dependent series, if that makes sense.] At any rate, I don't like making that kind of long-term commitment with an untried author. And with fewer standalone books on the market, there are fewer chances to sample an author's style before delving into a multibook epic.

So, that's one of the reasons why I read less adult genre fiction. So why YA?

After doing enough reading, I've made several observations about the field:

• First positive is length: as I said, I've got a prejudice that shorter is better. They're much easier to shlep around, and more manageable when I've only got a limited amount of time to read. And the YA books just feel much tighter and more concise.
• YA fic seems to be better edited. I don't know why that should be, but I've been seeing more stupid/sloppy spelling & grammatical errors in adult fiction of late. Maybe YA fic is better in this respect because purchasing decisions are more often often made by middlemen -- librarians, teachers, parents. But I just don't see the kind of sloppy writing (and spelling & grammar errors) I see in adult fiction.
• No gratuitous sex, violence or language. All three still exist in YA fics -- enough to surprise me sometimes -- but they're never there gratuitously. They have a character or plot purpose, and thus feel more integrated and less... show-offy of how much the author can get away with.

Since we're talking SF/F, I suppose it's not remiss to remind people that many think Heinlein's best works were his juvies. I'm also seeing a lot of books I grew up thinking of as adult SFF, such as Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, being rebranded and shelved in the YA section of bookstores. These reprints have different covers, larger type and sometimes interior illustrations, but no textual changes indicated in the frontspiece.

Finally, just because books are written for a YA audience doesn't mean they're dumbed down or simpler. I've found some fascinating mysteries and moral dilemmas, intricate plotting, and very clever humor in juvies. Plus a lot of enjoyment.

The popularity of Harry Potter has been a tremendous boon. As a reader of genre fiction, the ubiquitous "If you like Potter, try reading..." racks are a great way to find new titles. And it's also benefitted authors. Tamora Pierce has commented that because children weren't scared off by J.K. Rowling's longer books, her editors have allowed her an increased wordcount.

Anyway, there's a long, bloated, and probably incomplete answer for you. I'm sure that three o'clock in the morning, I'll think of several other utterly obvious reasons that I forgot to mention, but this is a start.

On a related note: It's funny. My manager has a seven year-old daughter, who apparently adores the first two Harry Potter books (hasn't discovered the rest of the series, and after I loaned Book 3 to my manager for her perusal, probably won't for a while yet) But because I read so much YA fic, I feel like I'm turning into their book pimp, suggesting other authors they might try. My manager has mentioned they're taking a family vacation to London later in the year. I've read enough YA books set in and around Elizabethan England that I want to compile a possible reading list to prepare their daughter if they go to the Globe Theater or other historic sites. :)

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:35 PM

Courtesy of Dave Pollard, researchers strapped a camera to the back of an eagle, and you can watch its inflight movies. Don't get motion sick!

And, from the same source, get a load out of this funny European commercial (wmv format) about snow removal. Doesn't he know enough to warm the car up while clearing off the snow!? Seriously, it helps!