The winner of the ham battle is you!

Books 18-26 of my 101 books in 1001 days project.

( 18. The Pact, Jennifer Sturman )

( 19. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede )

( 20. Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper )

( 21. My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism, Andrew Marr )

( 22. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper )

( 23. Subversive Sequels in the Bible, Judy Klitsner )

( 24. Monstrous Regiment, Laurie R. King )

( 25. Riders, Jilly Cooper )

( 26. Un Lun Dun, China Mieville )

The problem with the Kindle is that I have about six books on the go now, and switch back and forth depending on my mood, so I'm about 60% through a handful of novels but close to finishing none of them. The next few weeks I have made a pledge not to start any more books until I have finished all the ones I have on the go!

I have read more books as part of my 101 books in 1001 days project!

( 9. Girls of Riyadh, Rajaa Alsanea )

( 10. Serve the People, Jen Lin-Liu )

( 11. Furious Love, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger )

( 12. How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran )

( 13. The Perfect Rake, Anne Gracie )

( 14. Avalon High, Meg Cabot )

( 15. Economyths, David Orrell )

( 16. Watching the English, Kate Fox )

( 17. Hillel: If Not Now, When?, Joseph Telushkin )

Books I started and didn't finish:

( 00. The Grand Sophy, Georgette Heyer )

Having a Kindle is making me think all kinds of Thoughts about book pricing and how much I am willing to pay for how much quality*.

Today while backreading my blog feed I read Ana Mardoll: Please Publish Your Book which links to A Newbie's Guide To Publishing: Are You Dense?. Both posts are a point-counterpoint in favour of new writers self-publishing e-books, and I do broadly agree with them based on my own experience with an e--reader. I am snapping up 86p-£3 books like candy on the Kindle site, and in the past three weeks I have bought about 20 non-secondhand books (ie money is actually going to the author/publisher), compared with an average of three or four a year for the past three years.

The one thing self-publishing online can't do is put physical books in bookstores, obviously. I've basically stopped buying physical copies of fiction, but that doesn't mean everyone ever will have an e-reader and never ever buy paper copies of anything (and I still buy paper copies of non-fiction and reference books). I'm sure it's possible to self-publish paper books as well, but is it possible (or easy) to get those into bookstores?

Because although I do think the self-publishing economic model is great for authors, and really enjoy reading e-books, I want bookstores to survive too, because, I mean, bookstores are great.

ETA!: I also had some thoughts about short stories and the internet and how I would gladly have paid £1-£2 to read each story in the thisengland ficathon, for example (although obvs Shakespeare derivative works are less scary than derivative works for things under copyright and I think FANFICTION SHOULD BE FREE) What I mean is that there are good writers there and I would totally pay for short stories from you guys, and I think "good short stories" (which are no longer a way for people who are not Neil Gaiman to make money, I understand?) is a category extremely well suited to the e-reader market.

ETA2: Also this probably only applies for now to books aimed at grownups, possibly only non-reference books aimed at grownups, at least until e-readers are less expensive and more common among Young People.

*mostly how I am now willing to pay less than £3 for fiction of very middling quality, whereas before I had to be VERY SURE I would enjoy something before I spent money on it, but would happily spend up to £10 for paperback fiction. I think this is because a physical book is more of a commitment of space and effort than an ebook - if I don't like a charity shop book after 40 pages it SITS THERE and I have to DO SOMETHING WITH IT and I can't just BIN IT, I have to GIVE IT AWAY or TAKE TIME TO LUG IT TO ANOTHER CHARITY SHOP and WHO EVER HAS TIME, whereas if I don't like an e-book I can just delete it or archive it and it magically goes away.

Sunday and yesterday were very nice! _jenjen_, joranj, hoshuteki and self went to Posh Afternoon Tea at the Lanesborough hotel, which was, well, delicious and posh. The pianist was quite funny, and started playing Fancy Hotel Reception Riffs On a few '80s pop songs and Phantom of the Opera before settling into Cole Porter.

Ewan got me two books, Watching the English (which I am halfway through and is very funny, if not necessarily totally accurate) and Jerusalem: A Biography, which I have heard great things about and am excited to sit at home and read with a cup of tea.

Jenny, Josh and I went to see Cowboys and Aliens before tea, which was a thoroughly hateful film. I like Daniel Craig and most other people in it, and the fact that the capitalist bad guy was a cattle owner named "Dollarhide", and I wish they had stuck with A Lone Amnesiac Gunslinger Comes To Town, Then Everyone Fights Aliens (which was a very enjoyable 45-minute film trapped inside the one we saw) without the unnecessary, stupendous racism and misogyny. THANKS HOLLYWOOD. BY WHICH I MEAN FUCK YOU.

When we returned home VERY FULL in the early evening, I discovered that my mother-in-law got me a Kindle for my birthday in a bald-faced attempt to buy my love! As you may recall a few months ago I had been trying to decide whether it was worth buying one, and decided it wasn't really something I needed, but it is a brilliant gift and I am very happy and thankful for it.

The best thing I have downloaded so far is the Silent Voices Bible, which swaps the gender pronouns on everything and everybody. I remember a conversation with my rabbi early in my conversion, when he described how surprised and dismayed he was when he realised in university how severe the difference was between women's and men's experience of reading patriarchal texts. Aside from things like a female Abraham arguing with a female god, there are things like:

"Isn't a woman forced to labor on earth? Aren't her days like the days of a hired hand? As a servant who earnestly desires the shadow, as a hireling who looks for her wages, so am I made to possess months of misery, wearisome nights are appointed to me."

And, like, is this what it is like to be male? Texts are just all written for you? Male is normative and male pronouns are used to describe the general, the plural or the non-gendered? You don't have to work to find yourself in the text because it is all overt and easy and handed to you? IT IS BLOWING MY MIND BASICALLY. I want to do this with every text ever. I am definitely using this version for the "blog every book of the Bible" project that is on my 101 Things list.

What else should I be using my Kindle for other than "reading public domain books"? Can I get academic journals on it? I am already subscribing to the New Statesman and have bought a few trashy looking crime and romance novels for 86p.

***

Yesterday Ewan and I went to lunch at Dinner (this was my big birthday present from him), which was VERY VERY TASTY. I had a fantastic cocktail with gin and orange peel and rose tea from the Mandarin Bar as well, which I wish I had noted the ingredients for so I could make it at home.

After lunch I had an appointment with the admissions adviser at Rabbi School. We'd been exchanging emails intermittently after I signed up for, and then decided not to go to, Rabbi School Open Day, where I said "so I almost definitely do not want to be a rabbi, and I really love my current job, but I do enjoy higher education and Jewish stuff, so it would be nice to know if there are options for me", and she said "oh that is fine, there aren't really at the moment, but let's have a chat anyway", and we did, and it was nice and non-pressured but I still came away thinking (a) I probably don't want to be a (congregational) rabbi and (b) it is a giant bummer that there is no progressive Jewish body that will let me earn an MA in Jewish Stuff without going to classes during working hours. Oh well.

After Jew Class we looked at three properties, two of which were not great and one of which we love but is £20k more than we can afford and the estate agent said they are definitely not going that low. I suppose we could put an offer in anyway just for fun.

When we got home my stomach started doing odd things so we scrapped the plan of Ewan cooking me a romantic dinner and instead I lay in bed munching potatoes, watching 30 Rock and whimpering. Boo!

It is VERY RAINY today but I actually quite like this, as I have been feeling a bit sad and worn-down this weekend despite it being MY BIRTHDAY HURRAH, and now I can huddle over tea at work and have it feel OK to be sad and worn-down. There were very nice things about the weekend though! Like my lovely husband most of all, and also the bit where the Rabbi School admissions adviser said that of all the potential Rabbi School students she'd seen over the past few months, I was the least interested in but (in her opinion) the best suited for the rabbinate. Soz guys, I will be saving the world through financial journalism instead! I hope!

I am reading God: A Biography at the moment. and basically loving it. Its approach to the text is a bit odd - it keeps dancing around the documentary hypothesis but insists on treating the Tanakh as a literary unity. (Or, at least, the Torah - I haven't read further on yet.) It uses "the Lord" for "Adonai" and "God" for "Elohim"*, and says things like "the animals, who go into the ark two-by-two in the God version and seven-by-seven in the Lord version", but (for example) describes the second creation story as a "sequel" to the first rather than a different story.

I think this is because Miles is only interested in analysing the effect of reading it as a unity, sort of playing "let's pretend", but I keep going in my head "yes, there is an immediate contradiction because it was written by TWO DIFFERENT AUTHORS!" I think I need to get better at turning off my inner Wellhausen and playing along.

Especially because the rest of it is mostly great. I have just finished the section on how Abraham's response to God going "I am totally going to obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah, see if I don't!" is basically "O RLY? Because you've been waffling on about my and Sarah's amazing dynasty for the past eighty years and it ain't happened yet, so I'm REAL SURE you're going to follow through on this one", and then there are ace bits like:

Cain and Abel – the first two children of Adam and Eve – each bring the Lord an offering. Why? He has asked for no offering. He likes Abel's offering, but not Cain's, and Cain is angry. Why? What is Cain expecting? As in Genesis 2-3, the Lord speaks to Cain as a somewhat impetuous man might speak to a fellow man. As before, he speaks principally to condemn. But it is crucial to note that the condemnation does not arise from Cain's having broken any commandment of the Lord. The Lord has given no command not to kill. After the murder, when he says to Cain, "Hark, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!" it is as if he has at that moment discovered that murder merits condemnation. There is a groping and tentative quality on both sides of this relationship. The metaphor – "your brother's blood cries out to me" – may bespeak agitation rather than moral condemnation. Something is wrong, but does the Lord yet quote know what it is? He acts, and then infers his own intention from what he has done.

BRB GETTING A SPOON TO EAT THIS WITH

*obvs I find this fairly annoying, but there is also some odd stuff around God's names, like, "The meaning of el shaddai is of obscure origin. The word sadday may mean, or suggest, mountains. But the tradition in the use of the earliest translation of the name, God Almighty, makes it clear that of all the titles applied to God in Hebrew, it is the one most intended to convey raw power." I would have appreciated a bit more than "some medieval Christians thought this meant Almighty so that must be what the c950-850 BCE author intended by it"!

Oh hahaha I have JUST NOW figured out that "intercision" in the His Dark Materials trilogy, aka cutting away a child's (animated, conscious) soul in a horrific and painful and often deadly process, represents circumcision. PHILIP PULLMAN, YOU CARD. And I thought it was just the Catholic Church you were mad at.

ETA: This reminds me that we had a really excellent Jew Class last night about circumcision, which was basically: ( some joke about CUT TEXT here )

Back to HDM, there is also a comprehensive essay on the parallel in the books here, which includes the text of this hilarious bit from The Subtle Knife:

"Some of you have seen what they did at Bolvangar. And that was horrible, but it is not the only such place, not the only practice. Sisters, you know only the north: I have travelled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did – not in the same way, but just as horribly – they cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls – they cut them with knives so that they shan't feel. That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling."

LOL PHILIP PULLMAN, NEVER CHANGE :DDDDDDDDD

1. Black, Gay and Jewish is trying a Shabbat challenge. This is a great blog written by someone also going through a Reform conversion.

I’m excited but mostly anxious…can I really observe Shabbat wholly and traditionally? Am I ready? This semester the rabbis leading the class vary weekly. The rabbi who lead on Wednesday said something that really struck a chord with me. He said that being a Reform Jew doesn’t mean that you’re a less-traditional or less-observant Jew but that you’re a Jew who is informed and makes the decision to do or not do something.

2. rydra_wong is looking for "sf/f novels featuring characters with mental illnesses which do not fall into the following categories..." which are basically, "where disabilities are written as they are in real life and not used as plot devices".

3. My first week of using exercise stickers and a chart has been successful! Here is the Twitpic picture of the chart on my desk wall. WELL DONE ME.

Hey everyone! Happy 2011. Man, I feel better already. I rang it in at marnameow's with lots of high-quality South London people and macaroons. The actual new year happened something like this:

"Can we see the fireworks from here?"
"We're going up on the roof."
"Oh, we should go up to the roof then!"
"Where are my shoes?"
"Who has keys? Should we go up without--"
"Pete has keys."
"--it's not that cold, I'll just get my scarf--"
"Where's Pete? Pete?"
"Guys, there's no time, you'll be ringing it in on the stairs, it's in like a minute."
"Oh."
"It is kind of cold out here. Can we go back inside?"
"..."
"HAPPY NEW YEAR!"
"That was anticlimactic."

It was a really lovely party, though, with exactly the right number and kind of people for High Quality Fun. There was a great book about Freudian sexual theory as applied to Camembert and (as it was Marna's) lots of incredible food. I wore A GREAT PARTY DRESS that I got from Vivien of Holloway on Wednesday:




STYLING OH YEAH. You can't see the bodice very well because my hands are awkward but trust me, it is super cute. The best part of the party was watching a man surrounded by four or five children trying to get a sky lantern going in the courtyard below us. It took about ten minutes, but it finally sailed off happily into the sky (to cheers and waves from the kids), over the building, over our heads, and promptly crashed into a block of council flats across the road.

Ewan and I walked home through Bermondsey and Peckham at 2am and it was peaceful and not too cold out. And in the morning I wasn't even that hung over due to careful water consumption. It was a good vibe, good people, 2011 continues well (I have left the house exactly once) and I am optimistic for the rest of it.

Yuletide!
Oh hey! I wrote two stories: Invasion and Inscrutability (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the Raven King and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair) and Independence Wars (West Side Story, Maria). The first was my original assignment, and fell into place with fairly little fuss, so I picked up a pinch hit about two weeks later and spent the rest of the month wrangling with it. The prompt was for Riff/Maria, but it just didn't end up working with the story, so I have about 2k excised words of that on my hard drive. For the story as it is, I had no idea that the Puerto Rican independence movement was actually headed up by so many women, so way to go, history!

There are many good stories this year and I haven't even READ half the Shakespeare stories, but my top three favourites so far are:

The Parrot Dupatta, an Othello AU set in the British Raj. It's 18.5k words and amazing (they're all amazing);
The Cape as Red as Blood, purportedly based on Evangelion's music video "Call Me When You're Sober", but SECRETLY ACTUALLY the first few chapters of a really rollicking grown-up dark fairytale adventure novel;
Gamol-léac, a missing bit of Beowulf about a strange man who can perform miracles and smells really, really good:

Up then came / a worthy warrior,
Oak-tall, oak-strong / shorn-locked, short-shaven,
Dark as leather / dyed in walnut;
Clad in canvas / white as moonlight.
Up he strode / fearless, noble,
where Geatlings gathered. / Scorning arms
He spoke these words: / "Look upon me.
Now upon yourselves. / Again upon me.
You are not me."

Things I think are neat
- So You're Engayged is a wedding website for "LGBT and allied couples", and this is just an amazingly cute series of engagement photos. I especially love the bookstore shots.
- I don't follow a softer world, but marina linked to this one and I love it: a softer world: it might be dangerous
- hatam_soferet on her favourite Torah-writing letter halacha (rules for writing letters in Torah scrolls the correct way). "There is no difference between the straight and bent form save that one is straight and one is bent."

I'm only 50 pages in, but are there any women characters in Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road who aren't raped? Onstage or offstage. Not that there have been any onstage women characters yet, but hope springs eternal. :/