Dichroic Reflections

a traveling Parnassus

Arggghhh! I just had a long entry deleted when I hit the Escape key by mistake. I
hate when that happens....and it's never as good the second time you write
it.

I may have a minor sinus infection, cold or allergy rather than
just jet lag -- not too surprising, considering the radical change in climate and
all those hours in very dry airplane air. I do feel a little better today, though
I'm not sure I'll make it through practice tomorrow. Talked to Mom after her
surgery yesterday, and she's got several screws and a plate in her ankle -- all
the breaks were in the ankle, which might be nasty to heal but should make it
easier to get around meanwhile than breaks higher up the leg.

I'm
swimming in a sea of bibliophile's delight right now, an enviable place to be --
partway through Nicholas Basbane's new Patience and Fortitude, which the
library found for me right before we left, The Woollcott Reader, which I
had been in the reading before the library called, and Jacques Barzun's to Decadence which I started on the trip.

This is a fast reader's
curse. Because the trip was nearly two weeks long, I suspended my moratorium on
book-buying for the duration and took along Diane Duane's The Wizard's
Dilemma; Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse and Linnets and
Valerians, Cynthia Voigt's Tree by Leaf; Sean Stewart's
Galveston; and Diana Wynne JonesÕs Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol.
I. The Voigt book wasn't up to the level of the others -- it was only okay,
though she's won a Newbery Medal for another book. The Duane book was excellent --
not up to the best in that series, but nearly. Goudge is a new author for me --
I've been hearing about her for awhile and was excited to find her books back in
print, no doubt due to J.K. Rowling's public praise. They were as good as
advertised, too -- I liked Linnets almost more than The Little White
Horse and read through both twice over. Galveston was every bit as
bizarre and engrossing as Stewart's Mockingbird and made me wish I had
gotten to Galveston's Mardi Gras back when I lived in the area. I reread the
second book in the Chrestomanci compilation (which really comes first), The
Many Lives of Christopher Chant, and liked it better this time, but haven't
gotten to the other volume yet.

All that was finished halfway through
the trip, so it was clear I needed more. I found a couple large bookstores with
English-language sections. I got The Hobbit, The Princess Diaries,
and, in another store, the aforementioned Dawn to Decadence. I've read
The Hobbit before, years ago, but not the rest of the series -- my theory
was that, if I could find those, they ought to hold me for the rest of the trip.
Never did get them though. The Princess Diaries isn't an all-time Great
Book, but it's funny and holds its teenage tone all through. I liked it better
than the movie, which we saw on video at Rudder's cousins'. The movie took major
liberties with the plot, though it did hold the same spirit and tone. Examples:
the book is entwined with its Greenwich Village setting, while the movie Mia lives
in San Francisco; the Grandmère of the book is not nearly as sympathetic as Julie
Andrews (who is, nonetheless, magnificent); and there is NO WAY that actress would
be believable as a 9th-grader whose main concern is her flat chest (the movie
removes all but oblique references to her figure).

I do like Dawn
to Decadence, though I haven't made it very far through -- it's slow reading,
at least when you're travel-muddled. I was worried that Barzun would be as
annoying as Harold Bloom, but he's not at all, thankfully -- though, from all the
cautions at the front of the book, he is worried his readers will think he is. He
explains in detail why he is using 'man' for all humans, and why he is presenting
the logic given at the time for systems like slavery and divine right that are
abhorrent today. He doesn't come off annoyingly at all, though, at least not to
me, and not so far. I'll get back to him after returning Basbanes (who's also
interesting but slow) to the library.