I never know what to put here. Subject?

[pameladean]

Finished A WIZARD ALONE. Started in on STEALING THE ELF-KING'S ROSES. I adore Diane Duane's work. She has the heart of the matter in her. It therefore seems ungrateful of me to continue to feel annoyed at minor aspects that are sloppy or simply not quite to my taste. I can seldom get rid of the little voice in the back of my head that wonders why she couldn't just go over that sentence again and keep the rhythm from stumbling; that realizes that if she uses "he'd" or "she'd" or "they'd" once more I'll probably scream, and that if she uses "go" as a verb of change again I'll sigh heavily. It bugs me half to death that the first names of Nita and Dairine's parents change between SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD and the later books. It itches me that in the first book Nita is said never to have been afraid of the dark, and in one of the later ones is said always to have been scared of it.

So I finished A WIZARD ALONE and thought, wait a moment. She didn't do any of those things. And the prose! It doesn't just blossom from time to time. It's a garden at midsummer. Some of the flowers are dandelions or clover or shepherd's purse, but still. Wow, I thought, she's made a breakthrough. I started to read STEALING THE ELF-KING'S ROSES. I'll finish it, I'll reread it innumerable times, it is bound to make me cry, probably more than once, and laugh, also more than once. But the prose is Augustan, a nicely-planned structure for June, now half obliterated by weeds. Weird.

I really liked A WIZARD ALONE. Unfortunately, now I feel I should like to read all the rest of them again, possibly skipping A WIZARD ABROAD because of the idiotic editing of American terms into British ones. No, I rather liked that one too after the second reading. I guess I'll just grit my teeth. Some people. So fussy.

I still wish I could do what she does. But with language added.

I should go do what I do, and soon. Meanwhile, I made a watery black bean soup and some insufficiently crunchy spicy potatoes for dinner yesterday and took today off. I had to go downtown and pick up my prescription, and I had managed to delay calling the refill in until it was too late to pick it up on Friday. I was out of that drug this morning, and overslept, so that all my drugs got taken at the wrong time. I feel okay now, but I felt very weird for a while. I've got to get off of this stuff. But I am not "dieting," no way nohow; nor am I very sanguine about messing any more with my sodium intake. More walking, that's the ticket.

I went to Target and got various things, dodging about twenty thousand arguing families and people with strollers. I bought a $6.99 toaster and am now wondering if it will set the house afire. Will look for the UL seal, as Raphael suggested.

I was starving by then and had had no coffee, and Starbuck's doesn't have soy milk, anyway; so I evilly went to Dayton's Marketplace and bought a tuna salad wrap sandwich and a bottle of Coke and took them along to Eric's. Toliman ate a small fragment of tuna, probably to be polite, and then stuck his entire pink nose right into the Coke bottle. Some people's cats.

Toliman is definitely annoyed with my peripatetic ways. If I am the only human around, then I am supposed to STAY around, dammit. I got him to turn another somersault, though. Eric will be home late on Monday, to the very great joy of both of us.

Raphael and I have reached the end of Season Five of "Buffy." Much more maddening than Diane Duane, because there is so much more not-right stuff, but the same feeling turned up to eleven. Yargh. (Diane Duane causes about a 0.5 occasionally spiking to maybe 2. In case anybody is keeping track.)

Papersky, don't read what follows!

David and Lydy are presently watching the extended-version DVD of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, having first ascertained that I did not, as the nominal owner, think it improper that they should watch it without me. I didn't feel up to it. I did, in the course of fetching an onion for my dinner, sit down with them and Fester and Cholmondeley and catch the scene just after the
Birthday Party where Gandalf comes back and catches Bilbo packing, and they have that magnificent conversation about the Ring. The DVD looks really, really good. I'm looking forward to watching it.

My cat is sitting on the back of my chair. When I get up he will subside onto the seat and sleep there for hours, unless rudely evicted by people who unreasonably want to write their novels now.

Pamela

Comments

diane duane

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

oh yes. i so adore her writing, indeed. book of night with moon was beyond wonderful -- finally somebody who sounds like she really understands cats.

i am deeply tempted to even read her star trek stuff, just because she wrote it. :)

i can turn my inner editor off by saying "look, this is just like school, we'll read it once for fun, and then once for the book report". by the time the re-reading comes around, he's forgotten that we already read it once. just sometimes he doesn't fall for it at all. continuity errors bother me a lot more, if i catch them.

Re: diane duane

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Gosh. My inner editor does not turn off like that for anything. Mind you, the feeling I've heard people describe of remembering books from their teenage years as having lots of Good Things that turn out not to be in the books in question on rereading, I have been known to have about some authors when remembering back to the beginning of the sentence I'm currently reading. Laurell K. Hamilton does this, but I've more or less given up trying to figure out why I'm still reading her.

I've not yet read _A Wizard Alone_, unless I'm confusing them, I think it was _Wizard's Dilemma_ that I bounced off, it seemed rather ho-hum, and likewise _Book of Night with Moon_, there was something about all those dinosaurs appearing to survive solely by eating each other that knocked a hole in the book for me. I liked _On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service_, though. I have recently reread _Deep Wizardry_, which I am very fond of, and _High Wizardry_, which is stunning - would that C.S, Lewis could have read it - but _A Wizard Abroad_ scrapes fingernails down the blackboard of my soul, it does just about everything wrong that Americans falling in love with Ireland can possibly do about life in Ireland.

Re: diane duane

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Laurell K. Hamilton does this, but I've more or less given up trying to figure out why I'm still reading her.

We seem to have this one in common. (And I've got it about watching Buffy as well.)

I am now almost afraid to read _A Wizard Abroad_, although I suppose it might make a useful cautionary tale in some fashions.

Re: diane duane

[pameladean]

My inner editor will sometimes turn off, but my general expectations for Duane's work are too high for that to reliably happen.

I think that as standalone books DEEP and HIGH WIZARDRY are the best. There is so much carried
forward once you get to A WIZARD ABROAD that I don't any longer feel that I'm seeing an entire story, even though of course there are plots that get resolved. So my jury is still out on those. I'm sorry to hear that she got Ireland wrong. I thought it might be okay, since she has lived there so long. I also thought Nita's viewpoint might be invoked as an excuse -- does that work for you?

Pamela

Re: diane duane

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Nita's viewpoint as an excuse does not work for me, because that book does not read to me like a person first coming to ireland and ooging over Cool Stuff, it reads like someone who's been there a while and fallen somewhat in love with things of which she has at best a very partial understanding and at worst has got completely wrong trying to have their perspective as the underlying reality which Nita is slowly learning about and finding cool. I consider myself glad to have forgotten the bits I found really incendiary, I'd prefer not to look up the specifics now. Ian McDonald's _King of Morning Queen of Day_ is a very good example of something approaching quite similar things [ at least they feel similar to me, under the heading "Ireland, mythic" and also "Irish people, what they are like" ] and getting it right.

Re: diane duane

[pameladean]

No, no, by all means do not recall the trauma just to satisfy my curiosity. I had other objections to the book already -- the hamfisted pointless vocabulary changes (not that I blame the author for those) and the fact that it's not really Nita's story; she's an onlooker. It's part of her much larger story, but she doesn't have a central role. This is okay in a series; done differently, I even quite enjoy it. Absent a knowledge of its cluelessness regarding Ireland, I expect to enjoy A WIZARD ABROAD more a few rereads down the line as she pulls some threads from it through all the stories after. Which is something she is pretty good at.

Pamela

Re: diane duane

[kishmish.livejournal.com]

I agree completely about Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry being the best standalones. I also agree about Diane Duane's writing style, although even if I read it with a critical eye, I still find myself deep into the story and liking it. Oh, btw pegkerr referred me to this thread; I hope I'm not intruding. *waves. I haven't read The Book of Night With Moon yet, but after reading this thread I want to. Even if A Wizard Abroad wasn't up to our expectations, there's always A Wizard Alone^_^

Re: diane duane

[pameladean]

I actually love her Trek books too and have reread most of them. I think the best, just viewed as a novel, is probably MY ENEMY, MY ALLY, although SPOCK'S WORLD has some amazing short stories in it, which the structure permits. I find the later Romulan stuff a bit thin, but since the story isn't done yet I reserve judgement. THE WOUNDED SKY, her first Trek novel, is lots of fun but somehow more Trekky and less just a Book, if that makes sense.

Pamela

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I haven't read her Trek stuff, though I'll probably get around to it when I'm done with Mike Ford's. The tie-in fiction of hers that I really liked was the Harbinger trilogy, which is related to, I think, an RPG.

Re: diane duane

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I loved My Enemy, My Ally, too. I thought it was just about the best book I'd read in the Star Trek series (until I got turned off by so many other bad books that Paramount was putting out and stopped reading them altogether). My copy's just worn to bits.

Gotta pick up Stealing the Elf King's Roses.

Peg

Re: diane duane

[vass]

Her Star Trek writing's good. I don't always agree with her characterisation, and her physics is pretty well completely at odds with that of the rest of the Star Trek world, but she has what most Pocket Books lack, unforgettable characters. My Enemy, My Ally, for instance, I will carry with me to my death. I liked her Star Trek books better than TBONWM, actually: the cats weren't enough to make me enjoy that book. Even the dinosaurs weren't enough to make me enjoy that book. And the sequel was worse. I was so relieved to open The Wizard's Dilemma and see that she'd come good again.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the Diane Duane wizardry books. I remember reading So You Want To Be A Wizard, and then being thrilled to find sequals. Have you read the cat wizard books too, Book of Night With Moon and To Visit the Queen? They were also quite nicely done.

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

Hi, I've been lurking around for a while, and I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Corinne, I loved Tam Lin, which I read last year. I couldn't put it down. Then I picked it up and read it again. I found your journal through Peg Kerr. I just started reading Diane Duane's books because you talked about then (my library actually has them, amazingly enough). I read So you want to be a Wizard a couple days ago and am almost done with Book of Night with Moon. I really like them so far. Thanks for the recommendation. I enjoy reading your journal, I might pop in again and say hi, if you don't mind.
-Corinne

[pameladean]

Please do, I don't mind a bit. I'm really glad you liked the Duane books. I haven't read all the Cat Wizard books yet, but I did read THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON.

Pamela

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Diane Duane is amazing; I glommed on to her in elementary school, and only started letting go of the obsession when I reread my Door into... books again and finally realized that I'd be lucky if she ever finished the series. After that I was able to step back and look at her work a little more sensibly.

I am very pleased with Stealing the Elf-King's Roses, however.

[pameladean]

I'd have loved the Young Wizards books in elementary school. But I fear that Diane Duane and I are pretty much of an age, so that didn't work. I loved them when I got to them, though. I just wish I liked the style better.

Pamela

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

I tend to be less upset with language issues in books than you because somewhere at the back of my mind I read then as if they were spoken - and spoken words are much less tidy than the flow of words in writing. Not that I don't enjoy elegance, but I don't expect it.

But I am more upset at the lacks of humanity in plots, I think. The type of books I will throw around (not that I've done it much) the room are those where the characters don't act within the boundaries they are created - such as normal children who don't ask 'why' or act oddly creative.

Diane Duane I've been reading - it seems - forever. I do wish he'd write the last Door into book. And that Wind from the South would be published in English!

[pameladean]

I do some weird amalgam of hearing and something else. Sometimes I do really feel the author's "voice" and then locutions that didn't work start to do so, but that doesn't always happen.

What's WIND FROM THE SOUTH?

Pamela

Re:

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

Diane Duane and Peter Morwood have had a web site for a long time - www.owlsprings.com - maybe 7 years or so. I dug into it when I found it, and looked over Diane's bibliography. She had written Wind from the South for someone who later couldn't publish it, and was at that time offering bound printed copies to people. I wrote her about it, but never recieved one. Later that page disappeared from the site. Currently the site says:

A Wind from the South, Original fantasy novel, first publication in Germany (in translation) by Heyne Verlag, probably as DIE FOHN: summer of 2001.

I'd still like to see it.

Note, Door into Starlight the final book of the Five is due out in 2003 as part of the second volume of that series published by Meisha Merin. I'm sorry it didn't make it as a singleton.

[pameladean]

Thanks for the information! I have visited the website, but got sidetracked by the cat pictures and the anecdotes.

Pamela