flemmings | Entries tagged with reading

Ordered dinner in Monday and groceries in Tuesday and then got my Visa bill for the last month. Opened it with trepidation, because I've done a lot of online shopping since November, but discovered that mid-session I topped my account up by several hundred dollars and so my credits more than covered my debits. But really should start keeping track of what I buy since we're in this for the long haul.

Last finished?

Greene, ed, Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: the Crooked Counties
-- I have an omnibus edition of all three Rivals books, but it's succumbed to the drying effects of time. Not only come loose from the cover but also split into two parts. Seems I never read vol 3 and now I have. Pleasant and undemanding but dear lord I can do without that smug oaf Arsene Lupin.

Hume, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
-- which Greene thinks to be the best detective story ever written. Wouldn't go that far, but it's good enough. I note that everyone calls Hume an Australian writer even though he says distinctly and short-temperedly in his foreward that he's from New Zealand. No one listens to him, then or now. If the story's set in Australia the writer must be Australian.

Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
-- I'm sure the Suck Fairy has been at most of the Narnia books but this one is still bearable enough.

Reading now?

Cogman, The Burning Page
-- vol 3 being where I start losing track of What Happens When, so rereading to refresh the memory.

Yuasa trans, Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
-- I have several texts and translations of Oku no Hosomichi, and ought to get them read finally, before tackling that behemoth, Miner's Japanese Linked Poetry

And next?

More Library, probably. In the new year I may regain my ambition and tackle something meaty, but at the moment Dead Days weather (grey, dank, cold) has me in a constant state of Ow where I feel the need to coddle myself.

Walked to the laundromat with my rollator and it... didn't hurt as much as before? What pain there was, was elbows mostly. So maybe those flexor stretches are doing something? My plaint that doing strengthening exercises for eight or nine months has no results is countered only by the hip flexor exercise: where you lie at the edge of the bed and let that leg trail on the floor while bending the other knee to your chest. Time was, lifting the trailing leg back up used to be difficult, and now I can do it no problem. But it seemed very little result for so much work. However am chuffed at the idea of being able to get out even after the snow falls... if I can, and today wasn't just an unachy day. And the elbows still *hurt*, and will hurt worse walking over bumpy ice. But that consideration is for later,

Finished?

The Dark Archive, especially with the coda saying We're near the end of this, guys. Sigh.

Kipling, The Knights of the Joyous Venture
-- someone on tumblr was saying 'Look, clots, if an unrepentent imperialist colonialist can put a Chinese sailor on board his Viking ship, what's your problem?' I might cavil at the unrepentent bit, but yeah: not only Asian sailors (with unlikely names) but female pirates mentioned in passing as well. Except it seems I never read that part of Puck of Pook's Hill, so now I have. Not sure if I'll read all the rest of it: much perefer Rewards and Fairies.

Reading now?

Rankin, Exit Music
-- Rebus, as ever, and Big Ger Mcafferty, sigh, but mindless reading anyway.

Picked a Japanese book from the gomi, Bijinesu Koushou Jutsu/ Business Negotiating Tactics, aimed at poor Japanese having to negotiate stuff in English. Reading the introduction and explanations because they use watercolour business vocabulary that I never got a handle on. Am not likely to remember them now either but it does reinforce the kanji study.

Rickman, The Bones of Avalon
-- not a fan of the Merrily Watson series- definite lack of a there there/ neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring-- but figured a semi-mystery about John Dee might go down better. Maybe it's because this is an ebook but so far... there's still a lack of there theres.

Next up?

Really tempted to reread The Magician's Nephew. I wasn't as bowled over by Piranesi as some-- in spite of having all my ascendants etc in Pisces, I am stubbornly an earth-and-wood Capricorn when it comes to water, esp sea water, which basically I do not like and do not trust. But The Magician's Nephew does it just right: bound water in pools in a forest, to say nothing of orchards on top of hills.

Must contact the library system and arrange for home delivery during the winter season. Can have a bunch of my holds deliveted to me and picked up for the duration.

Barely five pages into Ulysses and already I encounter Virginia Woolf's spotty undergraduate scratching his pimples. What an unlikable tit Stephen is. I hope this is worth it. And yes, it's meaty and solid if one has the inclination to uncoil all the references, but I don't. Ah well, I have plenty of genre reading to pad the thing with.

(Sadie the dog, what *are* you barking at? If a raccoon, pray continue. If a skunk, pray refrain.)

Dusting of snow, no more, but cold. Stayed in and people came to me: my CDs of The Marriage of Figaro a day early, my wine order, and my bro bringing me road salt. I'd hoped he might stay for a chat- he has a cell phone and calls to him are a frustrating garbly gabble; how he ever managed to do business on it I can't imagine- but my s-i-l needed beer toot sweet for something she was cooking so off he went to, I hope, Loblaws and not the beer store farther away. Gather he's suffering winter melancholy: stuck now in their tiny condo with no restaurants to go to and few places to visit. Granted this is the guy who lived in a bachelor apartment for fifteen years, back then he could leave it at will. Have suggested they transfer to a larger condo in the building now that rents are plummeting and owners are desperate for tenants, but the trauma of moving out last January may still be with them.

Finished?

An Ian Rankin thriller, one of three he wrote. Mindless fun and no sodden coppers chasing Edinburgh gangsters, thank god.

And now?

The Dark Archive, large chunks of which I'd either forgotten or weren't there first pass through.

Next?

Pursuit of the Millennium is going nowhere. I want a big thick book, default reading, and am oh so strongly tempted to see if I can still read Ulysses. I had no trouble with it in my twenties but that was before the net did its thing to my brain, and everyone says it's unreadable, and god knows I couldn't get anywhere with Flann O'Brian because who cares about his wittering Irishmen? Joyce may much much more of the same, and life is short...

Snow fell last night but disappeared sufficiently by afternoon that I was able to get up to Loblaws for my prescriptions and some holiday stocking-up. When there's a lineup outside I can only stop by the pharmacy, since they let people in who are just there for the meds: and innate honesty keeps me from buying anything else. Today the only lineups were at the cashiers, and were long enough to suggest to me that maybe there ought to have been someone monitoring the numbers entering. But if there had, I'd be without my frozen turkey roll and stovetop stuffing. As it is, I'm now set for Christmas dinner. There are dozens of places that advertise their Christmas dinner catering on FB, but that's catering for groups and large families and runs to the hundreds of dollars. President's Choice may not be top of the line but it's cheaper than that and better than nothing.

No saying if the winter storm down south will dump anything up here, is why I wanted to get out today. Next week is supposed to be mild and rainy but is also preChristmas and no time to be shopping, even in an ordinary year, much less when cases go over 2000 a day in the province. Meanwhile I lead my timeless semi-shut-in's life, losing track of days, sleeping late except when woken by fraudulent robocalls about Social Security issuing warrants for my arrest, and forcing myself to exercise. Spent the weekend reading my old fanfic and cruising Youtube for clips of the Seven Samurai ie time travelling. Started The Pursuit of the Millennium, ballasting reading, but the print is so tiny that I think maybe I should read Montaigne instead. And then I go back to my genre reading and acrostics and feel futile.

I heard some of Loreena Mc Kennitt's work when I was in Japan and bought her whole backlist after I came home. Now all her earliest stuff says 'spring of 1996' to me. 1996 was a weird alternative dimension, precisely because I was just back after five years in Japan. So when I come across it again- as now, when my exercise music has started into the vocal stuff- I'm in a double reality shift. The oddness of 2020 looking back at the oddness of 1996,

Saying oh it's been so long, you've been so long on the sands
So long on the sands, so long on the flood,
They have married your Jeannie, and now she lies dead.

P/T staff from work dropped by today to deliver an orchid and a goodie bag from herself and one of the F/T staff. (Also a take out Ethiopian dinner and a latte. Dinner will last me three meals, the way I eat now.) It was sweet of them and I'm sad, but also, from things said and unsaid, aware that the place is as dysfunctional as it ever was and I'm well out of it. A. is now into her ninth month of pregnancy, and though it's a bad time to have a baby (grandma can't fly in to help) I'm glad A. will also be out of it too.

Last finished?

Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Mystery
-- I see there's a third volume of this which I'll give a miss. It's 1936 and the Japanese army is already devastating China.

Ima Ichiko, Hundred Demons 28
-- my heart fails within me. See, the last three or four volumes have been all about a collatoral branch of Ritsu's family, his great-aunt's children, grandchildren, and for all I know great-grandchildren as well. One of whom is supposed to have killed another girl when she was young but I can never remember who she was because these are all female children etc who marry and change their names. And now it seems maybe the murdered girl wasn't murdered after all? or it was someone else who died? And I really don't want to have to wade through the last four tanks in an attempt to figure exactly what's going on.

Reading now?

Down in the cellar was a box with the umptymany volumes of Kaguya Hime which, on evidence of the first tank, is an unholy mess. 'He found this dead baby in a bamboo grove but she wasn't dead so he raised her himself and neglected his wife so that they separated so he had to put the child in an orphanage from which his estranged wife adopted her five years later and made the girl her artist's model and also her lover only now the teenager has been abducted by these American army brats with yellow hair and Japanese names one of whom can fly jet fighters perfectly the first time because he's practised on flight simulations...' It's Japanese practice, I suppose.

Have the first Phryne Fisher in e-format but it's not grabbing me, partly because Phryne was poverty-stricken in childhood but now wears designer clothes huh? And wears a lot of designer clothes, I mean seriously this is fashion porn.

Next?

The Dark Archive arrived from G today. Am tempted to drop everything else and just read that.

Well, there's hope. It snowed a little last night and when I went to sweep off the steps, there was NND's four year old coming to do it for me. Did a reasonable job too, though part of it might have been delaying tactics to avoid kindergarten.

Last finished?

Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders
-- oh John Dickson Carr, what hast thou wrought? There's locked room mysteries and then there's contrived unlikely tortuous locked room mysteries with unfollowable MOs, and this is one of the latter, *clearly* an attempt to do JDC in Japanese. What a good thing I decided not to get him in his native language. The Inugami Curse was actually OK, but I need reassurance that his other titles aren't Carr pastiches.

Reading now?

Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Murders
-- I'm afraid I find these slow. Plucky girl detective wants to be stationed whetever a murder has taken place so she can observe the suspects, weary police chief wants her not to. Prefer Auntie Lee because I sympathize more with aging women, especially nosy ones with families.

Hazel Holt, Leonora
-- like Sheila Mallory, say. Though I think I spotted at least one gimmick lessthan 100 pages in. Never say that Character A finds Character B unplaceably familiar, 'reminds her of someone but can't think who' because the who is nearly always obvious. Though Holt then subverts the trope when Sheila meets a woman who looks unplaceably familiar, who then introduces herself as 'used to run the newstand in town', precisely the sort of person who is unplaceably familiar.

Still with 100 Demons, still slow, and trying not to read it till 3 a.m.

Next?

Good question. Yokomizo rattles off a list of famous western locked room mysteries I might want to look at, but none of the English ones are in eform (which I have to use now that snow has begun) and all of the French ones (Gaston Leroux) have painful translations.

I must be succumbing to lockdown again because November registers as a nothing month. I did things, things happened- boy, did they happen- but nothing made much of an impression. Not the two weeks long week post-election, or the eight days of false spring that overlapped it, or eating out on patios. It rains and snows and memory says it has always rained and snowed and anything else... didn't happen.

Am reminded of that don in Gaudy Night who remarks that some muddy-complexioned woman should eat carrots and clear out her system, because I roasted carots last night and jeez, how does anyone? No matter how long you bake them for, no matter how much oil or liquid they sit in, they remain rock hard while the marinade caramalizes and carbonizes around them. Ate them anyway because I was too achy to cook anything else. They cleared out my system. Thank you, carrots.

Got a grocery order in today, including a self-indulgent strawberry-rhubarb pie, and indulged in a large slice of that for lunch. Innards will alway be soothed by sweetness and starch.

Currently reading The Honjin Murders. The translation is awfully Gee golly whee! Wonder how the Japanese reads and am nealy tempted to order a volume from honto.jp. But prudence, prudence.

Dank, grey, chill not cold. At least I got my Asia-going cards mailed. Since four weeks isn't nearly long enough in these latter days, they must be New Year's cards, and will with luck arrive around the Epiphany. And why does the arrival of the Three Wise Guys get called by the term for a sudden enlightenment, one wonders.

Last finished?

Wanted cozy mysteries so, having been reminded of the existence of Imogen Quy, I read the first two Imogen Quys. I had completely forgotten the plots in the nine plus years since I read them last, which is a nice way to read mysteries, but still disconcerting. I mean, *nothing* rang a bell in either book.

The Diary and Poetic Memoirs of Murasaki Shikibu
-- Bowring's translation makes her sound marginally less wet than whatever other translation I read her in, but Bowring's notes inform me that half the time any passage can mean its exact opposite, depending how you take it: largely, depending on who you think the unnamed subject of the sentence is. Am reminded forcibly and again of Seidensticker's comparison of Heian prose to the transcripts of the Watergate tapes. Without tone of voice and inflection, sentences in both often make no sense at all. Also the usual Japanese 'you have to know what it means to know what it means': the courtiers and Nixon's cronies did, so they did.

Reading now?

Ovidia Yu, The Frangipani Tree Mystery

Flann O'Brien, The Dalkey Archive
-- biking reading. I suspect that, just as there's a generation of American writers- or two, or three, or mumblety many- who want to be Ernest Hemingway, so there's a generation of Irish writers who wanted to be James Joyce. Either that, or all Irish writers think alike. (Irish-Irish, not Anglo-Irish, who are another kettle of fish entirely.) Which is to say, you try me, Mr. O'Brien, you try me grately.

Ima Ichiko, Hyakki Yakoushou 28
-- which I shall be working at for a while yet.

Next up?

Mh, well there's the other Ovidia Yu.

I feel in the mood for a thumping great book, so maybe Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? Or maybe Sei Shonagon with Morris' notes beside me.

Feeling meh. World situation finally getting me down. May go back to drinking gin.

Books finished?

Cartmel, Flip Back
-- more Vinyl Detective. Entertaining except for his girlfriend's wine snobbery. Wine snobs are bores.

Edith Shiffert, Kyoto Dwelling
-- collection of seasonal haiku by an American who lived in Kyoto from 1963 until her death three years ago, aged 101. She's also the person who did those appalling translations in the Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry. Fortunately her own poems are more to my taste. She's especially good with February, which in Tokyo is the month of clear dry skies and plum blossoms. I expect Kyoto to be a bit mistier and wetter, given its bonchi setting, but not always:

Inside the plum grove
only one tree with blossoms.
blue, blue winter sky!

Bringing in the quilts
still warm with sunshine, shall I
take a noon-time nap?

As they are so few,
the plum blossoms excite us
this cold winter day.

A few snowflakes
caught in plum-tree crevices,
scent of white blossoms.

Reading now?

Through Murasaki's diary and its copious notes, about to start in on her poetic diary.

Ovidia Yu, The Frangipani Tree Mystery
-- so far, not as fun as Aunty Lee, but modern Singapore is more congenial than 1930s protectorate Singapore with the Japanese in the offing.

Next?

Err- the sequel to the Frangipani Tree, since I have it from the library.

Need to find something Japanese, but nothing excites me among the volumes available. Should I put a counter-hold on Kafuka in order to finish it, or let Whoever Has It Now have more than three weeks to read it in? Whoever may be Japanese and not need three weeks. OTOH there was a distinct relief in not having to deal with Murakami's hinkiness for a bit.

Transpires that misdelivered Amazon package wasn't a scam but an actual mixup. It was supposed to be a crossword book but the labels evidently got switched. Useful of- and, clearly, necessary for- the delivery types to take a photo because otherwise I wouldn't have put two and two together.

Morning lie-in dream had me at my brother's house which I think was still the other half of mine but quite different in configuration. Bro was changing the paintings on the wall as one does in a new season, but they were all virtually the same landscape except for small details. Neighbour's kid popped her (short cut dark-haired) head in at the window, rather to my surprise because we were on the second floor. Her dad came in by the door to pick her up. Neither was anyone I could identify. Bro mixed me a cocktail, which was dark green. Dreams are what I do instead of socializing these days.

Books finished?

Three slim volumes of Japanese love poetry in translation: Ten Thousand Leaves, The Ink Dark Moon, and The Burning Heart. Nice to have the Man'yoshu and its notes, though I think for once Miner did it better in the Introduction to Court Poetry. Komachi and Izumi Shikibu just don't translate well, especially out of context, which renders The Ink Dark Moon not so useful. Mind, I also finished Izumi's poetic diary in Miner's translation and find she doesn't work that well in context either. Passionate love affairs in Heian involve a great deal of moping about on her part and ridiculous jealousy on his, which rather makes one wonder why anyone bothered. And Heian poetry in general is untranslateable, so yeah.

The Burning Heart gives a nice selection of poems but Rexroth doesn't include any of the Kamakura women poets of the Kyougoku school that I rather liked.

Basho's Narrow Road in Miner's Japanese Poetic Diaries. Who also works better in Japanese and isn't quite as clever clogs with the language as the court poets.

Ovidua Yu, Meddling and Murder
-- another Auntie Lee Singaporean set mystery. Fun, but jeez the life of foreign domestic workers sucks.

Reading now?

Have to press on with Kafuka because I may not be able to renew it. Someone has a hold on it but I can't tell if it's active or not.

Brower trans., The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu
-- with copious grammatical notes and diagrams and such, all very necessary but also underlining the fact that Heian prose is clear as mud. Not fun reading.

Rexroth, A Hundred Poems from the Japanese
-- exercise bike reading, mostly to have it read

Reading next?

One book waiting at library, two more Ovidia Yus in transit, a Vinyl Detective in ebook. Shall get to them in good time but right now I have to read forty pages a day of Kafuka and as the action gets hinkier and more Murakami by the page, am not sure I want to.

To celebrate the moment, and because my new card came yesterday, I ordered in for dinner. So did everyone else, it seems, because in the ten minutes I stood on my ill-lit front porch, wearing white so I'd show up even if my house number didn't, two other Door Dash deliveries arrived for two separate houses across the street. My guy called me because, like many people before including myself on occasion, he or someone had writen my 543 as 534. I'm inclined to blame the map Door Dash likes to use, which showed my house to be on the west side of the street where the even numbers are. Though when I checked it again, they had me on Manning, the next block over.

I've ordered from these guys before but don't remember them being so generous with their portions. Granted I always order at least two dishes to make it worth their while, I still had a large bowl, looked at what remained, and thought 'Well, that's dinner sorted for the next four days at least.'

To work off some of the excess (pad thai noodles, hem hem) I did an extra 45 minutes on the bike machine. Turns out Handel's Royal Fireworks is the perfect music for this. Didn't even notice the time going by. That's half because I was reading my phone part of the time, and when I wasn't I was doggedly plowing through The Burning Heart, which is Kenneth Rexroth and a Japanese woman translating women poets of Japan. Granted the book dates from the 70s, and granted Rexroth or his co-translator have some satisfyingly nasty things to say about that dweeb Yosano Hiroshi- '(he) was a typical emotional exploiter of women. He attempted to disguise these proclivities with romantic nonsense about the spiritual glories of clandestine polygamy'- when we get to the classic poets who are translated by Rexroth alone, one finds this note on Izumi Shikibu: 'There survives a book of her poetry and her diary, one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature. Most of her poetry is erotic: she seems to have spent a life largely devoted to making love.' Yeah, sure, just like Catullus' life was largely devoted to making love, or Diana Rigg's. Like, we know Izumi Shikibu had a daughter and served at court. It wasn't all men all the time, even if men like to think so.

The book is falling apart and I'd happily trun it- Rexroth is so not my translator any more than Miner is- but I have no other translations of Yosano Akiko, so...

However, in other come-by-chance news, it seems Ovidia Yu has a series of detective stories stsrring a teenage girl in 1930s Singapore. Have put holds on two of them and shall pleasurably await their appearance.

Finished the yoghurt last night so this morning I had a scoop of ice cream on my oatmeal. It was yum. Didn't need to be followed later in the day by a brownie, but these are the End Times and a single brownie is excusable.

Finished?

Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning
-- not for the faint of heart, but well: I finished it, go me

Rankin, Bleeding Hearts
-- not for the faint of heart and why did they kill the second victim anyway, who was as unconnected to the Great Big Secret as you could get? Why not off the protagonist, who was actually getting close?

Reading now?

Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries
-- currently Narrow Road to the Deep North. Sweet Basho.

Still more Kafuka, getting woo-wooer by the page.

Next up?

I have a couple of holds that the library will deliver in its own good time. Otherwise there's that war time set Ellery Queen.

Abandoned?

Man, I really want to throw Lowell's Imitations in the recycle. His poetry does nothing for me and his attitude sucks.

Supernatural Sherlocks
-- none of whom are Sherlock, in the event. What they are is the soi-disant Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, but all battling ghosts and such, stuff I shouldn't be reading alone at night.

There are days I think I'm getting better or stronger or whatever, and then there are days like today. But today I walked four blocks and raked two bags worth of leaves and so maybe no wonder if I hurt? It's not the knees so much I worry about, though they were singularly uncooperative, but the back and hips. They're what I want to stop hurting because they're what make walking difficult, and I don't think a knee replacement is going to help there. And they were getting better there for a bit: no cramping in the morning, no lower back pain when I walked the bike to the corner. Ah well.

Last finished?

Clarke, Piranesi

-- well enough for what it was doing but it wasn't doing what I'd hoped it would

A Hazel Holt, and Ellery Queen

Reading now?

Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning

-- not cheerful stuff but I have it now and need to read it

Murakami, Umibe no Kafuka pt2

-- happily back to the Japanese. Library loan, probably good for six or even nine weeks maybe, since nobody else seems to want to take this out.

Jack Harvery (Ian Rankin), Bleeding Hearts

-- not a Rebus novel, meaning I'm spared Rankin's love for British gangsters. Not sure if assassins are an improvement, esp when the assassin is first person pov and his nemesis is an unlikable third.

Reading next?

The other Ellery Queen, maybe, or that Sherlock Holmes psychic pastiche one.

Yesterday I had a package to mail and because this was the first time in six months for it, I took it to the postal outlet at the end of the street which is now one customer at a time, no exceptions. So stood for fifteen minutes while the woman inside addressed a label, stopped to admire her handwriting, addressed it some more, stopped to tilt head and regard label, addressed it some more, spoke to the clerk, addressed another label, tilted head to inspect handwriting, addressed it some more, lather rinse repeat for fifteen minutes, and finally paid and left. I go in, say 'I'd like this sent airmail', am told what I'd blotted from memory: 'we only do Fedex, that'll be $40.' The postal outlet doesn't do post anymore. (It will sell you stamps but only in multiples of ten.) 'Shoppers Drug sends parcels.' Agh. I hate Shoppers Overpriced And Inconvenient and I hate Canada Post for partnering with Shoppers, but OK, I will bike over to Spadina to mail my bloody parcel. (There are in fact two Shoppers closer to me but, as I say, inconveniently located, while I can bike to Spadina in my sleep, even with dodgy knees and consequent imperfect control of the bike.)

And I will say, the clerk there was friendly and efficient and my parcel got off for under$10. But I was feeling ill-used and the day was sunny and unseasonably warm so I threw caution to the wind and went to my local eatery of the last forty years (seriously, where did that extra decade come from?) and sat on their distanced patio and had a Cosmopolitan *and* a glass of wine *and* their Eggs Dilemma, which are meatless Eggs Benny with dill in the hollandaise and to die for, *and* a crême bruleé cheesecake to follow. How little did I appreciate these things in the long ago days when I did them every week or ten days, and how nice it was to do it again for probably the last time in a long time, because winter is coming and restaurants aren't allowed inside seating. To say nothing of blood sugars, cholesterol, and surgery.

But since I was in my old stomping grounds, I went to BMV books to see if they had Hazel Holts, which they didn't, but did have an Ellery Queen double book, half of which I read last night while marvelling at how fast and loose EQ plays with police procedure, and *not* doing any of my regular routines- no exercise bike or kanji or therabands (which seem to annoy the elbows rather a lot.) Pure self-indulgence, and very nice oo.

A very mild tum upset yesterday gets me to the weight I'd gloomily figured I might hit in four weeks, just before surgery. It won't last, but in celebration I ordered in Indian food and wisely ate only a third of it. My cheekbones are shyly beginning to emerge amid the squirrel face, so vanity is satisfied as well. And of course it would be nice to drop another two kilos if possible, just for neatness' sake.That would be 16 pounds less pressure on the joints. Of course, by that calculation, I've lost 60 pounds of pressure since January but you can't prove it by my mobility.

Last finished?

Introduction to Court Poetry and Hamabe no Kafuka part 1.
-- don't know what to do about Kafka. Couldn't wait to finish the Japanese so I could go back to the translation, and now the translation feels off and I want the Japanese, but I won't get it any time soon even if I were to buy it from honto.jp. Dou shiyou, dou shiyou.

Coupla Hazel Holts, easily swallowed mysteries

Reading now?

Still with Piranesi, not liking where it's going at all.

Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries
-- next up in the classical Japanese litrachure back reading

Robert Lowell, Imitations
-- next up in the 'get it off the shelf' poetry purge. Lowell was a git and his Introduction shows it.

Next?

No idea. I'm beginning to have deer in the headlights reaction to impending surgery, which rather shortens the attention span. Console myself that there's even odds it won't happen, as Covid cases keep on mounting and the hospital continues not to have its act together.

So have finished Miner's introduction to court poetry which is all well and good. A little irked at his sneering at the imagism of the Kyougoku poets.

(Court poetry of the Kamakura period was, politically, a hoot ie poetry *was* politics and if your school of poetry was in the ascendant you got to compile the Imperial anthology, leaving out all the poets whose prosody you disliked, meaning the Kyougoku school. And the Reizei but they weren't, so far as I can see, as innovative as the Ryougokus.)

Like, I'm sure if your classical Japanese is up to it, the clever wordplay of trad waka is charming and resonant, but if it's not, the images of the later poets will do nicely instead.

But what I mostly take away from both Miner and Waiting for the Wind is that nobody is a patch on Saigyou, he of the negawakuba epitaph to the Saiyūki Gaiden.

Negawakuba
Hana no shita ni shite
Shinan

If I have my wish, I will die under the cherry blossoms

(There's the concluding lines that Minekura left out:
Sono kisaragi no
Mochidzuki no koro

at the full moon of the second month)

I'd quote more but all the reasonably translated, c&p-able, sites are pdfs. But
http://www.wakapoetry.net/poets/late-heian-poets/saigyo/

has a bunch with both Japanese and English. Enough to be going on with.

Dear God but Piranesi is oogey-making reading. Like a bad dream or the faintest recollection of something else I read somewhere else but can't trace. For no good reason I think that something else is certain scenes in Hamabe no Kafuka, which doesn't read at all the same in English as in Japanese. In Japanese it's all quite straightforward, almost commonplace, because the language is, even when everything else is surrealistic. In English it's both oogey and menacing, and I'm not sure if that's due to the removal of the language scrim- which normally makes things look more resonant, not less- or the translator's word choice. Am not good at noticing stylistic choices in English unless they're anvil-to-the-head stuff like Lovecraft.

An oddity I noticed many years ago when I was making meringues (so long ago that I forgot what those things are called and had to google 'egg white sugar'.) Ordinary eggs held a stiff peak just fine but free run/ organic eggs were much more sensitive, liable to deflate at a moment's notice and especially if you added even a hint of vanilla. And now hardboiling them, no matter how much I bring them to room temperature before cooking, no matter if I let them heat with the water, no matter if I whisk them away after five minutes and plunge them mmediately into cold water, they're impossible to peel without removing chunks of egg as well. Worth it to have happy hens, I suppose, but still annoying.

Last finished?

Carter, Waiting for the Wind
-- and now need to go back through and note the poems that resonated when I was reading through. Also to see if certain of Earl Miner's poets are there because I don't remember these Princess So-and-so's turning up There was a Tameko and a Chikako I noted in passing, who might be one of the princesses, given how names worked back then.

Yokomizo, The Inugami Curse
-- translated Japanese detective story. Has annoying bits like the detective immediately sussing out everyone's character from their expressions. 'Take sat with a taciturn haughty expression that revealed his disdain for all while Tomo, looking somehow cunning and insincere, shifted his eyes ceaselessly from place to place.' 'Kokichi ... had what at first looked like a mild-mannered air, but the restless eyes, identical to his son, revealed the evil in his mind.' 'Of the three half-sisters, she was the most attractive, but she looked the most venomous of the three as well.' I know Christie and others do this too, but it grates less in one's own language. And hell, the Japanese do at times seem psychic in their evaluations of foreigners at least, so maybe they can do it with each other in spite of their seemingly (to us) expressionless expressions. But otherwise quite the twisty page turner, and I have Yokomizo's other book on hold at the library, 84th of 84.

Reading now?

As above, Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry

Kafuka draws near a close, or rather, vol 1 of Kafuka draws near its close, and I don't have vol 2. Shall treat myself to the English translation.

Have given up on Villon and started La Dame de Kyoto by Gabriella Magrini, which is translated from the Italian and hence an easier read than a French French book.

Next up?

Piranesi, which I keep forgetting I have. Must put it out where I can see it or I shall go on forgetting I have it.

Ah, ok. So the trans character in Kafuka that I didn't notice was trans when I first read the book (or at least didn't remember as a salient detail of their character) might equally be intersex. The no breasts and no periods ever are suggestive of that, a detail one notices more when reading the Japanese.

That 'oldest thing' meme going around got me thinking what the oldest thing I own is. Thought it was the early 19th century Chinese vase I inherited from my father until I remembered the neolithic pot shard a Saiyuki fan sent me once. Then I tried to remember who that was. Old ML names after 20 years... but I think it was lorelei who might also have been figbash. Figbash I actually met, though I'd forgotten the fact. Must have been after the second Shoujo-con in New York. And I think she was the one who lived just up from the twin towers and watched the deadly dust rise up. But that would have been two months after the convention. And was she the same as lorelei? I thought lorelei was earlier...

And then I remembered that I have still messages in my old OE dating back to the late 90s so I went looking there. Still don't know if I'm conflating two people but boywas that a lot of instant time travel. Have been disoriented ever since. Adding happily to the disorientation is that my knees and back have miraculously stopped hurting, or at least stopped hurting any more than they did in mumble mumble 2016. Don't expect this to continue but right now I'll take it.

Vexatious day. Stiff for no reason, and achy with it, which resulted in several episodes of can't get on the bike/ can't get off the bike. Fortunately there's always some nice person who stops and helps me with this, and if it happens, as it invariably does, up by Loblaws that someone is a nurse from one of the retirement homes in the area who will even lift the uncooperative leg back over the bar for me. Solution is not to try getting on/ off bike anywhere but at the corner where the sidewalk slopes and gives me high ground because I can no longer be sure of managing it on the flat. Bummer.

I don't want the hassle of a knee replacement. I want my knees to work again. But if I'm inclined to get into a state about the hassle, I can console (!) myself that our rising tide of Covid cases, which have hit heights unreached even in April, will send the hospitals back into lockdown and preempt all elective surgery.

Then my Hazel Holt mystery arrived, the one that's not in the library system, and somehow turns out to be not only in the system but one I've read. No idea how I managed that because it even has the same title ie is not one where the Americans renamed the book completely.

My turducken dinner was... not the best turducken I've ever had, and generally a letdown in the way of seemingly all delivered meals. (Not all. Only western food.) But being bloody-minded by that point I ate it all, *and* the mashed potatoes * and* the cranberry sauce *and* the bread stuffing (which was baked in a kind of scone shape and very disappointing) * and* the pumpkin mousse dessert. Starch and sugar again. Tomorrow I shall have the salad that came with it and maybe the roasted vegetables, though parsnips and turnip are not favourites of mine. But today has been a vacation of not-doing of all my daily To Does, so now I will drink a Pepsi and read my library Hazel Holt.

In the brisk midAutumn
Gusty winds do blow

so I sat on my porch and watched them do it, first time in a long time- August was too hot, September too cold. Am displeased to note that I have a harder time getting out of the low porch chair than I did in July, three kilos ago. Ah well. Exercise, exercise.

Finished?

Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
-- not as resonant as when I first read it, but may be down to having read more Gaiman in the interval so that his tics are more familiar now

Coupla Hazel Holt genteel mysteries. Note that nice Mrs. Mallory never has trouble suspecting her friends of being murderers. Nor does anyone remark on the number of murders that happen among her circle of village acquaintances. Maybe we're supposed to assume that each murder happens in a separate trouser leg of time and is the only one in her experience.

Reading now?

Next Vinyl Detective book, again wih murderous record collectors.

Earl Miner, Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry
-- now that Waiting for the Wind draws near its end, back to the basic sources that Carter has been referencing all through it, though in fact what he cites is the much heftier Japanese Court Poetry by Brower and Miner. Which I don't think I own, having decided in my unilingual ignorance thirty-five years ago that Japanese court poetry has no there there. It's true that in English it decidedly lacks resonance, but once you come at from even an imperfect understanding of Japanese, it becomes delightful. Miner has a passage in the Introduction about poetic vocabulary and how there's a range of terms that the English translator can only render as 'sad'. Also I notice translators will work all the lines of the poem into a coherent English sentence, where what I'm seeing often enough are the nongrammatic juxtapositions you get in haiku

winter's solitude
and the world is one colour-
the sound of wind

Kafka chugs along, Villon doesn't. Should probably start something else in French.

Next up?

I keep forgetting I have Piranesi to read. Should read it.

Finished Claudine a Paris. Finally. Suck fairy attack: what a nasty piece of goods that girl was. But done and onto the reject pile it goes.

For my next French language exercise I thought I might read that French historical novel La Dame de Kyoto, about Murasaki Shikibu, but as I was looking over the shelves in the downstairs front room, eye was caught by The Poems of Francois Villon, a facing page French-English text. It's the equivalent of the Muromachi poetry book: read the original, chance a guess at the meaning, check the English. Might go with that, except--

--shriek opera next door has made me start up my sound system, untouched for nearly a decade because it clanks and grinds when changing CDs. It's nice to have something that will play any CD- my much loved and much-lamented Sony boombox won't read anything now- and yes I have music on my side of the wall, but I can't read when music is playing. I subvocalize and music- and songs certainly- interrupt the process. So... we'll see.

Had a dream last night, a proper dream with resonances that actually stuck in my head, about being back in Japan and meeting my former kiddy students who were now only a few years older than then, all of whom were fluent in English and showing me how they could write it. And their handwriting was beautiful and I was so impressed. And there was a long-ago Mom from the daycare who was called Naomi in my dream, though I can't remember if she was in RL, with her four children (I think in reality she *may* have had three sons) 'but one of them died', who was Japanese in my dream but still looked the same. Time telescopes this year: turns out I last saw her in the spring of 2018, going down to the Yayoi Kusama exhibition with no.2 son, and no idea why she's in my dreams now.

There's a down side to the kanji study, which is that I start to review them in my head as I'm falling asleep, and then get wound up because I can't remember the radical of one I reviewed today, or the reading or the meaning. I can look them up on my phone in the dark but the wp is like molasses, and if- as is invariably the case- I misremember any of the foregoing it's an exercise in extreme frustration. Mogi no gi 擬, not benshou no shou 償. And so on.

Finished?

A Hazel Holt mystery. Somehow felt I needed the next one, and because the library didn't have it I ordered it from Indigo. I now have my credit card number memorized and must seriously stop using it.

El Cid from Medieval Epics. Tells me no more than the recap in Medieval Myths but is a lot bloodier. Have put ME back on the shelf because I'm not in the mood to do this all over again with Roland and Siegfrid. Though reading the introduction to Roland I find there's a bit of a mystery to Roncevaux. Roland died, not in a battle against 400,000 Sarcens, but in an attack on Charlemagne's rearguard by Basque warriors as he returned from a Spanish campaign against the caliph of Cordoba. On the way back he sacked and burned Basque cities, and the Basques attacked in retaliation. It was a skirmish rather than a pitched battle, that still cost the lives of many nobles and all Charlemagne's booty from his campaign. But why was the baggage train in the rear of the army when it should have been in the middle as was usual? Wikipedia has nothing to say on the subject. Overconfidence, military SNAFU, or simply not knowing the terrain through the mountains, maybe?

Pratchett, Making Money
-- been so long since I read this that I'd totally forgotten the plot. A nice palate cleanser.

Reading now?

The perennial standbys: Muromachi poetry, Claudine, and Kafka. Claudine wears on me. Want to swap her for someone else. Wonder if I still have that French translation of Tanizaki's Manji (Buddhist swastika)? OTOH Tanizaki is as likely to wear on me as Claudine. Oogey writer, that.

Next up?

I have Piranesi but I'm not sure I want to start it in my current scratchy state. Am having a rare attack of missing People, which I will deal with in the usual way, but that takes time.

Riffing off one of Leonard Cohen's more unfortunate poems:

The summer pants
I bought fifteen pounds ago
I can wear them now.
It is never too late.
I advise you all
To become high cholesterol pre-diabetics.

Of course autumn and its teen C weather has come back again, and of course these are still billowy trousers unsafe for biking in. But still.

Am also now in possession of Susannah Clarke's Piranesi and will hunker down with it in these next few rainy days, once I'm done with the books on the go.

After lows well under 10 for a week and highs mostly in the teens, we've now got summer back for a few days with mid to upper 20s (and annoying little insects everywhere.) Shall doff the flannel sleep pants and hoodie for the duration. The space heater has an air blow function which is a godsend because south next door has something- heat? fans?- that periodically turns on and off and that I can hear through closed windows and presumed noise-blocking plexiglass. Could stand it just fine if it were always on but the stop and start jerks my attention.

Finished?

Second Vinyl Detective, which was good about lampshading the first Vinyl Detective but seems to have left the first suspicious death kind of unaccounted for? Also Medieval Myths which I must keep to compare against other versions.

Reading now?

Perpetual Kafuka, perpetual Muromachi poetry, perpetual Claudine. Was enchanted to find a Goodreads somebody remarking, apropos of La Maison de Claudine which has nothing to do with Claudine, being Colette's autobiographical vignettes, 'I was so pleased to discover that that bully Claudine isn't in this.' Yes, she is a bully, isn't she?

To console me, Making Money, because I always confuse it with Going Postal. Moist too is a bit of a dweeb. Give me Sir Samuel any day of the week.

Next up?

Oh, various ebook mysteries currently on hold. More Hazel Holt, more Louise Penny, and that Elizabeth Peters I started and forgot about.

When one's books on the go prove indifferent, it's a lot easier to do the necessary other things like exercise and kanji writing. Yes, and indifferent French reading practice as well. Claudine in French gets on my nerves, possibly because I detect the slimy hand of Willy. But I wish I had better books on the go. The second Vinyl Detective came in. Once again someone wants him to find a record. Once again, no sooner does a lead appear than the lead is murdered. If the theme of the series is going to be 'accidental judgements, casual slaughters' then I'll drop it now and let the sixteen people behind me in the library queue have it instead.

Then, having finished the rather charming and certainly out of date The Medieval Myths, completist me has to start in on the only slightly later Medieval Epics which is what I read Beowulf out of in my medieval lit. survey course. But this is a translation, not merely a retelling, prefaced by in-detail historical background.

Thought I'd start out with El Cid because he, alone of the Medieval Myths guys, behaved like a decent human being and not (cf Roland, Prince Igor, and Sigfried) a berserker bathing in the blood of a thousand youkai/ whatever. I'm still wading through the preface to that which is all head-spinny shifting alliances among a dozen Muslim and Christian kingdoms, when I thought the tory was just about El Cid trying to win back the love of his king Alfonso who for reasons unstated had sent him into exile. Yes, well, reasons were that El Cid had been fighting against Alonso on the side of his brothers, since the three kings, in best medieval fashion, were constantly trying to take over each other's territory. So when oldest brother is murdered and Alonso takes over his territory, Alonso is not gonna be best buddies with brother's champion. (Incidentally, Spain provides a strong argument in favour of primogeniture. Though I suppose if you're fratricidal enough, it hardly matters if only one of you is king.)

Maybe I should read some Pratchett instead.

Also low-fat low-carb eating is getting old. I would die for some toast and butter, or sweetened yoghurt, or chocolate. Someone on the FFL lost thirty pounds not eating wheat or sugar. Won't happen to me, not with my sedentary lifestyle, but the vague hope of getting to what I weighed in 1987 keeps me sticking to it. I cruise various restaurants on various delivery services, click on pad thai and hamburgers, and then back button.

We're at that perplexing time of the year when it's colder inside than out but it's *September* and no way can one justify turning on the heat. Space heaters, maybe, for short periods, but the rest of the time one must just put up with cold fingers and toes. Whereas I wore a jacket to go grocery shopping in the 15C afternoon and sweated.

Also, in a burst of 'last blow of summer', the city has torn up all the intersections along the main through street, the Barton Corridor, which for some reason known only to the planning department they couldn't have done when they were repaving that same street last June. Is a nuisance for a crippled biyclist like me because it means taking main streets to get anywhere for ohh the next fortnight.

Yesterday was a write-off in terms of production because I stayed under the quilts all day reading a Gladys Mitchell mystery. Golden Age, yes, but somehow very uncozy. There's many more if I want them but I think I'll go with Elizabeth Peters for my next. Did however salvage part of the day by steamrollering through the Johnny Walker the Cat Killer section of Kafuka, so at least that's done

Cholesterol meds are famous for causing muscle aches, also for having a nocebo effect ie if you think they're going to hurt you they're more likely to/ One day may be a little early for the effect to, well, take effect, but boy was last night an owie night, as today is an owie day. I haven't had alcohol for two weeks and I haven't had sugar for ten days, but I took my last bottle of lemon tonic and had a g&t this afternoon. No matter what I think, gin really doesn't ease the pain, but oh that sugar rush was so nice. I'm actually ok doing without pastries but I do jones for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
( Reading Wednesday )

Because my reflex when things go wrong is to throw money at it, when my doctor said I had to get more exercise to lower my cholesterol I immediately went online and ordered an under the table pedal machine, something I'll need anyway if I ever get my knee fixed. It came yesterday, and while I'm hoping the cholesterol stats are another lucky accident, I ignored my technophobia and unpacked it today. Cheapo brand so cheapo action but it will do. Trouble is the stirrups have velcro straps and the straps are too big, but then I realized it's for yahoos who wear their shoes indoors, so I will use it with running shoes. 20 minutes a day three times a week, they say, which is eminently doable.

Also ordered missing Judge Dees from the Canuck equivalent of Amazon, which is bad but at least not as bad as Amazon. On a hunch got Judge Dee at Work and am relieved to find that the missing page was reinserted in later print runs. So that's ok.

Fasting blood test today meant going without meds for eighteen hours (take with food anti-inflams) which demonstrated that I really can't go without meds for eighteen hours. Especially when I arrive at the lab at the busy time (9_10:30) and must stand social distancing in hallway for fifteen minutes. Can no longer stand for long periods of time or back seizes up, which it ought not to do given how much I stretch it and do core strengthening. Blah.

Newcomers in the neighbourhood: north NNDs' four year old returns from extended visit with Grandma while parents moved in. Plays in the back yard in the evening gloaming, shooting a miniature basketball into his miniature basketball hoop, while Turkish father smokes outside. South NND's Very Good Girl Sadie chews her bone and barks forlornly when N goes inside instead of playing with her. And mysteriously: at night something technical goes bingley-bingley-beep at random moments (actually more, bing-eley-boop!) and I can't or the life of me think what it could be. I never hear it during the day and I can't even tell where it's coming from.

Because my reflex when things go wrong is to throw money at it, when my doctor said I had to get more exercise to lower my cholesterol I immediately went online and ordered an under the table pedal machine, something I'll need anyway if I ever get my knee fixed. It came yesterday, and while I'm hoping the cholesterol stats are another lucky accident, I ignored my technophobia and unpacked it today. Cheapo brand so cheapo action but it will do. Trouble is the stirrups have velcro straps and the straps are too big, but then I realized it's for yahoos who wear their shoes indoors, so I will use it with running shoes. 20 minutes a day three times a week, they say, which is eminently doable.

Also ordered missing Judge Dees from the Canuck equivalent of Amazon, which is bad but at least not as bad as Amazon. On a hunch got Judge Dee at Work and am relieved to find that the missing page was reinserted in later print runs. So that's ok.

Fasting blood test today meant going without meds for eighteen hours (take with food anti-inflams) which demonstrated that I really can't go without meds for eighteen hours. Especially when I arrive at the lab at the busy time (9-10:30) and must stand social distancing in hallway for fifteen minutes. Can no longer stand for long periods of time or back seizes up, which it ought not to do given how much I stretch it and do core strengthening. Blah.

Newcomers in the neighbourhood: north NNDs' four year old returns from extended visit with Grandma while parents move in. Plays in the back yard in the evening gloaming, shooting a miniature basketball into his miniature basketball hoop, while Turkish father smokes outside. South NND's Very Good Girl Sadie chews her bone and barks forlornly when N goes inside instead of playing with her. And mysteriously: at night something technical goes Bingley-bingley-beep at random moments (actually more, bing-eley-boop!) and I can't or the life of me think what it could be. I never hear it during the day and I can't even tell where it's coming from.

As long as the daycare was closed, I forgot about it completely, which was very good for my mood. Now it's open again, with very strict policies about who can come into the building (not even parents: they have to hand their kids over outside) and I really really want to go by there and see people. Even though an exchange of messages on Whatsapp yesterday reminded me why I was so happy not interacting with that very dysfunctional found family. It's just: for six months I was perfectly happy with no social interaction and now I'm... not?

Last finished?

Two Judge Dees, the first Vinyl Detective, and the Spoon River Anthology.

I was a bit put off at the casual slaughter in the VD. I mean, if these guys are offing anyone who might have the records in question in their possession, why not off the guy who's actively tracking them down? Because he can lead them to more collectors? But the VD's contacts are in the public domain, so to speak: the villains also know who the second hand sellers are, because the're offing them. Oh, and all those people selling the records on the internet who make it so easy for the VD to acquire the missing ones when he's in California- why didn't the villains think of them? Some bugs in the system there.

Reading now?

And shouldn't be: Ogawa Youko, Revenge
-- yes, really good, but oh so oogey. Can't think of something that would counter it.

Next up?

Hopefully something cheerfull

Found this poem on the blog of someone I no longer follow because, though rather younger than I, they've gone curmudgeonly old: forgetting our glorious Boomer past to carp about People These Days pulling down statues and breaking windows and telling Curmudgeon how he should think which, because he's still a Boomer, he takes exception to. Oh well. At least he finds neat poems:

Crofter

Last thing at night
he steps outside to breathe
the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,
glare down
from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens
for small sounds. His eyes
are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?
He's an emblem of it
in its pure state.

And proves it. He goes inside.
The door closes and the light
dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig

Have been reading an ancient paperback, The Medieval Myths, summaries of Beowulf and Roland, Prince Igor and the Cid. But also Peredur, the ur-form of Percival, or possibly the other way around. I thought I'd read the Mabnogion but I must have skipped this one. And it's weird in that very Welsh way that makes Jungians very happy and has the editor of this compilation citing Jessie Weston, that muse of T S Eliot's. That whiff of 19th century anthropology is choking, but the images in Peredur are dreamlike (meaning brilliant and unexplained, not misty) and suggestive of things not graspable. If I were feeling more grounded I'd go back to Tim Powers' Last Call which, Gaiman-like, puts the Fisher King in America. But I'm caught in September Ghost Tide with no infants to counter the unsettling, creeping tendrils of the past, so I won't.

Only you know what? The Fisher King is De Troyes or someone misreading a French source of le roi pécheur (sinful king) as le roi pêcheur (fishing king). So the Mabinogion has to be later because it keeps the misreading. If it is a misreading and not what the original, possibly not-Christian source had in the first place. I mean, a wounded fisher king is much more resonant than a wounded sinner, but the latter is much more likely,

I've had the sideroom window closed and shuttered all year while south neighbour was doing dusty renovations, and only now has the room become stuffy. So I opened it up today, now that autumnal temps are here for a bit, and the sweet smell of autumn comes into the room.

So now I've finished all the Judge Dees and am assailed by missing scenes. Some I only imagined- the useful chart at the end of Judge Dee At Work sent me to a bit in The Willow Pattern that I seem to have ignored while reading, where Ma Joong's marriage to the twins is mentioned as a future event, not something that's actually recorded. But there's another bit where Judge Dee asks his Third Lady to help him in an investigation and she's disappointed that it's not as exciting as she thought it would be. I can't remember oming across that at all, this read-through, but I'm sure I didn't imagine that one. And charts don't help there.

Laundromat trip yields me clean towels. Laundry at home yields me a clean-smelling terrycloth sheet, too thin with age to use as a sheet per se (I believe I got it in Japan, making it pushing 20 at its youngest) but lovely for wrapping about neck and shoulders while I sleep and the fan blows cool(ish) air into the room. Succeeded also in extremely brief walk around corner and back to laundromat, and think I might manage more with a cane, maybe. I can't walk in shoes but evidently I need to. Also got down onto floor for the fist time in months which allowed me to do the one exercise that can only be done on the floor, and more important, got back up off the floor. This requires that elbows behave themselves, so will not be an everyday occurrence, but still.

Started a Tim Powers and stopped almost immediately. Wrong time of year for his sort of oogeyness. But needed something to read at laundromat so took The Spoon River Anthology, so I could say that after sixty years I'd read all of it. Is oogey in its own fashion: 19th century America holds a host of horrors. Should have brought Judge Dee instead but yanno, library books...

Have been active today. Hurt. Maybe by Friday the mug will be gone.

Finished?

Lattimore, Selected Greek Lyrics
-- another slim volume of verse. From my youth, and a keeper

Bailey, The Red Queen Dies
-- apart from me not being in the mood for a police procedural, this was an oddly cozy Brit murder police procedural. As in, contrived. As in, detective considers a buncha utterly extraneous threads tying the victims together. Alice in Wonderland! And the Wizard of Oz! Because both involve young girls! even though the first victims were young women. And the actual connection was something else entirely. A disappointment.

Reading now?

Van Gulik, Judge Dee at Work
-- reliably satisfying

Cartmel, Written in Dead Wax
-- the first Vinyl Detective. A find.

Ogawa, Lost and found fairytales
-- Ogawa being weird as ever. Luckily this is short because I'd rather read Murakami. But it's from the library- a hold that showed up unexpectedly- so must be finished first.

Dalby, Kouta
-- this week's slim volume of verse. Shamisen songs of the geisha. Uninspired translation. Has calligraphy from a famous calligrapher which I look at to try to discover what makes calligraphy great. Not readability, for sure.

Am of two minds whether to read Jean de Florette or Arsène Lupin for my French. The latter has more unknown, more important, vocabulary than the former. The former is better for mindless looking at the words and getting just enough of the gist to get by.

Up next?

Probably more Vinyl Detective. But that's tablet reading. Maybe something fictional from the shelves so I can keep on emptying them.

Abandoned?

Shiffert and Sawa, Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry
-- infuriating. An anthology would be wonderful, but: Japanese has these impersonal verbs of hearing and seeing that naturally equate to passives in English. 'Is heard' 'is seen' even if the sense is also close to 'can be heard/ seen'. Passives in English suck. And the translators render every kikoeru and mieru as a passive, as well as every true passive construction, and the clunk is terrible.

In fact, the clunk is terrible, period:

The Discarded Horse

What on earth is it, going from where to where,
that is passing around through here I wonder?
The same as a wounded god,
a single abandoned military horse,
Shining more than death,
alone more than liberty,
and at the same time like peacefulness without a helper,
is the field of snow where he temporarily wanders about
with hardly his own lean shadow to feed on.
Presently one cry is neighed-out toward the distance
and collapsing from the knees he has tumbled down,
The Asian snow, the heavenly evening!

Line breaks and capitalization just as in the text.

Took till nearly the end of August for me to register that there are no nightly fireworks because there is no Ex(hibition) this year which means there will be no air show either, which last I am grateful for.

Weather has gone warm and muggy again after that brief and intermittent cool down last week. Autumn will come eventually, but meanwhile my joints hate me.

Jean de Florette is all about brital murderous peasants, so I went searching for something more congenial and am now reading Arsène Lupin. His vocabulary is, oddly, more obscure than JdF's in spite of the latter's all landscape all the time.

How very 1993 it's being just now. Grey, washy, cool but humid, with cicadas.

Reading Wednesday has actually finished a book. Two, in fact.

F. C. Yee, The Epic Crush of Genie Lo
-- which, aside from having lotsa fun with the Journey to the West, is (I am told) an impeccably accurate account of what it's like being American-born Chinese. Being ABC sounds nearly as bad as being Singaporean.

Katherine Govier, The Ghost Brush
-- life of Hokusai's daughter Oei, who was also an artist under the name Katsushika Ooi. Her art is like nothing I've ever seen. These are paintings on silk, which would explain the strong colours, but it's startling after the usual faded out quality of woodblock prints:
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/hokusai-and-oi-keeping-it-in-the-family/

I may have to reconsider Hokusai himself. I've always said that Hiroshige's my man, because he does people-less landscape while Hokusai does people in a landscape. But I have to admit that a *lot* of Hiroshige is deadly dull, and what saves dull landscape is, in fact, people.

Forget where I got this book. A wee free library, I think. It was a gift to 'Michel and Lynn' and contains the author's signature as well as a note, on Japanese notepaper, from the original giver, a Japanese with a unisex name. Passing on finished books is one thing, but I suspect Michel and Lynn of never having having read the book at all. Hmph.

Currently rereading Going Postal, fun, fast, and refreshing. Beaver along happily through Hamabe no Kafuka and doggedly through Jean de Florette, and have The Red Queen Dies waiting for me next.

Since I'm getting nowhere with ancient Greek, onaccounta I have to memorize vocabulary that's given casually in the examples, not even in a table for each lesson that I can refer to, I'm reading French instead. Alas, I'm reading Jean de Florette because that' s what was to hand on the living room table. With a little effort I could have unearthed a Simenon someplace. The idea is just to read and not bother looking up vocabulary, but of course that doesn't last, not amid all these countryside terms. So I hauled out the large Robert's I rescued from the gomi many yeas back and use that. Am amazed we used paper dictionaries for so long. Heavy book, thin paper, ages to find the right entry. Even my unsatisfactory phone browser would work better. (Phone's google app is useless. Molasses.) But no one seems to have ever made a wordtank equivalent for French, one with a comprehensive F-E / E-F dictionary. It's all phrases for travellers. What do they expect students to use these days? Their phones, I suppose.

If I were reading Hamabe no Kafuka in English, it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure out that Major Chord 2 (二長調 ) is D-major, not B, and I could have gone off to youtube and listened to Schubert's sonata in same much earlier. Not that Schubert is my man at all; I have little use for either the unaccompanied piano or the romantics in general. But of course there's a long disquisition about that sonata in Kafuka, which implies it's kind of 平凡 erm uninspired. Which to me it is. But of course everyone else who turned up at Youtube for it was there because of Murakami.

Accomplished today by getting to Korean super and buying enough gyoza to see me to the winter. Bought a new kind as well as the old reliables and hope they're good, because the last new brand I tried wasn't. Chicken doesn't work with potstickers, or not for me. But at least I have some defence now against those urges to order them online, that assail me periodically.

Also washed the stairs after far too long. Had to stop halfway to rest. All the core strengthening doesn't seem to have touched the lower back that simply has to sit down if I've been standing for more than five minutes. I hope that a new knee will alter some of that, as it does for hip replacements, but I'm not betting on it.

Optionalish things to do each day:

Exercises, second batch. (First batch are necessary to be able to move when I wake up)

Kanji writing.

Japanese reading.

Housework of some description .

Shopping.

Three of these constitutes Accomplishment and I can say diem non perdidi.

Bro came by today and tried to get phone's data onto my laptop. Couldn't. I hate the laptop with the fierceness of a thousand suns. Not only is it useless, everything on it is so bitty that I can't see a thing, and I have no idea how to go about finding anything in Win10. Google may be another evil empire but I'm so tempted to get a Chromebook instead and have done with it.

As for reading...

...finished a Hazel Holt mystery, still terribly domestic, and also Jade City, which I'm glad to have done but. But. I have no desire to wade through two more thick volumes of mafia violence but I want to know what happens to these people and I don't want to go through wikipedian plot summaries. I want to have read the next two volumes. I want to skip the violent bits and read the family interaction bits, only they'll all be about things going from bad to worse as well. Argh.

Think I must reread Going Postal just to cleanse the palate.

There's a lot of hinkey stuff in Murakami that I somehow didn't register when I read it in English back in 2011 but that necessarily impresses itself when reading more slowly in Japanese. While slowly reading polite Japanese, which is like hacking one's way through an overgrown garden, cutting out all the excess verbiage and causative forms and verbs of giving to get at what's being said. (Polite Japanese, not prewar keigo, thank god, because that's like hacking through a jungle.) But there's one clanging 'oh no they didn't' moment that's really... guy, do your research.

Woman teacher is on a school outing, suddenly gets her period ten days before she should, sends kids off to look for mushrooms in the woods and takes herself deep into the forest to mop up with the handkerchiefs she has, because you always have handkerchiefs in Japan to dry your hands. Towels not provided in public washooms. Then she hides the bloody handkerchiefs where no one will find them and goes back to the group, still bleeding into her underwear, presumably.

No she doesn't let go of those handkerchiefs. She keeps them stuffed in her underwear because seriously, Haruki, periods aren't a single effusion of blood that then stops. Don't you know any women at all?

You need bloody handkerchiefs for a plot point? Find something else then. Mattaku.

Finished?

Karen Lord, Unraveling
-- reminiscent of Henry James ie the author knows what happened, a reader on the author's wavelength knows what happened, and the rest of us are simply confused. More fun than James at least, in that it has straight from Ezekiel angels, what might be a Demiurge, and a couple of archetypes backing up its murder mystery: but typical in that it doesn't announce itself as a murder mystery. You have to figure that out for yourself.

Buncha real mysteries that very much announce themselves as such

Christie, Something Wicked This Way Comes
-- via mooncustafer's recommendation. I didn't read this one when I was bingeing Christie two years ago because it's a Tommy and Tuppence who mostly go in for unlikely espionage, and it's a late Christie when IMO she was losing her edge, sometimes badly. But this one was still pretty sharp, and I enjoyed it.

Holt, My Dear Charlotte
-- in which Holt pastiches/ borrows Jane Austen's letters to background a murder in a small town. I like epistolary novels and I haven't read Austen's letters, so I didn't see the seams showing here. The solution was low-key but so was the solution in the one contemporary mystery of hers that I've read, so maybe that's just her style.

Van Gulik, Poets and Murder
-- Judge Dee therefore readable. Van Gulik's kinks are kinky and it belatedly occurs to me to wonder if the books would read any different without them. But they're indelibly part of his style too.

On the go?

Lee, Jade City
-- going slowly because 'this cannot possibly end well' is a given of the genre. Also because I don't understand why anyone wants to read about gangsters, let alone enjoys reading about gangsters. The violent lives of violent men can never be short enough for my tastes, so why am I reluctant to see the crop in this book come to their foredoomed bad ends? Possibly because the emphasis so far isn't on their violence and hooliganism, and because Lee writes so well in the 'noble triad/ yakuza' mode. The hooligans are all on the other side and one doesn't want to see them win. And the worldbuilding is pretty fascinating, so I keep on with it.

Next up?

Mh. Have a contemporary ebook Holt waiting on the tablet. Other than that, can't think what I feel up to.

I'm a suck for sauteed onions but my delicate nose can sense the smell of any onion fragment, cooked or not, for days afterwards. So I had omuraisu for lunch and now have a very clean kitchen afterwards.

The city finally gets its tax relief forms online ('forms will be available in July' no-I-don't-think-so) so I look at what's needed. Tax statement, yes, magnetized to the side of the fridge which is where I put any document I need. Old Age Supplement form from tax return, which will be in the file I sent to the accountant, which... I never got back from the accountant, did I, because everything was done arms' distance. No matter. One call to accountant and another to Beck Cabs and I have my documents. Might DL and print out the forms, at peril of upsetting my computer; might wait to see if City will send them to me as they have in the past. Have till October to apply but the sooner in, the sooner I get the rebate: supposing I still qualify,

Books finished this week:

Gulik, Necklace and Calabash
-- had forgotten most of this one, so a pleasant read

Cho, The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water
-- needs a reread with the tablet handy to look up all the Malay terms. I'm a little dubious at the notion of a wuxia romance happening not merely in the 20th century but actually *after* WW2, but maybe the Malaysian Troubles are backset to an earlier time? Fun and short. As ever with Afrai's stuff, I wish she had the leisure to err well, talk more. But with a legal career and a kid, that may be asking far too much.

On the go:

Well, with a wuxia under my belt, it's a toss-uo between my abridged Water Margin or another crack at Fonda Lee's Jade City, this time ignoring the names. Settled on the latter and am steaming ahead, but no doubt about it, it's a doorstopper. Probably a good sofa reading replacement for Tristram Shandy.

Karen Lord, Unravelling
-- had to start this several times because I could not keep the settei straight. Realize that this is deliberate: like walking one of the book's mazes, one can see only a little way ahead and has no idea of the overall pattern. This in spite of the multiple POVs, doling out information in fragmentary tidbits. I persevere, hoping for clarity at the end, but suspecting it may require another read-through when I'm done.

Next up?
Enh, those two will hold me for a while. But someone on the FFL mentioned a mystery writer called Hazel Holt, so if I need a break I have the first of the series on my tablet.

Finished Tristram Shandy, finally. Doubtless there are those who enjoyed it more than I. They're all over at Goodreads writing their reviews in what they take to be a pastiche of Sterne's style, which works as well as these things usually do ie not at all. Cf Geoffrey Willans, Nigel Molesworth, etc.

Made it to the greengrocer's yesterday and indulged in asparagus (much better than Loblaws' reedy woody offerings), cherries (non-existent there) and a small cabbage (the supermarkets have nothing but gargantuan ones, presumably to feed a horde of Hungarians.) Using cabbage is a dicey proposition for me, but I steamed a quarter of it with some carrots and slathered it with leftover peanut sauce from the pad thai I ordered on Friday. Next step is to make my own sauce, but experience suggests one can't do it with the soy-substitute pb I use. So must buy the real thing, and then try not to eat it.

Veg indulgence is with a view to losing another pound if I can. The hot weather bloat is most dispiriting when I step on the scales every morning. The other trick I've read about is to take your weight, halve it, and drink that many ounces of water each day. In my case that's pushing eight large glasses. Tried it yesterday with little results, because yesterday was hot, and gadding about, even on the bike, had me sodden with sweat. Like bicycling in Spain in the hottest summer in 80 years: I drank litres of water and it transpired at once, bypassing my kidneys completely.

Someone on tumblr has been live blogging Utena and reached the last episode today. What a wild ride. Utena ran from April to December of 1997. Finder Jean taped it for me, but the last ep was shown on Christmas Eve, she was out celebrating that day, and forgot to set her timer to record. It was months before the local Japanese store got it in, and as you may recall, the next to last episode ends hanging off the most precipitous of cliffs. Could barely stand to watch it once I got my hands on it, but Ikuhara, bless him, didn't blink once, though chasms of romantic tropes opened up all around him and begged him to fall into them.

Woke up this moning, unaccountably, in 1979, where I had absolutely no desire to be. My mother was dying that summer, and though I have few memories of the time, I recognize the ambience. So I did a few breathing exercises that landed me, unacountably, in 1992, living with demented roommates in Tokyo. So I got up instead.

The gov't has lowered my old age supplement by $300 a month, which would make me sad except that it's determined by income, and apparently I was very flush last year. Wish I wasn't such a fiscal illiterate so that I could determine how I came to be flush. But it certainly wasn't from working, so my stocks must have performed well and I can hit my investment advisor up gor extra cash if needed. And next year, when I'm still not working and the market has crashed, my income will be down again and my OAS will be up. Think nonetheless that I'll be a little more cautious with the restaurant delivery, which can easily eat as much as dining in. But in these pandemic days I know I'm spending less than before: no massage and only one aupuncture session a week.

Finished The Little White Horse which is, ok, comfort writing in wartime, so I'll live with the everything is perfect-ness of the thing. But a book that tells me almost at the beginning 'Miss Heliotrope used to whip Maria within an inch of her life' but Maria always lets Miss Heliotrope know she has no hard feelings, is not going to be a favourite of mine ever.

Slighter, but more fun, was The Haunting of Tram Car 015. I wish Clark would write a novel sometime; I always want more. Book had a preview of The Black God's Drums, which I've read, and would really like a novel set in that universe.

Am within 100 pages of the end of Tristram Shandy. Slog slog slog.

More happily, now the library books are finished, I'm back to Karen Lord's Unravelling, still happily between Three Parts Dead and Neverwhere. Started from the beginning again because it's that kind of settei. I have another library book to pick up tomorrow, but it's a short Judge Dee that I can read in an evening.

Another frustration dream, of trying to find my cell phone or tablet so I could call my acupuncturist but my bedroom was littered with my sibs' technology- cameras, game controllers, different phones (not that anyone in my family has ever owned a game)- all of which were phone or tablet shaped but with buttons in the wrong place, and my mother and father were being no help either.

Did in fact call my acupuncturist in RL, to cancel today's appointment, because there was a severe thunderstorm watch happening and the heat had given me a case of summer stomach. Supposed to be a bit cooler in the days to come.

I never read Elizabeth Goudge as a kid, which is odd, but probably a good thing. I suspect I would have hated The Little White Horse as much as I hated Beverley Nichols whom I did read: the good so good and the bad so bad and the bad also, funnily enough, dark haired and -skinned. Pfui.

Given that next door moved out in early February, it's odd that they should start getting mail again. But they do- bumpfy bank and credit card stuff by the look of it- which the NNDs kindly put in my mailbox. Called the bro today to apprise him of the fact, discovered they were actually in the city while my s-i-l winds up her last no really her last no *really* her last legal case, and so they said they'd come by. Then called back to ask would I like to go out to dinner with them? And oh yes I would but but but after steadily declining over the last month, Ontario numbers have surged this week when most of the province went to stage 3. (Not Toronto because we're still unacceptably high and the 'patios only' ukase has been interpreted by the wakamono to mean 'eight people all at one table', as seen by me last week on the drag by the hospital, thus: not easing any time soon.) Also I had a liquor store delivery coming between 5 and 9. So I had to decline, and only got a short visit in before they had to hurry off to the only reservation they could get, at 5:15.

But as it seems they'd also invited an old friend of L's, whom even she says is a miserable curmudgeon, I can't repine. There wouldn't have been much conversation to be had because he's also a self-centered curmudgeon, as so many hommes d'un certain age are, and convincd that other people only exist as audiences.

It was still nice to see them, since I haven't talked to anyone in almost a week except to exchange greetings with George the Painter next door as I put out the garbage last night, which he kindly put back for me this morning. Still wish they were next door, but I know if they were, between my bro's cocktails and L's cooking, I'd have put on weight over quarantine, not dropped it.

Searching my bookshelves for those stray Judge Dees, I opened up Kafka on the Shore just to check the translation of those army reports. And saw in passing that Kafka's sections are all in present tense. That simply didn't register with me in Japanese. Can't decide if it's because Japanese really is looser with its tenses (I swear I've read present tense narration before) or if I'm just impervious to these things.

Monsoon rain. Vacuumed a bit, swiftered kitchen floor, back hurts whenever I do any kind of housework, added new core strengtheners to exercises, doubt they'll have any effect. Finished another Gamache mystery, read half a chapter of Hamabe no Kafuka, started the last of my Judge Dees (Murder in Canton), soldier on through Tristrsm Shandy and The Little White Horse. Illustrations to TLWH are nice but automatic spoilers.

Am having one of my fortunately rare attacks of COVID blues. Want my family next door again. Change is vexatious to the spirit. If the mug would blow away I'd probably feel better. As it is, I'm being reminded what it was like to have hormones. Can't say I've missed it.

Email from the college of ECEs sniffing for dues money, now that some daycares will be opening. I am not in the giving mood so I sent them my resignation, or rather their resignation form, which for a wonder I could fill out and send from my tablet. (Doing it from the desktop requires a magic formula that I keep forgetting.) So that's that.

Still compulsively sniffing things to be certain I can smell them. Filled and achy sinuses should tell me why I only register them close to, but I have nothing to distract me from my paranoia.

Finished Kingom of Souls and an Inspector Gamache mystery last week, both of which left me with a reading hangover, again because I have nothing to distract me from my own thoughts. Gamache is fine for the Quebec setting and not fine for the constant plotting of hysteric underlings to bring him down. I'm sure the PQ police are a cesspit of corruption but this isn't gritty police procedural by a long shot- the series takes place in an idyllic small village- and RL details would be better omitted.

Kingdom of Souls is a feel-bad cliff-hanging bit of a hot mess. I never read grimdark so maybe this is what grimdark is like. Certainly it's both grim and dark, which is why I won't be looking at the sequel, but its settei is also complicated to the point that I couldn't keep various personages straight, which was frustrating. Anyway. Back to Karen Lord, I think.

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