Gawk and science marching on

Gawk: Not only staring stupidly ans verve, but also noun for cukoo and fool.

From Out of the Silent Planet, which I'm loving, loving, loving. Reminds me of "...Y los marcianos invitaron a los hombres" de Ebly, mostly because of the vivid descriptions and the outdated science. And the wishful moments where it down-right waves it as if saying "suspend disbelief and suppose this is possible, just let me tell the story". It's good enough that it even gets away with it, even if I'm not a kid.

Easy to read and highly enjoyable adventure with a good dash of though provoking and spiritual streak. And extremely quotable.

I want to buy it.

Sorn, Lewis and authors thematics

Sorn: It sounds like the name of a laughably bad guy of a csi-fi flick. It's obtaining food and lodge from another presuming it wont be denied. Comes from an old vassal obligation to lords called sorren.

Got that little one from a book of Lewis, from his sci-fi actually. I'm ravenously reading Out of the Silent Planet, and enjoying the allegory (applicability, bah!). It's somewhat spiritual, but that's to par with the author's usual theme.

You know, just some days back we were talking about this with mom: about how an author usually has ONE theme, because it's their theme, the theme of their lives or their minds, the one that builds in their souls and ends up spilling in paper. I'm talking about big game here. Gabriel García Marquez, Mark Twain, Dickens, Asimov, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Orwell, Verne, London, Buck, Ende. And why not, even King and Allende.

Thoughts?

The "Seva Ascendes" bit that surely everyone sweared at

You are reading Lolita. You vow to the masterful writing, even as you cheerfully grimace at the necessity of researching some word every other page. The guy even seems to enjoy sending you on multiple destination voyages that somewhere end in dirty, dirty places and meanings.

And then you come to this bit:

"Seva ascendes, pulsata, brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa, clatterans, populus in corridoro. Hanc nisi mors mihi adimet nemo! Juncea puellula, jo pensavo fondissime, nobserva nihil quidquam"

And no amount of erudition can preclude a deluge of colorful expletives. Personally, I can more or less intuit about half of what is there. So I'll say it with all the respect and admiration in the world: Nabokov sucks.

So here (be advised, some of it is gibberish resembling a word in some or various languages):

"Sap ascends, pulsates, burning, itching, most insane. Elevator clattering, pausing, clattering, people in the corridor. No one but death would take this one from me! Slender little girl, I thought most fondly, observing nothing at all."
- (lifted, more or less, from Alfred Appel's annotated version)

Wonderful, exasperating book.

Knackerman and the curious origins of everyday expressions

Knackerman: Comes from knacker, that was (is?) the trade of rendering animals not fit from human consumption (like road kills, old beast and the like). From there comes the expression knackered, as in, you feel old, dead and ready to be taken to the knacker.


Interesting, huh? Sometimes regency romances pay in unexpected ways.

(Yeah, I'm taking a breather from Lolita; pausing every couple of pages for a word search makes it a grueling reading. Awesome writing, though.)

Coevals, tiddles and the deluge that comes with pedantic characters

Paleopedology: Study of soils of past geological eras. 

Coevals: Contemporaries.

Fascinum: An image says more than a thousand words

Fourbe: Hey! French too! Trickster, cheater.

Tiddles: I still don't know whether it refers to the cat, or tiddler: child.

Atoll: Ring shaped coral reef. Atolón (ni recordaba esa)

Hopscotch: Rayuela! Silly me, not knowing this one.

Merkin: ... Oh. I'm getting quite the education, lol.


Huh?, Ahh, I'm reading Lolita, why do you ask?


Drumlins: Elongated hills believed to be caused by glacial movement. Interesting and weird. Here.

Favonian: Propitious, favorable. As it comes from a wind god, I think its mostly about weather? This books is giving my search engine a workout.

Phosine: Related to, or like, a seal. I can't believe this guy's first language wasn't English. How did he even come to this words???

Lissome and guilty pleasures

Lissome: Lithe, flexible.

From a romantic book set in Scotland. What can I say, I need my guilty pleasures every once in a while. They usually leave me feeling like I ate something terribly greasy, and ready and primed for something more healthy and nutritious. In a very sick way, they accomplish what they ought.

Speak and thorny issues well treated

Lately it seems like the subject keeps coming up to me. A chance Rape culture article, an awful book. Speak calling to me from the huge To-Be-Read pile, (now over 700 books, more than I can read in a lifetime) and popping repeatedly in my Goodreads feed.

I had a free afternoon (not so much, but I was tired from work and didn't feel like spending it building a scale model for the uni).

The books was all I could want about the issue and more. If the movie and the media hadn't spoiled me, it would have been so much better. Because it starts oh so softly. With a very closeted, lonely character. And teen snarky commentary about high-school life that actually made me smile and outright laugh.

Short chapters paint the picture fast and from the side. Like a sketch, or a kid telling you something important trying not to let it be noticed that it's important. It's real and a little bit heartbreaking. The issue is foreshadowed for a while but not quite mentioned. Until it is. But everything is connected, because you realize it's always there in her mind. And things keep coming back to it.

It's... Really, it's perfect for the subject, and the audience that should be recommended to. It's tasteful. No gain from shock value here. It's well written in it's simplicity's glory. It's honest. It's hopeful.

Uxorious and Gone Girl

Uxorious: A man dominated by his wife. Dominado, sometido.

Nick , journalist, male main character of Gone Girl, thinks this little word. So like him, all specific and pedantic. So far, I hadn't found any that stumped me. This one did. No surprise.

If you want a little puzzle to twist you mind and make your soul shiver a bit, and maybe even release some demented, adrenaline drunken laughs, go for this one. Depending on your level of reading, it could rate as a cerebral beach book. A noxious, really, really good one.

Deleterious and rape culture

Deleterious: Noxious, harmful, pernicious.

What the book I just finished is. It doesn't even deserve naming. I don't want to give even the morbid curiosity factor of publicity.

It passed as a romance. It was a horror story.

Guy with an ax to grind blackmails his ex into a dirty weekend. Serious, lose you job and livelihood blackmail. He's mistaken about the charge, which is actually irrelevant, unless you think it makes it even worse. She accepts. She's scared and stupid. She should have sued his ass for harassment and taken a restraining order. But hey, she enjoyed, so it's not so bad!

Hear that? That is actually an ironic tone, and the whistling is just my ears as my head explodes. I'm that boiling raging mad. This is me going nuclear.

Because THAT, that up there, was rape. And that thing made of paper and ink, that piece of shit with pages that should never be called a book, is a perfect example of the kind of things that build and prop a rape culture.

She takes him back at the end, marry, are happily ever after.

The guy forced her into a dirty weekend. WTF??!!

Me: You think that's swoon worthy? That a guy find you so irresistible he forces you to shack with him?2: Well, he's very handsome and hot, and great in bed, and rich. And she enjoyed it.
Me: *blink* Worths fail me.

If you are a woman as baffled as I feel, then there is still hope for our sex. Right now my respect for it has fallen a few notches. Whether you are or not, check Shannon Hale's article on what is and builds a rape culture. It's pretty enlightening, and the discussion diversified and interesting.

Disquiting

Disquieting: Inquietante, alarmante, preocupante, perturbador.

The book I'm reading, my economic state, my cat, my mental state.

I'll just gnaw at the book and ignore the rest. If you want something to blame any twisty stray thoughts on, go for Gone Girl. It's proving to be a perfect way to bend my mind.

Deface

Oh, sé perfectamente lo que significa

Deface: empequeñecerse.

Palabrita que suele aparecer en textos que toquen instituciones religiosas en cualquier forma.

I hate it today. Because that was what silence felt like, silence that was expedient and probably cheaper. It chaffed because I wished I was brazen and uncaring enough to make the damned word get crammed in all those tribunal crones gullets. I was actually upbraided like a child. And I took it. That's the rub: I choose to take it. Because it was practical, easier and most likely the smart thing. I should feel smug in thinking they bough the meek act, and that I purchased some laxity by way of being a silly girl knowing to keep her mouth shut. Instead, I boil and rage and spoil for a fight.

Poise: Aplomo, desenvoltura, elegancia.

Eso es lo que molesta. Que aún cuando fuere mi elección, se me robó por un segundo. Sell my poise to buy leniency. I made the bargain, but I hated my buyers with the intensity of a summer storm.

Murder & Goose Girl

Murder: No sólo significa homicidio, sino también parvada, bandada.

"...she felt as obvious as a goose in a murder of crows"

From The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, another novel in fairy tale style that is delving into many issues gracefully and beautifully. Of the bat, mother-daughter ones. Good coming-of-age story.

Canoodling, shaken fairy tales and books worth buying

Canoodle: Kiss and cuddle.

Hey, don't look at me like that. I more or less grasped what it ought to mean, by sound alone, but this was the context:

"It was almost exactly like the caves to the east where my girl cousins met their swains to canoodle."

I had to make sure.

The quote belongs to Jessica Day George's Dragon Slippers and you should know that I LOVE Fairy Tales deconstructions. So far (less than ten pages in) this one already hits "I'll buy", so big kudos there (I'm a poor student, I buy about 1 in 50 books I read, so there, big compliment indeed).

I mean, it starts with bits like this: 

"To be blunt, I was no beauty, and as I could not spin straw into gold or cry diamond tears, there was no reason for a wealthy suitor to overlook the fact that I had no dowry whatsoever.
“It will have to be the dragon,” my silly aunt declared as we all sat around the hearth, holding what my uncle called a council of war. “Surely a brave adventuring knight will save her from its clutches,” she continued, “and then we shall all be taken away to live in his castle.” She was also very fond of reading romantic tales."

And later:

"I was no longer as worried about being eaten as I had been. This dragon did not seem that inclined towards munching on human flesh. I was more worried that he would send me away empty-handed, without either a champion or a generous dowry. I didn’t want the champion, but the dowry-money would come in handy. It seemed that I had heard stories of noble creatures such as dragons taking pity on dowryless girls and gifting them with ancient treasures. Hadn’t I? Perhaps it wasn’t dragons. But surely, to avoid having to fight some overzealous knight, this one might make an exception …"

So worth re-reading.

Quinces, Gobling Market and Lips Touch

I drift through books, through the net, through songs, and learn new words for my second language. Today they are:

Tchotchkes: Trinket

Quince: Membrillo

Speaking of fruits, I reckon I'll get a host of new ones after I do a third thrift through Goblin Market (first was for listening to the luscious narration of this excellent audio version, second for clarification on the parts that the haze of pleasure overtook, I'm hoping the third will be the objective nitpicking one)

And speaking of Victorian naughty poems, check one of their spawns: Goblin Fruit, first tale of Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor 

Come on, do it. This is a taste of the artwork inside

You know you want to