posts interesting only to me – Page 22

Books read July

Published on August 1, 2012Leave a comment

Only six books read this month, mostly science fiction.

Darkland — Liz Williams
First in a duology about a far future female secret agent with psionic powers who gets an assignment to hunt down the lover who abused her years ago. Much better than it sounds.

The Apocalypse Codex — Charlie Stross
The latest in Charlie’s horror/spy thriller series, with the baddie this time being a charismatic tv preacher who is slightly more into that old time religion than is healthy.

Blue Remembered Earth — Alastair Reynolds
Featuring a near future Africa that’s not a dystopian hellhole. When their grandmother, the family matriarch dies, Sunday andd Geoffrey Akinya against their will get involved in a Solar System wide scavenger hunt for her final legacy.

Norman London — William Fitz Stephen
William Fitz Stephen wrote a hagiography of Thomas Beckett and as an introduction to that, gave a portrait of the city of London as it existed in the 11th century. This short pamphlet is build around that text, with introduction, maps and essays giving a context to it.

The British Character — Pont
A humorous collection of cartoons showing the idiosyncrasies of the British.

The Fourth Wall — Walter Jon Williams
Third novel in the Dagmar Shaw series about alternate reality gamers changing the world. Excellent, compelling.

Abide with me

Published on July 28, 2012Leave a comment

Like me, Sandra had long put away the religious faith she was raised in, but, again like me, had kept her appreciation for some of the hymns she had grown up with. One of those hymns was Abide With Me, which she had been talking about only days before her death. Last night at the Olympics it was used in the tribute to the victims of the 7/7 bombings. Even without that personal connection the performance would’ve given me goosebumps, now it was enough to make me tear up.

The icing on the cake is that this hymn has a political meaning as well. It has been used at every Rugby League Challenge Cup final since 1929 and rugby league is the northern, working class version of rugby, a song held deeply by generations of miners. Using it is therefore a subtle rebuke to the legacy of Thatcher, whose heirs now rule the UK again, just like the use of Jerusalem, another of Sandra’s favourites, could be seen as a clarion call for English socialism. Whether or not this was Danny Boyle’s intent…

Eight months

Published on July 7, 2012Leave a comment

So last night I came home completely stressed out, you know, with that feeling in the back of your throat as if you’d been screaming all day, heart racing so fast I thought I’d get a heart attack. At first I thought it was just a side effect of having had a busy week at work, what with everybody else on holiday, but it hadn’t been that busy or stressfull. It was only when I looked at the calendar this morning that realised what was really behind it: today it’s been eight months since Sandra died.

It’s funny. In everyday life, at work, I can hide my grief so well I largely forget it myself, but it only takes one small thing to get it back. For some reason the local supermarket has been a reliable trigger: one moment you’re looking at the frozen peas, the other caught in an ineffable melancholy. At home everything reminds me of her of course so that’s no refuge either. But it doesn’t really matter where I am; Sandra is inside of me and her memory comes back at any unguarded moment. This is not necessarily a sad thing, but the grief is still stronger than the joy of the memory.

What’s still haunting me is the anxiety of the last two years, the constant worry about whether the worst will happen and how. Now that the worst has happened, the anxiety is still there, only slowly disappearing, like land rebounding after an ice age.

So what I notice is that I still haven’t gotten some of my sharpness, my drive back, still am wondering what to do with the rest of my life now that she is gone. Which sounds like something out of a romantic, sombre pop ballad, but in real life isn’t very good to find yourself in.

Books read June

Published on June 30, 2012Leave a comment

Seven books this month, mainly fiction:

Intrusion — Ken MacLeod
What if the power to make the wrong decisions is taken from you, what if you want to make your own decisions without justifying yourself to others, not want to take up the shield of a religion to justify refusing what’s for your own good?

Something Wicked this Way Comes — Ray Bradbury
Sandra gave me this as a present some years ago, because we had been talking about Bradbury for some reason; I read it after his death. A great American fantasy/horror classic, full of his peculiar brand of nostalgia without his sometimes cloying sentimentality

Testament of Youth — Vera Brittain
A book drenched in grief and sorrow from the first page, though still with somewhat of a happy ending. Vera Brittain’s autobiography centers on the Great War and the men she lost through them: her lover, her brother, her friends as well as her struggle to live with these losses. Its matter of factness is what gives it its power.

Tsing-Boum — Nicolas Freeling
The French wife of a Dutch military man is murdered in her flat, shot six times with a machine pistol, as a gangster serial is playing on the tv, drowning the noise. A professional killing, but why this woman?

Cop Killer — Sjowall & Wahloo
Gloomy seventies Scandinavian police procedural, the ur-well of all those Hennings and Bridges and other fashionable Nordic thrillers.

Criminal Conversation — Nicolas Freeling
A highly placed banker accusses an equally highly placed doctor of murder and inspector van der Valk has to play a psychological game to find out the truth.

We Who Are About to… — Joanna Russ
When a starship crashlands on an alien world far from home, all but one woman see it as their duty to restart civilisation there. This is the story of that one woman.

Seven months on

Published on June 12, 20121 Comment

So I was idly browsing Youtube videos, as you do, when I found the video above, which I’d first seen at the Mighty Mighty Godking last year. It was one of the last youtube videos I’d shared with Sandra; correction, one of the last that didn’t annoy her, as I always liked to wind her up (and she me).

Last Thursday it has been seven months already that she died; sharing videos with her is one of the more trivial things I miss. She more than me had a knack of finding funny/interesting/weird videos on Youtube, as well as more interesting shit in general. Of course, the last fiv-six years, with her being home fulltime; not particularly sick, but not always in the best of health either, she often had more time than me to surf and blog. Every now and again I dive in the proggold archives to find something and are reminded of just how good she could write — like here e.g.. It’s no wonder that that particular blog is in a bit of a coma at the moment…