Legions of Hell by C.J. Cherryh

Legions of Hell by C.J. Cherryh

How could I resist a book entitled Legions of Hell?

“What are you reading this summer, Mia?”
“Oh, nothing, just LEGIONS OF HELL. Bwahahahaha!“

I can’t really pull of an evil laugh, though, which sort of makes it pointless. ;)

Anyway the story is not about Hell as the Big Three tend to portray it, with lakes of boiling fire and demons with pitchforks and all that. It’s different, and more subtle. Don’t worry, however; with Hatshepsut, Ramses II, Niccolo Machiavelli, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lawrence of Arabia, and the Roman Emperors involved, how could it be anything less than interesting?

---oh, and Augustus means it, Lion, he always means such things. And will mean them to the day some offense inflames him, then, then, he strikes without a qualm. There is no liar, Lion, like a sincere and reasoning man. (p. 33)

The wording is sharp and distinct as ever: She had died the focus of heroic fools. (p. 42)

Think, Niccolo was wont to tell him, when that sinister man offered him advice. Learn everything. That, boy, is the only way to know what you dare discard. Even to know that a thing is useless, is to know the value of everything. (p. 185)

It also involves the best and most unexpected cameo ever, when Caesarion and Marcus Junius Brutus run into an unnamed man on the subway of New Hell (page 221):

“I m-m-missed the station.”

“That’s all right,” Caesarion said. You can catch it next time around. We’re getting off at the next stop. Just stay put.”

“C-c-catch it next time. Yes. Yes.” The gray man bobbed his head up and down, clinging to the seat back with Caesarion’s gun on him. And then the gray in his eyes got grayer and paler and more desperate. “You’re going to get off. I want off. Get me out of here!“

“Mister, you just stay out of our way, hear?.... Just sit down,” Caesarion told the gray man. “Sit! Read your paper! Hear?”

“I r-r-read the paper,” the gray man said. “I r-r-read the damn paper.” Tears welled up. “I g-got on this train in Boston. I t-t-try to get off- I keep trying to get off- I don’t care what stop, anymore. I don’t think this is Boston, anyway.”

Yes, that’s right, oh those in the know: Charlie on the MTA!_

BEST. CAMEO. EVER.

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World Cultures: Russia by Stephen and Tatyana Webber

World Cultures: Russia by Stephen and Tatyana Webber

_{I have to move to Russia now.}

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The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: 5 stars

The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin
with introduction by Marilynne Robinson

This is a really well-written story. I absolutely love her voice. The fact that it has an introduction by Marilynne Robinson, who is in my opinion a genius poet, was a very good sign, and well-deserved. The Awakening (or, A Solitary Soul) was published in 1899 and still speaks quite clearly to me today. The world has changed, but the questions haven’t.

This edition comes with eight other shorter works, my favorite of which (but they are all fantastic) is A Pair of Silk Stockings. (Next-favorite is Desiree’s Baby.)

I will definitely be reading more of her.

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Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation by Michael Agar: 3-1/2 stars

(Today, actually)

Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation by Michael Agar

page 66:

Whorf looked at grammar and vocabulary, noticed the differences between one language and another, and said that they were more than just arbitrary differences that let you talk about the same objective, world.

The differences make you live in a different world.

This is strong, subversive stuff. The world can’t be separated from the language used to talk about it. They’re wrapped up together like hydrogen and oxygen in water. You can’t pull them apart and still have water to drink.

Objective reality disappears in the mist. Two different languages aren’t just alternative ways to talk about the same reality. Alternative languages carry with them a different theory of what reality in fact is. A shift from one language to another is a shift between two different worlds, where speakers of each one think their version is “objective”, but they’re both wrong.

Very much like the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty et al on intersubjectivity.

(At the core of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. /Wiki)

pages 13/14:

These different ways of looking at things had come to life in our common language, and they tied in with who we were, with our different social identities. The differences happened inside the same language, just as differences do between languages as distinct as Japanese and English….

Something happened…that had to do with who we were. Something came up, jolted us with a difference, made us aware that the “natural” way of doing things wasn’t “natural” at all [but learned]....

Differences like these- the sort of misunderstandings that we usually associate with a foreign language- happen inside a language all the time.

On page 250, He talks about the term Languaculture, to drive home the point that communication is not about words, or grammar, or proper verb conjugation- but about the people who use the language, their self and social identities, and the interaction between them against a broader cultural background.
Where the langua part is:

[T]hat this noun means that thing, and this verb means that action, so that the two together mean action on this thing… Word meanings in the sense of reference, and sentence meanings in terms of propositional structure.

And the culture part is:

How those words and sentences shimmer with associations, connotations… [A] sense of how to converse, argue, and tell a lie… [A] sense of who they’re talking with, and how they see them, of how that specific moment ties in with all the others that go into the flow of daily life, of how the talk fits into the society and the currents of history that lie behind it.

page 209:

Languaculture is a social fact. It sets limits on what you can say and sets up expectations of how you’re supposed to talk. But there are people… who struggle against the limits. Their experience of culture takes shape within their own. Rich points come into consciousness and inspire new frames, frames that make a new kind of discourse possible….

The new languaculture is a way to change the world by changing what it is that can be thought, said, and done.

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Native Tongues by Charles Berlitz: 4 stars

(August 12)

Native Tongues by Charles Berlitz

A few tid bits:

During World War I, anti-German feeling caused sauerkraut to be renamed “liberty cabbage”, and hamburger to be renamed “Salisbury steak”.

Would you like “Freedom fries” with that?

Sometimes an entire English sentence sounds like a basic expression in another language. Americans visiting Japan who would ordinarily experience some difficulty in remembering the Japanese term for “You are welcome” (dooitashimashite) have solved the problem simply- answering the Japanese “Thank you” (arigato) with “Don’t touch my mustache”. Said quickly, this is quite close enough to be an acceptable answer.

Now that scene in Toy Story 2 finally makes sense.

[In Mexico today] the Aztec rather than the Spanish names for certain animals are still used: “zopilote” (vulture), “tecolote” (owl), among many [including coyote]. The final “te” in these words stands for the Aztec “tl” ending, similarly modified in other words familiar to Americans, such as “chocolatl” (chocolate) and “jitomatl” (tomato).

Oh, and “California” is the name of the queen of the Amazons.

This book actually has some great information in it about which English words come from French, Latin, and German in particular, and therefore how knowing these words and recognizing patterns will help you learn other languages faster.

And though you may not care to learn Latin, perhaps, it's a small hop, skip, and jump to apply that information to learning Spanish, Italian, and even Portuguese.

People Skills by Robert Bolton: 5 stars

(July 13)

People Skills by Robert Bolton

I really like this book.

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Mating: A Novel by Norman Rush: 2 stars

(July 4)

Mating: A Novel by Norman Rush

I was intrigued at the beginning, and grew more and more disturbed the further along I read. Not by the plot or the political/etc discussions or anything, but by the narrator, the main character.

Also, how the hell is this a love story?

A story detailing obsession and outrageous manipulation, yes, but love? I don’t think so.

I need to read a book that I like now. The last two came highly recommended, but sadly I pretty much hated them both.

Honestly, I thought this book, about an American woman who ends up living in a secluded social-experiment commune-esque village in Africa, would be right up my alley. Something I could relate to. Instead I can’t even relate to that. But then again, of course I cannot relate to her, I am not a quasi-psychotic narcissist.

Apparently it’s back to space aliens again.

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Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier: 2 stars

(June 23)

Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier

Meh.

I don’t feel any connection here.

I can't help it- the entire thing sounded like a snarky, sensationalistic newspaper article to me. I could not connect with anybody portrayed in the book and especially not with the author.

I know I am sensitive as to society's treatment/ judgement of the female body, but this was a separate issue which was just acerbated by the tone of the book and the direction the author took with every single example. I felt more like a voyeur who was supposed to be getting a secret thrill out of the more distressing experiences related in the book, instead of a fellow woman interested in the humanity of these very real people.

Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

(June 23)

Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Barnes & Noble edition published 2007

I love Dickinson. Sadly, I have to agree with this review:

I don’t doubt that it’s possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson’s poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors wish she had written – a sort of ‘tidied-up’ and regularized version, a badly-tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren’t.

For example, on page 85:

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

It’s heft, not weight, and they’re not the same thing. This edition is sort of like, Dickinson Dumbed Down. :\

From the same review, and for my reference as well as yours:

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED’s poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader’s editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader’s editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don’t feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson’s abridgement of his Reader’s edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson’s Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson’s edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

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