Deutsch:

Faunblut von Nina Blazon (18.02.11)*
Vom Moorweib und den Weserriesen von Wilko Jäger (30.04.11)*

English:

Bareback by Kit Whitfield (25.09.11)*
Ghost Story - Dresden Files Book Thirteen by Jim Butcher (21.08.11)*
Glimpses by Lynn Flewelling (29.12.11)*
Lustrum by Robert Harris (12.07.11)*
Side Jobs - Stories from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (11.02.11)*


I don't know if you remember, but my New Year's Resolutionfor 2011 was to read 24 books. As you can see, that didn't quite work out, maybe due to depression/overmedication. Well, I'll try better in 2012.

☞ Interesting survey at http://survey.scimitarsmile.com/

☞ I finally read Side Stories, the Dresden Files short stories book. And I really, really wish Butcher would not write in the PoV of people other than Harry. ( Cut for spoilers. )

☞ Mostly over the shock I got last Sunday. Still haven't replied to the e-mail, but I will show up at the meeting tomorrow and talk with the others. Hopefully I will successfully attack Neil's behaviour with my passive-aggressive, defense-focussed style. If it doesn't work - well, no more meeting with other hobby writers in RL. Probably won't stay as long because I will need anti-anxiety meds that only last two hours too. I hate being afraid of people I like.

Deutsch:

Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik von Roald Dahl (09.05.10) (ungekürztes Hörbuch)*
Deutsche Geschichte in Quellen und Darstellung - Band 8: Kaiserreich und Erster Weltkrieg 1871-1918 von Reclam (12.09.10)*
Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte von Winfried Speitkamp (11.06.10)*
Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Askaban von J.K. Rowling (26.05.2010)**
Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen von J.K. Rowling (05.05.2010)**
Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens von J.K. Rowling (15.05.10)**
Die Heldenmutter von Wolfgang und Heike Hohlbein (28.04.2010)**
Zorro von Isabel Allende (02.03.2010)*

English:

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (03.08.10)*
The Blood Books Volume One by Tanya Huff (05.06.2010)*
Changes (Dresden Files Book Twelve) by Jim Butcher (08.04.2010)**
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (12.04.2010)*
Dead Beat (Dresden Files Book Seven) by Jim Butcher (03.03.2010)**
Feast of Souls (Magister Trilogy Book One) by C.S. Friedman (08.04.10)**
Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog! by Jerome K. Jerome (04.04.10)*
The White Road by Lynn Flewelling (03.06.10)**

☞ ficondemand hosts a First Kiss Comment Fic Meme. I would love to participate, but I can't write anything halfway decent in English at the moment, fictionwise. I can, however, rec One Mad Moment by lemposoi, which is Jeeves/Wooster. It also has two Velvet Goldmine oneshots!

☞ Does anyone know if Robert Silverberg is against fanfic? I found a SFF anthology today that I originally bought because it contained a Lord John short story by Diana Gabaldon. The other authors? George R. R. Martin, Orson Scott Card and Robin Hobb. And Silverberg. I sense a pattern there, but I couldn't find any info on Silverberg.

☞ I've been watching old (well, old by internet years) shows lately. Among them The Middleman which is funny and adorable, and The Black Donnellys, which is awesome. I have a thing for stories about brothers and crime. Both were cancelled after one season, sadly. I also watched Im Angesicht des Verbrechens, which is actually quite good but feels somehow raw and unfinished in places. I have no idea what exactly we needed the whole "destined to be together" subplot for – the getting together would have worked just fine without that.

☞ Do you have any recs for long, plotty original slash about adults? I have a craving for it but I don't know how to find them. I defaulted to RPF AUs, but it's just not the same.

Ich sage es lieber selbst, bevor jemand anders auf die Idee kommt: Ich hätte es wirklich besser wissen müssen. Aber da ich das Buch vor zehn Jahren schon einmal gelesen hatte und mochte, Heike Hohlbein mit von der Partie war und ich gerade Langeweile hatte, dachte ich mir, ich lese es mir noch einmal durch. Noch dazu hatte ich gerade Lust auf ein Buch mit weiblichem Hauptcharakter. Die Heldenmutter ist aus dem Jahr 1985, knapp 600 Seiten lang, ein Einzelband und High Fantasy. Soviel dazu. Nun zum Inhalt:

Lyra ist ein einfaches Bauernmädchen und hochschwanger, als sie die ebenfalls schwangere Elbin Erion und ihren Begleiter Sjur in der Scheune des Hofes findet. Beide befinden sich auf der Flucht vor den Herrschern des Landes. Lyras Kind stirbt kurze Zeit später bei der Geburt, doch als Erion von ihren Verfolgern eingeholt und tödlich verwundet wird, nimmt Lyra sich Erions Sohnes Toran an. Toran ist laut einer Prophezeiung der, der die Menschen von der Tyrannei der Goldenen befreien soll. Gemeinsam mit dem Magier Dago flieht Lyra zu den Zwergen, wo sie selbst die Rolle des Befreiers einnimmt um ihren Sohn zu beschützen.

Ich versichere euch, dass meine Beschreibung das Buch interessanter klingen lässt, als es in Wirklichkeit ist.^[1] Ich habe hier nämlich die ersten 300 Seiten des Buches zusammengefasst, obwohl der Stoff locker auf 100 oder 150 gepasst hätte. Die Szenen auf dem Hof ziehen sich über 100 Seiten hin und die Handlung wird im ganzen Buch ungemein gestreckt. Von dem wirklich interessanten Teil des Plots bleibt am Ende dementsprechend wenig übrig. Aber das ist noch nicht einmal das größte Problem des Buchs. Der Plot ist zwar nichts Besonderes, aber wenigstens solide und in sich schlüssig. Problematisch wird es, wenn man sich die Charaktere anschaut. Sie gehören einfach nicht in den Plot und das führt zu einer Menge Problemen.

( Lyra: )

( Dago: )

( Schwarzbart: )

( Bjaron: )

( Worldbuilding: )

Abschließend kann ich nur sagen, dass die Botschaft dieses Buches für mich ist, dass eine wohlwollende Diktatur einer schwachen Demokratie vorzuziehen ist. Diese Haltung wird von allen Charakteren mit Grips vertreten und Lyras abschließende Meinung zum Thema Freiheit wirkt schwach verglichen mit dem endlosen Gejammer darüber, wie viel Leid die Revolution dem Volk bringt.

Außerdem rate ich allen Autoren: Wenn eure Charaktere sich selbstständig machen und die geplante Handlung umgehen, lasst sie laufen. Sollten sie nicht irgendwann wieder von selbst beim Plot ankommen, solltet ihr es vielleicht mit anderen Charakteren oder einem anderen Plot versuchen. Die Heldenmutter ist das was herauskommt, wenn man Charakteren einen Plot aufzwingt.


PS: Dieser Post ist DW-only, da ich für die nächsten drei Wochen nicht crossposte. Es ist schließlich three_weeks_for_dw!

---

( Fußnoten )

☞ The Mary Sue debate is back again. This got me thinking about what I define as a Mary Sue, and I think I finally got a bit closer to what defines a MS: a MS is, for me at least, an id character that takes up a lot of room. More often than not, s/he is part of idfic. I have no idea what makes a character an id character, though. It's just this nagging-to-icky feeling that I get while reading, even when I like the character and the story. An example would be Harry Dresden in later books. It's one of the reasons why I won't touch other Butcher books; I'm afraid the protagonists will be id characters as well, and that unlike Harry they won't appeal to my id.

☞ I took a look at the books that I've stored under my bed. There are some books there that I didn't quite remember owning – three Hohlbeins. Some that I've never read – a 1951 translation of Dream of the Red Chamber. And books that I wish I didn't own – the Eric Lustbader book that calls him "master of the orient" on the cover. The weirdest book by far, however, is Raiders of the Deep by Lowell Thomas. In a German translation from 1930. Entirely in blackletter. It's about submarines in WWI, I think. Well, at least it's Alte Rechtschreibung and not the one before that. I always have to fight the urge to add random Hs to Ts and to replace every K and Z with a C after I read one of those.

☞ Is there a resource site or helpful program for vidders where they can look for footage without watching episodes? The main reason why I'm really slow at teaching myself how to vid is because I'm mostly not in the mood to look for the footage I need. I wish there was a site where I could just use tags to find a scene with a)Dean Wincester b)eating c)a hamburger or a)River Tam's b)feet (c)naked).

☞ I hate spring. It's time for my annual cold, for one. I always get them in spring because immune system doesn't know how to deal with a virus on top of all my allergies. I really loved this winter because I was allergy free for entire months, which is rare. Snow and temperatures below zero are vitually the only guarantee for me being allergy free (damn mould allergies). Also spiders. They are big, black and everywhere. At least the April weather is amusing. I don't think I've ever seen hail in bright sunshine before.

☞ Dear writers of FlashForward, please don't ever use German again. It was grammatically correct and the actors were actual German speakers (or plain awesome) and all ... it just wasn't really German. It sounded more like English. Imagine Japanese -> English translation that's grammatically correct but still not English, I'm sure there are a few.

☞ A propos German: Nobel Prize in Literature! Whoo! I'm always in a party mood when an author who writes in German gets the prize, because our language needs all the PR it can get (yes, even Tokio Hotel). There really isn't as much of a market for German books, and compared to English, few books get translated. Seriously, every idiot who writes their book in English can get it translated (e.g. Cassandra Clare), but German -> English is much rarer, I think. I haven't read any of Müller's books, but I think they sound interesting. I guess the east/west conflict is not of much interest in the US, but for me, it really is.

☞ Also: Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not sure how to feel about it. I kind of wanted Hu Jia to win.

ETA: Can someone explain to me why this post has a scrollbar?

Well, I really haven't been feeling all that well lately. I still haven't recovered from the warning discussion for one. That's why I haven't been particularly active lately. That and I was busy reading the Temeraire series. I loved the first three books, but the last two ... it's not that they're bad (they're not), I just have a feeling I know where the series is going and that I won't like it one bit. Reading isn't that much fun if you're waiting for the books to jump the shark.

☞ ( Spoilers for season three of Torchwood: )

☞ To Americans who discuss racism in Germany: Germany is not the US. Stop applying your standards, please? Or at least do a bit of research.

☞ Watching Smallville feels like time travel. The early seasons, at least. I feel like I'm back in 11th grade. I suppose I would feel the same if I watched Buffy, but I don't have this problem with other series.

☞ I am going to write that meta post about my thoughts on Stargate some day. Hopefully. It's harder than it sounds.

Today I proved that it is a good idea to offer books as free downloads yet again. Last year, I read the free version of Neverwhere and ended up buying the TV series. And today I finished reading His Majesty's Dragon (downloaded here) and ordered the remaining books of the series as soon as I had finished.

I suppose skuf is very happy now. I think she posted the link two times already and tried to share her addiction.