Books of various sorts
Jul. 18th, 2003 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2I haven't updated my journal in about two weeks. Part of the reason is that their server for where my journal is stored went down for a day or so two weeks ago, and along the way it ate an entry that I spent about three quarters of an hour creating. That made me angry.
But the real reason it's been a full two weeks is that I've been playing Toontown nearly every night. My character is reaching the upper limits now... very powerful. One of the fun things about this game is it allows you to group with anyone, whatever their power level, so I've often been helped by more powerful characters and now I can help lower level characters whenever I want.
I've been listening to my books on cd that I picked up from Half-Price Bookstore. On Monday I listened to MacBeth on cd (this I bought through Amazon.com -- my plan is to own most of Shakespeare on cd eventually). Tuesday and Wednesday I listened to Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth".
I'd never actually read this book before, and while I knew a lot about it from movies and whatever, I didn't really know what was going to happen. I thought they interacted with some underground human society, but all they do is see a fourteen-foot tall human and run away.
Two parts that made me laugh:
They spend days crossing a massive underground sea uneventfully, and then in the span of thirty seconds then encounter 1) a giant porpise 2) a giant sea serpent 3) a giant crocodile 4) a giant whale 5) a giant sea turtle "40 feet across" and 6) yet another giant sea serpent. Why all of these gigantic monsters are in the exact same place is anyone's guess, although two of them fight and nearly swamp their raft. My guess is they were sailing past an underground version of Monster Island.
The other thing that made me laugh was that they catch a fish which is apparently some prehistoric relative of the sturgeon, and the professor points out that like other cave fish, it is not only completely blind but does not even possess the organs for sight. Well, that's all well and good, but such fish only appear where there is never any light, and our adventurers are crossing a sea that is brightly-lit by some electrical phenomena that naturally isn't clearly explained -- but suffice it to say, they are in a cavern so huge that it holds not only a giant sea but wind and weather patterns and a steady light that serves for sunlight. He even mentions right after this fish incident that the horizon stretched out into the distance with no land in sight, and comments later on how the constant sameness of the light bothers their eyes. So there's no explanation for why the fish they caught should be blind.
But we're talking about a book in which three people reach a depth of more than 40 miles below the surface of the earth by walking, and then return to the surface quite quickly when they set a small explosive charge and it causes a volcano to erupt, and they ride their raft on a rising tide of hot water through a tunnel all the way to the surface, are spit out onto the side of the volcano, and are not harmed in the least. So why nitpick?
Oh, yes. At one point he estimates their raft is flying at a speed of "as much as 55 miles an hour!". Everything is a blur. Heh!
Yesterday I listened to another of my books on cd, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. This book amused me in a different way. It's written in a style that is peculiarly Victorian and which you would never want to use for a novel today. The whole story is told from the point of view of Jeckyl's friend and lawyer, who doesn't understand why this horrible person Hyde has such a hold on his good friend Jeckyl. I'm sure when the book came out there was a lot of mystery to the plot, and one could only imagine what Hyde was blackmailing Jeckyl with, or what sort of sordid relationship the two might have. But of course, anyone today can't help but know what's coming. At the end, when the lawyer and Jeckyl's butler break into the laboratory, they find Hyde dead, and then the last several chapters involve the lawyer reading confessions that explain everything. It's quite an anticlimatic ending, at least for me since I know the whole plot anyway. And the way it's told through the eyes of a third party observer, you never really get to know the main characters Jeckyl and Hyde as well as you might like. As I said, a Victorian way of plotting a book that wouldn't work well today.
But what was more amusing to me is the portrayal of Mr. Hyde, who is supposed to be consummately evil. Most of his evil involves his appearance. Unlike in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he is smaller than Jeckyl, shrivvled, ugly, weak and troll-like. People can tell just by looking at him that he's somehow malformed and evil.
That's the main basis for his portrayal as consummately evil: he looks evil. Apart from that, he drinks and carrouses a lot, he walks over a child without a care in the world (the child is not actually harmed) and, in the climatic event of the book, he savagely beats to death a well-regarded Englishman who bothers him in the street.
Quite shocking I suppose, but Hyde pales in comparison to real-life monsters such as Jack the Ripper, or Dr. H.H. Holmes (who killed many people around and after the time of the Chicago World's Fair). And the part that really seems odd is his reaction to this murder. Although we're told that he delights in it and plots to do more, what he actually does is cower in Jeckyl's laboratory, vainly trying to turn back into Jeckyl permanantly, and then commits suicide in the end rather than risk being caught and hanged.
This seems extremely odd to me, because a true criminal psychopath, while fearing the hangman's noose, never actually thinks that he will get caught. Typically they think they are so clever and bold that nobody will ever catch them. Certainly Jack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes fit this mold, and I can't imagine Edward "Blackbeard" Teach cowering in a room for days in fear and then killing himself. Holmes, at the time of his arrest, was only a day or so away from sailing to England to begin his reign of terror and fraud in a new land, and right up to the day of his hanging was scheming ways to avoid the noose. Jack, of course, taunted the police and never was caught.
Many modern-day psychopaths actually DO seem to have a dual personality. Albert Fish was capable of some of the most depraved acts one could ever imagine, (one psychologist pointed out that he had practiced "every deviancy for which there is a name"), and yet he was a single father who lovingly raised several children, sparing them from most of his darker side. Edward Nelson strangled at least 29 women so savagely that they nicknamed him "the gorilla strangler" but he was a friendly self-effacing man who claimed he could never have committed such crimes because of his deep religeous devotion. In fact, it's not uncommon for psychopaths to be inordinately religeous. In that, Stevenson was much closer to the truth than he probably guessed.
So... for a year and a half I've been meaning to order a set of the Ruth Plimly Thompson Oz books from the International Oz Club. They have a special where you can order 9 books (15-23, the ones that follow Frank Baum's original 14) in the Del Rey trade paperback format for $60 plus $11 shipping and handling. This is a great deal, especially since these books are out of print. But I could never get around to filling out the order form that you have to print out and mail by hand.
Finally a week ago I sat down to fill out the form and send it in. After filling it out and addressing an envelope, I visited the web site, and realized that my form, which I printed out in January, had the wrong address -- it had changed since then. I was a little annoyed at this, but then I realized that they now allowed orders via Paypal. Woo! What could be easier? I even have Paypal set up to draw money directly from my bank account. I quickly made a payment via Paypal with instructions in the body on what I was ordering, and my books arrived yesterday.
I actually owned one of these books already, but a different printing. Now I have all the Oz books from 1=23 plus a bunch of the others. This doesn't cover all of the Thompson books, but it's a very good start on getting all of them.
I remember when these books came out, while I was in high school. I loved the Oz books and snatched up the 14 Baum books in mass market paperback form, but I could never bring myself to purchase the Thompson books, not only because she wasn't Baum but also because they were in trade paperback format and didn't match the first fourteen. Pretty silly reason, but it bugged me back then.
Up until a few years ago you could still buy them in stores like Eilliot Bay. Now that they're out of print, there are only a few places you can find them. I'll have to see if I can complete my collection of the Thompson books soon.
The best part is that I needed "The Giant Horse of Oz" for some research for my anime Oz story. I wanted to include the rulers of the four lands of Oz, but while everyone knows Glinda rules the South, and any Oz reader will also know that the Tin Woodsman becomes Emperor of the West, only in this book does someone deal with the rulers of the East and North. The North was ruled for many years by a nameless Good Witch of the North, but she was never developed into any kind of personality, and in this book Thompson has it that she's disappeared and a new ruler must be named.
But the real reason it's been a full two weeks is that I've been playing Toontown nearly every night. My character is reaching the upper limits now... very powerful. One of the fun things about this game is it allows you to group with anyone, whatever their power level, so I've often been helped by more powerful characters and now I can help lower level characters whenever I want.
I've been listening to my books on cd that I picked up from Half-Price Bookstore. On Monday I listened to MacBeth on cd (this I bought through Amazon.com -- my plan is to own most of Shakespeare on cd eventually). Tuesday and Wednesday I listened to Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth".
I'd never actually read this book before, and while I knew a lot about it from movies and whatever, I didn't really know what was going to happen. I thought they interacted with some underground human society, but all they do is see a fourteen-foot tall human and run away.
Two parts that made me laugh:
They spend days crossing a massive underground sea uneventfully, and then in the span of thirty seconds then encounter 1) a giant porpise 2) a giant sea serpent 3) a giant crocodile 4) a giant whale 5) a giant sea turtle "40 feet across" and 6) yet another giant sea serpent. Why all of these gigantic monsters are in the exact same place is anyone's guess, although two of them fight and nearly swamp their raft. My guess is they were sailing past an underground version of Monster Island.
The other thing that made me laugh was that they catch a fish which is apparently some prehistoric relative of the sturgeon, and the professor points out that like other cave fish, it is not only completely blind but does not even possess the organs for sight. Well, that's all well and good, but such fish only appear where there is never any light, and our adventurers are crossing a sea that is brightly-lit by some electrical phenomena that naturally isn't clearly explained -- but suffice it to say, they are in a cavern so huge that it holds not only a giant sea but wind and weather patterns and a steady light that serves for sunlight. He even mentions right after this fish incident that the horizon stretched out into the distance with no land in sight, and comments later on how the constant sameness of the light bothers their eyes. So there's no explanation for why the fish they caught should be blind.
But we're talking about a book in which three people reach a depth of more than 40 miles below the surface of the earth by walking, and then return to the surface quite quickly when they set a small explosive charge and it causes a volcano to erupt, and they ride their raft on a rising tide of hot water through a tunnel all the way to the surface, are spit out onto the side of the volcano, and are not harmed in the least. So why nitpick?
Oh, yes. At one point he estimates their raft is flying at a speed of "as much as 55 miles an hour!". Everything is a blur. Heh!
Yesterday I listened to another of my books on cd, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. This book amused me in a different way. It's written in a style that is peculiarly Victorian and which you would never want to use for a novel today. The whole story is told from the point of view of Jeckyl's friend and lawyer, who doesn't understand why this horrible person Hyde has such a hold on his good friend Jeckyl. I'm sure when the book came out there was a lot of mystery to the plot, and one could only imagine what Hyde was blackmailing Jeckyl with, or what sort of sordid relationship the two might have. But of course, anyone today can't help but know what's coming. At the end, when the lawyer and Jeckyl's butler break into the laboratory, they find Hyde dead, and then the last several chapters involve the lawyer reading confessions that explain everything. It's quite an anticlimatic ending, at least for me since I know the whole plot anyway. And the way it's told through the eyes of a third party observer, you never really get to know the main characters Jeckyl and Hyde as well as you might like. As I said, a Victorian way of plotting a book that wouldn't work well today.
But what was more amusing to me is the portrayal of Mr. Hyde, who is supposed to be consummately evil. Most of his evil involves his appearance. Unlike in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he is smaller than Jeckyl, shrivvled, ugly, weak and troll-like. People can tell just by looking at him that he's somehow malformed and evil.
That's the main basis for his portrayal as consummately evil: he looks evil. Apart from that, he drinks and carrouses a lot, he walks over a child without a care in the world (the child is not actually harmed) and, in the climatic event of the book, he savagely beats to death a well-regarded Englishman who bothers him in the street.
Quite shocking I suppose, but Hyde pales in comparison to real-life monsters such as Jack the Ripper, or Dr. H.H. Holmes (who killed many people around and after the time of the Chicago World's Fair). And the part that really seems odd is his reaction to this murder. Although we're told that he delights in it and plots to do more, what he actually does is cower in Jeckyl's laboratory, vainly trying to turn back into Jeckyl permanantly, and then commits suicide in the end rather than risk being caught and hanged.
This seems extremely odd to me, because a true criminal psychopath, while fearing the hangman's noose, never actually thinks that he will get caught. Typically they think they are so clever and bold that nobody will ever catch them. Certainly Jack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes fit this mold, and I can't imagine Edward "Blackbeard" Teach cowering in a room for days in fear and then killing himself. Holmes, at the time of his arrest, was only a day or so away from sailing to England to begin his reign of terror and fraud in a new land, and right up to the day of his hanging was scheming ways to avoid the noose. Jack, of course, taunted the police and never was caught.
Many modern-day psychopaths actually DO seem to have a dual personality. Albert Fish was capable of some of the most depraved acts one could ever imagine, (one psychologist pointed out that he had practiced "every deviancy for which there is a name"), and yet he was a single father who lovingly raised several children, sparing them from most of his darker side. Edward Nelson strangled at least 29 women so savagely that they nicknamed him "the gorilla strangler" but he was a friendly self-effacing man who claimed he could never have committed such crimes because of his deep religeous devotion. In fact, it's not uncommon for psychopaths to be inordinately religeous. In that, Stevenson was much closer to the truth than he probably guessed.
So... for a year and a half I've been meaning to order a set of the Ruth Plimly Thompson Oz books from the International Oz Club. They have a special where you can order 9 books (15-23, the ones that follow Frank Baum's original 14) in the Del Rey trade paperback format for $60 plus $11 shipping and handling. This is a great deal, especially since these books are out of print. But I could never get around to filling out the order form that you have to print out and mail by hand.
Finally a week ago I sat down to fill out the form and send it in. After filling it out and addressing an envelope, I visited the web site, and realized that my form, which I printed out in January, had the wrong address -- it had changed since then. I was a little annoyed at this, but then I realized that they now allowed orders via Paypal. Woo! What could be easier? I even have Paypal set up to draw money directly from my bank account. I quickly made a payment via Paypal with instructions in the body on what I was ordering, and my books arrived yesterday.
I actually owned one of these books already, but a different printing. Now I have all the Oz books from 1=23 plus a bunch of the others. This doesn't cover all of the Thompson books, but it's a very good start on getting all of them.
I remember when these books came out, while I was in high school. I loved the Oz books and snatched up the 14 Baum books in mass market paperback form, but I could never bring myself to purchase the Thompson books, not only because she wasn't Baum but also because they were in trade paperback format and didn't match the first fourteen. Pretty silly reason, but it bugged me back then.
Up until a few years ago you could still buy them in stores like Eilliot Bay. Now that they're out of print, there are only a few places you can find them. I'll have to see if I can complete my collection of the Thompson books soon.
The best part is that I needed "The Giant Horse of Oz" for some research for my anime Oz story. I wanted to include the rulers of the four lands of Oz, but while everyone knows Glinda rules the South, and any Oz reader will also know that the Tin Woodsman becomes Emperor of the West, only in this book does someone deal with the rulers of the East and North. The North was ruled for many years by a nameless Good Witch of the North, but she was never developed into any kind of personality, and in this book Thompson has it that she's disappeared and a new ruler must be named.
