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Parmandil
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Name: Melanie
Gender: Female
Interests: Reading, especially fantasy; writing; math; foreign languages; singing; running; puppetry
Expertise: Whatever they've taught me in high school (which is of course limited)
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/26/2006
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| Let us celebrate with quotes!
"It would be more fun if we had more people to pass the moon to, actually." -LJP
"Well, that explains a lot. People from Washington are on the moon." -LJP
"I have moon dust all over my hands, actually." -LJP
"Smart people never die. They simply move to the moon." -SJP
"You're not Cleopatra, are you?" -Kate, to Sam
"I am crazed! I'm so excited!" -EDS
"It's more containerological." -Dr. S
"I'm slowly erasing the cosmos." -Dr. Y
"Could Adam have made a mistake? Like here comes a snake, and Adam names it a wombat?" -Dr. S
" 'Bitey?' 'The last one was Bitey.' 'All right, Bitey Two.' " -Dr. S, speaking as Adam and God
"What about the god of Bobby the Philistine?" -Dr. S and ETF
"The Sonless God and the Sonful God can't be the same person." -Dr. S
"It's not a swamp of nasty idolatry, it's just a channel toward the real God." -Dr. S
" 'The universe wanted me to have this.' 'I got some bad news for you, lady. The universe doesn't give a rip about you. It's gonna grind you under its mechanistic heel.' " -Dr. S, describing his (internal) reaction to a woman in a bookstore
" 'Here's the nightly God broadcast.' 'Yeah, and it's equally available to all human beings - both human beings - on earth!' " -SAW and Dr. S
" 'Do not eat that tree.' 'The whole tree - don't eat it.' " -ETF and HCA
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| Why is it that when people list the blessings God has given them, they hardly ever think to mention the gifts of nature? The earth? Food? Colors? Sunsets? Trees? Cats? The sun? The beach? (Well, maybe they remember food.)
They're hardly trivial things!
Nature is no small part of the demonstration of how lavishly God loves us! Not only did He send Jesus to die for us, He also gives us roses. Lots of them. Living and growing.
I think the only reason we forget to mention them is how very freely He gives them. We see the sun every day and so forget what a gift it is. Well, it's a gift, and a great one.
(Oh, and yes, I'm still alive. Hello again, everyone!)
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| Yay for Easter Vacation! Yay for sleep! Yay for novel-reading time! Yay for time to catch up on all those nice little projects for school!
Ah... sleep... how I have missed you... my old friend... nice to get reacquainted...
...and I feel the same way about novels.
Fruits Basket 19 is really good! ^___^
Christ is risen!
We had really superb timing in Torrey. We just read Athanasius On the Incarnation, about why God would do something so drastic as sending His Son to die. It's such a great book, and so appropriate to the season.
So yeah, thanks for the prayer. I'm OK now, and more than OK. I do still have paper to write and such, but I should be able to do that now. Do make sure to celebrate Easter properly!
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| Prayer would be appreciated. No, nothing too serious, just complete exhaustion starting to break me down. I've lived through this kind of thing before... but I can feel myself going, and I'm not nearly done with everything I wanted to be done with, and I'm having trouble focusing and working because I'm so tired.
Thanks be to God that He does give me rest and so many unexpected blessings... but He's also letting me be pushed to my limits. Please pray that I wouldn't break, that somehow I'll get things done, and above all that under this stress I won't snap in a way that hurts anyone else.
Just seven more school days till Easter Vacation...
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| It can be so nice to re-read wonderful books from times past. Lately, being on a blessed, blessed vacation until January 28th, I've been indulging myself a little.
I've been a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay for several years now. The Sarantine Mosaic, a duology composed of Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, is the best of his works, which is saying a great deal. What is art? What value does it have? What makes life worth living? What makes the difference between a good ruler and a bad? Is it possible for a ruler who came to power by murder to atone for it by ruling well? What do people care about most?
Guy Gavriel Kay, more than any other author I have ever read, knows how to make you weep for your characters. He tells a stirring, tragic narrative with just the right amount of dramatic intonation: not so little that it feels flat and wooden, but not so much that it feels melodramatic. If you want a good example of his emotional touch, here is a link to one of my favorite excerpts from Tigana, another superb book of his, on his official website. http://www.brightweavings.com/passages/tigana.htm
Unfortunately, I did discover on this re-read that I had forgotten (probably somewhat deliberately) some of his weaknesses without forgetting his strengths, so it's not quite as good as I thought it was. It's a thoroughly R-rated book, and some scenes bother me for their philosophy, not just for how explicit they are. He also, like all too many adult fantasy writers, insists on dragging in religion, including one religion inescapably meant to resemble Christianity, and although he attempts to show its power, he fails abysmally. He understands pagan religion pretty well, I think, though I can't be sure without being a pagan, but he doesn't really get Christianity, and so it can be rather frustrating to read at times.
Still, it's an absolutely beautiful book. I highly recommend it, especially for what it says about art. Crispin, the main character, is a mosaicist traveling to Sarantium, based off of the real Byzantium, there to decorate the largest dome ever built. A seemingly simple premise, not something you would expect to be able to build a full novel off of, but Guy Gavriel Kay does, and in style. By the end, the reader feels almost as deeply invested in the work as Crispin, longing for it to be completed and admired for generations, feeling like their lifeblood has gone into this work... It is so beautifully done.
I was going to continue to write about what I started re-reading last night, The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks, but I think that's plenty of posting for now. Perhaps later.
*edit*
I cannot let this travesty go unedited. I finished re-reading The Sarantine Mosaic only today, now, this morning at 7:45 a.m. after a night when sleep fell by the wayside, before a day when I meant to get plenty.
I had forgotten his strengths after all.
Not what they are, but how overpoweringly wonderful they are. How can a man see so clearly into the human heart? How could it enter his mind to create such a thing? How does he know so deeply what art can mean, what the heart longs for, how it bruises, what can make life worth living anyway?
I sobbed today, something I did not expect on this second? third? re-reading, prepared, I thought, for what would happen, knowing exactly how it ended - it was indelibly imprinted on my memory from the first time, of course. So I prepared my heart for it, holding myself back a little bit, expecting to be able to take it.
I had not forgotten what happened. Nothing surprised me. I knew. But that didn't stop the great racking sobs in the end - sobs of sorrow and of joy both. Not in the end. It's too powerful. Too raw.
I couldn't forget plot. But I could forget what Guy Gavriel Kay made it mean. I could forget what happened inside the characters, what a stirring appeal to humanity is there, how impossible it is to hold back at all.
There are flaws in The Sarantine Mosaic, exactly the ones I said before. In a lesser book they would be critical flaws. In this book... they are sad to see in such a glorious work of art, but they cannot change the fact that it is not only an absolutely beautiful book, but one of the greatest I have ever read in my life.
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