For new readers, the Walpurgisnacht primer in three easy lessons that I wrote a year ago.

Happy Valborg!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:12 0 comments

 
Web site I just found: the Creatures in my Head. Get your daily critter here, they are luvverly!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 15:53 0 comments

 
Yay! I'll get to share a 2-person office instead of a 5+-person one! This will make it much easier to actually work when I'm at the department; the large office room is nice and all but it's too much of a freeway, with people walking in and out all the time — and behind my back is a computer that's free for anybody to use which increases the traffic in here even more. Also, I'll share the room with another linguist so that will be good.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 11:31 0 comments

 
Must...write...more...about...books....

Johan just published a nifty list he made of the 53 most frequent authors (i e the ones we own the most books by) in our book collection. Together they have written 37% of the fiction we own. Since the books are mine, too, and since Johan's posting is in Swedish, I'll take the liberty to publish the list here, too, so I can comment on it (the numbers in brackets are the number of books we have by each author):

Moorcock, Michael (64)
Vance, Jack (61)
Tolkien, J. R. R. (45)
Pratchett, Terry (39)
Shakespeare, William (39)
Wodehouse, P. G. (30)
Jones, Diana Wynne (28)
Alving, Barbro (24)
Jansson, Tove (23)
Dick, Philip K. (22)
Howard, Robert E. (21)
Banks, Iain (20)
Leiber, Fritz (19)
Aldiss, Brian (17)
Brust, Steven (17)
Lagerlöf, Selma (17)
Lewis, C. S. (17)
O’Brian, Patrick (17)
Burroughs, Edgar Rice (15)
Christie, Agatha (15)
Zelazny, Roger (15)
Priest, Christopher (14)
Vonnegut, Kurt (14)
Henrikson, Alf (13)
Lang, Andrew (13)
Lundwall, Sam J. (13)
Nesser, Håkan (13)
Dickens, Charles (12)
Durrell, Gerald (12)
Heinlein, Robert A. (12)
James, P. D. (12)
Jordan, Robert (12)
Sandman Lilius, Irmelin (12)
Sayers, Dorothy L. (12)
Simak, Clifford (12)
Ahlin, Lars (11)
Delany, Samuel R. (11)
George, Elizabeth (11)
Gray, Alasdair (11)
Lindgren, Astrid (11)
Nesbit, Edith (11)
Orwell, George (11)
Asimov, Isaac (10)
Ballard, J. G. (10)
Cabell, James Branch (10)
Claesson, Stig (10)
Dagerman, Stig (10)
de Camp, L. Sprague (10)
Donaldson, Stephen (10)
Faulkner, William (10)
Greene, Graham (10)
McDonald, Ian (10)
Silverberg, Robert (10)

Not so very interesting to anyone else, perhaps; yet there are a couple of things that occur to my naked eye as I look at the list. While many of the names belong to authors we buy everything by, some of them — Christie, Jordan, de Camp — are writers neither of us like at all. I had a Christie period in my teens, and still read the occasional one, but when I do I usually find myself wondering why I do. Robert Jordan. . . well, he wouldn't be on the list if Johan hadn't been collecting everything Conan, years ago — and the same goes for de Camp. Moorcock was one of the authors Johan used to edit the Swedish translations of (hence getting free copies), but he is also a "buy everything" author, like Pratchett, Jones, Alving and Jansson. We're trying to get a complete Shakespeare collection (apart from the three one-volume Complete Works we own — those are not annotated) but it's a matter of finding them in good editions. The situation with Vance is more complicated — he is certainly an author I've been buying everything I could find by, but we also have two copies of some titles now that batch 1 of the VIE has arrived. Not that we are getting rid of the old copies — the VIE is a brand new edition, after all; the texts are not the same — but neither do I buy the ones we don't yet have, since we are going to get them soon enough anyway.

Anyway. Books make me happy. I like to be surrounded by books. I really like the list above, it makes me feel rich, even though I know it's nothing compared to what a lot of people have. But that doesn't matter. It's not a competition, I think.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 22:08 0 comments

 
Went to the antiquarian book fair, returned with spoils:

Calvino, Italo Den obefintlige riddaren Bonniers 1961
Holmgren-Strömbom, Greta Ur den blåmålade kistan - Om August Bondeson Bonniers 1913
Hyltén-Cavallius, G. O. & George Stephens Svenska sagor 1-5 Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien 1943
Wodehouse, P. G. The Clicking of Cuthbert Herbert Jenkins 196?
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Unplesantness at the Bellona Club Gollancz 1937
Swahn, Jan-Öjvind Fionns äventyr och andra irländska sagor Natur och Kultur 1963
Tikkanen, Henrik Paddys land - Irländska skisser Natur och Kultur 1957
Tolkien, J. R. R. Bilbo - en hobbits äventyr (ill. by Tove Jansson) Rabén & Sjögren 1962

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 21:29 0 comments

 
Yikes! Couldn't anybody have told me that I'd pasted in the wrong URL in yesterday's posting? Here is Robo Runner (I also corrected the link in the previous post.) And thank you Jonas for letting me know. . . I am faffing around with too many links, is my problem.

Not that there's anything wrong with the site I actually linked to yesterday: the juveline felis catus review, an evaluation of a kitten from an IT point of view.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 20:20 0 comments

 
Not quite back to normality yet. Whatever that is.

Today's discovery: RoboRally online — well, it's not really RoboRally, the game is called Robo Runner and there are a few things added, but basically it's the same. It's not a real-time game; the turn is not executed until every player has arranged a programme sequence and that can take hours or days; meanwhile everybody's moves are saved. I am the robot Apteryx, in case anybody wants to challenge me.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 21:28 0 comments

 
What I did on my holidays.

Today I've mostly been headachy and post-conventional. Hopefully I'll be back to normality soon.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 22:58 0 comments

 
Off to Eastercon very soon, so here's to a happy Easter to all. I'll be back on the 22nd.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:19 0 comments

 
I chatted with flerdle, who pointed me at a really fascinating poetic duel, which took place in the Australian newspaper The Bulletin, 1892-1894. The combatants were A B "Banjo" Paterson and Henry Lawson; the subject was the poetic description of rural Australia as either idyllic or gloomy, and other contemporary poets entered on either side. Here is the controversy in its entirety, although to appreciate it fully you should read this short poem first.

Excellent stuff, this. That's the way to duel!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 16:57 0 comments

 
kevan·ish, adj. Reminiscent of or pertaining to Kevan.
"a Kev'nish speech sleeps in a foolish ear." Hamlet, Act IV, Scene II.

Modern usage: Here is a Kevanish web site.


  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 13:19 0 comments

 
And here is the opposite of what I just wrote about — a thoughtful non-polarized commentary. To read it, if you're not a salon.com subscriber, you must look at an ad for 10 seconds; but it's worth it for it is a very good article. I really like it when he says [. . .] for many of us who oppose the war, it has induced what almost might be called a kind of moral schizophrenia.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 17:00 0 comments

 
This is what war does. I'm struggling not to start crying myself — I am at work, so it wouldn't look well if I did — for there is no other possible reaction than helpless tears. And that doesn't mean I value a museum more than a human life; this is not a matter of comparison of evils. The desctruction in two days of one of the world's most important keys to history is an evil that isn't necessary to set in relation to anything else.

But there is more than this. Read the comments to the posting I linked to — that's what war does, too, it polarizes humanity, there is no room for greyscale or nuances of opinion. If you think the war was necessary, then you think it's good and that no evil can come out of it. If you think evil came out of it, then you also think that any amount of tyranny and repression was acceptable. I detest that kind of ascribing opinions to somebody else, it means that people don't listen to one another; it's something that is always going on of course (oh for the reasonable and reasoning communities of Kim S Robinson!) but war makes it worse, it makes opinions stronger and more absolute and people seem to be less forgiving than ever when they talk about war.

And I see it in myself too. I tend to agree with many of the things the author of Making Light argues, in particular concerning this war, and so I refuse to read her detractors' posts properly, I just look for ammunition to use against them, I don't try to see their point of view. There are blogs I refuse to read because I disagree with them — well, there are reasons why I shouldn't: I want to read many blogs, and see no reason to fritter away time on blogs I don't want to read. And it seems pointless to consciously do things that I know will make me upset. But still. I want to live in a society where people can have different opinions and be free to voice them even if they are not particularly vocal. And not listening to what other people have to say is the same as working against the idea of that society. This is something war does, too. It stops us from listening to others' opinions, for if we don't feel 100% certain of what we think we can't go to war.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 13:22 0 comments

 
Went into town. Bought a couple of birthday presents, a book and some other stuff. Set a restaurant menu on fire. Returned home.

So just your basic Saturday then.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 15:57 0 comments

 
The war in Iraq may or may not be over, it is a matter of definition what you want to call the state of general plundering and armed unrest. Bombs are still being dropped and as for what will happen to the Kurds, if they will rise or not and what Turkey will do if that happens, nobody knows. Meanwhile, SARS (SAL, as it is known in Sweden) may or may not be under control, but only the other day new cases were found so it seems unlikely.

So I bury myself in books on multivariate linguistic analysis, and set up a blog for my cat. But I'm not hiding under the bedcovers — I just don't think that the world will necessarily become a better place if normal life is suspended and random silliness is banned until war and disease are things of the past.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 17:57 0 comments

 
Vem älskar Yngve Frej is a great little book, and extremely well suited for reading aloud. At first I thought the author was making fun of his characters, but he isn't — he just shows them the way they are, with a fond smile for their follies. And while the setting is dated — the book takes place in 1967 — the people aren't.

On the other hand I'm having a hard time getting into Kvartetten som sprängdes. It has suffered a bit from the passing of time (80 years) since it was written and I think Sjöberg's style is over-elaborate. But I'll finish it, it will be fun to discuss it with the book club people.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 16:08 0 comments

 
Help! I've been listed on the stock exchange! I'd seen references to the Blogger Shares game but not looked at it — so why am I suddenly worth $2172.16 and what do the symbols and statistics mean? Do I even want to know?

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 10:49 0 comments

 
Every post in LysKOM has a unique number; the posts are numbered in order from 1 in late July, 1990, to — as this is typed — 10 001 672. The numbers with lots of zeroes in them are known as "jubilees", and quite a lot of people find it a very prestigious thing indeed to write the jubilee posts. At 16:36 today, April 8, text 10 000 000 was posted, which caused the graph over posted texts to end up looking like this (the spike should be visible in the graphs lower on the page after it's disappeared from the top ones.)

Yep, all my different social circles are made up of oddballs :-)

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 21:51 0 comments

 
B Wahlströms gröna/röda ryggar. Nostalgimax!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 18:52 0 comments

 


The red dot marks where our house is; the study window next to my computer screen looks due north. Some fifteen minutes ago, an ambulance and a fire engine drove past on the north-south road leading into the housing area just north and east of here. Five minutes later, two more fire engines followed. All had their sirens on. Something bad has happened, I fear — but nothing in the local rag about it yet. . . No smell of smoke when I open the windows, though. I wonder if maybe a tree has fallen down on a house.

[edited to add: No - it was a fire. A big one, and I think the house was severely damaged, but at least nobody got hurt in it.]

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:24 0 comments

 
On second thought, before I log out I must mention Lilo & Stitch, the latest (or one of the latest — I can't keep track of them) animated Disney film. Johan got it on DVD for his birthday, so we curled up in the sofa the other evening to watch it.

And I liked it; it was somewhat sweet at times but too good-humoured to be syrupy. And the peple didn't look like Barbie dolls, and the little girls got into trouble for fighting; no, not at all too sugary. Also there was no tacked-on stupid love story, which really was a blessing. Whatever romance was there was very much in the background.

I didn't know beforehand that there was a science fiction angle to it; that was very enjoyable, too. On the whole it was a very funny movie; it made us laugh a lot. Definite candidate for re-watching.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 22:26 0 comments

 
Glgh. Too many things to write, for work, for other people and for this place.

I'm going to bed instead, I think. At least I've had a fairly productive day.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 22:12 0 comments

 
Comments on the links from the other day, for it isn't all that appealing to follow random links that haven't been explained at all...

Exactitudes is "[...] an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity" ; a photographic project with somewhere between 700 and 1000 photographies grouped together by style, clothes, attitude of the subjects. (It's a book, too, apparently. I don't know if the book contains more photos than the web page does; it does lend itself very well to the web medium however!) Many of these styles I have no real idea what they stand for, btw, but no doubt that only says something about my lack of perceptivity and memory for these things — which is borne out of a general lack of interest, of course. My loss.

On the other hand, I am not going to comment more on FuneralQuest. It's extremely addictive.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 16:51 0 comments

 
It may be time to comment on some books I've been reading, recently. Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book was a big improvement on The Eyre Affair. It felt less like a bunch of fun ideas loosely put together and more like a whole, and the character portraits were much better done. I enjoyed it very much indeed.

Since reading that, I've mostly been in a Diana Wynne Jones spell — or should that be under rather than in? I've said it before but possibly not in here: I didn't like DWJ much when I was a kid, her people were too strange and the grownups were always untrustworthy besides. Mostly I think it was a matter of style though. But now I'm very fond of her books, I think she's a marvellous writer and storyteller and I try to buy pretty much anything with her name on it I see.

[Yikes! A large fir tree was just felled by the wind, just outside our house. And when I say "large", I mean "50-year-old or so".]

Now I've re-read the Chrestomanci books and the Dalemark books. Interestingly enough, the first time I read the latter, which can't have been much more than 10 years ago as my copy of Cart & Cwidder was printed in 1993 and I remember buying them very soon after I'd read them, I liked the first three books a lot but not the fourth, to the extent that I never bought it. Instead I bought it only a couple of years ago, but didn't re-read it until now, when I find I like it the best of the lot.

And what I like most about DWJ now — as with pretty much every author I really like — is her writing style. That's one of the most tangible ways I notice that I've changed as a person from when I was a kid, I guess.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 14:23 0 comments

 
Hmm. Have been writing all sorts of things all day so don't feel up to doing much more writing now. Just a couple of links:

Exactitudes, via Raak.

And the eery and addictive game FuneralQuest.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 22:57 0 comments

 
Misunderstand me correctly: I am a fan of snow in its right time and place. I think Uppsala is the right place for it at times, and I'm sure that this is the right time for snow in Barrow, Alaska. But I do not feel that April in Uppsala is an appropriate setting for two inches of slushy snow, and I'd appreciate it if someone in charge could remove it, please.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 11:31 0 comments