*Is (virtually) happy*

Well, since I left my big, beautiful library at home, at least now I can enjoy it virtually. On my blog.

Yay for my new bookshelf feature! My goal is to stick every book that I have on my shelf back home on this shelf, but I don't know if that's possible . . . my memory isn't THAT good ;)

The Book of Mordred

Yesterday I read 'The Book of Mordred' by Vivian Vande Velde. And, frankly, I was disappointed with it.

After Celtic mythology such as the stories of the Three Shouts and Cuchulainn, the Arthurian tales are probably my favorite legend cycle. I have not yet finished Malory's Morte d'Arthur (had to leave it at home, alas for the length of the book and the airport's luggage weight limit!), and I suppose I cannot call myself a true Arthurian fan until I have, but I have read Layamon's Brut and Idylls of the King and--best of all--The Once and Future King, one of the best books ever to have been and ever to be written.

So since my brother likes Velde's writing, and since she said she was inspired by The Once and Future King, I had perhaps unfair high hopes. Maybe.

The issues I take with this book is that first of all Velde adds original characters, and secondly that she actually changes what happens in the story, too.

I don't usually mind original characters, but when they are made too prominent, it feels awkward and uncomfortable to read. The teenage seer and her mother are, in this book, much too prominent to work in my opinion. Malory doesn't mention any girl dressing as a boy and riding after Mordred's army, or taking part in the fight, and it's such an outlandish notion, it simply doesn't hold water for me. Such a character constantly reminds me 'it's just a story', which a good book shouldn't do at all.

Now, I personally really like the tragic story of Mordred and Arthur's 'deaths' (in quotations since according to some Arthur isn't truly dead at all, is he?)--I forget which Arthurian book I read it in (or was it Dante? I think it was Dante), but I remember reading about how Arthur's lance went straight through his son's chest and the daylight behind him shone through him like a star before he fell. Now, that's quite horrid, I suppose, but it's also sort of beautiful, I think . . . Well, anyways. Velde changes the story--Mordred was madly in love with Nimue! So he didn't die after all, despite nobly giving up his place on the barge to Avalon in order to save his father! Because Nimue cured him! And then he fell in love with a widowed noblewoman and lived happily ever after . . .

Bah.

Mordred was not Morgan Le Fay's puppet. Mordred was not a well-meaning, good-hearted young man. Twisting the story to make him seem so just doesn't work.

I am now sorely tempted to write a short story of my own on Mordred, because I do think it would be interesting to portray the events from his point of view, and I'd like to try to do the concept justice. But I think Velde really muffed it this time round, especially after The Once and Future King's clever, complicated, sarcastic, and miserably bitter Mordred. To justify a character one shouldn't change canon, never never never! It just weakens your case.

And that's my random rant for the day, folks!

A Haiku and My Weekend

"I'm a poor author
And I want to get published

Can you help me out?"

A special haiku for Laura to write on her sweater and sport around town. Because as we both know, the best authors always get published in unlikely and unconventional ways ;)

In other news, I got my library card at last, so the library's in big trouble now, heh heh. I borrowed Gone With the Wind, The Book of Mordred, and The Brothers Karamazov, none of which I've read before, though I started Karamazov at home and now I have a chance to finish it at last.

I also stayed up until 10 o'clock last night, not something I had planned, but when some TV station is showing a four-hour film version of Moby Dick, one of my favorite books ever, how could I resist? It was very well done. I own the Gregory Peck verson, and Gregory Peck is awesome as Ahab, but this version since it was longer had some elements from the book in it that the Peck version doesn't: the madness of Pip and the mysterious 'Parsee', for instance. Queequeg was Samoan or something like that, which surprised me, but it was okay, and Tashtego looked much more like Tashtego but didn't get much screen time, which was sad. Also the whale looked, surprisingly, more fake than in the original Gregory Peck version! My favorite characters from the book are Tashtego, Queequeg, and Starbuck. Starbuck was very good in this adaptation.

Anyways, that was my weekend. I also did a lot of cleaning, mostly in the kitchen, and had my first taste of mahi-mahi. For those of you who are wondering, it's very good.

Coolest T-Shirt Anywhere

"Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense.
Refrigerator."

(Spotted on a T-shirt somebody was sporting around campus. If that doesn't send the poet in you into a fit of hysterical giggling, I don't know what will. Um, you do know the rules of haiku-writing, right?)

Hobbits . . . On the Science Channel?

I don't know if any of you remember, but I remember seeing an article in the newspaper a few years ago talking about how some scientists had discovered skeletons on an island of a very small people--about 3 ft tall--and were excited because they believed it to be a never-before-discovered type of primitive human. I only remember this because the paper also said that the discoverers had nicknamed the skeleton a 'hobbit', which I thought was fantastic.

I hadn't heard anything about it since. But last night on a science channel I discovered an hour-long documentary. The title? 'The Human Hobbit'.

I spent the hour watching gleefully. I got immense satisfaction out of seeing all these scientists, professors, learned men from all over the world, and the dignified narrator seriously discussing 'hobbits'.

J.R.R. Tolkien had an ambition he thought impossible to realize: To create a mythology that would in turn inspire art, music, and other writings. Well, he's done it, and how! And not only that, but now he's snuck into the sciences too! Score one for epic fantasy!

I went to bed very cheerfully last night . . . .

(And I also finished 'Inkdeath', but I won't say anything yet per Laura's wish.)

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