Q&A: Answer Questions with Book Titles

Eppu

Quiz time! We pulled questions from a nifty online quiz (the link to which is of course by now lost) that we modified slightly. You’re supposed to answer the questions only by using book titles from your collection. Here goes:

1) Describe Yourself?

Eppu: Hobitti [The Hobbit in Finnish. Good food, comfy home, good company.]151229Hobitti

Erik: The Hermit of Eyton Forest [I like my woods]

2) What do you feel like right now?

Erik: An Excellent Mystery

Eppu: Bättre och bättre [=better and better; title of a Swedish textbook. ‘Nuff said!]

3) Describe where you live?

Eppu: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking [‘Cause America can’t seem to wrap its head around silence. In Finland, silence is common and normal. For me, silence = sanctuary.]

Erik: Utopia [I love our house and our little patch of woods.]

4) Where would you go if you could go anywhere?

Erik: The Far Side of the World [New Zealand is on my list right now.]

Eppu: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles [And come back from the past, too.]

5) Describe you best friend?

Eppu: History of Ancient Rome [This would be the Mister. As the Germans say, Herr Doctor Professor. :)]

Erik: The Age of Bede [My wife the Anglo-Saxonist]

6) Your favorite color?

Erik: The Frogs [The closest I can get to “green.”]

Eppu: The Virgin Blue

7) What’s the weather like right now?

Eppu: Sundiver151229Sundiver

Erik: Cold Days

8) What’s your favorite time of the day?

Erik: White Night

Eppu: Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi [Not Before Sundown in Finnish. This was a tough one; I don’t really have a favorite, nor books with times of the day in the title.]

9) If your life were a tv show, what would it be called?

Eppu: Quiet Influence [Although not sure how many people would find a show on introverts interesting.]

Erik: Antiquity

10) What’s life for you?

Erik: The Historian’s Craft

Eppu: Sense and Sensibility

11) Your current relationship?

Eppu: Arvaa kuinka paljon sinua rakastan [Guess How Much I Love You in Finnish]

Erik: The Truelove

The Truelove12) What gives?

Erik: The Joy of Cooking

Eppu: Cold Days

13) Your future expectations?

Eppu: Home Improvement Guide [Unfortunately. Then again, when it’s done, it’ll be Bättre och bättre again.]

Erik: The Ascent of Man [Or at least the getting up in the morning of man.]

14) You wouldn’t mind…?

Erik: Looking at Greek and Roman Sculpture in Stone

Eppu: Impossible Things [Certain things just aren’t likely to change very fast.]

15) What are you afraid of?

Eppu: Catching Fire [Don’t happen to have any books involving heights.]

Erik: The Fortune of War

16) Your best piece of advice?

Erik: Caveat Emptor151229Caveat

Eppu: Budget Makeovers [Saving money rocks.]

17) If you’d change your name, it would be…

Erik: Henry II

Eppu: Emma [This was a tough one, too. Jane Austen to the rescue!]

18) Thought of the day?

Eppu: Cut the Scraps! [Quilting is fun. :)]

Erik: Hannibal Crosses the Alps [No one thought he could do it, but…]

19) How would you like to die?

Erik: After the Fact [“I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”]

Eppu: Most Wise and Valiant Ladies

20) Your motto?

Eppu: Simply Scandinavian

Erik: The Barbarians Speak151229Barbarians

21) Your favorite activity?

Erik: Homebrewing

Eppu: Creative Ideas for Organizing Your Home

Images: Hobitti via Wikipedia. Sundiver via Wikipedia. The Truelove via Penguin Random House. Caveat Emptor via Bloomsbury. The Barbarians Speak via Princeton University Press

Q&A is an occasional feature in which we share our responses to quizzes, questions, and quirky ideas for your entertainment.

History for Writers Compendium: 2015

Erik

History for Writers explores world history to offer ideas and observations of interest to those of us who are in the business of inventing new worlds, cultures, and histories of our own. Here’s where we’ve been in 2015:

Thinking about history and writing

Worldbuilding basics

Economics and wealth

Military history

Race and gender in history

Architecture

Recommended reading

 

Special series:

Travel

Ostrich riding and the perils of research

Creating fantasy religions

Join us in 2016 for more history.

History for Writers is a weekly feature which looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool. From worldbuilding to dialogue, history helps you write. Check out the introduction to History for Writers here.

Final Star Wars: Episode VII Mood

Eppu

In our area, there were Episode VII showings pretty much continuously starting from 7 p.m. last night. I was ever so briefly tempted to go from viewing to viewing straight through the night. But no.

FB The Dark Side of Force 5 More Mins

No, we didn’t go.* Instead, we’re about to head out to a noon showing. It remains to be seen how many others we’ll have to fight for seats decided to wait till daytime on the official release day.

How early did you see The Force Awakens? Do tell!

*) I think we’re both at that stage where, rather than do something right the moment it’s possible, we prefer to take our creature comforts into consideration. (Especially sleep, much like an old cat. Yay for old cats!)

Image via The Dark Side of the Force on Facebook

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

The Return of the Bread Pudding

Erik

For our final Star Wars rewatch, here’s a sweet but simple bread pudding.

The Return of the Bread Pudding

Ingredients

  • Stale bread, any kind, enough to make 4-5 cups loosely packed cubes
  • 4 egss
  • 1 tablespoon rum
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 3 cups milk

Cut the bread into chunks and press into a buttered baking dish until well packed in.

Beat the eggs, rum, sugar, and spices together until well mixed.  Add the milk and beat well.

Pour the milk mixture over the breadcrumbs. Press down the top with a spatula or spoon to make sure the liquid is well distributed.

Let sit for half an hour, pressing again occasionally, until the liquid is thoroughly absorbed by the bread.

For best results, set the baking dish inside a larger dish of water to make a water bath, ensuring that the level of the water reaches up to the top of the pudding. If this is not practical, you can just bake the pudding in its dish, but be aware that the edges may get crusty.

Bake at 350F / 175 C for 1 and 1/4 hours.

Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

 

Image by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

Our Star Wars Rewatch Project: Epsidode VI

Erik

Our Star Wars rewatch concludes with Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.

1. Best Fight

Eppu: The space battle above Endor! Epic! (Even if it’s modeled after aerial dogfights, but nostalgia…)

151217atstErik: Ewoks vs. stormtroopers. I know some people think it’s too silly, but I disagree. The rebellion vs. the empire was always a case of guts and inventiveness vs. industry and regimentation. The fact that the empire never even considered that the ewoks could be a threat was their undoing. Besides, there’s nothing like seeing an imperial walker get smushed between two dropping logs.

2. Best Line

Erik: “I don’t know. Fly casual.” Han’s approach to life in five words.

Eppu: “How are we doing?” Luke: “Same as always.” Han: “That bad, huh?”

3. Best Minor Character

Eppu: This may be a little corny, but Admiral Ackbar! (“It’s a trap!”)

Erik: The commander in charge of the Death Star construction. He seems like a well-organized, conscientious leader, just the sort of person you’d want to put in charge of such a huge project. Too bad he works for a genocidal totalitarian dictatorship.

4. Best Reveal

Erik: R2-D2 was carrying Luke’s lightsaber in Jabba’s palace all along. The moment that lightsaber handle pops up out of the droid’s top is the moment when “Luke, you naive idiot!” turns into “Luke, you cunning bastard!”

LG_CRACK lennongirl Han epi626

Eppu: A two-parter: Luke finds out on Dagobah that Leia’s his sister, and Leia tells Han that Luke’s her brother. Mostly the latter because of the expression on Han’s face (click, click, click… you can see the wheels turning).

5. Best Save

Eppu: Chewie and ewoks commandeering a walker on Endor and turning its guns against the Imperial troops. Pew pew!

Erik: Luke Force-floating C-3PO in the ewok village to convince the ewoks to let them go. C-3PO’s mid-air freak-out pushes it just far enough over the top to go from ridiculous to hilarious.

6. Best Visual

151217MFErik: The Millennium Falcon racing the fireball out of the exploding Death Star. It still gets me on the edge of my seat.

Eppu: The rebel fleet coming out of hyperspace to attack the new Death Star.

Extra: Best Guess for an Episode VII Hook

Eppu: Leia’s become a Jedi. Her title has been revealed to be General, which lines up nicely with her holo-message line to Obi-Wan in Episode IV (“General Kenobi. Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars…”).

[And a week after writing the above, the world came crashing down: J.J. Abrams revealed in an interview with IGN (as reported by Moviepilot) that Leia chose to lead the rebellion instead of becoming a Jedi. Ohwell.]

Erik: Palpatine has been pulling the rebellion’s strings all along. He’s a master manipulator who can foresee the future. Did he have a contingency plan for Vader’s betrayal and his own (apparent?) death? Are his dead(?) hands still pulling the strings?

Images: Ewok log trap via History Bomb. Han’s bafflement via lennongirl / LG-CRACK on LiveJournal. Millennium Falcon escaping Death Star via Starscream & Hutch

In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

Leena Krohn on The New Yorker’s Best of 2015

Eppu1 Comment

Leena Krohn’s Collected Fiction, an anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, made it onto The New Yorker‘s best-of list!

Cheeky Frawg krohn-cover-largeJoshua Rothman writes of his selection of Krohn for The Books We Loved in 2015 like this:

“I also found myself hypnotized by Leena Krohn, a Finnish writer whose collected stories and novels, rendered into English by many different translators, have just been published as a single volume, ‘Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction.’ Broadly speaking, Krohn is a speculative writer; one of the novels in the collection, for example, consists of thirty letters written from an insect city. (‘It is summer and one can look at the flowers face to face.’) Krohn writes like a fantastical Lydia Davis, in short chapters the length of prose poems. Her characters often have a noirish toughness; one, explaining her approach to philosophy, says that when she asks an existential question, ‘life answers. It is generally a long and thorough answer.’”

Just a week ago, Krohn’s anthology appeared on The A.V. Club‘s Best of 2015 list (along with The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen). Again, congratulations!

Found via Helsingin Sanomat.

P.S. Try Krohn’s Lucilia Illustris for free, published in December 2015 by Electric Literature.

Image via Cheeky Frawg Books

Star Wars and the Classics, Part II: The Original Trilogy

Erik1 Comment

151216vaseYesterday we looked at how classical literature offers interesting ways of looking at the Star Wars prequel movies. We continue today with the original movies.

Episode IV: A New Hope – Homer, the Odyssey, Books 14-22

Episode IV can be read, from a certain point of view, as an essay in heroism. In particular, we see three different kinds of heroes: the always-was-a-hero, the becoming-a-hero, and the choosing-to-be-a-hero.

Leia is the always-was. She is a hero from the beginning of the movie straight through to the end. We never see her stop being heroic, even when being rescued. She has been part of the rebellion literally since she was born and even the destruction her homeworld doesn’t stop her.

Luke is the becoming. He starts as just a farmboy who dreams of far-off adventure. When he discovers his true heritage he strives to live up to the legacy of his father Anakin the great Jedi. Much is expected of him and he does his best to be the hero that people like Obi-Wan and Leia need him to be.

Han is the choosing-to-be. He’s a smuggler and scoundrel who isn’t in it for the rebellion. He just wants to do a job and get paid. He could have just flown away from Yavin with his hold full of cash and nobody would have been surprised. Instead, he decides to come back and help Luke blow up the Death Star.

The same three kinds of heroes appear in the Odyssey. In Book 14, Odysseus has just made it safely home to Ithaca but is still in disguise, getting the lay of the land and figuring out how to deal with the suitors who have been gorging themselves in his hall. The next few books follow Odysseus as he gathers allies, makes plans, and finally confronts the suitors in the final battle in Book 22.

Odysseus is here the always-was. He is a veteran of the great war at Troy and a cunning warrior. He begins the epic as a hero and never falters. Nothing stops him in his determination to get home and reclaim his place as king. Books 14-22 show him as a steady, crafty commander, biding his time and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Odysseus’ son Telemachus is the becoming. As the epic begins, he is just entering manhood and starting to take his first tentative steps into his father’s old role. For Telemachus, the Odyssey is all about proving that he is a worthy son to a heroic father that he knows only through stories. In this stretch of the epic he finally meets his father and proves that he can live up to his example.

The choosing-to-be hero of the Odyssey is Eumaeus, swineherd to Odysseus’ house and one of the servants who remains loyal to Odysseus, even when his master has been gone for twenty years. The sensible thing for Eumaeus to do would have been to abandon Odysseus and suck up to the suitors, like many of the other servants do, to secure his place in the household when Penelope eventually marries one of them. Instead, he sticks by his old master and helps him take back his home.

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Star Wars and the Classics, Part I: The Prequels

Erik1 Comment

151215stormStar Wars takes many of its cues from mythology and classical history. Here’s some recommended reading if you want to see how themes from the classics found their way to a galaxy long ago and far, far away.

Episode I: The Phantom Menace – Homer, the Iliad, Book 1

I can still remember my feeling of anticipation when I first sat in the theatre to watch The Phantom Menace. We’d waited years to get the story of Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace. We were going back in time to a more civilized age, a golden age of Jedi knights and the sophistication of the galactic republic.

The screen went dark. John Williams’s fanfare blasted from the speakers. The opening text began to scroll up from the bottom. This was everything we had been waiting for!

So what’s this crap about taxation of outlying trade routes? Huh? What is this, Accounting Wars?

The story began. We saw Jedi sitting in a conference room waiting for some cowardly bureaucrats to come and talk turkey. My heart sank in disappointment. (And we hadn’t even gotten to Jar-Jar Binks yet.)

It took many more years and several viewings of Episode I for me to appreciate what George Lucas was doing in this movie. There is a point here and it’s an important one: momentous events don’t start out looking momentous. Terrible things happen because no one is paying close enough attention to stop them when they’re small enough to be managed; only when they roll out of control do people realize what’s happening. Of course the fall of the galactic empire started because of a minor trade dispute and a lonely boy from a desert planet in the middle of nowhere. It could have started in any number of ways, but they all would have seemed just as trivial.

(Mind you, this doesn’t actually make Phantom Menace any better as a movie. It’s still plagued by terrible dialogue, wooden acting, and disturbing racial caricatures. But as a storytelling choice, it’s interesting.)

The classic mythic example of small causes leading to momentous and terrible events is the Trojan War. While pieces of the story are told in many different sources, there’s no single work that covers the entire war. Book 1 of the Iliad, however, puts us in the middle of the action to watch the last act of the war unfold. I’ve written about Book 1 of the Iliad here before, but it’s one of those texts that rewards going back to again and again.

As the Iliad opens, the Trojan war has already been going on for ten years. What we witness here is the conflict between two of the Greek captains, Achilles and Agamemnon. It begins when Agamemnon refuses to ransom a captive woman back to her father. By the end of the book, Achilles has withdrawn his forces from the fighting, which will swing the war in the Trojans’ favor, leading to the near defeat of the Greek forces, the death of Achilles’ friend Patroclus, and Achilles slaying the Trojan prince Hector in madness and grief. The death of Hector robbed the Trojans of their best warrior and sealed the fate of Troy. And it all flows from a dispute over the ransoming of a prisoner from an outlying village.

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