I loves you, LJ

[geoviki]

LJ - The Squee Edition

Squee #1 - mayflo drew ATBT art for me! Four sketches of ATBT Draco, to be precise, and they are here! They're great, Hannah, and thank you so so so much! My little writer soul has longed for art for ATBT, and now I can die happy.

Squee #2 - I don't think I mentioned isiscolo's newest fic Players. She posted it from her lovely tropical get-away. Millicent/Luna. Isis always makes characters that I can firmly believe in, and her writing is superb.

Squee #3 - jamoche has written a three-part ficlet in ajhalluk's LoPiverse, here. It's a backstory to The Perilous Point.

Squee #4 - Totally self indulgent shopping trip to Barnes and Noble last night. I got two books I've been wanting, including Mary Renault's The Persian Boy. Oh man. Slash. Slash in a printed book. Beautiful boys in love. I stayed up too late last night getting into it. Yes, I skipped ahead to the good parts; why do you ask? No, I didn't. Nope. Un uh. Wasn't me. Now I want to write Bagoas slash. (The Theban Band has a new Bagoas desktop, BTW, plus a Ron/Harry kiss if you haven't seen it.) Finally, ohreally___ has posted new Boyd pix this week. Love the haircut, honey.

Squee #5 - And I bought 7 new CDs. Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Afro-Celt Sound System, Los Lonely Boys, acoustic Brazilian, and Bonnie Raitt's first one. Doin' my best for the economy...

Squee #6 - The rewriting goes well, my son's team just won its soccer game, and my daughter returns from building houses for the poor in Juarez, Mexico, today.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

No, no, no, no, no, no. You don't rush to "the good parts" in something as perfect as The Persian Boy. Every moment, every thought, every sentence is constructed to create the very individual personality of Bagoas, without which you will be missing most of what makes the book unique. (In fact, when I had finished it, and after I had gone trolling for Bagoas moments in Funeral Games, which is an entirely different multi-character & multi-histories book in the third person, so this is so not a case of do what I say, don't do what I do... anyway, my point is, you can the reread The Persian Boy from the first page, omitting nothing, because you will then discover that it is sprinkled with signs and portents of the future, which you do not catch the first time. Jumping to Bagoas/Alexander at once wrecks everything Renault constructs to create this lovable and imperfect boy, whom we see changing in the course of the book.

But YES, I want to read your Bagoas slash, a dozen times yes. There is some dire stuff currently perpetrated in Alexander slash these days; the good is rare and precious, and we need more of it.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Did I say I read ahead? Did I leave you with that impression? Um... I was lying. I would never do such a horrible thing. Not me. Nope.

Fanfic has ruined me as a reader.

I have started a slow careful read from the very beginning (really). In fact, after about 30 pages, I wanted to go back and start again. I can tell this is gonna be fun to read. I enjoy Bagoas's POV. What a sweetie!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Isn't he absolutely terrific? I love that time and again, Renault shows him misunderstanding things, or working from a misapprehension. When I finished Fire From Heaven, I didn't want to start this one, because I wanted more Hephaistion. But I *almost* prefer Bagoas (although you'll see Hephaistion becomes a bit of an enigma in this book, precisely because it's all from Bagoas's PoV, which is at the same time completely frustrating, and achieves the very longing for more that drove Alexander all his life.)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Well, it's far better to read them in order, though, because you catch all the references to FFH in TPB (Oxhead, Phoinix, the place of Philotas, why Alexander accepted so much for so long from Kallisthenes, etc.) And of course Hephaistion, who's a cipher if you haven't read FFH; you can't see what Bagoas doesn't, but Renault intends her reader to know.

Bagoas speaks Greek, so he does have a common language with Hephaistion; but he has no other frame of reference, of course. And both of them make small but real allowances (but I don't want to spoil it for Viki.) And there is one scene in which Hephaistion, in effect, does protect Alexander from Bagoas. (I am evil...)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Oh, and movie!Bagoas is much too old, but they were already in trouble over the gay thing, they weren't about to go for paederasty charges, too...

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Bonnie Raitt's first one.

*envies*

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Another one of those CDs that I used to own on vinyl. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to trade those old formats in and get a discount for one's obviousl artist loyalty?

I practically wore out the grooves on this album in college.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

... and by a happy coincidence, an Iranian friend has just sent me a Persian New Year greeting - in cuneiform!


Translation: May God's Grace Protect Persia Against Rancor, Enemy, Famine and the Lie! (Cyrus the Great's Prayer)

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

So cool!

When I was about 8 or 9, I got an encyclopedia with cuneiform letters and hieroglyphics and Cyrillic and Greek, and I taught myself all the letters in these (to me) strange ways.

You and earthmoon are getting me all excited. Now I will have to make a trip downtown to the biggest bookstore in the West to find the first book of the series. You are both teh evil!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's absolutely worth reading Fire From Heaven first. (And the Hephaistion slash is... delicious.)

Pssssttt! Want the ebooks?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Absolutement! Oh, I'm all about the gay kings now...

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Which email addy? Which format? Can you open zip compressed files? rar compressed files?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

geoviki@msn.com

.html or .rtf, whichever

I can probably unzip a compressed file from zip; not too sure about rar.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

All sent! When you're finished with the Alexcander ones, you can start on the Athenian novels, they are to die for too!

I've dated them in the zip file; the Theseus ones are myth, so several hundred years before the others. I would advise you to read them chronologically, except that The Praise Singer, which is set in the 6th century BC, so before the other non-myth ones, is really one half of a novel to my mind; what there is is excellent, but I miss the second half of Simonides's life; it's as if she'd either given up or been ill midway. It's dated 1978, so it's her penultimate book (Funeral games, which is more historical than any of her fiction, is dated 1981 and she died in 1983); I don't know her personal history. The two gems are The Last of the Wine and The Mask of Apollo, which must be read in this order, because they are historically close; also, toward the end of The Mask of Apollo, you get so see one of the scenes from Fire From Heaven from a different point of view; it's wonderful. (There is also a lovely throwback detail to The Last of the Wine in the Alexander Trilogy; I'll let you find it; it is incredibly moving, over a span of four decades.) The Theseus duology you can read separately at any time.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Hee! Having exhausted the good Alexander fanfic, I've started reading the Greek authors (Xenophon on Cyrus/Kyros, and Plato's dialogues.) It's like staying in the same world, Renault has made it so easy to slip into this world.

There's a good alternate history on Alexander going West instead of East to India, A Choice of Destinies, by Melissa Scott, which is out of print but easy & cheap to order used. It is surprisingly well-done; i prefer it even to Judih Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands, on Alexander's conquest of Egypt, which is not in Renault (and therefore which I gobbled up, too; it's not bad.)

Now I want your cuneiform alphabet!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. You can re-read and re-read it without end. I have the English Penguin Omnibus, and it's literally in tatters now.

Happily, I also have the ebooks... :)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Give me an email & I'll send them. I have all the Greek & Alexander ones; not The Charioteer. What format do you like? I have .lit (MSReader) files, .html, .txt or .rtf .

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Can you open .zip compressed files? .rar compressed files?

I'll send .html or .rtf when I can (and you can paste it into Word) because it's got the formatting (italics, etc.)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Sent!

Do you know the maryrenaultfics community?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

GIP! Thank A.J. Hall for the idea...

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

You've done it now...I want the other book, too.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

My work here is done!

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

It suddenly occured to me the other day - I'd been having problems trying to work out how Bagoas looked - and I went "Yes! Very very young Freddie Mercury!".

My first copy of TPB fell apart from everyone reading it at school.

Actually, if anyone is interested, I have the Mary Renault biography around the house; it isn't bad.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

OMG, you've hit it! The pre-80's moustachio'd Freddie, of course.





My high school foray into slash was actually the play The Boys in the Band

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

GIP. I obviously have too much time on my hands.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the Theban Band comes up with something unexpceted - this is their first Harry/Ron, I think. Not their typical photomanip style, either, and I like this.