Elvish is the new Greek.
Apr. 29th, 2009 09:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyHappy Birthday, sparowhawk! At this point I have known her for about half of my life, which is scary when I think about it, but also speaks to the volumes of fun we continue to have. Many happy returns!
In other news, I have a quotation of the day to post before I go fill out my Starbucks application:
Mrs. Pearson's eyes were like blue ice. Oliver could tell that she was struggling to contain her emotions. "You...find...yourself in a confrontation with absolute evil, and you...are...planning...not...to...think?"
Oliver had never heard words said so slowly, with so much outrage.
"Well...I..." Oliver stumbled.
"Craft, strategy, cunning tactics: thought. That is all that allows good to triumph. Renounce reason and you're lost. Rely on your 'inner sense,' and you will make a mess of everything. Thinking is your only hope. Start thinking now and never stop. Outwit the evildoer! Learn to tell the difference between sound argument and slippery rhetoric. Discriminate between the Received Idea and the Enduring Truth; between the odd and the strange; the selfish and the self-centered; the childish and the childlike; between metaphors and ironies, riddles and paradoxes. Think, and if you can't think, read. And if you can't read--why, then think some more! Discriminate, adjudicate, split hairs, dispute priorities, but think, think! It is your only hope."
--Adam Gopnik, The King in the Window (New York: Miramax Books, 2005).
Later: I just finished this book, so I will append a brief review of it. In brief, it is excellent. I've been eyeing it ever since it came out while I was in college--indeed, I nearly bought the paperback at my college bookstore at several points--and I have to say that it's excellent overall. The hero is Oliver, a (bilingual!) American boy living with his parents in Paris: on Epiphany, he keeps his gold paper crown on too long and is mistaken by the window wraiths of Versailles for their new king, and adventures (and a battle for the soul of the multiverse) ensue. Gopnik lived with his family in Paris for a while, and his affection for the city shows through beautifully, though without condescension, and he manages to make gentle fun of both Parisians and Americans throughout the book, mostly through trenchant observations. The book is very elegantly constructed--its themes show through beautifully, but never become overbearing--and the characters are wittily sketched. It's also a contemporary update, in some respects, of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (indeed, Alice herself appears at one point!), and I appreciated that the book, though fantasy, very firmly embraces email, computers, iPods, quantum physics, and other trappings of modernity while trumpeting balloon swords and millennium-old stained glass windows. Like Oliver himself, it is something of a hybrid, and it thinks.
In other news, I have a quotation of the day to post before I go fill out my Starbucks application:
Mrs. Pearson's eyes were like blue ice. Oliver could tell that she was struggling to contain her emotions. "You...find...yourself in a confrontation with absolute evil, and you...are...planning...not...to...think?"
Oliver had never heard words said so slowly, with so much outrage.
"Well...I..." Oliver stumbled.
"Craft, strategy, cunning tactics: thought. That is all that allows good to triumph. Renounce reason and you're lost. Rely on your 'inner sense,' and you will make a mess of everything. Thinking is your only hope. Start thinking now and never stop. Outwit the evildoer! Learn to tell the difference between sound argument and slippery rhetoric. Discriminate between the Received Idea and the Enduring Truth; between the odd and the strange; the selfish and the self-centered; the childish and the childlike; between metaphors and ironies, riddles and paradoxes. Think, and if you can't think, read. And if you can't read--why, then think some more! Discriminate, adjudicate, split hairs, dispute priorities, but think, think! It is your only hope."
--Adam Gopnik, The King in the Window (New York: Miramax Books, 2005).
Later: I just finished this book, so I will append a brief review of it. In brief, it is excellent. I've been eyeing it ever since it came out while I was in college--indeed, I nearly bought the paperback at my college bookstore at several points--and I have to say that it's excellent overall. The hero is Oliver, a (bilingual!) American boy living with his parents in Paris: on Epiphany, he keeps his gold paper crown on too long and is mistaken by the window wraiths of Versailles for their new king, and adventures (and a battle for the soul of the multiverse) ensue. Gopnik lived with his family in Paris for a while, and his affection for the city shows through beautifully, though without condescension, and he manages to make gentle fun of both Parisians and Americans throughout the book, mostly through trenchant observations. The book is very elegantly constructed--its themes show through beautifully, but never become overbearing--and the characters are wittily sketched. It's also a contemporary update, in some respects, of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (indeed, Alice herself appears at one point!), and I appreciated that the book, though fantasy, very firmly embraces email, computers, iPods, quantum physics, and other trappings of modernity while trumpeting balloon swords and millennium-old stained glass windows. Like Oliver himself, it is something of a hybrid, and it thinks.