April 13– From Cellini’s Autobiography (1887) translated by John Addington Symonds (L is for Love)

This is the only Italy related anime clip I could think of besides Hetalia

April 13– From Cellini’s Autobiography (1887) translated by John Addington Symonds

Summary: Cellini is like a 14 year old writing a self insert fanfic.

Commentary: I get Cellini's autobiography about once a month, and they get more ridiculous every time. I'm kind of surprised there's anyone left not crippled/killed in Italy based on how many times he wipes the floor with a whole room full of people. My comments on this one are basically just a bunch of anime adjacent memes, since he sounds like a kid writing a story about how badass he'd be.

Our letter excerpt comes fairly early: 

Through intercourse together, such love grew up between us that, day or night, we never stayed apart. 

Obviously it's not that intercourse, but "we had intercourse an fell in love" is a fun quote. 

April 12– From "I Promessi Sposi" (The Betrothed) by Allessandro Manzoni (1827) (K is for Knocked Out)

No music

April 12– From I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Allessandro Manzoni (1827)

Summary: Lucia gets kidnapped.

Commentary: This is the third or fourth time I've had an excerpt from this. It's not bad, but trying to read a novel in semi-random chunks once every couple weeks is not really a great way of doing it. If I hadn't read the Wikipedia summary, I don't think I'd have any clue what was going on, who half the characters were, etc.

Today's letter doesn't actually appear in this passage, but I thought it was a fun bit to make work.

 After a few moments of agonized struggle, she seemed to become quieter; her arms sank by her side, her head fell backwards, she half opened her eyelids, and her eyes became fixed; the horrible faces which surrounded her appeared to mingle and flock before her in one monstrous image; the colour fled from her cheek; a cold moisture overspread her face; her consciousness vanished, and she fainted away. [...]

‘The ——! she seems to be dead,’ said one of them: ‘if she’s really dead!’

‘Pshaw!’ said the other: ‘It’s only a swoon, such as women often fall into. I know well enough that when I’ve wanted to send another, be it man or woman, into the other world, it has required something more than this.

"Women just get knocked out at random. They have couches for it in their bathrooms."

They just treat her being a generic damsel in distress as if it's real, it's funny.

April 11– From "Faust" by Goethe (1832) translated by Anna Swanwick (J is for Juevenile)

 Wagner's Faust Overture

April 11– From Faust by Goethe (1832) translated by Anna Swanwick

Summary: Mephistopheles helps Faust get with a hot (barely) teenager.

Commentary: At first, I was like, Yay, more Faust! Who doesn't love a good villianous(ish) origin story? Then this section was about Faust being such a creep that Mephistopheles called him out on it. 

MEPHISTOPHELES

You really talk

Like any gay Lothario,

Who every floweret from its stalk

Would pluck, and deems nor grace, nor truth,

Secure against his arts, forsooth!

This ne’er the less won’t always do.

FAUST

Sir Moralizer, prithee, pause;

Nor plague me with your tiresome laws!

I assume this is actually a reverse psychology type ploy, but when the devil starts moralizing to you, it's pretty bad.

Really, the thing that most sticks out here is how often the word child (23 times) and things like innocent show up. It's one thing to give the villain a hot underaged thing to show how they're evil, it's another to just write "dude's a pedo" every 3rd line.

April 10– "First Charter of Virginia" (1606) by James I

 One of Virginia's TWO State Songs

April 10– First Charter of Virginia (1606) by James I

Summary: King James lets the people founding Virginia make money on it.

Commentary: I've had a few of these historical political documents pop up so far. Conceptually, I think they're neat. In practice, some are pretty interesting, but some are rather dull. Generally, the ones that are more involved in the day to day operations or the philosophy of the organization are more interesting. This one is just King James saying these people can go somewhere and make money off it. You did get a solid list of names you could use for your book, game, etc. 

The most interesting part is probably this long rambly list that gets used several times:

And that they shall have all the Lands, Woods, Soil, Grounds, Havens, Ports, Rivers, Mines, Minerals, Marshes, Waters, Fishings, Commodities, and Hereditaments, whatsoever

Bet they wish they had copy and paste back then.

Also interesting:  

 may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility,

Did they actually think they could "civilize" the Indians? Was this just an excuse to take their stuff? It's weird to think of "civilizing" people like that to our modern morals, but maybe plausible back then. 

 

Star Wars Classics? "Splinter of The Mind's Eye" (I is for Imperial)

 Sort of random post today that will probably get moved to a different blog if I decide to do more. My wife and I moved recently, and I loaded my ereader up with some fluff. It took a little while to get internet setup, arrange my office the way I wanted, etc. so I just wanted something light and easy to entertain myself for a bit before bed or whatever. I decided to dig back into my childhood and read some of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. I could (I think I did at one point) write an essay about how The original EU (now "Legends") Star Wars novels were instrumental in making me into a reader and writer, and I was excited to dip back in and see how they held up (honestly, probably everywhere from absolute crap to great, same as I thought as a kid. It's easy to bell curve when you have a couple hundred books). Initially, I thought I'd start with the X-Wing series, since they were the earliest ones I remember reading (I think I had a couple chapter books before), but I realized how many others I'd missed, read out of order, etc. So, instead, I decided to do the publishing order. I made it about three pages into the novelization of A New Hope before the weirdness of reading a not entirely accurate novelization of a movie I've seen a hundred times kicked in. I jumped to the second book Splinter of The Mind's Eye.

From a purely historical perspective, Splinter is interesting. It's generally considered the jumping off point for the EU, but Marvel technically beats it to the punch for original stories by about 6 months with some comics, and there were also various adaptations of A New Hope even earlier. Splinter was written by Alan Dean Foster, who is probably best known today for his ghostwriting and adaptations. He did the novelization of A New Hope, which I'm going to take a second shot at, and Alien, among other things.

Splinter was partially intended to be a hypothetical low budget sequel to Star Wars. There's minimal space battles, and a lot of opportunities to reuse props, cheap sets, etc. Han Solo is briefly mentioned, but he and Chewie never show up (Ford hadn't agree to do a sequel) but are replaced by Halla (a sort of Han/Obi Wan amalgamation/grumpy old Force lady) a pair of big fury aliens. There's a few things that would later show up in Empire or other movies (Vader flinging stuff at Luke via the Force, force ghosts sort of possessing people, Vader falling down a big hole), and a bunch of stuff that's weird (Leia and Luke obviously want to bone, Vader shooting a Force hadouken,  Vader chopping an officer in half instead of choking him). None of the Imperials recognize Luke or Leia, which seems odd. Luke, maybe, but Leia was famous even before the Death Star.

The plot is pretty by the numbers sci-fantasy adventure. Spoilers for the rest of this paragraph if you care? Luke and Leia crash on a mysterious planet on their way to a diplomatic mission, get captured by the Imperials running a mining camp, get bailed out by bruiser alien sidekicks and weird Force grandma, find a magic crystal that enhances the Force in the statue of Not-Cthulhu (to the point where Luke can bring people back to life) that conveniently only works in that area, fight Darth Vader (Leia holds him off for a while and actually gets a couple hits in before some gratuitous torture. Luke wins after being semi-possessed by Obi Wan) by knocking Vader down a hole, they leave to go to the conference. The whole thing only sort of intersects with the wider EU.

As a novel it's passable. I wanted light and easy, and that's what I got. Foster isn't a great writer (at least here, I haven't read much of his other stuff) but he keeps the plot moving. Leia gets almost as much character development here than in the whole original trilogy, though it's basically all about her having PTSD from the first movie. She spends the front half of the book getting treated like a slave, and Luke's a total asshole about it, then Vader tortures her. I don't think Foster quite knows what to do with her, since she bounces from hyper-capable to worthless and abused every three pages. There's a couple fun body horror scenes, and it's interesting to see what Foster does with the still uncodified Force. He really likes the adjective "batrachian," which means "frog like." It's odd that it shows up multiple times in a 150 page long novel, but at least I learned something.

All in all, this is about exactly how I'd expect the EU to start. A traditional, pulpy side story with lots of weird bits. If you like Star Wars (particularly this era) or want to see what the beginnings of Expanded Universes in general look like, it's worth reading. At ~150 very light pages, it won't take long. If you're a 70s pulp sci-fi fan, go for it. If you've never read/seen Star Wars, I wouldn't recommend it as a first taste, and harder/more modern sci-fi fans can probably skip it. 2/5 mediocre writing partially saved by historical significance.

Check out this beautiful Ralph Macquarie cover art:

Thanks Wookiepedia!

April 9– From "New Atlantis" (1626) by Francis Bacon (H is for Hospitality)

 3 hours for a 1992 video game OST!?

 April 9– From "New Atlantis" (1626) by Francis Bacon

Summary:

Commentary: I'm sure this isn't the first "death day" selection we've had, but it's the first I've noticed. Our letter is H for Hospitality, which is what this story is about. It's fascinating to look at how hospitality is often one of the earliest and most important customs developed by cultures, though the traditional "let the traveler in for the night or you'll get smited" meaning has largely fallen by the wayside. Inhospitableness is (probably) the actual sin of Sodom and Gamorrah.

So that finding ourselves, in the midst of the greatest wilderness of waters in the world, without victuals, we gave ourselves for lost men and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to God above, who showeth his wonders in the deep, beseeching him of his mercy, that as in the beginning he discovered the face of the deep, and brought forth dry land, so he would now discover land to us, that we might not perish.

This is the end of the first paragraph of the story. It's an interesting beginning. They just run out of food and give up. They have food for a year, which does seem like a fairly sizable cushion (by my Googling/math the trip would take 2-3 months, 9600 miles at 120 miles a day) but it's still lame that the protagonist and crew just give up 4 sentences in. If you're going to deploy deus ex machina on page one, how do you have dramatics on page one hundred?

They find land and sail there easily (as opposed the the months of sailing in circles/dead wind before), but aren't allowed to land (but can resupply). They negotiate to land (mostly by Bacon cramming "Christianity", "Jesus", and "cross" into the next page as many times as grammatically possible). Hurray, another problem solved by God within a paragraph of introduction!

of somewhat a bluer colour than our brick;

Bacon likes this comparison. We see some parchement that's slightly yellower also.

I do like the expression "twice paid" that the Atlanteans (Bensalemites?) use when the crew tries to tip them. The explanation is that they've already been paid a salary for their service, and that the tip would basically be a bribe.

The narrator (I'm not sure if this is just a first person, or if it's supposed to be Bacon) gives a speech about how they should be good Christians so they don't get kicked off the island, and everyone claps.

Therefore for God's love, and as we love the weal of our souls and bodies, let us so behave ourselves, as we may be at peace with God, and may find grace in the eyes of this people." Our company with one voice thanked me for my good admonition, and promised me to live soberly and civilly, and without giving any the least occasion of offence.

This whole thing reads like one of those Evangelic Harry Potter rewrites. Deliver us from didactism.

 Eventually, we find out the island is named Bensalem. I always assumed that Bensalem was named after Ben Franklin (since the real one is near Philadelphia) but he wouldn't be born for 3/4 of a century after New Atlantis. The town is post-Franklin though, so it's possible it's a case of convergent evolution in naming. The internet seems unsure.

I put almost the same comment in my reading of The Imitation of Christ earlier this year. Bad Christian literature hasn't changed in...ever as far as I can tell. You could modernize the language some (maybe only a little, leave it pseudo-King Jamesy) and put this on a shelf at Waterstones next to Left Behind, and no one would bat an eye. There's a huge demand for books with no functional characters/conflict/setting and poorly written sermons every couple pages, and apparently has been for centuries.

April 7– Assorted Poems by William Wordsworth (~1810) (G is for Goof)

"I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud"

April 7– Assorted Poems by William Wordsworth (~1810)

Summary:

Commentary: Had a little mistake last night, and posted the 8th on the 7th. G is for goofing up!

The hardest part of these collections of a lot of small pieces is finding all of them. Often I wind up adding or dropping one or two, since T5FSOB doesn't pull exactly from an existing collection, and there isn't a super copy and paste friendly version of some of them easily available. I think I got them all right tonight.

I assume I must've read some Wordsworth at some point in college or whatever, but I can't remember any of his poems. 

I enjoyed "To The Daisy" the combination of imagery, whimsy, and appreciation of nature reminds me of sitting out daydreaming in a field in the summer.

A nun demure, of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden, of Love’s court,

In thy simplicity the sport

Of all temptations;

A queen in crown of rubies drest;

A starveling in a scanty vest;

Are all, as seems to suit thee best,

I like his poem on Cuckoos much better than Milton's.

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature’s holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What Man has made of Man?

Be better to each other, mankind!

He really liked writing about birds.

A creature not too bright or good

For human nature’s daily food,

This is like, the opposite of putting her on a pedestal, but in a way raises her up higher.