Reading/Watching Log #7

I managed to get a lot of reading in during the month of July, making a (reasonably) significant dent in my giant TBR pile. There was no general theme to my reading material, with a bunch of fairly obscure stuff I picked up at the latest school book sale. I finally got The Time Traveller's Wife under my belt, and I ended up watching a trio of anime films thanks to a themed display at my library. And if you've never heard of The Children Who Chase Lost Voices before – well, you can thank me after you've seen it.

Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip

Reading Patricia McKillip is like sliding into a hot bath – or diving into a cool lake. Her earlier work has incredibly dense prose, but later books have mellowed out a little to balance her trademark writing style with stories you don't have to read at least three times to fully fathom.

With Kingfisher she tackles the imagery and symbolism of Arthurian legend – specifically the Grail Romances, setting the basic plotlines in a modern day setting of coastal towns and fishing villages (particularly inns and restaurants) and reshaping some of the familiar story beats into a fresh narrative.

Here you'll find subterranean pools, roadside shrines and solemn processions, as well as the archetypal figures of questing knights, wounded kings, unattainable maidens and seductive sirens. Though it never explicitly links itself to the Arthurian cycle, the inspiration is obvious – and the more familiar you are with the legends, the more you'll enjoy what this book offers.

New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear

Like McKillip, books by Elizabeth Bear are written with prose that demands your full attention. Whereas McKillip's is just this side of purple, Bear's is an odd mix of sparse and detailed: she'll tell you what kind of tea her protagonist is drinking, but you'll have to read carefully to discern what they're thinking.

This is a collection of short stories set in an alternative history of1899, in which a steam-punkish New Amsterdam is still a colony of the British Empire (you can tell it's an AU by the fact the first story takes place in a zeppelin).

Each story blends politics and murder with a dash of the supernatural, in which Detective Abigail Garrett and Sebastian de Ulloa team up in order to solve mysteries. Oh, and Abigail is a sorceress while Sebastian is a centuries-old vampire. It's a bit of an odd mix, especially for a collection of short stories, but they're inventive and intriguing. A fun time was had by all, and Bear really does have some neat ideas when it comes to spell-casting.

Brethren by Robyn Young

Everyone has particular periods of history that are of especial interest to them: mine are the Salem Witch Hunts, the Renaissance and the Crusades. Throw in the Knights Templar and a few Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracies and I'm hooked.

It's a fairly straightforward recounting of the lead-up to the Eighth Crusade, with the story spanning the years 1260 to 1272, focused predominately on Will Campbell, a young man with ambitions to join the Knights Templar before he's drawn against his will into the inevitable secret conspiracy. (Name any conspiracy ever theorised and the Knights Templar will be involved somehow).

It rolls along at a speedy pace, but the characterization is a little flat, with dastardly villains, rather hapless heroes, and attitudes about war and love that are way too anachronistic even for my generous suspension of disbelief. It wasn't until I had finished that I realized it was the first in a trilogy, but I enjoyed it enough to seek out its sequel: Crusade.

Walter de la Mare's Stories for Children by Walter de la Mare

I was mostly familiar with de la Mare through his poetry, and when I glimpsed his name on a book of children's stories, I was intrigued. Turns out I wouldn't ever read this to a child: not only are they very long, but have an uncomfortable tonal mix of strange and sentimental.

They're also pretty dated – for example, the little black boy who desperately tries to become white because he's so bullied. The narrative is squarely on his side, but it's horribly condescending throughout. Then there's the story of the six children who go to live with their grandmother, only to inexplicably disappear one by one into an old chest, never to be seen again. And the little girl who is offered immortality by her three hundred year old grandmother, only to flee in terror back to her mother. Definitely one of the stranger anthologies I've read in my life.

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Published over ten years ago, I'm finally jumping on the bandwagon. My main point of interest in this novel was that I knew it heavily inspired the Doctor/River Song relationship on Doctor Who, with the book even making a cameo appearance in the Tardis at one point. Moffat was clearly a fan, and it's easy to see how his imagination was piqued by the timey-wimey element of this story.

As it happens, I was more interested in the science-fiction element of the story than the romance. Niffenegger comes up with a winning premise in which a man born with a bizarre genetic disorder is sporadically "displaced" throughout time – moving backwards into his past and forward into his future without the ability to control where or when he goes. There's a lot of fun moments that are staple of the time-travel genre, in which events that initially don't make much sense are given greater context later in the story.

Yet the novel is classified as a romance, despite the love between Henry and Clare having the same fundamental problem I had with the Doctor and River: they fall in love because their time-travelling antics have given them foreknowledge that they'll fall in love, not because of any organic bond between them. Of course, the logistics of time travel and love is a futile thing to complain about, but I never felt particularly invested in their romance – and at times it skirts pretty close to rather dodgy territory, what with an adult Henry visiting Clare while she's still a child.  

Ghostbusters (1984)

About a week before Ghostbusters opened in New Zealand, the original aired on television (because believe it or not, the existence of the latest movie doesn't destroy the existence of the old one!)

It's held up well (even the special effects) though the most impressive thing about it is the balance of horror and comedy: the scene in which hands rip out of Sigourney Weaver's sofa is just as terrifying as the jokes are funny. Not too many movies can pull that off.

That said, I'm not entirely sure what it is about this movie that made so many guys completely lose their minds over the thought of a remake. It's most iconic moment – the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man – is also the weakest part of the story, and the resolution on the whole rather anti-climactic.

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

On the one hand, I can fully grasp the emotional and artistic brilliance of this movie. On the other, a part of me wonders why I spent an hour and thirty minutes watching a film about a boy and his little sister slowly succumbing to malnutrition and starvation. For all of Miyazaki's anti-war themes, nothing he's done is as devastating as Isao Takahata's depiction of Japan in the midst of WWII. A bombing raid deprives Seita and Setsuko of their mother, forcing them to fend for themselves.

The adults they come across are either callous or indifferent, food is increasingly scarce, and the two seem unaware of how utterly vulnerable they are. Watch it and be completely shattered.

The Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011)

I was expecting this to be Studio Ghibli-lite, and yet it ended up being my favourite of the three animes I watched this month. Director Makoto Shinkai was certainly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's dreamlike landscapes, hefty themes and unusual plotting – if I didn't know any better, I say it was one of the master's movies.

Three characters drive the storyline of The Children: Asuna, a young schoolgirl who takes on household responsibilities in the absence of her deceased father, substitute teacher Mr Morisaki who hopes to resurrect his lost love, and Shin, a young man who emerges from the underground realm of Agartha in search of his missing brother. All three lives are defined by loss, and themes of grief and death permeate the story as they begin their journey down into Agartha – a place of stunning and serene beauty.

It's a movie that you simply have to sit back and let soak into you. It's long, even meandering at times, but it's an experience akin to watching Princess Mononoke for the first time: completely engrossing.

The Wind Rises (2013)

There's a chance I would have enjoyed Miyazaki's last film (or so he says) if I had known it was based on a real person. Jiro Horikoshi was a gifted aeronautics engineer who designed many of the war planes used by the Japanese air force, and this is an account of his youth, career, and marriage.  There are plenty of Miyazaki staples here, such as a beautiful love interest with tuberculosis and a cautionary anti-war message.

There's no fantasy element whatsoever, unless you count Jiro's recurring dreams of the Italian Caproni, another famous aeronautic engineer, and Miyazaki can't resist a completely fabricated love story between Jiro and Naoko that ends in a typically bittersweet way. It's as beautiful as you'd expect from Studio Ghibli, but the subject matter (romance in the time of planes) didn't really grab me.