books wot it bought today

I am in such a state over having posted the Cadman fic, my first really long and endlessly-revised and properly-betaed and non-experimental and emotionally-involved fic I've posted in years. Desert Prince is probably the last, and that wasn't finished, and before that When in Malta.

Anyway, what I was going to say is that I am in such a state over it (and it doesn't help having posted last thing at night which led to me waking up early and lying there and thinking 'I need to change that pronoun' and 'I need to switch around that proper noun' and 'I want to substitute 'being in a state' for 'being rattled', the adjective I spent quite some time last night hunting for in thesaurical lists and that suddenly came to me at 6 a.m.), ... where was I?

I am in such a state over this fic that I am not even daring to look at my Friends List or my Recent Comment lists or my email in case I discover the absence or presence of feedback, ack. I am floating along in willed ignorance, doing procrastinatory and substitutive tasks such as reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and buying second-hand books at Browne's and the Amnesty Bookshop.

And David Mitchell! I must resurrect my DM icon because this is a thing I also get into a complete state over: new David Mitchell novels. I did this when Cloud Atlas came out, and now I'm doing it again for Black Swan Green. I bought that book about ten days ago but I haven't dared open it; I've been reading all sorts of other things and just glancing at the book out of the corner of my eye, and then three nights ago I read the first 2 pages in a kind of breathless pretense-of-not-reading-at-all, without a bookmark. Today I started it again and I can almost not see the words I am in such a state. I am willing myself into calm appreciation, trying to evaluate in a rational manner the authorial devices used and the narrative strategies and the way paragraphs break and how descriptions of weather are used -- but all the while my pulse is palpitating. It is really quite absurd. I loved Cloud Atlas so much that I actually haven't been able to re-read it, and then, a dread at the back of my mind, I think, 'Maybe I'm dreading re-reading because it won't be any good second time round? Maybe it's all a nothing??' This is also the dread of Black Swan Green: what if I don't like it?? Oh, the psycho-ways of the brain.

If there's anyone whose style I aspire to it's David Mitchell.

But, on a less cathected note: books wot i bought today

• Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels (introduced by our friend Phil Hensher!)

• The Abduction of Sita, a Penguin epic (now what is that for a clever marketing ploy?), an extract from the Ramayana, modern prose version of R.K. Narayan) (I love the Ramayana. I saw it as a child, the four-night long version as performed in song and dance in front of the Prambanan temple in Yogyakarta in Indonesia; it was absolutely out of this world; the monkey king Hanuman was my first hero and lust object; this, dear reader, is how I knew I was straight by the tender age of five)

• Benito Pérez Galdós, Fortunata and Jacinta (19th C. Spanish novel of two women who love one man, one's the wife, the other's the mistress -- part of my reading-19th-C-novel project and also, hey two birds one stone, part of my reading-world-literature project!)

• Ursula K. LeGuin, Malafrena (I went through a LeGuin binge late last year and rediscovered why I love her. What a mistressful story-teller and gorgeous imaginer of intricate sexualities.)

• Raymond Queneau, Exercices de style!!!! Yes, *waves it at sheldrake*, I found it for one pound 50 second-hand in French! *falls over* Fodder for stylistic madness galore!

• Alan Garner, Red Shift. *waves it at sophrosyne31* I found it! Not in Borders but at Amnesty for one pounderoony and fifty pencitos! And guess who endorses it as 'brilliant' on the front cover? Heh, Ursula LeGuin. My authors are talking to each other.

• Chekhov, Lady with Lapdog and other stories It's an odd thing but I don't read many short stories off-line. This is curious because, of course, I spend my fannish print-out-reading life reading almost nothing but short stories of the fanfic variety. So I thought to sharpen the critical faculties and the writerly muscle, I'd read some publshortstories. Also, it's the 19th C. (birds, stone). Also, this is what sold me: One of the stories of 1889 is called A Boring Story. *waves at orlisbunny and brightest_blue and any other member of the boring!club* So it can be research, haha, for Boring!Orli. *sporfles* Chekhov wrote of this story, as I gleaned from the Penguin edition's Intro, that he had never written anything like it before. So: experimental writing is us!

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret. Because the chapter I am currently completing of my tobepublbook is on crime and clues in the 19th C. and this is a best-selling sensational novel of crime and murder of 1862.

• Philp Roth, The Plot Against America. Not a book wot i bought but a friend lent it to me and it's on the same pile of to-be-read books.

And now I must ponder the Herculean decision: to go back to my desk and write more on crime and clues? Or to brave the lion's den, grasp the thistle and the nettle and so forth, and actually look at my Cadman fic post? And add in those pronouns?

Um. I'm opting for murder. *runs away*

P.S. David Mitchell

I uploaded my David Mitchell icon.

Crime, here I come!