Slow The World Down!

[ladysprite]

How the hell am I ever supposed to read everything I want to when people keep writing new amazing and fascinating and intriguing books faster than I can catch up, and old ones that I've already read keep drawing me back with their seductive yet comfortingly familiar words?

It's just not fair - every time I read a book, it reminds me of another one that I need to reread, or points me into a genre that I need to explore, or makes me want to go out and hunt down everything that author has ever written, which then leads me off on another tangent until I wind up standing in front of my to-read pile whimpering in a frozen frenzy of indecision.

The local library doesn't help, either. I wander in there full of resolve that this time I'm just going to return the books I took out last week and renew my book-on-tape, but of course in order to do that I have to walk past a display that has, among other things, a paperback copy of 'Flowers for Algernon.' Which a friend of mine just mentioned reading recently, reminding me that I haven't read it in years and need to reread it RIGHT NOW.

Of course, once I've paused, I might as well poke around the stacks for just a minute, which of course traps me in their bait-and-switch plot. No, they don't have the new Jacqueline Carey book on the shelves (because, having finished the last of the Kushiel's Dart series, I must consume her new novel as soon as humanly possible), but while you're waiting, come look at this new shiny short story collection with half a dozen of your favorite authors. And the new Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. And a cookbook of baked goods sorted by flavor. And an entire new section of graphic novels.

Then, back at home with my armload of books, I'm suddenly confronted with the stack next to my desk of books I had planned on reading next - Andre Norton that I haven't read yet, because she's on my mind, a Charles DeLint novel in my collection that I somehow had missed, 'Dead Witch Walking' that I bought around the holidays and just haven't dug down to yet, 'Gone With the Wind' because, well, it's been at least a year since I've read it.

I need to stay unemployed, and just spend the rest of my life curled up on the sofa with a bottomless mug of tea and my books. There's no other possible solution.

Comments

[braider.livejournal.com]

*grin*

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Hey, in a completely different vein, is there a copy of your Italian dance manual available online? Or anything that you'd recommend for late 14th century stuff?

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

I'm working on typing up my translation; I originally translated it longhand, which was easier word-by-word wise but much more slow now that it's done and needs to be transcribed. It should be done in a month or two....

As for a 14th century source, does it need to be Italian, or would any region work? I don't think there are a lot of sources that go back that far, but I can poke around and see.

[siderea]

14th cen? As far as I know the Western Dance World starts in 1450 or so. Nothing before then.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'm looking for the earliest Italian stuff I can find because we intend to make a bold leap of faith from it to a time two millennia ago. We hope that we'll come up with something that a Roman from antiquity wouldn't laugh at. I found some good late 14th and 15th century stuff on the web, mostly SCA sites, but of course I want to incorporate your expertise when it becomes available.

[jducoeur]

Anything from the 14th century is by definition speculative. I know that some of it's out there (I published most of it), but keep in mind that it's *very* loose guesswork at best. As siderea said, we don't have hard information for anything before the mid-15th century.

Leaping from there to many centuries earlier isn't really useful, I'm afraid -- dance tends to change fairly quickly, and beyond a couple of centuries the chances of seeing much that's similar are poor. The examples of dance apparently remaining unchanged over the centuries are often illusory: for example, modern English Country is more a revival of the period form, based on documentation, than a surviving tradition. It's even worse in this particular case: the early SCA stuff is mostly Renaissance Italian, when dance was in deep ferment and changing rapidly. So it's a poor choice for trying to extrapolate backwards.

If you want a recommendation for a couple of millennia go, I'd check out "The Antique Greek Dance", by Maurice Emmanuel (1916, John Lane Co.). The scholarship is pretty dated by now, and it's still deep guesswork based on pictures, so I'd take it with a huge grain of salt, but it's at least from something like the right historical era. I think it's more likely to have relevant ideas than anything you're going to find from SCA period...

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice. I'll see if I can find a copy of that book. I suspect one of my Roman dance reenactor friends may already have it, as we approach this highly speculative idea from lots of different directions. What I'm particularly hoping to come up with are folk dances that people did together, as women and men. Most of the efforts at Roman dance thus far have been dances done by women only. Part of this is because the surviving literature tells us that upper class Roman men Just Did Not Dance, as it was considered beneath their Dignitas. But we know that some, such as Lucius Cornelius Sulla, did dance quite frequently. So I'm working from the idea that the rule was kept as much in the breach as in the keeping. But it's devilish impossible to find anything that they actually danced.

[siderea]

No, they don't have the new Jacqueline Carey book on the shelves

Hello, what? Excuse me, I need to buy a book....

[siderea]

Hardcover only! Poot. Am trying to minimize the mass taken up by books in my apt.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling! I don't even want to think about how many books I have waiting to be read right now...