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PH 7 (Fanfic) - Octopath Traveler II (Video Game), よるのないくに | Yoru no Nai Kuni | Nights of Azure (Video Games) + additional fandoms

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1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
   
   (I pulled everything from my physical TBR bookcase, in hopes that it will encourage me to read it.)


2. Book #1 -- first sentence: "Anyone can write about a large city--large cities are open to everyone--but small cities can only be portrayed by people who love them."
   
   (Already ambiguities: I skipped the preface because this line is better.)


3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty: "However, I haven't yet read V.W.'s book."


4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred: "What amazing childishness these old people were content to live in!"
   
   (Unexpected challenge: do I pick the second sentence or the second complete sentence?)


5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty: "'I know.' Verna dropped the packages. A hard, harsh sob pressed at her throat. 'I hate him.' "
   
   (Yes, I am treating one paragraph of dialog plus action as a single sentence for the purposes of the meme. Fight me!)


6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book: "Eunice picked up her bag and guitar and closed the door to the storm."


7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:
   
   

   Anyone can write about a large city--large cities are open to everyone--but small cities can only be portrayed by people who love them. However, I haven't yet read V.W.'s book. What amazing childishness these old people were content to live in! 'I know.' Verna dropped the packages. A hard, harsh sob pressed at her throat. 'I hate him.' Eunice picked up her bag and guitar and closed the door to the storm.

   
   
   I promise it wouldn't make any more sense if I chose another option for step 5.

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/waltons-lent/

https://languagehat.com/?p=19705

Anatoly Vorobey posted at FB (in Russian) about a novel I’d never heard of; I’ll translate what he wrote:

Jo Walton is a contemporary writer of fantasy and science fiction whom I have not read until now. Lent is a book set in Florence at the end of the 15th century, and its protagonist is a Dominican monk. The first part of the book—a pretty substantial chunk—is virtually indistinguishable from a historical novel (and a very good one, to my taste), containing almost nothing “fantastic”; but then, something happens… it would be too much of a spoiler to say more than that.

An interesting and original idea, wonderful prose—and, most importantly, in terms of the quality of its historical immersion, the book occasionally reaches the level of Patrick O’Brian (the highest possible praise from me). That said, there are some serious flaws—for instance, […], […], and even […]—but to my mind they didn’t outweigh the charm of this novel. Recommended: 4/5.

As you can imagine, that impelled me to read it, and having finished it, I’m in something of a quandary. Like Anatoly, I don’t want to spoil the plot turn, and like him I was somewhat let down by what followed it, but the first 40% (I read it on my Kindle) is so spectacularly good I’m eager to recommend it. He compares Walton to O’Brian, I’ll compare her to Hilary Mantel — I haven’t been so immersed in a carefully worked-out Renaissance environment since Wolf Hall. Furthermore, the portrait of Savonarola (for he is the Dominican monk in question) is as convincing as Mantel’s of Cromwell or Merezhkovsky’s of Machiavelli; for the first time I find myself feeling actual sympathy for that much-maligned fanatic. And it is a sterling example of religious sf/fantasy, not the most common subgenre; I would put it up there with A Case of Conscience and A Canticle for Leibowitz, though pretty much any seriously Christian reader is going to find it heretical, I fear. (The word apocatastasis crops up more than once!) All I can do is quote a couple of paragraphs from chapter 2 to give you a sense of the style and let you decide whether to give it a try:

APRIL 4TH, 1492

April morning sunlight falls on Girolamo’s desk as he makes notes for his next sermon. The heady fragrance of blossoming hazel wafts in through the window. He has been chosen to preach the Lenten sermons in San Lorenzo this year—a great honour, and a tribute to his powers of oratory. He has to admit that producing and delivering sermons daily for forty days does put a strain on him. Lent follows Carnival and goes on until Easter. It is the end of winter and the beginning of spring; it always feels like the longest season of the church’s year. He smothers a yawn. After the exorcisms he went straight to Dawn Praise, then slept for three hours before First Prayer at six in the morning. Then at nine he was preaching to a packed church in San Lorenzo. Now he needs to write another sermon for tomorrow. He has to force himself to concentrate on his work.

He has been taught how to put a sermon together—it was literally beaten into him at Bologna. Yet time after time God speaks to him in the pulpit and he finds himself extemporising. He knows it is a sin—and yet he wonders. How can it be a sin to speak of the future without premeditation when God shows it to him so clearly? He sometimes wishes God would reveal what is to come at quiet times, when he could better consider when or whether to share the vision. In the pulpit, speaking, it is easy to be carried away by his own emotion, and the emotion of the enthusiastic congregation. It isn’t easy to be politic. He has a reprimand on his desk from Brother Vincenzo, First of the Lombard Congregation of Dominicans, his direct superior. It is a letter which he must answer, humbly, once the sermon for tomorrow is written. And tomorrow he should definitely read his sermon as written, and not get into more pulpit dialogues with God. Yet the people like it, and God obviously likes it or He wouldn’t encourage it.

And here’s a Hattic bit from the author’s notes at the end:

I have chosen to use English words when I can, to give the kind of clarity lost by keeping terms in Italian—thus Senatorial Palace, Mercenary Captain, First Brother, instead of Palazzo della Signoria, condottiore, Prior. Similarly I am using Florence rather than Firenze. The reason for this is that unknown words lend distancing and exoticising. Sometimes you want that, here I wanted to minimize it as much as possible. The Signoria isn’t precisely a senate, but it’s not some weird unique thing either. They thought of themselves as being just like the senate of Ancient Rome. Maya Chhabra helped with getting Italian names right.

I have also simplified things—Fra Angelico’s name was Guido di Piero, Angelico was a nickname. Similarly, Leo’s name was Giovanni. Leo was a nickname before he chose it as his papal name. Ten percent of men in Florence in the period were called Giovanni, because John the Baptist was Florence’s patron saint. I have tried to simplify this by using Gianni for Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Gio for Lucrezia Salviati’s son, Johannes for Bentivoglio, and sticking with surnames as much as possible. If you see “Giovanni” generally you know it means Pico. I have left out tons of people to keep the cast of characters possible to manage. I have also simplified the description of how the government of Florence worked before Savonarola’s reforms—the senate wasn’t always seventy, it was of different sizes at different times, and there were other councils, and it’s all more complex than you can possibly imagine. The utterly strange system of drawing eight names from a purse and shutting the chosen men into the palace for two months where they rule the state from splendid isolation is what they really did. It’s no weirder than other procedures republics have chosen to attempt to prevent tyranny. Savonarola’s sermons on political reform survive.

I guess what I’ll do is allow discussion of any and all aspects of the novel in the comments, and suggest that those who want to read it unspoiled stay out of the thread until they have done so. If you have any interest in Renaissance Italy, you shouldn’t miss this book.

https://languagehat.com/waltons-lent/

https://languagehat.com/?p=19705