More of the same.

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Spoilers for vol 10, of course.

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This summary is becoming somewhat nonsensical, but I persevere.

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Here we go! Volume Nine. This one actually felt rather long for the plot. Although it’s in a mystery form, sort of, the best scenes often have nothing to do with the counterfeiting. The book feels really like an ‘in between’ incident. Well, looking at volume ten, it seems more interesting. /forges on.

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I can’t recall who recommended Perfume to me, but it was awhile ago. I ended up, for some reason, reading the Emperor of Scent instead (a non-fiction book about a scientist with a controversial theory of scent). But recently I came across Perfume in a library and picked it up. Perfume, by Patrick Suskind and translated from the German by John E. Woods (I figure with any book where the style is conspicuous, the translator also deserves mention), is the story of a genius perfumer and serial killer, set in 1700s pre-Revolutionary France, and the prose simultaneously flows free and displays both sumptuousness and precision. As I said before, this story is working without a net, as it is essentially a portrait of the sociopathic, inhuman protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille; normally a monster has a foil, but while there are other characters, Grenouille is the one whom we follow around, and whose consciousness is the most dissected. The story is not, really, precisely a realistic one, considering the extremes of the powers of scent Grenouille possess, but the setting is realistically conceived (having read much of this period of French history, I especially enjoyed the details), but takes on a highly… literary? quality, the sense of construction rather than a transparent style of simple description, through the sort of diction used in the text. What’s also notable are the descriptions of the alchemical processes of perfumery (which will probably be of interest to all you BPAL fans out there) and the perverse theories of human behavior implied in the tale.

Before I start, I want to make clear that I’m not an expert. I’m not a programmer or computer professional, just a user. A lot of people have expressed interest in using and customizing Wordpress, so I decided to write this guide. Feel free to ask questions, and I’ll try to answer them.

Installing

To use wordpress, you must know how to use FTP. Knowing how to chmod (change file permissions) also helps for some plugins.

To install Wordpress, you need a webhost which meets certain requirements, namely PHP and MYSQL. Mosts hosts will meet these. Some webhosts have Fantastico, which allows a one-click installation of Wordpress. If you’ve got that, then, just install Wordpress, and go to the customization settings. Yay.

If not, you should follow these instructions. Basically, you must first create a MySQL database, then just alter wordpress file, then run the script. It’s a fairly simple process.

Configuring

Okay, you’ve got wordpress. First, you should login (http://yourblog.com/blog/wp-admin) and start to configure your wordpress.

First, let’s go to Users.

One thing I recommend is turning OFF the rich text editor unless you like to use them. I don’t, because I’m used to just manually typing in links. To do this, go to Users, and find yourself. Go to the Edit page and there should be a box saying “use visual text editor.” Unclick that box.

While you’re on this page, you may want to give yourself a Nickname. Otherwise, any posts that you write will be attributed to Admin. Write a nickname in the box, and Update Profile (click the button). Then, under Display Name Publicly, choose that nickname.

Then, go to Options.

Under General Options, fill in the correct information. Remember to hit the Update Options button so that the changes are registered!

Under Writing Options, you can change the size of the text box you post in (I find the default too small, so I increased it to twenty lines).

Under Discussions, you can change the moderation options. Here you can set whether you are emailed when someone comments, and decide how much comment moderation you want. The default seems to be that you must approve comments before they are displayed, so change that if that’s not what you want.

Privacy determines whether your blog can be crawled by spiders and whether you ping Technorati or not. However, for added security, I suggest using .htaccess.

Now, you can start installing themes.

Themes are like layouts. To get themes, you can go to various sites and download them. This is the official site. Or, there are many recommendation lists.

However, some themes may have problems. They may not be widget-ready, which means that your widgets will not display, and some may not be compatible with some plugins, such as Brian’s Threaded Comments. Others may work in your preferred browser, but not in others. (IE is especially bad in this department, because of a CSS bug)

Once you have found a theme you like, load the folder to wp-content/themes, using FTP. For some themes, additonal menus may now appear under the Presentation category. To customize your sidebar for a widget-ready theme, go to Presentation>Widgets and just drag-click away. You can put text or even Javascript in the Text widget, but to put in PHP code, you must install a plugin.

Okay, now you’ve got a pretty nice looking blog, right? Okay, here comes the exciting part.

Plug-ins

Now, there are many plugins out there, and many sites offering them. There are several things you should keep in mind when installing plugins. Firstly, make sure they’re compatible with the version of WP you’re using. Secondly, sometimes plugins interfere with each other, so you may not be able to use all of the ones you want at once.

Here’s some plug-ins I use.

Akismet: comes bundled with WP. To activate it, you need to register with Wordpress.com and receive an API key (it’s like a string of text). Then activate Akismet in the Plugins menu and input the key. Akismet protects against spam. There are other anti-spam plugins out there, but I haven’t used them.

Brian’s Threaded Comments: This is probably the feature people most miss when leaving LJ. Brian’s threaded comments works, but it is incompatible with some layouts. If you look through my layouts on the theme viewer, you’ll see that some don’t have threaded comments. To install threaded comments, install the plugin normally (put it in the plugins folder), then, VERY IMPORTANT, take the copy of comments.php that comes with the plugin, and REPLACE the comments.php in your current theme (meaning go into wp-content/themes/yourcurrentheme) with the Brian’s Threaded Comments comments.php. Otherwise, this plugin will NOT work. Then, activate the plugin, and configure it under Options, where a new menu will appear. For many themes, it will work, but for others, it will not. I am working on figuring out why this is so, and seeing if I can fix the problem.

Executable PHP Widget: I installed this so I could use PHP in the sidebar. But, this is not a very critical plugin, unless you have a desire to do this.

LJGravatar: A modification of Gravatar which allows you to display LJ usericons. I talked with the plugin author here about it. Also, to use this, you must alter comments.php to put in the code so the gravatar can appear.

LJ crossposter: Allows you to crosspost to LJ. Watch out, though, if you create new categories, it will automatically check them as crosspostable. So, if you only want certain categories of post to be crossposted, make sure you uncheck them.

Simple Tagging: allows you to use tags. Now, LJ also allows tags, but they don’t have categories. Many people use WP’s categories feature to organize their posts, you say, so what do you need tags for? So, if that’s all you need, you might not want to include a tagging plugin. But, I find it useful, because I don’t want to have five bajillion categories. I think of the categories like a Table of Contents, and tags as the index at the back of the book. So I wouldn’t make a catgory called ‘Code Geass’ because I think eventually I stop posting about it, when the show is over. Instead, I make an anime category, and a Code Geass tag. That way I don’t have extreme category multiplication, but I still am able to just click a link to get all the Code Geass posts together.

Wordpress DB Backup: This is a very important plugin which allows you to easily make backups of your database. It’s easy to install and use. You can also schedule backups.

Wordpress OpenID+: This is a fork of the Verselogic OpenID, which I like better because it doesn’t make a new blank; you can just type your LJ URL into the webpage blank, and it will authenticate.

ThemeSwitcher: Not really that useful, but a lot of fun. Lets you change what theme you’re looking at.

WP-Polls: Lets you use polls. Fairly straightfoward to use.

WP-Slimstat: Stats program. Easy to use.

Hints: If you have trouble with a plug-ing, try visiting the webpage, or searching in the wordpress.org forum.

It seems that people have some questions about Saiunkoku.

1. Where can I get the novels and how can I read them?

The novels can be gotten anywhere Japanese books may be found. As for reading them, they’re in Japanese. I hear there are also Chinese translations, but I don’t know Chinese so I have no information about these.

2. Who does Shuurei end up with? Does she marry anyone?

The series is not over yet. So far, Shuurei has not ended up with or married anyone in the novels. Actually, I think that this issue is not going to be resolved until the end of the series, and who knows when that’s going to be.

Okay, there’s more story here, but I’ll be a bit less tl;dr here, because there’s less exposition.

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This is the second gaiden. It features the following stories:

1. First appearance of Ryuuren. Occurs at a different place from where it does, chronologically, in the anime. In the anime, it happens while Shuurei is in the palace, but in the novels, it occurs after she has left, around the time of the exam. Events here are quite different, though. I actually don’t understand why this one was eliminated, because it actually gives a lot of insight into the characters of Ryuuren, and oddly, Reishin, as well as developing Shuuei as a character (as he is somewhat underused, I believe).

2. Story of the Autumn Festival: This *wasn’t* animated. It takes place after Shuurei and Eigetsu have become governors, but before New Year’s, so between books five and six. I actually have to wonder if they’ll animate this as a flashback, because IMHO it gives a lot of important information about the Hyou clan and Hyou Riou (both of them). Actually, I wish they had put this in, because it adds more development to Kokujun, Shunki, and Sai Rin.

3. Post book eight story involving the main principals in that book. Ryuuren takes Shuurei and Eigetsu, with Kourin tagging along, on a tour of the newest tourist spots of the Sa Province capital. Occurs after the main events of book eight. This is a fairly cute story. (Yeah, Ryuuren appears a lot in this gaiden. It’s no coincidence he was on the cover.)

4. A short piece, after the afterword. Read the rest of this entry »

Read this book on the recommendation of a friend of mine. After hearing I was reading the Alexandria Quartet, written by Lawrence Durrell, she had told me that she had read some of his brother’s books. Gerald Durrell grew up in Greece, among other places, and ended up becoming a naturalist, roaming the globe collecting animals. The books are quite deftly written in a sort of old fashioned, British way, and charming. We learn what it’s like to have a marmoset as a housepet, not to overfeed baby hedgehogs, what to do if you are a pit with twelve Gaboon vipers (among the deadliest snakes on the planet), and many other things. Durrell is very good with description, so you get a sense of the varied landscapes through which he travels, and even if you don’t know what the animals look like, they’re easy to imagine from his portraits.

This novel is quite similar in format to the short stories in Lou-Lan, except, obviously, it’s longer. Tun-huang, located in what is today China, but was in olden times on the Chinese frontier, on the Silk Road. During the 20th century, priceless Buddhist scrolls and historical records were found in the Buddhist caves near the city. Inoue imagines the events which might have led up to this. The main character arrives from China, and through a complex series of events, joins the Hsi-Hsian army, fighting against various other groups. As in Lou-lan, the political events are quite confusing. Seen from today’s perspective, the lands and peoples depicted are obscure, and their finery and victories vanished under the sand. Perhaps because I read the author’s short story collection on similar themes, and also because there was far less discussion of Buddhism than I thought there would be, I didn’t read this book with as much gusto as I did his short story collection, but it is still worth reading for the unusual setting.

Finished This Scheming World, by Saikaku Ihara, but now I want to read it again. I have always meant to read Saikaku, but have never known where to start out. So I grabbed this book because it looked short. If I read a long book, I would feel compelled to finish it, even if I disliked it. This book not really like a novel as we traditionally understand it, but more of a set of short sketches and episodes featuring various sorts of townspeople during the Edo period in the 1600s, on New Year’s day. I read this in translation (I would be unable to read this in the original, because it’s not modern Japanese), but even there, a strong, strangely light-hearted (even when describing rather depressing things) voice emanates from the work. It feels in a way quite medieval, as it describes a world full of, well, worldliness, the vicissitudes of fortune, and folly. Now, when you think Japanese New Year’s, you envision the stack of mochi topped with an orange, visits to the shrine, snow and chill, ozoni soup, osechi-ryori, kadomatsu, mochi pounding, family visits, and in general, a mood of reflection, somber and cheerful at once.

Well, actually that mood comes through a bit in This Scheming World (there are some interesting details, like the fact that it was traditional for people to put Ise lobsters out with the mochi to welcome the gods. A lobster is mentioned as lasting two weeks, which confuses me; there are also many fascinating details of daily life), but during the Edo Period, the New Year had another meaning: it was the time when debt collectors came pounding on their door, because (I gather) it was their last chance to collect debts, and otherwise they would often just cancel them. So while the rich spent this time squabbling over their social obligations (as New Year’s is also a time to give gifts to people), the poor and financially struggling spent their time scheming to avoid bill collectors and thinking up schemes for making money. So in the end, actually many of the stories revolve around money, appropriate for the world of the townspeople, where money was how one climbed to the top of the ladder. (Rather than artistic refinement or military valour).

Finished reading this collection by Takashi Atoda. These short stories have a decidedly more contemporary air to them than most of the other books I’ve been reading lately; most are Showa era, and even then, the stories set in the past are moved there via reminiscence. (A frequent theme is a character recalling their childhood vividly, reflecting on what is lost from the past, and accepting its transience) The settings are generally realistic, although there are some horror-esque twist endings, which I cannot give away for fear of spoiling them, and a few fanciful tales, although IMHO, these are the weaker stories. On the back cover, Atoda is described as a “popular” novelist, and I suppose this means that his stories are not exceedingly enigmatic, although a few stories end on a deliberately open note, and many are more straightfowardly and wholesomely emotional than certain high literature works. Although the note also says that the stories do have more “human warmth” than Kawabata, I suppose I’d characterize them more as being (as far as I can feel style in translation) much more stylistically subdued than Kawabata, although the writer does move in some stories towards heavy aesthetic description. (extreme austerity sometimes becomes almost ostentatious?)

I rather like the opening of this novel, by Natsume Soseki: “if one lives by the intellect, one grows harsh. If one lives by one’s feelings, one is swept away, and by pride, one is confined, in any case, it is not easy to live in the human world.”

I read it in English, but maybe I should have stretched and tried the Japanese: “智に働けば角が立つ。情に棹させば流される。意地を通せば窮屈だ。とかくに人の世は住みにくい。

I expected the rest of the novel to be an illustration of this, but unfortunately (okay, not really), it’s mostly a meditation about aesthetics, in which the narrator (a painter wandering around in the Japanese countryside) stays at a hot springs inn near a temple and a village in 1906; the Japanese-Russo War is in the background. He converses frequently with the strange and individual daughter of the landlord. The narrator insists that art must remain objective, and praises the objectivity of nature (so this reminded me of Doi’s Anatomy of Dependence, in that the charm of nature is located partially in its inhumanity), which interested me because I was reading something about John Gardner, who insists that literature where we don’t enter in the feelings of the characters suffers from the flaw of frigidity. Indeed, although the narrator insists that the novel is a low form because it’s gossipy and concerned with the self-interests of the characters, there’s nothing like that for getting people interested in reading a story. Anyway, this book probably isn’t a good way to start out Soseki, as it is largely devoid of incident, although quite well-written, and filled with outstanding natural descriptions; I suggest Kokoro if you want to be depressed, and Botchan, if you want to be somewhat more amused.

Finished reading this short story collection by Yasushi Inoue, and I liked it quite a bit. It’s fairly traditional in style, historically based, and the prose in many of them doesn’t have that overt “this was translated from the Japanese” feel, perhaps because many of the stories don’t take place in Japan. The doorway to the past in these stories is archaeological and historical: each story contains artifacts, or is written from the perspective of the present day, so the gap in time is tangible. The first story, Lou-Lan (楼蘭）, is written in the style of a history, dramatizing the sad history of the tiny city state on the shores of the Lop-Nur, caught between the Hsiang-nu (a powerful nomadic confederation. I think they’re also known as the Huns) and Han dynasty China. Loulan is forced to throw in its lot with one or the other, and suffers greatly in the process; the fluctuations of the desert eventually bury the lush lakeside city in sand, until the present day, when it is rediscovered. The most powerful story, I felt, was the last one, set in 1600s Japan, which tells of the “tradition” of abbots sailing to Fudaraku (a divine isle in the Pure Land), which reads almost like a horror story.