The Mandelbear's Musings

For some reason I'm feeling absolutely exhausted. It's also possible -- likely, even -- that I've had a little too much coffee. The fact that my current cup of it has a little Frangelico in it may help, but probably not enough.

Meanwhile the song I've been working on is threatening to become a rhymed sestina, and to turn from a song into poetry of the most intimate sort. I shall probably be forced to fork it. The form intrigues me greatly, though; the Wikipedia article points to a wonderful example[pdf] that expounds on its underlying group theory. (Aside: go check out today's xkcd. Not as far off-topic as one might think.)

My mind seems to make a fairly strong distinction between song lyrics and poems. Some poems can be set to music -- I've done it -- but they tend to remain recognizably poems.

Meanwhile, I'm about 2/3 of the way through The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears, a book which presents its own fascinating difficulties for me. You see, it's historical fiction. In science fiction and fantasy, the genres that I'm comfortably familiar with, you can generally count on the author to give you all the information you need to make sense of the book. You are, after all, a guest in the author's private world: it's the author's job to make you feel at home there, at least by the time you get to the end.

The problem with historical fiction is that you're not in the author's private world: you're in this world's past. And history has been a subject I've mostly avoided, in my past. So there's always the question, when I run across a character or an incident in the book, of just how much is history and how much is fiction. And there's always the question of whether I'm missing something important by not knowing. As a result, I find myself spending a good deal more time in Wikipedia than I do with most of the novels I've read. Fascinating in its own right, if somewhat dangerous.

I can't decide whether the organization described in this article from Ireland Online is misguided, stupid, or willfully ignorant, but they appear to be completely serious.

A group of Christians determined to address what they claim are the myths of The Da Vinci Code are to offer the Irish public a mental health warning on the film before it hits cinema screens.

Hope Ireland, made up of Catholics and Protestants, will run an information campaign in a bid to expose author Dan Brown\u2019s best-seller as nothing but cunning fiction.

The group, supported by Church of Ireland and Catholic clergy and members of the secretive Opus Dei organisation, claims The Da Vinci Code does not know where the boundaries between truth and invention lie.

Which part of "fiction" didn't they understand? (From Gary McGath.)