Those who follow grahamsleight on Twitter will already be aware of this, but: he took a tumble while getting off his train this morning, and his broken his leg. He's now in ward T1 at University College Hospital (first floor, and -- use this information wisely -- bedside phone number apparently 07081 396234), where he is likely to be staying for a couple of days. He reports that visitors are very welcome, except between noon and 2pm. His iPhone battery is low, but so far as I can tell his spirits are good, considering.

EDIT: Further update here.

Poll #1467130
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 59

New Doctor Who logo

Blackberries

Raising the retirement age

This year's Booker shortlist

Google Wave

Quiche

Octocon

Doing a GOOD or BAD poll while ninebelow is away and cannot participate

New FTC guidelines on blogging

A new regime of early starts

Michael Tomasky

Stargate Universe

Glee

This

The thing that Niall meant to put in this poll but forgot

An extraordinary novel in many ways, one of which is the way in which I think this, from Rosemary Ashton's introduction to the current Penguin Classic edition, is dead wrong:

We have seen that Lydgate's own ideal of womanhood is damagingly limited and egotistical. So too is Casaubon's ... Yet there is some authorial ambivalence here. Just as, while criticizing Lydate's expectations of a wife, George Eliot seems also to blame Rosamond for not putting her husband's view and needs before her own, so with Dorothea she moves between sharp satire of Mr Casaubon's requirement of complete devotion in a wife and warm authorial endorsement of Dorothea's desire to serve her husband selflessly. (xvii)

I don't think there is any ambivalence here: all are being judged by the same criteria, which is the extent to which they are able to enter imaginatively into other's lives. Lydgate, Casaubon and Rosamond are criticized for (in different ways) failing to do so, or doing so only to a limited extent; Dorothea is praised because she does so, even though it is in many cases to excess.

The great strength of the book, of course, is the astonishingly generous omniscient voice in which it is told, which has time for every character's particular desires, and (though it chides) has sympathy with every one of its inhabitants. More people, I want to say, should write omniscient voice like this, and this well. The voice enables some of the things I enjoyed most about the novel -- its wit, and its social acuity -- things which, it strikes me, are what Jane Austen fans say they get from her writing, but which I have never been able to find there. For me, in fact, the voice was often the most compelling thing about the book; Ashton is right that

[Ladislaw] is the least successfully imagined character in the novel, partly because he is obliged by e plot to be rootless and have mysterious origins, and to function as a handsome, youthful foil to his fading older cousin Casaubon. (xv)

-- with the result that his relationship with Dorothea is supremely unconvincing (if entirely predictable; I'm a little astonished that Jo Walton can write "I defy anyone to guess what’s going to happen in Middlemarch, even from half way through", because it's blindingly obvious that Dorothea is going to end up in a suitable marriage at the end of the book, it being unthinkable that she might live happily as an independent; the only questions are ones of detail, exactly how the marriage is going to happen), although he's not the least interesting character: that would be Bulstrode, most of whose chapters nearly put me to sleep.

I wonder whether that voice isn't ultimately a vice disguised as a virtue, in some ways; its message is -- quite rightly -- that we can never know the full circumstances of anything, never know another person entirely, but its existence undermines that message. Makes it a bit too comfortable. Although this was never a book where I sank through the page. I think that was in part because for all the precise delineation of the various relationships -- Rosamond and Lydgate's marriage is the best, because it would have been so easy to make one or other of them unambiguously the villain; this is where the narrator's limitless sympathy and empathy are most admirable, and the hard edge to their ending feels right -- the geography of the setting was more than a little vague. Every time I thought I'd worked out where one place was in relation to another, I would be (it seemed) contradicted, and my inhabitance of the book disturbed. Yes, reader, I wanted a map!

But it's a book I will probably return to in five or ten years, nevertheless.

Testing a mobile LJ client...

For those who missed it last night: the 2009 Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist.

At the weekend, concern was expressed that I hadn't run a GOOD or BAD poll for a while. There was a fear that people might have gotten out of the habit of making arbitrary judgements. Hence: a new year treat for you all! Don't think, just click.

Poll #1325707
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 85

Bringing your own tankard to a party

Heritage beards

Needing to fill out a form to apply for a form

Mathcore

New Shoe Rock

"Xakus's kicking feet disappeared. The lips of the vegetative tube squelched shut. Jelly glistened. The flaps quivered like an epileptic vulva".

German sausage coated with so much pepper it makes your taste buds explode

Spaghetti Hoops

Final Fantasy XII

End-of-year lists

Naming bands after Italian restaurants

The '90s being almost two decades ago

Fibreoptic Christmas trees

Pride & Prejudice

CHEEEESE

But for this, I will make an exception.

Poll #1229576
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 80

Neal Stephenson

Following on from a mutually surprising discussion last weekend:

Poll #1229575
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 70

What is Neal Stephenson's best book?

What is Neal Stephenson's worst book?

Justification in the comments welcomed.

To be clear: I have not watched "Journey's End" yet, because bibliolicious is out at a gig this evening. But I wouldn't wish to deprive anyone of poll-clicking fun, and anyway I'm planning to pretty much avoid the internet for the next 24 hours, so:

Poll #1218259
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

Partners in Crime

The Fires of Pompeii

Planet of the Ood

The Sontaran Stratagem

The Poison Sky

The Doctor's Daughter

The Unicorn and the Wasp

Silence in the Library

Forest of the Dead

Midnight

Turn Left

The Stolen Earth

Journey's End

Season 4 overall?

Best season?

Feel free to link to your Who posts in the comments. Actually, that would be really helpful, because by the time I get around to watching the episode any relevant posts will probably be buried at about skip=300, and thus difficult to find.