Bookthoughts, a funny, and a photo.

Posted by: Redhead on: August 15, 2012

• In: for the love of reading | Guy Gavriel Kay
• 28 Comments

No review for you this evening, but hopefully my post will still be entertaining.

I’m about half way through Guy Gavriel Kay’s A Song for Arbonne (working my way up to Under Heaven). It’s been about ten years since I read this, and it’s just a beautiful as I remember. It’s a long, rather dense book, but oh is it amazing. If you’ve never read Kay, I highly suggest starting for A Song for Arbonne, or The Lions of Al-Rassan.

There’s a tiny little scene, about half way through, in a tavern, during a country fair, where some foreign traders challenge the local musicians for a song. It’s a fairly tense scene, and everyone knows that war is on the horizon. I’ll go into it in further detail when I write the review, but understand that in the country of Arbonne, music is everything.  And most of their music is of the romantic / love song variety. So this elder musician gets up, apologizes in advance that he isn’t going to play a love song, and plays an older piece, about a famous musician of Arbonne who had traveled north and was missing his homeland. After finishing the song, the musician then states that he did in fact, play a love song.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen the movie The Sound of Music. Yes, that old Julie Andrews movie. You know that scene, near the end, at the music festival, where Captain Von Trapp plays Edelweiss*? When I was a preteen, I fell head over in heels in love with Christopher Plummer** thanks to that scene. When I got a little older, and understood what that scene was actually about, I cried right along with him. It’s that kind of love song that the elder musician is playing in the scene I described above. And he is singing it in a similarly tense political environment as well.

Speaking of love stories, I happened to be reading A Song for Arbonne while at dinner at restaurant. The waitress says “what are you reading?” and not wanting to get into it (because I’d just read the above mentioned scene and was feeling a little raw) I simply said “oh, something old”. She said she’d recently had a birthday and had received the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, and even though she didn’t usually read romances, she was really enjoying it. The woman at the next booth saved me having to respond by turning right around and gushing that she too was reading 50 Shades, and wasn’t it, like, the best thing, ever? And, since she had just started dating a new fellow, she had asked him if he’d want to try some of the things in the book! The fellow she was sharing a table with visibly blushed, so I’m assuming he’s the guy she asked to tie her up and whip her.*** Dessert, anyone?

The gal at the table and the waitress are going on and on about how they wish whats-his-face Grey was real, and that he sounds so sexy, and that ohmygod it’s like such a good love story!

I interrupt their valleygirlish conversation with “it’s not a love story”. And receive in response a curt “no, it really is.” Ok, I admit it, I ain’t no 50 Shades expert, I’ve only read the cliffsnotes****. But sweetheart, if you want a love story, I got two words for you. Ok, it turns out I got four words. The first is Edelwiess, and the next three are Guy. Gavriel. Kay. Yeah yeah, I was the conversation killer. But I kinda wanted my check so I could get outta there.

So there’s your funny. And here’s your photo. Sorry it’s blurry, I took it “in the wild”, and had to wait till the clerks deserted that particular aisle in the bookstore. And yes, I’m bragging. Cuz i’m just an attention whore like that. 😉

*thanks IMDB, for wrecking my fantasy. It’s not him signing, and he didn’t even like the song.

**interesting. I think I just figured out why I have a thing for older men, and a thing for men in Uniform.

*** Fellas, now really. Is that a turn on? When a girl you’ve been on 2 dates with asks you to spank and whip her because she wants you to be just like whats-his-face Grey (a fictional character who has commitment issues)?

****Sorry Trev, I didn’t give those ladies the website for the what is now going to be known as The 50 Shades cliffsnotes. Although I really wanted to!

Tags: books, romance