It's been a while since I commented, but I can't not comment on this book. I've mentioned how part of the joy of the Tiffany books for me is that my mother grew up on the Chalk, near the White Horse and the Giant and all that, and those books tie me to her childhood. Raising Steam does much the same thing for my father -- he grew up in Yorkshire, and his great-uncle worked on the last steam locomotive out of the Doncaster ironworks. The Simnels speak like my father's family.

My dad's an aviation engineer who designed jet engines before he retired, but I often wonder if that's only because steam was dying as he came of age. He was a proper trainspotter, of the anorak-and-notebook variety, in his youth; my fondest memory of him is from when I was eight, chasing a steam train all over the North of England, catching glimpses of the cloud she made over various hills and never quite catching up. We'd left my mum and sister behind, and he let me navigate from the map. By then, he'd already taught me how to identify all the bits that go into a steam locomotive and how everything worked together.

So I have a lot of affection for steam locomotives. And, whatever else Pratchett did with this book, one thing that is purely perfect is the sense of noise and power, and of the sheer beauty of a well-made machine that really does live and breathe. The wonder in Pratchett's prose as he he describes Iron Girder is exactly the wonder that I feel standing on the platform at York* next to my dad, watching the Flying Scotsman or the Duchess of Sutherland come puffing into the station, and then waiting, barely restrained, to take off again down the track.

*One of the marvels of Victorian architecture, a real cathedral to industry. If you ever get a chance, go.

My mother grew up not far from the Cerne Abbas giant. As a child, she used to picnic with her parents and sister on his lack of trousers. (The one spot in that scenic valley from which you can't really see his lack of trousers, I suppose.)

I noticed that and cheered a quiet little cheer. Hurrah, Mark!

I love this book, and one of the reasons why is really evident in this section and the last one.

Sports and fashion -- not, on the surface, similar things -- are both viewed through a similar lens by a lot of people. They are frivolous, shallow, vain, unimportant pursuits for people of a less-intellectual bent. Think of the depiction of people who enjoy clothes or are good at a sport in film, and about the words that tend to precede "jock" when spoken by people who don't enjoy sports*. When I was a teenager, I used to look down on people who cared about fashion (even while I really wanted Gap khakis.)

This book, though, takes the time to show us how much fashion and sports matter. I mentioned earlier that I'm from Quebec, a province frequently insulted by the rest of Canada (check the comments of news articles and look for amphibian references, for instance). The Montreal Canadiens in the mid-century gave a postwar Quebec something to rally around. Dolly Sisters and Dimwell are pretty lousy places to live, as far as I can tell. They're not quite the Shades, but that's all they've got going for them. But at a football match, you can be proud to be from there.

For a more current example, imagine what the World Cup that ended yesterday is doing for little girls. That picture of Megan Rapinoe is amazing -- she's strong, she's queer, she's very good at what she does, she's defiant in the face of people who do not want her to succeed. Love it.

For fashion, Rhys and micromail makes me think of blue jeans and perfume in North Korea, and trousers on women in the 1920s, and what's going on in my home province right now re: visible religious symbols (read: hijab. It's shameful.) Beyond being art, fashion is political. Fashion is revolutionary.

Pratchett shows us the thought that goes into sport. You can't play a sport at a high level without being pretty fiercely intelligent; you have to have a good grasp of strategy and tactics, and be able to make a lot of very quick decisions in a short space of time. He shows us the thought that goes into fashion, and, more importantly, who gets thought about, and how (troll women, and what they actually want from their clothes).

He shows us why sports and fashion matter, and I love that.

*Some people legitimately don't, and that's fine! But there's also often derision, and that's unfortunate. "It's just running around and kicking a ball." Sure, and ballet is just jumping about waving your arms and legs. Theatre's just talking. Writing's just rearranging the dictionary. Astrophysics is just counting.

Look, it never hurts to be careful. ;)

Don't let my own lack of enthusiasm stop you from enjoying it! It's enough of a classic that it's in the Norton anthologies -- clearly there are a lot of people who do enjoy it.

Oops! Sorry, it's a habit -- I generally try to be nonspecific about things I don't like, and specific about things I do, but I suppose Matthew Arnold's been dead long enough he won't come across this. :p Grande Chartreuse.

I'd agree in a lot of cases (one springs to mind that takes about six pages to say "wow, this monastery is pretty."*), but my favourite poetry is always the stuff that says very complicated things in a very simple way.

*But then, I'm not much of a fan of that particular poet. There are other Victorians I'm much more fond of, like Gerard Manley Hopkins, who came the closest I've yet seen at expressing the wonder of a kestrel.

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

I'm keeping a stable of them. I've found myself doing it a lot.

It's habit-farming.

We're liking Urruti, but he doesn't seem to be compensating for how much the Impact are missing Piatti. I hope he heals quickly.