ten days meme (day 10)

[jinian]

Day Ten: One confession.

Okay, I do in fact have a confession here. I've been reading a book for two days that embarrasses me enough that I'm consciously hiding its title when I'm reading it out in the world because I don't want people to judge me. I got it on purpose when I saw it on the new shelf at the library, it's not like someone forced it on me. That book?

The Land of Painted Caves, by Jean M. Auel.

The inside of the cover says it's the conclusion to the series, so completism is thus satisfied. That is my excuse. Why I started reading these in the first place, well. They were some of the very few books I could read as a kid which had... herbalism. (Yes, really.) And, you know, self-sufficient tomboy heroine hunts and survives even when everyone tries to actually kill her. The books also had sex, which was highly interesting, though the first book's was rapey rape obvious even to a ten-year-old. Also animal friends! Inventing ALL THE THINGS! How to make leather white!

I mean, you have to just ignore Jondalar's INFINITE MANPAIN because his dick passion is TOO BIG. This is a lot of ignoring, but the frequent didactic infodumps about coltsfoot making things taste salty are completely worth it.

The overall premise of the series is a walking tour of European artifacts and cave paintings, so there's a lot of fairly nifty art described in detail too. Sketchy generalizations based on a few artifacts are presented as official-sounding fact more often than I am really happy with, but it also means Auel got to make up the sounds of semi-related languages a bit. She does a decent job of this, though we only see it for Homo sapiens sapiens in people's names. (The Italian Tribe was a little disconcerting.)

The thing that kept cracking me up as I read this volume (and kept me subdividing my bookmark to share things later) was that apparently the people in this volume are all quite consistently named in the language that prescription drug trade names come from:

Proleva. (antioxidant)
Echozar. (angiotensin antagonist)
Palidar. (antimalarial)
Levela. (anti-aging serum)
Jemoral. (jemoral jossa is below Poupart's ligament)
Garthadal. (did you mean Gardasil?)
Wylopa.
Jondecam.
Norava.
Tivonan.
Farnadal.
Jonokol.
Siralana.
Demoryn.
Lorigan.
Jeviva.
Jonclotan.
Marsheval.
Tremeda.
Sergenor.

Look at all that trademark potential waiting to happen! Any name not already glossed is available to YOU for creative branding opportunities. Go to it, my friends.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.

Comments

[skygiants]

hahahahaha MY PARENTS gave me Clan of the Cave Bear to read when I was twelve. I read all four then available, growing increasingly @____@ at the caveman porn, and have never felt an urge to return.

[jinian]

That is the best icon for this comment!

Had they READ it?! I think my mom had Clan and Valley of Horses in the spare room bookshelves, and I was just reading anything I could find, but it's not like she warned me off. Not that such action would have been terribly effective. I always thought my fourth-grade teacher hadn't read the book, since she let me report on the sling-wielding and herbalizing aspects for class. Maybe she was like O.o the whole time and told stories to her friends later.

[skygiants]

They had totally read it -- it was my dad's copy -- but I think they had conceived it in their heads as A Historical Classic and had sort of forgotten the caveman porn aspects.

I mean, this was not unusual for my parents; other books they gave me to read during my childhood included The Color Purple, The Mists of Avalon, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Aztec, so . . .

[rachelmanija]

I recall Aztec as alternating torture porn, actual porn involving extremely weird sex, and info-dumps about Aztecs in an exact 1-1-1 order.

[skygiants]

That was indeed the impression I got from a quick peruse upon having it handed to me, at which point I passed it back to my mom and politely showed her the back cover quote that screamed something about VIOLENCE AND LUST. (Mostly for the purposes of laughing at her, if memory serves.) So I never did get around to reading it! In retrospect this is just as well, the Clan of the Cave Bear books were probably enough porn for that year.