Weekly Geeks - Beyond Books

This week's task is:

#1. What are you passionate about besides reading and blogging? For example, are you crafty (knitting, woodworking, scrapbooking, model building)? Do you cook? Into gaming (computer or board)? Sports (player or spectator)? Photography? Maybe you like geocaching, rock climbing? Or love attending events like renaissance fairs, concerts? Music? Dancing? You get the idea.

Tell us why you're passionate about it. Post photos of what you've made or of yourself doing whatever it is you love doing.

#2. Get us involved. Link to tutorials, recipes, Youtube videos, websites, fan sites, etc, anything that will help us learn more about your interest or how to do your hobby. Maybe you'd like to link to another hobbyist whose work you admire or tell us about a book or magazine related to your interest.

#3. Visit other Weekly Geeks. Link in your post to other Geeks who've peaked your interest in their passion. Or maybe you might find a fellow aficionado among us, link to them.

I do indeed have other passions beyond reading, though lately I feel that I can't handle more than one hobby at a time. This makes me sad, because there are so many things out there I'd love to devote more time to. My greatest passion other than books is music. I became obsessed with music when I was 12 and I never looked back. Here's a picture of the CDs on my current computer-side pile. My latest (by "latest" I mean persistent-for-a-year-now, ever since I saw her open for The Mountain Goats) musical obsession is Emmy the Great, a British singer/songwriter whose first album is coming out next month. You should check her out! My favourite song of hers is this one.

Hmm, what else. Frightened Rabbit are a Scottish band that I'm also currently sort of obsessed with. They have a new live acoustic album which you can listen to in its entirety here. I discovered them via last.fm, a music website where I spend massive amounts of time. Other than listening to music at home, I also love going to concerts, and some of my best memories ever are of live shows. Unfortunately, for the past year or so I haven't been able to go to many shows, mostly because I'm no longer able to travel 5 hours each way for a band like I used to. But! Later this year I'm seeing Antony & the Johnsons and Wilco, so I'm happy. (Also, I collect concert setlist, but I should probably leave that story for another time. I have almost 50, though!)

I also really enjoy crafting. I go through phases where I do it obsessively, and then I spend months not crafting at all. My current obsession is making bookmarks, but I'll spare you the details because I've blabbed about it before. You can see some of my bookmark making supplies in the picture. A few years ago I also used to make accessories - felt brooches, bead necklaces, etc. You can also see some in the picture:


Another thing I love is hiking. This is something I only do when I have company and when I’m in a place where walking trails actually exist, which unfortunately is not the case at all where I live. But my ideal holidays are spent in nature, walking and being away from everything. Here are some hiking pictures from trips I took with my boyfriend over the years:





I have a weird relationship with movies and TV series. The ones I love I really, really love. These include movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunset/Sunrise, Lost in Translation, Spirited Away, Japanese Story, Little Miss Sunshine, Driving Lessons, Deconstructing Harry, etc; and tv series like Scrubs, Stargate and Babylon 5. Yet I am reluctant to make time for them somehow. It's the whole I-can-only-handle-one-hobby thing.

The same goes for videogames. I have been neglecting them for the past 2-3 years. I used to be obsessed with Final Fantasy, and the only reason why I'm not anymore is because a lot of time has passed and I've forgotten how much I actually love it. I also love older platform games like the Donkey Kong series, Yoshi's Island or the first two Banjo-Kazooie games. And of course, everything Mario.

Last but not least, there's writing. I haven't attempted fiction in a while (though I should stop being a wuss and go back to it for the simple reason that it's so much fun), but I write compulsively. I have since my pre-teen years. And I have a bunch of journals and notebooks that I love carrying around and filling with random thoughts, notes, lists, story ideas, quotations, etc.

This is all tempting me to start a read-less-and-do-other-things-more challenge. I love reading, I honestly do. But I know that I could get as much satisfaction out of some of these other hobbies. I wish I had several lifetimes, so that I could devote each entirely to one.

Other Weekly Geeks: Check out Care's lobster pie! It's actually a fruit pie, but how awesome does it look? Also, I discovered that Rebecca is a fellow Babylon 5 and Stargate fan. She's also into crafting. Lou is interested in travelling and Egyptology. Claire wrote about visual arts and shared some beautiful paintings. And Tasses wrote a very complete post on digital scrapbooking.

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New Classics and Japanese Literature Challenges Wrap-Up

Books Read:
New Classics:

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
  
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
  
• Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
  
• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Japanese Literature:

• When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka
  
• Strangers by Taichi Yamada
• Goodbye, Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto
• Black Rain by Masuje Ibuse
• Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Favourite Book: For the new classics challenge, it's actually really difficult to pick, but I think my absolute favourite was The Handmaid's Tale. For the Japanese Literature Challenge, either Goodbye, Tsugumi or Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. I recommend them all, though!

Least Favourite Book: New Classics challenge - easily Practical Magic. It wasn't bad, but I enjoyed it a lot less than the other Alice Hoffman books I've read. For the Japanese Literature Challenge, Strangers. I was loving it until the last few chapters, but the ending really disappointed me.

My thanks to the lovely hostesses, Joanna and Bellezza. For anyone interested, there is now a perpetual challenge to read the whole EW new classics list.

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Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

How do I even begin to tell you about this book? At first we have to seemingly separate alternating stories. In Hard-boiled Wonderland, our protagonist is a Calcutec who has been given a new mission. And what is a Calcutec, you ask? Basically a human data-encryption system. We quickly learn that in this world, there are two powerful organizations, the System and the Factory, that have constant information wars. The Calcutecs work for the System. And the protagonist’s current mission is to protect groundbreaking research data from falling into the wrong hands.

In The End of the World, a stranger arrives to a town. This town is completely surrounded by a wall, and he is told that to get in, he will have to surrender his shadow. And once in, there is no way out. The town is seemingly very peaceful, and he’s soon given an occupation as the new Dreamreader. But he gradually learns that this peace comes at a cost.

This is really just the beginning of it. Other things the stories involve include golden unicorns, an underground research lab, sound insulation, a mad scientist of sorts, and INKlings – not Tolkien and Lewis, but strange creatures who inhabit the underground and worship Lovecraftian giant fish things. And also, of course, the end of the world.

The two storylines do eventually converge. The relationship between them becomes obvious fairly early in the book, actually. But that makes things more interesting, not less. Also, there’s good news for those who aren’t too fond of Murakami’s ambiguity: this book makes sense! Mostly, anyway. The ending is still open, but open in a “I wonder what this decision will lead to?” sort of way, rather than in a “whaaaaa?” way. But answers are given, and we do learn what most things mean within the world of the story.

I very much enjoyed Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. I loved the science fiction elements, I loved all the questions that kept me turning the pages, and most of all I loved the fact that in the end this is a very human story – a story about identity and how we handle things and how we respond to the world.

One thing that bugged me, though, is that the science fiction elements are all based on the whole humans-only-use-10%-of-their-brains myth. And that’s very much not true. I think I’m actually as tolerant of impossibilities in my fiction as it gets, but this myth in particular is a pet peeve of mine. I’ll stop grumbling now, though.

I wonder about the ending. The story didn’t end like I wanted it to, but that’s okay. What I wonder about is what the ending means for the book as a whole. Because the interpretation I was going for kind of demanded the opposite ending. What was Murakami trying to say by ending it that way? I wonder if I should rethink the way I look at the story. Then again, the beauty of literature is that I'm free to take it however I want. And as you can see, there's still some of that traditional Murakami ambiguity after all.

A few notable passages:

That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

“Say, is that Bob Dylan you have on?”
“Right”, I said. Positively 4th Street
“I can tell Bob Dylan in an instant,” she said.
“Because his harmonica’s worse than Stevie Wonder?”
She laughed again. Nice to know I could still make someone laugh.
“No, I really like his voice,” she said. “It’s like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.”
After all the volumes that have been written about Dylan, I had yet to come across such a perfect description.

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extent to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

(I couldn’t find other blog reviews of this book…if you have one, let me know!)

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Fables: The Good Prince and War and Pieces by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham et al

‘Oh no’, you say. ‘Not again!’ But I promise that this time I have something other than ‘FABLES SQUEEEEE’ to say. After two brief and spoilers-free paragraphs about these two volumes in particular, I’m going to talk about how series in general work. And not just this series.

The Good Prince is such a nice book. It’s Flycatcher’s story, and by the end of it I wanted to give him a big hug. I really can’t say much other than this, and that it’s epic and exciting and full of really sweet bits. It is, along with Wolves and Storybook Love, one of my favourite Fables books.

As for War and Pieces, the title is enough to let you know that this is it: the full-scale war between Fabletown and the Empire has finally come. This is not the end of the series, but the main plot that was introduced in the very first book is resolved. Some things surprised me quite a bit, others not so much. On the whole I found this a satisfying book, but it’s not by any means one of my favourites.

Which brings me to how this series works. I think most fans agree that Fables has both plot-oriented books and character development/background story oriented books. And although I’ve always been very much interested in the main plot of the series, I much prefer the latter. I prefer the quieter moments, the in-between, to the action itself.

I couldn’t help but feel that War and Pieces felt a little rushed. Not much of anything had been happening for the last few books (granted, a very enjoyable “not much of anything”), and then everything happened too fast. I would probably have been more satisfied with a slower resolution.

Fables is different from series like, say, The Sandman exactly because the alternation between plot— and character-driven stories is so clear. (There are other differences, of course, but I'm leaving those alone for now.) And personally I like it when the two happen side by side in each of the books in the series. It’s actually not really fair to say that this isn’t the case at all with Fables because sometimes it is, the balance isn't quite right.

My very favourite kind of series is the kind in which each book has a plot of its own that reaches a climax and is resolved at the end, but still contributes to the main plot of the series. Again, The Sandman is a good example of this. And so is Harry Potter. I think this also happened with the first two Fables books, but not so much after that.

This isn’t really a complaint, though. It’s just me thinking aloud about how the series works. Series in general, really. I obviously still love Fables – not as much as The Sandman, but a whole lot. I was telling my boyfriend the other day that the difference is like the difference between Sufjan Stevens and the Great Lake Swimmers, but I somehow suspect this analogy makes no sense whatsoever if you’re not me.

Anyway, because I’m above all a character-oriented sort of reader, the main reason why I love this series so much is the characters. More than the world, than the humour, than the plot or the ideas, they’re what kept me reading. Fables has such great characterization. There’s always more to the characters than meets the eye. Take Prince Charming, for example. He's introduced as a conceited idiot who objectifies women and who counts Snow White, Briar Rose and Cinderella among his ex-wives. He is indeed all that, yet as the series progresses he surprises you, and you realize he’s not as vapid as that. His flaws are still there, but he reveals a whole other side. And the most interesting thing of all is that this new side isn't expected to redeem him or anything like that. He is what he is.

I'm glad I still have the prequel to read. And the Jack of Fables spin-offs. Plus I know read the whole series again. I love spending time with these characters, and to me that’s what truly makes a series great.

Other Opinions:
Stella Matutina (The Good Prince)
Fyrefly’s Book Blog (The Good Prince)
Casual Dread (War and Pieces)
Fyrefly’s Book Blog (War and Pieces)
Stella Matutina (War and Pieces)

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

Maps and Legends is a collection of essays about things like the preconceived notions about genre fiction, writing, His Dark Materials, comics, The Road, Will Eisner, Sherlock Holmes, Norse mythology or M.R. James, among others. For those who know me, this list will be enough to give you an idea of just how much I loved this book. But even when Michael Chabon was writing about things I never thought I was particularly interested in, I remained absolutely fascinated. His writing is a pleasure to read, and he makes everything sound interesting.

Maps and Legends is not quite a book about books in the same sense that Nick Hornby or Michael Dirda’s essay collections are, because Chabon does cover other topics. But the majority of what we find here is indeed essays on reading, writing or particular authors, genres and mediums. And like the two aforementioned essayists, Michael Chabon is someone with whose views I fully identify.

My very favourite essay was “Trickster in a Suit of Light – Thoughts on the Modern Short Story,” which isn’t just about the modern short story. It’s also about genre fiction, the reason why the concept of entertainment has become disreputable, and connecting with other human beings. Just look at this passage:

The original sense of the word “entertainment” is a lovely one of mutual support through intertwining, like a pair of trees grown together, interwoven, each sustaining and bearing up the other. It suggests a kind of midair transfer of strength, contact across a void, like the tangling of cable and steel between two lonely bridgeheads. I can’t think of a better approximation of the relation between reader and writer. Derived senses of fruitful exchange, of reciprocal sustenance, of welcome offered, of grasp and interrelationship, of a slender span of bilateral attention along which things are given and received, still animate the word in its verb form: we entertain visitors, guests, ideas, prospects, theories, doubts and grudges.
At some point, inevitably, as generations of hosts entertained generations of guests with banquets and feats and displays of artifice, the idea of pleasure seeped into the pores of the word. And along with pleasure (just as inevitably, I suppose) came disapproval, a sense of hollowness and hangover, the saturnine doubtfulness that attaches to delight and artifice and show: to pleasure, that ambiguous gift.
(…)
Yet entertainment—as I define it, pleasure and all—remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, and the universal hunger for connection

Isn’t he brilliant? Just one more:

And so as with our idea of entertainment, our idea of genre—one of those French words, like crêpe, that no one can pronounce both correctly and without sounding pretentious—is of a thing fundamentally, perhaps inherently, debased, infantine, commercialized, unworthy of a serious person’s attention. The undoubted satisfactions that come from reading science fiction or mystery stories are to be enjoyed only in childhood or youth, or by the adult reader only as “guilty pleasures” (a phrase I loathe). A genre implies a set of conventions—a formula—and conventions imply limitations (the argument goes), and therefore no genre work can ever rise to the masterful heights of true literature, free (it is to be supposed) of all formulas and templates.

Haha, yes. Because, as he goes on to say, realistic fiction follows no conventions at all, oh no. This is actually pretty similar to that passage from an essay by Ursula Le Guin I posted just the other day, I know, which goes to show that great minds think alike. You’re all probably tired of me borrowing someone else’s words to make this point again and again by now, but I just love seeing authors I so admire articulating everything I've always thought and felt about literature in such brilliant ways.

A few words on some of the other essays: “Of Dust and Daemons” is – you guessed it – about His Dark Materials, and while I disagree with some of what he says (namely that the third book sacrifices character for the sake of plot and theme), it was fascinating to read. “Golems I have known, or why my elder son’s middle name is Napoleon” is a fake memoir, which I guess makes it a short story, and a great one at that. “My Back Pages” is about how he began to write his first novel, Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I’ve had that on my tbr shelf for a few months now, and I want to read it more than ever.

“Kids’ stuff” was another favourite of mine. In it, he argues that in their quest to become Respectable, comics have become almost exclusively adult, and that unfortunately you don’t see all that many quality comics for kids anymore. This reminded me of something I sometimes wonder about. I wonder if some of the regard for comics like Maus and Persepolis, especially in academic circles, doesn’t come from the fact that they deal with such unarguably serious issues. And while a novel, because its status has been established for a couple of centuries now (though not as long as we tend to think. All this hullaballo about whether or not comics are "real literature" often reminds me of the debates people were having about whether anything other than poetry should be considered " true art" a few centuries back), is allowed to be playful or light or cheerful, a comic’s status is still too fragile. Therefore, if it wants to be taken seriously it has to be Very Serious Indeed. I’m really just thinking out loud here. Obviously I like seeing Maus and Persepolis being appreciated because they are indeed wonderful books. But it’s not like the only worthy novels are, say, Beloved and The English Patient. And the same goes for comics.

Anyway. I’ll shut up now. One last thing: this book has one of the coolest covers I have ever seen. See the three different colours? They’re separate overlapping dust jackets. How cool is that? And look! J.S. Peyton has detailed pictures.

A few more brilliant bits:

And yet there is a degree to which, just as all criticism is in essence Sherlockian, all literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction. That is why Harold Bloom’s notion of the anxiety of influence has always rung so hollow to me. Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving—amateurs—we proceed, seeking out the blank spaces in the map that our favourite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers—should we be lucky enough to find any—some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff we love: to get in on the game. All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.

We all grew up—all of us, from the beginning—in a time of violence and invention, absurdity and Armageddon, prey and witness to the worst and the best in humanity, in a world both ruined and made interesting by Loki. I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction, even if, in Maryland in 1969, as today, it seemed a little more true than usual.

For the central story of M.R. James, reiterated with inexhaustible inventiveness, is ultimately the breathtaking fragility of life, of reality, of all the structures that we have erected to defend ourselves from the constant nagging suspicion that underlying everything is chaos, brutal and unreasoning. It is hard to conceive of a more serious theme, or a more contemporary plot, than this. (…)
Ultimately all stories—ghost stories, mysteries, stories of terror or adventure or modern urban life—descend from the fireside tale, told with wolves in the woods all around, with winter howling at the window. After centuries of refinement, custom fittings, and mutations introduced by artistry and marketplace, the short story retains its fundamental power to frighten us with its recognition of the abyss at our backs, and to warm us with its flickering light.

Other Blog Reviews:
Madness Abides
The Bluestocking Society

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse (And hooray!)

Black Rain is set both several years after the end of WW2 and in the days following the bombing of Hiroshima. Shigematsu Shizuma’s niece, Yasuko, is not yet married, and rumours that she was hit by poisonous black rain after the Hiroshima bombing, and is now suffering from radiation sickness, lower her chances of finding someone. When someone makes inquires about her, her uncle decides to copy his diary of the days after the bombing so that he can set the record straight about what the family went through. Black Rain alternates between long passages from his diary and episodes set in the character's present.

Confession: I mooched and began to read Black Rain completely convinced that this was in fact The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock (a book about one of the scientists involved in the making of the atomic bomb meeting one of the survivors from Hiroshima). I’m not sure how I got the books mixed up. I guess there’s the fact that they’re both about Hiroshima, of course, and also that I first heard of both at tanabata’s blog. But anyway, I spend the first chapter of Black Rain being confused and waiting for the scientists to be mentioned. Then I realized my mistake, felt stupid, and began to read the book I actually had in my hands rather than the book I thought I did.

Black Rain is not about the political or social implications of nuclear warfare. Rather, it’s about its everyday consequence, its direct impact on people’s lives. A lot of the story deals with the practical consequences of the war. What did people eat? How did they treat their burns after the bombing? How did they react to seeing large chunks of their skin fall off? A lot of it is not for the faint of heart, but the writing style is as undramatic and subdued as it could possibly be. And I think this matter-of-factness made it even sadder.

The sections set in the present deal in part with long-term consequences of radiation, and with how the lives of so many people were permanently changed. There was a part I found particularly interesting, about how these people’s treatment clashes with their traditional way of life:

There had been a dozen or more people suffering from radiation sickness in the village, but now only three survives – mild cases, of which Shigematsu was one. All three had checked the progress of the disease by taking care to always get plenty of food and rest. Where the rest was concerned, however, it was not enough—nor was it tolerable for the patient himself—simply to lie in bed all day. The doctor had suggested doing light jobs about the place, supplemented by “walks”. Unfortunately, it was out of the question for the head of the family, to all appearances in the best of health, to stroll idly through the village. For someone to “go for a walk”, in fact, was quite unheard of. A “walk” was unthinkable in terms of traditional custom, and this unthinkable in principle.

Black Rain is a very moving book, but like I was saying it’s written in a very quiet, restrained tone. This is something I actually associate with Japan. Normally I shy away from making generalizations of this kind about entire nations or cultures, but from what I know of Japanese literature and art in general (admittedly not very much at all), I do get the impression that emotions tend to be expressed in more subtle ways than in the West.

Black Rain is actually not a depressing book. There are a lot of horrific things happening, but there are also moments of humour and beauty. I’ll leave you with this great passage from the introduction by the translator, John Bester:

Black Rain is a portrait of a group of human beings; of the death of a great city; of a nation crumbling into defeat. It is a picture of the Japanese mind that tells more than many sociological studies. Yet more than this, it is a statement of a philosophy. Although that philosophy, in its essence, is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, it seems to be life-affirming. Dealing with the grimmest of subjects, the work is not, in the end, depressing, for the author is ultimately concerned with life rather than with death, and with an overall beauty and transcends ugliness of detail.

Other Blog Reviews:
In Spring it is the Dawn
Everyday Reads

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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Very exciting news! The Graveyard Book won the Newbery Medal and Nation is a a Printz Honor book. Full list of winners here. Go Neil! Go Terry! A happy day :D

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The Sunday Salon (with Bookish Memes)

This is my first time participating in The Sunday Salon. It's not that I didn't want to participate before, but I either didn't get around to it or I couldn't think of what to write. But today I'm in a chatty mood, so here it goes:

Yesterday I started reading Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I've been in the mood for Murakami, especially after talking about Kafka on the Shore with Trish. Anyway, I'm not too far into the book yet, but so far there are two independent storylines, both of which are quite bizarre. I have no idea what's going on in either, but I'm enjoying both. That's not it usually goes with Murakami for me.

I was happy to see today that Sputnik Sweetheart was picked for the Unshelved Bookclub. That was my very first Murakami, and I still remember being both delighted and frustrated with it. I'd love to read it again someday, especially now that I no longer try to make sense of Murakami's books.

I guess now is also a good time to do the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels Everyone Must Read Meme Carl started. It's based on a Guardian list of books everyone "should" read. I'm always interested in lists like that simply because I love looking at lists of books, the longer the better. But I also don't take them very seriously - after all, what they boil down to is a list of books that whoever compiled the list thinks are important. How could they be anything else?

Anyway, I like this list in particular because it challenges conventional definitions of sci-fi and fantasy and includes several works of non-realistic fiction, regardless of how "literary" or "respectable" they are considered. And that always makes me happy. On the other hand, in doing that it ends up leaving out several classic sci-fi and fantasy authors who were never concerned with being confined to the "genre" ghetto. I'd have been even happier with a list that reached a middle-ground of sorts.

Here's the list. I bolded the ones I've read, italicized the ones I own, and purpled the ones I don't own yet but would like to read in the nearish future:

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
2. Brian Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
6. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
7. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
8. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
9. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
10. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
11. Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
12. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
13. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
14. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
15. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
16. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
17. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
18. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
19. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
20. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
21. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
22. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
23. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957) (I LOVE this book)
24. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
25. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
26. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
27. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
28. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
29. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
30. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
31. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
32. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
33. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
34. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
35. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
36. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
37. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
38. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
39. Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
40. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
41. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
42. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
43. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
44. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
45. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
46. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
47. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
48. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
49. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
50. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
51. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
52. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
53. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
54. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
55. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
56. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
57. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
58. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
59. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
60. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
61. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
62. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
63. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
64. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
65. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
66. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
67. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
68. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
69. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
70. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
71. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
72. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
73. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
74. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
75. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
76. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
77. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
78. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
79. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
80. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
81. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
82. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
83. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
84. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
85. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995) (It's good to see I'm not the only one who sees Murakami as primarily a fantasy author. Then again, he did win the World Fantasy Award, so clearly I am not.)
86. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
87. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
88. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
89. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
90. Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
91. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991) (A lovely choice)
92. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
93. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
94. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
95. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
96. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
97. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
98. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
99. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
100. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
101. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
102. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
103. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
104. José Saramago: Blindness (1995) (I tried. More than once.)
105. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
106. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
107. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
108. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
109. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
110. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
111. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
112. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
113. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
114. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
115. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
116. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
117. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
118. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
119. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
120. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
121. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
122. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
123. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
124. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

22/124. More to look forward to!

There's another meme I've been meaning to do: the 6 Things that Make Me Happy Meme Ladytink tagged me for. But since this is The Sunday Salon, I thought it'd be fun to make it 6 bookish things:

1. New books by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Nothing beats that.
   
2. Series. I love getting obsessed with a good series. I love the familiarity, the comfort, the complete immersion in the series' world. I'm currently having that experience with Fables. Yesterday I decided to read books 1 and 2 again because now that I (more or less) know how it ends, it'll be fun to see how it all began.
   
3. Comics and illustrated books. I love looking at pretty artwork, and I love seeing a story be told through images.
   
4. Pretty editions. For example, last week I bought this edition of The Three Musketeers, a book I already owned but haven't read, just because of how pretty it is:
   
   
   (Actually, it wasn't just that. First, it was in the bargains section. Secondly, it's a new and better translation! And thirdly, I figured that having a pretty edition would motivate me to, you know, actually read the thing at last.)
   
5. A good ending. How I love a good ending. The kind that is satisfying but also leaves you longing for more. That kind for which you hope, but that surprises you nonetheless. The kind that highlights all the things the book is about.
   
6. Books about books. I've only realized recently how happy they make me. More than formal criticism, I enjoy the informal ones, the ones that are about the author's personal experience of reading, the reading life, all the little things that are instantly recognizable to bookworms and that other people find so odd. Of course, these are the exact same reasons why I love reading book blogs.
   

What about you? Which things, bookish or not, make you happy? I'm not going to tag anyone, but do play along if you want to.

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Gathering Blue and Messenger by Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue is Kira's story. Kira is a young girl who's despised by her community because of her twisted leg. In Kira’s village, people with obvious physical flaws are normally taken to The Field and left to die, but, at her mother’s insistence, her life was spared. The book opens shortly after her mother’s death, however, and without her protection the villagers begin to press her to leave. But Kira has a talent, and because of this she is given a new home and a task: to repair the robe the Singer wears in an annual ceremony called The Gathering. With the help of her friends Thomas and Matt, Kira begins to realize that the things she was always told about the world might not be quite true.

Gathering Blue is a companion to The Giver. It’s set in the same world as Jonas’ story, but in an entirely different community whose inhabitants have no knowledge of what’s outside their boundaries. So someone who hasn’t read The Giver can pick up this book and understand it perfectly. There’s only a small reference at the end of the story whose full significance they might not quite realize, but that doesn’t make the story any less enjoyable.

I enjoyed The Giver more than Gathering Blue, but this is still a brilliant book. Some of the themes it deals with are similar: the dangers of isolation, of ignorance, of being oblivious to the outside world. Gathering Blue is not exactly a dystopia in the same sense the first book in the trilogy is, but Kira’s community is by no means ideal. Far from it.People’s lives are dominated by fear, and there is no place for those who are perceived as week. Some of the characters are compassionate, but empathy is certainly not encouraged.

Kira, however, is different. Not only because she was allowed to survived despite her physical imperfection, but because of what her knowledge of pain and of vulnerability allows her to understand. She’s a wonderful character, and throughout the book we get to see her wisdom and kindness affect other characters, and, ultimately, bring about change.

Messenger is much more of a direct sequel to Gathering Blue than Gathering Blue was to The Giver. And it actually ties the two previous books together by featuring characters from both. The main protagonist of this book is Matty, who we first meet in book two. The Village – the community where he’s now living – is beginning to change, and not for the better. Both his adoptive father and the leader of the community are concerned, and so his Matty himself. When some of the Village’s inhabitants decide to close its borders to new members, Matty is sent to his birthplace to fetch his friend Kira, so that she may join them before it’s too late.

Reading this book gave me a new appreciation for what Lois Lowry did with this trilogy as a whole. I absolutely love her writing, her worldbuilding, her ideas, the things she has to communicate. Looking at all three books, I see a scale of sorts: The Giver is very clearly a dystopia, and it’s hard to look at the character’s way of life and not be horrified. Life in Kira’s village is not quite as bad as that, but there’s clearly much room for improvement. Finally, in Matty’s village people are friendly and life is comfortable.

What I think Messenger is telling us is that once a welcoming community has been formed, an effort needs to be made to keep it that way. And that effort is just as great as the effort necessary to build it in the first place. There’s danger when a community, any community, becomes insulated, when it ceases to be open to new ideas, new people, new ways of life. I think this passage applies to a lot of what we see in all three books:

But now he knew there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the known world, in which people suffered. Not always from beatings and hunger, the way he had. But from ignorance. From not knowing.From being kept from knowledge.

And not knowing includes not knowing what is happening in the rest of the world. It includes closing up. In this trilogy we go from a dystopia to an almost-utopia, but we are shown the danger that a seemingly perfect society will go right back to the beginning of the cycle if it becomes too obsessed with protecting its way of life. There is a particularly brilliant scene when Matty is watching the community debate about whether or not to close its borders, and he realizes with horror how much the “us” and “them” dichotomy is beginning to enter people’s speech.

As you can tell by now, there was a lot I loved about Messenger. But unfortunately the ending left me very dissatisfied. Not so much the fact that we don’t exactly get the ending we were hoping for – that’s true of all three books in the trilogy to some extent, and it never bothered me before – but the fact that it felt a bit rushed. A lot of questions were left unanswered in a way that feels more careless than ambiguous. So many things that seemed important to the story were merely brushed aside. So much was left unexplained.

I still think this is a great book. But this time I felt that the book was too short to handle all the themes Lois Lowry was trying to address. The story was somewhat crushed under their weight. All the Lowry books I’ve read so far were short books that dealt with deep themes in a very satisfying manner. I really wish I could say the same about Messenger, but I can’t. Not quite.

Other Blog Reviews:

Gathering Blue
5-Squared
Maw Books
Becky’s Book Reviews
Bold Blue Adventure
Rhinoa’s Ramblings
Back to Books
The Written World
Books and Needlepoint

Messenger
Maw Books
Becky’s Book Reviews
Rhinoa’s Ramblings

(Please let me know if I missed yours.)

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Fables 7 and 8 by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, etc. (and 9, actually)

Ah, Fables. The more I read you, the more I love you, but the less I know what to write about you. It’s not that I have nothing to say, nor that the books are repetitive, but a lot of what I love about each individual book is what I love about the series as a whole, so I kind of fear that at this point I’m just being repetitive.

Also, plot summaries of these books are inevitably spoilers for previous ones, so I kind of want to try and avoid those too, at least as much as possible. I should probably should stick a spoilers warning here somewhere and say however much I want guilt-free, I know. But let’s see if I can manage this way.

So, in Arabian Nights (and Days), a delegation of Eastern Fables arrives to Fabletown. And among them is Sindbad! And a Djinn! (I hope this doesn’t count as a spoiler.) Anyway, the inevitable culture clash and mutual suspicion that follows will probably seem familiar to, well, pretty much everyone living in today's world. The good news is that an understanding is eventually reached, but I won’t tell you how.

Something I loved: how different font styles were used to represent different languages. It works really well. It acknowledges that not everyone is speaking the same language without making things hard for the reader by throwing in weird made up words.

There is a second story arc in this book, “The Ballad of Rodney in June”. In this story, we get behind enemy lines and see things from the perspective of two of The Adversary’s, er, collaborators. I think I enjoyed this even more than the previous story arc. It allowed the Adversary's side to be somewhat humanized, for starters, which makes sense if you consider everything this series is saying. Plus it was sad and touching and it made my heart break because I can so see how what happens here will come back to haunt us later on.

Volume 8, Wolves, is one of my favourites so far. It was so satisfying in so many ways. Some answers were given, some things I was hoping to see happen happened, and plus we get to see a lot of Mowgli. I have a soft spot for Mowgli.

The problem – which isn’t even that big of a problem – is that it felt a bit like a calm before the storm sort of volume. And so it left me filled with dread for these characters. I fear that their happiness will be short-lived. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong. I’m actually making a point of writing this before I start volume 9 because I don’t want whatever I’ll find there to influence my opinion of this book.

Wolves also has some of those this-will-surely-have-consequences-later sort of events, so I have the feeling that the next book will be action-filled. Soon I’ll find out! Meanwhile, some pretty art:





Edit to add: Well, I finished Sons of Empire this morning, so I might as well kill three birds with one stone and write about it too. First of all, this wasn’t it yet. Dark forces are gathering, but this is still a continuation of the calm before the storm. Not that I mind.

Hmm, what to say that isn’t spoilerish. I think this volume has my favourite art so far. The “Father and Son” issues, illustrated by Mike and Laura Allred, are absolutely gorgeous. I loved the story itself too, which is about Bigby and his father. And just look at the art for “Porky Pine Pie”, by Joshua Middleton:


Wow. Just wow. And look at the art for "The Road to Paradise” by Joëlle Jones:


There was something I loved at the end of this volume: an issue called “Burning Questions” in which fan questions about past events in the series were answered in very short stories. Most of the stories were very funny, and some answered things I had wondered about myself.

Well, off to read The Good Prince.


Other Blog Reviews:
Tripping Towards Lucidity (Wolves)
Everyday reads (Arabian Nights (and Days))
Firefly's Book Blog (Arabian Nights (and Days))
Firefly's Book Blog (Wolves)
Firefly's Book Blog (Sons of Empire)
Sophisticated Dorkiness (Books 5-7)
The Written World (Arabian Nights (and Days))
Jenny's Book (Arabian Nights )And Days))

(Please let me know if I missed yours.)

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Science!

Now that I'm done with the New Classics Challenge, it's time to come up with a list for the Science Book Challenge. I'm very excited about this challenge, and I had a lot of fun putting this list together. What can I say, it's the button. It does things to me. Of course, the fact that science is awesome also helps some.

The goal of the challenge is to read three science books in 2009, but of course I had to list more than three possibilities. I figured that it would be fun to come up with a science reading list I can return to even after the challenge's over. So lo! My list:

• Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman (both my boyfriend and Jenclair recommend this one.)

• Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (I want to learn more about primates... I didn't have much luck with Goodall, but this sounds like it will be better.)

• Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (This is one I most definitely want to get to. I think it will help me gain a vocabulary to explain why certain things make very loud alarm bells go off in my head. This is a vocabulary I used to have, but I'm losing it because I haven't dealt directly with certain concepts in so long. And I can't let that happen. Basically, I need to read more science books. And look! There's a blog.)

• Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt (Because this is a topic that seriously pains me.)

• Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal (Because Alan Sokal's prank was awesome, and because I LOVED Dawkins' review of his book.)

• How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff (Along the same lines as Bad Science.)

• Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey (This just sounds so interesting.)

• The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species by Scott Weidensaul (Added to my wishlist thanks to Jeane.)

• Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind: A Naturalist Debunks Our Favorite Fallacies about Wildlife by Warner Shedd and Trudy Nicholson (Same.)

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Surely this won't be whiny?)

• An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks (I've wanted to read something by Sacks for a while and this is the only one my library has.)

I could go on, but instead I'll just point you towards Eva and Debi's very complete lists. Also, my boyfriend suggested I take a look at this thread, where there are a bunch of suggestions.

Today I discovered the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books. You can see a complete list of winners and shortlisted and longlisted books here. The list is great. I'm always afraid of picking up science books on my own, because what if I come across pseudoscience in disguise? No, the world won't end, but I will have wasted my time and possibly my money. The books on this list are sure to be reliable and well-researched, and since the aim of the prizes is to to encourage the reading, writing and publishing of high quality, accessible popular science books, I have a feeling they won't be boring either.

And last but not least, the Science Besiedged website also has a long list of science books.

(I wonder if the Science of Discworld books could count? They're a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but the science chapters are written by actual scientists. Hmm.)

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The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This delightful novella describes how the Queen of England accidentally develops a love for reading. She happens to come across the Westminster travelling library and borrows a book just to be polite. She returns the following week, and winds up hiring her fellow library user Norman, a kitchen boy, as a sort of reading guru. However, as her passion for books increases, she begins to resent the fact that her duties demand her to spend time away from her books. Her advisers become increasingly worried about the Queen’s new obsession, and begin to devise schemes to keep her from reading so much.

The Uncommon Reader really is a book for book lovers. I think most bookworms will identify with this book to some extent. And no, most of us don’t actually neglect our jobs so we can read, but let’s face it, how often do we want to? Plus the story is about so much more than just putting duties aside to spend time with a good book. It’s about all the joys and pleasures of reading, all the discoveries and disappointments, all the feelings it brings out in us, all the thoughts it makes us think.

It’s also about the conflict between art and “real life”, about writing, about living, about doing things. And about politics, education and society at large. Do you ever wonder if reading actually counts as doing something? My own opinion is that reading is very much an active process, but as she progresses in her reading the Queen begins to ask herself that question. This brings her to writing. I know that writing down my thoughts about what I read and discussing books with others are very big parts of what makes reading so rewarding for me.

One thing that surprised me about The Uncommon Reader was how funny it is. I had read reviews that said it was funny, but somehow I didn’t expect it to be quite this funny. It’s funny in a subtle, straight-faced sort of way, but very funny nonetheless.

Judging by the number of other reviews I found, most people seem to already have read The Uncommon Reader. But if you haven’t, do yourself a favour and pick it up. It’s a very quick read – I got through the whole thing in a little over an hour – but also a very rewarding one. Don’t let the length deceive you. There’s a lot in this little book. And I have a really hard time imagining any book lover not enjoying it. Just look at these wonderful passages:

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undefering about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

‘Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.’

(This last bit made me laugh out loud, but you’ll have to read the book to see why.)

Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.

And seeing the blue- and pink-jacketed volumes ranged along her desk, the Queen thought they looked almost edible and straight out of a patisserie window.

‘Can there be any great pleasure,’ she confided in her neighbour, the Canadian minister for overseas trade, ‘than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen?’

Other Blog Reviews:
The Hidden Side of a Leaf
The Written World
Just Add Books
Page After Page
Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
Bermudaonion’s Weblog
Reading Adventures
A Striped Armchair
Blogging ‘bout Books
It's All About Books
The Book Zombie
Rebecca Reads
The Bluestocking Society
The Biblio Brat
BooksPlease
Care's Online Bookclub
books i done read
Bart's Bookshelf
Books of Mee
Melody's Reading Corner
Fizzy Thoughts
Lost in a Good Story
A Garden Carried in the Pocket
A Fondness for Reading
My Two Blessings
Book-a-rama
Nothing of Importance
A Book a Week
Tip of the Iceberg

(Please let me know if I missed yours.)

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How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Fifteen-year-old Daisy, the narrator of this story, is sent from New York to England to spend the summer with her maternal aunt and her cousins. Daisy’s mother died when she was born, and Daisy feels unwanted by her father and his new wife. When she arrives in England she’s picked up at the airport by her cousin Edmond, with whom she quickly develops a connection so strong she often feels he’s reading her mind. She also quickly grows to love her aunt Penn and her cousins Piper and Isaac.

Shortly after Daisy’s arrival, a war begins. Her aunt is out of the country when it happens, so for a while Daisy and her cousins are left to live an idyllic life, roaming the countryside, swimming in the river, sleeping in the barn at night, and generally not being told what to do. They manage to ignore the war for some time, but the fact that they're unsupervised is eventually discovered. They are separated, and begin to truly experience the consequences of war.

I absolutely loved this book. I think my favourite thing about it is the writing. Daisy is a wonderful narrator, and there’s so much in both what she says and what she isn’t saying. I wouldn’t exactly call her unreliable, but you can tell from the beginning that there are things she is keeping to herself. This changes as the story progresses. Daisy’s honesty and confidence increase, and the writing style changes to reflect this.

For example, the book is divided in two parts. In the first part, which is most of the book, there are barely any commas, and Daisy sounds almost desperately urgent. In the second part, however, normal punctuation is resumed, and Daisy sounds much more self-assured. All the things she went through allowed her to realize who she is, what she loves, where she belongs. And her voice shows that.

This is partially a story about war, but it’s so full of tenderness and love. We are never given any details about the war, and in this case I don’t think it’s so much because Daisy is not telling us but because she, as well as the rest of the characters, are not quite sure what’s going on. And this makes sense, because what matters for the story is not the specificities of war, but its consequences for the lives of ordinary people. And those are remarkably similar no matter the specific causes.

So more than about war, How I live Now is about love and survival and growing up and learning to live with what was lost, with what was seen, with what can no longer be helped. I found the ending absolutely beautiful. It added so much to my appreciation of what was already a lovely book. Since Daisy is the narrator, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that she survives the war. And with that in mind, I’ll share this wonderful passage from the very ending, which sums up what is for me at the core of the book and doesn’t give anything away:

…saved from the ravages of war by stubbornness and ignorance and an insatiable hunger for love.

Other favourite passages:

It was the first time in as long as I could remember that hunger wasn’t a punishment or a crime or a weapon or a form of self-destruction.
It was simply a way of being in love.
Sometimes I thought hours had passed when really it was minutes. Sometimes we fell asleep and then woke up to finish where we’d left off. Sometimes I felt like I was being consumed from within like a person with one of those freak diseases where you digest your own stomach. And sometimes we had to stop, just because we were raw and exhausted and still humming humming humming with something we didn’t even have the strength left to do anything about.

I was Piper’s guardian now and I thought I’d better act like it and make it clear to her that she was safe with me no matter what. And the thought made me fierce and strong like a mother wildebeest and all of a sudden I knew where people got the strength to pick up cars with babies lying under them which I always thought was made up.

If you haven’t been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.

After that day, I could barely enter the garden without a huge effort of will. The air was suffocating, charged, the hungry plants sucking at the earth with their ferocious appetites. You could almost watch them grow, pressing their fat green tongues up through the black earth. They emerged selfish and starving, gasping for air.

Other Blog Reviews:
The Hidden Side of a Leaf
The Written World
Leafing Through Life
Out of the Blue
Bending Bookshelves
A Striped Armchair
Bold Blue Adventure
In Spring it is the Dawn
Some Reads
The Written Word
Presenting Lenore
The Compulsive Reader
Adventures in Multiplicity
Miss Print
“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English”
Valentina's Room
Jenny's Books
Ink and Paper
In Search of Giants
Bart's Bookshelf
Tip of the Iceberg
where troubles melt like lemon drops
The Bluestocking Society

(Please let me know if I missed yours.)

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Weekly Geeks and Bookworms Carnival

This week's task is to answer the following questions:

For those who have been with the group, either from the start or joined within recent months, what does being a member mean to you? What do you enjoy about the group? What are some of your more memorable Weekly Geeks that we might could do again? What could be improved as we continue the legacy that Dewey gave us?

For those just joining us, why did you sign up for Weekly Geeks? What would you like to see here?

The initial reason why I was interested in Weekly Geeks was because, well, it was Dewey's idea. I wanted to give her my support, and plus I knew that with her behind it there's no way it wouldn't be fun. As the weeks went by I grew to really love the tasks themselves, even if I didn't always get around to participating. They were fun, varied, thoughtful and original.

What I like the most about Weekly Geeks is how inclusive it is. New members can join at any point and they are immediately welcomed. It gives us all an excuse to reach out, meet new people, interact with one another, make new friends. And for those who can be shy about commenting on new blogs, Weekly Geeks makes things easier.

Some of my favourite past themes were:

• #4 - Post about social issues you care about (because it allowed me to get to know my fellow participants better and to learn a little about a several issues I didn't know much about.)
• #5 - Other forms of storytelling (even though I never got around to actually writing the post I had mentally composed, I loved reading everyone else's answers.)
• #12 - Have your readers ask you questions about books you've yet to review (because I think it's a brilliant way to catch up on reviews, and because it gets us to interact more.)
• #16 - Pair up with another Weekly Geek and interview each other about a book (similar reasons as above.)

As for ways of improving WG, I honestly can't think of anything. Keep it up, guys.

---

Also, the 21st edition of the Bookworms Carnival is up at YA Fabulous. The theme is glbtq literature, and you can read some very enticing reviews, both of adult and of YA books. Renay also provided a fabulous list of links for those interested in learning more about glbtq literature.

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Out of this World

Carl is hosting the Out of This World mini-challenge this weekend as a part of the challenge in Dewey's memory. The goal is simple: to read science fiction short stories this weekend.


I checked this book out of the library for the mini-challenge. It's nearly 800 pages long, but I really want to read it all eventually. The selection of authors is very promising: Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Margaret Atwood, John Crowley, Ursula Le Guin, Roger Zelazny and Robert Silverberg, just to name a few.

I started by reading the detailed and excellent introduction Ursula Le Guin wrote, and there are two passages I just have to share:

Science fiction is "a genre", we are told, briskly. But the validity of the concept of genre (not to mention the problem of how to pronounce it in English) is problematical.

The definition of a genre is often an act of offense, or of retaliation. The professors and critics who for most of the century have controlled the modernist literary canon define and dismiss science fiction--frequently in absolute ignorance of its texts--as "genre fiction", that is, not "literature", in order to restrict "literature" to the privileged mode, realism. In defiant and often ignorant resentment of the "highbrow establishment", some practitioners of science fiction define it defensively as "popular entertainment", not "literature". Some chic critics go slumming trendily with them. None of this posturing advances understanding.

Genre is a useful concept only when used not evaluatively but descriptively. Authors and readers of any genre form a community, with certain shared interests and expectations. Modern poetry is a good example of genre as community. So is science fiction.

(...)

Perhaps any closed, fixed definition of a genre tends not towards a broader critical understanding, but towards a mere limitation to formula. (Thus, while "the genres" are defined in order to reduce them to formula, "literature" is defined by its exemption from the requirement that it be defined: Le Guin's Conspiracy Theory of the Canon.)

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Ursula Le Guin?

I thought it would make sense to start with two stories by authors Dewey liked: Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler.

"High Weir" by Samuel R. Delany is about a group of scientists who discover a structure similar to the Greek Parthenon on Mars. This structure is the first evidence of intelligent life outside Earth to be uncovered. As they explore the ruins, they also discover that the technological advance of this apparently extinct civilization is even higher than they had suspected. This discovery, as well as the whole expedition, have a strong psychological impact on one of them in particular, and it's mostly on this that the story is focused.

Reading this story reminded me of one of the things I like the most about science fiction: the fact that it often explores other ways of being, other possibilities for how things work. I know that in a sense that could also be said of fantasy, or even of fiction in general, but science fiction seems to me to have a very specific way of doing it. Another strong point: the excellent charcterization. I really need to pick up one of Delany's novels.

"Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler is set in a future where an unknown virus impaired humankind's ability to speak. Some people irretrievably lost spoken language, others literacy, and others both. The protagonist is Rye, a woman who lost her family to the virus. She also lost her ability to read and write, a fact that she very much regrets, but she can still speak. She's come to realize, however, that the safest thing to do is to hide this fact. I absolutely loved this story - it's my favourite so far. I loved the writing, the well-rounded characters, and the fact that it managed to be both heartbreaking and hopeful.

Finally, I read "Nine Hundred Grandmothers" by R.A. Lafferty. I've been curious about this author for a while because Neil Gaiman often cites him as a favourite (same with Delany, actually). This story is about an alien race, the Proavitoi, who are said to never die, only become smaller and sleep more and more as they age. The protagonist, Ceran Swicegood, becomes obsessed with finding the very first generation and asking them How It All Began.

Though all in all I preferred Butler's story, writing-wise this was my favourite. Just look at these passages:

He walked down the ramps through centuries and millennia. The atmosphere he had noticed on the upper levels was a clear odor now—sleepy, half-remembered, smiling, sad, and quite strong. That is the way Time smells.

What was that sound—too slight, too scattered to be a noise? It was like a billion microbes laughing. It was the hilarity of the little things waking up to a high time

That's it so far. I decided that as I read more stories I'll come back and edit this post rather than create another one, so if you're interested in sci-fi short stories, stay tuned! And it's still not too late to join the mini-challenge.

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"Homelanding" by Margaret Atwood is a very short story where a speaker addresses a being from another planet and describes what life on their home world is like in a series of short points. This home world is Earth, and although the narrator is describing life on our planet accurately it takes the reader a while to recognized what is being described. For example:

Sometimes we lie still and do not move. If air is still going in and out of our breathing holes, this is called sleep. If not, it is called death. When a person has achieved death, a kind of picnic is held, with music, flowers and food. The person so honored, if in one piece, and not, for instance, in shreds or falling apart, as they do if exploded or a long-time drowned, is dressed in becoming clothes and lowered into a hole in the ground, or else burned up.

These customs are among the most difficult to explain to strangers. Some of our visitors, especially the young ones, have never heard of death and are bewildered. They think that death is simply one more of our illusions, our mirror tricks; they cannot understand why, with so much food and music, the people are so sad.

Again, I am in awe of Atwood's writing. Excellent story.

"Strange Wine" by Harlan Ellison is one of those stories that cannot be properly described without giving away the ending. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's available online, or I'd urge you all to go read it and then come discuss it with me. It's about a man who vaguely remembers the green skies of what he believes is his native world. His life isn't a very happy one: his daughter was killed in a car accident, his son became paraplegic when diving into a swimming pool and hitting the bottom, and his marriage isn't doing very well. He believes that he comes from another planet, and that life on Earth is his punishment for some unspeakable crime he must have commited in his home world. And more than this I cannot say. It's a good story, and a great reminder than I need to read the Ellison book that has been waiting on my shelf for over a year now.

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I read "The Home Team" by Greg Wickenhofer on Debi's recommendation. It's a very short and fun story about kitchen appliances developing a mind of their own. It reminded me a little of that Terry Pratchett did with the imp inside Vimes' Disorganizer. I have to say Terry Pratchett does it a little better, but no surprise there, right? And this was still lots of fun!

Lynda recommended "The Day the Martians Came" by Frederik Pohl. It's about life being found on Mars, obviously, but more than that it's about the neverchanging face of prejudice. If you have 15 minutes to spare, read it!

Bart brought "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke to my attention. I'd heard a lot about this story and I'd always wanted to read it. Well, it didn't disappoint. It was interesting how the presence of a few words in the ending - "without any fuss" - made me like it so much more. The story is about a group of Tibetian monks trying to find all the possible names of god, and more than this I cannot say.

My favourite of this batch was "Snow" by John Crowley. I love Crowley's writing so much. It's about a man who lost his wife, but who, thanks to an expensive service provided by a company called The Park, can have access to 8000 hours of footage from their life together. The rationale here was that this would help with the mourning process, but as you can guess things don't exactly go like that. I'll leave you with a passage:

I think there are two different kinds of memory, and only one kind gets worse as I get older: the kind where by an effort of will you can reconstruct your first car or your serial number or the name and figure of your high school physics teacher: a Mr. Holm, in a grey suit, a bearded guy, skinny, about thirty. The other kind doesn't worsen, if anything it grows more intense: the sleepwalking kind, the kind you stumble into as into rooms with secret doors to suddenly find yourself sitting not on your front porch but in a classroom, you can't at first think where or when, and a bearded and smiling man is turning in his hand a glass paperweight inside which a little cottage sands in a swirl of snow.

"All Summer in One Day" by Ray Bradbury is a story about a group of children living on Venus, where it rains every day. It's a very short story, but Bradbudy brilliantly develops themes like childhood, cruelty and the magic of summertime. And the writing is just wonderful:

Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering and old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

I love Bradbury's writing about as much as Crowley's.

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Three Picture Books

This is my first time posting about picture books! The reason being that I hadn’t actually picked up a picture book in years (the last one before this was probably The Wolves in the Walls). Having limited library access, limit funds, and no choice but to buy certain books if I want to read them means I end up using a “money spent X time I will spend with this book” sort of logic. So picture books, delightful though they might be, are neglected because they’re such quick reads. And unfortunately I don’t even have any young children in my life I could use as an excuse (not that I think there’s anything whatsoever wrong with adults buying children’s books for themselves, of course).

What I had been overlooking was the fact that picture books are not meant to be read just once. I read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, The Princess’ Blankets by Carol Ann Duffy and Catherine Hyde and The Girl in the Castle inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer and Nicoletta Ceccoli last Saturday. Today I read them again, and I’m by no means tired of them yet. The last one in particular has art I could stare at for hours.

But let me do this one by one:

Nicoletta Ceccoli is hands down one of my favourite illustrators, and I cannot overstate how much of a visual treat this book is. The story itself is a fairy tale about – you guessed it – a diminutive girl living in a castle inside a museum. Children go to the museum, look at the castle, and sometimes get glimpses of the girl inside and wonder what her life might be like. The story doesn’t go much further than this initial premise, but the thing is, it doesn’t need to. Because its power is in what it suggests. For me, what this story is about is the imagination, that sense of wonder and longing that are such a big part of childhood, of fairy tales and of storytelling itself.

For more about this book, you can read Valentina and The Well-Read Child’s reviews.



The Princess’ Blankets by Carol Ann Duffy and Catherine Hyde is the most “adult” of these books (by which I don’t mean it’s superior to the others, nor that children wouldn’t enjoy it). It’s also a fairy tale, this time about a princess who is always cold. It reminded me slightly of “Cold” by A.S. Byatt, and considering that’s one of my very favourite fairy tales, I mean this as a compliment.

Catherine Hyde’s art is different from anything I’ve ever seen in a picture book (then again, I haven’t read that many). At the end of the book she says:

I read and reread the story many times until I saw it terms of atmosphere and colour. I wanted the mood to change like the seasons as the story progressed, so the paintings run from hot and bright to moody and harsh and finally to warm and sensual.

She definitely succeeds in creating the perfect mood for this story. The Princess’ Blankets is a beautiful book. And did I mention the language? I haven’t actually read any of Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry, but after this I certainly want to.

For more on this book, read Valentina’s and Joanne's reviews.

And last but not least, there’s The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. I was convinced this was going to be my first Seuss, but this book actually felt very familiar. I think I vaguely remember there being a copy in my tiny but much loved elementary school classroom library.

Anyway, as most of you probably know, The Lorax is about a greedy Once-ler who tears down a whole forest of Trufulla Trees to make Thneeds. He is warned to stop while there’s still time by The Lorax, who speaks for the trees, but only too late does he realize that the ecosystem he destroyed was beautiful and unique.

The Lorax is a book with a message, but it’s not annoyingly didactic in the least. I spent a long time thinking about why the book didn’t strike me as preachy – I wanted to see if I could come up with a better answer than “because I really, really like what Dr. Seuss is saying here.”

I think part of it has to do with his tongue-in-cheek tone. It makes the story light without undermining the seriousness of what he has to say. Secondly, he’s so up-front about it that you never get the impression that he’s trying to sneak something past his readers.

So: I loved the story, the illustrations and what he had to say. But what made The Lorax really stand out for me was the language. It was such a joy to read. I found myself reading bits of the book aloud without even realizing I was doing it.

For more on this book, read Debi’s review. Also, to read bout the very awesome Lorax project, click here.

There three books definitely convinced me to invest in picture books from time to time. And since they’re such quick reads, they won’t even be added to the tbr pile. I think I’ll start with more Seuss, and also with The Dangerous Alphabet (which I might have read at the bookstore some time ago, but I felt guilty and decided that it didn’t count. It was ridiculously overpriced – 23euros, which is something like $30. Yet it was right there, so how could I not read it? Can you blame me? I will get it, but it’ll have to be online.)

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