Look no further! The Interstitial Arts Foundation is having their annual auction, and there are some stunning pieces. Faves: Berry Moon book, a gorgeous print called Visual Fiction, and this intricate foldy-origami-book-wallet thing.

Go. See. Buy.

A catching-up post:

Overclocked by Cory Doctorow is awesome, especially "When sysadmins ruled the earth," a dark post-apocalypse short story on the power and risk of the internet(s), and what really matters when you come right down to it. On a related note, Doctorow has an interesting recent essay on science fiction as "radical presentism" -- in other words, what speculative fiction is really about is the tensions of the present, extracted and highlighted by projecting them into a [ ] near [ ] alternate [ ] distant (pick one) future. "Science fiction writers don’t predict the future (except accidentally), but if they’re very good, they may manage to predict the present...Science fiction is a literature that uses the device of futurism to show up the present."

Pastorialia by George Saunders. Clever and entertaining but not his best. Most of the stories are written in the same breathless, stream-of-consciousness narrative, meandering about from hither to yon -- the fun is in the trip; the destination isn't always that great. I liked "Sea oak" (nothing like zombie grandmas aunties to really make a point) and of course the title story with the characters stuck playing cavemen in a human zoo, which somehow manages to evoke office politics and the cubicle farm despite the sheep carcasses and the mutual social lice-grooming. Both Civilwarland and The brief and frightening reign of Phil were better. In persuasion nation of course was fabulous and still my favorite (that might have been the one that got him the Macarthur Genius Grant).

Beauty by Robin McKinley -- seriously ho-hum. Not bad, just ho-hum. Another fairy tale retelling, obviously, but so much like the Disney version I had a hard time swallowing it. Since this was published long before the Disney version it's entirely possible Disney got ideas from her, or maybe they both used the same source text (Perrault, maybe? It has a definitely French flavor to it), but it's lamentably simplistic even given that it's published under HarperTrophy, a children's imprint. (I have a hard time with HarperTrophy books anyway because I always think of "hypertrophy" -- not what they were going for, I'm sure, but there it is.) For this particular fairy tale I still have to name Tanith Lee's short-story version in her Red as Blood collection (ignore the horrifically cheesy cover and trust me -- it has sexy alien leopard cats, woohoo!) and Sheri Tepper's Beauty.

Let's see, this leaves me...three more, one of which is the Harvard Lampoon's spoof of Twilight. Will do those tomorrow.

Watched the rest of The Prisoner. Don't get it. Anyone who does, feel free to leave a comment clearing things up for me.

Picked up Wintersmith from the "Just in" shelf at the library and it confirms my opinion that Terry Pratchett is a god. This is one of his best, right up there with Mort, and Hogfather. The witches are in it -- Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Miss Treason -- as well as the Nac Mac Feegles, whom I hadn't met since I hadn't read the two previous Tiffany Aching adventures. The Feegles are...well...the nearest I can get is that they're like Smurfs with a Scottish accent: small, blue, not very bright, and they drink a LOT. Favorite Feegle: Wee Dangerous Spike. Favorite Feegle quote: "'Hooses, banks, dreams, 'tis a' the same to us,' said Rob Anybody. 'There's nothing we cannae get in or oot of.' 'Except maybe pubs,' said Big Yan. 'Oh, aye,' said Rob Anybody cheerfully. 'Gettin' oot o' pubs sometimes causes us a cerrrtain amout o' difficulty, I'll grant ye that.'"

At one point Tiffany witnesses the Dark Morris, a sort of anti-morris dance done in silence, all in black, at midnight in winter (Pratchett says one of his best book-signing moments was when he got to see this performed at a bookstore in Chicago!) She thoughtlessly leaps into the dance which brings her to the attention of the Wintersmith, who thinks she's the Lady of Summer; this makes him try to be much more human than he ought to be (he's an anthropomorphism of a season, after all) and confuses the natural progression of winter and spring. In addition to the hilariously funny moments the book has some quite poignant ones; Pratchett's books (two of them in particular) are the only ones I can think of that have made me both laugh to the point my ribs hurt and also leak the occasional tear, all within the same story.

Have now added the Wee Free Men andA Hat Full of Sky to my bulging to-read list (294!! I will never finish!!!!!).

Watched the first two parts on AMC last night. I know nothing about the original but the remake is weird as hell. Who knew a Knight of the British Empire could be this damn creepy?? I read that he had a hard time getting into the part until they found him the white suit; apparently with that, something clicked. He looks like a serial-killer ice cream salesman (I was always suspicious of ice-cream truck drivers -- that mindless repetitive music, those windowless vans, y'know?). Ick. Eek.

OK, Kafka was a Jew, so technically the first two terms are redundant. But I don't much care at this point. I've fallen rather far behind in getting down my thoughts about what I've read due to various real life interferences (conference travel, work, dog illness [it's intestinal, don't ask me to go there], and the all-important BETA-ING of some brilliant pieces which have yet to be posted but will rock the world of fanfic, see if they don't).

Anyway. Here goes my initial attemp at trying to catch up, starting with a quote from Kafka. I ran across this somewhere in my past, because I remember bits of it, but encountered it again recently and it stuck with me:

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books [ok, I take issue with him that, but on we go...], and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are the books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

An ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. F**king awesome. Can any of those perpetual NYT best-seller-list hack-denizens do that? I doubt it. Stephen King maybe, erratically. Danielle Steele or James Patterson: I highly doubt it. We read those to numb ourselves, to comfort ourselves, or to distract ourselves, not to challenge us or awaken us. They're pompoms, not ice axes.

I love the ice axes.

OK, I haven't actually been reading Kafka (he's best in the original Klingon, by the way). The quote was the lead-in to Chaim Potok's The Promise, which I did read and which I enjoyed very much (not an ice axe but perhaps an ice pick?). The central story of Reuven and Danny -- their friendship, their relationships with Rachel and her cousin Michael -- is ( folded up neatly in the interests of space )

On a completely different note, I foresee Epic Phail with NaNoWriMo. I've done zip, zilch, bupkus, nada, niente, or as a long-time friend would put it, "King Zippy Nada." Pfffft. Oh, and I chomped down on a handful of peanuts when I got home from work and a back tooth cracked in half and fell out.

Not so good there.

I think I'll have another glass of wine and go to bed.

Am completely disgusted by the Democrats caving in to pressure and allowing the evisceration of the reproductive health piece of the health care reform bill passed last night.

"Earlier, the House passed an amendment to pending health care legislation that prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option and in the insurance "exchange" the bill would create."

Great. So now not only are the women in our military denied a choice, so will be anyone opting for (or forced into) the public option, or who shops through this "exchange" (whatever THAT is). For anyone interested in objecting, Planned Parenthood has a petition/form letter here.

Not that it's any different from The Demon's Lexicon as a real book with pages and all. But now I can say I've read an entire book on a Kindle and talk knowledgeably and at great length about how Real Books Are Still Better. Which I think they are, in most cases, though if I were going on holiday I admit I'd rather take one Kindle loaded with sixteen books and my subscriptions to the New York Times and the Economist, rather than lugging 10 lbs of books around with me and having to find a news-stand for the paper every day. Two things struck me about the experience. First, the book seemed to go really fast (though that could just be because it's a YA book therefore a quick read for someone in their forties!). Second, good as the Kindle's technology and interface are, I found it harder to "get lost" in the story. Mainly I kept getting distracted by the little progress bar at the bottom that tells you what percentage done you are. That was weird. That never entered my mind before, in my entire reading life -- I guess you kind of notice as the bulk of the pages slowly moves from the right-hand side to the left-hand side, but only because the weight shifts and you have to hold it differently so it doesn't fall on the cat. It isn't something that stares you in the face, not to mention updates each time you turn a page (will this page get me to 75%? No...maybe the next one?)

I didn't like the percentage bar. I wanted it to go away. I resented it sitting there smugly measuring my progress. I get enough of that in my life. Reading isn't supposed to be measured in percent complete but in the joy and pleasure it gives, and the goal isn't to hit 100% but to enjoy the trip. (Will teachers start making assignments that way? "For tomorrow please read the first 10% of the book" ??)

So, 'nuff said about that. The book itself? Well, it's tough to say; perhaps the most concise summation is that her fanfic roots are still showing. The book suffers from a lot of the problems that fanfic -- even some of the good stuff -- does: logic problems, erratic behavior, thin characters, etc. None of the characters act their ages consistently, shifting from teenage to much more mature seemingly at random (or at authorial necessity?). On the other hand, the world she's created of demons and magicians has real potential, and she drops a couple of big twists -- one about halfway through, which I wasn't expecting, and then another right near the end, at which my eyebrows shot so far up they nearly fell off the top of my head -- which do serve to explain some of the oddities in the earlier part; the problem is when you come at it for the first time, it's a little hard to tell that those oddities are intentional and not just a result of the author not paying attention. I nearly gave it up about a third of the way in (at 39%, according to the Kindle's progress bar -- aha, there's a use for it!) As is too often the case with YA books (and fanfic), the characters are tad underdeveloped and the final confrontation is a bit of a fizzle, though still WAAAAAAY better than the pathetic limping finale that is Breaking Dawn LOL!! There are some wonderful bits that I wish could have been much expanded (the Goblin Market, for instance) and she has moments of really excellent wit and originality, so I have hopes that she'll improve as she goes along.

Oh, and the title doesn't seem to have any relationship to the story. That always bugs me.

Have been doing lots of writing but all of it, alas, work-related >:P Got my crits in to my online writing group for October -- barely, on the 31st -- but one got short-critted so it won't count (grrrrrr). I did sign up for NaNoWriMo; current word count is a big fat '0' (hiss boo). I slavishly followed the rules about not starting until 12:01 am Nov 1 to the point that I didn't even have a plot, which put me a bit behind. Saturday night I came up with something at the symphony (Beethoven really does make you smarter, as does Rachmaninoff apparently) but haven't had a chance to BIC-HOK-TAM yet. Why, you ask, am I not doing same at this moment? Excellent question.

On the reading front, I've had a few tasty things to beta (why is it 'beta' in the world of fanfic? why not 'proofread' or 'edit' like it is in the entire rest of the writing world?? why???). I also finally finished an item that's been on my currently-reading list for yonks: Preludes and Nocturnes, volume 1 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Mostly I wanted to read it because of Morpheus' Library of Dream, which contains never-written books by real authors (e.g., Road Trips to the Emerald City by L. Frank Baum and Alice's Journey Behind the Moon by Lewis Carroll). The Library hasn't turned up yet but I enjoyed the stories -- they reminded me of the old Mystery Comics Digest I used to devour as a kid, crammed with swamp monsters, witches, ancient Chinese curses, possessed drums and all manner of creepinesses. Morpheus is a strangely sympathetic character, rather like Elric of Melniboné. I shall proceed with the next volume and hope the Library makes an appearance.

Another reinvention of a fairy tale, Robin McKinley's Spindle's End takes a new approach to "Sleeping Beauty." Rosie, the princess-in-hiding, is definitely a new spin on the main character -- totally uninterested in clothes, dancing, or any other highbrow stuff, it turns out her true calling is as a "horse-leech," a job made much easier by the fact that she can talk to animals. The talking-to-animals was a nice addition to the story, and I loved McKinley's characterization of the "voices" of the different species: cats are elliptical and always talk in riddles, bugs speak in a kind of clicking code, foxes "generally wanted to talk about butterflies and grasses and weather for a long time while they sized you up," dogs bolster their conversation with lots of physical action, etc. Especially wrenching: Lord Prendergast's best stallion (used as a showpiece and stud, and never allowed to run or get dirty) and the huge white bird that lives in the rooftree of Woldwood, when they speak to her of their yearning to be free of the constraints they live with day in and day out.

Her writing style is unusual. I was struggling with it a bit at the beginning, I kept having to go back and reread paragraphs because I was getting lost in the sentence structure. She favors long sentences with lots of clauses and parenthetical digressions. Then, at some point about halfway through when I was playing online, I ran across this piece from Ursula K. LeGuin, where she draws an analogy between story and movement. There's the running kind of story, where you put one foot down after the next because you can't stop because you're leaning forward, rushing ahead -- page-turners. Then there's the walking story, where "you fall into the flow of the gait and cover ground while seeing everything around you, scenery you may never have seen before; and the walk may end up somewhere you've never been." And finally the dancing story, where you're led on for the simple joy of movement and things might seem pointless but beautiful, "and yet if the dance is true to itself, all the movements are connected and every one follows from the last, not predictably, but inevitably." And there was my problem: I was reading Spindle's End as though it were a running book and clearly it was a walking book. Or she's a walking writer.

Unfortunately the book was marred by a couple of places where there was no good reason for something to happen other than that the plot required it. For example, ( Spoilers! ).

I also took issue with the nature of the ending -- I don't object to happy endings, but the way they achieved it dissatisfied me, and the more I think about it the more dissatisfied I am. ( More spoilers ).

The idea of baby-magic (very young children unable to control their powers, therefore a bit of a trial to live with) was clever and cute, like a nicer version of the theory of poltergeists being generated by the pangs of adolescence. I also enjoyed the whole magic-thick-as-chalk-dust ambiance of the place, so that mugs spontaneously turn into frogs and people spend a lot of time asking things to stay what they are (laptop, stay laptop...). The story never explains why the country's that way, though, when none of its neighbors are. There was also no explanation of the roots of Pernicia's vengeful nature -- is she just a Bad Hat, or was there some conflict behind it? A simple insult like not being invited to a christening might suffice for a Disney villain but in a full-length book I expect a little more meat to a rage and fury that's been festering for centuries.

I'd like to try more of McKinley's books to get a better sense of her as writer; one of my colleagues at work has The Blue Sword and one of our interns was a big fan of Sunshine, so maybe I'll give them a try.

A long lacuna in posting, partly due to being very busy with regular day job, partly due to some freelance deadlines, and last but not least, partly due to some very intensive beta-ing of the latest chapter of Downloaded, an excellent and intriguing Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica crossover fic.

And oh joy!! This week IFC Channel is doing a six-day Monty Python-a-thon -- a new documentary with interviews, Life of Brian, Holy Grail, episodes from the series, etc etc etc. I'm in heaven. Because John Cleese doing his silly walk really is the funniest thing ever done by a human, and quite possibly by any non-human as well, not excepting any yet-to-be-discovered aliens.

Another one done for the hp_uk_meetup, about the price we pay for getting our heart's desire. Enjoy :)

( A Price Beyond Rubies (HG/SS, PG) )

Well, now that the hp_uk_meetup is over, I'm allowed to post the flash fic -- aka drabbles -- and also the slightly longer pieces (resulting from my inability to control my wayward Muse) that I contributed for their edification, jollification, and delectation. Herewith, my G and PG offerings; I have a couple of R-rated ones but will save those for tomorrow. And can I just say, I had huge amounts of fun with this? Thanks nursedarry for inviting me to play!!


( Irresistible (RL gen, G) )


( Social Grooming (RL/SB, PG) )


( Whiter shade of pale (HG/LM, PG) )


( Lunacy (LL gen, G) )

The University of Florida has a disaster plan for dealing with zombie behavior spectrum disorder (ZBSD). Or rather, it had one. Alas, college officials (who clearly have no sense of humor) yanked the file after it got national attention. Fortunately, like zombies themselves, internet postings never die, so you can still view it here.

Wow, talk about decadence. Just finished Anthony Burgess' Kingdom of the Wicked, about the Roman Empire during the first years of Christianity. (To give myself extra immersion, I also watched the old Masterpiece Theatre series I, Claudius in my spare time -- Patrick Stewart as a Very Sexy Evil Guy with hair!! Mr Ollivander as mad emperor Caligula!! Squee!! -- and tried to think in Latin. I am apparently a method reader.)

Anyhoo, the book was great fun. The history of Christianity as told by...perhaps P. J. O'Rourke? Or Bill Bryson? Here's a sample, about Paul and his efforts to convert the men of Ephesus, a hotbed of goddess worship. The craftsmen who make the little icons of Diana/Artemis are none too pleased with this idea:

So Demetrius and some of his fellow craftsmen held a meeting in Demetrius' workshop the following morning. This was a large shed full of fires, where some men poured molten metal into moulds and others cracked cold moulds open to reveal the smirking godlingess. Demetrius said:

"Look, friends, this is our trade. This is how we make our money."

"In your instance, a lot of money."

Demetrius ignored that. "We're all involved in the worship of the goddess, blessed be her holy name and sacred influence. This man Paul is telling everybody that there's no such thing as gods made by hand. Before we know where we are he'll have the damned temple pulled down and the traffic stopped."

"Traffic?"

"You know what I mean. The holy pilgrimages from all over Greece and Asia. This is our bread, friends."

"He's blaspheming against precious metal. So we --?"

"Stop him."

Thus it was that Paul and some of his fellow Christians were dragged to the Ephesian temple by the militant guild of silversmiths, aided by a rabble that did not need to be hired, for the gratuitous manhandling of foreigners is always both a virtue and a pleasure in provincial towns where, anyway, there is little to do in the evenings. Silas, fearful in the ruddy flare of the torches, seeing the mound of the goddess' huge belly threatening twenty feet above his eyes, panicked in the belief that they were to be sacrificed to her, Christian blood to be smeared laboriously over her polymastic or multimammial rotundity. He began to hit out...The mob, always suggestible, hit out too in the same directions, and one brawny lad shouted to Paul, "That's right, give to these impious Cretans or whatever they do be called!"

Heeeee. It's all (so far as I can tell) accurate historically in terms of events, but the dialog and attitudes were great fun. Not that Paul and the rest of the apostles aren't sincere, just that they're a bit muddle-headed; for example, everyone's puzzled when Paul starts to get suspicious of women (heh, go figure).

So next I'm going to tackle Gore Vidal's Julian, a historical novel about the Emperor Julian's changes to Christianity some 300 years later. With all this Roman stuff I feel I should be nibbling grape leaves. I have drunk a lot of wine lately, does that count?

Ha ha ha the Pope ha hehahaaa a spider ha heeh heeeee the music ouch it hurts I'm laffing...

Squeeee! wicked_visions has done a new set of anti-Twilight icons. Go. See. Giggle.

* Because of his comment on J.K. Rowling vs. Stephenie Meyer (at end of 2d para). Hahahahaaaa!

Strangers, by Anita Brookner. Another minute examination of character. She's good, of course, as always; brilliant at describing nuances of emotion to a microscopic degree, like fine pen-and-ink sketches. I enjoy her books because I often identify with their main characters: quiet, bookish women, observers of life rather than livers of it, baffled but admiring spectators of the more irresponsible, egotistic, demanding women around them, who seem to be almost a different species from themselves. (Although I must admit I meet fewer of those as I get older; perhaps they don't wear well...)

But this wasn't one of her best, I thought. For one thing, there's a man, Sturgis, as the central character and she's better with women. For another, Sturgis -- a man in his seventies, alone and occasionally lonely, meditating on what it means to grow old without family or close friends, who finally decides to strike out and try something new, even though he admits to himself it may be too late -- doesn't seem to have enough complexity to sustain such a lengthy exploration. He goes in mental circles quite a bit. Hotel du Lac, the one she won the Booker Prize for and which I still measure all her novels against, has Edith Hope, a very complex, self-analytical main character who learns some crucial truths about herself in the course of the book; Sturgis just doesn't seem to have the same depth, nor does he seem to come to any profound self-realization. It could be of course that I read Hotel du Lac at a B&B in Germany while my ex and I were on our honeymoon; that tends to lend things a romantic and satisfying aura. But I've revisited it several times and it's held up very, very well indeed. (Much better, in fact, than my ex...)

So meh; it's ok for a rainy Sunday afternoon but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. If you want to try a Brookner go for Hotel du Lac, or The Debut, or Brief Lives.

...spend your time reading The Book of God and Physics. What a complete waste of about four hours of my life (I skimmed the last 125 pages, very VERY quickly). I was eagerly looking forward to a good find-and-decipher-the-ancient-document page-turner and suffered a disappointment of colossal proportions. The book has the extra zing of being about the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious document which does in fact exist (it currently resides peacefully at Yale's Beineke Library after centuries of exotic travel with the Jesuits), and which has defied translation for five hundred years. You'd think that would make the book more interesting. Sadly, such is not the case. The reader is force-fed gobstopper-size chunks of exposition and AYKB, much of which is irrelevant to the plot; as if that weren't bad enough, the dialog is so stilted as to seem laughable, the characters as two-dimensional as paper dolls, and the logic trail so convoluted that Umberto Eco looks like "See Spot run" by comparison.¹

(Parenthetically, I feel compelled to observe that the intelligent and exacting Jesuits deserve better than the loopy protag in this book. This, for example, or this.)

The book is translated from the Spanish, and the most charitable thing I can say is that they should have sprung for a much, MUCH better translator; alas, even that I'm not sure would have saved it. Clearly William Morrow decided to publish The Book of God and Physics because they thought it had all the necessary elements for a U.S. blockbuster: a) a mysterious manuscript b) intrepid amateur sleuths criss-crossing Europe to follow obscure clues and c) a conspiracy perpetrated by religious power-mongers (in this case, fundamentalist Christians in the US). Da Vinci Code, anyone?

Two thumbs down and a resounding "Pfffffft" for good measure. And I bet they try to make a movie out of it.

1. "Q: What do you get if you cross Umberto Eco with the Godfather? A: An offer you can't understand."

Wow. This was awesome. Got it on loan from a co-worker and tore through the whole thing last night and this morning. The subtitle is "Old tales in new skins" and boy does it deliver! Thirteen classic fairy tales stunningly reinterpreted, from "Beauty and the Beast" to "The Little Mermaid," linked together in a chain of stories. The female characters are clearly the stars of the show, and although they're not all heroines or self-rescuing princesses or even wise, some of them, they're most definitely three-dimensional, real, vibrant women. Like Tanith Lee's Tales from the Sisters Grimmer, it's as if someone shattered a book of fairy tales and created a mosaic out of the fragments -- shivery, sensual, disturbing, wonderful, frightening, exhilarating, and infinitely intriguing.