mostly harmless books

I’m halfway into Ink right now and it’s finally starting to make sense! Happy moments of understanding. I even figured out that Guy’s play is The Bacchae in disguise (long live Wikipedia!). A bit earlier I was bored and I got to reading Amazon reviews… Not unexpectedly, many people hated the book. But I found this following comment very interesting: the reader disliked the exact things I love about the novels.

This is the first book that I have ever returned to any bookseller because I simply could not stand to read it any more. I made it just over half-way though before giving up hope that there would be a huge payoff at the end.

Any Clues to Help the Reader Discern What is Actually Happening vs. What is Only Happening in Someone’s Memories, Dreams, or Fantasies: I am a tolerant reader. I accept that there are things which are written on the page that are not literally happening to the characters. Unless obfuscation is the author’s purpose in these situations, however, I would appreciate the occasional tiny clue as to when we are in reality, when we are in memory, and when we are in fantasy or a parallel universe.

Dude, that’s the fun part! Guessing who is who and what they’re doing (and, even more importantly at some points, when) is what I love about The Book of All Hours. Tracking down the myths is great and for me at least it was a very good opportunity to refresh my memory. Gods are fun. Extra fun when the other book you’re reading (Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson) also has an important role for Inanna.

After postal troubles (again), my New Weird is finally here. With the special dedication Horia was telling me about.
(Since I couldn’t be there at the launch, Horia got the autograph for me and then mailed me the book. Two times even, because the first attempt was thwarted by the idiots at my post office.)

It’s going to be read and written about at some point, but not quite now as I just started two books (Vellum and Snow Crash, for the curious).

Anyway, here’s my book and its adorable “new weird” kitty.

Still alive. Read a lot while on holiday (though only one spec fic - Duma Key - and one slightly related - On Writing - both my Stephen King).

Back home, lazy as hell and continuing to be blown away by Vellum. I’m reminded everyday of how many things I’m missing. I was researching a “today in history” column for work and I found out that 10 years ago today Matthew Shepard was attacked and left for dead. Who the hell is he? An inspiration? Parallel? Alter-ego? of Thomas/Puck, mentioned in a brief scene that stuck with me for its cruelty. I suspected he was a real person, but I didn’t know the events were exactly as described in the book.

This thing needs a dictionary, a glossary, a companion book, something. I get so many things and yet the full picture escapes me. I’m hoping it will make more sense after Ink, but I’m not really counting on it. The review/thoughts on this will be extremely messed up.

I’m seriously envying Horia for getting to meet Hal Duncan. When I grow up I’m going to have the time & money to go to all the conventions I want.

I finished The Dispossessed a week or so ago. I still don’t like Ursula K. LeGuin so much, but I realized the difference 10 years make. Reading stuff like this at ~14 left me with a big “WTF” since I didn’t know what she was talking about and there’s no real story. (Guy lives on a planet, guy goes live on a different planet, guy runs off… wow, fascinating… not.) I really appreciated the balanced view. Everyone’s free to draw their own conclusions, but neither Urras or Annares were made to seem better. All societies have flaws…

The idea of an invented language being used on a large scale like that seemed exagerrated at first (and didn’t feel completely justified in the end either), but the non-possession was interesting to witness in speech. “The mother” instead of “my mother” is weird.

And now I am blown away for the second time by Vellum. Unless you’re a genius (or are able to pay more attention that me), the book begs for a re-read. I am getting more of the parallels than the first time around. However, since I’m almost done and I’m leaving on holiday tomorrow, I won’t take it with me. Carrying a trade paperback for 100 pages’ reading is too much, and I doubt I can read Ink without google at my fingertips. So they shall have to wait for a week a so until I can devote my full attention too all those cultural and historical references.
(It’s funny I love books I don’t understand… and it’s funny - as in weird - that I can read for an hour about the 1919 Battle of George Square because it’s mentioned in about 5 pages of a book but I stay as far away from alternate histories as I can.)

Thanks to the lovely BoingBoing and Cory Doctorow, I occasionally end up on a podcast/audiobooks website and download all the cool-sounding fiction I can get my grubby virtual hands on. I’m not really into podcasts, but I’ve found a couple of nice places - StarShipSofa and EscapePod, plus SFFAudio which has links to many places. And, for someone who loves accents, listening to Starship’s Tony Smith is very fun (like a puzzle! “now what did he say here?”)

So yesterday, finding myself without a bus book, I listened to stories - one from EscapePod, several from StarShipSofa.

First up was Elizabeth Bear’s Tideline. It’s about death and mourning and new life. And a robot and a kid. Chalcedony is the last of her (human) plutoon, a broken down battle robot that devotes the rest of her existence to creating a memorial to her dead companions and, unexpectedly, protecting a young boy. Another story of the robot-that-develops-a-heart? Yes and no. Every action can be explained by the laws of robotics - Bear’s, if not Asimov’s. A robot protects humans. A robot learned how humans honor their dead. A robot learned about the importance of remembering.

I wasn’t expecting to like a robot story so much, but I did. And although Arthurian myth might sound out of place, it fits right in.

Second, the SSS podcast.

Poetry: Greg Betty - Bottles
I didn’t even realize this was a poem, I thought it was a very short story. A bit of a different take on the “ships in bottles” idea.

Flash Fiction: Atalanta Pendragonne - Moon Over Baton Rouge
Another different take, this time dealing with vampires. A fun little story I enjoyed a lot. (But, really, that name?! Why?)

Article: Matthew Sanborn Smith - Jim Sawgrass
I never had any particular interest in genealogy or genetics, but this guy has a lot of free time on his hands and the short overview of how we’re all really related and how no family is really older than each other and how migration influences genealogy was really fascinating. He’s also funny, which made it even better.

Main Fiction: Paul Di Filippo - Bad Beliefs
I’d heard about Paul Di Filippo, never read anything by him as far as I can recall, and I got this podcast for the Jeff Carlson bit, so I had no particular interest in the fiction. But… boy was it cool. I never got what memes were (except for those annoying tags on blogs), but in here they’re personifications of… ideas? There’s “Drunk driving is safe” and “I’ll never die” and “Fuck the police” and another dozen or so embodiments of good and bad beliefs. Mostly bad, like the title says. The idea might be old, but it was new and exciting for me. I hope I’ll be able to track down a text copy of this, because I kept drifting off and I missed some parts, which is too bad for such an interesting and fun story.

On The Sofa With Jeff Carlson
This actually wasn’t as interesting as I was hoping. I’m sort of currently reading Carlson’s Plague Year and I was curious about the author, but I’d already read his bio so there was nothing really new. I might listen to it once I finish the book(s), because it might be better learning about his sources of inspiration after I finish reading.

And since we’re on internet stuff, Afterworld is an awesome post-apocalyptic animated series which can be watched online (on on AXN if they have it in your country).

To finish off on a positive note, my boyfriend informs me that Big Bang will happen again in 9 days and I should read Forever Peace. Plus: we won’t have to go to work anymore. Minus: we won’t get to go on holiday. I really want to go to Spain, so I hope the Large Hadron Collider doesn’t kill us all. At least not before October 4th.