I've posted a spoileriffic review over at the other blog, for those who're interested and have read it.

Tags: books

It's well up to the standard set by past WoT books, and with the introduction of Brandon Sanderson the pace moves faster and More Things Happen. Several long-standing plot threads get cleared up (some of them offstage, thank goodness), a couple of long-term goals get achieved, a couple of characters who've been around since the early books die, and the action scene near the end is more fun to read than Dumai's Wells and less morally icky.

On the other hand, as far as character goes Sanderson paints with a very broad brush, which tends to amplify a lot of the rather tedious gender stuff which has always been a feature of the series. I'm not using "rather tedious" in the same sense as most fans, of course - it's blatantly obvious that the books are about male-female relations, and I have no problems with this. It's a fascinating subject to write about. On the other hand, Jordan always just kept hammering away with the same sledgehammer, over and over again. Yes, we know that often people don't talk to each other and thus cause problems. Yes, we know that sometimes people just try to manipulate each other rather than communicating, and that that's silly. The key words are 'sometimes' and 'often'. In this series, they're all at it, all the time, and it gets really rather depressing. Sanderson's doing the same thing still (though, refreshingly, we do get some actual information exchange between characters - some trust and some basic competence, and that's why the plot is suddenly moving) and it's still annoying.

Tags: books

At Eastercon, we were given free books; I have reviewed one of them here.

It's Unnatural History by Jonathan Green, the first book under the Pax Britannica label from Abaddon Press, and it's uproariously, hilariously, risibly bad. It's like the hastily aborted bastard child of Bulldog Drummond and Sebastian Tombs, exhumed from a shallow grave and encased in a steam-powered armature of shiny brass.

(Elly made me post this link. In retaliation, I'm going to make her post about handling elephant poo.)

Tags: books, elly, sf

• Place names in fantasy
  
• Acacia, by David Anthony Durham (Part II, Part III)
  
• Obituary for David Eddings
  
• Review - Irons in the Fire, by Juliet E McKenna
  
• Review - Zahrah the Windseeker, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  
• Review - The Dazzle of Day, by Molly Gloss
  
• Re-reading - The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World, by Harry Harrison
  

Tags: books, meta, sf
Current Music: McCalmans - Shian Road

Somewhat incoherent - reaction-dumping. Context:

• http://deepad.livejournal.com/29656.html
  
• http://seeking-avalon.blogspot.com/2009/01/open-letter-to-elizabeth-bear.html
  
• http://truepenny.livejournal.com/625351.html?style=mine
  

Writers (and fans, by extension) are caught on the horns of a dilemma (or possibly a gazebo): on the one hand, we don't get to write honestly about other peoples' cultural experience, because it isn't ours to write about. On the other hand, other peoples' cultural experience is really fucking cool and interesting. On the gripping hand, most of these Interesting Cultures are actually really poor and deprived and don't have luxuries like time to write, a thriving publishing industry, or even a corpus of work in their own language and cultural idiom to grow up with. Which means that if it isn't written about by privileged white people (or coconuts, or bananas) then it isn't written about at all.

Poor us, what a problem we have.

Except...

We don't. It's not our problem. Seriously. The cultural experience of imperialism is not about the imperialists. I don't give a flying fuck what keeping someone in chains, whether steel or economic or both, does to your soul. Angsting about that makes you sound like Cordelia. [Edit: That's as in Buffy, not as in Lear or Vorkosigan.]

It's really tempting to assume that a) for every problem, there's a solution somewhere, if we only work hard at it with good intentions; and that b) that solution is more likely to be arrived at by smart educated people in developed countries.

But I don't see anything to support those assertions in these cases. Problems come in a lot of different domains, which often don't share anything with each other. And I appreciate that Not Doing Anything is a) hard, b) morally problematic when you think you might have an answer, and c) a whole barrel of No Fun.

(No, I don't have a consistent, coherent answer, or a manifesto to set out, or a program of things to be done. I'm neither that naive or that arrogant. Besides, I'm a privileged white Westerner myself, and the nearest thing to an oppressed minority in my bloodline is Welsh.)

Tags: books, politics, racism, sf

( Doctor Who )
( Stardust )
( GK Chesterton )

Tags: books, doctor who, poetry

The top fifty SF & fantasy books (where from? I don't know). Bold the ones you've read, strike the ones you hated, italicize the ones you couldn't get through. Asterisks for the ones you loved - more asterisks, more love. Plus signs for the ones you own.

I've assigned stars based on how much I loved them when I first read them, not how much I love them looking back. The instructions don't specify, but this makes more sense to me.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien *****+
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov **+
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A Heinlein **+
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin *****+
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C Clarke **+
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury **+
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe *
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr *+
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov **+
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett *+
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester **+
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey **+
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R Donaldson *+
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman **+
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl +
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling *
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams ***+
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny *+
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick *+
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement ***+
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon *+
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith *
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke ***+
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven **+
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien **+
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson ***+
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner **+
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester **+
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A Heinlein *+
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock *+
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks *+
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer **+

Tags: books, meme, sf

(via thipe)

* Grab the book closest to you.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write that sentence to this post.
* Copy these instructions as a new post to your LJ.
* Don't go looking for your favourite book, or the coolest one you have -- just grab the closest one.

'No, madame,' replied Henry; 'we are going into the city with Messieurs d'Alençon and Condé. I almost expected to find them here.'

(Also, points for identifying each others' books.)

Tags: books, meme

I am currently staring in slack-jawed starry-eyed astonishment at Mohandas K. Gandhi's paraphrase of Ruskin's Unto This Last.

This is a truly fantastic combination.

Tags: books

From an io9 post:

Perhaps the fear that Stephenson is becoming the literary equivalent of Weaving is what motivated Anathem's marketing campaign, or maybe it was the realization that Borders wouldn't order as many copies of the book if it were labeled what it is: A space opera, pure and simple.

Seriously... what were they actually reading? Did someone slip them E. E. 'Doc' Smith reprints inside an Anathem dustjacket? Yes, there was a spaceship in it, but it's not exactly important, and frankly the book would have been better without it.

As for becoming the literary equivalent of Hugo Weaving... oh, no, what a terrible obscurity to be doomed to.

Tags: books, sf

I haven't forgotten about the post on class I promised as a followup; I got sidetracked by something else, then by something else, and in the meantime started reading Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down. I need to post with notes on that, too, but in the meantime it's informing my ideas about class a bit as well.

I've been away from LJ for half the week, and have been skim-reading to catch up; did I miss anything noteworthy in any of your lives?

Tags: books, history

Neal Stephenson's latest is good enough that I took it on the Tube with me - a thousand-page hardback. Saying that, though, I do have some grumbles about it.
( Here be spoilers )

Tags: books, sf

The first draft of Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds has been posted online. If you aren't familiar with it, read this review and then immediately acquire a copy. If I owned more than one, I'd lend it out, or indeed press it on people. As it is, Fantasy Centre on the Holloway Road has a copy in stock as of lunchtime today.

Also as of lunchtime today, they no longer have copies of Archer's Goon (the first DWJ I read, and the one that got me instantly hooked); The Well at the World's End, Vol. II (with proper management, the entire North Sea could be restocked using the amount of cod in William Morris's fantasy novels, but they're still a really good read. They remind me irresistibly of The Deed of Paksenarrion); Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians, which I've been wanting to read for a while;The Tombs of Atuan; and Isidore Haiblum's The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders which is a wonderful Sheckleyesque romp through Jewishness.

Incidentally, I've also been updating my free book bookmark list. It's not even slightly comprehensive, but if it's on there then a) it's freely downloadable and b) I think it's worth reading. It should also be c) legal, or it it isn't then it's there by mistake. Other recommendations gratefully accepted.

I went to see Wolves at the Window at the Arcola Theatre the other evening, with friend_of_tofu - it's a dramatization of many of Saki's short stories, woven together into a more-or-less continuous narrative. Seeing Louis performed with a swaddled-up teddy bear adds a wonderful level of uncertainty to the presentation. Highly recommended, and it seems like rather a good theatre overall.

Wednesday, I'm going to the ABTT Theatreshow with my father, to geek out over shiny new lighting toys and pretend to be a real lighting designer.

For those of you who haven't been following it already, I recommend Freakangels, by Warren Ellis & Paul Duffield. First episode & archive.

That seems to be more or less it for lit-geek type updating, so I'm going to go and start clearing off enough of the kitchen table to try mounting some prints. And wrestling with my laptop power cord/socket in the hope that it'll consent to stay charging for more than ten seconds at a time.

Tags: books, sf, theatre

I've been wandering through a lot of discussions on the covers of SF&F books in the last few days - the old chestnut about "is this tacky or great?", "Will this put off new readers or will it keep the mundanes out of our genre?", and so on. I may work up a longer ramble on the subject, but I wanted to share my bogglement at one thing with you, O my readers.

Someone posted this image, showing the cover of his book, and asked for honest opinions.



Inexplicably, they didn't eviscerate him. There was not even any pointing and laughing. It's pretty good art, as fantasy art goes, but apparently that isn't a joke title or series name.

Tags: books, sf

Steampunkish YA one-volume quest fantasy. It took me a while to twig that this was actually supposed to be a YA book, since that wasn't mentioned anywhere on the dustjacket (apart from the detail of our heroes being early teenage orphans), but once I shifted gears to that I could enjoy it.

He has some amazing ideas, but he's too clumsy about executing a lot of them - the 'clever' similarities to Victorian history look more like lazy copying, and his characterization doesn't live up to his worldbuilding. The world is filled with fun, amusing one-note characters.

Tags: books

Thursday 8th May - keynote speaker, Symposium: Science Fiction as a Literary Genre.

Given the amazingness-density of The Baroque Cycle, and the intricte overlapping with history and mainstream fiction, this looks fascinating.

Tags: books, london, sf

Finally, I have connectivity again. On Monday afternoon, my laptop power cable finally gave up the ghost - it had been getting progressively more and more picky about actually providing any power, up to the point where I had to spend five minutes jiggling it about and physically forcing it in to find a position where it would work. Every time. So I opened the DC jack up to look inside, and it turned out that one of the wires had physically snapped. No wonder it was getting warm...
( solution )
( reading )

Other than that, my life has been entirely dull whilst offline. What've I missed? What should I be doing any time soon?

Tags: books, geek
Current Music: Dream a Little Dream of Me - Mama Cass

The other evening, I was wandering through Border's and got mugged by John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain - or, 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge.

It's a wonderful book - the history of Britain from 55 BCE to 1945 CE, without assuming that you knew any of it in the first place. O'Farrell's not a Historian, and he's wonderful in his treatment of the normal pop-history subjects like kings and generals and battles. There's been a big movement in historical studies to get away from things like that, but most of them - being Historians rather than satirists, polemicists, or straight-talking socialists - concentrate on writing about social trends and changes rather than pointing out in detail just what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all get taught to look up to.

On the other hand, he's also good at this history business - his bibliography's quite impressive. Not incredibly extensive, but it's there and it's got the right names on.

Tags: books

I should really get around to LARTing the local library over their shelving policies. They insist on stacking books horizontally on the shelves, or even face-out, instead of spine-out as nature intended. I rearrange the shelves I browse properly when I go, but I keep having to do it, so presumably this is actually someone's deliberate policy, and this must be remedied.

Tags: books

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
( Read more... )

Tags: books, meme