The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-third Annual Collection (Year’s Best Science Fiction) edited by Gardner Dozois. (3) [anthology, specfic]. I checked this out of the library. Technically didn’t finish the James Patrick Kelly novella that was the closer for this volume. Ehhh, I count it read, and book was due. I continue to enjoy every Paolo Bacigalupi story I encounter. I’m going to give myself a pass on reading any more Stephen Baxter, as what he writes is obviously not for me. Hated every second of the Harry Turtledove story, despite it being well-written and having moments, so I’m officially swearing off him as well. The Vonda McIntyre story “Little Faces” got completely inside my head. Unexpectedly, got tons more out of Bear’s story “Two Dreams on Trains” on a second reading, and I guess I’d done some kind of good parts transformation on “La Malcontenta” because it wasn’t quite like I remembered it. Still liked both. Was deeply uncomfortable with some of the characterizations of Africa and Africans in the “Clockwork Atom Bomb” because it seemed to play into lots of preconceived notions of racism, specifically how hopelessly backward Africans are, as though this “backwardness” had risen up in a vaccuum and were a character trait instead of a result of European imperialism. I’m pretty sure I felt that way because of how closely this story followed my reading of the genocide book. I didn’t think the author played fair with one of the African characters (or the reader) either, giving him lines that were painfully naive, and later having him say “Aha! but I’m a physicist!”. Finished on 02/19/07.
Luna by Julie Anne Peters. (4) [novel, YA]. Loaned to me by Sarah. Trying to get through the pile of loaner books. This was a good book, solid, deftly exploring the delicate topic of transgenderism. I imagine there’s a paucity of such books, especially aimed at teens, which explains why this gutsy, angsty narrative was nominated for the National Book Award. While easy to read and written from the POV of a very sympathetic character, I still found the writing itself to be sub-par. There were distracting author tics, and what I often hear called the “sentence level” work could have been better. I note this because while she tackles important and relevant issues that will interest teens, I don’t feel that kids should have a quality of material to read lesser than that available to adults. Finished on 02/23/07.
The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell. (5) [novel, childrens]. Given to me by Beverly, from yoga. Sweet little story of a man who builds himself a family from available materials: mermaids, wild animals and foundlings. Finished on 02/25/07.
The Sharing Knife Volume One: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold. (6) [novel, specfic, romance]. Given to me by Peter, who was too disgusted with it to finish it. Love Lois McMaster Bujold. Girl runs away from home and falls into a group of mysterious “Lakewalkers”, a formerly noble, ruling class who now patrols the land, getting rid of supernatural beasties. Delightful to read. Can’t say this is my favorite book of hers, though, not by a long shot. This seems like fluffier fluff than the rest of her books. Maybe I’m biased against romance? Finished on 02/27/07.
Squat by Taylor Field. (7) [novel]. Nabbed this book from my brother’s stack because the back cover sounded interesting. Pretty standard conversion story of a homeless OCD guy scraping by in New York. Had some moments, but the beauty of the story was defeated at almost every turn by the awfulness of the prose. My mental editor would not shut up. Finished on 03/08/07.
Additionally, quite a bit of online reading:
Crown of Stars by James Tiptree Jr. (1) [spec fic, anthology]. I checked this out of the library. A collection of short stories. I thought I would like this more than I did. The Quintana Roo book was better. While a few of the stories were really brilliant, there were a whole bunch that were heavy-handed, obvious, and dull (yes, I’m talking about you “Morality Meat”. Ugh). She did a fairy tale retelling/Romeo and Juliet story that was much better than my Egghead Kingdom, but still wasn’t all that, making me wonder if the whole concept of EK is doomed, doomed. I liked the doped up soldier story right until the end where I balked at the penultimate turn of the events (really, a body no one noticed? In the tropics? Didn’t it smell?). Wondering about the smell there made me notice how sense blind the writing was in other places. I wonder if there isn’t some dated factor to the book and whether I wouldn’t have liked it better if some of the plots didn’t seem so standard (maybe they were less so when she wrote them?). Finished early Jan, around 01/05/07 or so.
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch. (2) [non-fiction]. I checked this out of the library. It was recommended reading a (long) while back on slacktivist. An unflinching but humane look at the 1994 Rwandan genocide. There were more accusations of the French government than I expected (not that anyone, internationally, was spared. As an enlightened so-called first world, we really screwed up on this one). I had no idea the French had armed the genocidaires, and even provided troops who aided and abetted in the slaughter. The book quotes Mitterand as having said, “In such countries, genocide is not too important”. I don’t know if he was evil all the time, but there’s at least one instance of evil. Kofi Annan doesn’t come out looking too great either, causing me to lose quite a bit of respect for him, though Paul Rusesabagina is still a complete hero. It’s a pretty sickening and depressing history, but the book is amazing and completely worth reading. Finished on 01/30/07.
Man, it’s only January and I’m at least two books behind on the book a week thing. I couldn’t read the genocide book much faster than I did, though. There’s only so much calling people cockroaches and hacking them up with machetes I can absorb at a single sitting. I still owe book list entries for 2006, too. Perhaps later.
P.S. Sorry to have neglected the blog lately. I’ll try to be interesting and/or entertaining soon.
Happy New Year!
I’ve eaten my black-eyed peas, like a good Southerner, so I should have good luck and oodles of cash this year.
To close out my 2006 business, I’ll start documenting the reading vacation:
The Year’s Best Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois. (best guess 27) [specfic, anthology]. I checked this out of the library. From my written notes:”Best stories in this volume were originally published in SCIFICTION, making me even sadder that this market bellied up. Highlights: ‘Inappropriate Behavior’ by Pat Murphy, ‘The Voluntary State’ by Chris Rowe, ‘Scout’s Honor’ by Terry Bission, ‘Synthetic Serendipity’ by Vernor Vinge, ‘Ten Sigmas’ by Walter Jon Williams, and ‘Leviathan Wept’. Duds: ‘Delhi’ by Vandana Singh, ‘Sitka’ by William Sanders, ‘Mayflower II’ by Stephen Baxter, ‘Tourism’ by M. John Harrison. Frustrating:’Skin Deep’ by Mary Rosenblum and ‘Tribes of Bela’ by Albert E. Crowley. Poorest copyediting ever : ‘Mayflower II’ by Stephen Baxter.” Finished on 12/22/06.
Clan Apis by Jay Hosler. (guess 28) [graphic novel]. The story of a bee as it cycles through life in the hive. From my written notes: “Very enjoyable.” Finished on 12/22/06.
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold. (guess 29) [specfic]. The tale of a man who has led an extremely sheltered life as a doctor on a planet consisting only of men as he leaves the shelter of his home and what he has known. Because it’s Bujold, intrigue and embroilments follow, of course. From my written notes:”Most enjoyable read. I really admire the way Bujold doesn’t stint philosophical questions, even as she’s managing fast-paced, complex plots. There is lots to think about here.” Finished on 12/23/06.
The next book on my list is Buenos Aires which was terrible and needs to be kept away from the other good books, so I will put it in a post all its own, tomorrow. Teach me to pick my own books, I guess, since it was the only one unendorsed by the kind readers of this blog.
Melusine by Sarah Monette (best guess 26) [specfic]. I checked this book out of the library at first, then picked it up from Peter’s discard pile. The adventures of Felix and Mildmay, residents of two very different parts of Melusine. I liked this book, but not without reservations. Things I liked: (1) the magic system is just perfect. It’s clear that a lot of effort and thought went into it and it works and is broken in all the right places to seem authentic. I loved the competing schools, the shortsightedness of people’s disbelief, how the usefulness of the magic came from people’s interpretation of how it works. (2) some of the terminology was just perfect (annemer, hocus, flashies, flats, mollys, Keeper, Kennels). She’s got a definite way with words, a sure way to woo me. (3) I like it when doing the right thing has cost, and that’s definitely the case in this book. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. (4) the book is well-written. The author has an excellent command of rising tension, and the voice switches were seamlessly executed. I wanted to keep reading most of the time. (5) Mildmay rocks. Things I did not like: (1) a bit overboard with the unending melodrama. The relentlessness of it was less cathartic than tiresome. Oh, look, he’s blacked out from the pain again. (2) it’s page 290 before one of the major reveals (the reveal itself cleverly concealed and nicely done, imo) and somewhere before that there’s about 100 pages of totally unnecessary lunatic asylum. (3) I know I’m oversensitive to word and phrase repetition (I must be, I seem to complain about it all the time) but by about the seventh rep, I was ready to rip out pages with references to “hairy eyeballs” — a stupid, stupid phrase used about a dozen times. (4) the plot falls to pieces if anyone communicates to anyone else at any point in the book with clarity and honesty. Plots that are completely predicated on miscommunication irritate me. At the point when the compulsion is lifted but Felix still can’t bring himself to come clean and say what’s happened I got pretty impatient with the author, the book, and the protagonist. (5) I can totally buy a promiscuous happy puppy land with no STD’s (like in a standard romance, say), but if we’re going to have dark and gritty and promiscuous, then I need some syphilis in the mix to hold believability. C’mon, now. (6) everyone not the protags seemed a little flat and two-dimensional, most especially the evil folks. Sometimes people’s actions seemed to arise from no other impetus than plot convenience. Was this because of the first person narrative? I’m not sure. Other notes: just like any book with an intricate world (Perdido Street Station comes to mind) there were things that I was far more interested in than the author and I resented being yanked away from them. I liked the cade-skiffs, for example, but we couldn’t give them more than a couple of paragaphs, meanwhile we have to endure pages of court (yawn) intrigue. And why, oh why, couldn’t we get a date conversion appendix? Fine, enrich your world with multiple calendars, great, but help a reader out, willya? I still don’t know how long an indiction is (septad and decad were self-evident, afaic, but there were still weirdnesses such as Mildmay referring to people with two septad and three as kids. A seventeen-year-old is a kid? In this world? To a twenty-year-old? You’re kidding, right?). Things I didn’t get : why Thaddeus turns on Felix, the naming conventions, especially within Melusine and for Melusineans (why’s this one named Stephen and that one named Cardenio and the other named Joline?), how the politics works exactly. I’m still on the fence about whether I’ll read the next one. As you can see from my count, we’re slightly ahead on the did-not-like list, though I’ll forgive a lot for a truly decent magic system, and the plot has to be different in the next book, right? I finished this on 12/2/06.
Shriek: an afterword by Jeff VanderMeer. (best guess 25) [specfic]. Janice Shriek’s melodramatic afterword to Duncan’s 600 plus page history of Ambergris, with additions by Duncan and edited by Sirin. I liked this book. I babbled about it in an open letter to JV here before I’d finished it. Now, that I’ve finished it, I’m pretty pleased. He totally nailed the ending. I finished it on 11/28/05.
A few lingering thoughts about Shriek: an afterword and about Jeff VanderMeer’s response to my letter (That response, astonishingly, came more quickly than it would have had I stamped and mailed the letter! So much for my corner of the internet being seekrit, veiled by its relative obscurity. Though I guess I don’t have to be afraid of writing to writers anymore. From my sample set of one, anyway, they do not bite when you write to them. Best not to write to evil monkeys, though.)
First, the book. I shall try to put this into words, but I don’t know if I will succeed. The book itself, end to end, smacks down the polite fiction that novels are acts of communication. We like to think, as readers, that we are entering a doorway (doors, mirrors, windows everywhere in this work, btw) into a world the author created for us. Reality (I think and perhaps the author suggests so in this book – I certainly read it that way) is more like we build our own world, borrowing words the author has conveniently placed before us. But there’s possibly no real contact there. The incidents are isolated from one another. The act of creation, the act of receiving the creation work in parallel: never touching. I think this is a revolutionary concept, especially amidst all this talk of the writer/reader contract. I think one of the highest functions of art is to be contercultural, and I think this book is that on top of everything else it is (well-written, interesting, enjoyable, harrowing). The fiction of connection may arise, in part, from the reader trance I was talking about earlier. We go to a place not of our own making, therefore we assume it is the place of the author’s making. But VanderMeer denies there is such a place at all. There are only words, and the page, and either the writer alone with the words, or the reader alone with the words. That is all. Surprisingly, and cleverly, he denies the place by keeping you from it, using the very machine that would normally take you there. He may have said, “You will not get lost in this story, despite how well-told it is. I will not let you. I will remind you at every paragraph of its existence as story, an artifice.” My analysis, of course, is based on my reading, my own little castle I built with the words I was given. Is it what he meant? A part of what he meant? Not at all what he meant? I have no idea. Nor is it possible for me to ever know given only the work. In fact, my thoughts are largely so much interpretative chaff, but the book invites that, at the same time as it mocks it. There’s perhaps no absolute truth, only little truths, strung together on this thin wire of text. There’s no connection, but you will receive this message through a connection. A paradox. This book is bending my brain. Maybe in the end I will love it after all, though I said I wouldn’t.
Second, Jeff (is that too forward?) referred to the error on page 95 as something that occurred as he was adjusting “the mix” of the story. The long list of bands at the back of Shriek implies a strong connection between music and writing in VanderMeer’s work. My husband is a musician and a sound engineer so we often have these long rambling conversations about how making music is and is not like writing. We had a conversation just last week in which I was discussing writing to formula. It appears to be an easy way to make money, with a reliable repeatable product, but I can’t do that. If you give me a formula, I have to mess with it. He explained to me that it was a common requirement in studio training that an engineer precisely duplicate an existing recording. “There’s no other way,” he said,”to be sure that the sounds in your head are the sounds you’ve recorded except by exact duplication of a sound you’ve heard, then internalized.” Of course in writing, exact duplication is merely copying the words, so without involving your brain, it can hardly be expected to help your skills. Still, how much of writing is described by writers as trying to duplicate outside what goes on inside? A lot, it seems to me. And what sorts of tools or exercises might we use to get there? And how would we know when we’d gotten the notes right, unless there was some way to record it, to play it back? Seems like there’s something there that could be useful, if only I could figure it out. Somehow, VanderMeer is already thinking along those lines, already there. He’s fading some sounds and bringing out others. He’s adjusting lines for effect. He’s switching the solos around until it’s perfect. I want that level of control over my prose. I want to have my hand on the slider bar instead of just pushing out words one after another and hoping they’re in tune. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, but I’ve still got my shoulder to the boulder, stepping up the hill.
What I believe I read in 2005:
{Did I really not read anything between April 20 and July? See, that seems so unlikely. Is this when I first started doing origami? Because let me tell you I find it highly suspicious that I don’t have any origami books on either the 2005 or 2006 lists. I read several.}
So when did I read, and did I finish Modern Classics of Science Fiction? Was that late 2005, or early 2006? Not counted in the list above is Volume 1 of Nausicaa, because I didn’t complete it, but I read most of that at Dave’s after Viable Paradise as well. I was totally ok with not completing it, or looking at any of the other volumes. Are those two my only maybe unfinished books for that year? Not bad.
Apparently, if 2006 was the year of YA, 2005 was the year of graphic novels, and the year of borrowing (mostly from the library, but some from friends) instead of buying. No wonder I felt a bit disinterested in comics this year, considering how many I read last year. I appear, also, to have been very good about entering books into the database in January, because all five of my entries are from that month, and there are none for any of the other eleven months. And it only took me twenty two months to admit that no, in fact, this system was not working for me. I notice that I did one or two line synopses for my database. I may want to do that for my Book List entries, as that might help jog my memory about the book when I’ve otherwise completely forgotten it. My reading experience for 2005 did lead me to the very valuable discovery that nothing prevents me from buying a book after I’ve read it, if I really want to (and I’m more likely to know whether I want to after I read it). The only drawback is that people don’t seem to want to give you things you’ve already read as gifts. I’ve also discovered that if I want to get close to making the 52 book challenge, I probably need to pad my stats with plenty of graphic novels, like I did in 2005. What? They count! Why shouldn’t they count? Count them (as I did) and I’m less than 10 books from 52! I had no idea I was so close. I’m also beginning to strongly suspect I undercounted for 2006, but really, I can’t remember anything else! Curse you, poor memory and wretched record-keeping! I can’t wait to turn over a new leaf with 2007. All books noted, even if it kills me!
It’s completely plain by now, Chris Goodwin, that you only thought I was reading a bunch of non-fiction. No, it’s pretty much fictional stuff in my reading stack for 2005 as well as for 2006, with just a couple of exceptions per year.
Phew. Well that’s the backlog taken care of. No. I’m not looking at 2004. Too far back. Forget it.
Ok, here is where I try to list what I’ve read for the year, so I can go back and put in a number estimate for a stir of bones and Tehanu in the prior entry. I’m pretty sure things are missing, though maybe not more than four or so.
Read in 2006:
So, it looks like my year was mostly YA, and mostly drawn from library books. No wonder my to-be-read shelf never has any fewer books on it. It also looks like it’s good I didn’t take up the 52 book challenge, because I’m only about halfway there. Maybe next year.
I have this book database that my husband built for me, more or less to my exact specs. It’s supposed to help me track what I’m reading. And it doesn’t work for me. I never get around to entering the books. I thought it would be so cool to be able to query the database : books read in 2005, or YA Novels read, or books with review URLS, or books by author x. And it would be cool, but it doesn’t work unless I enter the data, and I’ve proved unwilling to go to the trouble. For a time I thought LibraryThing might help me with this (I tag books with the year I read them if it’s this year or last) but considering the huge numbers of things I borrow from friends and the library, and how little progress I’ve made entering my books on LibraryThing, that’s just not accurate enough.
Sooooo, I’ve been trying to come up with an alternate mechanism for recording what I read year to year. I have noticed on several blogs I read that people often enter this information right in their blog, and some have separate blogs for handling their reading material. I think I’m going to start noting my reads here. It’s searchable, after all, and although I can’t query it the way I could a database (how many x in y), I may be more likely to note it here, which is the bigger problem at the moment. I can keep a running tab year to year pretty easily by placing a bracketed number next to the title. I can even dump the database info for 2004, 2005 and 2006 (such as it is) into a few posts and have the complete record here (don’t hold your breath for that, though). The only problem I can see is procrastinating on entering the book because I plan to review it. I’m simply not going to review everything I read. To ensure there’s minimal correlation between noting what I’ve read and what I intend to review, I’ve created a separate category, called Book List, for the notation of books I’ve read, and a template to use in those entries. It should be short and sweet, just an overview with the pertinent facts and whatever interesting notes I feel like jotting down. Reviews will still come under the Entertainment category, as usual. I also hope I can use this method to keep better track of the fiction I read online, which is proving an increasing portion of my reading material, though since most of that is individual short stories, I’m not sure how I’m going to count that yet. There may be stuff that is less sensical or less for public consumption than usual in these entries, not because any of my thoughts are so private, but because a lot of my thoughts about things I read are so mundane and so scattered, but if you put up with the dream entries, surely, you can put up with my semi-coherent ramblings about stuff I read. Also, like the dream entries, they will be category noted, and you can just skip stuff in that category as it arrives.
As the first entry in the Book List category, I feel I should note what I’ve read, and I’m not going to start at the beginning of 2006, I’m going to start at the beginning of the week. Such is life.
A stir of bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. (best guess 23) [YA]. I checked this book out of the library. I finished it on 11/04/06. I really liked this book a lot, and plan to read the others of the series (this one’s a prequel, written after the others). This is a book that Marlee should read, if I can remember to recommend it to her when I see her. I very much enjoyed Hoffman’s story in Flights, which to the best of my knowledge is the only other thing I’ve read by her. I was immersed for about nineteen pages before the editor in my head dropped by and said “Whoa, that was an ugly sentence.” This usually happens way sooner, and that thought was immediately followed by, “But every one that came before this one was gorgeous, so let’s give a little slack, shall we?” She really does write beautifully. Something about the story felt quite familiar, and I checked the copyright date more than once to be sure I hadn’t read it before, and I can’t have.
Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin. (best guess 24) [YA]. I checked this book out of the library. I finished it on 11/08/06. I never read this book when it first came out, so I only had memories of the first three books of the series. This is a wonderful book, but brutal too. I had moments where I thought it was not really YA. Also, I think Le Guin is just about the only author I can tolerate preachiness from. I’m sure I will read this again so maybe I should buy it (along with the other Earthsea books!).