Vanderlust

Warning: fanboy post. If you don’t know who Jeff VanderMeer is, well… well, you will soon. Unless you’re one of those people who never clicks on the links. Yes, I see you.

A Jeff VanderMeer interview in which, among other things, he lists his favourite books! Jeff VanderMeer on novel outlines! Jeff VanderMeer’s own definition of the New Weird!

And in some sort of incredible vortex of awesomeness, Wired is giving away a PDF of VaderMeer’s latest novel, The Situation, which he describes as “Dilbert meets Gormenghast”. Download and enjoy. There are blurbs and an excerpt here if you are the cautious type.

For The Wynne

Kid books are fun to read. I recently read the four very awesome Chrestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones. The unfair comparison to the Harry Potter books is inevitable and tiresomely predictable, so -you know, whatever. Not gonna go there. Diana Wynne Jones is awesome. That is all.

One more. China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun out-Neverwheres Gaiman’s Neverwhere. The comparison is irresistable at first, but does not hold for long except in the most general sense. It’s also Mieville’s first book specifically aimed at “younger readers” and correspondingly quirkier and funnier and less political, but it does delight in subverting some of the tired tropes; chosen ones, quests and last-minute sacrifices.

I wish I knew kids I could give these books to. I suppose I’ll just wait for my niece to grow up a little more.

To Forme And Peynten Erthely Creaturis

Reading Dawkin’s The Ancestor’s Tale, which works chronologically backwards, tracing ancestries to discover when hominids diverged from the chimpanzees and bonobos (6 million years go), and then when that common ancestor diverged from the gorillas (a mere million years before that), and likewise when that even more common ancestor diverged from the orang utans (14 million years ago) and so on and so forth, all the way back to our -everybody’s- ultimate ancestor.

The central conceit of the book is that this is a “pilgrimmage”, with a structure deliberately modeled on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; each “pilgrim” being a chosen species. Two small mercies: Dawkins does not try to tell these individual “tales” in a fictionalized first person -an idea he considers and dismisses as “twee”- and the inevitable potshots at creationists and the religious right are mostly in the nature of brief asides or footnotes. Actually, those are not “small” mercies; if either of those things had been otherwise, it might have turned the book into unreadable gunk. But they are not, and it isn’t.

Dawkins is particular about not being carelessly speciesist: while the book follows the history of human ancestors most closely (at least, as far back as it makes sense to make this distinction), it takes care to avoid unthinking human-centric teleological thinking of the sort that considers humanity as a goal that all evolution has been “striving for”.

If you squint just so, the book looks just like a very well-written pop science book; detail, enthusiasm, an engaging central conceit and what we can call an epic scale with no exaggeration at all, with no hint that it is at the same time a stick to hit people with, in the unending War Against Religion.

Out Of Shelf, Out Of Mind

My books are still in their boxes. They entered these boxes earlier this year when I moved and, well, I never unpacked them. I am reminded of this brute fact because a friend asked to borrow some books that I know I own, but for the life of me I cannot find them, though I did find some books which I didn’t know I owned. Huh.

On that note; either I’m getting stupider or Justina Robson’s Living Next Door To The God Of Love is a little denser than I was expecting. I had to take a week-long break from reading it and when I came back I was thoroughly confused. I intend to exploit this unexpected pleasure and read it again from the beginning. Until someone gives me Endymion (two people have offered so far) this is all I have on hand to read.

Until I wrote that sentence I think I honestly believed it to be true. But then, of course, one stares at the words, and one thinks, wait, that can’t possibly… It’s not even remotely true. Not only do I have three hundred and eighty-seven megabytes of downloaded unread texts, not counting comics, but I have only this very evening discovered, while digging through the boxes, that I also own books that I have not in fact read.

Many of them, I think, are books I felt I ought to read. The category of the acquired-but-unread ranges from the comparatively lowbrow but essential genre reading (say, Delany’s Dhalgren or the entire Moorcock back catalogue) to the likes of David Foster Wallace or Thomas Pynchon. And Dostoevsky. I found a copy of The Brothers Karamazov lying forlornly in one of the bigger boxes, sandwiched between Marcus Aurelius and a Fritjof Capra book which -come to think of it- I haven’t read either. I was halfway through Crime and Punishment earlier this year, before I moved, and now I can’t even find it. And I had forgotten I was reading it.

Started, not finished, and then forgotten that I’d started. Amnesia gives us a further subset. Moby-Dick, for example. Some non-fiction, including the Dawkins-Dennett-Harris New Atheist unholy trinity.

(It suddenly strikes me that this is the ideal post to namecheck Pierre Bayard’s Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus, which would be especially delicious since I haven’t read that either. Nor do I have a copy.)

Alors, unexpectedly cheerful fact: far more importantly than a few bouts of amnesia, I have discovered a vast pile of unread books in my possession and am not actually hostage to Dan Simmons.

Now I just have to get some goddamn bookshelves.

Soaking It Up Like A Sponge

I don’t know how I forgot this one, but in the last few weeks I also finally got around to reading Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which was every bit as good as everyone says. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a comic-book geek in any case.

Speaking of comics: I’m enjoying the SMASHiness of World War Hulk, god help me. And I see Thor’s back. Wasn’t gone for very long, was he? Yawn. The Dark Tower comics are more like the books than I expected, which is a good thing. I keep obsessively re-reading Kabuki – The Alchemy by David Mack, though this one isn’t new. And in current DCdom, I’m not terribly impressed by Sinestro Corps and still not following Countdown properly. Evil Kyle is so totally not working. Also, why are they shuffling Flashes like a deck of cards? Just pick one… Any one. Joss Whedon’s Buffy Season Eight is … well, it’s okay so far. Vaguely Buffyesque, though I’m having a little difficulty recognizing people beyond the core characters. I’ll tell you what’s good, though: Mike Carey’s Crossing Midnight is really going places. I missed the entire Annihilation mega-event, and perhaps because of that I was pleasantly surprised by Annihilation Conquest: Prologue. Not least because Moondragon and the new Quasar -of all people- as a gay couple seems to actually work, and hopefully will not end with one of them getting killed and the other one crying in the rain. Arcana is rubbish. Avengers (both New and Mighty) was a little meh for a while, though I do want to try and follow the upcoming Skrull-invasion mega-event. (Why? I don’t know, I’m compelled. Anyway, it’s not like I’m buying this stuff for money or anything.) Oh, and another unexpected treat is Shazam – The Monster Society of Evil by none other than the magnificent Jeff Smith, he of Bone fame. And I actually am enjoying the extra-vile The Boys by Garth Ennis. It’s very Ennis, only more so.

Television: watched Battlestar Galactica season three. Weak overall with a few nice episodes, I thought. So… goddamn… cheesy. I seem to remember liking the early part of  the season better, but it never really recovered from all the filler episodes in the middle. Unfortunately, I could give a fuck whether Adama Jr. and Starbuck end up boinking or not. And I like All Along the Watchtower as much as the next guy, but that was a rather bad cover version. That said, the finale was… an interesting choice of last-minute-twist. Tigh and the Chief are the only characters I actually like, so expect me to be voting Cylon from next season onwards.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Heroes-hate on certain feeds of my acquaintance. After watching Heroes and Battlestar Galactica back-to-back in the last few months, I have to say: man, I wish Lost was back already. Or Prison Break, or something. Or I need to start watching this Dexter thing everyone’s on about. Or Bones. People are recommending Bones. If it sucks, please, people, tell me now before I risk my fragile brain.

And speaking of risking my fragile brain, isn’t there another Harry Potter coming out or something? Ugh.

Warm Reboot

The attempt to catch up on my reading continues. It’s what I’ve been doing of late, mostly, instead of blogging. Or writing, if it comes to that. But let’s not even go there.

During the un-blogged gap: first, finished Accelerando and another Charles Stross, Glasshouse, which I liked better. I found the former book a little too “yay, Singularity”. No, I’m not even sure what I mean -it’s not that he didn’t manage to surprise me, because he did. But the rapidly telescoping timeline of the story gave me a weird sense of vertigo. That said, Stross is very good, and I’ve long since added him to that list of writers whose books I will buy on sight. And I need to re-read both those books while sober.

Later, rooting around a book sale with very little to say for itself (and also, inexplicably, buried in abridged editions of David Copperfield), found a Stephen King going a-begging, a nice, fat Hearts in Atlantis- which, King-like, is overwrought in spots but sweet and sad, also King-like. Or at least, like King at his best. Also found Peter Straub’s Lost Boy, Lost Girl at the same book sale. Now, I’d been eyeing this in various bookstores for quite a while now, but as it turns out, I didn’t like it much. Seemed too formulaic, not like Straub at all. Not that I’m in any position to judge, having only read one other book by him -and that may well be the problem, that I was expecting something like the magnificent Shadowland and got, instead, a retread of a generic Stephen King story.

A week or two after the book sale I went a little mad and spent a fat wad of cash buying books. Read Ursula Le Guin’s Changing Planes, a little book but a tasty morsel. I almost wish it had gone on in that vein for a little longer, but that might have become unpalatable. Something almost Borgesque there. Moved on to a Dan Simmons-fest, with Ilium, Olympos and Hyperion. No, I really had not read Hyperion before… I’ll not comment, since as far as I know pretty much everyone justifiably loved that book. Ilium was actually a re-read, but I had forgotten almost everything about it except that it was some sort of remake of the Iliad, and was pleasantly surprised. Actually, because I read Ilium and Olympos back-to-back, I can’t remember where one leaves off and the other begins. I remember being just a tad melancholy when Olympos started explaining away all the sheer weirdness -I wouldn’t have minded not having some of the exposition in exchange for the sheer sense of wonder, you know?

The last book in the pile, which I’m just starting on and trying to make it last until I get my hands on the Hyperion sequels (so that I always have something to read next, of course), is Justina Robson’s Living Next Door to the God of Love. Justina Robson is another writer whose books I have resolved to buy on sight. This particular book, I’m not clear yet on what the hell is going on, but this is in no way a bad thing.

I’d post at more length on some of these stories, but I’m not much of a reviewer. For one thing, these days I’m instantly awed by anybody who ever actually finishes writing a book.

Forgot one book from my buying spree: Alastair Reynolds and Absolution Gap. This is actually the last book in a series, which I didn’t know until I was halfway through it. I just picked it up at random, just to test the waters. Amazingly, despite being at the end of a series, Absolution Gap is great, no sense of missing context. Solid, hard sf, with a sort of slightly campy gothic-horror feel surfacing every now and then.

Really, all I have to say is: I like all these books. Read them if you find them around.

Meanwhile, in other news: while not quite as dramatic as some previous online “housecleaning” sessions, I’ve just been cleaning out my online presence, mostly by deleting half a dozen old accounts on various unused or little-used services; one notable casualty being my five-year-old Blogger blog. Amusingly, it was only today that I realized that this WordPress blog is now a year old, give or take some days. I suppose I should stop thinking of it as the “new” blog, eh?

Tumblr and Twitter, the short-attention-span twins, both survive the cull, as does Last.fm. I’d add Last.fm and Twitter widgets to the sidebar here, but -to my mild shock- apparently WordPress.com doesn’t support them yet. What is this, the Middle Ages?

Meanwhile, over at Achewood, hilarity ensues as Ray lolcats Roast Beef. I find this extra amusing because of the use of “lolcat” as a verb. THE HELL WHY DID YOU LOLCAT ME YOU SON OF A BITCH!? Heh.

Getting A Round Tuit

It’s all square tuits these days.

Old joke. Was taught to me by a gypsy. I tell no lie.

I’ve been trying to write this short story. A friend of mine is editing an anthology and demanded that I produce something. I agreed. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

All right. It’s a little more complicated than that. She has in her possession a handful of first drafts I shared with her a year or two back, and is holding me hostage by threatening to publish one of them. I don’t think she’s actually serious, but those stories are so embarrassingly awful that I would feel much safer actually writing something I wouldn’t be ashamed to see in print. Just in case.

So this short story is taking up my evenings. (It’s got the would-be novel on hold.) I’ve written 1556 words, ending mid-sentence where I ran out of steam a few evenings ago. My notes and first-draft doodles come to about three times as much, and I’ve taken to carrying a big yellow legal pad around with me to write down more notes. The more notes I take the less the short story wants to stay a short story and the more it wants to turn into, I don’t know, a novella. Which is really a roundabout way of saying that I haven’t mustered the discipline to tell a story quickly and efficiently. I’m either green or rusty, I don’t know which. (Both?)

And of course I’ve used this time to discover a new forum that has all sorts of interesting threads to read, catch up on eight hundred unread feed items, open twenty-eight new tabs in Firefox, each one something I absolutely must read. Oh, and read books. In the past two days, I’ve read Hal Duncan’s Vellum, Justina Robson’s Mappa Mundi, most of Accelerando by Charles Stross, and Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (which last was somewhat reminiscent of another book I liked, David Brin’s Kiln People). I’d be hard pressed to say which of the above named books I liked most. (It’s too soon, anyway… I’m still high from reading them all back-to-back.) In a way they’re all about the same thing: identity. I recommend them all most highly to anyone with even a vague interest in sf.

And of course, whenever I read a book (especially all four of the above, which were all good) I have to detox myself. Make sure I’m not unconsciously imitating the style, the themes, the devices, the language of writers I enjoy and admire.

(While on the subject of books: I bought N. three books for her birthday: One Man’s Bible by Gao Xingjian and two Coetzees. She picked them out herself. I feel terribly lowbrow when I compare her reading list with mine. To be fair, I intend to read at least the Xingjian book when she’s done with it. I did start on that one before I gave it to her, but only had time for a few pages.)

Structured procrastination is supposed to be finding the right things to avoid doing: things which seem to (but don’t) have deadlines and seem to be (but aren’t) awfully important. Now I need to find something, some seemingly vital task, to fit into that to-do slot so that I would be writing my short story in order to avoid getting around to it.

I, Reader

Read in the last few days: Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake and Kafka On The Shore, Stephen Fry’s Making History, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Re-read Clive Barker’s Thief of Always because it’s a short one for a quick re-read. I keep picking up Naked Lunch but never actually reading it. Somebody in my house was reading Dick’s VALIS and left it on the couch, so I reread that too, even though I’ve read it many times before.

I feel like I don’t read enough. The above glut is something of a reaction to that feeling, an attempt to get back in the zone. The feeling gets intensified with all the litblogs I read and the forums I’m on and how terribly well-read everybody else seems to be. I know I was well-read at, say, fifteen -but that was more than a decade ago and I don’t seem to have kept up. (Or else I do a lot of re-reading my existing collection but not really branching out into anything new) The last two people I brought this up with both laughed it off because I have this reputation among my friends as an avid reader, but if you think about it, the days when I’d read books by the dozen every month are long past. And I miss that.

I’ve started keeping a list of books I want to read. The list currently includes 90 books: David Foster Wallace, the new novels by Warren Ellis, Terry Eagleton, Steven Pressfield, Ben Peek, Kelly Link, Thomas Pynchon, Charles Stross, Justina Robson… I’ve combed the local bookstores, but come up with nothing. (Though I spotted a Chabon the other day and didn’t buy it for some godforsaken reason… I need to go back and hope it’s still there) Started downloading PDFs in desperation -it makes me feel guilty, unlike downloading mp3s, but I can’t take it any more- but even that can only get you so far. And a crick in the neck besides.

Books I Have Not Heard Of, And May Not Get Around To Reading

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (who wrote Effendi and Pashazade, both of which I rather liked (“rather liked” is better than just plain “liked” but not as good as “liked a lot”)) is one of the people shortlisted for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award, with a book called End Of The World Blues which I have not read. (Or even heard of, until five minutes ago. I live under a rock.) Nor have I read any of the other nominees, or heard of any of the books in question.

Now, I would like to read all of these books. (Curiously, the only Clarke award winner I remember reading is Paul J. McAuley’s Fairyland. Which, incidentally, is an awesome book.) But it seems unlikely that I will get around to them soon. Local bookshops, in any case, are a hit-or-miss affair. Often I go to a bookshop with the intention of buying some specific thing and come away having failed to find it, but having bought two other books instead because -well, who knows when I’ll ever find them again? And of course, books are expensive, so my wallet ends up whimpering in a corner, all bloodied. Not that I need to be buying books. Stacks of books on the table at my right and more on my bedside table, all going unread because I’m trying to spend more time writing than reading anyway.

Also, I can’t write immediately after reading, especially if whatever I’m reading is particularly good, because I tend to absorb the style. It takes a little while for the taint to go away. In addition to living under a rock, I am a recovering chameleon.

Talking Heads

Belatedly wandered across Neil Gaiman being quite chatty on the RU Sirius show. It’s worth a listen. Neil Gaiman does not sound anything like I expected him to sound like. It’s quite a new interview, what with them talking about his new book -Fragile Things- which I have not read yet.

Meanwhile, for something completely different…. here’s the intellectual equivalent of Monday night professional wrestling: Steve Pinker and George Lakoff bitch-slapping the merry hell out of each other. Much hair-pulling ensues.