Category: News & Curiosities

Filthy lucre

I’ve always been curious about the logistics of actually trying to make a living off of being an author (a sci-fi/fantasy author in particular, of course), so a couple of blog posts, both recent and older, have been particularly interesting and informative in this respect:

I hope these kind of link aggregations aren’t too overwhelming (or irritating); I like compiling them as much for my own reference as for the purposes of propagating interesting links.

Go to:
John Scalzi
Catherynne Valente

Sandman, 10 (and maybe 5) years later

“Change, change, change: Sandman and the ’90s”

I’ve had this link in my bookmarks-to-follow-up-on forever, but didn’t get around to checking it out till now, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an essay about Neil Gaiman‘s The Sandman by the (unnamed?) blogger of Grand Hotel Abyss, and it does a number of wonderful things. One, it elegantly examines the series’ central conflict – how to cope with change – and the ways in which the series’ characters choose to meet that conflict. I’ve always had trouble taking a step back from works and simply synthesizing like this, especially when the work in question is as sprawling, loopy, and multi-layered as Sandman, so I love finding lucidly written essays like this one that help give me a better vantage point.

Two, it considers the series’ characters in light of the particular tensions and concerns of the 90’s, of which it’s often considered an emblematic work. Of course this is only one reference frame within which to examine the series, but as someone whose knowledge of Culture stalled somewhere in the middle of 19th-century France, I found it a very useful and approachable introduction to the series’ immediate literary relevance. (I am yearning to say something about zeitgeist here, but I’m trying to establish an academic buzzword limit, especially since the essay itself segues into some discussion of pre- and postmodernism – though gracefully, I think.)

Three, it considers the series from the perspective of someone who first read the series at 16, and probes the question of why, like so many 16-year-olds at the time, she found the series so relevant – and how that same reader, 10 years older and wiser, feels about it now.

Continue reading Sandman, 10 (and maybe 5) years later

“The perverse allure of a damaged woman”

How Ayn Rand became an American woman (via Slate)

Ayn Rand is one of America’s great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that “the masses”—her readers—were “lice” and “parasites” who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. […] So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?

A few days ago I suggested The Fountain (century-crossing meta-romance painted in black and gold, yay!) to one of my friends for our weekly movie night, and was mightily confused when she made a disgusted expression and said, “Isn’t that by Ayn Rand?”  She had apparently misheard my suggestion as The Fountainhead.

I’ve never read Ayn Rand and am only familiar with Objectivism in the vaguest way (much of that knowledge coming, pathetically, from Bioshock), so this article in today’s Slate, which examines how Rand’s traumatic, warped life mapped onto her cultishly successful writing, went a long way towards explaining my roommate’s reaction. The ending of the article gets a little frantically polemical, but as usual, I’m not savvy enough to examine its claims with a critical eye.

“100 Best Fictional Characters Since 1900”

…at least according to Book magazine in 2002.

“Best of” lists are overdone and hopelessly subjective (which is half of the fun of them, I guess*), and neither Kakaner nor I can ever get enough of them. I don’t even know what the criteria for “best” are here – though I assume it orbits somewhere around “compelling” and “beloved” – but the range represented is certainly interesting. The list covers everyone from the Little Prince and Atticus Finch to Stephen Maturin and, of course, Harry Potter. Jay Gatsby takes #1, followed by Holden Caulfield at #2. There are also several non-human representatives, including Winnie-the-Pooh, Toad from The Wind in the Willows, and the Dog of Tears from Blindness.

If you had to choose one fictional character as your absolute favorite, could you do it? (Say that the motivation is that some nefarious individual is holding a match to your only copy of your favorite book, unless you decide.)  Is s/he/zhe/it from your favorite book, or is there no correlation?

* the other half of it is complaining about omissions that seem obvious to you.

20 of the world’s most beautiful libraries

Up for a visit?
via Oddee.

What does your dream library look like? Circular nooks or long galleries? Glass-fronted bookcases or open ones? Lush carpeting or hard-wood floors? Sliding ladders and secret passageways? Beds built into the bookcases so you don’t even have to get up to reach your favorites?

In Which Emera and Kakaner Try to Memorize Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, K

Once upon a time, Emera and Kakaner were high school students who shared roughly half their classes and more importantly, were badminton partners in gym.

I am writing to tell you all about a peculiar period of time in our senior year of high school during which we tried to memorize the hulking blaring entirety of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Emera had read this first and strongly impressed upon me that if I did not read it soon, my very existence would dwindle and die away. In no time, we were both completely obsessed with JSMN and literarily worshipped its texts, and for a long time, could speak of nothing else. Reviews of JSMN will be forthcoming– it’s just that our current reviews are rather explosive and incoherent. JSMN also made it to our The Black Letters Top Books list, so you can understand what kind of literary entity we are dealing with here.

We were inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. Although both of us had already read the book before being assigned to read it in AP English, the second time around, the concept of memorizing an entire book in secret really tickled our fancies. So, we conferred, and somehow decided that the 800-page JSMN was the obvious choice.

Continue reading In Which Emera and Kakaner Try to Memorize Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, K

Introducing Paige M. Gutenborg

Recently, the Harvard Book Store unveiled a machine that has been many years in the making… Paige M. Gutenborg!

paige_m_gutenborg_introduction_about_poster

For those of you unfamiliar with this, Paige M. Gutenborg is a book-making machine. Although I wasn’t present at the unveiling, I made sure to pack my camera when I stopped by a few days later. Here are some details from the webpage:

  • Prints books from a growing catalog of 3.6 million books, including titles from Google digital files and public domain databases—along with previously inaccessible works.
  • Creates a library-quality, perfect bound, acid-free 300-page paperback book in roughly four minutes. These books are indistinguishable from paperbacks produced by major publishing houses.
  • Represents a revolution in the book world, allowing readers to get their books in a manner that is fast, local, green, and affordable.
  • Can print your book and we can deliver it locally—same- or next day! We also deliver domestically and internationally.
  • Provides authors with affordable, flexible printing options. There are no minimums, and you retain full rights and complete control of your work.
  • Looks forward to printing your novel, personal cookbook, family genealogy, memoir, dissertation, personalized gift, and more.

Continue reading Introducing Paige M. Gutenborg

Isaac Marion Stash and a Story

isaac_marion_anna_warm_bodies_inside_postcard

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen Emera’s and my numerous reviews of Isaac Marion‘s works, namely The Inside, Warm Bodies, and Anna. These works are pretty much all highly recommended, and are self-published by Marion (links provided at the bottom of this post). Marion is noted for his strange genre niche that is, for the most part, a mix of horror, weird fiction, and romanticism.

Continue reading Isaac Marion Stash and a Story

Two reviews of reviews (sort of)

Ursula LeGuin wrote a very useful review of Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood that I just finished reading, in which she touches on one of my favorite conundrums: what does it mean to call oneself “genre” versus “literary”? Atwood apparently likes rejecting the sci-fi designation, based on an arbitrary definition that I frankly find bewildering. (The dynamics of of genre/literary “tribes” are discussed in greater and amusing detail on Jeff Vandermeer’s blog here. This, of course, is all following the enormous brouhaha made by Lev Grossman’s bizarre less than carefully argued* editorial  in the Wall Street Journal about the so-called Victory of Plot in contemporary fiction. Sorry to link-fling if you haven’t been following this from the beginning, but I find it all pretty engrossing.)

Anyway, LeGuin provides a great review of the book, as well as very delicately, very incisively nailing Atwood for her fallacy in evading the designation of sci-fi. Being considered as a work of science fiction, LeGuin tells us, is not a limitation, but something that enriches the experience of reading a novel, gives us another dimension from which to analyze and celebrate a book’s creativity, fullness, and success.

Damn straight.

—

Separately, The Mumpsimus has become my favorite blog for reviews and discussion of speculative fiction. That its author, Matthew Cheney, is an English professor (as well as a writer of assorted fiction and nonfiction, and editor of Best American Fantasy) is not surprising: his reviews are lucid, accessible, and literary, filled with useful allusions and fun, thoughtful analyses. Every time I read a review of his of a book or story that I’ve already read, I want to go back and read the work again.

The excitement in his reviews is tangible – reading them is like sitting with a good friend and discussing the story at hand, tossing ideas back and forth and unraveling knotty plot points together. I also think that he tends to appreciate a lot of underappreciated and misread works. Case in point: his ecstatic, playful review of Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals” (which I loved and briefly reviewed here). Judging from the comments following, said story was not so well-received by many readers; I think it’s a shame that none of them seemed to get anything further from Cheney’s review. Note that his review is somewhat spoiler-y.

Unfortunately, his blog is also rather unwieldy to navigate, but the material is all so good that I don’t mind trawling.

*correction made following the reading of Grossman’s comments in response to all the heated criticism.

If you’ve ever felt inadequate about your bookshelves…

…take a look at Neil Gaiman’s library. As featured in Shelfari, which appears to be a sort of Facebook for people obsessed with books.

The only other time I’ve seen that many (predominantly) genre books in one place is, well, never. (Maybe Kakaner has seen more, given that she’s personally ransacked the catacombs of the MIT Science Fiction Society Library, but I’m still betting that Mr. Gaiman’s shelfapalooza could hold its own.) Also, this is apparently only “the downstairs library,” as the “upstairs library with all the good reference stuff in it” is not featured.

….uh.

It’s pretty delicious to go through each full-size photo and check out the individual books – like four copies of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Swan Sister, and a Swedish (?) edition of one of the Sandman volumes.

Now excuse me while I go and take a cold shower.