Category: Book porn

Madame Two Swords, by Tanith Lee (1988) E

Date read: 8.1.11
Book from: Personal collection
Reviewer: Emera

This is one of my most treasured finds from Readercon, picked up from the fantastic Somewhere in Time Books: Tanith Lee‘s 1988 limited-edition novella, with illustrations by Tom Canty. From the title and pastel cover I expected a tale of genteel swashbuckling, possibly YA; should have remembered that Lee never goes in for gentility. Elegance, yes – Lee is manically elegant – but never gentility.

Madame Two Swords starts in a familiar place for Lee: a sensitive, fearful, recently orphaned young woman in an early 20th-century alternate France is treated cruelly by both circumstances and humanity; her only spiritual sustainment comes from a book of poetry discovered in a secondhand shop:

“The blue cloth binding was quite pristine under its dust. It was a slender book, without lettering. I opened it out of curiosity.”

“The book was my talisman. Other girls wore crosses or medallions.”

The narrator is unemployed and evicted, and finds herself in dire straits, chased from one end of the socioeconomic spectrum to the other: too middle-class for hard labor, too unskilled to be a seamstress, too unwilling to accede to customers’ advances to be a waitress in the seedier cafés. At the extremity of her despair – enter Madame Two Swords, a black-eyed old woman of terrifying intensity, in whose museum-like house the narrator comes to some strange realizations.

In this France, the Revolution was sparked by the poet-demagogue Lucien de Ceppays in the city of Troies. This Revolution culminated in the execution of the original revolutionaries, including de Ceppays, by the fickle mob, and the occupation of France by a fearful British monarchy. Inhabitants now speak “Frenish” as often as French, and labor in a depressed economy overseen by a puppet government. The narrator’s talisman-book is, of course, a volume of de Ceppays’ work, and contains besides a haunting watercolor portrait of him. The story quickly sees her devotion to his image and memory moving beyond girlish fantasy.

The final supernatural twist, when it comes, is powerful in effect, in large part because of the supreme delicacy with which Lee constructs the fleeting image central to the revelation. There’s an also-delicate but definite touch of gender-bending, which I wish I could discuss in more detail without being spoilery, but suffice it to say that I liked how Lee addressed its implications, a lot. This is a story that makes use of deeply Gothic-Romantic tropes (duh, Tanith Lee) yet resists being just romantic; it’s fierce and intelligent and ultimately insists on the dignity of all of its characters.

And so my love affair with Tanith Lee continues! If you like Revolutionary France and cross-lingual puns and intelligent Gothic fantasy, if you love Tanith Lee and beautiful books, you might consider treating yourself to a copy of Madame Two Swords.

Two more photos (can’t help showing it off!) under the cut:
Continue reading Madame Two Swords, by Tanith Lee (1988) E

The long good-bye

Say farewell to Borders: “Borders to shut down for good after deal collapses.”

In a twist or knell or something or other, I received what will theoretically be my last-ever package from Borders yesterday, too.

Any Borders reminiscences to share? I just remembered that Borders was the first legit bookstore in my vicinity to stock manga; prior to that I’d scoured E. B. Games and, occasionally, Toys ‘R’ Us, to pick up single, frequently battered issues of Pokémon, Digimon, and some horrifically translated Gundam Wing. I think my first high-intensity exposure to manga (lots of it! all in one place! in a bookstore!) was a long, dazed afternoon in a Borders spent flipping through, among others, a CLAMP series that seemed really cryptic and creepy at the time, probably partly because the first volume was missing. I’m not going to say what series it was, just to preserve the imagined mystique.

Edit: This article does a great job of explaining what Borders’ closing will mean for consumers, publishers, and authors.

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, by David Petersen (2007) E

[Pssst – Readercon 22 reports are in the works. Thanks to some sitey issues, we’re holding off on really image-heavy posts for the moment; have an only moderately image-heavy post in the meantime.]

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Date read: 7.18.11
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

“Mice struggle to live safely and prosper among the world’s harsh conditions and predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed. They are not simply soldiers who fight off intruders: they are guides for common mice looking to journey safely from one hidden village to another. The Guard patrol borders, find safeways and paths through treacherous terrain, and keep the mouse territories free of predators. They do so with fearless dedication so that mice might not just exist, but truly live. In Fall 1152, follow the adventures of three of the Guard’s finest – Lieam, Saxon, and Kenzie – as they seek to uncover a traitorous plot against the Guard…”

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152

In an obvious progression from my childhood love for Redwall, I’d been longing to read Mouse Guard for ages ever since I spotted its cover in a bookstore a few years back; Kakaner obliged me last week by thrusting the first two volumes into my hands. While the story is pretty much a throwaway (Petersen could really use an editor for grammar alone), the comic works purely on the basis of visuals and concepts.

Mouse Guard: Sadie receives an urgent message

Petersen’s figures aren’t very dynamic, but his panels are often beautifully composed, and his pairing of liberal hatching and stippling with a rich, autumnal palette creates delicious texture and depth. The climactic battle that spans the last chapter – heralded by a shift in the palette first to moody plum shades, then to an eerie, luminous red – is surprisingly dark and gritty; again the visuals are successful in generating drama and atmosphere despite lackluster storytelling.

And let’s be honest here: it’s SO. CUTE. Oh my god big-headed mice in cloaks. Oh my god tiny glassblower blowing tiny bottles. Oh my god tiny castle masonry and kilns and inkwells and… you get the idea.The scenes of everyday life in Barkstone, the town where the central trio uncover the anti-Guard conspiracy, and Lockhaven, the Guard’s fortified headquarters, pretty much had me spasming with glee; equally so the faux-historical tidbits and diagrams on mouse trades and settlements included at the end of the book.

Thanks for the conniptions, Petersen! I look forward to more in volume 2: Winter 1152.

Go to:
David Petersen: bio and works reviewed

The Honor System

Something that made me happy to see:

“Books are priced as marked by the sticker on the front cover. If you find a book that you want, please pay for it by putting the money in the locked box. Honor System Books has been a part of Cambridge for over 5 years now. Thanks so much to YOU and this awesome community

THANK YOU!!”

Brattle Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. I’m not sure how often it’s there; I’ve walked by it maybe twice now on good-weather days this spring and summer.

“How To Buy a Book,” and authorial fisticuffs

For anyone who’s ever fussed over conscientious book-buying and the care and keeping of indigent authors, Nick Mamatas advises on How To Buy a Book (or where, really). Much of it seems to come down to whether a retailer feeds into BookScan, a book-sale data compiler that informs many publishers’ decisions. More interesting details with which to inform your future Amazon vs. indie decisions over at the post.

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If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what China Miéville would look like with hair, you may well fall within the target audience for this blog: Could They Beat-Up China Miéville? In a sort of long-form, extra-nerdy variation on Chuck Norris facts, two bloggers take turns scripting deathmatches between everyone’s favorite weird-fiction pioneer/nerd sex symbol and a variety of cultural icons, e.g. Sting and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why not?

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All-new and unexpurgated

My favorite book-news of late! An uncensored edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray has been published, based on Wilde’s original typescript. Some previously snipped and pruned bits: Basil Hallward’s more explicit effusions towards Dorian (“It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend”); a sinuously creepy/sexually charged episode in which a stranger pursues Dorian in the street, “passing and repassing him many times;” references to Dorian’s “mistresses;” and other elements that might offend “an innocent woman.”

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Ever wondered how all those prodigious sellers on Amazon actually get their books? A Slate contributor unloads his guilt regarding his current profession: trawling used-book sales with a barcode-reading PDA in search of books that can turn a profit online. It’s a pretty depressing read, but says some interesting things about bookselling, reading, and bibliophile culture.

“The book merchant of the high-cultural imagination is a literate compleat and serves the literate. He doesn’t need a scanner, because he knows more than the scanner knows. I fill a different niche—I deal in collectible or meaningful books only by accident. I’m not deep, but I am broad. My customer is anyone who needs a book that I happen to find and can make money from.”

…

“When I work with my scanner and there’s someone else shopping near me who wants to read books, I feel that my energy is all wrong—high-pitched, focused narrowly in the present, and jealous. Someone browsing through books does it with a diffuse, forgetful curiosity, a kind of open reckoning that she learned from reading.”

(emphasis mine, just because I liked the observation so much.)

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And my silly overlapping-fandom squee for the week: Cat Valente and Ursula Vernon briefly discuss an aviating capybara.

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SJ 2010

2010 Shirley Jackson award nominees are out – which I’m selfishly extra-excited to see this year because Kakaner and I have scheduled a week this summer to go gallivanting off to Readercon, where the awards are presented. Awwww yeah. (This will be my first-ever con, for the record.)

Dribs and drabs of thought –

  • More title synchronicity (“A / Dark Matter”) – as with “Palimpsest” for the 2010 Hugo noms.
  • Joey Comeau!! Did not expect to see him there. (He’s better known as the word-provider for A Softer World, though Kakaner and I have been sorta following his standalone prose since he started with Lockpick Pornography back around… 2005?)
  • Clearly I really need to pick up Haunted Legends, though I’ve kind of spiralled out of my horror anthology phase.
  • I also need to look into Karen Joy Fowler at some point. See her name everywhere, know nothing about her work.

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Go to:

Shirley Jackson

A few things Gaiman, one thing not

Neil Gaiman will be writing the script for an English-language film adaptation of Journey to the West. This sounds like it should be very fun, indeed. There might also be some Guillermo del Toro in the mix, hurrah.

At first when I read the news I also thought that this might be the project that Gaiman’s been alluding to during his extended travels in China these past couple years, but I suspect that there’s still something else (or maybe several somethings else) to come out of that.

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The Gneil has also revealed that a film adaptation of American Gods is underway, helmed by a director with “many, many Oscars.” I must admit that the idea of an American Gods movie seems to me only slightly less disastrous than a Sandman movie, but I’ll keep mum till more details are out.

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The winner of the 2010 Tiptree Award, for sff that explores and challenges ideas of gender, has been announced! I also recognize lots of titles on the short- and longlists as books that I Really Should Be Reading…

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Go to:

Neil Gaiman

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a311009/neil-gaiman-confirms-american-gods-film.html

Another sad farewell

Diana Wynne Jones has passed away at the age of 76. I had had no idea that she was ill. Apparently, at least as late as last summer she was still working on two books, which makes me think yet again how much I love authors as people, how much I admire their devotion to their creations and their readers.

While her books weren’t a big part of my childhood, apart from a brief love affair with The Dark Lord of Derkholm, I very much wish they had been – a later read of Howl’s Moving Castle had me cursing myself for not having read it when I was a bit younger. And regardless, I’ve always had a strong sense of her presence and influence in the worlds of fantasy and children’s literature, of her warmth and irreverence.

Good-bye, Diana.

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Part of what had me so shocked when Brian Jacques passed away was my longstanding impression that Redwall, as a world and as a series, could go on forever. For better or for worse, in the case of the series – to me the books began to seem unbearably repetitive somewhere around Taggerung. But regardless of the quality of the later books, and regardless of the criticisms of moral black-and-whiteness and so on, there was so much good in Redwall. And my impression always included my image of Jacques himself – the mousethief, loving, mischievous, honorable, stubbornly old-fashioned – as part of that good, that heartening sense of solidity, comradeship, and simple joy. I mean, come on, he was a bearded, twinkly-eyed former sailor. He started telling the Redwall stories to children at a school for the blind when he was working as a milkman. Repeat what I said above about loving authors as people.

Andy of Anagnorisis shares her remembrances of growing up with Redwall, and meeting Brian Jacques, in a beautiful memorial post here. And – eulalia!!!

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This is perhaps a morbid thought, but all of this is making me want to hunt down the addresses of my most favorite children’s authors and send them letters to tell them how much they mean to me, while I still can.