authors

…if you love the feeling of going into a library and coming out again with more books than you know you can read in the time available.

Ohhhhhhh yeah.

(I’ve been working hard on whittling down the ratio of unread to read books in my collection, but for the holidays I decided to indulge and sneak in a huge library trip, and it feels so good.)

Also, fun Nebula Awards interview with Cat Valente, wherein she provides all sorts of interesting tidbits about Fairyland.

Also also, may I squee about the fact that a week and a bit ago I got to see Valente read from her newest novel, The Habitation of the Blessed? (Unfortunately I forgot my camera, otherwise I’d have a few event photos, but I’m hideously backed up with any kind of blog-posting anyway and etc. etc.) As always, it looks to be tender, strange, and luscious; can’t wait to spend some quality time with my copy.

- E

Go to:

Catherynne M. Valente: bio and works reviewed

Sending me into fangirl ecstasies, the New York Times featured two substantial pieces on speculative-fiction luminaries, this week and the last:

In “Making  Squid The Meat of the Story,” China Miéville talks about his preferences in cephalopods; his newest novel, Kraken (speaking of which, I covergasmed recently over the art for Subterranean Press’ limited edition); why he found Star Trek horrifying as a child; and more.

“At a certain stage some people end up not trusting their own imagination,” Mr. Miéville said. “You get this kind of baleful set of voices in your head that tell you, ‘That’s silly; you’re being silly.’

“But I think most people have more ideas in their heads than they think they do. It’s just that those of us in the fantastic fields — either we don’t listen to our own filters, or we have a much higher ridiculousness threshold.”

And in “Hero of Comic-Book World Gets Real,” Alan Moore discusses his current work-in-progress, “a lengthy spoken-word recording accompanied by an atmospheric musical soundtrack and a book of photographs” about Steve Moore, the comics writer and early mover and shaker within British comics. (Sorry if this is completely not-news within the realm of Moorephilia; I’m behind on news about pretty much everything imaginable.)

Also made my week to see continued confirmation that Moore will be continuing work on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, one of my most-beloved series, despite his plans to otherwise leave behind the world of graphic novels.

- E

Go to:
China Miéville

Expect to see a lot of random posts about Angela Carter these days, because as part of my academic-year-end cool-down I’ve been indulging in a lot of re-reads of The Bloody Chamber, accompanied by munching of whatever academic essays I’ve been able to find for free through Jstor. wheee. (If you are not, like me, a babbling Carter fangirl, feel free to move along – when I get enthusiastic about things, I get very enthusiastic.)

So this has been one of my absolute favorite finds: the blogger at The Cantos of Mutabilitie has written, in great detail, an astrological analysis of Carter. I can’t pretend to understand any of the technical (?) aspects of it, but it’s both highly entertaining, and a wonderful tribute to Carter’s style and career. Some of my favorite bits:

“There’s a huge stellium (or planet cluster) in Taurus – Mercury, Saturn, Sun, Moon and Uranus all huddling together, with Jupiter just over in Aries – and then we find Neptune and Pluto swung out to one side. Accordingly, this is an extremely ‘earthy’ chart: the other elements are all relatively weak. This intense concentration on earth evokes the baroque celebration of the mundane in Carter’s writing, her heady ability to work mud and blood into her otherwise very mannered and super-sophisticated prose.”

…

“One senses that Carter’s taurean Mercury liked to hoard words like trinkets, cherishing dialect words and obsolete terms for the tackle and trim of various trades. … There’s almost a hunger to possess – a Taurus keyword – language, rubbing words as though they were pieces of smooth bottle-glass on the tideline, grubby and history-filled.”

…

and this particularly amusing part about Carter on Lovecraft:

“I find interesting that in a piece of criticism she derided H. P. Lovecraft for his horror writing, for two reasons. First, for his naivety; she saw that Lovecraft thought of evil as visible horror, and no one with a strong Pluto could fall for that one. Secondly, she wrinkled her nose at his sheer gloopiness, his childishly putrid slimes. She was a hard-edged writer; in contrast to Lovecraft, her kind of horror is the lurid glamour of the knife in the hand of the insane surgeon, always with the frisson of style – not deliquescence and gunk.”

(worth noting that the blogger is himself decidedly unfond of Lovecraft – he explains why at length in an equally ornate and amusing post here.)

- E

… are three reasons why Margaret Atwood believes we should keep the paper book.

There’s a little bit of a spat going on in the comments of Margaret Atwood’s blog concerning the digitalization of books. While many people do fervently agree with Atwood’s reasoning (well, if they’re reading the blog they probably enjoy reading good literature and therefore probably appreciate books), people are accusing those against ebooks for not realizing the vital advantages of the cyberbook.

No one is contesting the advantages, convenience, and necessity of digitalizing information. With online text we can use Ctrl + F and access all the information of the world using a 1-5 pound laptop.  When it comes to books, the appeal of being able to download another form of media for free is too tantalizing, even for those who would prefer to read a physical book.

Atwood uses the reasons cited above as the pragmatic basis for the argument in support of books. Although these occurrences are unlikely and probably far from anyone’s list of immediate concerns, let’s see what does hit home. How many times have you accidentally scratched a CD, or come home to find your harddrive corrupted? Blue screen of death anyone? It doesn’t work quite the same for books They’re pretty durable– they can withstand many scratches and beatings, and I doubt anyone has come home to find that their book suddenly won’t open or the words have turned into some Wingdings jargon straight on the page.

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