Photos of Authors' Bookshelves

From The Atlantic: Writers and Their Books

I sort of hope these photos do not represent the entirety of these authors' book collections, because if they do, I have a couple of them beat.  It's nice to see the mixed book colors and sizes, though I suppose the collections could still be organized in an OCD sort of way.

Also, I'm envious of every single empty shelf space -- I have none and I am one trip from Barnes and Noble away from needing to buy another bookcase (but I live in a two-bedroom condo and have nowhere to put an additional shelf).  My cats are also envious of empty shelf spaces.

Best Books I Read in 2011

Here's the "best of" list I've been threatening to produce for the past couple of weeks.   (I'm only counting books I actually reviewed since I started consistently writing in this blog in May.  And my sole criterion for inclusion of an item on this list is the vague recollection I have when looking over my list of reviews.  And these books may very well not have been published in 2011.)  So, in no particular order:

• Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman
• The Habitation of the Blessed and The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente
• The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer
• The Dragon's Path and The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham
• Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay
• The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley P. Beaulieu
• Song of the Beast by Carol Berg
• Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian C. Esslemont
• Stands a Shadow by Col Buchanan

I think that's 12.   I know it's a little biased in favor of some of my favorite authors (Abraham, Kay, Berg) and series (Esslemont) but there are a couple of new names on the list too.

In Good Company

I love cats, I have five of them and want more.  I talk about them all the time (maybe not so much here on this blog) and spend hours filming them, editing the video, and posting it on YouTube.  (I have other pets, too, including a 95-pound Rottweiler -- no lapdogs for me).

At any rate, seems lots of writers (and probably lots of would-be writers) like cats, as well:

Writers and Kitties

Enjoy!

More Web Writing about GRRM

Seems like those who write for newspapers, associated blogs and websites, etc., can't get enough of George R.R. Martin this year:

I'm hooked on George R.R. Martin's flights of fantasy from The Guardian


This one purports to be positive, mostly taking the escapist tack.  But it's a bit of a backhanded compliment, as fantasy keeps being compared to "literary" and "established" writers and coming up somehow deficient.  And calling the Thomas Covenant books silly?  Not really a way to get a lot of support from fantasy fans...though that's probably not the target audience.

Good Fathers (or Bad Fathers, Revisited)

Since my Bad Fathers post was so popular, I decided to revisit the topic.  And I did actually come up with an example of a good single father of a daughter in a fantasy novel: Karigan's father in the Green Rider books by Kristen Britain.  There are a few tensions in their relationship but he provides for her, sends her to school, etc.  Caveat: as I remember, Karigan has a number of aunts, who serve as stand-ins for her mother.  And, her father is a wealthy merchant so he doesn't need sons to work the farmlands (though I suppose daughters could do this too...) or supply some local lord when he levies troops.

Another possibility for a good father that didn't go very far because he was murdered early was Liath's father in the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliott.  He's done some stuff that's put him on the run (it's been a very long time since I read those books), but Liath seems to have a genuinely good relationship with him, even though the economic situation was pretty lean for them at the time he died.  (And, for that matter, Sanglant seems to have done okay with Blessing while Liath was missing.)

I might consider including Angus Lok from the Sword of Shadows by J.V. Jones as a good father; he has a wife and three daughters and after the wife and two of the daughters are murdered, he goes on a quest to find the remaining one (which sort of doubles as a quest for revenge for those who have been lost).

Of course I've also come up with quite a few more bad fathers of daughters, as well:

• Karsa Orlong from House of Chains by Steven Erikson (rapes a mother and daughter; later we find out he's fathered two daughters by them though I haven't gotten around to The Crippled God so I don't know if that storyline picks back up)
• Paks's father from The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon (he's only interested in marrying her off to a neighboring farmer, so she runs away to join a mercenary company, though I believe he's proud of her in the end, and I don't remember whether her mother was still alive or not)
• Penthero Iss from the Sword of Shadows series by J.V. Jones (he finds Ash as a foundling and adopts her only because he wants to exploit her developing magical talents to further his own ambitions)
• Elias from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams (mostly because he's gone nuts, though -- I think his relationship with Miriamele may have been good at one time)
• Thomas Covenant in the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson (again, with the rape: his daughter Elena ends up powerful but mentally ill, her mother Lena is also of diminished capacity by the end; I think he does feel guilt about this later and tries to make things right the best way he knows how, though)
• Hekat's father from Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy (another case of selling the female children off)

Of course there are bad fathers of sons, as well (Darken Rahl comes immediately to mind).  But it seems like the daughters get the short end of the stick much more often.

TV Adaptations

From The New York Times: The Channeling of the Novel

It's about HBO pursuing novels for TV series adaptations.  I don't think it even mentions A Game of Thrones, which is surprising considering how many times the Times has mentioned George R.R. Martin's books and the series in the last year.

I think it's probably a good trend, though.  I've seen a couple of HBO series in the past few years (Rome, The Wire, the first season of Treme, and working my way through Deadwood right now).  Nothing current as I'm relying on DVDs and iTunes, but my opinion of each of these series is generally quite high (with the exception of the fact that no one seems to have a good marriage or relationship...I mean, I know the divorce rate is high in this country, but there are also 40-50% of marriages that DON'T end in divorce -- surely some of them are happy).

Anyhow, it's an interesting thought experiment -- which fantasy novels would make good adaptations and which wouldn't.  I do think HBO was taking a risk with Game of Thrones.  I mean, I figured it would make good TV, but the series isn't finished and the books are coming out at a slow pace.  Looks like it paid off for them, but will people still be there 5 years from now for The Winds of Winter?

Steps to Writing a Novel

From the Huffington Post: 131 Steps to Writing a Novel

This is not really how I go about things, but I did enjoy some of the items on the list.  Here are two of my favorites (neither of which I have done, #9 because I used a dictionary of names for most of them and #123 because I'm not actually published yet -- and it hadn't occurred to me before, but I'm sure it is something I will if I ever get published).

#9: Look in the phone book for character names.
#123: Check Amazon for sales rank 146 times.

Bad Fathers

Seems like whenever the mother dies off or is otherwise absent in a fantasy novel, bad things ensue.  Especially if the mother's only children were girls.

Maybe, the father sells the girl off (Green by Jay Lake).

Or maybe, the father has sex with the girl(s) (The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, or that prostitute who gets killed early on in Song of the Beast by Carol Berg).

Sometimes, even if the mother is around, cultural tradition makes every 11-year-old girl into a whore for her father's and brothers' friends (also Song of the Beast).  I'm fairly certain that no mother -- especially after having experienced this herself -- wants this for her daughters.

Maybe the father is a rapist (Who Fears Death? by Nnedi Okorafor) who doesn't stick around.

And then, there is Craster from A Song Of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, who marries multiple women, abandons the sons and raises the daughters, only to commit incest with his daughters and repeat the cycle with the next generation.

I am sure there are some good fathers of daughters in fantasy novels (not counting the case of daughters being products of a happy, normal marriage), but I am really drawing a blank at the moment.  Can anyone think of any?

Reaction to A Dance with Dragons, Part Three

Note: I wrote this a couple of days ago.  Posted in sequence with previous reaction posts, though.  (I figured it might not make sense if I said I haven't had time to read right after posting another entry like this a few hours ago.)

Well, I haven't had a lot of time to read during the past few days but the thing that has stuck in my mind regarding A Dance with Dragons since my last reaction post was that George R.R. Martin should definitely be a candidate for the Bad Sex in Fiction award.  I've read the scenes with Asha Greyjoy now, and they're pretty bad, but I think the absolute worst is the "entertainment" put on for Daenerys with the naked dancers who end their performance with simultaneous sex acts.  There are some feats of acrobatics there that I just can't quite believe would ever work.

That aside, some stuff is finally happening (not with Daenerys, who isn't doing anything but refusing to open the fighting pits and worrying about her dragons in the dungeons and having internal monologues about her marriage prospects -- I can pretty much predict what every chapter beginning with her name is going to contain, before I start reading it).  Tyrion's storyline is picking up, in unexpected ways at that.  Tyrion's POV is probably the best one so far, if for no reason other than things are actually happening around him (though I don't know how much control he has over events).  Jon Snow really isn't doing a whole lot (well, I guess Stannis has left and he's taken on some wildlings to help with defense of the Wall).  Etc., etc.

Reaction to A Dance with Dragons, Part Two

Spoiler alert: Really, whenever I write about a book, just assume there are spoilers.  It'll save us all some time.

Read a bit more in A Dance with Dragons yesterday; think I'm on page 196 now.  I hate stopping right in the middle of a chapter but I was in the hair salon and when it comes time to wash the dye out, I don't tell the hairdresser to wait.

Anyway, not much reaction to report now, except to return to a theme that I mentioned in my last post of this nature.  And that's the timeline, especially with the Jon Snow storyline.  I find that the scene where Gilly was called into Jon's presence and he told her she was taking Mance's son away instead of her own, was totally unnecessary.  WE ALREADY KNEW THIS HAPPENED.  And her reaction took up only a few lines and was inconsequential in the scope of things.

Now, there are some other things happening at the Wall that need attention (like the execution of Janos Slynt).  But I think there is a way to focus on these without repeating stuff the reader already knows.

I've been reading forums about this book on Amazon for ages, so I already know what is going to happen with Bran, though he's only just arrived in this underground place where he meets the guy entwined with the tree.  Still, I don't think knowing the outcome spoils it for me, because the process, the getting from point A to point B, can still be interesting.

I find that I forget large chunks of story.  I recently looked up Reek as I had forgotten who he was, completely (Theon Greyjoy).  I don't even remember his character from the previous books.  Which is, I suppose, a fail on my part since it seems he played an important role.  Luckily, I don't have to go back and completely re-read the previous volumes to figure it out, thanks to all sorts of internet resources about these books!  (Not that I didn't enjoy reading the first four books, but I still have 30+ untouched books on the shelf and I'd like to get to those at some point, too!)

Davos's storyline completely confused me, as I had vaguely remembered that he was dead, but a look at A Wiki of Ice and Fire straightens me out on this point.  This is a case when the parallel storylines plot may actually work pretty well, because I haven't noticed any duplication here.  And where I'm actually surprised, because I could totally believe he was dead, since Martin so often kills off major characters.

Anyway, probably a couple more posts like this before my final review.  I'm not wowed so far or anything, but I do want to see how things come out, and so I keep reading.

Use Tax

This post is marginally related to books (especially online ordering through retailers like Amazon).  I wonder how something like this would work for an e-book, if you have to pay sales tax on those or not.  I mean, I guess you're supposed to.  I think I've sometimes had to pay sales tax on iTunes, which I guess is basically the same thing.

Anyway, found this in my local paper but I am guessing that it's a variation on a theme that gets attention in a lot of cities this time of year (except those in states like New Hampshire that have no sales tax):

Not so fast on 'tax-free' purchases from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Couple of questions:

1. Do any of you pay this?  Really?
2. Who spends $3000 on a coffee machine?  (Granted, I hate coffee, but the first Mr. Coffee that turned up in the Amazon search results was about $22.)

I've known about this all along, but I've never done anything about it.  I don't even know if I could, I don't keep track of receipts so well and I generally delete the e-mails related to the purchase once the product has arrived.  I seriously doubt I could list even half the things I've ordered online this year, or how much they cost.  The system is not set up for actual revenue generation.

Top Book Headlines of 2011

Found this in the Christian Science Monitor:

10 top book headlines of 2011

I'm minorly irritated that it's a slideshow format instead of a plain old article, but I've gotta say it's better than the other top news stories of 2011 page I saw (forget where), which said that the death of Amy Winehouse and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton were more influential and/or important than Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring.

Of course there is the obligatory nod to, guess who...George R.R. Martin, but hey, I suppose it's cool that a fantasy author is getting so much exposure.  Once people get tired of waiting for The Winds of Winter they might check out some other fantasy.  There's a lot of good stuff out there right now and I've been surprised by the number of indie and/or small press authors whose books I've enjoyed this year.

More E-Book News

A few news items about e-books and e-readers:

Readers getting cheaper, but rising e-book prices causing sticker shock from The Chicago Tribune
New e-book pricing scheme a surprising assault on the wallet from MSNBC
Amazon selling over 1 million Kindles a week from Reuters

I'm assuming the Amazon sales figures are only for recent weeks (i.e. holiday shopping season).  I gather they haven't been up front about releasing Kindle sales figures for individual weeks in the past.  I wonder if consumers who own e-readers of any variety are going to find themselves buying paper books anyway, as e-book prices go up.  I know there are a lot of people who say they will never buy conventional books again, after making the switch.  But there are other people who are less committed and who are only looking for the best deal.  And this second group is the one that will get lost if the e-book prices go up too much.

Myself, I belong to a third group of people -- those who have no interest, whatsoever, in e-readers or e-books.  Go ahead, call me a Luddite, I really don't mind.

Year's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy (NPR)

Lev Grossman is at it again -- this guy is writing articles and blog posts for all sorts of media outlets (I think I've seen Time, the Wall Street Journal, and maybe something else, and now here's his list of the year's best fantasy and science fiction on the NPR website).

Aside from the apparently obligatory nod in lists of this nature to A Dance with Dragons, it's a refreshingly different list from some of the other ones I've seen.  Love that Joe Abercrombie is on there (I really need to get around to reading The Heroes).  And I think it's good that Catherynne M. Valente is getting some exposure on a list like this, because her work is just so different from what's out there that it's worth checking out.  (I haven't yet read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making but I probably will sometime in 2012.)

I'm less familiar with the other items on the list, but I think it really takes a bona fide fantasy author (and fan!) to come up with some of these, and that's refreshing.

Character Relationships

Check out this recent XKCD.

It's a series of diagrams of character relationships for different movies (including Lord of the Rings).  You know, who is together at what time, paths crossing and diverging, etc.

It would be an interesting exercise (though I'm not going to attempt it) to do this for the Malazan Book of the Fallen or A Song of Ice and Fire.  You know, some multivolume work that's really, really complicated.

If there's anything quite like this out there for those, post a link in the comments!

Organized Bookshelves

Retweeted this the other day but wanted to talk about it in more than 140 characters:

The importance of organizing your bookshelves

(Yeah, yeah, it's from The Guardian so I know they spell "organizing" differently, but I'm not British and I can't bring myself to do it.)

I think you can tell from looking at my blog that I don't believe in organization.  In the background image, you see Esslemont, Erikson, Rothfuss, Lloyd.  (It's all a photo of one shelf -- mostly Erikson behind the text in the middle.)

I live in a two-bedroom condo, and one bedroom is full of small animals in cages (well, the iguana is not so small, but he is in a cage).  So books are either in the bedroom I use for sleeping, or the living room.  I already need more shelf space but don't know where I'll put more shelves.  At any rate, all fantasy fiction is grouped together, but with absolutely no logic to which author goes where, except for the cases where I have a ton of books in the same series or by the same author (and inclusion in this list does not have anything to do with liking or not, it's just what I own) -- Wheel of Time, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Shannara, Sword of Truth, Recluce, Glen Cook, Guy Gavriel Kay, etc.  In these cases, I try to keep them together on the same shelf.  Not necessarily in order of publication (that would really screw things up with Glen Cook because there was Dread Empire, then Black Company, a few standalones, Instrumentalities of the Night, more Dread Empire, etc.).

I also try to keep books out of the vicinity of the litterbox if I can help it.  Sometimes the kitties miss.  I have some books (mostly little-used textbooks from general education requirements, though my Harvard yearbook happens to be in the area too) with old cat piss on them.  Not sure what to do about that, honestly.  I'm ignoring the issue until I have to move, I suppose.

Nonfiction?  It's everywhere.  Most of the science is in the living room now, philosophy is split, fiction that's not fantasy is all over the place, folklore and mythology is sort of together.

I don't like to alphabetize.  Since I have the sort of memory that works very well spatially, I can remember where a book is without having to have it organized.  I think it drives my boyfriend nuts as he's an alphabetizer and categorizer.  Sometimes I wonder what he'd do if I moved some of the CDs in his apartment around.  (I wouldn't actually do that, but I tease him about it.)  (Second parenthetical remark: I don't have to worry about alphabetizing music, since I have an extensive iTunes library and the computer does it for me.  Though I mostly use the "shuffle" feature, anyway.)

Now that I think about it, I've posted on this topic before:

Books on the Shelf
Books on the Shelf, Revisited

Well, what are you going to do about it?  With over 200 posts and only me writing them, there's going to be some repetition!

Reaction to A Dance with Dragons, Part One

I finally started reading A Dance with Dragons the other day.  I do intend to post a full review when I finish, but it's a much longer book than the ones I've been reading lately, and I figured I could write down my thoughts every so often so that it would be easier to compile a review when I'm finished.  So here's the first installment.

I've said this before, but I hate it when there's a long time between volumes of a series being published.  I read the first four books in A Song of Ice and Fire in a row a couple of years ago.  I remember major characters (Cersei, the Starks -- and Jon Snow, Tyrion, Daenerys, Gregor and Sandor Clegane, etc.)  But there are some that I just don't remember.  Although that's a failing on my part, I suppose.  I had a similar problem with the later Harry Potter books (although not to the same degree).

Anyhow, I haven't really run into that problem yet, but I'm only on page 82.  So far there have been a few reminders of past events (very welcome), only a couple of paragraphs describing food/feasts/meals, and the only rape (I think) occurred in previous books and was referenced here (e.g. in Tyrion's private thoughts).

I don't think I care so much for the method of italicizing characters' talking to themselves (or thinking to themselves).  But, I can live with it.  And I really don't remember if this is new or not.

I got confused at one point, as I knew Jon Snow had sent Sam and Gilly and Aemon away, but then here they were, still around.  I know A Dance with Dragons starts out with a note from George R.R. Martin explaining that it runs parallel in time to A Feast for Crows.  At first I found this irritating, but I started thinking about it.  When you have such a large cast of characters, and you have to split events like this, what do you do?  Focusing on different characters in different locations, in parallel, is one answer.  Tolkien did this in the two halves of The Two Towers. Steven Erikson did this in Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice.  So there is precedent.

But the thing is, the action is totally separate in each of those cases.  It's not the same here.  I mean, the mentions of Sam and Gilly have so far not been very important.  But it's weird to read about them now, when we already know where they have gone off to.

Maybe the dividing lines are not so neat, and Martin is doing the best he can.  I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.  Timelines are tricky things, as I've discovered myself as I've been writing my own manuscript.  (And I don't even have anything so epic as to divide it into two halves, at least not yet.  I do love these big complex multibook series, and maybe someday I will write something like that.)

Anyway, more blogging, perhaps some Twitter, and then I'll call it a night.

Humbling Experience

I know this blog doesn't get a ton of visitors.  But I know a few people have read it, even a few authors have stumbled across it from time to time.  Bradley P. Beaulieu, Courtney Schafer, and Jay Lake have linked to it (and I have to give Jay Lake credit for absolutely being a good sport because I was not very kind when I reviewed Green).  I believe Rowena Cory Daniells has stopped by as well; I decided to follow her on Twitter when someone else re-tweeted something of hers, and then I logged into my Gmail account and found she'd followed me right back, which is cool.  (Around the same time, I got a hit on my blog from Australia, which I'm guessing is her.)

Anyway, I suppose that's one great thing about the internet -- authors are out there, interacting with their readers, in ways that were unimaginable a decade or two ago.  People whose books I've bought and read have actually read some of my words too.  (Yeah, I know I'm super late to the social networking bandwagon.  And I'm still a Facebook holdout.)

Amazon's Bestselling Books of 2011

The Steve Jobs biography is Amazon's bestselling book of the year.  Couple of fantasy titles on the top 10 list, A Dance with Dragons and Inheritance.  This goes part of the way towards confirming a suspicion I had some time ago: that the Amazon "best of" list for fantasy and sci-fi is based on sales, not quality.  Or even on good reviews from readers.

It would be, I think, difficult to come up with a top 10 list unless you'd read everything that came out in a year.  I certainly don't have time for that.  Maybe the Klausner-bot could pretend to.  My own compromise for a top 10 list will be choosing from among the books I read in 2011, or at least since I started writing reviews on this blog in May or June, because at least I have a list of those on my reviews page.  These books may not have been published or released in 2011, but I don't care.  This is my blog and that's how I'm going to do things!

NYT Front Page!

Opened up my newspaper the other day (you know, one of the days when my newspaper delivery man actually gives me a complete paper, on time).  And I saw this (on the front page, no less):

Athhilezar? Watch Your Fantasy World Language

I wondered how long it would be before the Times got back to publishing things with some connection to George R.R. Martin.

Seriously, though...I just can't get into the constructed language thing.  (My boyfriend likes this stuff, is even trying his hand at making up one of his own...he's been at it for years.)  I appreciate that it takes effort and a knowledge of linguistics so you don't end up making up something that sounds stupid.  But my feeling is, unless you are describing a concept or object that doesn't have an English equivalent, you can just use English words.  (We should assume that in a fantasy society, if it actually existed, they wouldn't actually be speaking English, and you're writing a translation of sorts.)

Anyway, in the Song of Ice and Fire books, there's not a fully-constructed, widely-used Dothraki language, and I'm grateful for that.

Side note: My newspaper delivery guy regularly shows up late.  Sometimes not at all.  When he is on time, his car stereo is way too loud for a residential area at 6AM.  Sometimes he delivers me a paper missing sections.  Sometimes he actually gives me the wrong paper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution instead of the New York Times).  Sometimes he delivers me a paper on the weekend (I have a Monday through Friday subscription, can't afford the whole week on a grad student stipend).  Sometimes he delivers two papers.  I have a problem at least once a week, sometimes twice.  So am I giving him anything in the self-addressed (but not stamped) envelope he stuffed in the plastic sleeve of my paper the other day?  I think not.  (I honestly wish they'd fire the guy -- I'm sure in this economy there'd be a line of people who'd snap up the chance for income in a second, and do a better job of it.)

Media Hating on Amazon

Continuing with this morning's theme...

I'm going to be honest, I order from Amazon all the time.  You may have noticed I link to their site and products all the time.  But there's been a lot of hating on Amazon in the media lately.  A few cases in point:

Amazon Backlash Continues to Build from Publishers Weekly

Amazon's Jungle Logic from the New York Times

These are both about the same thing...Amazon's price check app.  And the day (December 10) they gave big discounts for going into stores and using the app.  While the promotion apparently wasn't available for books, this is still a jerky thing for Amazon to do.

It's not enough to make me stop shopping at Amazon (for one thing, to my knowledge, there are no independent bookstores in my area and I don't know of another site online with a comparable number of reviews or a comparable selection including a pretty complete collection of used paperbacks).  I started buying there in the late 1990s when the only way to get something the bookstore didn't have was to do a special order at Barnes and Noble, then wait for a long time for it to come in.  (Side note: people apparently still do that, I see books like that behind the counter at B&N all the time.)  But it is Walmart-like behavior and it does cause some amount of moral conflict that I have to deal with.  (For the record, I haven't shopped at Walmart in several years, even though there are two supercenters within 15 minutes of where I live.)

Sometimes This Is Me...

There are days when I feel like this:

Trends

I've noticed that 10 of the last 11 books I've read have been by female authors.  That's not a bad thing, at all -- in fact, it's encouraging because I'm female and I'm writing a fantasy novel and I like to see a lot of women get published.

But, I think I'm going to swing the other direction for awhile.  I've got two massive tomes on my shelf that I really want to get around to (A Dance with Dragons and The Crippled God).  Both of these will take me awhile.  I'm actually thinking of writing my reactions to them as I read them, instead of an all-encompassing review at the end (though I may have a summary review and a list of links to the various earlier discussions in lieu of a long review).

Nothing earth-shattering to say in this post, just mentioning something I noticed.

Brandon Sanderson versus Terry Goodkind

There's this Amazon forum titled "Is Brandon Sanderson Obsessed with Terry Goodkind" that I've been reading lately.  I have read most of both men's works to date (haven't gotten to The Alloy of Law by Sanderson or The Law of Nines or The Omen Machine by Goodkind yet).  And I have to say, the more I think about this, the more firmly I come out on the side of Sanderson.

Sanderson is not my favorite author or anything.  But he is doing a god job finishing up Wheel of Time. He's original in his world-building, though he does have a fondness for plucky female heroines. I didn't care for Warbreaker so much, and I'm on the fence about The Stormlight Archive.  But he's productive, and Mistborn and Elantris were great.  On balance, my opinion of him is more positive than negative.

I have developed a really antagonistic relationship with Goodkind's books, though.   Wizard's First Rule was all right, but it went downhill from there. See my Worst Fantasy Series and Unrealistic Societies posts for more specifics.  I keep reading them because they sell well and I feel like I should read them so that I know what's going on in fantasy.  (Reading bad stuff so I know what not to do, you know.)  Although I did get a hardcover of The Law of Nines on a remnant table at Barnes and Noble for only $5, and that probably says something about other people's opinions, as well.

I don't know anything about them as people, maybe they're both nice guys.  Maybe they're not.  Though I can imagine having a much more pleasant conversation with Sanderson.  (That Ayn Rand libertarianism of Goodkind's really just turns me off.)

Writing versus Being a Writer

Another Huffington Post piece:

Do You Want to Write or Do You Want to Be a Writer

It's one author's take on the writer's persona.  Which, if you think about it, has changed a lot over the past decade or two.  Madison Smartt Bell, the author of the piece I linked to, describes a time someone pulled out a smart phone and Googled him on the spot (he was on a publicity tour in France).

Okay, wow, I stopped writing this in the middle because I was super hungry and my boyfriend showed up to take me out to dinner.  Now I totally forgot where I was going with it.  So I will probably just wrap up and let the story linked to speak for itself.

I'm not sure I want to be recognized by a lot of people on the street, but doubt I ever will be.  I would like to get my manuscript published, and have some people actually read it.  While I have that dream in the back of my mind of writing for a living, I'm a realist.  Writing for a living is probably more likely than winning the lottery (and I do buy lottery tickets), but I know I need a day job.

Another Locus Roundtable

These Locus Roundtables are pretty good; I posted about another one not too long ago.  Here's the most recent one I found:

Becoming Assigned Reading

It's a little shorter than I'd like...but there are also links to the other roundtables which are also interesting.

One of the comments is quite true: there are some books I hated simply because they were assigned reading in class.  (The Great Gatsby comes to mind.  I read it again later and enjoyed it.  Might actually be interesting to try again, it's been well over a decade since my last encounter with F. Scott Fitzgerald.)  But then, I can't think of a time I've ever been assigned a fantasy or science fiction book for a class.  Now maybe that's because I only took the bare minimum of English required, since my degrees are in government, biology, and chemistry.  I did have one English professor who at least incorporated magical realism into the curriculum amongst all the required texts, and I admire her efforts in that area, though I suspect her point was lost on most of the class.

Review - Song of the Beast

Song of the Beast is a standalone novel by Carol Berg, one of my favorite female authors.  It's been out for awhile, but her publisher, Roc, put out a nice trade paperback version a couple of months ago and as that is the only book of Bergs I hadn't read yet, I bought it on one of my most recent trips to Barnes and Noble.

There's a new introduction by Berg in this edition and in it she states that while Song of the Beast is not her first book to be published, it's the first of her writing efforts that she feels to have been a success.  And while I loved this book in the way I do all of Berg's works, there's a bit of a trope-ish feel to it.  You can definitely tell, if you read her later works, that she's developed immensely as a writer in the intervening years.

So what are the trope-ish elements?  Here are the ones that occur to me just now: (1) Dragons, including their subjugation by humans, the fact that they're no longer producing young, etc.  (2) Music as magic (we've seen this in Terry Brooks and more recently in Peter Orullian and David Anthony Durham, and I believe L.E. Modesitt, Jr. also had a series where music was an important element to magic, though I haven't read the Modesitt books).  (3) Hero (of a noble background) has been in prison unjustly for a long time.  (4) Elements of the minstrel's traveling life.  (5) Multiple races, one of which has been downtrodden.  (6) Hero meets a woman who hates him at first but eventually who falls for him (although they don't live happily ever after in the end, exactly, so that's a bonus, I suppose).  (7) The manipulator who won't tell everyone his plans until the end.  (8) Destroying a musician's hands to end his livelihood.  (9) Masquerade ball.

I know, I know, no book is free of tropes.  And I can usually overlook them if I like the story enough, which I did in Song of the Beast.  Because in addition to the tropes, all the elements that I commonly see in Berg's books are present here, as well.  Especially the long climax scenes where a lot of important action goes on for a number of pages and you just don't want to put the book down.  (I've always thought Berg was quite good at writing climax scenes.)  You also have a hero (Aidan) who goes through a lot of crap (I'm recalling Seyonne from Berg's Rai-Kirah series, maybe Seri from The Bridge of D'Arnath) but finds some kind of peace and purpose in his life in the end.  These guys get beaten down but manage to hang on and end up okay, if not on the path they originally thought their lives would take.

Berg's writing style is a bit different from the last two authors I read (Catherynne M. Valente and Liane Merciel) in that she doesn't use nearly as much figurative language as either of them.  (Completely off-topic, but I also don't use much figurative language, and I'm glad to see that I enjoy an author who writes in a similar styleas I do!)  Still, her prose does a fine job of conveying the information she wants to get across and I can't find anything in it to nitpick about (which is not always the case, if you read some of my other reviews).

Well, I take that back.  There is one thing about the writing style that I had a hard time with.  Berg switches back and forth between different viewpoint characters, which is absolutely fine, as no one character was in every scene.  But she writes every scene in the first person.  There are a few individuals (e.g. Prince Donal) who only get one chapter, and I don't have trouble with that.  But Lara (a woman disowned by the Ridemark -- see below -- for trying to ride a dragon) and Aidan (the unjustly-imprisoned musician) both had considerably more chapters.  And I would get so used to Aidan's chapters in the first person that I would be thrown for a loop when I was reading Lara's, still thinking about Aidan and being confused by the action as a result.  I know I said it was odd in my review of The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer that Schafer switched back and forth between first-person and third-person scenes with Dev and Kiran.  But it was much easier to remember who was doing the talking in that case.

There are two main enemies in this book, and I'll talk about the Ridemark first.  Perhaps this is a novice mistake, but the people of the Ridemark are just a little too evil for my taste.  They control the dragons by force, make them incinerate people.  They're fearsome warriors in their own right.  They even let women fight.  (Though paradoxically, women are treated like crap otherwise -- they never get to ride dragons and they're fair targets for rape from the age of 11 in the twelve tribes of the Ridemark.)  They are expert torturers, and they keep hostages in squalid conditions (and don't care much for the hostages' well-being, even if they don't intend to kill the poor souls).

The other enemy starts out as a friend, or so we think -- he's Narim, an Elhim.  The Elhim are a curiosity as a race; they only have one gender, but are commonly referred to as "he."  (Apparently they engage in asexual reproduction, is what I glean from the text.)  They're also extraordinarily long-lived, and Narim spends the novel manipulating people into correcting a mistake he made in his youth.  He drugged the dragons to bring them under his influence, but the people who became the Ridemark stole control of the dragons from him and the Elhim have gotten the brunt of a lot of bad treatment -- from many segments of society -- in the intervening five hundred or so years.  Narim's motivations are always suspect, although at first it's hard to believe he's up to anything.  Actually, his development from a friend/Good Samaritan to a bad guy is quite well done, and progresses at an appropriate pace over the course of the novel.  We later learn he's been a manipulator all along, but it's not necessarily easy to see this, starting out.  Narim actually wants Aidan to free the dragons so he (Narim) can enslave them again, and make the humans pay for five centuries of bad treatment.  Which is actually an understandable goal, though perhaps not what the reader wants to happen.  So Narim is a good villain, actually (in the sense of story construction).

I'm not actually sure what else to say here.  This seems sort of short compared to my other reviews.  Although looking at it in "preview" mode, it's nine paragraphs, and that's much longer than any of the Amazon postings masquerading as "reviews" (some of them, especially the ones that give fewer stars, do have some decent analysis).  If you've read and enjoyed Berg's other work, you'll enjoy Song of the Beast.  I'd probably start with one of her series and then come back to this one, though.  It's a good book, I read it in less than a day, I cared about the characters, I thought the climax scene was excellent, etc., but she hadn't developed to her full potential when she produced Beast.  It's an interesting exercise to read Berg's later works (and I've read them ALL) and then see where she started, how she changes as an author, etc.  Overall, though, I'd recommend this one.  (Especially if you're looking for a standalone!)

Review - Heaven's Needle

Wow, starting a review the day I finish a book.  (Though I don't know if I'll be finishing the review today.  We'll see.  Still have to grocery shop, exercise, shower, feed the dog and cats, make dinner, etc.)  At any rate...

Heaven's Needle is Liane Merciel's second "Novel of Ithelas."  It follows the events in The River Kings' Road though I hesitate to call it a sequel, exactly.  Because the whole plot in The River Kings' Road about the two babies, etc., is completely dropped.  I mean, that plot did reach a logical conclusion in the first book, and maybe Merciel will revisit those characters in the future, but you don't necessarily have to read The River Kings' Road to understand Heaven's Needle.

There is some overlap in another subplot from the first book, with respect to Kelland and Bitharn.  It has been an exceedingly long time since I read the first novel, and I spent half of Heaven's Needle trying to remember what happened other than the thing with the babies and the subsequent journey.  And I really never could.  Although I believe Kelland must've been captured by some bad guys (Thorns) at the end, because he starts off Heaven's Needle imprisoned by them.  If you liked Kelland and Bitharn (at least a couple of Amazon reviewers of The River Kings' Road did, you'll be happy with this book because they're major characters).

There are a couple of things Merciel does really well in this book, and so I'll start with those.  I feel like most of the major viewpoint characters (Kelland, Bitharn, Asharre, and maybe Corban, even) are pretty well-developed, with complex personalities and internal conflicts.  They're also largely sympathetic because even though they sometimes have to make decisions and do things they don't want to, we can understand their reasons for doing so.

I felt like the pacing was excellent, as well.  The major characters are nearly always in danger, it was hard to catch a break.  This made me want to keep reading to find out what happened next.  I also liked the fact that the "good guys" had to make an alliance with the "bad guys" (Thorns) and work together to solve a problem (although it was a little predictable that Malentir attempts to betray Asharre in the end).

Finally, I think Merciel's prose is pretty good.  No unnecessary details, but nice use of figurative language.  I can actually picture the hovel where Corban holes up, for example.  Dialogue is a little sparse, or else interspersed with a lot of description (I really don't think people stop and think for a paragraphs' worth of words any time someone makes a statement, although this is a common phenomenon in fantasy novels).

Magic in Ithelas is of the gods-granted variety that we have seen also in the works of Elizabeth Moon and Michael Moorcock. (Side note: never thought I'd be comparing those two.  But in this instance, I believe it's appropriate.  Certain people are chosen by or have relationships with different gods, and can pray or ask for help with healing, or generating light, or all manner of other things.)  Sometimes the magic doesn't work, though.  And that's good.  Because I'd never worry about the characters' safety if I knew they could just pray their way out of anything.  Those who are gods-favored can die, or become maimed or corrupted, and in fact all of these things happen to characters in Heaven's Needle.

I think the plot could've used some work.  Bitharn starts the novel by tricking people in Heaven's Needle (a prison for the worst sort of offenders, whose bodies would be dangerous even in death, hence them being kept alive instead of executed) so she can get Malentir out.  She's done this because she's made an alliance with the Spider (a lady who is a devotee of a dark goddess and who controls the Thorns), who is keeping Kelland prisoner.  This is a big deal, and a very bad thing that Bitharn has done, and she's worried at first about betraying the Celestian order (Celestia is the goddess she and Kelland follow).  But when she's finally called before the high solaros (kind of like a Pope, I think) to account for her actions, he's like "I totally understand and we'll just tell people Malentir tricked you."  I think she gets off way too easy.

Also, any scene where Asharre and Evenna (a Celestian Illuminer, which is kind of like a priest or priestess/healer) and company, or Kelland and Bitharn and Malentir confront people who have been corrupted by Maol (an evil god whose followers sort of slowly decay and descend into madness and infect people, animals, and even plants and water), someone is always at the limit of his/her strength.  Someone is always injured and miraculously healed by magic, which Kelland can do as a Celestian Sun Knight, which Asharre can do with a magic sword once she figures out how, which Evenna can do to a degree with a prayer, which Malentir can do by somewhat darker means.  Even so, other than one time when Asharre and Evenna are captured, the heroes always defeat all the corrupted people (or dogs, as the case was once) and get away.

One other repetitive element was traveling by means that caused some disturbing visions or feelings.  There was a bridge Asharre had to cross that was designed and enspelled to confuse besiegers approaching a fortress, and a magical means whose name I forget that Kelland, Bitharn, and Malentir had to use twice that also was quite discomfiting to Bitharn, especially.

A final repetitive element was one or other group of viewpoint characters shows up somewhere only to find all the residents have abandoned the place.  But there's plenty of food they left behind, firewood, etc., and at least one Celestian to purify the food and water from Maol's taint.  So no one really goes hungry or goes without shelter or anything like that.

Merciel spends long periods of time with one set of characters, which is nice because I do generally sympathize with them and become engaged in their struggles.  But sometimes it might be advisable to switch between them a little more often.  In one case, I was thoroughly confused.  Kelland, Bitharn, and Malentir arrived in Carden Vale and investigated the aftermath of everything that happened during Asharre's and Evenna's visit.  Only, Merciel hadn't yet included the scene where Asharre and Evenna had left Carden Vale.  So I'm sitting here thinking, eventually these two groups are going to meet up, or, I don't understand why Kelland and company haven't found Asharre and Evenna yet.  And then I read the scene where Asharre leaves Carden Vale.  Even though I've already read about some stuff that happened after her departure.  Splitting up the action a bit more might have prevented this, especially since the book is otherwise in chronological order.

I think the Kelland/Bitharn relationship needed a little tweaking.  The whole thing is, they have feelings for each other but both are devoted to their Order and their goddess and Kelland has even taken an oath of celibacy (and Bitharn totally respects this).  They reveal their feelings for each other early on but agree not to do anything physical, and then they never once even come close to giving in to their desires.  Instead, Kelland says once his work is finished, he'll step down from the Order and they can marry, and Bitharn is satisfied with this.  So there was like no sexual tension at all.  (Various Thorns tempts Kelland with the idea that he might retain his goddess-granted powers even if he sleeps with Bitharn, but he overcomes these temptations quite easily, and perhaps even comes to believe what the Thorns say.)

Be prepared if you read Heaven's Needle for the story to go on a bit past the big climax scene where Gethel (the dude who let loose Maol's taint) dies and Asharre and Evenna are rescued.  Corban is still around, with all the blackstone arrows.  (I don't think I've mentioned these yet...Corban wants to make money and he wants a weapon that will overcome any mages with god- or goddess-granted powers.  Gethel gets him one, these arrows with blackstone from the evil sealed fortress of Duradh Mal which was the source of all the problems of Carden Vale.  But Corban becomes reluctant to part with these arrows.  It's the influence of the blackstone, and when his presence in a major city is revealed, Asharre, Kelland, Bitharn, and Malentir go to deal with him.)

The only character who really undergoes a transformation is Asharre.  She's unsure of her place in the world after the death of her sister, but agrees to go on the journey protecting Evenna (and another Illuminer whose name escapes me at the moment but he dies pretty early on so it doesn't really matter).  She's asked to become the weapons trainer for the Celestians, and isn't sure whether she wants to, but eventually agrees to it at the end of the book.  It's a rather predictable arc but she is a sympathetic character, and I was glad she'd found a place in the world after all the hardships in her life.

Side note: as of this writing, Amazon.com has exactly five reviews of this book, one from each star level.  (I don't think I've ever seen this before.)  Of course the Klausner-bot loved it.  The 4-star review is unreadable, because whoever wrote it doesn't believe in capital letters at the beginnings of sentences, or punctuation.  The others are worthless.  So yeah, maybe I put some spoilers in here, but if you want an actual analysis, hopefully I've given it.

I'm going to second the recommendation of one of the Amazon reviewers, that you don't necessarily need to read both "Novels of Ithelas," or if you do, there's no need to read them back-to-back.  It's not really necessary to have read The River Kings' Road to understand Heaven's Needle, and in fact, if you do read one right after the other, you may be more confused than if you space them out a bit.  Still, what with the complex characters, fast-paced plot, and lovely prose, this book may well be worth your while.

Slow News Day

The following story from Reuters was hounding me in at least three categories on Google news the other day (still is, actually):

Reading is alive and increasingly electronic

If you've spent any time on this blog, you'll know I'm not a fan of e-readers.  But I realize they're popular.  My mom has a Kindle.  Even my 91-year-old grandma has a Kindle.  Although my aunt has to do the downloading of books for her.  (Actually, e-readers can be good for older people because I believe you are able to increase the size of the text if you have trouble with that sort of thing.)

Still, I'm not sure this is newsworthy, or a surprise to anyone...

Counterintuitive (?) Writing Advice

So you probably know by now, if you've been reading this blog much at all, that I get a lot of ideas for content from The Guardian and The New York Times.  Lately, the Huffington Post has had a lot of interesting content related to writing and books, so I'm going to start including more from them as well.  Like this one:

5 Lies They Tell You About Writing

I am not a published author, of course (though I hope to be one day, which is something else you know if you've read much of this blog before).  And I am the sort of person who really does care about what the experts say.  I listen to my veterinarian, to the guy who trained me to use the LC-MS/MS (a particular type of scientific analytical instrument is all you need to know, if you're not in the field), to the car repair people (I'm fairly certain they're not trying to cheat me).  But writing is like that one area where theoretically anyone can write a novel.  I've seen novels from computer scientists, stay-at-home moms, lawyers, etc.  And maybe because of that, I don't always listen to the advice of so-called "experts."  (A few exceptions...Stephen King's advice is not bad, nor is Orson Scott Card's.)

At any rate, it turns out, sometimes the advice is not true.  (Write what you know?  Seriously?  Who wants to read about cleaning up after my pets, endless labeling of HPLC vials and microcentrifuge tubes, or what I watch on TV while I walk on my treadmill or lift weights?  Because that's basically what my life is, these days?)  Anyway, head on over to the link I posted and see what you think.

A Jerky Thing to Do

I read this in the New York Times the other day:

Many Online Book Buyers First Shop Around in Stores

You could argue that Barnes and Noble is overpriced.  (I have the membership and I find that prices with the membership, and some of the coupons they send out, are close enough to Amazon, maybe a buck or two higher but you get that instant gratification of having the book in your hands.)

It's a jerky thing to do to local independent bookshops, for sure.  There are few enough of those, these days, as it is.  Behavior like that described in the article only makes it worse.

I browse in stores and I buy in stores.  I also browse online, though I do that less often.  I find it easy to spiral out of control on Amazon, so I only buy books there rarely, and usually only when I have a gift card.  Or if there is a series I've got books 1-3 of but 4 and 5 are out and not in the store, maybe I'll get those on Amazon.  Because if I'm reading along in a series, I am the type to read everything that's available at once.  So I need the next couple of books.

What I don't do is take a smartphone to the bookstore and look up the price online.  To be fair, I don't have a smartphone.  I have a POS prepaid thing because I don't have any money.  And if I do get money, I'd rather spend it on books than on a phone.

But anyway, if you're lucky enough to have a local independent bookstore, and you're going to browse there, BUY there too.

A Word to the (Not So) Wise

I notice via my StatCounter account that a number of people are coming to my page looking for meme templates.  Because sometimes I mention internet memes in my posts.  So I'm going to let you in on a little secret (which should really not be a secret, if you understand the internet at all...but still, I'm getting these clicks, so let me set you on the correct path...)

Meme templates are *gasp* available from the Memebase Meme Builder page.  Who ever would've thought?  Even rather obscure ones are available, if you click through enough pages.

But, if you don't know that already, you will probably never make the Memebase home page anyway.

E-Books: US versus UK

I'll admit that living in the US, I don't often consider what technology may or may not be available in other parts of the world.  I mean, it's obvious that people in countries like Niger are more worried about putting food on the table than they are about the Kindle Fire.  And I know that when my boyfriend had to go on all these business trips to Moscow last year, people over there were always asking him to bring iPhones and other devices that they had a hard time obtaining.

But I sort of made an assumption that people in countries like Australia or the UK were about as into e-readers as customers in the US, and it turns out I was probably wrong about that.  It seems the UK has been slower to adopt e-readers than the US.  The essay linked to (from the Huffington Post UK) lists some reasons why: price, timelines of technology release, availability of more bookstores, and stubbornness (or resistance to change).  (There have been some e-book pricing inquiries in the news lately, as well, some in the EU and maybe now in the US.)

Well, I'm stubborn as well, though I'm not British.  To a degree.  I had no problem giving up physical CDs for an iPod, but to me, books are something different.  I care about physical books.  Whereas I never read liner notes with CDs.  I was only interested in them for the music, and an iPod allows me to carry around thousands of songs and listen to whatever I want, whenever I want.  I've said it before, but I don't use books the same way I use music -- I want to finish a book before I move on to the next one -- and maybe that colors my opinion.

Review - The Folded World

I reiterate something I've said in previous posts, which is that I hate writing reviews days and days after I finish a book.  But sometimes, that is just how things work out.  I usually have time to read, because I can do that in smaller chunks of time.  20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, etc.  I really can't write a review that way.  It's hardly even worth getting the laptop out of the bag and plugging in the modem and router.

So here I am, having finished The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente, on Saturday or Sunday and writing about it now.  Apologies in advance for (1) spoilers and (2) forgetting important stuff because this book hasn't been on my mind much (if you want to know about leaky HPLC pumps that need their seals replaced, though, I can tell you all about that).

The Folded World is the second volume in Valente's "Dirge for Prester John" series and the sequel to The Habitation of the Blessed.  Once again, our experience of the events comes through the eyes of a monk -- in this case, Alaric, since Hiob is still indisposed.  Alaric has received permission to pick three more books from the tree (see my review of Habitation for more of an explanation -- in fact, you should probably read that before this, anyway, because there was a lot of introductory material there that I don't really want to repeat here).  Realizing the dangers of decomposition of these book-fruits, Alaric employs two other monks to assist him in transcribing the contents of these books.

Once again, we are transported to Pentexore.  The Folded World is every bit as lyrical and beautifully-written, with all the symbolism and figurative language we saw in Habitation (it definitely still falls into the "literary fiction" category).  However, much less introduction to the world of Pentexore was required, for several reasons.  First, we've already been here, through Hiob's transcriptions.  Second, there are fewer new arrivals to Pentexore (more on this in a moment), and we don't learn as much about it through human eyes as we did before (through Thomas and also Prester John).

This is a good thing.  One of the few problems I had with Habitation is that nothing much happened, that I could summarize the plot in a paragraph.  Not so, here.  The Folded World had a lot more going on, and even though it was more complex, the various threads were woven together well and the ending was not at all what I expected after my reading of Habitation.  I do like it a lot when novels are unpredictable, and Valente surprised me here.  So that's cool.

Each of the books Alaric chooses has a different narrator.  Hagia the blemmye is again a narrator, although she is being told what to write by John's half-crane daughter Anglitora and Anglitora's words (in italics) are incorporated throughout Hagia's sections.  Hagia (and Anglitora, and John, and Hadulph, and Hajji, and Qaspiel, and a few others from Habitation) are on a journey over the Rimal.  John has looked into an enchanted mirror and seen Constantinople and Jerusalem burning, and feels compelled to go to the aid of his people.  There is a lottery (which may or may not be fair) and some Pentexorans are chosen to accompany John and others are left behind.  The prospect of war is exciting to the inhabitants of Pentexore, because it's been so long since they've had a real war that they've forgotten that it means people actually die.  So they build ships and pack up barrels of dirt from Pentexore so that they can plant weapons and so forth, and be able to grow new ones.

They make it to what would be modern-day Iraq (outside Mosul) and find that there is a river that they cannot cross.  It's like there's an invisible wall and no one from Pentexore may go through.  They come upon a Muslim man (we'll call him Yusuf, as his full name is much more complicated but also difficult to remember) and also a monastery.  John is allowed to enter the monastery, and begs for Hagia (his wife) to also be admitted.  They reluctantly let her, but force her to veil herself so her breasts (where her eyes rest) cannot be seen.  This partially blinds her.  At any rate, she and John end up back outside after this unpleasant reception and find themselves attacked in the night.  Yusuf helps the people of Pentexore defend themselves, but many of them die.  This, plus the invisible wall, is enough to make them turn around to go home.  (The monks think the people of Pentexore are monstrosities, whereas Yusuf thinks they're djinn.  So Yusuf is much friendlier to them.)

One thing that I love about the battle scene is that, as depressing as it is, Valente never forgets the natures of the characters she's writing about.  A man tries to attack Hagia but doesn't know how to go about it because she can't be strangled and has no throat to slit.  Men treat Anglitora as if she is lame (she has one wing and one arm) but her wing is actually quite powerful.  Little details like this really add to the atmosphere.

But that's only one account.  We have two others.  One is written by Vyala, a lion and Hadulph's mother.  She is given the care of Sefalet, Hagia and John's daughter.  Sefalet has a head with no features.  Her eyes are in her hands; she also has a mouth in each hand.  Her right-hand mouth is normal, lovable, etc.  Her left-hand math speaks prophecies of doom and unnerves her parents, sometimes making Hagia not even want to spend time around her own daughter.  In John's absence, his friends are charged with building a great cathedral, and Vyala and Sefalet hang around the building site.  Some sections are told by Sefalet, and these are a little obnoxious because they're told in two columns, one from the right-hand mouth and one from the left-hand mouth.  But this only occupies 3 or 4 pages in the whole book, really, and if you skip it, you aren't missing a lot.  I would say Vyala's sections have the least amount of action, although there are a few details that probably set up what's going to happen in volume 3.  (More on that later.)

The final account is from another man named John who seems to be a compulsive liar.  The epitome of the unreliable narrator.  Etc.  He's also made it to Pentexore, after traveling much of the known world (or so he says -- it's difficult to tell because he lies so much, we don't know whether to believe a word he says).  Only, he's made it to the "other" Pentexore.  Some centuries before, Pentexore was split by a wall to prevent evil and destructive forces from crossing over to the side with the fountain of youth, etc.  This concept was not developed much in the previous volume, other than through the plight of the phoenixes, who are dying out because they cannot go to their home city to burn themselves, since it is on the other side of the wall.  This second John ends up on the other side of the wall and is kept a virtual prisoner by some six-armed people called hexakyk.  They manipulate him into doing a few things (including killing a "unicorn" who actually resembles a man).  Then they pretty much lock him up with some sentient person-sized emeralds who control his access (or lack thereof) to different rooms of their home.  They build a giant bonfire which cracks the wall separating the two halves of Pentexore; Sefalet from the other narrative has also come to the wall, and it breaks completely when this second John and Sefalet meet on opposite sides of it.

So this was the unexpected ending.  I figured that the Pentexorans would all die on their quest for Jerusalem and Constantinople, or else Christians would come back and sack Pentexore.  And two volumes would be the end of the Dirge for Prester John.  Because Pentexore is basically where India is, today, and we all know that Pentexore doesn't exist!  So I was pleased that this did not happen.  Now I am thinking that there will definitely be a third volume.  John and Hagia and the survivors have to come home, and the inhabitants of the second Pentexore (where people live normal lifespans and are decidedly less magical) will either overrun the first one -- remember, John and Hagia and the rest are away when the wall breaks -- or have to work together with their counterparts from across the wall.  The cathedral will be finished or destroyed.  Sefalet will sort herself out or not.  But there are a lot of issues to be addressed and I am anxious to find out how this happens.

I see I've left out the Hiob/Alaric storyline.  Hiob starts moving his hand, even in his vegetative state (figuratively and literally vegetative).  Alaric supplies him with pen and paper and he writes pages from the book-fruit he ate.  But in the end, Alaric decides to commit Hiob to the funeral pyre.  (We still don't know the identity of the woman who controls the book tree.  That is another question for volume 3.)

Characterization is better here, too.  Hagia remains fully-realized and some new dimensions are added, especially with respect to Sefalet and Anglitora, John and Yusuf.  John starts to see his own conflicting nature -- he has adopted Pentexore as his home, he has become its king, but he's still a faithful Christian and loyal to the city of his birth (Constantinople).  The second John is complex as well, I think, although he could be lying to make his story more compelling.  Or he could really feel bad about killing the "unicorn."  We feel pity for Sefalet, and for Imtithal/Hajji.  Other characters are less well-developed, but our narrators are better and let's face it, we just can't get inside the head (or abdomen, in the case of Hagia) of every character in every novel.  Or there'd be no room for plot at all.  I think Valente gets the balance right in The Folded World.

Definitely, don't read this without reading The Habitation of the Blessed First, or you'll be hopelessly lost.  But once you've read that one (and it's short, as is this volume), check out The Folded World.  You won't be disappointed.

The Folded World

Commercial Writing

Found the following authors' roundtable on Locus.com:

Commercial Writing

It's kind of long, but in sum, a number of authors (presumably in the sci-fi/fantasy fields, though the only name I recognize is Guy Gavriel Kay) discuss the market for writing, genre fiction versus "mainstream" or literary fiction, writing for money, what you should write, etc.

There are some differences of opinion there, if you read the whole thing.  One discussion point touches on something I've often thought about -- very few people these days make a living from their writing.  Most writers have day jobs, you will discover, if you read the "about the author" sections of books.  Some people want to make writing a career.  A lot of people who write want to do this, in fact, if I had my guess.  But unless you are very lucky and have a huge following, this isn't going to happen for you.  There is another way you might make a living writing, and that's doing series fiction (e.g. Star Wars or Star Trek novels or something of that ilk), or writing something you know will sell but isn't really what you want to write.  And the consensus is among the authors surveyed for the linked piece above, it's harder to do that than you might think.  And perhaps not worth it, unless you can't find a day job that's to your liking.  (Writing something you're not interested in could be torturous, I would expect.)

Still, interesting to get a perspective from people who are published!

Another Best-Of List

I'm sure there are hundreds of "Best of 2011" lists out there.  I can't (and won't) post every one, but I did find one recently from The Kansas City Star, which is a paper I have a fondness for as I grew up reading it.  Also, the title was promising, from a fantasy perspective: 2011 in books: It was a year of magic and change

So there's a little fantasy on the list, including The Night Circus, although otherwise, it's a pretty standard list with a lot of carryover from the New York Times and other similar lists I've posted.  Some of the YA titles sound like fantasy, but there's so much good fantasy out there for adults that I haven't read much YA fiction in awhile.  (In the beginning, I read a fair amount of YA fantasy, but as I've developed specific tastes, I've moved towards darker, more mature fare.)

Sometime soon I'll post my own "Best of 2011" list, but I think it'll be "best books I read in 2011."  And they may not have been published in 2011.  And of course, of all the books I have that are published this year, I may have read something like half.  The Cold Commands and The Kingdom of Gods await.

Barnes and Noble versus Apple

I'm not a big reader of Forbes magazine.  It has a conservative bent (I do not), and I have a low tolerance for things related to business and economics.  But *sometimes* business news reaches into the world of books, like the following piece from Forbes: Four Reasons Barnes and Noble Could Threaten Apple's Dominance.

For me, Barnes and Noble competes with Amazon and Apple competes with neither.  Because, of course, I stay away from e-books.  I do have an iPod and I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro.  I don't have a tablet as it seems like a frivolous purchase when I make a grad student's stipend (<$25,000 a year) and I have real bills to pay.  I suppose if I suddenly found myself with disposable income (which is only going to happen if I win the Powerball or MegaMillions jackpots, hah!), I'd go for an iPad.  Because I do like Apple devices.  But I wouldn't read books on it.  As for B&N and Amazon, I love the browsing experience at a physical bookstore, and nothing will ever replace that for me.  But bookstores have an annoying habit of not having all the volumes of a series in stock, and Amazon nearly always does.

Then again, I expect that I am not the typical consumer.

Stock tips included in the Forbes article, if you're into that kind of thing.

Pretty Books?

E-books, of course, are hot right now.  (I'll probably have a couple of posts on the subject of e-books coming up soon, because I've found some stories online about them lately.  And I'm suffering, currently, from a dearth of ideas about what to write on this blog.  Commenting on things I read online is an old mainstay, even though it doesn't make for the most inspired posts.  At least it's something.)

But apparently, publishers are also interested in selling more physical books.  And so they do things like make the covers pretty to lure customers.  (Read more about it in The New York Times.)

I suppose I appreciate good cover art as much as the next person.  There's certainly enough bad cover art out there.  But when publishers start doing fancy things with the books to improve the aesthetics, they start losing me.  I treat books pretty harshly; I bend the pages to mark my place, I take them in the bathtub, I throw them in my purse if I know I'm going to have to wait somewhere a long time.  For me, the content is the most important.  Substance over style, you know?

I haven't seen so much of this lately, with one exception: The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente, which I finished last week, has pages which are rough on the outer edge.  I guess this is supposed to make them feel more like a historical manuscript or something.  My feelings: (1) it was weird for the vertical edge of the page to be rough but the top and bottom to be smooth and (2) the finishing actually made the pages more difficult to turn.  I suppose I found it a bit obnoxious.  But at least the sequel, The Folded World, is not like that.  (For what it's worth, I like the cover art on both.  Though the art on The Folded World makes more sense to me, in terms of the contents of the book.)

Re-Reading Books

There aren't a lot of books I have re-read.  Back in the day, when all I knew of fantasy was The Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and The Malazan Book of the Fallen, I re-read books often.  (The Thomas Covenant and Malazan books are still among my favorites.)  Now that I am not limiting myself to offerings from the Science Fiction Book Club, but regularly buy from Amazon and Barnes and Noble stores, I have a backlog of 30+ books to read.  Re-reading anything is not going to happen for awhile.  But, I thought the following piece from The New York Times was interesting:

Read It Again, Sam

Sometimes re-reading is an interesting exercise.  I read the Narnia books as a child and thought they were decent adventure stories.  Granted, I was a child who had never once been to church (now I'm 34 years old and still haven't been to an actual sermon, only weddings and funerals!).  So when I re-read the Narnia books after getting into fantasy some years ago, the religious symbolism was pretty shocking.

Are there any books any of you readers out there like to re-read?

NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

I know I haven't been so kind with respect to National Novel Writing Month in the past.  But, lots of people participate (not me, I must reiterate) and so it probably is deserving of some attention.  It's gotten a fair number of commentaries (in a lot of college and small-town newspapers, but also in some national publications).  Here's a random selection:

• From the Columbia Missourian
  
• From the Daily Nebraskan
• From the Daily Texan
• From Forbes
• From NPR

And from the NaNoWriMo website, a list of published novels that began as NaNoWriMo projects.  Which of course are not from the November 2011 event...

The gist of most of the stories linked to above is the same -- a description of what National Novel Writing Month is, some profiles of participants and why they do it, etc.  I'm sure I've only scratched the surface as far as the number of wrap-up posts out there on the web.

At any rate, if you participated and got your 50,000 words, great.  Let me warn you, though...I've been working on my manuscript since April, 30-60 minutes a day (about half the rate you'd need to get 50,000 words in a month, and that's if you're well prepared), and I'm only on the second major round of editing.  If you really want a polished novel, it's going to take awhile.  It's also probably going to be longer than 50,000 words.  (Mine's somewhere around 160,000 words right now.)