Category: Books

Robert Sheckley, the author, has died. I enjoyed his absurdist SF tales such as The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton. I should go back and re-read them.

This must be a hoax. It can’t be genuine, can it? It is just too bizarre for words, or for raised bumps for that matter. 

There was once a host organism called SCIFI.COM. It was an online presence designed to market the Sci Fi cable channel in the US. It hosted what I would describe as a symbiote: SCI FICTION – the division of the company that published Science Fiction short stories online. The symbiote, embodied by its enlightened editor Ellen Datlow, did well, and the quality of the material was recognised by awards from the science fiction community at large.

 

Alas, the host organism appears to have decided that the symbiote is a parasite, and will be excising it at the end of this month. So a valuable channel of new (and old) science fiction short story writing will soon be silenced. One can only hope that the existing stories will remain archived at the site – but there’s no guarantee, and some have already been removed.

 

I find the announcement of the closure typical of the "we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because we’re a bunch of philistines" school of not recognising something good when it’s staring them in the face: As SCIFI.COM gears up to expand with exciting new ventures utilizing the newest technology, it will discontinue SCI FICTION, the online publishing division of the site, at the end of 2005.

 

David Schwartz has come up with a good idea to commemorate the writing, and the work of Ellen Datlow, over at the ED SF Project. It’s a collection of appreciations of the stories. Go and visit. Who knows, you might feel inclined to read some of the original stories, even if you are not a fan of SF.

That’s the title of a short book by Gabriel Zaid. It’s a meditation on books and the act and passions of reading. Another book for the "to read" list, I feel.

 

(hat tip to Norman Geras over at Normblog for this)

Signs and signage are an inevitable part of life. From the humble "keep off the grass" to rococo variants that confuse more than they inform. Of course, there are web sites devoted to some of the more bizarre specimens that are out there. Most of the specimens pinned down in these sites are, I assume, genuine. But now, there’s a new variant, the sign designed for a humorous or ironic metacomment. These are available in a new book published this month. One for the stocking, I think.

A rather good interview in the New York Times. It’s by Deborah Solomon, who interviews Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and now Talk To The Hand. I get the feeling that Ms Solomon didn’t quite know what to make of Ms. Truss; the feeling was probably mutual. The interview also contains an extraordinary anecdote about Michael Cunningham, and I don’t know quite what to make of that.

Maciej Ceglowski, over at the Idle Words blog has a witty piece on the role that books play in courtship. I particularly like his take on Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being as "the sexually-transmitted book that this Czech-born author has inflicted on a generation of American youth". His alternative list of books looks most intriguing.

I’ve just come across Library Thing, and I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s an online catalogue for your personal book collection. The buzz page is full of quotes saying how exciting this is, but it leaves me feeling that I’ve obviously missed something. Or perhaps I’m just the little boy looking at the naked emperor.

 

I already have a catalogue of my library, built with a very flexible application: BookCat. This has more bells and whistles than frankly I know what to do with, but at its core it does what I want in a straightforward and satisfying manner. So I’m scratching my head trying to think why I would want to do something similar using an online service (one that has far, far less flexibility than BookCat). I mean, I can understand it with photos – Flickr is an online photo cataloging and photo-sharing service that I do use. It’s easy to share an image (after all, what you see is what you get) – but all you can share about a book is metadata, not the book itself. So what is the point?

 

I expect I am missing something, so I’ll play with Library Thing for a little while and see if the penny drops…

Wendy Lesser, in today’s Guardian, explores something that I try not to think about: downsizing one’s library. I know that at some point in the future, it will be inevitable that I will have to let some of my books go, but hopefully that will not be for many years yet.

… is the title of a novel by Kasuo Ishiguro. I referred to it a little while back in connection with the Man Booker prize (it was the runner-up).

 

I was sufficiently intrigued by the storyline that I bought a copy and read it while we were on holiday last week. It is a remarkable novel. While ineffably sad and elegaic, it makes you, the reader, want to scream out to a pitiless universe that "I’m alive, damn you!!".

 

Highly recommended.

Oooh – lots of eBooks for free – and legal! I’ll just wait for another generation of the Tablet PC and I’ll be all set.

 

(hat tip to Mike over at Coffee Corner)

The Man Booker is a high-profile prize for English literature. Last night the results for the 2005 competition were announced and John Banville has won it for his novel The Sea. I’m not sure whether to acquire a copy or not. The story synopsis does not really appeal to me. I’d much rather go for a copy of the runner-up: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The synopsis of that novel sounds really intriguing: cloned children whose sole purpose in life is to end up as organ donors. I always like stories where the game of "what if?" is raised to the next level.

When I’m in a good bookshop, I usually have a peek in the Children’s section at the Pop-up books. Paper engineering fascinates me, and over the years I’ve built up a small collection (60-odd) of such books. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jan Pienkowski was the paper engineer to watch out for – his Haunted House was the book that got me started. I see it’s just been reissued – may it bring pleasure to a new generation of young readers.

 

These days, though, the name of Robert Sabuda is the one to watch. I think he’s one of the best in the field at the moment. His Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are masterpieces. His latest, Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs, created with his partner Matthew Reinhart, is also a prime example of paper engineering at its best.

 

Sabuda also has an excellent web site that is packed full of information, including a gallery of other paper engineers and pop-ups. Well worth visiting.

…And over in the department of the bleeding obvious, I am wiping off the coffee from my keyboard thanks to this.

 

(hat tip to Skeptico)

WhipPoorWill posts an entry that encapsulates perfectly the impact that books have on people – it brought tears to my eyes. I know how Declan feels. Books are multidimensional beings, and we destroy those that have the deeper roots into our emotions at our peril.

OK, as promised, I went and checked the library. Further suggestions include:

 

Pagan’s Father – Michael Arditti

Easter – Michael Arditti

Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall – Neil Bartlett

Six of One – Rita Mae Brown

Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown

Father of Frankenstein – Christopher Bram

Flesh and Blood – Michael Cunningham

The Abomination – Paul Golding

While England Sleeps – David Leavitt

Brothers – Ted van Lieshout

Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll – Paul Monette

How Long Has This Been Going On? – Ethan Mordden

Like People in History – Felice Picano

Franny the Queen of Princetown – John Preston

On Glory’s Course – James Purdy

A Better Class of Blond – David Rees

In the Eyes of Mr. Fury – Philip Ridley

Aelred’s Sin – Lawrence Scott

Time and Place – Alan Sheridan

Drifters – Tom Wakefield

 

Any others you’d like to suggest?

 

Update: There’s going to be the inevitable web site for The Big Gay Read

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2003, the BBC launched a competition called The Big Read to find Britain’s favourite book. The result (no doubt influenced by Peter Jackson’s film, which was current at the time) was that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy won.

 

Now, librarians in Manchester have had the bright idea of launching The Big Gay Read. The initial list of contenders has twenty books as hopeful contenders. Glancing down the list, I see that I’ve only managed to read seven*, but I also think I could propose a few more books to be added to the list. Watch this space – I’ll go and check the library. 

 

* read so far:

A Home at the End of the World Michael Cunningham
Hallucinating Foucault Patricia Duncker
Rough Music Patrick Gale
The Line of Beauty Alan Hollingworth
Tales of the City Armistead Maupin
At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O’Neill
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeannette Winterson

… for best novel: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Well, OK, I quite enjoyed it. It kept me going until the end (which is more than I can say for many novels – e.g. Cryptonomicon). But somehow, despite the number of pages and its own bookmark, it felt, well, just a little bit lightweight. Still, I don’t have Ms. Clarke’s talent, so I shouldn’t really grumble.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 – 1873) contributed to the society of his day as both a politician and an author. However, he is perhaps best known in our time as being an exceedingly bad novelist. The opening of his novel Paul Clifford  has passed into our collective consciousness: It was a dark and stormy night… 

 

There’s something fascinating about regarding the train wreck of bad writing (I mean, just look at Dan Brown), and the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrates the fact. The Apostropher reminds us that this year’s contest has just awarded its prizes, and treats us to some wonderful examples of writing that Bulwer-Lytton would have been proud of.

There’s an excellent article about the life and works of Roald Dahl in the New Yorker, written by Margaret Talbot. I first came across Dahl as a young adult, reading the eerie tales of Switch Bitch and Kiss Kiss, I never had the pleasure of reading his tales for children through a child’s eyes. A tinge of regret for that, I think.