I May Not Know Much About Life

Blessed Solstice to You and Yours

2008-12-22T01:25:00.001-08:00

I love Georges de La Tour's use of light; he's one of my favorite painters. And yet, I'd never seen this picture, which seems appropriate for today.

The Young Singer by Georges de La Tour

PS Hopefully I will post soon and explain how writing roughly 30,000 words of fiction in the last two weeks has kept me from posting reviews for the five books in my "already read" stack.

Book Twenty-three -- Empress (Godspeaker, Book One) by Karen Miller

2008-12-03T17:48:00.000-08:00

Empress (Godspeaker, Book One)
by Karen Miller
fantasy
717 pages

Have you ever read a book only to find that you don't like the majority of the characters, you find the writing to be mediocre at best, you think the world-building only succeeds some of the time and yet...you find yourself wanting to read the next page (and the next book in the series) because you really have to know what happens next? Or maybe it's just me?

Empress is the story of Hekat, a girl born into horrible, back-breaking poverty in a part of the world that sees women as useful only for bearing sons. At 12, as soon as she has her first period, her father sells her to slavers. One of the slavers thinks she's something special and treats her better than the rest of his stock and certainly better than she was treated at home.

She learns a great deal from the slavers as they traveling from The Savage North (no really, that's what it's called, right there on the map) to their home city of Et-Raklion, way down in the south. We learn along with her and here's where the shaky world-building comes in. We do learn that it's only in the north that women are totally disenfranchised and that, further south, they can serve as warriors and priests (godspeakers) of the nameless, monolithic God, and yet we see them still being treated poorly elsewhere. While yes, that happens even in our own society, the way it's handled here feels like Miller didn't really think everything through.

We also learn that this is an almost insanely religious society; the godspeakers are everywhere, sacrificing live animals at the drop of a hat, doing magic, enforcing curfews, advising the warlords who are the head of the secular side of the government and generally interfering with people's lives. Although the whole setting has Middle Eastern overtones, the one good thing I can say is that this doesn't really read like a fantasy version of Islam.

Once Hekat and the slavers reach Et-Raklion and she learns that, while she's "beautiful and precious" (a phrase she and other people use about her all the goddamn time), she's still a slave and not as important to the slavers as she thought. She runs away and that's essentially where her story really begins.

There's nothing really new about her journey (it's a pretty typical "rise to the top while not caring about who you step on to get there" trope) and the fact is, she's a rather unpleasant character--manipulative, lacking in any real empathy, and incredibly selfish. It makes sense given her background, but it also makes it kind of hard to care about what happens to her. The people around her, with the exception of Vortka, a young man taken from the same slave train as Hekat and made a godspeaker, are mostly annoying as well. The high godspeaker of Et-Raklion, Nagarak, is scheming and ambitions; the warlord, Raklion, is a good soldier, but easily manipulated, and so on.

On top of it all, if it weren't for the adult nature of the sex scenes and the sacrificial scenes (seriously, avoid this book like the plague if you hate animal death or ifscorpions freak you out), I'd think it was a YA novel. Miller's writing is incredibly simplistic and repetitive; off the top of my head, I could easily name twenty fan fiction writers in my current fandom who are much much better writers.

And yet, as I said up there at the beginning of the review, I blew through this book and will undoubtedly be grabbing the next one. I don't know what it is, but sometimes a story will manage to break through all of the obstacles the author throws in its way and demand that you finish it. So I ask again: that ever happen to any of you?

Or is it just me?

Meme!

2008-12-03T16:39:00.000-08:00

This one was going around LJ the other day (although you were writing a poem and not a song) and now I see that both Figgy and Marra have done it, and because I am about the stealing of good ideas, and also about procrastination, I'm going to do it again here.

First phrase from iTunes songs on shuffle 1-20; 21 - song title, 22 - band name.

Turn Your Ugly Face
by I Had a Dream

I was born by an old streetlight
She knows the voices in her mind
Have I got everything? Am I ready to go?

My lover's charms
I know you just want to kill me
You belong to the gang

Field of light
Something isn't right
Knew you were born under a waxing moon

Well turn up the bottle, pour down the wine
Oh, life is bigger
When I offer you survival

The leaves tell
Be ready to fly
Alcoholic kind of mood

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
Must it take a life for hateful eyes
The canyon air is like a breath of fresh LA

Bye bye love
There's no time for us

Okay then, that's surreal. Although the last two lines dovetailed nicely.

1. Street Smart, Book Stupid by Sara Slean
2. After All (DJ Moon) by Delerium
3. Traveling Again (Traveling I) by Dar Williams
4. My Lover's Box by Garbage
5. I Need to Say Goodbye by VAST
6. O Valencia by The Decemberists
7. Happy by Mazzy Star
8. Something Isn't Right by Aimee Mann
9. Majesty by Claire Voyant
10. It Ain't the Wine by Kate Wolf
11. Losing My Religion by REM
12 Bling (Confessions of a King) by The Killers
13 From Heaven to Dust by Azam Ali
14. Journey by Hungry Lucy
15. Nancy Boy by Placebo
16. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin
17. Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly
18. Dogs of LA by Liz Phair
19. Bye Bye Love by Simon and Garfunkel
20. Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen
21. Getting Scared by Imogen Heap
22. Fallen by Beauty's Confusion

Done and done! or: Game Hens and Gratitude!

2008-11-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

Dinner is over and the dishes are washed! Go me! *does victory dance*

We had game hens with pomegranate glaze, mashed potatoes, greens, and yams. I've done the hens before, but that didn't stop me from ruining the first batch of pomegranate molasses. Fortunately, I'd made a small batch and only used half of the bottle of Pom so I was able to do a second batch, to which I paid a great deal more attention.

Mashed potatoes are something I could do in my sleep; I used some really nice little red potatoes and the results were creamy and buttery and yum. This was the first time I'd been the one to make the greens, usually that's Nancy's thing. She walked me through it and they were tasty and good.

We cheated on the yams. While we were shopping at TJs the other day, they were giving out samples of their frozen yams with brown sugar, pecans and cranberries and they were fantastic so we picked up a package and they were every bit as good as they'd been in the store. I might have to grab a couple of packages of them and stash them in the freezer.

We both had water and Two Buck Chuck--Nancy had the white zin and I had a half glass of the Cab that I'm still working on. It's raw, but not bad, and it remains to see if it'll give me a headache.

Dessert will be a vanilla bean cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. After we picked up up yesterday, we went to Cocos for coffee and their oh so yummeh Harvest pie; it's standard pumpkin pie with pumpkin chiffon on top. I love it, but not a whole pie's worth so the cheesecake will be perfect.

This hasn't exactly been the greatest year for us. Never the less, I'm grateful for my wonderful friends, my great family and my lovely wife. I'm grateful that this country elected a President we can be proud of and I'm grateful that, even though it took a defeat to do it, my people and our allies are energized and ready to fight for our rights.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving or an enjoyable Thursday!

♥!!

Book Eighteen -- Anathem by Neal Stephenson

2008-11-20T15:20:00.000-08:00

Anathem
by Neal Stephenson
science fiction
935 pages

I've been putting off this review for a while because I feel a little like Wayne and Garth--not worthy. However I need to move on and so here I am, taking my best stab at it. I'm going to try to avoid too many spoilers, but some are inevitable, as are excessive italics, due to many made-up words.

On a world known as Arbe, the study of science, mathematics and philosophy is limited to the avout, cloistered scholars who live in maths or concents (a concent is a large community often made up of more than one math) and who only interact with the Sæculum (secular world) on a limited basis during the Apert, a yearly period of ten days when the gates of the concent open and people from both the secular and mathic worlds can mingle. The concents are divided into groups: the Unarians (one-offs, whose members remain cloistered in the math for a year), the Decenarian (tenners, whose members are cloistered for ten years), Centenarians (hundreders, whose members are cloistered for one hundred years) and the Millenarians (thousanders, whose members are cloistered for one thousand years). Within the cloistered world are many different Orders who study different things and have many different philosophies, but all of them abide by the long-established rituals and rules of the Cartasian Discipline.

Sounds like the set up for a fantasy novel set in some medieval not-quite-Earth, right? Not so much, actually. The world outside the concents is modern and technological, with cars and cell-phone analogs (called jeejahs, which is a great word) and TV and so on, and the work done inside the concents is scientific and not religious. This is an old world with over 7,000 years of recorded history; there have been set backs and failures of the system more than once, including three great Sacks (when the outside world attacked the concents), and something called The Terrible Events, which sounds a lot like a nuclear war or some similar technological planetary disaster.

The story begins with our hero, Fraa Erasmus (known to his friends as Raz), facing his first Apert. He's a tenner who's been at the Concent of Saunt Edhar since he was a small child and is now at a point where he needs to decide what he's going to do with his life. During the Apert, he meets his sister and we get a look at the difference between the thinky, mostly low-tech world of the concents, where everything is discussed to death and beyond, and the secular world, full of commerce, industry, somewhat mindless entertainment and flash in the pan religions.

After the Apert, Raz and his circle of friends realize that something is going on within the concent; the starhenge (observatory) has been closed off and the older fraas and suurs (the concents are co-ed) seem to be a little worried. Things come to a head when Raz's mentor, Fraa Orolo, an astronomer who's made a dangerous discovery, is tossed out of the concent in a rite known as anathem (a lovely portmanteau word made up of "anthem" and "anathema"). As Raz and his friends figure out why, they are called to leave the concent and travel to a world-wide convocation, where they will help advise the secular authorities on the crisis. Normally, the secular authorities would provide transportation for the avout, but with so many being called, the scholars are forced to make their way on their own.

And so, Raz, his sister Cord, Sammann (an ita--one of the concent's technology experts), a thousander named Fraa Jad and several others set out on a journey across Arbe. Their quest includes adventures along the way, as well as several detours while Raz attempts to find his mentor, but finally, they reach the convocation, only to get caught up in plans to defend the whole planet from the threat from space discovered by Fraa Orolo.

If Anathem were nothing more than the story of Raz's journey and subsequent mission to save his planet, it would be a fantastic addition to the quest genre of SF. The world-building is excellent and nuanced, the characters are engaging, the story is fascinating and the climax is exciting and enjoyably convoluted. Even the background romance between Raz and one of the suurs from his order is handled well.

But this is Neal Stephenson and so the book is much much more than that; there are layers upon layers here. One of the layers is historical--for someone up on their history, it's easy to see that Arbe is what our world would be like if the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists had retreated behind walls and all their knowledge had not been lost, but rather added to throughout the subsequent centuries. It's a lot of fun to read about historical events on Arbe and say "oh hey, I know where he got that from!"

Then there's the philosophy of language and science layer, which is the stuff that probably loses Stephenson readers. The characters talk everything to freakin' death; there's a section that's almost 100 pages long in which, during a series of dinners, senior fraas, suurs and a secular politician discuss the crisis from any number of philosophical angles. I kind of got lost in there because philosophy is not exactly my forté, although I really do like the position of the Lorite school of thought, which is that everything that can be thought of has been thought of already; the Lorites pretty much exist to say "so-and-so had that idea back in 2015" every time someone comes up with something, which might be annoying for the characters but amused me.

If you're a long time Stephenson reader, you're probably either really really intelligent and educated and can follow his digressions, or you're the kind of person who takes what he's talking about on faith and reads his books for the sheer enjoyment factor and the possibility that you might learn something new. Either way, you're used to books with huge amounts of information about various subjects woven into the narrative-- language theory in Snow Crash, for example, or cryptography in Cyrptonomicron. In other writers this kind of thing is annoying and info-dumpy, but somehow, Stephenson makes it work.

One of the things you look for in computer/video games is the level of replayability--do you want to play GTA: San Andreas again when you finish, or are you just done with it? For me, that's a concern with books as well--can I reread them and get something new out of the book? Anathem is going to be one of those books I will return to again and again, and each time, I'll pick up something I missed the time before.

While Stephenson uses a number of made up words for this (including bullshytt, which only kind of means what you think it does), there are definitions scattered throughout the book and an glossary at the end of it. There's also a historical timeline as well as several appendices that help illustrate some of the concepts Stephenson uses in the novel.

So yes, at 900+ pages, this is a massive undertaking, but seriously, if you have the time, read it. It's easily Stephenson's best novel since Snow Crash and as his first attempt at setting a story in a world other than Earth, it is truly brilliant and detailed world-building. The characters are engaging, and, for all the discussion that goes on, the action sequences are gripping.

Of the twenty-two books I've read so far, this is the one I want everyone to take the time to read. Trust me, it's worth it.

Side note: someone actually made an amateur trailer for the book. It's a bit cheesy in places, but it's an interesting piece of transformative fan work.

The World of Anathem

The Freebies List

2008-11-20T00:09:00.000-08:00

Both Marra and Figgy did this, so let's make it a Cannonball Meme, shall we? To quote Figgy, "a 'Freebies List' consists of the 5 celebrities you'd most like to do whoopie with. No consequences or regrets. Just pure enjoyment."

Because I love the laaaadies!

5. Allison Janney -- Fabulous, talented, hot and also? Tall.

4. Kate Hewlett -- Actress and playwright and generally gorgeous. (and yes, that's her brother down in the "honorable mention" section of the guys. It's a talented family.)

3. Rachel Luttrell -- Unless you're a Stargate: Atlantis fan, you undoubtedly don't know who she is. Poor you.

2. Gina Torres -- I've lusted after her since the Xena days.

1. Carrie-Anne Moss -- I'm sorry, were we talking about something?

Honorable mentions: Monica Bellucci, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Lawless, Tilda Swinton...okay the list could go on and on.

Guys I'd switch back for, a list that proves that I'm a big, geeky fan-girl.

5. Joe Flanigan -- Someone else from SGA. To be honest, he's hardly the best actor out there and he's a Republican (which is why he's fifth on the list), but I really do think he's hot in a dorky kind of way.

4. Jason Momoa -- Another obscure SGA alumni. Just look at him for a minute, okay? Now, any questions as to why he's on this list? Even I like a little beef in my cake now and then.

3. Liam Neeson -- Yeah, he's a little craggier these days, but still...

2. Sean Bean -- Because everyone needs a bit of rough from Yorkshire.

1. Viggo Mortenson -- Smart, funny, sensitive, talented and really really hot. The question is: why wouldn't you? (yes it's a huge picture but I've always loved that shot.)

Honorable mentions: Jason Isaacs (Brotherhood and Harry Potter) and David Hewlett (SGA again)--two guys I'd love to just hang out with.

Take to the streets and possibly scare and or offend people? Damn right!

2008-11-16T08:40:00.000-08:00

So, over in this post and in reply to comments to it, Artaxastra thinks the GLBT people and their allies who have taken to the streets are like the KKK. She thinks we should concentrate on getting people to like us, that we should be conciliatory and we should step back and work carefully and not try to scare anyone.

I say...BULLSHIT.

On September 5, 2008, Nancy and I, along with two very dear and wonderful friends, went to the county clerks office and got married in a ceremony recognized in the city and county of Sacramento and in the state of California. Why we did it doesn't matter. What matters is that we had the right to do so. It was a right determined by the highest court in the state, doing their job interpreting the Constitution of the State of California.

Apparently, our marriage and the 17,999 other same-sex marriages that took place after May 16, 2008 offended a group of people. They didn't like it, didn't like that we had that right. And so...they decided to take it away from us. They got help from many places, but the chief source of funding and people to man phone banks and protest--did you know that they bused people in from Utah to protest on California streets?--was the Mormon Church.

And they did it. A combination of factors that are even now being debated enabled a church from Utah to scare the people of California into taking away a right granted to a minority under the law.

Should people be scared of gays and lesbians, bisexual and transsexuals, people who somehow don't fit into their narrow view of sexuality that we call straight?

No, of course not.

Should they be scared that an out of state church was able help to pass a proposition to amend a state's constitution to take away a minority's right ?

No.

They should be terrified. You should be terrified. We should all be terrified.

They took away our rights.

The tragedy here isn't that 18,000 couples now have to wonder if that piece of paper means something. The tragedy here isn't that many many more couples who dream of being married someday now have to wait even longer than they already have. The tragedy here isn't that the GLBT folk and their allies took to the streets in protest, thus upsetting some delicate balance that some people think might some day down the line get some people to LIKE some of us.

The tragedy here?

The tragedy here is that MORE PEOPLE aren't out there in the streets.

They took away our rights.

Are we angry? No, we are fucking outraged.

They took away our rights. Here in the United States of America.

They took away our rights.

Of course we took to the streets. I don't want to live in a country where a minority has its rights taken away and DOESN'T take to the streets.

They took away our rights.

What if women had been granted the right to vote and then had it taken away. Would you expect our suffragette fore-mothers, women who fought and marched and went to jail and were force-fed, to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?

What if everyone who ever marched or spoke up for their civil rights, MLK and Black people, Césear Chavéz and the Hispanic workers, the stone butches and drag queens and the fags and dykes of color...what if they'd been given the rights they deserve as citizens of America only to have them taken away? Would you expect these people who fought and talked and marched and argued and bled and, yes, sometimes died to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?

They took away our rights.

Everyone in this country who believes that all are created equal, that what we as Americans strive for is a more perfect union....

Everyone should be out in the streets, because they took away our rights.

They. Took. Away. Our. Rights.

Whose rights are next?

What She Said

2008-11-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

My wife. I think I'll keep her.

Well, you know...if people LIKE me enough to let me stay married.

Books Nineteen through Twenty-two-- Anita Blake by Laurell K Hamilton

2008-11-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

Guilty Pleasures
265 pages
The Laughing Corpse
293 pages
Circus of the Damned
329 pages
The Lunatic Cafe
369 pages
supernatural detective fiction
by Laurell K Hamilton

You know how I said I was going to review Anatham next? Yeah, I lied. For one thing, I'm totally intimidated; I doubt I can do it justice. For another thing, well I'm kind of depressed and so I holed up in bed yesterday and today and read four rather dreadful books, one right after the other. Somewhere in there I slept a fair amount as well.

Mind you, I didn't go out and buy these; it seems a certain person I'm married to went on a kick several years ago and so we have a whole stack of them on the shelf. I grabbed the first one because...well, because I didn't want to have to think or read anything complicated.

Anyway, I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail on these; they don't really deserve it and I just want to get them on the list and move on, hopefully to a much better, brighter day.

Guilty Pleasures is utter "how the hell did this woman ever get published" crap. In it Hamilton introduces Anita Blake, animator--means she can raise the dead--and vampire hunter and sets up her world, in which supernatural creatures are real and the public knows about them. To be honest, she does a crappy job of world-building; I just can't buy some of the changes she makes in the legal system, but whatever. In this one, Anita is hired by the chief vampire of the city--St. Louis, which apparently is vampire central--to find someone who's illegally killing vampires. In the middle of all this, Jean-Claude, owner of a vampire strip club called Guilty Pleasures , ends up putting two of the four "marks" that can turn a person into a "human servant" on Anita. Jean-Claude is an arrogant asshole who calls Anita "ma petite" and the fact that I think we're supposed to find him sexy is just another strike against the book. The mystery isn't all that complicated and the writing is stilted; Hamilton is better than Stephanie Meyers, but that's about all I can say for her.

The Laughing Corpse pits Anita against a Mexican voodoo queen while investigating a number of truly grisly murders. Oh yeah, there's also some rich guy who wants Anita to raise a zombie, only the zombie's been dead long enough that a human sacrifice will be required and Anita won't do it. On top of it all, there's the annoying Jean-Claude, now Master of the City, who's being threatened because he can't even keep his human servant in line. He keeps after Anita, trying to convince her to let him put the rest of his marks on her so, presumably, she can spend the rest of an unnaturally long life dealing with a condescending jerk. Anita's not exactly my favorite fictional character ever, but honestly, I can't blame her for trying to avoid this clown. Of the four books I read, this is actually the best one--the plot moves along nicely, the writing's smoothed out some and the mystery is actually fairly complicated. I'd say that if you had to read one of these books, this would be the one to read.

Circus of the Damned has Anita dealing with what looks like a rogue gang of vampires on a killin' spree. However, near as I can tell, the main purpose of this book is to introduce us to Richard, the junior high teacher who also happens to be a were-wolf. And here's where I say, with all due sincerity, Laurell, honey? Stick to the action/adventure genre and leave the romance writing to someone, anyone, else. Reading Anita and Richard flirting is enough to make you want to kill yourself. It's not the painful but realistic flirting of two people who aren't supposed to be good at it; on no, this is supposed to be cute and snappy. Also, there's more Jean-Claude, who manages to put his third mark on Anita, but then, after the final battle with more rogue vampires, removes all his marks. Whatever, he's still a tool. This one isn't nearly as good as Laughing Corpse; it's not a mystery so much as a little action/adventure and a lot of romantic set up.

The Lunatic Cafe is the werewolf novel. Well, there are other were-creatures as well, but in this one, there's a mysterious death by critter and also some icky were-creature snuff porn floating around. Mostly, though, it's about Anita trying to deal with her relationship with Richard, the sensitive New Age were-wolf. Also there's a ton of posturing; seriously, there's this one meeting with several were-creatures that's pages and pages of people talking about dominance and who's in charge. I kinda wanted to scream "I fucking get the point, okay?" but it wouldn't have done any good. Also, yes, there's more Jean-Claude, this time he demands equal dating rights or he's gonna take Richard out even if it means that Anita will come gunning for him. The mystery part of this one is only so-so, but I don't think you're really supposed to care because this is all about setting up the big love triangle.

Part of my problem with these books is that I rarely like anyone in them. There are a few side characters--a couple of cops and Anita's private detective BFF--who aren't bad, but that's just not enough. Some authors can make unlikeable characters work, but you have to be much better at the craft than Hamilton is. In the end, I just don't care about Anita, or which of her two annoying suitors she picks or what her next supernatural case may be.

I have no idea what I'm reading next, but I know it'll be better than these four books.

Also, OMG is that like the cheesiest cover in the history of...well, forever?

PS. Also? I can't count.

Oh holy crap, you guys

2008-11-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

I spent the last day and a half reading the first four Anita Blake books.

Send help.

Dunno if this is happening to anyone else....

2008-11-14T00:50:00.000-08:00

Knowing that I lived in Iran for a couple of years in the '70s, a friend of mine just recently gave me the very nice, all-in-one-volume version of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which I've been wanting to read for a while. And then today....

Well, today we got a new car. My mother-in-law, for reasons surpassing understanding, bought a brand new Jetta last year, in spite of the fact that she was hardly driving at all and had a perfectly good, late model Volvo. Now that she's living with a cousin and has sold her condo, she doesn't need the car and so she had it shipped from Chicago to us here in California. It's completely paid for, has only 900 miles on it and it even still smells like a new car.

Now ever since she decided to sell her condo, she's been asking Nancy if there was anything she wanted, since Nancy had left some stuff in the basement way back when she went to college. And Nancy kept saying, "no Mom, I really don't need any of that stuff, except that it might be cool to have all my old Nancy Drew books." So, there in the surprisingly roomy trunk of the car were two boxes of Nancy Drew books. I flipped through some of them, thinking I might read a few, only...they're all under 200 pages.

The point--other than OMG Yay New Car!!!--of this long-winded digression is that I seem to have changed my reading habits to the point where I won't let myself read anything that doesn't qualify for Cannonball. It's kind of stupid really; I'm doing pretty well--last I checked, I'm in third place--and Godtopus knows that I've got more free time than a lot of other people doing the Read. I could probably take some time to read something--other than fan fiction--that doesn't qualify, but I just feel like it would be wrong or something.

My brain, she is weird sometimes.

Come next September or 100 books, which ever comes first, I'm probably going to have a huge stack of graphic novels--I mean really, I've never read Watchman or Y, the Last Man and recently I've been wanting to reread the collected Sandman--and short books waiting for me.

Books Sixteen and Seventeen -- A Confederation of Valor by Tanya Huff

2008-11-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

Valor's Choice
282 pages
The Better Part of Valor
315 pages
science fiction
by Tanya Huff

Okay now that I'm (mostly) recovered from Election Week and am writing again, it's time to get back to the books. Or book. Or books.... A Confederation of Valor is two books in one, which made my wallet kind of happy because I'm old enough to remember when paperbacks weren't eight or nine bucks a piece. *rattles walker and shouts at clouds*

Tanya Huff is one of those versatile authors who really should be more popular than she is. She writes pure fantasy (the Quarters series), modern/urban fantasy (the Keeper series), the vampire/magical detective genre (the Blood Ties series and the Smoke series) and military SF (the Valor series) and all of it's good. She's also a filker* and a lesbian who frequently puts gay characters in her books--Tony, the protagonist of the Smoke series is gay and, unfortunately, in spite of the fact that the books are really good and properly creepy, there probably won't be any more in the series because her publisher pulled the plug on it. Apparently gay doesn't sell enough books. Her Blood Ties series was made into a really cheesy, but fun TV series; it was filmed in Canada on the cheap and then played on Lifetime for two short seasons.

I happen to have a soft spot for military SF and, honestly, I don't really know why. Most of the people writing it are pretty right wing/Libertarian and their politics often show up in their work. Still, gimme a band of Marines battling the odds on an alien world, or a steely-eyed starship captain going up against the enemies of her empire and I'm a happy camper. So finding out about this series was great because I know that Tanya's politics are much closer to mine and I already like her writing.

The Valor series is about Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr of the Confederation Marines. The fact that she's female isn't such a big deal; David Weber's Honor Harrington series is about a female starship captain, for example. Still it's not all that usual in the space marine genre, which made it a nice change.

The other really nice change is that unlike most of the books you run across in this genre, which are about Humans only or Humans fighting aliens, Huff's Confederation is made up of many different species. The older and wiser species have sociologically evolved beyond aggression, which created a problem when they encountered the Others, who were not interested in peaceful negotiations. And so the Confederation recruited younger, more aggressive species, including Humans, who had barely made it into space when the Confederation came calling.

In addition to Humans, the Marine corp includes the di'Tayken--an elf like species who give off so many sexual pheromones that they have to wear mechanical maskers--and the Krai--a species that can and will eat literally anything, including the bodies of both their enemies and their own honored dead. So in addition to the usual personality tensions in any military unit and military politics in general, there's also some species tensions.

Valor's Choice is the first book of the series. Kerr and a platoon of Marines are sent on what is supposed to be easy duty: guarding diplomats and helping show the flag on a mission to the planet of the Silsviss, a reptilian race that is looking to join the Confederation. As the senior NCO, Kerr is also responsible for breaking in a new Second Lieutenant, something made complicated by the fact that he's a di'Tayken she had a one night stand with, not knowing he was an officer.

Of course things go awry; after an initial round of "getting to know you" encounters, the suborbital ship containing the diplomats and the Marines is shot down over a wilderness preserve used to test Silsviss males during their aggressive adolescence. It's up to Kerr to see that everyone survives and the ensuing struggle is exciting, to say the least.

Kerr's a good character--smart and dedicated but not without a dry sense of humor--and it's easy to like her and to give a damn about what happens to her. Huff also does a good job making what could be boring stock characters come to life; the baby officer from a military family who's afraid he's not up to the task; the trouble-maker with a heart of gold; the card-shark; the alien who knows more old Earth expressions than the Humans, and so on. There's even a nod to a common trope of these stories; one of the guys is reading letters from home and counting the days until he sees his family, and his friends all remind him that in movies, he's the guy who always buys it. The diplomats from the older species of the Confederation are interesting as well; not only is she good at inventing aliens with cool cultures, Huff does a good job envisioning how true pacifists would react to a sudden plunge into a combat situation.

The Better Part of Valor takes place shortly after Valor's Choice. Having insulted a general, Kerr gets pulled from her platoon and is given the dubious honor of leading a recon squad and a bunch of scientists into a mysterious derelict ship floating in space. In addition to a thrown-together squad, a politically appointed officer who's more concerned about his PR status than anything else, Kerr has to deal with a news crew and the wise-cracking salvage operator who discovered the ship.

One of the things Huff's good at is setting up a good creepy situation and then running with it. (The mummy in Blood Lines, for example, is really fucking freaky and I don't normally find mummy stories to be all that scary.) A big abandoned space ship with an interior that changes into rooms pulled from the minds of the explorers offers plenty of opportunity for creepiness, particularly when a group of the mysterious Others--the Confederation's bug-like enemies--show up to explore the ship as well.

Both these books move along a nice clip; they're fun and exciting and, unlike so many books in the genre, there aren't any right-wing politics buried under the surface. There are two more books in the series and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them. If you like the genre, run, don't walk, and if you're not sure about the genre but like a good, well-written SF adventure, give them try.

Next up...Neal Stephenson's latest masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly; Anatham is utterly fantastic.

*For people who don't speak Geek, filk is folk music for SF/Fantasy geeks. The songs are usually SF/Fantasy based, but there's filk about computers as well. Sometimes both the music and the lyrics are original, but a lot of the time people rewrite popular songs with their own lyrics. It's a true nerd pastime that mostly goes on a SF cons. Thus endth the lesson.

I just realized something (still not a book post)

2008-11-11T21:38:00.001-08:00

One of the reasons that the whole "Blame the Brown People for Prop 8 Passing" thing pisses me off so much is that it's yet another case of making assumptions about a group of people as if they were part of some sort of hive ~~vagina~~ mind.

How often have we seen the Far Right and the evangelicals claim that the GLBT community has a Gay Agenda? And on the Left? How often have our votes been taken totally for granted because they know that, for the most part, we're automatically going to vote Democrat?

Both attitudes are insulting and both drive me crazy. My own personal agenda is probably a little different than Nancy's, and both our agendas are undoubtedly miles away from the single gay guy next door who seems to love perpetuating several gay stereotypes. There is no monolithic Gay Agenda; there are, in fact, GLBT people who don't give a damn about the right to marry.

As for counting on my vote.... I'm used to that, both as a far left Liberal and as a dyke. It's conventional political wisdom that actively courting the gay vote is the kiss of death to a campaign. Which you know...step inside my Docs for a day and think about how that feels. "We want your vote, but we can't actually promise you anything at all or even acknowledge you except in the vaguest way. I'm sure you don't mind."

My point is that for white GLBT folk or allies to turn around and act as if there's a monolithic Black or Hispanic hive mind with a homophobic agenda is hypocritical. It's what people have been doing to us and it saddens me to see people turn around and do it to another minority, particularly when the numbers everyone's using to insist that Black voters were responsible for 8 passing are, to quote Rodney McKay, Wrong Wrong Wrong!!!!

If you're doing that, if you're assigning certain characteristics across the board to certain racial groups, well...that's racism, plain and simple.

checks Yup, still married!

2008-11-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

Dear people out there in CA who voted yes on 8, including some of you in my freakin' hometown (and thanks a lot for that; I like to think of Sacramento as a nice blue spot in a Valley of red),

I'd just like to take this moment to tell you that me, Ruth, the big fat dyke? Still married. Screw you.

To the rest of you out there:

Okay, as you've seen around, or maybe you haven't (which is why I'm linking to this): "The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes." Basically the argument is that substantial changes to the State Constitution require the approval of the Legislature before they go to the people in the form of a ballot initiative. This one? Pretty substantial and it never went before the Legislature.

Bear in mind that this is the same Court that declared for equality back in June. I don't know these people and I'm sure they'll be all fair and impartial and stuff when they do their judge thing , but you know? It's got to be kind of annoying to have done your damn job, interpreted the Constitution, and then had a bunch of people spearheaded by a church in freakin' Utah (we don't even share a border with them!), try to get around something you said was legal. Also I bet they didn't take kindly to being called "activist judges."

May I just say that I'm personally glad we have State Attorney General Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown on our side? Say what you will about him, but the guy's a solid liberal and is the one who insisted that Prop 8's language be changed to reflect the fact that it was taking away rights. It probably would have passed with better numbers if he hadn't done that.

Also, Joe the Plumber? Screw you too. My union plumber voted for Obama.

So, three people in the room--two plumbers and me. Who knew where the nearest hardware store was? I should have asked them to drop in at Butch n Nellies to get me another coffee; the one I had at 6 has long since faded and I'm running on freakin' fumes here.

PS, I read two books, so I'm up to 17 now and I'm halfway through Neal Stephenson's utterly awesome Anathem. I love how he entertains, makes me feel smart and makes me feel kinda ignorant, all at the same time.

Oh hey, can we NOT do this?

2008-11-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

Like racism, homophobia exists in all communities.

See what I did there?

Nancy said it best.

When the sun comes up in the morning

2008-11-05T00:37:00.000-08:00

Nancy and I will still be married. We will still be two women who love each other and nothing anyone does can ever change that.

It's not over. There are still things that can be done, law suits to be filed and a fight to be fought.

Am I happy that my state cares more about chickens than my rights?* No, of course not. But I am happy that my friends did their best; many gave money to the No on 8 campaign as wedding presents and many more voted against it. It means a lot.

And for the haters out there, the ignorant and the stupid, the people who voted for discrimination? I'm sorry. It must be hard living your life in so much fear.

*Prop 2, which is all about humane standards for confining farm animals is passing with a very healthy margin.

YES!

2008-11-04T22:46:00.001-08:00

Today, tonight, right now at this moment....

I'm proud to be an American.

And you know? My ancestor, the one who fought in the Revolution, would probably be appalled at what happened tonight. Women running for office? A Black man being voted into the highest office in the land? His female descendant, the lesbian married to a Black woman, voting?

Jehu would have been shocked and probably bewildered.

And that? That's part of why I'm proud.

Because we can change and we can become better and we can continue to perfect this union.

Yes.

Yes We Can!

Snerk!

2008-11-01T22:03:00.001-07:00

Not particularly work safe, but pretty funny anti Prop 8 vid.

Book Fifteen -- Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

2008-11-01T02:51:00.000-07:00

Tigana
by Guy Gavriel Kay
fantasy
673 pages

After reading Tigana, or any book by Kay, you aren't surprised to discover that he's an accomplished poet as well. In fact, when Christopher Tolkien took on the job of publishing The Silmarillion from his father's notes, Kay was one of the people who worked with him. Trust me, Kay's better when he's writing his own stories.

Fortunately for me, Tigana was the first book by Kay that I read. His earlier trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, suffers from such a bad case of "everything and the kitchen sink" fantasy that you end ip thinking that Kay never met a fantasy trope he didn't like. Thankfully, he got that out of his system and sat down to create Tigana.

Roughly half a generation before the events of the book, the lands of the Palm--a peninsula divided into nine tiny duchies and principalities with vaguely Italian names and language--was conquered by two different sorcerers. One, Alberico, is a pretty straightforward villain, but the other, Brandin is a much more complex character. Unfortunately for the Principlaity of Tigana, Brandin's beloved son died at the hand of Tigana's prince. In revenge, Brandin performed a mighty act of sorcery that prevents anyone not from Tigana from hearing or remembering the name of the principality. As a result, when the last person alive at the time Tigana was conquered dies, the name of the country will be lost forever.

And so the stage is set for a band of rebels, including Alessen, the youngest son of Tigana's last prince, to try to win back their freedom and the freedom of the rest of the Palm's provinces, because along the way, Alessan has realized that the only way the divided provinces can prevail is through unification.

All that sounds pretty normal; talk about your common fantasy tropes. But where Kay excels is in...well, honestly, pretty much everything. His heroes and heroines are flawed, complicated people and Brandin is an excellent example of how to do a villain right. In fact, while I do love the rebels, particularly Devin, a young singer who falls almost accidentally into the conspiracy, it is the story of Dianora, a native of Tigana who is taken captive and put into Brandin's harem only to struggle against her love for him versus her desire for revenge that makes me love this book.

Well, that and the sheer beauty of Kay's prose. He's a simply stunning writer who uses language and imagery perfectly, and who knows the power that words have. If you like truly sparse prose, then no, his books aren't for you. However, you never feel that he's throwing words at the page in order to bring up his page count; each word seems placed just so, much like the mosaics created by another one of his characters from another book. The result is a picture of love and loss and honor and responsibility that will stay with you for a long time.

If someone came up to me and said, "I don't normally read fantasy, but can you recommend a good starting place?" I'd hand them Tigana and tell them to sit down and savor it from cover to cover. While there is magic in the book, it never takes over the book the way it so often can in fantasy.

Book Fourteen -- Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

2008-11-01T02:08:00.000-07:00

Across the Nightingale Floor
by Lian Hearn
fantasy
287 pages

Taking place in the Three Countries, a place much like feudal Japan, Across the Nightingale Floor is the first book of the Tales of the Otori. It tells the story of Otori Takeo and Shirakawa Kaede, two young adults caught up in the intrigues of their time.

Takeo is a young man raised in an isolated village by his mother, a member of a forbidden religious sect. The local lord, Iida--an ambitious villain with no real redeeming features--with his men, destroys the village. Takeo is saved by a mysterious stranger by the name of Lord Otori, who takes Takeo to his lands and adopts him.

Meanwhile, the beautiful Kaede is a hostage, held by one of Iida's vassals to compel her father's loyalty. When a man attempting to rape her is killed and the man she is betrothed to dies, she becomes the object of superstition, although that doesn't stop her captor from setting up yet another betrothal--to Lord Otori--for her

Takeo learns that he is the son of a member of The Tribe, an ancient group of ninjas. He has an almost magic ability of super hearing, which serves him well when Lord Otori summons an old Tribe friend to train Takeo. Their ultimate goal is to assassinate Iida, who is so paranoid that he has a "nightingale floor"--a floor designed to make chirping noises when someone steps on it--surrounding his chambers.

The book rushes on with an almost breakneck speed and yet there are moments where Hearn pauses to describe a landscape or a room with an appreciation that adds a Japanese touch to the novel. It's not written in the style classical Japanese literature, which, as someone who gave up on The Tale of Genji, I appreciate, however, you never forget that you are in a world of samurai and ninjas.

There was a moment when I was sure she was leading up to a pretty common trope, but then, when I was wrong, I realized that I was thinking of Western tropes and Hearn was using a common Eastern trope. While she doesn't actually bring anything new to the table, she tells her tale well and gives us likable characters and deeds of ninja derring-do in enjoyable settings.

I call Across the Nightingale Floor fantasy because that's what it's categorized as, but, aside from Takeo's super-hearing and his family ability to hypnotise people, there's no magic; this could be read as a straight-forward action novel with a nice touch of romance in the background. I most certainly recommend it; I sat and read it in one go tonight and I'll be getting my hands on the other books in the series; there are three more that deal with Takeo and Kaede and then a prequel about Lord Otori.

Oh sure, Amazon is cheaper....

2008-10-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

There's something about a bookstore, even one as soulless and corporate as Borders. I really do like shopping though Amazon because it's easy and cheaper than most bookstores, but I still love going into a bookstore and fondling the books. Of course, like an idiot, I almost always forget to take a pair of reading glasses with me, which leads to me holding the book at arm's length and squinting while I read the back.

I looked at a ton of stuff in the SF/Fantasy section and almost picked up Maguire's Son of a Witch, but I put it down, figuring I'd pick it up used somewhere. I did get Neal Stephenson's newest, Anathem which kind of sounds like it's his take on the classic A Canticle for Lebowitz. It's pretty massive and Stephenson is hardly someone you can read quickly, so it'll be a while before I have a review up.

I also picked up Tanya Huff's first two Valor novels, conveniently bound together in one book. I'm a big fan of her Vicky Nelson vampire books and the spin off Shadow series. Seriously, if you the whole "vampire and female PI together they fight crime" genre, read the Blood Ties books. Trust me, they're a lot better than the short-lived Lifetime series, although the TV show had some serious pretty--male and female--going on. Anyway, Huff's Valor books are military SF featuring a female space marine, so I'm good.

Hard military SF is actually one of my guilty pleasures, particularly if the protagonist or one of the main characters is female. I call it a guilty pleasure because, well to put it one way, most of these writers are probably voting for McCain or writing in Ron Paul. But still, give me a new David Weber Honor Harrington book (aka Female Horatio Hornblower In Space) and I'm a happy camper. I have no idea why I like this kind of thing so much, although I suppose my early love of Heinlein's* juveniles has something to do with it.

Darkrose picked up a couple of books that I'll end up reading--a fantasy novel set in a pseudo-Japan about an assassin and a fascinating sounding book about a people on a post-apocalyptic fantasy world going on crusade. It's nice to have someone around who reads the same kind of stuff I do; several of the books I've read for the Read have been her books.

Finally, although I said I wouldn't do too many re-reads, I found myself downstairs without a book in hand the other night when I went to get a late night snack. I ended up picking up Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay and ended up reading it cover to cover over the course of the last couple of days. While it's not my favorite Kay book (that would be Sailing to Sarentium), it's utterly fabulous. I'll have a review of tt up soon.

*I'll save the Heinlein rant for another day; suffice it to say, I think he jumped the shark right around Farnham's Freehold.

Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain

2008-10-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

To you and yours!

From Darkrose and Telesilla!

Girls for Obama!

2008-10-31T01:05:00.001-07:00

Girls for Obama!

What got me about this was seeing the above post right after seeing something over at Wondermark where David Malki has started something called True Stuff from Old Books, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Today he ran three political cartoons from 1911, two of which had to do with women and voting.

Hey!! Listen up!!

2008-10-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, many of you have seen the Donuts/Bacon '08 shirt, right?

Well it gets better because there's a song. Described by the artist as "a bouncy Pro-Obama agitprop song about voting liberally, drinking liberally, and celebratory hangover food" it's well worth listening to and downloading and generally savoring like....

...well, like Donuts and Bacon! (in the morning!)

DONUTS AND BACON LYRICS

We were reading and watching and ranting irate
When we saw a shirt advertised at the debate
Such sweet inspiration! A savory plate
Of donuts and bacon, Obama 08

And I saw in that vision before me online
A fine sentiment that we could all get behind
When the victory’s ours let’s go out and get blind
And eat donuts and bacon in the morning!

CHORUS
Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon in the morning

Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon in the morning

It’s been a long tunnel but we see the light
Cause we all know that Barry will carry the fight
So let’s get out the vote then drink whiskey all night
And eat donuts and bacon in the morning

CHORUS

All good liberals can fight when our back’s to the wall
Cause we know that we’re right, and the right’s not at all,
All us losers and boozers and heroes can’t fall
If there’s donuts and bacon in the morning

CHORUS

Though we’ve suffered eight years of republican blight
If the worst should occur by deceit tuesday night
We can drown all our sorrows then get up to fight
And eat donuts and bacon tomorrow

But religious folks tell me despair is a sin
And though I’m no believer and I’ve never been
I believe that Obama and Biden will win
Let’s have donuts and bacon every morning

CHORUS 2X and WE OUT.

Book Thirteen -- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

2008-10-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
mystery
229 pages

First off, yeah the book's out of order; I have Lies My Teacher Told Me partly written up but it's proving to be a difficult write-up and this one shouldn't be.

I haven't wanted to do too many re-reads for this, but in this case, I haven't read it in something like 15 years so I figured it couldn't hurt, particularly since I knew the ending back when I read it the first time.

It's an easy read, even if you have somehow managed to avoid seeing the movie. A mysterious woman shows up in a detective's office with a story that's mostly bullshit. Detective's partner goes off on the job and gets killed. Detective slowly works his way to solving partner's death and the woman's case. There's sex, booze, guns and a lot of fast talk. Dude, it's Sam Spade, which really...'nuff said.

While there are bits and pieces in the book that didn't make their way into the movie--Gutman's daughter, for example--almost all of the dialog in the movie was lifted right from the pages of the book. If you're at all an aural reader like me, it adds a nice layer to the book. The first time Joel Cairo shows up--and while the movie coded him gay, the book flat out states it--all I could hear was Peter Lorre's voice as I read.

One of the most interesting things about the book, and something I'd have not noticed until I started writing, is that the point-of-view is so distant and omniscient that you're never allowed into anyone's head. I'm sitting here thinking about writing like that and it's just weird to me, although really, it's kind of the ultimate in "show, don't tell."

Anyway, it's a fun and fast read, so if you haven't ever read it, you might want to check it out.

Book Twelve -- Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

2008-10-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

Lies My Teacher Told
by James W. Lowen
non-fiction
318 pages

By the time I was in high school, I could list the post-Norman Conquest rulers of England in order and probably tell you at least a little bit about each one of them. I knew that 1492 wasn't just important because that's when Columbus sailed, who Xenophon was, how Chaucer was related by marriage to the royal family, why Persepolis had been in ruins since Alexander's day and that Cleopatra was neither the first of her name nor actually Egyptian*.

American history bored the crap out of me.

Reading Lies My Teacher Told Me makes me wonder if my boredom had more to do with presentation than anything else.

Lowen looks at how high school history books present, or more accurately don't present, controversial subjects. You know, things like how Columbus was an asshole who was in it for the money (also people knew the world was round back then), how most of the Indians in the Northeast were killed off by a plague they picked up from European fishermen before the Pilgrims got there, how John Brown wasn't so crazy actually, how Reconstruction really didn't play out the way you think it did and, hey, what about class differences in the US?

What we get in our textbooks, or at least the 12 Lowen read through, is feel-good history. It's designed to make white kids feel good about being Americans. There is no controversy and things just happen without the cause being examined. And that, right there, boggles my mind. If we don't know why things happened, how can we recognize when they're happening again; how can we watch our own times and not think about cause and effect?

I wonder how different my level of interest would have been if I'd been given more than feel-good history. As it was, I got an A and then forgot all the boring dates I'd had to learn and happily went back to reading European and Ancient history. In my spare time. For fun.

Go figure.

Any way, it's a good book and a fantastic antidote to crappy high school history.

*1492 was the year of the Reconquista, when the last of the Moors were kicked out of Spain; whether this was a good thing or not depends on your point of view. Xenophon was a Greek historian who, in 400BCE, helped lead a group of mercenaries from Persia back to Greece. He wrote about it in a book called Anabasis, or The Persian Expedition. Geoffry Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, was married to Phillipa Roet, whose sister Katherine was the mistress and later third wife of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and uncle to Richard II. Persepolis was burned by Alexander's troops and by all accounts, Alexander wasn't at all happy about it. The Cleopatra we've all heard of was actually Cleopatra VII, the name was, like the name Berenice, a very common name back in the day. She wasn't Egyptian; the royal family had been Greek since Egpyt was conquered by Alexander.

In Sickness and In Health, but Mostly In Sickness

2008-10-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do something interesting or profound or maybe even angry for Write to Marry Day, but the fact is, both Darkrose and I are sick. I've been sick for about a week and a half; I got better over the weekend but now my voice is starting to go. Darkrose actually took the day off and slept for most of it.

My own sleep cycle is screwed up so I stayed up all night. I did a load of laundry around noon--we were getting to the "honey, I'm running out of underwear" stage--and made up a batch of lentil soup. At some point, I cleaned out the cat boxes and washed some dishes. About the time she crawled out bed, I fell into it and slept for a while.

It's just coming up on 9pm; normally at this time, she'd be getting ready to leave work, but tonight she's on the phone with a friend whose been having some spam problems on her website's forum. I put down my book--Lies My Teacher Told Me, which will probably be my 12th Cannonball Read book unless I pause to read the first Mercy Thompson book--to do this post, but I'm actually hoping to fall back asleep soon.

Ogdred, our younger cat, is curled up at the foot of the bed and Joxur, the older one, is trying to convince me that because I fed him gooshy food earlier than usual, he should get more at the appointed time. The house is kind of a wreck because I'm not the best housekeeper when I'm well, let alone when I'm sick.

This is our life slowed down a little thanks to the first flu of the fall. This is the "in sickness" part of our marriage. This is our dangerous "glamorous" lesbian lifestyle. This is our GLBT agenda; helping out a friend, making dinner, having clean underwear in the house, dealing with cats, doing our best to take care of one another when we're both coughing and sneezing and constantly blowing our noses.

This is what people are afraid of. Oh sure, the leather boys (and bois) posing half-naked on Pride Parade floats and the Dykes on Bikes are scary; they're the mysterious other. But we're pretty damn normal; we struggle through the petty daily challenges pretty much like I did when my spouse was male. We're not just like the couple next door, we ARE the couple next door.

Hatred is complicated and multi-layered and sometimes it's a lot of work to maintain. When the homophobes and the anti-same-sex marriage crowd are faced with the fact that the people they're hating on are just another couple trying to make it through the week, it's freaky for them. How are they different? How can they be better than us if they are us and we are them?

What if they're wrong? What if they've been wrong all this time? What if this means they've been wrong about other things?

We are the married couple next door and, aside from how we have sex, we are far more like a straight couple than not. When you vote, ask yourself how a pair of people who love each other and who make late night runs to the store in order to buy ice cream for the other could possibly threaten this state so much that our constitution needs to be amended to remove our rights. And then?

Vote No on Proposition 8.

And now? I'm gonna go have some soup.

I just don't know...

2008-10-27T05:32:00.001-07:00

Gods, could these people be any more disgusting?

A Yes on 8 ad uses pictures of children without their parents permission.

Book Eleven -- Keeping It Real by Justina Robson

2008-10-25T22:13:00.000-07:00

Keeping it Real
by Joanna Robson
SF/Fantasy
333 pages

Okay, to be honest, I was a little iffy about this one. It's a cross between urban fantasy and cyberpunk with a cyborg heroine whose job is to protect a hot elf rock star. Within the first five pages Lila, our heroine, actually looks at herself in the mirror in order for the author to have a chance to describe her--pretty much classic Mary Sue stuff, particularly as, in spite of all the metal attached to her body, she still comes across as pretty hot.

There were other tells that made me wonder if Robson started out as a fan fiction writer*; most glaringly, the little bit of Common Knowledge at the beginning of the book reads like the kind of thing you wouldn't have to explain if you were writing about a universe everyone already knew. It's almost like she didn't know how to present the information any other way, except for that part where she does a halfway decent job of exposition early on.

But you know? I'm kind of glad that I was reading it for Cannonball, because I stuck with it and it was actually a lot of fun.

The basic premise is that there was some sort of awful explosion, called the Quantum Bomb, involving a super collider. The resulting rip in the space time continuum leads to six different worlds existing in parallel to one another: there's our own world (called Otopia for some unknown reason); Zoomenon, the world of the Elementals, Alfheim, where the high/Tolkien style elves live; Demonia, where the Demons hang out; Thanotopia, the land of the dead from which necromancers gain their power; and Faery, and yeah that's pretty obvious.

The Elves are all about Culture and so the fact that Zal the High Elf is a rock star in Otopia is cause for death threats against him. So, enter Lila Black, half-machine, half-human agent. She's brought in as his bodyguard, but also ends up playing a "Game" with him. Games are complex interactions that end with the loser paying a forfeit; in this case, it's pretty easy to guess what the game is, and in fact, the book itself follows the whole "hot bodyguard/sexy rock star" formula, only the peril is a lot more interesting than usual.

I'd recommend this one if you're halfway decent at suspending your disbelief and are looking for a fun, only slightly trashy, romp. It sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, but the fact is, I enjoyed it for what it was and have every intention of picking of the next in the series.

*Not that there's anything wrong with that; I can easily name a handful of SF/Fantasy writers who started out writing fan fiction. In fact....

Okay, this is where I suddenly lose a lot of cred and probably some respect from some of you people, but...I'm a fan fiction writer and have been for the last 14 years. I've also published one short story that's been reprinted a couple of times, most recently in Best Lesbian Bondage Erotica. But mostly? I write (mostly) gay porn about TV shows and movies and even actors.

"Keep crying and keep walking"

2008-10-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

All she was doing was filming the Yes on 8 people, but apparently, according to them, that's enough to justify this kind of violent behavior.

There's a push on to get 10,000 people out there pounding the pavement to rally voters and it's actually making me feel guilty. But the problem is...I'm already on shaky emotional ground in general and I honestly don't think I could talk to anyone who is seriously in favor of Prop 8 without either getting into a yelling match or breaking into tears.

It's...see, you know these people are out there; you see them with their stupid slogans hanging out near Pride Festivals and so on, but you try not to think about it most of the time. And then something this polarizing comes along and suddenly you remember that there are people out there who completely and utterly HATE who you are. And what can you say in the face of that?

There was a discussion on one of the political blogs I read about how people are saying that they're voting yes on 8 but they're not bigots. No, I'm sorry, but you don't get to say that. Because if you aren't a bigot, then why are you voting to take away my civil rights? And anyway, the result is the same, a vote yes is a vote yes, no matter how many gay friends you have.

There simply is only one reason to vote for this measure: you hate fags.

Book Ten -- Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

2008-10-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
by Gregory Maguire
fantasy
368 pages

Having enjoyed Maguire's look at Oz and since my spouse-person happened to have this book on hand as well, I figured I might as well see if it was any good. The Cinderella myth is not one of my favorites, but then I'm not that fond of fairy tales in general. This version, however, really did pull me in.

Maguire made the decision to set the story in Holland in the 1630s, setting the familiar characters firmly in the emerging middle class. The narrator, Iris--the younger of the two step-sisters--her older but simple sister Ruth and her mother Margarathe arrive in Haarlem from England after Margarathe's husband died. Margarathe finds employment as a housekeeper, first with a painter and secondly with a wealthy merchant who's made a lot money speculating on tulips.

When the merchant's wife dies, Margarathe slides into her place and the familiar story begins to take shape. But of course, this isn't the story of Cinderella (who starts off as Clara); it's the story of Iris, a plain girl who happens to have some artistic talent. It's fascinating to watch Iris struggle to deal with her mother's ambition, her own infatuation with the painter's apprentice, her desire to paint, and, of course, Clara's beauty.

There is no actual magic in the book, although there are a few things that strain the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. I really liked the psychological explanation for Clara allowing herself to be banished to the kitchen, and loved the little details about painting and the lifestyles of the Dutch Bourgeoisie. My main issue with the book is a silly personal one; the other step-sister, the one who is slow and big and clumsy? Couldn't Maguire picked a name other than Ruth?

Oh hey, I'm one tenth of the way there! I'd buy more books to celebrate, but it's the end of the month. Huh...I wonder if my fees are paid off at the library.

Oh hai!

2008-10-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

Damn, the Canonnball List is getting long! I'm actually reading everyone's reviews, but if we pick up too many more people, I'm thinking I should count reading the blogs as at least half a book.

Anyway, just wanted to say "Hi" to any of you who are reading my blog. Feel free to introduce yourselves, or not; I'm easy.

This Just In: Water Stil Wet

2008-10-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Alan Greenspan realizes that he was wrong to think that free markets would police themselves.

Wait, Ayn Rand was wrong?! Greed Is Good doesn't work as a financial philosophy?!

I'd feel more sorry for him if his beliefs hadn't landed us in the mess we're in.

Book Nine -- Wicked by Gregory Maguire

2008-10-23T18:46:00.000-07:00

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
by Gregory Maguire
fantasy
406 pages

Okay, so I lied about what my next book would be; in case it isn't clear, my book selections for this are pretty random and are aimed at me having not having to spend too much of my fixed income on books. I happened to be cruising our bookshelves and found this and, since it was recently reviewed, both on Pajiba and by one of my fellow cannonballers, I figured why not?

It's been a while since I read an Oz book, but back in the day, I read all 14 of L. Frank. Baum's Oz books and possibly some of Ruth Plumly Thompson's books as well. And here's where I pause and suggest that you get your hands on some of the follow-ups to Wizard of Oz and just look at them. John R Neill took over the illustration job with the second book and his work is just gorgeous.

So yeah, as a former Oz fan, I was looking forward to revisiting the world as an adult though an adult book but also kind of dreading it because, well, what if it sucked? Fortunately, it didn't suck; in fact, it's pretty damn good.

Basically the book follows Elphaba, later known as the Wicked Witch of the West, from her birth to her death at Dorothy's hands. It concentrates on five different periods of her life: her childhood in Munchkinland; her years at university where she meets, among others, Glinda the Good; her time in the Emerald City as a rebel against the Wizard; her time in the Winkie country, where she prefected her witchiness; and finally, the short aftermath of the death-by-house of her sister.

Maguire's Oz is Baum's Oz "through a glass darkly;" it's recognizable but full of things like specism (the talking Animals are treated as second class citizens), religious schism, class warfare and so on. It's an echo of the ills the Industrial Revolution brought along with it and caught up in all this is Elphaba, whose earnest desire to do good gets twisted until she's the Wicked Witch we all recognize.

It's not a perfect novel, but it's a fun one, even if the only background you have is the original Wizard of Oz movie.

Next up--probably--Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Maguire's take on Cinderella.

Book Eight -- The Book of Saladin by Tariq Ali

2008-10-22T01:20:00.000-07:00

The Book of Saladin
by Tariq Ali
historical fiction
367 pages

As you might have guessed, I'm into medieval history. You can't be all that into medieval history and not know at least a little about the Crusades. In fact, I've read a fair number of non-fictional accounts of the various Crusades, but.... But, of course, they've all been about the European experience in the Holy Land, even when the author is not painting the Western knights as heroes.

One of the few Muslim leaders you hear about if you know even a little about the Crusades (even if your only exposure was, say, the historically inaccurate mess that was Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven*) is Sultan Yūsuf Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn ibn Ayyūb, better known to Westerners as Saladin. Sadly, aside from reading his wikipedia article, I know very little about Saladin from sources other than Western authors. In legend, he is, along with Richard I (of England, aka the Lion-Hearted) one of the great chivalrous leaders of the Crusades and the only "Saracen" respected by the other side. Since most of those legends aren't at all accurate about Richard, I tend to take them with a grain of salt.

The Book of Saladin is written from the point of view of Isaac ibn Yakub, a Jewish scribe selected by Saladin to write his biography. Along the way, ibn Yakub also talks to a couple of the women of Saladin's harem and Saladin's oldest friend. He also travels with the Sultan from Cairo to Damascus and finally, to Jerusalem, which Saladin takes back from the Christians. The result is a fascinating look at life on the other side of the Crusades.

Ali sticks to history when it comes to things like Saladin's accomplishments; the man's life really was remarkable and there isn't any need to embroider it. However, he invents the the various women in the book because medieval Islamic historical accounts don't even give us the names of the mothers of Saladin's sixteen sons. And while he does a good job at showing us how extraordinary Saladin was, you never really feel that you're getting into his head. He remains a distant figure for most of the book, while the invented women of his harem feel very real and interesting. In a way, however, the fact that Saladin is distant actually works; he is, after all, the Sultan, the figure around whom everyone else in the book revolves.

It's a good book and is a lot more readable than many historical novels; Ali is an excellent storyteller. Apparently this is the second of Ali's Islamic Quintet--although it certainly stands alone--and I intend to get my hands on the rest of them.

Next up, something that isn't historical fiction, probably either Keeping it Real by Justina Robson or Lies of Locke Lamorra by Scott Lynch.

*Don't get me wrong, I love Kingdom of Heaven, as incredibly flawed as it is. Where else could you hear Liam Neeson say: "I once fought for two days with an arrow in my testicle."

Book Seven -- The Reckoning by Sharon Kay Penman

2008-10-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

The Reckoning
Sharon Kay Penman
historical fiction
587 pages

And so I come to the end of Penman's Wales books. To be honest, The Reckoning is a bit of a disappointment. It picks up shortly after Falls the Shadow and deals with the conflict between Llewelyn and Edward I (also known as Edward Longshanks) over the ultimate fate of Wales. There's yet another woman involved, Simon de Montfort's daughter Ellen, promised to Llewelyn before her father died.

One of the problems with historical fiction, even if it's not technically a romance, is that the writers want us to believe that each match involving their main characters is a love match. In the first book, Here Be Dragons, there is some real evidence that Llewelyn the Great loved his wife Joanna; in a time when no one would have blamed him for divorcing her after finding her in bed with another man, instead, he welcomed her back into his life. But really, did Simon love his Nell? Did the second Llewelyn love his Ellen? Penman wants us to think so and I'll go with it, but after a while, you have to wonder.

That's not the only problem with the book, in fact, it's not even my major issue with it. My real problem is that it's anti-climactic. Not because I knew Edward was going to win, but more because I don't really find the second Llewelyn as interesting or as passionate as I found Llewelyn the Great or Simon de Montfort in the first two books. Nor is Ellen nearly as interesting as her mother Nell, or her great-aunt Joanna. There are moments when Penman tries to make Edward a sympathetic character, but she never really succeeds. Even the constant flip flopping of Llewelyn's brother Davydd--who went back and forth between siding with Edward and siding with his brother--and the part where pirates capture Ellen--something that really did happen--aren't enough to make the book work for me.

In the end, of course, rocks fall and the Welsh die. Ellen dies in childbirth, Llewelyn dies in battle and Davydd is possibly the first person to have been hung, drawn and quartered. Wales falls to Edward, who went so far as to give Llewelyn's title of Prince of Wales to his son, as all (or at least most) succeeding monarchs have done. In my write up of Falls the Shadow, I said that knowing the end doesn't really matter, and yes, that's true. But you have to have interesting people to get me to want to read the book, to engage me even though I know it'll all end badly. These weren't those people.

Book Six -- Falls the Shadow by Sharon Kay Penman

2008-10-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

See, the problem with historical novels, particularly the ones about visionaries and rebels, is that even if you know little about the period or person, you can pretty much count on them ending badly. The author can also be a clue about the relative happiness of the ending and when you read Sharon Kay Penman, whose first novel was a sympathetic account of the life of Richard III, you can bet that she picked a heroic but ultimately tragic figure for follow.

Falls the Shadow is a tragedy, even the name gives it away. It follows the life of Simon de Montfort and Llewelyn of Wales. This isn't Llewelyn Fwar (the Great) who was one of the main characters of Here Be Dragons, rather, it's his grandson, who is trying to hold together his grandfather's dream of a free or at least a united Wales against the treachery of his brothers.

But for all this trilogy is ostensibly about Wales, the main character of this book is Simon de Montfort. He's one of those men who crops up in history from time to time, someone who is just plain ahead of his time in many ways. Penman shows us a man who truly believed that his God-given duty as a knight was to look after people more helpless than himself. In the course of his life, he managed to force the King of England--Henry III, son of King John and not much better a ruler than his father--to not only honor the Magna Carta but also the Provisions of Oxford, a much more democratic outline for governing.

Deposing a king was srs bizns back in those days and Simon claimed he did everything in the King's name, that his quarrel wasn't with Henry, who was his brother-in-law--Simon married Eleanor, Henry's sister--but with Henry's useless advisors. During Simon's period of control, the first elected parliament met in England. Granted, the only people who could vote were those men who held property worth 40 shillings or more, but still, we're talking about the middle of the 13th century here.

And in the end, of course, that was the problem. Instead of giving more power to the barons and other nobles, Simon's Provisions favored the very small, nascent middle-class--the Provisions of Oxford was the first legal document published in English since the Conquest. It was just too early for this kind of thing, plus, in the end, Simon faced a much more serious opponent than the dithering Henry: Henry's warrior son, Edward, later known as Edward I or Edward Longshanks.

And Wales? It gets very short shrift in this book, but at the end of the book, Llewelyn is still free and trying to hang onto his country. Even without reading it, I know that the next book in the series--The Reckoning--will see the end of his fight and not in a good way. After all, these days the Prince of Wales is an Englishman, not a Welshman.

So why read something when you're pretty sure going in that it'll all end in tears? To know how it happened, and to see one version of what the people involved might have been thinking. After all, look at how many versions of the Arthurian legends have been written and how popular Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is. Without Simon de Montfort and the Provisions of Oxford, which didn't last long after his death, the history of English democracy and eventually US democracy might have been very different. Which would be why, even though very few people have heard of him, there's a plaster relief of his head in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives. I get the feeling that de Montfort, or at least Penman's version of him, would be honored.

Nerdvana?

2008-10-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

So, I've mentioned that I game, which yeah, I know...but really it's not the geekiest thing I do, so whatever.

Anyway, in addition to various computer games, I also play in City of Heroes/Villains an MMORPG in which you play either a superhero or supervillain. I tend to play villains more; not only is it fun to be evil, but that part of the game has a better storyline. It's acutally a lot of fun and considering how much time I have on my hands--my fellow Cannonball Readers? If I didn't game and write, you'd be eating my dust--it's not a huge waste of time.

Tomorrow, the lovely Darkrose, who, by the way, is totally to blame for my gaming, and I are off to Hero Con, a one day event put on by the company that runs the game. Now, bear in mind that we are a couple of chubby geeks, but we're also a pair of Mean Girls. This is gonna be so much fun.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Then I'm gonna come home and finish my next book. Really.

Oh Fred, how are you so awesome?!

2008-10-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

McCain's next best hope -- and I mean for his soul, not for his electoral prospects -- is to have someone like Bob Dole sit him down and explain what's at stake in the three weeks he has left. Bob Dole should explain to McCain that even though Bob Dole never got to be president, Bob Dole is OK with that, because people remember Bob Dole as an honorable man and not as a lying, dishonorable, race-baiting windsock willing to say or do anything in pursuit of his ambition for power.

I started reading Fred at Slacktivist for his hilarious ripping apart of the Left Behind books, but I've stayed for content like this.

And really, if you haven't checked out Left Behind Friday you really should.

Finally, I'd like to shout out a huge THANK YOU to the Philadelphia Phillies for taking out those fucking Dodgers!

Book Five -- Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks

2008-10-14T02:37:00.000-07:00

Consider Phlebas
Iain M. Banks
science fiction
467 pages

Well that was bit of a romp with an annoying ending. The first of Banks' novels set in the world of "The Culture", Consider Phlebas follows a fairly standard plot line. A "Mind," an AI capable of running a space ship, escapes an attack on its ship and lands on Schar's World, a Planet of the Dead. It's a valuable thing/person and both sides of the Idiran-Culture War want to get their hands on it. The Idirans, religious fanatics trying to convert the galaxy, send in Horza, an agent of theirs and The Culture, a post-scarcity society run by AIs so the humans can live the good live, send in Balveda, one of their own agents.

Horza is a Changer; he can take the on the form of other people and along the way, he picks up some fairly lame space pirates and their ship, with Balveda in tow. After that, it's pretty much a Quest for Treasure story, featuring some interesting stops and settings as it moves on.

I can't explain my disappointment with the end without spoiling the book, but in spite of that, I haven't ruled out reading more of Banks' Culture books. This one is an enjoyable space opera with a few gross-out scenes, the usual space and ground battles and some very mildly written sex.

I should probably talk about my spoiler policy. For anything somewhat recent, I'll try to avoid spoiling the book if I can. I'm a little more inclined to spoil for the historical novels; when I get around to Colleen McCullough's Antony and Cleopatra I may mention the fact that Antony loses. Not only is this a matter of history, it's also been covered in any number of books, plays and movies and if you didn't know, well too bad.

Also, Darth Vader is Luke's father.

That is all.

pimpin' for a friend and other stuff...

2008-10-14T00:39:00.000-07:00

Vote for this shirt, not only because it's cute, but so I can buy one.

Not much else going on; I'm coming up on the end of two--yes two!--books and hope to have reviews up tomorrow or Wednesday. Go me!

Book Four -- The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

2008-10-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

The Memoirs of a Survivor
Doris Lessing
fiction
219 pages

So I stayed up all night last night. I do this sometimes, usually when my sleep schedule is fucked or I want to run errands before Darkrose heads out to work at 11:30. So, as you do after you've been up all night, I stopped at my favorite coffee place--Butch n Nellies--and got myself a 20 oz Mexican Mocha. While waiting for my coffee, I checked out the book exchange bookshelf and, in amongst all the romances, was The Memoirs of a Survivor. Bear in mind, as you read this review, that I still haven't slept and all I've had is the mocha and some sun chip things from Trader Joe's.

Now it's easily been over 25 years since I read any Lessing and when I did, way back in high school, it was her rather odd science fiction series Canopus in Argos: Archives. And honestly? I don't remember a blessed thing about them other than that they were complicated.

The Memoirs of a Survivor is...complicated in some ways and incredibly simple in other ways. Set in a dystopian future, a woman becomes responsible for a twelve year old girl named Emily and her half-cat/half-dog pet, Hugo, as the city they live in falls apart around them. Told in first person from the POV of the woman, whose name we never learn, the novel records the slow slide as the city and society in general falls apart due to some undisclosed series of events, as well as the life that Emily makes for herself in the new shifting social order. Laid over this is the narrator's experience with and in the strange and shifting landscape of a series of rooms beyond a blank wall in her flat. At times the mysterious rooms show her a strange, antiquated version of Emily's childhood and at other times, they are more impersonal reflections of the chaos that goes on outside the flat.

I'm not sure if I can recommend this or not, because I still haven't decided if I like it or not. I like the deceptive simplicity of Lessing's writing and a good dystopia will grab my attention every time, but I'm still trying to figure out what happened in the end.

CA Prop 8

2008-10-07T17:19:00.000-07:00

If there are only two things I want to see happen in this election year, it's a win for Obama and a defeat for California Proposition 8, which, if it passes, will amend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

After weeks of poll numbers indicating that voters in CA were going to reject Prop 8, two new polls are showing it ahead. And while I know there's plenty of time to swing it around, it's still gut-wrenching. Darkrose and I got married a little over a month ago and, you know? I'd kind of like to wake up on November 5 and not have to worry about hanging on to that status.

I'm hardly naive, particularly on this issue, but really, there are times I want to talk to the people who are doing this and ask what I ever did to them, how my spending the rest of my life with the person I love threatens them. And then I look at what we refer to as the "terrorist fist jab wedding picture" (actually we're gripping each other's hands there) and realize that really, there's nothing I can say to the people who think that that picture is a sign of all that is wrong in America.

All I can do is ask that those of you who think that it's pretty fucking awesome that in one afternoon in Sacramento county, a mixed race lesbian couple, a Hispanic straight couple and a white male couple either got licenses or got hitched spare a little positive energy or, if you can, a little money.

Book Three -- To Serve and Submit by Susan Wright

2008-10-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

To Serve and Submit
Susan Wright
Fantasy
300 pages

So a while back Jacqueline Carey wrote a book called Kushiel's Dart that takes place in a sort of alternate Renaissance Europe. The main character, Phadre, is a courtesan and spy, as well as a very serious masochist. The book is a fun combination of action/adventure, fantasy and the occasional kinky sex scene (which, unlike the Anita Blake books, serves the story instead of the other way around), the world-building is interesting and the writing, while a tad purple in places, isn't dire. The book sold well and so far there are two trilogies set in that same world.

I picture Susan Wright reading Kushiel's Dart and thinking, 'I can write that!'

It was at the point where I thought: 'oh hey, is that a spaceship?!' that I really really wish she hadn't.

The book is set in an alternate universe that resemble Northern Europe of the Viking era; it's heroine, Marja, comes from the fens of Alternate Saxon England. She's unusual because her mother is part Skraeling from the New World (Wright doesn't even bother to invent a new word, she just uses the Norse name for Native Americans) and because she can see the spirits. Of course, she's beautiful, if a bit grubby due to being a child of nature and the fens and also, poor.

Enter Lysander, a gorgeous hunk of slave trader who has his own longboat and roams around buying only the most beautiful boys and girls, which he then turns around and sells as sex slaves. But classy ones, mind you, all trained up in submission and pleasure techniques and so on. Marja pretty much falls for him at first sight and convinces her family to sell her. As one would.

So off to Lysander's compound, which for some reason is referred to as a haushold, because nothing adds that spark of the exotic and makes the reader feel all smart and stuff like an occasionally untranslated word, the meaning of which is obvious. Anyway, Marja gets trained (in a series of scenes which are neither very graphic nor well-written and once more depend on untranslated words so Wright doesn't have to decide which euphemisms to use for body parts or sex acts) and also annoys Lysander's partner/wife because she's just so lovely and also, Lysander obviously has a thing for her. Marja is, of course, a natural and superb submissive.

There's a disastrous trading trip during which Marja ends up taking a noblewoman named Silveta's place and getting raped, which ends up with Lysander and Marja being banished from that particular part of the world. Then, her training finally over, Marja is about to be sent to Lysander's mysterious home land on a "winged ship" that appears out of nowhere, when two things happen. One, my dislike of this book becomes active loathing (spaceships?!) and, two, Lysander decides that he loves Marja too much and not only can he not send her off to be the plaything of some cruel Master or Mistress on his planet, but that he must work to end the icky sex slave trade.

He sends her off, telling her he'll meet up with her later, and it's easy to guess that doesn't go well.A fter a series of stupid misadventures, Marja ends up throwing in with Silveta, whose husband has died. The rapist guy is going to become ruler of the land and take Silveta, so the two women run away, trying to recruit an army to help them get back what belongs to Silveta. Along the way, Marja sleeps with just about anyone who gives her the glad eye and in the end, in spite of Silveta's claim to the land and Marja sexing people up to make deals, they are saved by a male deus ex machina.

I could have liked this book if:

1. Wright were a better writer and had depended on more than a few untranslated words to set up her world. I'll forgive a lot if there's good world-building going on.

2. The plot had been less predictable, or more entertaining, or just better.

3. It had been pure porn for the sake of porn, at which point I wouldn't care about the quality of the writing or the plot.

4. The two women, both of whom did grow a little and learn things in the course of their adventures, saved their own asses and won the day for themselves.

Since none of those things apply to this book, the whole thing (including the spanking scene) was pretty much a yawn and if I weren't doing the Cannonball Read, I'd have never finished it. Its only two redeeming qualities is that it's one hell of a fast read (it took me about an hour), and the fact that I got it used for the cost of shipping.

There's at least one more book in the series, but, yeah...whatever.

Honestly...no really...

2008-10-07T03:15:00.000-07:00

I did not intend for this blog to be nothing but book reviews and YouTube videos, but I really couldn't help wanting to share this one because it's just so goddamn awesome.

Particularly if you watched MTV in the mid-80s.

New Readers and a request for recs!

2008-10-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

Wow, looks like more people have joined The Read!

Welcome to: Boom Kitty, Jen Ji, Merc, Mrs. Walker and Rusty (all conveniently linked to in my handy list to the right)! Good luck to you all!

I'd introduce myself but I really don't know what to add to the information that's already over there in my About Me section. If anyone wants to know more, however, I'm always willing to talk about myself, so just ask.

Finally, I don't have a real plan for The Read except that I'd like to get through the huge stack of "books we own that I want to read." Well and there's also "use The Read as an excuse to buy books." So, I'm open to recs. I like:

* historical fiction (obviously) -- my preference is for the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe and the various great civilizations of the Ancient Near East (Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome) but I want to expand my horizons into something a little less Western Canon.

* historical non-fiction/biographies -- see above.

* science fiction and fantasy -- Anything good, although if it's by Neal Stephenson or Guy Gavriel Kay , I've either already read it, or will be reading it. I'm mostly over typical fantasy rewrites of Tolkien and if you rec anything by Heinlein I will indulge in a rant about how much he sucked. I like vampires but dislike zombies unless the book is really really good.

* Anything that's so transcendentally excellent that I should read it even if I'm not wild about the genre. Basically, I'm interested in the book you give to people and say "I know you're not wild about mysteries/modern fiction/romances/whatever, but you have to read this."

The one book I try to get everyone to read even if they don't like the genre? Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Seriously, freakin' read it, okay?

Book Two -- Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman

2008-10-07T01:01:00.000-07:00

Here Be Dragons
Sharon Kay Penman
Historical Fiction
700 pages

After reading crappy historical fiction, I wanted to read the good stuff, so I went for the first of Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh Trilogy, because I love her book The Sunne In Splendour which is about Richard III and the War of the Roses. Here Be Dragons is about an even more obscure period of British history--the end of the 12th, beginning of the 13th centuries. Yup...it's the Robin Hood era and this book is partly about Evil Prince John.

Actually, it's is about two very different rulers, John in England and Llewelyn in Wales, and--yes, I know this sounds like a movie ad--the woman who was forced to choose between them. John inherited the extensive Angevin Empire--all of England and half of medieval France--created by his father Henry II. Llewelyn inherited one third of Wales in a time when the Welsh princes had to swear fealty to the English crown. Quite the power imbalance and yet, an ambitious Welsh Prince could still make quite a lot of trouble for the English. So John looked for a way to get Llewelyn on his side and found it in an arranged marriage between Llewelyn and Joanna, one of John's many illegitimate children.

This is pure history, all these people existed. However because all we know of Joanna is that she was John's bastard daughter, that she married Llewelyn, had children with him, that there was a scandal and when she died, Penman has a great chance to invent a fascinating character and she makes the most of it. John only learns about Joanna after Joanna's mother dies and he rescues the young girl from poverty and obscurity. At that point in his life, she's his only daughter and whatever else history has to say about Bad King John, it tells us he was a devoted father to both his legitimate and illegitimate children. Of course, Joanna learns to love her father; she knows little of his personal flaws or the mistakes he's making as king of a kingdom beset with money issues and French enemies.

When John marries Joanna off to Llewelyn, who is 32 years old to her 14, she's understandably terrified. She finds herself in a country where very few people speak her language and most of her husband's subjects, including his son from an earlier liaison, resent her presence, both because she's English (although she rightfully points out that that's an insult; she's Norman) and because she's her father's daughter.

Penman could have gone the easy route and had Joanna and Llewelyn fall for one another immediately, but, although eventually they learn to love each other passionately, it takes them a while to get there. And even afterwards, it's hardly an easy marriage, particularly as Llewelyn's ambitions for Wales puts him more and more at odds with John. John for his part, is struggling and making bad decision after bad decision; he is, after all, the king who was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

And yes, it sounds kind of dry, but in spite of her habit to indulge in the occasional info-dump, Penman brings these people to life enough, makes them real enough, that you really do want to know what happens to them. That you learn things--like the fact that the Magna Carta went too far and took too much power from the Church, and so John had the Pope's backing in his war on the barons--along the way is cool, but you never lose sight that in the middle of all this history is a woman who is torn between her father and her husband. Joanna's not a passive character; she's got the family temper and she's intelligent. Watching as she faces the facts about her father is painful but it feels very real to anyone who's ever loved someone only to realize that they're not a good person.

And really, that's where historical fiction can shine and a good writer can keep their readers hooked. By making history about real people with motives and concerns we can understand, the novelist can take us past the dry facts and show us that, in the end, history isn't about forces we can't understand, but about sons whose parents didn't love them, daughters who have to make hard decisions and mothers who want the best for their children.

Next up? To Serve and Submit which is some kind of fantasy novel that promises to be both soft-core porn and a fascinating story about one girl's epic journey. It better deliver.

What?! A girl's gotta take a break from the weighty stuff and have a little fluffy fun.

It's Official!

2008-10-04T00:57:00.001-07:00

So, Brian put me on the list of participants of the Cannonball Read, which means I'm officially in the race. I seem to be in good company; I just checked out one of the other participants--Marra Alane--whose very first book was Stephenie Meyers abysmal vampire novel Twilight. Marra hated it.

I should probably post the rules: 100 books in 1 year. 200 pages. No graphic novels. Short story collections have to have 6 stories.

I'm adding "no cookbooks and no poetry" to my personal rules. I do, in fact, read new cookbooks cover to cover and I might even review some here, but counting them toward the race would be cheating. As for poetry, well, as Robert pointed out, poems tend to be printed in a way that takes up a lot of space so even a collection of 200+ pages isn't as dense as prose or non-fiction. Again, it'd be cheating.

In addition to Alabamapink, Brian and Marra, there's also Robert, and who knows, there may be more people signing up. Currently, Brian's in the lead with 12 books, followed by Alabamapink with 9. The rest of us are back in the peloton with 1 book apiece.

This is going to be fun! After all, I like wiping the floor with the competition.

And the greatest of these...

2008-10-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

Book One -- Earthly Joys by Philippa Gregory

2008-10-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

Earthly Joys
Philippa Gregory
Historical Fiction
500 + pages

Good God, this woman is a best-selling author who got one of her books made into a feature film? Okay so The Other Boleyn Girl was hardly a box office smash, but still, if the book was half as bad as this one, who the hell thought it would make a good movie?

Earthly Joys is the story of a gardener named John Transcendent who creates fabulous formal gardens for some of the most important people of the early Jacobean period. He starts out working for Robert Cecil, adviser/spymaster to Elizabeth I and James I, and eventually works for George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and "favorite" of James I, and then, ends his life working for Charles I.

This should be right up my alley; I find the period fascinating and, of course, James I was one of several gay/bi (if I may apply a modern term that wasn't used at the time) monarchs of England. Also, John Transcendent is a totally great period name; it's one of the reasons I decided to read this book instead of one of her Boleyn books.

Sadly, Gregory is all about telling instead of showing. In the first five pages or so, we learn that John is not only Cecil's gardener, but also his confident. Not because she shows us, but because she just says so. And it just goes on like that for another 500+ pages as John wanders in and out of history and travels around Europe buying rare plants. He also marries Elizabeth, a truly boring Puritan, who pretty much exists as a character to be boring, which, when you think about it, is great for Gregory, who didn't have to work very hard to give the woman any real depth.

John eventually falls passionately in love with Buckingham, apparently just because Buckingham is gorgeous and has style. Frankly, I think the historical Buckingham, while indeed stylish and handsome after the fashion of the day, was an incompetent ass and Gregory's portrayal of him does nothing to change my mind. I can't see what John sees in him and she does nothing to really explain it. I'll give her credit for actually going there and writing the buttsecks instead of just having John pine for Buckingham, but that wasn't enough to save the book for me.

Although I knew it was crap pretty much from about page three, I stuck it out, because I'm like that; even with mediocre fiction, I tend to want to know what happens. In addition to the whole "telling not showing" thing, John's a pretty passive character and frankly, in the end, his death didn't have any real impact on me. God knows I have no interest in the sequel, Virgin Earth, which is about John's son, who, thanks to losing his Puritan religion when his wife dies, is a slightly more interesting character than Elizabeth. Still, I don't really care about what happens to him in Virginia.

I don't always like to judge an author by just one book, particularly one written ten years ago, but she's been writing for over twenty years so that's not really an excuse. So yeah, this one? It's a skipper and I won't be reading any more Gregory.

100 Books in...well, as long as it takes

2008-10-03T03:11:00.000-07:00

Brian Prisco, who is one of the reviewers over at Pajiba is doing something he calls The Cannonball Read, which pits him against Alabamapink in a race to see who will read 100 books first. They've opened up the race and so I figured, why not? I haven't been reading as many books lately as I used to, so hopefully this challenge and my own competetive nature will get me back on track.

So yeah, that's why I created this blog. I can be found elsewhere as:

Telesilla on Live Journal--be warned, the El Jay is pretty much my fannish/personal/political journal and if you don't know what slash is, tread over carefully over there.

The Sweetly Scented Lemmings -- where my friend Helens and I review perfume and soap from indie craftspeople.

Telesilla on Last fm -- if for some reason you care about what I'm listening to.