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aseJanuary was a major wrap-up month, where I finished two books I'd swapped out for commute reading. And then I went back to school full-time and finished nothing in February; the YBF#9 was dragged out from the end of January through the very beginning of March. There was also a lot of fragmented Greatest Hits rereads, such as the "75% of Outbound Flight / Survivor's Quest" reread that isn't logged here. But here is what I actually finished:
How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest, and Other Essays in Western History (Reuben Gold Thwaites) (1903): Nonfiction. The publication date is not a typo.
My roommates and I spotted a box of free books on the street, and of course had to investigate. This is one of the books we found. The "Northwest" of the title refers to the old American Northwest: Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc. The prose dates the book, as does its blatant racism and laser-sharp focus on the male gender's historical triumphs. There's something pretty cool about the firsthand accounts of interviewing Revolutionary War veterans that made it worth my time to normalize for the dated attitudes and go with it.
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (Louis Menard) (2001): Nonfiction yoinked from the Pulitzer lists. A very academic look at the people and ideas of post-Civil War American philosophy. This was interesting and detailed and included entertaining side-trips, including a little education on the history of post-secondary academics and research in America. However, nothing stuck very well; this is another book that I wanted to have a discussion about to get more traction on the material.
Choices of One (Timothy Zahn) (2011): Post-ANH pre-Empire romp: the Emperor's Hand investigates treason on the Outer Rim, the Rebel Alliance looks for a new base in the same system, and sneaky OCs set up Imperials and Rebels to take a fall.
Adjusting one's expectations is important. One makes different demands of Serious Business nonfiction than distracting fiction. And when I need mindless distraction, Star Wars delivers. Choices of One pushes the boundaries of sneaky and unreliable narration and might go over the line into author manipulation, but kept me entertained. I am not sure if baby Jedi Luke or the Thrawn-Car'das galactic road trip were more fun.
Year's Best Fantasy 9 (David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, ed) (2009): What the title says. The good, or at least smoothly written or thought-provoking, included Kage Baker's "Running the Snake", an alt-history Shakespeare; Naomi Novik's swashbuckling "Araminta, or The Wreck of the Amphidrake"; and "The Film-makers of Mars", where Geoff Ryman's prose does exactly what he wants it do. James Stoddard's "The First Editions" might not be a classic for the generations, but the idea of turning people into books (literally) is such an interesting conceit I thought about it for several days.
The bad: Doyle and Macdonald's "Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita", a vampire-werewolf-supernatural evil thing that reads like the first draft a larger "supernatural hunter in Europe" thing; "The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D.", by Al Michaud, a longwinded yarn whose punchline is half-spoiled by the introduction; Howard Waldrop's Penzance / Peter Pan / other? pirate crossover "Abast, Abaft!", which suffers from my limited Gilbert and Sullivan tolerance, as well as my Disneyfied knowledge of Peter Pan canon; "Dearest Cecily" (Kristine Dikeman) combines epistolary format with a really stupid catty fight over a man, managing to fail a Bechdel test in a story with no men.
The ugly: "A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica", Catherynne Valente. Valente's writing concerns run almost, but not quite, ninety degrees to my reading interests. So the nonstandard narrative structure that reads like infodumps - if indodumps can be emotastic - didn't do a lot for me. Lisa Goldstein's "Reader's Guide" had a similar structural problem: it looked like a "figure out the story from the questions" story, and morphed into something completely different. I also didn't appreciate the pre-story introductory blurbs; as mentioned, "The Salting and Canning..." blurb includes a spoiler, which significantly detracted from my reading experience. The introductions to the remainder of the stories didn't significantly help me direct my attentions to stories' strengths, or at least adjust my expectations to be in line with author intent.
Other notables: Peter Beagle has two stories in this collection; "The Rabbi's Hobby" and "King Pelles the Sure", which are small-scale "people" stories. This works much better for me in "The Rabbi's Hobby"; I came to Beagle at the wrong age to appreciate the fairy tale-ish style of "Pelles" and The Last Unicorn. So it's technically well-executed, but not my thing.
Table of contents:
"Shoggoths in Bloom" - Elizabeth Bear
"The Rabbi’s Hobby" - Peter S. Beagle
"Running the Snake" - Kage Baker
"The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm" - Daryl Gregory
"Reader’s Guide" - Lisa Goldstein
"The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D." - Al Michaud
"Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake" - Naomi Novik
"A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica" - Catherynne M. Valente
"From the Clay of His Heart" - John Brown
"If Angels Fight" - Richard Bowes
"26 Monkeys and the Abyss" - Kij Johnson
"Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita" - Debra Doyle & James Macdonald
"The Film-makers of Mars" - Geoff Ryman
"Childrun" - Marc Laidlaw
"Queen of the Sunlit Shore" - Liz Williams
"Lady Witherspoon’s Solution" - James Morrow
"Dearest Cecily" - Kristine Dikeman
"Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta" - Randy McCharles
"Caverns of Mystery" - Kage Baker
"Skin Deep" - Richard Parks
"King Pelles the Sure" - Peter S. Beagle
"A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead" - Richard Harland
"Avast, Abaft!" - Howard Waldrop
"Gift from a Spring" - Delia Sherman
"The First Editions" - James Stoddard
"The Olverung" - Stephen Woodworth
"Daltharee" - Jeffrey Ford
"The Forest" - Kim Wilkins
Numbers game: 4 total finished. 4 new, 0 reread; 2 fiction, 2 nonfiction.
How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest, and Other Essays in Western History (Reuben Gold Thwaites) (1903): Nonfiction. The publication date is not a typo.
My roommates and I spotted a box of free books on the street, and of course had to investigate. This is one of the books we found. The "Northwest" of the title refers to the old American Northwest: Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc. The prose dates the book, as does its blatant racism and laser-sharp focus on the male gender's historical triumphs. There's something pretty cool about the firsthand accounts of interviewing Revolutionary War veterans that made it worth my time to normalize for the dated attitudes and go with it.
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (Louis Menard) (2001): Nonfiction yoinked from the Pulitzer lists. A very academic look at the people and ideas of post-Civil War American philosophy. This was interesting and detailed and included entertaining side-trips, including a little education on the history of post-secondary academics and research in America. However, nothing stuck very well; this is another book that I wanted to have a discussion about to get more traction on the material.
Choices of One (Timothy Zahn) (2011): Post-ANH pre-Empire romp: the Emperor's Hand investigates treason on the Outer Rim, the Rebel Alliance looks for a new base in the same system, and sneaky OCs set up Imperials and Rebels to take a fall.
Adjusting one's expectations is important. One makes different demands of Serious Business nonfiction than distracting fiction. And when I need mindless distraction, Star Wars delivers. Choices of One pushes the boundaries of sneaky and unreliable narration and might go over the line into author manipulation, but kept me entertained. I am not sure if baby Jedi Luke or the Thrawn-Car'das galactic road trip were more fun.
Year's Best Fantasy 9 (David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, ed) (2009): What the title says. The good, or at least smoothly written or thought-provoking, included Kage Baker's "Running the Snake", an alt-history Shakespeare; Naomi Novik's swashbuckling "Araminta, or The Wreck of the Amphidrake"; and "The Film-makers of Mars", where Geoff Ryman's prose does exactly what he wants it do. James Stoddard's "The First Editions" might not be a classic for the generations, but the idea of turning people into books (literally) is such an interesting conceit I thought about it for several days.
The bad: Doyle and Macdonald's "Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita", a vampire-werewolf-supernatural evil thing that reads like the first draft a larger "supernatural hunter in Europe" thing; "The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D.", by Al Michaud, a longwinded yarn whose punchline is half-spoiled by the introduction; Howard Waldrop's Penzance / Peter Pan / other? pirate crossover "Abast, Abaft!", which suffers from my limited Gilbert and Sullivan tolerance, as well as my Disneyfied knowledge of Peter Pan canon; "Dearest Cecily" (Kristine Dikeman) combines epistolary format with a really stupid catty fight over a man, managing to fail a Bechdel test in a story with no men.
The ugly: "A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica", Catherynne Valente. Valente's writing concerns run almost, but not quite, ninety degrees to my reading interests. So the nonstandard narrative structure that reads like infodumps - if indodumps can be emotastic - didn't do a lot for me. Lisa Goldstein's "Reader's Guide" had a similar structural problem: it looked like a "figure out the story from the questions" story, and morphed into something completely different. I also didn't appreciate the pre-story introductory blurbs; as mentioned, "The Salting and Canning..." blurb includes a spoiler, which significantly detracted from my reading experience. The introductions to the remainder of the stories didn't significantly help me direct my attentions to stories' strengths, or at least adjust my expectations to be in line with author intent.
Other notables: Peter Beagle has two stories in this collection; "The Rabbi's Hobby" and "King Pelles the Sure", which are small-scale "people" stories. This works much better for me in "The Rabbi's Hobby"; I came to Beagle at the wrong age to appreciate the fairy tale-ish style of "Pelles" and The Last Unicorn. So it's technically well-executed, but not my thing.
Table of contents:
"Shoggoths in Bloom" - Elizabeth Bear
"The Rabbi’s Hobby" - Peter S. Beagle
"Running the Snake" - Kage Baker
"The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm" - Daryl Gregory
"Reader’s Guide" - Lisa Goldstein
"The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D." - Al Michaud
"Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake" - Naomi Novik
"A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica" - Catherynne M. Valente
"From the Clay of His Heart" - John Brown
"If Angels Fight" - Richard Bowes
"26 Monkeys and the Abyss" - Kij Johnson
"Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita" - Debra Doyle & James Macdonald
"The Film-makers of Mars" - Geoff Ryman
"Childrun" - Marc Laidlaw
"Queen of the Sunlit Shore" - Liz Williams
"Lady Witherspoon’s Solution" - James Morrow
"Dearest Cecily" - Kristine Dikeman
"Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta" - Randy McCharles
"Caverns of Mystery" - Kage Baker
"Skin Deep" - Richard Parks
"King Pelles the Sure" - Peter S. Beagle
"A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead" - Richard Harland
"Avast, Abaft!" - Howard Waldrop
"Gift from a Spring" - Delia Sherman
"The First Editions" - James Stoddard
"The Olverung" - Stephen Woodworth
"Daltharee" - Jeffrey Ford
"The Forest" - Kim Wilkins
Numbers game: 4 total finished. 4 new, 0 reread; 2 fiction, 2 nonfiction.