Lynda Reads

See Lynda's reviews elsewhere

2010-08-27T08:51:00.001-07:00

Now reviewing on Goodreads, mostly. See my reviews there!

Betsy Trumpener nominated for Relit Award

2009-09-03T06:47:00.002-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Prince George Author Shortlisted for National Literary Award

Caitlin Press congratulates Prince George author and CBC Radio News reporter Betsy Trumpener, whose short story collection The Butcher of Penetang ($17.95, Caitlin Press), has just been shortlisted for The Relit Award for short fiction.

This is Trumpener's second nomination for a national literary award; she garnered a nomination for the prestigious Danuta Gleed Literary Award earlier this year.

Situating her stories from northern BC to rural Ontario to countries at war, Trumpener carves up rare, savoury slices of stories that are both tough and enticing: a child goes missing in a dangerous part of town; a draft dodger finds himself with bloody hands; and a robber is armed with only a hairbrush. The people in these edgy stories cut cocaine into comfort food, push sex into the snow, and chase speeding ambulances in the dead of winter. Writer Susan Musgrave calls the debut "exquisitely crafted glimpses into the beauty of our fragile human lives."

Betsy Trumpener is an award-winning CBC News reporter and radio documentary producer. Her non-fiction and fiction have been published in numerous publications, including the Guardian, the Globe and Mail and This Magazine. She was the first annual Writer in Residence for the CBC arts show, North by Northwest, and she has been awarded a Western Magazine Award for her magazine column, "North of Unreal," a Jack Webster Award for Best Radio Feature, and a Jack Webster Africa Journalism Fellowship.

The ReLit Awards, short for Regarding Literature, Reinventing Literature, Relighting Literature, were founded in 2000 and emphasize the importance of ideas over big-money prizes. Winners in the poetry, novel and short fiction categories will be celebrated at a special event during the Ottawa Writer's festival in October. Winners receive the ReLit Ring, which features four moveable dials, each one struck with the entire alphabet.

The other six nominated authors in the short fiction category are Ian Colford for Evidence (Porcupine's Quill), Arjun Basu for Squishy (DC Books), Don McLellan for In the Quiet After Slaughter ((Libros Libertad)), Pamela Stewart for Elysium (Anvil Press), Mark Anthony Jarman for My White Planet (Thomas Allen Publishers) and Lisa Foad for The Night is a Mouth (Exile Editions).

CAITLIN PRESS IS AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER
distributed and marketed by Harbour Publishing

To arrange an interview with Betsy Trumpener or to request a copy of The Butcher of Penetang, please contact Marisa Alps or Rachel Page:
marisa@harbourpublishing.com or rachel@harbourpublishing.com
phone: 604-883-2730, fax: 604-883-9451
Caitlin Press email: info@caitlin-press.com, website: www.caitlin-press.com

Mara: Daughter of the Nile

2009-08-16T12:03:00.005-07:00

I met this classic from 1953 thanks to family friend Holly Altmeyer who fell in love with it in Elementary School. Now a high school student, Holly lent me the 1953 edition which she obtained as a library discard. Her praises encouraged me to read the book which I was delighted to find well plotted, engaging and heart warming. Checking it out for this blog entry I discovered it is still in print in a new edition and sports 166 customer reviews on Amazon.com. It is good to know some classics never die but are loved over and over again each generation. Also found a scan of the 1953 title page and a sample of fan art on PhotoBucket.

The Wikipedia entry for Mara: Daughter of the Nile includes a section describing historical eras to do with dynastic details of the Egyption kings. I was more interested in the tone of the work which portrayed slavery without anything more than an hint of the potential for sexual abuse that would doubtless have featured in a modern re-telling of the same story. I found it refreshing.

Definitely a Cinderella story, in which Mara earns the love of the marvelous Lord Sheftu, secret leader of the opposition to a despotic queen, it is told with charm and even some insightful cultural awareness. Shetfu's terror at tomb robbing intelligently avoids being trivialized by the superimposition of modern attitudes while retaining the sympathy of the modern reader for what could easily be dismissed as superstition.

Hal Friesen about book by Mark Shegelski

2009-05-19T08:08:00.004-07:00

The professor under whom I did my undergraduate research just published his first science fiction book, and I thought I'd let you know about it. As one of the readers who helped him edit I can tell you they're worth checking out! You'll find the info below.

-Hal

Title: "Remembering the Future"
Author: Mark Shegelski
Publisher: Scroll Press
Retail Price (Canadian): $19.95

You can see the cover of the book and the description that is on the back of the book
by going to amazon.ca or amazon.com. Note on the back cover the strong endorsement by Robert J. Sawyer (Canada's leading scifi author)

"Fascinating, inventive stories from a stunning new talent. You'll remember these futures."

--Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo award-winning author of Hominids

Here is the link to amazon.ca:

Remembering the Future.

Michael Armstrong May 8, 2009

2009-05-10T09:37:00.004-07:00

Tegan and I went to see Michael Armstrong perform poetry to jazz at Books & Company, May 8, 2009. He's still got the stuff. I treasure the poems on his CD, backed up by the same band, which I've played many times in the car. Tegan remembers King Snake and the one about the monkey the best. The images of the frozen words sticks with me, too. And the father/son remembrance bound up in a game of catch where so few and so ordinary words ultimately mean so much, and yet are never quite enough. I wish the poems on his CD a long life and wish it was available somewhere commercially. I don't think it is. Gathered around Michael in the image above are some of the thirty or forty folks who turned out to cram Cafe Voltaire on a Friday night. After Michael's set there was a radio play I missed out on due to other committments.

The Annual Magazine Caravan April 19 2009

2009-04-29T07:45:00.004-07:00

Text adapted from The Pulse

April 19, 2009. A literary cabaret featuring Rob Budde, Dee Horne, Sarah de Leeuw, Betsy Trumpener and Gillian Wigmore who read from their recent works published by BC book and magazine publishers.
Venue: Books & Company

See more pictures on facebook.

The Ambassador's Staff by Sherry D. Ramsey

2009-04-29T07:21:00.002-07:00

"Met" Sherry D. Ramsey this morning by reading her story, The Ambassador's Staff on the e-journal Thoughtcrime Experiments. It's a future-noir. Well put together, goes down smooth, and captures my feelings about too little sleep and too much coffee, to boot. Allegorically speaking." Below is the bio on Sherry D. Ramsey from the site. Sherry is also an SF Canada member, which is how I came across her story.

Sherry D. Ramsey (sherrydramsey.com) never expected to become an Internet geek. However, after publishing a web magazine for ten years, creating websites, copyediting for the Internet Review of Science Fiction, networking with writer’s groups online, and becoming part of a writing community in Second Life, she fears it’s an inevitable conclusion. Her stories have appeared in On Spec, Oceans of the Mind, Neo-opsis, Speculative Realms, Undercurrents, and elsewhere. Sherry is a member of the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia and SF Canada, and a founding editor of Third Person Press.

Random Ethical Resonances

2009-04-26T10:19:00.004-07:00

Twice in the last week I have happened across a statement that resonates with me as strongly as if I had written it myself - proof there is comfort and stimulus in exploring the world of other people's thinking more, which is the goal of this blog. Here are the two examples.

In Charles de Lint's 2003 "Addendum to Afterword" to his 1985 novel Mulengro, addressing the question of political correctness in writing from the point of view of races, genders and situations not our own (after respectfully noting some caveats):

Let the criteria be good writing--books that inform and enlighten us while they tell a story--not the source of the writing. And if that makes me sound naive, so be it. But I'll continue to read as widely as I can, and I'll be enriched by it. And I'll continue to use as large a character palette in my writing as the story requires, because I can't do otherwise and still maintain my integrity to my work.

Author Allan Weiss, on his website, in the section on philosophy. I expressed a kindred sentiment, I think, in my online story "Going Back Out", which is an allegory tale in which Ann berates a young Reetion pilot for giving up her sense of mission because Sevolites can fly harder than she can (a quantitative measure), without considering the cause for which they fly (a qualitative, ethical consideration). The point being that sometimes "what" you are doing has to matter more than the "how much" aspect of your success at it.

I see much moral complacency around me, and it distresses me. Writers are more interested in their careers--in making sales--than taking a potentially costly moral stand. (Weiss)

References

de Lint, C. Mulengro, (2003), New York: Tom Doherty Associates.

Weiss, A. "Philosophy and Ethics" retrieved 25 April 2009 from http://www.allanweiss.com/

Small differences call for loud distinctions

2009-04-26T09:09:00.001-07:00

In chapter 5 of Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee (p. 99-109), the author describes the way we humans tend to pick mates who are similar to ourselves, based on a search image established during our formative years. Diamond is, as always, convincing. What, then, about the maxim "opposites attract"? After a little thought, it struck me that this is another example of a syndrome I think of as "the finer the hairs to be split, the sharper the knife". In other words, where a transgression is slight or a difference is minor, the more aggressive people are in asserting it. A good example are the psychological differences between men and women. Compared to man and tom cat, or man and nematode, the psychological and emotional differences between man and woman are pretty trivial. But it is very important to humans to delineate and defend this difference, so it is played up and exaggerated. I suspect the same could be found to be true of efforts to make black and whites seem radically different in apartheid South Africa, or patricians and plebs in classical Greek society.

References

Diamond, J. (1992). The Third Chimpanzee. (1st ed.) New York: HarperCollins.
Labels: depression, evolution, Jared Diamond, psychology

2009-04-21T12:38:00.002-07:00

Many thanks to Cathy Palmer-Lister (http://www.conceptsff.ca and http://www.monsffa.com/) for alerting me to the Montreal Gazette story Everything you need to know for a dinner conversation about ... Reading.

The story includes the following lovely paragraph:

Isn't reading a little passé? Well, it's true that nearly one-third of Canadian adults didn't read a single book for pleasure all year, according to an Ipsos Reid survey looking back at 2007. But the 69 per cent of Canadians who did read were voracious, digging into an average of 20 books over the year.

And went on to point out the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer was made a best seller by young people. I can attest to the truth of this! My 16-year-old daughter, Angela Lott, is reading it over and over. And, I'm thrilled and proud to say, she's looking forward to reading my next novel, Part 5: Far Arena of the Okal Rel Saga, when it comes out in May.

Why marry a guy who gets down?

2009-04-18T08:58:00.001-07:00

Reading (Diamond, 1992) p. 128 about the evolutionary biology rational for aging in humans and wondered about depression in men. Jared describes "optimization" as the explanation for why an obviously good trait, like longevity, wouldn't get as pronounced as physically possible. The answer is that whole organisms live or die, not just single traits, and the entire organism is a cooperating whole of multiple strategies each with cost-benefit aspects. Why, then, would depression exist at all? I believe dysfunctions like depression are runaway versions of functional features of an organism's makeup. Depression mitigates ego. It might, therefore, make a beta male more attractive to an alpha female by dampening his will to dominate her, making it possible for them to be cooperating mates instead of knocking the female out of the breeding game due to her unusually potent resentment of being dominated. A woman who fought back with enough determination to kill or cripple either herself or the offending male, or who was sufficiently repelled by the dominating behavior of males to run away and live in isolation from them, would eliminate herself from the gene pool. But a strong, male-resistant woman succeptible to a romantic approach by a less macho man would make a resourceful mother, especially with the support of an emotionally dependent mate. Evolutionary biology authors often talk about the role of year-round sex in keeping fathers at home to help raise their own children. Depressive tendancies might just as convincingly create an emotional dependence of the moody male on the more resilient female with a strong sense of family, assisting to keep him around. The benefits for her, and their offspring, would naturally depend on the extremity of the respective traits in play. But optimization for the organism may well have included a checkmark on the plus side for mild depression in the male, working in partnership with an emotionally robust female, especially since getting the blues does not preclude other desirable traits such as intelligence.

References

Diamond, J. (1992). The Third Chimpanzee. (1st ed.) New York: HarperCollins.

Sandra Kasturi

2009-04-01T07:28:00.002-07:00

A line or two from Sandra's poem Broken Houses by Daylight, recently shared over her sonnetaweek mailing list to which I belong ...


What to do when the house has not quite caved in to the demands of its
roof, the quarrels of its blown windows, the fallen bricks saved
against the leaning wall ...

A Spell for Cameleon by Piers Anthony

2009-03-22T10:47:00.002-07:00

Enjoyed the surprisingly clever and heart-warming quirk of discovering how the secret magic of the protagonist, Bink, motivates moral behavior on the part of the Evil Magician Trent. Bink is a magical 'every man'! Even the powerful must work for his benefit because it is ultimately in their self-interest. Great metaphor! Jolly good story. (By a belated convert to Xanth.) I got my copy of A Spell for Cameleon in a box of books purchased at a Calgary SciFi con last summer. I've been working my way through them. Lots of duds. But enough discoveries to make the project worthwhile! A good book is never old.

The Wind and the Sky by Suzanne Church

2008-07-07T13:40:00.002-07:00

I bought a copy of The Best of Neo-Opsis at its launch at VCON in 2006, but as life will have it, I just read Suzanne Church's lovely interpretation of the Prometheus legend this morning. "The Wind and the Sky" does a touching job of critiquing our contemporary obsession with science in the context of myth-making and with matter-of-fact pathos that is never maudlin. Polnine belongs to a race of post-disaster androids that are the heirs of mankind with respect to science and technology but have lost interest in their primitive progenitors and pursue knowledge as an end in itself. Curiosity leads Polnine to visit a degenerate tribe of humans where he meets a woman named Ve'keso who becomes the focus of his research into understanding the meaning of life. Church handles the ensuing love story with an intelligence rarely seen in its gendre, never flipping a switch to miraculously make Polnine human. She executes the whole package with charm and humour. Polnine's connection to Ve'keso is shallow and deep at the same time, and his nature always alien. Yet by his actions he is heir to the mightiest of legends uniting men and gods. A gem.

Old Men, Smoking

2007-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

Came across the poem "Old Men, Smoking" while googling for Sandra Kasturi and had to say something about it. I found it on the ARC Poetry website in a 2005 review by John Barton . The poem describes the interior world view of the men through exterior details - tells a story in images. I love the way Kasturi makes lovely language reveal hard realities and then lets it stand, naked, in this poem: admiring the "guileless crocodiles" who steady the "tilting world" even while exposing their ugliness, like an object and a disease "humming in the voices of God". Just wow.

Chasing the Bard by Philippa Ballantine

2007-12-13T08:41:00.002-08:00

I picked this book up at a con in the spirit of sampling works on my publisher's table. (Dragonmoon Press is now part of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. I'm published by Edge.) I've read a couple other fantasies from Moon Dragon Press which were competent and interesting enough to finish, but this is the first of three I have felt the urge to blog about. So - why did I like Chasing the Bard? For characters like Puck and Anne and Oberon, I think, although Sive and Will himself are the main protagonists. I suspect Sive is Ballantine's invention. A quick google for "Sive" turned up references to an Irish play by John B. Keane and a bunch of acronyms from various industries and adding "Oberon" yields hits from the software industry, not mythology. Sive is Oberon's smarter, tougher sister in the novel and the savior of her kind from the evil machinations of her ex-boyfriend, Mordant. For this she needs to woo Will Shakespeare for magical reasons which play out over his lifetime. I recently did a course on Renaissance literature which featured Shakespeare, so perhaps the interweaving of the bard's story with faery was another reason I enjoyed the book. Readers are idiosyncratic creatures, after all, who respond to what an author offers based on what they have already laid down as a foundation in their own brains. As villains go, Mordant was predictably vile and mindlessly destructive. He is given a little scope by his back story, but not much is made of his betrayal of his former nature. Everyone important seems to grasp, from the start, that he is possessed by the story's god of chaos, the "unmaker". The lively interactions of characters from faery with the world of mortals is the fun part of the story. Ballantine’s portrayal of multiple universes bridged by fey immortals reminded me of Martha Wells’ book, Elements of Fire. I suspect anyone who liked one of these books might find the similarities and differences interesting. Both feature a powerful female misfit from faery-land whose alliance with a mortal is critical to beating the bad guys.

Princes of the Golden Cage by Nathalie Mallet

2007-09-03T07:44:00.001-07:00

Nathalie Mallet sets up the problems faced by her hero, Prince Amir, on the very first page of her lively novel, The Princes of the Golden Cage. From that point on, she artfully entwines a mystery with a journey of self-discovery that includes a motivating love interest on the side. The characters are individuals from the start, and the tale beguiles the reader with a story-telling armoury drawn from the best tradition of secret passages, hidden identities, supernatural thrills and dramatic combat.

At the center of the story is Prince Amir, a decent young man despite his life’s alarming circumstances who longs to survive the struggle among his brothers over who will succeed their father as sultan so he can fulfill his dream of exploring the world beyond. Unfortunately for Amir, he has over two hundred brothers and must live with them inside the confines of a palace governed by formal rules of combat and gangs led by stronger contenders for the throne than himself. His strategy has been to trust no one and disguise his own strengths in the hope of escaping notice but this, too, his risky because his loneliness and isolation can pitch him into periods of hopelessness. At the start of the novel, his only companions are two mentally ill brothers and his precious books.

Amir’s very reputation as a reclusive scholar gets him drawn into investigating the eerie deaths of his brothers when some supernatural evil begins to harvest them once a month when the moon is full. In the process, he makes the acquaintance of an eccentric but friendly brother named Erik who turns out to be much more important than Amir thought. Because of Erik, Amir becomes embroiled in the struggle for the throne, like it or not, and entangled in the schemes of powerful women, including the beautiful and well-educated princess intended for whoever wins the throne. Politics and personal desires create good chemistry for action with high stakes, emotionally.

The setting in which the novel takes place has a charm of its own. The insider view of life as a surplus prince is plumped out with stolen glimpses of the harem and tales of the past that haunt the present. But Amir himself is definitely the best part of the book. Impelled to act by circumstances and leery of his own better impulses, he betrays a good heart through his choices and his thirst for friendship. His moody hours are easy to identify with and his fear of betrayal is completely understandable even though it can seem peevish at times. His flaws make him human and his misconceptions inject humour. Amir is fundamentally an optimist, game to carry on with whatever comes his way and bold enough to brazen his way through the rough spots. I look forward to seeing him in print again.

The Princes of the Golden Cage is a rewarding read for anyone with a taste for historically based fantasy, a supernatural mystery or just a fondness for charmingly flawed, heroic characters struggling to find their way in life. It is suitable for readers of any age sophisticated enough to understand the historical setting and young enough at heart to enjoy evil genies and a bit of sword play.

According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge

2007-08-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

I picked up According to Queeney for $5.00 as a remaindered book for the prospect of an historically plausible glimpse of Dr. Johnson, an eccentric whose dictionary made him an icon of his era and beyond. I bogged down a bit in the middle and wasn't sure I would review it here as a book that touched me in a special way, but I found myself thinking about the characters and wondering how I would feel about the opening that frames the story after I had finished the book and re-read the beginning which is actually the end. It has the power to make the reader share the lives of the historical characters within its covers in an intimate way that left me with two lasting impressions of note: how human legends really are, and how sad it is that genius of Johnson's kind would be lost in the modern world. Telling the story "according to Queeny" placed the point of view solidly on the sidelines, in the hands of someone unimportant to historians but as much a person with her own goals as anyone who makes it into Who's Who, for whom the great man was both a very real person who was a long-term friend of the family, as worthy of both criticism and compassion as her mother or other family friends, and a bit of a bother to a young girl with little person interest in him. Perhaps I, like Dr. Johnson, was suffering a bit of a depression when I put the book aside, temporarily. I am glad I completed the journey.

The Steam Magnate by Dana Copithorne

2007-07-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

The city of broken glass is the central character of Dana Copithorne’s novel The Steam Magnate. Protagonists Kyra and Eson, and later Jado the inventor, play out their parts in the arms of a dreamlike world of lost knowledge and serene days filled with filtered light and settings presented one by one like paintings in a gallery. The reader determined to have a love story or a tale of intrigue surrounding power will be tantalized but might be ultimately disappointed by the way conflicts wash away before the greater significance of mood and setting, but the eerie feeling of having visited a unique place with deep secrets will stay with the reader when the book is finished.

The Steam Magnate’s strengths lie in the pictures it creates in the reader’s head filled with brooding undertows and the haunting impression of lives trapped in amber. The featured line drawings enhance the effect. I sometimes paused to study an illustration until I felt satisfied and then reread the scene it described before continuing with the next chapter. It would be a mistake to read The Steam Magnate with too much urgency.

Drama, in the book, is vested in marvellous details rather than events in the lives of the characters. It is ultimately not very important, for example, why Kyra comes to the Glass City to meet Eson or that he originally mistook her for another woman named Sarah. It is not clear whether Eson’s entrepreneurial endeavours, with Jado, is ultimately successful or desirable. And although the characters intertwine, each is profoundly alone to the very end where Eson and Kyra are parted. Important questions are resolved in introspective solitude. I was fond of the use of letters as bridging instruments in this internal dialogue, sometimes answering questions left unanswered from the earlier part of the novel. The letters span time and place like artefacts of communication that create a false sense of certainty about slippery relationships.

Science is a shadowy spectre in the world of The Steam Magnate. Its power is nodded at occasionally in items like the fantastical vision bird explained as a product of lost craft from an earlier era, but the feel of Copithorne’s realm is magical although the magic might be understood as a metaphorical cipher for real phenomenon. Eson’s power over his debtors, for example, is bound up in potent documents it is easy to interpret as legal ones that drain their victims of vitality. His attempts to profit from nature, first through steam power and later through attempts to harness the might of the ocean in the city of Rising Waters, parallels the exploitation of natural resources to create wealth in the mundane world. But whatever the deeper significance of the magical functions and objects in The Steam Magnate, they wind through the book’s gently flowing plot like bright ribbons.

In one sense, The Steam Magnate is a book about how we succeed and fail to connect with each other as spiritual beings with hopes, secrets and aspirations, but its unique charm is in the interplay between these and the settings in which they take place. Place and personality interact in the search for identity. Jado the inventor sums it up well in the following passage:

The places Jado knew had been the settings of stories he had heard all his life. When he was a child, the stories were of heroes and thieves, ghosts and angels. As he got older he was told other stories that changed his view of each spatial reference point. Sunlight Appears Only at Dusk was at first a ghost tale, a place where one must be fearful for his soul when walking past. Later, Jado learned it was also a place where some of his past relatives had been arrested and taken away on false grounds a hundred years earlier. So the place took on a different meaning, and his sense of identity sharpened.

Anyone nimble-minded enough to appreciate the bleed of spirit between character and setting, history and present, will find The Steam Magnate an interesting meditation.

Element of Fire by Martha Wells

2007-01-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

This is the first book I have stayed up all night to finish in a long time. It happened over the Xmas holidays which made the extravagance possible, but I would have been captivated by the characters and situations of Wells' novel even in the middle of the busiest of weeks. Wells achieves a fantasy setting with enough historical realism to retain the interest of the older, more cynical reader who would like to experience the joy of once more sympathizing whole-heartedly with worthwhile characters. I worried she was going to crush my revived joy in the noble and heroic just enough to be unable to sleep without finding out what happens to the gallant, jaded Thomas and the brash young mortal-fairy hybrid Kade Carrion who begins the tale as a problem for Thomas, the captain of the Queen's guard, but becomes the answer to more than he'd bargained for. Thomas' relationship with the dowager queen and the character of Ravenna herself weave a rewarding counterpoint to the growing entanglement of Thomas and Kade, keeping the story grounded in politics that reminded me of bits and pieces of European history surrounding royal families, their favorites, scheming courtiers, and interminable struggles for dominance with other powers. Students of literature and folklore will likewise enjoy Wells' portrayal of fairy, which cleverly incorporates both the 'ugly and evil' view of fairy-kind based on medieval legend and the 'beautiful but inhumanly cold' alternative, with Kade knocking around all realms as a misfit in every one.

I highly recommend the tale to intelligent readers, young and old, who like to cheer for deserving, if imperfect, good guys and experience the senory pleasures of a romp through an enchanted land.

Element of Fire by Martha Wells was originally released by Tor in 1993. I reviewed the 2006 edition re-released by the author after a tidy-up edit in order to keep the book accessible in print. Cover design for the 2006 edition is by M. Wilson with typesetting by Katya Loney.

PS for a map of the palace to let you locate characters in scenes as they unfold, see Palace of Vienne in the Ile-Rien on Wells' website.

Rarity From a Hollow by Robert Eggleton

2006-11-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

"Knowing everything doesn't mean that a person has a true answer to an actual question."

Lacy Dawn (character)

Intrigued by what I've glimpsed of Rarity From a Hollow by Robert Eggleton and especially liked the quote, above, from the free online sample of the book. Owe a few reviews to others that will keep me busy until Xmas, so I'm blogging an expression of interest for the time being.

Homepage of Theresa Crater

2006-11-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

Just started reading Under the Stone Paw by Theresa Crater, which was sent to me for review, and surfed to her homepage. Very classy. Loved the picture and the clean, simple functionality of the choices. (Oh, how badly doth the Okal Rel Universe website, of mine, need to be re-vamped to move the background material, er, well, into the background. Maybe next year.)

Attributes of a Goddess

2006-10-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've never been one for inspirational pop psychology on how to fix your life or get in touch with your inner whatever-it-might-be, but I recommend Denise Torgerson's Attributes of a Goddess with pleasure. It is fun to read and well crafted. The sense of a personality behind her descriptions of how to get in tune with your inner goddess is a playful and unpretentious one, making it easy to take what works for you and stand clear from those aspects of Torgerson's philosophy that do not fit with your own. In a world full of desperate competition for diminishing resources, Attributes of a Goddess breaths with the graceful wisdom of being satisfied with less than everything, so long as the journey taken is a true one. Organized into fifty-two short passages, for consumption at a rate of one a week, the book can easily be sorted or shuffled to suit a reader's fancy as required. I take a few pages with me on trips to remind me to open my eyes and my heart and laugh at myself with affectionate humor from time to time, because goddesses need a good sense of humor as well as the strength to walk among "the small ones" without losing their own, vital spark. Attributes of a Goddess is an e-book. It may be purchased online at http://www.attributesofagoddess.com/.

Kynship by Daniel Heath Justice

2006-09-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

Daniel Heath Justice's Kynship blends mythic traditions of North American natives and medieval Europeans in a magical re-telling of the archetypal conflict between those who belong to the land and the avaricious rapine of invaders. The story plays out against a cultural mosaic complex enough to cover the problems of half-breeds and misfits as well as each culture's exemplars. Told from multiple points of view, the first book of this three part series succeeds in making readers care about the characters, particularly the cheerful and self-assured "pixie" (Tetawi), Tobhi, who becomes an emotional focus for many of the large cast of colourful characters. I was fortunate to have this book brought to my attention by Renee K. Abram, the Publishing Coordinator its publisher, Kegedonce Press, and to get a sneak peek at book two in the series, as well. I recommend it to readers who like their good and evil well defined but human enough to entertain, and all who have longed to cheer for nature and the bonds of community in the struggle against an alienating and avaricious lust for progress that is really all about amassing power. The sensory stalks of the 3-gendered Kyn, interspersed histories of the gods, many races of unhumans, charming illustrations of the characters throughout the book, unexpected connections between characters, handy glossary and many other details and touches contribute to the story's richness and originality.

Peony by Pearl S. Buck

2006-08-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

I and my family recently stayed with my publisher, Brian Hades, who invited us to help ourselves to the paperbacks lining the walls of his basement, as he is planning to clear them out soon to make way for rennovations. My daughter, Jennifer, took home a big load. I confined myself to about ten. Well, maybe twenty. The first one I read was old and dry that pages fell out as soon as they were turned, so I wandered around Heritage Park, in Calgary, periodically discarding pages of an Agatha Christie novel in waste bins. The second one I read is the jewel that inspired this blog entry: Peony by Pearl S. Buck, written in 1948 and still delightful.

The Air Loom Gang by Mike Jay

2006-06-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

The Air Loom Gang is a strange and compelling tale, blending the history of madness in England with the social upheaval leading up to the French Revolution. Author Mike Jay also traces threads from the "Air Loom" of his subject, James Tilly Matthews, forward and backward in time, concluding with a look at its descendants as spun from the imaginations of more recent madmen. But the story's real power lies in the personality of Matthews, himself, a madman who was half right; a husband who was much loved, and a patient with more popular appeal than the doctor who used him to achieve fame. The book is a unique piece of social history: part biography of a remarkable human being and part detective story.

Prisoners Under Glass

2006-03-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

Rachel's adventures evading the wicked Lilah and her people-shrinking mother, engaged me and my eleven year old daughter, Tegan, for many pleasant nights of bedtime reading. We had a bit of a hard time believing in the scale of things (literally), in a climactic scene but that, itself, was cause for discussion, and the emotions all worked even if the physical proportions were dubious. This is a book you can laugh out loud with as you read, and shed a tear over as well for the sake of the heroine's sorrows. I stress the shared enjoyment factor because R. Patrick's book has plenty of punch and quick developments that are ideal for a chapter-a-night affair. I recommend it to all mothers and other adults looking for a good read to share with the reluctant (or voracious) reader in their lives, and for all those who are young at heart whatever the number of candles on their cake, next birthday. My daughter and I particularly enjoyed the astonishing transformations, the sparkling imagery and the humorous dialogue. Tegan's favourites were the colourful supporting cast of characters, who each had their own unique voice, quirks and personal growth challenge to overcome. We also have a new family saying, delivered in an over-the-top Italian accent: "The size of a chilli pepper!"

Copenhagen at the Prince George Playhouse

2006-03-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to thank Sue Murguly properly for her production of Michael Frayn's brilliant play, Copenhagen, at the Prince George Playhouse March 9 to March 28, 2006. I will have to settle for telling her and and her accomplished cast that I have never seen a local production of a more difficult and important play executed as professionally as her Copenhagen. The last one I saw in Prince George that made a comparable impact on me was Michael Armstrong's original, two-person production of his play In Their Nightgowns, Dancing, and for some of the same reasons. Both plays use language and a complex interplay of time and perspective to get at concerns as profound as the atrocities of war, and as personal as a friendship. In talking with Sue Murguly, during the run, I discovered that she offered Copenhagen in the full knowledge that it would not be a box office hit. No matter how well staged, the play is demanding and its subject matter threatening. Not once, but through a multiplicity of possible realities, we see how the decisions of a few individuals could make the world end, and for reasons even they can never clarify entirely although they are the most intelligent -- if not the wisest -- of men. We seem to be in the mood for ligher fare. Ironically, the more densely packed the action and violence in our entertainment, the less able we seem to take it seriously as a threat to civilization as we know it, and perhaps even to life on Earth. It is almost as if the game-player who blows up worlds a dozen times a game is innoculating himself against the terror of the real thing by making it surreal. If so, we need more producer-directors like Sue Murguly to bring us down to Earth. If only we could get more people into theatres to see plays like hers.

Wasps at the Speed of Sound

2006-02-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

Derryl Murphy's first collection of short stories has a great name: Wasps at the Speed of Sound. The stories measure up to the bizarre image. Things are just wrong in these stories, but we come upon them in media res, with the characters taking them in stride. Dodging wasps that can drill through the front porch is the sort of thing that Murphy's characters expect to get through on a bad day. Although the situations in most of the stories are bleak, the characters face them with a jaunty sort of fatalism that keeps them in action to the final sentence, occasionally terminating in a happy ending for the protagonist, at least, if not our planet. Earth gets done in often enough, in the book, to satisfy a whole choir of doomsayers, but the reader is insulated from the impact by the brash indifference of the often-jaded characters, making it bearable. Sharp bits still sting, now and then; where they poke through the superficial callousness: like the well-televised demise of the last lemur, interesting enough to draw an alien to observe it, but still not enough to make us wise up and stop trashing our irreplaceable inheritance. Murphy's stories are a strange collection of barbed allsorts, that won't please all palettes, but come in an interesting selection of flavors with tart twists to please jaded taste buds.

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

2005-11-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I was going to like Paladin of Souls at first. I remember having the same reaction to The Curse of Chalion, because it wasn't a Vorkosigan tale, but found I enjoyed it greatly by the time all the characters and conflicts were established. In the case of Paladin of Souls, I found the first few chapters a bit irritating for the sake of the extended traveling-the-countryside business so typical of fantasy novels, and the main character's "I'm resentful about everything" attitude. Not that Ista didn't have cause for her resentment, but her life seemed to be one long rejection of everything and everyone about her, which made it a bit hard to warm up to her until she conceived a liking for the lively Liss, the female courier. But I grump only because I am so very glad I didn't give up prematurely. I picked the book up again, after a six month hiatus, and read the last 3/4's in every spare minute available to me. It has been a long time since I lost myself so pleasurably in a fantasy! Thank you, Lois McMaster Bujold, for a great read, great characters, a moving story and further development of the ingenious system of magic wrapped up in the nefarious ways of the five gods of Chalion. The book deserves its hugo and I hope Bujold has many more in her!

Love's Body, Dancing in Time by L. Timmel Duchamp

2005-10-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

Duchamp's intelligent tales of otherworldly experience are literary science fiction that is hard-hitting with a velvet glove. She paints disturbing images in lovely words. Sexual distress underlies most of the stories, but is handled uniquely in each case, revealing just how complex a thing human sexuality really is.

The first story, "Dance at the Edge", features an obsession with a loved one, but its special significance lies more in the idea of "the edge", itself, as a concrete analogy for that ineffable something that spell binds those few blessed (or cursed) to perceive it when others do not. "The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi" and "The Heloise Archive" are empowering stories of women overcoming their exploitation by lovers through their own, intrinsic superiority, expressed in deep and subtle ways. "The Gift" is a beautifully ambiguous look at suppressed sexuality, couched in a cleverly drawn portrayal of a gender role reversal in which the worldly interloper who perturbs a flawed paradise is female, and the innocent she seeks to liberate is male.

A minor quibble concerns the length, or perhaps the amount of repetition, in "The Heloise Archive", however authentic the voice for the historical setting and the vehicle of telling the story through letters. I rather enjoyed the footnotes, however, and the arc of the whole tale.

Over all, I agree with Samuel R. Delany's endorsement of Duchamp's work: her stories "elicit the thrill of ideas struggling to manifest as pure drama". I recommend them to any reader with an interest in sexual excesses and limitations, who values a painful and humanizing treatment of subjects that might otherwise be merely titillating.

Commander's Log, Craig Bowlsby

2005-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Delighted to see Commander's Log continue with a new episode in 2005!

In an era when special effects dominate too many weak scripts, in blockbuster productions, Bowlsby proves that good writing and good acting lie at the heart of comedy.

The early episodes remain my favorites, for sheer audacity and originality, although Bowlsby ramps up the action in episode three with typical zany charm, while managing to remain loyal to the laundry squad roots of his heros as they fight a bitter electrion campaign against the arch villain Bastaard. The best moment in the new format episode, for me, is the one where both candidates woe a voter with promises, our hero running on the clean socks campaign. The best episode, all around, has to be the one that features Blather alone in the command center, played against an ingenious counterpoint of screen alerts.

(I look forward to the next complication. Perhaps our heros will become covetous of status, take a teach-yourself course on being real officers, and struggle to keep their lowly roots and shallow qualifications from showing in their discourse on engineers at fashionable crew events.)

Reviewing Site Finds

2005-08-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

Discovered two interesting review sites this week that restore dignity to the deserving among the ranks of unpublished or POD published writers, while exercising standards and discrimination. If the future of publishing is for weeding to take place via post-publication selection, rather than via pre-publishing screening, then people like POD-girl and Torgo of Honest Critiques may be the avant-garde of a new phenomenon. (If I was a betting animal, my money would go on "some of each" for the future of publishing. That is, traditional publishing will remain a major player but there will be increasing scope for alternative routes to respectability.)

POD-dy Mouth POD-girl is a published author who started reading POD books in quest of the ultimate bad novel...and was surprised to discover some good ones. Her blog is devoted to giving those unexpected jewels more exposure.

Honest Critiques Discovered by my friend Virginia O'Dine, who is a member of the NorSpec Writers Group in which I take part, this site reviews whatever authors wish to send in, for good or ill.

Sandinista by Marie Jakober

2005-08-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

It is a testament to the power of Marie Jakober's Sandinista, that I remember it so well, years after reading it for the first time. It made me miss a bus. I was visiting Alison Sinclair, in Calgary, at the time. Never good at navigating, my wanderings landed me in a fast food restaurant, about noon, where I settled down to read after reassuring myself that I knew which bus to catch, when, in order to get back to Alison's apartment that night. But I became so engrossed in Sandinista that I failed to look up until I finished the last page, hours later. I had not even noticed the young man sweeping up around me with a hopeful air of expectation that I might leave.

The magic of Sandinista lives in the weave of the very human lives that Jakober uses to tell the story of a painful time in history, with her usual gift for embedding people in the circumstances and setting of her novels.

The Concubine's Children by Denise Chong

2005-07-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Denise Chong achieves magic with her very human portrayal of her two, extraordinary grandparents, and the generational fall out of their roots in the "old world". It is seldom any author can reveal both the courage and failings of subjects with such generous objectivity. The fact that the story she tells of May-ying and Chan Sam was one that defined the warp and weave of her mother's life, penetrating into her own, makes it even more impressive. Adding the parallel life of the family in China creates an eerie, almost supernatural overlay that proves to be surprisingly real when the author and her mother brave the journey to discover the side of the family to whom they are the legends.

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

2005-05-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

The 'salt roads' of this novel's title are the blood, sweat and tears of Ezili's people as they struggle against prejudice and slavery to achieve fulfillment in their lives. Three women are featured, separated by centuries and geography, but united by the touch of a troubled goddess. Ezili is both powerful and helpless. She is a force without a will, and then a will without the freedom to act. Over the course of the novel, the heroines age as the goddess grows up.

A key moment, for Ezili, is the scene in which she clashes, through the agency of of one of the women, with a rival god bent on reckless violence. But for the most part, Ezili knows no more about who and what she is than the reader does, and the richness of the novel is derived from the life experience of its protagonists. Whether or not the thematic aspects achieve a satisfactory chord for the reader, the crisp characterizations and historical details surly will.

The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay

2005-05-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

I found The Last Light of the Sun a somewhat grimmer story than most of Kay's wonderfully emotive sagas, but still completely enjoyable although I don't think I would rate it as my favorite of his books. Kay's quasi-historical settings were delicious, as usual, and the fairy world elements of the story were cool, other-worldly and mysterious. The book is a "slice of life saga", skillfully tackled from multiple viewpoints. As always with Kay's books, I was sorry when I found I was done.

The Ghosts Behind Him

2005-04-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

Bruce wanted his book of poems to be called The Ghosts Behind Things. His mother, author Doris Ray, does not say so explicitly, but I am sure that is why she named the book she wrote about their family's struggle with his schizophrenia, The Ghosts Behind Him.

The story she tells is a touching, often gripping, chronicle of her own attempts to come to terms with her son's illness, in the midst of a life that embraces not only Bruce but a large and complex extended family with a committment to literary pursuits that permeats their everyday lives, and inspires an open-minded quest for meaning wherever it is offered.

Anyone suffering through similiar turmoil will find an unadorned courage in this book, as well as friends with human failings, who survive tragedy and negotiate, repeatedly, with new hope. Anyone who can't imagine what it would be like to have a loved one who suffers from a disabling and personality-altering mental illness, can find out, in Ray's book.

As a last thought, I would like to commend Bruce Ray, himself, for believing in literature enough to support his mother's work with his cooperation.

Interview with Nalo Hopkinson

2005-03-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

Nalo Hopkinson, Interviewed by Lynda: Williams Dec 7, 2004

[Full Transcript]

Summary

Nalo Hopkinson read at Mosquito Books, in Prince George, B.C., on Dec 7, 2004, at the invitation of Dr. Robert Budde of the UNBC English program. She was interviewed about her writing earlier that day by fellow author Lynda Williams, who runs the web development lab at the Centre for Teaching and Learning at UNBC. Pictures were taken at Nalo's reading, on the evening of Dec 7.

Nalo read from her Christmas story, "A Young Candy Daughter", donated as a benefit for the Caribbean hurricane relief fund, as well as her critically acclaimed novel, The Salt Roads and other works.

Transcription by Amanda DaSilva.

Survival by Julie E. Czerneda

2005-03-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

Julie Czerneda's Survival combines a fantasy-rich sense of wonder with good background science. I also enjoyed the west coast B.C. setting and the wacky world of research focused graduate students and their supervisors. One of the many details that I liked about the "near future" setting, was the way that strict conversationist rules are so much a given, for the era, that one can actually dislike the stuffy types in charge of seeing they get upheld. Her heroine, Mac, is a refreshingly serious-minded young woman who derives a lot of satisfaction from her work and really never wanted to know very much about aliens. Aliens, unfortunately for Mac, come looking for her. As does a dashing government agent who is not thrilled about the assignment until it starts looking like pay dirt. The characters and friendships of the book make it a warm place from which to explore a very alien biology with world-destroying quirks up its sleeve.

Survival is book one of the Species Imperative series. The next book, Migration, is due out this summer.

The Dying Poem by Robert Budde

2005-03-18T23:40:00.000-08:00

"The question becomes, am I part of the script? Am I in it?"

the dying poem is prose poetry, like Robert Budde's earlier novel Misshapen. It is less about events in the world, than the interplay of those events and the meanings they dress themselves in, as they are absorbed by people trapped in the involuntary art of living. Or in the case of the dying poem, seduced by the finality of death.

I recommend reading this book slowly, in sips. It makes sense as overlays of lives and images. Art and artists. It is about death, and the meaning death can give to a life that had worn itself thread bare with the hunt for meaning, with only indifferent success. But it is not a celebration of nihilistic ennui. It is about three artists, Henry, Jay and Dee, whose lives are drawn together over the enigma of Henry's suicide, and ultimately resolved through art itself. They cannot touch each other except through their art, as if on another plane, where only the abstract is real.

The poetry of the book, cast as prose, is gentle and lush despite the harsh subject, sparingly told.

A Rum Affair

2005-01-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

What I loved about A Rum Affair was the integrity of Raven, the amateur botanist, who turned sleuth to prove the botanical fraud. One might have a giggle, in this cynical world of ours, about such a fuss being made over whether a particular plant grew in a particular spot, but it does matter, damn it! It mattered to Raven, who was by far the better botanist than the glory seeking professor who fudged results to pump up his reputation.

This book is a delightful tale of duplicity and defense of truth, written small. If more of us had Raven's stubborn conviction with regard to whatever it is that we value most in life, the world might become a more honorable place.

For the student of intrigue, it has all the quirks and dodges of perverse human nature to exhibit, from cover ups to consipiracies of silence, an island named Rum, a quaint and curious insider's culture and sealed papers awaiting discovery.

A treat both for students of botany and those intrigued by human nature.

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

2005-01-02T16:57:00.000-08:00

Wright was preaching to the converted, in my case, when he makes the case for getting a grip and living within our means before we exhaust the carrying capacity of mother Earth. I enjoyed reading his book, A Short History of Progress, all the same, despite the scary moments when you want to tear your hair and yell, "No, no, I don't want to be living in the last century of progress!" and then despair because it looks like the only way to prevent it is to get all the greedy guys in control of the goodies to stop panicing about hoarding up even more of their unfair share of the spoils and start thinking about the future, instead.

But I've been depressed about the fact many of the most powerful people on the Earth are certifiable maniacs ever since it was brought to my attention, as a young adult, that world leaders were seriously considering destroying all life on Earth if necessary, just to decide who was right about how life ought to be lived on Earth. Go figure. No child of the cold war can be shocked by the notion that the rich and powerful might have the emotional maturity of juvenile delinquents armed with machine guns in a crowded school yard.

If there was a sour note, for me, in the pleasure of finding a book that gets a vital message out there as effectively as A Short History of Progress, it was hearing through the grapevine that the author, Ronald Wright, is disparaging about Jared Diamond's masterpiece, Guns, Germs, and Steel. I don't find the two of them at all incompatible. Wright stresses the boom and bust inevitabilities of those who consume without reference to sustainability. Diamond answers the question of why some areas of the Earth did better than others in the race for dominance, presuming all human beings had an equal innate potential to win the development sweep stakes.

Perhaps the friction, if there is any (a quick website failed to find anything I could use to deny or confirm the rumor), stems from the familiar if often unfortunate rivalry arising from different disciplinary perspectives. Jared Diamond is a scientist. Wright comes to his conclusions from the humanities and social sciences end of things.

Personally I feel that there is plenty in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" to support and reinforce the idea that it is high time for man to know himself, as Wright concludes in A Short History, as "an Ice Age hunter only half-evolved towards intelligent; clever but seldom wise."

The Mummy Congress

2004-12-15T22:15:00.000-08:00

You have to read a book subtitled "Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead". At least I did--sometime over a year ago, now. My copy has since been loaned to dear friends Richard Rogala and Edel Toner-Rogala, and is about to become the next offering from me to my brother-in-law, Peder, in our unofficial book club otherwise known as exchanging Xmas gifts. It isn't a book I want to part with, however, without first registering my approval. Without getting back "into it" I can best convey the memory--despite the intervening months--as follows: imagine what mummy enthusiasts argue about; imagine them being quirky, individual and passionate; and imagine the stories that mummies have to tell. The Mummy Congress interweaves three kinds of stories. Those of the mummies, those of the scientists who study them, and that of the author as she is drawn into the extraordinary relationship between those two groups, almost--at first--against her better judgement. At least that is how I remember it, at the distance of over a year since I turned the last page.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

2004-12-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

Love, Plague and Righteous Error

Stayed up until 3 a.m. to finish Year of Wonders, and want to say thanks to Geraldine Brooks for a book I enjoyed thoroughly. Her wonderful novel, based on the true story of the village of Eyam in Derbyshire, during a plague outbreak in 1666, kept me company for a week at a time when I really needed something engaging to end the day with. I am always grateful to books that cost me sleep, even if I can't afford the time (is everyone's life run by a palm pilot going beep these days!) to sink into as many as I would like, these days.

See also:
Year of Wonder Review on the Book Bags site, and at at bookcrossings.

Two Biographies

2004-11-20T09:06:00.000-08:00

Started a collection of Canadian biographies but must start this entry with the admission that I haven't finished either of the first two. I got three quarters of the way through Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Romance of Canada and half way through The Life of Margaret Laurence. I am not sure why, exactly, because I was enjoying both books. I will probably finish them some day, when the mood strikes me.

Strangely enough, I have never read any Lawrence and never felt particularly motivated to read her ficton. But I was struck by two things, reading the first half of the work at hand, by biographer James King. First, a sense of resonance with her sense of being an observer in her own culture and family. Second, just how different the world of writing was for her, versus the experience of someone getting started today, not even a century later, in more or less the same social circumstances.

Laurier's biography, by Laurier L. LaPierre, is one of those books that make me proud to be Canadian, and demonstrates that our history is fascinating. More lawful, on the whole, and less bloody, than is the norm in Europe or the U.S. But every bit as passionate and full of drama. Not to mention quirky contradictions and great personalities.

Preliminary thoughts, of course, but some days in the 21st century those are all you get the time for expressing.

The Emotionalists by Sky Gilbert

2004-10-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure what to make of The Emotionalists by Sky Gilbert, a fictional portrayal of Ayn Rand and her inner circle published by Blizzard Publishing of Winnipeg, in 2000. I'll start by saying that I picked the book up out of curiosity, at a Coles sidewalk sale, and bought it for the sake of the introduction. Like the author, I read Rand's book, The Fountain Head, in my teens. I would not say, as Gilbert does, that Rand was my mentor, but I experienced an echo of his fascination and disillusionment. I was also interested in the summary of the plot, in which Ayn tells her husband that she wishes to take a lover, and all concerned are expected to take the news rationally.

I read the play quickly, interested to find out how the characters would be portrayed. On the whole, although I found it worth reading, I was a bit disappointed. The author gets across his beef with Rand's corrosive philosophy and his view of her as a shrill, hypocritical egotist, a bit too unrelentingly to allow her character much scope. One wonders why the people in her circle remain enthralled. Perhaps it is a case of taking the mystique of the historical character too much for granted, and therefore failing to set up the false idol in a convincing way, for the reader, before pulling it down.

The character of Marcel Pin had the most facets, which isn't surprising since Sky Gilbert specializes in activist gay work (as judged by five minutes of google research) and Marcel is the "musical" character in the play.

the many lives & secret sorrows of Jospehine B.

2004-09-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

Sandra Gulland's first person narrative of Josephine Bonaparte's early life is a delight. She makes you believe this is history without bogging down in explanations -- even if she has to resort to a footnote now and then! That's talent. And courage. I've never read a better account of how people both weathered and were snuffed out by the Terror: part of the new regime one day and awaiting execution the next. But for all the intensity of the drama, Rose Beauharnais (later Josephine B.) is candid and matter of fact about her sorrows. A very good read. Probably its best success, technically, is how skillfully the author makes it possible for us to like Rose despite her association with people who have a lot of blood on their hands, by means of her limited view and the danger that threatens her. A sense of reality and period unfolds in details like her bad teeth, and the ambiguity of her unhappy marriage that makes the death of her husband both tragedy and relief.

The Last Apocalypse

2004-09-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D. / James Reston, Jr. concludes that there was one, spanning about 40 years prior to the year 1000 A.D. and constituting the triumph of Christian forces over the Vikings of Scandinavia, the Moors of Spain and the Magyars of eastern Europe. The stories Reston tells are emotional and enchanting, animated by wonderful characters such as: queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded and Gerbert the brilliant, pope of the millenium, and his boy emperor, Otto III. Legend and history co-mingle in a grand canvans. I particularly remember the glory that was Cordoba, the struggles of Germanic Roman Emperors with Byzantium to aquire brides born to the purple, and the great clash of Christianized Olaf and the last great pagan fleet of Sigrid and her lover. The prominence of women in the tale surprised me: vampire Queens of Rome, Cordoba slave girls with curious power over their masters, Sigrid, and more than one Theophano but especially the one who reigned for a decade while her son Otto III matured. Reston's book gave the period a solid feel for me. As a personal sidebar, I was amused to recognize some of Guy Gavriel Kay's themes from the "Lions of Al-Rassan" in the story of Al Monsoor. As always, of course, Kay picks his incidents and combines them in new formulas merely inspired by the history they seem to be based on.

Pickwick Papers to Paul's Poems

2004-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

While my life bumps along through a rough patch on a couple of fronts, I've been rediscovering the world of books and the solace of meeting fresh perspectives through them. Took a stack of books out of the library, returned half no more than glanced at, but got through all of Royal Murders (sadly, returned, so I don't have the author's name on hand and renewed The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D. / by James Reston, Jr. and By the Sword: a History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions / by Richard Cohen.

I would also like to recommend, from the PG Public Library, The Tale of One Bad Rat
/ by Bryan Talbot, published by Dark Horse Books. This one is a graphic novel, dealing with a rat-loving girl called Helen, breaking free from a victim's assumption of guilt and shame over childhood sexual abuse by her father, through bonds with a pet rat, new friends and a deep fascination with Beatrix Potter and the Lake District in England. Beautiful creation on many fronts.

The Pickwick Papers by Dickens is a joyful discovery. I am taking in a chapter a night before bed and finding the slow pace and elaborate language wonderfully alien to our hectic existence in the modern world.

And then, like a miracle, just as I find myself surprised that I gave up so much of my inner life to work long hours when it no longer seems clear that it was necessary ... I discover a resonance of doubt about the sanity of 21st century capitalist lifestyles in a friend's poems.

The friend is Paul Strickland, someone who has always cared about writing and reading and struggles, like so many of us, to find a place for both in his life. His poem "Work Liberates" is a ten line question about why we let our personalities become submerged in corporate profit motives. It ends, on a cynical note, with: "To work is to pray." His longer poem, "Lunacy", paints vignettes of moments in history where we took a wrong turn in chosing our icons, marching towards a starker, darker world of greed and aggression. Paul is a closet poet. I would like to see his work appear before the public some day.

Books in the Bag: Conversion Trip

2004-08-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

Finished Paddy Clarke: ha ha ha by Roddy Doyle, a Booker Prize winner for 1993, during trip to Calgary this weekend to attend Conversion; on the home stretch with Neil Miller's Sex-Crime Panic by alyson books and finished Sword of Shannara which I've been meaning to have a look at since I met and chatted with author Terry Brooks at a previous con. Started The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup by Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada, bought Elisabeth Vonarburg's Dreams of the Sea and gulped down big meaty chunks of Samuel Pepys: the Unequaled Self by Claire Tomalin while driving home. Well, David was driving. Curious that I seem to be much better able to read in a moving car now, than I could when I was a child. Both the Pepys biography and Paddy Clarke came to me as gifts from David's half sister Katrina, along with a marvelous biography of the city of London, England, which I have only tasted so far. I am trying to weed books out of the house in preparation for renovations so I have many stirred up and out of place, bringing them to my attention afresh. I have been carrying around The Elements of Grammar by Margaret Shertzer for those five minute reading opportunities. Delighted to discover, at the con, that I can look forward to The Lateral Truth: An apostate's Bible Stories by Whinter Davis, forthcoming from a new small press called Green Magpie Press, operating out of Calgary. Even the Stones by Marie Jakkober was on sale at the Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy booth, at conversion, and I attended a reading from it by Marie. I have already read the book. Enjoyed the reading by Rebecca Bradley, author of the Gil series, of a pre-history work she is in progress with. The story features outcasts from a hunter-gatherer culture, in the aftermath of a plague. Bradley is an anthropologist as well as a talented writer, and makes both an entertaining and plausible go of it.

Amateur Authors

2004-07-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

Samuel Pepys and Chaucer were amateur authors, so was Milton; they were civil servants. All facts I am coming to appreciate more as I read the excellent Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin. Even in the Sci Fi world, in which I am a published but amateur author, one can find plenty of excellent precidents for non-pro authorship. Like Tolkein. The meaning of amateur, here, being number two in the list at http://www.webster.com , namely: "one who engages in a pursuit, study, science, or sport as a pastime rather than as a profession". I would prefer a less insipid word than pastime for the last bit, such as passion, voluntary hard labor or life's work auxiliary to primary source of income, but the point is--lots of wonderful authors had day jobs. So flinch not from the strenuous sneers and imprecations of the hard core pro, oh fellow amateurs. We, too, come of a long and honorable tradition. PS I do not recommend surgery for removal of a bladder stone in the 17th century, as Pepys experienced it. Shudder.

Curse of the Science Fiction Writer

2004-07-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

In the category of discovering science fiction authors: via a message on the SF Canada mailing list, I surfed to Ahmed A. Khan's mini-story Curse of the Science Fiction Writer and discovered how to deal with despots.

Readers Think, Watchers Click

2004-07-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

I found reading Mara E. Vatz's commentary on a report by the National Endowment for the Arts both depressing and inspiring. (See: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1487 ). In a nutshell, the study at issue shows that reading for pleasure is on the decline. It also points out that the subset of the population that does read, is the portion of the population that contributes the most to civilization.

As a fiction author, okay--that's depressing. Who wants to know that one is "playing" to a shrinking audience?

As a reader, on the other hand, it is nice to know that my growing impression that I am not likely to enjoy a conversation with anyone who hasn't read a book of his or her own free will in the last six months, is not a mere figment of my imagination.

On balance I think .... there are an awful lot of people in the world. If readers are less than 50% of them at the moment, that still amounts to a lot of people. And if it is going to be the readers or the non-readers who make the world turn (by being proactive instead of apathetic) then I am glad it is the readers who are in the driver's seat.

As for the "optics" in a world that seems increasingly obsessed with the "more is better" stampede, I recommend we found a Readers Pride organization. We could make T-shirts that say: "Readers Think, Watchers Click".

The irony here is that most people consider me a techno-guru. I work in educational technology and have owned a computer since the TRS-80. I have a Masters in Computational Science and I consider dabbling in Flash Animation programming to be entertaining. But the kind of integrated, whole-meal-deal stimulation I get from a good book is still unparalleled for me as a mental experience. It is to books I retreat for solice and to deepen my understanding of the universe. When I read a good book, I feel as if I've had an exciting conversation with the author that has expanded me as a human being.

Since I seem to have one foot, firmly, in each world I find myself deeply puzzled some days. How is it that so many people view the issue as an "either/or" affair?

Cory Doctorow's Next "Garbage" Novel

2004-07-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

Discovered Cory in a professional capacity, while searching the web for articles on Digital Rights Management. Joined his mailing list and this morning, over my coffee, read an excerpt from his next novel based on an indepth knowledge of ... junk. Couple of things that struck me as interesting apart from the story. :-) One, the excerpt is from a work in progress but it is online now. I found one typo in it--I can relate to that! An in initial blurb warns the work is one "in progress" and the actual words might change before it sees print. It was on something called "Fantastic Metropolis" hosted by MULTIVERSE.org. And it promotes a book soon to be in print, from Tor. Oh, yes, and it is set in Ontario. Cory's a fellow Canadian. About the text, it's an interesting read and definitely original. I can say with confidence that I have never read a story about a bunch of brothers parented by a washing machine and a mountain before. I liked the protagonist, Albert. Hope he copes.

Digital DNA

2004-07-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

DNA is digital! Never thought of it like that before, but it made all kinds of sense when I read Glyn Moody's rationale in the early chapters of his book on the history of bioinformatics, a new science empowered by the availability of the Human Genome. Protein is analog. DNA is digital. DNA is a four-symbol digital code, rather than a two-symbol one, but it is n less digital for being richer in that regard. It is easy to forget that the difference between digital and analogy coding is not based on sticking to zeros and ones. To be digital, all a code requires is that it be put together out of discrete building blocks that are never intermediate between one state and another. The letters A,G,T and C (standing for DNA's four bases) are every bit as digital as my computer's two-state flip flop circuits and a disk drive's two-state magnetic domains.

Moody's book also uses a style for doing footnotes that intrigued me because it looks so natural, especially for web citations. For example, the second footnote on page 9 of the book reads:

The Connection:Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine, and Business / Glyn Moody (Wiley; 2004) was a serrendipidty find on the "new arrivals" shelf of the UNBC Library. I'll be reading it for a while! Got in the first few chapters at the Four Seasons Pool in PG last weekend, sitting on the sidelines while the kids were swam.

Vea and Vahoc by A. M. Stickel

2004-07-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

Cutting a Dark Lord Down to Size

In a two page neo-fairy tale, written as a submission to a writer's challenge for the July 2004 edition of Deep Magic, author Anne M. Stickel struck a resonance for me with a toy box. I was a bit worried that the competently written tale would lapse into cliche about two paragraphs before the toy box arrived. It did, also, cross my mind that the heroine's parents might not be as complacent as she was about their deaths, since however meaningless a substandard life might seem to someone with high expectations, it is a bit heartless to make presumptions concerning its value to the parties concerned. But "Vea and Vahoc" is mythic stuff, so I'll waive the human rights objection. Quibbles of that sort don't really belong in a myth. And it is all worthwhile once we get to the toy box. I thought, "Yes!". Anyone who wants to know what it's all about will have to go download the July 2004 edition (free!) of Deep Magic at http://www.deep-magic.net/Issues/July2004/index.shtml

The Connection: Anne herself told me about Deep Magic, when she notified me of a review of my own novel (with Alison Sinclair), Throne Price, that also appears in the July 2004 edition.