I'm going through another spate of playlist creation in my search for the Perfect Work Mix (120 - 180 minutes of rocking awesome that will cut through the background noise without blowing my eardrums). I started out hating Rob Thomas and now I am strangely addicted to "Fire on the Mountain", even though I also want to steal the instrumentals for mashups. (From about 1998 - 2003 I hated everything on every rock or alt rock radio station. Everything. So I was not particularly keen on Matchbox 20, mostly because I didn't know I was looking for pop with a dance beat.) It's a slightly guilty pleasure, like reading trashy fantasy novels.

Speaking of trashy fantasy novels - yes, please disagree with me - I am rereading His Majesty's Dragon. There is a touching scene early in the novel where outside forces tell Laurence it's his duty to leave Temeraire in other people's care - forever - and Temeraire disagrees. Emphatically. Laurence gives up and admits that Temeraire is awesome and he'd never leave him. Somehow I am reminded of Lyra and Pan in the intercision chamber, and incidentally I'm a little disturbed by this comparison of two novels which have nothing to do with each other. I mean, Novik is Neopoleonic wars with dragons, occasionally using some thematic conflict about duty and justice to make the reader say, "no! You can't do that to Temeraire!" while making very sad faces, and The Golden Compass is the first in a trilogy taking on God and religion. Temeraire is not Laurence's daemon (much), but apparently it's that hard to break up the set.

To bring these two together: if at any point I wind up with a set list that doubles for His Majesty's Dragon and rocking awesome music for work, I will be deeply disturbed.

That took entirely too long.

JULY

The Yiddish Policeman's Union(Michael Chabon): Noir set in Sitka Province as the clock ticks down toward its reversion from a Jewish resettlement state to the governance of the United States. Meyer Landsman must fight his alcoholism and his superiors to solve the murder of a chess-playing heroin addict with surprising connections. The afterward, where Chabon essentially says, "I'm proud of my 90's work [which was Serious Lit], and now I'm having an adventure" endears Chabon to me.

Short Fiction for the WSFA Short Fiction Award: ( Amundsen to VandeMeer. )

Black Powder War (Naomi Novik): Reread. The adventures of William Laurence and his dragon Temeraire, volume three: overland Asian trip to Sharpe territory by way of Turkey. I was struck by my own weaknesses when reading the Lien and That Guy cameo in this book. Briefly - short, crazy smart, adaptable: why are we fighting Napoleon again? I'm having warm and fuzzy Bujold flashbacks here.

Ciao, America!: An Italian Discovers the U.S. (Beppe Severgnini): Short essays written during a year living in Georgetown, in DC. Lightweight reactions to shopping, neighbors and the house. I was hoping for some deeper reflection on the people Severgnini interacted with during that year, but alas: deep like puddle.

In the Shadow of Islam (Isabelle Eberhardt; Sharon Bangert trans.: Bangert translated someone else's (edited) publication of Eberhardt's journals, so who knows how much truth is left. But the imagery that survives the double translation is pretty cool, and some personal color remains. Eberhardt's attention to the desert is worth mentioning; so is her unrestrained racism towards black Africans.

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson): Hiro Protagonist: hacker, pizza Deliverator, greatest swordsman in the world, versus an insidius virus that turns computer programmers into drooling vegetables and just enslaves everyone else.

( Cut for size. )

Empire of Ivory (Naomi Novik): So possibly I rotted my brain this summer with rereads of beach-worthy novels. My absolute favorite character in the entire book is and may always be Hannah Erasmus, who is living an entirely different story that Laurence does not notice until it's forced down his throat. Oh, Will. You never see it coming!


AUGUST

Throne of Jade (Naomi Novik): Reread. More entertaining fluff than I remembered; Novik isn't deep, but she has a very smooth writing style. What impresses me is that I remember this as "the book set in China", but 2/3rds of the action happens before the protagonists get anywhere near that country.

Victory of Eagles (Naomi Novik): ( Gigantic spoilers. )

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams): Play/script. The family gathers for "Big Daddy" Pollitt's birthday, and to vie for the money he'll leave when cancer kills him. I picked this up on a half-considered "hey, educate yourself" impulse, and was struck by how crystal-clear the staging directions were. williams has a Vision, and is very clear in describing that vision, which helped me reconstruct his intentions to my enjoyment. It's interesting to notice that, for the purposes of the play, it makes almost no difference whether Brick Pollitt is gay or straight; what matters is what everyone else thinks about him. There something about assumptions and scandal in there I'll pick apart some other time.

When the King Comes Home (Caroline Stevermer): Set in the same world as A College of Magics, but in the medieval era. A runaway apprentice encounters Good King Julian, 200 years after his death. If you like Stevermer, you'll like this. If you're kind of "meh" on Stevermer, you'll remain "meh". I found parts interesting - more of the apprenticeship would have been cool, for example - and should have liked things like the battle. Entertaining, but not deep.

Marvel 1602 (Neil Gaiman and many other awesome people): The thing about comics is that they're a pain in the neck to log. Writer. Artist. Inker. Colorist. But sometimes the results are pretty cool. This makes more sense now, after some wiki-enhanced knowledge of the Marvelverse, than the last time I tried to read it, in 2004. (On a side note, it's hysterical how much I haven't changed in four years. Same authors, same themes. Letting the android loose in Vegas is still hysterical.) Very pretty, and makes me feel bad for Steve Rogers, but like Snow Crash works best if you think about the pretty pictures and maybe the themes, but not the world construction.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams): Play/script. Blanche DuBois stays with her sister Stella and Stella's husband Stanley Kowalski. I was completely distracted because I saw Due South before I ever read the play, so I have skewed associations for Stanley and Stella Kowalski. Blanche reminds me of some of my relatives, so I, um, find her really chilling, and suspect that in a different era Stella and Stanley would be filing for divorce sometime before their kid turns five. Domestic violence is bad.

Good play. Lousy at analysis here. Go read it yourself.

This week I am house-sitting for fans off to Worldcon. You know what this means: car! It also means playing dodge-truck at I-95 speeds during rush hour, but that's what you get when you volunteer to drive people to BWI. Today's other awesome moments were the accidental Home Depot trip (my much-abused mint is finally properly potted, yay) and realizing - 12 hours after my airport adventures - that I had the car keys but not the house-key.

When I am not courting death on the interstates, I'm reading Naomi Novik's latest novel. My first reaction is that I want The Adventures of Perscitia and Iskierka: A Scientific Treatise, because you know what would happen? They would set things on fire. A lot. And this would be awesome. wmslawhorn fake-spoiled me for nuclear bombs, and I almost fell for it. Because it's that sort of crack. I am possibly a little giddy with how many of my buttons are lighting up, ding! ding! ding! as I burn through the book. This is serious emotional manipulation, and I am all for it. Rock on, Novik!

Also, the part of Laurence's scruffy mid-to-late book stubble will be played by Viggo Mortenson's scruffy stubble.

Holy surprise, aCyteen sequel for Christmas! We were wrong! The thing is, I'm not sure I want a second Cyteen novel. The first was pretty much Cherryh's SF masterwork, her Big Statement: how do you top that? I'm not sure anything could live up to that sort of anticipation, not to mention one's uncritical 17-year-old reactions.

The rest of this week: pick-up soccer after work tomorrow, happy hour downtown Thursday (odds of my lateness are sadly high), day trip to Baltimore sometime this weekend. norabombay and I took 1h40m of off-peak time to decide we absolutely must go to Wiscon next year, which memberships I shall be buying August 15th, aka payday. (This may or may not trash any possibility of making Worldcon in Montreal, and that'll be an update for a different day.) Tonight I sleep; I put a baseball cap on my head at 9 for no logical reason and it's still there. The clarion call for sanity-restoring rest is making itself felt.

Today I was plagued by many small examples of my failings, morning, lunch and afternoon, and then I went to Trader Joe's and bought approximately one million calories of junk food. As many as five hundred thousand of those may to make it to tomorrow's WSFA meeting. Today is July 17th; I am going to get through the August inferno by not thinking about it. And possibly duct-taping the AC controls to on.

Yesterday I triumphed over inertia and mugginess long enough to attend Naomi Novik's reading at the Bailey's Crossroads Borders. (Labelling Bailey's as your DC stop is... misleading. It's like saying you'll be in Boston - ie, downtown - when you actually are in Jamaica Plain or Brookline.) What I keep forgetting about catching a bus at the Pentagon metro station is that the entire metro system was built for A) convenience or B) laziness instead of A) paranoia or B) "security" concerns, and that the Pentagon is resolving this little problem by putting a man with a shiny black machine gun between the metro escalator and the buses. In case you hadn't gotten your adrenaline shot du jour, you know.

I'd known walking out the door that I was running late; I missed most of the introductory remarks, but made it in time to hear Novik read a short story about the first Western-style dragon-taming. Debt-ridden rake must slay dragon in ancient Rome; complications ensue. Novik followed up with a Q&A session that lasted until the store employees asked her to wrap it up for signing time. I was particularly enamored of the question about future stories that lead to Novik saying something about far-future ideas; an audience member said, "dragons in space!" and Novik said "yes". Possibly I may have applauded that one. And whooped a little. During the signing period I chatted with dsudis and other people whose LJ handles have utterly escaped my feeble mind. I badgered GS from WSFA for a ride back to the metro, because the only thing more fun than public transit is public transit at 9:30 PM. Yay, socialization! I need to do more of that.

Empire of Ivory (Naomi Novik / naominovik): ( Way to cliffhanger, Novik! )

Ha'Penny (Jo Walton / papersky): Remember what I was saying about writing to entertain? Walton is writing to tell an idea in story form. Her character's trucks are gonna break, their dogs will be shot, their wives will leave them. I want to say something about gender roles and Carmichael and Jack, whose PoV would probably be enlightening. Why doesn't Jack get a job too? I come from the two income household assumption, and also from the "construction workers are hot" mindset, so I may be missing the point here. Series structure note: Carmichael PoV limited 3rd past; female protagonist limited 1st epistolary. Nifty trick, since it gives you a reserved point of view, and a distorted one.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Childhood (Oliver Sacks): For anyone like me, who hasn't been paying attention, Oliver Sacks is awesome. The title pretty much encapsulates the book: childhood, science, colorful twist. It's a love letter to science. Sacks talks about such and such a part of growing up - uncles, parents, the nanny, World War Two child evacuations - and then wanders off to talk about physics, or the history of chemistry. Sacks also includes many, many entertaining footnotes (he blames Mendeleev's footnotes in The Principles of Chemistry, which he writes about in terms that make me want to read it too). Sacks loves science, and is well-versed in the history of science, which he uses to lead into and out of his own childhood. Sacks had a large family, including several uncles involved in industry and applied chemistry or physics. If you think this didn't impact his life, you'd be so wrong. There's something to be said for family expectations and how they play out in your life (see also Sacks's mother arranging an introduction to human anatomy at age fourteen - because every 14 year old wants to dissect the corpse of another 14 year old). It's difficult to write a biography without saying something about the people who impacted that life, and in this case, chemistry and chemical concepts are at least as prominent as the people. Very fun biography.

I didn't intentionally read two novels of alternate history focusing on the UK this week, but that's what happened. If you ever need an illustration in the difference between honor and reputation*, do Empire of Ivory and Ha'Penny as paired reads.

*The Bujold definitions, with honor being what you know about yourself, and reputation being what others know about you.

I'm a lot more worried about Carmichael's ultimate fate than I am about Laurence's, but that's what having a dragon who's smarter than you will do for your luck roll.

If there's a theme this month, it's, "but your meta is so good! Why is your book not so good?"

Self-Made Man (Norah Vincent): Woman decides to cross-dress to explore that age-old question, "but how does it feel to be a man?" Yes, I did read this for the titilation factor. Two things strike me: the temptation to check off central themes bandied about in women's studies courses, and how joyless and relatively humorless the author makes the entire process seem. If you're going to transgress social norms, you may as well have fun, no? The author had a breakdown at the end of the book, about a year and a half into her exploration into masculinity, which may have something to do with the tone. Her experiences are interesting, but every chapter leaves me thinking, "you know, you make it sound like life as a man is a terrible thing, an emotional wasteland - except I'm pretty sure it's a little more complicated than that." Also, I think Vincent failed to fully acknowledge the impact of class and race on her personal experiences with masculinity. For example, door-to-door sales (one job she tried) are soul-destroying regardless of gender. A cushy internship at dad's law office is something else. For men or women.

Conclusions? Flawed, but thought-provoking. Gentlemen, pipe up: do you feel like you're living in an emotional wasteland? Discuss.

Tooth and Claw (Jo Walton/papersky): Self-described Victorian novel with dragons. I appreciated the elegance and artifice of the many plot threads concluding happily, but suspect I'd get a lot more out of this if Pride and Prejudice had inspired me to read more regencies.

"A Gift of Wings" (Sarah Monette/truepenny): Monette keeps doing cool meta in her lj, but her actual fiction does nothing for me. "A Gift of Wings" is a romance, which means the narrative tension should derive from the lovers overcoming obstacles to be together, but in this case, the primary obstacle seems to be the traumatized wizard and the battle-hardened mercenary not talking to each other. For months. When the narrative voice reflects that "he made it plain without so much as a word that they were lovers no longer" I tend to gag a bit.

( Digression on romance, by way of quests. )

The characters are adequately crafted (if love-struck fools), the setting nicely evoked, and - to me - the plot a complete turnoff. Even the smutty bits do nothing for me. YMMV, especially if you like romances.

On the other hand, a traumatized wizard and a battle-hardened mercenary woman must solve a murder they are accused of committing. Together, they fight crime!

("A Gift of Wings" was published in The Queen in Winter, a collection of romances written by Claire Delacroix, Lynn Kurland, Sharon Shinn and Sarah Monette. Had I realized what I was getting into, I would have totally not ILL'd this. Not a romantic!)

Black Powder War (Naomi Novik/naominovik): Look! It's an overland Asia trip with dragons, and then it's a Napoleonic land battle with dragons! ( Mild book 3 spoilers, comment on book 4 chapter 1 preview. )

And there I go, getting gleeful about horrible deaths. Like I said, I'm here for the worldbuilding; plot and characterization are a little secondary. Though I may get attached to Iskierka, pluckiness and all.

July previews: I'm 30 pages from the end of Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable, which involves a lot of circa early '90s computer modeling, and generally isn't as cool as The Selfish Gene. But I'll at least have some nonfiction finished this month. Also, Fifth Business is kicking around my room, so I'll probably knock that off Real Soon Now.

Combining these because it's a fairly short list, other than the Hugo shorts abuse. I'm also letting the comments made under the influence stand, because I can.

April Books

I read Hugo nominees, how cool am I? ( Well, not very, because I just finished the shorts and they were *terrible*. )

I think a more interesting discussion might be consideration of why the short story nominees were so lacking this year (tentative hypothesis: since only 278 ballots were sent in, according to the LACon Hugo nominees list, a writer with a good publicity plan could totally swing the vote), and/or suggestions of short stories that should have been nominated, but weren't.

Actual books

A Short History of World War II, James L. Stokesbury: If ever there were a title that begged to be poked fun at, this is it. Surprisingly, Stokesbury almost manages to live up to it: 389 pages (hardcover) is a brief review of some really complex maneuvering. The narrative moves along at a reasonably brisk clip, laying out the broad movements of the war in clean academic prose punctuated by the occasional dry bon mot. I have absolutely no background to judge the book by, but I liked it. It's 20 years old, which is absolutely ancient by bio standards, but it's not like WW2 is on the move, so this is probably a reasonable book to recommend to people. My major complaints are two: first, it is academic, so it's fairly heavy reading by default, and second, my geographic knowledge is appallingly bad, so more maps would have been nice. I was constantly flipping to the available maps as it was.

Personal reactions: there is something riveting in all catastrophes. But after reading the casualty counts, the territory lost and won, you're left wondering what it was all for. War is still the triumph of stupidity over good sense.

* * *
May Books

Throne of Jade (Naomi Novik/naominovik): Second book in a series of adventures about William Laurence, aviator, and his dragon Temeraire. In this episode, the pair are shipped to China to appease Imperial sensibilities. For some reason, I found this more cohesive and entertaining than the first (Temeraire or His Majesty's Dragon, depending which side of the Atlantic you ordered it from). The set-pieces were about the same, but felt more firmly knit together by the intervening material. My big question at this point is how deliberately Novik's going about her B-plot: it looks like she's setting Temeraire to set off the English Dragon Revolution, but I don't know if that's where she's planning to take the series. The sea serpent thing was an interesting touch, but for which side of the argument I don't know.

Three things to be doing, and no desire to do any of them. Must be book review time. Only I finished one book last month, and am making my way through A Short History of World War 2 two pages at a time.

Temeraire (Naomi Novik/naominovik): Published as His Majesty's Dragon in the US, but I read the UK HC, so it's going down with the English title. Captain William Laurence sort of accidentally harnesses a dragon, dumping him out of the familiar confines of His Majesty's Navy and into His Majesty's Aerial Corps (of wilder repute) as Napoleon's strategies unroll toward invasion.

( Huge spoilers. )

Spoiler-free summary: if you like that age of sail gig, you'll like this; if you're me, you're waiting on the second book, because the gossip is good, and poking around the reviews suggests that your lack of historical knowledge means you're missing setup stuff.

Something else that might be interesting to consider are the intersections of blogging/LJ, writing, getting three books out in one year, and sales numbers. There's been a fair amount of buzz in the end of the blogosphere I'm familiar with - the mad internet fangirls, who are sarcastic and get a little feminist and literary in their interpretations of canon - but it's going to be interesting to see how the sales numbers fall out. Rapid release of new material is a good way to raise a writer's profile, and yes, I'm trying to The ratio of books read because [person] on LJ wrote it vs. books read this year is getting alarming.