Mumble Herder

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
31. Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge.
32. Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith.
33. The History of the Danes (Gesta Danorum) by Saxo Grammaticus, translation by Peter Fisher, edited by Peter Fisher and Hilda Ellis Davidson.
34. Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin.
35. Edge of Our Lives by Mark Rich.
36. My Mother Gets Married (Mor gifter sig) by Moa Martinson, translated by Margaret S. Lacy.

37. Edinburgh by Alexander Chee. I sometimes dislike lyrical prose, but this is not one of those times. It's difficult subject matter; the narrator, Fee, is one of eighteen young boys molested by their choir director, and forever after he blames himself for not having spoken up. The book is about his survival, sort of, but it's also about the damage done. Chee's prose is relatively spare--the book clocks in at just over 200 pages--but the imagery in them makes the book seem much larger than it is. When I finished it and shut it I had to sit for a moment, marveling that so much could fit into so small a space. Two motifs recur through this desperately sad and lovely book--one is swimming, and the other is song. Reading the book is, I think, something like swimming through a song.

I took today off to finish. At about 11 AM I finished the longhand draft of the novel (I still haven't settled on a title); after a break to work out, watch some "Mad Men," shower and eat lunch, I typed the last bit up at about 1:15. So drafts 1 and 1.5 are now complete. This one took a long damn time; I started it in the summer of 2009, and now it's done, if only for the moment.

Here's what it looks like as a Wordle, because I love Wordles and I don't care who doesn't:

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
31. Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge.
32. Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith.
33. The History of the Danes (Gesta Danorum) by Saxo Grammaticus, translation by Peter Fisher, edited by Peter Fisher and Hilda Ellis Davidson.

34. Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin. Oh yeah. All my high-fantasy misgivings and gender questions from the previous books are acknowledged here. The style is less epic and more personal, making the perils much more frightening and real. The cultural assumptions of the feudal, male-dominated society are pointed out and questioned, to a greater or lesser degree. And the wizards of Earthsea lose their breezy gloss and are revealed as just men, in some cases deeply flawed and dangerous ones. Tenar, from The Tombs of Atuan, is the protagonist here, and she's a wonderful character to revisit long after the events of that book. Since escaping her fate as the servant of the Nameless Ones, she's been intermittently content; she's raised a family and made a life, and yet the way in which it is so easily uprooted here forces here to realize that she's never been fully at home. I loved this both as a story of characters I cared about, and as Le Guin's answer to her own work.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
31. Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge.

32. Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith. I confess that I'm approaching each new Highsmith novel with trepidation, and while starting the last few I've thought, "This might have to be the last one for a while." Her world is dark and claustrophobic; on the other hand, her characters are odd and fascinating. "Odd" may seem an understatement for Tom Ripley or Bruno from Strangers On a Train, but it works for Ray Garrett and Ed Coleman, the men at the center of this book. Odd because the book opens with Coleman taking shots at Garrett with a gun, and instead of reporting this attempted murder to the Roman police, Ray takes off and makes his way to Venice, where he expects to meet Coleman again. Ray is Coleman's son-in-law, or rather was, because the novel opens in the aftermath of Peggy Garrett née Coleman's suicide. Both men are emotionally wrecked by Peggy's death, but the effect on Coleman is more obvious; he blames Ray for her suicide, and simmers with a homicidal rage throughout the book. Ray, on the other hand, seems willing to bear a certain amount of punishment despite having no apparent culpability for what has happened--he doesn't want to die, and yet he treats Coleman's attacks as little more than inconveniences, as if unwilling to compound his father-in-law's grief with legal consequences. A weird and fascinating novel, and one that really makes me wish I could go to Venice.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.

31. Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge. Just recently re-printed by the wonderful and personable Small Beer Press, so get your copies there. Solitaire is a definite page-turner--I am kind of a robot in that I have pretty structured reading times, and this book basically obliterated them. What's compelling about it is primarily the character of Ren "Jackal" Segura, who starts out as the gifted and sheltered scion of the Ko corporation; everyone's expectations for her are high, but she's had the best training they can offer and she's smart. And then quite suddenly everything goes to hell, and she's not the golden child anymore--she's a prisoner, sentenced to a term in a virtual reality prison. The novel covers a lot of ground: corporate life, prison, trauma, and functional and dysfunctional families of both the biological and constructed varieties. Mainly, though, what Eskridge really explores what it means to be alone, how community is constructed, how relationships can make us simultaneously vulnerable and secure. Highly recommended.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
21. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
22. Rebellion at Christiana by Margaret Hope Bacon.
23. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.
24. This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith.
25. Sandstorm: A Forgotten Realms Novel by Christopher Rowe.
26. The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Patricia Hampl and Dave Page.
27. Thor: The Mighty Avenger Volume 2 by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee, and Matt Wilson.
28. A Brood of Foxes by Kristin Livdahl.

29. The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin. I've come to the conclusion that--so far, at least--I like Le Guin's science fiction a little better than I like her fantasy. That's not to say that I dislike her fantasy, but the first three Earthsea books all have strong moral themes, and this volume in particular has a sort of lyrical didacticism to it that I find myself reacting against. The Hainish/Ekumen books are moral books too, but the questions they pose are more open-ended, the answers more complex. There's also the fact that this book is in part about the Empty Throne, and how putting the Rightful King on it is a large part of restoring the world's balance; I am bothered by the class problems inherent in such stories. Certainly Le Guin handles it better than most, but it grates. On the other hand, there are things like the Children of the Open Sea, and the dragons of Earthsea, which are as evocative as any creations from fantasy literature. It's still a good book, but it's one that I have some problems with.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
21. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
22. Rebellion at Christiana by Margaret Hope Bacon.
23. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.
24. This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith.
25. Sandstorm: A Forgotten Realms Novel by Christopher Rowe.
26. The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Patricia Hampl and Dave Page.

27. Thor: The Mighty Avenger Volume 2 by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee, and Matt Wilson. For some reason in reading this I twigged to something that I hadn't quite realized in reading Volume One; this is a romance comic. I mean, yeah, it has superheroes, and robots, and Namor--well, Namor isn't really inconsistent with the romance thing, is he? But at heart, this comic is--or, tragically, WAS--about Thor and Jane Foster getting all googly-eyed over each other. And in case you're wondering, that is AWESOME. Seriously, I get all swept away myself, and when the story is abruptly cut off after issue 8, I feel sad, like realizing that maybe that girl you went on that great date with doesn't actually want to see you again. It hurts a bit, until you learn to focus on how great the date itself was, and at least you can relive it. In this, this comic is very like the late great Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, which I also highly recommend for readers young and old.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
21. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
22. Rebellion at Christiana by Margaret Hope Bacon.
23. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.
24. This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith.

25. Sandstorm: A Forgotten Realms Novel by Christopher Rowe. I'm not precisely sure how long it's been since I read an RPG tie-in novel, but I know that the last one was Homeland, which is one of the worst books I have ever read. It's one of the Drizzt Do'Urden books, and this was when everyone was going crazy for Drizzt, and I was curious, and, well. That was the last but not the first D&D-related novel I read; when I was 10 I heard about and tracked down a library copy of Quag Keep (that's right, I was HARDCORE), and I read and enjoyed the Dragonlance books back in the day. The first trilogy came out when I was in junior high, and I was heavily into D&D then--in fact it's probably safe to say that insofar as I had a social life at all, D&D (and, on occasion, Gamma World or Champions or Top Secret) was it. Otherwise I read, and while I never went quite as crazy for the Dragonlance books as I did for Tolkien or McCaffrey, they had the virtue of being about a world in which I already knew the rules, and into which I could insert myself (or at least a character created by me) without much effort. And whatever its weaknesses, Dragonlance had great characters--I still get a bit misty thinking about good ol' Flint Fireforge--and one lesson that I took from RPGs is that characters are paramount.

I played D&D into college (my LJ handle, which I use all over the internets, comes from Snurri Icebreaker, my dual-classed fighter/ice mage, who was named for Snorri Sturluson), but aside from that one time at Sycamore Hill--seriously, who would turn down the chance to play when HOLLY BLACK is going to be the DM--I haven't played in 12 or 15 years. I haven't much wanted to. The trouble with RPGs, for me, is that they use the same brainspace that I use for thinking about and writing fiction, so when I play I tend to write less. Which is fine 99.99% of the time, but not right now, because after reading Sandstorm I want to be playing in a D&D campaign SO FUCKING BAD.

If you have never heard of Christopher Rowe, then I sort of envy you, because he's one of those writers that I wish I could go back and read again for the first time. Until now I'd probably have said that about "The Voluntary State," his cyber-absurdist mindfuck novella that was nominated for (and should have won) every award in the genre the year that it was published. Now I'm not sure. I know that if I was to go back and discover him at fourteen or fifteen, I'd want someone to send a copy of Sandstorm back in time to me, because it blows any Dragonlance novel out of the fucking water. Characters are paramount, like I said, and Rowe's characters have a life beyond what's on the page; I think that even for me to try to encapsulate them here would diminish them. What you need to know is: great characters, thrilling action, mystery and intrigue, romance and sacrifice, a fertile landscape seeded with story. If you're anything like me, you need this book.

Apparently it was yesterday? I was not at all aware until I saw this post from mrissa which seems reasonable enough.

The book I am currently reading: I am usually reading three books. Currently they are This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith, The Collected Jorkens: Volume Two by Lord Dunsany, and The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Guess Who.

The book I am currently writing: I haven't settled on a title for it yet. It might be The City of Brass, but that might be the title for the series, as I expect that this will end up being three books. It's about time travel and various ancillary magical events in a mystically isolated St. Paul, with an emphasis on the immigrant communities here. Also, there are secret societies, spirit traps, John Dillinger, exploding churches, and floods, and that's just so far.

The book I love most: Obviously it's a ridiculous question, but that said it's probably Don Quixote, which recently bumped One Hundred Years of Solitude out of the top spot.

The last book I received as a gift: The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1.

The last book I gave as a gift: I gave my little nephew a subscription to Babybug for Christmas, I think that probably counts.

The nearest book on my desk: I guess it's Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant by Stephen Alter, which I bought a couple of years ago at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
21. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
22. Rebellion at Christiana by Margaret Hope Bacon.

23. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. A graphic novel about cultural identity, very much in the vein of The Woman Warrior except brighter and male-centered and aimed at young adults. I liked the art and I liked how Yang wove the three different storylines together; it's a bit tidy, but it works.