From Iraq to Arthur and Parts In-Between: Reviews

Because I read a lot both inside and outside the spec fic realm, I thought I'd just keep things simple and review every few weeks some of the books that I've read in short capsule-type reviews, in case the material might appeal to others. Now not all of these books (in fact, the majority) are going to be in English, so while my thoughts will be in my native language, the material itself is more likely to be in Spanish than in English. But there might be some English-language translations available, so feel free to look for those.

Tómas Eloy Martínez - El vuelo de la reina This book won the 2002 Alfaguara Prize for Spanish-language literature and after having read it, I can understand why. While on the surface the story might appear to be a simple tale of the obsession that a renowned Buenos Aires newspaper editor has for a reporter, Eloy Martínez has made this much, much more. The story feels like it's part of the obsession, passionate, repetitive at times, almost pathological in its exploration not just of the relationship between the editor and his 'Queenie,' but also of the world around. Written just as Argentina was about to plunge into its 2001 financial meltdown, the story reflects that, the sex scandal in the US White House, as well as the Bosnia War. Elements of real-life mixing in so well with the fictional personal as to create a story that is well worth the re-read. Sadly, no English translations yet exist of this novel, at least to my knowledge.

Mario Vargas Llosa - Diario de Irak This is a non-fiction journalist account of Vargas Llosa's trip to Iraq during June-July 2003. Accompanied by his daughter Morgana (an accomplished photographer), he spent two weeks there, meeting with various people in the street as well as some of the Ayatollahs and other religious leaders there. It is an interesting account in which he is very honest in his pre-war thoughts of the US-led invasion and his sympathy for the desire of the Iraqi people to be free of terror is quite evident throughout this short collection of newspaper pieces written at the time. Although he left before the insurgency became more lethal, he does note the problems caused by continued American occupation. It is an interesting and fairly balanced interpretation of the war and its immediate aftermath. The pictures alone and the imagined captions to them are worth the $12 that I paid for this book.

Eliseo Alberto - Caracol Beach Another Alfaguara Prize winner (in fact, the inaugural co-winner in 1998 and currently available in English translation), Caracol Beach is a story that straddles genres and cultures with apparent ease. It is in part the tale of the madness that haunts a Cuban soldier after the atrocities of the Angolan Civil War. It is a tale of a senior party gone wrong. It is a story of a father dealing with his drag queen son and his lover. It is the mixture of the real with the imagined, of sanity and madness, and told with a humane touch. I really enjoyed this account of how madness can co-exist with 'sanity' and just how tragic of a loss life can be. Highly, highly recommend reading this story in whatever language suits you best. I've yet to read an Alfaguara Prize winner that didn't deserve the title of "Well-Written Book."

Gabriel García Márquez - El otoño del Patriarca This was the most difficult García Márquez novel I've yet to read. Written in a semi-stream of consciousness style (few punctuation points, no paragraphs, only 5 chapters), this was a very fluid and sometimes dream-like nightmare of the last days of a Caribbean tyrant's reign. After this novel, García Márquez grew sick of the subject matter and said he would refuse to write fiction again as long as the dictatorship of August Pinochet remained in power in Chile. Although he broke this in order to write El amor en los tiempos de cólera, it is certainly understandable as to why he grew sick. This story utilizes its strange structural form and its poetic turns of phrase to underscore the brutality, the callousness of the tyrant's reign. It is one of García Márquez's more moving works and a total 180º from the tone and style of Cien años de soledad. But it was a necessary turn and this novel, for the most part, works as he intended it to work, as a condemnation of how we permit dictators to come into our lives.

John Steinbeck - The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights Many thanks to a friend of mine from India, Rohini, for pointing out to me that Steinbeck did an adaptation of Thomas Malory's La Mort d'Arthur. I just finished reading this on Tuesday and I thought he did something very clever in this reinterpretation of the Arthur accounts. Although Steinbeck himself declares that his original intent was to modernize and 'clean up' the famous stories (as Malory himself did from 13th century accounts), he in turn ends up doing a Pierre Menard: In retelling Malory, he mades the stories more than just repetitions of 15th century accounts. Indeed, in many places, the stories take on meanings that could not have existed in Malory's time, such as how the reader interprets some of the interactions between the knights and the 'fair damsels'. Due to his rearrangement of some of the scenes and the reduction of repetition, Steinbeck's account, although based almost entirely upon Malory with little in the way of overt re-writing or in the introduction of new material, becomes much more 'modern' for the reader. In fact, Steinbeck himself notes this in passing in some of the letters that were reproduced in the back of the book. Indeed, those letters become almost as valuable as the extant materials (as Steinbeck unfortunately never completed this adaptation before his death in 1968) in revealing just how Steinbeck was interpreting Malory, both for his time and for our time. Certainly a book well worth the read, especially if you like Arthurian romances.

Brandon Sanderson - Elantris This book left me with mixed feelings. Although there were many praiseworthy elements to the book (the ability to conclude matters in less than 500 pages; the sympathetic characters; the general sense of optimism with which Sanderson imbues his characters), I couldn't help but notice the mechanics to the story were a bit awkward in places. Maybe it was due to me having read stories that utilized first-person limited narratives or rapidly shifting, dialogue-heavy exchanges, but it just seemed at times that the dialogue in Elantris was clunky and too descriptive when the characters were interacting with each other. In addition, things sometimes came across as a bit too providential at times, as though everything was going to be solved, piece of cake, in a short time after only a little bit of suffering. But these points only served to lower a potentially very good tale to merely a good and very acceptable first novel by an author. It shall be interesting to see how Sanderson has grown as an author when his Mistborn series comes out, starting this summer.

Homosexuality and Fantasy

For some people, seeing those two words together in a title is either oil and water to them or else it raises the expectation of some sort of slash fiction. But probe a little deeper, and one is likely to turn up quite a bit of hesitation, stammering, and possibly even some anger over the implications of such a title. To introduce the very real and problematic issue of homosexuality is for some akin to being violated, of having their idealized world of elves, Quests, and so forth being invaded by a very troubling sociological issue from our everyday lives.

This topic has been wandering about in my mind for some days now. Reading Matt Cheney's excellent article on Brokeback Mountain, followed shortly by glancing over a discussion of the issue over at Frameshift, has only served to make me decide that here and now is a place to post my often incomplete and chaotic thoughts on the issue of homosexuality as it relates to the fantasies that I've read. No doubt, there will be those reading this who will disagree with my comments, either because I do not understand enough about what it means to be gay in a straight world or, conversely, because I may be a bit too sympathetic towards homosexuals. Then again, the very notion of this ambiguity on my part only serves to underscore the difficult nature of this topic, right?

As many others have noted in the past (and I recall a discussion of sorts in the past with Scott Bakker on this), the common understandings of homosexuality seem to be tied up with ideals of masculinity. Whether it deals with super-buff gay men striving for the Adonis ideal or the martial attitudes of an Achilles, there is an undercurrent of hypermasculinity that some people associate with homosexuality. Perhaps this is part of the unease that some feel when trying to grasp the issue of what it is to be gay: How can one be a manly man and love men instead of women?

This is one of the 'Trojan Horse' issues I perceived in reading Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy, especially in the just-released third volume, The Thousandfold Thought. One of the main characters, Cnaiür, is a very conflicted individual. Known as the Breaker of Horses and Men, he has a very violent temperment, so much so that he has come to the cusp of brutal insanity. He doesn't love his women, he fucks them, often brutally and with very little passion involved, save in regards to his first wife and to the captured courtesan, Serwë. But yet the depths of his passions seem to have been reserved for another, a man known as Moënghus by some, Mallahet by others. Throughout the trilogy, Cnaiür repeatedly expresses a murderous desire toward this Moënghus, even as the whisperers among the Scylvendi have labelled him as "faggot" and "weeper." But yet in the end, when Cnaiür does manage to confront Moënghus, he but both kisses him and then kills him before he literally fades into the darkness of the second swazond he marks on his throat. A truly tragic and ambiguous end to a tragic, conflicted character.

In the coming weeks and months, as more and more readers come to read this conclusion to Bakker's trilogy, there likely will be some reactions. Already at Bakker's official forum, the topic has been raised in pejorative terms, even going so far as having the original poster question whether or not the author himself were 'gay.' I suspect there will be many people disappointed to learn that Cnaiür 'was a faggot,' while others might debate whether or not being seduced by a Dûnyain would constitute being raped and dealing with that burden/shame rather than being gay. Still others might argue that the entire understanding of homosexuality/heterosexuality is an outdated concept that does not deal with a whole range of issues of personality/identity that exist outside the realm of sexuality. Regardless, it shall be interesting to see how much of a firestorm Bakker's story will produce, if it will indeed produce any at all, outside of an awkward, painful silence that often accompanies doubt and confusion on such serious matters.

Bakker's trilogy serves only as one very recent example of the intersection of real-world issues of sexual identity and fantasy. There are other authors of course who have treated this topic in depth. Ricardo Pinto's in-progress trilogy, begun with The Chosen, has two gay characters who fall in love with each other, yet the main impetus of the story does not deal with the homosexuality. Ursula Le Guin has written many tales in which characters are bisexual, homosexual, or pansexual in stories meant to explore issues of sexuality and self-identity. Doubtless, there are other authors writing today that are addressing these issues in a straightforward and thought-provoking fashion.

But how will the readers react? Are fantasy fans in general going to be very accepting of homosexual characters and situations that focus on the possible nature(s) of sexuality? Will there be a day in fantasy, similar to what Andrew Sullivan has outlined for real-life America, in which there might be such an acceptance of situations and characters that the division between gay and straight might dissolve? Or will there be more stammering, more hem-hawing about the topic, accompanied by a deafening silence?

Dreaming of 'True' Fantasy

Lately, my love for reading books of the speculative has begun to wane. I just can't seem to find as much enjoyment or originality in much of what I read that's being produced by the genre presses. Perhaps this is due to not knowing where to turn for what I want to read most, or perhaps it's more due to my readings out of genre (and even out of my native language) in recent months. Whatever is the cause, it has been troubling me.

For example, I am just over halfway finished with Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. Over at the OF Board, this book has been praised for being well-written, with interesting characters, intriguing plot, and for having a complete story told in just one single 500 page volume. But as I've been reading it, I've noticed some troubling things. The dialogue is a bit trite and forced in places, the action is contrived (too many coincidental or providential events occur), but most importantly, there isn't a magic in the writing. Don't think of this as an unfair attack on the book, as it indeed is written better than the majority of epic fantasies that I've read, but I guess this is just a case of damning with faint praise.

Now I know there are books written within the genre mood that seem like they will meet my criteria for a truly fantastic read. For example, Jay Tomio has been lauding Catherynne M. Valente's Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams and Hal Duncan's Vellum to me (and others, of course) for a while now and I am very eager to read these volumes when I have the time/money to purchase them online. But what about the rest of the genre? Is Fantasy in truth just a branded, marketed entity with a focus on secondary worlds, stock characters and situations, with only servicable language, with other visions, other dreams to be relegated to the sidelines? Could there be much truth to the accusations some have made of speculative fiction that it really has lost its connection to the power of language to create the moods necessary for proper wonder/speculation to take place?

I do not have the answers to that, only just this growing suspicion that if I fail to discover more works of wonder, that I will eventually move on, perhaps back to the world of postmodernist fiction, where I used to dwell, lost in fractured time-stops and giddy moments of language explosions, in which differance possibly held a key to the understanding of what I failed to grasp. Hopefully, there are some fantasy/speculative works being written today that can grasp me in such a way. Perhaps some of you reading this can suggest works for me to consider. Perhaps.

Cuentos

As many of you know, I like to read a variety of genres and styles. Although I very much enjoy fantasy (especially in the form now categorized as 'magic realism'), I also very much like to read stories that are set in the here and now, sometimes to the point where it seems the story, the cuento in Spanish, reads like a diary of someone who has existed under our very noses and yet we never noticed until that narrator thumps our nose and makes us pay greater attention to what is transpiring before our very eyes.

Alberto Fuguet has a gift for this. One of the founding members of the McCondo movement, which aspired to wage a 'war' of sorts against the notion that Latin American literature=magic realism, Fuguet has been a very successful author and screenwriter for about 15 years now. I particularly enjoyed his transnational update of The Catcher in the Rye known as Mala onda (Bad Vibes in English translation) and his 2003 novel, Las películas de mi vida (The Movies of My Life), demonstrated quite well his talent for relating his experiences living in both the U.S. and Chile in a fashion which illustrated the ever-growing influence that American pop culture has had on the 'other Americans' of the Western Hemisphere. His latest book, (Cortos: Cuentos (Shorts: Stories in English), illustrates this influence even more.

The stories found within Cortos revolve around a few Chilean youth. Some of them never leave the country, while others take extended tours of the United States, often with disillusioning results. It is a tale of a group of pop culture cognoscenti, those who are as much at home discussing the latest Hollywood gossip as they are reflecting upon Chilean culture (which often is seen in a negative comparative light). The tales are written in a variety of ways, from a traditional narrative coming-of-age moment that opens the tale, to the usage of screenwriting script to portray in vivid terms the conflict between the traditional and the disposable pop culture.

One story in particular, "Más estrellas que en el cielo," ("More Stars Than in Heaven"), highlights what Fuguet (and in some fashion the others of his literary generation) has aimed to achieve. It is a tale of a group of youth that have arrived in the US and have become enamoured with the bright lights, big city of Los Angeles. Told in a form that is even more Spanglish than usual for Fuguet (and he and others tend to mix in more Americanisms to reflect the speech of South American youth today), this story is a tale of the conflicts that occur each and every day in the cities of the United States, where not only are there a thousand tiny humillations but also a profound gap in the worlds that separate the nations of the Americas. It is powerfully written and yet subtle, as Fuguet tends to let the characters show what is happening rather than just trying to explain.

The other stories in the collection come close to the level achieved by "Más estrellas que en el cielo," but in different fashions. There are accounts of sons returning home to visit, talking about just how strange it is to be at 'home,' or how difficult it is to be a Latino in the land of the Yanquis. Cortos is a reflection of just how interconnected and yet segregated still the various Americas have become and as such, it is a valuable work of fiction. Highly recommend reading it in either language (although I myself read it in the original Spanish).

Part II of My Admin Votes for the 2006 OF Awards

OK, for brevity's sake, let's just say that I will not be giving my choices in all of the categories for various reasons. For example, I am not a movie-watching person, having seen an average of 1-2 movies a year, so there won't be any choices there. Another is that I feel uncomfortable discussing rationale behind the more 'community' type categories here, so don't expect to hear how I voted for those categories. But below are my choices in a few categories that interested me, with brief explanations for most of them:

Best New Author of 2005:

This was a tough category to choose a particular winner or runner-ups to, in part because I haven't read that many authors that have two or less books out. But reflecting back on the books I've read in 2005, there is one story that I enjoyed most:

1. Caitlin Sweet, The Silences of Home - Although this is her second novel, Sweet has been a virtual unknown outside of Canada, which is a shame, as she writes some very good tales that envoke all sorts of emotions when the reader stops to consider what she is writing. While her first story, A Telling of Stars, isn't as much of a novel as a fable in many aspects, The Silences of Home (a prequel of sorts), is a fully-realized novel with interesting characters, a plausible and interesting plot, and an underlying theme about the fragility of truth and the lies that bend it. All of these elements combine to form a story that was one of my favorite reads for 2005.

2. Tim Pratt, Little Gods - Pratt is a really good short story writer. Although I have yet to read his first novel, The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, he gets this high position based solely on this one volume of collected short stories, which are excellently told and with a depth of meaning to them that many, more established writers fail to bring to the table.

3. Ian Cameron Esslemont, Night of Knives - Despite my choosing of this book as being Most Disappointing (due to technical/editing problems, not with his potential as an author), I believe Esslemont has the potential to develop into a solid, entertaining author whose stories should complement quite nicely those of tag-team partner Steven Erikson.


Most Hyped Event of 2005:

1. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - The numbers don't lie - millions of books sold in 24 hours, hundreds of people discussing the book in a one-week period over at OF. Love her or hate her (and I tend to like her), Rowling knows how to turn up the hype machine and get the ball rolling with her releases.

2. George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows - Again, a no-brainer, as fans have waited for 5 years for the fourth volume to the popularly and critically-acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series to be released. While early returns might have been somewhat mixed, it seems that the wait helped drive hundreds-long lines of people at his booksignings in November and December 2005.

3. Serenity - Although this is a movie and not a book, it seems that geeks and otherwise 'normal' fans of the cancelled Fox series Firefly made this movie a cult-like hype event. Although I've never seen the TV series and have no desire to see the movie, I thought I might as well acknowledge the hype that its fans gave to it and the numerous posts about it in 2005.


Most Underrated Book of 2005:

1. Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Although I could praise Eco's latest to the heavens, it seems that for the local reading public, Eco is a treasure waiting to be discovered. This would be a great book to start with, as it's one of Eco's most accessible and yet thought-provoking books, a tale that deals with memory loss and what it means to live only with a superficial relationship to the outside world via comic books and adventure stories, among others. A must-read book that sadly hasn't yet received the ink here at OF that it has elsewhere.

2. Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners - Link is one of the best short fiction writers out there. She's been nominated for all sorts of awards and was one of Time's Five Fiction book choices for 2005. Yet hardly a word about her here at OF unless I or Drkshadow03 (and maybe Jake) mention her. Almost a crime, that is. Hopefully, she'll get more ink here in the near future, as more people read her excellent stories.

3. Caitlin Sweet, The Silences of Home - I've already said plenty above about this novel. Let's just hope as her reputation grows, that this book and others of hers will find a wider audience outside of Canada and the few lucky Americans such as myself that have read her.


And those are the categories that I choose to reveal my votes. Perhaps this will encourage some to discuss them here or elsewhere. The true value of these things really deals with persuading people to think about the excellent fiction there is available and perhaps to buy some of the works mentioned here or elsewhere because of the praise received.

Skeptical about the Singularity

This post isn't meant to be a very detailed, researched response to what I perceive as problems with the concept of the Singularity, but instead just an introduction to possible questions/shortcomings about this belief. So there won't be extensive citations or even elaborate explanations behind my statements. But hopefully this will encourage some discussion, either here or elsewhere.

The term Singularity refers to an expected near-future event (some futurists have stated that they believe it will happen during the 3rd decade of this century) in which future rates of technological development will have accerlated to such a point as to make predictions of human society and its development practically impossible. The term comes from the physics realm and is meant to mirror the uncertainties that happen around a black hole. Supporters of this concept cite things such as Moore's Law (where computational abilities double around every 18 months) and anecdotal evidence about how technologies have developed at an apparent exponential rate throughout human existence.

All well and good, I suppose. There seem, however, to be certain constraints that haven't been taken into account by most proponents of the Singularity model. Now once upon a time, I was training to be a cultural historian and I can't help but wonder at the near absence of references to the cultural dimension. Yes, some have claimed that society today would be almost unrecognizable to someone from a century ago, but that's just a misleading statement. Yes, technologically, the farmer from 1900 might be amazed by the computers, cell phones, radios, TV, airplanes, and mass transport systems, but after taking a few minutes to orient himself, that hypothetical farmer would see a lot more in common. From the language being nearly the same to witnessing a similar social organization scale into the Haves and Have Nots (and yeah, some things about historical Marxism are valid in this context - deal) to how human paralanguage is basically the same, there is still quite a bit of a lag between technological concepts and societal reorganization. In a world in which we use words formerly associated with horse-drawn transportation to describe our manipulation of motorized transportation, it seems that a linguistic Singularity at least is still in the extremely distant future.

Oh, perhaps proponents might argue that at some near-future point that the very concepts of communication will change, perhaps with bio-mechanical augmentation. Perhaps, but then comes the issue of availability and public acceptance. Just as the ancient Greeks invented a working steam engine or the Mesopotamian civilizations had the concept of a battery (as witnessed by what was found within some of their idols) but did not develop related technologies, what advantage will there be for societies to develop these technologies if it would mean a widespread change in societal organizations in the decades or centuries to follow? Will we see renewed attempts to limit the spread of new technologies, such as what Great Britain attempted to do in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution? Will there be benefits (such as age-related research) that will be denied to a certain population, with the possible risk of societal revolt?

On these fronts, I have seen very little mention from the Singularists. Maybe I'm just too much of a skeptic here, but I can't help but see quite a few issues that just haven't been addressed to my satisfaction. But perhaps others here can point out counterarguments to what I said above?

Larry's Choices for the 2006 OF Awards, Part I

Again, like we've done in previous years, we're going to post separately what some of the Admins over at Other Fantasy believe are the best (and occasionally) the worst of what we have read or seen in the sometimes-wacky world of speculative fiction for 2005. Perhaps this list (mine will be posted about a week or so before Jake's) will spark some interest among those trying to decide who to vote for, while others might just be curious to read some of the books that I will mention.

Now my top 3 will not coincide necessarily with the Finalists for the 2006 Awards. I read many different things this year and if some of these don't happen to be in English, don't believe that I'm being a snob or anything. If anything, hope there's an excellent English translation available or that you will be able to find and read the books mentioned in the original. The more exposure books from outside the 'traditional' markets get, the better in my opinion, as I am convinced that the world out there offers a much larger palette of expressions and meanings than which can be painted using the English language alone.

Anyways, I've blabbed too much, so here are my choices for some of the categories (I'm leaving out community and movie-based options, as I would prefer to focus on the book world here):

Best Book Released in 2005

1. Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - This was one of Eco's better efforts in my opinion. I've been a fan of his writing for ten years now and outside of The Name of the Rose and possibly Foucault's Pendulum, I believe this is Eco's strongest work. As I said here, Eco reveals more of his keen wit than he has before in his previous four novels, plus the level of introspection that the protagonist, Yambo, experiences just adds such a layer of depth to this story of a man who can remember the artifacts of his life, but not the actual memories of the people and places behind those artifacts. Although the story of an amnesiac has been done before by a great many authors great and small, Eco's twist to the story provides a unique depth and poignancy to this tale.

2. Yuri Andrukhovych, Perverzion - This tale within a great many tales of an Ukranian writer/gadfly who mysteriously disappears during a conference in Venice is an exercise of speculation and intrigue that quickly devolves into an intertextual exercise that engages the reader while the oft-funny segments will entertain. The translation was just published in English this summer and if Andrukhovych is any example, then there should be some very excellent works coming out from Eastern Europe into English translation in the coming years.

3. Caitlin Sweet, The Silences of Home - Sweet has written a tale within a tale that revolves in part around the ancient question of "What is truth?" A story of revenge and longing, The Silences of Home is a prequel of sorts to her earlier The Telling of Stars, but each book can be read independently of the other, plus the order of the reading can affect greatly how a reader perceives the connections between the two tales. The writing here was not as lyrical as in her first novel, but the characterizations and plot developments were done very well, leaving the reader to ponder at the end what exactly Truth was after all.

Honorable Mentions: Isabel Allende, Zorro; China Miéville, Looking for Jake


Best Book Read in 2005 but Published in Prior Year:

1. Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciónes (Spanish) - It is no secret that Borges is likely my favorite author and after having read in Spanish for the first time this year this wonderful, wonderful collection of his, it is no surprise to those that know me that I would choose this for my favorite book read this year. The stories are thought-provoking, full of double intent and the imageries invoked will make the incautious reader wonder what is real and what is artifice. Of special note is the story of Pierre Menard, who seeks to recreate without copying the actual Don Quijote, with results that are surprising. A must read for fans of deep speculative fiction of the sort that Gene Wolfe loves to write.

2. Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño (Spanish) - This early 17th century play revolves around the interstices of Dream and Reality, as the players within begin to question which is which. One example of this is a monologue almost 2/3 of the way into the play, in which one character says this memorial soliloquy:


¿Qué es la vida?: un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida?: una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño,
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

(What is life?: A frenzy.
What is life?: An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the best good is small,
that all life is a dream,
and dreams, dreams they are.)

Enough said, right?

3. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) - After reading this book, I could see better why Locus Online and other genre publications were eager to claim this book as their own. A story revolving around this mysterious, eponymous book and one child's almost fanatical devotion to the book he 'adopted' as the scene revolves around a mysterious man that seems bound and determined to eliminate all copies of this book from the face of the earth, La sombra del viento is in turns a fascinating mystery and a thoughtful look into the meanings that printed words hold for us and our imaginations.

Honorable Mentions: Alejandro Dolina, Crónicas del Ángel Gris; José Saramago, Ensayo sobre la ceguera; Gabriel García Márquez, Del amor y otros demonios; Jorge Luis Borges, El libro de los seres imaginarios; Laura Restrepo, Delirio

Most Disppointing Book Released in 2005:

Like last year, this category is very hard for me to remark about, because virtually all of the books I read this year, I enjoyed in some form and fashion. So just because I mention a book here does not mean that I believe it is a horribly-written or executed book. Instead, in most cases, it would just mean there were a few annoyances that kept me from enjoying the story as much as I enjoyed others this year.

1. Ian Cameron Esslemont, Night of Knives - Before some of the Erikson Reading Cult™ try to gang up on me and toss me out, I should note that this book makes it for the editing and typographical errors that plagued the book. These little annoyances kept me from enjoying Esslemont's story as much as I would have wished, although there is certain more than enough promise there to warrant future publications of his planned five books in the Malazan world.

2. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - While I certainly enjoyed this story a lot and believed it was a stronger effort than 2003's Order of the Phoenix, I just was left feeling that there was a bit too much exposition at times in the middle and that the ending was a bit rushed. While Rowling deserves most of the praise that she's received for the Harry Potter series, compared to the other readings I've done this year, this was relatively weak in comparison. Consider this a backhanded compliment of sorts, I suppose.


Most Disppointing Book Read in 2005 but Published in Prior Year:

Only one book came to mind here and this one was chosen as much because I felt it was a ripoff of much of Jorge Luis Borges than for any perceived deficiencies of writing. Yes, Paulo Coelho's El Alquimista just read as a trite, somewhat more shallow take on much of Borges's oevre than anything else. It just soured me on the tale told within, which wasn't that bad, but not good enough to help me overcome my initial distaste to the story.

I will add some of the other categories either later this weekend or sometime next week. Feel free to leave your thoughts and opinions here.