September 8-10 Book Porn

The past few days have seen the arrival of six galleys/ARCs and review copies, as well as five more books that I ordered from Amazon. First, the galleys, from two sources, the recently-established Underland Press and from Tor:

Top-left: Brian Evenson, Last Days; Will Elliott, The Pilo Family Circus.

Center: George R.R. Martin (ed.), Wild Cards: Busted Flush

Here are three more publisher-sent books, from Penguin/Roc:

Left: Dennis L. McKiernan, City of Jade (continuation of his Mithgar series); Mercedes Lackey, Foundation; Barb Hendree, Blood Memories

Here are three of five books that I ordered from Amazon this week, the first two from the Reading the World program that I blogged about last spring:

Left: Taha Muhammad Ali, So What (bilingual Arabic/English en face poetry); Ma Jian, Beijing Coma; Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory: Volume 2 (graphic novel adaptation)

And finally, the third and fourth volumes in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age series:

Left: Ink and Steel; Hell and Earth


If I receive any more books this week, I'll blog about it with photos on Saturday.

August 30-September 7 Reads

While many of these are just completions of books I had already begun or were short (under 200 pages), thanks to the Labor Day holiday weekend and a lessening in grading duties (sadly, this week will be a killer for me, though), I managed to complete the following books:

284 Alissa Torres, American Widow (non-fiction; graphic novel).

285 Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg, A Field Guide to Surreal Botany (illustrated book, already discussed back on August 15 - enjoyed the book quite a bit).

286 Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (This short novel made me smile, before realizing just how heart-rending it was in places. Need to read more Nabokov, I see).

287 Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (stream-of-consciousness collection of this Portuguese master's thoughts on a whole host of issues)

288 Richard Parks, The Long Look (ARC for a September 2008 release, this book about an "evil" magician cursed with a sense of premonition which forces him to act to avert even more heinous events was a very good read, although there were places where the dialogue seemed to need a bit more polishing. Still, a worthwhile read.)

289 Alan Moore, Watchmen (graphic novel; this might be one of my favorite reads for this year so far. More later, if time will permit in the coming weeks)

290 Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red (novel set in 16th century Ottoman Istanbul in which a murder mystery is revealed among a discussion of representative art and the furor it aroused at the time. Enjoyed the book, will certainly re-read it in the coming years.)

291 Fábio Fernandes, A Revanche da Ampulheta (Brazilian SF novella that I'll need to re-read more carefully in the next few months, as while I got the gist of it, much of the story's meaning has fled me during the passage of the past week, since I don't think in Portuguese. I do recall enjoying what I understood of the tale though and I hope I'll have something much more substantive to tell Fábio in the coming months when I re-read that and his other two stories that he sent me last month.)

292 Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence (while not his best work, I found it to be a well-written tale, but more on it later, I hope.)

293 Naguib Mahfouz, Children of the Alley (this Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author's allegory about the feuds and fighting among the three main Abrahamic faiths is moving without ever being maudlin. Highly recommended.)

294 Jeff VanderMeer and Rose Secrest (eds.), Leviathan: Volume Two (this 1999 anthology didn't work as well for me as did the 3rd and 4th volumes, but perhaps the fact that I read it during the week while tired from school duties might have something to do with my lack of enthusiasm for stories by authors such as Stepan Chapman and Rhys Hughes that I normally enjoy greatly.)

295 George MacDonald, Lilith (this 1895 novel was lyrical and its prose held up rather well for me, but the story ultimately was a bit sparse in places.)

296 Milan Kundera, The Joke (just finished reading this earlier today. Much to think about, but the levels of meaning behind the word "joke" throughout the multi-PoV story make for a reflective, often devastating read. Kundera, along with Mahfouz, are two authors that I glad I discovered this year.)

In Progress:

297 Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard (recent reprint of a 1989 release, I am roughly 25% in and enjoying it so far. More later, time permitting this week.)

For the record, I've read 4 books the past couple of days and barely anything during the workweek. I tend to finish off the remaining 150-200 page chunks of novels rather than read all of them in a linear, serial fashion.

Regarding the "purpleness" of prose

So much is in the eyes and ears of the beholders. One person's "purple" is another's moving passage. In a day and age in which the semicolon seems to be destined to the same fate as the English Subjunctive, when complex clauses in which there are several dependents that serve to modify the thrust and meaning of the main, but at the expense of some fearing commas the way that another might fear heights or open spaces, one has to wonder at the changes wrought during the past few decades.

There's an interesting discussion here about "prose overdose." The authors named almost universally were some of my favorites; their prose is beautiful to me. But it seems that for many, "transparent" prose is the bee's knees, since most of the authors lauded by those who disdain the "purple prose" writers tend to be those who write in a rather minimalist style, even when some elaboration would have helped those stories.

With this in mind, I decided to read George MacDonald's 1895 classic, Lilith. Peppered throughout the book are passages such as this:

All at once, a radiant form stood in the centre of the darkness, flashing a splendour on every side. Over a robe of soft white, her hair streamed in a cataract, black as the marble on which it fell. Her eyes were a luminous blackness; her arms and feet like warm ivory. She greeted me with the innocent smile of a girl - and in face, figure, and motion seemed but now to have stepped over the threshold of womanhood. "Alas," thought I, "ill did I reckon my danger! Can this be the woman I rescued - she who struck me, scorned me, left me?" I stood gazing at her out of the darkness; she stood gazing into it, as if searching for me.

She disappeared. "She will not acknowledge me!" I thought. But the next instant her eyes flashed out of the dark straight into me. She had descried me and come to me!

***

She poured me out a bowlful of milk, and, handing me the loaf, begged me to break from it such a piece as I liked. Then she filled from the wine-jug two silver goblets of grotesquely graceful workmanship.

"You have never drunk wine like this!" she said.

I drank, and wondered: every flower of Hybla and Hymettus must have sent its ghost to swell the soul of that wine!

"And now that you will be able to listen," she went on, "I must do what I can to make myself intelligible to you. Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I - we are but a few - live to live on. Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection. Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet ripe, and have lived thousands of your years - how many, I never cared to note. The everlasting will not be measured.

"Many lovers have sought me; I have loved none of them: they sought but to enslave me; they sought me but as the men of my city seek gems of price. - When you found me, I found a man! I put you to the test; you stood it; your love was genuine! - It was, however, far from ideal - far from such love as I would have. You love me truly, but not with true love. Pity has, but is not love. What woman of any world would return love for pity? Such love as yours was then, is hateful to me. I knew that, if you saw me as I am, you would love me - like the rest of them - to have and to hold: I would none of that either! I would be otherwise loved! I would have a love that outlived hopelessness, outmeasured indifference, hate, scorn! Therefore did I put on cruelty, despite, ingratitude. When I left you, I had shown myself such as you could at least no longer follow from pity. I was no longer in need of you! But you must satisfy my desire or set me free - prove yourself priceless or worthless! To satisfy the hunger of my love, you must follow me looking for nothing, not gratitude, not even pity in return! - follow and find me, and be content with merest presence, with scantest forbearance! - I, not you, have failed; I yield the contest."

She looked at me tenderly, and hid her face in her hands. But I had caught a flash and a sparkle behind the tenderness, and did not believe her. She laid herself out to secure and enslave me; she only fascinated me! (Chapter XXV, "The Princess")

MacDonald's prose probably leaves many of you reading this shaking your head at the flagrant abuse of exclamation points, commas, dashes, and semicolons. But perhaps for some of you, these punctuation marks, aided by the rhythm of the triple modifiers (such as the "outmeasured indifference, hate, scorn!"), served to give a sense of flowing meter to the passages cited above; I certainly found it to work despite the near occasions of falling into the mortal sin of becoming untrue to its own self. For me at least, the descriptors serve to add subtle hints of mystery and possible deception into what might, at first glance, be but a saccharine-filled paean to capital L Love. Likewise, the allusions to scenes from ancient Greek myth, such as that of the wine, serve simultaneously to ground the story in a mythic setting, while the prose and the dialogue serve to accentuate just how "otherworldly" this setting truly is. It is a fine balance, but for the most part MacDonald manuevered his way well between the Scylla of too little exposition and the Charybdis of too much description at the expense of the story.

However, for many, this is just too much. For them, the focus is lost admist the tangled weave of the verbal labyrinth; even Ariadne couldn't provide the necessary thread for these erstwhile Theseuses to find their bearings. Less is more, even at the expense of a more varied hue and pitch to the stories they read. More is lost than just in translation, it seems. A pity, or perhaps not? What do you think on this issue, as well regarding the quoted MacDonald passage?

September 4-6 Book Porn

Five books this week, with the first photo set being devoted to two review copy packages I received.

Left: R.A. Salvatore, The Pirate King (bound galley); Laurel Anne Hill, Heroes Arise: A Parable

These three books I bought soon after I received my first paycheck at my new job. I've already begun reading the book in the middle and hope to read the others over the next week or so.

Left: Dave Eggers (ed.), The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007; George MacDonald, Lilith; Milan Kundera, The Joke.

The MacDonald book was a serendipitous find; I have been curious about him and Lindsay for a long time and expect a post later today or tomorrow about thoughts related to the opening passages. Wish some griping about "respect" issues would cite MacDonald's literary circles, as he certainly had a few interesting friends in different literary aisles, to say the least.

New Poll on possible mid-October Book Club selection

Thought I'd give some choice here, even if technically I'd still be the one nominating the first time through (for others the next times, though). Each of these ought to still be in print and available for a relatively cheap price. Shall be interesting to see which interests people here the most, as there's a wide variety of styles here.

Blogger Book Club Proposal

Since it seems there are a few who are interested in doing some sort of a book club that would span several blogs, consider this a post to gauge further interest and perhaps to get feedback on a few proposals. Hopefully, we can get around a half-dozen or so people to participate and that this can be more than a one or two-time affair. So if you would, please respond with your willingness to participate and if you have further suggestions/counter proposals to the ones listed below:

1. One blogger will be chosen in some fashion (previous book chooser? vote?) to choose a book for reading.

2. All books must be: 1) Available in English, 2) Be in-print or easily acquired, 3) Published before 2005.

3. Books don't have to be shelved in the SF/F category in most bookstores, but that there ought to be some sort of "speculative" element in the tale.

4. Minimum of 4 weeks between book selection and book discussions.

5. Book will be discussed on participant blogs inside of a week of the chosen date, if possible (considering I barely have time to read books these days, I'm not going to complain if work/personal issues force an abandonment of plans).

6. Links to other participant book club blog posts to be added at the bottom of the book post, whenever noted.

7. Comments on one's own blog can be in whatever style the participant chooses (since each of us has our own styles and reviewing preferences). Also, comments on the others' blogs is encouraged, since discussion is what makes things interesting.

Anything else come to mind that ought to be discussed here? If things are okay with people, I'll post something this weekend, say a book for discussion (provided people don't mind me being the first to select a book).

Ideas comtemplated, ideas abandoned

So it is Labor Day. While doubtless many are thinking of cookouts and barbecue, I am contemplating how much long I can delay grading student papers that I want to hand back tomorrow. I have roughly 250 said papers to grade, so needless to say, this will take up much of my evening (along with watching my beloved Vols play). But despite this looming deadline, I thought I'd share a few ideas that have come to mind, some of which I realized almost immediately were implausible:

1. Establish a sort of blogger "book club" - While the idea of herding cats might be daunting to some, I have wondered what would happen if a group of say 3-10 bloggers agreed to read and write a brief report of a book every month or two, say one that wasn't published in the past year or so. And what if said project led to questions and comments from the participants and readers on all of these blogs, with links of course to said discussions? Probably would give quite a bit of perspective for readers of various blogs to consider, no, besides raising awareness of the newer blogs?

2. Doing more author interviews - This is something that sucks up a lot of time and energy, as previous interviews I've done involve many "rounds" of emails, sometimes hours devoted just to thinking of the "right" questions to ask, among other matters. I want to resume it on an occasional basis to highlight the authors I believe deserve more attention (I don't believe I've ever participated in an interview where the author and/or publisher sought me out first).

3. Having occasional "guest blogging" - This is an idea I've resisted quite a bit and I still highly doubt I'd do it, largely because this blog has a bit of an "identity" now and I don't know if I can justify to myself having anything more than the once in a blue moon post by anyone not already approved for posting here. That being said, I might occasionally email certain people and ask them to write a short something that would then be posted here, provided that it would be of interest to myself and to others reading this blog.

4. Abandoning formal book reviews here - I haven't written a formal one since late June and until I have the time again to devote the hours necessary for writing one, it might be a while. Then again, I do want to cover the World Fantasy Awards like I did last year, so maybe I'll resume doing regular reviews of 1000-1500 words in a month or so.

5. Advertising - Uh....HELL NO!

6. Ending this post on a rather "imperfect," if not "Satanic" note - just for those of you who were curious about that previous post of mine a few weeks ago regarding six being an "imperfect" number in certain religious traditions...