Category: Books

Maybe this is a little too efficient:

Too busy for Cliff’s Notes? Welcome to The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature: Great books distilled to their essence and presented in the most efficient form of communication ever devised.

(via Scott)

Word has it that the Heinlein Trust has given the go-ahead for Spider Robinson to flesh out a detailed novel outline called Variable Star.

Hmmmm.

On the one hand, posthumous “fleshing out of a story outline” exercises are rarely satisfying. The recent Dune exercises, and the previous Asimov robot tales stand testimony to that.

On the other hand, Robinson can write, and he has an almost religious respect for Heinlein’s work.

Should be interesting.

I have about six books in-process at the moment, plus my weekly comics et al., so my book throughput isn’t always what I wish it were. One reason I read while walking at lunch …

Book rankings in each section from 1 (bleah!) to 3 (yeah!).

Knight Life, by Peter David

• Summary: [2] This is a revised and rereleased version of one of David’s earlier works, wherein Arthur finds himself resurrected and running for mayor of New York, with a child Merlin as his campaign advisor.
• Entertainment: [3] Light, airy, and amusing, both on (re)takes on the Arthurian legend, as many of the folks from that saga make appearances in one way or another, and on politics (New York politics in particular). David manages a modicum of suspense, particularly as to the outcome of the renascent Arthur/Gwen romance. But most of the book is easy reading, with plenty of duck-out-of-water chuckles and bad puns. Vintage (literally) David stuff. And a sequel should be released in the near future.
• Profundity: [2] The course of true love never did run smooth. Obsessions can get you in trouble. Trust your feelings, Arthur. Out of the box thinking can come up with some very interesting — and superfially appealing — solutions to intractable social and legal problems. People like a guy on a white horse — and maybe that’s sometimes a good thing.
• Re-readability: [3] This could easily become a “comfort book.”

The Lord of Castle Black, by Steven Brust

• Summary: [2] This is the second volume of Brust’s The Viscount of Adrilankha Dumas pastiche. The Empire gets its legs underneath it, Morollan (the titular character) becomes involved in matters, and lots of folks run around doing a lot of sword fighting and exchanging witticisms.
• Entertainment: [2] The conceit remains entertaining, and is crafted with a now-polished fashion. But it’s almost become too easy, and I almost have the sense that Brust is rushing things along just a tad, to be done with it perhaps. The cast has now gotten so large that it’s easy to lose track of who’s who, who’s whose friend, who’s whose parent, who’s of what House, etc. that may contribute to the sense of a lack of focus. Every character, it seems, needs a parenthetical reference every so often, in a book that is built around parenthetical references, and the result becomes sketchier and sketcher. The lack of remembrance of who’s who isn’t a terrible barrier, though; you just kind of go along and enjoy it anyway.
     At the same time, Brust is finally more substantially dealing with characters we know, or recognize from the Vlad books. Enough of them, from Loraan to Sethra the Younger to the Sorceress in Green, pop up that it begins to feel artificial.
     All that quibbling aside, it’s still a greatly entertaining book, and I eagerly look forward to the next installment. Though, to be honest, I’d rather have another Vlad book.

• Profundity: [1] Despite Paarfi’s best efforts, there aren’t many.
• Re-readability: [2] No time soon, though. Unless I need a leg up on understanding the next book.

Speaking of which, Sethra Lavode is due out in April 2004 …

You may buy this for me.

I’ve even put it on my wish list, in case you forget about it.

Thank you.

(via SEB))

Spinsanity has their take on Moore and Dude, Where’s My Country? (further detailed here). To sum up:

In his latest book Dude, Where’s My Country? — a polemic against President Bush — liberal gadfly Michael Moore again demonstrates why he has a reputation as a slipshod journalist who has trouble getting his facts right.

The hubristic perqs of being being a best-selling author:

After the publication of the The Queen of the Damned, I requested of my editor that she not give me anymore comments. I resolved to hand in the manuscripts when they were finished. And asked that she accept them as they were. She was very reluctant, feeling that her input had value, but she agreed to my wishes. I asked this due to my highly critical relationship with my work and my intense evolutionary work on every sentence in the work, my feeling for the rhythm of the phrase and the unfolding of the plot and the character development. I felt that I could not bring to perfection what I saw unless I did it alone. In othe words, what I had to offer had to be offered in isolation. So all novels published after The Queen of the Damned were written by me in this pure fashion, my editor thereafter functioning as my mentor and guardian.

“Let her edit cake.”

Aye, and surely John Kovalic knows too well the weakness that besets me and my first mate. To the plank with him!

Early, “rediscovered” pieces of literature are often a mixed bag. The academics like them, because they provide insights into the author’s development. Completists like them because they, well, want things to be complete. Readers — are often disappointed.

Still, I’m sort of looking forward to the new Heinlein book coming out. It’s actually his first novel, and while such bits are usually rejected because they’re, well, bad, Those in the Know say it’s because Heinlein was way ahead of his time.

“For Us, the Living” was written by Heinlein about 1938-9, before he wrote his first sf short, “Lifeline.” The novel, “For Us, the Living,” was deemed unpublishable, mainly for the racy content. So racy is/was the content that in the 1930s the book could not even have been legally shipped through the US mail! For this reason, after a few publisher rejections, the novel was tabled by Heinlein, but the content was mined for his later stories and novels. A fellow named Nehemiah Scudder even appears in “For Us, the Living.” It’s important to point out that according to those favored few who have thus far read this long lost Heinlein novel, it did not go unpublished because it was bad–they say it’s quite good, though clearly a first novel by the author (it has a two and a half page footnote!). It was unpublished because the mores and culture of the time would not allow it.
“For Us, the Living,” was put aside, and eventually lost. The Heinleins apparently destroyed all copies they had. And because at the time it was written Heinlein was not a member of the science fiction community, no other sf writers knew about it. He had let one or two friends read it, and it is by a long trail through one of them that this rarest of treasures was located.

There’s quite a bit more info here, too, which says it’s “not as polished” as his later work, but is quite different from anything written then or today, with lots of explorations of alternative sexual mores (and economics) from the perspective of a contemporary pilot thrown into the future.

I dunno. I love Heinlein’s work, but his earliest stuff is more than a bit stiff. And while his “racy” stuff was okay, a lot of it came forty years or more after this book, which is an infinity in writing years. And if Heinlein could get a bit pendantic about his social concepts in his later works, in his earlier works it was positively deadly.

Still, it’s one more thing I’m looking forward to coming out this winter.

(via Uncle Bear)

… but were sane enough not to probe too deeply …

No, actually it’s a heavily hyper-linked essay about the hystory of the Mythos — the collection of writings by various authors (starting, of course, with Lovecraft) about Cthulhu and the Elder Gods and the Great Old Ones and related critters. Good reference.

(via Uncle Bear)

I have rule books to read.

Game stuff to write up.

Weeks of comic book backlog.

Three or four other books I’m in the middle of.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Bad timing for The Lord of Castle Black to come out, I guess.

Not that it’s going to stop me from reading it.

I’ve never read any of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, but, if I do, I will definitely rely on this map of their interrelationships. Cool.

(via BoingBoing)

A fine site with both annotations of all the gods in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and pictures of the carousel at the House on the Rock. Fun.

(via Gaiman)