Books

Diagram Prize

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Possibly this one ought to be on SFAW, except that there’s not much science fiction involved. The Diagram Prize is given annual to the oddest book title of the year. The reason I’m talking about it is that my friend Jonathan Clements has made it onto the “very long list” with his collection of essays about the manga & anime industry, Schoolgirl Milky Crisis. The short list will be announced on the 19th, and the public will be able to vote on the winner. Here’s hoping that Jonathan makes it. Mind you, there’s some stiff competition, including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears, and my personal favorite, Venus Does Adonis While Apollo Shags a Tree.

By the way, Jonathan is very knowledgeable about manga and anime, and is a hugely entertaining writer. You can find out more about the book at the official blog, and you can buy it from someone who is not Amazon. Also the book is eligible for any non-fiction awards for works published in 2009.

Secrets Going Cheap

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Goods news from PS Publishing today. Firstly they will be bringing out a new Gene Wolfe novel, The Sorcerer’s House. But also they have a special offer on John Berlyne’s magnificent bibliography of Tim Powers, Powers: Secret Histories. Get it while you can, it is awesome. Full details here. (And sadly not available through The Book Depository because PS prefers to sell direct.)

Helping Some Authors

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

John Scalzi has been encouraging us readers to go out and buy books by Macmillan authors to help them through while their books are not on Amazon. In view of this (and to test out the Book Depository folks), here are some suggestions taken from the very excellent Locus Recommended Reading List.

An Alternative to Amazon?

~ Cheryl ~ 16 Comments

Given that a lot of us are thoroughly fed up with Amazon (and even if you agree with their plans for ebook pricing you have to admit that their behavior over the last few days has been petulant and childish), what do we do about selling books online? In time-honored Internet fashion I asked my readers for suggestions. The one that sounded most promising, as it provided worldwide coverage and an excellent selection of books, was The Book Depository.

Why do I like these people? To start with take a look at the responses to this post. They clearly have a lot of happy customers out there. Also one of the responses came from a chap called Kieron Smith who just happens to be the Managing Director (that’s British for CEO) of the company. That shows that they are on the ball. Having signed up for their affiliate program I was very impressed with the range of options available. It is going to take me a while to digest it all.

Of course I had reservations. One of those was how they would deal with small presses. Bearing in mind what people like Gavin Grant and Ben Jeapes have been saying about Amazon over the past few days, I didn’t want to get yelled at by publishers. As far as I can make out, TBD work mainly through major distributors such as IPG, Ingram and Baker & Taylor. As you’ll see from the comments to that previous post, Steven H Silver has been making inquiries about getting ISFiC books stocked and is happy so far. This bodes well.

I have also been looking around the TBD web site. They have an impressive list of awards, and staff with a solid background in the book trade. And personally I’m extremely happy to have found a UK company that really knows how to do a web site. Our train companies could learn something from these guys.

Of course there may be problems down the road, but from my first day’s contact with these folks I have been impressed enough with these folks to give them a try. It will take a while to convert everything over, if only because their links use the full 13-character ISBN and I’ve been using the 10-character one ever since Emerald City days, so I have a lot of data entry to do. However, if you want to take a look at their store you can do so though this link (UK and hopefully European users should see a link from there through to the UK site.) And if you want to check out their affiliate scheme you can do so here (noting that I’ll get a referral commission if you use that link).

Update: I see that Matt Cheney and Ken Neth are also recommending TBD.

Sunday Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

No, I’m not taking the day off, I’m trying to catch up (again).

– What sounds like a wonderful piece of historical detective work: a book about the man who inspired Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner”.

– M. John Harrison reviews John Wyndham’s Plan for Chaos.

– An article about trans people in Pakistan that is more interesting for what it says about Islam than what is says about gender.

– One of many reasons why I will be supporting the Saints next weekend.

Free Spirit

~ Cheryl

In the comments on my article over at Feminist SF Niall Harrison mentioned that Gwyneth Jones’ wonderful novel, Spirit, is now available as a free ebook (PDF format, DRM-free). From a Hugo point of view this was interesting, because a freely downloadable ebook is most definitely available in the USA which should give Spirit an extra year’s eligibility (it missed out badly last year due to being published in the UK only late in December 2008). As it turned out, the ebook did not go online until January 2010, so it won’t be Hugo-eligible again until Reno (assuming that the usual eligibility extension gets passed). However, that gives plenty of time for US readers to download and enjoy it.

As a reminder, Spirit is set in the same world as the Aleutian Trilogy, and I believe after the events in the short stories that make up The Buonarotti Quartet. My review is here.

The Perils of Re-Tweets

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Earlier today John Joseph Adams tweeted about The Windup Girl being featured in the io9 book club. I re-tweeted this, because it is a good book and I’d like to see people able to read it (it is only out in hardback right now). JJA also happened to say that the book was the “SF novel of the year”.

Anyway, people are kindly re-tweeting this information around, and some of them are stripping out the other attributions and just leaving me. So now it is me that is apparently saying that The Windup Girl is the “SF novel of the year.” And you know, it might be, but there will be four other books on my Hugo ballot as well. Twitter, however, has me quoted.

I don’t really mind this too much, but such things can be a problem. Not so long ago I said something fairly innocuous on Twitter and found it being RT’d, subtly altered, by a bunch of Islamophobes. So if you see someone being quoted on Twitter, try to check out the original tweet.

Powers Impresses Guardian

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today Alison Flood’s tour of classic fantasy at The Guardian features one of my all time favorite books: The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. I’m delighted to see that Alison was well impressed. What’s more, The Guardian has excellent itself in finding a suitable illustration for the article, which I shall now shamelessly link to.

Anubis

(A five-tonne replica golden Anubis is carried past Tower Bridge to mark Tutankhamun exhibition. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA)

Oh, and thanks for the name check, Alison. 🙂

Sam on Sam

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

The first Sam being Sam Jordison at the Guardian Book Blog, and the second being the hero of the book he is reviewing, Roger Zelazny’s magnificently bonkers Lord of Light. I’m delighted to see that Sam loved it as much as I did when I first read it. Must do so again sometime.

Good Grief! Miss Austen!!!

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Over at the Aqueduct Press blog Timmi Duchamp has posted her collection of favorite reads from 2009. A book that particularly caught my eye was Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied History by Jillian Heydt-Stevenson. Timmi notes:

Heydt-Stevenson’s revelations of the multitude of sexual double-entendres and smutty allusions in Jane Austen’s novels (intelligible to her contemporaries but not so much to us) are stunning. That’s not all she does in her book by any means, but it pretty much makes the point that very few of Austen’s twenty-first-century fans have any notion of how Austen’s contemporaries read and understood her novels. For about a decade now — ever since I read Eve Sedgwick’s essay on Sense and Sensibility — I’ve suspected that significant aspects of Austen’s work was sailing clear over most of our heads. Given the socially contingent nature of language, it really doesn’t take long for certain (often important) aspects of texts to become either invisible or unintelligible.

Ah, if only I’d had this book years ago I might have been more willing to read Austen in school.

Also it is a very good point that Timmi makes. The way we read books depends very heavily on the cultural context in which we read them. Reviewers please take note.

Gift Ideas

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Still stuck for something to buy for your friends and family? Might I suggest a browse in the Abe Books Weird Book Room? (Thanks V!). The current featured book is Talks with Trees; A Plant Psychic’s Interviews with Vegetables, Flowers and Trees. Other classic titles listed there include the following: The English: Are They Human?, Toilet Paper Origami, Barbie: Voyage to Rados, How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction, and the inimitable 50 Ways to Use Feminine Hygiene Products in a Manly Manner. What more could anyone ask for?

The Art of Maurizio Manzieri

~ Cheryl

I don’t get many free books these days (and indeed I turn down most of those I am offered), but here’s one I did get sent. It is an art book by an Italian called Maurizio Manzieri. Who? I hear you ask. Well you may not know his name, but if you check out his portfolio you’ll probably recognize several covers from places like F&SF and Interzone. Art does not need translation, so someone like Maurizio (or, for that matter, Stephan Martiniere, who is French) can sell easily into English-language markets.

The book is published in France and has text in French, Italian, English and Spanish. Amazon US doesn’t appear to have it yet, but you can order it from the publisher. At the very least i hope this will remind people that there are many more fine, prolific artists out there than the usual suspects who appear on the Hugo ballot each year. Maurizio was up for a Chesley this year, so clearly his fellow artists approve of what he does. Now you folks know his name.

Madness of Flowers

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Jay Lake is a prolific fellow. I haven’t read Green yet, but so far my favorite amongst his stories are those set in the City Imperishable. Madness of Flowers is book #2 in the series, a sequel to Trial of Flowers reviewed here.

There’s not a lot to be said about the plot. The City is once more in danger from nefarious foes (including pirates and a giant ice bear), and it is once more up to the likes of Imago, Jason and Bijaz to save it, despite the constant opposition of the venal and incompetent Burgesses. To a large extent the book is “more of the same”, but then again that’s pretty much what I wanted.

I noted in my review of Trial that one of the things Jay does is include nods of acknowledgment to other city-based fiction. I’ll therefore leave you with this short quote:

His steps were small as the seconds that count out a mans dying. He walked through the narrow, damp tunnels of a jade mine, across a swaying metal bridge in a city of high canyons, down a lane paved with ice between walls of falling water, through a granite-floored hall lined with paintings of women with the heads of birds, across a gull-haunted, sun-warmed dockside empty of people where fish rotted in their nets. Tall square towers burned, gray-capped men like mushrooms slunk along fungus-lined walls, metal carts slithered overhead on high wires, a withered white tree bloomed in an empty courtyard. With every footfall his body stretched and tightened, shortened and lengthened, became heavy as time and light as a soul’s breath.

Onesiphorus walked through the idea of City, knowing that if he missed his step, he’d never go home.

I confess that I can’t identify all of those references myself. Hopefully between us all we can manage it. Have at it.

Lambshead Rides Again

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Tucked in the middle of a news post where you might not notice it is the piece of VanderNews that I have been most excited about recently. Jeff says:

Diana Gill at HarperCollins has bought The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities from us

Yes, the irrepressible Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead will soon be bringing you more delicious weirdness. I’m looking forward to it. There will be more news later, presumably when Jeff finishes his mammoth book tour.

Link Salad for Second Breakfast

~ Cheryl

Kevin and I are both very tired this morning. We have no idea why. However, breakfast and caffeine should fix that. In the meantime, in the great hobbit tradition of Second Breakfast, I offer up a big plate of link salad.

Boilerplate

~ Cheryl

Back in April I blogged about a book called Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel. I noted at the time that it would not be in the shops until October, but that time is now passed and I have my own copy. It is just as wonderful as Jeff VanderMeer promised.

The book is a “mockumentary” which purports to tell the story of a mechanical man invented in 1893 as a replacement for human soldiers. Our heroic robot (or automaton as he would have been called in those pre-Capek days) has all sorts of adventures, including joining Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, saving the life of Pancho Villa, helping put down the Boxer Rebellion and so on. The history (and I have had Kevin check this for me) is excellent, as is the digital work that allows Boilerplate to appear in so many period photos.

If you don’t want to believe me, here’s Richard Bruton telling you what a fabulous book Boilerplate is. He has a bunch of pictures too, but not the one I really want to be able to show you: the fabulous mock Alex Toth sketches for a proposed tribute cartoon series featuring Boilerplate, geek girl “Tina Tuneup”, and “Spigot” the mechanical hound (who look rather like Velma and Scooby).

I’m definitely nominating this book for a Hugo. Given that it is mainly fact and art, I think it fits best in the Best Related Work category — or at least that’s where we can nominate it without too many people getting upset.

Further information is available at the official Boilerplate web site, and in this video.

Ash

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

When this year’s Hugo short list contained three books marketed as YA a lot of people complained about “dumbing down” and the like. That’s by no means necessarily the case. A book written for teenagers can be just as complex, if not more so, than a book written for adults. However, the writing in YA books is often very straightforward and transparent. Gene Wolfe could probably get away with writing like Gene Wolfe for a teenage audience, but if he was an unknown it is unlikely that he’d be able to sell such a book. And when you read a YA book that is straightforward and transparent you never quite know whether it being so is evidence of lack of skill on behalf of the writer, a conscious decision on behalf of the writer, or something that the writer has been bullied into by her editor.

All of which is necessary preamble to saying that I sped fairly quickly through Malinda Lo’s Ash because once you know the basic conceit (it is a lesbian re-telling of Cinderella) the book is straightforward and transparent. You know who all of the characters are, and what is going to happen, and Lo tells that story in a simple manner. That doesn’t mean it is a bad book. Indeed, it was cute and entertaining. And let’s face it, who would want Prince Charming when the most Charming thing about him is his wealth, especially if you could have his seriously sexy huntress instead?

So Ash is a fun book, and a good book for broadening the minds of young girls who might otherwise be reading Twilight and mooning over sexy vampires. It is very promising for a first novel. Malinda Lo isn’t in the same class as Robin McKinley yet, but give her time, or simply ask her to write for adults, and she may well be.