Books

On Internet Privacy

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The BBC has just put up an article about how the Press Complaints Commission is introducing new guidelines about what information the news media is free to lift from social media sites when writing a story about someone. Quite how much help this will be is another matter. It is all very well saying that you can’t lift an embarrassing photo from someone’s Facebook site without asking permission to use it, but in these days of ubiquitous camera phones the Internet is doubtless full of embarrassing photos of people on other people’s web sites, and offered a few bucks by a journalist they’d be happy to pass them over.

Anyway, this reminds me that in odd spare moments I have been reading my way through a book called The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. I was recommended by danah boyd and it is fascinating reading. Some of that fascination is sheer horror at the damage the Internet can do to your life if you are unlucky enough to have a story about you go viral. Stories such as those about the “dog poop girl” from Korea or the “Star Wars boy” from Canada are really quite chilling when you realize that the same sort of thing could happen to you. But author Daniel J. Solove is also very interesting when he talks about the history of privacy and how things like the invention of the camera were, in the past, regarded with just as much technophobic horror as the Internet is today. It is all good stuff, and the book is freely available online under a Creative Commons license. You can read it here. The book is quite short, and there are chunks you can skip over because they are the usual academic thing of establishing your starting position by stating stuff that everyone knows, so reading it online is no great hardship, though I’m planning to buy a copy when I get back to the US.

Last Dragon

~ Cheryl

I bought this book because Jeff VanderMeer had been enthusing about it. I don’t always agree with Jeff on books, but I do more often than not, and I can guarantee that if he recommends a book then it will be interesting even if I don’t like it. Last Dragon by JM McDermott, however, sees us completely in agreement. Firstly, I really like the book, and secondly it is one of those books that will have a lot of reviewers describing it as “difficult” if they are honest, and “pretentious” if they are not. The prose is a long way off from Hal Duncan, but it is ambitious, and the book has a complex narrative structure that makes a fairly straightforward fantasy plot a lot more interesting. Possibly even more impressive is the fact that the book comes not from the likes of Prime or Night Shade, but from Wizards of the Coast’s new Discoveries series. If I’m reading the acknowledgments correct then the very brave editor responsible is Phil Athans. I’m hoping I get to meet him and Mr. McDermott at a con somewhere this year.

BBC Looks Down Nose

~ Cheryl

It appears that the BBC has begun a series about fantasy literature. Over at The Guardian’s book blog, Damien G Walter complains that the first program in the series is unimaginative and patronizing, and gives the impression that fantasy literature is only for kids. Gee, what a surprise. I suppose I should be outraged, but actually I’m just bored. Finding minorities to patronize is what the media does. It would be nice if the BBC did an intelligent series about the work produced by people like M. John Harrison and Rob Holdstock (to pick just two high profile British names), but they’ll get much bigger ratings for a program that is about JK Rowling and Philip Pullman and which suggests that anyone over the age of 10 who reads that stuff is a pathetic geek. Still, mustn’t judge without seeing it. Episode 1 is still available on the iPlayer, and it has a brief clip of China in it. I’m happy to watch it just for that.

Nebula Final Ballot

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The New Moon's Arms - Nalo Hopkinson Having spent much of the day doing Nebula-related stuff at SFAW I thought I might as well comment on the nominees here (something I keep having to restrain myself from doing back there). First of all, just in case you haven’t seen it, the nominee list is here. I don’t have much to say about the short fiction as I still haven’t read much (must do so over the weekend as the Hugo deadline looms). The script category is widely regarded as a joke, so I’ll ignore that too. As for the novels, well…
Continue reading →

Matter

~ Cheryl

Matter - Iain M Banks Well, I got to the end, and was just about to write something about it when I discovered that John Scalzi had already said what I was going to say. Scratch that for an idea.

On the other hand, I can note that Banks seems to have been aware of what he was doing and even advertised it. On page 474, just as the plot is starting to warm up, he has his heroine say, “It’s like all war; months of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” Not that the previous 473 pages are actually boring, they just move much more slowly, and are full of that glorious space opera stuff of, “You think that’s big and impressive? Ha! Wait until you see THIS!”

And the occasional bit of philosophy, of course. I suspect that much of the message of the book is bound up in just one paragraph spoken by the “thing I can’t talk about because it would be a spolier”. That and a few musings on wealth and its uses by the admirable Mr. Holse. All else is entertainment, but it is good entertainment.

A Sale is Announced

~ Cheryl

I try to pay attention to which editors at the big publishing houses buy which books, because they all have their individual tastes and knowing who bought a book often tells me a lot about whether I will like it. One of those people whose purchases I generally tend to like is Juliet Ulman at Bantam. And therefore I am very interested to learn that she has just bought some books by Kamreon Hurley. Now those are books I am already looking forward to reading.

Empire of Ivory

~ Cheryl

Empire of Ivory - Naomi Novik The Temeraire saga thunders on, though this one probably has somewhat more for the Jane Austen fan than for the Patrick O’Brien fan. It takes Novik over 200 pages to get to Rider Haggard territory, but she gets there in the end and the expected things happen. The dragons are as cute and lovable as ever, probably because, as I have belatedly realized, they all have the personalities of cats.

All Doomed Again

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

The NYT has a fascinating article about the rise of the “cellphone novel” – Japanese chick lit composed on cell phones and now taking over the best seller lists. I suspect this will get a few people going:

Rin said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold.

“They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said. “On other hand, I understand how older Japanese don’t want to recognize these as novels. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I’d like cellphone novels to be recognized as a genre.”

Too many words, Mr. Mozart. Too many words.

But wait! Are cellphone novels a genre, or are they a style? Can you have cellphone SF, or does it have to be chick lit? We must categorize things! Where is Jay Lake when you need him?

Ah well, could be worse, at least we don’t yet have a ferocious debate between those people who want cellphone novels banned from the Hugos and those who think such works deserve a category to themselves.

The Poisoned Crown

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

The Poisoned Crown - Amanda Hemingway Well, the Sangreal Trilogy reaches its entirely predictable conclusion in a satisfying enough way. The final volume seems to have fewer jokes, perhaps because the fate of worlds is as stake, but it was still a pleasant enough read. And it isn’t meant to be heavy stuff, after all. Here’s hoping it has sold well enough to get Hemingway another book deal. I’ll buy them if she does.

One thing I would like to highlight. At the back of the book there is am actual, genuine credits page, listing agents, editors, publicists (hi Rebecca and David!), people who helped with the research and so on. This is a good thing to do. I wish more books would do it.

Till Human Voices Wake Us

~ Cheryl

Till Human Voices Wake Us - Mark Budz There are times when marketing people should not be let anywhere near book covers. To start with, when you see a quote like “Hard SF’s next superstar” splashed across a book cover you just know it isn’t the full comment. Sure enough, a quick check inside reveals a much longer quote from a PW review: “Budz may be poised to become hard SF’s next superstar.” Ah well, at least it didn’t say “has no chance of being…”.

Unfortunately, while it is true that Budz has written some material that could be classed as “hard SF”, he’s probably better known for his speculations in biotech, which the hard SF crowd tends to look down upon. As for Till Human Voices Wake Us, it certainly has echoes of Matt Ruff, M. John Harrison and Phil Dick, but not a trace of Greg Benford that I could detect. So any hard SF fan buying this book on the strength of the cover is going to be disappointed. You, however, are forewarned, and can go out and enjoy a smart, ambitious, character-driven novel that, in the best tradition of PKD, keeps you guessing as to what is “real” until the very end.

Too Many Books

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As I frequently end up telling people who are worried that they are “not qualified” to vote in the Hugos, you can’t read everything. You can’t even read anywhere near everything. I might not have read quite as many books in 2006 as I have in past years, but I’ve still read quite a lot. Jeff VanderMeer has also read quite a lot, and the one’s he has read and very different that the ones I have read. Nevertheless, because I have lots of faith in Jeff’s good judgment, I’m sure that they are very good books. I just wish I had time to read them all. You can find Jeff’s Best of the Year article over at Locus Online. Check it out.

Carnival

~ Cheryl

Carnival - Elizabeth Bear Bit of a shame, this one. Carnival starts off superbly. I love the setting, in which Bear manages to have a go at both feminist utopias and eco-fundamentalists without ever losing sympathy with the ideals that got her galaxy to the desperate state it is in. But towards the end I felt the plot tried to wrap up far too much, far too quickly, and with far too much hand-waving, thereby wasting much of the set-up. I shall leave you with some choice quotes:

The only significant natural predator that human women have is heterosexual men.

And as a consequence (though this comes earlier in the book)…

In previous societies – in all recorded societies, other than the New Amazonian – when a women died by violence, the perpetrator was almost always male. And almost always a member of the woman’s immediate family, often with the complicity of society.

And finally, on a different tack:

Kusanagi-Jones didn’t think those anything special. Perhaps they’d be more meaningful in context, but it seemed to him that their status as cultural treasures was based on their provenance rather than their art. They were historical works by women; it might be enough for the New Amazonians, but Kusanagi-Jones hoped his own aesthetic standards were somewhat higher.

Shopping

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today being the first day of half-way decent weather since I got back to the UK, I took myself into Taunton to do some shopping. It is farmers’ market day, after all. So some venison has been duly secured. I have stocked up on stuff from Lush. And I have books. I have finally got hold of the third volume of Amanda Hemmingway’s Sangreal Trilogy, the first two books of which I have very much enjoyed. I’ve also picked up the second Tom Lloyd novel, The Twilight Herald as I thought that the first one showed a fair bit of promise. I can’t find Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army anywhere, so that will have to wait until I can get to London.

I also looked in clothes shops. As of now I have a certain amount of hope that this might be a good year for summer dresses, and about time too.

Pretty Good Odds

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The indefatigable Simon Kavanagh has set up an entertaining little promotion for Iain Banks’ Matter in Facebook. It is a virtual event. Some people seem to have got kind of confused by this, but basically all you need to do is say you are attending, and write “I love The Culture” on the event’s wall, and you go into a draw for one of 10 signed and personalized copies of Matter. Currently there are just 32 people signed up, and a few of those appear to have missed the writing in the wall thing. I am watching with interest to see if the thing takes off.

Spaceman Blues

~ Cheryl

Spaceman Blues - Brian Francis Slattery When Spaceman Blues first appeared it was to an enthusiastic review from Matt Cheney. Since then other reviewers have been less appreciative and the book seems to have sunk without trace. Having finally got around to reading it, I think I can see both sides. Slattery’s prose is, in places, magnificent, and the book is also highly amusing in places. But it is also a gay love story set amongst the immigrant communities of New York against a background of an alien invasion. The soundtrack is by George Clinton, and the ending is very downbeat. Beautiful book. Not gonna sell.

Though it had been in the water for days, it was found not three hours ago, shuffling in the tides of the East River before wrapping itself in the struts of a pier near the Financial District, where commuters sweating stains in their sharp suits pointed at it and called each other on their cell phones. It will make the cover tomorrow because of this. The brokers and bankers are unused to bodies in the water, it is unprofessional.

Lovely stuff.