Category Archives: First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day

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A few thoughts.

Nebula Award nominees are out.  One pet peeve I have with SF/F awards is that so much is series-oriented.  This year 5 of the 6 nominees in the novel category are part of a series and one of them is book 7 in its series.  (To be fair, 2 of the nominees are the first book in the series) and so require an awful lot of someone who uses these awards as reading list fodder.  All that aside, I'm excited that The Three Body Problem was nominated.  I definitely plan to pick that one up at some point in the future, and I was always going to read Ancillary Sword given how much I liked the first book.

I read Player Piano as part of my ongoing passage through Kurt Vonnegut's novels.  It was pretty much as I remembered, not exactly what you think of when you think of Vonnegut, but so many of his consistent themes are right there from the very beginning.

I read some other stuff, but I'll save that for the comments.

Some good things that I found on the internet this month:

"Some Desperado" by Joe Abercrombie.  A short story title that should be read sarcastically.  It's a Western setting with a young woman trying to get away with the spoils of a robbery.

"Weary" by P.E. Garcia.  A quiet, but strong short story.  I'm not sure I can put my finger on why I liked this.  But I did.

"Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov.  The short story that became the first chapter of the novel by the same name.  I actually read this a few years ago and loved it.  But then I came across this reading of it by Alexsander Hemon and I got to listen to it again.  I love the initial description of the title character and his situation.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Biography x3

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This year, I decided I was going to re-read (or read for the first time) all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. With that in mind, I looked around for some books that get into the background of both the books and the author. This month I read three biographies of various types.  I'll admit that by the end of the third, I was feeling a little like I was going over the same material, but each was different enough.  Listed below are the books that I read all or part of this month.

THE MAN:

SoItGoes

And So it Goes - Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields

The word that comes to mind is "workman-like".  It's about as straightforward as a biography can be.  Point to point without much editorializing or analysis in between.  Still, this filled in a lot of details about Vonnegut's life that I was not familiar with (the kids, the wives, the agents, etc.) and gave me a pretty good framework for the other biographical books that I read.

Letters

Letters by Kurt Vonnegut (edited by Dan Wakefield)

Reading this directly after the Shields biography was about perfect.  A lot of the details that were only mentioned in passing in this book I was already familiar with from my previous reading.  I enjoyed Vonnegut's writing even in this non-narrative format.

PalmSunday

Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut

One of many "autobiographical collages" that Vonnegut published that collects some of his lectures and writings and attempts to connect them together. This is perhaps a little redundant with respect to the collection of letters above, but it was interesting to see how Vonnegut connects things as opposed to an editor or biographer.  This added some depth to some life events, but as noted in the intro, I did start to feel like I was reading some of the same material.

THE NOVELS:  (Analysis - I've only started these two, so any thoughts are preliminary)

VonnegutEffect

The Vonnegut Effect by Jerome Klinkowitz

Klinkowitz has written a lot of analysis of Vonnegut's work.  This book breaks things down by novel.  Depending on how much I like this book, I might seek out some other Klinkowitz offerings (there are quite a few, here's his author's page on Goodreads, see if you can spot the theme).

UnstuckInTime

Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut's Life and Novels by Gregory D. Sumner

Lest you think that I am some kind of truly original visionary with the re-reading Vonnegut idea, here's someone who already thought of it and wrote a book about it.  This might be the book I'm most excited to read in this post.  I've only gotten through the prologue (an abbreviated biography - Argh!) and the section on Player Piano so far.

So, fair citizens.  What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: New Year

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The last book I read in 2014 was The Wanderer by Timothy J. Jarvis.

It's a horror novel (because what better time than Christmas for a little horror?) that loves what horror can be. The structure of the book is very aware of itself. A manuscript that describes something supernatural is found in the apartment of a recently disappeared author. But before you know even that, the first words of the book are an excerpt from that author's story:

"What is it?"
"An old manuscript. Much of it is hard to make out, but..."
Mr. Leatherbotham cut in.
"What? That worn-out old Gothic trope?"
He rolled his eyes.

The whole book careens along through the various stories (a demonic puppet show, a variation on Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, and an homage to Lovecraft, among others) that come from chance meetings with strangers (another self-aware nod to "weird tales" and horror stories) while updating the main plot. It only perhaps loses steam once or twice but quickly finds its footing. The Wanderer is a book where a word like ichor feels right at home. The vocabulary is extensive and the description is remarkable. The prose is described as poetic in more that one place, and it's easy to see where that comes from. The description is concerned with things often visceral, often gory, often downright repulsive. Horrible things are happening in The Wanderer. And they keep happening.

I loved it, the main plot of an immortal man fleeing an immortal pursuer while all the stories spin out around him worked really well and put this right up there among my favorite reads of the year.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Goals

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December is here. The final month of the year, where everyone starts publishing their "best books of the year" lists and I start to compile my reading list for 2015. More on that next month probably. This month is our last chance to meet our reading goals for 2014 (if we set any - I did, of course, and I tracked the whole thing on a spreadsheet, because that's who I am).

I had two goals for 2014.

1) Read 60 books (I usually set my goal somewhere around 50, then adjust as life happens). I'm about 50 pages from finishing my 58th book of the year right now, so things are looking good for that.

2) Read about one "big" book per month that I have wanted to read before, but never found the time. An attempt to clear away some of my backlog that really worked out well, I think. Read some really interesting books and checked off a few bucket-list books.

Here's my final list of "big" books for 2014 in general order of how much I enjoyed them (I'm going to start Midnight's Children next week and finish before the end of the month).

Author Title
Laszlo Krasznahorkai Seiobo There Below
David Markson This is Not a Novel
Georges Perec Life A User's Manual
Roberto Bolano The Savage Detectives
Bruno Schulz The Street of Crocodiles
+ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot
Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinths
Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon
John LeCarre The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
+ The Looking Glass War
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities
Haruki Murakami 1Q84
Kobo Abe The Woman in the Dunes
Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire
Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
J.G. Ballard Concrete Island

So, what do you have left to read in 2014? What are you reading right now?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Reading in Translation

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J.M.G. Le Clézio - DésertLast week, as we rolled south toward Kansas, Mrs. Hayes and I occupied our minds with podcasts. The pillowy ride of the new (to us) full-size Buick sedan and the monotony of eastern Iowa might have lulled us to sleep were it not for The Incomparable, The /Filmcast, Roderick on the Line, and Radiolab. "Translation," last week's Radiolab episode, got me thinking about the books I've read in translation, particularly the book I'm reading right now –  J.MG. Le Clézio's Désert, translated in my edition by C. Dickson.

This is my first modern French novel. I dutifully read, as I'm sure many of you did, Voltaire and Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant in high school. I might be forgetting a few. Since I don't speak French, I never read any of them in anything other than English, just like I'm reading Le Clézio. Mostly, reading this book is flying blind. I'm ignorant of any conventions in French literature, and completely reliant on C. Dickson to convey Le Clézio's entire persona as an author – characterization, phrasing, pacing, voice, everything except the plot. If Désert were a film by Godard or Melville I might have more to go on; I wouldn't need a translator to help with anything other than dialogue. But C. Dickson's my only lifeline to the ship Le Clézio is sailing across the Sahara. I'm over halfway through it, and while I can't say if I "get" it yet, I can say with conviction I'm in awe of the writing. Or is it the translation?

I read and translated a little Russian literature in Russian as an undergrad: Pushkin and Akhmatova and Gogol come to mind. I don't speak or read Russian well enough to read a book anything but haltingly, but at one time I got along enough to form a few opinions, mainly about poets. Blok and Akhmatova blew me away. I know enough about Russian literature and culture to have a decent idea of what an author or poet is doing or the society his work is engaging. With the French, I have no idea. (I will be even more lost when I finally get to Ha Jin's War Trash, hopefully by the end of the year.)

It's funny. Some of my favorite authors are those I can only read in translation. Murakami, for example. There are books of his I like better than others, but despite my near-complete ignorance of non-automotive Japan and my total Japanese illiteracy, he is definitely near the top of my list of favorite writers. How much of that do I owe to Murakami, and how much of it to his English translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel? I suppose I could answer that by saying I never recommend anyone read Constance Garnett's translations of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or anybody else. (Please. Read the newer and superior Prevar & Volokhonsky translations.) A good translator gets out of the way and imparts as much of the original author's vision and voice as possible, and a bad one can completely destroy the original while leaving the reader completely unaware of the demolition. The problem is knowing which translator has been at work.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Series

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This month I finished Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy (pictured above if I figured out the header thing correctly). He released all 3 books this year, and it was kind of nice to be able to finish one and know that the next was coming out in a month or two (eat your heart out GRRM fans!).

The series itself was interesting and at times really good. A portion of the coastline has been cordoned off and designated as "Area X" after an incident. Several expeditions have been sent in, but none have been successful in determining exactly what is going on.

Annihilation follows the twelfth expedition into Area X,
Authority follows what happens at The Southern Reach, the organization sending in the expeditions, in the aftermath of book 1.
Acceptance sends some characters back into Area X and investigates the incident that started the whole thing.

The setting in all of these books is awesomely weird. In Area X, in the Southern Reach, the feeling of isolation, paranoia, and alienation comes through in a very real way. The plot tended to lose itself occasionally. In book 1, you spend the entire book inside the head of the narrator, and she doesn't know what's going on any more than you do. As I said above, that's great for an atmosphere of paranoia and isolation, but not so great for figuring out what is going on. Books 2 and 3 deliver a bit more in the plot department, making book 1 almost the foreword to the rest of the trilogy.

I enjoyed the series. It didn't blow me away, but I liked the weirdness enough that I was glad to have read it.

On the subject of series, I was looking through my "recently read" list and I have started a bunch of different series that I just haven't got around to finishing. Maybe next year that will be a good reading goal. How about the Citizens of the WGOM? What series have you finished recently? What series have you started recently? What series has you patiently awaiting the next volume?

Put all that, or any other book stuff below.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – Awards Season

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The World Science Fiction Convention has come and gone in the past month which means one big thing to me. Hugo Awards. I like the Hugos because they are far enough into the year that most everything they recognize is widely available. Lots of people have lots of very valid criticism about the nominating and voting process for these awards (both are done by fans and convention-goers only), so “Hugo Award Winner” doesn’t necessarily correlate to “Absolute Best Stuff Out There”, but it’s a nice place to start for those who haven’t read every bit of sci-fi published in the last year.

Other big awards that have lead me to really good stories in the past are:

Nebula Awards

Locus Awards

World Fantasy Awards

That’s a lot of reading, and I won’t pretend that I got through everything on all those lists. Instead we’ll start with the Hugos and maybe fill in some editorializing about things I enjoyed that missed out.   As always, where I can find material freely available online, I've provided a link.

BEST SHORT STORY

The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere (John Chu) – Hugo Winner. A love story in a world where every time someone lies, they are immediately drenched with water.

If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love (Rachel Swirsky) –Nebula Winner. I really liked this story, the gimmick of the story almost wears thin, but it fits the events that put the whole thing in motion. Nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and WFA.

Selkie Stories Are for Losers (Sofia Samatar) – My favorite of the four. The narrator’s mother was a selkie, a seal who was trapped in human form when the narrator’s father stole her coat. Nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and WFA.

The Ink Readers of Doi Saket(Thomas Olde Heuvelt) – Nominated for Hugo and WFA. Set in a village in Thailand where all the wishes that are set in the river during a festival are collected. A good enough story.

THINGS HUGO MISSED?

Effigy Nights (Yoon Ha Lee) – Her collection Conservation of Shadows was incredibly good. If you like this story, get the book, because every single story in there I liked.  WFA nominee.

 

BEST NOVELLETE

The Lady Astronaut of Mars (Mary Robinette Kowal) -  Hugo Winner. You should read anything by Robinette Kowal, this is a good story about an aging astronaut having to revisit old disasters.

The Waiting Stars (Ailette deBodard) - Nebula Winner. From the same universe as “Immersion” (my favorite story from last year’s awards), deBodard is amassing a bunch of these really powerful pieces about alienation and culture. Another really good story.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling (Ted Chiang) - I love Ted Chiang’s stories. He always does an amazing job of weaving technology and memory together. This story is very good, but I can see why it didn’t win.

The Exchange Officers (Brad Torgersen) (link goes to a .pdf) – I struggled to finish this one. Especially as it was in a category with three writers that I knew and had enjoyed in the past, this one felt as though it didn’t belong.

THINGS HUGO MISSED?

The Prayer of Ninety Cats (Caitlin Kiernan) - Nominated for Locus and WFA.  A story of fear and illusion framed by a movie that tells the (fairly graphic) story of Elizabeth Bathory.

BEST NOVELLA:

Equoid by Charles Stross - Hugo Winner.  This is pretty good horror. It uses Lovecraft as a jumping off point, but it will turn your stomach and sets up a pretty good monster. My only quibble is that it’s clearly a part of an existing universe (Stross’ Laundry series) and so it’s not self-contained like some others on the list.

Wakulla Springs (Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages) - Set in a Florida swamp over several generations. Nominated for nearly everything (Hugo, Nebula, WFA, Locus).

Six-Gun Snow White (Catherynne Valente). I have loved Valente’s work before this (“Silently and Very Fast” was one of my Hugo favorites a couple years ago) and this transposition of Snow White’s story to the American West is a pretty good story. Nominated for Hugo, Nebula, WFA, Locus - Winner of Locus Award.
(Not freely available that I know of)

The Butcher of Khardov (Dan Wells). A character study of a monster. The butcher’s motivations won’t really surprise you too much, but Wells does a pretty good job of telling the tale in an entertaining fashion.
(Not freely available)

The Chaplain’s Legacy (Brad Torgersen) (link goes to a .pdf) - Liked it fine. Didn’t surprise me much, though there were some scenes that were nicely executed. A chaplain who averted the destruction of the human race is called back into negotiations with an alien race.

THINGS HUGO MISSED?

The Weight of the Sunrise (Vylar Kaftan) - Nebula Winner.  Didn't get to read this, but I will sometime soon.

BEST NOVEL:

Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie) -

This won everything it was nominated for (Hugo, Nebula, Locus). I finally got a copy that I hope to get to this month. Everything I’ve heard has said this is very very good, so I’d recommend it based on that alone. If you read it in September, then we’ll have something for sure to talk about in the next Book Day post!

The Wheel of Time series (Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson) -

Enough has probably been said about this. If you feel like 10,000 pages of fantasy might be up your alley, this will scratch that itch.

Neptune’s Brood (Charles Stross) -

I don’t know Charles Stross’ work at all (save for his story in the novella category), but this was nominated for a Locus and a Hugo, so I’ve been tempted to check it out.

THINGS HUGO MISSED?

The Golem and the Jinni (Helene Wecker). I'm two-thirds of the way through this book right now, it seems as though it's a bit longer than it needs to be, but the title characters are interesting. Nominated for Locus, WFA, Nebula.

Stranger in Olondria (Sofia Samatar). Sounds interesting, and I really liked her short story, so I might get around to this one.  Nominated for Locus, WFA, Nebula

The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman). I wasn’t impressed. But then I haven’t connected with Gaiman in the couple of chances I’ve afforded him. Nominated for Locus, WFA, Nebula. Winner of Locus award.

-----------------------------

That might get us started for some discussion.  What have you been reading?

First Monday Book Day

Bucket List Book

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Gravity's Rainbow was a "Bucket List Book" for me. We've all got "To Read" lists that are far too long, but even on those lists some of the books stand out. I've always been pretty good about working my way through them (I've loved the challenge ever since I took a Great Books class in college), but somehow even among the Bucket List Books, Gravity's Rainbow stood out. Maybe because I adore Pynchon, and this is considered his masterpiece. Maybe because it's notoriously difficult. Whatever the case, it was one of the biggies on my Book Reading Bucket List. And now, I'm glad I've read it. Even if I never really get it all.

I started Gravity's Rainbow in December. I finally finished Sunday night. 8 months it took me. Part of that was a function of some insanity in my life, but that added a couple months at most. Mostly it was that there were many days when I didn't pick it up at all, or when I did I would only read a page or two. I've had this experience with Pynchon before - when I read Against The Day - and like in that instance, finishing the book didn't necessarily leave me with an immediate sense of accomplishment. But I hope that experience proves instructive in a more important way.

When I read Against The Day I frequently felt lost as I read through it. Pynchon's prose can be extremely difficult. He gets lost in asides and transitions, and asides and transitions become the main story, main characters fade entirely from the story, minor characters jump back into essential roles, etc. I read ATD alone, and it was probably the biggest reading challenge I've ever faced. When I was done, I wasn't sure what I'd just finished. But as time passed, more and more things started to click. I feel like I really "get" ATD now. I don't feel that way about Gravity's Rainbow, but maybe in a few months I will. It's also worth saying that, having read both Against The Day and Gravity's Rainbow, that, right now at least, I feel like Against The Day is the better of the two. Gravity's Rainbow was Pynchon's first masterpiece, perhaps, but not his greatest. Maybe I'll feel differently, eventually, when I've had some time to sit with GR.

As for the content itself... My initial thoughts probably aren't worth much. I'm stunned. The ending was anti-climactic. My favorite character was a fairly minor person, I suppose. The protagonist, and indeed, the book, seemed to lack direction. A lot of that was on purpose, but it didn't change the maddening nature of the fact. I want to hear what others have to say about it. I want to sit down and talk about it. I feel like there's so much to be unpacked. It's a rare thing to read a book so dense, that so begs for conversation. I've got several dozen pages dog-eared to comment on. If others are willing, I'd be happy to jot down more specific thoughts in the comments.

For now, let me just say: I'm done. It is good to be done. It is a very good thing to be done with a Bucket List book.

So, how about it citizens? What have you been reading? What are your Bucket List books? Who wants to actually talk about Gravity's Rainbow? Pepper and DG (and others), are you ready for Pale Fire?

First Monday Book Day

Agenbite of inwit

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After my projection into the lofty aither with Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, brennschluss was inevitable and I finally finished what was probably the toughest, chewiest piece of literature I have ever feasted on.

In the beginning, I was looking up all of the obscure references, phrases, and people and not making much progress.  The dude at the beer cave posited that the first twenty pages were intentionally written in such a manner as to keep people from reading any further.

In advance of the denouement of GR, I ordered another endurance read, Ulysses by James Joyce, and have just embarked on that journey.

Seriously, Dedalus.  I'm stony.  Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.  Today the bards must drink and junket.  Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty.

So, Citizens, what are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Nothing Ventured

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This book has been sitting on my shelf for almost a year, silently rebuking me. I finally pulled it out two weeks ago, in anticipation of our spring break-go-look-at-socal-colleges road trip. I'm not very deep in (only ~120 pages), but I'm pretty impressed.

R. Scott Bakker is a canuckian and (gasp!) earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Literature from Western Ontario. He also spent some time in a Ph.D. program in philosophy at Vandy. But apparently all that learnin' hasn't prevented him from creating something weird and wonderful. This is the first in an extensive, and lauded, series of swords-and-sorcery fantasy, but with a high degree of inventiveness and "literate"-ness. The first trilogy goes by the Prince of Nothing moniker (originally planned as a single book, then expanded and expanded as so often seems to happen).

I'm not far enough in to really know whether there are any compelling female characters; I've only "met" one named female so far in the narrative (teh Repository tells me that she will become prominent). So I'm a little nervous that things will decay into cliche, but hopeful that the hype will bear up. Certainly, the sophistication of the writing and storycraft is far ahead of anything that Robert Jordan achieved in The Wheel of Time, although it maybe lacks the swashbuckle of that epic series. This doesn't (yet) have the grit and realism of George R.R.R.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. I might put it in a class with Dune, actually, for the scope, vision, and pacing. I'm looking forward to getting in deep.

What are you reading?