Last year I did my readings so as to ensure that I would read 50 books within the span of a single Lunar New Year, a kind of interesting challenge for the first time, pushing myself to read more and in a certain way. Of course, I found that the fact I was doing a Lunar New Year list affected how I was reading. Not all of my choices were affected by this, of course — if I’d been maniacal about it, I wouldn’t have joined the Ezra Pound Reading Group at the Uni, because reading Pound is slow and …
Category: BOOKS & AUTHORS
Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read (according to China Miéville)
Instead of the Lunar New Year Readathon I did last year, I’m considering trying to work my way through China Miéville’s list of Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read over at Fantastic Metropolis. Some of those books will be difficult-to-get, but I just got a credit card approved, so it might be possible to order them, used, if I really want to make my way through the whole list. (Meaning, the books I haven’t read, which is the majority of Miéville’s selections.)
Indigo Children? Hogwash!
Nabbed from a somewhat skeptical (and rightfully so) discussion on the Stephenbaxter mailing list, is this link to an article about so-called “Indigo Children”. Jake’s mother is a teacher at this Baytown-area school, and worries that he may be ostracized by his peers if word ever gets out about his special gifts. “He questions everything because he wants to know,” she says as her son draws a picture of a lollipop tree. “The questions he asks are not even age-appropriate.” These children tend to know things without ever being taught or told. Jake’s companion Jan “can use a compound bow …
SF and (Bits of) the Postmodern
The contents of this post were originally written as part of my post on Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, but I felt that they deserved to be developed into a separate, individual post, which is why this is here. Conjure Wife and my understanding of how one could read that text critically brought to my mind a comment I wrote on an essay my friend Myoung Jae was working on lately, which touched upon the subject of postmodernist literary techniques, and the notion that it was through these techniques that a writer can express best the claims and values and criticisms …
For Those On the Road A Lot
For those of you forced to be on the road, especially driving, who wish they could spend the time reading, you might find useful the wonderful site of Librivox. LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (podcast and catalog). Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project. It’s a very cool project. I am enjoying it and planning to download a novel …
Weird Things You Learn Reading Comic Books Graphic Novels
Wearing silk beneath a suit of armor can make the removal of arrowheads much less damaging and much easier, since the head of the arrow gets “wrapped” in the miniscule threads of the silk. No, really. Learned that little fact in David Mack’s Kabuki, Vol 1: Circle of Blood graphic novel, which is not what I expected but is interesting enough, I suppose.
Pinter demands war crimes trial for Blair
Sometimes artists still do act as prophets, calling people out on wrongs: The Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter has called for Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes, in his acceptance speech to the Nobel committee. Go, Pinter, go!
What is this thing called… SF?
Kat has written a wonderful post about the question of the difference between fantasy and SF, and why some people like one and not the other. I’ll throw in my own two cents: I think these kinds of fiction speak to different areas of the imagination. I started out as a reader and writer of fantasy, simply because I loved imagined worlds; the more complete an imagined world, the more I loved it. (I’m sure this was at least in part fueled by my fascination with the Forgotten Realms line of products from TSR. I regard it now as a …
Lunar New Year Reads, Book #31: A Draft of XXX Cantos
Ezra Pound is one of the modern masters of poetry. Ezra Pound was a dismal failure. Ezra Pound was a genius. Ezra Pound was a madman. These readings of the man, or readings of the man from his Cantos, I can understand. I can understand each of them, collectively as well as individually, and I can even affirm them collectively as well as individually. You might say that Ezra Pound transformed poetry forever, and I would not be inclined to disagree with you. On the other hand, you might be inclined to say he inflicted terrible wounds on poetry and …
A Few Links for Ezra Pound Fans
First, an interesting (if problematic) assessment of the Cathar heresy and the basic dualist impulse one often senses in people confronted with the theodicy — the paradox of evil in a world created by a good deity, by Hilaire Belloc. Second, an interesting snippet on Neoplatonism at Wikipedia which, far from incomplete, refreshes my memory and makes it clear to me why Pound was so into Plethon and Psellus and the rest of this lot. Lastly, an essay I’ve seen around before, but one which points out some interesting facts regarding the relationship between Ezra Pound and the Occult, a …