In 2007 I read the following books: Code: italics = reread asterisk = new (to me) author (*) bold = my favorites this year exclamation mark = !unfinished strikethrough = never finished, never will Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang (*) The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George Hicks (*) Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson Accelerando Charles Stross (*) Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, by Wendy Kaminer (*) Tatja Grimm’s World by Vernor Vinge The Koreans by Michael Breen (*) Stone by Adam Roberts Sin City …
Tag: books read 2007
More Recent Readings: November/December 2007
People have commented that my discussions of recent listenings, viewings, and readings all bundled together in a single post make for unwieldly linkage, so I’m just going to go on about books here — partly also because November was so busy I watched very little anyway, and will review what I have seen at the end of December instead. Like I said, I was very busy, so my short, short list is as follows: Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2007 was an okay issue. Ted Chiang’s work was, as usual, respectable. This review does “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” …
Back to Life…
Up for air again. I haven’t posted much of substance lately, and I’m not (really) about to start now. The editing gig I took on has hit that chunk on the exponential curve of increasing involvement where time for sleep begins to erode, where I stop even the minimal amount of tidying I try to remember to do, where I stop cooking or eating properly. This is not nice territory, but the gig is almost done, and the worst of it, I hope, is past. More time for other things, then: too-long-deferred grading, working on drafts, edits, submissions, my column, …
Recent Readings & Stuff, Late August, September & October ’07
Books The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker may not blow away people with some real familiarity with the sorry state of affairs in the human sciences — like a friend who shall remain nameless (unless she wishes to comment here) and who said that the criticisms made in the book were not uncommon among grad students in her department. But in that it encapsulates the argument in a way really easily parsed by nonspecialists, frames it in terms of the harmful effects of Blank Slate-ist denial of inherent human nature, and movingly retaliates against the scummiest of Blank Slate-ists who, …
Watched/Read/Listened: July 16th to August 13th
First off, I’m writing this in pieces, as I complete each book, so that my comments about each aren’t based on hazy recollections of a month past or more. BOOKS: Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow I’ve been a fan of James Morrow’s writing for years now, since I read, by chance, his novel Only Begotten Daughter back in my undergrad days. Since then, I’ve read Bible Stories for Adults, This is the Way the World Ends, and Towing Jehovah, the latter of which is the book to which Blameless in Abaddon is the sequel. Morrow’s made a name for …
Read & Watched & Listened
This list spans June and the first half of July 2007. READ: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.Fascinating, disturbing, and surprising. It has the usual disclaimers from locals, but what I found unusual and particularly inspiring was her continuous reminders of the kind of horrific objectification that was forced on female slaves in America, on the downright moral and sexual depravity of white masters. What was striking was that she spoke less in abstract terms, instead slamming home her point with specific examples from her life, which were enough to turn my stomach. She wrote …
Read & Watched Lately (May 2007)
A back injury in mid-May landed me on my back, in pain. Which meant I got a lot of reading done this month, not only books I’ve been meaning to get to, but also the chance to catch up on my magazine subscriptions. Of course, I have a new copy of both Interzone and F&SF, but that’s a good thing, actually. Magazines: Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2007 I wasn’t crazy about the Gene Wolfe story, so all the articles in praise of him just sort of muddled things for me; I thought the best pieces were (definitely) the David …
April Readings / Viewings
It’s been a busy month, but I’ve managed to do some reading and to watch a couple of movies. Deeper discussions of the books, less so on the movies. Books: Korea Bug: The Best of the Zine that Infected a Nation, by J. Scott Burgeson. I’ve finished it! Not that it was a ponderous read, but that I feel like I have achieved something here. It’s a really fascinating text, actually — all kinds of interviews with people in whom I would have been interested, if I’d thought to think of them. The last gisaeng (Korean geisha)… a shaman… interesting …
March Readings, Part 1(.5)
Since my last post about readings was February/March, this one is March, Part 1.5. It’s been a busy month, and I’ve also been switching back and forth between a lot of different things, so I hardly read as much as I would like to be able to say I had. However, it’s been a month of very good, worthwhile reading. Picking up from where I left off, I tore through Small Beer Press’ LCRW No. 11, which was sent to me by the lovely and (enviably) talented Tina Connolly. My suspicion that it might be a worthwhile zine to subscribe …
February Readings, Part 2, and March Readings Part 1
Sadly, yes, I am still catching up on my one and only current monthly magazine subscription. (I’m actually technically subscribed to a few more monthlies, but they haven’t yet started to arrive.) various magazine subscriptions. The theory is that I need to at least catch up, since I’ve subbed to a few more things and want to be in the groove once all the new subscriptions start arriving. But I find I can get through an issue of F&SF in a couple of days if I focus on it. So Maybe 5 or 6 days a month, my reading time …