Flight into Fantasy

I never read Dragonlance as a kid, and I have no desire to read it now. Do you know how many Dragonlance novels there are? Whew! Way too many!

Any old schmuck can write whiny angst, but I think it takes a genius to write genuinely funny comedy.

For the record, Connie Willis is a genius.

That is all.

Some people read way too damned much into the Harry Potter books. Seriously.

I was telling my sister the other day about some of the insane batshit stuff I’ve read online about how persecuted certain segments of the population who have even more spare time than I do feel because OMG Harry and Hermione are not ever going to get together. She sighed and said in an exasperated tone, “But everyone knows Hermione’s supposed to be with Ron.”

Personally, the only reason I care all that much about who ends up with whom in the stupid books is that I want to stay away from the seriously crazy people that discuss Harry Potter. As far as the books are concerned, I’ve always been rooting for Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny because I saw it coming. And, if I were to read more fanfic than I actually do, I’d probably just do a random search on Fanfiction.net for Luna Lovegood, who has grown to be my favorite character in the series.

I can totally see, for the first time ever, where the Harry/Draco shippers are coming from.

Also, there is way too little of Luna in this particular book.

I started a collection of Connie Willis’s short stories. I’m also in the middle of reading a collection by Peter Straub. The Willis I’m enjoying so far. The Straub… Not so much. I’m not sure I can pin down what it is I dislike about what he writes, I just know it isn’t working for me.

In other news, today we’re going to go have a small family get-together in the afternoon. My brother wants us all to play board games, which is always fun, except that my siblings are two of the most competitive people on the face of the planet. Our attempt to play Cranium last night went disastrously badly. I mostly blame the fact that my brother, who was the reason for this, was chugging Captain Morgan the entire time. I’ve also discovered that I do not like rum unless there is also Coke in the glass containing the said rum. Captain Morgan, to me, tastes more like flavored rubbing alcohol than anything else does.

This anthology, edited by the dream team of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, features 36 short stories and a few poems that were outstanding during the year 1998. Well, at least outstanding according to these editors. I, the average reader, was not nearly so impressed.

There were some excellent stories. Terry Dowling’s “Jenny Come to Play” was haunting and blood-chilling. Delia Sherman’s “The Fairy Coney Catcher” was liberal and beautiful, and Patricia McKillip’s short story, despite the fact that I can’t remember its name, stood out for me. Jane Yolen, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link all provided excellent short stories, too.

I have to make special note, though, of the fact that “Twa Corbies”, the short story by Charles de Lint, did not bowl me over the way I was expecting. I was hoping to love it. In fact, I just kind of went meh, which was my reaction to most of the other tales in this collection, aside from the truly atrocious stories, which made me want to gag.

The problem, too, for me with this book came from the fact that I had an audio book produced by the Library of Congress which was narrated by a grandfatherly British man with a dry voice that did not inject any of the stories with any kind of warmth or emotion. Being blind, I can usually ignore the voice if I listen to an audio book, or put the warmth and emotion I need in there myself (which is what I do often when I’m reading books via my very artificial-sounding screenreader) but sometimes, especially when listening to a mediocre short story, it’s really hard to even try.

I’m hoping that the next Datlow/Windling collection I find is slightly better, both in terms of quality of work and quality of recording on tape.

i’m on the last short story in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collection I’ve had from the library since August. I’ll be sad to not have to hear the voice of that old, grandfatherly British dude anymore… Not so much.

There was one particular author they featured though, who had a fascinating story. The short story was called “Jenny Come to Play” and the author was Terry Dowling. Unfortunately, the Library of Congress has not seen fit to record anything else by him. But the story was a horror tale set in a mental hospital… Which I found quite awesome.

On other book-related notes, apparently the Library of Congress has begun the process of reading A Feast for Crows. This means I may be able to read it sometime next year, if I’m lucky. Therefore, I hope I can get a commercial audio copy of it before then.

As I said a couple of days back in my journal, I think Kit Reed is an awesome writer who more people need to be familliar with. This collection of twenty short stories is a good retrospective of her work from 1958 to 1998.

All of the stories in this book are, on some level, creepy. Even when Reed’s being funny or satirical, that creepy factor is still there. Most particularly creepy are her stories dealing with motherhood, in particular “Chicken Soup”, in which devoted motherhood is taken to the extreme, “The Mothers of Shark Island”, and “Mommy Nearest.”

That being said, I love Reed when she’s making social commentary. “In Behalf of the Product” is a speech by a pageant winner that is just very, very not what you’d expect. “Like My Dress” is a nice commentary on the media and what people will do to get fame. “Cynosure” and “The New You” are also a bit satirical, but the twists at the end are the kind that make me rub my hands together with glee.

It says something for Reed that I zipped through all these short stories in only a matter of days, whereas the collection of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror that I have out from the library has been languishing for months.

Reed is definitely an author to check out if you like weird stories!

First of all, I would just like to express my distaste for the spelling of the word “cum”. I don’t know why. It just bothers me.

Second of all, I finally have a tape recorder that works. W00t!

Third of all, I have now had the ending of the Dark Tower series totally spoiled for me thanks to some asshole reviewing at Amazon sticking his review under the wrong place.

I am hoping that I can forget this fact if I ever should chance to get to read those books.

I don’t usually post poetry here in my journal, but I rediscovered this poem a few minutes ago, and I love it.

Incidentally, has anyone ever heard of the Canadian folk group Finest Kind? They do a version of this poem on one of their CDs.
“A Pilgrim’s Way”
Rudyard Kippling

I do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way,
Or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray.
If these are added, I rejoice—if not, I shall not mind,
So long as I have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind.
For as we come and as we go (and deadly-soon go we!)
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
Thus I will honour pious men whose virtue shines so bright
(Though none are more amazed than I when I by chance do right),
And I will pity foolish men for woe their sins have bred
(Though ninety-nine per cent. of mine I brought on my own head).
And, Amorite or Eremite, or General Averagee,
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
And when they bore me overmuch, I will not shake mine ears,
Recalling many thousand such whom I have bored to tears.
And when they labour to impress, I will not doubt nor scoff;
Since I myself have done no less and—sometimes pulled it off.
Yea, as we are and we are not, and we pretend to be,
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
And when they work me random wrong, as oftentimes hath been,
I will not cherish hate too long (my hands are none too clean).
And when they do me random good I will not feign surprise.
No more than those whom I have cheered with wayside charities.
But, as we give and as we take—whate’er our takings be—
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
But when I meet with frantic folk who sinfully declare
There is no pardon for their sin, the same I will not spare
Till I have proved that Heaven and Hell which in our hearts we have
Show nothing irredeemable on either side of the grave.
For as we live and as we die—if utter Death there be—
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
Deliver me from every pride—the Middle, High, and Low—
That bars me from a brother’s side, whatever pride he show.
And purge me from all heresies of thought and speech and pen
That bid me judge him otherwise than I am judged. Amen!
That I may sing of Crowd or King or road-borne company,
That I may labour in my day, vocation and degree,
To prove the same in deed and name, and hold unshakenly
(Where’er I go, whate’er I know, whoe’er my neighbor be)
This single faith in Life and Death and to Eternity:
“The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

Kit Reed totally needs to be more well-known than she is. I just started a collection of her short stories today. She calls them “womanist” fiction, as opposed to “feminist” fiction. And they’re fascinating stories. I’ll probably be through these stories in the next couple of days or so. What’s fascinating is that this collection of stories– Weird Women, Wired Women –spans a period of nearly forty years of Reed’s writing. All of her stories feature women that are very indicative of the times they live in. It’s a great social commentary as well as a damned fascinating read.

this book was interesting. It features eleven short stories by people who made the fantasy genre popular. Or, at least it tries. All these stories were set in series the authors selected made famous.

My favorite stories were “The Hedge Knight” by George R. R. Martin, “The Burning Man” by Tad Williams, “Dragonfly” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and “The Runner of Pern” by Anne McCaffrey. Other stories, however, were a lot weaker, including Silverberg’s own contribution, “The Seventh Shrine” which was a murder mystery I found unreadable because of its trite, stupid dialogue, and flat, boring characters, and Robert Jordan’s contribution, “New Spring”, which had both of those qualities in abundance, plus misogyny to boot.

The book is great for people looking for new authors to explore, and provides new material by favorite writers, too. Recommended in spite of some of the really craptacular stories.

Dear Helpless Disabled Person:

I’m sorry that you can’t get the book we’re supposed to be reading as a group. However, I do not have any idea what you expect us to do about it. It’s available in some form that will not cost you money. It’s totally not our fault you can’t use the resources you need to gain it. Maybe if you returned some books to the library, you wouldn’t have this problem.

Not a whole lot of love,
Me

Dear Local Library for the Blind:

I check out special equipment so that I can listen to cassette books produced by the National Library Service for the Blind. When I request this equipment, the least you can do is send me a machine that works. As it is, now I have two shoddy tape recorders I’ll be sending back to you for repairs. Which will severely limit my ability to read, and that will severely piss me off. The least you could have done was quality control checked your equipment before you sent it out to me so we wouldn’t have this problem.

Much hate,
Someone who should not have to resort to buying overpriced access technology just so she can read a goddamned book.

Joining to crosspost this there.

Just because I got curious, I went looking for reviews of Elizabeth Haydon’s books about Rhapsody. The one review I did read pretty much says the title character’s a Mary Sue, but then it goes on to say that one of her supporting characters happens to be the sort of archetypal character I adore. Anyway, so then I found an excerpt of Rhapsody on Tor’s website. It starts out with a scene from one of the bad guys. Having read it after reading the book review I found, my first reaction was, “OK, when is he going to say ‘Curses. I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those stupid kids.’” Which seems apt since the reviewer says that by the end every one of our three good guys pretty much becomes teh uberspecial.

BTW, my tape recorder has bitten the dust. I’m getting it replaced very soon, because I must have something to read… And I got another Year’s Best Fantasy collection which is thankfully narrated by a guy who sounds both fairly young and fairly American.

Oh, and note to self: It is completely OK if I decide that, to revive my flagging Nano, I should switch to the Pov of some random villain wannabe who can commit all the things on the Evil Overlord list.

I’m not going to be reading anything by him anytime soon. Largely because I found the story he wrote set in his Wheel of Time universe for the Legends anthology really overblown. I find it difficult to relate to characters whose names I can’t even pronounce. Plus there’s something about the descriptions we’re given of the Aes Sedai that bothers me. I’m not sure what that would be, but there it is.

Anyway, I’m getting the impression that the Dragon Reborn (who I understand is supposed to be the main character in the series itself) is a horrible Marty Stu. I mean, Jordan sets him up that way in the novella what with all those said Aes Sedai trying to capture him to “gentle” him.

Yeah, so… One less fantasy series I think I’ll be investing in.

Apparently, there is a real, honest to god market out there for original mpreg fiction.
(Mpreg, of course, standing for male pregnancy).
I’ve just read a sweet poignant short story which features just that very topic. It was well done, but I still couldn’t help thinking, after it was done, that I could see someone replacing the name of the main character with Remus Lupin or Bill Weasley or something like that.

If you get a craptacular narrator, the book loses a lot of its luster.

My collection of The Year’s Best fantasy and Horror, which I have been trying to work my way through since August, has such a man reading it. He’s British, and man does it show. I get the feeling he might actually live in the States (which is probably a sensible feeling given that I didn’t have this book lent to me from some British library), but still. The man sometimes overdoes it just a teeny tiny bit on the whole American accent. It sounds really hokey, for example, when he tries to do his impression of a redneck, and his knack for character voices is just… not there. I get the impression he’s a little bit better suited to nonfiction book narration, and I sort of wish they’d let him stick to that.

That’s not saying British people (of whom I have several on my friends list) shouldn’t read Audio books which will be listened to by Americans. It’s just that *this* British guy shouldn’t have read this particular book.

So today I allotted myself the stories by Tad Williams (“The Burning Man”) and George R. R. Martin (“The Hedge Knight”) in the Legends anthology.

I have, therefore, been in fangirl heaven. (Except for the part where I was alone in the house and was reading one of the passages of Martin out loud because I liked the way it sounded and there was a knock, which turned out to be the mail carrier.)

I shouldn’t say it, but after reading the Williams and Martin stories, everyone else represented in this particular collection just come off as complete and total hacks.

Oh, and there was a brief moment after I finished “The Hedge Knight” when I found myself realizing that there was so much slash potential in that story. But even without that, Ser Duncan the Tall is my type of character. *pets*

The only Song of Ice and Fire fanfic I’ve ever found I discovered over at Adultfanfiction.net. And that appears to be a Sansa/Sandor Klegain story.

I’m a bit frightened to go look at that story, because that’s totally one of my secret ships.

Nano day 11 word total: 0 words. today I’ve got to write something even if I hate it. And I’ve figured out how there can be smut. Yay smut.

Last night I appear to have missed a phone call. This is because I have no idea how to click over from one line to the other with my cell phone. So if the call was from any of you I apologize since I totally never meant to blow anybody off.

In other news, I have learned that Robert Silverberg doesn’t impress me with his fiction any more than he does with his nonfiction. However, despite the fact that she’s written some short stories that have made me go WTF in the past, Ursula K. Le Guin’s just really awesomely cool.

All right, off to write some nano wordage.

I don’t usually post song lyrics, but I think I will this time. Or at least I’ll link to them.

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

I really enjoyed his short story “the Grinning Man”. I’m definitely intrigued enough to want to read some of the rest of the Alvin Maker books. I’m still a bit leary of trying anything beyond that, but he’s definitely got my curiosity piqued.

Next up is one of Silverberg’s Majipor stories… Which is so far one of the longest pieces in the book. The synopsis he gives of the series and the world of Majipor really aren’t inspiring me to read much further. But then, like Goodkind and Card, I’m not terribly disposed to think favorably on Silverberg, because as I’ve said elsewhere, his essays are kinda whiny.

However, after Silverberg come stories by Le Guin, Williams and Martin. And I’m definitely looking forward to a few squeeing fangirl moments, since I loved Earthsea (well, the world premise and the first two books… I never finished the third), and Tad Williams and George R. R. Martin are two of my favorite authors ever.

OK, well, yeah. Now that I have read this particular short novel, I’m quite happy never to read any other Goodkind again.

I’m sure if I hadn’t read the story with a slightly jaundiced eye, I’d have just called it really really meh. Our main character, the wizard Zedd, is a godlike Marty Stu. And Goodkind did introduce the Mord-Sith, not because they actually helped the story at all, but because, dude, chicks in leather!

Abby, our protagonist, I actually sympathized with. Her character was developed well, and I understood her motivations. But she had to put up with Zedd, and failed utterly to slap him upside the head, which is probably what I would have done.

Heh, the next story in the collection is one of Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker stories. I will probably find reasons to dislike this one, too, because Card is a homophobic bigot.

You can all see where these are going if you’ve been reading my LJ lately.

Book 40: Magic’s Promise by Mercedes Lackey. Another very quick read, and pretty much engaging from beginning to end. I’d forgotten how dark this book was. Poor Tashir. What a shitty hand that poor man got dealt in life.

Book 41: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling. Ordered because I also have a library copy of the latest book. This was probably my least favorite HP book to date, but then, Umbridge makes up for all of it. I just wish she hadn’t gone batshit crazy at the end and gone all maniacal villain on Harry and company. She was creepy and disturbing, and for the most part one of the coolest villains ever because she had motive, nor was she stupid or particularly cheesy.

Book 42: Magic’s Price by Mercedes Lackey. In which we are introduced to Stefen, who I will fangirl endlessly for being a wonderfully complex character and who also failed utterly to get on my nerves…something I can’t quite say for the actual hero of the books.

I should add that I really do like Mercedes Lackey. Her writing is flawed, yeah, but I can overlook the flaws and enjoy the books, provided that I don’t try to analyze them too deeply.

So, now that that’s out of the way, here’s an ethical question. I see that Mr. Goodkind has actually published “Debt of Bones”, the short novel in the Legends anthology which I am currently reading as a standalone novella. Can I include that as a book I’ve read for the year, or are you all gonna insist I finish the whole Legends anthology before I can count it?

Dear Professional Author,
Y’know, the last hundred pages or so of the book are probably not the best
place to introduce new characters. I really don’t understand what the
purpose of this last story arc is aside from giving your character
omgmoreangst! Which he doesn’t need, clearly.

Also, I clearly do not have the patience for twue wuv because, were I the
love interest of the character you’re needlessly torturing, I would have hit
him over the head with a blunt object and run away to forge a bond of
soul-matey goodness with someone a little less exasperating.

Sincerely,
A fan who really does enjoy this author’s work… It’s just that I can’t
quite read it without rolling my eyes.