Beneath The Ground You Walk On

Here is a review of Hollow Earth by David Standish, that I found on PTDR:


Hollow Earth Review


Here is a review from Publisher's Weekly:

The idea that another world exists below the surface of the Earth has captivated science fiction and fantasy writers since the days of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" and Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. As Standish reveals, the theory has also been promoted by serious (if sometimes slightly off-kilter) scientists, beginning with the eminent Edmond Halley, who theorized that smaller concentric spheres were nested inside the Earth. Standish's approach relies heavily on plot summaries of novels by the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, with frequent sarcastic interjections. "Stop him before he describes more!" he cries after one particularly lush passage. Scientists are dealt with in similarly detailed and skeptical fashion. Beneath all the wisecracks, however, Standish seems to have a genuine affection for his assorted crackpots and dreamers, and he provides an amusing tour of their various underground utopias. Unfortunately, the story fizzles at the end, failing to develop the all too sketchy hints that some people out there are still hollow-earth believers—but it's a fun romp while it lasts. 65 b&w illus. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Scar

I've just finished reading China Miéville's The Scar. I felt that as a whole The Scar was lopsided, with character development and plot reaching an equal pace (or at least a more effective unity) towards the last third of the book. Not to say that I didn't enjoy the hell out of everything that came before it.

The depth of imagination on display in The Scar is remarkable, and is testimony to Miéville's absurd world-building ability. I haven't read Iron Council yet, but I sure as fuck hope he gets back to Bas-Lag (the world in which The Scar takes place) again or at least releases the reams of notes he's written about it.

If you do not care about spoilers, here are a couple of reviews you may want to glimpse at:

1. Jeff Vandermeer's review
2. William Thompson's review (which reveals A LOT more than Jeff Vandermeer's review)
   

With that said, The Scar is well worth your money.

Sidenote: Did anyone else feel sympathy for the Avanc, or is that just me being irrational?

Beautiful editions of illustrated fairy tales

I've spent the past couple of weeks looking for and collecting some beautiful and interesting editions of fairy tales and the like, and will spend the next couple of days putting up pictures of the illustrations and information for those who are interested in that sort of thing. So expect to see pictures and info from the following books:







The Annotated Wizard of Oz - beautiful oversized book, with voluminous annotations and pages of pictures and information that tracks the history of Frank L. Baum and The Wizard of Oz

The Annotated Alice - from the same collection as the Annotated Wizard.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses - Ill. by Kay Nielsen (one of the greats from the Golden Age of illustrators, and my personal favorite)

Easton Press edition of House of Mirth - Easton Press is a specialty press that prints beautiful leather-bound editions of classics and modern favorites. They're also known for their hardbound, often signed, editions of sci-fi classics and Hugo/Nebula winners.

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - The editions illustrated by Mervyn Peake, many people are not aware that Mervyn Peake famous for his Gormenghast trilogy was also an illustrator for Alice, I will be displaying some of the images throughout the book here. Mervyn Peake's illustrations for the book stand out to me as one of the most interesting. I will provide more info over the weekend.

There are other books that I am still looking for, but look for interesting pictures and information on editions of your favorites in the next couple of weeks

Too Poor For Graduate School

Here is an interesting article in the Washington Post (online) about how difficult it is for students with an insufficient income stream to continue their higher education into graduate school:

"Put Grad School Within My Grasp"

Although I agree with the sentiments expressed in the article – I am hoping to get into a PhD program sometime in the near future, and worry about my ability to afford doing so – I think the issues surrounding higher education and those in the low-income bracket are more complex than is expressed in it. For example the author, Sui Lang Panoke, recommends the creation of a federal need-based program to assist graduate students based on merit and not on economic background. This point is well taken; a program that is blind to one's economic standing while basing desert on academic merit is a fair one. However, from personal experience, I know only two people who also intend to attend a graduate program, and share my socioeconomic background. So it is not only a matter of what your economic standing is at the point you decide to attend graduate school. Granted, the author's situation is a common difficulty that deserves attention, especially when considering non-funded masters programs. But my concern lies with getting individuals from a socioeconomic background that just about dictates against going to grad school, to want to go to grad school in the first place.

Margaret Cavendish & China Miéville

I stumbled upon a very interesting blog posting about the trans-speciatiation relation between Margaret Cavendish (17th Century writer of The Blazing World) and China Miéville. Here's a quote from this piece:

A colleague who is an 18th century-ist was reading The Scar along with me, and suggested that there might also be a strong parallel between The Scar and the 17th century utopian text by Margaret Cavendish called The Blazing World (1666), which is about a human woman who is kidnapped by a man who loved her, and taken out to sea. The boat is taken across the ocean in a freak storm, and the men on board all freeze to death as the ship is brought towards the North Pole. But the kidnapped woman is rescued by strange bear-men, and brought to see the Emperor, who is so impressed with her that he marries her and makes her Empress.

Trans-speciation: From Margaret Cavendish to China Miéville

Richard Bowes: There's a Hole in the City

There is a great Richard Bowes story on scifi.com titled "There's a Hole in the City". It's a post-9/11 narrative that begins a day after the attacks on the towers. I don't know if the appeal of the story increases in proportion to your familiarity with New York City. Nonetheless, its very effective and packs some good jolts. Here's an enticing quote from the story,

I was in a hurry when I went off duty Saturday evening. A friend had called and invited me to an impromptu "Survivors' Party." In the days of the French Revolution, The Terror, that's what they called the soirees at which people danced and drank all night then went out at dawn to see which of their names were on the list of those to be guillotined.

There's a Hole in the City

I guess this wouldn't be such a bad investment at the $228 price tag, if it wasn't for the fact that cats, in my experience choose to scratch more than just the scratching post you provide.

Jeff Vandermeer's Shriek Party - Update

I’ve just received a lot of goodies from Jeff Vandermeer for our Shriek party to be held on Saturday, August 19. For those of you who have already RSVPed to come, expect to receive cool signed bookplates, Ambergris beer and other goodies for the party.

If you are a fan of Jeff Vandermeer’s and live in the Philadelphia area, please feel free to join us, especially if you like drunken debauchery, prancing squid and that sort of thing. We would love to meet other fans^_^. Just e-mail me at chuchu223@gmail.com and we will make arrangements.

I’ll be posting pictures of the goodies later tonight!

Randomness from a Bibliophile

How come Amazon.uk has a better selection/availabilty of books than Amazon.com? Does that mean we care less about books in this country? And do their major publishing houses churn out as much crap as ours?

Readercon, George Washington, and Deer

I was thinking about something this morning in relation to one of the panels at Readercon. The authors on the panel were having a debate about the tropes, or forms of fantasy and whether you can mix avante garde writing into fantasy and still keep you readership and audience. One of the authors ventured that the problem with trying to be experimental (straying from the formula or what is expected) is that you run the risk of losing the main audience.

Well yes that may be true, but then why be a fantasy writer at all when you can gain a larger audience by writing romance? If every author wrote based on what he thought would earn him the widest readership (the most sales), we’d end up with, well, crap. It’s like that psychological experiment that creates a painting based on statistically surveying the American population for what they believe they want to see in a masterpiece. This is the result:



Apparently we want to see deer and children hanging out with George Washington. There’s a good reason, sometimes, to ignore what your audience thinks they want...

The other question posed by the author to support his point was: how many fantasy readers have ever read M. John Harrison? Hmmm. . .I guess the foregone conclusion is that if he isn't sucessful as say Mercedes Lackey, then he should stop writing how he writes and follow Lackey's example? When did we begin to use the number of readers as a counter for good v. bad writing? Or worse: what should and should not be written? So what if only thousands out of billions of readers appreciate your writing? Is that so bad? Again let me remind you, as a whole, we want to see George Washington hang out with deer…

And I know there is a demographic of who reads what genres, but like genres, demographics can often just be marketing bullshit that makes it easier for the execs to prod their authors and readers into nice, well-delineated areas.

I’m 23, Asian, Female, and a Wharton graduate. The marketers predict that I should be reading the next, shiny How-To management book…or at the very least Amy Tan.

I’m not ambitious enough to read How to Backstab Your Way to Middle Management and I hate Amy Tan (really, that’s not a strong word for the feelings I harbor for her and her writing; way to perpetuate stereotypes is something I would like to say to her; here you are given the opportunity to observe some grain of truth about what it's like being Chinese-American, and you squander it writing only what the American audience wants to hear is something else I'd like to say), but I digress.

The point is that I’m not in the demographic for fantasy and certainly not avante garde genre writing. Yet I have read M. John Harrison and his writing has enriched my life, in a way that Tolkein or Robert Jordan & Co. have never done. So thank god he writes what he does, the way he does it.

There’s no doubt in my mind that I read Fantasy/Sci-fi because it let’s me get away from my own mundane life. But if I just wanted formulaic escapist stuff, I could just as easily pick up Nora Roberts. It’s for the ideas, the different ways authors tell their stories, the experimental things, the thought-provoking qualities of the genre that keeps me coming back. So kudos to those who are doing what you do despite sales, because you are the ones that are an inspiration and constant source of delight to me, and I suspect many others.

World eBook Fair

Between, July 4 - August 4, go to www.worldebookfair.com for over 330,000 downloadable eBooks (classics, philsophy, poetry, children's books, sci-fi, even movies and audio) in 100+ languages. Have fun!

I guess I know how I'm going to spend my weekend...

Something saccharine to go with the morning coffee

Looks like a barbie doll set for some enterprising little girl? It's not...it's a set of tools made for a woman. I'm somewhat speechless.

International Philosophy

Alright, I could not help myself. Here is the Monty Python international philosophy soccer game:



Here's the link if you can't watch the embedded clip: Monty Python-International Philosophy

Salt and Pepper Dog Shakers...

Kind of unappetizing if you ask me...

Diana Wynne Jones

For anyone who still reads children’s books, I would suggest Diana Wynne Jones. Having only picked up her work as an adult (if you want to call me that) I have no idea how children react to her work. But I find her writing to be enchanting and strangely uncompromising. There are less clichés and more real characters here than many other children's novels. Let’s just say, if I had children, I’d be gently coaxing/bribing them to read her.

By the way why is Morgantown Public Library in West Virginia so much better than all the libraries in Philadelphia combined?

Favorite children's series

I'm going to update the lists of recommendations that I've made in my blog, so here's a link to my post of favorite children's series, to be updated.

Cats...

I have to say sometimes I feel sorry for my cat Nemo, who is too fuzzy for her own good, causing her to do a lot of slipping and sliding on our hardwood floors when she's trying to surprise attack us.

She makes up for it by leaving a large quantity of very fine and fuzzy cat hair all over the towels in the bathroom.

Foucalt Vs. Chomsky

Ever since I heard the mention of a televised debate between Michel Foucalt and Noam Chomsky, I've been dying to see it. It was televised in Europe sometime during the 1980's, but thanks to Youtube, I can now post it here.

Part 1:

Part 2.

If the embedded clips don't work for you here are the links:

Part 1
Part 2

Readercon Pictures

Here are three pictures we took at Readercon:

China Miéville, ready for his interview.

From left to right: Paul Witcover, Paul di Filippo, and Elizabeth Hand

From left to right: China Miéville, Paul Witcover, F. Brett Cox, John Clute, Jeanne Cavelos, and Jeffrey Ford

Readercon Revisited

We got to Readercon about 8 at night on Friday, rather dazed and hardly able to believe we were in Massachusetts. The drive up was unmemorable except for being stuck in rush hour traffic for 2 hours trying to get out of New York. Oh and also almost being rear-ended while stuck in traffic, cause the guy behind us decided that he would sit on our bumper, and speed up quickly every time we moved.

Anyways, we really were thrilled to be at the con—although there were moments of pure sheer terror. It didn’t help that we both felt out of our element and highly intimidated since everyone seemed to already know each other. Anytime I began a conversation with someone that I was a fan of, I felt as if I were an English major in the presence of James Joyce, utterly incapable of making normal conversation, and having the slight tendency to stare and blubber. Toss in the feeling that I can’t possibly say anything to them that would be interesting and the “I don’t know you, but I want you to like me” thing, and it makes for some uncomfortable situations. Luckily for the most part we managed to escape those moments by the sheer grace and kindness of the authors we met. As David mentioned, the encouragement and graciousness of the authors that we talked to really made our trip worth it.

Of course the panels and the interview with China Mieville was nothing short of amazing. I will make another post about the rest of Readercon, including my personal thoughts about the man who would not stop scratching his head or sitting in front of us when he did so! And I will definitley bring up the hilarious Bad Prose competition, a highly creative version of the game Dictionary. For those of you from high school, do you guys remember how much fun we would have playing that game at slumber parties? I still remember some of the definitions we made up strangely enough. I also feel a tiny bit sad, because I felt so much funnier and smarter back then =P.