I've been using this and other guidebooks to plan a short vacation trip next weekend. It will be my fifth wedding anniversary. Husband and I have been together for eleven years total. For several years in a row we have gone back to Ithaca, NY, where we met. But we're both so busy this year that we decided it's time to start a new tradition in a new place. So we're visiting Orcas Island, which is within driving distance.
This has been by fat the best resource. It succintly describes each island and its individual resources in a way that the others really didn't. Very well organized. Highly recommended. And I'll tell you about the Island when we get from the trip.
Monday's Review: Year's Best SF11
Year's Best SC 11, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.
It's been several years since I've read one of these 'best of' collections. Back then they weighed a bit more and were still edited by Gardner Dozois (LEGEND IN HIS OWN TIME)(I'm not teasing. It's true. He is).
This volume contains stories from 2005. It was a very nice change to read something brand new for a change. Very big names, and some of my favorites, too. My favorite was the second story, Deus Ex Homine, by Hanna Rajaniemi.
Trends: posthumans. Yea, once we get enough processingpower/nanobots/whatever, we will beomce as gods. I find this a bit tiresome and I hope it plays out soon.
There were a number of short shorts from Nature, which apparently has been publishing one-page SF shorts in every issue. I had no idea. They were fun and made me think of Petrona. I approve of this intrusion of levity into science's sanctum.
Well worth reading or buying.
It's been several years since I've read one of these 'best of' collections. Back then they weighed a bit more and were still edited by Gardner Dozois (LEGEND IN HIS OWN TIME)(I'm not teasing. It's true. He is).
This volume contains stories from 2005. It was a very nice change to read something brand new for a change. Very big names, and some of my favorites, too. My favorite was the second story, Deus Ex Homine, by Hanna Rajaniemi.
Trends: posthumans. Yea, once we get enough processingpower/nanobots/whatever, we will beomce as gods. I find this a bit tiresome and I hope it plays out soon.
There were a number of short shorts from Nature, which apparently has been publishing one-page SF shorts in every issue. I had no idea. They were fun and made me think of Petrona. I approve of this intrusion of levity into science's sanctum.
Well worth reading or buying.
Great Book: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Roth's The Plot Against America was nominated by some critics for the New York Times' best book published within the last 25 years contest. And it's also this month's book club selection for my Jewish Book Club.
The premise is that of a faux memoir or alternate history memoir. Philip Roth writes in the first person about his childhood growing up in a Jewish suburb of Newark in the forties. The crucial difference is that in this life, Charles Lindberg enters the Presidential against Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 on a platform of keeping America out of the war. He wins by a landslide, precipitating a dangerous slide in American politics towards the kind of anti-semitism indulged in by Hitler.
This is the first work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Roth that I've read. I can see why he's so popular. He does a superb job of invoking the sights, sounds, and smells, the fears, hopes and relationships of this community and of his family.
The premise is ambitious and intriguing, and carried out very thoroughly. Lindberg WAS a known anti-Semite and Roth builds a completely believable scenario.
Then the end of the book happens. The house of cards collapses. Roth fails to pull an astonishing ending out of the bag. Perhaps because Lindberg was a real individual Roth was reluctant to demonize him to the extent that would have made this a really ground-breaking, mind-blowing 'it could happen here' story. But then why write the book at all?
I am frankly perplexed by the ending of the book. And disappointed.
The premise is that of a faux memoir or alternate history memoir. Philip Roth writes in the first person about his childhood growing up in a Jewish suburb of Newark in the forties. The crucial difference is that in this life, Charles Lindberg enters the Presidential against Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 on a platform of keeping America out of the war. He wins by a landslide, precipitating a dangerous slide in American politics towards the kind of anti-semitism indulged in by Hitler.
This is the first work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Roth that I've read. I can see why he's so popular. He does a superb job of invoking the sights, sounds, and smells, the fears, hopes and relationships of this community and of his family.
The premise is ambitious and intriguing, and carried out very thoroughly. Lindberg WAS a known anti-Semite and Roth builds a completely believable scenario.
Then the end of the book happens. The house of cards collapses. Roth fails to pull an astonishing ending out of the bag. Perhaps because Lindberg was a real individual Roth was reluctant to demonize him to the extent that would have made this a really ground-breaking, mind-blowing 'it could happen here' story. But then why write the book at all?
I am frankly perplexed by the ending of the book. And disappointed.
Thursday's Review: Ranger's Apprentice: Book One: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
Yay, another derivative adventure series! Will is too small and spindly to enter 'warrior school' so he gets apprenticed to a 'Ranger' who taches him how to 'Move Silently', 'Climb', 'Backstab', 'Track', and a number of other skills stolen straight from Dungeons and Dragons. Guess what? Then he Saves the Realm! Mediocre story, derivative setting, boring characters. Interesting monster, I'll give it that.
Is it me? Have I outgrown this kind of book? I know not all young adult books are awful. I love Diana Wynne Jones. But the last several YA or YA-type books that I've read just seem so flat and bad to me lately.
Maybe it's because I'm reading them in between the classics, but I've been doing that for over a year now....
Is it me? Have I outgrown this kind of book? I know not all young adult books are awful. I love Diana Wynne Jones. But the last several YA or YA-type books that I've read just seem so flat and bad to me lately.
Maybe it's because I'm reading them in between the classics, but I've been doing that for over a year now....
Reading Journal Entry: Island on the Sea of Time, by S. M. Stirling
I heard a lot of good buzz about this book. I was expecting more from it.
It's a high-concept book: Nantucket gets catapulted to 1250 BC. Coast Guard boat too close to shore gets pulled along too. What shall the soft-bellied inhabitants of the twentieth century do? Eric Flint pulled off much the same trick with 1632, except in West Virginia.
This meaty premise is treated with all the delicacy of a butcher. The writing is atrociously poorly edited, the characters are flat and endlessly unsatisfying. Stirling has made an effort to include different points of view, but the black lesbian Coast Guard Captain speaks with the same 'voice' as the white Prostestant police captain. The lack of introspection is monumental. We never learn the names of the children Our Lesbian Hero left behind. The island's only two Jews marry each other, but never mention their religion.
I thought this book would never end. It's this kind of mechanical, juvenile wish-fulfillment (the lesbian ends up having sex with a blond teenage Druidic warrior chick) that gives science fiction a bad name.
It's a high-concept book: Nantucket gets catapulted to 1250 BC. Coast Guard boat too close to shore gets pulled along too. What shall the soft-bellied inhabitants of the twentieth century do? Eric Flint pulled off much the same trick with 1632, except in West Virginia.
This meaty premise is treated with all the delicacy of a butcher. The writing is atrociously poorly edited, the characters are flat and endlessly unsatisfying. Stirling has made an effort to include different points of view, but the black lesbian Coast Guard Captain speaks with the same 'voice' as the white Prostestant police captain. The lack of introspection is monumental. We never learn the names of the children Our Lesbian Hero left behind. The island's only two Jews marry each other, but never mention their religion.
I thought this book would never end. It's this kind of mechanical, juvenile wish-fulfillment (the lesbian ends up having sex with a blond teenage Druidic warrior chick) that gives science fiction a bad name.
I got nuthin'
What a pitiful showing last weeks - 3 out of 5.
Well, maybe I'm a little blogged out for the moment. I need a few days to catch up on my reading. And since it's a holiday, I'll take some time off. I'll be back with more reviews on Wednesday, July 5th.
Well, maybe I'm a little blogged out for the moment. I need a few days to catch up on my reading. And since it's a holiday, I'll take some time off. I'll be back with more reviews on Wednesday, July 5th.
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