What I'm Reading: Nine Princes in Amber

Like the Dune series, the Amber series by Roger Zelazny is one I enjoyed greatly when I was younger and have decided to revisit. The first rather slim volume, Nine Princes in Amber, came out in 1970. I first read it in probably the 10th grade and immediately noticed it was different than other fantasy books I'd read. Although it does have kings and magic and such, it eschews the warmed-over Lord of the Rings-inspired cliches so often found in other fantasy books, as well as their flowery language. Indeed, its clipped, dry style is far closer to a detective novel by Hammett or Chandler than to Tolkien or Terry Brooks.

Its main character is Corwin, who wakes up in a hospital room with his memory gone, but realizing that he's being over-narcotized. Why? Probably somebody doesn't want to kill him outright, but doesn't want him waking up. He drags himself out of bed, rips out the IV, pushes aside the nurse and stumbles down to the hospital director's office, where he bluffs his way out with the threat of a lawsuit. But where to go from there? Indeed, after this first chapter we very easily could have ended up in a mystery.

But instead, as Corwin's memory gradually returns, he learns (and so do we) that he is actually one of nine princes of Amber, heirs to the throne of that kingdom which is the only real place in the universe. All other places are mere shadows of Amber, their realness and solidity dictated by their distance from Amber itself. Earth is a fairly important place for it is where several shadows cross, making it somewhat more real than most places and something of a crossroads for travelers through shadows.

Corwin discovers that during his stay in the hospital (and how long was he there, anyway...?), his brother Eric, a cruel and merciless man, has positioned himself to take over the kingdom and is in fact only a few weeks from his coronation. The book relates how Corwin gains his full memory of his true self, and his joining the tangled alliance of brothers who have decided to fight against Eric. But if you think you have already predicted the ending from what I've written, you are quite wrong. I meant it when I said this book eschews the fantasy cliches, and it ends up in quite a different place than expected, seemingly teasing the reader with certain fantasy tropes only to veer off in other directions entirely.

This book held up for me as an adult better than the Dune books. In fact, I'd say Nine Princes of Amber was full of pleasures. I've mentioned the writing style and the unexpected plot twists, but the characters also are superbly drawn: some have a measure of nobility but all have weaknesses and vices, and take time for the simple pleasures of food, beer, cigarettes, even walks in the woods or games of chess. All have mixed motives, complicated relationships with the other characters, and conflicting desires. This is the first of ten books, and I will definitely be reviewing the others over the coming year. I only ever read the first seven or eight of them in high school, but I have recently purchased The Amber Chronicles, which has all ten in one volume.

What I'm Reading: The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world's oldest known story. Although our most complete version of it is from Assyria around 700 B.C., fragments of the story have been found from as far back as 2,000-ish B.C. Any writing that we have older than that consists only of records of commercial transactions, plus maybe some poems or prayers. If there are older written narratives than Gilgamesh we don't know of them.

It must have been fairly widely known around the Middle East back at that time because fragments have been found in several languages--for instance, its most famous episode, an account of a flood that destroys all life on earth except one righteous family, of course appears in an only-slightly modified form in the Bible, and was found also in the traditions of many other peoples. However, from the time of antiquity until an archeological expedition uncovered it in the early 20th century the rest of the story was lost.

The story follows Gilgamesh, a young and vigorous king of Uruk. Unable to find a match for his physical prowess among civilized peoples, the Gods send the wild man Enkidu to Uruk, where he engages with Gilgamesh in a wrestling match. After battling to a draw, the two become the best of friends, and set out on adventures together. They defeat a monster in the cedar forest of Lebanon, attracting the attention of the love Goddess Ishtar. She proposed to Gilgamesh, who turns her down. In revenge, she casts a sickness on Enkidu, killing him. Heartbroken after the death of his friend, Gilgamesh sets out for the garden of the Gods to find the secret to immortal life. He arrives and encounters several strange characters, including Utnapishtim, the only mortal man ever to be granted immortality, who relates to him the Flood story. Finally, Gilgamesh finds a kind of undersea plant that grants immortal life, only to lose it again. Upon his arriving again at his home city of Uruk he finally realizes the fate of all men is to die, and the best a man can do is achieve glory for himself while upon the earth.

I've wanted to read this book for a long time and I don't know why I never did before; it's pretty short and easy to read. It's basically an adventure story with larger-than-life heroes and epic journeys and magic artifacts. I would think anybody from high school on with an interest in fantasy or fairy tales would find it interesting, and it's also an intriguing document of life in earliest recorded history. Yet despite its distance from us in time, I find the problems and concerns of Gilgamesh are not so different than those of people today: friendship, romance and spurned love, finding your place in the world, and coming to terms with the inevitability of disease, aging, and misfortune.

Ranking the non-DC and non-Marvel Comic Movies

So far I've ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, and the X-Men movies.  There's only one major franchise of super-hero movies I haven't ranked yet, and that is the Spider-Man franchise.  But for now, let's rank the comic-based movies that aren't based on DC or Marvel superheroes.

As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

American Splendor--Based on Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comics about life as a blue collar worker in Cleveland. Parts of the movie are "real", with Paul Giamatti playing Pekar himself, other parts are animated. Includes all the famous episodes--Pekar's friendship with cartoonist R. Crumb, his appearances on David Letterman, his work at the Cleveland VA hospital as a file clerk. Highly, highly recommended.

Conan, various movies--I've decided the Conan movies are based on R.E. Howard's original stories, and not the 1970s Marvel comics, so these don't earn a review.

Crumb--About the life of underground cartoonist R. Crumb and his exceedingly strange family. Robert Crumb and his two brothers grew up with a brutal, physically abusive father and turned to drawing their own comics as an escape. They continued this practice into their teenage years and beyond, with Robert especially sublimating his repressed personality and sexual desires and frustrations into increasingly bizarre comic art. This became the basis of a whole career for him, producing such 60s comics icons as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. The movie is endlessly fascinating and most certainly not for kids.

Creepshow--A horror film based on the spirit of the old 1950s Tales From the Crypt comics, but not on any particular stories that were actually published. As with Conan, I've decided these don't meet the threshold for inclusion.

Fritz the Cat (1972)--An X-rated animated movie based on R. Crumb's stoner, ne'er-do-well cat. Do not, do not show this movie to your kids. But don't show it to your adult friends either. It feels highly dated, the racial and sexual scenes are just embarrassing, and it is awfully hard to get through.

Heavy Metal (1981)--Unlike Fritz the Cat, and perhaps this is just personal bias showing, but I find this film to be the height of lurid pulp entertainment. Taking several of the best-loved stories from the long-running science-fiction comics anthology magazine Heavy Metal, adding a hard rock soundtrack anchored by Sammy Hagar, and not toning down the sex, nudity, violence, and weirdness of the original material one bit, this movie achieves a sort of dream-like id-driven erotic nirvana. Voice work is done by John Candy and Ivan Reitman, among others.

Hellboy--Haven't seen

Judge Dredd--Haven't seen

Mystery Men--Reasonably amusing send-up of superheroes based on a popular DC comic from the early 1990s.

Sin City (2005)--Ultra-violent anthology with stories from Frank Miller's popular 1990s comic. Noir atmosphere and truly over-the-top murder and mayhem featuring bent cops, femmes fatale, and private eyes.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)--Haven't seen

V for Vendetta--Haven't seen

Watchmen (2009)--This 1986 comic by Alan Moore featuring superheroes facing the real-life consequences of their actions is considered one of the finest comics ever made. A nearly scene-for-scene transfer to film somehow results in a fairly mediocre movie. Huh. I've re-read the comic lately, it's still pretty good, you should read it too if you haven't yet.

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Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Swamp Thing (1982)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014): Haven't seen
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

What I'm Reading: Safe Area Gorazde

Gorazde is a town in Bosnia. During the Bosnian war from 1992-95, it was one of four safe areas for Bosnian Muslims that the UN negotiated with the Serb militia. Of the four, it was the smallest and most remote, so it rarely made it onto the news like Sarajevo or Srebrenica. Its remoteness also made it difficult for the UN to supply, so it experienced some of the worst privation of the war, if not the worst fighting. Comics journalist Joe Sacco visited there four times in 1994 and 1995, interviewing mostly Muslim inhabitants and refugees. His regular visits gave him a depth of knowledge and local contacts that most journalists did not have. He published Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 in 2001.

Despite my love for comics, I was a little skeptical at the idea of comics journalism for something like this before reading the book, but I was completely off-base. The use of comic art gives his journalism the immediacy of photography--indeed, I assume from the level of detail that many of the pictures are photo-referenced--yet the advance of panels provides narrative cohesion that a simple progression of photos could not. Nor do the comics skimp on factual material, with plenty of maps, dates, and names giving the necessary backdrop. But most importantly, Sacco's art gives us real insight into the day-to-day life of Gorazde's citizens, many of whom we come to know well and care for during the course of the book.

Sacco also maintains a journalist's neutrality, although an objective recounting of the matter necessarily implicates Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and Serbian General Ratko Mladic as villains, willing to start a war and slaughter civilians in pursuit of an ethnically-pure Greater Serbia. Sacco's story shows how regular Serbians who had lived in Gorazde since birth were willing to turn against their neighbors and join the Serbian militia. Some of them were forced into it--we see on occasion a Serbian willing to help a Muslim friend, so long as no one sees them so they won't suffer the inevitable reprisals, which was often execution. But other Serbs must have gone along willingly, fighting against Muslims, looting and burning their houses, maybe because they believed in Serb extreme nationalist ideology or perhaps even as a lark.

I'm not sure I can recommend this book widely, because although it is a beautifully done graphic novel on an important event in recent history, the subject matter is so harrowing I think a lot of people simply won't be able to bear it. I found especially awful scenes at the Gorazde hospital, where doctors performed surgery on the critically wounded in primitive conditions, with only the only anesthetic available being brandy. Still, for a teen or adult willing to stomach realistic scenes of a town on the frontline during wartime, this book is an invaluable primary source on the Bosnian conflict.

Ranking the Other DC Movies

So far I've ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the Avengers movies, and the X-Men movies.  There's only one major franchise of super-hero movies I haven't ranked yet, and that is the Spider-Man franchise.  But before we get to that, let's finish ranking any extraneous DC movies. This will be easy, because I've only seen one of them.

If you'll recall, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Swamp Thing (1982)-- I saw this for the first time two or three years ago, and you know what? It's not bad, considering its terrible reputation among comic fans. I'm going to call it Okay rather than Pretty Good because it is low-budget and the special effects are laughable, but I found the movie perfectly entertaining. Sure, Swamp Thing was obviously a rubber suit, but the acting and script were no worse than most superhero movies. Much better than, say, Thor, which was big-budget but felt straight to video. This was low-budget and felt like all it needed was a little more investment.

Constantine (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)

Yes, I'm aware of Watchmen, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc., but those are not DC universe movies and I'll cover them in another post.

_______________________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Iron Man
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Swamp Thing (1982)
Iron Man 2
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

What I'm Reading: Moby-Dick

Call me Joshua. I've finally finished the journey. I started Moby-Dick last fall, read about half in a month, then put it down, intending to pick it up again after the New Year.  In fact, I picked it up again in September and only just now reached the end. I've developed a theory during my reading of Moby-Dick that everyone who reads it comes to identify with Captain Ahab, with the reader's white whale being completing the book itself.

So was it worth it? Was it worth the weeks and months, the dense prose, the bizarre chapter-long digressions on the illustrations of whales in books or the comparisons of whales and dolphins, the obscure references requiring pages of explanatory notes, the whole trip from the north Atlantic to the Indian Ocean to the East Asian coast and then the final fateful encounter in the south Pacific?

Oh, God yes, it was worth it. For one thing, the prose is so beautiful, so biblical and epic. Here's one of my favorite passages, concerning a ship-boy, Pip, who's fallen overboard in the middle of a whale hunt and goes mad during his hours-long sojourn alone on the sea, before the ship comes by to pick him up:

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.

That's writing right there. If you don't shiver when you reach the part about "God's foot upon the treadle of the loom" I'm not sure you're fit to read the English language.

The story's well-known enough, and the characters too, I think: obsessed Ahab, good-hearted and conscientious Starbuck, cheerfully cynical Stubb, brave and spiritually attuned Queequeg, and many, many others. What's less well-known is that reading this book is an education in itself, and for that I dub it one of my coveted Shortcuts to Smartness books. You see, not only do you get the famous story, you get everything you ever wanted to know about whales and whaling (and I mean everything), but also hundreds of details about geography, sailing, history, New England life in the 1850s, religion, the culture of South Pacific islanders, and on and on.

So do I recommend this to others? Oh, that's a tough one. I don't think any lover of literature should die without reading this, let's put it that way. As for whether you should read it now, that depends on how much time you have to devote to it, because this is one book that does not reward distraction. But if you're willing to make the commitment, Moby-Dick is truly one of the best books you'll ever read.

To Be Creative, Don't Hoard Ideas

Sometimes I meet or hear about a writer who thinks ideas are a rare, precious resource. These writers hoard ideas like a squirrel hoards nuts, locking them away no one can ever see them. They're frightened to share their ideas with others lest they should be stolen. They spend useless time studying copyright law to keep others from copying them. They work for months or years on a story way past the point where more polishing is necessary, because they think they're only going to get one shot at a good idea.

This is all nonsense. Talking about your ideas with others begets more ideas. I say, if someone else steals your idea, good for them! If they're a good writer, what they do with it won't look anything like your story anyway. And if they're not a good writer, why do you care what they do with your idea? And forget copyright--leave all that up to your agent and publisher, although my guess is the hoarders rarely get to the point of having an agent or publisher.

I'm something of a perfectionist, but once you've gotten your story to a point where more work on your story doesn't change the story's quality, move on to something else. There's usually a natural point where if you're paying attention, you realize you've pretty much reached the limit with the story you're working on. If you spend longer than that on it, you're just gumming up the creative part of your mind that needs new things to work on.

You should have so many ideas that if one doesn't work out, you have a hundred more to pick from. The thing to do about ideas is not to protect them, it's to stoke the furnace in your mind that produces them. And just as you don't gain strength by resting your muscles all the time, but by using them vigorously and often, so it is with your creativity. Write lots of stories, poems, letters! (Blog posts!) Keep a notebook with you to write down story ideas whenever they occur to you. If you have a funny or frightening dream, consider how you might adapt it to written form. (Lots of my best ideas come from dreams.) And join a writers' group, where you can discuss all sorts of ideas with other writers!

Cross-posted at The Writers of Chantilly Blog

What I'm Reading: Complete Peanuts, 1981-82

The Complete Peanuts is a noble project to publish every strip of Charles Schulz's Peanuts, from its inception in 1951 to its final panel in 2000.  It's a gargantuan undertaking, and a new volume covering two years is issued every six months.  The project is now up to the early 1990s, but I'm a little behind and have only reached 1981-82.  I've reviewed two previous volumes of the Complete Peanuts, the 1977-78 volume here, and the 1979-80 volume here.

The volume continues the trend of the previous two in that each one is just a little less sharp than the one before, the long-running gags a little more tired, the new ideas a little less inspired. For instance, there's only one new character introduced here--Marbles, another of Snoopy's brothers. I'm pretty sure more members of Snoopy's family are not what the strip needs at this point. Anyway, Marbles is a down-to-earth dog, and is fairly mystified by his visit to Snoopy and his constant imaginative antics. He doesn't have much personality and I'm not sure he ever showed up again.

Much funnier is a sequence in which Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty enter a bowling tournament. Patty lords her high average and correspondingly high handicap over Charlie Brown's more modest handicap. They both wonder at the identity of the terrible bowler with an average score of one, only to find Snoopy nonchalantly strolling in. Unexpectedly, Charlie Brown leads the tournament, but in the final frame he's so nervous he bowls the ball out the front door. It rolls across the parking lot and through a pumpkin patch where Linus and Sally are waiting for the Great Pumpkin to show up. When Linus is knocked out by the bowling ball, he assumes he fainted on seeing the arrival of his hero. Good stuff with some well-timed punchlines, and really rewards a familiarity with the strip's recurring themes.

Other highlights are a long-ish sequence re-uniting Snoopy and his tennis doubles partner, Molly Volley, and one of my favorite on-going gags, Snoopy's hobby as a hack writer and his never-ending quest to get published (I guess I can identify!).

Still, we're well into the twilight years here. Unless a reader is interested for some reason in one of the particular strips or sequences in this volume, I'd recommend one of the older books.  For me, the best ones are from the 1960s, with the strip maintaining a pretty high degree of quality through the 1973-74 volume. I suppose I'll get the next one, but as with the previous couple, I'm really not sure if I'm going to follow this through all the way to the end.

Ranking the Batman Movies

So I've recently ranked the Superman movies, the Avengers movies, and the X-Men movies.  Now, let's do the Batman movies.

If you'll recall, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Batman (1989)--With Jack Nicholson playing the Joker.  I saw it in the theater and have seen it at least once since then and found it still quite watchable.  Great stylized Gothic set design, great cast, dark but not gloomy and with just a little bit of camp.

Batman Returns (1992)--Danny DeVito as the Penguin.  This one is nearly unbearable to sit through.  Dull and dark--I don't mean tonally, although that too.  I mean visually, it's like watching a play in a closet.  Some of the action scenes you literally can't tell what's going on.

Batman Forever (1995)--This one is not half bad.  It got terrible reviews and I haven't run into anybody else who likes it, but really, I think Jim Carrey as the Riddler was an inspired choice.

Batman and Robin (1997)--I caught this on cable a few months after it came out and could not finish watching it.  So terrible.

Batman Begins (2005)--Probably my personal favorite.  The Scarecrow is truly creepy.

The Dark Knight (2008)--Another great one.  But you don't need me to tell you, this one got all kinds of good reviews.  If anything, a little too intense--you're really wrung out by the end of it.

Dark Knight Rises (2012)--This might have gotten the coveted blue text if it'd been 15-20 minutes shorter.  Some great scenes but just goes on and on.

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
_______________________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Iron Man
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Iron Man 2
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

What I'm Reading: Ungifted

Ungifted, by Gordan Korman, is a humorous book for middle schoolers.  It stars Donovan Curtis, a born trouble-maker, an eighth-grade smart-aleck who cuts class with his two buddies, the two Daniels, to play pranks and escape sitting in boring classrooms.

He gets in more trouble than even he can handle, however, during the school pep rally for a big basketball game. The statue of Atlas bearing the globe, which stands in front of the school on a hill, is practically begging for a smack with a big stick, and Donovan is just the delinquent to provide one.  To the horror of Donovan and the delight of the two Daniels, that jars the giant metal globe loose and it rolls down the hill, shatters the glass doors to the gym, and bounces across the gym floor, sending basketball players and fans scattering. Luckily, no one is hurt, but the district superintendent happens to be standing outside the gym and catches Donovan red-handed.  He drags him to the administration building where he writes Donovan's name down on a handy piece of paper and promises he will call his parents later that evening.

After he sends Donovan home, he hands the list of new students for the district gifted school to his assistant and rushes off to a meeting.  When he returns to his office later, he searches frantically for the sheet of paper with that kid's name.  What was it?  Dave?  Doug?  The piece of paper has to be in the office somewhere!  Meanwhile, on Monday, Donovan finds himself transferred to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction.  He's as surprised as his teachers, but the Academy seems like a good place to lie low until this whole thing blows over.

The rest of the book involves Donovan attempting to fit in at the Academy.  The Daniels let him know the superintendent is searching for him at his old school, but if can keep himself enrolled at the Academy he realizes the superintendent will never think to look for him there.  Since, his parents could never afford to pay the costs of fixing the gym, he really tries to do well in his classes for the first time in his life, going so far as to join the robotics club.  It's obvious from the beginning that he'll never match the academic prowess of his driven, high-IQ peers at the Academy, but Donovan and his nerdy new classmates gradually discover that he may be gifted in his own way, and does indeed have something to contribute.

I think any middle-schooler would really enjoy this book.  I probably wouldn't recommend it to adults, unless they were specifically looking for a humorous middle-grade book, but I don't think an adult would be bored by it either.  It's fast-paced and very funny--I laughed out loud several times at the various situations Donovan gets himself in, and chuckled at nearly every page.  It also provides a nice message about the different talents and strengths everybody has, even if they aren't obvious to others, and not to assume you know what's happening in another person's life.  It's not preachy, though; it presents its message in an organic way, with Donovan, the least likely of heroes, proving to be just what the Academy was missing, while by the end of the book the Daniels and a number of Donovan's nerdy new classmates reveal sides of their personalities one wouldn't have suspected at the beginning.

What I'm Reading: God Emperor of Dune

Over the past couple years, I've been re-reading what at one time were my favorite books ever, Frank Herbert's Dune series.  In a previous post, I decided that my estimation of the series had fallen a few notches since high school, due largely to the stilted dialogue and a somewhat overwrought writing style.  Nevertheless, the world-building and cool concepts still left me with an overall positive impression.  This time out, I'm reviewing the fourth book in the series, God Emperor of Dune.

This book jumps forward 3,500 years (!) from the events in the previous books, where we had last seen Leto II, rightful heir to the galaxy-spanning empire, physically combining his body with the sandtrout (precursors to the spice-producing sandworms on the planet Dune) that would provide him with near-immortality, though at the cost of his humanity.  At the opening of GEoD, the symbiotic relationship with the sandtrout is well advanced, with only Leto's human face and hands left, embedded at one end of a massive wormy body.

Politically, Leto Atreides has come to totally dominate life in the galaxy.  The sandtrout provide his human brain with massive doses of the spice, giving him visions of the future and memories of humanity's past, while his control of Dune allows him to regulate the flow of spice to the rest of the galaxy, and his Fish Guards, an all-female army who worship Leto as a God, are feared across the empire.  All the great organizations of the previous books are highly curtailed--the Spacing Guild is little more than an intergalactic bus service, the Bene Gesserit religious order is a fraction of its former size, the technology-building Ixians and body-cloning Bene Tleilaxu severely circumscribed in their ability to act.

Under Leto, the galaxy is under an enforced peace and war has not been seen for generations.  But his reign has a deeper purpose as well, for in his visions he saw that humanity was on a path to die out.  By carefully manipulating the various strands of social, political, and religious life in the empire, Leto means to avoid this and guarantee humanity's future, what he calls his Golden Path.

Nevertheless, all is not well.  A new clone of Duncan Idaho, the swordmaster to the Atreides, has recently arrived on Dune (Leto has a new one grown every time an old one dies--keeping a piece of the old days around) to take command of the Fish Guards, and this new Duncan is highly skeptical of God Emperor Leto and his total control of human life.  The daughter of Leto's major domo, Siona, is leading an underground rebellion against Leto on Dune itself.  Finally, the Ixians have sent a new ambassador to Leto's court, Hwi Noree, a beautiful and sensitive woman bred specifically to appeal to Leto's long-dormant human side.  These characters and their plotting and machinations bring Leto's millenia-long reign to a crisis point.

This book is quite different from the first three in the series.  For one thing, many chapters are structured something like a Platonic dialogue, with Leto using his vast store of experiences and knowledge to lead a character via deep conversation to a new way of thinking.  I get the feeling he's something of a stand-in for Frank Herbert himself, providing Herbert's views on religion, morality, and human nature, rather like Jubal Harshaw in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.  Despite that, the action in the book moves along fairly briskly, and Leto is such a fascinating character that these long conversations don't drag.  At least they didn't for me.

Another difference is a strong undercurrent of eroticism.  Leto's vision for his Golden Path requires him to manipulate human breeding, weeding out the brutal and the slow-witted, and selecting for the creative and physically hardy.  However, his ethos leads him to avoid forcing people to act whenever he can, instead convincing them his way is best or otherwise maneuvering them to make his preferred choices.  A repeated theme involves his efforts to get certain characters to notice the physical attractions of other characters, thus leading them to mate with the right partners for Leto's program.  Oddly, I didn't remember this aspect of the book at all from when I last read it 20 or more years ago.

It's almost impossible for me to imagine someone coming into this book cold and reading it through to the end.  A reader would really have to have read at least one or more of the previous books in the series to have a prayer of understanding it.  Yet, it's so different in tone and content from the previous books that I would think many Dune fans might also be repelled by it.  Personally, upon this re-read, I find it rivals Children of Dune as the best in the series, with thought-provoking themes and compelling characters (still a lot of stilted dialogue, though).  Overall, I can't recommend it generally, but for a reader who has some familiarity with the Dune universe and isn't afraid of a science fiction book pretentious enough that this reviewer can see parallels with Plato's works (not that Dune fans aren't familiar with pretension...) this makes for fine reading.

Ranking the Superman Movies

All right, we've done the X-Men movies and the Avengers movies, let's do the Superman movies.

As before, the ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Superman (1978) (rewatched it recently and found it still excellent)
Superman II (I've seen it a number of times over the years and it's one of my favorites)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984) (I haven't seen this since the mid-1980s but my siblings and I must have watched this on videotape about a dozen times--so it can't be too bad, right?)
Superman IV
Superman Returns (2006) (not bad, but kind of bland)

Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
_______________________________________________________________________________

And here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Iron Man
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Iron Man 2
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Superman IV

Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

Ranking the Avengers Movies

A few weeks ago I ranked the X-Men movies, and promised I would do some more superhero movies in the future.  Let's do the Avengers movies, from best to worst.

If you recall, the ranking system was arranged so:
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Iron Man--The best in the Avengers franchise, and one of the best comic-based movies ever made.
Avengers--Hugely entertaining.
Captain America
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Iron Man 3
Iron Man 2
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Thor--Feels like a TV movie.  No sense of wonder at all.
Hulk (2003)--I give Ang Lee credit for trying to do something novel, but it really did not work.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Let's put them together and check out the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far.
Iron Man
Avengers
Captain America
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
Iron Man 2
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
_________________________________________________________________________________
This is a fun game, I'll probably put up another list in a couple weeks.  I believe there are three franchises left to do (Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man), and numerous one-offs.

What I'm Reading: Goya

Goya, by Robert Hughes, is a big, thick, beautifully-written account of Francisco Goya's life, with a lavishly generous selection of many dozens of Goya's paintings and etchings included.  I first picked it up at a book sale, amazed that such a gorgeous art book would be available for under $10.  At home, I thumbed through it a few times just to gaze at the pictures, then thought I'd see how the writing was.  Well, the writing was great, and I couldn't stop reading it.

Robert Hughes's biography is thorough and well-balanced.  He emphasizes Goya's humanism, his inspiration by the contemporary ideals of the Enlightenment, with special attention paid to just how much Goya might have known about those ideals in backwards Spain, where the Inquisition still did its best to keep out foreign ideas even in the late 18th century.  His criticism of Goya's works is superbly attentive to detail and his explanation of the context for each work is clear.

Really, it's hard to find fault with any aspect of his writing--I suppose he might have trimmed some of his writing about the more peripheral figures in the story--a lengthy digression about Godoy, Spanish prime minister in the 1790s, for instance--but the details of Spanish history are so little known generally that even this is pretty helpful for most readers.  On the other hand, there are a few figures who receive very little attention, such as Goya's wife, to whom he was married for 40 years.  But that is due simply to the lack of knowledge about her.  It seems Goya rarely referred to her in his letters, and other accounts of her are just not known.

One admirable aspect of the book is the way Hughes corrects various myths about Goya.  For instance, his notorious The Naked Maja (also found in a clothed version), was most certainly not the Duchess of Alba, and although he was friends with the Duchess and perhaps even smitten with her, circumstances make it extremely unlikely they ever had an affair, as is often supposed.  In fact, the painting was commissioned by Godoy, and is most likely a young mistress of his, probably with a generic face added to hide her identity.  Nevertheless, the painting caused some trouble for Goya later when an Inquisition auditor found it in a warehouse after Godoy had fled to France, and Goya had to go in and account for his salacious representation of a naked woman.

When I was in college I took a course in Spanish art history, and for my end-of-semester essay I wrote about Goya's famous Third of May.  I was glad to encounter the painter again so many years later, and delighted to revisit him with as knowledgeable and passionate a writer as Hughes.  Any adult with an interest in art would find this book rewarding.

What I'm Reading: Counting by 7s

True story: Under the "Taste Preferences" tab in Netflix, where you can review what sort of movies Netflix believes you like to see, my wife and I have earned a "never watch" in the categories of feel-good, inspiring, and sentimental.  With that in mind, I have to say that the latest book I've read, Counting by 7s, a YA-novel by Holly Goldberg Sloan, comes perilously close to feel-good and inspiring.

I wasn't totally put off by the book; in fact, I enjoyed it overall, and there were parts of it I liked a lot.  The main character is Willow, a 12-year old girl who is something of a child prodigy, able to pick up foreign languages in a few weeks and full of facts, though devoid of social graces.  Her interests are plants, medical conditions, and the number 7.  You can probably already imagine that she's not too popular at her middle school.  Her only friend moved away the year before, and now she only has her plants and her parents.  These are taken away from her in one swoop, when her parents die in a car crash, and she's thrust into the youth protection system.

Fortunately, she had already become acquainted with a school counselor after being accused of cheating on a standardized test (she'd gotten a perfect score, although of course she earned it honestly).  This counselor, Dell Duke, is one of the worst school counselors in history, a self-involved loser completely uninterested in his students' lives or his job and with a private organization system that involves assigning each student who comes to him with the label of "oddball", "weirdo," "lone wolf," or "misfit."  Another of Dell Duke's charges, Quang-ha, a high-school delinquent, and his overbearingly bossy sister, Mai, become involved in Willow's life when they search for Dell's runaway cat together.

If you guess that this unlikely group would somehow bond and change each other for the better, you are not on the wrong track. This goes down better than it might thanks to a large dollop of humor.  I laughed out loud a number of times while reading this, and nearly every chapter has a situation or conversation that made me at least chuckle.

Nevertheless, I found the book somewhat predictable.  Not any particular part of it, and there are some nicely zany and surprising moments, but the overall direction.  Another thing that bothered me was a minor but recurring character that Willow meets, a taxi driver named Jairo.  When she sees an odd-shaped mole on the back of his neck, she recommends he see a doctor, and it turns out to be cancerous and caught just in time.  Their other encounters are similarly serendipitous, with the whole subplot feeling jammed in to show how special Willow is, rather than because it really serves the larger story in any way.

I cannot say this is one of those YA books I think a lot of adults would like, but I do think middle-schoolers would enjoy its humor.  I found it clever and don't think it was a waste of time to read, but for me the author sacrifices plausible plot and character development, especially at the end, to shoehorn in an inspirational message.

What I'm Reading: I Served the King of England

Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer who wrote during the Communist period.  His works were considered anti-revolutionary, I suppose.  In any case, I Served the King of England, which Hrabal finished in 1971, circulated in underground editions in the 1970s and was not formally published until 1983.

I Served follows the life of Ditie, who lives with his grandmother in a laundry as a boy and when he leaves home finds a job as a busboy at a hotel restaurant.  He learns the art of waiting tables from the maitre d', an older man who's seen it all, and even once served the King of England.  As time goes on, Ditie finds jobs at increasingly grand hotels, and finally he himself serves the King of Ethiopia at the finest hotel in Prague.  It is in these jobs that he develops twin obsessions with saving money and bedding women, a way to make up for his lack of stature (he's under five feet) and his name (ditie means child in Czech).

During World War II, he woos and marries the German daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official, much to the disgust of his former colleagues in the hotel trade, who consider him a collaborator.  His wife and infant son die in the final days of the war.  With the money he's earned during the war he's able to buy a hotel of his own, only to see it taken by the Communists when they take charge of the country a few years later.  After a period in prison with a group of millionaires accused of exploiting the people, he accepts a series of forestry and road maintenance jobs in the remote mountainous areas of the country, where in the quiet and isolation he comes to terms with his life and what is truly important.

Hrabal's writing is absolutely beautiful.  Let me give you a little bit of the book, so you can see how gorgeous it is.  In this section he is working in the prison kitchen where one of his daily jobs is to feed the pigeons.

"I had to come out of the kitchen on the stroke of two, and if for some reason the clock didn't strike but the sun was out, I would go by the sundial on the wall of the church, and when I emerged, all four hundred pigeons would swoop down from the roof and fly straight at me, and a shadow flew with them, and the rustling of feathers and wings was like flour or salt being poured out of a bag.  The pigeons would land on the cart, and if they couldn't find a place they would sit on my shoulders and fly around my head and beat their wings against my ears, blotting out the world, as though I were tangled up in a huge bridal train stretching out in front of me and behind me, a veil of moving wings and eight hundred beautiful blueberry eyes."

This is one of my favorite parts, although the writing is this good on every page.  In its minute observation of details he reminds me quite a bit of Marcel Proust, with the difference that Hrabal is much faster to get to the point.  After all, the book is only a little over 200 pages and covers a lot of ground.  He (or at least Ditie) is also much concerned with the attractions of the female form and the pleasures it can provide, so you might say Hrabal is like a shorter, naughtier version of Proust, which in my mind is quite a recommendation.  I'm not sure this book is for everyone, but for those who are less interested in a rip-roaring plot and more in elegant, thoughtful writing with a strong erotic thread, this book is well worth seeking out.

Ranking the X-Men Movies

Today, my son and I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past, based on a much-loved X-Men story arc from the 80s.  It starts in the not-so-distant future, when robots called Sentinels have hunted down nearly all mutants on Earth, and the few remaining X-Men decide to send someone back to the past to change the timeline and prevent the Sentinels from being invented.  The bulk of the action takes place in 1973, the year the future X-Men have decided is the critical time that needs to be changed.  It's quite a spectacular film, and one of the better X-Men movies, but I'll get to that after a brief digression.

In the comics, the character sent back to the past was Kitty Pryde, who in the 1970s was a teen-aged girl.  Because of her youth, she functioned in the comics as a device to allow the readers to follow the often convoluted storylines and keep track of the huge cast of recurring villains and secondary characters, by asking questions of the other, older characters.  The answers filled in the blanks for her and readers alike.

But in the X-Men movies, Wolverine is the main character.  Among the dominant teen-aged male readership of the X-Men at the height of their 1990s popularity, Wolverine was the favorite because of his tough guy persona and his retractable claws.   The movie producers decided to make him the focal character for audiences, but had to tone him down, so now the emphasis is on how the once-violent man has learned to keep his bestial nature in check through force of will.  Played by Hugh Jackman, he is much more sympathetic than in the comics.

Thus, the very questionable choice of changing the a fundamental part of the story, and sending Wolverine back in time instead of Kitty.  Yet, I have to say it works.  The movie makes up for it by having Kitty play the main role in facilitating the mind transfer that sends the future Wolverine's psyche to his 1970s body.  Various other minor changes also help with translating a very "comic-y" storyline to the big screen, and the result is a movie that feels true to the original story but should entertain anybody who likes action movies, no real comics knowledge required.  Although it might help to have seen one of the earlier films.

Here are the X-Men movies rated, from best to worst:
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good Black=Okay  Red=avoid

X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The Wolverine
X-Men: First Class
X-Men
X-Men 3: Last Stand

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

Yes, none of these rated as excellent, but the top three are perfectly entertaining, and the next two aren't terrible.  I may do future superhero movies ratings in the future, and the green may come into play then.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy So I got this out to see if my son would like it, decided at not-quite-9-years-old he's not ready yet, but once I started couldn't stop reading it myself.  I haven't picked the book up since high school, but it's pretty much as I remembered.  Ridiculous, absurdist humor as we follow Arthur Dent around the galaxy.  Arthur is the last human left alive (or so he believes!) after the destruction of the Earth to make way for an intergalactic highway.  The book is episodic in the extreme, with lots of lengthy asides (sometimes chapter-length) about the various alien races.  As always, the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42, and the most important thing you can bring with you when hitchhiking around the galaxy is a towel.

Hyperbole and a Half A graphic novel, or rather, a graphic series of autobiographical short stories, by Allie Brosh.  This is probably the funniest thing I've read this year, quite a feat considering I reviewed Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about 15 seconds ago.  The tone is a little bit hard to nail down, but let's call it whimsically edgy.  Chapters cover topics mainly relating to the author's dogs, depression, and childhood.  Depression has never been funnier.  Some sample chapter titles are "Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving," "The Helper Dog is an Asshole," and "The Hot Sauce Debacle."

The last one is about the time when she was a kid and ate some really hot salsa.  Never having previously exhibited a skill of any type, her parents reward her with more attention than the feat really deserved, and made a big deal about it at their workplaces.  This backfires when her dad arranges a contest between her and one of his coworkers who really likes hot things.

Another good chapter attempts to clear up some misconceptions that her dogs hold, such as "I should eat bees."  "Oh, no, why happening?" the dog thinks, as it eats yet another bee and is stung, yet again, on its mouth.  The chapter also attempts to suss out why the innocuous vacuum cleaner is so frightening for her dogs, while the lawnmower is a source of fascination that must be investigated, despite the fact they make the exact same sound.  If these sorts of things sound potentially funny to you, you'll definitely like this.  If not, you should probably find something else to read.

Ursa Minor I picked this up at my local comic shop when the author and artist were there signing some of their work.  Tom Hutchison was the writer and Ian Snyder the penciler.  It takes place a decade or so in the future, when vampires, werewolves, faeries, and so forth have come out of hiding and revealed themselves to be real.  As the story starts, vampires have infiltrated the highest levels of the US government and are using their political power to take over the country.  Only a small group consisting of a witch, a were-bear, a stone golem, and a few others, recognize the danger, and decide they have to take the vampires out.

Amusing enough to read, but I have the let-down feeling about this the way I do when I start watching a B-movie and see that Roger Corman directed it.  The problem with Corman is that he was too competent for a film he directed to be entertainingly bad, but neither did he have the budget, time investment, or possibly skill to make a truly good film.  Similarly, Ursa Minor is well-done enough for what it is, but a book about vampires at war with were-bears is probably never going to be fine literature, and it doesn't quite have enough of the sleazy, hothouse atmosphere that's going to make something like this really work.  The standard here is Conan the Barbarian (movie, comics, or original pulp stories, they all fit the bill) or the Heavy Metal movie.  If it's not as over-the-top as any of those, it needs to go back in the pressure cooker.

What I'm Reading: Becoming Mr. October

So here's my baseball book for this year: Becoming Mr. October, by Reggie Jackson.  I saw it on the New Arrivals stand at the library and picked it right up.  Reggie gives us a few chapters on growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania, his college career at Arizona State, and his early professional career with Oakland, but the bulk of the book covers the 1977 and 1978 seasons with the Yankees, when they won the World Series two years in a row.

It actually works pretty well paired with Bill Lee's autobiography, which I read last year.  Bill Lee was a pitcher with the Red Sox in 1978, that near-mythical season when the Sox and Yankees ended up tied for first place in the American League East on the last day of the regular season and had to play a tie-breaker.  Not surprisingly, Bill Lee makes a few appearances in this book as well, although we're reading now from the other point of view.

One thing that struck me about both books is how badly the pitchers were handled.  Bill mentioned Red Sox manager Don Zimmer refusing to adhere to a regular rotation, instead "saving" certain pitchers for key games, only to find they don't produce because they've had too much or too little rest.  Similarly, Billy Martin on the Yankees would decide he didn't like a certain player's attitude and bench him (often without explaining why), and then pitch another guy on only three days rest.  Or, he might yank a pitcher in trouble in the fourth inning instead of letting him work out of the jam, and send in a closer for the final five innings of the game (or more, in case of extra innings).  Favored pitchers he would leave in for all nine innings, fine for one outing but hell on a pitcher over multiple starts.  After half a season of this, most of his pitching staff suffered permanently sore arms or worse.  Reggie mentions several great pitchers who never pitched the same after working on one of Martin's teams.

I have to wonder--was this typical?  I mean, the Yankees and Red Sox were two of the best teams in baseball, and that's how they were treating their pitchers.  I have to imagine lesser teams were even worse off.  Or were the Yankees and Red Sox special cases, who managed to win despite the way their pitchers were treated?  No way a manager could get away with that today.

Then too, Billy Martin comes off terribly in Reggie's book in general.  I'm not sure I've ever read a positive account of Billy--even writers trying to be nice use euphemisms like "scrappy" or "feisty."  Reggie describes him as downright mean, a drunkard who harbors secret grudges that he satisfies by trying to humiliate his players on the national stage.  Apparently he had a special dislike for Reggie from the very first day that Reggie showed up at spring training in 1977.  Of course Reggie, an outspoken black man who had to fight for every bit of respect he ever got, simply wouldn't put up with Billy and at times openly defied him.

Of course, Reggie was famous for speaking his mind, even boasting about his talents and accomplishments.  It wasn't idle though--he was truly the best power hitter in the game!  Four home runs in four consecutive at-bats in the 1977 World Series, and that's just for starters.  I didn't realize that Yankees catcher Thurman Munson originally referred to Reggie as "Mr. October" sarcastically, but Reggie quickly picked up the phrase and wore it proudly.

He admits in the book that in retrospect, he wouldn't have said everything he did.  He says he was naive about the media when he got to New York, as in Oakland there'd typically been only three sportswriters in the locker room after games and they'd had a strong respect for players who wanted to keep things off the record.  In contrast, the Yankees locker room had dozens of sportswriters after a game, each looking for the best quote they could get and not above quoting overheard remarks, private conversations, or even subtly twisting their quotes to make them juicier.  Reggie says now if he'd known how many hurt feelings there would be, he would have kept his mouth shut a lot more often.  Quite an admission for a player who many thought at the time went out of his way to create controversy.

All in all, I would think this book would be of interest to any baseball fan.  It's an entertaining story by one of the more colorful characters to ever play the game, playing on one of the best Yankees teams of all time.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Back again with another round-up of some of the graphic novels and things I've read lately!

Prophet: Brothers:  A few months ago I had a mini-review of the first volume of this series, and here we are with the second.  Still following John Prophet in the far distant future and across the galaxy as he continues a sort of vaguely defined mission that I believe will ultimately involve him waking up the long-dormant human empire.  By this time, he's assembled a team of non-anthropomorphic alien friends to help him.

The plot is fairly obscure and the characters are thin, but that's hardly the point here.  The point is seriously weird space opera, and Prophet delivers.  I think what I like most about this is the sheer scale: we meet civilizations that rise and fall, wholly contained in the massive corpse of an eons-dead war giant; or sentient tree aliens that have lived for thousands of years.  It really gives the feel of a galaxy so huge and strange it couldn't possibly be fully explored or understood in a single human lifetime.

In the first book, and even more so here, I also notice a definite slant in future technology towards the biological.  For instance, when the characters leave the ship, they pass through a living membrane that covers their bodies and acts as a spacesuit.  Or, at one point when John is nearly starved to death, his tree creature friend grows a fruit out of his own body and feeds it to John to keep him alive.  This biological vibe gives many scenes sexual or excremental overtones.  I think those overtones also contribute to the feeling of immense scale.  It makes the characters seem like tiny parasites feeding on and living in creatures vastly greater than they, and operating according to motives as incomprehensible to them as our lives are to an amoeba.

The Incal: I was very interested to read this, a famous underground science-fiction comic from the 1980s written by surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and drawn by legendary French comic artist Moebius.  This work has been cited as an influence on countless movies and comics since it came out, to the point that Jodorowsky and Moebius (unsuccessfully) sued the producers of the movie The Fifth Element for ripping their ideas off.

Alas, I wasn't as impressed by this as I'd hoped.  It follows John DiFool and his pet Deepo, a seagull made of concrete, on a quasi-mystical adventure to save humanity from a series of escalating threats in the distant future.  Strange to say it, but I think the main problem I have with it is that it's too coherent and straight-forward.  I mean, the trappings are all science-fiction surrealism, but there's none of that dream-like logic that normally infuses this sort of thing.

I also felt that it never quite committed to what it wanted to be.  There were hints it wanted to be a science fiction political intrigue (and Jodorowsky's quest to film the book Dune is well-known), but the scenes of political maneuvering in a multi-species, multi-planet parliament never amounted to more than "people in politics are on different sides."  There simply wasn't enough detail or background provided for us to know why one faction was important or what positions they held.

Similarly, there's a fair amount of nudity, sex, and violence, but it's all fairly tame, more than is strictly necessary to the plot but not enough to be truly lurid.  There's a lot of religious imagery and plotting, but as with the politics, not enough detail for us to really care.  I feel the story would have been better served if Jodorowsky had not tried to stuff everything into it.  If he'd picked a direction (say, straightforward space opera, or futuristic politics, or Heavy Metal-style erotic SF fantasy, or whatever) and stayed with it, it would have turned out better.

The Importance of Writing Groups Redux

I've written in the past about the importance for a writer of being in a writers group.  In those posts, I mentioned four reasons to join a writers group:

1) Reading out loud in front of a group makes you try harder when you're polishing your work.

2) The support of other writers boosts you and supercharges your desire to write.

3) The critique provided by the other writers is an important tool in improving your work.

4) A regular meeting helps you get back on track when you've lost your way.

I'd like to mention a fifth that's occurred to me lately.  At the last few meetings, some of the other writers have read some really great pieces.  A couple writers in particular read chapters from their books that impressed me--and maybe made me a little envious.  Hey, I can write as well as that!

So why haven't I?

Obviously, I've really got to up my game if I'm going to keep up with these guys.  And so we come to the fifth reason: competition.  When other writers are hot, when they bring in something that makes you say "Damn!"  When they're providing the group with a master class in how it's done, you know it's time to get to work on your own story or manuscript.

What I'm Reading: How to Write a Damn Good Novel

Like most of these how-to books, James N. Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel has some good advice and some truly god-awful advice.  The thing is, I bet a lot of writers who read this book say the same thing, only we're talking about different parts of the book.  Writing, and especially writing at novel-length, is all so individualized that what's fertilizer for one writer may be manure to another.

The advice Frey gives that I'll take away and put to use immediately is his idea to give the overall thrust of the book, as well as each main character, a premise describing their plot or character development arc.  For instance, the premise for Michael in the Godfather is that family loyalty leads to a life of crime, or for Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, forced self-examination leads to generosity.

I'm sure I've heard advice along these lines given before, probably in the form of "give each character a motivation," but that never seemed to work for me.  People's motivations change moment to moment based on the situation.  But phrased as Frey put it makes the idea a little more abstract, and its utility was immediately apparent to me: you can instantly tell whether a scene you're writing is relevant or not.  Does the scene advance the overall premise of the book, or of the character(s) in the scene?  If not, then it doesn't need to be in there.  I do this already, of course, but the premise concept provides a way to screen each scene more quickly.

The worst advice I found was Frey's admonition to put together something called a "step-sheet" before you ever start writing.  As he describes it, this is basically a detailed outline showing the dramatic rise and fall in tension throughout the book, and apparently it should take about a month to finish.  For some writers that might be great, but I'm never going to do it.  In my mind, anything more than a one or two page sketch at the beginning is a straitjacket.  Start off with great characters and let them figure out how to navigate the plot.

Another thing Frey mentioned that I doubt I'll ever do, although it sounds intriguing, is to interview your characters before starting the book.  This actually sounds like it might be a good way to establish their voice.  Of course, my preferred way to establish a character's voice is to write the book and let it come out naturally.  But who knows?  Maybe if I'm having trouble with a character some time I'll give it a try and see if it helps.

One thing I appreciated about Damn Good is that it's more on the practical end than the cheerleading end of writing how-to books.  Even if you don't agree with a suggestion, at least he makes one on nearly every page and you can take it or leave it.  I've had it with the cheerleaders.  I've written enough and gotten good enough I don't need the encouragement, and I'd rather read something with a high density of advice.  For those who are looking for encouragement, turn to Bird by Bird, which is clearly the best in that category.

So as a writer, should you read this?  Of course.  If you want to write a novel, you should probably read a dozen of these.  Half of what's in any of them you'll already know, and another third will be absolutely wrong for you, but that remaining fifteen percent is what you're after.  I found my fifteen percent in this book and my guess is you will too.

What I'm Reading: The Reason I Jump

The Reason I Jump was written by Naoki Higashida, a thirteen-year-old Japanese boy with autism.  Though unable to verbalize his thoughts in normal speech, his mother created something called the "alphabet grid" that allows him to communicate.  He has both a keyboard version for typing on the computer and a cardboard version he carries around with him.  The alphabet grid contains the English letters in the middle, with numerous common Japanese symbols around the edges, and by pointing at the appropriate symbol he can hold conversations with others and make his thoughts and wishes known.

It's a little hard to classify this book.  It's part-memoir, although as a young teen Naoki hasn't had much life experience to relate.  It also contains some short stories that Naoki has written to illustrate what life is like for those with autism.  But mostly, it's a series of questions followed by a paragraph or two explaining the questions he most often encounters about his condition.

For instance, in answering why he's not able to hold a conversation or even answer simple questions, he explains that he is able to form words.  It's just that if somebody asks him a question verbally, he has to process the question, formulate an answer, and say the answer out loud, performing all those steps consciously where most people do it automatically.  By the time he manages to get a response out, the conversation has moved on or ended completely!  To the other person, he appears non-responsive, even though in his own mind he understood the question perfectly.  Basically, even his native language is like a foreign tongue to Naoki.

Similarly, he addresses questions regarding his sudden and jerky movements, his repetitious behaviors, his sense of time, and many other topics.  It's all quite reasonable once you read his explanation for them.  Many of his activities that seem odd to others really act as a relief valve for him.

I find his answer regarding the reason he melts down or throws tantrums to be revealing.  He writes that internally, he is as mature as any other thirteen-year-old.  But because others treat him as a little child all the time, and because his own brain and body so rarely cooperate with his intentions, his life is a never-ending frustration.  It is his belief that anybody would react the way he does if subjected to the same level of stress he is.  (I am paraphrasing his words here, but I think this is an accurate characterization.)

The book is easy to read and immensely interesting.  Most readers should be able to finish it off in an hour or two.  My wife tells me that The Reason I Jump  is increasingly found on high-school required reading lists, which seems like a sensible addition.  Considering the amount of insight Naoki provides about autism, a condition that many consider inscrutable, and the amount of sympathy he generates for the autistic, I would say nearly everybody should read this book.  I might add, by reading about Naoki's very non-standard brain, even non-autistic readers will likely learn more about how their own minds work.

What I'm Reading: Grind Joint

Grind Joint is another Writers of Chantilly book, this one by long-time member Dana King.  It's a hard-boiled mystery about a good cop, "Doc" Dougherty, in Penns River, a once-prosperous but now dumpy industrial town.  The title refers to the new casino in town--a grind joint being a downscale casino catering to the most desperate clientele.  No sooner does the place open its doors than a dead body shows up on its doorstep.  Seems the casino has attracted the attention of some Russian gangsters, who want to move in and displace the Italian mob family that's long used Penns River as a convenient, low-key base for their real business down in Pittsburgh.  The Russian gangsters figure the grind joint will being some real action to Penns River, and have no desire in keeping things low-key in pushing out the mafiosa.  It's up to Doc to solve the murder and stop the coming gang war, if he can.

Now in my life I've read perhaps eight or ten hard-boiled mysteries, and half of those were during a summer in high school when I got into the Spenser series, but even I can see that there's nothing particularly original in the plot or characters here.  But that's hardly the point.  I think a mystery fan would find this lean and perfectly-paced, with proper genuflection to all the stations of the genre cross.

What interested me, however, was another book, contained in the same pages but hidden under the genre conventions: an anthropological study of a west Pennsylvania mill town in decline. I hope that doesn't make it sound boring, because I mean the opposite. With just a few lines of naturalistic dialogue, with a passing comment about traffic patterns, an offhand line about a streetscape, a short sketch of the relationship between a politician and a mobster, King deftly builds up a thick description of Penns River, a stand-in for any number of actual towns far enough from Pittsburgh not to be suburbs, but close enough to still be in its orbit.

So there you have my recommendation--Grind Joint is suitable both for the reader who might enjoy its considerable virtues as hard-boiled detective novel, but even more so for a student of American urbanism who wants a nuanced document of a decaying industrial town, fictional in this case but different only in the particulars from hundreds of other actual towns.

What I'm Reading: A Journey to Self-Publishing

A Journey to Self-Publishing is another one by a member of the Writers of Chantilly.  The author here is Kalyani Kurup, who gives us a brief (five chapters) but charming memoir of her experiences as a writer and her misadventures in the publishing world in India and the United States.

I can definitely recommend this book to other authors, especially those considering the alternative world of self-publishing.  Writers will find a lot of useful lessons on dealing with publishers and free-lance employers, as well as the occasional pointer on improving one's writing style. Some non-writers may find it to be a lot of shoptalk, but I think others will appreciate how well she laces her story with self-deprecating humor and careful observations of the people she meets.  I especially love her story of a lengthy search for a certain address in Bangalore, accompanied by the world's worst-oriented auto-rickshaw driver.

I might also add that despite her frequent protestations in the text to the contrary, Ms. Kurup's English is impeccable! Her prose style is elegant and tasteful, a little like one of those Bangalore gardens she must have seen that day--perhaps more flowers and ornamentation than are strictly necessary, but all directed towards the end of creating a beautiful, well-tended place for relaxation and edification.

What I'm Reading: Red Flag Warning

A couple years ago somebody got me the book The Big Burn by Timothy Egan, because the person knew "I like history books."  At first this seemed like a terrible choice.  Sure, I like history, but a book about a forest fire in Idaho a century ago, in the early days of the Forest Service and the National Parks System?  Sounded like a snoozer.  But how wrong I was!  The Big Burn was so well-written, so tense and dramatic, that I easily count it among one of the best history books I've ever read.

It was with that in mind that I turned to fellow Writer of Chantilly Melanie Florence.  One of my writing/reading goals for this year is to read something by all the WoC writers with books out, and her recently self-published book, Red Flag Warning, claims on its cover to "showcase the realities of wildfires in our western forests today."  This seemed like it might be a good fictional companion to the Big Burn.  And it is!

There are really three layers of story interest: First, a murder mystery.  Our heroine, Sophia, works on a Forest Service field crew as a botanist.  One of the other women on the field crew, a soil expert named Jackie, is resented among other crew members for her laziness and drinking on the job.  But when she turns up dead from poisoning on one of their work sites, suspicion centers on the crew members--especially Sophia, with whom she had recently clashed.

Two, the story takes place against the backdrop of a series of wide-ranging forest fires in eastern Oregon.  It's mid-summer, and this area of Oregon has suffered seven years of drought.  Huge, acreage-destroying fires flare up with the flick of a cigarette butt or a spark from a metal tool.  Sophia's husband, Gerald, works on a fire crew and puts his life in danger with every new conflagration.  Not surprisingly, as she works in the woods, the threat of fire is ever-present for Sophia herself, as well. The plot points and descriptions here are comparable to the Big Burn.

Finally, the book gives us fascinating descriptions of Sophia's life as a botanist on a field crew for the Forest Service. I had never previously known or really thought about a job like this, but the book gives us a realistic portrayal of what such a position entails, working the details in organically with the rest of the plot.  This actually turned out to be probably my favorite part, as it's always fun to see other people's jobs.

The book could be classified as a "cozy mystery" but it ratchets up the tension and drama effectively by the end.  Melanie knows what she's doing and after a somewhat slow start, Red Flag Warning becomes a page-turner by about halfway through.  If I have one complaint, it's that there were two many characters.  I believe for verisimilitude's sake, she made Sophia's field crew the size of a real field crew.  However, many of these characters blended into one another, especially the guys: Randy, Butch, and Aaron.  I think it would have been more effective if these three had been condensed to one or two more sharply-drawn characters.

All in all, an entertaining book that I think cozy mystery fans would enjoy, and would also interest anyone who likes the Big Burn and wants to learn more about the phenomenon of Western wildfires.

My 2014 Writing Resolutions

Okay, obviously I'm a little bit behind.  Well, I did actually write these on 1 January, I just haven't gotten around to posting them until now.

1) Maintain blog.  Hmm, I seem to have fallen a little bit behind on this.  This post is a good start, though!

2A) Finish reading current novel at the bi-weekly Writers of Chantilly meetings.  I'm on my way, I read a chapter per session and I have four left, I think.  So about two months.

2B) Find a beta reader for current novel.  Not sure if I really need to do this or not, but I do have someone in mind.

2C) Finish all edits on current novel.  This will come a little later in the process

2D) Send to agents, possibly by April 2014.  That's an ambitious target, we'll see.

3) Finish short story for Writers of Chantilly "Unfinished Business" anthology.  COMPLETE!

4) Read (and blog on, and comment on Amazon) a recent book by all other Writers of Chantilly members who have recently published.  I'm reading one now, Red Flag Warning, by Melanie Florence.  Of course I'll review it here when I'm done.  Not sure if I actually can get to everybody this year, but I intend to hit as many as I can.

5) Decide on next long project.  A sequel to my current novel, or something else?

What I've Been Reading: The Wonder of Girls

The Wonder of Girls, by Michael Gurian, is a companion book to one I read a couple years ago, The Wonder of Boys.  The two books attempt to fill a gap in how our society understands the minds and behavior of girls and boys, which Gurian sees as overly informed by psychology and sociology.  Not that he discounts those fields, but he feels not enough attention is paid to the roles of biology, hormones, and the natural progression of children through the lifecycle.  One interesting feature is that he uses fairy tales and traditional stories to illustrate his points, based on the belief that these stories tell essential, age-old truths about raising children that modern methods overlook.

I could be remembering wrong, but I believe there were more stories in the WoB.  The WoG uses two stories--Cinderella, and a fairy tale from aboriginal Australia--but the focus here seems to be more on hormones, and how a lot of natural hormone-influenced behavior in girls is misunderstood.  In particular, Gurian thinks we pay too much attention to girls' self-esteem.  His point is that teen-agers, and girls especially, naturally have low self-esteem as they make mistakes that are an inevitable part of growing up, and as they are exposed for the first time to the monthly hormonal cycle of a grown woman.  Only by learning from their mistakes, and experiencing the the normal ebb and flow of monthly hormonal and emotional cycles over time, can girls gain true self-respect.  Efforts to raise self-esteem through empty praise or mindless recognition ceremonies do little to improve a girl's genuine opinion of herself.

He also describes his and his wife's disillusionment with the feminist views they had when they were younger now that they are dealing with their own daughters.  He finds that the view of feminists from the sixties to eighties that differences in girls and boys are nearly all socially-created, and that the solution is for women to empower themselves in the workplace and on campus, to be...not wrong, but incomplete.  Rather, in his own daughters and the girls in his practice, he sees a biological need to connect with others and nurture that boys don't have to the same extent, but that girls must have to feel emotionally complete.  For raising children, he proposes an alternative to feminism he calls womanism, that holds women should have the same opportunities as men in work and education, while acknowledging that many women will find more fulfillment in raising children, caring for those in the community, and maintaining family and friendship bonds than in careerism.

I was surprised at how much practical advice he offers for a book that in some ways takes a fairly high-level view of child-raising.  He offers firm guidance on such issues as exposure to television and the media, spanking, offering affection, helping children manage peer relationships, and other topics.  A lot of it is more teen-focused than on younger children like my daughter, but I found it helpful.

I also found him highly credible, both because he offers so many examples from his own family counseling practice, but also because he so often takes a well-reasoned, middle-of-the-road approach.  The ideas of his on feminism that I mentioned above are a good example--he finds much to recommend feminist approaches to child-rearing, but wants to make them part of a more inclusive method that incorporates knowledge from many fields.  The use of age-old stories illustrates and deepens his insights, and also make some fairly dry material more fun to read.  I can definitely recommend this book to those parents looking for a general, non-ideological parenting book, though those with children having specific special needs will need to look elsewhere.

What I've Been Eating: Sisters Thai

Alas, I have not been a good blogger this month!  And I have stuff to post, too--reading and writing goals for the New Year, book reviews, etc.  I'll get to them another day.  For tonight, I'd like to extol my favorite restaurant: Sisters Thai, on University Avenue in Fairfax, VA.

Sisters Thai is an easy three-block walk from our house.  It opened last spring, and we've eaten there probably half a dozen times since then.  I've had places before where I've liked eating, but this is the first time I've ever absolutely fallen in love with a restaurant.  The best word to describe it is cozy.  Delicious works too, unpretentious might not be out of line, but cozy is the most apropos.  I'm not sure if it's the way they knew us by our second visit; or because I've never had a bad meal there; or because the sauvignon blanc is just perfectly sweet and tangy to match with spicy food; or the way people draw little pictures and write quotes in the blank spaces on the menu; or the way each table gives you a different view of the full bookshelves, Thai artwork, toys, and photos decorating the place; or the way the staff is extremely friendly but just a little bit inattentive--not so much as to annoy, but enough to allow for conversation; or just the whole laid back vibe of the place.

So tonight when we arrived (just Lee and me, the kids are at a Tae Kwon Do parents-night-out party), it was Friday night and we hadn't made reservations so we sat at the bar for a while.  The owner of the place, a charming and disarmingly cheerful lady, came over and chatted us up for a few minutes (!), remembered that we have two kids (!!), and brought us our wine and frozen green tea slush herself (!!!).  We had also realized since our last visit that the Thai menus decorating the wall are actual menus, different than the normal menus they bring you, with a list of Thai street food options.  So as many times as we've been here, and there are still options we don't even know about!  I had roasted duck on rice, and Lee chicken soup with rice noodles.  Nothing fancy, but everything is so good!  A perfect balance of food, atmosphere, and service, and all done so joyously you don't realize until afterwards how much work must have gone into it.  Quite reasonably priced, too--not cheap, but the bill always seems to be a little under what I expected.  If you find yourself in Fairfax at some point, I highly recommend a visit to Sisters Thai.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Another round-up, this one covering my family's recent car trip from Virginia to Oklahoma, and back.  As you might imagine, we listened to a lot of audiobooks, and I got in some reading too.

Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections: Now this is more like it.  In my review a couple weeks ago, I found Volume 5 of this graphic novel series to be my least favorite of Sandman.  Volume 6 collects several one-issue tales, reading like a collection of short stories, and I found this volume to be much more entertaining.  As always, the tales involve the Sandman, also known as Morpheus, or Dream. This is the guy who visits you at night and gives you all those stories in your head. He is the king of the Dreaming, a land made up of all the various nighttime places we go to and people and creatures we see there.

Most of the stories here have a mythological bent, placing Morpheus into familiar stories but giving them a twist.  We read the tale of Orpheus visiting the underworld, Baghdad during the time of the Arabian Nights, Revolutionary France, and Imperial Russia, among others.  I think my favorite story was August, about the Roman emperor Augustus in his final days.  He decides for one day to disguise himself as a beggar and sit in the streets of Rome with a companion, a dwarf and actor named Lycius.  Lycius wonders why Augustus would debase himself so, and the reader learns at the end what has driven Augustus to this.  Not surprisingly, Morpheus had something to do with it, although I won't give away what.

Ruins of Gorlan: This is the first novel in the Ranger's Apprentice YA fantasy series.  This is one of my eight-year old son's favorite books, so I was interested to hear the audio version on our trip.  Alas, I wasn't so impressed as my son.

The series follows Will, an orphaned teenager who has been taken on as an apprentice by the ranger Halt.  Halt teaches his young charge the ways of the Ranger order: tracking, knife-throwing, moving silently, etc.  I think my son enjoys the high adventure of the series, and the clear and detailed battle scenes.  I was more intrigued by the setting of the book, which seems to be a lightly fictionalized northern England during the Middle Ages, with references to a people like the Scottish to the north, and something very like Viking raids on the coastline.

However, I found the thing pretty dull, overall.  The plot was generic, the dialogue strictly what was necessary to advance the action, and the writing style, while clear, had no special tone or wit.  It lacked the drama of better-written fantasy, say The Hobbit or any of a hundred others.  This series is one I don't especially care to re-visit.

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place:  Another audiobook, and a complete and refreshing contrast to the Ranger's Apprentice.  It follows Miss Penelope Lumley, a graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor, Bright Females, whose first job after graduation is as a governess at Ashton Place, a huge manor house.  When she arrives, she discovers the three children mentioned in the job description were actually raised by wolves, and only recently caught by Lord Ashton, an avid hunter.  It is Miss Lumley's job to use her superior Swanburne education, especially the extensive collection of useful aphorisms coined by founder Amanda Swanburne herself, to teach her charges to behave as proper English children and to ready them, if possible, for a civilized appearance at the Christmas Ball, which the Ashtons host every year.

As you can probably tell from my summary, the tone of this book could best be described as arch.  The writing is an exquisite send-up of 19th century English novels, the various situations Miss Lumley finds herself in are hilarious, and the entire book is a delight.  Best of all are the wolf-raised children themselves--ten-year old boy Alexander, eight-year old boy Beowulf, and four-year old girl Cassiopeia--who despite their wolfish habits are really quite charming.  Their pure, good-hearted natures contrast with the polished but spoiled Lord Ashton and Lady Constance, and their rich friends.  I highly recommend this to anyone with a love of English literature.  I'm not even sure I can say it is written for children; although superficially at their level--and my children did enjoy it--the various jokes and asides can only be fully appreciated by adults.