Tag: the wonders of the public library system

My new love: The Kraken by China Mieville

True Story: The first in-depth article I read regarding China Miéville was a NY Times article about The Kraken, his latest novel (2010).  I found this article because (of course) Neil Gaiman linked it in his blog. (Or maybe on twitter, since I can’t seem to find it on the blog.)  It was this article, along w/Neil’s recommendation, that got him on my list of authors to check out. After The Scar, I knew I’d be keeping track of his work. But I just finally read The Kraken, after four other books by Miéville.  And I’d forgotten that the article was about this one until I went looking for a pic for this blog.

Art by Vincent Chong

The Kraken is my favorite so far, though I’ve loved everything I’ve read. Here are today’s reasons why I am in love with China Miéville:

 

 

1) I don’t always understand what the heck he’s talking about.  This is rare, especially in a work of fiction.

2) Even when I don’t understand exactly he’s talking about, I’m not irritated by it. It’s not bad writing, it’s fantastic writing that comes across as reality – we don’t always know what the heck is going on!  I’m right there with the rest of the characters. Most of them manage to muddle through somehow, like we all do.

3) He loves to play with words. He makes up words for concepts that don’t currently exist (in mainstream culture, at least) and plays with the language while labeling them.

4) He’s not ashamed of his geek flag, and slips his pop culture references in with originality and tons of humor.

5) I’ve yet to guess more than 50% of any story (of his) that I’ve read (4 novels & one short story collection), and never been disappointed. Many of his plot twist are not just surprising, but truly mind-blowing. As in: I have to put the book down and marvel at the new place he’s taken me in my brain. He doesn’t take things to the next level – he skips 100 steps and lands somewhere much more shocking, and rearranges everything you just read into something new and even more impressive. All without breaking the tension.

Go. Read.

 

Binjas – FTW!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned China Miéville before – here, in fact – a new speculative fiction love for me. Since picking up The Scar, I’ve read Perdido Street Station, Looking for Jake (short stories) and now Un Lun Dun. And The Kraken is sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to finish Middlemarch.

Un Lun Dun (UnLondon) is an ‘other-London’ in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland,  Neverwhere (and various other stories, none of which I can recall right now) where there’s a whole other city/place below/between/just-out-of-reach of the real city, where freaks or aliens or whatever live, and everything is just a bit different than the city most people live in.

Miéville grabs with glee this license to mess with the world.  He is a meticulous world-builder, and never misses an opportunity to add a bit of crazy fun to every situation the intrepid heroes are faced with. He gives us things like upside down cars that are used as boats (which are called ‘car’ but with the word upside-down on the page, it sounds something like ‘rack,’ but the best way to pronounce is ‘turn your head upside-down, then say car’), trash is alive (and can be pets), librarians are explorers, houses are made from defunct technology, and giraffes are the scariest animals.  And – my personal favorite – the binjas.  Seriously. Trash cans (bins in the UK) which are actually ninjas. They keep their weapons inside their cans and have the perfect camouflage. Binjas. Freaking. Awesome. The illustrations are also done by Miéville, quite the talented guy.

Miéville wrote this book aimed at a YA audience, so – at least in the beginning – it doesn’t have much depth. But stick with it, it will be worth your while. There’s  a video interview (which you can see here, sexy & smart – woohoo) where he talks about the book -why and how and stuff.  This book interrogates the quest model so common in sci-fi books (whether for kids or adults) and pokes some fun at it as well. The best thing about this book? It’s fun.  He’s clearly having a blast writing it, and it is fun to read it.

If you love sci-fi/fantasy books, and you’re looking for a light read that isn’t boring and lame – or you’re looking for a way to ease into the dark craziness of Miéville – read this next.

His Roots and my roots

I just finished watching the two TV mini-series based on the books of Alex Haley, Roots and Roots the Next Generations.

When I was 7 or 8, I remember seeing parts of the first one from my attic bedroom with my sister, peeking down the staircase after we were supposed to be in bed (and I remember getting caught, after which they moved the TV and made it harder, but we could still watch it).  Turns out my memory wasn’t that good, but it was enough for me to (finally) get the DVDs from the library and watch both of them (28 hours, I think?) over the last few weeks (no, I do not have a life, thanks for asking).

Some of it could have used some editing. Some of it was obviously cleaned up for a mainstream television audience (and in the 70s, when they were stricter than they are now). But – wow. Most of the acting is incredible. Some if it – even cleaned up, and cut away at the last second, and condensed  –  is so painful to watch, and listen to.  I can build up a head of righteous indignation for the unfairness of someone cutting in line at the grocery store, so watching human beings treated like cattle, and pets, and half-wits, and contagious diseases for fully half of all the scenes they showed… well, that was hard to take. My chest would fill up and I’d be choking on all the things that no one was saying. But I have to say… I’m so jealous of Alex Haley.

The effort that his family put in to making sure that they stayed together, and knew where they came from, who they were.  Seven generations – from a man stolen from everything he knew and taken half-way around the world. Brought to a place where no one spoke his language and they beat him for believing he was fully human. But his four-greats-grandson was able to find the village he had been stolen from, and cousins who still lived there. I can’t even go back three generations and have names for everyone. I know a few tiny facts about that generation, and nothing from before that. Neither of my parents seemed to give a hoot about any of it. And then they moved away from their entire family, on both sides, and put as many miles and silences between us as they could and still be in the same country. So I sit out here, like a rock thrown into the ocean. And I wonder which mountain I fell off of, because I didn’t grow here. I came from something else, somewhere else. And I wish I was on bedrock, not this sandy soil. Alex Haley’s family was bought and sold and beaten and cheated and raped and cheated again – but they always had each other, and they even had a name and a few words from Africa.

best read lately – Zero History by William Gibson

The fiction that William Gibson writes now cannot strictly be called Science Fiction (or, if you prefer, speculative fiction). The world in Zero History (and the rest of the Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition and Spook Country) contains nothing that is not currently available in the world today. Sometimes, you have to make an effort to remember that he’s made none of these facts up. Of course the plot and people and details of their story are fictional – but all have been created by things that really exist. The world in the Blue Ant trilogy is our world, we live in it. And seen through Gibson’s eyes – it’s a crazy, freaky, fabulous place.

The difference – the thing that makes him incredible and amazing and worthy of homage and envy – is his ability to translate a unique viewpoint into prose that puts the reader firmly behind his eyeballs (real or metaphorical) so that they see the world new and different. He seems to have ‘created a new world’ out of the real world that surrounds us. I imagine that he developed this skill by building ‘fake’ worlds inspired by what he saw in the real world, until the world morphed and the reverse was now more interesting or inspirational or what-have-you.

The plot is slightly less labyrinthine than many previous Gibson novels, but no less satisfying. And (spoiler alert) the meeting between Hollis and the never-named Cayce had me jumping for happy-joy.  These characters echo much of my own personal world-view, and I’m sure that Hollis and Cayce and I would be friends.

I feel I should mention (for those who’ve not read Gibson) that he writes fantastic female characters, without it ever feeling like he’s trying to write a strong female lead character. All of his characters are nuanced and real and convincing, and many of them happen to be female – females recognizable as fully human and in no way singled out as unusual in being so. This is certainly true for the Blue Ant trilogy, and if memory serves, is true for previous works. Chevette from the Bridge Trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties) is a favorite, and I’ve loved Cayce since the first page of Pattern Recognition.

I went to see William Gibson at Powell’s in September (day two of his book tour – yay living in Portland!) to hear him read from Zero History. And truly, to be in the same room with him and get a feel for who he is. Again, as with Chabon, it was everything I’d hoped it would be.  I’d recently listened to Spook Country on audio (not read by him) and so it was easy to slip back into that world.  The descriptions sound even more odd when you are listening to them rather than being on the page, where you can go back and read them again to figure out what familiar object he’s describing in such unfamiliar terms. I’d read Spook Country several times before hearing it, so I was simply being reminding, not told for the first time.

I am super-focused on getting my debts paid off right now, and don’t usually buy hardback books anymore, so I didn’t buy a copy that day. I’d had Zero History on hold at the library for more than a month the day the book was released (I think I was something like #26 on the list) and was ever-so-patiently waiting for my turn. It finally came the day before I left for Alaska for six days of child- and friend-bonding. Perfect! There’s nothing better than a highly-anticipated read on a trip with many plane rides and days spent waiting for people to get off work. I almost started it again as soon as I’d finished it (which I don’t believe I’ve ever done). And I was sad to give it back to the library – but of course did so quickly after returning home, since my book-receiving karma must be kept in tip-top shape at my only current, dependable source for new reading material. I’m tempted to put it on hold again right now so I can read it again soon. Though not too soon – currently 135 holds on 44 copies. It makes me happy to see how many other people appreciate fabulous writing and a unique world-view. Go. Read it. Start with Pattern Recognition. You won’t be sorry.

What I Read in May – Part Deux. In which I detail my ongoing obsession with all things Gaiman

Five of the books I read in May were by Neil Gaiman. Three of them were comic book collections, so those are a quicker read, usually. But still – that’s a lot of Gaiman. And that doesn’t include the months (and months) of blog posts I read.  Plus, he’s the reason I read Alabaster. So, yeah.

He shows up a lot in June as well. And July. He’s a talented, prolific guy, what can I say?

***

Absolute Death & Endless Nights and Marvel 1602, all by Neil Gaiman and various artists (Dave McKean, Mark Buckingham, P. Craig Russell & Andy Kubert to name a few). Reading these reminded me of how much I loved reading comics. Not as a kid, as an adult. I got hooked on X-Men comics the summer after I graduated from high school (my roommate had been collecting for years and I got to read all he had, and then had to start collecting my own when I moved away). I finally stopped collecting them after 10 years – not because I stopped liking them, but because it was too expensive to keep up with all the storylines I was interested in, too much work to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and they are much more fragile than books. Plus, I was a broke child and had to economize. But I never stopped liking them. I got all of these at the library – yay, libraries with graphic novels!

Absolute Death* & Endless Nights are both oversized collections from the Sandman comic book series. Death is the incarnation of death (a happy young goth girl) who is one of the Endless, a group of immortals (but not exactly) which includes Dream, Destruction, Desire, Delirium (formerly Delight), Destiny and Despair. Absolute Death is a collection of the Sandman stories that Death starred in, and Endless Nights has one story about each of the Endless. Both include forwards, extra text/sketches/back story/etc not included in the original comics. Much awesomeness.

Marvel 1602 is that most perfect of things: A COMIC BOOK by NEIL GAIMAN that has the X-MEN in it. Plus the Fantastic Four, Nick Cage, Captain America, Dr. Strange, and a bunch of other Marvel Universe regulars I’ve forgotten. Mutants start showing up in the year 1602, and prehistory starts repeating itself, sort of. It’s fantastic. A 6-comic series that ended up being 8 because there wasn’t enough room for it all. Even more awesomeness.

American Gods and Anansi Boys. I read American Gods (again) for #1b1t on twitter – in fact I joined twitter so I could follow it. #1b1t was the first twitter book club (one book one twitter). Twitterers voted on what book the world should read – and American Gods won. I read Anansi Boys (again) because I was reading the part of Gaiman’s blog where he was writing it – and wanted to give it another shot.

American Gods is a fabulous book, probably the novel that moved me from liking Gaiman’s writing to looooving it (I’d already read Neverwhere, Stardust and Smoke and Mirrors). It is the story of Shadow, a seemingly-regular-joe who got in a bit of trouble, and gets out of jail to find that ancient gods (like Odin and Icarus and hundreds of others) are battling new gods (like Media and Techboy), and he’s caught in the middle. A road story, and buddy story, a coming-of-age story, and a treatise on the waves of peoples who have come to the ‘new world.’ Also about human nature, and faith. Did I say I loved it? LOVED it. I think I first read it in 2002ish when it first came out in paperback. This was probably my fifth time – still fantastic. Couldn’t stick to the reading schedule for #1b1t and finished it the 3rd week.

Anansi Boys is… well, my least favorite Gaiman book (see, my love is not blind!). To be fair, the first time I read it, I thought it was a sequel to AG, which it most definitely is not. It shares one minor character in a completely different context. This book is a comic (as in funny, not as in pictures + word balloons) undertaking, whereas AG is a serious and contemplative novel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s like when the movie trailer looks like a romantic comedy and the film turns out to be gory horror flick – it messes everything up. So I was reading it again to give it a fair shot (and this time prefaced by Gaiman’s blog discussion). Still my least favorite Gaiman, but I liked it better the second time around. AG is my favorite kind of novel, and very well-done. AB… isn’t. My favorite kind of novel, that is. It is very well-done.

For those of you sick to death of me blogging (and talking, and texting, and facebooking) about Mr. Gaiman – you’ll be happy to hear that I only have about 18 12 months of blog left to read. Then I will have Read. It. All.

Well, all except the American Gods blog – which is in a book w/some other stuff, so I’ll be reading it there when I can get a copy. But I have to warn you… he’s still blogging. And writing. And twittering. And now I’m following his fiance and his assistant because they are both funny and interesting as well (no, Officer, I was not peaking into Mr. Gaiman’s windows. These binoculars? I was merely admiring those fine bee-hives over yonder, why do you ask?).

So, maybe he won’t own the place, but this will certainly not be a Gaiman-less zone any time soon. You’ve been warned.

* Absolute refers to the size and paper quality and such, and is not to be construed as commentary on Death, death, dying, or how it’s much like taxes. In case you were wondering.