Despite keeping busy with our little puppy, we managed to attend AnomalyCon in Denver, where I got a chance to a.) pose with a giant TARDIS and b.) meet Nebula nominee Genevieve Valentine, whose dark steampunk circus fantasy Mechanique is exquisitely crafted, brilliantly non-linear, and unbearably happy/sad.
Tag Archives: reading
Among Others
I’ve been reading Jo Walton’s evocative novel Among Others. A fantasy story set in Wales during the late seventies, it positively resonates with compassion for teens, geeks, outcasts–our younger selves. The book’s compassionate tone is established by the epigraph–a quote from critic Farah Mendlesohn, who offers this advice to her younger self: “It’s going to […]
Steering the Craft
Last night I sat up reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1998 book Steering the Craft, a collection of writing exercises for the “Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew.” I’m currently a lone navigator, getting used to being alone with my craft, so I marked a number of Le Guin’s writing exercises to try out later […]
The Magicians
Lev Grossman is the kind of fantasist who refuses to give readers what they want, which probably explains why his brilliant new fantasy novel The Magicians is so polarizing. Some readers hate Grossman’s sobering take on the whole Harry Potter genre: they expect a charming Hogwarts-like school with earnestly heroic young wizards fighting high-stakes battles […]
The Graveyard Book
I just found out that Neil Gaiman’s riveting novel The Graveyard Book has been awarded the Newbery Medal. Well deserved! I bought my copy in Scotland and read it at Dalkeith House in one gigantic gulp. My UK edition features lovely and delicate drawings by Chris Riddell, while the US editions have darker, more atmospheric […]
Sharp Teeth
I teach Beowulf and Paradise Lost almost every year, something I wouldn’t do if I didn’t have a thing for epic poetry. From time to time, I’ve wondered why nobody writes epic poems anymore. You know—sprawling, thrilling narrative poems that ordinary people actually want to read. Somebody had to bring the epic back, and with […]
Worldcon
The World Science Fiction Convention was held this year in Denver, and I was lucky enough to be there inside the Colorado Convention Center, rather than on the outside, looking in. Highlights of the conference included the Masquerade contest, the GOH speech by Lois McMaster Bujold (who had some great things to say about genre-jumping), […]
Steampunk
This week, Tachyon Publications released Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s great new anthology of all things steampunk, which has a wealth of Victorian gadgets and devices, as well as fine stories by Jay Lake, Paul Filippo, and Ian R. MacLeod. The editors’ introductions are relatively concise, obviously meant to be descriptive rather than scholarly. For the […]