All reviews copyright 1984-2012 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN AND CAMERA by George Chappell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/07/2003]
If you have any friends who are doctors, you should point them towards George Chappell's THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN AND CAMERA, an older novel (or possibly novella) of a tour of the human body written in the style of late 19th century travelogues.
To order Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera from amazon.com, click here.
THE CHERRY ORCHARD by Anton Chekhov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/13/2010]
We recently watched a 1962 BBC production of THE CHERRY ORCHARD by Anton Chekhov and I was stuck by how topical it was. The mother, faced with having to pay taxes on the estate, basically decides to bury her head in the sand and refuse to take any action. For example, she could save the house by selling the cherry orchard, but apparently doesn't think she should have to make any sacrifices and so refuses to do so. This reminded me of people now who want to keep getting Social Security, Medicare, police, road maintenance, etc., but not to have to pay the taxes to support those services.
The mother also does not want to take the alternative of cutting down the orchard and leasing the plots of land either. Nowadays, of course, her attitude would fit right in with the idea of preservation of "greenspace", but I don't think that was Chekhov's intent. (In specific, the characters talk about how no one is buying the cherries anymore, and they've even forgotten how to make cherry jam.) Rather, she refuses to realize that unless she takes action, the orchard will be sold and then be cut down anyway. This too is familiar--people bemoaning how they don't like all the changes going on and how they want to freeze everything in place. The mother here has her nice house, beautiful view of the orchard, access to the river--and she doesn't want other people to have any of those things because that means giving up a bit of what she has. It may be a stretch, but all the people whose ancestors got here before there were immigration restrictions and took land that no one else was using (except the Indians, who didn't count), are now complaining about immigrants in just the same way. (One I know not only had ancestors who got here a couple of hundred years ago, but apparently further back they were among those who came over to England with the Norman invaders. I guess invading another country is better than being an illegal immigrant.)
And in THE CHERRY ORCHARD, who eventually buys the orchard? A man whose grandfather used to be a serf on the estate before emancipation (1861). Not surprisingly, he has no great emotional attachment to the accoutrements of the landed gentry--he sees the orchard as an impediment to be removed in order to get full value from the land. This is not surprising--I doubt that the grandchildren of slaves here would have been too upset to see the plantations sold and broken up so that houses could be built on small plots that they might be able to own.
THE COMIC STORIES by Anton Chekhov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/13/2006]
I discovered THE COMIC STORIES by Anton Chekhov (translated by Harvey Pitcher, ISBN 1-56663-242-0) from listening to "Cutting a Dash", a BBC show based on Lynne Truss's writings about punctuation. (She later wrote a book on the subject, EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES, which I reviewed in the 12/03/04 issue of the MT VOID.) In her discussion of the exclamation mark on the show, Truss quotes from the Chekhov story "The Exclamation Mark". When I went to find this story, I discovered that the various web sites that claim to have all of Chekhov's stories did not have this one, and indeed, this collection is this story's first appearance in English. These stories are not comic in the same way that P. G. Wodehouse or Damon Runyon or even Nikolai Gogol is comic, but they are amusing. My problem is that because I borrowed this from a distant library, I have to read the thirty stories too close together (even with a three-week loan period). Reading too many comic stories too close together is like eating a pound of chocolate at one sitting. So if you have a taste for Chekhov's humor, this book might be better purchased than borrowed.
To order The Comic Stories from amazon.com, click here.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by G. K. Chesterton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2005]
G. K. Chesterton's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (ISBN 0-486-43178-9) has no relation to either of the Hitchcock films of that title, but is rather a collection of eight stories about sleuth Horne Fisher, who "knows too much" about the British upper class. The stories have Chesterton's literary flair, but are not as appealing as his "Father Brown" stories, perhaps because Fisher is not as appealing as Father Brown. And I came to this conclusion well before I read the following speech by Fisher: "...if you think I'm going to let the Union Jack go down and down eternally, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat; not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty Yankee Jewesses, ...." (page 71-72) (Yeah, I know--I seem to be seeing this sort of thing everywhere. Trust me, I'm not choosing books *trying* to find these.)
To order The Man Who Knew Too Much from amazon.com, click here.
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/28/2003]
Our library group read Tracy Chevalier's GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. I wish I could say I liked it, but it really didn't do anything for me. People apparently liked the way it evoked that period in Delft, but as someone who reads a lot of "world- building" books (for worlds both historical and fantastical), I didn't think it was exceptional. And in fact, several other people found it not as enthralling as the reviews would make one think. It is popular with reading groups, and I would attribute this to two facts: it's short (233 pages), and its protagonist is a woman (a girl, actually). Since most reading groups are either all-female or mostly female, the books popular with them seem to have a preponderance of female protagonists. I suppose I should suggest some Joanna Russ or James Schmitz (although female authors seem to get extra points also).
To order Girl with a Pearl Earring from amazon.com, click here.
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/19/2009]
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two) is a different take on resource depletion and entropy. As usual, Chiang comes up with a premise and then carefully works out the details and ramifications. In this regard, this most resembles Chiang's "Seventy-Two Letters" in its construction of a different world-view. (One might think of Richard Garfinkle's CELESTIAL MATTERS or Jay Lake's MAINSPRING, but neither of those develop their premises in the thorough and serious manner than Chiang does. It is possible that Chiang has written a story that was not great, but if so, I haven't found it yet.
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang (F&SF Sep) is another story with its roots firmly in the fairy tale/Arabian Nights genre even as it is also a very tightly plotted multiple time-travel story. The less said about before you read it, the better you will enjoy it. Chiang has so far appeared incapable of writing a less than stellar story, and this is no exception.
STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS by Ted Chiang:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/02/2010]
Greg Egan is the author most people think of when they think of "mathematical" science fiction authors. but STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS by Ted Chiang (ISBN-13 978-0-765-30419-3) proves that Chiang is another who relies heavily on the "Queen of Sciences". For example, "Tower of Babylon" is a story built upon geometry (pun intended)--in specific, the idea of a curved universe in which if you travel far enough in a single direction, you return to your point of origin. (There is also an element of topology in the intertwining spiral staircases.) Of course, it also relies heavily on the Bible, and on early theories of the universe--not precisely Aristotelian (as in Richard Garfinkle's CELESTIAL MATTERS), but having aspects of that cosmology. (This is one reason why quibbles about air density, temperature, and gravity are beside the point.)
"Understand" is to some extent the standard story (usually told in the first person) of someone whose intelligence is enhanced to superhuman levels (e.g., Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon" or Poul Anderson's BRAIN WAVE). As with most such stories, the problem is that the (un-enhanced) author has to be able to write convincingly from the point of a super-genius which is, in effect, the same as trying to write from the point of view of an alien. One thought from it did connect to other stories by Chiang, the idea of gestalt: "In each case, I don't have to consciously memorize rules, then apply them mechanically. I just perceive how the system behaves as a whole, as an entity." And later, "My new language is taking shape. It is gestalt-oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but impractical for writing or speech. It wouldn't be translated in the form of words arranged linearly, but as a giant ideogram, to be absorbed as a whole."
"Division by Zero" is clearly mathematical, being based on the idea of discovering that mathematics is not consistent, but somehow it never seemed to go anywhere.
"Story of Your Life" is told in a very non-linear fashion, in keeping with the way the aliens in it think. And this is what I remembered most clearly about the story. But a recent viewing of "Breaking the Mayan Code" brought a whole new set of connections to mind.
For example, Chiang's protagonist writes, "Their script isn't word divided; a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and modifying." This is almost exactly what the Mayans did with their symbols; in fact, the documentary has a lot of scenes in which we seen several logograms in a row, and then animation shows then transforming, rotating, and uniting to form a single glyph. However, in the alien language, "a noun is identified as subject or object based on the orientation of its logogram relative to that of the verb." I do not think this applies to the Mayan language.
What really sums up the idea of the story, though, is this: "This meant the heptapod had to know how the entire sentence would be laid out before it could write the very first stroke. ... The heptapods didn't write a sentence one semagram at a time; they built it out of strokes irrespective of individual semagrams." (I actually use something like this in programming one of our VCRs, as it sometimes saves button presses to program the fields out of order.)
Mathematically, Chiang also makes references to the calculus of variations.
"Seventy-Two Letters" is a story of golems, and homunculi. The idea of the creative power of language--the use of "charms" of seventy-two Hebrew letters to animate golems connects to the notion of performative language as described in "Story of Your Life". The interconnection of the two--golems and homunculi--is quite deft, and makes the story more than "just" another Frankenstein clone (if that's not mixing one's metaphors). (I will add that this story won the Sidewise Award for alternate history.)
"The Evolution of Human Science" was originally published in "Nature" as one of their short-shorts, under the title "Catching the Crumbs from the Table" and, like "Understand", looks at a sort of post-human intelligence, though from a different point of view, one more in keeping with the notion of the Singularity.
"Hell Is the Absence of God" revisits the problem of reconciling the existence of God and of evil, but in a somewhat different fashion than usual. The earth of Chiang's story is experiencing angelic visitations. These sometimes cause sickness, injury, or death; other times they provide miraculous cures. In addition, Hell is sometimes visible, and one can see who is there. Hell is not a place of eternal punishment but "merely" the "absence of God." What determines who is blessed by an angelic visitation and who is cursed, who goes to Heaven and who to Hell, and how all this affects people's beliefs, philosophies, and feelings is Chiang's subject.
This is indeed a daunting task, but Chiang is up to it. As evidence, here is part of his afterword: "For me, one of the unsatisfying things about the Book of Job is that, in the end, God rewards Job. ... Why does God restore Job's fortunes at all? Why the happy ending? One of the basic messages of the book is that virtue isn't always rewarded; bad things happen to good people. Job ultimately accepts this, demonstrating virtue, and is subsequently rewarded. Doesn't this undercut the message? It seems to me that the Book of Job lacks the courage of its convictions: If the author were really committed to the idea that virtue isn't always rewarded, shouldn't the book have ended with Job still bereft of everything?"
"Liking What You See: A Documentary" is about calliagnosia, a condition in which someone is unable to recognize "beauty" (or "attractiveness", if you prefer). In the world of the story, one can have a simple operation to "install" this condition (and conveniently, the ability to turn it on and off with ease). Not surprisingly, many of the early proponents are college students, but there are also those who are against it.
(As an aside, when did the plural of "passerby" become "passerbys" as it is in the book?)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/29/2002]
I can say that Ted Chiang's new story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary" (in his collection STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS), is up to Chiang's usual standards. It reminded me a bit of Greg Egan's "Reasons to be Cheerful" and a bit of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," while also being quite distinct from either of them. Chiang takes on "lookism," but doesn't decide for the reader which side he or she should be on. Rather he presents positives and negatives for both sides, and leaves the matter as ambiguous as, say, the matter of faith in his "Hell Is the Absence of God."
To order Stories of Your Life and Others from amazon.com, click here.
THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS by Ted Chiang:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/11/2011]
Having said how uninterested I was in the adventures of the protagonists in the virtual reality world in Greg Egan's ZENDEGI, I find it ironic (or something) that I enjoyed THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS by Ted Chiang (ISBN 978-1-59606-317-4), which is almost entirely about adventures of the protagonists in a V.R. world. Maybe it is because Chiang focuses more on the interactions of characters in our world with the constructs, while Egan spends too much time in the detailed construction of virtual reality scenarios.
To order The Lifecycle of Software Objects from amazon.com, click here.
THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/01/2004]
The general library discussion group chose Kate Chopin's THE AWAKENING (ISBN 0-486-27786-0) for this month. I gather this is a mainstay in courses on feminist literature, but it failed to do much for me when reading it on its own merits. At the time of its publication in 1899, it was considered shocking, and while on an intellectual basis I see why, it fails to engage me emotionally in the main character's feelings. (This is one of that series of Dover "Thrift Editions" I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which had a spike in sales when amazon.com was offering free shipping on orders of two or more books.)
To order The Awakening from amazon.com, click here.
MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK by Paul Christopher:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/09/2009]
Three weeks ago, in the 12/19/08 issue of the MT VOID, I wrote about COUNTERKNOWLEDGE by Damian Thompson, and in particular his discussion of pseudo-history. Well, MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK by Paul Christopher (ISBN-13 978-0-451-41186-0, ISBN-10 0-451-41186-2) is another example of this proliferation of pseudo-history. The copyright page of MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK has the usual disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are use fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is totally coincidental. But at the end is an "Author's Note" which says that certain relationships in the story are "true" and "known". So far as I can tell, this is not the case, and the "Author's Note", while having some facts in it, is as fictional as the rest of the book. (I am avoiding being too specific in case you decide to read the book, though frankly, the "revelation" is predictable and the book is not that good.) While I am no great admirer of the person in question, this claim about what is "true" is really uncalled for. One would think that a mystery/thriller about missing and stolen art works would be sufficiently exciting, but ever since THE DA VINCI CODE, authors have apparently decided that they must include some long-running conspiracy--preferably involving the Catholic Church--by a secret society to conceal the truth about something or other. With a few additions and the right marketing, Michael Flynn could have a runaway best seller with his 1990 novel IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND. Interestingly, when I reviewed that book twenty years ago, I mentioned Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln's HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL (upon which THE DA VINCI CODE was based) in the review. But Flynn was honest about his book. He did not pretend in an author's note that his speculations were actual facts, Christopher (and others) seem to think that doing so makes their books better, but it just serves to degrade the public's intelligence. For the people who believe it, it makes them believe things such as that there really is a secret society working to maintain Jesus's bloodline. And for the people who realize that these "Author's Notes" are as fictional as the rest of the book, it makes them suspicious of everything they read. This may not seem so bad, but what it means is that it is impossible to convince them of anything, because any facts they don't like, they can dismiss as mere fabrications. There's apparently a sequel to this (THE AZTEC CONSPIRACY), exposing some other conspiracy, probably also with an "Author's Note". With novels this makes some sense, I suppose, but one wonders why people are not more skeptical of the various claims made by many "non-fiction" writers. Don't people find it peculiar that the same person can manage to uncover hidden secrets in so many diverse areas of history? It's as if in science the same person who formulated relativity than went on to discover DNA. (It could be that the Coen Brothers need to take some blame here, for saying at the beginning of their 1996 film FARGO as "This is a true story." Certainly many people believed it was.)
To order Michelangelo's Notebook from amazon.com, click here.
THE WAY OF CHUANG TZU translated by Thomas Merton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/20/2009]
THE WAY OF CHUANG TZU (translated by Thomas Merton) (ISBN-13 978-0-87733-676-9, ISBN-10 0-87733-676-6) is one of those "Shambhala Pocket Classics". (Unlike convention "pocket programs", these truly are pocket-sized. There is something odd about the fact that one can fit the wisdom of Chuang Tzu in a pocket, but not the schedule of a science fiction convention.)
A sample: "To organize is to destroy."
Or: "Of safeguarding property Chuang Tzu wrote: 'For security against robbers that snatch purses and rifle bags, people stow their possessions in trunks and bind them with ropes and bolts and strong locks. This is what the world calls wit. But in reality it is only saving up for the strong thief, who hoists the trunk on his back and runs--fearing only that the ropes and bolts will not hold or that the lock will break. Isn't everything we do to secure ourselves against future loss a little like this? ...
The invention of weights and measures
Makes robbery easier.
Signing contracts, settings seals,
Makes robbery more sure.
Teaching love and duty
Provides a fitting language
With which to prove that robbery
Is really for the general good.
A poor man must swing
For stealing a belt buckle
But if a rich man steals a whole state
He is acclaimed
As statesman of the year."
To order The Way of Chuang Tzu from amazon.com, click here.
THE GNOSTICS by Tobias Churton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/27/2002]
I just finished C. S. Lewis's autobiography, SURPRISED BY JOY. I suggested it for the library book discussion group, but someone wanted me to make sure it was the sort of thing people would like. I'm not sure I can judge that, but I'm finding it quite suitable. (The discussion group has some constraints on its choices--the book must be available in numbers in the library system, not too new, and not too long. The last rules out most recent biographies. The rule about "not too new" is because those books are in too great a demand already.)
SURPRISED BY JOY is certainly more accessible than the other "religious" book I read at the same time, Tobias Churton's THE GNOSTICS. It's surprisingly difficult to find any sort of basic book about gnosticism, but apparently this was a companion piece to a British television series about it, and so isn't too academic. (What I'm really looking for is one of those "Gnosticism for Beginners" or "Introducing Gnosticism" graphic texts from Totem Books. (These should not be confused with the "for Dummies" series. The "Introducing Kafka" volume is illustrated by Robert Crumb.)
To order The Gnostics from amazon.com, click here.
THE ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND by Brock Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/18/2008]
I picked up THE ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND by Brock Clarke (ISBN-13 978-1-565-12551-3, ISBN-10 1-565-12551-7) in part because it was set in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the surrounding area. Since I come from there (Chicopee, with four years at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst), I thought the local setting would make it more interesting. There are two sorts of ways to use local settings for color. One is to get all the minutiae correct. Allen Steele has done this with the same area. When he mentions characters going to a barbecue place on the Route 116 bypass, for example, you know he means Bub's. The other way is to mention a few main roads, and make up the rest. That seems to be Clarke's method. The result is that instead of enjoying the local references, I found myself constantly saying, "What is he talking about?"
There is no Chicopee Street in Amherst, and no state prison in Holyoke. There is an Our Lady of the Lake College, but it is in Louisiana, not Springfield, Massachusetts. (Clarke may be modeling this on Elms College in Chicopee, formerly Our Lady of the Elms College.) Similarly, there is a Pioneer Packaging, but not in Agawam. The Student Prince is indeed a German restaurant in Springfield, but not owned by anyone named Goerman (the owner's name is Scherff). Also, the Student Prince is at least five blocks from Court Square, so the entrance to it could not be in an alley just off Court Square.
There are no superstores on Route 116 near Amherst (they are all on Route 9), and no Book Warehouse or Pioneer Valley Mall. It is not a half-hour commute from Amherst to Agawam (even the optimistic Google says it is 41 minutes). There is no Super Stop-N-Shop in Chicopee, and the ordinary Stop-N-Shop is not in a neighborhood of older homes, and is a mile and a half from the Edward Bellamy House, not just a few blocks.
An even more interesting question is *when* this is taking place. The narrator supposedly burned down the Emily Dickinson House, served ten years in (the non-existent Holyoke) prison, and has been out of prison for another ten years, yet the technology, cars, and so on are present-day. So is this some alternate history (since in our present world the Emily Dickinson House was not burned down)? I suppose that would explain some of the differences from our reality, but not really why there would be a Super Stop-N-Shop right near the Edward Bellamy House in Chicopee. The Paramount Theater in Springfield stopped showing movies around 1970.
Now I'm sure that many people would consider all of this beside the point, that I am missing the main ideas of the book for this trivia. It may be an attempt to bring science fiction reading protocols to a mainstream literary work. In science fiction, one is expected to get one's facts right. If someone gets in a rocketship and flies away from the sun, they should not arrive on Venus. But while a mainstream author is allowed to make up some details of setting, he is still supposed to maintain a certain level of accuracy. A character in Manhattan should not cross the East River to reach New Jersey. I think my feeling here is that if Clarke has chosen to use a very particular real town as his setting, he should hew as closely to that town as possible.
To order The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England from amazon.com, click here.
ENGLAND UNDER HITLER by Comer Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
A few months ago, there ran on some PBS stations something called "Hitler's Victory." It was promoted as alternate history, but there was only about twenty minutes of fictional alternate history. The rest (over an hour) was an discussion of documents discovered describing the German plans for after a successful invasion, and interviews with people about what plans had been laid in place on both sides. Well, the whole thing could have been based on Comer Clarke's ENGLAND UNDER HITLER, though it apparently wasn't. Clarke's book is precisely this discussion of documents, interviews, and extrapolations from German actions in other conquered countries, and in the occupied Channel Islands. Clarke's book is over forty years old, but it didn't seem like the TV movie/documentary added much new to the story.
To order England Under Hitler from amazon.com, click here.
JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL by Susanna Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/15/2004]
The main book I read this week was Susanna Clarke's JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL (ISBN 1-58234-416-7). (At 800 pages, it is not surprising that it is the main book I read.) This has gotten a lot of press, almost all positive. It was even mentioned as a shoo-in for nomination for Britain's Booker Prize. (It didn't make it.) I will say that it is a shoo-in for Hugo nomination next year, especially since the convention is being held in Glasgow, giving a much higher number of British nominators.
So I will undoubtedly seem like a bit of a spoil-sport when I say that I do not think this is a great book. That may be because I am not a big fan of Regency novels and this has been described as a fantasy Regency novel. The premise is that at one time magic was rife in England, but has fallen into disuse. At the start of the novel Mr. Norrell seems determined to prove that magic still exists, but only he can do it. Then Jonathan Strange comes along to challenge him, and to try to train new magicians. (This is, I suppose, a thinly veiled parallel to the general conflict between the notions of aristocracy and democracy that was occurring at that time.) But for all the magic, not much seems to happen, or rather, things happen at a much slower pace than in most books. This is fine if you want the texture of the era, the Napoleanic Wars, magic, and everything else, but not if you are looking for a story.
Now all this probably sounds as though I'm looking for all "all- action" plot with only the barest layer of characterization and writing over it. This is not the case, but I will admit to preferring poetry in smaller doses than this book. (Russell Hoban's work, for example, usually has more emphasis on poetic writing and atmosphere--but HER NAME WAS LOLA was only 207 pages long.) But I will acknowledge that for people who read the huge fantasy series coming out these days, the length will not be an issue, and JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL is a well-written novel set in a fascinating world.
(Along with others, I have to wonder at Clarke's division of Britain into England, Scotland, Wales, and Elsewhere [Faerie]-- where is Wales in all this? And why is it called "English magic" when it clearly includes Scotland? And does anyone else have magic?)
And one final note: this is being marketed as mainstream, not fantasy, so 1) it will be in a different section of the bookstore, and 2) it will be priced a little higher than most fantasy novels. The chains have pretty much decided that they will not stock mid- list fantasy priced above $25, but mainstream novels do not have any such ceiling that I know of. This is priced at $27.95, certainly a good price when compared with a lot of the EFP ("Extruded Fantasy Product") selling for $24.95 these days, or for that matter when compared to mainstream pricing in general. (Note: I just saw it at Costco for $15.99, so it is probably being heavily discounted elsewhere as well.)
To order Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell from amazon.com, click here.
THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU by Susanna Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/24/2006]
THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU by Susanna Clarke (ISBN 1-596-91251-0) is a collection of stories by the author of JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL. The stories are set in the same milieu as that novel, with some of the same characters. If you liked the novel, you will like these, and if you found the novel too intimidating due to its size, these provide a more manageable introduction to that world.
To order The Ladies of Grace Adieu from amazon.com, click here.
PAPA by Susy Clemens:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
A more interesting literary biography [than Aldiss's] was PAPA, the biography of Samuel Clemens written by Susy Clemens when she was thirteen years old. Her spelling is quite outrageous, but her descriptions of Twain are pretty much spot-on.
To order Papa from amazon.com, click here.
MISSION OF GRAVITY by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/18/2004]
Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY (ISBN 0-345-00993-2), unlike the Asimov, did not seem to age well. Maybe my tolerance for pages of world-building infodump has decreased, because I seem to remember that when I first read it about thirty years ago it was great.
To order Mission of Gravity from amazon.com, click here.
NEEDLE by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]
I re-read Hal Clement's NEEDLE as a stroll down Memory Lane, and concluded that it is really a "young adult" novel. And though Hunter talks about the clues that give the fugitive's host away, when I flipped back through the book, I couldn't really find where they were revealed to the reader, somewhat marring the mystery aspect. (Hal Clement died October 29, 2003, for those who have not heard. -mrl)
To order Needle from amazon.com, click here.