posts interesting only to me

Reviews up at SF Mistressworks

books and books review, posts interesting only to me, science fiction
Published on

Dept. of self promotion: the last few weeks I’ve gotten some old and new reviews published at Ian Sales’ SF Mistressworks site, dedicated to showcasing good books by female sf writers. Thought it might be good to point y’all at them.

The Female Man — Joanna Russ: “The Female Man is a tough book, but not a hard book to read. Joanna Russ is a brilliant writer and everything in here sparkles”

Ammonite — Nicola Griffith: “Nicola Griffith’s goal was to create a world populated solely with women without falling back on clichés about what such a world would look like. No “seven-feet-tall vegetarian amazons who would never dream of killing anyone, no “aliens who are really women or women who are really aliens”, but “the entire spectrum of human behavior”. ”

The Sword of Rhiannon — Leigh Brackett: “What sets The Sword of Rhiannon a touch above other pulp adventure stories is both Brackett’s writing and that elegiac sense of loss that comes across through it.”

Sign of the Labrys — Margaret St. Clair: “The infusion of what at first seemed a fairly standard science fiction story with a dose of Wicca worked pretty well. If necessary, you can ignore all the Wicca mumbo-jumbo and just think of it as psionics.”

Books read May

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
Published on

May saw a slight increase in books read, with less pressure from work and other interests. But with S. back in hospital again there was still less time and desire to read than usual.

Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille — Steven Brust
A strange book but that was just right for me when I read it, this quite cozy adventure set against a backdrop of succesive nuclear holocausts.

To Reign in Hell — Steven Brust
Brust does Paradise Lost. Another strange novel, but a good one.

Early Medieval Settlements — Helena Hamerow
A excellent archaeological/historical overview of settlements and their evolution in North-West Europe during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. This is history on a much smaller scale than the books I have been reading about this period, but it complements them well.

Foreigner — C. J. Cherryh
The next novel I read in my Year of Reading Women project. The usual Cherryh story of a young man trust in a crisis beyond his control, with no power but a whole of responsibilities.

The Second Anglo-Dutch War — Gijs Rommelse
AKA the war in which we beat the English like a redheaded stepchild. A good overview, somewhat hampered by its origins as a ph.d thesis.

The Complaints — Ian Rankin
The first post-Rebus novel I’ve read of Rankin. The hero is younger, less cynical but the plot could’ve fitted a Rebus novel as well. This is not a complaint on my part, pun not intended.

Cheap Segars

Comix, posts interesting only to me
Published on

comics bought today

The result of a day shopping for comics. Quite a lot of E. P. Jacobs’ Blake and Mortimer, several William Vance drawn Bob Morane, a Jeremiah I needed, the first album in the Comanche western series also drawn by Hermann and the two absolute toppers: Comic Arf, a collection of Craig Yoe’s comics obsessions and volume 2 of the Fantagraphics’ E.C. Segar’s Popeye series. Which only cost me ten euros at the English remaindered shop at the top of Kalverstraat. And they got a whole stack of them left, so if you’re in Amsterdam…

Books read April

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
Published on

Way too late with this post, but then April was not a good month for me. A combination of work, private troubles and other priorities meant I only managed to read three books this month. It didn’t help that I was way too ambitious chosing which books to read, as you’ll see. This time last year I read ten books, in 2009 thirteen.

The Inheritance of Rome — Chris Wickham
Recommended to me by Chris Y: it did not disappoint. An excellent book that traces the evolution of the Late Antiquity Roman Empire into the early Middle Ages, without getting hungup on “the Fall of Rome” or the political-military aspects of this history.

Three Victories and a Defeat — Brendan Simms
Readable if at times repetitive history of the Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, as the cover has it, in the context of the British quest for a Balance of Power in Europe in the eighteenth century as successive governments, both Tory and Whigs, sought to guarantee Britain’s safety. A very traditional novel, as the focus is solely on diplomancy, war and the internal politics of the British Empire, with a soupcon of economic history. It’s repetitive because Simms points out with great glee how each new government made the same old errors.

China Mountain Zhang — Maureen F. McHugh
Another book read for my Year of Reading Women project, this is McHugh’s debut novel and is that rare science fiction novel that doesn’t have the fate of the world or universe at stake. Instead it tells the story of a gay American Born Chinese construction worker with a Hispanic mother who was big in the revolution that made the US a socialist country and vassal state of China sometime in the late or early 22nd century. Zhang just tries to live his life in a world that on the whole is neither worse nor better than our own.