Books read December

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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A new year, a new month, a new list of books read last month:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms & The Broken Kingdoms — N. K. Jemisin
The first two books in a fantasy trilogy that so far has been excellent.

Glide Path — Arthur C. Clarke
An enginering novel based on Arthur C. Clarke’s experiences in World War II, strongly reminding me both of Clarke’s own enginering science fiction as well as Nevil Shute’s more mainstream novels.

Empires and Barbarians — Peter Heather
Heather continues his examination of the end of the Roman Empire and the rise of its successor states, now widining his focus to take in the Carolingian and Ottonian empires that arose in the second half of the first millennium CE as well. A bit of a slog to get through, but worth it in the end.

Killing for England — Iain McDowall
Described as the new Ian Rankin, McDowall has some of his same strengths, most noticably the same awareness of how much politics is involved in policing. This was a fast paced police procedural that I read in a day, about two Black men turning up drowned in the same small city within months of each other, witht he police struggling to determine whether or not it was coincidence or enemy action…

Emperor of the West — Hywel Williams
Excellent one volume history of Charlemagne and the Carolingian empire.

Rome’s Gothic Wars – – Michael Kulikowski
An introductionary level textbook on the first two centuries of Gothic-Roman clashes, made interesting by Kulikowski’s very certain dismissal of the standard stories of Gothic origins.

Cartomancy — Mary Gentle
Seeing out the year with Mary Gentle’s second short story collection, what could be better?

Hiatus

Meta, posts interesting only to me
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It was the day before Christmas and all through the house internet, not a creature was stirring… So I think I’ll take a little leave of absence myself as well. See y’all in the new year, though I may be back earlier if inspired.

Yesterday a year ago

posts interesting only to me
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We went under the knife to get that kidney transplant going. I did expect things might not quite go to plan and that S. in particular might take some time to recover, but I sure didn’t expect her to still be in hospital a year later… A bit of a wasted year, 2010 has been for us; hopefully next year will be better.

So farewell then Dirk Deppey

Comix
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Fantagraphics has had to let Dirk “¡Journalista!” Deppey go as they could no longer afford a fulltime blogger. Dirk takes the opportunity of his last column to look back:

In the last ten years, I’ve thrown away a career, assembled porn mailers, drew comics, wrote essays, raised money for a homeless cartoonist, organized Seattle’s worst benefit concert ever, digitized hundereds of hours of cassette tapes containing (I think) the largest oral history of comics in the United States, started a weblog, kick-started a blogosphere, attended a bunch of geek festivals (including four San Diego Comic-Cons in a row), edited a magazine, interviewed cartoonists whom I greatly admired, got quoted in major newspapers on topics in which I was often unqualified to hold a quoteworthy opinion, became several bibliography citations, became a footnote, became an Internet micro-celebrity, became a Wikipedia entry (it reads “mostly harmless”), helped facilitate a manga line and spent a full four years working from home in my living room, naked! And I got paid to do all of it.

It’s a real pity it had to come this far, but completely understandable that it had to happen. Comics being not the most stable or profitable business at the best of times, with the recession grinding on indeterminably in the US, it’s not surprising Fantagraphics was wanting to cut costs — and a fulltime blogger is a luxury that is easily cut… You could call it a small miracle that they had been able to keep Deppey employed for as long as they did.

Luxury or not, Deppey’s importance in developing a proper comix blogosphere is not easily overestimated. Just having somebody there day in, day out collating and reporting on all sorts of comix related stories, directing traffic to blogs or websites otherwise overlooked, has helped to mold the blogosphere. What’s more, Deppey also served as an example for other bloggers, again both by being there every day and through the quality of his blogging. Sure, most of it was link blogging, but he always managed to pick at least two-three, sometimes even five or six interesting or thoughtful links every day, which few people could’ve equalled over so long a period. And when he wrote longer posts, it was always interesting as well.

On a more personal level, ¡Journalista!, was one of the blogs that managed to suck me back into comix again. If only for that he will be missed.

What a porn ban would also do

IT is not magic pixiedust, LGBT
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Make it that much harder for transgender teens to get support:

Yes, they exist. I hated what I was for nearly all my teenage years., wanting to rip the skin from my body, sobbing myself to sleep at night because I couldn’t understand what I was. But then came along the internet. Oh, the internet. It fucking saved me. It gave 18 year old me a view of the world that made me realise that I wasn’t alone, that I could do something about the pain that made me want to die.

Claire Perry, and her evil piece of legislation, would take that lifeline away. Oh, maybe not conciously. I doubt she even knows that trans people exist, let alone that there are trans teenagers out there who rely on the internet for vital support. She wouldn’t notice as the sites they use to gain crucial advice from are blocked, due to having never-quite-defined “adult materials”, as support channels are closed down for “endangering youth”. She wouldn’t notice as sites all over the net are blocked for containing mention of sex, genitals, puberty and sexuality, when what they are doing is educating a badly unrepresented and unsupported section of society.

Not that such a scheme, as proposed by some daft British MP, would actually work in the real world anyway, but it could do quite a lot of collatoral damage anyway. Worse, any such scheme is going to disproportionally hurt self help sites and support sites rather than truly exploitative sites, because the former are always going to be easier to find and shut down.