A light introduction to the subject, Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth includes many sweeping generalizations. I’m more excited about another recent book, Don’t Know Much About Mythology, which I’ve just begun.
The Children of the Company by Kage Baker
I’m a great fan of Kage Baker’s Company novels, but I found The Children of the Company annoying.
It’s not really a novel, first off; it’s really an amalgamation of short stories. So forget about narrative flow. It’s just patched together by the character Labienus.
And Labienus is a most unpleasant character, for second; he’s a disaffected mortal who is the epitome of a misanthrope. And he’s not Mendoza. Readers want to know! Where’s Mendoza? For that matter, where are most of the previously introduced major characters? Back stories for some of them are fleshed out here, and one character does seem to be disposed of. But in general the grand story arc isn’t advanced.
I felt like I needed a character chart like you use when you read a Russian novel or an annotated timeline. Many of the short stories here intersect, in minor or major ways, with episodes in the other novels or other short stories. But really, do I want to read a book of short stories that just drop tidbits about the larger story?
I know an author’s purpose in writing is bound to be different from my purpose in reading. But this made me want to say: Kage Baker, stop stringing us along. Get on with it and finish the story you’ve started.
Ten fortune cookies
- A dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.
- A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he gives up.
- Make serious decisions in the last few days of the month.
- The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that held its ground.
- Regenerate your system through diet and exercise. Save the cookies!
- Plan your work and work your plan.
- Luck will visit you on the next new moon.
- Common sense is not so common.
- Courage comes through suffering.
- Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
Numbers one and two were characterized by my dining companion as being part of the “New England Series” when we got them one Sunday night. I’d say five, six, eight, and nine would also qualify (all, in fact, are printed with the same blue ink, with the same registration marks, and all include lucky numbers and “learn Chinese” on the back). Note that only one is a fortune. And one of these isn’t really from a cookie, but from the Analects of Confucius.
Jag älskar IKEA
IKEA opened in the Boston area and I decided I had to try it out this evening. What a trip! It is enormous, larger even than the new IKEA store in Philadelphia. It was packed. There were security people directing traffic from two blocks away. And this at 7 on a Saturday night.
I took notes for a couple of needs in my new apartment, but I wasn’t able to find shades for the ceiling-fan lights with bare bulbs. I did pick up two boxes of those wonderful oat crisps with a chocolate layer, some crispbread, black currant preserves, and a tin of ansjovis for making janssons frestelse.
Beta testing for Amazon
I’ve signed up to beta test a different kind of display for Amazon. Half of my visitors will see a standard link, and half will see a rollover link that displays more information about the book. (You’ll continue to see one or the other on every visit as long as they have their beta test.)
I’ve just finished The Children of the Company by Kage Baker. Expect an entry about it soon.
Ten things I got from my ancestors
A Friday Tenâ„¢ list just a bit early:
- From Grandma Tracey: an interest in publishing. Grandma Tracey wrote a history of Imperial Valley, where I grew up, and published a newspaper.
- From Grandma Sutton: a love of sweets. At least I think that’s where it came from. She gave us fresh-baked bread with butter and white sugar on it. I remember her loading up toast with lots of jam. She would take “half” the last slice of pie until there was a tiny sliver left.
- From my mother: a love of salty things.
- And high blood pressure.
- From my father: a bad temper.
- From both my grandfathers: an agrarian sensibility.
- From my parents: a sense of safety and of being loved.
- And a college education.
- And a need to be right (or is that a need not to be wrong?).
- From all my ancestors who just kept moving West: a sense of independence and self-reliance.
Shadowfall by James Clemens
James Clemens’s Shadowfall is subtitled: Book One of the Godslayer Chronicles. Cheesy, isn’t it? But I liked it. It isn’t horror, it’s fantasy, although it is assuredly dark (rape, mutilation). And there are gods, and there is slaying.
There is an intriguing system of magic, and characters who aren’t easy to pigeonhole as “good” and “bad.”
While there’s a large story arc that isn’t completed (book one, you know?), there’s a satisfying end to the particular plot of this part of the story. So I’m looking forward to the next one, but not with that sense of dissatisfaction that some multi-volume stories give.
Ten yucky things about Zathura.
Doc Smartypants, Larry, and I saw Juman...er, Zathura last night. There were some definite good things about it: We saw it for free. The astronaut was cute. The special effects were great. I want to live in a house like that in the worst way. But in the end I found it a disappointing movie.
- Scary parts that aren’t scary: the entrance of the astronaut, for instance.
- Really obnoxious kids: flip, bratty, dim.
- Gratuitous teenage girl: totally irrelevant to the plot, even more of a cardboard stereotype than the boys.
- Tim Robbins wasted: what a dud role. (But I did like it when he finally blew up at the boys. See #2.)
- Why does the astronaut wear a space suit if you can breathe in space?
- Spoiler: It was totally lame who the astronaut turns out to be.
- Spoiler: The special effects just after you find out who the astronaut is were lame, lame, lame.
- Preachy, moralistic, predictable.
- The sound was too loud.
- There was an asshole sitting behind me who talked all the way through.
CUSP by Robert A. Metzger
Apparently a Nebula Award-winning author, I’d not heard of Robert Metzger before. The back cover of CUSP certainly has an astounding list of blurbists: David Brin, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, and Robert J. Sawyer, each touting it as hard scifi. CUSP starts out as a near-future hard scifi story, but it quickly enters what I’d call fairy-tale land. And to top it off, it has a non-ending ending. If it hadn’t been the only book with me on a short trip, I’m not sure I would have finished it.
Polyglot dreams
Ten languages I’ve at times thought I’d like to be able to make myself understood in (or to understand, in the case of dead languages):
- English (not, unfortunately, always a given)
- French
- Dutch
- Yiddish
- Swahili
- Mandarin
- Icelandic
- Old English
- Latin
- Hebrew
See, I’ve always had this vague, unrealized dream of being a polyglot. Unfortunately, it has remained a dream, as even my six years of instruction in French (lo these many years ago) have come to naught.
Brought to you by Doc Smartypants’ Friday Tenâ„¢.