Tag Archives: books

Give My Librarian a Hand

Copyright 2013 by Paula S. Jordan

Book Fiesta Kids reading on moon

Image Credits

The terrific librarian here in my tiny town is interested in supporting top-notch SF/F reading, but hasn’t read a lot of it herself. So she has asked me to suggest some authors and titles for her shelves.

I am preparing a list of my favorites, including authors we’ve discussed on the blog, but I don’t know much about books for children and young adults and haven’t actually seen much mention of them here.Book Fiesta 1

The first name I gave her was Ursula LeGuin, for her Earthsea series. And there’re the Narnia and Wrinkle in Time books. But with all the writing going on out there these days, I am sure there are great ones that I have never heard of.

Any good, sense-of-wonder, mind-expanding reads you can suggest for the younger set would be most appreciated!

P.S. In searching for images for this post I came across the following tidbit: seems a West Virginia legislator has proposed a bill requiring schools to add science fiction to their reading lists. He recommends adding grade-appropriate SF into the classroom … to stimulate interest in math and science among students in the public schools…. Bet it would help in a lot of other ways too!

Writer to Readers: A Question of Titles

Copyright 2013 by Paula S. Jordan

Thank you all for a very informative discussion last week on naming characters. I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot.

Spy from cold_So, if you’re willing, I’d like to take the discussion a little further.

For many writers, and I tend to be one of them, “finding” a title is as hard as, or maybe harder, than finding the story itself.

The style of a title is often suggested by the style of the story—tough titles for tough stories, poetic titles for romances and evocative fantasies, gritty titles for down-to-Earth/hardscrabble stories.

But what about this one: The Spy Who Came In  From the Cold?

Or Gone With the Wind?  I’ve read that Mitchell went through many other titles before finding the obvious winner.  How quickly would you pick up these others she considered:  Tomorrow Is Another Day, or Garden of G and ENot in Our Stars, or Bugles Sang True?

And then there is the actually rather simple murder mystery, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Got to admit, the range of characters and sub-tropical mystique of the story did make the mood of that title not so unexpected.

So, what’s your preference in titles? Think of books without cover art and stories without illustrated title pages—what sorts of titles draw your eye and hand to one story and not another?

Ship Who SangIs it the title that addresses the overt action or conflict of the story? Or the one that suggests the deeper driving issues? Is it the explicit or the evocative? The tough, or the compassionate? “Just the facts, Ma’am,” or the poetic? Or are there other titling styles that I have missed all together?

Also, are titling issues the same for short stories as for novels? Or are they the different? And how might science fiction/fantasy titles differ from mainstream work? And from each other?Screamcover

The first SF title that comes to mind: The Ship Who Sang. Both evocative and a literal reference to the story.

Then there is “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.”

Looking forward to another good discussion!

A Reader’s Quest: The British Library

Copyright 2012 by Paula S. Jordan

This may just be the greatest library in the world: 14 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 58 million The British Librarypatents, 3 million sound recordings. 130 million items in all, spanning 30 centuries and originating, as Philip Howard* puts it: “from almost every country and language since man stopped building the Tower of Babel.”

Texts both ancient and modern, world-renowned and rescued from obscurity. Works of music, art, mathematics, the sciences, and every known branch of literature. The earliest printed book, the Diamond Sutra, from 686 A.D., found buried along the edge of the Gobi Desert. Maps, letters, and manuscripts. Technical drawings, patents, and musical scores. A vast collection of contemporary material in an ever-expanding range of electronic media. Jane Austin’s writing desk. And one white ‘60’s- era envelope with Paul McCartney’s first scribbled lyrics for “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

King George III's Library

King George III’s Library

The Magna Carta, Beowulf, the Lindisfarn Gospels, the Codex Sinaiticus, beautiful early Qu’ran and Jainest texts, Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio, a Leonardo daVinci notebook, Sherlock Holmes, Alice’s Adventures Underground, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. (More on some of these in later posts.)

The largest single “item” may be King George III’s 65,000-volume, 19,000-pamphlet library, collected from the mid- 15th to the early 19th centuries and considered one of the most significant collections on the Enlightenment. It occupies a specially-designed six-storey UV-filter glass tower at the heart of the Library.

My personal favorite? Bill Woodrow’s bronze sculpture in the lobby. A book big enough that I could actually crawl into it! And weighted with a ball and chain lest it fly away.

Finally! A book I could actually crawl into!

Finally! A book I could actually crawl into!

But, for most of the world, the coolest thing of all has to be the British Library web site.  You can search the main catalog. The online gallery section lets you see 30,000 items from its collection. And its virtual book feature allows you to browse 32 of the Library’s greatest treasures online. The entire book. Every page. And you can turn the pages yourself.

* The BRITISH LIBRARY: A Treasure House of Knowledge, by Howard, Philip; Scala Publishers Ltd, 2008

A Reader’s Quest

Copyright 2012 by Paula S. Jordan

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the British Library

Ken and I are finally, after some years of wishing and planning, taking off soon on a European adventure! There will be some time in Italy (mainly Tuscany, visiting with a friend.) Then Rome, London and Bath (I’ll finally get to see Stonehenge!!) And Paris. Yea!

And it occurred to me: I’ve scheduled the ruins (the forum and coliseum, prehistoric British and Etruscan sites) and the art (The Sistine Chapel, Florence, David! The Louver!) and the archaeology, and the food, and the Theater (The Globe! Shakespeare’s London!) but the only thing at all book-like … though I’ll be excited to see it … is the Rosetta Stone.

So now, a dream list of historical documents to be visited. The entries are all British, so far:

The Magna Carta — very early copies in the British Museum and British Library.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — British Library, together with Chaucer, Shakespeare, ancient maps and sacred texts of many religions (including the Lindisfarne Gospels and a Gutenberg Bible), illuminated medieval manuscripts, a daVinci notebook, and … the Beatles. (Sadly, the Chronicle doesn’t seem to be on display and my email has gone unanswered.)

The Domesday Book — said to be in the British Archives, but the web site doesn’t mention it. Again, my email unanswered.

The Bayeux Tapestry — not technically a book, of course, but a document all the same — is unfortunately in Bayeux, in France, and far from Paris.

I’ve done no searching yet for bookish treasuries in Tuscany, Rome (the Vatican Library for one), or Paris, and have fewer ideas of what to look for in non-English literature. So … any thoughts? If I am able to see the books you suggest, I will do all I can to send pictures, of the buildings if not the objects themselves.

My thanks for all suggestions!

The What Are You Reading Log

You can find this page in the tabs, above.

For new Darkcargo-goers, this is a page of running comments wherein we all chime in and log what we’re currently reading. It’s fun to see what books everyone else is taking up, how frequently different readers begin and finish books, and serves as a great way to get recommendations.

This is the fourth edition of this page which started in August 2010, and over 250 comments: that’s a lot of recommendations!

24 October 2011 to 15 February 2012

11 April 2011 to 24 Oct 2011

August 2010 to April 10, 2011

Harry’s Side Jobs, Part One

Copyright 2012 by Paula S. Jordan

Side Jobs

Stories from The Dresden Files

by Jim Butcher

ROC Books, 2010

There are eleven stories to review in this excellent anthology – all but three or so of the shorter Dresden pieces written to date – and there’s a good bit to say up front about the collection itself. So I’m going to take this in two parts; anthology comments and the first three stories now, and the rest next time. Unless it takes three parts. Butcher’s stories are that good.

As regular readers of the Dresden Files Series know, Jim Butcher lets some time elapse in Wizard-Detective Harry Dresden’s world between one novel and the next. Gives you the sense that Harry’s always out there somewhere, making his way in the really-mean streets of Butcher’s urban fantasy Chicago, and not bothering to tell you about it unless it’s something notable even for him. Something like a more-or-less friendly zombie T Rex running loose in the streets. And all that time, between the books, Harry is living a human life as well as a magical one. Maturing. Growing in magical knowledge, power and skill. Meeting adversity. Collecting scars.

With these stories Butcher gives you a few vivid glimpses into Harry’s life between the books. You get to see him grow.

The first story in the collection – and they are given in the order of the Dresden Files chronology – is a treasure for any reader who is also a writer: the first Dresden piece Butcher wrote and, in  his words, “an anxious beginner’s first effort” at marketable fiction.

Restoration of Faith takes place some time before Storm Front, during Harry’s apprenticeship at detective Nicholas Christian’s agency, Ragged Angel Investigations. Nick (who also appears briefly in Ghost Story) specializes in finding lost children.

On this occasion the lost – actually runaway – child is Faith, the smart, feisty, ten-year-old daughter of rich but unloving parents. After hiring Nick’s services to find her, they decide they’d rather not be known as the parents of a runaway. So they report her to the police as a kidnap victim, giving Harry’s and Nick’s descriptions as the perpetrators.

Two things impressed me about this story: the remarkably detailed backstory that Butcher had developed at that early stage and the level of writing skill he’d achieved in “only the third or fourth” story he’d ever written. Granted, he wrote it as a class assignment at the University of Oklahoma’s Professional Writing program, so he was not untrained. Even so, his ease with the language and keen insight into his characters’ inner lives were surprisingly good for a student writer.

As to backstory, a great many of the props, behaviors, and characters of the Dresden Files are already in place. Harry has his black canvas duster and a prototype of his power ring. He has a workable tracking spell and other dependable magical skills, complete with evidences of the system’s drawbacks and limitations. His intelligence, courage, sense of humor, and soft, self-sacrificing heart are already recognizable as the Harry of the later books. He encounters a powerful and nasty inhuman opponent out of fairytale who has violated the Unseelie Accords, and defeats it with the help, at first meeting, of a short, blonde, female ‘uniform cop’ named Murphy.

I call that a satisfying beginning.

Vignette, a brief piece written for a sampler handout at a convention, takes place between Death Masks and Blood Rites. For its length, and its quick midnight creation just before deadline, it gives some good, amusing insights into Harry’s life at that point in his still-developing career: the kinds of every-day distractions that could interrupt his studies, his relationship with Bob the Skull, and his cluelessness about certain aspects of the mundane world.

Something Borrowed takes place between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty. It came about when Butcher was invited to write a piece for Pat Elrod’s anthology My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding. He took it as an opportunity to explore the changing lives of the Alphas, the pack of young werewolves who were, at that point in the series, completing their college years and embarking into adulthood.

It’s a werewolf story almost – but not completely – without fur, exploring the impacts of both the mundane and magical worlds on the human lives of Alphas leaders Billy and Georgia on their wedding day. It is not, however, without magical challenges. Those come in the form of a powerful Winter Sidhe bent on avenging the Alphas’ involvement in the battle of the fairies described in Summer Knight.

Butcher’s character skills make for especially good reading in several insightful scenes:  Billy’s response when a hung-over, post-bachelor-party Harry, at his snarky best, confronts Georgia’s snooty stepmother; Harry’s slow realization that Billy is no longer a kid; the first encounter between Murphy and Bob the Skull; and the maturing team-of-two trust between Harry and Murphy.

All in all it is a well developed, satisfyingly suspenseful story of search and rescue, deadly magical tricks and traps, a foray into Chicago’s treacherous undertown complete with Harry’s special brand of pyrotechnics, and the multifaceted power of a kiss. A good read.

That’s it for now. See you next time for more of Harry’s Side Jobs.

Set Them Free

I have too many books.

I know. You’re all nodding your heads yes and looking around at your piles of books. At what would be the problem with that? The human eyeballs can only read so much per day, per week, per month, and hence per year. With that realization, comes the conclusion that I have too many books.

And the library has many of the same books. And I have a library card. I also have El Internet, which gives me nearly unlimited access to book-like entertainment.

So, I say it is time to set some of my books free. Out into the world. To some other eager reader’s gaze.

Paperbackswap is one of my favorite methods for obtaining used books and for passing on my books. I like the idea of some individual out there actually requesting one of my books. I feel like it is going some place where it is wanted. And that makes it easier to set some of my papery friends free.

For every book that is requested, you get 1 credit. You can also list audiobooks, which are worth 2 credits. Your books ship out, you get credits, and then you can turn around and pick out other books.

But it gets even better. Paperbackswap has siblings. You can use those credits on CDSwap and DVDswap and viceversa. I love sending out some old highschool required reading classics and getting some crazy Himalayan music. Or listing some cheezy action flick and using that credit to pick up a space opera audiobook.

If you’re feeling that it’s time to set some of your books free, Paperbackswap might be for you.

Libraries and Their Keepers

Copyright by Paula S. Jordan, 2011

As a companion piece to Darkcargo’s recent discussion of  ‘older reading devices’ (i.e.: books) I’d like to offer a thought or two on the places of enchantment and discovery where those ‘older reading devices,’ were to be found, i.e.: ‘older libraries,’ and the Librarians who brought them to life.

My earliest memory of a library was of a  single pleasant room attached to the general store in my grandmothers tiny Louisiana town.  My brothers and I would climb the steps to the long unpainted porch that served both establishments, say polite hellos to the chorus of old men wearing down the benches outside the store, and pull open the screen door at the end of the porch.

The room was no more than ten feet by twenty, with windows on the front and one side wall, Miss Duckworth’s small desk to the right of the door, and all remaining wall space filled with books.  In the center was a table where featured books were displayed, and where members of the summer reading club colored in a segment of a smiling bookworm for each book we read.

Miss Duckworth was a world-expanding experience for me, with her suggestions of such new friends as the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew, and the fabulous adventures they enjoyed.  When she discovered that I liked science fiction, she made sure that I found all the six or eight volumes with the space ships on their spines.  Later still it was biographies, maybe twenty in all. and I read all those as well.

She never had an assistant that I knew of. When she was ‘indisposed’ the door inside the battered screen was locked.  Her own pay, if she was paid, was surely very small.  What I regard, then, as the gift of her time, was pivotal for me.  Though other libraries have followed, with flashier technology and limitless collections of more serious and challenging fare, Miss Duckworth’s was the cornerstone of my reading life.

And I wonder, for all the convenience and variety of e-books dropping magically into our reading devices, isn’t something missing? And I’m thinking of something more than the bulk and heft of words resting physically in your hand. I am thinking of the absence of that other hand that put the book into yours.

Passion Play

At DragonCon this year, my friend received an advanced reading copy of Passion Play by Beth Bernobich. She passed it on to me. This book is due to be released October 2010 by Tor Publishing.

The book is 367 pages and it wasn’t until the last 100 pages that I started to enjoy the main character, a teenage woman. The romance, or passion play, didn’t start until about the last 50 pages, so I am not sure why the title Passion Play.

This book seemed to be a very complete final draft of a story that still required some polishing. It will be interesting to see what this author can do in 4 or 5 years. She makes an attempt to subtly lead the reader into the magic side of the story, but the rules of the magic use and past lives never became clear to me. I also hope the published book contains a map.

The characters themselves were pretty one-dimensional, which isn’t always bad. However, I felt the main character was the same person on the last page as the one I met on the first page. While she had several experiences throughout the book, I didn’t really feel there was much internal character development.

On the other hand, it was an easy read (didn’t have to look up any vocabulary words) and there were no unexpected twists and turns. I didn’t have to think about the book much; just along for the ride. This could be a good book for that weekend beach vacation, looking for some mental down-time.

One note to Tor Publishing. The main female character is dark-skinned and the woman featured on the cover (who I assume is suppose to be the main character) is obviously white skinned. I heard this called “white washing” the character. It is my understanding that the author has little or no imput on the cover, so folks, please don’t fault Bernobich for that.

Another thing – at DragonCon, it was said that if you like Jacqueline Carey, you will love Bernobich. I have read all of Carey’s work, except for her latest book. Bernobich is not, yet, the same quality writer. With Carey, I am always left with several new insights into the human character. I did not get that with Bernobich. At this time, the two should not be thought of as equal.

So, if you enjoy a Fantasy novel with some action, some intrigue, a little bit romance (with vague sexual descriptions), then check this book out.

- nrlymrtl, 09/27/2010