book lists

Not much October travel, yahoo! Game-wise it’s still StarDew Valley and Skyrim on computer and console, D&D5E and Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight) for tabletop.

In television, I’m happy to have a new season of DC Legends and The Flash start; I’ve been working my way through The Arrow and am finishing up Season 2 now, but it lacks the humor and sweetness of the other two. We did finally get around to watching season 1 of Stranger things, which didn’t really grab me much at first, but finally won me over. We finished that up last night and are looking forward to season 2.

As part of my reading, I did learn how to pick a lock this month, or at least have gotten to the point where I can pick the practice one in about ten seconds (which makes me feel a little badass, but in a pretty limited way) and also understand both how a skeleton key works and what a padlock shim is. I figure this will be a useful skill, post zombie-apocalypse. Maybe. Lotsa story ideas brewing from it, though, including a new Serendib piece.

Here’s the books I read:

Anonymous. Visual Guide to Lockpicking.
Michael Bishop. Light Years and Dark. One of the strongest anthologies I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across.
Leigh Brackett. The Long Tomorrow.
Rutger Bregman. Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build an Ideal World. Great argument for basic income, lots of fascinating history of what’s been tried (and worked with amazing effectiveness).
Chesya Burke. Let’s Play White.
Chesya Burke. The Strange Crimes of Little Africa.
Robert Coram. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. Interesting bio, particularly if you’re curious about 4GWarfare since his concepts inform it.
Tananarive Due. The Black Rose.
Tananarive Due. My Soul to Keep.
George Alec Effinger. Heroics.
Laurie Forest. The Black Witch.
Victor Gischler. Ink Mage.
Robert Graves. Watch the North Wind Rise. Well, that was interesting, is all I’m going to say about that.
Charlaine Harris, Day Shift.
Brandon Massey. Whispers in the Night.
Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Space Opera.
Nnedi Okarafor. Binti.
Lorenzo Pecchi and Gustavo Piga. Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.
Declan Shalvey. Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #1.
Michael Swanwick, Being Gardner Dozois.
Pamela Samuels Young. Buying Time.

Panel description: Explore the overlap among Magical Realism and contemporary, urban, and traditional fantasy–and even horror.
Participants: Lillian Cauldwell, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Nick Mamatas, Cat Rambo, Kat Richardson (M)

I don’t know that we said too much that was insightful about the division between magic realism and fantasy, but we did arrive at a decent and interesting booklist, which I present here for your pleasure.

Ambrose Bierce – An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (free on the Kindle)
Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
Paola Corso – Giovanna’s 86 Circles, The Laundress Catches Her Breath (poetry)
Andy Duncan – Beluthahatchie and Other Stories
Laura Esquival – Like Water for Chocolate
Barbara Howes – Eye of the Heart
Natsuki Ikezawa – The Navidad Incident: The Downfall of Matías Guili
Franz Kafka – anything (I like the stories.)
Stephen King – The Green Mile (opinions differed on whether this should be counted)
Yann Martell – Life of Pi
Haruki Murakami – anything
Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children
Elif Shafak – The Bastard of Istanbul, Flea Palace
Latif Tekin – Dear Shameless Death
Ngugi wa Thiongo – The Wizard of the Crow
Amos Tutuola – The Palm-Wine Drunkard
T.H. White – Mrs. Masham’s Repose
Carlos Ruiz Zafon – The Prisoner of Heaven (Cemetery of Forgotten Books), The Shadow of the Wind

Margin Magazine

1. Engage the senses. You don’t have to hit every sensory stop – but it sure helps. Vivid visuals are great, but they are even better when backed up with visceral, precise taste or touch or sound.

2. Hint at the conflict. The majority of great stories provide the reader with some clue to the conflict driving the story within the first three paragraphs. Here, for example, is the first paragraph of Kelly Link’s marvelous “Travels with the Snow Queen”:

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about books I’d recommend for writers focusing on their craft. This time I’m choosing books that are handy to have on a nearby shelf, particularly books that help spark new ideas, whether it’s at the overall story or plot level, or bits that can be used to adorn a story, the tiny embellishments like filagree or the lines in the Book of Kells, because we can always use new idea, little shocks, a kick in the head that turns the world askew in a way that lets us see it more clearly.

• The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Sometimes when I’m stuck on a story (or even a polish of a story), I like to look up things that appear in the story, using this dictionary. Looking at the lore behind a symbol can often help you use it effectively.
• Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures by Luc Reid. I love this little book both as a way to spark ideas for stories or characters, but also creating touches of authenticity when ivoking subcultures like rock climbers, sky divers, and UFO believers.
• Visual Dictionary – I like my Macmillan Visual Dictionary, but there’s also plenty of others, like Merriam Webster’s. If you don’t know what a widget or boat part or architectural feature is called, this will have it. A great aid towards precision.
• Some book of poetry. It could be anything, Shakespeare to Ogden Nash. T.S. Eliot. Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson. Something densely poetic. It can be prose, but it has to be dense, poetry-drenched prose, like Djuna Barnes or James Joyce. Recently I’ve been employing Rumi. Use it several ways – to spark timed writings or stories or whatever, but I use it primarily for coming up with titles.
• People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. (Kindle version) This is a view of history from the left, and one that looks at a lot of moments that are not covered in the mainstream history books. Look here for interesting story ideas or historical details for period pieces.
• Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer. (Kindle version) A career guide that is worth looking at repeatedly. (Disclosure: I wrote the appendix on writing workshops, but there are much, much wiser voices throughout the book, particularly Jeff’s.
• A tarot deck. Yes, technically not a book, but certainly there’s been plenty of books written about them and these books tap into all sorts of archetypes.
• The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, by Robert Graves. A rich source of European Mythology, Graves is both reading through or dipping into on an occasional basis, this can be another useful source of starting images, symbols, or even poetic titles. For similar books, look at Weston’s From Ritual To Romance or Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

Tired of the usual stuff? Here’s five fantasy classics that you may have missed.

Jirel of Joiry, by C. L. Moore. If you love Red Sonja, Jirel is the heroine for you, worthy of company with Conan or Imaro. Indiana-born Moore was one of the first women to write in the sword and sorcery genre.

Tomoe Gozen, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Another strong woman is embodied in Tomoe Gozen, a samurai in the first of a trilogy set in a richly-realized and fabulous 12th century Japan.

Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack. Beautiful and ornate, set in an alternate America that seems sadly unlikely, this is a fabulous take on spirituality today.

Monday Begins on Saturday, by Arkadi and Boris Strugatski. A young computer programmer is recruited for a Russian Institute devoted to the paranormal in a book that’s more Office Space than X-Files. One of my top ten favorite books of all time.

Green Phoenix, by Thomas Burnett Swann. Swann is sadly neglected and all of his books are worth picking up, but this is one of the lovelier ones. He does more interesting things with classic mythology than most authors.

So here’s the list of fiction(ish) drawing on comic book super-hero trophes, generated here.

Novels:

• Michael Bishop, COUNT GEIGER’S BLUES.
• Michael Chabon, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY.
• Tom DeHaven, IT’S SUPERMAN!
• Jennifer Estep, KARMA GIRL.
• Minister Faust, FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF DR. BRAIN.
• Austin Grossman, SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE.
• Jonathan Lethem, FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.
• George R.R. Martin, the WILD CARDS series.
• James Maxey, NOBODY GETS THE GIRL.
• Perry Moore, HERO.
• Tim Pratt, THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF RANGERGIRL.
• John Ridley, THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS and WHAT FIRE CANNOT BURN.
• StephSwainson, THE YEAR OF OUR WAR.

Short Stories:

• Charles DeLint, “Bird Bones and Wood Ash”
• A. M. Dellamonica, “Faces of Gemini”
• Carol Emshwiller, “Grandma”
• Jim Hines, “Sidekicked”
• Jim Hines, “Stormcloud Rising”
• Vylar Kaftan, “Blank Sezra”
• James Maxey, “The Final Flight of the Blue Bee”
• Tim Pratt, “Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters”
• Cat Rambo, “Acquainted with the Night”
• Cat Rambo, “Ticktock Girl”
• Benjamin Rosenbaum, “The Death Trap of Doctor Nefario”

Poetry:

• Jeannine Hall Gailey, FEMALE COMIC BOOK SUPERHEROES