Puppy Face

National Spelling Bee 2009

So, even though I (somehow) manage to watch the National Spelling Bee almost every year, it never ceases to amaze me how incredibly freaking good these kids are. I'm jealous, really. Even when they don't actually know how to spell a particular word, they know enough about the rules of forming words that they can piece together an almost always accurate spelling. Personally, I'm proud of myself for getting the word origin right on most of the spelling words (I swear they were all French- even the ones that weren't), though that really had no effect on my ability to actually spell them.

This year, the winning word was "laodicean", which is a Greek to Latin word with an English combining form meaning "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics". My favorite word, however, was "bouguiniste", a word that went from Dutch to French and which means "a dealer in second-hand books". Guess what I'm going to tell people I am from now on?

I can't help but wonder if there'll be another volume of stories like Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. It's a great concept for an anthology, and every one of the writers involved is a powerhouse in his of her own right, so unless they get an equal collection of stories for a sequel volume it may not be a good idea...but if they do, it is.

New Arrivals

Saints and Strangers by Angela Carter

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi

Eidolon by Jonathan Strahan

Three Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernada Alba by Fredrico Garcia Lorca

The New Weird edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer

50 Hottest SF Women

I don't really agree with the order of this list, but I'm sharing it anyway.

http://www.ugo.com/movies/top-50-hottest-sci-fi-girls/?cur=mikaela-barnes&cmpid=ppc_ggl_ugo_hsg_081508&gclid=CODy2t_D1poCFQghnAodUmL72w

Genre and Literature

To start off with, I want to make this clear that this isn't a scholarly essay of any sort- I'm just blathering about something that's been on my mind lately. For the last month or so I've been coming across various blog posts and web pages discussing the differences between 'genre' fiction (science fiction, mysteries, romances, etc.) and 'literary' fiction (a bit of a redundant term meaning anything that isn't sf/f, mystery, etc.) and why the two are for some reason considered to be antithetical to one another.

Now wait just a damn minute.

While I agree with everything Hal Duncan says on his examination on literary fiction (not all that surprising- I tend to agree with him on most things) I can't help but wonder- why isn't anyone else talking about how literary fiction is, by it's very nature of being fiction, a fantastical genre? That's right, I said it- literary fiction is the same basic thing as that oft-derided 'genre' of fantasy fiction.

Why do I make this claim? Well, it's an argument of semantics, really. Fiction is made-up. You can dress is up as 'contemporary' or 'classic literature', you can call it slipstream or urban literature or whatever-the-fuck-else, but at the end you're still left with fiction. Fiction isn't true. Non-fiction is true (don't get me started on that 'creative non-fiction' crap. That's a separate blog post of fussiness) and can be considered to be in the same realm of literature as, well, literary fiction. However, if you're writing non-fiction... and unless you're writing 'creative non-fiction'... you're writing something that's well researched and created in order to inform or incite, and you're presenting it as truth and usually not as entertainment. There are exceptions to this, of course, in the form of gossipy bio-pics and collections of trivia and humorous tales that have no point other than to amuse. But, I'm wandering. My point is that while non-fiction can be just as literary as, say, Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, fiction in general is a sort of fantasy by virtue of being made-up, no matter if it contains dragons and elves or soccer moms and knitting clubs (which is another trend which pisses me off- but again, different topic).

And do you know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The whole swords-and-sorcery connotation associated with the fantasy 'genre' is off-putting to many readers, I know, but at the heart of every novel, regardless of its literary aspirations, there is an echo of the word 'fantasy'. Hal Duncan mentions the suspension of disbelief being vital to reading fantasy (as we know the genre), but I can't help but ponder about all those slightly odd 'contemporary fiction' novels, those classified as 'strange fiction' or slipstream'. Does 'legitimacy' in the more 'literary' fiction depend on being 'predictible' and 'realistic'? Or can we admit that simply by being fiction, even the most literary novel has a little spark of the fantastic at its core?

Thor 2011!

Holy cow, Kirk's daddy is going to be Thor in Marvel's 2011 adaptation of the comic! They've cast Loki as well, but he's not listed on Imdb yet.

Imdb.Com's Thor Page

Marvel's Announcement of Loki's Actor

What's next? Confirmation that Samuel L. Jackson will in fact be Nick Fury? (Who seems to be white again in the comics...except in Ultimates, where he's still black...jeez, I can't keep up with this guy's racial changes...)

Christopher Barzak's The Love We Share Without Knowing

I have my first contender for 2009's top five books.

Christopher Barzak's The Love We Share Without Knowing is a collection of interlinked short stories which explore the concepts of identity and nationality, namely Japanese and American. The stories follow a varying cast of characters, some of whom meet at various points of the book and some of whom vanish altogether after one fateful event. Each character, however, is linked to the others by a twisting thread of love (some would say fate, others chance), giving the collection its name. Not every character gets a chance to tell his or her story before vanishing from the overall storyline, which makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, there will be a sequel volume of a sort. (I especially wanted to read the story of the man who spends hours alone in a Japanese love hotel and writes in the love hotel's diary, expressing his views on the heartbreak and joy that other patrons, and humans in general, all share.)

I'd read "In Between Dreams" in The Solaris Book of New Fantasy (which is included in this volume as well), and was at first very intrigued by Barzak's use and re-interpretation of Japanese myth in a contemporary (Japanese) urban setting. It helps, of course, that this particular story deals with the kitsune, or fox spirit, which is probably my favorite aspect of Japanese mythology. Barzak uses the kitsune in several of the stories, tying the stories together by playing off of the spirit's mischievous and rather untrustworthy cleverness. I was also very curious to see if The Love We Share Without Knowing delved into the past of the gay American character, Danny, who is trapped in a supernatural coma by his jealous Japanese lover, Kenji. To my delight, Danny got his very own story, though sadly Kenji's side of the tale remains untold.

Overall, I was very impressed with the collection, and I've been thinking about picking up Barzak's other book, One For Sorrow. I've also ordered a short story collection that happens to have one of Barzak's stories, but I haven't read it yet. (It's still in the mail, actually.) I'm looking forward to what else Christopher Barzak comes up with.

This Week's Books (And a New Author's Blog)

I've been on the hunt for Christopher Barzak's work since I came across his story in the Solaris Book of New Fantasy. I eventually found his blog, and realized only a few hours ago that he in fact has two books out (and is working on a third). His current releases include The Love We Share Without Knowing and One for Sorrow, both of which I plan on eventually adding to my collection. I swear neither of these books were listed a few months ago when I first searched for him!

Anyway, in the course of the last week (or so) I've bought or rescued a good ten or so books...not all of the books I ordered have come in, but I've listed them here anyway so I don't forget. And all of them are listed on LibraryThing, or will be shortly.

Today's Prize Find:

Charles Vess' Book of Ballads-

Rescue Cases:

Nigel Barley's Grave Matters-

Howard Engel's Lord High Executioner- I wish the cover shot were of higher quality. It's actually a pretty nice looking book. Um...sort of.

Larry Townsend's Run, Little Leather Boy- Sadly, there's no image available of this one.

Recent Purchases:

Samuel R. Delany's Dark Reflections and The Bridge of Lost Desire-

Jonathan Carroll's Bones of the Moon- (Which was actually also a rescue, come to think of it.)

Brian W. Aldiss' The Twinkling of an Eye: My Life as an Englishman- (Also somewhat of a rescue!)

Andrew J. Wilson's Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction- Sorry, no image available.

Bought, But Still Drifting Somewhere in the U.S. Postal System:

Ekaterina Sedia's Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy-

Theodora Goss' In the Forests of Forgetting-

Steve Berman's Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year's Gay Speculative Fiction-

Delia Sherman's Interfictions:An Anthology of Interstitial Writing-

I was going to post a review of the new Trek movie, but I'm still running it over in my head, and at any rate I think I'll go back to see it again soon. I will say now that though I don't feel as if I can accept the film as truly canon, it is the most beautiful fanfiction ever written. Futher opinions will be forthcoming when I've come to grips with the movie.

Wolverine: Origins

I'm rather disappointed with the new Wolverine movie.

I haven't heard what other people have said about the film (other than the group I went to the release with, but we were all pretty much on the same page) so maybe someone out there had a slightly more positive experience...but I don't see how. I don't think there was a single aspect of the storyline that caught me off guard or made me think. Oh no- my friends and I were crowing about "ooh, that's *spoiler's* dad! I betcha it is!", "oh, that guy is so going to die" and "she's really a traitor! Five bucks says she turns on him!" and in every single case, we turned out to be right (sadly) except for the time I said "oh, the elevator is going to be empty when it arrives on the floor" and Deadpool (err...just Wade, actually. They weren't calling him Deadpool yet, I think) was still in plain view when the elevator landed. That may have been the only surprise in the entire movie- and I haven't even read the Origins comics, so it's not like I was cheating! (That also means I don't know how close the movie followed the comics, or indeed if they follow them at all, so don't take this review of the movie as a commentary on the comics.)

As if the transparent plot wasn't insult enough, the special effects wound up leaving the same acidic aftertaste in my mouth as the cheap-as-fuck special effects employed by none other than the SciFi (SyFy now) channel. Granted, they weren't as God-fucking-awful as the SciFi/SyFy effects are, but they were way below par for a movie with the kind of history and fanbase (and one would think with the funding!) usually associated with the X-Men movie franchise. Granted, this is a prequel, and we all know how much those suck, but I still find it difficult to believe no one somewhere along the line of production said to his friend "hmm...do Wolverine's claws look a bit... I don't know, flat? Unfinished, maybe?" because the first thing I thought when Wolvie unsheathed his newly-minted adamantium claws was "those look totally fucking fake", especially in the farmhouse bathroom scene where Wolvie examines his funky snow-white claws in excruciating detail. (Also- am I the only person who asked "when and how the hell did we wind up in Smallville?" when Wolvie showed up at that farmhouse? Seriously- what the fuck?) The explotions and most of the fighting was so-so in quality, pretty much what you'd expect in any typical action flick, though I really dug the one awesome scene torward the end when Sabertooth and Wolvie teamed up against a teleporting Deadpool (for reasons that I'm choosing now to spoil).

Gambit. Oh, for the love of God, why? I spent way too freaking long to see my dear Remy in a movie for THAT to be all I get. Weak accent, not a word of French, very little screen presence and 90% of his fighting techniques were annoying rather than awesome. And, to add insult to injury, he had normal eyes. That's right, not the infamous red-on-black- he had normal eyes. They glowed a wee bit when he used his powers (and only when he used his powers during a closeup), but generally he had normal pupils, normal irises, the whole works. I am PISSED. First they screw up Rogue, now they've gone off and screwed up Gambit, too.

Cheap cheap cheap fucking cheap.

On the plus side, I loved Ryan Renolds as Wade (for the all of five minutes he was actually on the screen), and Liev Schreiber's performance as Sabertooth was excellent- much, much better than the stuntman they had play his part in the X-Men films. And what's more is I've heard there's an extra scene at the end were Deadpool shows up, breaks the forth wall (his trademark in the comics) and shushes the audience, after his *spoilers!* decapitation in the film. Healing powers for the win! The scene I saw at the end of the credits in the particular theater I attended just showed Wolvie drinking at a Japanese bar and being mopey. *end of spoilers*