... and the Paper Sculpture Escapade

This is ace. That is all.

Geeky Fun

Hey guys, do you read Girls Like Giants yet? It is a great blog started by some lovely and talented gals up at the University of Oregon. They talk about pop culture in a smart, refreshing forum. It is fun, thought provoking, and has given me a load of fun new things to read or watch.

Anyways, they kindly let me do a guest post the other day and I thought I'd put up a plug in case you were interested. I'm talking about my current favorite tv show, Torchwood. Do you watch Torchwood? If not, do so immediately. It is the best show on tv right now (and the old seasons are all on netflix, so you can catch up fast!). Enjoy!

Go West

Being raised in the Wild West -- albeit a rather shady and all too 20th century version of it -- I have a bit of a fondness for frontier tales. Or maybe it is a remnant from my devouring all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books when I was 7. Either way, I really enjoy the period. I also enjoy manipulations of the theme: steampunk frontier, space frontier, romantic frontier. But there is a distinct shortage of frontier magic. Until now.

Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede

Wrede is very good at alternative history, as we can see in what she terms Regency Magic*. So naturally, I had pretty high hopes for her latest novel, billed as a YA fantasy work. Then I read the book in a few hours on Halloween.

It is a rich novel, and long-ish for YA, so I generally would have expected it to take a few savored afternoons. Instead, I got up to make dinner and when I came back to the book, I noticed I only had about 20 pages left. The book was that good.

Okay, so now that I've built it up so much you are almost guaranteed to find it lacking, let's talk about the work itself. The U.S. frontier parallels the one we know from history lessons and Western movies, but differs in enough key aspects to be foreign and exotic. Magic, for one, is everywhere, as magicians, magical creatures, magical dangers. The nation we know as the U.S. has still separated from what we call England -- Columbia and Albion, respectively in Wrede's west -- but the Civil War happened decades earlier, Lewis and Clark never made it back from their expedition, and Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were genius magicians. In this strange, delicious, wild land, there is a girl, the thirteenth child of her parents and twin to a seventh son of a seventh son, called Eff.

When her parents decide to relocate, Eff is moved from the industrial and familiar east to the far edges of the frontier, at the edge of the Mammoth River that splits the continent. She is caught up in the adventures the frontier life brings, complicated by her own magic (and her mixed feelings on such) and the magic of the land, by turns terrifying and breathtaking. This is only the first book for Wrede's Frontier Magic, and while the end of the novel is a satisfying one, and not really a cliff-hanger, I am nonetheless greedy for Book Two's publication next August.

I think I like this book in part because it does what Wrede always does well, create relatable young heroines and entangle them in sticky-sweet relationships much like those her readers experience. She always places these characters in rich settings, with adventure-rich plots veined in magic. In short, she is a very good YA fantasist. But she is also a great novelist in that each of her books feels new, in a way that so much of the available reading out there today doesn't. Even though the frontier setting should be almost cliche by now, she gives it such new life with her interpretation that I couldn't help but turn page after page. Any author who can make the cliche seem new earns high marks by my count.

Read this book. Read her entire bibliography. I know I'm gushing by this point, but she deserves it. And so, my friend, do you.




*Mairelon the Magician was a beloved book as a child, and its sequel The Magician's Ward (now combined in an omnibus A Matter of Magic) is a go-to when I have a craving for a sweet romance (with costumes!). I definitely recommend them, once you've finished Thirteenth Child and need more. And when you want even more, read her Enchanted Forest Chronicles. They are pretty much perfect.

Dreamy Escapes

The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip

Just to be upfront, Patricia A. McKillip is my all time favorite fantasist. She is absolutely brilliant. Her lush novels always have this immense feeling of depth that you just get to glimpse here and there, with maybe a brief immersion or two. They leave you craving more, though you are also strangely satisfied. Her prose is crisp, clear but also creates a world of lyrical beauty that matches the Kinuko Y. Craft cover paintings that adorn so many of her novels. I always feel like I've been treated to a new fairy tale after I read one of McKillip's latest -- at once familiar and dear, but also dark and twisted and dangerous, like the original tales of Grimm and Perrault before Disney got to them.

Her latest novel, published in 2008, is no exception. The Bell at Sealey Head evokes something of an 18th or 19th century feel, wholly embedded in a very real village balanced on stormy sea cliffs, but the fey world steadily encroaches on the unwitting villagers, with a few notable exceptions. The innkeeper, a serving girl and her wild hermit mother, a merchant's daughter all have something more to say about why, each day at sundown, a bell rings out. A bell, that is, that no one has ever seen or located. The lady of the land lies in her deathbed and her heir comes to visit with an entourage of silly courtiers, throwing the sleepy village politics into a whirl. Meanwhile, a disheveled scholar arrives ink-stained and loaded down with books, seeking more of the bell and its world. The locals must help the strangers find their paths and positions in the village while dealing with increasing (and increasingly menacing) fey activity.

We are also treated to a glimpse of the parallel fey realm, seen through the dangerously curious eyes of a young princess who merely wants to know why. Her world is one of rules and duties, each more nonsensical than the last, but each of which must be followed to the letter at peril of death and doom. As the two worlds draw nearer and nearer, the young girl must learn to ask the right questions of the right person to free her world and that of the mortals.

There is a sweet courtship over books and curiosities, courtship kept secret to protect lives, bonds of family and friendship in both the mortal and fey realms. The characters are ones you would like to be friends with -- or ones you too would fight with all your strength.

I really encourage you to go out and buy each of McKillip's beautiful novels and story collections, but if you at least read her latest, I think you'll see why she is my favorite fantasist. Though others may reach her level in their own genres, none of them can do fantasy and fairy tales so beautifully, dangerously, achingly daringly well.

Counting Calories

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

For the next installment in my summer reading series, I opted for a rad new science fiction piece. Bacigalupi has been nominated for and won various awards for his short and long fiction, and as soon as I saw this book I knew I wanted to read it. The cover is great, and I will definitely admit to judging books by their covers -- especially when they are this good.

The novel itself takes place in a distant dystopic -- or perhaps just realistic -- future, after the global oil culture has completely collapsed. The major commodity is now the calorie, as man and beast power is the primary form of energy. Genetic manipulators have created new food forms -- many of which are sterile after one harvest and enormously susceptible to terrible plagues -- as well as new critters and even new people. I found something of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake in his biopunk future, though he cannot yet keep up with her literary prowess at the level of the individual word. Her work is polished to the utmost, while Bacigalupi's is at points clearly a debut novel. That said, if this is his debut work, I can't wait to see his more practiced novels*.

Bacigalupi shifts his narrative's perspective from various characters occupying various roles in this new world in the Thai Kingdom. A calorie man: an agent of one of the biopower companies holding patents on seed variations and disease strains alike. Various locals throughout the bureaucracy each vying for a place in the precariously balanced hierarchy running the kingdom. And a windup girl, a new person genetically enhanced in almost every way, but handicapped by a twitching, clockwork-like motion that distinguishes her and her kind from true humans.

The novel is disturbing in the its level of potential truth. It is not so hard to imagine his biopunk society as one that could arise after our current petroleum bubble bursts. And his characters, perhaps especially the windup girl, are relatable in their hopes and fears, their flaws and strengths. He explores basic philosophical truths, such as what is means to be human, to be decent, to survive. He critiques and mocks our own society -- at times wistfully or gently, at times with the sharpest satire. The scifi world of his novel allows him to explore these truths in a way that lets them sneak into your own mind, settle in, and then smack you upside the head. Bacigalupi's social commentary is practiced and subtle, even when the novel itself bogs down.

I have also read some of his shorter fiction, which displays his skills in crafting new settings and characters that are immediately understandable. I look forward to his future novels displaying even more of that skill, as I did find The Windup Girl occasionally awkward or aimless. The narrative always found its way again, though, and while the ending can't rightfully be deemed satisfying, it was appropriate.

On the whole, Bacigalupi is now firmly installed on my author list and I certainly recommend delving into the novel. Give yourself a few weeks -- as it can be a bit too much to swallow in long sittings -- but I think you'll enjoy the ride.

*His latest, Ship Breaker, was released in May, but I haven't read yet. Have you? Thoughts?

Spicing up Dickens

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

The next book of the summer was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Montana Medal in 2007. Set on Bougainville Island during the civil war there in the 1990s, the novel is told from the perspective of a young teen girl, Matilda, who has spent her whole life in the same small village. Despite the conflict on the island, the only white man in the village, Mr. Watts, takes over the teaching responsibilities for the children of the island. He has no experience with teaching, so he does the only thing he knows. He reads to the students from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, aloud, from start to finish. He helps them understand Dickens' dense, wordy prose set in a far off land the students know nothing about: Victorian England. But as the civil war between the miners and the mining company brings violence and terror to the small village, Matilda and her fellow islanders must rely on the rich story of Pip's maturation to survive the atrocities.

Race is a major theme throughout the novel, with the black islanders, the brown fighters, the single white teacher... At the end of one chapter is one of the most well written discussions of white and black, as racial experiences, that I've seen in fiction. Because Mr. Watts is the only white person in the village, the racial scale is balanced quite differently than in many situations, but the black islanders still know what power having white skin can bring, the completely different mindset, however unconscious it may be, of being white.

Though the novel is immensely rich in thematic content, it is also an interesting, engaging read, told in the simple, straightforward voice of Matilda. I found it much more enjoyable than attempting to read Dickens, and I might even go so far as to say Jones takes Dickens to a whole new level. Perhaps it helps that Jones is not paid by the word, to write serially as Dickens was. Perhaps it is simply that Jones has a richer understanding of race and power, being from a colony himself, and one that still struggles with racial tension between the colonial descendants and the Pacific Islanders. Whatever the reason, Mister Pip fully earns the awards bestowed upon it, and I fully recommend it for your pleasure and education.

Summer Reading

Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson

My next choice for summer reading was significantly different. This book is a meaty, intense read, far from the light fare so many pick for a beach or camp book. That said, read it immediately.

This memoir from three perspectives details a decade of service in the Red Cross and United Nations. The authors are deployed in Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Liberia with stopovers in New York throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. They are young, attractive, clever, and hopeful in Cambodia, there to help democracy reach the oppressed masses. Thrown into situations they don't fully understand and surrounded by the luxury and excitement of being a liberated and comparatively rich white civilian in a tropical paradise. They are naive, idealistic, adventurous and excited, and it is beautiful. Heady by their success, they keep their positions with the UN and seek deployment in the newly developing wars across the world.

Of course, as they face genocide, hatred, and corruption, each of the authors must reexamine their own motivations and positions. Their perspectives, while immersed in the chaos in each of the above nations, reveals the failures and poor choices of the US and UN leaders, the fallibility of individuals on either side, but also those glorious moments of pure and noble humanity so starkly exposed against the horrors.

Regardless of how thorough your history of the 1990s is, this well written set of vignettes and essays will give you an entirely new way to look at the involvement of the UN and US in developing situations around the world then and, in all likelihood, now.

Summer Reading

Okay kiddos, apparently now that Memorial Day has passed, summer is official. For those of us who live in L.A., summer never really stops, but I think that actually fades some of its charm. What fun is summer if you don't have to wait impatiently for it during winter?

That said, I still love summer. And my favorite part as a student was the summer reading. I could read any and everything I wanted, without having deadlines or papers or analyses to keep in mind. I plan on doing quite a bit of summer reading, though with the added benefit of not stopping come Labor Day. And I'll share what I like here, so you too can have fun. First up is a book I've read before, but decided was worth yet another reread, and thus doubly worth a recommendation. I hope you enjoy.

A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer

The love child of Jane Austen and Charles Darwin, this is a novel about characters, love, relationships, and growing up as a girl. Lovers go courting, sisters fight and defend one another, and the parents are inevitably bonkers. It has the charms of Austen's England, in a way, but is set in modern New York, and has a decidedly Darwinistic slant -- that is, nature vs. nurture -- to its dark and wry humor. Spunky, at times silly, but definitely delicious.

Manifesto

Thanks to Have Your Cake, I found lululemon's manifesto earlier today. And it punched me in the head with all its goodness. I recommend it highly, especially if you, like me, are still in the "It's still early in the year so I don't have to start my resolutions just yet, right?" phase.

Full text version is here. Read and enjoy!

Ooh! Pretties!

This new-to-me tumblr, found thanks to You Are My Fave, is making me very happy.


You're welcome.