This month's book list is a little longer than the last, because I didn't do much rereading in June. I wasn't intending this, but looking at my list of books, it's (among other things) showing a significant amount of the range that the term "fantasy" can cover, without including anything that would reasonably be compared to The Lord of the Rings.

Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light oursin has to some extent infected me with her interest in Mitchison, whose work is very hard to find. (The only one I'd managed before this was Memoirs of a Spacewoman, a second-hand paperback that is literally falling apart.) This is somewhere in the border between fantasy and fairy tale: the main character is Halla Bearsbairn, so named because she is fostered for a while by a bear, or maybe a were-bear: her foster-mother had been her nurse, who rescued her when her parents decided they couldn't keep her and their newborn son. The bears can't keep her for long, they have to hibernate, so she winds up with a dragon, who is treating her partly as his child, partly as one of the elements of his treasure. And on from there, adventures over what turn out to be several centuries, including a meeting with the all-father (who advises her to travel light) and repeated encounters with a valkyrie who tries to recruit her for that team. Recommended if you come across it; I picked it up at a warehouse-clearance sale from Small Beer Press, who have reissued it.

Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter Volume 2 of the "Long Price Quartet," more of Otah Machi's story. This one takes us to a different part of the same culture, several years after the ending of A Shadow in Summer, which disappointed me because I was hoping to see more of how Amat's plans came out after she decided she had to leave the trading house she had been working for, for reasons to do with different kinds of loyalty.( As papersky noted on Tor.com, Amat is an unusual hero for a fantasy novel (or, indeed, any novel), a middle-aged woman, an accountant whose leg hurts all the time, and hurts more when she has to hide out and doesn't have her medicine.) That said, this is well-written, with good characterization, if a somewhat odd political system. In the previous book, we saw a bit of how the khaiate handles succession; this one foregrounds the expected fratricidal conflicts between the incumbent's sons. We also get more about the andat, the reified verbs, magical beings whose great desire is not to exist, but who would be pleased to take a few, or a few thousand, humans with them on their way to nonexistence. The city of Machi controls, and is powerful and prosperous because of, one called Stone-Made-Soft. The applications to mining and manufacture are obvious; walking through mine tunnels with a being that is thinking about what it would take to bring them down on your head is unnerving.

MCA Hogarth, Flight of the Godkin Griffin (serialized at godkin Fantasy again, in this case about people who are decidedly not human: what they are is less clear, in part because they vary a great deal. Angharad is a Mistress-Commander in the Godson's army, all set to retire when she is appointed governor of a newly conquered province. The province, predictably, is not entirely conquered. She is also dealing with personal issues, and with her doubts about the basic motivation of her culture: to interbreed with people as different as possible in order to produce a god. The goal and project are both bizarre from outside, but the cross-breeding works at least in the sense of producing a wide variety of different intelligent beings, some with wings, different kinds of fur, or antlers.

As she was writing, Hogarth periodically posted polls, things like "should this conversation turn romantic?" or "how much do you want to hear about Ragna?" and used the results to guide the story. I don't think it made much difference to my connection to the story, but others' mileage may have varied. The print version, expected soon, won't have those: it's not a choose-your-own adventure book, maybe something closer to Philip K. Dick using the I Ching to guide his plotting.

Sarah Monette, Corambis The fourth and final volume of Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. These are set in a world where magic works, and many people mistrust magicians, often including other magicians. The ongoing story is about two brothers, Felix (a magician) and Mildmay (who has no magical ability, a former cat burglar and hitman whose most respectable skill is card playing). They are entangled in a variety of ways, emotionally, despite (or because of) not having grown up together, though they had similar poor and abusive upbringings, and are both damaged by their pasts, physically as well as mentally. Mildmay feels responsible for Felix, for reasons that may not make sense to either of them; they could also be the poster children for communication problems in a relationship. Much of the time, they aren't just wading through their own past arguments and resentments, they seem to be taking out all their anger at everyone else who neglected or mistreated them on each other. The world has magic and wizardry, and Felix has tasks to do with that, and with his past, but much of the story is about Mildmay's illness, and his and Felix's need to pay bills. The other thread here is about a margrave [name], who participates in an attempt to use magic to help a rebellion. Everyone else in the room is killed by the thing they awaken; he survives, blind, and is captured, and displayed by a vindictive man on the winning side, and then taken away from that and tries to figure out what is wanted from him, believing that, blind and defeated, he is by definition useless.

A good book, including the drop into a somewhat higher-tech part of the continent: Felix asks "what's a train" when told, in his travels, that he will need to take one, and the person who told him explains, being used to foreigners not knowing. The railroad system is complicated enough that a large timetable (aftermarket documentation) sells well, as does the series of supplements. Enjoyed isn't the word for all of my reaction: the communications difficulties were convincing, and not fun to read. I suspect this book would be confusing and unsatisfying to someone who hadn't read the others. In fact, I wish I'd gotten this sooner, when they were fresher in my memory. (I may see about borrowing them again to reread; I bought a copy of Corambis at Wiscon, to support an author and a bookstore I like as much as because I was impatient.)

Rebecca Ore, Centuries Ago and Very Fast This one is weird, but fun. Vel is about 12,000 years old, and no explanation is given for why he, alone among anyone, lives so long, nor why he can travel back and forth in time. He moves with some care: he can't always get out of the time he's in, and has learned that not all injuries heal. We see Vel, and his "sisters" (by now greatⁿ nieces, and his lovers. There's a lot of sex in this book, mostly between men, often explicit, and intended to be both arousing and in character. Out of bed and in, Vel tells stories: mammoth hunting, traveling, being treated as an extremely minor god, seeing his friends imprisoned or killed for homosexuality, the sort of low-key investment that you can make over time if you can see the future. When a necklace is stolen from him, Vel just waits and takes it from the thief's grave, decades later. In the afterword, Ore says that this book was inspired (at least in part) by slash fiction. I would say "recommended if you like that kind of thing," but I don't read much of that kind of thing, and I enjoyed it. On the other hand, one advantage of original characters over slash is that an author working with her own characters doesn't use the shortcut of assuming the reader already knows what they're like or the back story, which I often don't.

P. C. Hodgell, God Stalk and Dark of the Moon (in an omnibus volume as The Godstalker Chronicles) This feels almost like a parody in some ways: the viewpoint character is one of a created race/organization of powerful beings whose God has handed them the task of fighting evil. The evil force is called Perimal Darkling, and the agents of God include two more-or-less-humanoid species and one species of very wise, almost-immortal felines. The viewpoint character Jame (who goes by various other names at different points, including "the talisman") is a young woman of the Kendyr, one of those three people's. She has almost no memory of, well, anything, who stumbles out of the lands controlled by the dark force into a city, where she finds herself offered an apprenticeship as a thief, moves in many different social circles, and gradually regains at least some of her memories. God Stalk moves fast enough that I didn't much mind that the plot was more "and then...and then...and then" in which neither reader nor characters have time to get their feet under them. By the end of that book, Jame has gotten tangled with some of the local gods of the city she stumbled into; she talks about what the existence of other gods might mean for her rigidly monotheistic (in a trinitarian way) people, but is too busy with other things to really seem troubled by that point. She is convincingly concerned about why she can remember so little of her past, and by some of the things she can remember. This wouldn't be a problem if the title and story weren't setting Jame up as a destroyer and restorer of gods.

Dark of the Moon has Jame regaining more memory, and shows battles in a larger area, and I found it less convincing. Events seemed to take place because they suited the author's convenience, not because they followed one from the next or because things happen at least somewhat by chance. In addition to the formless but powerful Perimal Darkling, the threats this time include a vague group of tribes called the Horde, who we are told have been proceeding in a slow circle, consuming everything in front of them and fighting internal, cannibalistic battles for several centuries. It's not remotely clear why none of them ever broke away, in search of safely and fresher pastures. I was also both unconvinced and annoyed by the statement that the Kendyr had started restricting the powerful "Highborn" women, but not the men, after a specific woman had gone over to the dark side: because it is made clear, by the characters as well as the third-person narration, that she had done so following her twin brother. Yes, some men might find that a convenient excuse, but nobody, female or male, seems to notice that it's inconsistent, not only unfair but insufficient to provide the safety it is allegedly aimed at. You either restrict all of your powerful and potentially treasonous human weapons as much as possible, or train all of them because you need them to fight against the forces of Darkness. I'd recommend reading God Stalk and stopping there, which is easier if you find a used copy of God Stalk rather than the two-novel omnibus. (This isn't a "don't go there" warning that the second book ruins the first, just that I liked the first and found the second less fun and less plausible.)

[crossposting by hand between LJ and DW, comment wherever you like]

I have been a member for a very long time, lurked for even longer, and posted here only twice before. I have been such a stranger to LJ lately, though, as I mainly just reserve any posts to my tumblr blog, but I thought you might enjoy some of my work anyway.

I have been participating in a personally-challenged "craft month," where I have entreated myself to make a new craft every day (not a difficult task for many of you, I know). I tried this once before, but it was hard to keep up during school because my room is so small. Now I just keep my things strewn about my room and pick up a project when the inspiration strikes me (a very nice, if not impractical, way to live! I will miss it). Anyway, I have been pretty lax about snapping the photographs, but I feel productive about the work I've done. Here's a big post of the wares I've captured so far. If you like what you see, I will remember to post the rest for you great crafters to see once I get the right light to take photographs.

( Button clusters, a felt panda, a vintage-inspired fascinator, and miscellaneous jewelry this way! )

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/why-democrats-have-no-time-to-waste.html

The Wall Street Journal's has had its monthly economic forecasting panel attempt to predict what the unemployment rate will look like through the end of 2010. And the results are something that should make the Administration -- and Democrats in Congress -- a little nervous. The average forecast for the unemployment rate next December -- a year-and-a-half from now -- is 9.5 percent. That's no better than where unemployment is today. And only one economist out of 51 ventured a forecast below 7.6, which is what the unemployment rate was when Obama took office in January.

It's not that the Journal's forecasters are all that bearish overall. In fact the panel, which has a notoriously bullish track record, expects to see GDP turn positive quite soon: 70 percent expect the recession to end by the fall, and 90 percent by the end of the year.

The unemployment rate, however, has long been a lagging indicator, especially following recent recessions. Suppose that the recession ends in August. Perhaps six months from then -- in February or March -- the economy will actually have started to create jobs. But the employment picture will have gotten worse in the meantime; it will be creating jobs from a peak of, say, 9.9 percent if the administration is lucky, or say, 11.2 percent if it isn't. It will take some time to get the number back down to the 9.5 percent that it's at presently, much less to fall below the 7.6 percent number that would represent an overall gain of jobs during Obama's tenure.

The question is: how playable a hand would the Administration have at that point? They'll probably get some boost when (if?) the recession is declared over. But maybe not much of one. The Persian Gulf Recession officially ended in March 1991; George H.W. Bush was still suffering from the consequences of it 18 months later.

A more favorable precedent, perhaps, is that set by Ronald Reagan. His approval rating hit its trough in February, 1983, a mere three months after the 1981-1982 recession ended. Reagan, more than G.H.W. Bush, could claim to have inherited his recession from the previous administration. Although that recession started in July 1981, half a year into Reagan's term, it was in some ways a continuation of the January-July 1980 recession that began under Jimmy Carter. In this way, his situation is more analogous to Obama's, whom nobody can blame Obama for the start of the current recession -- although increasing numbers will become frustrated with him that it hasn't ended yet.

Reagan's Republicans nevertheless lost 26 seats in the House during the 1982 midterms. That is probably a reasonable over-under for the losses that Obama's Democrats might suffer. While on the one hand, Obama's timing may turn out to be somewhat better than Reagan's, on the other hand Republicans were losing ground from a much lower peak -- the only controlled 192 seats in the House before the midterms, whereas Obama's Democrats now have 257. I'd still take the under given that betting line, mostly because the GOP is poorly organized, both in terms of message and infrastructure. But anything from the Democrats gaining a few seats to losing their hold on the chamber is entirely possible.

The Democrats are in a much more fortunate position, at least, in the Senate, where even after a couple of recruiting coups, the GOP is playing more defense than offense. The over-under there may still even be in positive territory for the Democrats -- say a net gain of +/- half a seat. The Democrats are further fortunate that the Senate, not the House, is the legislative bottleneck right now. If hypothetically the Democrats lost 25 seats in the House, which would make their margin 232-203, but added one seat to improve to 61 in the Senate, it's not clear how much worse off they'd be, particularly if the losses in the House were mostly to conservative, Blue Dog seats.

Still, there is not much time for the Administration to lose in pushing forward the Democratic agenda. The recent sluggishness in the recovery reduces, if not altogether eliminates, the possibility that the Democrats will have some kind of golden window of opportunity prior to the next midterms. Suppose that the recession ends tomorrow, and that the jobs recovery begins sometime around the Holidays. That's pretty much the best reasonable case for the Democrats. But would you really want to be pushing, say, a climate bill in the summer of 2010, with unemployment still in the high 8's or low 9's and an election right around the corner? At that point, the better strategy might be to redouble the efforts to keep as many seats as possible in the House and gain a couple in the Senate.

These next couple of months -- the time just before and after the Senate recesses in August -- are precious for the Democrats. Sure, they'd probably have an easier go of things if the recession hadn't gotten quite so deep. But it's nevertheless likely to be their best time to play offense until the spring of 2011, and possibly much longer than that.

Okay. I'm wanting to move beyond still lifes, scenics and wildlife, but shooting people is beyond my experience level, and portraiture doubly so. I read and absorb and look at others' work, but I don't feel like I'm picking up on the techniques.

The dangerous question: would I do better to try and land a slot as an assistant in a portrait studio, or look into formal classes and critiques?

Operators are standing by...

(Sorry, no photo to attach...my computer's down, so I get the joy of posting from my phone.)

I watched Warehouse 13 last week and where the Librarian movies are clearly spoofs of action-adventures where they retrieve things, and I think are funny, I thought Warehouse 13 was like a bad spoof. I don't plan to watch it again.

I watched the first episode for the season of Eureka and while I knew who-did-it early on, I still liked it and plan to watch the season.

The last episode of Eli Stone was last night and even if it was just meant to be a season finale, it was sufficient for the series finale. The TV columnist for the WashPost wrote when it was announced to be cancelled that it had better numbers than some other ABC shows, so you never know what the motivation is.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/day-2-of-ala-and-reading-things-aloud.html

Yesterday I had a breakfast with many librarians, then signed was interviewed in front of a crowd by Roger Sutton from Hornbook, signed for happy librarian-folk for three hours, then napped and went off to dinner with the Newbery Award Committee, the sort of dinner where you have each different course at a different table, and talk to everyone. Then I signed books for them (and for a few stray Printz Committee judges, who crept in).

This morning was Dim Sum with Jill Thompson for breakfast (Here is Jill. People always want to know where she got that bag, and she made it herself. I told her she should take orders for them for a ridiculous amount of money.) Then with Elyse Marshall, ace HarperChildren's publicist, to a local studio where I was interviewed for Barnes and Noble, then recorded some paragraphs from Kipling's The Jungle Book, Ray Bradbury's story "Homecoming" and James Thurber's The 13 Clocks. I loved doing them -- B&N will pick one sequence and have it animated and put up online.

Was fascinated by how different the voice of the narrator was in each case -- the voice of the book, and that reminded me that I had not yet answered this, and had meant to:

Neil ~ Thank you for many hours of entertainment, whether I'm reading your works, or you are! My daughter is finding that chapter books are a good thing, and wants me to read them to her. I'm glad to do so, but I'm looking for some suggestions from a masterful book reader (you) to a very coarse book reader (me). How do you keep the character voices straight in your head? I suppose it helps that you know the words particularly well since you wrote them, but any tips or suggestions? Any other pointers for engaging the listener? I know my daughter doesn't mind (she still wants me to read, after all!), but I'd like to be better for her and for me. Thanks and keep up the superb work, both here on the blog and in the offline printed universe! BRIAN

Let's see. Character voices are more or less easy: I sort of cast them in my head as I go. What's the person like? Who do they remind me of?

I'm appalling at doing accents, but not bad at doing people. And mostly you're not even doing impressions, just general brush strokes. How does a person sound? Well, you hold them in your head and generally sound like that.

When dealing with a larger than life story I'll sometimes go for a larger than life cast in my head: In (for example) The 13 Clocks, in my head, when I read it aloud, I tend to cast Marty Feldman as the Golux, and Peter Sellers (doing his Laurence Olivier in Richard the Third impression) as the evil Duke.

It's hard though, in a big book with a lot of characters, some of whom may nip off-stage for seven or eight chapters at a time. Do your best, and have a picture in your head. Borrow from your life. Steal voices shamelessly.

Most important, just do the voices (including the voice of the Book, which may not be your voice exactly, but should be close enough to it that it won't be a strain), and do not be shy. Even at your worst, you're doing better than you would if you didn't do the voices, and kids are a mostly uncritical audience, especially if you do it with confidence.

Read it as if you're telling a story. Read it as if you're interested and you care. And, the biggest and most important one, vary the tune.

I heard a young writer reading some of his own work in public a few weeks ago, and every sentence had exactly the same tune, the sime rising and falling cadences. They all ended on the same note. The beat that ran through the whole passage did not change from first to last. It was hypnotically dull.

Listen to people read who are good at it. BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 (here's the Radio 4 Readings website)are a great source of an ever-changing series of books and stories, fiction and non-fiction, all read aloud and read aloud well. Listen to the tune, where voices go up or down. Listen to what makes a reader speed up or slow down -- listen to what keeps you interested and where you lose interest. And do it as they do -- change the tune, change the pace, keep interested and it will keep interesting.

But mostly my advice is this: just do it. Enthusiasm and willingness to do it counts for most of it, and you learn by doing it and get better from doing it.

I've been reading in front of audiences now for almost 20 years. I've got significantly better in that time, mostly because I've done it so much. You learn as you go. You get better as you go. Practice makes if not perfect then at least pretty decent.

And that's all.


Except to wish Roz Kaveney happy birthday.

I feel like I should be doing something "productive". Buuuuut I don'twaaaanaaaaaa. Also, I need to feed myself. Add that to the list of productive things I don't wanna do. :P

Apparantly I am disgruntled. If you have seen my gruntles, please tell them I want them back.

I had quite a few leftover scraps of curtain samples I got years ago from a website I cannot remember. Naturally, when I bought my new camera I realized I needed a proper cover for it. I didn't want to buy one for ten or twenty dollars so when I had some time to kill yesterday I decided to make a casing for it. I sewed together some scraps and used some leftover denim for "batting". The sewing isn't fantastic but it looks better in person and it does its job! :)



( Camera Cozy )Thanks for looking!! :)

At the advice of a fellow blogger I did some cropping. I'm really happy with the way it came out. I think they were right, the rule of thirds is very important in this picture.




I really wanted the little flower to outshine the bench. I also wanted to play with the green, yellow and brown in this picture. I think cropping it helped bring out the yellow a lot more. Thanks for the input.

25. Amjed Qamar, Beneath My Mother's Feet

A young adult novel about Nazia, a 14-year-old in a working-class family in Karachi, Pakistan. Nazia is smart, doing well in school, and engaged to her cousin. However, when her father is injured and loses his job, things quickly go downhill. Nazia's mother gets a job cleaning houses, and Nazia is forced to drop out of school to help.

This book was seriously brutal in the multitude of bad things which happen to Nazia and her family. It never came off as unbelievable or emotionally manipulative, but it was shocking to see how little a supportive net there was available for this family, and how quickly they lost everything. Overall, this wasn't even a depressing book, mainly because of Nazia, who is a strong and optimistic character. She may have a bit too much faith in people, but she relies on herself, and ends up finding her own solution. Recommended.



Also, wheeeee! Halfway to the goal!

Hello! I have a question about blenders - I checked the tags, but could not find anything about smaller, 'single-serve' blenders.

I used to make a smoothie every morning, but the cleanup of my Kitchen-Aid blender, plus putting it all back together each time, has really deterred me. I've been skipping breakfast lately, and would really like to get back into soymilk, fruit, and protein powder smoothies.

I've been looking into smaller 'personal-size' blenders that promise easy cleanup, and it looks like there are two main contenders out there:

Back to Basics:
http://www.amazon.com/Basics-Blender-Express-White-%2528BPE3WHITE%2529/dp/B000G65MSI/ref=sr_1_2

Hamilton Beach:
http://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Beach-51101-Single-Serve-Blender/dp/B00065L6CU/ref=pd_sbs_hg_3

Has anyone used these products, and do you have a recommendation? The two big factors for me are ice crushing, and ease of cleanup. The fewer parts / pieces to disassemble and clean, the better!

Finally, if you have a favorite breakfast smoothie recipe to share, I would love to hear it.

Thanks!

http://www.mooseparty.org/betsy/2009/07/i-am-having-one-of-those-days-where-i.html

i am having one of those days where i am getting more in touch with my feelings about things. there have got to be ways to do this that don't include suddenly being whacked over the head with them. hell if i know what they are, though.

however, i am now going to have some protein, take a shower, and ponder some yardwork. i might clean the house instead. we'll see.

So who should I run into at the top of the Art Museum steps yesterday beating people with the remnants of a cardboard tube?



Rodney Anonymous, from the Dead Milkmen.



Who might be the funniest person I know.

I didn't plan to watch two DVDs with Germany in them sequentially, but it worked out that way. If you set it for English sub-titles, don't worry when the first five minutes or so don't have them. They'll come after that and you can see what happens in the beginning. It surprised me quite a bit, since it has nothing like what the packet blurb says:

"... contemporary road movie that takes its Israeli characters to Berlin as they attempt to understand the role that the past still plays in the lives of young Israeli and German people."

What actually happens:

There are three main characters -- a brother and sister who are Himmler's grandchildren (the brother lives in Germany with his folks; the sister in a kibbutz in Israel) and an Israeli assassin. The assassin is assigned to play tour guide for the brother when he comes to visit his sister on an errand from his parents -- to get her to come home for Daddy's birthday. The assassin is unhappy at being given this minor task, but he is off his stride since his wife committed suicide, and in the end, he doesn't even listen to the last tape he made from his bug in the sister's room. Turns out the sister tells the brother that Himmler is still alive, and the assassin's boss sends him to Germany to find out more. Himmler is at the birthday party -- does he live? If not, how does he die? And does someone kill him?

The movie also has a difficult scene where the assassin is upset not only because the brother takes them to a gay bar (the sister already knew he was gay), but spends the night with an Arab. However, when a group of queens are attacked in a German subway, the assassin defends them.

You'd need basic knowledge of WWII to get everything in this, and even then, I can get similar updated emotions from the WashPost.