The Book of Sand

The 5th of the B's and the 8th in the list of 100.

Unusual is the best way to describe The Book of Sand by respected and acclaimed Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges.

It's a very slim volume containing 13 short stories. Most were written around 1975 when the book was published, but others were written earlier.

By the time Borges wrote most of these stories he was an old man and totally blind. Many of the stories have the theme of lost youth, others contain unfulfilled love. The author uses 1st and 3rd person to tell his tales, but in nearly all 13 of the stories it's obvious that the main character is based on Borges himself, usually a younger, healthier version.

Borges was considered a fantasist and this book appeared in a list of 100 Must-Read Fantasy novels. Firstly it's not actually a novel, but a collection of short stories and secondly it's fantasy credentials are very slim as I understand fantasy. The only genuine fantasy stories are the first one; The Other, where the author somehow meets a younger self, and the 13th, the title story, which tells of an amazing book; The Book of Sand. A book with no beginning and no end, a volume that will be read differently by everyone who reads it and will never contain the same contents twice, depending on who has possession of it, it may not even appear as a book to the owner.

I have to admit to being frustrated through most of the time reading the stories, this was largely because they appeared to be fragments of larger works, thoughts of the author that he considered making into more coherent tales or the beginnings of a larger work which was never expanded upon.

Something may have been lost in the translation, but I found a lot of the prose pretentious and clumsy.

I have to conclude that it simply wasn't for me.

I can't recommend anything similar, because I'm not generally a short story reader, so haven't come across anything quite like this collection.

Questions & Answers

This meme (whatever a meme is) was initially posted at: http://wisb.blogspot.com/2010/05/book-habits-meme-reboot.html with an invite to answer it on your own blog. I thought I'd do just that.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack:

I hardly ever eat while reading. I just can’t do the whole dip into bowl, navigate snack to mouth thing and still concentrate on the book. My manual dexterity is and always has been shocking. So the answer is no.

What is your favorite drink while reading?

Very rarely drink while reading. If I get thirsty, I’ll put the book down and go to the kitchen to get something to drink. On the rare occasions this does happen it’ll probably be Coke.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

Horrifies me, always has. Never ever do it.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

I have 2 bookmarks, one is a soft woven, Persian rug type thing and the other is a cross stitch that my wife made for me. I usually mark my place with them. Very occasionally if I know I’m not going to be away for long I will lay it flat open. Dog earing the pages is a huge no no for me. I haven’t done that since I was about 8 years old.

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?

Mostly fiction. I do sometimes read non fiction if the subject interests me. The last non fiction was The Age of Wonder.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?



My wife laughs at me about this. I HAVE to read to the end of a chapter or a section. Terry Pratchett annoys me because he doesn’t usually have chapters in his books.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?



I joke about throwing books across the room if I don’t like them, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually done it. I rarely don’t finish a book, but if I really can’t go on I close the book, put it in another room and generally leave it there to rot.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?



No, but I do try and remember it so I can check it on the computer.

What are you currently reading?

Jorge Luis Borges: The Book of Sand. Truth be told I don’t really like it much and can’t work out why he’s so respected.

What is the last book you bought?

Monster by A. Lee Martinez. I went on a real book buying spree for a while and I’m trying cut back so I can at least make some inroads into the ever growing TBR pile.

Are you the type of person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?



My wife can read more than one at a time, she has had as many as 5 on the go at the one time. I’m strictly a one at a time person, unless you count graphic novels. With those I’m usually reading the graphic novel at home and keeping the book for the commute.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?

I don’t have a specific time or place, but I do most of my reading on the train to and from work. I also try to read a chapter in bed at night before turning off the light.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?



Both. It depends on the book. Stand alones don’t require you to wait in between books, but if the series is good enough and the wait isn’t too long I can do it, although A Song of Ice and Fire has turned me off buying the first book of a number of new series until at least the 2nd book is out.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?



It changes, but 3 things that stay up there are: Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word series, Tad Williams The War of the Flowers and Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series.

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)



When we get the time we try to put them on the shelves in our library alphabetically by author. Makes them much easier to find that way.

Monster

Monster is the 6th book from the inventive and chaotic mind of author A. Lee Martinez.

Martinez had me hooked after I thoroughly enjoyed his debut (Gil’s All Fright Diner), and from what little I read of Monster, before purchasing it, I knew I was in for another treat.

Don’t let the title put you off. It sounds rather like a horror novel or even a serial killer thriller, but it’s not. It’s a lot funnier for a start. It’s actually rather hard to categorize the book. It could be described as either Urban Fantasy or Comic Fantasy and the author himself disagrees with both of those. I’m going with Comic Urban Fantasy.

The Monster of the title is Monster Dionysus. Monster works for Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services. If you have a problem with an infestation of trolls or an army of imps have invaded your house, then Monster and his paper gnome partner Chester, are more than likely who will be sent to deal with it.

Judy is a college dropout, doing nothing with her life, who happens to find a yeti eating all the icecream in the freezer of the supermarket where she works nights stacking shelves. She calls Animal Control Services and Monster and Chester turn up to handle the invader.

Judy has a problem with creatures of a magical nature, they seem to keep turning up and they manage to pretty neatly also ruin Monster’s life. They certainly total his car, trash his house and hasten the break up of his relationship with his succubus girlfriend; Liz. This throws Monster and Judy together even though they don’t really like each other. If the two of them can’t work together the cat loving Mrs Lotus, and her mysterious stone will destroy the universe.

Author A. Lee Martinez managed to crack every funny bone in my body with Monster, he’s fast joining Sir Terry Pratchett on my list of authors not to read on the train lest laughing inappropriately earn you glares from the grey suited office drones. Early on in the book I was reminded of Men In Black, at times the book is very much the fantasy equivalent of the comedy sci-fi film. Monster is Tommy Lee Jones, Judy is Will Smith and there’s even a case to equate Chester with Frank the talking pug dog.

I loved Gil’s All Fright Diner and Monster is getting the big thumbs up too. I’m going to have to seek out the rest of Martinez’s work.

Fan Fiction

I'm actually not sure why I'm writing this or if I'm even trying to make any specific point, but I came across an interesting post from George RR Martin (the author of the epic A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series) on his Not a Blog:http://grrm.livejournal.com/151914.html
regarding fan fiction.

Mr Martin's post was inspired by a rant Diana Gabaldon posted on her blog about it and the 1,000+ responses that the post generated. George Martin's own post got more than 400 responses and he eventually had to lock the thread due to the sheer volume of response.

I've long known George RR Martin is an opponent of fan fiction and actively discourages his fans from writing anything based on his creations (he refers to it as 'playing in someone else's sandbox'). My main issue with Mr Martin and fan fiction is that he doesn't seem to fully understand what it is.

Some time ago a poster on his Not a Blog asked him why he was opposed to fan fiction and his response was a rather flippant comment that he was all for fans writing fiction, he'd just rather they use their own creations, not his to do it. I'm sorry Mr Martin, but that isn't fan fiction, that's fiction.

In this particular article on his Not a Blog he clarifies that position somewhat with this comment:

"One of the things I mislike about fan fiction is its NAME. Truth is, I wrote fan fiction myself. That was how I began, when I was a kid in high school writing for the dittoed comic fanzines of the early 1960s. In those days, however, the term did not mean "fiction set in someone else's universe using someone else's characters." It simply meant "stories written by fans for fans, amateur fiction published in fanzines." Comic fandom was in its infancy then, and most of us who started it were kids... some of whom did make the mistake of publishing amateur fan-written stories about Batman or the Fantastic Four in their 'zines. National (what we called DC back then) and Marvel shut those down pretty quickly.

The rest of us knew better. Including me. I was a fan, an amateur, writing stories out of love just like today's fan fictioneers... but it never dawned on me to write about the JLA or the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, much as I loved them. I invented my own characters, and wrote about those. Garizan, the Mechanical Warrior. Manta Ray. The White Raider. When Howard Keltner, one of the editors and publishers of STAR-STUDDED COMICS, the leading fanzine of its day, invited me to write about two of his creations, Powerman and Dr. Weird, I leapt at the chance... but only with Howard's express invitation and permission."

Now just because you personally don't like the name of something doesn't mean that you can ignore it to make your own argument. The accepted view of fan fiction has always been that it is a work of fiction written by a fan of a particular creation whether that be a comic book, a TV show, a movie, a book, whatever using concepts and often characters created by the original work's author/creator. What George wrote when he was a teen wasn't fan fiction, it was fiction, he used his own characters and his own world. What he wrote based on Howard Keltner's works was fan fiction, but he had the difference between George and any number of posters out there on the internet writing their own fan fictions was that he had the permission of the creator and his work was endorsed by the creator.

I found it interesting that Mr Martin throughout all his long post made no mention of Songs of the Dying Earth, an anthology published last year edited by Mr Martin and his friend and collaborator Gardner Dozois featuring stories written by George RR Martin and a number of other authors set in Jack Vance's Dying World concept and using characters created by Mr Vance. Aside from the facts that Jack Vance endorsed, authorised and got some of the proceeds, this work was fan fiction, pure and simple. Mr Martin goes on to say that if he passes away he hopes that neither his descendants or publishers allow anyone to write fiction based on his creations. I find that attitude a little churlish. I hope that when he lives to Jack Vance's age (Mr Vance is 93) and receives a submission from a younger author who idolised him and his work and was inspired by such, to put out a book with others using his ideas and characters, that he like his hero Jack Vance, endorses and authorises said work.

George RR Martin's definition of fan fiction also reclassifies a number of original works. Two that immediately spring to mind are Terry Brooks debut novel Sword of Shannara. There is no doubting that the characters and concept were inspired by Lord of the Rings, but they were definitely original, so by George RR Martin's definition Sword of Shannara should be reclassified as Lord of the Rings fan fiction. Sections of Tad Williams' stunning series Otherland are very obviously inspired by L. Frank Baum's Oz concept and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but no one is going to reclassify Otherland as fan fiction. Bill Willingham's marvelous comic book Fables uses public domain characters from popular fairy tales and nursery rhymes, mostly the Brothers Grimm, but I haven't seen anyone classify Fables as Brothers Grimm fan fiction. In fact that's a comic book that George RR Martin heartily endorses and approves of.

I don't read much fan fiction, and I have a few reasons for that, none of which because I disapprove of it. I find a lot of it poorly written, that which is well written often doesn't properly capture the characters properly and most of it is wish fulfilment; the author writing a conclusion to things as they would have preferred to see it. My wife enjoys fan fiction on certain subjects and that's largely driven by the fact that many of the authors write pairings she'd rather see. Having said that I did write a Buffy fan fiction myself many years ago. I used as little of Joss Whedon's characters and ideas while still making it clear that it was definitely set in the Buffyverse. It was well received, but I never wrote another one, preferring to create my own worlds and characters. My attitude towards fan fiction is live and let live. It's out there, you can't stop it, it was in existence well before the internet, it just wasn't as widely distributed and as long as no one writes this stuff and then tries to sell it as their own creation I don't see the problem or the point of the opposition.

Homunculus

Really getting through the list now! James P. Blaylock’s Homunculus is the 4th of the B authors and the 7th in the complete list of 100 works.

I did read some Blaylock back in the dim dark ages of the 80’s when he was most prolific and kids were still riding their dinosaurs to school. I can’t remember what it was I read, but I never touched the author again. Homunculus reminded me why.

Having now read it I’m not actually sure why it qualified for the list at all. It’s best classified as steampunk. James Blaylock is considered one of the pioneers of that field. Although Homunculus was published in 1986, a year before the term was coined, it is most definitely steampunk. It’s set in and around London in 1870, whether or not this is an alternate reality is not explained.

One of a number of problems I had with the book is the lack of a coherent plot. As near as I could work out it concerned the efforts of a group of amateur scientists and inventors who called themselves the Trismegistus Club to keep the contents of two boxes (a large emerald and a tiny man; the homunculus of the title) out of the clutches of their sworn enemy; wealthy and unscrupulous Kelso Drake and his band of henchmen. There was a subplot about a homemade spacecraft built by Langdon St Ives; one of the leading members of the Trismegistus Club, an object that Drake also covets. There was a third party, a mad evangelist (aren’t they all?) by the name of Shiloh, exactly what purpose he served in the book I’m not sure, his presence seemed confusing and was not explained to my satisfaction. I’m sure he seemed like a good idea at the time.

Blaylock’s characterisation frustrated me no end. The nicest thing that can be said about the members of the Trismegistus Club is that, with the possible exception of the unfortunate Bill Kraken, they were bland. Drake and his henchmen, including the evil hunchbacked reanimator; Dr Ignacio Narbondo, were cardboard cut out villains, you half expected them to twirl their moustaches and laugh evilly.

The author seemed to have written book in 3 separate styles, part Victorian mystery, part Frankensteinesque science fiction and then steampunk fantasy. I’ve seen the melding of styles done successfully in the past, but it’s not easy to do and in the case of Homunculus it failed spectacularly, not one of the styles was written particularly well or worked well with the rest of the story. Added to that was a strange and perplexing preoccupation with fish. Barely a chapter went by that the aquatic creatures weren’t mentioned.

The pacing was also uneven, mostly the narrative moved quite slowly, the action sequences were short and sometimes abortive and came at unexpected times, except for the penultimate chapter which was a slapstick chase scene that would not have been out of place in a Keystone Cops silent movie.

In the end I didn’t know why the protagonists did what they did and overall it was not an enjoyable read. I won’t be seeking out more of James P. Blaylock’s work.

If someone would like to read something in this vein, but much better written and more entertaining, I’d recommend Australian YA author Michael Pryor’s Laws of Magic series, currently comprising 4 books (Blaze of Glory, Heart of Gold, Word of Honour & Time of Trial).

Fables: War and Pieces SPOILER ALERT

It had to happen sooner or later and in this the 11th collection the Fables go to war.

In the first issue of the collection; Kingdom Come, drawn by Niko Henrichon, Boy Blue is shipping out, but before he goes there two things he has to do. One is to let the Fables on the Farm know that if they want he'll take them to Prince Ambrose's kingdom of Haven in the Homelands, but there is one catch. In area Haven isn't much bigger than the Farm, and while they'll be free to leave, once they do so they won't be under any protection from the Imperial forces of the Adversary. It's up to the individual Farm Fables to choose. We never find out exactly who does elect to go and who decides to stay, but there are some hysterically funny conversations when the Fables try and choose between the technological advantages of the Mundy world (TV, iPods, the internet) and the lure of being back in the Homelands. The second thing that Blue has to do is tell Rose how he feels about her, especially once Stinky, sorry Brock the Badger explains to him that it's painfully obvious to everyone else that she's head over heels in love with him. Unfortunately by the time Blue gets around to this and he's shipping out Rose decides she doesn't want to open herself up to possible heartbreak if he doesn't return.

The second two issues, a two parter called Skullduggery features Cinderella in her secret agent glory. Pinnochio has been smuggled back from the Homelands. Fabletown's brains trust: Charming, Bigby, King Cole, Beauty, Beast and Frau Totenkinder believe that the puppet is extremely important to the war effort and they want him safely hidden in the Woodlands building. It's up to Cinderella to collect him from Chile and spirit him to New York, battling Imperial agents the entire way.

Once Pinnochio is secured the action shifts to the war in the main story; War and Pieces. Charming resigned as Mayor and gave the position back to Cole so he could take an active part in the war. He's one of the commanders on the Arabian built skyship Glory of Baghdad. Sinbad is the other commander. The skyship is held aloft by flying carpets and armed with modern Mundane weapons, they are kept up to date with what the Empire is doing by the zephyrs. Glory's chief mission is to locate and bomb the gates that connect the various Homelands to each other, which will greatly restrict Imperial troop movements.

The war is also being fought on other fronts. Bigby commands Fort Bravo, their duty is to protect the one remaining magic beanstalk to provide an escape route for the Fables if needed and to destroy it if the Imperial forces look like gaining control. The Farm is being used as a storage and staging depot and the Homelands building is their headquarters. Blue is supply, he uses the Witching Cloak to ferry himself, reinforcements, supplies and news between the various fronts of the war.

Briar Rose has been dropped into the Imperial capital with Hakim, the Arabian Fable guard and one of the 13th floor Fables, the witch Mrs Someone to protect her. When the time is right she will prick her finger and the amplification that Fabletown's magic users have placed on her usual sleeping spell will put everyone0 in the city to sleep and cause it be covered by a near impenetrable thicket of thorns.

Things go smoothly until the Emperor (who is really just a giant armoured puppet) breaks free of the thorns and gets information about Fort Bravo. He travels there and the commander there fires a specially enchanted arrow at Bigby. The arrow should find it's target and kill them. Blue gets in the way and tries to shield Bigby with the cloak. Amazingly the arrow pierces the cloak and wounds both Boy Blue and Bigby, but neither fatally. Bigby takes on the Emperor and uses guile to bring him down and allow Blue to finish him off with the Vorpal Sword.

Meanwhile an Imperial dragon squad has managed to avoid detection by Glory and launches itself in a suicide attack on the flying ship. Glory explodes and Charming and Sinbad barely manage to esscape with their lives and their payload. They're grounded, but they still have one gate to destroy. At the last Charming proves that the stories about him weren't just that, he is courageous and noble and gives his life for the greater cause.

The war is over at great cost. The Fables have captured the Adversary, Pinnochio's father Geppetto. They bring him back to Fabletown at Pinnochio's insistence. I can't see this ending well.

This was a great collection. It was fitting of a big war collection, you could sense that the series had been building to this. One criticism is that there seemed a bit of an anti climactic sense to it. The war just went too smoothly for the Fables. Although the ending was tense there wasn't the same sense of loss we got seeing some of the heroes go down in March of the Wooden Soldiers. Yes, Charming died and did so nobly, but his amoral character never allowed readers to bond to him tightly. The only other Fable that I got any sense of loss about dying was Mr Toad from Wind in the Willows and that was only because I saw his grave at the end, he never spoke and I think we only saw him once in the entire series.

I'm still eager for more!

Gil's All Fright Diner

Gil’s All Fright Diner is A. Lee Martinez’s debut novel and what an enjoyable entry into the field it is, too. If the title doesn’t give it away the book sits comfortably in the subgenre termed Urban Fantasy.
 
Duke and Earl are two good ol’ boys with a difference. Duke is a werewolf and Earl is a vampire. They spend their largely immortal lives (Duke is virtually unkillable and Earl is effectively undead) cruising around North America in Duke’s battered old pickup truck. One night they drop into Gil’s; a seedy looking roadside diner on the outskirts of the one horse town of Rockwood, (it’s never actually stated where Rockwood is, the middle of nowhere is a pretty good guess) for a bite to eat. Before they can finish their meal the diner is attacked by a pack of zombies from the small graveyard situated across the road. Having taken a liking to Gil’s owner; a plucky, plus size woman named Loretta, Duke and Earl decide to stick around to help her out. They find true love (in Earl’s case at least), face death many times and help avert the end of the world in the course of their adventure.
 
Gil’s All Fright Diner is best described as huge fun. The most succinct and accurate description I can come up with is: think of the first Tremors movie, make Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward (coincidentally Fred Ward’s character in that film is named Earl) into a vampire and a werewolf, and change the ‘graboids’ into zombies. There’s a lot more to it than that, but this is a good start. The continual good-natured bickering between Duke and Earl and the situation they found themselves in (which seemed pretty normal to them) reminded me a lot of the genetically-blessed Winchester brothers from the TV show Supernatural, and most of what happened in the book would not have been out of place in an episode of that particular show. There were pop culture references scattered liberally throughout the narrative, and the dialogue was also reminiscent of another supernatural TV cult favourite: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Aside from Duke, Earl and Loretta, readers are also introduced to Rockwood’s laconic law enforcer; Marshall Kopp, who takes putting down zombie cows and capturing animated scarecrows as all part of a day’s work, he also barely blinks when finding out that the two drifters who just rolled into his town are living embodiments of beings best known from old horror films. Tammy or Mistress Lilith, as she prefers to be known; a nubile high school nymphet who is using an old copy of the Necronomicon and pig latin incantations to bring about the end of the world as we know it (check page 134 for an explanation of how some dreadful actors land syndicated TV shows and multi-picture deals. I knew there had to be something evil at work behind that). Tammy’s moronic follower and boyfriend Chad. The cute guardian of the local graveyard; Cathy and her spectral best friend, the feisty terrier Napoleon.
 
In a field that is littered with pistol packing slayers (inevitably female and ‘hot’) and lustful vampires, Gil’s All Fright Diner is a welcome change of pace, it picks up a lot of the current concepts in Urban Fantasy, throws them to the ground and then gives them a severe kicking. Just like the evil-chasing brothers they reminded me of, Duke and Earl put everything to rights in Rockwood and then roll off into the sunset; given Earl’s natural aversion to sunlight, they actually roll off into the starlit night, but it just doesn’t sound as good. There was plenty of scope left for further adventures, but as yet the author has preferred to devote himself to writing standalones. Gil’s has encouraged me to seek out the further unrelated works of Mr Martinez, but I live in hope that we will see the further adventures of Duke and Earl sometime in the future.