It does not compute that there is not a Wheel of Time Re-read, therefore there is one! Hooray!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 11 of A Memory of Light, in which Egwene almost puts her foot in it, Rand learns about that whole discretion/valor thingy, and Mat really, really, really needs to fire his travel agent.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

I am also thrilled to continue to tell you that the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer! How cool is THAT, seriously.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[Crush! Kill! Destroy! Or Not!]

Ready, set, Re-read! *cannon boom*

Today’s entry covers Chapter 10 of A Memory of Light, in which a mystery is introduced, involuntarily bad decisions are made, and a deeply unfortunate race is begun.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

I am also thrilled to continue to tell you that the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer! How cool is THAT, seriously.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[I know I’ve already quoted WarGames for cut text, which is a damn shame because it would work perfectly here. Dangit]

Oh, joy! The white smoke over your monitor indicates that a new Wheel of Time post has been selected!

(Or, that you need to get a new computer.)

Today’s entry covers Chapters 8 and 9 of A Memory of Light, in which we discuss Papal marriage rites, amazing daredevil feats of DOING THINGS WHILE PREGNANT RUN AWAAAAAY, and who would win in a game of 13x13 Chicken.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

I am also thrilled to continue to tell you that the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer! How cool is THAT, seriously.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[Though if Francis keeps being all crazy and progressive this is a problem which might actually come up]

What makes Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness so distinctive and memorable is the protagonist, Reason Cansino. Reason is Australian, and half-Aborigine, and she has grown up in extremely peculiar circumstances which, naturally, seem completely normal to her. She has grown up on the run, with her mother, Sarafina, but cut off from the rest of her family—especially from her grandmother, Esmerelda. Sarafina has told Reason that Esmerelda believes she’s a witch, but of course there’s no such thing as magic. All the same, she’s taught her some tricks for how to deal with it, like counting Fibonacci numbers in your head. Now Sarafina has been hospitalised and Esmeralda has control of fifteen year old Reason, and the way magic works and whether it can be benign is about to become a huge problem. Reason knows how to live in the desert and how to keep moving on, but she knows almost nothing about the way normal people live....

[Read more: mild world spoilers, no plot spoilers]

Take my hand, dear reader, and let’s take a leisurely stroll down Nostalgia Lane to revisit our roots. The “we” in the “our” is us: nerds, geeks, genre fans. And our roots are the beginnings, those first books or games or sites or images we stumbled upon as children that started the itch, that itch for the fantastic that leads some people to—as adults—spend thousands of dollars cosplaying at Comic Con while others look on in bemused confusion.

I am the person I am today because of the books I read as a child. This is a fact I am absolutely sure of and something I can plot the course of my life by. For me, this can be seen in the general and specific: I work at Tor because for my entire life, my personal bookshelves have been stamped with the little mountain top logo and when I turned my eyes to publishing, there was only one company that sprung to mind. But also on the broad scale, I will always pause by the fairy tchotchkes in truck stops and make a beeline for the genre section in any bookstore, likely until the day I die. F/SF is in my bones.

[Read more]

On the subject of reading as escapism, Tolkien asked C.S. Lewis who was opposed to escape, and answered “Jailers.” Yet seventy-five years after the publication of Tolkien's “On Fairy Stories” where he relates this anecdote, people are still trying to make us feel guilty about our reading.

“What are your guilty reading pleasures?” “Why do you read escapist books?” “Is there any merit to that?” “Is there something wrong with you that you're reading for enjoyment instead of taking your literary vitamins?”

[Read more: I love reading]

John Brunner wrote four major novels, each of them set fifty years ahead of the date when he was writing. In each of them he extrapolated different social and scientific trends and problems he could see in the world of the time in which he was writing and projected theml forward. In Stand on Zanzibar (1968) it’s overpopulation, in The Jagged Orbit (1969) it’s race relations and violence, in The Sheep Look Up (1972) it’s pollution, and in The Shockwave Rider (1975) it’s society speeding past the point where people can keep up—the title is a direct reference to Toffler’s Future Shock.

What people remember about The Shockwave Rider is that it predicts ubiquitous computing—in 1975—and some of the problems that come with it. It’s pre-cyberpunk, and it’s cyber without the punk. Reading it now, it’s impressive what it got right and what it got wrong.

[Read more]

Roses are red, violets are blue, Wheel of Time Re-read… blurbity schmoo.

Today’s entry covers Chapter 7 of A Memory of Light, in which plots are thickened, and I reveal the utter lack of PO-tree in my soul. Oops.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

I am also thrilled to announce that the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer! How cool is THAT, seriously.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.” ~Steven Wright]

Samuel Delany was born in New York on April 1st 1942, which makes today his seventy-first birthday. Happy birthday, Chip!

I could write a considered post about Delany’s significance to the field, but I’m just too enthusiastic about his work to do it in a properly calm way. Delany’s just one of the best writers out there, and he always has been, from his emergence with The Jewels of Aptor (1962) and The Fall of the Towers. (1963-5) to last year’s Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His major work—Babel 17 (1966) (post), The Einstein Intersection (1967), Nova (1968) (post), Dhalgren (1974) (post), Tales of Neveryon (1975), Triton (1976) and Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) (post)—is right at the top of what science fiction has ever achieved.

[Read more]

This is the first post for The Way of Kings re-read. Please understand that the very nature of these posts can be and probably is spoilery, especially in the comments area. So BEWARE, unless you’ve read the chapters discussed you’ll be exposed to a lot of the underpinnings to the story. This post will cover the Prelude only, which, I believe, is the shortest chapter in the whole work, but is also filled with hints of many things to come in the series. This is a long haul story and it shows. Sanderson has already admitted it is planned to be at least 10 novels long and it will be 10 to 15 years, at least, before we get to the end.

If you want the full experience of The Way of Kings I suggest finding a copy of the hardcover, as it has some gorgeous end papers containing two maps of the world of Roshar. The first few pages of the book also include a different, more detailed two-page spread map in B & W. Another feature of the book is an emblem unique to each viewpoint character that is shown at the beginning of the chapters. All in all, this is a fine production that shows the fingers prints of Sanderson’s vision throughout. There are other art features that show up in later chapters as well.

Now, with that all out of the way, please summon your Shardblades and let’s jump into the fray!

[Read more]

All shall fade, perhaps, WOTers, but for now, the Wheel of Time Re-read rolls on!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 6 of A Memory of Light, in which MOIRAAAAAAAAINNNNE. And LAAAAAAAAAAAN.

(squee!)

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

I am also thrilled to announce that the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer! How cool is THAT, seriously.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[Home is behind/ The world ahead/ And there are many paths to tread/ Through shadow/ To the edge of night/ Until the stars are all alight]

You won’t believe how delighted and astonished I am to see A Fugue in Time back in print. It’s been out of print and impossible to find for my whole lifetime. I’ve only owned it myself for a relatively short time (thank you for finding it for me, Janet!), and it’s probably the book I have most frequently read from libraries. It’s in print! And I can therefore recommend it in good conscience!

A Fugue in Time is one of those books I could easily talk about without re-reading, because I love it so much and know it so well. But as soon as I thought about doing that I realised that no, I could give myself the treat of reading it again. It’s not a very long book, after all.

It’s genuinely hard to pin down as to genre. It was published in 1945 and set in 1941, but it covers the years from 1841 to 2000. It’s arguably science fiction and contains science fictional assumptions about the future, though it was published initially and republished now as standard mainstream fiction. What makes it especially interesting is the way it is written as if all that time is taking place at the same moment—the use of tenses and of interwoven plots in different generations of the same family is really quite amazing.

[Read more]

Wheel of Time Re-read is GO!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 5 of A Memory of Light, in which everyone talks FOR A MILLION YEARS, felines fully fail to be funneled, and someone makes A Dramatic Entrance.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[“Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line.” ~Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope]

Pull up a chair, mon frère, and have yourself a Wheel of Time Re-read!

Today’s entry covers Chapters 3 and 4 of A Memory of Light, in which we discuss the efficacy and/or appropriateness of telepathy, soul laundry, and foursomes. Like you do.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[Great, now I’m picturing the Dark One as like a sado-masochistic Mr. Clean. Ironically, brain bleach now needed]

Kit Whitfield’s In Great Waters is a truly unusual book. It’s hard to describe—it’s an alternate history where there are merpeople and that has changed everything. The merpeople—or “deepsman” to give them their proper name—are like a missing link between people and dolphins. They only need to surface to breathe every thirty minutes or so. They have tails. They are immensely strong. They have language but they are sub-sapient, they’re at a very interesting cusp of alien that we don’t see explored very much. They can cross-breed with humanity, and we first see them through the eyes of Henry, who is a cross-breed, or “bastard.” He has a bifurcated tail and can only stay underwater for fifteen minutes, but he can lie and say a shark is coming when he’s being bullied by the other children. It’s a lie that always works, and it works on the adults too. Henry has more cunning than the rest of his tribe but has less strength and power. Then he comes out of the water and begins to discover the world of landsmen and how he can relate to them. We discover it all with him, how similar and how different that world is from our history, what a difference the deepsmen have made.

[Read more: no spoilers]

My post What’s Reading For? developed a lively comment thread in which the majority endorsed my Epicurean view that “Reading is usually the most fun I can have at any given moment.” But there were some very interesting dissenting voices, and I’d like to have a look at them too. There’s a way in which I do read in all of kinds of different ways, and in which they are interesting ways to think about how and why we read.

[Read more: “What’s reading for, part 2”]

Hail, WOTers! I bring you, with probably more phlegm and mucus than is strictly sanitary, a Wheel of Time Re-read!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 2 of A Memory of Light, in which no one asks for permission for anything, and sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes it really isn’t.

I didn’t mean for this to be another one chapter post, but see above re: phlegm and mucus. Also, eye-watering, itching, and hacking up a lung or two, no big. So far 2013 is FIRED as far as my immune system is concerned.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[“Assume a perfectly spherical cow.”]

Say my name, say my name, WOTlings! Or, if you ain’t running game, have a Wheel of Time Re-read!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 1 of A Memory of Light, in which dudebros hang, potential beach frolics are hopefully contemplated, and I am entirely contradictory in my reactions over characters living and/or dying. Because I am COMPLEX, OKAY.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[English and Irish: from a word that originally denoted a wine steward, usually the chief servant of a medieval household, from Norman French butuiller (Old French bouteillier, Latin buticularius, from buticula ‘bottle’). In the large households of royalty and the most powerful nobility, the title came to denote an officer of high rank and responsibility, only nominally concerned with the supply of wine, if at all.]

In the comments to my post “Is There a Right Age to Read a Book,” I noticed an odd thing. I’d written it mostly thinking about the comment that you shouldn’t read Jane Eyre until you’re thirty or Middlemarch until you’re forty, and I was thinking about reading pretty much entirely for pleasure. I was talking about spoiling the enjoyment of a book by reading it too early—or too late. In the comments though, people started talking about prescribing childhood reading and talking about books as if they were vitamins that you should take because they’re good for you. There were comments about the immorality of re-reading because it causes you to miss new books, and comments about learning morality from reading. It all became surprisingly Victorian.

I think this may have happened because I had started off discussing classics, and lots of people have these kinds of feelings about classics, as if they’re things you “ought to” read, educational reading, rather than things you read because you want to. And this led me to think about what I read for, and how that might be different from what some other people seem to read for.

[Read more: what I read for]