Monthly Archives: December 2009

As I mentioned earlier this month, I’m packing to move up to TYG in North Carolina. And being me, most of the packing involves boxes of books. So the question arises, which ones do I leave behind?
I’m not talking about leaving lots—I have maybe 24 boxes (most of them small) so far, I’m maybe half done, and I could squeeze the books I’ve rejected into maybe one more box. But that’s one less box I have to lug to the truck, so it’s worthwhile. And yesterday, I began thinking about my process of rejection.
•Duplicate books, obviously: TYG has The Lord of the Rings and several Harry Potters so I can foresake those.
•Books that were marginal in the first place. Most of Patrick Rothfuss’ Name of the Wind was incredible, but the parts I didn’t like I disliked a lot—so out it goes (if the second volume improves, I’m sure I can find a replacement copy).
•Books I kept because I have more by the same author. In my younger days, getting everything by my favorite authors, even novels I didn’t like, seemed important; not so much now. So loving Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk though I do, Rafael Sabatini’s Strolling Saint will go to charity, as will a number of Philip Jose’ Farmer’s books.
•Mysteries. There are several authors, such as Jonathan Kellerman, where I’ve acquired three or four of their books in sales, and no more. In a kind of reverse-completism, that seems kind of pointless now (and it’s not as if Kellerman or Deborah Knott would be hard to find in libraries) so I’m leaving them. Exceptions being the ones I’m really fond of, such as Erle Stanley Gardner, Emma Lathem or Ngaio Marsh.
•So-so reference books. There are a few on my shelves that had a lot of useful information without being particularly interesting; unless it’s information I really need, they’re history (hahahahaha, am I a punster or what?).
Even at that, it’s going to be a long, hard haul. Good thing TYG is totally worth it.

SHARPE’S PREY: Ridchard Sharpe and the Mission to Copenhagen, 1807 opens with Sharpe having a very dark night of the soul, having lost the fortune he brought back from India and the woman he won in SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR, and discovering the Rifles don’t like jumped-up enlisted men any more than the rest of the army—all of which leads to him volunteering to become minder for an emissary to Denmark only to discover the emissary has plans to sell out to the French. A rather grim one, from Sharpe’s murdering an old foe at the start to having one of his superiors covertly arrange the murder of the heroine near the book’s end, and the bloody assault on Copenhagen in the middle. And that wraps up the prequels.

It’s to Cornwell’s credit that if I didn’t know better, SHARPE’S RIFLES: Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galicia, 1809 would feel like mid-series-the only awkwardness in matching the retcons is that there’s not the least reference to his Dead Love in his pursuit of the Pretty Girl here. Otherwise, this fits very well with Sharpe’s rising arc of self-confidence as he proves himself to the rifles, Harper reluctantly accepts stripes and a Spanish saint rides again. It is a surprise that this great assault on Santiago was pure fiction when all the prequels are set amidst historical battles (as is the next retcon book, SHARPE’S HAVOC). Still, well done.

URANIUM: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World by Tom Zoellner, tells how the useless mining waste known as pitchblende became useful first as a pretty paint, then as a radium source, then in its own right as people started realizing what would happen if two pieces slammed together. This is old hat to me in spots (the Manhattan Project, the forged Niger documents) but does a good job covering the history of uranium mining (and how trendy and cool uranium was 50 years ago) and the black market (concluding that it’s long past the point at which all the uranium can be corralled).

Courtesy of Abebook’s Weird Books Room, we now know there exist:

What’s Wrong With My Snake?

Death in the Pot: The Impact of Food Poisoning in History.

Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Mind Power.

What Not To Wear On a Horse.

The Gangsta Rap Coloring Book.

Semen For Sale.

What To Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor’s Guide.

A History of Orgies.

Is Your Dog Gay?

50 Ways To Use Feminine Hygiene Products in a Manly Manner.

There were quite a few that sounded more sensible and interesting, but I cherry-picked.

DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU picks up Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu series (which I’ve been rereading off and on) a decade after Hand of Fu Manchu, as new narrator Shan Greville discovers that the mysterious beauty hanging around his boss’s Egyptian excavation  is no less than the titular Fah Lo Suee, whose schemes threaten to trigger the next World War until Fu Manchu’s rather deus ex stepping in. Since I know Rohmer tried spining off this series before (the non-Fu Manchu The Golden Scorpion) I wonder if this may not have been another revamp. Fairly entertaining.
TIME OF THE GHOST is Diana Wynn Jones’ story of a drifting ghost who can’t quite remember which of four sisters she is, but slowly comes to realize she’s on the brink of being devoured by an ancient goddess they awakened, unless she can find some way of altering the past before the payment on the pact comes due. The content of this one is more horror and less fantasy than Jones’ usual (the concept of the girls unwittlingly arousing a Dark God is pretty stock) but feels quite different due to the ghostly approach, and it plays on her constant interest in families who aren’t quite what the focal character imagines.
DARK BANQUET: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood Drinking Creatures by Bill Schutt does a fascinating job exploring the lives of vampire bats, leeches, ticks and blood-drinking finches, their evolution and lifestyles. This is strongest on vampire bats, which are Schutt’s professional field of interest, describing the different modes of attack (one species apparently rubs against birds’ brood patch and triggers a nurturing impulse to keep them from leaving while it bites) and the compliexities of their diet choice (since their diet is pure liquid protein, they can’t store it as fat and have to eat half their own weight every night. Well done.
THE MAKING OF THE FITTEST: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean Carroll, is a look at evolution from a genetic perspective, including a species of fish without hemoglobin, the shifting  development of color visuion through vertebrate history and  fossil genes coding for functions no longer used (“We aren’t perfectly designed, because these genes are junk.”). Carroll intended the book as a mix of evidence for evolution, and to the evolutionary studies being done at the genetic level; good, though a lot of this was familiar to me.

But I picked up a bug on Thanksgiving and I haven’t had much energy for creative blogging. So here’s what I read over my leisurely (and for the most part delightful) Thanksgiving vacation:

BLACK AJAX by George MacDonald Fraser dramatizes the life of Tom Molineaux, the freed American slave who became the first Great Black Boxer, coming within inches of the British championship before being undone by his own self-indulgence and the intervention of Harry Flashman’s treacherous father (I think Fraser’s just injecting him into an existing boxing controversy)—though the cast are quite definite that even under the best circumstances, Molineaux was out of his league.A good job capturing the rowdier side of the Regency era, and it’s interesting how much Molineaux’s story resembles that of Jack Johnson a century later.
THE BOOK OF A THOUSAND DAYS by Shannon Hale is an excellent fantasy—based on a Grimm tale but set in a vaguely Mongolian culture—in which a nomad turns princess’s maid just in time to have the king lock her up with her mistress in a sealed tower until said mistress agrees to marry the local Evil Warlord. Only events, of course, take unexpected courses … Very well done.
SOULLESS: The Parasol Protectorate, Book The First by Gwen Carriger, is a Victorian “urban fantasy” (I still don’t get why the definition has narrowed from “fantasy in cities” to “female ghostbuster kicks butt”) in an alt.timeline where vampires and werewolves have their legal rights and a literally soulless spinster discovers that her power to neutralize supernaturals (“To transition from mortal takes a stronger than usual soul—your touch drains some of that off.”) is of great interest not only to the government but to a fanatical league of mad scientists. This didn’t work for me, both because the set-up is a bit too close to Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse) and because there’s more romance and less action than I really wanted (this could easily have been marketed as paranormal romance).
CATASTROPHE PLANET is a good actioner by Keith Laumer in which a Navy veteran struggles to survive after massive tectonic shift collapses most of human civilization, then discovers he’s also the target for a mysterious group of attackers whose agenda may relate to an ancient city that’s been thrust out from under the Antarctic ice cap. While Laumer’s style in tough-guy stories overdoes the similes, he does a good job depicting a ruined world.
STRAYING FROM THE PATH: New Tales of Little Red is the anthology of Red Riding Hood stories I’m in; outside of my own work, my favorite stories were “Scented Danger” (a woman in a futuristic city learns grandma’s house may be more dangerous than the path through the wood), “Wolfwoods Girl” (a male Red and a female wolf—but a much nastier one than mine) and  “A Splash of Red” (a modern-day Red Riding Hood learns both wolf and woodsman are waiting impatiently for the story to begin).
THE EAR, THE EYE AND THE ARM by Nancy Farmer is a good SF/fantasy novel sert in 22nd-century Zimbabwe where the children of a powerful government official are kidnapped, leading to their picaresque efforts to get back home while the eponymous mutant detectives attempt to catch up with them (the fantasy element comes in when this all ties into a battle between Zimbabwe’s ancestral spirits and those of an expansionist neighbor). A fun story, and a very good portrayal of a nonwhite SF setting.
SHARPE’S FORTRESS: Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Gawilhgur, 1803 by Bernard Cornwell follows up on SHARPE’S TRIUMPH as Sharpe learns that officers up from the rank get no respect, his old enemy Hakeswell attempts to finish him off for good and Wellesley attempts to take an impregnable Indian fortress (Sharpe is given the role of spotting Gawilhgur’s weakness, which went to a Scots troop in the real battle). This seems to complete the shaping of Sharpe’s future begun in the previous book as he discovers he really is officer material and begins thinking about this new branch of the infantry that specializes in riflery. Good.