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A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

23 May 2009 in Collection, Short Story | 2 comments

By Ursula K. Le Guin.
Begun 09 May 2009; finished 11 May.
For ‘10 Books From My Library’ reading challenge.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Ursula Le Guin’s short stories (also her novels, but especially short stories) need to be read slowly, ruminated, pondered and mulled over. Reading A Fisherman of the Inland Sea at my usual speed — and thinking about it on the fly — nearly caused my brain to implode. Like munching on peppercorns. No-oo. Must take time, chew each paragraph thoroughly, taste all the implications, roll the ideas around in my mind prior to internalizing their consequences. That’s the best (safest?) way to read a Le Guin short story.

So I can only give you an overview of this collection of short stories right now, as I haven’t fully digested it yet. There are seven stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, all fantastical and speculative. Read the rest of this entry »

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Secret Lives

10 May 2009 in Collection, Short Story | No comments

By Jeff VanderMeer.
Read on 01 May 2009.

Jeff VanderMeer is establishing himself as one of my favourite authors of short fiction. Secret Lives is a collection of “biographical” vignettes about real people that VanderMeer has met and knows relatively well. But instead of writing real biographies, he has imagined “secret lives” for all these people that are as varied as their real professions. And since VanderMeer is a writer of weird fiction, the secret lives are appropriately weird. They range from the merely off-beat to the completely fantastical.

Some randomly-selected examples of secret lives from the collection:

  • one character learns how to arrange his attire and attitude such that he becomes invisible to the eye;
  • another exploits hidden passages between our world and others, as shortcuts to and from his destinations;
  • another discovers fragments of a mysterious nation, and becomes obsessive about finding it;
  • yet another attempts to “dance the human genome” in hopes of being recognized for his originality.

There are 36 vignettes in total, and all very imaginative; I never found them contrived or “weird for weird’s sake.” I read Secret Lives in one sitting the day I got it, and enjoyed it thoroughly. VanderMeer not only has a fertile imagination, he is also a versatile writer who’s delved into various modes of storytelling and narration. (Case in point: the varied stories in City of Saints and Madmen.) I’ve been following VanderMeer’s writing for some time, especially his short fiction, and I’m looking forward to reading what he has in store next… as well as getting down to his novels Veniss Underground, Shriek: An Afterword and Finch.

I bought Secret Lives directly from VanderMeer himself (a worthwhile addition to my library!). At the time of writing, I believe he’s still selling copies via this page.

The Sandman: first five collections

26 January 2009 in Collection, Illustrated | 1 comment

By Neil Gaiman.
Being Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll’s House, Dream Country, Season of Mists and A Game of You.
Begun 02 Jan 2009; finished 09 Jan.

My (rather poor) excuse for not having read The Sandman earlier is that I couldn’t figure out where the story began. A friend kindly solved my impasse by lending me the first five story arcs. I won’t give a synopsis since the stories very complex; Wikipedia and others can explain it better.

I’d only read one work by Neil Gaiman prior to this, American Gods. That book revealed what a masterful author he was, and that fact was reinforced in The Sandman. Gaiman is a very imaginative creator, a careful writer. Commencing each story arc was like opening a window into a new land, which gradually unfolded before my eyes. The deeper I went into the story, the more detailed each character became; each element of the story — character, setting, idea, ambience — became sharper and more vivid, intertwined with each other in complex patterns; finally all the threads begun were connected, carefully tied off, and resolved into a marvellously detailed tapestry of story.

Gaiman takes his time to spin the tale, and the luxuriant slowness of the storytelling was tangible: I would surface out of the story feeling as if hours and hours had passed. (And sometimes, that was true.) Indeed, all the Sandman stories had a dreamy, faraway, mythical ambience — very fitting for stories surrounding the immortal Dream and his oneiric kingdom. Gaiman’s world-view is also quite evident throughout the stories, and some appear to me as vehicles to convey a particular message concerning the world. Even though I read The Sandman purely for the story, I’m sure I could’ve obtained some sort of moral message from it.

As for the stories themselves, they were wonderfully told, and Gaiman is undoubtedly a talented author and extremely clever at weaving mythology, history and fiction into new creations. But his stories did not move me, and whilst they were absorbing and worth reading, I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed them. So I’m currently impartial to The Sandman, and remain ambivalent about Gaiman as an author. If reading is a love affair, I’m still waiting for him to woo me.

So that’s all I have to say about The Sandman. This review definitely doesn’t do the graphic novels justice; there’s so much more to them and I’ve only given terse coverage of how I felt about the stories, but in this first pass I didn’t bother to read deeper into the philosophies and ideologies of The Sandman. I’m glad I read them, but the rest of the series isn’t particularly high on my list.

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The Chronicles of the Black Company

26 January 2009 in Collection, Novel | No comments

By Glen Cook.
Being The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose.
Begun 18 Dec 2008; finished 28 Dec.
Review written on 01 Jan 2009.

Overarching plot points and themes are discussed here. Nothing specifically spoilerish, but it may take away some of the fun of discovering the story for yourself. Don’t follow the cut if you don’t want it spoiled!

I’m not sure how I got wind of Glen Cook in the first place — Steven Erikson’s praise of the Black Company series as the source of inspiration for his Malazan Book of the Fallen definitely played a part — but I bought The Chronicles of the Black Company omnibus from Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s book sale, and read it over my vacation break.

This omnibus collects The Black Company, Shadows Linger and The White Rose, which together form one story arc of the Black Company’s employment with the evil tyrannical power known as the Lady, the campaigns and wars they fought against the Rebel (the Lady’s opposition), and their sudden betrayal to come under the banner of her nemesis the White Rose. In the meantime, the Company marches all over the land, engages in numerous battles, gets tangled in political intrigue, military insurgency and rebellious machinations, all the while remaining under the shadow of not just the Lady and her minions, but also a greater, more sinister evil. This military sword-and-sorcery fantasy is told in first person by Croaker, the Company physician and historian, who happens to have the unique privilege of being close to the Lady and her activities.

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The Wind’s Twelve Quarters

10 January 2009 in Collection, Short Story | No comments

By Ursula K. Le Guin.
Begun 01 Oct 2008; finished 05 Oct.
Review written 26 Oct 2008.

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters is a farrago of Ursula Le Guin’s earliest short fiction: a handful of the most hard/’technical’ science fiction that she would ever write (that nevertheless also have their sociological commentary), the seminal stories that eventually developed into the Earthsea and Hainish series, and the rest, all psychomyths in SF, modern or historical setting, which ruminate over various aspects of human nature and our relationship with each other and with technology. Several of her short stories are also platforms for Le Guin’s political and social ideologies, preludes of her novels which discuss ideology in greater depth.

This is the first book in my quest to read all of Le Guin’s short fiction. All the stories in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters already display Le Guin’s characteristic writing voice: sober, contemplative, sometimes whimsical, sometimes dryly humourous, melancholy but not pessimistic. This collection gives a fine overview of Le Guin’s versatility and imagination, and I enjoyed many of them. My favourites:

  • Semley’s Necklace is one of the most sorrowful tales I’ve ever read. How I wish it had a happy ending!
  • April in Paris is a light-hearted and moving story about time travel;
  • I first read Nine Lives in another anthology (and it was my first encounter with Le Guin), and it remains a masterful story about loneliness and connecting with people;
  • The Stars Below is a moving tale about an astronomer-in-hiding who learns to use his skills to live and navigate underground;
  • Direction of the Road is a whimsical and very clever story about relativity from a tree’s perspective;
  • The Field of Vision isn’t one of my favourites, but it’s worth mentioning because it was a mystery-of-sorts, and had an astonishing conclusion - one that you’d not typically see in a SF story.

One collection down, many more stories to go!

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Lay Thoughts of a Dean

8 January 2009 in Collection, Non-Fiction | No comments

By William R. Inge.
Begun 07 Sep 2008; finished 16 Sep.
For the Author A-Z Challenge.
Review written on 18 Dec 2008.

Lay Thoughts of a Dean is a collection of short letters, essays and talks by William Ralph Inge on various non-theological topics. Inge is an English professor of divinity of Cambridge, Anglican priest and theologian who penned the bulk of these essays circa 1910s to 1930s. Topics he discusses range the gamut: from letter writing to and schoolboy pranks; English manners, world-view and etiquette; England’s cultural relationship with America; socialism and Europe’s political climate; musings on the Great War; media and entertainment; and the activities of Christians and the Anglican church. All of which are serious and whimsical to varying degrees, thoughtful and intelligent, yet bite-sized and easy to read.

At this time of writing I don’t remember any of the content of Inge’s essays, save that they provide a fascinating snapshot of the moral and political climate of that first one-third of the 20th century. Inge’s essays are the thoughtful sort that comes from an intellectual and religious person, so they are mixed with rationality and a high moral standard. I largely agree with his thoughts on family and values; I recall not agreeing so much on some of his political stances, especially regarding socialism and the political climate of contemporary Europe — but this could be due to hindsight, after witnessing World War II and its impact. On that note, the impact of the Great War on Inge’s thoughts was profound and is evident in his essays, which were almost all written within a decade of the War’s end. I also enjoyed his essays on lifestyle and language: letter writing, schoolboy pranks, and English metaphors and puns — these were clearly humourous, and a fascinating insight into English culture of that time.

This review is vague on specifics because I don’t remember them. But I definitely enjoyed reading this collection of essays: they were thoughtful, intelligent, and most importantly, gave me a definitive insight into England in the early 20th century, and one cognoscente’s view of the world. Not a bad book to have picked up, considering I needed to fill in letter “I” for the Author A-Z challenge!

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The Earthsea series

21 October 2008 in Collection, Novel | 1 comment

By Ursula K. Le Guin.
Being, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales From Earthsea and The Other Wind.
Begun c. Apr 2008; finished c. Aug.

All these are novels except for Tales From Earthsea, which a collection of short stories and world-building notes, including the novella Dragonfly. The novels loosely follow the lifespan of Ged, the last Archmage of Earthsea, from his youth in A Wizard of Earthsea (reviewed) to old age in The Other Wind. The first three books centre around Ged and his deeds, which significantly change the world and himself. The spotlight shifts away from him in the latter two novels, which are more concerned with the changes in Earthsea that were set in motion by his deeds.

As usual, I’m not terribly concerned with the characters and stories per se, but prefer to examine the themes and motives that underlie the novels. So I’ll primarily discuss the series as a whole, and touch on individual books now and again. The review may ’spoil’ Earthsea in a universal, thematic way, so you may not want to read this if you want to know absolutely nothing about the books. A spoiler concerning Tehanu (both story and character) is duly marked.

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Orsinian Tales

20 October 2007 in Collection, Short Story | No comments

By Ursula K. Le Guin.
Begun 08 Sep 2007; finished 14 Sep.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
–Jessamyn West

Ursula K. Le Guin would rank alongside Ray Bradbury and Jorge Luis Borges as a “everyday magic” storyteller, and alongside Lord Dunsany and J.R.R. Tolkien as myth-spinner (further discussed in the review of A Wizard of Earthsea). I fell in love with the fantastical worlds of Changing Planes (also my first Le Guin), and love her short stories even more after reading Orsinian Tales.

The world of Orsinian Tales is our own, and has all appearances of being set in some Central or East European nation, but the details are never clear. There is no magic or clearly “fantasy” element in any story; some of them are practically about ordinary people living their ordinary lives. Yet there is an atmosphere of the fantastic, the otherworldly, the timeless in those stories. (Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury is just the same.) In them, colours appear a little more luscious and vibrant, ordinary sounds contain a bit of music, and the most insignificant or passing moments take on great significance and specialness. Bradbury and Le Guin have this amazing ability to see beauty and wonder in the smallest, most mundane event — this is the “everyday magic” that I speak of.

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