Releases I'm Ready For, Spring 2016

This season, the two books I'm most eagerly anticipating share an unusual characteristic for me: neither one is fiction.

→ HAMILTON: THE REVOLUTION by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (April 12) explores the making of the amazing musical (which I'm listening to right now and playing inside my head always). From advance coverage of the book, I gather it contains an annotated libretto, photographs, interviews, and essays that tell the story of both the show and the history behind it. I'm not sure if I'll dive into this and read nonstop or if I'll be satisfied to enjoy it gradually, but either way, I'm glad I no longer have to wait for it.

→ HUNGER: A MEMOIR OF (MY) BODY by Roxane Gay (originally June 14, but may be changing): I am here for anything Roxane Gay writes. Her debut novel, AN UNTAMED STATE is a beautiful and brutal read. The essay collection she released the same year, BAD FEMINIST, takes a thought-provoking look at a range of personal, political, and pop cultural topics. The new memoir focuses on food, weight, and body image, and I'm sure it will be another brilliant and difficult book.

While I haven't been waiting with the same excitement for any of this spring's novels, I'm intrigued by several upcoming releases that I'll be sampling and potentially reading. June 7 is a popular publication date, so I won't get to all of these immediately!

→ THE REGIONAL OFFICE IS UNDER ATTACK! by Manuel Gonzales (April 12): A few years ago, I read and recommended Gonzales's short story, "One-Horned & Wild-Eyed". I never got around to his collection, THE MINIATURE WIFE AND OTHER STORIES, though it's still on my radar. In this debut novel, a "coterie of super-powered female assassins protects the globe from annihilation", which sounds like fun.

→ IMAGINE ME GONE by Adam Haslett (May 3) is a family story about mental health, which is relevant to my interests. That the novel spans decades and is told from multiple points of view also gets my attention.

→ THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO by Cathleen Schine (June 7) is another multigenerational family drama with some focus on depression. The title comes from a Philip Larkin poem with a special place in my heart.

→ THE ROOT: A NOVEL OF THE WRATH & ATHENAEUM by Na'amen Tilahun (June 7) is an urban fantasy set in San Francisco. I don't usually read this genre, but I know Na'amen from FOGcon and am always thrilled to hear him speak on any panel.

→ THE GILDED YEARS by Karin Tanabe (June 7) is a novel based on a real black woman who passed as white in order to attend Vassar at the end of the nineteenth century, an era when her race would have excluded her from admission.

→ HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi (June 7): I've already encountered several enthusiastic reviews of this debut that begins in eighteenth-century Ghana and tracks the lives and legacies of two women with very different fates. Gyasi will be appearing at the Bay Area Book Festival in June.

And speaking of the Bay Area Book Festival, the extensive schedule of events has just been posted, and tickets are now available to guarantee seating at individual sessions. That's one more source of anticipation for me this season!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Andrew Heisel at Electric Literature investigates the history of the novel's first sentence: "Now we laud this and many other great sentences, but no reviewer at the time thought anything of Brontë's choice. No one in America was excited, four years later, about Melville's classic opener to Moby Dick. Nobody had a thing to say about the wonderful beginning to Pride and Prejudice. Nobody was bothered by the pedestrian beginning to The Scarlet Letter, or in love with the beginnings of Middlemarch or A Tale of Two Cities, or unimpressed by that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

March Reading Recap

Last month's reading was an excellent and varied set of books:

→ THE NEST by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Leo is the oldest of the four adult Plumb siblings, and he's screwed up the future for all of them. His brother and sisters have been relying on their shares of The Nest, the family trust fund, to save them from financial troubles they've been trying to conceal. Shortly before the money was to be distributed, their mother drained the fund to bail Leo out of a costly substance-fueled car accident. Now he's home from rehab, and the others want to know how he's going to pay them back when he has no resources, or at least none he'll admit to.

Dysfunctional family drama is my favorite type of story, and this novel is one of the best I've read in the genre. The plot hinges on money, but it's really about siblings who haven't been close forced to come together in a crisis and figure out how they actually feel about one another. Each of the Plumbs is a complex, uniquely flawed character stumbling through a specific set of problems. They're brought to life by Sweeney's vibrant dialogue, well-chosen details, and funny observations. Even the story's smaller characters are fully developed and given their moment in the spotlight.

I just loved this book all the way through. I wished the best for every character, though several were often jerks, and I was satisfyingly moved by the story's resolution. I'm also thrilled to see wonderful things happening to this wonderful novel.

→ THE SELLOUT by Paul Beatty opens with the narrator in the chambers of the Supreme Court, waiting for a hearing on the case that has made him a target of national outrage. He's a modern day black man from Los Angeles who stands accused of owning a slave and implementing racial segregation in his inner city community, with the surprising aim of bringing people together. The narrative then jumps back to recount how the whole bizarre situation arose. It's a rambling, inventive tale written in biting prose that's sometimes uncomfortably funny and sometimes simply uncomfortable.

The story builds slowly, with most of the focus on the dynamics of the unconventional characters. Our protagonist (often nicknamed but never named) is a skilled urban farmer trying to carry on the legacy of his radical psychologist father while also recovering from his childhood as a subject of relentless behavioral experiments. He accidentally acquires a slave in the elderly Hominy Jenkins, who was once a bit player in the Little Rascals and still misses the simplicity of old-fashioned racism. The town's segregation begins as an attempt to cheer up Hominy, with help from the narrator's unrequited love, a bus driver who always speaks her mind. As the project grows, they enlist more co-conspirators and face opposition from a local talk show intellectual who seeks to end racism by rewriting classic literature in an ever more ridiculous fashion.

I laughed frequently while reading THE SELLOUT, and I cringed just as often. The story's absurdity couches nonstop commentary on the realities of racism in America. The result is an intense and very effective novel.

→ INTO THIN AIR is Jon Krakauer's riveting account of climbing Mount Everest with an expedition that ended in disaster. Krakauer had extensive climbing experience, though none at high altitude, when he was sent by Outside magazine to climb with a commercial guiding company and write about the operations and effects of commercial expeditions. When a severe storm hit the mountain as several groups attempted the summit on May 10, 1996, numerous climbers were overcome by the wind and cold and became lost for hours, and eight never made it back to safety.

The book is an engrossing mix of memoir and reporting. Krakauer describes his own experience during the weeks of the expedition while also presenting the stories of the people he climbed with. Based on interviews conducted later, he reconstructs the disaster from the perspectives of everyone involved. Woven into this narrative are fascinating tidbits about the history of climbers on Everest as well as discussions of ethical issues surrounding guided ventures that make Everest available to less skilled climbers.

Krakauer's effective writing conveys the scale, difficulty, and thrill of the climb, and he never shies away from addressing the risk and unpleasantness involved. He writes with moving candor about his own guilt over the harm he may have caused through his presence as a journalist and by his actions and mistakes during the disaster. The conscientiously detailed account explains the how and why of everything that happened, both when the expedition was operating normally and when catastrophe struck. This is a fantastically executed work of narrative nonfiction.

I first read INTO THIN AIR ten years ago, and I was inspired into a rare reread after watching Everest, a movie that dramatizes the same events. Krakauer has criticized the film for getting things wrong, including his own portrayal, but it's pretty accurate for a movie, and it does a good job of showing the challenge of the climb and the horror of the disaster. Though I don't read much nonfiction, I've counted this book as a favorite since my initial reading, and I found it just as excellent this time around. I should remember to make time for more of the great narrative nonfiction I hear about.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Catapult, Tony Tulathimutte shares tricks to keep things short in your writing: "The most useful and underrated technique is what's sometimes called the 'scalpel edit': clipping and nipping your manuscript line by line. Once I started focusing solely on lowering the word count, everything looked baggy. My first draft contained the line: 'Up to a certain degree he felt there was nothing wrong with disliking work,' which ended up as: 'Still, it beat real work.'"

Exciting Week of Author Events

This week, two authors with exciting new releases appeared in my area, and I made the effort to break out of my usual routine (sit at desk, then sit on couch) and attend. I'm so glad I did, because both events were a ton of fun!

First, Charlie Jane Anders visited Google to talk about her wonderful ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, which I raved about last month. She read a well-chosen excerpt that introduces readers to the characters, the San Francisco setting, and the Caddy, an artificially intelligent smartphone-like device that plays an important role in the story. Since Google is likely to develop any such technology, the audience was delighted by the appropriate and funny selection.

In the interview that followed, Anders talked about building the world of the novel, which incorporates both science fiction and fantasy. When the interviewer asked which of those she'd prefer if could only have one, Anders said she'd rather live in a world with magic, provided she could be one of the witches. They discussed the decision to set the book in San Francisco, the deleted scenes she's been posting online, literary influences, and the guest list for her ideal author dinner party (Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing, and Michael Chabon).

This event was filmed and is available online, so you can enjoy the reading and conversation as well.

The following evening, Helen Simonson appeared at Kepler's as part of her book tour for the just-released THE SUMMER BEFORE THE WAR. I started reading the book while waiting for the event, and I was immediately curious about the entertaining cast of characters in an English seaside town right before World War I begins.

Simonson's excellent first novel, MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND, is charming and funny, so it was no surprise to discover the same description applies to the author. She was interviewed by Tracy Guzeman, author of THE GRAVITY OF BIRDS, and the discussion was fascinating.

Simonson talked about the terror of writing a second novel after the astonishing success of her debut. She faced this terror by setting herself an even bigger challenge, working with multiple points of view, a historical setting, and the high stakes of war. The book is set in her Sussex hometown, but she's lived in the US for 30 years, which she feels gives her the necessary distance to write about the place she grew up. Her novels start with characters and no solid plot in mind, so she writes to see what story develops, always trying "to zag when expected to zig". Simonson confessed that her writing process is one of avoidance and that she often stays away from the keyboard for days, but she's realized important story work happens in her head as she procrastinates and that she's more comfortable thinking things out before committing them to the page. This "creative procrastination" seems to work just fine for her, and I'm eager to read more of the new novel.

I hope to continue getting myself to author events when the opportunity arises. I'm looking forward to a big event in a couple of months, the second Bay Area Book Festival, which will be June 4 and 5 in Berkeley. I had a great time last year and am waiting with interest to see this year's schedule of events in a few weeks. For now, there's a sneak peek available, and guests include Charlie Jane Anders, Sherman Alexie, Jonathan Lethem, and many more.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Literary Hub, Ed Tarkington describes his journey to publication in How I Gave Up On The Great American Novel And Got A Book Deal: "All the arch cleverness and literary pyrotechnics in the world are worth nothing if you aren't willing to put a little blood on the page--or a lot. For so long I’d been afraid to be vulnerable, to strip away the artifice and get down to the truth of what matters to me, to stop worrying about being cool and write from a space of deep longing, a place rooted in memory and desire and, above all, love. I'm not afraid of that any more."

Crime Doesn't Pay

In this series investigating my childhood writing, we've lingered in the eighth grade period, studying just a few of the many works to come out of that year's English class. Who could forget the mood of frustration evoked by Mental Turmoil Aboard Flight 103 and its ill-considered revision? Who is eager to forget the soul-bearing honesty of An Introduction to Me and the startling revelations about shopping?

Now it's time to examine the final composition from that class, a 1600-word story that's likely the longest and most complex piece of fiction I'd produced at that point. The last month of school was spent on the various stages and drafts of this assignment, which was introduced this way: "A professional author often uses his/her personal experiences as a source for his/her writing and asks him/herself, 'What if?' Remember one of your own experiences and ask yourself, 'What if?'"

As my story's inspiration, I drew on an event I'd recently witnessed while visiting a different school. I saw two friends pulled aside by a teacher after class and questioned about test answers that suggested there had been cheating. I never learned the truth of the situation or what happened next, so I imagined a possible chain of events for this story. The way things play out in my fictional version doesn't strike me as all that believable today, but it's also not absurdly unrealistic.

I have a similarly ambivalent reaction to everything else in the story. This is not an amazing piece of fiction. It's packed with cliches both linguistic and situational, starting with the title, which doesn't even fit. Much of the dialogue is unnecessary, causing the story to drag, and I'm not surprised to discover that every pointless exchange survived intact from the first draft to the last.

On the other hand, there's a definite, if plodding, competence to the writing. The plot escalates through a series of events across multiple scenes and then reaches a conclusion. Characters develop. The premise and execution deliver a modicum of suspense. It's really not bad for a 14-year-old, and there's little in the story for me to mock.

The lack of childish ridiculousness means this work isn't all that interesting to read, but if you'd like to observe my maturation as a writer, please enjoy.

Crime Doesn't Pay

"Whadja get?" pestered Jennifer, sitting to my right at our lab desk.

"I haven't gotten mine back yet, dummy," I teased, shoving her lightly.

"Don't call me 'dummy'," she said, practically shoving me out of my chair.

"What did you get?" I asked.

"An eighty."

"Eighty? I can call you dummy if I want to."

"Here, Allison," said Ms. Corbin, handing me my science test.

Jennifer saw my grade.

"You got an eighty, too," she shrieked. "Dummy!"

The girl in front of us turned around and gave us a cold, hard stare. Jennifer stared back at her with her eyeballs almost popping out. Then she turned back to me and moved her mouth like a fish to go with her bug eyes. I laughed.

"Allison and Jennifer, could I see you after class?" requested Ms. Corbin, as the bell rang.

FOGcon 2016 Report

I spent the weekend at another fun and exhausting round of the Friends of the Genre con. I'm proud to say I've attended every previous FOGcon (writeups from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015), and I always enjoy getting together with fellow speculative fiction fans to discuss books and other topics of interest to the SF community.

This year's programming seemed to skew toward the other topics. I attended several panels on science, technology, and language that cited few or no fictional examples, focusing instead on what exists in the real world and what might emerge in the future. For instance, "The Developing Reality of Intelligent Machines" considered improvements in artificial intelligence and their implications for society. "From Caterpillar to Butterfly" covered unusual biological phenomena that occur in nature, with some talk of how these could inspire alien characters. All these panels were interesting, lively discussions, but I was surprised at the end of the weekend to realize I hadn't collected nearly as many book recommendations as usual.

A few panels did concentrate solidly on fiction, lengthening my to-read list. I was especially excited about "Domestic Fantasy", a discussion of works that feature families and domestic matters. Honored guest Jo Walton was one of the participants, and she and the rest of the panelists had fascinating things to say about how domesticity is handled in speculative fiction. "The Ethics of Magic" was another fun topic, examining stories that address or ignore the consequences of using magic. I was also happy to wrap up the convention with a celebration of the life and work of honored ghost Octavia Butler.

Overall, my con was less focused on the programming than usual. I wasn't signed up to participate in any panels myself, and I skipped a few sessions in favor of socializing or sleeping in. I guess I say this every year, but the best part of the weekend was hanging out with cool people. I shared food, drinks, and laughter with good friends. I started chatting with Jo Walton after a panel we'd both attended, and we wound up in an entertaining conversational group for the next hour. More people showed up for karaoke than ever before, and I sang my voice out late into the night.

FOGcon came right after a wonderful, relaxing vacation to Maui, so my life has been full of travel and excitement lately. It's time to turn my writing brain back on and see if all these adventures produced any story ideas.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Electric Literature, Kevin Pickard considers the use, or significant avoidance, of pop culture references in fiction: "But, on the other side of the debate, novels have started popping up and earning the 'timeless' or 'out of time' approbation. What is especially interesting about this is that, in at least two examples, the timelessness seems to go against the novel's ultimate project."

February Reading Recap

I spent more of February reading than I really intended, because there was too much good stuff to read! I enthusiastically recommend all of these, which include two of the books I've been anticipating and two by authors who will be honored at FOGcon, coming up March 11-13.

→ Ted Chiang has famously published just 15 stories during his 25-year career, but his work has earned about the same number of major speculative fiction awards. STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS collects his first eight stories, and they're all incredible. Each has a fascinating, unexpected premise unlike anything else in the collection, and that premise develops through fascinating, unexpected plot turns and careful prose. The varied subjects imagined by Chiang include the Tower of Babel, superhuman intelligence, golems, mathematical abstractions, and beauty.

One concept he returns to several times -- and it's a great one -- is the idea of taking some historical scientific or religious theory and constructing a logical world in which it's true. (I'm linking to online versions of the stories, but all have wonky formatting, so you should really get the collection.) In "Tower of Babylon", the tower to the vault of heaven is a reality, and after generations of construction, that barrier in the sky has been reached. The story details all the nearly plausible logistics of building a tower with technology available in ancient times, and every development in the story is a delightful surprise. "Seventy-Two Letters" establishes a version of Victorian England in which two beliefs from the past are scientific realities. These intriguing pieces of worldbuilding seem initially unconnected, but by the end of the story, they combine into a brilliant conclusion.

A couple of other standouts from the collection involve relationships affected by shocking discoveries. In "Division by Zero", a marriage falls apart after a mathematical breakthrough. "Story of Your Life" is a heartbreaking family drama revolving around alien linguistics and another concept I can't reveal that makes it even more relevant to my reading interests. This last story is currently being made into a movie. To echo Chiang himself, I hope it's good!

Ted Chiang will be an honored guest at FOGcon, and I can't wait to hear him discuss his stories and ideas.

→ LOVECRAFT COUNTRY by Matt Ruff: Atticus is an avid science fiction reader who's recently back from serving in Korea. After several unpleasant months working in the Jim Crow South, he's eager to return home to Chicago, where his beloved uncle, a fellow genre reader, runs an agency for black travelers and publishes the Safe Negro Travel Guide. Atticus has a more strained relationship with his father, but when his dad mysteriously vanishes, Atticus sets out to find him. Accompanied by his uncle and a childhood friend with a lot more survival skills than the men expect of her, Atticus journeys to an isolated Massachusetts town in a dangerous sundown county. There they discover a shady group of white men, practitioners of an ancient form of magic, who aim to enlist Atticus for nefarious purposes.

The book is structured as a series of thrilling tales, with a perfect pulp cover to match. Each section focuses on a different member of the story's two central families as they grapple with an obstacle, like the new homeowner fighting off attacks from both white neighbors and a poltergeist. At first the connections between the problems are unclear, but the threads cleverly come together to reveal the vast conspiracy threatening Atticus. I enjoyed how this structure provided a chance to spend time with each character as they followed their passions and wrestled personal demons, and I loved seeing how each new piece of the puzzle fell into place.

This novel is full of horrors. Some take a supernatural form, running the gamut from possessed doll to tentacled monster. Others manifest as segregation, discriminatory laws, and other forms of racism. Ruff deftly combines the two types in a way that never seems clunky or preachy, with each abomination an essential part of the plot. Detailed research into the 1950s and earlier eras enriches the story, as do a delightful cast, imaginative plot developments, and characteristic Ruffian wit. LOVECRAFT COUNTRY delivered everything I was hoping for from one of my favorite authors!

→ THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT by Alexander Chee: Lilliet Berne, a celebrated soprano in 1882 Paris, is approached by a writer who hopes she'll originate a role in his new opera. The offer is thrilling, yet bewildering, because the story he's written is based upon details of Lilliet's own life, long-kept secrets that only a few people know. As she sets out to uncover the mystery of who betrayed her, the reader learns of her remarkable past and the many times she remade herself.

Life's Been Good

I thought it was time for an update on all the exciting things happening around here, for some values of "all", "exciting", and "here".

→ FOGcon is in two weeks! I'm getting excited for great discussions of speculative fiction, the opportunity to meet and celebrate this year's honored authors, hangout time with friends, and karaoke.

→ I've been reading a lot, including my anticipated new releases as those books have come out. The ones published so far have brought me much reading pleasure, and I'm looking forward to the two appearing next month.

→ As tends to happen, more reading correlates with less writing, but I have been noodling around with a few things. We'll see if anything emerges.

→ Cleaning up my writing room is also occupying a bunch of my time. I have sorted and filed mountains of paperwork. I wish this involved digging out amusing treasures to share, but it's almost all dull stuff like bank statements. The one entertaining thing I unearthed was my commentary on the refinancing process.

→ I finished knitting another sweater! The simple, one-piece pattern for this project meant I was able to knit it in just two months, unlike my first sweater, which I dawdled over for a year and a half. The new sweater is extremely warm and cozy, and I enjoyed snuggling inside it on the blustery, rainy day after I completed it. Every day since then, it's been in the 70s, and my sweater lies here unworn. I probably shouldn't complain (but sometimes I still do).

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Tanwi Nandini Islam shares a behind-the-scenes look at the process of arriving at The Perfect Book Cover: "For the cover of my debut novel Bright Lines, I knew I wanted something abstract, geometric, bold, and iconic. What I didn’t want to see on my cover: mangoes, saris, boats, the colors green and red, or stock photos of sad-faced-sexy-faced brown women. I didn't want cultural tokens to be stand-ins for nuanced, beautiful artwork." (Thanks, The Millions!)

The Gift of Love

I don't normally mark Valentine's Day, but my eighth grade English class did, so this year I have a thematic piece of childhood writing to share in honor of the holiday.

The assignment was to write an essay or poem inspired by Valentine's Day. I guess song lyrics also counted as acceptable:

The Gift of Love
to be sung to the tune of
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"

I'll give the world the gift of love
This St. Valentine's Day.
The feeling of being cared for
Will never go away.
 
This love will envelop the earth
And fill each empty space.
Everyone everywhere will smile,
All people will embrace.
 
There'll be no shouts of anger heard
And all fighting will cease.
All guns will drop from people's hands:
The world will be at peace.

I thought it was nice I came up with an interpretation of the assignment that avoided nearly-fourteen-year-old romantic angst about, say, Justin who sat in front of me in science class and made funny jokes. I started imagining a teacher having to read dozens of such compositions, so then I wasn't too surprised when I read the complete instructions and saw a variety of suggested topics entirely unrelated to romantic love. The sole opportunity to muse on a crush offers, "If you wish, you may answer this question without giving the name of the person."

My poem was an answer to number 8, "If you could give the world a valentine, what you would give and why?" Several others involve gifts, including the somewhat surreal "Pretend you are a valentine gift. What are you? To whom will you be given and why?" The rest relate to hearts, most notably "If your heart were visible for others to see, what would you want us to see?" I really hope some smart aleck wrote about regular beats and properly functioning blood vessels. I'm surprised that smart aleck wasn't me. I bet Justin would have taken the bait.

The instructions indicate we wrote the rough drafts of these compositions during class, then revised them for homework. I approached the editing more enthusiastically than with most of the other assignments, perhaps either because I wrote the first draft with less preparation or because it was poetry:

January Reading Recap

I started off this year with a fabulous month of reading, and I have four strong novels to recommend:

→ ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders: As a child, Patricia discovers she's a witch who can speak to animals. Laurence builds a very modest time machine from complicated instructions he finds online. When they meet during the hell of eighth grade, Patricia is struggling to understand her mysterious magical powers, Laurence is inventing more advanced machines, and both of them are tormented by peers and parents who want to squash their talents. The two outcasts are drawn together into a complicated friendship that ends badly. By the time they find each other again in San Francisco ten years later, Patricia is a powerful witch and Laurence a technological wunderkind. The state of the world is grim, and they're both determined to save it, but their approaches may be in cataclysmically dangerous opposition.

This book is a wild ride through magic and science and love and the looming apocalypse. The characters are wonderful and complex, not just Patricia and Laurence, but also their eccentric witch and scientist friends and their intriguing antagonist (and one-time guidance counselor). The story kept me turning pages when I really should have been getting some work done, and it kept me guessing through many unexpected plot developments that led to a satisfying conclusion.

While Patricia and Laurence live in a world where fantasy and science fiction are real (though not widely recognized), they also occupy territory very familiar to me, where people problem-solve over dinner, binge-watch Red Dwarf, and reflexively make Doctor Who references. I love the way Anders loves and writes about this world and blends it seamlessly with the imagined elements. There's additionally an exaggerated, cartoony aspect to the story world that bothered me during the early parts of the book, but later it either dropped away or stood out less.

The quirky prose fits perfectly with the story's embrace of different types of weirdness, and I highlighted so many sentences that made me smile. As kids, while the characters people-watch at the mall, "Laurence thought the two women in smart pumps and nylons were life coaches who were coaching each other, creating an endless feedback loop." At a Chinese restaurant, "the General Tso's Chicken was a little too general." And when worldwide disasters proliferate, somebody confesses, "My biggest fear about the apocalypse isn't being eaten by cannibals--it's the fact that in every other postapocalyptic movie you see someone with an acoustic guitar by the campfire." Yeah, this novel is simply a lot of fun.

→ AMONG OTHERS by Jo Walton: Mori was a twin who spent her childhood running with her sister through their Welsh valley, chasing fairies. Now at 15, she's alone, with a leg that doesn't work properly, shipped off to unknown relatives in England and from there to a restrictive boarding school. All that's left of her old life are a few beloved books, and she's cut off from fairies and the natural magic of the world. Lonely and diminished by her circumstances, Mori seeks solace in every science fiction and fantasy book she can get her hands on. Gradually, her love of books brings her to others who understand her, and her situation improves, but a threat still looms from the dark magic that took away her twin.

I loved this book, which is as much about the magic of reading as about the magical creatures and powers that both enrich and endanger Mori's life. Walton has dedicated the novel to libraries and librarians, and at one point Mori declares, "Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization." Every book Mori reads gets a mention and often a brief review or discussion. I'm not nearly as well-read in SF myself, so I didn't understand all the references, but I collected many recommendations.

The novel is written as Mori's diary, and this device worked better for me than it often does, because the minutiae Mori captures give the entries an unusual plausibility. This has the effect that the story is far more mundane than you might expect from one that contains magic and fairies. Really, the magic is a subplot to the tale of a lonely teenager trying to make friends in a new location. I found Mori a wonderful, sympathetic character from the beginning, and I was deeply invested in everything that happens to her, but honestly, not a lot does. Or rather, the cataclysmic events of her life have already taken place, and the book is concerned with how she deals with the aftermath. This makes for a relatively quiet story about friendship and the love of books, which are important topics to me as well. I appreciated this story and the way it was told, and I hope other readers I know will also find companionship inside.

Jo Walton will be an honored guest at FOGcon next month, March 11-13 in Walnut Creek, CA. I'm looking forward to hearing her talk about books!

→ DIAMOND HEAD by Cecily Wong opens in Honolulu in 1964, the day of the funeral for one of the wealthy Leong family. The members gather, united in their grief but divided by disputes and betrayals that have been accumulating for decades. As the ceremony proceeds, the reader is drawn into the memories of different characters to learn about sixty years of fraught family history in China and Hawaii.

I'm always happy to read a multigenerational tale of secrets and regrets, and the story of the Leongs kept me engrossed. I was caught up by the mystery of what went wrong in the family's past, and as the revelations were doled out, I found them surprising and unusual. Historical and cultural details enriched the novel, and I was interested in the close-up experiences of the Boxer Rebellion and Pearl Harbor. At times, I found the nested narratives convoluted, but overall, I enjoyed how pieces were layered together to create an absorbing story.

→ DEPT. OF SPECULATION by Jenny Offill is a novel assembled out of scraps, isolated paragraphs depicting moments in a relationship, feelings of love or anger, and loosely related musings on science or philosophy. There's a basic story arc about a marriage, but the book is less concerned with plot than with presenting a breathtakingly frank depiction of what it's like to join lives with someone else, to raise a child, and to potentially give up art in the process.

The book's format reflects the narrator's disjointed, often depressed state of mind and perhaps the general distractions of modern life. It's particularly representative of the days of a new parent, as she states explicitly: "Caring for [the baby] required me to repeat a series of tasks that had the peculiar quality of seeming both urgent and tedious. They cut the day up into little scraps." While the collage style was highly effective at points, there were other scenes I wished I could linger in to experience more of Offill's insightful observations. If this had been a longer novel, the snippets may have grown tiresome, but at under 200 pages, it was a short and varied enough text to keep my attention.

The best parts of this book are stellar in their raw honesty. I didn't love it as wholeheartedly as many other readers, but overall, I admire this novel. I won't speak of "liking" or "enjoying" it, because it's mostly an uncomfortable read, though a worthwhile one.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Rebecca Turkewitz writes at The Toast about Literary Geography: "Growing up in Massachusetts, in a small town just north of Boston, I had plenty of opportunity to explore the nexus of real and imagined places. A disproportionate number of writers have called Massachusetts home, providing the state with a rich literary landscape. My childhood home is twenty minutes from Walden Pond and the town where Louisa May Alcott set Little Women. Esther Greenwood, Plath's heroine in The Bell Jar, felt stuck in suburbs whose culture I recognized."

Making Use of Space

Creatively, I'm between things at the moment, mulling over ideas and contemplating what comes next. Since I don't have an all-engrossing project, I decided this would be a good opportunity to address the clutter that has been gradually taking over my writing space.

I'm fortunate to have a room of my own to work in, with a writing desk facing the window, a comfortable reading chair, and bookshelves. The room is large enough that there's also space for various household storage, but this area has gotten out of control, and we can't easily get to the stuff we need to access. Combined with my towering piles of paper and stacks of unshelved books, lately the empty floor space is mainly paths between the door and the two chairs.

So I've been sorting paperwork into folders, getting rid of unnecessary crap, and clearing off surfaces. Once everything is better arranged, I'll have more room to write and more room to store the things we actually need. While I spend this time organizing my space, I'm pondering how I might give some order to the story ideas bouncing around my head. Both are big tasks, and I'm trying not to rush either process.

I'm looking forward to having a writing space that isn't full of distracting clutter. And then I'm looking forward to being fully distracted by another writing project.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Andy Browers of Book Riot charts his childhood Growing Up Alongside FoxTrot: "Maybe the pencil marks on your own literary doorway were measured against the March girls when you were yourself just a little woman or man. I'm sure there are lots of people whose annual cruise through the Harry Potter books have brought them through the ages and stages of development of every last Weasley. I was a literary late bloomer, and my reading habits were simple. I had the Foxes."