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04:39 pm - Michelle West: The best epic fantasy everyone should read
In seventh grade, more years ago than I care to remember, I needed a book to occupy me for a week-long trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. I'd seen a really cool-looking book on the shelves of one of my local bookstores, and the day before I left I bought it.

It was The Broken Crown by Michelle West, and that has to be one of my best book-buying decisions of all time.

This was back in the Day before days when there was virtually no Internet, and it took me years to figure out that more books would be and were published and that the story told in TBC didn't start with that book. But we're living in the future now, and I can recommend the entire sequence of books to you just like this. And I do.

The Argument
I've said other places that most authors only have one or two themes in them. Michelle West's is unquestionably the end of the world, and what people will do either to stop it or to bring it about.

I'm going about this the wrong way, though. Michelle West is a Japanese-Canadian author who also writes as Michelle Sagara and Michelle Sagara West. The Sagara books are The Chronicles of Elantra, which are also very good but are very different from the West books--if you like urban fantasy, definitely check Elantra out.

I don't really like "epic fantasy"--listing all the series I've bounced off, hard, that other people love would probably earn me a sporking, but thinking about it, I'd argue both that West's novels are epic fantasy, and that her books are qualitatively different from most conventional epic fantasy in their focus, which is first and foremost on the characters, and then on their cultures, and only finally on epic trappings such as battles and gods and games of thrones. Not that these things don't matter in her writing--there is a very large, truly epic plot going on in these books, and I love it to death--but the plot is revealed first and foremost through the characters' thoughts and feelings and emotional arcs.

So, yes. There are the trappings of epic fantasy in here--gods, demons, mages, seers, Bards--but they are never allowed to upstage the characters, and the end result is some very dense writing about fully imagined cultures populated by heartbreakingly human people (even when these people are demons, or gods, or the children of gods, or half-humans). The way West writes politics ought to bring many more well-known authors to tears, let alone cultures and its impacts on the people born into them.

At this point I should probably launch into talking about the books themselves. No spoilers beyond the dust jackets, I swear. In publication order, they are:

( Amazing books are amazing. I kid you not. )

Tags: books: fiction

January 3rd, 2010

queeninnarnia

08:39 pm
Tomorrow is the first day of school! Woo! I hope I like it.
Current Mood:

excited

Tags: school, tefl

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January 2nd, 2010

10:28 pm - Sherlock Holmes, again
Oh, this movie. I can't think of the last time I saw a movie again and thought it was even slashier than I did the first time. I actually found myself looking around at the other people in the theater and wondering what exactly people without slash goggles were getting out of it--people laughed at all the right points (unlike in Milwaukee! people in Jersey have more fun, apparently?), so the movie was hitting them too, but in what places? I couldn't venture to say.

eumelia asked me a few months ago what I thought fandom was, and now I have to amend my answer: it's a worldview, too.

( Fannish blather )

Current Mood:

bouncy
Current Music: Hans Zimmer, "Psychological Recovery - Six Months"

Tags: movies

05:09 pm - Broken Embraces + Invictus
I like movies. Someday I will see three in one day in theaters. But this New Year's Eve I only managed two.

Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos). Dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2009.

I actually haven't seen almost any of Almodóvar's films other than Talk to Her, but I went to see this with a Spanish-major friend of mine and her sister, both of whom have seen almost all of his movies, and their conclusion was that Almodóvar needs to get some new fixations. Despite the fact that it was a retread of some of his earlier material, however, it's a very enjoyable movie; Almodóvar is a really great filmmaker, and even a somewhat slight film like this one can be really good in the hands of a master, and it is. Almodóvar clearly loves movies a lot (he actually reminds me of Quentin Tarantino in that respect, though obviously they like very different movies), and this movie is just beautiful to look at, the colors and the composition of the shots in particular. The scene where Penelope Cruz cries onto the tomatoes is ravishing, to take just one example. In some ways actually it reminded me of anime in its persistent calling attention to its own (hyper)flatness--anime is composed of multiple layers within its images, and Almodóvar does a lot of the same thing in this film: the camera focuses on photographs, on computer screens, on films projected within the film; sometimes we see direct camera footage and other times we're within the shots of the movie-within-the-movie. Interesting, to say the least. Given that Almodóvar has directed at least one movie under the name of the protagonist of the movie, himself a film writer and director (Mateo Blanco), I'd wager it's semi-autobiographical, too, or at least an autobiographical fantasy, which is also interesting.

Invictus. Dir. Clint Eastwood, 2009.

I really liked this movie. It does a good job of grafting some fairly serious concerns onto a rather stereotypical frame (that of the sports movie) without condescending to either the sports of the social politics. It's so much Nelson Mandela's movie rather than Matt Damon's character's--which is very much not the impression one would get from most of the advertising here in the States, uncoincidentally--and, yeah, in case anyone needed more proof, it shows conclusively that Mandela really is a remarkable human being. It's not every day that someone with so much virtue, in the ethical sense of the word, turns up, let alone is at the right place at the right time and has the political wisdom to make the most of everything he's got.

It was also interesting, as a sports movie, in that it focused not on the coach or manager of the sports team in question but on the team captain. The sports films I've seen tend to focus, when they focus on a player, on the key person on the side, usually the pitcher in baseball or the QB in American football. And I thought the movie did a good job of showing the effect of Mandela and his policies on the team, the team captain (played by Matt Damon, great as usual), and on the country without getting heavy-handed.

As a U.S.-ian it's very hard to resist seeing in South Africa an imperfect mirror of society here in the States, which is both dangerous and simplistic, though not completely wrong-headed, I think--at the end of the movie, when blacks and whites are celebrating in the streets together, I immediately thought of the street celebrations last Election Day night, when Barack Obama won. But I really don't want to draw any other comparisons besides that one. Instead, I'd also like to congratulate the movie, despite being made mostly by Americans behind the camera, for telling a story in which the United States doesn't really feature, a fact which was brought home to me by the exchanges between Mandela and the New Zealand PM at the World Cup match. And on another level it's a really great case study of the unifying power of petit nationalism--though it's explicitly state- rather than nation-based nationalism, which is interesting.

Finally, South Africa is a beautiful country to judge from the location shots. The Tenured Radical, whose blog I enjoy a lot, has been on sabbatical there this season, and I'd recommend her posts on her experiences for some contemporary context.

Tags: movies

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January 1st, 2010

02:23 pm - Yuletide Revealed, & the Year in Fanworks Considered
Yuletide having been revealed, it turns out that jadelioness (who I think is

jadelioness) wrote me No One Loves You Like I Do, and Élizabeth Perry aka watersword wrote me Incense and Sunglasses on Orchard Street. Thanks so much again to you both; you made my first Yuletide pretty damn awesome.

I wrote four Yuletide stories. In order, they are:

The Momiji File (Gouhou Drug) -- I never expected that this would be the fandom on which I would match my recipient, but thankfully the prompt was pretty open-ended: essentially, what happened next? I wound up setting the story immediately after the end of volume 3 and stealing a recent plot point from xxxHOLiC to form the request the boys took on, partly because I think there would have been a lot more HOLiC crossovers had Legal Drug continued. It was an interesting challenge to write a story that could be read as either slashy gen or pre-slash, depending on the reader, since that seems to be a key feature of the manga reading experience. I also tried, as much as possible, to load up the fic with actual details from my time in Japan (this included scrutinizing the photos I took in Rikugi-en for the settings--you could actually go sit on the shamisen player's bench, not to mention walk across the bridge Kazahaya nearly falls off), and to make the dialogue echo the characters' diction in Japanese. Writing the story also made me realize how much of the slashiness in canon depends on visual humor and innuendo. Oh the power of images! And thanks again to

nokiirat, whose insightful beta comments helped me get Kazahaya's characterization better. I think, though, that maybe my favorite thing about the story is the Suki Dakara Suki crossover. I justified it on the basis that Hina (and Doumeki, too) went to Waseda for college, and now in my world they totally do.

A Midwinter's Tale (The Drowning City - Downum) -- I'd offered to write Downum originally, and the requestor is a fellow tag-wrangler, so when I saw it on the unfulfilled prompts list I jumped at it. Oddly enough, it took me almost a day and a half to write, because I couldn't think of a concrete scene on which to anchor the first part of the fic. But I got to throw some Latin into my writing, and draw on my classics background, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Empty-Handed (Old Kingdom series - Nix) -- Another story about (maimed and/or missing) hands. I wrote this on my plane to Detroit on Christmas Eve morning, having paged through Abhorsen the night before, and I'm very happy with it. It's probably going to become the first in a little series of fics in this fandom based on YT prompts for New Year's Resolutions.

The World Ends With You (the Michelle West novels - West) -- This one I churned out on my forty-minute flight from Detroit to Milwaukee on Christmas Eve afternoon, because I share the fandom with

inkstone, the requestor, who totally knew it was me because there's about five of us in this fandom, total. XD I've read the other story written for this same prompt ("Indelible" by moontyger; it's good! you should read it!), and I think it's interesting how the two of us did completely different things with the exact same request. Ideally I would have reread the beginning of Hunter's Death before writing it, but c'est la vie. I did at least manage to echo some of West's diction from key scenes in other books. And I'm totally way too fond of the title.

( 2009: The year in fanworks )

I think it's time to make rugelach now.

Tags: writing, yuletide

sonya_hay

11:47 am - Auld Lang Syne
Happy New Year to all, and to all a wonderful 2010!

Here are my New Year's resolutions:

1. Finish thesis
2. Get a job
3. Finish a story
4. Get off my butt and start being social with real actual humans instead of books from the library
5. Start working out more
6. Keep in better touch with people

Nothing difficult at all, right? Does anybody else have any resolutions? Or would you like to suggest any to add to my list - either serious or non? All will gladly be accepted and retained for future blackmail purposes! (grin)

Best wishes to all in the New Year!
Current Mood:

hopeful
Current Music: Queen

December 31st, 2009

11:31 pm - The secret history of science fiction
Is really, fundamentally boring, if you believe these dudes.

Kelly, James Patrick & John Kessel, eds. The Secret History of Science Fiction. San Francisco, CA: Tachyon Publications, 2009.

Okay, well, this book. I'm totally going to pound out this review in the 22 minutes remaining in the decade, because I don't want it following me into 2010. Oh, this book. I am not dispassionate here.

( Oo, look at us, we're literary! )

Really what this book shows is that there's no justice in the world. Good people are talentless and talented people are bastards; Michael Chabon's work is utterly thrilling and, in its gender politics, utterly distasteful to me, but I can't help but love his work anyway. Science fiction is where it's at, but half the good writers aren't in this book and those who are are represented by terrible stories. So it goes.

Current Mood:

ranty

Tags: books: fiction

10:28 pm - I, I will begin again (farewell to the Naughts)
It's only in thinking back to the turn of the millennium (yes, numbers geeks, it didn't really start until 2001, but vox populi, vox dei) that I realize that this decade has, for me, been bracketed by death.

Ten years ago my uncle was in a snowmobiling accident on 27 December. My mother flew out to be with my aunt, her sister, and didn't come back until 31 December; my uncle died in January without ever having regained consciousness. It was my first real experience with death, I think; certainly the first time I really knew the deceased. I would never have dreamed that his death would be followed by my mother's ten years later. I am selfishly grateful that my sister and I had ten years longer with their parent than my uncie's children, my cousins, did.

It's been a good decade, though, in other ways. I graduated high school and then college, lived in Japan for a year, visited another eleven countries, and learned three languages besides Latin, two of them living. Ten years ago I wanted to write books when I grew up, and I still do; ten years ago I planned to earn a PhD in something, and I still do. Both of these dreams are closer than they have ever been; I wouldn't know what to do without them, really. This decade also saw the introduction of our parrot into our family, and a wonderful part of it he is too.

2009 itself has been unquestionably the most difficult year of my life so far, for all that it saw the inauguration of Barack Obama and saw me getting into Dreamwidth and the OTW, both of which have been incredibly awesome experiences (mostly for the people involved) which I look forward to continuing. I would never have pictured myself sitting where I am ten years ago, back at home and on the cusp of adventures beyond the ones I'm already having; hell, I didn't think I'd be where I am now a year ago. But it is what it is, and I'd be a fool not to turn my face to the sun, even at midnight.

Resolutions: Read every day. Write every day. Run longer, as often as possible. Practice writing Japanese so other people don't show me up too horribly in grad school. Finish the novel. Start the novel(s). Walk through graveyards. Be happy, or at least content.

Happy New Year, everyone. To quote Daniel Shore, we survived the 00s, and the 10s have to be better.

Current Music: U2, "New Year's Day"

queeninnarnia

06:12 pm - FYI: New Adobe Hack
FYI, from an email forwarded to me by my dad.

Subject: Ongoing Malicious Adobe PDF Attacks Against Users
Summary: Multiple groups are using a new attack against Adobe Acrobat and Reader to attack users in an attempt to gain unauthorized access to agency computers and steal data. This attack is triggered by simply opening a malicious PDF file using Adobe Acrobat or Reader and requires no other user interaction. There is currently no patch against this attack and a patch will not be released until January 12^th, 2010. Users are urged to use caution with any PDF files, including those from known associates and to personal accounts.
Immediate Action: Do Not open PDF files until you disable JavaScript with Adobe.

Adobe does not expect to have a fix ready until 12 Jan 2010.

To disable JavaScript through the application preferences in Adobe Acrobat/Reader 9.1:
·         Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader
·         Select Edit>Preferences
·         Select the JavaScript Category
·         Uncheck the ‘Enable Acrobat JavaScript’ option
·         Click OK
Current Mood:

busy

December 30th, 2009

11:30 pm - One last Yuletide post
Everything I have open in tabs, unread, has been recced to the comm already; almost all of these have too. Contrary to appearances, there is a filtering mechanism at work here! But Yuletide is full of awesome writing.

Relatedly, if anyone wants to take a stab at guessing which fics I wrote, go Yulegoat-wild! I very much doubt that anyone will be able to, since Yuletide 2009 doubled my finished fanfic output by 200%, but regardless, here are a few hints:

1. I wrote four fics: two in Yuletide and two in Madness.
2. I have written in none of these fandoms before.
3. One has been recced to the comm.
4. None are in really popular Yuletide fandoms, and none are explicit.

On the offchance that any one gueses correctly, I will owe you a story, at least 500 words. Comments screened (if you comment about the recs I will unscreen).

( Spirited Away, album fic, composer RPF, Hidden City, My Little Ponies, Chronicles of the Kencyrath, Earthsea, Darkangel trilogy, Temeraire, The Prisoner, Hook )

Tags: yuletide

05:05 pm - 2009: The year in books
At the moment my tally for 2009 stands at 138 books. If I can force myself through the rest of The Secret History of Science Fiction by tomorrow night, it will be 139, but that book will not feature in this post regardless, so onward.

Seven excellent (fiction) books:
M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume II, The Kingdom on the Waves
Roberto Bolaño, 2666
A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book
Kelly Link, Pretty Monsters
Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
Shaun Tan, The Arrival
Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Books I gave as gifts:
Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
Adam Gopnik, Angels & Ages
A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Shaun Tan, The Arrival

This was the year I rediscovered sff; hell, this was the year I rediscovered reading for fun. I very much hope that I can keep up the reading in 2010; my goal is to expand my reading range, as well as, in general, to read at least 100 books. We'll see.

With two prominent exceptions, all the non-fiction books I read this year were excellent, and are recommended. Relatedly, I didn't post about Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, but it's great, and I think it's a book (along with The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing) that every U.S.-ian should read.

All the links go to the Dreamwidth entries, but there may be more discussion on the LJ posts.

And beneath the cut, without links-back or italics,

( the full list )

Current Mood:

accomplished

Tags: books: meta

December 28th, 2009

06:44 pm - Help me, to-do list, you're my only hope.
I'm just going to get this out here and then go back to getting things done before I crash. Why will I crash? Because we didn't get home until about 2:30 this morning--our plane was scheduled to land at 11:48, but we touched down at approximately 1:15. Yup. Even better, when we landed in Detroit we didn't catch that our connection had been delayed, so we booked it through two terminals in vain. All this because of snow in Detroit, but hey, we got home, and eventually found the car, and this morning I managed to get to work on time despite less than three hours' sleep, so in my book this counts as a success.

It was a good visit; we saw almost all of the relatives we have in Milwaukee that we still care to see, including my great-great-aunt Irene (who's either 94 or 97; none of us could remember) and some of my dad's cousins, whom I've mostly only seen at funerals heretofore. We also went to Kopp's, without which no visit to Milwaukee is complete in my book, though even in this I show my native strangeness--Leon's beat Kopp's in the Journal-Sentinel poll a few years back. As usual the food, beer and company at my aunt's were delicious, and it was good to see my relatives, who seem to be doing better than before. We saw Sherlock Holmes en masse, which was fun; we took up an entire row in the theater. Unfortunately my grandparents are starting to show their age, but at 78 and 80 it's practically to be expected. And we had Ned's Pizza, which is probably the best ever. Lots of snow, too, and repeated snowing; very pretty, and not too obfuscatory.

I read a few essays in Mechademia 4, of which more anon, on the first plane, but gave in to my exhaustion on the second and started writing Holmes/Watson fanfic answering my own question (Q: Why couldn't they take down the empire? A: Sherlock gots to get paid, son). I will finish it up and post it on the AO3 shortly, I think, and maybe someday I will even find the iconoclastic steampunk AU to which it very much wants to be a prologue inside my own brain-attic.

Current Mood:

tired

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December 27th, 2009

05:51 pm - Up in the Air.
Irony, thy name is air travel. Since I was just informed that my first flight of the evening has been delayed, jeopardizing my connection (no matter what the gate agent says, we'll have to hustle once we reach Detroit, if we do land on time), I might as well write this up now, particularly since the film may wind up being a tribute to an era that may be passing, security-wise. (The irony here is that at my dad's insistence we arrived at the airport 2.5 hours before our flight was scheduled to depart and have sat around since then.)

( Where am I again? Who am I? )

Current Location: MKE
Current Mood:

edgy

Tags: movies

02:49 pm - Yuletide recs the second
Yuletide brings all the great writing to the yard.

( Sherlock Holmes, Web 2.0, fairy tales, song and album fic, The Big O, Matilda, composer RPF, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Hamlet, My Fair Lady )

Tags: yuletide

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11:08 am - xxxHOLiC Rou 195 translation
This is the reason I shouldn't have left my DS in another time zone.

( Decide what bendings of your will you're willing to forgive )

Tags: translation: holic

(24 comments | Leave a comment)

December 26th, 2009

10:24 pm - Sherlock Holmes (the one and only)
Oh, this movie. I loved it. I have a hard time not loving a movie in which a) there is never any sunlight and b) Irene Adler is amazingly awesome.

( Elementary. )

I want to see the movie again, but first I have to survive my flight home to Jersey. If these rumors about the increased security protocols are new, they will probably kill the industry, not to mention me. Wish me luck.

Tags: movies

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11:12 am - Yuletide recs the first
The archive is currently down for maintenance, which seems like a good time to post these.

The best way I have found to browse Yuletide & Yuletide Madness is by fandom. Here is the page for Yuletide proper, and here's the page for Madness.

( Young Wizards, China Mieville, Megan Whalen Turner, Dinosaur comics, Calvin & Hobbes, NPR RPF, Honorverse )

Tags: yuletide

December 25th, 2009

sonya_hay

01:56 pm - MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Hope everyone's having a great holiday with family, friends, gifts, and not too much indigestion. :)

(Image-heavy under the lj cut.)

( Contains images of Christmas vacation* )

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, and is looking forward with hope and excitement for the New Year. Talk to you all soon!

Current Mood:

festive
Current Music: Christmas carols, of course!

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11:07 am - What's today? Why, today is Christmas Day!
Or, hooray for Yuletide! I received two full-length fics.

The first is No One Loves You Like I Do. It is the anime Blood+, David/Julia at a Red Shield holiday party, and it is hot like burning.

The second, a Treat, is Incense and Sunglasses on Orchard Street. It is Diane Duane's Young Wizards: Tom and Carl take a vacation in New Orleans, and it's great to see them get to enjoy themselves (and each other!) for once. I don't know whether the Treat writer mentioned Lud-in-the-Mist because he or she knew that I read it this year and liked it a lot, or because the Treat writer is awesome and likes good books, but either way, that shout-out was great.

I am not very good at leaving articulate comments, but both stories are awesome, and I sincerely enjoyed them. Thank you, writers!

Christmas Eve also saw the release of a very special holiday episode of Shadow Unit. I enjoy this strange hyperfiction experiment quite a lot on account of the characters, who are awesome and flawed and tragic and utterly human. The third season starts in February; I'd recommend the holiday episode, "On Faith", as one possible entry point to the show, and there is also a recommended reading order, which starts from the beginning.

And on that note, I should probably go get dressed.

ETA: My recipient and someone else left me very complimentary feedback on one of my stories! It is snowing again! So, all things considered, I think this Christmas has turned out as well as can be expected.
Current Mood:

content

Tags: yuletide