After that, I read my favourite Xanth novel by Piers Anthony, Night Mare. The writing is so simplistic and a real joy to fall into. It’s nice reading books that don’t require a lot of thought, that you can just escape into. The Mark of Merlin by Anne McAffrey was one I hadn’t read before. It was pretty good and, a bit of a departure from her usual. I think it was one of her first books though.

I had four other books earmarked to read but didn’t get around to them. A Whale for the Killing by Farley Mowat, The Inedible Woman by Margaret Atwood, The Sword of Calandra by Susan Dexter and another book by Farley Mowat whose title escapes me. I also finished Life After Life by Kate Atkinson of Case Histories fame and was sorely disappointed in the ending. It was incredibly frustrating as the book took awhile to get into, but once I did, I was invested and felt very let down by how it ended. It was made worse by understanding why it was ended in that way.

While I was abroad, the bbc series Case Histories with Jason Isaacs as Jackson Brodie aired. I’m currently playing catch up and watched episode 2 last night. It’s rough going waiting so long for excellent programming to come back (I know Sherlock fans will agree with me here!) but it hasn’t disappointed. The first episode had at least 5 instances me going “oh Jackson” in complete exasperation, but the second episode had me feeling sorry for him. Poor guy just can’t catch a break. Looking forward to watching the final ep tonight. I hope they do more!

Also while I was in Canada, a few friends and I went to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. I was that girl with the large root beer and pot of poutine. I got chills down my spine when I heard Benedict’s voice go “I can help you”. Yes, I have a serious crush on him. I’m smug to say that a friend didn’t understand the Benedict attraction until I told her watch Sherlock, and now she gets it. And doesn’t he make a good villain?!

Image via Wikipedia

Truth be told, I should have read Dragonflight a long, long time ago. Originally published in 1968, this book has been around since, well, as long as I’ve been alive. Longer, even. It’s one of those books, the ones that anyone purporting to have any semblance of “geek cred” is assumed to have read—and cherished deeply—lo, the many years ago, as part of an assumed formative pre/adolescence.  Probably in a small room that served as a place of personal refuge that sported generic flying saucer wallpaper and an R2-D2 desk lamp.

Hello, welcome to Cliché Island.  I’m Puddin and I’ll be your host today.

Anyway, somehow, with all the science fiction/fantasy I’ve read through the years, I’ve never read any of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series.  I’m pretty sure that makes me either a bad person or wholly lacking in the aforementioned “geek cred”.

Then again, I’m of the opinion that the concept of “geek cred” is as much utter bullshit as theories that we never actually landed on the moon or that the government is actually in secret negotiations with the aliens from the Pegasus galaxy to provide human samples for experimental study.

Clearly the Pegasans don’t need any governmental cooperation—as if that such a thing even existed.  If nothing else, I’m pretty sure the collective governments of Earth couldn’t cooperate to find a men’s room.

But, uh, “geek cred” is another post.

Anyway, so, uh, Dragonflight.

I would like to tell you that I devoured this novel and then spent hours lamenting how my life to date has been somehow vacant because it took me so long to read it.  But. I just can’t.  I found Dragonflight uneven, at best, and not captivating enough to carry me into the next book in the Pern series, Dragonquest.

Honestly, I’m surprised I feel this way about it, based on the early part of the novel.  Things started off well enough, and I truly did tear through the first two-thirds of it in little more than a day.  The characters seemed a bit thin, sure, but at least their respective motivations were clear and made sense in the early going.  But as the story wore on, it became clear to me that the plot, not the characters, was the driving force here, even as it became more convoluted.  In the end, the protagonists seemed wooden and, well, opaque, for lack of a better word.  They leapt from one extreme behavior to another—even, or maybe I should say, especially, when reacting to each other—and I could never get a firm feel for their motivation(s).

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that they felt more like set pieces than actual characters.  Machines through which the plot moved.

Holy passive voice, there, Batman.

Having read plot-driven novels before, that didn’t have to mean terrible things.  Unfortunately, the primary conflict in Dragonflight never really got my knickers all kinked up, either.  The stakes just didn’t feel all that high.  There’s no real antagonist, but rather this sort of faceless, conceptual one.  I mean, sure, the situation is looking grave for these people and Pern in general, but I never felt as if Doom-with-a-capital-‘D’ was waiting behind door number one to pop out like a jack-in-the-box at any second.  Things, stuff—they call them Threads, I guess, some kind of spore ejected from the nefarious Red Star—were going to fall from the sky and ruin the whole planet. But, you know, eventually, in this kind of Little Shop of Horrors-veggie-takeover-sort-of-long-drawn-out-process.

That is, unless, of course, the dragons and their riders could stop it.  Meh.

Granted, if you lived when Dragonflight was published, during the Cold War, this could, potentially give you a bit more pause.  But, let’s the honest, the upcoming zombie apocalypse, the threat of invasion by Oompa Loompas, the prospect of your local Starbucks running out of espresso at 10 AM, and MTV’s fall lineup this year are more immediately terrifying concepts.

Admittedly, given this book’s age, I might be applying my own modern critical prejudices.  And you could argue that younger me perhaps wouldn’t have been so bothered by what I deem cardboard characterization.  Then again, maybe not.  After all, the books that I do hold dear from those formative years are generally strongly characterized. I just didn’t realize that was important for me at the time.  I liked them but didn’t really consider why.

Regardless, Dragonflight just didn’t have what I’m looking for.  I was glad when I finished, not sad there wasn’t more. Two stars out of five, which in my book equals “meh.”

Of course, that’s just my opinion.  I’d love to hear yours.  Please leave a comment, or join us over at The Sword and Laser to discuss it further.

In the meantime, go read a book. Then we’ll talk about it.

Pud’n

Anyway, I’m not quite sure how it happened, but somehow during those visits we picked out and I watched Stardust, and Mirrormask, and I really LOVED Stardust, and I thought that MirrorMask was very interesting, with absolutely awesome-weird-intriguing art in it, and that was it…

Then, I think I realised that it (Stardust) was a movie based on a book, and so I read Stardust. And I really really liked it very much. I think that the next book I read was The Graveyard Book, and then I saw Coraline (without my dad) and read that, and then read Crazy Hair to my little sister and enjoyed it and (as at the time my hair was very long and constantly tangled, though not as long and tangled as the girl’s in the book) commiserated with it, and then I came across part of The Graveyard book in a short story anthology called “Dark Alchemy”, which lists all the author’s other notable works, and things kind of rolled on from there.

Or maybe my good friend introduced him to me in intermediate?

I just don’t remember.

But the point is, at some stage of my life, I read something that Neil Gaiman wrote. And I thought it was great. And so I read some more.

Now, when I’ve read almost all his books and am currently avidly drowning myself in The Sandman (which is not that sandman that is a villain/hero person who turns to sand in the DC comics like I thought for ages and ages (years). He is Murphy, Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, one of the Endless…he has many names, but he is not that guy!) while eating breakfast while trying not to burn the toast and miss the bus, because internal assignments suck, I feel justified in squizzing at his blog now and then. I enjoy reading about the authors of books that I like – knowing the context which the author feels necessary and/or something they want to pass on about why/how they wrote the book attracts me…probably because I always read the foreword and prologue author’s notes and the “about the author” back flap which is sometimes boring but usually witty and slightly strange, like Terry Pratchett’s, and all those other additional notes and bits and pieces. So, then, if what I’ve read interested me (which is why I knew about how Ursula Le Guin made most of her books about dark-skinned people because the majority of the population is dark skinned which is why most of her books don’t have people on the cover illustrations, and Anne McAffrey, who first started writing to change the way females in science fiction were depicted, even before I decided to study them for English, or possibly because I knew I chose them) I look them up an read a bit more about them. But I don’t like intruding into personal spaces, especially of people whom I admire/whose works I admire, even if they post it to the world, because sometimes what you post to the world is more private than what you don’t. So I try not to – I don’t have twitter for that reason.

Also, I have a couple of friends who, in my opinion, can take it rather too far, and I really don’t want to become like them in that respect, because while enjoying a book/artwork/group/author is fine, and sharing that interest is definitely great and encouraged, if you ‘fangirl’ enough, to such extents, that people literally do not want to talk to you at all about that subject, and leave when you start harping on/screeching excitedly/etc, etc, it means that the limit has been reached and passed.

But I do like knowing things. So I read bits, and look people up every once in a while and check what I’ve missed. Which is how I came across these two things:

Firstly, Neil Gaiman is doing a new Project with Blackberry Keep Moving, called “A Calendar of Tales”, the first part of which was to get twitterers (so yes, I do miss out on things But still, the cons outway the pros) to answer questions about each month and for Gaiman to create a story about each month using an answer given…to create a calendar of tales. That part is done, and there is a free link to download his twelve stories, here.

The next part is open to everyone – we get to create art, take a photo of it/scan it and post it up on the site, and in the end, some artworks will be chosen to create a real calendar, which will I think then be sold/given out with Blackberry’s new product (something will happen to it). Which is SO COOL!! There is some amazing stuff up there already.

Secondly, Neil Gaiman has a wife. Her name is Amanda Palmer. Apparently, she is a legend among some people – I only discovered what it is she actually is/does about an hour ago. Gaiman posted a clip of her very recent TED presentation, which is really fantastic and talks about very pertinent things in our lives, like asking, and about the music industry.

The Art of Asking

Posted by Neil Gaiman at 4:59 AM

 ”In a day and a half over half a million people have watched this talk, at the TED website and on YouTube.”

(the title is a direct quote taken from this post as well)

Then I found Amanda Palmer’s blog which is also quite spectacular in and of itself, seeing as she’s had it for over 10 years. And firstly I was struck by how different the style between her blog posts and Neil’s blog posts are.

And then I decided to post about this.

(Now, I’m going to do that damn assignment and get it out of my life)