via The Millions:
What is the biggest, most glaring gap in your lifetime of reading?
Most people who responded had a complete list, and as much as I want to follow their lead it would be more challenging to find one single gap and leave it at that. So I've been thinking about this for something like a week, and have finally decided that if I were told that I could only ever read one neglected part of my reading for the rest of my life, I would have to start concentrating on world myths, legends, and religious histories. My biblical education is painfully lacking. I went through the Catholic system, and was a confirmed Methodist, but I really don't have the christian myths down pat. And this doesn't just include biblical stories, but the epics that sprung from them, including Arthur and his holy grail.
Don't even get me started on anything outside of the Christian cannon. For a period of time I was obsessed with the Egyptians and Greeks, and managed to pick up quite a bit of their mythology, but I was more interested in using their civilizations as backdrops for my own imaginings than I was in remembering faithfully what I was learning. Same with Norse mythology. My Japanese fan phase got me acquainted with quite a bit of far eastern mythology, but when it comes to China or Taiwan I'm still very much in the dark. And if you say Russia or Africa or the Middle East I say forget about it.
Last semester I managed to pick up a ton of Campbell's mythology books during a library sale. The hope is that once I've finished with them this particular hole will be plugged and I can go work on the next one, contemporary fiction.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Books at BnN
For Christmas one of my bosses gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card. That's an excellent gift to give someone who is a compulsive book hoarder, and today I finally decided to take the bus up to my nearest store and pick something up. Since I get enough non-fiction from the university library and through my myriad courses, I went straight to the Sci-fi/Fantasy section, hoping to find some additions to my reading bread and butter. The only stipulation that I gave myself was that I didn't want to choose any books from a well known name like Salvatore, Lovecraft, etc, since I could easily find those books in the library, and besides, us small timers have to stick together.
The only problem was that I could find no titles that caught my eye. Every book looked like every other book. Every cover seemed to say the same thing. I ended up prowling the four shelves that made up Barnes and Noble's speculative fiction section a dozen times with no results. Every book was either all about sexy demons in a dirty city, a fantastic medieval world + magic, or a mundie going about his life and suddenly falling into one of the two. The only books that were consistantly drawing my eye were the Warhammer titles. I've yet to read anything from the Warhammer universe, but again and again I would see the cover, or read the back, and think to myself 'oh, this is different', and then notice the Warhammer icon. I had grouped well known series' into the well known authors catagory however, so purchasing a Warhammer book was a no-no for this particular excercise. And that left me with almost nothing.
Luckily I had scribbled down the name of a title Bantam Dell had been trumpeting in my inbox, and upon bringing it up to the help desk found a single copy of the first book of the series hidden at the bottom of the shelves, Scar Night by Alan Campbell. The back cover was torn in two places, but I was out of options, and this was one of the few books that did not bore me within the first three words of the synopsis. Because one paperback did not nearly cover the total of my gift card, I went back to scrounging and eventually settled on A Magic of Twilight by S. L. Farrel, mainly because the words 'relative newcomer' were printed on the back of the book and the cover illustration was not some random person posing with a big weapons in fancy armor.
I've read the first chapter or so of Campbell and it looks promising. Haven't even opened Farrel yet.
The only problem was that I could find no titles that caught my eye. Every book looked like every other book. Every cover seemed to say the same thing. I ended up prowling the four shelves that made up Barnes and Noble's speculative fiction section a dozen times with no results. Every book was either all about sexy demons in a dirty city, a fantastic medieval world + magic, or a mundie going about his life and suddenly falling into one of the two. The only books that were consistantly drawing my eye were the Warhammer titles. I've yet to read anything from the Warhammer universe, but again and again I would see the cover, or read the back, and think to myself 'oh, this is different', and then notice the Warhammer icon. I had grouped well known series' into the well known authors catagory however, so purchasing a Warhammer book was a no-no for this particular excercise. And that left me with almost nothing.
Luckily I had scribbled down the name of a title Bantam Dell had been trumpeting in my inbox, and upon bringing it up to the help desk found a single copy of the first book of the series hidden at the bottom of the shelves, Scar Night by Alan Campbell. The back cover was torn in two places, but I was out of options, and this was one of the few books that did not bore me within the first three words of the synopsis. Because one paperback did not nearly cover the total of my gift card, I went back to scrounging and eventually settled on A Magic of Twilight by S. L. Farrel, mainly because the words 'relative newcomer' were printed on the back of the book and the cover illustration was not some random person posing with a big weapons in fancy armor.
I've read the first chapter or so of Campbell and it looks promising. Haven't even opened Farrel yet.
Book List 2009: #4 Ficciones
The following is cross-posted from Librarything.com.
Reviewing a book by a 'master' of literature always feels like a dangerous undertaking, so I am going to call this a response instead.
I read Borges for a class called Philosophy in Literature. While I'm not a total Philistine in literary matters, I would be lying if I said I caught half of Borges' references without having to look things up. Once I -did- look them up, my reading became much more enjoyable. Borges is utter nonsense unless you can figure out how to catch somehow the things he is throwing at you, and although I am sure that I've let the lion's share of the meaning in his work slip through my fingers on my first reading, what I did catch was delightful.
Borges is playful to the extreme. The stories in which he shines are those where he takes some strange idea and runs with it straight through. My favorite in the anthology has to be "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." The premise stripped bare of Borges' elaboration is idiotic, but the story is a great one none the less. I can hardly understand it.
While I read Ficciones I was constantly torn between crying out, "This is so stupid!" and "Oh god, this is genius!" at the exact same time. I'm inclined to think that his greatest stories are both.
There are also a few stories in Ficciones that are not nearly as interesting as the others. Perhaps if epic shorts like "Funes, the Memorious" had never been written, a story like "The Form of the Sword" would still be great fiction, but when compared to their neighbors, there are a few stories that do not incite nearly as much masochistic mental glee as the others.
Regardless, Borges is a master of imagination, and for that I tip my hat to him.
I've got three books vying for the next to-read. One, T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets is required reading for class, so the chance that it will win out is high. I'm still slipping in chapters of Foundation and Empire here and there anyway.
Reviewing a book by a 'master' of literature always feels like a dangerous undertaking, so I am going to call this a response instead.
I read Borges for a class called Philosophy in Literature. While I'm not a total Philistine in literary matters, I would be lying if I said I caught half of Borges' references without having to look things up. Once I -did- look them up, my reading became much more enjoyable. Borges is utter nonsense unless you can figure out how to catch somehow the things he is throwing at you, and although I am sure that I've let the lion's share of the meaning in his work slip through my fingers on my first reading, what I did catch was delightful.
Borges is playful to the extreme. The stories in which he shines are those where he takes some strange idea and runs with it straight through. My favorite in the anthology has to be "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." The premise stripped bare of Borges' elaboration is idiotic, but the story is a great one none the less. I can hardly understand it.
While I read Ficciones I was constantly torn between crying out, "This is so stupid!" and "Oh god, this is genius!" at the exact same time. I'm inclined to think that his greatest stories are both.
There are also a few stories in Ficciones that are not nearly as interesting as the others. Perhaps if epic shorts like "Funes, the Memorious" had never been written, a story like "The Form of the Sword" would still be great fiction, but when compared to their neighbors, there are a few stories that do not incite nearly as much masochistic mental glee as the others.
Regardless, Borges is a master of imagination, and for that I tip my hat to him.
I've got three books vying for the next to-read. One, T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets is required reading for class, so the chance that it will win out is high. I'm still slipping in chapters of Foundation and Empire here and there anyway.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Book a Week Resolution
My New Year's Resolution for the past three or so years has been to read at least a book a week. For two I managed to accomplish just that. My year in Japan threw a wrench in those plans, as I only realized that the campus library had a collection of English language books late in the semester, and even then, I was having a hard time simply doing the minimum of my classwork. For 2008 I ended up short by 20 books. Considering that a book a week makes only 52 books, this is not a good record at all.
But I'm right on track for 2009. So far I've read three, books, Deryni Checkmate, A Robot Anthology, and Nickel and Dimed. I enjoyed all three.
Next up is Ficciones by Borges. As it is the first required text for my Philosophy in Lit class, I may be cheating a little, but it's a worthy book in its own right and worth reading. Plus, its relatively short.
But I'm right on track for 2009. So far I've read three, books, Deryni Checkmate, A Robot Anthology, and Nickel and Dimed. I enjoyed all three.
Next up is Ficciones by Borges. As it is the first required text for my Philosophy in Lit class, I may be cheating a little, but it's a worthy book in its own right and worth reading. Plus, its relatively short.
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