The Den of Ubiquity

I finished reading the Science Fiction of The 40's book. It wasn't bad, though I found "Venus And The Seven Sexes" a little bit on the painful side of satirical. Several stories I could have sworn that I should have read before, but they didn't seem familiar while I read them. Maybe I just have a MLAS.

One of my co-workers was talking about Eragon a couple of weeks ago, comparing the book to the movie, and seemed surprised when I told her I hadn't actually read the book. She just assumed that I'd read all the big books out there, especially the big YA books. But I haven't read that one, or Artemis Fowl, or any of the Geronimo Stilton, though I have read a bunch of Secrets of Droon and Magic Treehouse, and am working my way through the Lemony Snicket books. (Still not up to The End yet.)

So, thinking of that, I started reading The Merchant of Death, the first book in D.J. McHale's "Pendragon" series. I'd bought a special $2.99 promotional copy of it a while back. So far...it's not doing much for me. I mean, for one thing, if you're gonna have a character who has a secret destiny in another magical world, he should be a misfit, right? Someone who's never fit in? In this book, he's a basketball star at his school(he's 14), and the book starts with him kissing the girl of his dreams. Okay, his friend back on Earth(who keeps receiving missives from him, and investigating the mysterious disappparance of his family on his end)is more of a misfit, but he doesn't get a secret destiny, does he? At least not so far... I'll tell you, what's the point in being an outcast if you don't have the consolation that at least the cool kids don't get cool secret destinies? Only half kidding here. But this makes our protagonist reluctant to get involved and more interested in trying to get home (since he doesn't know it's not there anymore), which is a bit annoying.

As a result, I've been going to my nonfiction backup book, which at the moment is Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, subtitled "How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity." Lessig is, among other things, the chair of the Creative Commons Project, and an actual bona fide lawyer, so he has some interesting thoughts on copyright law and its implications for culture. And it's conceivable he won't be that sympathetic to the RIAA, given the fact that he's already brought up the Jesse Jordan story, of a university student who got sued for music piracy because he built a search engine. It's full of bits that I have to stop and tell my wife, so it promises to be a good read. Sorry, Pendragon.

---

Is it just me that gets annoyed whenever networks muck around with their TV schedules? It's not just moving a show from one timeslot to another one on a semi-permanent basis(which caused me to miss a lot of "Scrubs" episodes), but the one-time things, especially the ones that they don't announce in advance.

I mean, on Sunday I was expecting "Studio 60" to be on at 8:00 on CTV the way it usually is, which is when the VCR was set for. Instead, probably because of that stupid football game I couldn't care less about(though it did make a funny "How I Met Your Mother" episode), it was on at 9:00. After "HIMYM", I happened to notice that it was on, halfway through. We knew it was also on on Monday, but we're already watching and taping so much other stuff on Monday that we weren't sure we'd be able to fit it in, so we watched the second half of the episode. We did tape the first half on Monday night(it's on at 11:00 on the American station, which is just one of many reasons why we watch the Canadian broadcast instead), and we'll watch it tonight and see if we missed much.

Last night it was also announced that "Heroes" was going to be on at a "special time" next week, 8:00 or something. Except that according to my usual TV lookup site, it's still listed for 10:00, so I don't know what the hell's going on there. Is the site just working on old information? It didn't say anything about the "Studio 60" rescheduling when I checked it later. I've started setting up weekly recording schedules on my VCR, but that only works when the same shows are on at the same time every week... Do TiVo people have problems when shows are rescheduled? Do they get the updated times, or tape the wrong thing? Just wondering.

Oh, and next week there's two hours of 24, for some reason, as I was just reminded. That'll be wonderful. I mean, I like all the shows we're watching, but I like my non-TV time in the evenings as well. That's why I'm not really weeping for "Six Degrees" and "The Nine", or most of the other swiftly-cancelled shows from the past. We're still watching "Battlestar Galactica" and "Angel" on DVD, but at the rate we're going we can only fit in one of them every week.

Another reason to wish for summer, I guess.

I did, of course, finish reading Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, though it took me until the next day. I'm still not sure about it--it feels like a bit of a letdown, after Order of The Phoenix, or perhaps just after rereading the whole rest of the series. ( Not too many spoilers, but if you're concerned, don't click here. )

From that one I moved on to Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. It's technically in his Discworld series, but technically it's in a sort of YA offshoot, or something. Sort of like The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents(which is unrelated); there is an actual sequel, Hat Full of Sky. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg cameo at the end. An excellent book, as one might expect from Pratchett, and it didn't feel too juvenile, apart from its young protagonist. I don't know if the fairies that appear in the book are supposed to be the same kind that appeared in Lords And Ladies, either.

Air by Geoff Ryman was next on my list, because it was a library book and I'd been putting it off while reading J.K. Rowling. It was highly acclaimed--shorted listed for the Sunburst Award, and a finalist for the Philip K. Dick award, both of which are juried awards, I must note. It's a bit off-putting at first, as one starts out with a mature woman, Chung Mae, living in a village in a fictional central Asian country--the last place on the world to get the Net(which, in 2020, is fully integrated with your TV). Things pick up when the village is part of the first test of Air--a sort of broadcast Internet that goes directly to your brain--with disastrous consequences. The book is fairly balanced between Mae learning about the near-future world, and Mae interacting with her fellow villagers and countryfolk. In the end it mostly hangs together, though the very ending is a little bit downbeat. If you like juried-award-winning SF(mainstream lit-SF hybrids, that is), then you should try this book. If that sounds like faint praise, it is--the book didn't entirely sell me over, but it seemed to do what it did quite well.

After that I read The Swordbearer by Glen Cook. It's a fantasy title, dating from 1982, a couple of years before he broke through with the Black Company series. The plot seemed a little familiar, but I think I'd just overheard a couple of friends talking about it years ago and not realized what book it was. Crippled teenager escapes from ruins of boyhood home when extremely nasty army invades(and supposed allies fail to arrive in time)--finds legendary sword and becomes mighty warrior. Except that he begins to have trouble deciding which side he really should be on, and to resent being a pawn of the goddess who created the sword. There are vague echoes of Elric here--the sword sometimes kills people he doesn't want it to, for instance--but in Cook's own ground-covering style. It looks like there could have been a sequel, but it must've been shelved. (Unless it's The Tower of Fear or one of the few other Cooks I don't have yet...)

I've just started reading Kill The Dead by Tanith Lee. I'm running out of her books, which just don't seem to be that available in North America--or maybe just in trade paperback or something. Even in megastores like Chapters, they're not stocked, or only in trade paperback(which I hate). Anyway, this is one of her old early Daw ones, coming in under 200 pages, so it shouldn't take me long. As long as I'm not distracted...

What could there be to distract me, you ask? Well, I did finally manage to finish All The President's Men, which I considered something less than a page-turner. Woodward and Bernstein may have been great journalists, but they failed to bring this subject to life. And it was just getting into Nixon's secret tapes by the end, with a tantalizing footnote reference to Agnew's resignation, so it didn't even seem to cover the entire story it promised. Probably it was just rushed into publication before the whole farce had played out. In any case, I think I'd rather see the movie. At least I have a vague idea who some of those people mentioned in early Doonesbury cartoons really were.

But the real distraction has been the presumably-pseudonymous Galadriel Waters. See, I had the urge to see if there were any books about the Harry Potter series in the library. Apart from the dozens coming out on whether Harry Potter is pro- or anti-The Church, I found a couple. One of them was my Ms. Waters, et al., so I checked it out. It turned out to be a supplement to an earlier book, concerned entirely with Order of The Phoenix, so today I got the earlier book. Ultimate Unofficial Guide To The Mysteries of Harry Potter(Analysis of Books 1-4), which is an offshoot, I imagine, of this website, the HP Sleuth Homepage. It's got a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the books, with notes to hints and clues, confirmed or speculative, as well as things to look for, recurring motifs(socks???), name analysis, and more, so much more! It doesn't bode well for my reading that much else, does it?

Especially since I've added Harry Potter to the series I'm doing for my wiki. More on that later, I imagine.

Books update...

After Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle(which didn't have the happiest ending, but at least our hapless narrator was beginning to get his shit together), I went on to Poul Anderson's The Corridors of Time. This was picked as being a)one of the thinnest book on my to-be-read shelf, and b)one of the slowly dwindling set of books that I bought over thirteen years ago and still haven't read. I'm not Poul Anderson's biggest fan, but he has done some good books, like Tau Zero, and I still have a few of his that I haven't read from my rabid-used-book-buying days.

It starts out promisingly enough, with a man, Malcolm, wrongly convicted of murder being approached by a mysterious woman who promises to have him acquitted. She ends up involving him in a time-war, sort of like the one Fritz Leiber set so many stories in, except that the sides are truly distinguishable, and true changes to recorded history are impossible. Malcolm ends up on the side of the woman(Storm), a dionysian matriarchy, fighting against the technologically-oriented patriarchy on the other side. All too slowly, Malcolm begins to realize that his own side is not particularly that of the angels, and eventually manages to extricate himself from the conflict and start up a middle ground.

Since then, I've been rereading the Harry Potter series. I'd gotten out Philosopher's Stone a while ago, and once I actually reread it, it seemed quite natural to go on to the second one. I'm up to the fourth one now, and I imagine I'll get through the rest of the series before Half-Blood Prince comes out, with maybe a break to read something else in between. Goblet of Fire is the one I remember the least of, probably because it hasn't been made into a movie yet, and Order of The Phoenix came out more recently. One thing I'm noticing as I read is how often Rowling makes Harry into an outcast, with maybe one or two friends sticking by him, through forces beyond his control. And how rarely he actually manages to make any progress against the Malfoys of the world, who seem firmly entrenched in the society, what with him being in his early teens and all. Order of The Phoenix was, IIRC, a bit of an improvement that way, and hopefully the last two books will continue that trend.

Edit: Forgot to mention that we're also reading Philosopher's Stone to Simon. He's even trying to read it on his own, though how much he's getting out of it is debatable. He's started incorporating it into his lengthy story/monologues, though he keeps getting Gryffindor and Dumbledore confused, as well as Snape and Slytherin. (Although now he's transplanted Hogwart's to Neopia, so I keep saying it should be Slotherin...)

---

We rented a few movies this week, too. We got "Brother Bear" and "Scooby-Doo" for the kids. "Brother Bear" was surprisingly good, actually, despite how the latter-day hand-drawn animated movies have been dismissed compared to the computer-animated ones. "Scooby-Doo"...well, I'd have to say that Linda Cardellini as Velma was the best thing about that movie...though Matthew Lillard did a very faithful Shaggy. I wasn't particularly impressed with Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, possibly because she just seemed not quite Buffy-like enough. Or, rather, she was, but not in the right ways--in the martial arts moves, but not in the character.

For adult movies, we saw "Ocean's Twelve" and "Vanilla Sky". Well, Nicole didn't watch the last half of "Vanilla Sky". I won't give it away for anyone who hasn't seen it, but let's just say that my Wild-Assed Guess was proved right, and I actually liked the second half better than the first half. Now I'm almost curious to see the original Spanish version, "Open Your Eyes", which has Penélope Cruz in exactly the same role...

"Ocean's Twelve", on the other hand, was a major disappointment. It felt like they edited out most of the plot, but left in the comedic byplay between the vast array of characters that we couldn't keep straight anyway. I mean, we remembered Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and George Clooney, of course, and Elliott Gould and Bernie Mac, but there were three or four that we just couldn't keep track of. Meanwhile, the plot was excessively tangled, though once again my WAG was proved right. The extended Julia Roberts segment in the middle may have been the best part of the movie. But all in all we could've done without this movie.

I have finally finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Not to imply that I didn't enjoy it, which I did, mostly, but it was long, and it was physically thick and heavy. I got tired of stuffing it into my backpack to take to work, which didn't leave much room for things like my lunch and my CDs and tapes to listen to.

It was a decent book, and probably a good candidate for the World Fantasy Award, if not the Hugo, but I can't say that it'll become one of my favourites. It could have been shorter, being very slow at the beginning and middle, and it took a long time for the plot to become clear. But it had a great sense of place and time, of early 19th century England(and bits of the rest of Europe), and obviously Susanna Clarke put a lot of thought into the history of magic in England, at least. (Though not outside of it, for some reason. But that kind of Anglocentrism is also in keeping with the times.)

Now I have to move on directly to the Peter Watts book(Behemoth, Part One: β-Max), since it and Jonathan Strange are both due back on Saturday. At least this one, having been split in half, is only 300 pages. Less than half of Jonathan Strange. Boy, those publishers sure love their midlist authors!

I'm also reading Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts/Private Stories, for which I swear I've been waiting for two years to come in at the library. It's amusing so far, at least. I keep neglecting The Descent of Woman, though every time I do pick it up(it made a better book to sneak into the bathroom at work than Jonathan Strange, for instance)I enjoy myself reading it.

---

This evening I went to start up Winamp, and it told me a new version was available. I decided to upgrade, since I had a story to read for the Cult of Pain meeting(on a Wednesday this month). Unexpectedly, with the free upgrade was a free 50 MP3s to download from eMusic! So I happily used those up with the rest of my evening.

Of course, like all legitimate music-download sites, the selection was limited and quite scattered. However, I was able to find enough. Firstly, I remembered that They Might Be Giants' "Long Tall Weekend" had been available from eMusic, so I downloaded that one. Then I found not one but two(!) Miranda July albums. After that it was a little bit harder, but I decided to go for a Glenn Tilbrook solo album(whose title I've forgotten). The remainder were mostly single tracks--a couple of Peter Himmelman, some Stereolab and Negativland, one by the Lilac Time(I was thinking of Stephen Duffy because he's a good friend of Steven Page from the Barenaked Ladies), and I tried a couple of new bands, In Itself and Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Now I just need to get some more CD-Rs so I can burn some of this stuff. I like the physical backup.