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Saturday Hangovers (Updated)

3 Comments / Hangovers / By Gwenda / January 27, 2007

The ever-fabulous Colleen has read Cecil Castellucci’s forthcoming Beige and apparently loved it as much as I did, which is to say LOTS. Closer to the release date I will sing the full praises of this novel, but I will say that I believe this is my favorite book of Cecil’s to date and that’s no small thing. Plus, it made me go listen to lots of my favorite punk bands. Pre-order Beige now; I’ll wait.
J.L. Bell ruminates a bit on the hot topic of point of view.
Chicken Spaghetti has all the links from participants in yesterday’s Poetry Friday.
The divine Carolyn Kellogg (aka Pinky) alerted me to a call for submissions from Hot Metal Bridge, the new literary mag of the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA program, which will debut in April. Go forth and submit.
Colum McCann’s new novel Zoli is loosely based on the life of famed Polish Gypsy poet Papusza.
Cory Doctorow loves the conclusion of Justine’s trilogy so much he’s BoingBoinged it. It’s sitting over on the kitchen table right now, waiting for me to get a spare moment, but I suspect I’ll be seconding his opinion.
Why has Grey’s Anatomy been sort of sucking this season? Could it be Marti Noxon’s influence? (Scroll to the very end of the post.)
Aurealis Award winners? Anyone?
UPDATE: Gavin has posted an unofficial list of Aurealis winners in the comments. Guess I’m finally going to have to break down and read Monster Blood Tattoo.

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Best Crawford List Ever

Scientifiction / By Gwenda / January 26, 2007

Finalists for this year’s Crawford Award, for the best first book by a new fantasy writer, are Daniel Abraham’s A Shadow in Summer, Alan De Niro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child, Theodora Goss’s In The Forest of Forgetting, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, Naomi Novik’s Temeraire, and M. Rickert’s Map of Dreams. The award has been given annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts since 1985 and was originally funded by a gift from Andre Norton. Nominators for this year’s award included Kelly Link, Graham Sleight, Niall Harrison, Jonathan Strahan, Farah Mendlesohn, and Gary K. Wolfe. The award will be presented at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 14-18 in Fort Lauderdale.

Yay for Alan, Mary Rickert and Dora Goss! (Thanks, Gavin!)

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Thursday Hangovers

Hangovers / By Gwenda / January 25, 2007

Bookshelves of Doom recommends Justine’s Magic or Madness. Which I clearly endorse. Book three will be here before you know it, so now’s the perfect time to catch up on the first two.
This is very book.
Terri Windling posts about all sorts of Marina Warner-related goodness. I had forgotten about Phantasmagoria, but must have it.
The one and only Dave Schwartz reviews Pan’s Labyrinth for Strange Horizons, which we saw over the weekend and thought was utterly fabulous.
Chicken Spaghetti does a great service by reprinting Deborah J. Lightfoot’s "Get Your Books AR Listed" from the SCBWI Bulletin on those mysterious accelerated reading lists and how they happen.
This little piece on The Office reveals that Ed Helms in a bluegrass band called Lonesome Trio.
Rosemary Mosco’s awesome 55 word stories. From the latest: "My secret power is pathetic fallacy." (Via Karen.)

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It’s Not Paranoia: “Life As We Knew It”

7 Comments / Books / By Gwenda / January 25, 2007

When the Moon is knocked out of orbit by an asteroid, it becomes a strange menace hanging low in the sky. And the world starts to end — or that’s what it feels like for teenage Miranda. Tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and epidemics ensue as she chronicles her family’s struggle to stay alive through the collapse of their (and our) way of life in great and sometimes heartbreaking detail. Always believable, always human, Miranda’s story is harrowing, but it brings with it a multitude of rewards for the reader. And — at least on the topics I knew enough to be able to judge (public health, societal collapse) — Susan Beth Pfeffer gets it pretty much right.

I don’t have time at the moment to give Life As We Knew It the fuller take it deserves, but please, do read it. Especially if you’re secretly (or openly) obsessed with post-apocalyptic scenarios, societal collapse, deadly epidemics, etc. etc. Oh, I should caution though that you should also be a fan of fantastic writing and extreme emotional believability, in addition to that other stuff. This book is INTENSE.

And highly recommended. Thanks to Jennifer for pointing it out.

UPDATED: And it’s now up for the Andre Norton Award; yet another reason to check it out.

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Wednesday Hangovers

Hangovers / By Gwenda / January 24, 2007

Head over to the LBC for the discussion of Valerie Trueblood’s excellent debut Seven Loves.
Why are people so prone to magical thinking?
Go check out all the YALSA lists that came out of ALA. (Full of good stuff, including Scott’s latest.)
John Crowley’s series of posts about dreams has led to a new community on LJ where various dreams are being taxonomied. Very nice.
Pimp my bookcart contest winners. Oohlala. (Via Leila.)
Ed has the goods on a rare showing of Ace in the Hole aka The Big Carnival on TCM; Billy Wilder fans take note and DVR accordingly.
The best fashions from science fiction movies, according to Wired. (Via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.)
Liz Hand reviews Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature in the WashPost.

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VeronicaMarsTalk

11 Comments / TV Goodness / By Gwenda / January 23, 2007

And even bigger yay:

Show Me the Monkey. Attempting to keep her mind off Logan (Jason Dohring), Veronica (Kristen Bell) takes a job helping animal researchers track down a monkey missing from their laboratory. In order to find the missing animal, Veronica and Mac (Tina Majorino) go undercover as members of an on-campus animal rights group, believed to have freed the monkey. Meanwhile, Mindy O’Dell (guest star Jamie Ray Newman, "E Ring") asks Keith (Enrico Colantoni) to investigate Dean O’Dell’s (Ed Begley, Jr., who does not appear in the episode) death because she believes he was murdered. Percy Daggs, Francis Capra, Michael Muhney, Ryan Hansen, Chris Lowell and Julie Gonzalo also star. Nick Marck directed the episode story by John Ebrom and teleplay by John Enbom and Robby Hull.

Let’s hope the animal rights activists are painted with a more subtle brush than the feminists of the last arc. And also that the show’s chances for another season aren’t signaled by what will apparently be an 8-week hiatus following this arc for some reality show called Pussycat Dolls.

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Mad Max World

2 Comments / Books / By Gwenda / January 23, 2007

Henry Farrell has posted a fascinating email exchange with China Mieville about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I bought ages ago but haven’t gotten to yet. A snippet:

CM – It’ll be interesting to see where he goes next. It’ll be quite hard to step back from this, back to another pre-Apocalypse moment, however conceived. Perhaps a drawing-room comedy…

I mean, didn’t you think the roasted baby was just, y’know, a little bit camp?

Go there for the more serious parts of the discussion. (Via Niall.)

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Heroes Yammer

9 Comments / TV Goodness / By Gwenda / January 22, 2007

Finally, new television:

Godsend. Matt reveals himself to his wife. HRG confers with Mohinder. Now that she knows the truth, Claire tries to make sense of her life. Hiro seeks the sword that he is destined to own. Niki must face the consequences of her decision to turn herself in to the police. Simone and Nathan are worried about Peter, who has been in a coma for two weeks. A new hero is introduced who meets Peter and offers him a different view of the recent changes in the human evolutionary process. Micah visits his mother.

Looks like an action-packed one.

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Award Fever (Updated)

Books / By Gwenda / January 22, 2007

Check out the 2007 American Library Association award winners in all the children’s/YA categories at YALSA (or the ALA has now updated their site). The Printz went to Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese (with honorable mentions to S&S favorites M.T. Anderson, John Green, Marcus Zusak and Sonya Hartnett). It’s nice to see a graphic novel win the top honor, so I won’t even carp about how Anderson was robbed.

Oh, and congratulations to Cynthia Lord for her Newbery Honor and Schneider Award!

Feeling Better

3 Comments / MFA Rock / By Gwenda / January 21, 2007

… after sixish hours working on revising/rewriting my first 17 pages. Lots more work still to do, but nice to have done some. I also cleaned the desk and filed all the papers I brought back with me (handouts from lectures, my own manuscripts from workshop with comments, admin stuff).

And, joy of joys, my first packet due date was pushed back to Saturday, February 17th, which gives me almost a month to get the first 40 pages of my now-untitled novel in shape, two short critical essays completed, and to read four or five books and do an annotated bibliography. My advisor is Tim Wynne-Jones, who is a fabulous, inspiring, hilarious writer, and who also–coolest of coolness-wrote the music for Fraggle Rock.

Tomorrow, back to work. Still coughing a bit, but that’s slacked off too.

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