Which is to say, maybe I’ll be posting regularly and maybe I won’t. You’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve not yet made it over to the campus, so much is dependent on the Wireless Situation and its acceptability. (However, props to the American Flatbread Co. joint in Burlington* for an excellent dinner. Welcome after a hellish experience that started with the airline having no record of my reservation, and involved shoving through a cattle-esque stampede of not-boarding-yet freaks at JFK.)
I read Cecil‘s Beige on the plane and found it BRILLIANT. Her best book yet, seriously, and I’ll have more to say later on about that. Next up is Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl, which I’m very excited to finally get to read. (Now, if only I can find a copy of Caitlin‘s latest up here, I’d be truly happy. Oh, and if a nice publicist sent me Ironside … puh-leeze?)
Some links I didn’t get to post before I left:
- Kelly talks to Ysabeau Wilce about her new YA novel Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog. Wisconites among you may remember our Pretty Magic Butlers of Roanoke reading a couple of Wiscons ago: This is the butler!
- Tightrope Girl on difficult characters.
- Hannah being wise on the subject of rejections.
- Education makes you live longer. Maybe.
- James Hynes in the Boston Review on why John Crowley isn’t hailed as the literary genius of our times that he clearly is. Mostly, I like this piece, but it has some odd moments that lapse into "indulging in what it is critical of" in terms of justifying the appeciation of genre that I find bizarre given the overall point. (Via Maud.)
- A lukewarm review for Joe Hill’s first novel Heart-Shaped Box (which I also wouldn’t mind an ARC of…), but it actually makes me want to read it more. Based on his short stories, I can’t imagine lack of ambition being an issue.
- Fictional ruins from fictional worlds.
- The aforementioned John Crowley looking for recs of nonfiction books to recommend to his class in writing F&SF at Yale.
- Nicola Griffith interviewed on NPR. (Thanks, Kelley!)
- Jeff VanderMeer’s Twelve Overlooked Books of 2006 at Locus Online. (Yay, Fairy Tale Review!)
And now I must sleep. Please forgive if the next two weeks here are incoherent/poorly attributed/practically insane.
*A very Portland-y, Madison-y kind of town at first glance, but sprawlier.
I don’t have a Heart-Shaped Box ARC to send you, alas — I read a copy from work, and had to return it. I don’t think it’s as ambitious as the most remarkable stuff from Joe’s collection, but it’s a damn good ghost-filled road-novel.
omigod, they won’t give me a fucking arc of BEIGE. I read it in it’s computer ms form and ADORED it (best cecil book evah), but I want to read it again! in boooook form!
curse my sales rep. CURSE HIM!
also, have a blast in VT, I am so jealous. my semester of stuff for the BA program is due tomorrow and I am sick about it.
Thanks for the link 🙂
I wouldn’t call my review luke-warm. I think it’s a very good ghost story with some interesting ideas in it. I just think that Hill’s got more in the tank than he displays in this book.
On an interesting side note, if you want to buy the short stories on Amazon Uk at the moment, they’re going for close to £60.
Welcome to the decidedly non-frozen North. Be advised that it’s normally much, _much_ colder than this. Have fun!–Brett
Speaking of Hill, did y’all see that Subterranean is doing a chapbook of “Pop Art”, with art by Gahan Wilson? Pretty.
Good luck! I’m betting you’ll be the smartest kid in class.