Review: The History of Caliph Vathek

The History of Caliph Vathek by William Beckford

Modern fantasy, as we all know, was born with The Lord of the Rings. (Modern fantasy’s problem with serial structure was born around the same time.) But the genre existed long before Tolkien, and its pre-Tolkien history is something I’m keenly interested in. Last November, I listed off all the entries in the classic seventies Ballantine Adult Fantasy series that were in the public domain. I intend to make my way through all of them, more or less in chronological order. Okay, so this isn’t Orlando Furioso, which predates The History of Caliph Vathek by two hundred years, but the thought of narrative poetry gave me acid reflux. I figured it was a bad omen.

The Sunday Salon: The Hobbit 2 Trailer #1

While I found The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to be a mixed bag, I, nonetheless, dropped everything and ran to my laptop a little before 1 PM this past Tuesday. There’s always something about your first fandom, isn’t there? (Sit down, Digimon, you don’t count.) Plus, it’s the summer for television, I’m almost done with the Bondathon in real time, and I’m lying in painful wait for a copy of Star Trek: The Voyage Home to come in at the library, so I’m a little starved for content at the moment. And so, like everyone else on the Internet, I offer up my traditional frame-by-frame analysis. Hit it.

Review: The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Angela Carter, we meet at last. I’ve been getting recommended Carter’s books for years now—during my trip to Ireland with my college, I actually bought a copy of The Night Circus because it was gorgeous and on sale. But I haven’t gotten around to it, because of my habit of holding onto books I own as a sort of stockpile against finding myself without access to a library at any point in my life. But given that my keen interest in the art of adaptation was fired up by my recent viewing of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, it was time to finally pick up The Bloody Chamber. Luckily, it was a library book, or I never would have gotten around to it.

The Sunday Salon: Bookish Fall Television 2013

Because I didn’t know how network television worked until 2005 (shows come on every week? What dark magic was this?) and thus developed a taste for long-form narratives very late in my development, my television watching habits are pretty scant compared to my peers. And they look downright minimalistic compared to the tumblrinas. (A tumblrina is anyone on tumblr who makes me feel old.) This past television season marked the first time I ever had appointment television shows—Elementary, Once Upon a Time (I should probably review the second season soon, eh?), and Saturday Night Live. And, as another first, I’m actually making decisions about what shows I should pick up come next fall. There’s a few bookish options, and I’d like to share those with you today, in order of ascending ridiculousness…

Review: Redshirts

Redshirts by John Scalzi

So Star Trek Into Darkness broke my heart and not in the fun way. (The fun way involves my usual Sunday night weepings, which I believe the rest of the world calls Once Upon a Time.) With my hold on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (yes, I know it’s painfully slow, but completionism compels me!) remaining in a, well, holding pattern, I knew I had to do something to drum up my waning enthusiasm for the franchise if Project “Watch All Of Star Trek” was ever going to get completed. Luckily, Redshirts was available right off the shelf at my local library when I finally stepped in.

The Literary Horizon: Poison Study

Poison Study by Maria V. Synder

Review: Dragonflight

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

When Anne McCaffrey passed away in 2011, I was saddened, as many people in the sf community were. I was also seized by a sudden urge to go back and read The Dragonriders of Pern. Well, go back… I distinctly remember reading a Pern novel featuring a tall, dark villainess in middle school, but, looking back, I definitely could have just imagined that. In any case, 2011 was when I determined to read Dragonflight and get a toehold back in the series, to see if I wanted to continue or not. Naturally, it took me two years to finally sit down with it. Yeesh.

The Literary Horizon: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherill

Review: The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

For some insane reason, I thought that my final finals season at Agnes meant that I would have tons of time for reading. This was not only a lie, but a damned lie. I checked out every book I could only get at my college library and a handful of books from the local library. Fines piled up on the school books and the local books went home, unread, save for one: The Man in the High Castle. I’d only known Philip K. Dick by reputation, and I had confused The Man in the High Castle, the “Nazis won World War II” story, with another “Nazis won World War II” alternate history short story that was much more dour and depressing. Well, not that this isn’t…

Reading by Ear: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

For a very long time, I hated Kurt Vonnegut. More specifically, I hated Slaughterhouse-Five. It was assigned to me during my first or second year of high school, so I was still doing debate and still in the throes of what I like to call “The Wombat Years”—a bad period spanning most of my adolescence that featured bangs, rabid femmephobia, and constant, quiet anger. That last one had a hair trigger, and Vonnegut tripped it by, in my memory, calling Billy’s daughter “a bitch”. (This may or may not actually happen in the book.) I finished the book, since it was for school, but I scowled more than usual all the way. I am no longer a wombat, but that loathing remained. I did know I’d have to revisit this eventually for Reading by Ear—I just didn’t read that much as a kid, y’all!—but I was expecting the worst. And all I’ve got to say is praise and hallejulah, the Wombat Years are behind us.