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So Carl has announced his Sci-Fi Experience for 2009, which will run from January 1 until February 28. I had already decided to sign up for the 42 Challenge and I think the two will sit very nicely together.
No lists but reviews of any sci-fi stuff I happen to read or watch, linked appropriately. I don’t really need much encouragement to read in this genre; as well as my own stash I have the Book God’s extensive collection built up over many years which I can dip into, and there are already some intriguing possibilities beginning to emerge.
One thing I would like to do as part of these two challenges is read more sci-fi written by women; I’m thinking of Octavia Butler, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Kate Wilhelm, Sherri S Tepper to name a few – any other suggestions in this area gratefully 
received.
And as for TV and movies, well the Dr Who Christmas special will be worth watching again and pondering on, and we’ll just have to see what other delights come across screens big and small between now and next December……..
Stainless Steel Droppings » Blog Archive » The Sci Fi Experience 2009.
So I thought another way to kick-start my reading habit after the current lull was to sign up for some new and interesting challenges, and this one (which I found via Eva at The Striped Armchair) really appealed.
My six books are:
- Duncan Grant: A Biography by Frances Spalding
- The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter and Poet by Jan Marsh
- Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography by Matthew Sturgis
- William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis by Angela Thirlwell
- The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian Society by Caroline Dakers
I’m really looking forward to this one; I’ve had some of these books kicking around for a while, just looking for the right moment to be picked up.
It’s about time I owned up about the abject failure that was the Fall Into Reading Challenge, so here’s how it all panned out.
I meant:
- to read the following books left over from RIP III challenge:
- Duma Key by Stephen King [failed]
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury [completed – hurrah!!]
- Come Closer by Sara Gran [failed]
- Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman [failed]
- to finish Jigs and Reels by Joanne Harris which I started reading way back when? [failed]
- to finish The Mandlebaum Gate which I abandoned earlier this year, and kick-start my Muriel Spark readathon once again [failed]
- to read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman as soon as I get my sticky paws on it [failed]
- to find enough books in addition to these, and make the time to read them, so that I hit my 52 books in 52 weeks goal [not anywhere likely to succeed – may get to 40 if I try really, really hard]
Oh well, better to have tried and failed……..
I started writing this post, for the last book in the RIP III challenge, back on 4 October, and it seems strange to come back to something I read all those weeks ago and try to put down in words why I enjoyed it. Because I really did enjoy Uncle Montague – a collection of stories told to Edgar during apparently one visit to Uncle Montague in his strange house in the woods.
The stories themselves have a connecting theme – they are all ostensibly about bad things happening to usually young people who don’t listen to what they are told, although I’m not sure that you could call them morality tales. They have a lovely creepy Gothic atmosphere to them and are enhanced by the wonderful illustrations by David Roberts – I particularly like the expression on young Edgar’s face on the cover, which gives a strong impression of someone trying desperately not to look round at what might be behind him.
Particular favourites are Climb Not and A Ghost Story, but they are all very good, and the revelation of exactly what predicament Uncle Montague is in was satisfying. So definitely worth reading, though as I said more atmospheric than genuinely scary.
This was my final read for the RIP III challenge.
I have to say right at the beginning that I really love stories about vampires. That’s not to say that I am uncritical; there are at least two series of vampire novels that I’ve stopped following because the the stories have become formulaic (I won’t mention any names…..). But it means that I’m always on the lookout for something interesting in the genre, and was thrilled to come across Let The Right One In by accident when browsing in a bookshop.
According to the blurb on the cover, Lindqvist has “reinvented the vampire novel” and there is “a whiff of the new Stephen King” so this was a no brainer for me. And I’m so glad that I picked it up, as it is a genuinely creepy and unsettling book which has been stuck in my head over the few days since I finished it.
We are in Sweden, a suburb of Stockholm to be exact, on a council estate. Oskar is 12 years old, being brought up by his mother alone and bullied at school. One night, while acting out a fantasy of revenge in the local play area, he meets Eli, a girl of indeterminate age, and they form a bond. She gives him the courage to face up to his problems, but it soon becomes clear that she isn’t what she seems; she is in fact a vampire who is at least 200 years old.
That’s the set-up, but there is so much more to this story. It’s incredibly bleak in places, a lot of the characters lead disappointedlives, the children are mainly from broken homes. However, the supernatural element blends in; Eli is a victim also, turned into a vampire when a child, not really understanding how it all works but knowing what she needs to do to survive. It’s incredibly gruesome in places (which I don’t mind) but also really affecting, and I found the end satisfying.
I’m not sure I’ve done this unusual story justice, but if you want something new in the vampire tradition then give this a try.
This is my third read for the RIP III challenge.
So though I said I wasn’t going to get involved in any more challenges, I couldn’t resist this one as it is such a simple idea. I’ve been thinking quite carefully about what to set myself as goals, and I’ve come up with the following:
- to read the following books left over from RIP III challenge:
- Duma Key by Stephen King
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Come Closer by Sara Gran
- Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman
- to finish Jigs and Reels by Joanne Harris which I started reading way back when?
- to finish The Mandlebaum Gate which I abandoned earlier this year, and kick-start my Muriel Spark readathon once again
- to read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman as soon as I get my sticky paws on it
- to find enough books in addition to these, and make the time to read them, so that I hit my 52 books in 52 weeks goal
That looks like enough to get on with, I think!
Where to start with this one? A controversial title (I received some askance looks when reading this on my daily commute) perhaps, but as with all works by Joyce Carol Oates carefully chosen, not for shock value but to reflect what the nub of the story really is.
Rape is about Teena Maguire, a single mother, and her daughter Bethie, 12 years old, and the consequences of their short-cut through a local park late at night after a Fourth of July party. Teena is raped by a number of men who are high on drugs and alcohol, beaten and left for dead; Bethie is beaten but escapes, though she can hear from her hiding place what is happening to her mother.
The men’s families hire a lawyer who is able to get their charges reduced to assault by claiming that there was consent and the beating and so on must have been carried out by a different group of men who came along later; after all, no-one actually witnessed the rape. Some of the most difficult parts of the story are here, where the justice system seems to fail Teena and Bethie; the author has made it clear from the start that these men are guilty, there is no room for ambiguity or doubt, but Teena’s poor choice that night, her dress and her family circumstances are used against her. But there is one man who is determined to see justice done, and the latter part of the novella concentrates on how he achieves that; whether his actions are right or wrong is left to the reader to decide.
This is an incredibly powerful story, but not to everyone’s taste; I’m sure many will find it a difficult read. I have said elsewhere that I admire Joyce Carol Oates greatly, and a number of her novels deal with the undercurrent of violence in modern society and how it often erupts into the lives of otherwise ordinary families, and this is no exception. The events stay with Bethie into her adult life.
This is my fifth read for the Novella Challenge.
First things first – I loved this book. I read it slowly so that I could enjoy the experience for as long as possible and I’ve been mulling it over ever since, trying to work out exactly why Heart-Shaped Box is so good.
I think it’s basically such a wonderful idea – rock star buys ghost over the Internet and when the titular heart-shaped box containing a black suit arrives, he finds himself genuinely and creepily haunted. And it all goes downhill from there, as he and his current lady-friend try to find a way to rid themselves of this malicious presence.
It helps if you like the characters and I thought all of them were well-rounded, particularly Jude and Marybeth, and I found it was really easy to invest myself in their survival. I particularly loved the stuff about the dogs- I won’t say anymore as I’m sure I’m not actually the last person in the world to read this, although it feels like that sometimes.
It would be really easy to compare Joe Hill’s writing to that of his dad, who as everybody probably knows by now is the great Stephen King, but that comparison would be a bit unfair as Hill has his own distinctive voice. I’m really looking forward to reading more – I have Twentieth Century Ghosts tucked away somewhere for winter reading.
If you haven’t read this you should really give it a try. Great stuff.
This is my second read for the RIP III Challenge.
I started to write this post in July and promptly forgot all about it while I dithered over the book pool for this challenge – but never mind, got there in the end!
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So I’ve already mentioned elsewhere that I signed up for this challenge, which I have to say I’m really looking forward to as I have been fascinated by Canada and things Canadian since I was quite young; I’ve no idea why, but there you are. Some of my favourite bands are Canadian (Rush, Barenaked Ladies) and I’ve read quite a few authors, most of whom will be represented on my reading list.
The challenge is – starting (well, started) July 1st, 2008 and running to July 1st, 2009 – to read (and write about) 13 Canadian books (by Canadians and/or about Canadians).
I’ve been pondering my booklist, and have come up with the following:
1. A Celibate Season by Carol Shields and Blanche Howard
2. Pilgrim by Timothy Findley
3. Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay
4. The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint
5. Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood
6. For Your Eye Alone: The Letters of Robertson Davies
7. The Glenn Gould Reader
8. After Edgar by Joan Barfoot
9. The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
10. Runaway by Alice Munro
11. Neuromancer by William Gibson
12. Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland
13. Strange Things by Margaret Atwood
These are all books that were kicking around the house, it was just a question of gathering them up. Now all I have to do is start to read!
So ever since Carl announced RIP III I’ve been wandering around the house looking for suitable books to use as my pool for the challenge.
And even though there are more I could add, I think I’m going to plump for the following list from which to complete Peril the First, where I have to read four books of any length from any subgenre of scary stories I choose:
- The Terror by Dan Simmons [6 September]
- Duma Key by Stephen King
- Come Closer by Sara Gran
- Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist [25 September]
- Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror by Chris Priestley [3 October]
- Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman
- Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill [14 September]
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
I would love to have included The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman but it doesn’t come out in the UK until the end of October as far as I can tell.
I also intend to round off the challenge with my annual viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which seems fitting given Carl’s fabulous challenge button!
Bride of the Book God 