What: A group of rabbits whose warren is destroyed by the bulldozers of a housing development try to find a new place to live, despite various pitfalls and traps along the way.
Who: Anyone who loves animals will love this book, and any writer interested in writing epic journeys as well as non human protagonists will find an analysis of the rabbits’ trek an instructive one.
When: Read this for immersion or when you want to share a saga with your children.
Why: Read it to see how well Adams has worked out rabbit soceity, including a vocabulary full of rabbity concepts like tharn and fabulous phoneticisms like hrududu. Read it to see the rabbit mythology and listen to the folktales told among the rabbits, very much in the same tradition as Kij Johnson’s The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North park after the change.
Where/how: Read it on a summer afternoon, preferably one when you can see a young rabbit or two frisking on the lawn, flicking their long ears back as they eye you whenever you flip a page.
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You Should Read This: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Charlie is one of the great characters of SF and the story resonates with his voice. If you're interested in finding out more about how to write great dialogue, check out my Speaking in Another's Voice: Dialogue online class tonight, 7-8 PM PST. Cost is $29.99 ($19.99 for former and current students) For more details, click on "Take an Online Class with Cat" at the top of this page.Flowers for Algernon was originally a short story by Daniel Keyes that appeared in 1959 in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and won the Hugo Award the following year. Seven years after the story’s publication, it appeared in novel form under the same name, and shared that year’s Nebula Award with Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17.
What: The story is told by Charlie Gordon and involves intelligence experiments being done on both Gordon and the title character Algernon, who is a white mouse.
Who: Anyone who wants to be decently well read in science fiction should read this book. It’s a classic, and one referenced and discussed elsewhere. One of my favorite stories by Susan Palwick, the title story in The Fate of Mice, is told from Algernon’s POV.
Why: Read it because you will want to know Charlie, to hear him tell his story, and to see a master use the device of an unreliable narrator in a way that takes your heart and breaks it over the book’s knee. Read it to discover a story that has survived the test of time and will, I strongly believe, continue to do so.
When: Read this when you’re thinking about things like how a character gets the reader on their side, as well as how what a character doesn’t say is sometimes as telling as what they do. Read this when you are ready to sit down and read it in one full sitting, preferably, which is doable for faster readers since it’s a slender book.
Where and how: Read it where you won’t mind weeping; public spaces (like airplanes) are unsuitable because you will have to have a heart as hard as winter to not tear up some. This is, in fact, one of the best examples of a fabulous tearjerker of a story that I know.
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Not much October travel, yahoo! Game-wise it’s still StarDew Valley and Skyrim on computer and console, D&D5E and Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight) for tabletop.
In television, I’m happy to have a new season of DC Legends and The Flash start; I’ve been working my way through The Arrow and am finishing up Season 2 now, but it lacks the humor and sweetness of the other two. We did finally get around to watching season 1 of Stranger things, which didn’t really grab me much at first, but finally won me over. We finished that up last night and are looking forward to season 2.
As part of my reading, I did learn how to pick a lock this month, or at least have gotten to the point where I can pick the practice one in about ten seconds (which makes me feel a little badass, but in a pretty limited way) and also understand both how a skeleton key works and what a padlock shim is. I figure this will be a useful skill, post zombie-apocalypse. Maybe. Lotsa story ideas brewing from it, though, including a new Serendib piece.
Here’s the books I read:
Anonymous. Visual Guide to Lockpicking. Michael Bishop. Light Years and Dark. One of the strongest anthologies I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across.
Leigh Brackett. The Long Tomorrow. Rutger Bregman. Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build an Ideal World. Great argument for basic income, lots of fascinating history of what’s been tried (and worked with amazing effectiveness).
Chesya Burke. Let’s Play White. Chesya Burke. The Strange Crimes of Little Africa. Robert Coram. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. Interesting bio, particularly if you’re curious about 4GWarfare since his concepts inform it. Tananarive Due. The Black Rose. Tananarive Due. My Soul to Keep. George Alec Effinger. Heroics.
Laurie Forest. The Black Witch.
Victor Gischler. Ink Mage.
Robert Graves. Watch the North Wind Rise. Well, that was interesting, is all I’m going to say about that.
Charlaine Harris, Day Shift. Brandon Massey. Whispers in the Night.
Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Space Opera. Nnedi Okarafor. Binti.
Lorenzo Pecchi and Gustavo Piga. Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Declan Shalvey. Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #1. Michael Swanwick, Being Gardner Dozois.
Pamela Samuels Young. Buying Time.
Not much October travel, yahoo! Game-wise it’s still StarDew Valley and Skyrim on computer and console, D&D5E and Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight) for tabletop.
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