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If this were a sane and sensible world there would be someone out there pressuring Dirk Flinthart to re-release his suburban Brisbane noir novella, Brotherly Love. I mean, dude, how is this ever out of print? More importantly, why has it been out of print for over a decade?  Why do I need to acquire it in op-shops and library seconds sales? I give away copies of this book semi-regularly, and it is loved with a fierce devotion by everyone who sees the words “yakuza”, “overweight computer hacker” and “army of goths” in the blurb. It’s the kind of book that causes readers to get a dangerous gleam in their eye as they contemplate the forthcoming awesomeness, and it does not dissapoint them when they read on.

And alas, I’m at my final copy, which means I must now guard it like the precious and hiss at people who ask if they can read it. I must also tape it together, since I re-read this book so often that it’s going to fall apart.

So I’ve been trying to read Edgar Rice Burroughs A Prince of Mars for over a month now.

It…ah…it isn’t going at all well. So not well, in fact, that I actually put together a photograph of the book, the Spokesbear and my frowny-face of extreme displeasure as an illustrative aid, but that plan was thwarted by the fact that I’m house-sitting and brought the wrong thingamywatsits* to connect the camera to the computer. Hell, I suspect reading this book is actually making me a little crazy and there is some form of retaliatory planetary romance pastiche in my writing future**.

Were I a saner person this is the point where I’d cut my losses and give up on the book, acknowledging that Princess of Mars is so deeply ingrained in the cultural prejudices of it’s time with not enough cool stuff around the edges to ease me past the knee-jerk string of “for fuck’s sake” responses I get while reading. Sadly, I’m not that sane person. I keep reading regardless, determined to get to the end. I just take my time. I loathed every minutes of Gabriel Garcia Marqeuz’s 100 Years of Solitude and it took me four years to finish, but I did it. And it’s a pity, really, because Marquez’s short fiction is often extraordinary and it took me years to discover that due to the slow pacing of the novel.

I suspect it’s going to take me much longer to finish Princess of Mars. I also suspect I’ll go and re-read Michael Moorcock’s Mar’s tribute books too, since they’ll remind me of what I actually like about this section of the genre.

*technical term. Also, to compound matters, I followed up the previous mistake by spilling coffee on the camera.
** I suspect mine will involved masked wrestlers.

So yesterday I had a cyst the size of a walnut removed from my scalp, which served as the catalyst for the rather enthusiastic bandage job posted last night.  The combination of restless nerves, a long wait in the surgery, and the complete inability to sleep due to the bandages constricting my jaw meant I spent a lot of the day reading.

Changeless, the follow-up to the Gail Carriger novel I blogged about on Tuesday, was a fun read that didn’t really have the zomgawesomesauce feel of Soulless. Which is not to say that it isn’t full of Steampunky goodness and a readable book, just that I missed the added frisson of enjoyment that came from the intertextual Austen-esque moments that made the first book so much fun. Austen-esque doesn’t work when you’ve got happy, sexually active couples in the opening pages. I found myself missing that.

Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, however, was the exact kind of comfort reading I was looking for around 1 AM. I picked this book up after listening to the DVD commentary by authors David Levithan and Rachel Cohn on the film adaptation (which is a gently charming coming of age story that I bought largely on the strength of the awesome commentary track featuring the novel’s authors, the director, and the screenwriter). It’s a sweet coming-of-age love story with all sorts of cool stuff happening around the edges (punk music, New York, characters who are gay as opposed to gay characters), and it’s nearly impossible to hate anything that includes the line I’m the nonqueer bassist in a queercore band on the first page. My inner sixteen year old has such a fierce crush on this book. My exterior thirty-three year old kinda digs it too, although he’s far more reserved about his crushes.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to lie very still and wait for the stitched up hole in my scalp to stop hurting. At least the doctor downgraded me to a more sedate bandage today…

Angela Slatter’s short story collection, The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales, is available for pre-order in hardcover or paperback. And you’ve gotta admit that it’s a pretty awesome-looking book:

The official launch is at Worldcon in September. It goes without saying that the book itself is going to rock and you should totally secure yourself a copy.

So Gail Carriger’s Soulless is pretty fricken’ awesome, assuming a given value of awesome that roughly equals me rabidly devouring the book like the unholy mixture of crack and mind-candy it is. I’d fallen for this book so hard after the first chapter that it could have spent the remaining pages kicking puppies and forcing kittens to recite Mein Kampf in their native lolcat and I still would have loved it.

Yes, I lapse into hyperbole here, but the book deserves some hyperbole, for it is one of those novels that operates on the fundamental assumption that pure undistilled awesome will carry the day. It bypasses the critical impulses and pleads directly to the little part of the soul that’s been waiting for this book all along without ever knowing of its existence. It inspires the kind of unconditional joy that last emerged when I was sixteen and reading David Eddings.

This week io9′s Weekend Short Story Club is throwing some love in the direction of my friend Ben Francisco and his story Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts which originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy last year. This pleases me because, lets face it, Ben is awesome and Tio Gilbertois one of those stories I patiently waited for him to get published since I read the first draft at Clarion back in 2007 (the other peice I’ve been waiting for, This is Not Concrete, appeared in the most recent issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet that arrived on my doorstep on Friday).

“You read The Lathe of Heaven?” To his credit, the Spokesbear manages to say this without making it sound like an accusation. Of course, he immediately proceeds to sniff the cover like one of the drug dogs you see at the airport, which kind of undoes his momentary attack of self-control. “You don’t like Le Guin and you’ve had that book sitting on your shelf for six years without reading it. What gives, dumb-arse?”"

“I don’t like Earthsea. That’s not a condemnation of her work in its entirety.”

The Spokesbear made a nervous coughing noise in the back of his throat. “People will kick your arse for not liking Earthsea. You know that, right?”

“I’ve locked the door and taken the phone of the hook. I can drag the shotgun out of the in-case-of-zombie-apocalypse kit if we need it.”

“Sure.” 

I fidgeted as I made coffee, uncomfortable under his stare. “Fine,” I said. “It’s short. I need short books. I promised myself I’d read 104 books by the end of July, most of them written by women, and I’m falling behind.”

The Spokesbear doesn’t look convinced. “That theory doesn’t work so well when you don’t like the book, kid. You have to *want* to read things.”

“I liked Lathe of Heaven.”

He sniffed the cover again, pulled a face like he’d discovered a stash of rotten eggs instead of literary cocaine. “This? It’s had a bookmark living at the end of the first chapter since your first attempt to read it back in 2006.”

“Well, I liked some of it.”

“Some of it?”

“The last half.”

He gave me a flinty look. I’m not sure how he managed that, given his eyes are plastic beads and designed to give the impression of cuteness. Call it a quirk of his character, the stern thread of iron beneath his floppy exterior.

“Look,” I said. “It’s a slow starter. It got better, when I gave it a chance.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Better how?”

“Rule of three,” I said. “Conflict between two characters, no matter how intense and meaningful, becomes far more interesting when a third character is introduced to take sides and provide contrast. Plus Heather gives a personal stake to the philosophical conundrum at the core fo the book. And the second half of the book has dream-diving alien turtles. You can do no wrong with dream-diving alien turtles.”

“Turtles trump the considerable metaphorical depth of the first half? Really?”

I sipped my coffee. “Really. Turtles are fun.”

“You really wouldn’t be an SF fan if Star Wars hadn’t come along, would you. Style and fun trump substance in your head.”

“Not entirely. I mean, if that were true, I would have liked the remake of Star Trek.”

“They’re going to take away your geek badge,” the spokesbear said.

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I finished my coffee, pondering the book and the conversation.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think the dislike of Earthsea has more to do with the person who recommended it to me than the book itself.”

“Teacher?”

“Ex-Girlfriend.”

“Which one?”

I gave him a name. He listened, shaking his head.

“If that were really true, you’d dislike Angela Carter.” The Spokesbear looked smug. “Is that checkmate, dumb-arse? Can we stop talking about the book and go back to work now?”

It was. We could. I did.

It seemed a good day to revisit these videos:

Way more fun than any academic discussion of the Catcher in the Rye I’ve ever had.

2009 is totally going down as the year that I rediscovered how much I enjoy reading for pleasure. It’s one of those habits that eluded me a while back, which was kind of unfortunate given that my book-buying habit didn’t exactly die off at the same rate. And it’s not that I stopped reading, exactly; I just fell into the trap of rereading old favourites with the occasional new work creeping in. By the end of June I’d made the decision that this should be rectified and promptly started ploughing my way through the seemingly endless array of novels and non-fiction that fill my too-read bookcase.

Since then I’ve managed a fairly steady pace of two books a week. I’ve barely made a dent on the unread book read pile of doom, but it’s still exposed me to a lot of kick-ass fiction. To whit, I give you the fourth and fifth instalment of Awesome Things about 2009:

 The City and the City, China Mieville (4/15)

‘Tis probably not to everyone’s tastes, but for my money The City and the City was a phenomenal novel that utterly blew my minds and reminded me why I enjoy reading fiction in the first place. There’s a part of me that’s a little bit in awe of this book, even as the other half of me is busy rereading chunks and trying tofigure out how Mieville pulled of the neat trick of taking such an absurd idea and making it seem totally fricken’ natural within the context of the novel. It’s the kind of book that makes me wish I still taught undergraduate writing theory classes, because it’d be fricken awesome to spend a semester watching other people process the book and respond to the narrative.

To put it simply: I heart this book. The Spokesbear hearts this book too. It’s one of those things that’s going to plague me for years as I try to figure out how it works, why it works, and whether I can eventually pull of something that’s equally as awesome as a writer (odds are, I can’t, but it’ll be fun to try). And awesome fiction is awesome.

 A Whole Stack of Books by Cherie Priest (5/15)

One of the things that brings me considerable joy as a reader is that rush of reading someone for the first time and realising they’re still at the point in their career where you can both catch up (thus ensuring the immediate gratification of more books *now*) and follow their progression while new work gets released.

2006, for example, is always going to be the year where I picked up Elizabeth Bear’s short story collection and rushed through her first SF trilogy in the aftermath; 2007 is the year where I started picking up anthologies purely on the basis that they contained Kelly Link’s work; 2008 saw me rush through the noir novels of Christa Faust (with Hoodtown immediately earning its spot as one of my favourite novels ever)*.

I’m not entirely sure what separates these writers from other new writers I came across in the same years, but I suspect it’ll come down to some combination of: an interesting web presence where the writer talks about process, having new releases on the horizon just as I finished their first few books, and the release of smaller projects via Indie Presses (I speak here, primarily, of Subterranean; oh, how that company taunts me with the shiny hardcovers and special editions from writer after writer I enjoy reading).

2009 quickly became the year where I read a lot of Cherie Priest. Sure the entire process may have started in 2008 when Tor gave away free copies of Four and Twenty Blackbirds at Conflux, but 2009 was the year that I finally got around to reading the other two books, RSSed Priest’s blog so I wouldn’t miss any new books when they came out, and preordered Boneshakerso there’d be minimal delay between the end of the trilogy and the start of the next fix (because nothing says “fan for life” like the promise of steampunk zombies).

*Intriguingly, I have to retrace my steps back to 2004 (aka the year I read Etgar Keret for the first time) before there’s any testosterone in the list. And 2005 was a bust for fiction, although I followed a bunch of game designers that year instead. It made sense at the time.

The October edition of Apex Magazine went online this week, with my story To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament among the table of contents and available for free online or via print or PDF for a reasonable cover price.

I should probably mention that of all the stories I’ve written, Horn included, this one is probably the weirdest and the squickiest. And since the working title was “John Flamsteed has sex with aliens to save the world” you should probably get fair warning that it’s a little on the smutty side,  so it’s probably not safe for work unless your co-workers are particularly forgiving of alien-sex. Not that it’s all squicky sex, or even that it’s the focus, but…well, you know…it’s there.