July 17
2007
First, if you are a Buffy fan and you're not reading Season 8 then really, you are insane. I got my box of comics today with issues 3 and 4 and this story is so fab - not perfect but on its way to absolute perfection - that I can not stand it. We have Buffy and Xander and Willow together! And the bad guys are bad guys from their past - believable bad guys! And the set-up for the next Arc is great! (That would be a quote from Dawn in post title today.)
I mean just read it people, okay? Or at the very least do check out the cover for issue 3 - is that gorgeous or what?
Today's mail brought an ARC for Mike Resnick's upcoming story collection The Other Teddy Roosevelts. Here's the Sub Press description:
Theodore Roosevelt: president, naturalist, explorer, author, cowboy, police commissioner, deputy marshal, soldier, taxidermist, ornithologist, and boxer. Everyone knows about that.
But how about vampire hunter?
Or African king?
Or Jack the Ripper's nemesis?
Or World War I doughboy?
Mike Resnick (the most-awarded short story writer in science fiction history, according to Locus) has been the biographer of these other Teddy Roosevelts for almost two decades. Here you will find a familiar Roosevelt, but in unfamiliar surroundings -- stalking a vampire through the streets of New York, or a crazed killer down the back alleys of Whitechapel, coming face-to-face with the devastation of 20th Century warfare, waging an early battle for women's suffrage, applying all his skills to bring American democracy to the untamed African wilderness, or coming face-to-face with one of H. G. Wells' Martian invaders in the swamps of Cuba.
And, as Winston Churchill said of the Arthurian legends if these stories aren't true, then they should have been.
As a historian and SFF fan this is the sort of book that makes me deliriously happy. (As you already know from my love of Emma Bull's Territory.) It's not due out until Feb of next year but I'll be reading and reviewing it soon - so I can persuade many many of you to preorder your own copy.
Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite literary subjects - honestly I almost enjoy reading more about him (and his nonfiction work) then I do his novels. I've been following the attempts to save Finca Vigia, his Cuban home, for quite some time and when I read articles like this it just really infuriates me. There is so much about the continued US embargo of Cuba that is absurd, (to start with - why have an embargo against one of the tiniest communist nations on earth while letting the largest take us over, one Walmart at a time?), but refusing to allow direct financial aid from private citizens in the US to restore Finca Vigia really takes the cake. The Cuban government would make money off the restored house as a tourist draw but in the face of what would be lost to literary history by allowing it to crumble who really cares? We are anti Ernest Hemingway fans now? Here's what I'm talking about:
But much of the rest of the estate remains in disrepair. An impressive tower next to the house is closed, Hemingway's fishing boat is shrouded in scaffolding, and red tiles are sliding off the roof of the termite-infested guesthouse. More importantly, the original manuscripts and books, which contain thousands of Hemingway's notes, are still at risk. The US government has blocked not only the money needed but specialist equipment such as dehumidifiers and scanning equipment.
Molly Millerwise, public affairs director at the Treasury, said: "We do not issue licences that facilitate activity promoting Cuba's tourism. The sanctions against Cuba are in place to help restrict hard currency from flowing to the Castro regime, which lines its pockets with money while forcing the Cuban people to live in fear and oppression."
Because of course no one in the US government lines their pockets with our hard earned cash and the only folks living in fear and oppression in this country are the illegals, the poor and - well - anyone who can't afford a really good lawyer. I swear, we sink deeper and deeper in Wonderland every damn day.
Flora Segunda meets Kiki Strike? I'm just saying why not just read those two books and skip the "next big thing".
Via Endicott Studio, take a look at Madame Tutli-Putli a stop motion animated film that looks really intriguing. I've been watching the interviews with the directors and it's a great look into the creative process for filmmaking. I'll be watching for when this once becomes available on DVD.
Meg McCarron spreads some love in the direction of Nicola Griffith's Always and also adores Laurie Marks' Water Logic which I still must read. (Nicola has some thoughts on the writing process over at the Aqueduct Press blog.)
Johanna reviews The Professor's Daughter, another lovely gn from First Second. I hope all you YA librarians know about this one - it's a perfect (and unorthodox) choice for teens.
This has been a rather scattered entry - I'll try to have more focus tomorrow!
