Book Nostalgia: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Quick anthology update: I was recently over at author Shay Fabbro’s blog talking about how we created the shared world for the anthology. And that’s it for promo today.

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In this week’s installment of my Nostalgia series, I’m looking at the first of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books. (More to come in a future Nostalgia post!) Sailing, camping, pirates, and treasure…what’s not to love?

In case it’s been a while, here’s a quick summary to jog your memory. Swallows and Amazons features two groups of preteen siblings, each crewing a small sailboat on a large lake. The four Swallows, exploring the lake for the first time, are thrilled to be allowed to camp alone on an island…until the two Amazons arrive, and war ensues. There are night raids, an attack on a pirate houseboat, and the discovery of a treasure chest.

Weekend Link: Seasons Eternal Anthology

Happy weekend!

Seasons Eternal, the anthology I mentioned earlier this week, is out today, and we’re excited…

It’s available at Amazon (Kindle format) and Smashwords (just about any other ebook format you like), and there will be a print version out soon.

You can read all about it at Turtleduck Press.

That’s all for this week. See you back here on Monday!

Embassytown by China Miéville

What can I say about China Miéville’s Embassytown?

Miéville is not an easy author to read. His fantasy novels tend to be chock-full of really whacked-out worldbuilding, Lovecraftian monsters, and plots that don’t go the way they’re supposed to. (I’ve read several; my favourite of them is Perdido Street Station.) But with Embassytown he turns that sensibility to science fiction, and the result is something truly special.

(Note: No spoilers in the review, but there may be spoilers in comments.)

How Do You Choose Books?

How do you choose the books you read?

To me, there are way too many good books, too little time (for values of “good” that are personal, not objective). I’m constantly running across a new book that sounds intriguing, but I’m only reading about 25 books a year. That means I somehow have to narrow down the list. A lot.

Here’s what a book has to go through before it gets into my hands.

1. I find out it exists. This usually happens through blogs such as The Whatever, Cheryl’s Mewsings, or The World SF Blog; from awards shortlists; from various best-of lists; and from (mostly online) friends or acquaintances. I find so many books this way that I don’t browse in bookstores anymore — when I go into a bookstore, I’m looking for something that’s already on my list.

2. The book languishes in my TBR overflow. The books I find in Step 1 go into a massive overflow list in my email or my RSS feed for future investigation. Lately, they’ve been stopping here because I haven’t had time to check them out  further, but when I do…

Weekly Link: Picturing Books

Okay, so it’s not Friday. Whoops. I regret nothing.

Here’s something that touched me this week, a painting by Jesse Willcox Smith:

Found via Tor.com’s lovely round-up of book-related art. Go look! And I’ll see you back here on Monday.

My First Imaginary Lives

One of my recent blog posts got the most fabulous comment the other day. Here it is, in part:

I also thought I was one of a very few people who lived (not a typo) Trixie Belden as a young girl. Since my family house was near some beautiful woods and a creek, my best friend – also a Trixie fanatic – and I would pretend Bob-Whites all day long. Everything, and I mean everything, we saw became a mystery. We could turn the sight of an elderly lady driving a VW bug into a kidnapping plot. We tied ropes to the handle bars of our bicycles and they became our horses. My two older brothers were, unbeknownst to them, Mart and Brian. We aggravated them to no end by calling them these names. I was Trixie – always – and my friend was Honey. Playing Trixie Belden and the Bob-Whites was a dream escape.

This shared memory threw me back to a time when I pretended just as intensely. Trixie Belden wasn’t one of my primary inspirations, though. I drew from a lot of sources, and I’d like to share a few of them today. Maybe they’ll spark a memory for you, too.

Genre-Bending: Just Barely Speculative Fiction

I’m fascinated by edge cases — genre-bending, cross-genre fiction, works that don’t fit neatly into categories. Today I’d like to talk about fiction that, for one reason or another, just barely qualifies as speculative fiction. Doesn’t mean it’s bad — often quite the opposite. It’s just doing something different.

First of all, I don’t mean literary fiction using genre tropes. That’s a whole ‘nother animal (one that I also enjoy). Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, for example, obviously uses the convention of time travel, but it doesn’t read like a genre work — it reads like women’s fiction or literary fiction, and it’s interested in the same sorts of ideas and themes. It’s using time travel to speak a non-genre language. Same for Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

What I’m interested in today is the reverse. What happens when a book is “speaking” speculative fiction, but it doesn’t use much or any technology that we don’t have today, or employ magic, or use any settings in imaginary worlds?

Books to Help You Beat the Heat

Hot enough for you? I don’t know about you, but where I am, it’s been hot and sticky for weeks and doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon. Here are some reading suggestions for summer…

Beat the Heat

If you’re dreaming of a good snowstorm, these might help.

1. Rider at the Gate by C.J. Cherryh. Set on a snowy alien planet. Cherryh takes the well-worn concept of telepathic bonds between human and animal — and twists hard. The half-tamed nighthorses are intelligent and highly dangerous, but they and their riders are necessary for travel, because what’s out there in the wild and the cold is even worse. There’s also a sequel, Cloud’s Rider.

Author Spotlight: SF and Fantasy Writer Lois McMaster Bujold

In this Author Spotlight series, I’m talking about other SF&F writers. The aim is to showcase authors who may not be the most famous, and to give you enough information to decide whether you might enjoy their work.

Today’s featured author is Lois McMaster Bujold. She’s a multi-award-winning American writer best known for her science fiction, namely the long-running Vorkosigan series, and she has also written some very thoughtful off-world (secondary-world) fantasy…

Friday Link: Cover Reveal

Thanks again to all the fabulous guest bloggers who kept the lights on while I was away! I’ll be back for real on Monday, but in the meantime, I have some exciting news. The indie press I’m a member of, Turtleduck Press, has a new science fantasy novel coming out in less than a month, and the cover has just gone public. Take a look:

Isn’t it pretty? To read more about the novel, hop over to Erin Zarro’s blog.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you back here on Monday!