"Perverse and Uncommercial"

Since my book came out, lots of people have asked me to describe my writing. I'm not good at this. However, having now seen my writing described by reviewers and by common readers, I've got a few ideas about how other people describe it. "Not nice", "disturbing", "bewildering", etc. After a while, I found myself responding with the same two words when people asked what my writing is like. "Perverse and uncommercial," I heard myself say now and again. (I'm sure I have some rejection slips around somewhere that call my writing exactly that.)

I don't know if those terms are exactly true, but they seem to set up the right expectations in readers.

My friend Jeremy John Parker overheard my self-description. Being not only an excellent writer and discerning editor but also a talented designer, he decided there should be clothing, tote bags, mugs, etc. with "perverse and uncommercial" on them. And so there now are.

There are black t-shirts with white lettering and white everythings with grey lettering, should you desire one of your own.

Once I received the shirt I'd ordered (because how could I not order such a shirt?), I decided it was time for a new publicity photo, as seen above.

Ferguson, Missouri, USA

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Fallen Books

I was upstairs and heard a crash.

I came down and discovered some of my ever-precarious piles of books had fallen.

Had I let the piles grow too large?  Had one of the many books I'm in the midst of reading been placed unartfully on the pile?  Had a small earthquake rustled the house?  Had gravity changed?

No, none of those were the reasons that multiple piles fell at once.

Readercon Book Haul

I'm just back from Readercon and too tired to write up all the various fun that was had -- some great panels, lots of wonderful conversations with more folks than I can possibly remember to mention, not nearly enough time with even more folks than I could ever mention, etc.  Paolo Bacigalupi was so horrified that I had not yet read (or even procured a copy of!) his new novel Ship Breaker that he challenged me to Jell-o wrestle him to the death.  (I like his work so much that I swallowed my pride and declined to wrestle him, because, of course, being the monster of human strength that I am, I would crush him within seconds, and he, being dead, would no longer be able to write.)  Later, a young fan named Junot Diaz and I talked for a while.  He seems like a smart kid, likely to accomplish something one day -- keep your eyes on him.

A more comprehensive Readercon post will appear soon, but for now, here are some of the items I came home with, either from the dealers' room, from friends, or from a used bookstore I visited with Eric Schaller, Liz Gorinsky, and Brian Slattery...

11/11

Books Received

The majority of the books I receive from publishers and writers are, unfortunately, not ones that spark my interest. They find homes at local libraries, with more appreciative readers, etc. (unless really desperate for cash, I don't sell books I get for free).

The ones that do, for some reason or another, arouse my curiosity are still more plentiful than I have time for. Consider, for instance, two current piles of books I intend to do more than just glance at the cover and publicity materials for...



And that's just stuff that's arrived in the last few weeks...

Some of these are books I will definitely read -- indeed, one of them, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, I read this past weekend. (Not sure if I'm going to write much about it anywhere, because I had exactly the response M.A. Orthofer had at The Complete Review, and I don't think I have anything to add beyond what he said. But we'll see.) I'm writing a piece for Rain Taxi on Wallace Shawn, so will be plunging into his two, as well as brushing up on all the rest of his books, this week. Beyond that, well...

I'm intrigued by each of the Night Shade books, but am most excited by Paolo Bacigalupi's first novel, The Windup Girl, since I've had a few things to say about his short fiction in the past. I intend to read the others, but if I only get to one of them, it will be The Windup Girl.

The little book on top of one of those piles is an advance copy of The Original Frankenstein from Vintage, and it's an interesting attempt to reconstruct the earliest manuscripts of Frankenstein. Editor Charles E. Robinson seeks to show the exact nature of Percy Shelley's influence on the novel, and makes what appears, at least at first glance, to be a strong case for Percy as a collaborator with his wife on the book. The collaboration is complex, though, and for anyone who has previously been fascinated by the changes between the published editions of Frankenstein, this volume will be essential. As a reading text of the novel, though, it's awkward, given how much the scholarly apparatus has to intrude upon the actual text, so it's not a book anyone will want to read as their first encounter with Mary Shelley's "hideous progeny".

I'm intrigued by Penguin's re-issue of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's novel Who Would Have Thought It? not only because I had never heard of it or because it is billed as the first Mexican-American novel, but because it tells the story of a Mexican girl raised by Apaches who ends up in New England amidst hypocritical abolitionists.I don't usually find a plot to be the most intriguing things about a novel, but that's a plot that intrigues me!

Finally, among the books you may not have heard of, sits my friend Caroline Nesbitt's horse novel, Ride on the Curl'd Clouds, which I am curious to read not because I know anything about horses (I don't), but because I've known Caroline and her writing for years. One of these days I'll get around to interviewing her about the book and about her decision to publish it via Lulu.com, a decision she and I talked about a lot -- Caroline had previously published a nonfiction book in the traditional way, but we thought she might be able to have more success publishing her novel herself and marketing it within the equestrian community, a world she knows well.

The other books are there because at one point or another they seemed interesting to me and so I hope to get to time to read at least some of them. We shall see...

Piles o' Books

I've run out of bookshelves and have been rearranging some things, which has caused me to create a few big piles of books. I liked them as sculptures, so took some pictures. Then I began wondering what would happen if by some miracle these piles survived a few centuries and were discovered by future archaeologists -- they'd figure, perhaps, they had stumbled upon the hoard of a mad hermit. And would not be entirely incorrect in thinking so...  [click on images to see full size]

A Sign

My friends Rick and Beth Elkin are currently traveling from their home in New Mexico up to New Hampshire here to display their excellent wares at the 76th Annual League of NH Craftsmen's Fair. To amuse themselves on the trip, they're taking pictures of particularly interesting sights and sites and sending them my way. The above is my favorite photo so far.

In Arizona

I just got back from eight days in Arizona, visiting friends and family, taking a reprieve from the snow. It turned out to be a good time to be away -- various friends from New Hampshire emailed and texted me photos of thermometers reading temperatures well below zero (-14, -19 Fahrenheit). I returned to somewhat better temperatures (getting into the 20s during the day) and a lot of new snow that needed to be shoveled.

Here are links to a couple of Picasa photo albums of places we went that were particularly photogenic, at least to me. The first is from the art installation by Dale Chihuly at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. The second is from a visit to the Cosanti Originals workshop (established by Paolo Saleri, who still lives there), where lots of ceramic bells and tiles are made.

Chihuly in Arizona

Cosanti

My favorite photo of the trip, though, is one I took of a friend of mine's son jumping into a pool in Tucson:


And, finally, the view from my bedroom window at home:

Cat Dominates Predator and Alien!

That VanderMeer's Predator novel is nothing to me! Bwaaahaaaaaaa! And Evenson's aliens shall die beneath my claws!

Recently Received

I've never given much of a sense here of the books that arrive at Mumpsimus Central each day. Here, then, are some photos of most of the books that have been sent to us in the past two weeks (the only ones I know for sure are missing are advance copies of Thomas M. Disch's The Wall of America and Holly Phillips's The Engine's Child, both of which I immediately put on the to-be-read pile -- though if I'm responsible to my other duties, I won't start reading either till the late fall. But being responsible is so dull!)

Some closer looks...

Paul Auster and Peter LaSalle!

Night Shade Books continues to publish a wonderful variety of books with beautiful covers.

Two books with great titles: The Age of the Conglomerates and The Defenestration of Bob T. Hash III.
An anthology, a novel, and a short story collection
And, finally, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard and Adam Golaski's Worse Than Myself.

TBR

Just to remind myself of all I should be reading, I decided to take this photo of my most immediate to-be-read pile: books that I have either begun reading recently or need to start reading very, very soon because there are upcoming projects related to them (for instance, I agreed to write about Meja Mwangi for KenyaImagine, warning them that I wouldn't be able to get to it until August, but now August is ... a week away...) I'm reviewing the Nisi Shawl collection for Strange Horizons, and probably later reviewing the Greg Bear novel for them, and I owe SF Site a review of the LeGuin books (I haven't even gotten myself a copy of the second book in the trilogy yet...) Some of the others are for classes I'm teaching in the fall, while assorted others are books that I started reading recently and then had to run away from for a moment to go do something else and haven't had a chance to pick up again. Meanwhile, the mailman just drove up my driveway, which means he's got packages that won't fit in the mailbox.....

A Brief Hello

Life has been busy with the grading of piles of student papers and tests that I unwisely let build up (in ten years of teaching, you'd think I'd know better...) and work on a short story that I promised a certain anthology's editor I would have done by March (and yet it keeps wanting more and different words!), and so I haven't had much to write here. I did get some reading some done this weekend, finishing Lydia Millet's marvelous new novel, How the Dead Dream, which I'll be reviewing for somebody or other eventually. (Briefly: In some ways it's about capitalism and extinction, but it's more an affecting character study, though it's also a laugh-out-loud funny satire, yet really by the end it's a lyrical and heartbreaking look at-- Well, you'll just have to read it. And if you're in the NYC area, stop by the McNally Robinson bookstore on Weds, March 5 for a reading.)

All of which is just me popping up here to say, Nope, still don't really have anything to say. Will you accept a photograph instead?

(That's a picture of a pot made by Hideaki Miyamura and owned by my friends Rick and Beth Elkin. I took the picture on a brief recent trip to visit them in New Mexico -- the morning sun on the glaze was mesmerizing.)