A short post at The Hooded Utilitarian about Jhangir Kerawala’s Timpa comics, here.
Possibly relevant, this post from last year about one of the weirder Tintin comics.
December 12, 2012
Elsewhere
I have a (much delayed, this is entirely my own fault) review of Nick Jackson’s The Secret Life of the Panda over at The Future Fire. I’ll admit I asked for the book mainly on the strength of that unusual cover – which you can also see, along with a blog post by the artist, here. Chomu Press have brought out some beautifully designed books and this may be my favourite out of those I’ve seen.
Jackson’s stories are good too, though occasionally in a rather gruesome way (it is possible that I am squeamish) – dark and controlled. More details at the Future Fire website, but if you’re too lazy to read the whole thing, know that I approved of this book.
February 22, 2012
Shiny things that people might like to own
While at Comic Con India (distinguished from all other comics conventions by being a place where you can also buy saris, momos and kahwa) I found myself joining Deepa D in an attempt to find exciting things to auction for Con or Bust - a venture fraught with peril as we negotiated small children singing the Chhota Bheem theme song, a Superman who had neglected to wear underpants either underneath or on top of his costume, and the like.
Deepa has posted to the community with all the loot thus obtained. Here is a collection of comics and graphic novels – for those of you who know him, the lettering for Auto Pilot was done by Aditya Bidikar.
But the lovely people at Blaft provided these copies of the hilarious Kumari Loves a Monster. And (I may have screamed a little) this amazing, beautiful thing.
Other exciting objects related to science fiction and the world outside the UK and the USA – the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards are having a fund drive, and they have a bunch of very shiny books as prizes. The list is here.
July 26, 2011
Elsewhere
As most of you probably know, the SF “Mistressworks” blog exists to highlight science fiction by women written prior to 2000 (the time period covered by Gollancz’ Masterworks series which is rather short on female contributors). My piece on Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow is now up there, and I hope you enjoy it.
July 10, 2011
Peake links
I’ll have a couple of longer pieces up in a few days. For now, though, here are some links to other Peake-ish things:
A wonderful tribute in The Guardian, with contributions from China Miéville, Michael Moorcock, Hilary Spurling and AL Kennedy.
John Holbo at Crooked Timber initiates a discussion on Peake. He also pinpoints one of the things I like about Titus Alone; the genre-bending aspect of it “Like if spaceships had shown up in “The Return of the King”.”
Last year, Paul Charles Smith did a good, in depth reading of the series over the course of six posts. Those are all located here.
Nandini Ramchandran commemorated Peake’s birth centenary on her First Post blog, where she suggested that Peake’s training as an artist and vocation as a poet were what made him brilliant.
An older review, by Adam Roberts, of Peake’s collected poems can be found at Strange Horizons here.
And musically, there’s The Cure’s “The Drowning Man“, which was inspired by Gormenghast. I’d also link to The Strawbs’ “Lady Fuchsia” (and why are they all exclusively fixated on Fuchsia?), but youtube tells me it’s not available in my country.
Next: a “Why you should read Peake” post? A “what is wrong but also what is right with the BBC adaptation” post?
[Links to things I haven't yet read are welcome - tell me in the comments or over email (aishwarya at practicallymarzipan dot com) and I will add them to the post.]
January 20, 2011
Piracy and privilege and property and publishing and other things that begin with P
Apparently people are talking about this again. This isn’t so much a post as a way of directing people who are interested to fantasyecho’s collection of links (which I found via Shweta Narayan).
Also to quote this, from qian’s first post there, because it is so familiar*:
“Order it from Amazon!” It takes a million years for the book to arrive, you pay a swingeing amount**, it’s held up at the post office and you have to drive out and pay taxes to collect it, and all the while you’re aware that it cost you four times the amount it cost an American to buy it. The worst insult? In almost every case, the author is not even contemplating that somebody like you will be reading it. You quite simply do not exist in their world.
*It’s not quite as bad as this in India anymore, because we’ve had a few really good online bookstores (Flipkart!) start up in the last few years. Plus there always have been a few good bookshops that could surprise you, if you lived in one of the major cities.
** “But the book depository has free worldwide delivery!” Here is the list of countries they ship to. I appreciate them and the work they do, but I really think they need to remove that “worldwide” from all over their site.
November 13, 2010
Various Links
The Carl Brandon Society are having a fundraiser to benefit the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship. If you enter you could win an eReader that comes pre-loaded with work by some amazing spec fic writers. Details here.
Via Queen Emily, this study seems to show that our brains can predict the future. Or something.
Here is a much (much!)-belated link: As most people who read Indian blogs will know by now, a few weeks ago there was a case of plagiarism involving the magazine India Today - editor Aroon Purie’s letter at the beginning of the magazine contained some rather distinctive lines that had been lifted from Grady Hendrix’s Slate piece on Rajinikanth. A number of blogs reported the incident – very few mainstream news sources did so (Aditya Sinha, who I like and respect, did a piece in the New Indian Express. His is the only article on the subject that I saw).
And then Mitali Saran, whose funny, indignant, personal column Stet is one of my favourite newspaper things, wrote a column on both the plagiarism and the Indian media’s reaction to it. Guess what happened?
Much respect to Mitali for standing up and making a big deal of this. And I hope Stet will soon be appearing elsewhere.
From plagiarism to piracy – Celine Kiernan would (understandably) prefer for you to buy/borrow her books, rather than illegally download them. The Speculative Scotsman did a post on the numbers involved, and this led to some fascinating discussion in the comments.
From piracy to pain – Aadisht had an article in yesterday’s Mint Lounge about the phenomenon of the 100 rupee novel. I am all too familiar with some of the books from which he quotes (I lent him some of them).
Catherynne M. Valente has a new book out and I am waiting most impatiently for my copy. The book is based in the Prester John myth and in order to explain who he was to those strange people who did not read Mandeville for fun (I know, right?) she wrote a post on Scalzi’s blog and made this magnificent and totally authentic video:
October 12, 2010
Garner love
For many months now I’ve been promising myself a reread of Alan Garner’s magnificent book The Owl Service (and a rewatch of the very good BBC adaptation alongside). I’ve written about Garner on this blog, though never enough to express quite how vital he has been to me, and to how I read.
October 10, 2010
Elsewhere on the internet
The Future Fire have my review of Mark Mellon’s Napoleon Concerto. I really wanted to like this more than I did (and I feel particularly guilty when I’m harsh about small press books) but it simply didn’t live up to its promise, for me.
May 26, 2010
Some Book links
…a few things I’ve been meaning to link to:
Paul Charles Smith recently reread Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan trilogy. My love of Peake is well known to those who have been reading this blog for a while, but if I haven’t yet convinced you of his greatness I hope that Paul will.
Adam Roberts has been reading (for the first time, and I suspect it will be the last) Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books. Fans of the series may not find these posts entirely enjoyable, but I think they’re excellent. A sample:
As Samuel Beckett’s career progressed, his writing became more and more pared down, less and less verbal, increasingly approaching the asymptote that was at the heart of Beckett’s bleak vision: silence. The great, productive paradox at the heart of Beckett was that one of his century’s greatest verbal artists mistrusted the ability of words ever to articulate truth—not just particular arrangements of words but verbal art itself. The Unnameable, in that near-sublime novel, says: ‘I’ll speak of me when I speak no more.’ For him silence is ‘the only chance of saying something at last that is not false.To step briskly ab sublimi ad ridiculus, Jordan’s career manifests something similar. Insofar as Heroic Fantasy is a fundamentally narrative artform, to which readers go in order to experience the pleasure of following the movement of characters through time, Jordan says: no. Wotix is the closest he has yet come to a book that disperses that force of narrative momentum—that great strength of the novel as a mode—into a great swarm of indistinguishable coexistent characters and non-progressions. If the traditional novel takes the shape of a quest, a linearly horizontal progression through narrative time, Wotix explodes that linearity in a bewildering near-dimensionless knot or tangle of non-progression.
The above, combined with their shared connection with Russia, makes me wonder if Roberts is distantly related to the Pandeys.
Larry Nolen has also been reading the Wheel of Time books, though in his case these are rereads. He’s generally worth a read, and though he’s kinder to the books than Roberts, these are still thoughtful, critical, and funny.
Casting actors for imaginary movie versions of books is generally great fun (and something I have spent far too much time on). A few months ago Gail Carriger discussed who she would like to see play her characters here. I love most of her choices, except that Paul Bettany would clearly make an ideal Professor Lyall.
Now Celine Kiernan has a competition up on her blog where you get to cast her three main characters for the chance to win the trilogy – which means getting hold of The Rebel Prince many months before the rest of us. And then I will be forced to hunt you down and commit violence upon your person. Go look.
Gav at the NextRead blog has been hosting a short story month. Plenty of excellent story recs there, but here I am talking about an Edith Nesbit story that I love.
You’ve probably already read Sridala Swami’s interview of China Mieville. If not, do so immediately. I admire both of them, and they seem like they’re both really enjoying this conversation.
And while on the subject of Mieville, Jonathan McCalmont wrote this epic review of The City and the City. I liked the book rather a lot when I read it last year. But it’s a good review – I’ve only recently discovered McCalmont and so far I’m a fan.
Also, Roswitha (like me) has been keeping a record of everything she reads this year. She’s also (unlike me) a wonderful writer, and her Book Munch posts are a joy to read.
Finally, and not particularly book related: Aadisht is now writing an opinion column for Yahoo India. The first two columns are here (I took that picture!). I may be biased, but I think they are hilarious. Sanjay Sipahimalani and Jai Arjun Singh are also writing for yahoo. Nothing but good can come of this.