HSU IT Department

Why yes, I have been reading, thank you for asking. Knocked three off my to-read list just this week, go me!

Garden Spells: A good and pleasant read, but thin: I wanted more on all dimensions -- length, depth (ok, maybe not width). Claire and Sydney were a little too pat as characters: Sydney the free spirit who finds out that freedom is more than just the ability to leave whenever you want, Claire the stay-at-home who discovers that fear of others leaving doesn't excuse never letting them in. I would have liked the book to have started when Claire and Sydney were children, so we could have seen their relationship develop its fraught character naturally, rather than being told about it in flashbacks or conversations. And for sure I would have liked to see more of their grandmother, latest of this long line of Waverley women who know so much about herbs and flowers.

That said, and despite what I found to be a completely non-credible resolution of the problem of Sydney's ex, what is here is lovely and a pleasure to read. The apple tree that's part of the family, a bit like a big shaggy dog that lives in the garden, is an unusual and fun touch. Evanelle, the giver of immediately-useless-but-eventually-important gifts, is just a delight, as is Bay, the little girl who knows instinctively where things (and by "things" we include "people") belong. I'd love to see a sequel that covered her growing up.

The Hill Bachelors is a collection of short stories steeped in the Irish psyche and landscape. I first encountered William Trevor a few months back in the break room at work, via his short story "The Women" in The New Yorker. Like that one, these stories are intense, focused, acutely observant, and often with some sort of secret or unspoken event at their core. Excellent examples of subtlety and keenness, though more often melancholy than happy. Sort of an anti-Maeve Binchy.

Once again, the unquenchable Flashman is off on a mad, bad, and totally unintentional adventure. While en route home, Flashy is shanghaied by his old enemy John Charity Spring, the Mad Don of Oxford, with the willing (to put it mildly) assistance of Spring's extremely sexy daughter. He ends up in America, where not one, not two, but THREE different groups either pay, strongarm, or blackmail him into becoming the second-in-command to abolitionist John Brown. Brown is in the midst of planning for -- or, more accurately, waffling about -- his raid on Harper's Ferry, and Flashy, depending on which employer he decides to follow, is supposed to (a) ensure it succeeds, (b) ensure it takes place, regardless of whether it succeeds or fails, or (c) delay and sabotage it so it never happens. Well, history takes its course and the raid of course does happen, but along the way Flashy manages to bed a number of women, escape by the skin of his teeth more than once, encounters more than one old enemy, and comes out smelling like a rose, as usual.

As always, the history is top-notch, the characters cleverly drawn, and the adventures harum-scarum. However, Flash is a bit more mellow in this one than in others, and seems to actually feel a bit fondness for "old J.B. and his crackbrained dreams," as he puts it. As a bonus, the story is bracketed by scenes of Flash with his grandchildren: Augustus ("young gallows...bursting with sin beneath the mud"), Jemima ("a true Flashman, as beautiful as she is obnoxious"), Alice ("another twig off the old tree, being both flirt and toady"), and John ("a serious infant, given to searching cross-examination"). Ha!

How do you do this in only 178 pages, Neil? How?? How???

You know how there are some books that, when you finish them, you don't want to start another one, at least not right away? You don't want the experience you've just had to be overwritten, or diluted; instead you want to cherish it for a little longer. Let it steep, as it were.

This is that sort of book.

The main character is a child, but this is not a children's book, not by a long shot. A healthy dollop of myth, a bit of poetry, a glimpse or two of deep mystery, frosted with horror and seasoned with that pure intensity of emotion that's hard to recapture outside of childhood...

Oh, just go read it, will you? Preferably now, and in one sitting. It's brilliant.

I know it seems like Christmas is a loooooooooong way away, but it's never soon to plan for holiday fic-ness. This is a fun, low-stress fest, and some lovely stories have come out of it. And how can you resist that adorable owl???
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...a fun and easy Holiday fest for the Harry Potter fandom!

Banner by capitu.

It started with Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. And now, my friends, we have this absolutely fabulous internet ad. (Where was this when I was thirteen??? But hey, at least it's here now!) I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at an ad while at the same time being so utterly and completely delighted. (Here is the associated article from CNN.)


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Tomorrow there will be pictures of lobsters and sailboats and osprey and swing bridges. Today, the first step in post-vacation catch-up: reviews of the books I read while away.

You wouldn't think that anyone could make four-hundred-plus pages of trudging through dust and heat intriguing. And yet somehow Lessing does it. The very end was a bit of an anti-climax, and I didn't really find it credible that Certain People (who shall remain nameless to prevent spoilage) could successfully track Mara and Dann across an entire continent that's decaying into anarchy and chaos. But if you can look past those two points, it's an interesting take on a distant-future slow-motion environmental collapse.

This is a funny, occasionally warm, sometimes biting, and in places rather horrifying satire on gender. In the world of Egalia's Daughters absolutely everything gender-related (except the actual act of giving birth) is reversed: females are in charge of the government, hold most of the important jobs, and make all the decisions for the family, while males stay home, curl their beards, gossip and raise the children. The reversal extends even to language itself: females are wom (sing.) and wim (pl.) while males are manwom (sing.) and menwim (pl.) -- since it was translated from the Norwegian, major kudos go to the translator for successfully retaining such nuances. Written in the late 1970s during the height of the feminist movement, its historical context is reflected in the story in the form of agitation for equal rights for menwim(!). While I expected story elements like menwim being "homemakers" and wim running the country, the story incorporates the entire spectrum of gender-related experiences, including rape and domestic abuse; in some cases it was downright startling to realize how, even today, society is less appalled by certain behaviors from men than they would be from women. The preceding 200+ pages do such a good job that the last chapter, which consists of the opening paragraphs of a novel the main character is writing about a fantasy world where men are in charge, actually seems weird. Definitely worth a read.

An energetic blending of the sword and sorcery of Michael Moorcock, the mysterious jungle cities of H. Rider Haggard, and the lonely -- possibly mad -- knight-errantry of Don Quixote, with a smattering of H.P. Lovecraft. Solomon Kane is an incarnation of the Eternal Hero; he doesn't remember where he came from, but he has occasional fleeting memories of a far-distant past in which he -- or some earlier incarnation of himself -- battled the Old Gods of fear and darkness as proto-humanity tried to free itself from their bloody grip. And like The Gunslinger (Stephen King's high opinion of Howard is quoted on the front cover), Solomon Kane doesn't know where he's going, only that he is bound to protect the innocent, battle evil, and go forward towards an unknown destiny. (There is, alas, a discomforting racist element to the stories set in Africa; one paragraph in particular is a paean to the Aryan race's strength, intelligence, military abilities, etc. Like Haggard, he was a product of his times, I guess.) That aside, these are tremendously fun adventure tales in the classic Indiana Jones or Allan Quatermaine style, with a dusting of morals/metaphysics. Evil is always defeated, the damsel is always rescued, and the good guy always wins. (Admittedly, sometimes the good guy is the only one who survives, but hey, he is the hero, right?)

I re-read this on vacation last week. I'd forgotten what fun it is :) Milady the thoroughly evil, a sort of 17th-century Black Widow; d'Artagnan so chivalrously romantic, falling in love at first sight; Porthos the lovably pompous goofball, gambling away his horse and inveigling a replacement from his wealthy little old lady; Athos, very obviously A Man With A Secret; Aramis so endearingly bipolar ("I'm going to be a priest...no, she loves me!...no, I'm going to be a priest..."). And oh, the melodrama, the desperate races against time to foil yet another plot, the swordfights and duels and feathered hats! What more could one ask?



Best rat-and-mouse story ever, bar none. I so much wish there was a sequel -- I want to know how they're doing in that valley. (And I don't care what anyone says, Justin isn't dead!)

The company that posted this song, Soomo Publishing, calls it a "satirical video." Possibly one could also call it a grownup version of Schoolhouse Rock. I prefer to think of it as just a kick-ass way to celebrate the Fourth of July. I especially like the part where somebody -- Sam Adams, is it? -- gets up on the table and starts playing the fiddle. Plus the mischievously sexy bit with the feather from 1:09 to 1:14. Hubba, hubba.


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(1) Senator Wendy Davis from Texas and the People's Filibuster

(2) Goodbye, DOMA!!!!

(3) The U.S. Army Quidditch team:

I know, a weird combination of subjects, right? And yet here they are, together on this very page!

First, the man who saved the bunnies: A Marine corpsman stationed at Camp Pendleton found a dead rabbit while out and about on the base, and after exploring nearby he discovered four baby bunnies, which he took home and fed and raised until they were old enough to survive on their own (more pics). This man is my hero :) He apparently also rescued kittens in Iraq, and he also mentions finding a tiny tiny frog which he named Crouton. I don't know why, but that made me laugh hysterically for quite some time.

On another note, I'm re-reading Stephen King's On Writing and very much enjoying it. He's straightforward and blunt and some of his observations are remarkably perceptive. "The road to hell is paved with adverbs," he says, comparing them to dandelions (one is pretty, but next thing you know they've invaded everywhere) and advising you to avoid them like the plague. Then he goes on to theorize that writers tend to use adverbs when they are less-confident -- they aren't sure that they've shown what's happening and therefore feel the need to also tell:

Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It's by no means a terrible sentence (at least it's got an active verb going for it) but ask yourself if firmly really needs to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you'll get no argument from me...but what about the context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn't this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn't firmly an extra word? Isn't it redundant?

Then he goes on to talk about Tom Swifties and the popular game of making up punny ones (You've got a nice butt lady," he said cheekily.) and closes by saying, "When debating whether or not to make some pernicious dandelion of an adverb part of your [writing], I suggest you ask yourself if you really want to write the sort of prose that might wind up in a party game."

Here is where he talks about his idea of the Muse; it's quite a bit different in detail from what most people might think, but he's got the essence of it correct: that the muse is capricious and you've got to work to catch/deserve their attention.

...if you don't want to work your ass off, you have no business trying to write well...There is a muse,* but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He's a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it's fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he's on duty), but he's got the inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know. (pp. 138-39)

*Traditionally the muses were women, but mine's a guy; I'm afraid we'll all just have to live with that.

A few pages later, after he's talked about how it helps to have a place you can go (and if you're starting out, it's especially important that that place have as few distractions as possible!), he says this:

But you need the room, you need the door, and you need the determination to shut the door. You need a concrete goal, as well. The longer you keep to these basics, the easier the act of writing will become. Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hard-headed guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine til noon or seven til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.

Like I said, the details aren't what I imagine (I can't picture a cigar-smoking muse, but Damon Runyon and Ed McBain probably could!), but I agree with the core principles: work hard and make the muse feel welcome