Books

The Times has an excerpt from a letter by Beatrix Potter offering a scientific opinion on the Loch Ness monster’s humps:

Armed with an innate understanding of frogs, toads and newts, she wrote in 1934 to the author of a book on the Loch Ness Monster: “May I hazard a suggestion about the humps? These beasts — whatever they are — frequent deep waters. They are able to sustain immense variations of pressure. I suggest that the humps mainly result from a power of self inflation under a very elastic skin for the purpose of equalising pressure. Frogs & toads, especially the latter, have power of inflation. Toads let off acrid water. Their inflation is in the belly. But it is conceivable that this beast may have a very loose elastic skin all round its body.”

(Via Maud.)

Spot the error in this NYT story about the dragon design for Eragon (I’ll help by bolding it):

Mr. Fangmeier said the 22-year-old author of the “Eragon” novel, Christopher Paolini, had already given Saphira enough lore and mystery to sustain her as a character. He focused instead on one aspect: the business of dragon flight. To that end the filmmaking team spent a lot of time debating the degree to which Saphira’s wings should or should not resemble the standard bat wing. Eventually they added some feathers, though not so many as to tip the creature toward the canine-looking dragon Atreyu from the 1984 fantasy movie “The NeverEnding Story.”

Tsk, tsk. Everyone knows that Atreyu was a hot boy, not a dragon. The dragon is Falkor. And could it not be mentioned that the movie is based on a book as well? (And a better book, at that.)

A poorly thought-out and savage review of the Tiptree bio is making some waves over at the SF Signal. Check out the comments. (Via JJA.)

Forbes has a special report on how those book things, with the pages and the words? They’re actually doing okay for themselves. (Via Maud.)

Updated:

I know it’s wrong to make fun of Suzanne Somers, who has surely helped flatten many, many abdominal muscles, but her answer to the "Books are" thing cracks me up:

Books are… I have spent my lifetime collecting books and devouring books and re-reading books and quoting from books and learning some of my greatest life lessons from books. I have written 16 books since the ’70s, which reflects my Irish heritage for writing, and each one is one of my beloved children. I fear the day when the technos decide that paper books are obsolete and we are reading from PC screens and iPods and eBooks, and we never again experience the little rush of opening a new book and cracking the spine and smelling the print and diving deep into the thoughts of the writer. It’s probably inevitable that this will eventually happen if one looks back on the history of written communication; from chipping messages, to papyrus, to the Guttenberg press, to the typewriter and now the wonderful digital world of computers. No matter how our books come to us now and in the future, the inner thoughts and imagination of the writer will somehow always find an avenue to communicate. I love my books!

Despite my vow (in August, ouch), I’ve done a terrible job keeping the thumbnails and the list up to date with what I’m reading lately. I also may not — sob — make the 75, mostly due to periods of extreme stress and/or upheaval this year, and periods of reading bits and pieces of nonfiction books, which I’m not counting because I did not read from cover to cover. But I’ll get close, because I have eight or so that I must read before the end of the year. These will be the thumbiest of nails, because I don’t have time for more.

44. Firmin, Sam Savage – A lovely book about a rat and reading. You can read all you’d ever want about this one over at the LBC — it was this season’s Read This! pick, and while I preferred Manbug, I’d definitely recommend this too.

45. Sideshow: Stories, Sidney Thompson – Another LBC book, this one wasn’t completely my cup of tea, but it’s worth seeking out if you’re into oddball, Southern fiction (which I sometimes am, and I actually suspect I may have just read this at the wrong time).

46. Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell – It’s the weirdest thing, but my memory of reading this, in a gulp over the course of a day, is of being very cold. But it was still summer when I read it, still hot and humid outside. This is an absolutely chilling, marvelously strange little book that packs a huge amount of weight. If you read it, it’ll be different than anything else you read this year. See also: Sarah’s recommendation.

47. To Feel Stuff, Andrea Seigel – A more than worthy follow-up to Like the Red Panda. I find bits of this novel resurfacing on a regular basis, stuck in my memory like glue. My full take is here.

48. Shriek: An Afterward, Jeff VanderMeer – Tied with Octavian Nothing to be my favorite book of the year. You must, must, must read this. It still hasn’t gotten the attention and discussion it deserves. My full take is here.

49. The Keep, Jennifer Egan – Like everybody else in the world, I tore through this and highly recommend it. The balancing act Egan pulls off with point of view is something to admire. See also: Leila at Bookshelves of Doom’s review.

50. Wide Awake, David Levithan – The best feel-good political novel of the year, bar none. A funny, sharp, and surprisingly touching story about a contentious future election (that of the first gay Jewish president) and two boys in love.

51. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation Vol. 1: The Pox Party, M.T. Anderson –   I never have figured out quite how to talk about this book. And surely, by now, you’ve heard everything you need to to convince you to read it. I don’t want to spoil the surprise of it for anyone, the revelation. This may well be Anderson’s masterwork and I can’t WAIT for the second volume. I’ll write about both then, instead, maybe. Anyway: READ IT. BOOK OF THE YEAR.

52. The End of Mr. Y, Scarlett Thomas – I read this during my trip to Portland and found it absorbing. I do think it’s a bit uneven and didn’t love it as much as others (say, Mark or Maud or Colleen — so, please, do yourself a favor and listen to them instead of me; they’re almost certainly right). That said, it’s definitely a strange, compelling thought puzzle of a novel. I lost patience at times with sections near the end (the earlier ones didn’t bother me) that were almost entirely composed of long philosophical discussions, in much the way Ayn Rand always lost me with that stuff when I was a teenager. The rest, though, is quite fascinating. I don’t think the military research thread ever quite meshes with the rest of the elements, and I would have preferred the Troposphere to be more developed as a world. (With the exception of Apollo Smintheus.) But, yeah, you SF types should read this one. For those of you who loved it without reserve, I recommend seeking out Justina Robson’s Living Next Door to the God of Love, which hangs together a bit better to me but is sympathetic in its concerns and approach.

53. Grey, Jon Armstrong – I’ll have more to say about this one closer to when it comes out in February. For now, I’ll just say that it was an extremely pleasant surprise to read such a strange, elaborately written (but brief) science fiction novel (blurbed by Michael Chabon, no less). I have no idea what Armstrong has published before, but this is definitely a novel that will have people talking next year.

54. Map of Dreams, M. Rickert – This is one fabulous collection of stories. My full take is here.

That’s it for now: More soon! No, really, this time. I mean it. 

She is so going to steal their souls and live forever. (Via Maud at her newly spiffed digs.)

Locus lists notable SF books coming out between now and Sept. 07. Just browsing the list I can’t wait for: Paul Park’s The White Tyger; several Liz Hand titles, but most especially Generation Loss; Caitlin Kiernan’s Daughter of Hounds; Tricia Sullivan’s Sound Mind; Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box; Holly Black’s Ironside; Elizabeth Knox’s Dreamquake; Emma Bull’s Territory; William Gibson’s Spook Country; and, really, a bunch more that I’m too lazy to list.

It’s going to be a very good year for fiction.

So, what are y’all looking forward to?

I’m as excited about Joss Whedon’s season eight of Buffy comics (though not as excited as I am about his run on the X-Men) as the next person still mourning the show. Jeff Jensen chats with Whedon about it in EW, which is also lovely, but I must call attention to this one wrong-headed bit at the beginning of the piece:

And save for that love it/hate it sixth season, the show never failed to deliver the goods.

I really, really hope that when Jensen says this, he’s acknowledging that in a good and true universe season seven wouldn’t even exist. It was TERRIBLE. Or has the collective wisdom on this changed? I fear going back to watch it. And while I’m in the camp of loving most of season six (yes, the magic = drugs subplot and what happened to Tara were wrong, but the musical was so very, very right), I still kind of feel like the end of five was the real finale. I will stop now.

Jonathan Safran Foer in the NYT on his dog in the context of the re-consideration of a leash law loophole in NYC that gives dogs some after-hours romp space. He goes on to make some larger points about how having animals in our lives — personally and collectively — is a good thing, if not always convenient.

Yeah, he’s won me over. I could never dislike someone with a dog named George — and he gets it*:

Our various struggles — to communicate, to recognize and accommodate each other’s desires, simply to coexist — force me to interact with something, or rather someone, entirely “other.” George can respond to a handful of words, but our relationship takes place almost entirely outside of language. She seems to have thoughts and emotions, desires and fears. Sometimes I think I understand them; often I don’t. She is a mystery to me. And I must be one to her.

Of course our relationship is not always a struggle. My morning walk with George is very often the highlight of my day — when I have my best thoughts, when I most appreciate both nature and the city, and in a deeper sense, life itself. Our hour together is a bit of compensation for the burdens of civilization: business attire, e-mail, money, etiquette, walls and artificial lighting. It is even a kind of compensation for language. Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness? And why does it make one feel, in the best sense of the word, human?

*And it’s nice to vicariously experience rowdy dog stories, in which your sweet angel dog (ahem) Emma actually chews relatively few things by comparison. As long as you keep the good stuff out of her reach, anyway.

New graphic novels aimed at teen girls in the NYT, featuring the fabulous Miss Cecil:

The first Minx graphic novel will be “The P.L.A.I.N. Janes,” written by Cecil Castellucci and illustrated by Jim Rugg. It tells the story of Jane, a transfer student in a suburban high school who starts a campaign, “People Loving Art in Neighborhoods.” It’s a call to appreciate the everyday world that comes to involve everything from protesting the construction of a new mall to encouraging pet adoptions from animal shelters.

…

The experience of survival is a personal one for Ms. Castellucci, 37, whose young-adult novels include “Boy Proof” and “The Queen of Cool.” In 1979, when she was 9, Ms. Castellucci witnessed a bombing by the Irish Republican Army in Brussels. In 1986, she was in Paris during a rash of bombings. Those incidents, and the events of Sept. 11, played a role in shaping the story.