After reading Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword I immediately went in search of Swordspoint, the first book she set in The City (thus far she has refused to give the city a name). The volume comes with the novel and 3 bonus short stories set in the same world.

I’m finding it hard to be objective about Swordspoint because, honestly, I was disappointed. But I was so hopelessly smitten by Privilege that perhaps disappointment here was inevitable. It isn’t a bad book but it doesn’t feel as substantive as Kushner’s most recent volume. I wonder if I would’ve felt that way if the world was new to me. I think a lot of the delight in Swordspoint would come from meeting the characters and learning about this strange city where nobles plot their Machiavelian plots but the Kings have been ousted.

In Swordspoint Alec and Richard are young men, lounging about in Riverside, being in love, and getting into trouble. Alec is an unknown quantity (and again, this may have changed the experience for me, as I knew who he really was from page 1) and Richard is an infamous swordsman in much demand from the nobles. Lord Ferris is a power-hungry up-and-comer, yet to experience the setbacks mentioned in Privilege. Duchess Tremontaine is in the prime of her beauty and power. It was nice, in particular, to get to know her.

When Richard refuses a contract from a particular noble, the Lord in question takes it upon himself to try to force Richard’s hand. Richard retaliates and ends up finding himself in hot water (I’m being intentionally vague). Huh, come to think of it, maybe that’s my problem with the book. There’s a ton of ambiance and character description and seeing the city, but really not a lot happens. There’re a few threads that kind of peter out to no apparent purpose. And if I were to be honest, the ending felt…well, almost like Kushner had to stretch to gather in her threads and tie them all off.

It certainly isn’t a bad book. But it isn’t of the same “omigawd you have to read this!!!” caliber that Privilege is. One of the short stories at the end is called The Death of the Duke and was very satisfying. The other two were just good fun. If you love this world that Kushner has created, you’ll want to read Swordspoint just to learn more about events mentioned in Privilege. But don’t expect to be as amazed as you were with the later book. I’d love to hear the opinion of someone who reads this book first; if anyone stumbles on this blog and wants to do a mini review I’d be thrilled to post it.

I suppose that David Allen’s Getting Thing’s Done is old news by now, but I just got around to reading it cover-to-cover. I’ve picked it up a few times but never before made it to the end.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great book, but it gets a bit dry in the middle, once the initial enthusiasm of what he’s telling you wears off. In case you’re new to GTD (as the system is referred to on the web), the focus on it boils down to writing down everything so that you don’t have to waste brain power worrying about whether you’ve forgotten something, and then making lists of the Next Action you have to do on all your projects. Breaking eveything down into discrete steps. I’ve dabbled with the system and it really does work.

It seems only fair to buy the book, but honestly there’s an almost cult-feel to GTD and a lot of the information in the book can be found online. In fact, Allen’s own website might be a good place to start. There is of course a Wikipedia entry on the system that gives a good overview and has a lot of further reading links. 43Folders.com also has a good ‘getting started’ article.

Well, I could go on and on and never say anything that hasn’t already been said about the book a gazillion times. It’s a great system for reducing stress in your life. You can buy the book and get it from the source, or do some googling and get the same info for free. But if you’ve got a lot of stuff on your mind, this system can really improve the quality of your life. Again, I’ve only dabbled with it, and even that made my days a lot less stressful.

Ellen Kushner is one of those authors that I’ve been aware of for a long time, but I can’t say exactly why. I’m sure I’ve never read anything of hers before. It might be as obscure a reason as her possibly having been a member of a museum I used to work for in East Hampton. She’s from NYC and is part of the arts community there, it seems, so it’s possible she summered in ‘The Hamptons’ and joined The Guild Hall there. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is that The Privilege of the Sword is brilliant! And it was a complete suprise, for me. I mentioned a bunch of posts ago that the 2006 World Fantasy Convention sent me box of books, and this was one of them. I picked it up, more or less at random, and starting reading it and was immediately sucked in.

Kushner weaves words into a tapestry. You don’t read this book…you sink into it. I am, quite frankly, in awe of her skill, of her voice and how she just causes imagery to bloom in front of the mind’s eye. Let me just grab a random passage for you. In this scene our heroine Katherine is meeting her uncle, ‘the mad duke’, for the first time:

My uncle the Mad Duke looked me up and down.
“You aren’t very tall,” he said.
Beyond his face I could see his back reflected in the convex mirror over the fireplace, so that he swallowed up the room.
“No, sir.”
It was a delicious room, painted blue and white with touches of gold; very modern, very airy, filled with pictures on the walls and curios scattered on little tables that seemed to have no other purpose but to hold them. Tall glass doors opened onto gardens overlooking the river.
He said, “This is Tremontaine House. It is very elegant. I inherited it from my grandmother, the last duchess.” When he mentioned her, the planes of his face hardened in distaste. I recognized the expression from many family dinners of our own. My uncle’s face kept turning familiar, as though I’d known him all my life. A tilt of the head, a flick of the eye—I knew him—and then it was gone, and I was confronting a fearsome stranger. He had my mother’s long brown hair, which looked very odd. I thought only students had long hair. He’d been a student once, but surely that was long ago.

The book is fantasy, but there’s no magic in it. The setting is a land where the kings have been overthrown, but the nobility still exists, ruling in what seems to be a quasi-democratic fashion. We really only see hints of this. Many disputes between nobles are solved by dueling, and more often than not, the dueling parties hire professional swordsmen to stand in for them. The Mad Duke has brought Katherine to the city to have her trained in using a sword, for reasons known only to him.

This is a world where women don’t do such things as dress in pants and carry swords, so it’s a bit of scandal. But the Duke is nothing if not scandalous. He is wealthy and of noble blood, so he Matters, but he is also prone to drinking and drugging, and his lovers are as often men as women. In general, he is something of an irritant to proper society in town. A fascinating character and very fun to watch.

But the main thrust of the book revolves around Katherine as she grows accustomed to her new life, makes some unlikely friends, and ends up playing the part of the hero that she has long read about.

A wonderful book. Delightful from first page to last. Oh, and I have the ‘trade paperback’ print and I’d recommend it. The font and graphics used for chapter headings and section breaks really add to the experience. Well worth the extra few bucks over the cost of a mass-market paperback edition.

It has taken me literally months to read Gary Gach’s Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Buddhism. which is more a reflection on me than on the book. But it means I don’t feel qualified to ‘review’ it, if you even consider what I do reviewing a book. I don’t even remember details of the first two-thirds of the book.

It took me so long just because my interest in buddhism and spirituality in general waxes and wanes constantly, and when I’m not in an ‘interested’ phase I can’t bring myself to read up on it. I go all cynical and scoff at everything I read and that just seems pointless. No sense in reading it if my mind is tightly shut to what the author has to say, right?

Anyway, in brief, the Guide breaks down into three parts. First is an historical overview of Buddhism. Where it came from, what the various ‘flavors’ are and how it spread across the world. Next is a kind of ‘hands-on’ section that teaches you little snippets of practicing. I actually found the meditation parts interesting and I think what I really wanted to be reading was a guide to meditation. I’ve had a bit of success using the techniques to quiet my mind at night when my brain is so full of ideas I can’t sleep. Anyway, I digress. The last part of the book is a kind of ‘buddhism and you’ section, talking about how buddhism can impact your life, and the kinds of things buddhists have done to improve the world around them.

Even though the style is typical of an “Idiot’s Guide” (breezy and way way too cute) there was still a lot that I didn’t retain. I could see re-reading the book again in the future. I think I’d get more out of it with a second read. Though maybe a different ‘beginning buddhism’ book would be a better choice. One thing that Gach reinforces is that there isn’t one philosophy that is buddhism. There’s a myriad of variants, so it might be worthwhile to get a second opinion written by someone who looks at them all a bid differently.