A few days ago I went to the bookstore to get a stash of stories for my dear friend Sophia, who is just shy of 10. And one of the books I wanted to get her was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I’d read and loved it as a child and was delighted to find it was still in print.

But being a vile and selfish man, when I got it home I could not bear to give up my prize! So I sat down to read it before passing it along.

Now, I won’t say it was as wonderful as I’d remembered it, because that’s how memory is…everything gets either more amazing or more horrific as it receeds into the past. But it was an awful lot of fun. I’d really forgotten all the characters besides Milo. There’s Tock the Watchdog (who goes “TickTickTick” all day…his brother Tick goes “TockTockTock all day…it’s a long story and he’ll share it with you when you read the book) and the Humbug who’re Milo’s companions in his quest to free the Princesses Rhyme and Reason. Puns galore in the book, often in the form of the demons. For instance, The Senses Taker who tricks you with your sense of sound, sight and smell, but also robs you of you Sense of Purpose and your Sense of Duty. And he’s one of the more normal beings you’ll meet.

The other thing I’d forgotten, or more likely never noticed, is what the book is trying to instill on us, and that is a love of knowing things. Milo learns that Knowing Things is important and that you never know when knowledge will come in useful. It was a gentle enough lesson that I didn’t pick up on it when I was a child, but it makes me ever more happy to pass it on to my young friend.

I also should note that this edition still has the wonderful illustrations by Jules Feiffer. Towards the end of the book is a spread illustration showing all the demons chasing our heros. I remember staring at that picture for a LONG time as a kid, trying to identify each demon in it.

Finally, a trivia note. Years before anyone was talking about Chaos Theory and The Butterfly Effect, the Princess of Reasons explains to Milo how everything is connected, saying

Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world;

Interesting, eh?

If you’ve got a young reader to buy for, or if you’re just in the mood for a dose of nostalgia, pick this book up. Its wonderful.

estimating the frog:pond ratio – “What works for me may not work for you.”

OK, I made up the title, but there’s some good stuff for the struggling writer in this post.

Thanks to Cat from OWW-SFF for pointing this out to me!

Oh, and the author is Elizabeth Bear.

So I need to know, am I a freak, or just a bit too anal?

I’m reading Eragon, which is a Young Adult fantasy. (Please don’t tell anyone I’m not a Young Adult) and I came across something that just stuck in my craw.

On one page is this sentence:

At dawn the sun’s rays streamed through the window, warming Eragon’s face.

Fair enough. It’s a warm day. The characters awake and break their fasts and then its time to go work in the fields and we read:

The sun was cold and pale. providing little comfort.

WTF? So now it seems like a winter sun. What kind of day has the sun getting cooler as the day goes on?

And why in the world does this bother me? I read it yesterday and this morning its still bugging me. Maybe its the editor in me or something. But does that kind of thing bug other readers, too?

Mind you, I’m certainly not condeming the entire book because of this one faux pas. In fact I’m enjoying it so far. This post is more about introspection than critiquing the book. Why can’t I let stuff like this go!!!?? 🙂

Well, against all odds I actually finished a book: Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide. So what can I say about this book that hasn’t been said a zillion times before? Probably nothing.

OK, backing up, this is the third book in Card’s series about Ender Wiggins. The series started in Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead and ends in Children of the Mind. Then there are the ‘parallel’ books starting with Ender’s Shadow and, gosh, I could go on all day. Just head over to The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card and click on OSC Library.

So what to say about it. It took me a LONG time to read. I kept putting it down and going on to something else. I’m not sure why that is. Well… I ‘read’ the first two books in audiobook format and I wonder if that caused some kind of ‘culture shock’ when I transitioned to actually reading it myself. Or maybe its because each book gets…deeper? More contemplative? Ender’s Game was flat out fun stuff. Lots of motion. Speaker for the Dead got a bit more…still, but there was still some amazing character development. Xenocide was really compact, and almost sessile. It just felt a bit too long for the story, or something…

But anyway, now I’ve finished it and I have to say, the ending was a dissapointment. There were some rather deus ex machina events that felt like they existed only to give Card an avenue for sequels. And the ending didn’t end. Which is ok for me since Children of the Mind is on my ToBeRead pile, but I wasn’t expecting it. I remember the first two books having a complete ending.

Ah well. None of this is to say I didn’t like the book, and aside from the nits picked above, the second half was good stuff (once I got to about the half-way point, I read the rest straight through). If you haven’t read the first two books, do so. I really, highly, super-ultra recommend Ender’s Game in particular (and I guess they’re finally making a movie version, so hurry and read it before Hollywood rips its soul out). And if you’ve read the first two books, plot them on a graph with ‘fun’ on one axis amd ‘contemplative’ on the other, and understand that Xenocide follows that curve. If the curve is heading in a direction you’re comfortable with, then the book is worth picking up. 🙂

A friend of mine and her fiance are opening a pretty interesting gallery dedicated to illustrations from children’s books. A local paper wrote an article about it. I can’t wait to visit! New gallery finds inspiration in illustration.

I just finished my second, and probably not last, read through of volume two of Janice Kim’s ‘Learn to play Go’ series. It is, for a neophyte Go player, an excellent read. Her first book had to spend a lot of time on the mechanics of the game, but here she’s talking tactics, mostly.

Perhaps you’re a better student than me, but after a single read-through I knew I hadn’t absorbed it all. And even after a second, I think there are points I’ve missed. I’ll revisit the book again later.

Her first volume is a great start to learning the game, but if you know basically how to play, Volume II is the place to begin learning how to play well.

This is the first book in what I’m told is one of the better Star Wars series. It takes place after the classic SW movies (Episodes 4-6). The Empire is shattered but still survives, and a new leader is rising to power there. In the meanwhile, the Rebellion, now known as the New Republic, is suffering growing pains of its own. The cast of characters includes those we came to know in the movies, which makes it all feel very solidly Star Warian. 🙂

I’m not really a Star Wars fan, so I’m going to call it a decent sci-fantasy read. Real fans of the genre (Can I get away with calling Star Wars its own genre?) would probably like it a lot.