More Book Listy Meme-ness

From Del Kytlar. The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

There was something about adding this to your LJ, which I'm not sure that I'll do or not. The point was to find the people who have only read six books on the list and foist more on them, but I suspect that I've read more than six. And where the hell is Frankenstein on this list?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole**
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare***
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So I've read 31 on this list. Not too bad. I've obviously got big gaps with no Russian or French authors' books read, and only a handful Dickens. I'm sure I've read more Austen, but I don't know what. There's all those Masterpiece Theatre mini series, so perhaps I just THINK I've read them. I've also missed out on all the Brontes.

Now . . . Mr. Wheeler, I am looking directly at you. You're next.
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*I absolutely LOVE this book. IMO, the greatest American novel ever written.

**I just bought a copy of this over the weekend. Now I will get my chance to read it.

***My second-favorite Shakespeare play (right behind MacBeth); do yourself a favor and read it, don't bother seeing any of the movie versions. And if can, see it live. It's amazing.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo is one of my favorite 'new' writers. He's written a bunch of stellar short pieces (including a disturbing piece "Softer" for Logorrhea) and I always look forward to something new from him.

Right now, you can go here and learn a little bit about Paolo over on NPR. Very cool.

Jeff VanderMeer and Women Writers

I'm hoping that Jeff enjoys the new issue* when it arrives, since he just posted about some of the writing he enjoyed most while reading for the Best American Fantasy 2 was done by female writers.

This list is a fantastic round-up of writers that I hope get wider exposure and bigger audiences in the years to come. On top of that, three people that I've published made his list: Beth Adele Long ("The Rose Thief in Electric Velocipede #4), Michelle Richmond ("Logorrhea" in Logorrhea), and Rachel Swirsky ("How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth" in Electric Velocipede #13).

Other authors that Jeff lists that I really enjoy reading include Aimee Bender and Shelley Jackson. There are many more that I need to become familiar with.
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*In case you forgot, the new issue was all female contributors in honor of Wiscon, the world's largest feminist science fiction convention.

Hits Me Right Between the Eyes

So, I can't remember why I started reading Ugly Hill* but today's strip really hit home for me today. It was . . . eerily familiar . . . apt? Just replace 'strip' with 'zine' and you could have me talking. The punchline is:

"Hey that's . . . ! Wow, that's kind of comforting. Yes! I'm defective!"

It's the set up to the punchline that I think fits me to a tee.

I'm totally digging on Ugly Hill right now. Everyone in Ugly Hill is some sort of monster or creature. They are all unique. Siblings, parents, children, very few characters look like each other. However, at the same time, the strip references things that happen in our world, such as current movies or music. It's a bewildering array of zaniness that I can't stop looking at.

The strip completely loves the fact that it's a comic. The characters are completely ridiculous--the main character's brother goal in life is to be an over-worked drone in a soul-sucking corporate office, and he KILLS or EATS people who get in his way--but the strip seems to revel in that fact.
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*OK, I totally remember, but it's REALLY boring. Suffice to say, it was because of Lore Sjoberg and we'll leave it at that.

Since I've been getting questions

For the moment, we are damp but above water here in IA. We're in Davenport, which is right on the Mississippi, but it's typically the tributaries over-flowing their banks that causes the most trouble.

That's not to say that the Mississippi can't overflow its banks. Downtown Davenport--right on the river--is flooded this morning. I-80 is closed between Davenport and Iowa City (where the flooding is bad), so to get to Des Moines from where I live, you have to drive through Dubuque, a detour that adds 110 miles onto your trip.

We are fine. There are a lot of people worse off then us, but we appreciate being in your thoughts.

Best American Fantasy 2

I have it on excellent authority* that some of the work I edited and published last year will be holding a spot in the Best American Fantasy vol 2:

Michelle Richmond - "Logorrhea" (from LOGORRHEA)
Rachel Swirsky - "How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth"

(from Electric Velocipede #13)

The year's best reprints for LOGORRHEA keep coming, don't they? And I can't tell you how excited I am for Rachel's story to be reprinted. It means a lot to me when stuff out of my little magazine gets recognized. It's things like this that can make my whole week . . . or month.

I know I've spoken before on this, but it's one thing to enjoy the stories I select, and have fun laying out the issue, etc.. I should feel all those things. It would be ridiculous to go through all this effort for something I didn't enjoy. But to have an impartial third party validate your choices, to acknowledge that you're finding and publishing good work . . . that means a lot.

It doesn't hurt that Rachel is fantastically talented. I think we're going to see a lot more amazing fiction from Rachel in the future. I know that I have at least one poem from her in the near future, and I hope to see more work from her once I re-open to submissions.
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*I also was given permission to speak about this even though the final ToC is not official yet.

OMG, I am giggling over here...

All I can say is:

http://lolthulhu.com/

plz to insert 1d4 adventurererers

kthnx

Selling My Childhood

Just a word of warning, what follows is crass commercialism. If you'd rather not read about stuff I'm selling, go check out my list of World Fantasy Award nominations instead. After finally getting the chance to go through the boxes my parents brought to our house last summer when they helped us move. These were apparently things I had 'forgotten' at their house, and now that I had a house of my own (and more importantly, now that I was close enough to drive to) they thought I should have them back.

To that end, I have some of the material up for sale on eBay. These are the big things. My Micronauts, my Shogun Warriors, and my Metagaming Microgames.

You'll also see a few books that I have listed. There are two ARCs for books that I have purchased in the final format (in the case of INK, I have a British edition and an American edition) and a copy of Jeff VanderMeer's VENISS UNDERGROUND, which I realized that I had two copies.

There are a few more things that I haven't done any research on like an old ripcord yellow Tron vehicle (without the rider) and a few boxes of comic strip books, choose-your-own-adventure books, and other ephemera. I have the Hobbit and Return of the King 45 RPM book sets, and the double album Hobbit set. I also have a bunch of weird comic book + 45 RPM record of Spiderman, Batman (I think), and Star Trek. A lot of these things are either too saturated on eBay, or haven't generated a lot of interest. If anyone is excited by these unlisted items

Informative Logorrhea Review

Today I read a very thoughtful, and not necessarily flattering, review of Logorrhea. The reviewer breaks down the anthology story by story, which I thought was great since most reviews don't have the space to talk about each story.

This is exactly what I want people to experience. OK, I want people to enjoy the book as much as I did, but barring that impossibility, I want people to be able to enjoy the book overall, and get a few stories out of it that they really like.

I don't expect everyone to like every story. I would probably find it disingenuous if someone claimed to like every story. I'm sure there are people out there who did like every story (other than me). I find the idea unlikely. But, I think there is enough in the book that everyone can find something they like.

BEGIN SLIGHTLY SPOILERISH DISCUSSION OF LESLIE WHAT'S "TSURIS"

While I obviously don't share her feelings on most of the stories, there is only one that I will bring up here. In her discussion of Leslie What's "Tsuris," the reviewer states "This is not, however, an indictment of the tale itself; but simply a case of the reviewer not being able to view a work objectively." And I think it hampered her reading of the story. Now, perhaps she wouldn't like the story anyway, but What sets up the reader in the beginning of the story to feel one way, and then flips you on your ear towards the end to make you question your sympathies.

In fact, this was what I felt was the power in this story. You begin by having sympathy for the wife, but in the end you discover that she is the awful one. I think the reviewer had a fairly poor opinion of the wife to begin with, so was not able to feel that switch and was left feeling unsatisfied with the story.

END SLIGHTLY SPOILERISH DISCUSSION OF LESLIE WHAT'S "TSURIS"

2008 World Fantasy Nominations

Hey folks, if you were at last year's World Fantasy convention, or have a membership for this year's World Fantasy convention, you can fill out a nomination ballot for the World Fantasy Awards. The ballot must be post-marked by June 30, 2008, or you can send your choices in via e-mail.

"But wait!" you cry. "The World Fantasy Awards are a juried award!"

Ah yes, but the top two vote getters via this nomination process automatically get on the ballot. And not that being on the ballot makes you more likely to be picked by the judges from among the final candidates, it does make you more likely to win an award over the people who are not on the ballot. Since the world did not explode when I posted my Hugo nominations, here are my World Fantasy Award nominations.

LIFE ACHIEVEMENT
Howard Waldrop
Terry Brooks
Anne McCaffery
Terry Pratchett
Michael Whelan

This one was tough for me. A lot of the people that I felt were deserving of the award have passed away, and only living people can be nominated for the World Fantasy Award. So I asked my non-genre friends about fantasy/speculative authors/people they knew. I got a lot of great ideas, but I only have five spots. I gave serious consideration to Joe R. Lansdale, Tom Canty, and Tim Burton, but in the end I went with the list above.
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NOVEL
Chirstopher Barzak - One for Sorrow (Bantam)
Hal Duncan - Ink (Del Rey)
Ekaterina Sedia - Secret History of Moscow (Prime)
Catheryenne M. Valente - Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (Bantam)
Mark Teppo - The Oneiromantic Mosaic of Harry Potemkin (Farrago's Wainscott)

I know a lot of people will see this list of novels and wonder what the heck is wrong with me. I can only pull from the work I've read. The Barzak was my favorite book I read last year. The Duncan, Sedia, and Valente are all extremely well-written and enjoyable books. And the Teppo was a lot of fun and very challenging. I don't know that it will get enough nominations to make the ballot or that the awards jury will place it on the ballot, but perhaps I'll get a few more people to go look at it and enjoy it.
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NOVELLA
Elizabeth Hand - Illyria (PS Publishing)
Jay Lake - Crossing the Seven (Logorrhea/Bantam)

I didn't read a lot of novellas from last year (by World Fantasy definition, anything more than 10,000 words but less than 40,000 words). I read both of these, and lucky for me they are both great pieces.
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SHORT FICTION
Daniel Abraham - "The Cambist and Lord Iron" (Logorrhea/Bantam)
Theodora Goss - "Singing of Mount Abora" (Logorrhea/Bantam)
Jeff VanderMeer - "Appoggiatura" (Logorrhea/Bantam)
Rachel Swirsky - "Post-Human Creation Myth" (Electric Velocipede #13)
Brendan Connell - "Dr. Black and the Village of Stones" (Electric Velocipede #12)

I think it's fairly transparent what I'm doing here. I read a lot of short fiction last year, but I'm not ashamed to nominate from the things that I've edited. That being said, picking and choosing from among what I edited was tough enough.
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ANTHOLOGY
Logorrhea - John Klima, editor (Bantam)
Inferno - Ellen Datlow, editor (Tor)
Wizards - Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, editors (Berkley)
Best American Fantasy - Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, and Matthew Cheney, editors (Prime)

I know some people won't nominate themselves. Again, I don't have a problem with it. And if people are put off by the fact that I nominate myself, there's not much I can do about that. I know that most (all?) of the year's best reprint anthologies have taken stories from the anthology and Locus recommended it, so I have to feel that it was one of the best anthologies from last year. It was my favorite.
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COLLECTION
Imago Sequence - Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
Things Will Never Be The Same - Howard Waldrop (Old Earth Books)
Hart & Boot & Other Stories - Tim Pratt (Night Shade Books)
Portable Childhoods - Ellen Klages (Tachyon)
Past Magic - Ian R. MacLeod (PS Publishing)

I thought the Baird collection was fantastic. And I think Ellen Klages is very under-rated (or at least there are not enough conversations about her writing) and I would be well-pleased to see her on the ballot.
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ARTIST
Jon Foster
John Picacio
Stephan Martiniere
Daniel Dos Stantos
Tom Kidd

Making up for my Hugo faux pas, I nominated artists who I felt provided some exceptional artwork for last year. Again, you can see a nice gallery of last year's covers here. I don't think the gallery is complete, but it gives a well-rounded example of what was done last year. Martiniere is perhaps a little too science fictiony for this award, but I really like his work.
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SPECIAL AWARD PROFESSIONAL
Juliet Ulman for editing
Ann VanderMeer for editing Weird Tales
James Frenkel for editing
Alan Beatts and Jude Feldman for Borderlands bookstore
Jason Williams & Jeremy Lassen for Night Shade Books

I added links to people so that you can see what they worked on last year. The Night Shade link is a search I did in Amazon's advanced search. I searched for Night Shade Books as publisher with the limit of 'during 2007' to try and get the work they published last year. Jason and Jeremy can check its accuracy.
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SPECIAL AWARD NON-PROFESSIONAL
John Klima for Electric Velocipede
Matt Kressel for Sybil's Garage/Sense Five Press
Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, and Sean Wallace for Clarkesworld Magazine
Deborah Layne for Wheatland Press
Darin Bradley and Aaron Leis for Farrago's Wainscott

And again, I nominate myself. I wasn't sure if Deb Layne should be in this category or in Professional. I decided to put her in this category since that's where she's been nominated before. Hopefully that's not wrong. Otherwise I've got three newish short fiction markets that I think deserve some more attention. Granted, should we all get on the ballot I will root against them, but until that happens, I'll lend my support.

Oh Hell, I'll do it, too

132 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

90 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

From Andy Wheeler, via Gwenda.

I'm not sure what it means that I'm superior as both spouses, I should marry myself? It probably has something to do with waffles.

Neil Clarke on Short Fiction

In this month's editorial at Clarkesworld Magazine, Neil Clarke has some very interesting things to say about the state of short fiction and magazine publishing. I quote:

"Every few months, leagues of Chicken Littles run to the rooftop to proclaim the impending death of short fiction. Fueled by annually declining subscription numbers for the "big three" genre magazines or the announcement of the closure of another, these reactions have some grounding, but fail to take the big picture into consideration."

This has been happening for decades. It's easy to see it as crying wolf (to pull in another folk tale) but as Neil states, the declining subscription numbers seem to point at something real that's happening.

If you haven't read Neil's post yet, please go do so. It's very well written and thought provoking. There are a fair amount of comments as of today (including some by yours truly), and I'm sure there will be more.

When Will I Get Issue 14?

My plan is to send out copies of issue 14 this weekend, June 7. I will be sending contributor copies about a week or so after that. I have a few freelance projects that didn't wrap up as quickly as I expected.

The delay for contributors is so that I can send copies and payment together. However, I am willing to send copies in advance of payment if someone really wants to see the issue.

I hope to have some news (don't worry, good news) about future issues in the next week or so.

The Fix reviews Robert Freeman Wexler chapbook

Just yesterday, TTA Press's* review magazine The Fix reviewed the Robert Freeman Wexler chapbook**, Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed: Stories. I have to say, this review says everything that I've wanted to say about this book, but haven't been able to articulate so clearly.

For example:

"With a wink and nod for Wexler’s anti-conglomerate marketing themes, Methods’ innovative fiction pushes physical boundaries, speaks to bread, belays jungle walls, listens to disembodied sages, and escapes anti-utopias."

and:

"Wexler takes the reader for an in-depth ride through a Big Brother gauntlet that at times echoes close-to-home issues without making direct accusations that could lose the attention of extremist readers who might otherwise turn away—the hallmark of an effective satirist. Highly recommended."

and:

"Wexler’s use of the chapbook medium, in this reader’s opinion, speaks volumes and serves to benefit the interests of his readers as well as send a message to the broader publishing industry as a whole."

OK, now that I've stolen all the thunder from the review, you should really go read it to see how Rae Bryant breaks down the individual stories. Wexler writes very lush and dense prose, and does not do so quickly. So for many people, they aren't able to see what Wexler's been doing with his writing since the time between pieces is a fair amount. This short collection should give people a better insight into what he's been doing with his writing.
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* Home of Interzone and Black Static, two EXCELLENT British magazines.

** This is the third chapbook I've published.