Reading

It’s been a while since I made a book post. I have actually been reading, but only in fits and starts, rather than my usual “swallow a novel whole in two hours” mode. While I was on vacation in Florida, my brother gave me a bunch of books, and I just finally finished reading them; I also never wrote about one that I took with me and finished while I was out there.

What it really makes me want to talk about intersects with games, and that’s the impoverishment of the fantasy imagination that certainly afflicts fantasy games and fortunately doesn’t much afflict these books.
Read More “Briefly noted: Dave Duncan, Sharon Shinn”

I’m feeling tired, and sick (still fighting off some bug I picked up while on vacation in Florida), and the idea of more derring-do with Dave Duncan’s King’s Blades exhausted me. My brother gave me six of these, and they’re great (and I’ll write about them later, once I finish them) but tonight I needed something lighter.

So I grabbed another one of the books that Jim Lee sent — Alan Moore’s Smax. I was only a few pages into it when I spotted a Tron lightcycle in the traffic (something that the highly detailed annotation manages to not identify.

That led me on a merry hunt through the whole book finding everything. Radiskull! 1/3 of Totoro! A heck of a lot of Neil Gaiman references — although technically, one was to the Little Endless! And are those pixie sticks on the dinner table along with the mermaid, the blind mice, the unicorn (with an apple on its horn), the three pigs (little, of course), the roast cherubs, and the stuffed goose with the golden eggs? That would be pixies on a stick, naturally. Stick up the ass, naturally.

Moore reputedly describes everything in every panel. Yikes. Nice light fantasy reference library described here. I think you can probably read the annotations without spoiling the comic, so have at, if it means you’ll go buy the book afterwards. 🙂

Oh, and for all you gamers — Myst, Oddworld, Quake… yep, they get nods too.

EDIT: Reputedly describes everything: yep!

PAGE 1.
PANEL 1.
OKAY WE JUST HAVE ONE BIG PANEL TO OPEN WITH, ZANDER. WE ARE UP ABOVE
THE MOSTLY-FORESTED AREA WHERE THE INN THAT ROBYN AND JEFF ARE STAYING
AT IS SITUATED, BUT WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO SEE THE INN HERE ON ACCOUNT
OF THE SPREADING CANOPY OF TREES THAT TAKES UP MOST OF THIS FIRST PAGE,
AS SEEN FROM THE DISTANCE, UP TOWARDS THE TOP OF THE PAGE, WE MAYBE
SEE DISTANT LAKES AND MOUNTAINS BEYOND THE FOREST, BUT OUR MAIN
ATTENTION IS ON THE IMMENSE SPREAD OF THE FOREST CANOPY DOWN BENEATH
US, FROM WHENCE SMAX’S LOUD, BELLOWING WORD BALLOONS ARE THE LOUD
SOUND OF SMAX’S VOICE, A LARGE CLOUD OF FLYING THINGS ERUPT UPWARDS OUT
OF THE FOREST. MOST OF THESE ARE BIRDS OR BATS, BUT THERE ARE ALSO A
LARGE NUMBER OF FLYING THINGS FROM FANTASY STORIES (PEGASUS, THE EVIL
FLYING MONKEYS FROM WIZARD OF OZ, THAT STUPID LOOKING THING FROM NEVER ENDING STORY, FAIRIES, GRIFFINS, THE FLYING NUN … ANYTHING YOU CAN
THINK OF, BASICALLY) ALL ERUPTING UP STARTLED FROM THE FOREST INTO THE
MOSTLY CLEAR SKY UP IS NOW THE MORNING AFTER THE FUNERAL OF SMAX’S
UNCLE MACK. THE LOGO AND THE EPISODE TITLE (ANOTHER SYD BARRETT QUOTE,
LIKE OUR PREVIOUS TWO) GO DOWN TOWARDS THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

I am not quite sure why I like the books by Andrew Greeley. Perhaps it is the vague memories of being raised Catholic, of knowing (with a third-grade child’s awareness) a parish where the priest would actually visit people’s homes, would teach catechism in the church basement, where First Communion was a big deal.
Read More “Andrew Greeley”