Friday Picture Reading #6

Reading the Letter by Pablo Picasso, 1921.

Is That Supposed to be Funny - Booking Through Thursday

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

What’s the funniest book you’ve read recently?

My reading list for this year is pretty serious stuff. Much more so than I suspected. Looking back over my "Reviewed in 2009" list there's not a lot of humor on it. It's fairly rare that I laugh out loud while reading a book. I suspect that when I go for laughs I go for television, movies and plays. The funniest thing I've seen lately is The Awful Truth, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Irene Dunn and Carey Grant. If you're looking for laughs, rent it tonight.

I did read two very funny books this year, though neither was intentionally funny. Aliens Among Us by Ruth Montgomery, which I read as part of the Dewey Decimal Challenge, made me laugh out loud several times. Ms. Montgomery believed that spirits from other planets travelled to earth and took possession of important people at crucial times in history in order to guide the human race. The biggest laugh I had while reading all year came from Rider Haggard's She. How that book remains in print is beyond me. My spouse, C.J. and I listened to the book on tape while driving to Lake Tahoe. There is a scene involving a native ceremony in an underground temple that features a priestess shouting "Bring me a black goat! I must have a black goat! Bring me a black goat!" We never laughed so hard. Almost had to pull over.

I did read two genuinely funny books this year. Why We Read What We Read by Lisa Adams and John Heath is a snarky look at the books that make the best seller lists in America. I found lots to laugh at because I do enjoy snarky humor now and then. The Good Doctor by Neil Simon, based on short stories by Anton Chekhov was very funny, too. I was hoping to use the book with my students, but the final scene is "too mature" to get it past the school board.

So, if you're looking for funny books, you've come to the wrong place. In the meantime below is a short scene from The Awful Truth. Cary Grant and Irene Dunn play a sophisticated urban couple getting a divorace due to a complicated misunderstanding. They share custody of their dog, Mr. Smith.

Tale of Genji Read-a-Long ch: 17-20

Genji is now in his early 30's, and hardship has made him a better man. His return from exile receives mixed reactions, many are still suspicious of him while others welcome him. What makes this section of the novel stand out is that, for the first time, Genji must deal with his children.

His young daughter has inherited all of her parents' beauty and grace; Genji fears for her future if she is left in her provincial home, untrained in the ways of the court. He convinces her family to let her accompany him to his new home where he has built a wing to provide comfortable lives for those in his charge, mainly a small group of women he has courted. They agree.

I'm not confident that I've followed the course of his son's life correctly but as I see it, Genji's son by the former emperor's consort, who is now emperor, has learned the truth of his parentage. He is keeping this knowledge a secret for now, though he feels scandalized by his father's, Genji's, inappropriate behavior. I do not think he knows that Genji is the former emperor's son at this point, which makes him the former emperor's grandson rather than son. When you have a love life as complicated and as varied as Genji does, the children are going to become a problem one way or another.




Reading the Tale of Genji is an education. By the end of the book I expect to have a thorough understanding of life in the Heian-kyo court of medieval Japan. I thought it might be fun, maybe even useful, for those following the read-a-long to talk about a few things I've learned. Above is a very short video featuring a performance on a Yamato-koto or Japanese zither. It is believed to be one of the few instruments to originate in Japan instead of coming over from mainland Asia.
This is a godchild doll, amagatsu, one of two protective devices a girl-child received at birth. She was supposed to transfer all evil influence that came her way to the doll. During her third year she gave up the doll. Girls also received a dagger, mibakshi, at birth as a protective talisman.

A common pastime during winter, one Genji indulges in during this section, was to have the servants roll large snowballs. As far as I can tell, the aristocracy themselves did no rolling. Instead, they enjoyed the spectacle of their servants. There is a passage in The Pillow Book that describes making a giant snow mountain and the betting that went on afterwards regarding how long it would take to melt.

Good times.

The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff

It began, strangely, with baseball.

Opening line, The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff

On May 10, 1849, English actor William Charles Macready gave his last American performance as MacBeth at the new Opera house in Astor Place, New York City. Inside the theatre supporters of rival American actor Edwin Forrest shouted so loudly that the entire first act had to be performed in pantomime. Outside a crowd of 20,000 packed the streets armed with cobblestones, ready to attack the National Guard troops who had been called in after the rioting of the previous night. The troops opened fire on the crowd, above their heads at first. The crowd responded, a riot ensued, and upwards of 30 people, many of them bystanders, lost their lives.

People don't care about Shakespeare like they used to.

The events and social circumstances that led to the Astor Place Riots, or Shakespeare Riots, are carefully examined in Nigel Cliff's book The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth Century America. Mr. Cliff focuses his study on a single, tragic event, but he also casts a wide net. His book is a history of theatre, of Shakespeare, of the rivalry between America and England. It is also a biography of Ediwn Forrest, of William Charles Macready, of New York City and America. There are many rewards to be found in The Shakespeare Riots.

One reason why William Charles Macready is an important figure in the history of theatre and of Shakespeare is that he made his career restoring Shakespeare's plays to their original form. 150 years earlier, Nahum Tate had revised King Lear believing he was updating a primitive genius, making his work acceptable to modern thinking. At the close of Tate's version, Cordelia and Edmund are married. She is crowned queen by Lear who has recovered from his brief period of madness and been restored to his kingdom. Lear then retires to become a happy grandfather to the new ruler's children. Tate's Lear has no fool. It also has only 25% of Shakespeare's actual script. It was the only version of King Lear performed for 150 years, until William Macready presented a restored version with Shakespeare's original ending and with the fool restored to his rightful place. Audiences loved it. Even American who jealously, and patriotically, argued the greatest Shakespearean actor of the day was their countrymen, Edwin Forrest.

The societal events and the personal rivalry between Macready and Forrest that led up to the riots make for interesting reading. Macready was supported by the upper classes, those with enough wealth to mimic the fashionable ways of London high society. Forrest was championed by the Bowery B'hoys, anti-immigrant gangs from the lower and poorer quarters of New York City. Forrest had shocked English high society and embarrassed American by hissing Macready during a performance of Hamlet. This led to the end of the pair's long friendship and to the beginning of the end of Macready's popularity in America.

Normally, this story would all be confined to the footnotes of history--not the sort of stuff one studies in a history class. I can promise you, it won't be on the test. None of the people involved were "great men"; what happened, though tragic, did not change the course of the nation. But what emerges from The Shakespeare Riots is a portrait of America that deepens the reader's understanding of the country. From the beginning, the United States has been a "melting pot," a combination of cultures and peoples, but from the beginning there have been groups fighting against immigration, against anyone outside of the norm. That those groups found a convenient target in an English Shakespearean actor is what makes The Shakespeare Riots so unusual. That Shakespeare once occupied such a central position in American culture says something. That he no longer does says something else.

This book counts for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge and for the Dewey Decimal Challenge. It's a 700 book

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by ken Kesey

They're out there.

Last week I went to one of my favorite used bookstores, Baybooks, in Concord and overheard one of the clerks say to another, "Why would she read the book first? Won't it just spoil the movie?"

While I've never felt reading a book first spoiled the movie, there are some movies that forever spoil the book. After you've seen Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch you will always see him when you read To Kill a Mockingbird. Once you've seen Humphrey Bogart every Dashell Hammet novel you read will summon his image to your mind. I imagine most fans of Harry Potter have a difficult time getting Daniel Radcliffe out of their heads when re-reading their favorite volume. A great performance can forever affect how you read a book.

This was the case with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Not just with the lead character, but with just about all of them. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Danny Devito, Christopher Lloyd and Will Sampson all made such a strong impression in the 1975 film that it's difficult to get them out of your head when you read the book. The fact that the movie follows the book so closely does not help.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is the story of a group of men living in a psychiatric hospital in the early 1960's. The men live a strictly regimented life, presided over by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, who controls every aspect of their daily routine. Each man is there for a different reason, but for a clear reason. They all belong there. They all need help. Enter Randle McMurphy, a transfer from a prison work camp, a move he engineered believing that life in a hospital would be an improvement over life on a work farm. McMurphy upsets the routine as soon as he arrives. He gets the other men to gamble, smuggles in wine and women, breaks the rules whenever he can, assuming that he has only six more months to go and then he'll be free.

Nurse Ratched stands in his way. She controls everything on the ward, including the doctors who are all her juniors. Any change McMurphy wants to make must have her approval; any rule he breaks faces her justice. He is determined to break her constant cool demeanor, to get her to react to him with passion, until he finds out that she holds the key to his freedom. Once committed to a psychiatric hospital, a patient stays there until the doctors say he is cured, not until his sentence is up. The doctors will do whatever Nurse Ratched says, so McMurphy must win her approval if he is to win his freedom.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is well worth reading even if you have seen the movie. While it's different from the movie, it is deeper. By spending more time with them in the novel we get to know the characters much more than we do in the movie. The narrator is Chief Bromden, known as Chief Broom, a Native American who is believed to be both deaf and dumb. He is neither, but the fact that everyone thinks he is makes it possible for him to be the fly-on-the-wall with access to all sorts of information a first person narrator would not have otherwise, especially a first person narrator who belongs in a psychiatric hospital. That's one difference the novel has going for it--because we can see inside Chief Broom's head, hear his thoughts through his narration, we know that he does belong in the hospital. He may not be the most reliable of narrators, one of the chief difference between the movie and the book and a fact that makes the ending problematic.

We are always on Jack Nicholson's side when watching the movie. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest features a young Jack Nicholson, the rebel fighting against the system. The audience can't help but root for him. The McMurphy of the novel is always sympathetic, but by the end of the story we begin to see that the other patients may not be getting exactly what they need from his antics, that the system they are in may be what the really need. McMurphy's rebellion is easy to admire in the movie, in the novel it's easier to see the tragedy it leaves in its wake. By no means is it all McMurphy's fault, Nurse Ratched is just as responsible and just as awful in the novel as she was in the movie, but McMurphy is the catalyst that pushes events to their tragic conclusion.

This book counts as title number four in the Classics Challenge.

Short Story Sunday: "Birthday Girl" by Haruki Murakami

No one wants to give away the ending in a review. This guiding principle is much more difficult to follow in a short story review than it is in a book review. It's even more difficult when reviewing a Haruki Murakami story.

Haruki Murakami's use of magical realism sneaks up on his stories. He lulls the reader into the everyday and then adds a, sometimes very small, dose of the improbable. Without noticing it, several paragraphs or pages later, the reader believes in the impossible things that are happening. To give anything away risks spoiling the magic. In his short story "Birthday Girl" a young woman has to work at her restaurant job on her 20th birthday. During her shift she meets an old man who says he can grant her one birthday wish. If I say anthing more, I might give something away.

If you're willing to play along with Murakami, you'll not regret it. That may be the best way to view reading Haruki Murakami, not as reading but as playing along. It's lots of fun.


If you've read a short story this week and would like to join in here at Short Story Sunday, please feel free to use Mr. Linky below.

If you don't see Mr. Linky, please post your link in a comment. Mr. Linky has not been himself lately.

A Challenge, A Bookstore, and An Asian Pear

Yet another challenge reared its ugly head over the weekend, the Random Reading Challenge. When the year started I swore I would not do any challenges, then I ended up finding a few I could not resist, four actually. I've even joined a read-a-long. You'd think that would be enough.

This weekend I found the Random Reading Challenge on several blogs. The idea is to read a randomly chosen book from your own To Be Read stack. No pre-planning allowed. The goal is to wander away from your reading lists and find something just for fun.

This is part of my To-Be-Read stack.

So you can see that a book selected at random would help; none of the books in this picture are part of any challenge list. Because there is still a bit of the Dungeons and Dragons playing teenage geek in my heart, I decided to use dice to generate the randomly selected book. To generate a number big enough to cover all of my TBR list requires 12 dice, but that would mean books 1-12 would never be chosen. So I rolled two dice just to see how many dice I should roll. Seven. I rolled seven dice, added them up for a total of 22, counted 22 books from the top and came to Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays by the German author Christa Wolf. So it goes.

Last week, I met up with a friend and fellow book club member in San Francisco at the new Contemporary Jewish Museum which has a wonderful exhibit from Russian Jewish Theatre including some great stuff by Marc Chagall. Afterwards we found that the Alexander Book Co on 2nd Street is still there and still has a great variety of books. If you find yourself in San Francisco you really should stop by. The Alexander Book Co. is the last great downtown book store in San Francisco with three floors and over 50,000 titles. It's not a crowded place, either. Sadly, many people in San Francisco don't even know about it. I saw 30 or forty books I never heard of that I had to have. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I had just enough cash with me for one, Paris Noir, a collection of mystery stories set in Paris. You're bound to find something there will leap off the shelf and into your arms.

When I got home I found a strange collection of tree branches in the middle of Dakota's dog bed. (Dakota likes to sleep outside on sunny days - see here.) Several weeks ago I posted a video about how Dakota likes to eat peaches off of the tree in our backyard. She ate every one that she could reach, C.J. and I ate the rest. Now that the Asian Pear tree is approaching harvest time, Dakota has been eating Asian Pears. In fact, she has cleaned off the lower branches. She cannot stand on her hind legs, a few Bassets actually can--it's unbelievably cute, but she has somehow managed to pull down some of the higher branches, by jumping I guess, and has been taking them to her bed and eating Asian Pears off of them. Bad dog. Good thing it's a very tall tree; there's still a lot of fruit higher up.

So what's in season in your garden?

Australia Campaigns for Equality

CJ and I have joined a local group working to promote equality and overturn Prop. 8 this week. I volunteered to be the data coordinator which is about a glamourous as it sounds, running the database of local voters so the people going door-to-door know just where we need to go. We should know very soon if we're trying for a ballot initiative in 2010 or 2012. In the meantime, we'll be on the ground, doing the grassroots work, trying to bring equal rights back to California.

And, in the meantime, people in Australia are doing the same thing. Here's a fun little video from Down Under made by EqualLove09.

Dakota's Favorites: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

There are many people who simply refuse to read science fiction. You know who you are. Let's call it Genrephobia. If you suffer from Genrephobia and are looking for a way out, Ursula K. Le Guin might be able to help you. Ms. Le Guin writes science fiction and fantasy but her work is characterized more by ideas and character than by fantastic creatures and futuristic hardware. Many people who love science fiction and fantasy dislike her for just these reasons. Her novel, The Lathe of Heaven, may be just the ticket for Genrephobes looking for help.

This review of The Lathe of Heaven first ran here in September of 2007.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin is science fiction, but it's a science fiction of ideas, of what if's, not of technology and alien planets. There are aliens and technology in the novel, but they are beside the point really. This is a fable, like so many episodes of The Twilight Zone, a story about the improbable designed to tell us something about the every day.

In The Lathe of Heaven, George Orr has dreams that come true. His dreams come true, and he is the only one who notices the changes they make in the world around him. To stop his dreams he has been taking overdoses of various drugs which is a crime punishable by forced visits to a psychiatrist in Le Guin's anti-utopian future. The bulk of the novel is made up of Orr's sessions with Dr. Haber.

Dr. Haber does not try to cure Orr. Instead he tries to use his power to improve the world, to clean up pollution, reverse global warming, stop war. These all sound like good ideas, but it never works out that way in fiction, not for long. Soon Dr. Haber is creating a stifling, controlled society, where the individual is sacrificed for the greater good. George Orr tries to rebel but how can he when Dr. Haber has gained control of his dreams.

I found The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin to be entertaining and surprisingly pertinent to today's world. Considering the book was written in 1971 this is not exactly good news, but it is a very good book. Even if you're not a fan of science fiction there is much to enjoy in The Lathe of Heaven. I'm giving it five out of five stars.

What's Your Preference?

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Which do you prefer? (Quick answers–we’ll do more detail at some later date)

•Reading something frivolous? Or something serious? Serious. I go to television for frivolity most of the time.

•Paperbacks? Or hardcovers? Due to budgetary restraints, paperbacks.

•Fiction? Or Nonfiction? 80% fiction. But nonfiction has made a strong surge in my reading this year. People who never read it are missing out on some great stuff.

•Poetry? Or Prose? 90% prose. One should always have a little poetry in one's diet. A reading list with no poetry is like a recipe with no salt.

•Biographies? Or Autobiographies? Autobiographies 60%. You may think it it's best to always get the story from the horse's mouth, but most horses wear blinders at some point in their lives.

•History? Or Historical Fiction? History. Truth is stranger than fiction.

•Series? Or Stand-alones? Stand-alones, except when I'm reading a series.

•Classics? Or best-sellers? Most classics were once best-sellers, Grasshopper.

•Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose? Quality prose of all kinds.

•Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness? Plots.

•Long books? Or Short? Good books and good stories.

•Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated? Illustrated whenever possible, which isn't often enough. Books should have more pictures. They used to all have pictures, but somewhere along the line it was decided that only children's books should have pictures. This is pure nonsense.

•Borrowed? Or Owned? I only read books I own, except when it's a Library book. They always want them back.

•New? Or Used? That's the trouble with new books, as soon as you're read the first page, they become used.

Mean Streets by Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Kat Richardson and Thomas E. Sniegoski

I sat down next to Michael and said, "I think you're in danger."

Do you like your detective fiction hard-boiled? Does your fantasy reading tend towards the Gothic? Combine the two and you have Mean Streets, a collection of four novellas by Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Kat Richardson and Thomas Sniegoski. Urban fantasy, a new genre with a growing audience, takes fantasy elements and places them in real life, contemporary settings. From what I've read of it to date, urban fantasy leans towards the dark, a perfect setting for detective novels.

Mean Streets presents four of the best selling authors in the genre and introduces their popular detective characters: Harry Dresden, John Taylor, Harper Blaine and Remy Chandler. Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden is a wizard/detective who works the mean streets of Chicago. While detectives are typically on the outs with the local police, Harry is also on the outs with the local wizardly authorities. In "The Warrior", Harry must protect an old friend while staying out of the line-of-fire himself. In spite of the use of magic, "The Warrior" remains close to the traditional detective story, things remain relatively reality based.

Simon R. Green takes us into realms far beyond reality, and far beyond the mean streets of London where "The Difference a Day Makes" takes place. Within London, is a darkly magical section mere mortals fear to enter called the Nightside. It's a very low-rent, Vegas version of Daigon Alley, where anyone can go to find things one wouldn't want to have or do in the light of day. What happens in the Nightside is supposed to stay in the Nightside. What happens in "The Difference a Day Makes" is closer to David Lynch than it is to Dashell Hammet, but it makes for an entertaining story none-the-less.

Kat Richardsons "The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog" is the longest piece in Mean Streets which brings up my main problem with fantasy as a genre-- length. Visit any bookstore's fantasy and science fiction and you'll see many titles coming in at over 1000 pages only to find they're the first of a series. Mystery fiction rarely reaches the 400 page mark. Ms. Richardson's novella is good, but it suffers from too much talking. Detectives do have to interview the suspects and one can certainly lead to another, but "The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog" took much longer than it needed.

The final novella in Mean Streets is "Noah's Orphans" by Thomas E. Sniegoski. Whether or not readers will enjoy Mr. Sniegoski's work depends on how they react to his premise. His detective is Remy Chandler, a former angel. Chandler is trying to live his life as a human, but continues to find himself in situations that force him to use his angelic powers. In "Noah's Orphans" another angel hires Chandler to find Noah who has disappeared from his home on an oil platform in the middle of the ocean. Things get stranger from there.

Has reading Mean Streets won me over to urban fantasy? Are magical hard-boiled detectives going to find a home on my TBR shelf? I say never say never. If you wonder around the entire bookstore like I do, you never know where your eye will land or what cover will reach out and grab. Who knows what combination of genres someone will come up with next.

Are you a reader of urban fantasy? Is Mean Streets a good introduction to the genre?

The Great Mortality by John Kelly

Feodosiya sits on the eastern coast of the Crimea, a rectangular spit of land where the Eurasian stepped stops to dip its toe into the Black Sea.


In the bonus section of The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Time author John Kelly discusses three people who brought the period of Europe's Black Death to life for him. The first is Jacme De Podio, a peasant from Marseille. After Jacme's son, grand-daughter and daughter-in-law all died from the plague, he decided he should inherit his daughter-in-law's estate. To do so he had to find two witnesses who would swear out in court that she had died. Jacme spent two years searching the plague ravished city of Marseille, finally found the witnesses he needed and inherited the estate. Carpe Diem.

The second was Queen Joanna of Naples and Sicily. One of the major celebrities of 14th century Europe, Queen Joanna stood accused of murdering her husband so she could marry her lover. Her trial in the Papal court at Avignon was the must see event of the day, drawing a crowd from every corner of the continent in spite of the plague that ravaged the land. She was found innocent, though later her former in-laws invaded her kingdom forcing her to flee to Provence where she was reuinted with her lover. The third is Agnolo di Tura called Agnolo the Fat. Agnolo, a hard-working man who rose from the lower classes to the upper middle class prior to the plague, wrote one of the better chronicles of the Black Death which sums up the plagues full horror, "And I, Agnolo di Tura, called the fat, buried my wife and five children with my own hands."

The Black Death, called the Great Mortality by those who lived through it, was the greatest tragedy ever to befall Europe. (Whether or not its death toll was worse than that of World War II depends in part on how you manipulate the statistics.) While it brought about an end to the lives of millions, the Black Death changed the course of European history and laid the groundwork for the Renaissance.

Mr. Kelly's book is a thorough and entertaining account of the Black Death from its origins to its after effects. While he presents the historical facts and the scientific details along with the numbers needed to understand the profound effects the Black Death had, Mr. Kelly's focus on the individual people of the time brings the story home as it brings the story to life. The story of the Black Death is full of scoundrals, heroes and everyone in between. Agnolo di Tura will be familiar to anyone who remembers what they studied in middle school, but others, like Queen Joanna of Naples have been kept out of the history books for one reason or another. Hers is one of many fascinating stories in The Great Mortality.

The Great Mortality is a history book for both lovers and non-lovers of history. While there is enough detail in The Great Mortality to answer all but the most obscure questions anyone might have about the Black Death, the book never becomes lost in arcane information or bogged down in academic language. The story of The Great Mortality is always interesting, often moving, and at times inspiring. That all of Agnolo di Tura's children died moves the reader, but so does the knowledge that he carried on in spite of this. In fact, he remarried and became successful enough to complain about his worker's demands for higher wages.

This books counts toward the Non-fiction Five Challenge.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story.

The world of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novels is a world of adventure. It's also a world of books. In Zafon's world people fight each other over books, even kill for them. Writing a book and getting it published, is a game of Byzantine intrigue involving organized crime, beautiful movie stars, occult underworlds, betrayal, self-sacrifice, love, death and revenge. Everything a young writer probably wants the writing life to be and everything an old writer knows it is not.

The Angels Game, translated by Lucia Graves, returns to the literary world of Barcelona where Mr. Zafon's previous novel The Shadow of the Wind took place. The Angel's Game is the story of a young writer, David Martin, who becomes a huge success writing serial adventure novels under a pen name while ghost writing the literary sensation of the century. His own novel, the only one to bear his real name, is a failure confined to the underground passages of the cemetery of forgotten books featured in The Shadow of the Wind. David Martin makes enough money writing serials to move into a large, dilapidated mansion with a tower on top of a hill overlooking much of Barcelona. There he lives out a very quite life, writing, with the help of a local girl and the few friends he has.

Enter the devil, in the form of Andreas Corelli, a publisher from Paris, who hires Martin to write a book that will become the basis of a new religion for the fee of 100,000 marks. Soon after Martin begins to discover a series of very strange coincidences. His tower mansion was once the home of a writer who had been hired by the same Andreas Corelli to write a similar book. The one book Martin was allowed to take out of the cemetery of forgotten books was written by that same writer. The movie star who lived with the writer is connected to Martin's mentor and one-time provider. People begin to die strange deaths that appear linked somehow to the book Martin is writing. He wants to stop, to break the deal with Mr. Corelli, but soon he is so involved in writing the book for the new religion that he cannot stop, though he suspects Mr. Corelli's intentions.

Mr. Zafon's books are adventure novels for the literary set. What book lover could possibly resist an underground cemetery of forgotten books underneath the city of Barcelona? Various people can debate whether or not The Angel's Game is as good as The Shadow of the Wind, both books are not without their flaws, but the question is beside the point. Zafon provides his readers with a rollicking good time, an adventure high-minded enough to allow his readers to let go and enjoy the Gothic. Is Corelli the devil? Is the tower mansion haunted? In the end, I don't care as long as the answer to the question "Are you having fun?" is yes.

Short Story Sunday: "Such, Such Were the Joys..." by George Orwell

Soon after I arrived at Crossgates (not immediately, but after a week or two, just when I seemed to be settling into the routine of school life) I began wetting my bed.

George Orwell was sent to Crossgates school at the age of eight. A scholarship boy, away from home for the first time and in the care of others, when he began wetting his bed they punished him, more so each time he did it, culminating in his first caning. The adults in charge told him bed-wetting was a sin, that he was a bad boy for doing so. He stopped wetting the bed after the second caning, but, some thirty years later when he wrote "Such, Such Were the Joys...", he still held a grudge. He stayed at Crossgates through the primary grades, up to age 13, and looking back, he had nothing nice to say about the experience.

"Such, Such Were the Joys..." is an essay, not a short story, but Mr. Orwell's best work is really in his non-fiction. If you know him only from 1984 or Animal Farm you've not read his good stuff. Reading his memoir of growing up in an English public school it's easy to see why he fought for the communist side in Spain; it's a wonder even more British schoolboys didn't. Young Orwell regularly faced severe punishment, beatings included, for infractions that earned his wealthy, titled peers a wink and a nod from the school's staff. (Boys will be boys was an attitude that applied only to wealth.)

None of the boys were allowed to keep their pocket money. Instead of shopping for themselves, each boy was given a certain amount of candy, according to the position their father's held. Orwell got only two cents worth per week, while the wealthy boys got six or eight. Wealthy boys got a birthday cake large enough for everyone to share--Orwell did not. Aristocratic boys got "extras" like shooting and horseback riding. Scholarship boys like Orwell did not even get their own cricket bats. These sound like minor things today, but to a child of nine or ten, a child who is constantly told that he is already getting more than he deserves, minor things like this matter. Imagine being one of a handful of nine and ten-year-old boys who does not get a birthday cake. Imagine being told, "Your people aren't rich. You must learn to be sensible. Don't get above yourself!" each time you asked for your own money. Years later, Orwell learned that his parents had sent the school money to pay for a new cricket bat .

There is no Mr. Chips waiting in the wings to come and rescue young Orwell. He survives primary school, of course, and goes on to great success, but Crossgates deserves none of the credit, and he gives it none. "Such, Such Were the Joys..." is a cautionary tale, but a useful one. A look at the past with all hint of rose-tinting removed from the glasses.

If you'd like to participate in the July round of Short Story Sunday, whether you read an actual short story or a non-fiction essay, please feel free to use Mr. Linky below to post a link to your review. If you don't see Mr. Linky, then please leave a link in a comment. Mr. Linky has not been feeling well lately. I'll post a list of everyones stories next Sunday.

The Ideal Album

Last Sunday I learned how to make the ideal album in a class taught by Micheal Burke at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Here's a very short video.




If you'd like to learn more about making books and general book arts stuff the San Francisco Center for the Book has much to offer.

Special thanks to ds at Third Storey Window for suggesting I make this video.

Friday Picture Reading #5

From Philip Greenspun's Photo Essay on Cape Cod.

Tale of Genji Read-a-long: Chapters 13 - 17

Chapter 15: Yomogui (A Waste of Weeds) soars above everything that has come before it, even as it's heroine sinks into the depths loneliness. I'm gushing, but chapter 15, Yomogui - A Waste of Weeds deserves gushing.

The focus of chapter 15 is not Genji. Instead, for the first time, we see the consequences of falling in love with him. Earlier in the book Genji romanced a very refined young woman, one so refined that eventually Genji gave up on winning her. Though he implied he would return to her he never did. The woman, the daughter of His Highness of Hitachi (Suetsumuhana) remains within the walls of her opulent home, waiting for Genji to return. Eventually her father dies, and her family leave for other positions. With very little money to support herself, Suetsumuhana loses her servants one by one until she is left almost completely alone in a badly decaying mansion. What was once a famous garden is now a jungle of weeds, a path through it made by oxen left loose to graze by the local herd boys. This chapter reads like a passage of Virginia Woolf or a scene in Grey Gardens.


Some of her domestic furnishings, all antique in style and well used, remained as handsome as ever, and persons with tedious pretensions to elegance, eager to acquire them, made condescending approaches on the assumption that poverty left her no choice, invoking as they did so the special interest that attached to them because His Late Highness had commissioned them from so-and-so or so-and-so; and her gentlewomen tried now and again to bring her round in the hope of relieving the misery that faced them day after day. "What else is one to do?" they would say. "That is life, after all." But her only response was sharp reproof. "My father left them to me on the understanding that I would look after them," she would say. "How could I allow them to adorn the house of a nobody? It would be too sad to disobey his wishes." She would not allow it.


It was her fortune never to receive a single visit, however casual. Only her most reverend brother looked in on her, on the rare occasions when he came to the City, but he, too, was so impossibly old-fashioned that even for a monk he made a strikingly impoverished, unworldly sort of hermit, and he hardly noticed having to struggle to her through dense grasses and weeds. The grounds had in truth vanished beneath scrubby reeds, thick wormwood towered to the eaves, and humulus blocked both gates, east and west, although horses and oxen had trodden paths over the crumbling earthen wall. Even the herd boys who freely grazed them there in spring and autumn allowed themselves outrageous behavior.


The galleries collapsed in the eight month of the year of the great storm. The servants' hall, once pathetically roofed with boards, were stripped to bared frames and of the servants themselves not a single one stayed on. Smoke rose no more from the cooking hearth, and one misery followed another. Those who live from thievery must lack imagination, because even they ignored the Hitachi residence, walking straight past it on the assumption that it had nothing to offer. The main house therefore remained, inside, just as it had always been, despite it thickets of weeds. Dust there was aplenty, since no one swept or cleaned, but here His Highness's daughter lived out her cheerless, perfectly appointed days.


Genji does appear at the close of the chapter. He is moved by what he finds and does provide for Suetsumuhana. Because he finds her after returning from his own period of exile, he is a different man than the one who abandoned her years before, but he still does not return her love. Even so, Genji provides for Suetsumuhana, repairs her family home and makes sure she has enough money to live as she once did.

If you've been put off by the length of The Tale of Genji or by comments about his womanizing, consider just reading Chapter 15. It's wonderful.

What I Did Wrong by John Weir.

But I don't want to talk about the dead guy.

Alice Hoffman does not like bad reviews. Book critic Roberta Silman discovered this a few weeks ago when she wrote a review of Ms. Hoffman's newest book The Story Sisters. Ms. Hoffman Twittered her reaction to the world:

"Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Anne Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?"

According to Media Bistro, Ms. Hoffman posted Roberta Silman's personal email and phone number to the web and encouraged people to

"tell her what u think of snarky critics."

Ms. Hoffman no longer has an account with Twitter, and I hope her fans and friends had the good sense not to call Ms. Silman, but the entire incident does raise the question, once again, of whether or not book bloggers should write bad reviews. The general consensus is that we should not. If we don't like a book, we should not bother reading it let alone reviewing it. Because I find myself sometimes completing books I do not like, I am in 80% agreement. I do think writing a bad review, if it's an honest one, is ethical, justifiable, and often useful, maybe not to the writer but certainly to the book-buying public.

John Weir's book, What I Did Wrong, tells the story of a single day in the life of an unattached college professor. Although the professor is gay, he is obsessed with the straight male students who take his class in New York City's Bronx neighborhood. He remains close with his best friend from high school, also a straight man, who offered him some protection during his youth. The professor accompanies his friend to a local bar to meet his first online date. While the two prepare for the date, the professor has a series of flashbacks about another close friend who died several years earlier from AIDS.

Throughout the novel the narrator tends to drop brand names along with references to current or hip music and film. It is possible to become more universal by becoming more specific, but a novel that does this risks becoming dated. One of my favorite movies has a character refer to the day Echo and the Bunnymen broke up. I was probably one of the few people in the audience who understood the reference back in the 1980's. How many people would get it now?

The book's narrative structure is problematic. The story of the friends death from AIDS is compelling, and how it haunts the narrator for years is interesting. So tell that story. The plot line about the straight friend's first online date did not add much to the novel. I did care enough about the characters to finish the book, and there is probably a set of readers out there who will identify with them and love them. Unfortunatley, I'm not a part of that set.

For a very interesting dicussion of how authors should respond to reviews see Justine Larbalestier's blog. You can count on Ms. Larbalestier for interesting discussions of what it is like to be an author. Trish at Hey Lady What'cha Reading also has an interesting discussion going on.

This books counts as part of The Challenge That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

The Center of the World by Andreas Steinhofel

I never even saw most of the men Glass had affairs with.

There is a lot of wish fulfillment in gay themed Young Adult fiction lately. The stereotypical coming out story used to have a tragic end; even in novels intended to promote acceptance of LGBT youth someone had to pay a price, often had to die. Nowadays, coming out is easy, in fiction anyway. Parents and friends still struggle to accept the main character, but this lasts a few pages, maybe a chapter and the LGBT teen narrator moves on to other issues. I hope this is a reflection of a changing world but I have some doubts. Too often this kind of wish fulfillment ends up writing down to the Young Adult audience. Wish fulfillment has it's place, but we still need reality checks. Young Adults can handle it.

The Center of the World by Andreas Steinhofel, translated from the German by Alisa Jaffa, provides plenty of wish fulfillment, but it contains enough reality checks to avoid writing down to its audience. Phil, the seventeen-year-old narrator, lives with his twin sister and his mother Glass in a crumbling hillside mansion in small town Germany. The setting is exotic, even for a German audience-- that's the wish fulfillment. The Americans are not welcome in the village; they are made less welcome once everyone there finds out that Glass has a long series of short affairs. That Phil's father was only number three on this very long list does not help matters. Outcast because of his pariah mother and his American background, Phil has few friends his own age until he meets Nicholas and falls in love.

In spite of its exotic setting and the exotic nature of its supporting cast, The Center of the World is not a wish fulfillment novel. The novel's triumphant ending is bittersweet, but its an earned triumph, all the more powerful because of what Phil goes through to get it. He has no trouble with being gay, neither does anyone in his family, but the town does not approve and the town makes certain its disapproval is known. While there's nothing in The Center of the World intended to scare anyone back into the closet, the book's grown-up sensibility makes it clear that life in the open is not always going to be easy.

This book counts for The Challenge that Dare Not Speak Its Name. It's not light reading, but neither is it heavy reading. More and more Young Adult literature from Germany is becoming available in translation-- I suspect because Cornelia Funke has been doing so well. It's nice to read some of the realistic Young Adult fiction that is out there in the non-English speaking world.

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

Quirke did not recognize the name.

When a mystery novel opens with the discovery of a dead body, it has my full attention. Avoid the eccentric neighbor characters and get right to the chase. Benjamin Black, John Banville to the Mann Booker Prize jury, opens The Silver Swan just the way I like it. A young man drops by the Dublin morgue to ask pathologist Garret Quirke not to perform an autopsy on his wife. She has just committed suicide by drowning, and he cannot bear the thought of her being cut up for examination. The Silver Swan is off to an excellent start.

Things have not gone well for pathologist/detective Garret Quirke in the two years since he was introduced in Christine Falls. His wife has died, his father is in a hospital, and his daughter is making every effort she can to avoid him. Quirke does not want to become involved in another investigation, not after how turned out in Christine Falls, but when an old acquaintance makes a special effort to ask him not to perform an autopsy he cannot stay out of the case.

What follows is an entertaining detective story that makes a successful effort to grab its readers and force them to keep turning the pages. But, because it strays from its central character, it's not as successful as Christine Falls. Quirke could have walked out of a Dashell Hammet or a Raymond Chandler novel. He has a drinking problem, a jaundiced view of the world, trouble with women, and he really doesn't want to be involved--all things make good hard-boiled detective fiction. When he is present on the page, The Silver Swan has the goods. But over half the time, the focus shifts to other characters: his daughter, his friend, the victim and her backstory, various suspects. These are all interesting people and the book would suffer if their scenes were removed completely, but it would definately gain if they were cut.

Mr. Black is up to more than just telling a detective story, of course. In Christine Falls he shone a light on parts of Irish history many people would prefer be kept in the dark. The Silver Swan has a much more domestic agenda. No societal ill is examined, nor is any great historical scandal brought to light. Instead, the characters traverse the conflicts men have with women, fathers have with daughters, and one jaded man has with the world around him. The actual mystery operates as a means to explore these relationships. That's fine if you're looking for a novel, but it's problematic if you're looking for a mystery.

Short Story Sunday: "Never Despair"

"The rain began to fall as they threw the last few spade fulls of earth onto the grave."

Sometimes the whole point of a science fiction short story is a bit of a gimmick, but that's okay if the gimmick works like it does in Jack McDevitt's short story "Never Despair." If you're a student of history, particularly of World War II then you could probably guess the gimmick from the title, even if I had not included a picture of Winston Churchill. Knowing the gimmick ahead of time should not spoil the story for you.

Centuries into the future, our civilization has fallen. The cities, towns and roadways that are present day America have become overgrown like ruins of the Mayan empire. A small group of treasure hunters have wandered further away from their own town than anyone before them. They seek Haven, the place where a legendary figure once stored all of the knowledge of the ancients. Only two members of the original party survive, Quait and Chaka. They camp inside an ancient underground grotto.

During the night a strange figure appears. Chaka wakes, sees him and confronts him. He is unarmed, says he lives in the grotto, says he is the last one left. Chaka tells him about their attempt to find Haven and that they are probably about to give up the search and return home. He offers her words of encouragement. "It is possible you will not succeed. Nothing is certain, save difficulty and trial. But have courage. Never surrender. Never despair." Sounds like Winston Churchill to me.

Is he a ghost? Is he some sort of hologram in a museum interacting with a visitor? Chaka never finds out. Will she take his words to heart and keep looking for Haven? "Never Despair" asks the reader to write their own ending; my answer is yes.

You can find "Never Despair" in the anthology Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams.

Dakota Picks a Winner: The Hunger Games

Dakota picks the winner of one slightly chewed copy of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.




If you'll send me your information I'll get the book in the mail to you ASAP.

Dakota's Favorites: Becoming Judy Chicago by Gail Levin

Shortly after I first published my review of Becoming Judy Chicago I found out that she used to live just the next town over from me in Benicia, California. There is still an active art scene in Benicia but it's not the kind of town where I would expect to find art like Judy Chicago's. Benecia has become a bit up-scale, a quaint, older downtown and high-end housing all around. But it was once a hot bed of artist/activists like Judy Chicago.

This review first ran here in July 2007.

Becoming Judy Chicago by Gail Levin is a thorough look at the artist's life and career to date. It begins like most comprehensive biographies with a chapter on her parents' story and then continues, in detail, throughout Judy Chicago's life. However, it is the in-depth coverage of Judy Chicago's artistic process that most interested me.



Gail Levin has researched this book to the ends of the earth. I've seldom read a more thoroughly researched biography. Gail Levin has interviewed everyone involved in Judy Chicago's life and work, whether they were ultimately for or against Chicago. She has also read all of the reviews, and I do mean all of them. Her bibliography is exhaustive.


All of this research has paid off handsomely. We are treated to an in-depth look at how Judy Chicago came up with her projects, predominately The Dinner Party, and at how Chicago's ideas took shape through interaction with a large team of women and some men to produce one of the iconic artworks of the twentieth century.


CJ was fortunate enough to see The Dinner Party when it was shown at the SFMOMA and he remains impressed with it to this day. CJ usually cannot stand anything painted after Cezanne. I'm planning on taking it in at the Brooklyn Museum of Art next time we are in New York.


I was struck with how passionate the response was to The Dinner Party. According to Gail Levin, The Dinner Party made money for the exhibitors just about everywhere it was shown. CJ reports that he had to wait in line 90 minutes to see it. This was one of the shorter waits according to Levin. The people who saw it often reported it as a life-changing event. Many of the women who saw The Dinner Party went on to work with Judy Chicago on the Birth project and the Holocaust project.


The critics were just a passionate if not as appreciative. Gail Levin quotes many of them in Becoming Judy Chicago. Their reaction is so vitriolic that the reader can't help but wonder why? Twenty years after its first viewing The Dinner Party can still provoke a strong reaction, but the critics Levin quotes react like Chicago was trying to bring about the downfall of mankind. I found this part of the book to be the most interesting. It very clearly illustrates the sexist bias in the art world that existed as late as the 1980's and continues to largely influence the art market today.



I do not believe this book is for everyone. Gail Levin does keep the pace moving and Chicago's life is interesting enough to make the reader want to know more. But the book is an exhaustive biography, nothing is left out. This usually makes for a bit of a long read in my experience. Be willing to skip some parts to get to the stuff you really enjoy is my advice. There is a great deal in Becoming Judy Chicago that the reader will find enlightening and rewarding.

I'm giving Becoming Judy Chicago by Gail Levin five out of five stars.

BTT: Unread - A Video

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

“So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, ‘No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!’

Dakota and I made a video response.




I've not counted how many books are in the video. Counting is a math thing--I'm an English teacher.

Gilgamesh: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell

He had seen everything, had experienced all emotions,

from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision

into the great mystery, the secret places,

the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed

to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted

but whole. He had carved his trials on stone tablets...

...Find the cornerstone and under it the copper box

that is marked with his name. Unlock it. Open the lid.

Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read

how Gilgamesh suffered all and accomplished all.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is arguably the oldest story in the world, a thousand years older than the Iliad and the Bible. Dating back to 26th century B.C.E., The Epic of Gilgamesh is probably based on a Sumerian king who ruled the city of Uruk around 2750 B.C.E. The ruins of Uruk were only recently discovered, and the story of Gilgamesh itself was lost to time until a 1872 when a scholar noticed that a set of undeciphered tablets, sitting the the British Museum for decades, contained the story of a Babylonian Noah. He deciphered them all, giving the world its first near complete translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of a great king, a god-king, who, through friendship, became a human being. As it opens, Gilgamesh is building the city of Uruk, constructing the greatest walled city ever seen. He has no regard for the people whose lives are consumed by his desire nor for the gods who fear it. Enkidu, a wild man capable of defeating Gilgamesh, is sent by the gods to the forests near Uruk. Enkidu lives at peace with nature, a friend to all animals until a beautiful young priestess, Shamhut, arrives. When he falls in love with her, she cuts his hair, cleans him up, civilizes him and brings him back to Uruk where he does battle with Gilgamesh.

The battle is a fierce one, but it eventually becomes apparent that the two great men are equally matched. Gilgmaseh, who has never had an equal before, befriends Enkidu and the two then have a series of adventures. Typically, Gilgamesh suggests the adventure and Enkidu tries to talk him out of it before giving in and going along. Gilgmamesh suggests they defeat the monster Humbaba and cut down the forest he lives in, but Enkidu resists arguing that this will anger the goddess Ishtar to whom the forest belongs. They defeat Humbaba, cut down the forest, and disgrace Ishtar. The gods then send down the Bull of Heaven which Gilgamesh and Enkidu also kill. But during the battle, Enkidu is mortally wounded and dies soon after. Gilgamesh is heartbroken, so he sets off to defeat death itself. It is during this final journey that he meets the man who survived the great flood which destroyed all the world.

Gilgamesh is a compelling story, full of adventure, romance, sex and violence and it does have a few things to say to a modern audience. Who hasn't suffered the loss of a loved one or wanted to defeat death? Mr. Mitchell's translation is both poetic and highly readable; the story can be read in one or two evenings. But if you're looking for something as wonderful as Seamus Heaney's recent translation of Beowulf, you won't find it in Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh feels like a very primitive story, like a rough draft for the epics that will follow it. It lacks the poetry of Homer's Iliad or Virgil's Aeneid, along with the depth of character and narrative complexity of later epics. But it is the first one, and there is something to be said for that.

I believe that one of the most important lessons we can learn from history is that it can all vanish. The historical king, Gilgamesh, built a great city, Uruk, which is now a ruin, one that would be unknown but for the expert eye of archaeologists. The names of its kings are recorded as are many of their deeds, but the only one anybody is still talking about, outside of very refined academic circles, is the fictional one featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh. What survives the passage of time is art.

This book counts for The Classics Challenge run by Trish at Trish's Reading Nook. It was also eaten by Dakota yesterday, along with Crime and Punishment.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Does Stephen King have advice a book blogger might find useful?

Stephen King's fans will be interested in how he became a writer, and anyone who wants to become a writer ought to listen to his advice. But does On Writing anything useful to say to those of us who write for fun?

Mr. King divides On Writing into two sections. The first is a memoir of his early attempts at writing, the newspaper his older brother put out as a way to make pocket money. This part of On Writing is interesting and entertaining but not particularly useful. No one can duplicate the childhood that made Mr. King the writer he is, but his account of his early career is enlightening. In the second half of On Writing, Mr. King gets serious and gives frank, useful advice for aspiring story tellers. Though story tellers are his only real concern, his advice is still useful for non-fiction writers such as book bloggers.

I'm keeping three things he suggests in mind:

1. Favor the active voice.
2. Avoid adverbs.
3. Follow this formula: 2nd draft equals 1st draft minus 10 percent.

Numbers one and two are not new--Mr. King gives credit where credit is due and faithfully discusses Strunk and White's book The Elements of Style which every writer of any sort should own. He makes his own case for the active voice and against adverbs in On Writing and it's a good one. Though after he's made it, it's difficult not to read the rest of the book looking for examples of adverbs and the passive voice. Number three came to Mr. King in a note written at the bottom of a rejection slip for a story that was too "puffy." It's excellent advice. There is much more in On Writing that a book blogger should find useful. I'm sure any writer looking to improve their own work, whatever it is, will find at least three useful things of their own in On Writing.

In fact, if you know someone who wants to become a writer, maybe your own high schooler or college student, give them this book. If they haven't read it by the end of the following week, and if they can't tell you three things they should do, then go out and buy them a guitar because they're just going through a phase and music will probably be next. If they read it and they can tell you how they intend to use the suggestions in it, then start saving tuition money and hope for the best. Who knows, they may turn out to be the next Stephen King.

This books counts toward the Non-fiction Challenge and as an 800 book in the Dewey Decimal Challenge which leaves me with 600, 700 and 900's still to go.

Dakota Eats The Huger Games - Book Giveaway

This week we feature a book giveaway unlike any other.




I should have said Suzanne Collins not Susan Collins. Sorry.

If you'd like to win a slightly eaten hardcover copy of The Hunger Games please leave a comment below. Link to this post for five entries. Enter by midnight, Friday, July 10 to win.

Dakota will be selecting the winner Saturday morning.

Short Story Sunday: "Tonight the Sky Will Fall"

Space Opera is a sub-genre of science fiction popular in the 1940's t0 1960's. You can still find contemporary examples of it, but it's become an eccentric uncle genre, something fans of more literate science fiction may treat kindly but don't take very seriously. In his introduction to Space Opera, editor Brian Aldis discusses the difference between science fiction and space opera:

Science Fiction is a big muscular horny creature, with a mass of bristling antennae and proprioceptors on its skull. It has a small sister, a gentle creature with red lips and a dash of stardust in her hair. Her name is Space Opera......Science fiction is for real. Space opera is for fun. Generally.

"Tonight the Sky Will Fall" by Daniel F. Galouye is fun.

The story takes as its premise the idea that all of reality is a dream. That we are simply actors in a supreme being's dream is the basis of some philosophies, but what hapbecomes of reality if thre dreamer wakes up? In "Tonight the Sky Will Fall" a single man contains the being that is dreaming the dream. He is unaware of this and cannot control whether or not the being will awaken. Government agents, however, are aware and have arranged the man's life so that it will be as happy as possible in order to keep the man alive and to keep any extreme emotion he might have from waking the being and destroying reality.

There is, of course, a rogue agent who wants to take control of the being in order to alter reality to suit his own Utopian ideas. There is a girlfriend. There is a trusted side kick. There are several plot twists. The story is fun, as Mr. Aldiss suggests all space opera is, but it also has a grain of thought behind it. If reality is created by some sort of supreme being, can it not be destroyed in the same way?

If you'd like to participate in this month's round of Short Story Sundays please use Mr. Linky below. Be sure to leave your name and the name of the story you reviewed at your site.