ゲド戦記 (Tales from Earthsea)

Wonderful news for lovers of Anime and fantasy alike! Miyazaki Gorou, son of the brilliant Miyazaki Hayao of Studio Ghibli fame, has just completed an animated movie version of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series. It opens in Japan on the 29th of July and I am so there.

All of the Studio Ghibli movies I've seen so far are amazing, My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ), Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便), Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫), Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) the list just goes on and on. And, although I've yet to see it everyone says Howl's Moving Castle (ハウルの動く城) was great as well. If Studio Ghibli can make a charming moving out of a basically unreadable book like Howl just imagine what they'll do with one of the fantasy classics of all time. I am so psyched!

I bought myself a new copy of The Earthsea Quartet to refresh my memory before I see the movie, because my original set is in tatters by now. I still need to get The Other Wind and Tales from Earthsea though. Maybe I'll pick 'em up while I'm in the States.

the official Studio Ghibli website

see also

a video of the theme song with some clips from the movie

Neil Gaiman + Amano Yoshitaka = Amazing

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Title: Sandman: The Dream Hunters

Author: Neil Gaiman, Amano Yoshitaka illus.

Genre: Fantasy / Graphic Novel

Read: 19th July 2005




Comments: A tragic love story between a monk and a fox-spirit, told in Neil Gaiman's beautiful prose and illustrated with Amano's lush and hypnotic brushwork, this is a true work of art. It's is a good place to start for someone who's never read a graphic novel before, and perhaps is skeptical whether "comic books" can really be literature. After you read this there will be no doubt in your mind, Gaiman and Amano are masters of their respective crafts.

Quote: "The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox..”

Sandman: The Dream Hunters

Bad Monkey

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Title: Sock

Author: Penn Jillette

Genre: Crime Fiction

Read: 15th July 2005




Comments: Part cop thriller, part 70s/80s rock encyclopedia, part atheist rant, and part porno novel: only Penn could pull this off. 'Sock' is the story of a NYC police diver who finds an ex-girlfriend's body at the bottom of the river and starts his own investigation of her murder. The catch of the story that sets it apart from other 'cop on a quest' type novels is Penn's darkly honest sense of humor as evidenced by it's narrator: the cop's foul-mouthed pet sock-monkey (you heard me right, a talking sock-monkey). The book goes off on lots of weird tangents, but ultimately pays off big time. This is an amazing book, but not for the squeamish. Check it out.

Quote: "Bad monkey wammerjammer.”

Sock

Jane Who?

Rating: ☆☆☆

Title: The Eyre Affair

Author: Jasper Fforde

Genre: Science Fiction / Comedy

Read: 13th July 2005



Comments: Set in an alternate version of England where the Crimean War continues to the present day and the populace is obsessed with fine literature and Shakespeare in particular, 'The Eyre Affair' is a fun romp that succesfully combines literature, science fiction and comedy.

Thursday Next is a special operative in the police literary division and when Acheron Hades (great name for a villain BTW) begins kidnappring characters from major novels it's up to her to stop him. Although it's quite silly and over-the-top, 'The Eyre Affair' is good breezy read with a fun premise and lots of quirky likeable characters. I'd give it 4 stars if it was a little more believable, but still a good book.

Quote: "Until Jane Eyre was kidnapped I don’t think anyone- least of all Hades - realized quite how popular she was.”

The Eyre Affair

I'm going to ...

Rating: ☆☆☆

Title: Checkpoint

Author: Nicholson Baker

Genre: Political Fiction

Read: 9th July 2005




Comments: We all know you can't say "I'm going to kill the President", because the moment you do, an armed flock of Secret Service will descend on you and wing you away to God only knows where, but that's just what Baker does in this book.

Well not exactly... Checkpoint is written as a dialogue between two friends: Jay and Ben. Both are enraged by Bush's callousness and mishandling of Iraq, but Jay has decided to take things into his own hands. He's hatched a plan to assasinate G.W.B. and it's up to Ben to talk him out of it. It's a thin sliver of a book, packed from cover to cover with emotion; sadness, frustration, but mostly the rage of good people who feel helpless to do anything about the current political morass.

I finished it in one sitting and was left hopping mad. It's a departure from Baker's usual detailed and introspective style, but it's worth giving it a read. (You may need to pick up something a bit more uplifting for your next book though, if you do.)

Quote: "...this guy [G.W. Bush] is beyond the beyond.”

Checkpoint

Finally!

Whoo-hoo!

I've been waiting for this! Neil Gaiman's newest novel 'Anansi Boys' has finally come out in paperback in Japan! As soon as I finish Intoxicated, I'm on it like glue.

Again I say "Whoo-hoo!".

Anansi Boys

The Weird World of José Carlos Somoza

Rating: ☆☆☆

Title: The Art of Murder

Author: José Carlos Somoza

Genre: Mystery?

Read: 9th July 2005





Comments: Billed as a murder mystery, this book is really more like a weird science fiction acid trip to a future where art is everything, and the rich and famous spend millions to adorn their homes with real living human works of art (beautiful naked young people painted and posed), eat off human tables and sit on human chairs. One famous and controversial artist, Bruno von Tysch even creates shock art pieces with suspected serial killers and human freaks of nature as his canvases. However, when one of Tysch's canvases is destroyed (ie: the model is killed anddismemberedd), only days before his major exhibit of recreations of Rembrandts, detective Lothar Bosch must investigate and stop the art thief/ killer...

This is a very tense and creepy book and extremely well-described and believable for all its surreality. The only problem lies in our lack of sympathy for the characters. The final showdown involves a young 'canvas' chosen to be the killer's final target, but she is introduced too late in the novel for us to really sympathize with her. Also while it works as science fiction, the detective / mystery bits were a tad lacking. If you're looking for a classic murder mystery, this book will, I'm afraid, leave you unsatisfied, but if you want to read something that will mess with your mind a bit, I recommend it highly. I also recommend Somoza's earlier work 'The Athenian Murders' which is again another novel of ideas (this time philosophy and solipsism) disguised as a mystery novel.

Quote: "Money is Art."

The Art of Murder

see also

The Athenian Murders

The Virgin Queen

Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Title: The Life of Elizabeth I

Author: Alison Weir

Genre: Biography / History

Read: 26th June 2005





Comments: A lively and readable introduction to Tudor History. Ms. Weir makes Elizabeth come alive on every page and it becomes obvious why even now, more than 400 years after her death, people are so fascinated by her. The prose is engaging and avoids the trap of becoming overly scholarly and plodding as some historical biographies are wont to do. Reading this left me wanting to know more, and I highly recommend Ms. Weir's other books on the Tudor family, especially 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII'.

Quote: "I am already married to an husband and that is the kingdom of England."

The Life of Elizabeth I

see also

The Six Wives of Henry VIII

Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens

The Divine Sarah (Nour El-Din)

Rating: ☆☆☆

Title: I, the Divine (A Novel in First Chapters)

Author: Rabih Alameddine

Genre: Fiction / Miscellaneous

Read: 20th June 2005



Comments: I wish I remembered this book better. I thoroughly enjoyed it while reading it, and was amazed at the ability of a male author to portray a female narrator so spot-on and convincingly, but most of the novel's plot has escaped me now (almost exactly one year after finishing it). From what I do remember, I found the author's conceit of beginning the story afresh from a different starting point in each 'first chapter' to be extremely well-deployed, and not at all gimmicky as it well could have been. I also enjoyed the glimpse into another culture (the narrator is a Lebanese-American woman) and reading this inspired me to pick up other novels by Middle-eastern authors. I recommend it to anyone who's looking for something a little different to read that may give them a fresh perspective on the world.

Quote: "My grandfather named me for the great Sarah Bernhardt. He considered having met her in person the most important event of his life. He talked about her constantly. By the age of ten I was able to repeat each of his stories verbatim. And I did."

I, the Divine

Eeeeeewww! (But I mean that in a good way.)

Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Title: Eating Mammals: Three Novellas

Author: John Barlow

Genre: Fiction / Miscellaneous

Read: 18th June 2005





Comments: The three novellas of this book's title are: the title story 'Eating Mammals' which is about a professional eater called Captain Gusto, (kind of like Kobayashi Takeru {see link below} only he'll literally eat anything), 'The Possession of Thomas Bessie: a Victorian Melodrama' about a strange cat, born with a pair of small wings (don't worry, it's not in the least cutesy or cat-fancieresque), and finally 'The Donkey Wedding at Gomersal, recounted by an inhabitant of that place' about a rather odd wedding (I'll let you guess what exactly was odd about it).

They're all good solid stories, engagingly written, but the title story takes the cake, so to speak. I don't want to spoil it, but one of the last scenes is so perfectly, viscerally, stomach-churningly written that I literally felt sick reading it. Anyone can write a gross-out scene, but this is different, it was kind of a gross-out elevated to the level of art, if you can follow me.

I recommend this book to all comers (provided they have a strong stomach) and I invite you to check out the author's first full-length novel (link below) which was delivered to my door yesterday and is next on my list.

Quote: "There will always be one place, dirty, and perhaps forgotten to all but its inhabitants, deep in a dark corner of a dark country, where the name of Captain Gusto will be rememberd."

eating mammals

see also

Kobayashi Takeru

Intoxicated: A Novel of Money, Madness, and the Invention of the World's Favorite Soft Drink