Space Station Mir

36. Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery Rapture, creamy, dreamily--these are the hallmark words of an L.M. Montgomery novel. Jane of Lantern Hill is the perfect amalgam of Montgomery's best plots and descriptions--refined, elevated, reified. Montgomery is notorious for her descriptions that run off the page (especially of flowers and sunsets), her protagonists' soliloquizing tendencies, and her plots' lazily episodical nature. All of this is present in Jane , but the flowers are pruned, the protagonist is capable as well as dreamy, and the plot's episodes contribute to a clean arc. Jane, unlike Montgomery's other famous protagonists, grows up in Toronto, with her soft-willed mother and forbidding grandmother. But of course she's magically whisked away to the infinitely divine (another one of Montgomery's words) Prince Edward Island, by the father she doesn't remember. Jane will have to reconcile her old and new selves, and heal some old wou...

This week's Top Ten Tuesday at the Broke and the Bookish is Top Ten Books on My Winter TBR List--but I don't feel like making another TBR list I'm not going to fulfill. Instead, I want to take a moment in honor of Thanksgiving and think about all of the things I'm grateful for, and I'll attempt to make it bookish. 1. Junot Diaz, and my students I'm thankful that many of my students really strongly responded to the Junot Diaz short story I assigned them, it's clear that they've taken ownership of the material and feel like it "belongs" to them. They've even shown interest in reading more of his work! 2. The growing popularity and abundance of short stories, sci fi and fantasy in particular I usually read novels growing up, but I think it was less of a conscious decision than that was just what was around. Now, everywhere I turn, authors are releasing short story collections, and more and more anthologies are gaining attention. Tor....

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at the Broke and the Bookish ! 1. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie I'm cheating, I already got it =D 2. T he untitled sequel to The Circuit: Executor Rising by Rhett C. Bruno 3. Bombay Blues by Tanuja Desai Hidier Also, already got it! 4. The Winds of Winter by George R.R. Martin But, you know, not holding out too much hope for this anytime soon. Sequels That I Want, But I Guess I Can Wait For (since, you know, I've waited this long) 5. The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss I was waiting for the third book... 6. Allegiant by Veronica Roth It's complicated. 7. The Magician King and The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman Again, it's complicated. My feelings about this series are so conflicted. 8. Son by Lois Lowry It's not complicated. I'll get to it when I can, I just don't actually own it. 9. The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory Not complicated, just a matter of priority. I needed Ancill...

I have been doing plenty of reading, but more of the sort to keep me sane between work (read: bouts of grading). Recently Finished: Old Missouri Reviews Years ago, an old student of my dad's got wind that he had a literary-minded daughter. She was cleaning out her closet, I suppose, but didn't want to throw out a large collection of Missouri Reviews that she had accumulated. Instead, she gathered them up, and presented them to my dad, instructing him to give them to me. I was flattered, but overwhelmed, by the gift. For years, they sat in my closet, unread. Finally, I decided it was no good just leaving them there, and enacted a ruthless purge. I went through and took out issues with prize-winning stories, or issues with stories by authors whose names I recognized. The issues that made it onto my shelf have provided most of my reading recently. I've read almost all of the stories now. I admit to skipping most of the poetry, I didn't care for it. The issue a...

Love this topic over at the Broke and the Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday. 1. Ismene from Sophocles' Antigone I always thought it was unfair that Antigone gets a whole play when it's her recklessness that gets her poor sister Ismene killed. It's only fair that calmer, wiser Ismene get her own story. 2. Gustav III of Sweden from Francine du Plessix Gray's The Queen's Lover Gustav III stole the show from Marie Antoinette a bit, and I hope du Plessix Gray writes more about him. 3. Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter I feel like Luna's life is destined to be interesting. I'd love to learn more about her early life, but also what she went on to do. 4. Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings, and his daughter Elanor I wish there were continued adventures of Sam, and then Elanor. I'm sure that she has to go see the Elves, just like her Dad. I imagine her sneaking off to Lothlorien, and Sam having to follow her. 5. Oscar Wao from The Brief Wondrous Li...

35. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Have you ever heard the joke that one person is a world? In Ancillary Justice , one person is a ship. It's an idea that we can all relate to, stunningly realized by Ann Leckie in crisp, simplistic diction. This idea, of a ship that is a person, is what makes this story sing (literally). Ancillary Justice is a compelling example that great science fiction is essentially the literalization of metaphors (according to Seo-Young Chu in Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? ), or a cognitive estrangement from the mimesis of reality (a wordier but not more complicated idea from Darko Suvin's criticism). Breq, the narrator, is the last remaining "piece," if you will, of a vast artificial intelligence network that controlled an enormous troop carrying star ship, which led ominous "annexations" for thousands of years. To complicate matters more, Breq is actually a human body, that hundreds or thousands of years ago was wipe...