All I Want for Christmas: This Girl's Wish List

With Jo Walton sorting out your gift-buying this season, the ultimate question remains, what does this girl want to see under the tree? Most years, my book list is circumvented by my very wily hubby who makes a trek down to the local SF bookstore at which, I can only guess he calls in the masters and mistresses of book wisdom to discuss what a space operatic nutter would like. The meeting of minds (and robes because in my mind all SF book owners are part of a secret geeky society with strict rules around cloaks, robes and capes) has resulted in some ultimate gifts culminating with me discovering and subsequently falling all over myself for the Expanse series. 

Many a holiday has been highlighted by my reading choices, as I guess all of us are want to do. The right read at the right time is the simply the best of all worlds and unlike food can be re-visited, treating the books as little time capsules of happiness. As mentioned Ibsen will forever have my heart, but so too does John Richardson Picasso biography. Seeing those three tomes of extreme detail, chalked full with art on my shelf puts the feeling of Boxing Day sloth mode fully into my brain. For my American friends, Boxing Day is the best and I highly recommend you adopt this further extension of Christmas. Christmas may be the big daddy of glamour, but Boxing Day is the PJ wearing choco-eating from your lap, playing Trivia Pursuit while gnawing on a turkey leg by 10, cool little cousin. 

Thanks in part to my library-only policy and a recent trip to Arizona, my book list is slightly less extensive. I may have lightly indulged at a large U.S bookstore taking advantage of the slight mark-down in book prices. I say slight, because at one time books just south of the Canadian border were being sold for a nickel, a nickel I tell ya; now, not so much.  I can still buy a bottle of rum for a quarter, fill my gas-tank with spare change but the simple act of locating a bookstore, never mind buying a book is a feat for the seasoned warrior. Where have all the book-store in the States gone?  

First up, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. I have deep affection, fascination, fandom of Russia. Really, it is quite odd as I am not Russian, nor can claim any past heritage to the Motherland but for some reason the land speaks to me. Whether it be Tostoy's vodka-drinking, ice-skating, fur-wearing aristocratic glimpse, Dostoevsky's deep despair, the Soviet era, Putin, I want to go to there. I have many friends who are Russian, who fled Russia, who share little insights into the corruption, the crime, the poverty and yet I want to go to there. I have a dear friend, whose mother was in the war, who ate shoe leather to survive, who had shrapnel in her body until her passing, I still want to go to there. As for my friend, she fled with her small son and husband, managing to escape to Israel and yet, I still want to go to there. And so when I read Anton's review on Genre-Bending, it was a done deal. Nothing like a Russian, reading a Russian perspective of the goings-on  to grab my full attention. So yes, this Christmas I want corruption, I want the Motherland.

Next up is the continued exploration of the newest SF author on the big stage, Karen Lord. On the list is her inaugural award-winning fantasy novel Redemption in Indigo and the newly released The Galaxy Game that continues the world-building found in The Best of All Possible Worlds. I want them both, yes I do.  I have a feeling that Karen Lord is onto something, opening the genre into a new an exciting branch of SF story-telling. I want to be there for this amazing and a long time coming, triumph. To do that though, I really need to check out her other books to confirm whether I am correct or not. I know I am though, my geeky SF sense is tingling.

And with that, I am done. I know, it is rather shocking but I already own The Maze Runner, have Good Omens on my night-stand and may have purchased some gems for some loved-ones that I may (you never know) read once they are done.  I cannot mention the titles as that would ruin Christmas, but I anticipate happy days ahead for some people.

To Eat Your Own: A Review of Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

It would be remiss of me not to review at least one book this year about dragons. Late to the Jo Walton party, having only earlier this year discovered her acclaimed novel Among Others, I have spent the rest of 2014 reading through her catalog of work. I should say, most of, a voracious contributor to Tor, Walton recently published a collection of blog posts she wrote for the site that at this point in my life is of no interest to me. I know rather crappy of me, being a blogger, not reading other blog posts but Walton's talents for composing a tale is far more exciting than her opinions. Funny how fickle we are as readers, although my adoration for Herbert is a little past the ridiculous, I have not read nor interested in reading any of his other books. Please do not chastise me, in my defence I am what I am when it comes to my reading pursuits and at the best of times it makes little to no logical sense. My husband to this day has yet to resolve to the fact that he married someone who spent the holidays of 2004 happily reading a 800 bound, brooding, dark biography on the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. 

What can I say, the playwright not only is fascinating but a relative. One should always keep up with the goings-on with family, you never know what aspect to your character is genetic instead of that 'odd thing you tend to do'.  Thus it is so with the dragons in Tooth and Claw. Tooth and Claw, an earlier work of Walton's which not surprisingly won the World Fantasy Book award the year of it's release is about dragons eating each other. I kid you not, as I have literally stolen that which Walton herself has opened her summation of the conception of Tooth and Claw. Click here if you missed the last link to Jo's site where she talks about herself. You know folks, all my links have a purpose, okay maybe not this link, but most do. 

Apparently, Tooth and Claw has been stylistically compared to Jane Austen if Jane were to interpose her humans with dragons. Walton insists that there is little to no Austen in it and rather the inception is thanks to Trollope. Having not read any Trollope, a travesty that must be addressed, I cannot attest to that, but since authors know best when it comes to their own work, I would be inclined to agree. 

Beyond the Victorian sensibilities, what I did manage to discern was that the world-building was multi-layered, complex and wonderfully disturbing. No society is without it's tragic flaws. Walton's dragons have a habit of consuming each other; so much that Church and State have strong dictates of what is considered lawful and/or sinful. The climax of the novel is the civil suit against the son-in-law of a patriarch dragon who is deemed to have eaten too much of his dead father-in-law. I cannot tell you how amazing it is to type that sentence out! Can you imagine how hilarious it was to actually write this book?  Not that this book is funny, it is not at all, taking itself as seriously as any upper-class English nobility from the 19th century would have tended to do. Tooth and Claw is brimming with simply glorious teeny tiny details that entertained me to no end. I love when the tried and true version of fantasy or myth are reinvented or simply explored more thoroughly resulting in an almost anthropological study. 

I highly recommend this book simply for the sheer pleasure of discovering what is deemed an acceptable amount of dead dragon that a son, daughter and son-in-law are allowed to eat.