just saw this movie this week.  It was written by one of the most popular and award winning speculative fiction authors working today–Neil Gaiman.  Mr. Gaiman has been nominated for Hugo again for his short story "How To Talk To Girls At Parties" and has won just about every other award under the sun for his novels (especially American Gods) and his comic book series, Sandman.  So you can understand why anyone would come into this movie with high expectations.

MirrorMask was okay.  It had all the right things: character conflict, a world to save, a bit of character growth, giants, libraries, a betrayal, a good queen and a bad queen, not to mention beautiful scenery, and marvelous acting (I can’t wait to see more of Gina McKee and Stephanie Leonidas).  But I don’t think it is going to become for the generations what The Princess Bride or Dark Crystal or even The Neverending Story became.  Neverending Story was so badly acted in places it made you want to pull out the actors and insert a water buffalo because clearly the buffalo would have read the line better.  Doesn’t matter.  It is the world that makes the movie.

Continue reading “MirrorMask”

What Becomes You by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz “Scientist Link begins his fascinating account of gender reassignment by explaining scientific classification. . . . Raz writes of her child with rare and moving candor. . . . Mother and son’s poignant account becomes one of steadfast maternal love in the midst of changes only partly physical. Both knowingly return, always, to the terrain of the heart.”—Booklist See previous praise for What Becomes You. Continue reading More Praise for What Becomes You

Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari by Betty Levitov “An interesting travelog and an example of an alternative educational experience suitable for African collections as well as for education collections.”—Library Journal Previous praise for Africa on Six Wheels. Continue reading More Praise for Africa on Six Wheels

Madah-Sartre: The Kidnapping, Trial, and Conver(sat/s)ion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir by Alek Baylee Toumi “Toumi is clearly passionate. . . . Librarians with backup collections in recent philosophy and Islamic issues will find this a good book with which to stimulate general readers to dig deeper.”—Library Journal    Continue reading Praise for Madah-Sartre

Alan Cheuse reviewed Because a Fire Was in My Head by Lynn Stegner on NPR’s All Things Considered   Listen to the review here. Continue reading

It is Thursday again and it’s the last Thursday in April.  Tomorrow is the last day of our web poetry sale.  This week, I thought I’d share with you our poets’ personal websites and blog sites.  Next week, I’m not sure what I’ll be sharing with you, but we shall soon see, right? Now, for your Internet browsing pleasure, In alphabetical order, our poets! First up, nurse and poet Courtney Davis has a website.  She won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize for  Leopold’s Maneuvers.  Courtney posted about National Poetry Month on our blog.  Poet Kathleen Flenniken’s book Famous won the … Continue reading Is it Thursday again?

found this little book in a used bookshop and its paperback cover
has been laminated to protect it. It was $1.25 when it first came out
in 1974 and I bought it for $.95 22 years later. I wonder if Brackett
would appreciate how little her work has depreciated in the intervening
years.

You know Leigh Brackett from Empire Strikes Back script (though how much she had to do with it is debated) and from The Big Sleep screen adaptation that she did with William Faulkner (that was a question on Jeopardy
last Friday), but little of her work is still in print. It’s really too
bad. She was well loved and respected by her peers and her work is fun,
adventurous, and classic sf.

The Ginger Star is the reintroduction of her great character Eric John Stark.  Stark is a larger than life survivor straight out of romance literature
(like James Fenimore Cooper’s characters, not "romance" genre sort of
thing). He was orphaned, rescued and raised by near beasts who were
destroyed by humans. He was then adopted by Simon Ashton who was the
first person to really care for him. At the start of The Ginger Star,
Stark is all grown up and currently on Pax, the planet for politics,
looking for information on Simon Ashton.

Continue reading “The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett”

Paper Tiger: A Novel by Olivier Rolin “Martin, an aging French radical from the 60s, wonders where it all went and why. One night in 2000, when this rushing stream of a book is set, he broods out loud while driving around (and around and around) Paris with Marie, the 24-year-old daughter of his best friend from ‘the Cause.’ . . . [T]here are also treats that make the car ride worth taking, some serious (like Rolin’s observations—often pessimistic—about the human condition) and others delightfully comic (like the young revolutionaries’ many botched missions). When the journey to the end of … Continue reading More Praise for Paper Tiger

Because a Fire Was in My Head by Lynn Stegner “A novel fully realized on every level, Because a Fire Was in My Head is a provocative literary work of weight and luster. A risky, intermittently melodramatic tale, it casts light both on the timeless mysteries of the human psyche and on the paradoxes of a notoriously contrary epoch, namely, post-World War II North America. . . . [Stegner writes] with lyrical grandeur and psychological gravitas. . . . [P]rofound awakenings on the part of both a novel’s characters and its readers are the landmarks of powerful and lasting fiction. … Continue reading More Praise for Because a Fire Was in My Head