I managed to catch up (sort of) on my nonfiction magazine reading (often at the expense of my newspaper reading), so I have quite a few magazine pieces below. I started some short story anthologies and some nonfiction anthologies, and I’m reading them slowly. I’ve listed some things below, and I’ll recommend others as time goes on (and I get to them).

I found myself scanning endings of novels a lot. Often the books would hold my interest until the middle, and then I figured I knew where they were going or they simply nattered on too long. I was usually right when I thought I knew where they were going. The ones that nattered usually got back on track toward the end, but I’m still not going to recommend them because they weren’t quite good enough to hold me.

One of my favorite romance authors had a new book out this month that I devoured, but I’m also not going to recommend it. I nearly quit reading in the first four chapters, and finally realized why. The heroine is a true doormat/victim, the first time this author has ever done anything like that. The book had a lot of neat things in it, but the heroine never overcame her passivity or even realized that she was a victim. So naw. Not recommending it.

However, I found a lot of things to recommend. I have listed them below. I hope you find some in here that will interest you.

March, 2012

Andrews, Ilona, Magic Mourns, Kindle edition, Penguin 2011. Originally published as a novella in Must Love Hellhounds, this short piece in the Kate Daniels universe follows Kate’s best friend Andrea. I’m not sure the story would stand alone without having read the novels. I think it will, but it provides a richer experience if you have read the novels.

What impressed me was that even though this follows the Kate Daniels plot rules (lots of personal interaction, a big crisis, a big battle, and a not-entirely happy ending), it feels different. The voice is different, and so is the perspective. Andrea is a different character, and it comes through in every word of this piece. If you’ve read the series, this answers a few questions. If you haven’t, I suspect you might want to start somewhere else.

Angell, Roger, “Life and Letters,” The New Yorker, January 2, 2012. I usually don’t recommend anything out of the “Talk of the Town” section of The New Yorker, but I found two things in the January 2^nd edition. In “Life and Letters,” Angell discusses regular mail—what we call “snail mail” these days—and how it’s all fading away. Surprisingly, at least for me, he doesn’t examine it from a nostalgic perspective, but from a practical one. In fact, he asks why we’re mourning its passage.

Good question. I miss the ritual of it: When I started writing, getting the mail was like getting a present every day—or at least having the possibility of a present every day. I don’t have that attitude with e-mail. It’s the attitude I miss, not the actual paper mail itself. I love e-mail, and I love the convenience. Now my snail mail is down to a few things from friends, bills, magazines, and special orders (only because Fed Ex/UPS can’t find my house). So I’m always disappointed when I go to the mail.

Anyway, in his short commentary, Angell got me to think about all that and more. Go take a look. It’s a good read—which, btw, I got in the snail mail, but you can get electronically if you but subscribe.

Brockmann, Suzanne, “When Tony Met Adam,” Kindle Edition, Ballantine, 2011. This is a short story related to some of Brockmann’s romance titles. I haven’t read them (although I own them). I planned to read the story after I had, but I changed my mind as I was trying to set up the reading list for a short story class I’m teaching.

When I’ve done the class in the past, I’ve been extremely frustrated with the quality of romance anthologies.  Every other genre has a years’ best short story anthology that I can assign. Romance doesn’t. Romance anthologies are published by publishing company, with one or two big name authors from the company’s line and two relatively new authors. The stories are by invitation. I doubt that the big names get any editing at all, and I suspect the smaller names are edited to death. You’re usually lucky to get one good story out of the whole bunch.

So this year, I assembled my own from stories published electronically. I’ve owned the Brockmann since it came out, and I decided to read it because I wanted something contemporary and different.

I knew that this was a story of two men falling in love—that was the different, I thought—but it’s also a classic contemporary romance, extremely well done. One character gets redeemed and the other learns he’s not perfect either. The single sex scene is so hot I had to fan myself off when it was over. And then…the story made me cry. In the middle. I never cry in the middle of a romance. But I did here.

It’s a spectacular story, and really worth reading.

Chang, Leslie T., “Working Titles,” The New Yorker, February 6, 2012. First let me express some skepticism about this piece. The New Yorker published it under the heading “Letter From China.” The piece discusses reading for fun in China, and does an overview of a certain kind of book that appears in China. Now realize that China is bigger than the United States, and Chang only discusses a handful of books as representative. Realize too that whenever I read a similar article about US readers, the article always gets stuff wrong, is too general, and usually misses the point.

But…I know nothing about literature in China, so I have no way to judge if this piece is accurate or not, too general or just perfect, right on or misses the point. I only know that I found this essay (letter) riveting, because the Chinese have a class of fiction that we haven’t had here in this country for nearly 100 years. The “work” novel.

Chang cites the Horatio Alger novels of a century ago about young men finding success through industriousness as our literary equivalent, but even that seems wrong. The books she describes here sound like capitalism porn—they’re all about striving to get ahead, backstabbing, buying apartments and Louis Vitton purses with hard-earned gains.

The cultural differences that Chang points out seem profound. That might be the point of the article or they might actually be that profound. Again, I don’t know, but I did find myself thinking about this piece long after I finished it, which makes it worth sharing.

Denk, Jeremy, “Flight of the Concord,” The New Yorker, February 6, 2012. I don’t think I’ve ever read an essay like this one. It’s by a classical pianist who describes the art of recording a well-known piece of music. He discusses all the considerations—from the versions by the artists who recorded the piece before to the right amount of technique versus passion. Fascinating stuff, particularly for those of us who listen to a lot of classical music.

Gibson, Gary,  “From Slide-Rules to Techno-Mystics: Hard SF’s Battle For The Imagination,” Strange Divisions & Alien Territories: The Subgenres of Science Fiction, edited by Keith Brooke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Great essay on the history of and the current attitudes toward hard science fiction. I particularly loved this:

“If you were to cut open hard sf’s body and tear out its beating heart, you might very well find yourself clutching a copy of [the August 1954 issue of Astounding]….Contained within its pages you would find a story written by Tom Godwin called ‘The Cold Equations.’”

His analysis of “The Cold Equations” importance to hard sf is spot-on and runs through the entire piece as both an example and a metaphor. This is one of the best pieces on hard sf that I’ve ever seen.

Hall, Donald, “Out The Window,”  The New Yorker, January 23, 2012. A lovely essay being old. A lot of writers make it to old age. A lot of writers keep writing in their old age.  But very few writers write about old age. Hall does so here. He talks about being old as alien to the young, and remembers how that was. Then he confirms that it is alien, even to one’s self. Fascinating essay. Worth reading, maybe more than once.

Harris, Robert, The Fear Index, Knopf, 2012.  Someone at Knopf tried to make this package into something nice. Instead, this book has the most horrible dust jacket of the year. Not only is the dust ugly, but it feels awful to hold. Which just goes to show that everyone makes mistakes, I guess. If you take the dust off the book, it is lovely—with nifty endpapers and a nice interior design.

In The Fear Index, Harris takes on financial markets. It sounds dull. It’s not. When Harris is on his game as he was in Fatherland and The Ghost (later called The Ghost Writer), he’s one of the best writers in the business. He’s on his game here, although I wasn’t sure at first.

I found the book compelling from the start, but I wasn’t sure where he was going. I kept thinking it’s like a cross between a William Gibson novel and a Colin Harrison novel—the high-tech world of Gibson with the overly intelligent overly privileged fish-out-of-water hero of a Harrison novel. But in the middle of the book, that sense faded, and I felt a deep disappointment. Harris used a hoary old science fiction trope, and I nearly set the book down. I’d seen that a million times—in the movies, in books, in TV.

I’m so glad I continued. He took that trope and stood it on its head. I actually laughed out loud in pleasure and surprise.  I cannot tell you what the trope is or how he twisted it without ruining the read, but I can tell you that once again, Robert Harris pleased me greatly with one of his novels.

He is on the top of his game with this one, but buy the British version or an e-book so you don’t have to put your fingertips on that dust jacket….

Hitchens, Christopher, “Charles Dickens Inner Child,” Vanity Fair, February 2012. I think it appropriate that Christopher Hitchens’ last column for Vanity Fair before his death was an examination of another writer’s work, influence, and influences. He has some interesting points about Dickens here, some of which I knew, and others I didn’t. Also in this issue, you might want to look at Salman Rushdie’s remembrance of Hitchens. I will miss the monthly columns. They were one of the highlights of Vanity Fair for me.

Kamp, David, “Freud, Interrupted,” Vanity Fair, February, 2012. I almost failed to recommend this piece, but I found myself quoting it and thinking about it for nearly a week after I read it. Lucian Freud was Sigmund’s grandson. I’m not a fan of Sigmund and his attitudes toward women. I knew his grandson was a famous artist, and I decided I’d skim the piece.

I found an interesting article about a fascinating man, who died with his boots on. Lucian Freud worked harder as he got older, upset that his body had slowed down. So to compensate for that, he put in more hours, not fewer. He believed he would never finish the work he had in his head.

I can empathize with that attitude. And what Lucian Freud said about selfishness and the artist is something I’ve said to people close to me (as they got close to me). I’d never seen anyone else be so blunt.

Worth reading and thinking about.

Lehrer, Jonah, “Groupthink,” The New Yorker, January 30, 2012. Fascinating essay on brainstorming. Apparently, it doesn’t work—not in a group—and it never has. Other ways of group thinking do work to come up with creative ideas, and Lehrer delineates them here. Fascinating stuff on the way the brain works.

Lizza, Ryan, “The Obama Memos,” The New Yorker, January 30, 2012. I debated listing this essay here because I try not to have political discussions on my blog. So here’s a warning, folks. If you want to comment on the books/articles/stories, fine, but please don’t have a political discussion here.

I posted this essay because it greatly disturbed me and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it. I’m a political junkie, who reads everything she can get her hands on, no matter what side of the aisle it comes from. I don’t consider myself naïve. And yes, I voted for Obama, but with hesitation and a clear eye. I’m one of those people who, when a friend offered to buy me that Obama as Superman t-shirt, I said, “He’s just a man, and he’ll never be Superman. The job won’t allow it. People who own that shirt will be disillusioned come 2012.”

And those people are. And perhaps that’s what many will take from this essay. But what I took is the very level of dysfunction that exists in the workings of our current government, and how people on all sides capitulate to it. I actually had to walk away from this piece several times, and force myself to come back to it because my level of frustration was so high.

So I put this here to share my discomfort, yes, and because it’s one of the pieces I read in March that I’ll remember for a long time. Go read it. But if you want to discuss its points, please do so elsewhere. Thanks.

Morrow, James, “The Raft of the Titanic,” The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories, edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates,  Running Press, 2010. The alternate history part of this story is that somehow the Titanic crew and passengers managed to build a gigantic raft out of the book before it went down, and 2000 people survived. Yeah, I had trouble suspending my disbelief on that part too, until I remembered that I was reading James Morrow, and he wasn’t going for a believable alternate history. He writes satire. He was going for a much larger point, one that had to do with governments and war and the lies we tell each other. The point, however, wouldn’t work if the story failed, and it doesn’t. It’s very well done. I particularly like his treatment of Margaret (Molly, the Unsinkable) Brown. Wonderful story.

Paumgarten, Nick, “Countdown,” The New Yorker, January 2, 2012. This is the second Talk of the Town piece I’ve ever recommended, and it’s from the same issue as the Angell above. This one also deals with technological change. This time, it’s about the way we can time everything. Or almost everything, from crossing the street (those crosswalk timers) to automobile navigation systems. He also recounts an experiment, started in 1927, and still going, that only has nine pieces of data because the thing experimented on is so slow and unpredictable. This one is—pun intended—worth your time.

Reed, Annie, “A Most Romantic Dragon,” Thunder Valley Press, 2012. I love this story. Morived, a dragon who merely wants to practice his comedy routines, has fallen in love. He wants to date the daughter of a very traditional dragon. The problem? Morived isn’t traditional—and knows that Daddy Dearest will hate him from the moment they meet.

I first read this story in our February workshop. Annie had written the story for the workshop, and I had no idea that Morived had appeared in a previous story—until I looked up the e-book version, and saw that she had paired the stories. (You get the previous story as a bonus with this one.)

I’m off to order the previous story now—and I can’t wait for more of Morived’s adventures.

Seabrook, John, “Streaming Dreams,” The New Yorker, January, 16, 2012. I already wrote in my business blog about the epiphany that this piece gave me, but the essay is about more than the change in the culture. It’s about the changes at YouTube, how companies grow from a small idea to something larger, and how a corporation can (and should) grow, maintaining old customers while attracting new. He doesn’t quite cover the minefields to my satisfaction. (Netflix’s adventures in minefields come to mind), but he does deal with how difficult the shift is. And he gives a good analysis of the personalities involved. Worth reading, no matter what you think of business or YouTube.

I also read a lot of student manuscripts, most of which were excellent. If the students let me know when and where the manuscripts that I liked are published, I’ll let you know in future lists.

However, everything I’ve listed below are things that I can remember and have greatly enjoyed. So here’s what I read in February that’s worth sharing.

February, 2012

Andrews, Ilona, Magic Burns, Ace Books, 2008.  As longtime readers of my recommended reading list know, I’ve been searching for someone to replace my favorite urban fantasy writer. I love that writer’s books, but a few novels ago, the attention turned from what interested me—stories set in a recognizable modern time—to stuff set in a made-up fantasy world. Lost me. (I do keep asking friends if the writer has moved away from that stuff yet. So far, no.)

Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot of urban fantasy, most of which drives me insane. I like world-building. I like what used to be called “hard” fantasy, where the worlds made sense. If magic existed, then this would happen. It wasn’t all arm-waving. I’ve found some good practioners of the genre who give me a good read, but nothing to write home—or here—about. I’ve also read some spectacular short stories that haven’t translated into spectacular novels.

Ilona Andrews (a husband and wife writing team whom I will still refer to as “she” for ease of discussion) caught me with an earlier short story.  I liked it a lot. So I picked up the first novel in the series, which was okay, and I was a bit disappointed. The short story had rigorous world-building. The novel was a bit confused, so much so that at times I had to reread sections.

Neither of those problems exist in the second book of the series, Magic Burns. In fact, I’d recommend that you start here and read the first novel when you’re feeling completest. This novel almost feels like it was written by a different person(s?).  It is smooth, clear, and the world-building is explained when you need it explained, instead of you trying to figure it out yourself.

Andrews has a way of making fight scenes interesting (most people don’t) and she has excellent characters, which got me through the first novel. I care about these people. Also, her vampires are icky (not someone to fall in love with) and her werecreatures can be quite terrifying. It’s all wonderfully done, set in an Atlanta (a world, really) in which magic sweeps in and destroys technology, rather like a horrible wind sweeps in and brings down electrical lines. Lots of possibilities there and by this second novel, she’s using all of them to good effect.

As I said above, start here. The book is a quick, fun read.

Block, Lawrence, “The Murders in Memory Lane: Those Scott Meredith Days,” Mystery Scene, Holiday, 2011. This is part two of Lawrence Block’s memoirs of working at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, but you can read it without reading part one. I do hope he later turns this into an e-book, because the essays are marvelous. The Meredith Agency, for those of you who don’t know, was extremely influential and extremely shady. Block discusses all aspects of it here. Those of you who believe agents can do no wrong should realize that many of the big-name agents still working today got their start at Scott Meredith, and learned their trade at the agency. Those of you who believe that an agency will “look out” for its writers over its bottom line should read this as well. Block is reminiscing here, talking about the bad and the good of the agency. Worth reading. By the way, if you’re a mystery reader and you don’t get Mystery Scene, you might want to correct that. Of all the magazines for readers, this is the best.

Crais, Robert, Taken, Putnam, 2012. I couldn’t put this novel down. I picked it up and three hours later, I was done. It’s an excellent novel.

Two young adults get kidnapped by what looks like human smugglers who help Mexicans cross illegally into Southern California. It quickly becomes clear that something more complicated than that is happening, but what, exactly we don’t know.

Shortly after he’s on the case, Elvis Cole gets taken as well, and his partner Joe Pike begins a frantic search for him.

Here’s the nifty thing about this book: It’s simple. It’s a story of kidnapping and possibly murder, a story about a few days in which things go very, very, very wrong.

Bob tells it out of order.  We see the young adults get taken, we know right from the start that Elvis will disappear as well, and when we first see Joe Pike, he’s beating the crap out of someone who knows where Elvis is. Bob tossed the timeline in the air, caught the pieces, and came up with an unputdownable thriller.

If he hadn’t done this, the book would have descended into an almost unreadable mass of imprisonment, claustrophobia, and hopelessness. This way, the novel is compelling and memorable.

Clearly Bob had trouble finding the right mix. His acknowledgements mention pushing up against his deadline, many re-reads of different drafts, and the assistance he got fixing this book.

What new writers—and many established writers—don’t understand is that what Bob did was rewrite the novel. He didn’t tinker with the words to try to fix it. Rewriting isn’t word-tinkering. It’s story-fixing. Sometimes the story comes out right, and sometimes it doesn’t. If it’s truly screwed up, then the writer must start all over from scratch without touching the original manuscript—or even looking at it.

But often the writer can mix up the elements and find a better way—using the existing material—to tell the story. Then the only word-tinkering is to delete repeated information and to write better transitions. Fixing sentences wouldn’t have helped in this case. Fixing sentences and line editing usually don’t help much at all, and often hurt the story. So writers: when you think about revision, never ever ever think about the words. The story’s not about the words. It’s about the tale you’re trying to tell. Tell it the best way possible.

Like Bob did, in Taken.

Gladwell, Malcolm, “The Tweaker,” The New Yorker, November 14, 2011. This unfortunately titled article is about Steve Jobs, kinda. Gladwell looks at the history of invention, and claims—with some pretty strong evidence—that the people who monkey with inventions and improve them are as important as the inventor themselves. He says Jobs was a “tweaker” which is slang for a meth addict. I don’t think Gladwell or his editors know that, which sometimes makes this piece unintentionally hilarious, but doesn’t negate his point. Jobs improved things, he didn’t invent them. This one is short and worth reading, even if you’ve overdosed on analysis about Jobs.

Lauterbach, Preston, The Chitlin’ Circuit And The Road To Rock ’N’ Roll, Norton, 2011. I loved this book. The only thing it missed was a CD (or a download) with versions of the music he mentions. Some, I know, are unavailable, but other pieces aren’t, like Big Mama Thorton’s version of “He Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog.”

Anyway, Lauterbach wrote a history of the black nightclubs during segregation, and how they became the breeding ground for rock ’n’ roll. This might sound dull, but it’s really not. There are fires and murders and gambling and hookers and the real words to “Tutti Frutti,” (oh, man are my eyes open now). Early history of B.B. King (which I mostly knew), Little Richard (which I most definitely did not know), James Brown, and so many others you’ll recognize. The ones you won’t recognize, though, like Walter Barnes, truly make the book.

I read a lot of music history (particularly rock history) and a lot of black history, and most of the things that Lauterbach writes about here, I’ve never heard of. Wonderful, eye-opening, entertaining stuff.

Lepore, Jill, “Birthright,” The New Yorker, November 14, 2011. This piece is on the history of Planned Parenthood. Now, I studied women’s history and try to keep up on the reading, and I didn’t know a lot of this. I knew about Margaret Sanger, but not about the history of Planned Parenthood from the 1950s forward. Very interesting, no matter what side of the political aisle you sit on.

McPhee, John, “Progression,” The New Yorker, November 14, 2011.This one falls under a New Yorker subheading called “The Writing Life,” and the tagline that some editor put on it isn’t accurate. The tagline is “Starting a piece the wrong way.” That’s not what this is about. It’s about the way a writer’s mind works, how he circles his way to the correct topic, which is often one he didn’t even know he wanted to write about. This is especially true of nonfiction, but I’ve done it in fiction as well. McPhee has been writing for decades, and has written some iconic articles. If you want to be a writer, already are a writer, or are a passionate reader, this one is really worth your time.

Which got me thinking: Was it me? Was I getting too critical? Then I realized that both series authors had never published any other kind of book. No stand-alones, no other genres, no pen names. Just their series novels, which had been running for 30 years in one case, 20 in the other. They had gotten stale. Worse, they let others dictate how the series should go. (One of the authors blogs about how her agents (yes, plural) and her editors in the UK & US always tell her what to do next. Unfortunately, she listens.)

I hadn’t liked the two books previous by either author. I gave up on a different series (same problem) after three stale books. I guess I give my favorite series novelists three strikes before they’re out. Oddly—or maybe not so oddly—I give novelists who try new things about five or ten tries before I give up on them, figuring some books just aren’t to my taste. Another reason to diversify as an author, I guess.

I also read the first book in an urban fantasy series. The book was good enough for me to finish, good enough, in fact, for me to buy the next. I debated about recommending it, but I’m not going to. The book was better than many urban fantasy novels which often drive me nuts with their illogic and terrible world-building, but it wasn’t good enough to recommend. I hope a future book in the series will be. (First books often aren’t the best an author can do.) I did discover this writer through short fiction, so I’m expecting that the books will improve over time.

However, I did read a lot of excellent things as well. Here’s what I read in January that I want to share.

January, 2012

Bear, Elizabeth, “In the House of Aryaman, A Lonely Signal Burns,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, January, 2012. Keeping my promise to myself that I’d read the digests this year (although so far I’ve only managed Asimov’s), I went back to this issue after reading February’s. I’ll be honest: the title of the story is what put me off the issue. The title is on the cover. I can’t tell you why the title didn’t work for me, but it didn’t. Then I read the story and realized the title is absolutely perfect for this story. So what do I know?

Set in a future India, “In the House…” follows a murder mystery among other things, but it also keeps with the issue’s theme of distant relationships. Relationships seem almost impossible in this world, and yet a detective must explore all relationships—good and bad—in order to solve a crime. The story’s a brilliant conceit, with genetic manipulated cats and cloning and a rather inventive murder (or is it?) in a locked room. Nicely done, and worth the price of the issue all by itself.

Brenner, Marie, “To War in Silk Stockings,” Vanity Fair, November, 2011.  Fascinating piece about Kathleen Harriman Mortimer. Until she died, in her nineties, no one in her family (or her biographers, it seemed) knew about her life in World War II, or about the diaries she kept. The family (she’s Averell Harriman’s daughter, if you’re wondering) released those diaries so that scholars could look at them. Marie Brenner gives us a shorthand look, and quite a look it is. It makes me want to see all of them.  Fascinating stuff.

Howe, Barton Grover, “Twas The Night After Christmas…Argh,” the News Guard, December 28, 2011. Local humor columnist, Barton Grover Howe, occasionally knocks it out of the park.) He takes on Clement Moore’s Night Before Christmas and makes the modern day poem work. A lovely and sentimental holiday piece with just enough bite to make it entertaining.

Johnson, C.W., “The Burst,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, January, 2012. Johnson’s story, “The Burst,” follows a post-doc student in the near future who is working with a world-class physicist. Or overworking (although most post-docs I know went through something similar). The story explores quantum theory and relationships both, and it made me tear up. If I tell you much more, I’ll ruin it. But I loved it.

King, Stephen, 11/22/63, Scribners, 2011. Wow. This book hit all my reader cookies. I love history, I love stuff that deals with the Kennedys, I love alternate history, and I love Stephen King. I was actually afraid to read the book because I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to expectations. It did and more. In fact, it gave me a small homework assignment, which I’ll get to in a minute.

King manages to convince me that high school teacher Jake wants to change history by killing Oswald before Oswald kills Kennedy. There’s an inexplicable time travel portal in the back of a local diner—you go in, and it’s September 1958; you come out two minutes after you left. No risk, right? Except that you age normally, so you could stay ten years and come back looking ten years older.

Wonderful conceit, which means that Jake—in order to do the deed—must live for five years in the past. And when you live somewhere, you can’t help it: you develop relationships and you have an impact, which he does.

The strength of the book isn’t in the time travel  or the alternate history. It’s in the history itself and in the relationships. King always excels at setting and characters, and they carry the show here. The tension is high, and the book—even at 850 pages—is a page-turner.

I mentioned homework, and King gives some at the end. If you’ve never read Jack Finney, you should. But King also references other books throughout, including John D. MacDonald’s The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything. He doesn’t call the book by name, but that’s what Jake hopes for in the end—the girl, the gold watch, and everything. I asked some MacDonald fans about the book while I was reading the King and became convinced that he was referencing it throughout. (MacDonald’s books litter this one.)  Now I’m going to read it to find out what subtexts I missed.

King mentions in his afterward that he tried to write 11/22/63  in 1972, but it was too soon. He’s right about that. What I’m not sure if he realizes is that he did write a version of the book in 1982 (?) when he published The Dead Zone. Similar themes, similar conceits—would you kill a man to save the world, and if you did, would it change you? Plotwise, the books are quite different, but thematically and structurally, they’re much the same.  Including the fact that both Johnny and Jake are teachers.

11/22/63 is the better book, written by a writer in control of all of his tools. He can wave us past a few unbelievable things, and he can make us care about a mission we know will have unpredictable repercussions. I was glad, too, that he took a historical view of Kennedy instead of a starry-eyed one; that makes a difference in the last part of the book.

11/22/63 is now one of my favorite King books. I don’t even feel bad about the fact I bought it twice. (First in hardcover, and then when it got too heavy to hold up at night, for my Kindle.) Highly recommended.

Lewis, Michael, “California and Bust,” Vanity Fair, November, 2011.  Lewis has had a series of articles in Vanity Fair on the current economic crisis, but none more frightening than this one.  California has always been a bellweather state, and the bell it’s weathering right now is an economic crisis of amazing proportions. Lewis goes all the way down to the local level to look at the effect of the economic crisis on the state; the one thing this article doesn’t mention is that California was in crisis before the Great Recession hit. Since I live in one of California’s sister states, I knew something more about the crisis than, say, people in Texas do. But I had no idea the extent of the crisis on the local level. This piece is terrifying, even though he tries to end it on an up note. Read this one with the lights on.

Neville, Stuart, Ghosts of Belfast, Soho Press, Kindle Edition 2009. This puppy was billed as noir, and oh, boy is it. An extremely dark thriller, one I couldn’t put down, about a former killer during the Troubles who is being followed by the ghosts of 12 people he killed. (In Ireland, the book is called The Twelve.) He discovers somewhat accidentally that if he gets rid of the people who ordered the hit on the ghost, the ghost will disappear.

It sounds like a rather traditional horror novel, but it isn’t. Set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland after the Troubles have (theoretically) ended, the novel looks at redemption and guilt, remorse and opportunism in the face of a country that used to be at war, not just with its English masters, but with itself.  The resonances here are great, and the novel itself surprising. I did not know how it was going to go.  I even liked our killer, even though he had done terrible things.

A wonderful book. A fantastic thriller. Be warned, though. This one will keep you up at night—both because it’s a thriller and because it makes you think.

Quinn, Julia, Just Like Heaven, Avon Books, 2011. Thank heavens for Julia Quinn. After reading Stuart Neville’s book and the very dark January issue of Asimov’s back to back, I need levity. Quinn provided it—although I worried in the middle, as Marcus, our hero, lies ill from an infected cut. The book is set in the 1820s after all, and technically, the cut should’ve killed him. But why read a funny romance novel about a dead hero?

Quinn’s books are interlinked. For eight or nine novels now, she’s been torturing her characters by making them attend the Smythe-Smith musicales, an annual party around a concert held by a family that is tone deaf. It’s been a lovely set-piece in all of the novels. And now she takes the gutsy approach of writing about the tone-deaf Smythe-Smiths, with the climax of the book happening at the musicale itself.

I won’t spoil it, except to say that she has another set-piece—an egregriously bad Perils of Pauline type novel that everyone is reading, and they all comment on how bad it is. In each book, someone mentions that the heroine’s mother is pecked to death by pigeons (as an example of the made-up book’s awfulness) and each time I encounter that line, I laugh out loud. I did so here as well.

Just Like Heaven follows Honoria Smythe-Smith (who has an accurate first name) and Marcus Holroyd as they fall in love. They’ve known each other since childhood, and slowly realize that their relationship has changed. It’s a lovely book: the perfect antidote to all that darkness I’d been reading about. A nice pick-me-up if you’re in search of one.

Wolcott, James, “Still Cuckoo After All These Years,” Vanity Fair, December, 2011. James Wolcott has been on a roll. His last couple of columns have really spoken to me. This one is about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Wolcott looks at the book’s history and influence, and he did something courageous—he reread it. Rereading a favorite novel is always risky: you’re not the same reader, so often the experience sours you on the book. Wolcott was happily surprised. He found the book better than he remembered and even more relevant, if that’s possible. So take a peek. This one’s worth reading.

—————

What a weird year. I’m glad it’s done. I ended up with a lot of time to read this month—and please note that I’m not recommending everything I read here. I never do. But I did notice something. Unless the book/article/story is in paper, I’m having to read past some errors. This isn’t just an indie problem. In fact, most traditionally published e-books are worse. I’m just finding some fascinating errors.

If the book is indie published, it generally has two mistakes—whatever the author doesn’t know (for example, hyphens get misused) or typos that spellcheck won’t catch such as (in one rather hiliarious instance) “groan” for “groin” You get maybe three of those per book. The indie-published formatting and structure is often superior to a traditionally published book. I know some of my short stories have these issues, particularly from the early days of WMG when I had to do my own copyediting. So you indie-writers—spend the money. Hire a copy editor. It’ll make all the difference.

Traditionally published books have terrible formatting errors—still!  And often have OCR errors, particularly in older titles that are being reissued. The publisher isn’t springing for a copy edit on the previously published book. Then they scan that book, and every page is riddled with gobbledygook or wrong words such as (in another hilarious instance) “farting” instead of “flirting.” (That has got to be my favorite error of all time. Our heroine is surprised that the hero is farting with her. Yep. I guess that means they were compatible.)

Traditionally published books with OCR errors have them every page or two, and are annoying to read. The indie published books with copyediting issues have a pattern that can be ignored. Once you realize that Author A doesn’t understand hyphens, you can read right over them. Otherwise the  book is pristine.

I suspect all of this will change as everything shakes out. But we’ll still end up with a lot of books that remain in print riddled with errors—particularly from traditional publishers. Be forwarned when you get your e-editions.

As for the actual reading itself, it was a mixed bag. Some things were wonderful, and some awful, but a lot was entertaining while I read it, and annoying by the time I got to the end. For example, I read a series book by a favorite author and I think his main character is getting careworn. Or maybe I got struck by a bit of morality. Because by the end our “hero” had killed his ranking officer while in the Pentagon (and our “hero”’s law enforcement friends covered it up) as well as a top-ranking senator & his son (and again our “hero”’s law enforcement friends [a different group]  covered it up), and you know, I just didn’t believe it. I really didn’t. My sense of disbelief got strained to the breaking point.

I also read a lot of Christmas stories this month. I started an annual holiday recommended reading list in November which I’ll put up every holiday season, adding titles. So what you see recommended below will be added there next year.

But wow, did I read some holiday dogs. Including an anthology from a major traditional publisher that was awful. The first story was so!full!of!exclamation!points! as to be unreadable, and the third story was one gigantic romance novel cliché (two people who don’t know each other trapped in a snowy mountain cabin, lots of sex, no relationship, and no story). The second story had possibilities, and I did read it all the way through, hoping for the best. Great setting, fascinating set-up…and then the author decided to have these two characters not talk to each other for the entire novella. (sigh) It would have been so much nicer if she had actually used the set-up…

Every now and then I do read something that makes me grumpy, and that anthology qualifies. Yuck….

I also dipped into a lot of Tomes for research on a topic I really don’t understand and must understand before I write about it. (Dang that story brain.) So I’m reading bits and pieces of lots of fascinating things, none of which I can recommend because I’m not finishing them.

Fortunately I was able to read every word of the pieces below. They’re wonderful and they made my reading  month. I hope you find something that’ll interest you here.

December, 2011

Allen, John, On Wisconsin, Fall, 2011. Maybe only a former editor would appreciate this, but the best magazines have themes. The issues have a flow and a message, if read in order. (Of course, you must ignore the columnists [who never get the memo], and the regular features.)  The articles in this issue of the University of Wisconsin’s alumni magazine are all about reinvention, of lives, of science, of futures.

I read three different alumni magazines—Dean’s, and the two from my college career—and the only one I ever recommend articles from is Wisconsin’s. They’re not puff pieces. They’re good journalism with a UW slant. This is a particularly top-notch issue.

Berg, A. Scott, “The Hunt For Hemingway,” Vanity Fair, October, 2011. Years and years ago, I read Berg’s book on the editor Maxwell Perkins. It’s fascinating stuff]. Apparently Berg is working on a book about Hemingway, and managed in the past decade, to get to Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s home in Cuba. There  he and Perkins’ granddaughter, who started the ball rolling on all of this, found a treasure trove of never-before-seen material by and about Hemingway. Never-before-seen, of course, since Hemingway left Finca Vigia fifty years ago. There’s a huge gap in Hemingway scholarship, and the answers are all in Cuba.

The article is fascinating, about the arrival, the hunt, everything. The letters are not as interesting for me, because I’m a Hemingway fan not a Hemingway scholar. But this piece is worth the read, just for the look into a writer’s life—and the strange circumstances that occurred after his death.

Block, Lawrence, “Murders in Memory Lane: Scott Meredith, Part 1,” Mystery Scene Magazine, Fall, 2011. Lawrence Block is writing a nifty column for Mystery Scene about the folks he’s known in the field. He’s known some interesting ones. As a writer who got her start in the 1980s, I heard a lot about Scott Meredith the “super agent.” In fact, most of the agents I knew when I started out had been Scott Meredith trained. Once, when I was searching for a new agent, Ralph Vicinanza and I had a meeting. He asked if I wanted him to represent me. I almost did, until he made a comment. We were discussing my previous agent, who had gotten his start at the Scott Meredith agency, and Ralph said, “I guess you just have to figure out what kind of Scott Meredith agent you want.” Because Ralph had also been trained by Scott.

Well, the previous agent had burned me, and so that cooled me down on Ralph as well. (He probably didn’t realize what he had said wrong at the time.) I had heard stories about Scott Meredith from everyone. Nothing surprises me about Meredith any  more, but I’m still fascinated by him.

Block’s column this time deals with the beginnings of his job at the agency—how he got there, and how he ended up with them as his agent. Good writer that he is, he ends on an ominous note. But it’s only ominous if you’ve already heard Scott Meredith stories.  That ending does what any cliffhanger should—it makes me want to read the next column right now.  I love these columns. I hope he collects them into a book at some point.

Connelly, Michael, The Drop, Little Brown, 2011.  A new Harry Bosch book. I love Connelly’s work and usually buy it the day it’s released.  I get most of my mystery hardcovers through our local independent bookseller, and this time, his shipment of signed Connellys was late. Like a month-plus late. Ack! I didn’t read reviews, I tried not to drool at the book that Amazon kept offering me, I waited—and got it two days before Christmas. And managed to read it—despite everything that was going on—in two days.

Part of that rapid read is because this book is short—maybe 70,000 words when the average novel these days is 100,000. Maybe. Little Brown did a lot of tap dancing with wide margins, increased font size and lots of white space to stretch this thing to its 388 pages—which made it easier for my tired eyes to read in the print version, but probably caused the production people nightmares.

But I can’t attribute my rapid read only to the shortness of the book. This thing moves. Once you start it, you won’t be able to put it down.

The Drop finds Harry Bosch in the Open-Unsolved Unit of the LAPD, with a case that looks like it might be police misconduct. He doesn’t want to investigate, but of course he does. And as he does, he gets another case—a current case—because an influential political party asked him to investigate. The cases aren’t really related except by something that Bosch calls “high jingo”—stuff that’s done for political reasons, not because it’s important or sensible.

The book is impossible to put down, and the last line is a killer. (Don’t peek.)  I loved it and immediately searched for any unread Connelly books around the house. Of course, there are none. [sigh] So I must wait until next year for the next Connelly. Proof yet again that readers can go through books faster than the fastest writer can write them. Buy this one: it’s good.

Dittrich, Luke, “Two Dozen Strangers in a Cooler,” Esquire, October, 2011. This is an incredibly riveting article that reads like a piece of fiction. It’s about the Joplin tornado and the 24 people who hid in the cooler at a minimart. It’s not about what happened to them afterward, nor is it about how their lives changed. It’s a survival piece about the tornado itself, a minute-by-minute account of what happened, how it felt, and how they barely managed to get out of a totalled building with their lives. Extremely tense, extremely dramatic, extremely well done.

Howe, Barton, “One Small Step–For Everyone Else,” The News Guard, December 14, 2011. I’ve mentioned Barton’s humor column before. He writes for the local paper, and sometimes his pieces are too local to make sense to anyone outside of our 7,000-person community, but sometimes he writes a piece that I think everyone will appreciate. This one was “written” by his 18-month old daughter. Which sounds really twee. But it isn’t. It’s a fun perspective on being…18 months old. Somehow he nailed it.  (I do wonder what his daughter will think of all this in 18 years, but hey, not my problem.) Take a look. All of Barton’s columns are on his website, and are worth your time to check out. [link]

Johnson, Simon, and Kwak, James, “Debt and Dumb” Vanity Fair, November, 2011. Fantastic article that puts the financial history of the United States in perspective. How the system got set up, what it compares to, why it works, and what could screw with it. Yes, this is political, but it’s more of a history lesson which, it seems, we badly need in this country.

Kelly, Christen Anne, Home Run, Blue Cedar Publishing, Kindle Edition, 2011. Anyone who read The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction when I edited knows I’m a sucker for a baseball story. I love baseball stories, much more than I like watching baseball on TV. So when I saw the proposal for this book at one of our workshops, I begged Chrissy to write it. I knew this would be a book I would like. I just knew it.

When the book came out, she sent me a copy and I confess: I felt nervous. I always worry when I read the proposal and then the book arrives. I already have expectations. I expected this to be good.  Fortunately, it is.

Technically, Home Run isn’t a baseball story, although it features a former professional baseball player. It’s a softball story—girls’ softball. Laurie coaches a softball team for 12-year-old girls, and she fiercely protects them, because her father ruined the game for her by turning it into work when she was their age. Her father’s plan succeeded: Laurie went to college on a softball scholarship and was one of the best players ever, but she quit because she hated playing.

Although she still loves the game. And she loves her girls. She worries about them when Jack shows up with his daughter, Elizabeth. Parents are enough trouble when they aren’t former Rookies of the Year, when they don’t have a reputation for being difficult, and when they aren’t so handsome that a girl can’t think straight.

The book could go along the lines of a contemporary romance—and it does—but not on rails. The novel is really about dreams: how important they are, how easy they are to crush, and how they must be nurtured. Parents play a huge role in this novel, and so does the entire team. Elizabeth is a great—believable—kid, and the situations here (her father’s divorce, the love of the game, the conflict the adults around her feel) makes the story even more powerful.

This is one of those unclassifiable books that drive traditional publishers nuts. If you like sports novels, you’ll like this—even if you don’t like romance. If you like romance, you’ll like this—even if you don’t like sports novels. If I were marketing it, I’d market it as romance, but cringe a little, because I know I’d miss half the audience. Now, with the indie revolution, we don’t have to worry about that sort of thing. Books like this one can find their audience.

Wonderful book, chockful of unexpected surprises. There’s a bonus short story at the end of the Kindle edition, which I haven’t read yet, and more short stories in this world of girls’ softball. Chrissy is a former star softball player herself, so the book’s got authenticity in spades. It’s also the first in “The Home Run series” of novels. You can bet I’ll be first in line for the second novel—and I’m off to get some short stories now.

Liu, Ken, “The People of Pele,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, February, 2012.  A wonderful traditional science fiction story about exploration, about leaving family and friends behind to do something spectacular. Without FTL, this ship must use cold sleep, and the inhabitants wake up decades after they’ve left everyone. This is a multi-cultural mission, one that is to bring the world closer together, but run by the Americans. And you can guess: the first message they get from Earth, sent shortly after they left, hints at tensions. Then they’re told to claim Pele for Earth. This is the subtext that is happening while they’re trying to learn about Pele, discover other life forms, and oh—it sounds like something you read fifty years ago (if you could read fifty years ago, which I couldn’t)—but it’s really modern and really relevant and quite wonderful. The sf snobs who believe that sf should never repeat old ideas will not notice this one, but you should. Read it.

Lubrano, Alfred, “Tracking the Ties That Bind,” On Wisconsin, Fall, 2011. An essay from Lubrano’s book called Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams. I learned when I taught—and through my husband and two of my friends—that folks with blue collar upbringings (especially from forty, fifty, sixty years ago) had different training than little ole white collar me.  The training and expectation mean that I have to teach differently when I start folks with a blue collar background on a path, or we don’t communicate. It took years to realize that.

Lubrano illustrates it in this article about Fred Gardaphé, who graduated from the UW in 1976. He came from a particularly tough (read: mob-infested) neighborhood of Chicago, and went on to be a professor. This is a look at his life, the things he overcame, and the things he now appreciates about his friends from the neighborhood and his home. Fascinating stuff. There’s also an essay in here by Gardaphé, which you should read after you’ve read the Lubrano piece.

McAllister, Bruce & Malzberg, Barry, “Going Home,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, February, 2012. A powerful, powerful story about…well, read it. It touches on the Golden Age of sf, on writing, on editors, on the way things change, but it’s…well, if I tell you, I’ll spoil it because it’s only about 2,000 words long. But they’re marvelous words. Read this one too.

Price, Jenny, “Prison Breaks,” On Wisconsin, Fall, 2011. A short piece about JD Stier who went to prison in 1998, and is now working in the White House. This is about the efforts of one teacher who showed Stier a way out—and Stier himself, who took that opportunity and ran with it.

Reed, Annie, “Essy and The Christmas Kitten,” Kindle edition, Thunder Valley Press, 2011.  This story is not as sweet as the title implies. Instead, it is a bit dark and moody, so much so that I read with one eye half closed, worried that something would go wrong. But it is a Christmas story in the best way, and quite memorable.  One of my best Christmas reads this year.

Reed, Annie, “Roger’s Christmas Wish,” Kindle Edition, Thunder Valley Press, 2010. Somehow I missed this in last year’s Christmas reading. Young Roger’s grandmother moved in with him, taking his room. His parents are unhappy, and so is Roger. All he wants for Santa to do is make his grandmother leave. The story is sweet, with unexpected twists. It’s also a nicely done e-book. I read it in the Kindle app on my iPad and it felt like I was reading a real book. Nicely done.

Reed, Robert, “Murder Born,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, February, 2012. What’s wrong with traditional book publishing today? Pretty easy to show you rather than tell you: Every major sf editor rejected Robert Reed’s proposal for a novel based on this idea. Bob writes, “This is the same essential story, chiseled down to the bone. There is one plot element added to the original tale, and everything that the editors wanted taken out has been shoved forward and made obvious.”

Honestly, truthfully, this story just might win Bob a Hugo. It’s that powerful, that original, and that well written. I  know what happened in the book houses: they were afraid of this.

The story was inspired by the way that Bob’s home state carries out the death penalty. He wanted to write a story about a way that would make the execution of some heinous human worthwhile—and without spoiling what that is, let me tell you he accomplished it. It’s a powerful story about futures, about life and love, about death, about man’s inhumanity to man, about all that great stuff that the best sf does. It’s a spectacular story, and we Asimov’s readers benefit from the book editors’ cowardice. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Keep it in mind at Hugo voting time.  I know I will.

Williams, Sheila, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February, 2012. Because 2011 has been so awful for me in terms of reading and life and all of that fun stuff, I missed my goal. My goal was to read all of the digest magazines, or at least give it the good old college try. Well, I revived the goal for 2012, which means I have to start now. February’s issue arrived in my mailbox early because I have a story in the issue as well. I did not reread my own story, and am not counting it as part of the recommendation for this issue. (I’m self-serving, but not that self-serving.)

I grabbed the magazine when it arrived yesterday, read Sheila’s take on winning her Hugo, and mentally upbraded myself for not doing the same thing at F&SF when I won for editing years and years ago. (I’m still honored by that Hugo. It means more than I can say.)

Her essay is marvelous. The cover caught me as well—I love Bob Reed’s work, and the title sounded great—but I promised myself I’d read all the way through before I got to his issue-closing novella, which I did.

A few of the stories I liked, but not quite enough to recommend on their own. But the ones that I have recommended, I love.  I devoured the entire issue in an evening, then made sure I put January’s on the top of my TBR pile.

There’s a reason Sheila—who does not campaign like some editors—won the Hugo in 2011 on merit alone. She’s a spectacular short fiction editor. Her work is top of the line. Asimov’s is my favorite sf magazine—and probably my favorite fiction magazine.  She’s doing a hell of a job. Support her by buying issues, either on your e-reader or in paper. And since I mentioned Hugo voting above, keep her in mind as you fill out your 2012 ballot. She’s doing a great job.

Wolcott, James, “Norman Mailer Sent Me,” Vanity Fair, November, 2011.  Wolcott has a memoir coming out (or maybe it’s out by now—I’m really behind in my reading), and this is an excerpt. It’s about the beginning of his career. He quit college and moved to New York on the thinnest of opportunities.

Wolcott’s essay shows why some writers (and artists) survive, and why others fall by the wayside. Reading between the lines here, you see a man who has incredible drive, who tried and tried and tried, and finally ran out of resources before he gave up. And even then, he gave his given career one last try—and that try worked. (Who knows how many other times he would have “given up” before the final try worked? Those of us with incredible drive say we’re giving up when really, we don’t see how to keep trying—and even then, we’re looking for a way not to give up.)

This excellent essay also captures early 1970s New York, and the literary scene there. Highly recommended.

 ***

I wish I could say that things settled down more in November. They didn’t, really. Thanksgiving snuck up on us. As I write this, on the second day of December, we’re still reeling from the fall. But I did manage to read more and write more, partly because things were inching toward normal.

After Thanksgiving, I launched into my Christmas reading with a vengeance. Clearly I want this year to end. But I’m also ready to move forward. I’ve even organized my to-be-read pile. 

 What I did read in November was mixed. A wonderful sf novel (listed below), followed by an okay sf novel. A great mystery novel (listed below), followed by one I had to slog through. I couldn’t sustain a long romance novel this month, but the shorts I read were great. Plus there are some good articles below as well. Enjoy!

November, 2011

 Cach, Lisa, “A Midnight Clear,” Mistletoe’d, Kindle Edition, 2011. A lovely holiday novella, set in New York at the end of the 19^th century. The period details are fun—I had no idea that was when the Christmas card habit started—and the characters are great.  Catherine has spent years being wined and dined by her rich aunt, going to London, Paris, and on what was once called the Grand Tour. Catherine  has met European royalty and American royalty. She wears fine clothes, and she has an eye for beauty. Sort of. Because Catherine is terribly near-sighted and too vain to wear glasses.

She comes home for Christmas, to her family’s not insubstantial house in a relatively small town, and one of her wealthy suitors follows her. But she also meets a man whom she has no idea is wealthy—William, the owner of the general store. She’s not attracted to him at first because she can’t see him, literally. Then someone (William?) buys her a pair of spectacles and has them anonymously delivered, and suddenly she can see everything much clearer.

A great deal more happens here, including a magical wish by an innocent young girl (is that where the spectacles come from?), and some proper comeuppance for a very bad person. The story is lovely, the details good, and all of it will put you in a wonderful holiday mood. Enjoy!

Gessen, Keith, “The Book On Publishing,” Vanity Fair, October, 2011.  This is absolutely the best article I have ever seen in a mainstream publication on traditional publishing. Gessen knows how publishing works, and sees it all, from its foibles to the things it does right. This article also shows you would-be traditionally published writers what can go wrong, what can go right, and how tentative it all is. Everything went right for Chad Harbach in the run-up to the publication of The Art of Fielding. I have no idea how the book is selling now, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is perfect.

The way the agent found Harbach is precisely the way that agenting used to work. But if you look at the agent’s career, you have to wonder how this guy will continue to make money. My first agent discovered me in the pages of Asimov’s. Dean’s first editor discovered him in the pages of Night Cry, the sister magazine to the Twilight Zone Magazine. Apparently this still happens in the mainstream.

I know genre editors and agents look at the awards lists on short fiction for new clients to this day, but I have no idea how long that will last.

Look at the photos, particularly the one inside the publishing house. The room is large for a publishing house, but appropriately cluttered. Note how young the agent, publicity people, and designers are. Note that the oldest person there is the executive editor. Realize how little experience goes into producing these days.

Anyway, read closely. Realize how unusual this all is, and yet so mundane. It’s a spectacular article.  Btw, you’ll have to download the e-book, because VF has pulled the article from its website.

Gross, Michael Joseph, “Enter The Cyber-Dragon,” Vanity Fair, September, 2011. Fascinating article on China and its hacking into global corporations. We’re all living inside our computers these days, and Gross shows how mini-wars happen without us even knowing it. Worth reading.

James, Eloisa, Storming The Castle, Kindle version, 2010? James published a short story that ties into her novel, A Kiss at Midnight. James is retelling fairy tales in a 19^th century romance setting, so there’s a feel of the fantastic here without any fantasy at all. Still, it’s all wish fulfillment, and lovely stuff as it is.

The opening is particularly fun: Phillipa  has just lost her virginity to her longtime beau, and I do mean just lost. The story opens with them both naked. And at that moment, Phillipa decides this is not the guy for her.

Lesser writers would have shown that scene, but it’s a lot more fun to hear about it from the disgusted Phillipa’s point of view. She flees to the nearby castle, which has just been purchased by some royal family from a small principality. (Think Monaco.) Phillipa arrives just as a crisis comes to a head, and of course (this being a romance), she has the solution. She also meets the handsome Wick, who is the prince’s bastard brother.

The story proceeds from there, twisting and turning in unexpected ways. Unlike a lot of short fiction published as promotion by traditional publishers, this story actually has a lot of substance, and feels solid. The story does stand alone. If you’ve never read James, this is a nice inexpensive way to start. (The story is 99 cents—also unusual for traditional publishers.

Kleypas, Lisa, Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, St. Martin’s Paperback, 2011. I saved this one for my holiday reading. In fact, I bought it in October when it first came out—and honestly, I could’ve read it then, despite the title. Because this isn’t a Christmas story; it’s a fall holidays story. Halloween makes a major appearance and Thanksgiving is hilarious, even though the book itself isn’t funny, but heartwarming.

Holly’s mother died in April, leaving Holly’s uncle Mark as her guardian. Mark has never been around children, doesn’t know what to do, but he enlists his brother Sam, and together they try to make a home for this poor little girl who has given up speaking since her mother’s sudden death. Six months later—in September—Holly writes a letter to Santa: she wants a mom for Christmas. Not that Mark wants to marry or anything. You get the rest of the plot, of course.

But the book is set on the San Juan Islands in Washington State, and it’s clear that Kleypas lives in the Northwest because the details are great. The characters are even better, from Holly to Mark to Maggie, the young widow who has just started a toy store.  Realistic, sensitive, and touching. You can read this one at any season of the year (but fall would be best).

McDevitt, Jack, Echo, Ace, 2010. McDevitt has both a lot of fun with this Alex Benedict adventure and quite a serious point to make.  Even though the Benedict novels are set in the very far future, quite far away from Earth, only one group of aliens have ever been discovered: the Mutes.  Aliens here are defined as “intelligent” life, and McDevitt hits every single argument about definitions, about even being able to recognize an alien, about the dangers of alien encounters that have been a part of science fiction almost from the beginning. He dismisses most of them in a short series of conversations.

The plot seems simple: someone contacts Benedict, an antiques dealer, about a stone tablet with mysterious writing on it, writing that can’t be identified. The person who knows about this tablet commits suicide rather than reveal the secret of the tablet, which Benedict (and others) suspect comes from a new alien race.

The novel has a lot of adventure and some great character interaction. It also provides a lot to chew on with bigotry, aliens, prejudice, and the central question: what could be so Other that the people who discover it don’t want to admit it even exists.  The answer is both surprising and heartbreaking.

One of the best in the series, and a good place to start if you haven’t read any of Jack’s work before.

Orlean, Susan, “The Dog Star: The Life And Times of Rin Tin Tin,” The New Yorker, August 29, 2011.  I almost didn’t read this article. I have never cared about Rin Tin Tin, not even when I was a child. I preferred Lassie. Rin Tin Tin seemed ancient and old to me, even though I loved the silent comedies. A dog on screen without sound somehow didn’t interest me at all.

But this article does. The story of the actual dog, Rin Tin Tin—or Rinty, as his owner Lee Duncan called him—is fascinating. Found in a bombed out German encampment in World War I, Rin Tin Tin was a newborn puppy when Duncan rescued him, his mother, and his siblings. The dog became the most important creature in Duncan’s life. Duncan happened to go home to Los Angeles at the beginning of the movie craze—and the German Shepherd craze—in America. A confluence of opportunity and opportunism created one of the most famous on-screen dogs of all time. The essay’s short, an excerpt from Orlean’s book, but worth the read. I doubt I’ll pick up the book, because even with this, I’m not that interested in old Rinty, but I have a hunch many of you who read the article will end up with the book too.

Robinson, Peter, Before The Poison, William Morrow, 2012.  When my bookseller friend gave me this advanced reading copy after he had finished it, I was excited. I love Peter Robinson’s work.  But when I picked up the book (which has a fantastically ugly cover), I was momentarily disappointed.  The book wasn’t an Inspector Banks novel.  I had thought, when I first saw that book announced, that it would be.

Still, I love Robinson’s work, so I set aside the other book I was reading and started this one right away. I’m so glad I did. It’s fantastic. It’s an old-fashioned novel, not quite a ghost story, but haunted all the same. It’s a mystery, but more a mystery of the human experience.

An Oscar-winning composer returns to England after his wife dies. He buys a huge old house and when he arrives, he discovers that, in the 1950s, the previous owner was murdered by his wife. The wife was executed for the crime, which was a sensation in England at the time.

The composer becomes obsessed with the case, and so do we. The book never goes in the direction I expect. It takes us throughout the history of the 20^th century, and travels from Paris to South Africa and beyond. Yet it still feels like a haunting.

If this book isn’t on all of next year’s best-of lists, then that’s a crime in and of itself.

Toobin, Jeffrey, “Partners,” The New Yorker, August 29, 2011.  I debated recommending this article because I do try to avoid politics on this website. When you discuss Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice, you automatically discuss politics. That’s just the way of things. But I ultimately decided to add it, because the article is just that good and very interesting. It made me change my assessment of Thomas.

Toobin wrote an excellent book about the Court called The Nine [link], and he’s at work on a follow-up about the current Court.  This is an excerpt. I liked the previous book, and I will pick up the new one when it comes out. So, even though you probably have an opinion about Thomas, read this. I guarantee it will make you reassess everything you’ve heard about him.

Willis, Connie, “All About Emily,” Asimov’s, December, 2011.  For years, Connie Willis’s holiday stories, published in Asimov’s,  were part of my Christmas traditions. Then, she got deeply involved in her excellent novels, All Clear  and Blackout (which I recommended earlier), and she stopped writing any short fiction at all. Which is, I think, a crime. I love Connie’s novels, but I adore her short work.

“All About Emily” riffs on the movie All About Eve, and explains the film for those of you who missed that marvelous classic. The story is set in New York at Christmas, and our heroine is the aging actress who might be threatened by a new up-and-comer, Emily. And yet, something about that girl….

It’s a fun story, especially if you love old movies, Broadway, theater, and New York at Christmas time. And it manages to be good science fiction as well. It’s nice to have you back, Connie. Please continue writing short fiction while doing your novels.