Saturday, March 04, 2006

Octavia Butler (1947-2006)

Octavia Butler has died. She died from taking a fall and hitting her head. That just stinks. I was first introduced to her at the Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi Book Club. Her writing doesn’t have a lot of Flash Gordon type stuff. She wrote about people and you she made you think. Want some of books that will knock you on your ass: Wildseed, Clay’s Ark, Kindred,and Fledgling.

While I’m on the subject of books and authors, I just finished Micah by Laurell K. Hamilton. I’m very disappointed. When I saw this book pop up on my iCal, I thought, “Great something to really take some time to read.” Last Tuesday I went to the local book store and look around for this book. I walked write past it because I was thinking it was going to be a hard cover. Silly me it’s a paperback. This is an Anita Blake novel, which really should be called a short story. Ms. Hamilton could have put this on her website as a free download. At 280 pages, it remind me of my students who turn in 4 page papers into 10 pages by changing the font size and hoping you don’t notice. If she had put this out as a hardcover her fans would have burned her at the stake. The book is not bad, just short, very little depth and most background filler. Ms. H you better make it up to me when Danse Macabre comes out in June. I will say this she can write an oral sex scene that doesn’t leave you feeling too dirty, but makes you think: “Hey, I want to do that!”

I’m working through Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series, and I’m in the second book The Good, the Bad, and The Undead. After a slow start with Dead Witch Walking, the books have started to become interesting. I guess enough foundation has been laid, to make me care about what to the lead character and found out what secrets the other characters are hiding.

The last book I’ve been working on over a year is “Staying Dead” by Laura Anne Gilman. A nice premises but Ms. Gilman needs to work on her style more. I never read anything more painful. It seems to me Ms. Gilman is stuck between 1st and 3rd person in her storytelling. I really want to try this book again and get through it. That’s something for me to do this summer, along with several other things.

A friend once told me I stumble into the noir/Goth/vampire erotica section of the bookstore. Now that I look back on my reading list perhaps she is right, but I think lot of these books could be seen as Shadowrun genre: Magic and technology, Voodoo doll and chants, electricity and steel. Weird Science. To really see the things in a new light how about this: After doing some digging into the family tree, it turns out my grandfather was Voodoo priest or at list a practitioner of the dark arts. So hide you hair clipping or I’ll work some serious mojo on your ass.

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