October 4, 2005

The End of Life as She Knew It - New York Times: “The End of Life as She Knew It

Joan Didion.
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
By Joan Didion.
227 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $23.95.

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: October 4, 2005

In Joan Didion’s work, there has always been a fascination with what she once called ‘the unspeakable peril of the everyday’ - the coyotes by the interstate, the snakes in the playpen, the fires and Santa Ana winds of California. In the past, that peril often seemed metaphorical, a product of a theatrical imagination and a sensibility attuned to the emotional and existential fault lines running beneath society’s glossy veneer: it was personal but it was also abstract.

There is nothing remotely abstract about what has happened to Ms. Didion in the last two years.”

The excerpt in the Times Magazine was excellent.

The Trouble with Trolls: “The Trouble with Trolls
In a new Discworld novel, a dwarf has died under mysterious circumstances.

Reviewed by Donald E. Westlake”

Tip of the hat to the Washington Post for a perfect pairing of reviewer and material. Without giving anything away, comic master Donald E. Westlake appreciates comic master Terry Pratchett. The interesting thing, though, is that Westlake’s review kind of misses the substantive point of the book … he doesn’t really get the moral fervor that drives Pratchett’s Sam Vimes in this and every book. And, while Pratchett’s Vimes does a great job of reminding the reader what it’s like to be a new father, that seems to have sailed right over Westlake’s head. There’s a dimension to Pratchett’s writing that simply isn’t present in Westlake’s, and it makes Pratchett the superior artist.

Hampton Union Local News: $68k hauled in at LobStars auction: “Local author Dan Brown, of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ fame, sponsored ‘Lobsternardo da Vinci,’ decorated by his wife, Blythe, with Renaissance-themed decoupage and Da Vinci quotations, and signed by the author and the artist.”

Brand extension marches on.

Publishers Marketplace reports this sale: “Canadian rights to policy advisor on human rights and refugee issues to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Amanda Sussman’s THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE: A Handbook for Social Activists, to Chris Bucci of McClelland & Stewart, for publication in 2007, by Samantha Haywood of the Transatlantic Literary Agency.”

Good grief.

Aftenposten Norway, Norwegian news in English: “Norway’s Constitution requires that over half of the government cabinet are members of the state church - the Norwegian Helsinki Committee says this provision is a violation of human rights.

‘It cannot be so that one has to join a certain religious community in order to be a cabinet minister. Not if there is to be true religious freedom,’ NHC assistant secretary general Gunnar M. Karlsen told newspaper Dagsavisen.

Karlsen believes it is time to revise Norway’s Constitution.

Lawyer Nj�l H�stm�lingen at the Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo agrees with this interpretation.

‘The Constitution’s paragraph 12 is in conflict with both the United Nations convention on civil and political rights and the European Council’s human rights convention,’ H�stm�lingen said.”

Norway’s provision would violate the United States Constitution, too. But I like it…

Thank you for signing up to receive information about Alastair Reynolds from the Orion Books website. We think that you would be interested to know that Century Rain (paperback) by Alastair Reynolds is now available.

To find out more, visit Http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/MP-26271/Century-Rain.htm

CENTURY RAIN was a darned good book, but in the end, I thought the fatal flaw was that the storyline relied upon one of the great wishful thinking memes in the world of Information Technology:

IOL: ‘Opus Dei must shed light on its dark image’: “But John Allen, a Vatican reporter who has just published a new study of Opus Dei, thinks the group still has a way to go.

‘Opus Dei is always lax in coming to its own defence’
‘They still have some ground to cover in rendering themselves transparent to the world outside,’ said Allen, author of Opus Dei: Secrets And Power Inside The Catholic Church.”

LOL. Reporters have a vested interest in assuming that every organization should strive to be transparent. Not so.

The Blog | Arianna Huffington: Making Faux Martyrdom Pay: Judy Miller Lands a Book Deal | The Huffington Post

Much of what HuffPo says here is right on target, but she doesn’t consider the possibility that Judy Miller actually has a story that’s worth $1.2 million. Now, what could that story be?

Elsevier.com - Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science

Now this is something I can really get excited about!