SFist Reads

Well, after having to field all sorts of questions about The Washingtonienne at our EFF panel, we figured we might as well finally read it. Thankfully, on vacation in the great state of Washington, we found a copy at the Granite Falls branch of the Sno-Isle Public Library system. We got something of a 'look' when we brought the book -- and it's boob-riffic cover -- to the counter and said "we'll go with something easy and salacious." On that level, the book certainly didn't disappoint. The writing was sub-sixth-grade level, and 200+ pages of ass-f**king and line-blowing whizzed by in about three hours. And those are the highlights! The lowlights included an allusion to Cruel Intentions at one point, followed by an allusion to Dangerous Liaisons much later. Um, sorry Jessica Jaqueline, but those are both based on the same story! The ultimate disappointment, though, was the ending. Like, the story had a moral! WTF? SFist Jackson would finally like to note that maybe the beef between Ms. Cutler and Ms. Cox has something to do with the fact that Ana Marie's name doesn't appear anywhere in the book -- not in the narrative, not in the acknowledgements, nowhere. She's 'blogette.com' and that's the end of that.

SFist Matt just finished Lud-in-the-Mist, a novel from 1926 that did a pretty good job of anticipating modern fantasy writing. It's got an introduction from literary heartthrob Neil Gaiman (co-author of the awesome new film Mirrormask, which we'll be reviewing later this week), who calls it "the single most beautiful, solid, unearthly, and unjustifiably forgotten novel of the twentieth century." Neil's own book, Stardust, shares a slew of elements with LitM: in both books, a vaguely 17th-century rural community abuts a magical land that is regarded with suspicion; after the partial seduction of a father by mythical elements, a son is drawn into a forbidden magical realm. In Stardust, the son goes willingly; in LitM, however, he's dangerously seduced. In the end, Stardust is an unquestionably better story; but LitM is its mom and a worthy read.

SFist Emily has been subsisting on a steady diet of magazines since she has been too lazy to hit the library or bookstore for quite some time. She did just stumble upon an aweomse website, What Should I Read Next? that recommends books based on things you've read in the past. When she hits the library, she'll be picking up Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders by John Gierach. Anyone read that? Not sure what that recommend says about her but....

Cedric is reading the new San Francisco Zagat 2006, but shhhh, he is not allowed to talk about it yet