This was the best selling book in the USA in 1909, a century ago. I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg after reading John Scalzi’s piece about the bestsellers of yesteryear, and how they are forgotten. (Does anyone want to join me in reading Florence Barclay’s The Rosary next year, a century after it topped the charts?)

The Inner Shrine is probably a decent enough novel in the romance genre, and people who like that sort of thing today will probably enjoy this as well. After an opening couple of chapters in France, where the older heroine’s first husband dies in murky circumstances, we then shift to New York, where the challenge becomes to unite three pairs of lovers sundered by circumstance and social codes (all are, or have been, very rich). You probably aren’t going to read this, so I shall reveal that the “Inner Shrine” of the title is a woman’s heart, which can be unlocked by the three words “I love you.” That is probably the crucial data point that will help you decide if you want to read this book or not.

I think I gained also some insight into the strict code of morals of the American east coast aristocracy as it affected my own grandmother, who almost shared a name with the younger heroine of this book (Dorothy rather than Dorothea) and was born into a family of transatlantic steel magnates in Philadlphia in 1899; her uncle became Attorney-General of the United States and her step-brother was a Pulitzer Prize winning literary critic. I knew her, of course, as a crotchety and somewhat snobbish old lady, but it’s interesting to get a more direct insight into where that came from.

Stephen King describes this on the front cover as the "best graphic novel I've ever read", which of course is not a helpful data point unless you know how many graphic novels King actually has read. Is Neum the prettiest seaside town in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Was Dick Cheney the greatest US vice-president ever to come from Wyoming?

I'm afraid it didn't really work for me, though I think I can see why Stephen King and his fans like it. The premise has our hero, Yorick, unexpectedly surviving some disaster which killed all other men – and I think also almost all male animals – in a contemporary earth; this last volume has him juggling contacts with his friends and lovers, and with the Israeli and Russian female military teams trying to capture him and his Y chromosomes.

I found the whole thing a bit unconvincing; almost all the surviving women seem to be young and beautiful, and where John Wyndham did diffirent bits of this story in various interesting ways, Vaughan doesn't. I think this is the tenth and last volume of a series of books about Yorick/Y, and perhaps earlier ones were more compelling, but this one won't be getting a particularly high vote from me.

This is a graphic novel based on a series of books by Jim Butcher which had a TV show as well; but it was all new to me, and I only got it because it is on the Hugo shortlist.

It’s actually very good. Our hero, Harry Dresden, is a hardboiled private investigator who also happens to be a wizard, and is routinely called in to help solve mysterious cases in Chicago. The plot here, involving odd goings-on and strange deaths in the Lincoln Park Zoo, is pretty straightforward; the villain, being English, is easy to spot, and the rest is just routine defeat the bad guys stuff. But it is told vividly and with a certain humour, and very well drawn by Ardian Syaf (who is also ‘s illustrator for Chance). This is my first encounter either with the Dresden Files or with Syaf’s work, and it has certainly whetted my enthusiasm for both – especially for Syaf.

Will rank this behind the Serenity story on the ballot but not far behind!

• doctorwho: The 44 deaths of Doctor Who
  Why it will never be the same again
  (tags: doctorwho)
• Farrah's Brainy Side – Page 1 – The Daily Beast
  The unexpected connection between Farrah Fawcett and Ayn Rand
  (tags: philosophy)

A friend of mine is looking to hire someone with the following qualifications (as he gave them to me):

Excellent English, preferably a native speaker
Very good French
Editorial skills
Experience of publishing on-line
Experience of / education in EU justice issues

(That last one seems to me to be the kicker, but I have honestly no idea of the level of expertise being sought – I suspect it may be enough to have studied a course which included EU law, but was not sure of the right question to ask him.)

The job starts 1 September for at least a year; it is based in Brussels. The salary is 1,700 monthly net of tax, plus a car and other perks. (I guess that grosses up to about 35,000? Or perhaps a bit more?)

My friend was a bit vague about the nature of the work; I got the impression that it is a private sector firm which has got an EU contract of some kind, to create a website which will contain easy-to-read summaries of complex EU documents, presumably in the area of “justice issues”. I recommended strongly that he should advertise it publicly, but he said he prefers to put the word out through the various networks, and he was sure I must know someone who fits his requirements.

Well, if you think you fit his requirements or know someone who does, contact me directly (by LJ message, or via the email address on my profile) and I’ll put you straight on to him.

• Iran: null hypothesis, and consequences | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion
  More Muir
  (tags: iran)

• Un-Amerikan Activities – Vision On
  Illustration of how we see colours
  (tags: coolstuff)
• FW: Thought for the day on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  Warning: contains a rude word
  (tags: jokes)
• Dracula: 24 June
  The classic Bram Stoker novel, posted as a series of blog entries
  (tags: sf)
• Kosovo Ex-Prime Minister Arrested on War Crimes – NYTimes.com
  This is so very stupid
  (tags: kosovo)
• lasultrix: My examinations are completed.
  Quote from At Swim-Two-Birds about bed
  (tags: literature)

Sequel to the same author’s Most Ancient Song, which didn’t much impress me, and neither did this. I gave up after 100 pages of inconsequential sailing across a fantasy archipelago.

A tough but necessary read. Levi was one of the lucky ones: not killed immediately on arrival at Auschwitz; he was then too ill to be evacuated with most of the remaining prisoners when the camp was abandoned, but healthy enough to survive the ten days until the Russians arrived. In between he gives an unforgettable picture of life in unspeakable conditions, where the prisoner’s brutalised consciousness revolves around theft and the impossibility of personal hygiene, as something to focus on other than the crematorium chimneys in the next compound. It’s a very short book but packs a powerful punch. (And it is a shame that the translators abandoned the original title, Se questo è un uomo / If This Is A Man.)

If you are waiting in the departure lounge in Skopje airport, it is definitely worth paying €10 to sit in comfy chairs in the business lounge where there are free snacks, drinks and wifi.

A quirk of my self-imposed reading schedule means I got to this shortly after Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy, to which it is somewhat related. I know the author from our shared careers as political activists and operators, but this book is entirely about ethics, attempting to establish a universal code of how to make the right decision. Ethics and politics are not always considered in the same breath, but they are not far apart in their intellectual roots, and indeed my father was nominally professor of both at University College Dublin (they were put in the same department when the National University of Ireland was created, though I understand they have since been split).

King’s book is entirely about ethics, and while he refers to earlier writers (such as Rawls in particular) he seems to be putting forward a new schema, taking the search for value in one’s life as an axiom and working forward from there through empathy and obligation towards one’s fellow human beings to the Help Principle, that we should help other is the value of our help to them is worth more than the cost of that help to us. The second half of the (short) book works through practical examples of this principle in politics, romance and law.

I am not well enough read in philosophy to know how original all of this is, let alone how fairly King represents the views of other philosophers, but it is a very attractive and comprehensible argument, told in a chatty but far from superficial style. It reminds me most of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though without the motorcycles, and it possibly has the potential to become a similar cult classic with the right sort of marketing. (Certainly has a catchy title.)

This was Wodehouse’s last book, unfinished when he died aged 93 in 1975, here published just as he left it, with extensive notes by Richard Usborne. It is a Blandings Castle story, with the usual clutch of romances: one of the Emsworth nieces is in love with with a young man deemed unsuitable by her mother but who Galahad Threepwood smuggles into the castle; slightly more unusually, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in love with one of the Earl’s widowed sisters, but feels his wooing style is being cramped by his police guard; and the Earl himself, of course, remains dreamily obsessed with the Empress (his pig). It is all very familiar, comforting and funny. I lent it to an eastern European friend last night who had never heard of Wodehouse, and she was laughing out loud by the second paragraph. I may see how easy it is to find cheap paperbacks of his earlier, complete books on eBay. (Especially the early Blandings ones, Summer Lightning, Heavy Weather and Full Moon.)

I must say that I approve heartily of the decision to publish the book as it was when Wodehouse left it, with Usborne’s detailed notes (which include also appendices on the floor plan of Blandings Castle and the train timetable). In the sf and fantasy world we have seen a number of posthumous or near-posthumous collaborations, and I have not yet heard of one that was any good.

• Omnivoracious: Leave an Idea, Take an Idea: Five Things Someone Else Should Totally Do (Guest Blogger China Mieville)
  Thanks to Angie for pointing this out to me
  (tags: sf)
• dwfanvids: A Little More Sonic-348 uses of the sonic screwdriver video
  (tags: doctorwho)

Back to the narrative sequence of this excellent series, after my dipping forward to read the most recent, Hugo-nominated volume. Here we have Fabletown under direct and vicious attack from Pinocchio’s brothers, with sinister infiltration by the woman who calls herself Red Riding Hood, and wracked also by an internal power struggle between Old King Cole and Prince Charming. Which sounds really stupid but works really well; in particular, the battle against the wooden invaders is very vividly and memorably depicted.

How it all worked out:

Round One: An Older Kind of Magic, by Patricia Wrightson
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Round Two: Great Home Decorating Ideas, by Mike Lawrence and Jan Eaton
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Round Three: The Afterblight Chronicles: Kill or Cure, by Rebecca Levene
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Round Four: Diplomacy Lessons, by John Brady Kiesling
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Round Five: Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror, by Ian Marter
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Counting Telos and Quick Reads novellas, but not short story collections, Torchwood novels or SJA novelisations (gotta draw the line somewhere, that still leaves 460-odd books!), and giving each author a full credit for co-authored works:

Terrance Dicks leads the pack with 76 – 64 Target novelisations, plus also Timewyrm: Exodus, Blood Harvest and Shakedown from the New Adventures, The Eight Doctors and Endgame from the Eighth Doctor Adventures, and Catastrophea, Players, Warmonger, Deadly Reunion and World Game from the Past Doctor Adventures, and Made of Steel and Return of the Judoon in the Quick Reads series

Next with 17 is Justin Richards: Theatre of War from the New Adventures, System Shock and The Sands of Time from the Missing Adventures, Option Lock, Demontage, The Banquo Legacy, The Burning, Time Zero and Sometime Never… from the Eighth Doctor Adventures, Dreams of Empire, Millennium Shock, Grave Matter and The Shadow in the Glass from the Past Doctor Adventures and The Clockwise Man, The Deviant Strain, The Resurrection Casket and Martha in the Mirror from the New Series Adventures.

Next with 12 are David A. McIntee, Kate Orman, Stephen Cole and Gary Russell. McIntee has written NA’s White Darkness, First Frontier and SanctuaryLords of the Storm, The Shadow of Weng-Chiang and The Dark PathAutumn Mist and PDAs The Face of the Enemy, Mission: Impractical, The Wages of Sin, Bullet Time and The Eleventh Tiger.

Orman’s credits are for The Left-Handed Hummingbird, Set Piece, SLEEPY, Return of the Living Dad, So Vile a Sin and The Room With No Doors of the New Adventures, Vampire Science, Seeing I, Unnatural History and The Year of Intelligent Tigers from the EDAs, the PDA Blue Box and the Telos novella Fallen Gods.

Cole’s name is on EDA’s Parallel 59, The Ancestor Cell, Vanishing Point, Timeless and To the SlaughterThe Shadow in the Glass and Ten Little AliensThe Monsters Inside, The Feast of the Drowned, The Art of Destruction and Sting of the ZygonsFrayed because he wrote it as "Tara Samms".

Christopher Bulis on 11: NA: ShadowmindState of Change, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Eye of the Giant, Twilight of the Gods and A Device of DeathVanderdeken’s ChildrenThe Ultimate Treasure, City at World’s End, Imperial Moon and Palace of the Red Sun.

Steve Lyons also 11: NA’s Conundrum and Head Games, MA’s Time of Your Life and Killing Ground, EDA The Space Age and The Crooked World, PDAs The Murder Game, The Witch Hunters, Salvation and The Final Sanction, and NSA The Stealers of Dreams.

Gary Russell also on 11: include the novel of the 1996 TV movieLegacy, MA’s Invasion of the Cat-People and The Scales of Injustice, EDAPlacebo Effect, PDAs Business Unusual, Divided Loyalties, Instruments of Darkness and Spiral Scratch, and NSA Beautiful Chaos

9: Ian Marter, Gareth Roberts,  Paul Cornell, John Peel and Paul Leonard
8: Lance Parkin and Mike Tucker
7: Trevor Baxendale, Simon Messingham, and Malcolm Hulke
6: Barry Letts, Dave Stone, Jacqueline Rayner, Jim Mortimore, Marc Platt, Martin Day and Nigel Robinson (and I can’t be bothered to link any further)
5: Andrew Cartmel, Andy Lane, Craig Hinton, Gerry Davis, Keith Topping, Lawrence Miles, Paul Magrs, Robert Perry
4: Ben Aaronovitch, Chris Boucher, Colin Brake, David Bishop, Eric Saward, Jonathan Blum, Mark Gatiss, Mark Michalowski, Mark Morris, Nick Walters and Pip and Jane Baker
3: Christopher H. Bidmead, Daniel O’Mahony, Donald Cotton, Ian Stuart Black, John Lucarotti, Jonathan Morris, Lloyd Rose, Peter Anghelides, Peter Darvill-Evans, Peter Grimwade, Philip Hinchcliffe, Philip Martin, Simon Bucher-Jones, and Simon Guerrier
2: Brian Hayles, Dale Smith, Daniel Blythe, David Fisher, David Whitaker, Ian Briggs, Mark Clapham, Michael Collier, Mick Lewis, Paul Scoones, Robert Holmes, Simon A. Forward, Stephen Gallagher (as John Lydecker), Stephen Wyatt, Steve Emmerson, Terence Dudley and Victor Pemberton
1: Alison Bingeman, Andrew Hunt, Andrew Smith, Barbara Clegg, Bill Strutton, Dan Abnett, David Banks, David Lawrence, Eric Pringle, Glen McCoy, Glyn Jones, Graeme Curry, Graham Williams, Iain McLaughlin, James Swallow, Jeremy Hoad, Jon Blum, Jon de Burgh Miller, Jon Preddle, Kelly Hale, Kevin Clarke, Kim Newman, Louise Cooper, Mags L Halliday, Malcolm Kohll, Mark Chadbourn, Matthew Jones, Natalie Dallaire, Neil Penswick, Nick Wallace, Paul Ebbs, Paul Erickson, Paul J. McAuley, Paul Saint, Peter Ling, Rona Munro, Russell T. Davies, Simon A Forward, Simon Clark, Stephen Marley, Tom Arden, Wally K. Daly and William Emms

In case anyone ever asks you.

Zelazny’s first novel, and one of his great ones, set on a devastated future planet earth with a Greek immortal lapsed terrorist as the protagonist. He was almost at the peak of his powers: in his late he hit levels of quality he had difficulty in reaching again in later, more comfortable times. The familiar Zelazny themes of death and fatherhood are already here. Conrad/Konstantin loses his wife (apparently, in an earthquake) and two other sympathetic characters die of natural causes; and his son (like himself immortal, but without his own eternal youth) recurs to utter prophecies and help at a crucial moment.

Two things make the book. The first is the fascinating character of the narrator, whose hard-boiled but occasionally lyrical voice becomes familiar (perhaps too familiar) in later Zelazny but must have been fresh in 1965. His past as a former fighter against the alien Vegans and quisling humans who have taken over the devastated earth, combined with his present as a chief administrator collaborating (at least superficially) with the administrationn makes us never quite sure what he is up to himself but eager to find out. He is a hero who is trying to keep his heroic identity under wraps. He does things like dismantling the Great Pyramid for laughs. And there are the little touches like dropping in on his friend’s daughter’s seventh birthday party.

The other thing is just the writing: first, the setting up and description of the bizarre blasted landscapes of the future Greece, the voodoo celebration in Haiti, the shift in perspective as he fights the golem, the Athens hotel room covered with plaques commemorating Conrad’s life as Konstantin (“I was really afraid to go into the bathroom”). And second, of course, the humour – the skill Zelazny had in combining the contrasting styles of demotic with epic and making it funny rather than just cheap.

The book is not without flaws. The plot (both the sequence of events in the story, and the conspiracy among several of the characters) has a lot of holes in it. Conrad appears to have married Cassandra without telling her how old he is; she in her turn surprisingly survives apparent death and then doesn’t contact him for weeks, showing up just in the nick of time to save them all from the Black Beast of Thessaly. (No apologies for spoilers – the book has been a classic for forty years.) The invisibilty of Conrad’s immortality to the administrative system is rather less credibly established than that of the protagonist of Zelazny’s later My Name Is Legion.

But I loved rereading it, and am wondering if I might make the complete works of Zelazny into one of my future reading projects. (I should add that I got the idea of setting myself reading projects in the first place after discovering from a biography that Zelazny planned his own leisure reading fairly meticulously.)

This is a gruelling, horrible account of how a group of Mexicans crossing the border into Arizona in 2001 were killed. In the first place, they were killed by the high temperatures of the desert, and by their lack of water and supplies; in the second place, they were killed by their guide’s losing the way and bringing them into the hostile, homicidal wilderness; but basically they were killed by the policies of the American and Mexican governments trying to prevent poor Mexicans from getting jobs in the USA. As a citizen of three states myself, I have never been a fan of tough immigration laws, and this awful story is a vivid demonstration that such measures promote human trafficking and ensure sordid deaths for those who are unlucky in the lottery of evasion. Urrea is merciful to all the humans involved with the story; the problem is with the system and the failure of political leaders to tell the truth about the labour shortage in the developed world and the true effects of pandering to domestic xenophobia.

It’s a peculiar profession, but I hope you win.

• rosefox: "You just stand there looking cute, and when something moves, you shoot"
  How to get work as a freelancer
  (tags: work)
• jimvanpelt: What I Have Learned From Reading George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones
  (tags: sf)
• ELIAMEP Thesis 4/2009: The European Union and its Neighbourhood: Time for a Rethink :: ELIAMEP
  Brilliant and devastating analysis of the weakness of the EU’s policy towards it eastern neighbours
  (tags: eu)
• A Czech warning: out-voting Britain would break the EU | Charlemagne’s notebook | Economist.com
  The positive aspects of the EU rotating presidency
  (tags: eu)

I loved Robert Anton Wilson’s fiction and non-fiction in my late teens and early twenties, and so was delighted to discover this audiobook of interviews and lectures – most of it a series of five long interviews from about 2000, and then a couple of lectures delivered in Boulder, Colorado, in earlier years. I’d heard or read most of it before, and have outgrown some of it, but his humorous, cynical, sceptical take on life, politics, literature, religion and the nature of reality was a refreshing break for me over the last few weeks (switching between this and the much less interesting METAtropolis). His Brooklyn drawl seemed to sharpen the humourous but deadly serious points he was making beautifully. (Though I was sufficiently perplexed by the way he pronounced "monotheism" as "m’NŌTHyism" to set up a poll about it.)

I was really prompted to get this because LibraryThing kept recommending it to me; apparently because the other owners of many books in my library also own and like this one. The full list of related books, as diagnosed by LibraryThing’s algorithms, is long and suitably eclectic and Discordian; I think Wilson would have been very glad to be seen in the company of some of these, and I hope that the authors of others (at least one of whom occasionally reads this lj) would be please to be grouped with him.

Just been to the physiotherapist in the wake of my recent back problems. He demonstrated convincingly that my left leg is slightly shorter than my right leg. In 42 years I had never noticed that, and nobody else had ever pointed it out.

A rather good character study by Tomine of Ben Tanaka, a young Japanese-American man who is, frankly, a bit of a dick. His various girlfriends (and his friends who are girls, who tend to be into girls themselves) all try to make him aware of his shortcomings (the title of the book is also of course a double entendre on Ben’s nervousness about the size of his own dick, which feeds into his behaving like one). Tomine manages to show us Ben’s failure to listen and still make him, if not sympathetic, at least comprehensible, and shows a convincing picture of what it’s like to be an Asian-American in California. Definitely worth picking up.

• A psephological interlude – Splintered Sunrise
  ha-tip to Mick Fealty: why STV is too good
  (tags: stv ireland)
  FT.com / UK – UN disquiet puts Ban’s second term in doubt
  Problems at the top
  (tags: world)
• From Yerevan to Tehran? | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion
  The Armenian precedent for the Iran situation
  (tags: world)

A rather tough read about the arrival of the American oil companies in an unnamed Arab statelet, and the social disruption that this inflicts on the population.

I like the way in which the “Americans” are shown as alien beings, as the Other in a hitherto stable and settled society; I think that being shown oneself (and for these purposes I am certainly an “American”) as others see one is always a good thing, and Munif does this blisteringly well.

I think he is not as good as Chinua Achebe at demonstrating the disruptive impact of western colonialism on the local society. Perhaps (though I would be dubious about making this comparison) that impact was less in the Gulf States than in Nigeria. Munif has existing power structures (the emir) being reinforced and distorted in their authority by the arrival of the outsiders. Achebe has the local power structures devastated beyond repair.

Both Munif and Achebe present a somewhat pre-lapsarian view of the original societies. Achebe is worse in this respect, but it is still notable that Munif’s story is told almost entirely – apart from two or three chapters out of 77 – from the point of view of the male characters; I don’t think there are more than half a dozen women named in the book.

Anyway, an educational read, but I would have liked a bit more nuance in the narrative.

This is an excellent short guide to philosophy. I am not widely enough read in the subject to know to what extent Russell is pushing his own views rather than simply giving an overview of the subject, but he succeeded in persuading me that the questions of Berkeley, Hume, Kant, et al are not stupid, but very interesting and part of the gateway to opening up one’s thoughts about the world as a whole. I found myself thinking of particular resonances with my political work, and the very nature of knowledge. He has a great final chapter about why this is all worthwhile, online here, but this was my favourite paragraph (with apologies for the sexist language of 1912):

The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.

I particularly love that line about freeing one’s thoughts from the “tyranny of custom”. Good stuff.

…or so I deduce from his website:

Montenegrin media space was over the past few days contaminated by the many-times-rehashed science fiction stories about cigarette smuggling and Milo Djukanovic’s illegally acquired wealth…

In the original:

Crnogorski javni prostor dodatno je proteklih dana kontaminiran već mnogo puta prežvakanim naučno-fantastičnim pričama o švercu cigareta i nezakonitom bogaćenju Mila Đukanovića…

(official Montenegrin government press release of 4 June; of course the stories have been around for a lot longer than that.)

• blacksearoamer – Pimms in short supply
  Sad times at the British Embassy in Tirana
  (tags: balkans)
• FT.com / UK – Washington is unable to call all the shots
  The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meets
  (tags: world)
• FT.com / Comment / Opinion – The European Union can be proud but not complacent
  The European project, 52 years on
  (tags: eu)
• Atlas Obscura | Wondrous, curious, and bizarre locations around the world
• Omnivoracious: There and Back Again: Five Reasons Tolkien Rocks (Guest Blogger China Mieville)
  China Mieville on the Writer of the Century
  (tags: sf)