Mini-Review: More Katha Pollitt

Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics and Culture, Katha Pollitt

This is a collection of columns that were published in The Nation between 1994 to 2001. As gentle reader has probably figured out by now, I think Pollitt is one of the more worthwhile feminist analysts of what's going down in American culture and politics these days, and Subject to Debate is a fascinating look back at what was going on, from a feminist perspective, during the Clinton years.

Mini-Review: Return to Dykeland

Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel

Bechdel is a genius. But than, you all knew that, already, didn't you? For more than 20 years now, Bechdel has been showing us what America looks like through the eyes and experiences of a group of gender outlaws - the Dykes to Watch Out For and their friends, lovers and families. This latest volume looks at how the Dykes are dealing with the war on terror, the debate over same-sex marriage, and all the other major issues facing America in the early years of the 21st century, while struggling to manage all the weaknesses that the flesh is heir to in their own lives, and trying to find a little happiness here and there amidst all that's going on around them.

Mini-Review: The Next Thursday Next

First Among Sequels, Jasper Fforde

If you've read anything by Jasper Fforde before, you know what to expect from First Among Sequels. If you haven't, and if you enjoy very clever, funny, absurdist fantasy packed with hilarious literary references and cutting social satire, then what are you waiting for?

Between conversations with Uncle Mycroft, who has been dead for six years, the trials of raising three children, one of whom may not exist, and coping with her two Jurisfiction trainees - Thursday1-4 and Thursday5, characters out of the books that have been written about her - Thursday Next must face an enemy from her past and save Bookworld from the alarming decline in readers. You really don't want to miss any of this. Oh, and a little hint - there are three Thursday Nexts in the book, so watch POV carefully, or you may miss something important.

Mini-Review: Return to the Tales of the Deryni

Childe Morgan, Katherine Kurtz

A long time ago, Katherine Kurtz wrote a fantasy trilogy set in the land of Gwynedd that told of the coming to power - both temporal and magical - of a young King, with the help of guardian chosen by his father, killed in battle with a sorceress and pretender to the throne.

Since then, Kurtz has been adding to the tale of the Deryni - humans with innate magical abilities co-existing with ordinary humans - with more novels about the rule of King Kelson, and explorations of Gwynedd's past.

Kurtz writes her Deryni tales in trilogies, it seems. Her most recent trilogy is set in the decades just prior to her first novel, and focuses on the life of Alaric Morgan, the half-Deryni lord who will one day be the guardian and mentor of the future King Kelson. In the first volume of the series, Kurtz sets the stage for the birth of young Alaric. The second volume of the trilogy, Childe Morgan, covers Alaric's childhood as his parents begin to prepare him for his future as the protector of the heir to the throne.

This is classic Kurtz, mingling all the threads of court, church, foreign powers, enemies within and without that we have come to understand so well through all that has gone before, and creating a rich background against which we may view the original novels of King Kelson's early days in power.

Mini-Review: Ray Bradbury, Master of the Short Story

The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury

One of several re-reading projects I've been meaning to get around to is the short fiction of Ray Bradbury. This is the first collection I've gone back to, and after two, maybe even three decades since my last reading, it's amazing how many of these stories are ones I remember, and at the same time, ones that I get thrills and chills about all over again as if I'd never read them before.

It's a powerful collection, containing such stories as: "The Veldt" (children turn on their parents using the technology of a simulated playground), "The Other Foot" (the reaction of a Martian colony of black people driven off earth to the news that most of the remaining white people on earth have died in a world war and the survivors desperately need their help), "The Rocket Man" (a child and his mother deal with the danders faced by his father's career as a 'rocket man'), and "The Exiles" (what happens to the spirits of books and their creators when all the books are destroyed?), to mention just a few of the 18 classic short stories in this collection.

Bradbury's gift was to be able to write just enough, no more and no less, that each story was complete and full to the brim - nothing wasted, nothing missing - and to tell in this way a simple story that somehow had meaning and relevance far beyond the basic plot of the tale. A master storyteller.