Katrina note + various

[rushthatspeaks]

Cambridge/Boston area people: Porter Square Books, who fill the role of Local Independent Booksellers nicely, are having a program where if you buy a children's book and donate it to their books-for-shelters program, they'll give you twenty percent off, in addition to shipping it themselves. They're concentrating on picture books and books which can be read aloud to large groups of kids; the goal is to entertain as many people as possible. So if you want to donate a specific book and don't have a spare copy, this is a good way to do it. I put in a couple of things along the lines of A Wrinkle in Time-- things I remember catching my school classes when they were read aloud to us. The program goes until September 23rd.

I read the new Diane Duane, Wizards at War, while I was in there. I don't feel like writing up a detailed review, but despite some very good individual sections, this one doesn't strike me as anything special. I'd rank it second-to-worst in the series, just ahead of A Wizard Abroad, and don't expect to be picking it up until it hits paperback. (I've always thought the best of the Wizards books is Deep Wizardry, which is one of my favorite books ever, and it's followed fairly closely by A Wizard Alone-- just so you know where my tastes lie in this.) Saw the new Pratchett lying about in signed hardcover, but did not particularly feel like investing, especially as we will be going to see Pratchett day-after-tomorrow and I would like to be unfamiliar with the material in case he reads from it.

I have an eight-hour shift tomorrow, because they couldn't find anyone else to cover it, despite my having told them very firmly that I cannot work whole days yet. Let us hope it does not kill me.

ETA: comment thread includes spoilers for portions of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, although nothing specific about the recent one.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Where are you seeing Pratchett?

Nine

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Uh. I need to look it up, but I'm pretty sure he'll be somewhere at Harvard. Must ask the roommate who saw the flyer, after I get back from work tonight.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

7 PM tomorrow at Longfellow Hall at Harvard, a free reading. I am amused that it is on the Appian Way. 13 Appian Way, a triskadecaphilic classicist's bouquet.

[mixedborder.livejournal.com]

*What date exactly?* In your post you say day-after-tomorrow and in this you say tomorrow, and LJ's date/time stamps are so screwy...I don't want to miss this, so please reply!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Friday, September 16th.

[mixedborder.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Maybe I'll see you there!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I was unimpressed with Wizards at War. My favorite is Deep Wizardry, followed closely by So You Want to be a Wizard?.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I love So You Want to be a Wizard?, but am also horribly annoyed with it because it suddenly became clear to me when I was about thirteen that SYWtbaW is the children's book you see if they don't think you're cool enough to be a wizard, which sent me into a funk for six months. On the other hand, the author's name on the manual Nita first picks up is Hearnssen, meaning that one of the protagonists of Duane's other major series wrote it, and this helps a lot with me dealing. Am *so* cool enough to be a wizard, dammit.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The thing I liked best about Wizards at War was that there was finally a character who wasn't a wizard and yet claimed her right to participate anyway.

Things I did not like: It was padded. The pivotal character (the female insectoid) sort of appears out of nowhere, then doesn't do much of anything. The climactic battle seemed to be the same climactic battle that happened in the last few books. And when the reader is convinced with good reason that nothing permanently bad will happen to anyone, the stakes are yawn-worthy. And the revelation about Ponch made sense, and yet was profoundly annoying.

I think what I like best about So you Want to be a Wizard is the creepy transformed New York, and the Lotus. And that for the first few books, Kit and Nita were the only characters you were sure-- well, pretty sure-- would survive the book.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Wizards at War has far, far too large a cast, and too many of them are cameos, and too many of them are brought on to be Tearfully Killed. And with Ponch, yes, total agreement. Also, how much bigger can the catastrophes get? Saving the world, sure. Saving the universe, I do not buy. What next? Where does one go from that? Am hoping she recovers her sense of scale, but.

I am vaguely annoyed with the series in general after hearing Diane Duane say at Noreascon that she has no intention of stopping it until the market runs out, but I did love A Wizard Alone dearly, so what the hell.

I haven't been able to read So You Want to be a Wizard since September 11th. I think about it, and then it is bad-- "If something should happen to all that life, how terrible!"-- and then I can't reread it. But it is one of the great NYC books.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Are you sure that's what I said? Or did I say that I wasn't going to stop writing them until I didn't feel like telling those stories any more? Or until no one wanted to read them any more?

[syonakeleste.livejournal.com]

::hopes it does not kill you::

[weirdquark]

Eee. I hope it doesn't kill you too. Ganbatte ne.

[zdenka]

I also hope it does not kill you. I had a brief thought of wandering by the counter later today and asking whether you were dead, but this does not seem entirely helpful.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Well, if you bring a necromancer... People wandering by are always welcome, mind you, as a distraction, provided it isn't lunch rush (i.e. not before 2 PM).

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I read the new Diane Duane, Wizards at War, while I was in there. I don't feel like writing up a detailed review, but despite some very good individual sections, this one doesn't strike me as anything special. I'd rank it second-to-worst in the series, just ahead of A Wizard Abroad, and don't expect to be picking it up until it hits paperback.

Glad to know I'm not the only person who thinks A Wizard Abroad is the worst of them, and that one does not have to be Irish to do so. [ Of all the books by USAn authors romanticising Ireland and getting the feel teeth-gratingly wrong I have read, that's among the worst. ]

(I've always thought the best of the Wizards books is Deep Wizardry, which is one of my favorite books ever, and it's followed fairly closely by A Wizard Alone-- just so you know where my tastes lie in this.)

How do you rate High Wizardry then ? I like Deep Wizardry a lot, but High Wizardry is doing something almost unique [ outside C.S. Lewis ] and to my mind succeeding if anything better than Lewis.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I'm nowhere near Irish, and I thought it was quite useless, as a book.

How would you describe what High Wizardry's doing, then? I don't like it as much as Deep Wizardry, but I'd /like/ to.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I'm nowhere near Irish, and I thought it was quite useless, as a book.

It may well have other flaws, the Irishness irked me enough that they didn't register.

How would you describe what High Wizardry's doing, then? I don't like it as much as Deep Wizardry, but I'd /like/ to.

I would think of it as taking on Christian-worldview issues of innocence, Fall and redemption on a grand scale in a way similar to how Deep Wizardry is addressing the problem of evil on a personal scale. I do not share that worldview now, but I was brought up in it, and in High Wizardry she demonstrates what strikes me as a detailed and sympathetic understanding of that set of philosophical issues.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

A Wizard Abroad bugged me for all kinds of reasons, the sticky Ireland being only one.

I am reduced to handwaving when I try to say what High Wizardry does, but I think we may be reacting to the same thing. It's exalting, you know?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

High Wizardry is either just second or just third on my list, depending on how I'm feeling about A Wizard Alone this week. The best parts of Wizards at War are updates on High, although she never quite achieves its quality.

High Wizardry is a wonderful, spectacular book, which nearly does out-Lewis Lewis (I have to think about that), but Deep Wizardry takes it for me because of Ed, who is the best incarnation of the Lone Power *ever*. At any rate, that's how I read him, because all of the other books have direct argument with the Lone One in a way that Deep Wizardry didn't seem to me to do, until I thought it over, and went, okay, there's the obvious Big Nasty Serpent... and then there's the other one, who actually *subtly* foretells the cosmic shift in the nature of the Powers of that universe that High Wizardry brings out in blazing detail. In every other conflict with the Lone One, it's all Power-y and a Force to be Reckoned With and you can't trust it, but with Ed all that is right out there as part of his nature and it... matters, but is part of what makes him worth interest and attention, to Nita. And so I see the redemption of the Lone One in that universe as a thing that came about, fairly largely, because Nita could love a shark for being what it is enough to send it to Timeheart.

Duane's not gonna beat that one with me-- I mean, I'm writing a novel in which the protagonist's main quest is the importation of sharks to Mars, and the genesis of said book was well before I read Duane. So.

Wizard Abroad, by the way, is, in its entirety, the reason I stopped buying new Diane Duane novels in hardcover before reading them first.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

In every other conflict with the Lone One, it's all Power-y and a Force to be Reckoned With and you can't trust it, but with Ed all that is right out there as part of his nature and it... matters, but is part of what makes him worth interest and attention, to Nita.

Interesting. I'd not been reading Ed as an aspect of the Lone Power so much as a meditation on the existence in the universe of things which bring about death and destruction without being willedly evil... I should reread it before I try making any more detailed argument, I think, as I'm not remembering well enough how closely and what kind of closely Duane is identifiying the Lone Power with entropy and imperfection per se.

And so I see the redemption of the Lone One in that universe as a thing that came about, fairly largely, because Nita could love a shark for being what it is enough to send it to Timeheart.

No argument there; that's a very lovely thing.

Duane's not gonna beat that one with me-- I mean, I'm writing a novel in which the protagonist's main quest is the importation of sharks to Mars,

That concept certainly made me go "ooooooh", fwiw.

[signy1.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Pratchett. Lucky dog. I've read 'Thud!' already, and if he does read from it you are in for a treat. Although it might almost be cuter if he reads the companion volume, 'Where's My Cow?'