In this post I am taking a detour from Charn to talk about fanfic of Charn. Narnian fanfic has been on the internet for at least two and a half decades, though not in the massive amounts inspired by the Disney live-action movies. The pre-Disney fanfics were based on the books, and far more …
Secret Agent Britain’s Wartime Secret Service by David Stafford BBC Worldwide, 2000 [Challenge # 12 : A book featuring spies or espionage.] Super-spy shenanigans, the kind we’re familiar with from James Bond movies and Cold War espionage novels, began in WWII — in the offices of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, a secret agency separate from …
Exhalation by Ted Chiang Alfred A. Knopf, 2019 Ted Chiang is a SFF writer who’s been around for a while but has yet to produce a novel. This collection came out in the early days of 2020 and features his work up to 2019. I checked it out of the Seattle Public Library a …
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller Ecco, 2018 Look at this cover. Isn’t this one of coolest book covers you’ve ever seen? The black background, the red, white, and blue neon tubes, the circular orca logo surmounted by an Inuit hunter, done in a style harkening to NW Coast Indian art… now this promises excitement! …
Kriss: The Gift of Wrath by Ted Naifeh Art by Warren Wucinich Oni Press, 2019 This graphic novel is the perfect gift for a middle school child of 11 – 12 who is getting into experiencing adolescent angst, heavy metal, Goth culture, and fantasy fiction. The story is a time-worn one: a young orphan and …
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Harper Collins, 1998 [Challenge # 18 : A book taking place in Africa.] I switched my African read from The Fate of Africa because I came upon this book in one of the local Little Free Libraries and started reading it while in line to drop off some junk …
Buried Alive by Myra Friedman William Morrow & Company, 1973 [Challenge # 12 : A book where music features prominently, or about musicians.] As a singer Janis Joplin is, unfortunately, something of a museum piece now. Her icon status has faded with the decades, unlike her contemporaries Aretha Franklin and Dolly Parton, both of whom …
Narwhals: Arctic Whales in a Melting World by Todd McLeish University of Washington Press, 2013 [Challenge # 22 : A book taking place mostly or all on water.] My first choice for this category, Blackfish City, didn’t work out, so I subbed Narwhals one after noticing I had saved it to my Seattle Public Library …
To Sleep with the Angels by David Cowan and John Kuenster Ivan R. Dee, 1996 [Challenge # 47 : Nonfiction on any subject.] The 1958 Our Lady of the Angels Catholic school fire traumatized a generation of Catholic schoolchildren. To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire, by David Cowan and John Kuenster, …
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Pantheon Books, 2003 [Challenge # 29 : A graphic novel or comic book.] I finally got around to reading Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis which served as the graphic novel for this year’s reading challenge. It retread a lot of the ground I had just visited when I read Reading Lolita …