Lots of unicorns here
but that doesn't mean everything's a unicorn
.
Unicorns can be fun. Unicorns can be lonely. Unicorns may live through the wrong time. Or just the right time. Or unrecognized until much later. Or only by the prophets who preceded them.
And some things are not unicorns at all.
119) The Sandman: Fables & Reflections by Neil Gaiman et al., finished October 27
Another great short-story collection including the Emperor Norton story and probably the most nudity so far. Sometimes I wish I'd been buying these as a kid but maybe not.
Anyway, I do wonder if these will retain their classic status another fifty years. Neil Gaiman helped create new possibilities in fiction but sometimes the first thing through the door is not the one that becomes immortal.
I probably won't live long enough to know the answer to this question.
almost two weeks
120) The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, finished November 3
I know the story as a movie that more scared me as a child and more annoyed me as an adult. That said, the book is its own thing and it is beloved and every once in a while I consider reading it and now I finally have.
It is such a different road for fantasy than all the Tolkein/Sanderson stuff. Which is not to knock those styles, but the light touch here allows for a different form of beauty and meaning and I love that.
The novel makes for a delightful companion. It is both small and vast and I wish I didn't have the movie's imagery holding it back. I'm sure next it'll be a ten-hour streaming event and that will be too realistic and maybe even gritty. It'll happen and it should happen but it won't change the simple fact that some books are best as books.
No wonder everyone loves it.
weeks
121) Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome, finished November 3
I believe this is my third time reading this book. I discovered it thanks to Connie Willis and first read it was hilarious. It still made me laugh out loud numerous times but the bits didn't really combine into a driving read. I don't know if my tastes have changed or it's a one-and-done sorta thing.
This version was published by TOR which seems odd for something decidedly NOT science fiction and thus I wonder if it was in response to Willis's novel. This might also be why they added Told After Supper to the end, a very silly sequence of ghost stories. But, weirdly, there is NO suggestion of an additional text tacked on anywhere on the book's outside or pre-text pages. Even the tops of the pages still say THREE MEN IN A BOAT after you switch books.
Plus, TOR's version has a smattering of typos, hardly appropriate for a book that's been out 112 years at the time of publication.
Anyway, if you're unfamiliar of it, three uppermiddleclass British fellas (and a dog) take a fortnight's trip up the Thames. Laughs ensue.
months
122) The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey by Peter S. Beagle, finished November 5
This is his original draft, written years before the version that became a massive hit and remains beloved. Bits of the original remain here—some lines, some images—but this unicorn leaves her forest to discover our world and meets and then travels with a demon rather than a magician and a Molly.
The tone is right. The beauty of the sentences is right. But placing it in the modern era is wrong. It makes it feel like it's trying very hard to say something specific (ala White Noise) while in fact saying nothing in particular. By being more openly about whatever you want it to be about, the published version of The Last Unicorn becomes all the more meaningful. As Beagle says in the afterward, he was trying to be a satirist and it wasn't working.
That said, even though it's a bit glum without purpose and although it ends before it figures out its point, it was another great read.
Clearly, I'm now a person who will pick up Peter S. Beagle books.
two or three days
123) Have Spacesuit–Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein, finished November 14
I listened to Citizen of the Galaxy during my commute back in 2006 and, while parts of it irritated me, I did enjoy its bounty of imagination.
This is my second Heinlein book and I'm reading as part of a trio, starting with Three Men in a Boat (see above) and ending with To Say Nothing of the Dog (which I read c. 2000 and still think of as one of my favorite books). Connie Willis, thanks Heinlein for introducing her to Three Men in To Say Nothing's dedication, so all I'm doing it arranging them in chronological order.
Have Spacesuit is not as tightly connected to Jerome's novel and Willis's; the protagonist's father is just reading it in the opening scene (for, like, the 500th time). But it does come off as a real recommendation.
I'd always imagined this novel would be about a professional adventurer, but in fact it's about a teenager who wins a spacesuit in a soap company's contest then gets kidnapped by aliens and so on and so on. It's a very 1950s YA sort of read but it's also great fun. It is funny to see Heinlein striving to imagine the future and attempting something like feminism and just falling grossly short of where the world would be just years after he's writing.
Anyway, it was fun and a light lift.
coupla weeks
124) Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins, finished November 16
I don't know when I first became aware of Mitt Romney, but certainly living in Utah when he saved the 2002 Olympics put him on my good side. When he was on the ballot in 2012, I didn't vote for him, but even with some of the embarrassing things he said, I still thought of him as a reasonably decent human being.
The biography filled in blanks in his story and it's excellent at letting us dig deeper into one man's mind and thoughts. And, since he has been around at a number of significant historical events, his own witness and insight opens new windows of understanding.
The biggest indictment (imo) the book offers is of our democracy's bad motivators—we have created a system where our leaders are worried more about reelection than doing good or right.
McKay's writing is easy on the eyes; the pages just fly by. For a book that was done as quickly as possible, it holds together as a piece of writing and there are relatively few errors (only one seemed significant, writing 2002 instead of 2022). Of course, the occasional missing word makes you wonder about errors of content, but the lengthy notes provide a sense of confidence in that respect. Not to mention McKay's longstanding respectable reporting.
This is not a full biography, though it does cover every portion of his life. The early years fly by and then the text slows down to examine more closely events that seem most important during the last decade—and I don't just mean events events, but these are often thematically motivated editorial choices. I don't disagree with these decisions (it's the right book for this moment) but there is still room for future biographical attention.
But me, I'm satisfied.
(If you were hoping for a better review from me while I have a cold, sorry, try this instead.)
about three weeks
125) The Sandman: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman et al., finished November 21
This is the only one we own (Lady Steed brought it into the marriage) and in many respects I think it deserves that honor, though Ishtar's dance means it cannot be left at reaching level (the description of a man ejaculating over and over until he was ejaculating blood stuck with me a long time; maybe it will again).
What Gaiman is best at is concepts and that's why it's his shorter works (comics, short stories, children's novels...) that tend to be his best. And Brief Lives has just strong concepts throughout, with a just-strong-enough plot to contain them all.
Maybe I should say that his shorter AND his episodic works that work best. Because Sandman, as a whole, is not particularly "short" and it works as both an entire and in its bits.
Anyway, I liked it.
three weeks (with a two-week gap in the middle)