December 2018 – Ecce Signum

Reading at the End of the Year

2018-12-31 John Winkelman

Here we are at the end of 2018, and here are the last additions to the library before we ring in the new year. On the left is the January 2019 issue of Poetry, and on the right is Decals by Oliverio Girondo, the latest from my subscription to the catalog of Open Letter Books.

The holidays have been hectic as always, but I have made good progress in Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning. I hope to have it completed before ConFusion 2019, where Palmer will be the Guest of Honor.

And with that, Happy New Year!

Some Light Holiday Reading

2018-12-25 John Winkelman

This week brought a wide variety of new reading material in a small stack. The latest issue of Salvage just arrived, along with the latest Paris Review and the fourth volume of the Long List Anthology. I’m off of work until January 2, so I should be able to sneak in some reading time.

I finished reading Ferret Steinmetz’ excellent The Flux and am now dividing my time between Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer and Seth Dickinson’s The Monster Baru Cormorant.

Earlier today I opened the Fall 2018 edition of the Copper Canyon Reader, which contains some excellent poetry by several Copper Canyon poets. I would get a subscription to Copper Canyon, as I have to so many other wonderful publishers, but their subscriptions are $1,000, and that it a little steep for me at this point in my life.

And since this is likely the last post for 2018, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Links and Notes for the Week of December 16, 2018

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A long write-up in Harper’s on Oulipo, centered around All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo, published by McSweeney’s. Which I own. The book, not McSweeney’s.
An amazing collection of photos of science fiction fandom, from cons and parties throughout the 60s and 70s.
And yes, because it is the end of the year, a list of literary figures we lost in 2018. Damn, but I’m still broken up about Anthony Bourdain.
Because it is the holiday season, here is a rather well-done biographical film of H.P. Lovecraft.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Links and Notes for the Week of December 9, 2018

2018-12-17 John Winkelman

Some new books by Muslim authors we can look forward to in 2019. Me? I’m waiting for The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty, the sequel to her excellent The City of Brass.
Some words: Sphinx, sphincter (yes they have the same etymological root)

Yeah, not a lot to add from the past week. Everything is Christmas wishes, end-of-year lists, and the ineffectual flailing our 45th POTUS. I expect things will pick up again in the new year.

Brief Reads for the Week

2018-12-16 John Winkelman

Not a lot new this week for the library at Winkelman Abbey. Here we have the latest issues of Amazing Stories and Apex Magazine. I’m saving my money for the holidays and will probably burn a gift card or two to add to my collection of Russian literature, anarchist literature, and Russian anarchist literature.

Apex Book Company just announced that they will no longer be publishing the print version of their magazine, which makes me sad. It was a year-long experiment on Patreon to see if there was enough interest to keep such an endeavor afloat. According to editor Jason Sizemore, there were just barely enough subscribers to launch the print version for a year, and therefore they are going to return to only publishing electronic versions with possible annual “Best of” collections or the like. If you have not yet experienced Apex Magazine, or the books produced by Apex Book Company, I recommend you hie yourself to their online store post-haste.

In reading news, I completed Flex by Ferret Steinmetz, and immediately started the sequel The Flux, which thus far (two chapters in) is every bit as good as the first. Still about halfway through The Monster Baru Cormorant, and in the spare moments I am reading random entries in Salvage. The most recent was China Mieville’s long essay about social sadism, which is online at Salvage.zone. So it goes.

New Reading Material for the Winter

2018-12-09 John Winkelman

A few new books with dark and somber covers to match late-autumn Michigan. The first two are the second and third issues of Salvage, which bills itself as “a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters,” and has the tagline “bleak is the new red.” It is good. Really really good. I first heard about it when researching different *punk literary subgenres, and came across an article about China Miéville wherein he discussed his involvement with Salvage. Miéville has lengthy essays in each of the issues I have so far purchased (2, 3, 5) and likely will have more in the future issues which arrive as part of my subscription. Well, of course I purchased a subscription.

On the right is the latest shipment from Two Lines Press, which continues to surprise me with wonderful books.

On the reading front, I have mostly recovered from the week at the AWS:Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, and am partway through The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson and Flex by Ferret Steinmetz. Both are quite excellent reads and they are absolutely nothing alike. I highly recommend both.

Links and Notes for the Week of December 2, 2018

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Over at GQ, a beautiful, funny, heartfelt, tearjerker tribute to Anthony Bourdain, from some of the may people who have known, worked with, and loved him.
A good list of the nonfiction which has appeared on Tor.com in 2018.
Excellent interview with, and discussion of, China Mieville.
On the Oulipo.
And in odious political news, Metafilter has just posted the latest in their long-running series on the regime of Terribly Triggered Trump.
And for a ray of hope in these troubling times, here is an interview with Chris Hedges where he discusses the current state of the USA, and his new book America: The Farewell Tour.

Several Weeks of Interesting Links

2018-12-04 John Winkelman

November was crazy busy, what with National Novel Writing Month and the AWS:Reinvent conference, so here are all the links from November 4 until now. Regular posting will resume, er, whenever.

Fifty Must-Read Books By Egyptian Authors
50 Must-Read Microhistory Books
Some beautiful artwork from Russia’s early wars.
Tor.com’s list of new Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Genre-bending books coming out in December.
NPR’s amazing, wonderful, awesome list of their favorite books from 2018. Well over 300 books to add to your list. Page also includes links to their annual lists going back to 2008.
The Millions is currently posting their 2018 Year In Reading list, wherein the Millions contributors discuss the books they have read over the past year. Link goes to the archive page which also includes reading lists from past years.
Kirk Thatcher, the punk from Star Trek IV, is an amazing human being.

A Small Addition to Mount Tsundoku

2018-12-02 John Winkelman

A small update this week, which given the mountain which arrived last week is just fine. This is the latest from my subscription to the excellent Open Letter Books, which was the first publisher to which I subscribed, back in 2014 or 2015.

I spent all of this past week in Las Vegas for the AWS:Reinvent conference, which left me with a decent amount of time for books on the airplane and in airports. I read Mirra Ginsburg‘s wonderful translation of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita from cover to cover, and made significant dents in Sunvault and Volume 5 of The Apex Book of World SF. I also made a little headway in the extraordinary Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, but reading such a book in the middle of the Las Vegas strip made me want to burn the place to the ground. I will revisit Scarborough over the holidays, when I won’t be surrounded by the monetized fetishizing of the worst of first world indulgences.