June 23, 2014

SF/F Commentary

Link of the Week: John Chu’s “Stand Back! I’m Going To Quote Junot Díaz (Thinking about language)”

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John Chu’s recent post over at The Booksmugglers is a must read.  He talks about the difficulty of including foreign language in works of fiction and has some truly interesting things to say on the subject. An excerpt: Whereas listeners might reasonably experience that orchestration both ways, readers either understand a foreign language or they don’t. However, like how the orchestration of the Carousel Waltz must be compelling in either instrumentation, a story that makes use of dialect or foreign language must be compelling either way. Non-fluent readers must never feel as though something is missing but fluent readers must never feel as though anything is extraneous.  Go on.  Read the whole thing.

SF/F Commentary

Mass Market Paperback Bingo #2: Pick a Book; I’ll Read and Review It

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I had a bit of an disaster today:  I got stuck in a thunderstorm, which resulted in my backpack, my notebooks, and my copy of Ink and Steel by Elizabeth Bear getting soaked through.  Since the Bear book is the one I’m supposed to be reading for MMPB Bingo, I’ve decided to temporarily jump ahead to the next shelf on the same bookcase (front row of books) so I can at least start reading something else while Ink and Steel dries out. If you’ve not seen this before, here’s how it works: You find a book in one of the images below that you’d like me to read (if you load the images on their own, they should be large enough to read everything without squinting). You leave a comment below telling me why you’d like me to read and review it.  There are no guidelines for this part.  You can say something silly.  You can be dead serious.  You can appeal to my corrupt side.  Doesn’t matter.  I’ll pick whichever comment sounds most appealing to me. I pick a winner, and then I read and review the book. It’s pretty straight forward, no? So have at it.  Here are the images:

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