BookWords Blogg

In this post, I write three mini-reviews of books that take place in alternate realities, and then I explore a world that’s all too real now (though not in a too terribly tragic way): the world of malapostrophicated writing. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez Fascinating history of a fictional family in a fictional place; full of pathos, existential horror, comedy, and a large dose of "magical realism". Yes, there are a lot of sordid and shocking details; but if something is to be a "true" chronicle then the bad must be included with the good. The prose style is a little heavy-handed and awkward at times, though this may be simply the result of translation; the full flavor of something written in one language can seldom (if ever) be carried over into another. Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler In this quasi-science fiction novel, the author of “Kindred” spins a dark tale about survival in a near-future American Dark Age. Th...

Reviewing three collections of "Tales" this time. The theme of racism has to come up, though it was not intended originally. Also, let's start a conversation about possible alien languages. Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy There are quite a variety of tales in this book, ranging from Tolkienesque stories of elves and dragons to horror “The Baumoff Explosive”, comedy “The Dragon Tamers”, satire “Chu-Bu and Sheemish”, paradoxically violent children’s folktales in the Brothers Grimm mode “Puss-Cat Mew “, mythology “The Golden Key”, imaginary histories “The Story or Alwina”, strange little existential gems “The Thin Queen of Elfhame”, as well as a rather unsuccessful attempt to shed fantasy of its European roots “A Zulu Idyll” (which is nonetheless told from the view of a European). Many of them combine two or more of these ideas. Some of them ring with the type of epic grandeur and deliberately archaic language that characterize Tolkien’s “High Styl...