Back!

So, it turns out that having a wedding and Christmas in the same week makes you very busy. Who knew?

But it has all gone off like a charming charm, except the part where I got a cold. We have had all the peeps here, and a good time has been had by all, what with the board games, and the card games, and the books and the conversation and the monkey tubes. (What is a monkey tube? A long long thin balloon you have to tie at both ends. The ones we got have monkeys on them, so...monkey tubes!)

If you are reading this and have not heard me say it, well, I hope you had a Merry Christmas! And will have a Happy New Year!

We'll see if I make it...

Being home for the holidays and attendant events (sis is getting married, hooray!) may prevent the one-a-day plan for the next little while. I feel like I've got a good head of steam, though, so I will try to plow on through.

Friday's restaurant: the Subway in my apartment complex. Man, I eat there so often that if you really were what you ate I would carry people around underground for two dollars a pop. There is nothing particular about it; it's just a Subway. The pizzas are surprisingly good though.

Saturday's restaurant: The Mandarin! In Bountiful, Utah. We ate there tonight, in fact. It is, by acclamation, the best Chinese restaurant in Utah. Some might say this is kinda like being the world's tallest short man, but whatevs, as the kids say these days. I seriously doubt it could be considered "authentic" in any ordinary sense, but it's darn good eatin'. Spicy shrim and Thai coconut curry and black bean sauced green beans! Hurrah!

ARRGGH I AM BUSY ARGGGH

So!

Yesterday's restaurant! Carmack's! The old one with all the grease!

It was one of the great delights of my childhood and teenage-hood to go to Carmack's and get their greasy burgers and greasy fries and glazed donuts. Oh. So delicious.

Sadly, it burned down. Too much grease, and I wish I were kidding. Even more sadly, when they re-opened in The Building That Cannot Sustain a Franchise, it was not nearly as greasy or delicious. To cap the sadness, it then went out of business. (As you would guess from the building name.)

Alas, Carmack's. We hardly knew ye.

Today's restaurant: Pancho Villa's! It is actually not my favorite-favorite burrito place in San Francisco, but it is much bigger and better known. And they win prizes for their salsa, and they have a big picture of Pancho Villa looking like a ridiculously baby-faced cartoon villain. He really did have a pretty round face, but not like in that picture.

Anyway. Burritos! Delicious and oh-so-filling! And full of rice and beans! One more would make it a theme, but it may not happen. It all depends on what I'm hungry for tomorrow. (Home cookin', most likely. Hooray!)

Restaurant the Third!

NAMA, which has kinda gone downhill a little bit since they stopped giving the combo dinner in the bento box and started giving it to you in pieces. :( Very sad. But I ate there tonight and the sushi was superb, so I am willing to forgive the decline of the beef teriyaki over the last three years.

Restaurant the Second!

I did not eat at restaurants much in Venezuela. We did not get nearly enough money. (Food was expensive, relative to how much money people made--at least if you bought stuff in cans, which we Americans mostly did, being Americans and accustomed to things in cans.) One evening, though, my companion and I decided to splurge, and we had a big chicken dinner at a Venezuelan grill-barbecue place. It was pretty good...grilled chicken, some kind of salad which we probably weren't supposed to eat, rice and beans (ubiquitous in Venezuelan cookery), arepa on the side...all the good stuff. I actually remember it more for our waiter than anything else, cuz, wow, that was weird. But that story will be held for another time!

That's pretty much Venezuelan food right there, by the way, except that they eat a lot of pasta too. (2nd in the world for pasta consumption per capita, after Italy, I was told. I wouldn't be surprised.) It's not exactly adventurous, although if you are a glutton for punishment many families have home-brewed hot oil (like hot sauce, except what you do is put peppers and things in a bottle with vegetable oil and let the capsaicin leach out into the oil) on the table. I was never much for that stuff, though, it was usually very hot indeed.

I first ate a shawarma in Venezuela, too, actually, from a street vendor in Cumana, if memory serves. It was one of the best shawarmas I've ever had, actually. The lavash there is better than it is here; either that or I was just hungrier back when I was a missionary and it made everything taste better.

Except when I do the best first!

(See last post for relevance of topic.)

I have had a request for Seven Restaurants I Have Known and Loved and Eaten At. And I am going to begin with the site of one of my finest eating experience ever: Thep Phanom.

It's a Thai restaurant across from what used to be my domicile in the lower Haight, and it is full of wonderful things! The first time I went there might have been the first time I ever went to a Thai restaurant, and we got carry-out to take to the Mad Dog in the Fog trivia night. I got the beef and spinach in peanut sauce and said to myself as I ate the first few bites, "This is delicious, but it is much too rich!"

I did not know that you must eat it with rice! That is the right way.

When my family came to visit me in San Francisco for the second time we came back to the apartment after gallivanting about the city all day. So we were peckish, and perhaps because of that the food was especially delicious. We had beef and spinach in peanut sauce on that occasion too, and a prawn dish, and another fish (I think), and satay skewers (again, I think), and other good things, and we had little dyed-paper placemats that we took away with us (we got permission). It was a great triumph; all of my family went away saying that they must eat the Thai Dinner from this time forward.

And we still do!

The Wizard Knight, by Gene Wolfe

I save the best for last! Or try to.

The Wizard Knight might be my favorite fantasy novel set (The Knight, followed by The Wizard) ever. And I have read lots and lots and LOTS of fantasy novels. Many many. At least five in the last month, and that was without trying.

Gene Wolfe demands a lot of the reader, and it doesn't always turn out well. (Free Live Free and Castleview being the best examples of "not well", in my opinion.) But he also gives an unusually high rate of return for your work, in the stories that work. In addition to exciting events, sharp writing, and interesting characters, he has interesting things to say about science, engineering, politics, and morals. Much of his work is informed by Catholic theology, and reflects it in interesting ways; he also has characters who are really good, in ways that show he has a good idea of what good people are like. (Many authors--even great authors, like Milton, to give a classic example--have a hard time making their "good" people more interesting than their "bad" people, and have to resort to anti-heroic figures as protagonists. Gene Wolfe does not have this weakness.)

It's a great story. The ending makes me cry every time. I recommend it to everyone who reads this blog; I can't be sure you'll like it, but I hope you will.

I didn't have a novel for Tuesday!

Eek!

OK, Tuesday's retroactive novels will be the Amber Chronicles of Roger Zelazny.

They decline in quality a bit as they go along, but the first five or so are real ripsnorters, and the conceits of Amber, the Pattern, and the Trumps are all-timers.

Well, they deserve better, but I am in a hurry, so let's flip forward to today and talk about...Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy! Vances does very little fantasy, although much of his science fiction is highly fantastic (The Book of Dreams, anyone?). The Lyonesse books are, however, a very notable exception. Set in the (mythical) island of Hybras and its lesser surrounding isles, west of France, it is chock-full of fairies, wizards, princes, Ska (vikings, not musicians), and even stranger things. Like all Jack Vance stories it is intensely weird; like most it is often laugh-out-loud funny; and it is perhaps the strongest of all his books for characterization and plot. It might be my favorite work of Vance's...'nuff said.

A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin

Look, it's another R.R.! (Apparently Mr. Martin added this lagniappe de plume--I mean the R.R.--to distinguish him from all the other George Martins out there; also, as he says, it worked for Tolkien.)

A Song of Ice and Fire is a (planned) seven book series, currently at four books, which is almost as good as its dust jacket blurbs make it out to be. Which is about all you can hope for in a book, really. This is a good example of fantastic events handled realistically; there are important supernatural elements in the story, but not that many of them. Magic and magical creatures are rare and not well understood; most of what happens is just the (gripping) story of a medieval-technology civil war. In a way, this realism is the biggest drawback to the story for me; people really talk like that, and really act like that, but, well, must art imitate life at quite that level of detail?

On the other hand, the realism of the story has some great strengths. For one thing, the story is written from multiple points of view, so there is no "hero" and no guarantee that any particular good guy will not have his career suddenly cut short by one of the bad guys. Even better, it is not by any means clear who the good guys and bad guys are; you spend the first book hatin' on one character, only to have gained a great deal of sympathy for him by the end of the fourth. Very few of the characters are really good, and none are wholly evil (although at least one comes pretty close).

A complicated story, then, and a moving one, and with its share of rip-roaring adventure, tragedy, and comedy (take a bow, Dolorous Edd!). Whether or not Mr. Martin will ever finish the fifth book is a hot topic of speculation among fans of the series, but assuming he does I will toddle down to the bookstore and buy it.

If you know about me and bookstores you know how strong a recommendation that is.

Let's try this.

Acronym madness! My self-imposed rule: no word may be used more than once. First ten acronyms for the letters NCA:

National Christian Association
Northern California Admirers
Norse Caledonian Amalgam
Narrow Crypt Assistance
Nine Color Adjustment
Nifty Cringeworthy Allophony
Not Commonly Acknowledged
Noteworthy Calumnious Acclaim
Niflheim Cardboard Asset
Never Create Acrimony

From the rational to the bizarre to the at least explicable!

Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake

Another series, of which the last (Titus Alone) can safely be ignored if the reader desires; it is very different from the first two books, adds little or nothing to them, and was never really finished.

The first two, though...wow. Weird, weird stuff. Titus Groane and Gormenghast are unusual as "fantastic" literature in that they have no element of the supernatural; everything in the book is at least theoretically possible. But the overall impression created by the books is intensely fantastic...much more so than in many novels in which there are lots of supernatural things which are considered prosaic by the people to whom they happen (the Harry Potter books are one example; the Weasleys are an ordinary English family who just happen to be wizards). There is pretty much nothing "normal" about anything in Gormenghast. Possible, yes. Normal, no. The atmosphere of highly codified strangeness Peake generates in his careful description of Gormenghast, its traditions, and its inhabitants is perhaps the best thing about the book.

It also has wonderful names, and a truly chilling villain (and some unlikely heroes). I think a lot of people would find these books dull or simply unintelligible , but I loved them. (Again, the first two; the last is a different kettle of fish.)

Addendum

I didn't say much about Hart's Hope, in a way (or about The Lord of the Rings, although I don't expect my audience to be unfamiliar with that one, whereas I will bet I have only one reader who's read Hart's Hope, unless they are random people wandering in off the Interweb). These aren't going to be book reviews in any ordinary sense; I just want to put the novel's name out there and tell a little bit about why I think it's worth mentioning.

Also,

It's been really cold here! I mean, by the standards of the place. 42 degrees at present, which is no joke in houses as badly insulated as many are here. (My first apartment, for example...brrrrrrr.)

Hart's Hope, by Orson Scott Card

So, the 800 pound gorilla got an eight hundred word blog post. (I don't know if that's really how long it was, but it was a biggie). Today we will do something shorter.

Hart's Hope is, in my opinion, one of Orson Scott Card's best novels. That doesn't mean it's an easy read--rather the opposite. (I find that there's often an inverse ratio between "quality" and "ease of reading" for Card's novels.) By saying it's hard to read, I don't mean it's boring...again, rather the opposite. It has a lot of cruelty, a lot of sadness, and a lot of moral ambiguity. It is also a rich supply of food for thought and perhaps the most intriguing world created by Card, who does an excellent job of laying out specific details that give the reader a flavor of the culture, religions, and worldview of the characters without falling into dictionary didacticism. It's not the novel that I would choose to introduce a reader to Card's work (that would be Ender's Game, an easy choice if ever there was one) nor the novel that affected me most deeply (that would be Red Prophet, an even harder read), nor the book I would take to a desert island (Maps in a Mirror, because of his endnotes, because short stories are awesome, and because it's huge). But I think it may be the most complete of his stand-alone novels.

The List.: Seven Awesome Fantasy Novels

So, I talked about this last week, except it was just six. But that does not fit with the theme! We would have to do a book twice!

Fine, so let's get the 800 pound gorilla accounted for first: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Few indeed are the who essentially invent genres, and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is one of them.

The Lord of the Rings is not quite perfect; it has longeurs, it has some odd structural conceits, and in the case of Tom Bombadil it has both at once. It is remarkably free of romantic love and women generally. Some feel the idea of dark-skinned southrons in the service of a Dark Lord is indicative of latent racism. Such are the classic complaints, in order of how seriously I think they should be taken (which is to say, 1) true enough, 2) true but not that important, given the purposes of the book, and 3) are you kidding me?).

Against which we set...well, for one thing, inventing a genre--the modern epic fantasy. Inventing a world, with languages, history, peoples, and mythology (Tolkien was one of the first to do this, as well). This is more or less de riguer for modern fantasy novelists, who go forth in battalions like locusts, and who all* look back to Tolkien. The story is gripping, with any number of iconic elements (the Ring itself, Sauron, the Nazgul, Gandalf...oh, heck, name just about any important character, all the important peoples, most of the geographical features and cities...you get the idea) and well-written, too, although there are the previously mentioned longeurs.

One of my favorite things is the inclusion of the hobbits, because I think that it is through them that Tolkien invites the reader into the story. No human being could even approximate the grandeur, the grace, or the sheer power of Gandalf, Galadriel, or Elrond; Aragorn and Legolas, though much less in stature, are still superhuman; Boromir and Faramir, although now not beyond a human stature, are still heroically proportioned as princes and warriors.

But Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are like us. They worry about breakfast, complain about the walking, and are generally only given any attention because of the company they keep (and, in the case of Frodo, because of his exceedingly unfortunate heirloom). There is nothing heroic about them as they begin their journey; they spend their time fleeing the Ringwraiths, getting cold and wet, being set upon by barrow-wights and Old Man Willow, and escaping principally through the intervention of others. They are literally small, often silly, and relentlessly quotidian in their outlook as they pass through their many adventures.

But, in the end, everything depends on them. The Ring, in the hands of a hero, would prove an irresistible temptation; it is, in that sense, Frodo and Sam's very ordinariness that lets good triumph over evil. No human could be as wise as Gandalf, as agile as Legolas, or as kingly as Aragorn; but we would all hope to be as persevering, as sensible, and as courageous as Merry and Pippin prove themselves to be. We admire Gandalf and Aragorn, but we empathize with the hobbits, and their inclusion in the tale is, in my opinion, the greatest stroke of genius in The Lord of the Rings.

*I presume that not all consciously do, but I think it is pretty much impossible not to be influenced by Tolkien if you write fantasy.

Sleep spot the Last

I lived for three years on Treasure Island, which sounds rather romantic but isn't. The Navy used to own it and I lived with three roommates in one of their multiplex housing units--multiplex in that they are like duplexes, but six in a row usually. (Hexiplex?) Sorta like the Beatle's "houses" at the beginning of Help!, except it was not a single dwelling of sybaritic luxuriance on the inside.

Anyway. There was a big tree just outside my window that would flower every year with big red puffs; it was a southern exposure, so it was bright and cheery, and my bed was right under the window. There was a lot not to like about that house, but the prospect from my bedroom window was by far the finest of any I've had in San Francisco.

Sleep spot #6

The night of my arrival in Barcelona, Venezuela, it was desperately hot and humid. October is a good month for rainfall and the weather was getting its licks in...a regular "stick of water", in the Venezuelan idiom ("un palo de agua"). There were some large number of us...fourteen? Sixteen?...and, if I remember correctly, there was trouble with transportation. It was late late late by the time we got to the apartment where we would spend the night.

We slept on bare mattresses in our skivvies, six or eight of us in the room, and there were MOSQUITOES!!! there as well. (A running theme, perhaps?) We had one or two fans for the whole room, and they did their best, I'm sure, but there wasn't much to be done. I mostly slept very well indeed in Venezuela, but that night was an exception.

The next morning we were packed off to our various final destinations, and my apartment in Maturin was the site of an unpleasant but amusing sleep-related experience too...but we'll save that one for "bug stories" and stick with that first night in Venezuela with the rain pouring down and the bare mattress and the mosquitoes and the room full of breathing.

Sleep spot #5

How about a FAIL-to-sleep place? Namely, the train from London to Edinburgh? This is something that was actually chronicled on the former iteration of The Blog, so I will refer you there for details. Oh, that horrible orange light!

I then made up for it, in part, by zonking out in the Scottish National Gallery, much to the amusement of my friend, who found me in rapt contemplation of...the inside of my eyelids, seated bolt upright in from of a great big mural. I believe the painting in question is whatever hangs on the left-hand (east?) wall of room A3 on the second level there.

That's as much as I remember about it, unfortunately.

Sleep spot #4

Now we will combine the camper and mountains! To get the night we spent in the camper in Loa, Utah (the site of the ancestral home, in fact, where my grandfather grew up, which has now passed into the hands of strangers if it still stands at all, but still represents for me "where my ancestors lived").

I forget why we had gone there, but I think I will always remember how bright and how clear the Milky Way was that night. You will never see a night sky like that one except on a clear night in the mountains.

Speaking of Lev Grossman,

I finished his book The Magicians yesterday. It was kinda like three parts Harry Potter in College, one part Narnia, and another three parts Catcher in the Rye, with maybe just a little of Jack Vance's Green Magic for astringency.

I don't think I can give it a whole-hearted endorsement, but it was certainly an interesting combination.

In the meantime,

I have slept in a tent in the High Uintahs. 10,000 feet of elevation or so. It was our "not at a scout camp" summer camp, which was, I think, the summer I turned 13. We hiked in on Monday and out on Saturday and carried all the food and what-not with us, and got sleeted/snowed upon in July. 10,000 feet will do that to you. We slept by little lakes, fairly warm and shallow, and at dusk the bats would come out and eat mosquitoes and flitter across the surface of the lake...we were big fans of the bats, because MOSQUITOES!!! We would stand in the smoke from the fire, and that helped some, but we would get bitten through all our clothes.

It was really a pretty awesome experience. Makes me wish I still did that kind of stuff, although how I will find a week to wander around the Sierra Nevada (and in preference to all other activities that might fill that week) is beyond me.

I dunno. My friend B. tells me I am due to be a scoutmaster for about ten years because of my ride karma; maybe I'll get back to camping then.

A subject for debate!

From Lev Grossman, the Six Best Fantasy Novels Ever Written (via the Volokh Conspiracy).

It hits some high points, to be sure, although the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories are not novels, per se (he quibbled).

My own thoughts turned quickly to the subject of "What novels qualify as 'fantasy'?" Would Dune? The Book of the New Sun? What about The Stand? Or One Hundred Years of Solitude? I would say "no" for each of them, but it's not necessarily easy to parse. One commenter on the VC thread, for example, placed Dune firmly in the category of fantasy because of the precognitive effects of spice consumption, although faster-than-light travel itself would not have been considered "fantastic".

At any rate, you are probably dying to know (ahem. Play along with me, here) what my Six Best Fantasy Novels Ever Written are at this point. I am too. The Lord of the Rings must figure on the list, and the Narnia books and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are also strong candidates. Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy would probably figure in it, and Zelazny's Amber books might too.

I'll give it some thought.