Re: Pride and Prometheus

In a double pastiche of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, John Kessel‘s “Pride and Prometheus” introduces Mary Bennett to Viktor Frankenstein. Being a tortured romantic hero, Viktor fits neatly into Mary’s world, seeming at first merely to be a moody, intelligent young man who is unaccountably intrigued by what Mary’s interest in natural philosophy. But […]

Collards are survivors

Well, the collards that poked their heads above the snow from time to time are definitely dead. But the collards out back on the hillside, the ones I didn’t see up close all winter not only survived, but look downright robust. They’re as tough as pansies.

Re: The Ray-Gun: A Love Story

From the opening, “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story“, by James Alan Gardner made me smile. In storybook prose it tells of a ray-gun and the boy who found it. I most enjoyed the flashes of humor in lines like: No one on Earth noticed–not even the shamans who thought dots in the sky were important.

Re: If Angels Fight

Living near Boston means I hear more than enough about the Irish in Boston, the Kennedys in Boston, and crony politics in Boston. Thus when I meet with these Boston tropes in fiction, my resistance goes way up. In this case, I simply could not fight my way past my prejudices. I will have to […]

Maple Sprouts

These are the weeds I should be pulling: sneaky little maple sprouts, lying coiled on the surface, eager for spring rains to wake them, ready to spread green little wings. They’re easy to pull now, but not when they take root and become seedlings and saplings and trees. That’s the price of having a corner […]

Re: Time, Love, Memory

Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest For The Origin of Behavior, by Jonathan Weiner is so engrossing, I nearly missed my stop. The biologist in the subtitle is Seymour Benzer. As he worked at Caltech, it was weird for me to read about him and familiar things–Tech offices, the jacarandas–when I don’t […]

Re: Kaleidoscope

In “Kaleidoscope,” by K.D. Wentworth, Ally finds herself caught in a kaleidoscope of possible worlds. In some she returns a stray dog to its home. In others, it gets run over. In some her friends are married and thriving. In others they’re in various stages of breakup. And in some, she just might find her […]

Re: Dark Rooms

In “Dark Rooms“, by Lisa Goldstein, the realistic but fictional Nathan Stevens encounters the fantastic but real George Méliès. Stevens meets Méliès in a dark room watching turn of the 20th century films, when cinema was in its infancy. Stevens has come to Paris to be an artist, and joins Méliès in the new art […]

Cloudy skies, sunny flowers

Since when are pansies wimps? They make it through the winter just fine, or at least mine do. When I’m looking for fall pansies, I pick the old-style whiskery ones that aren’t so huge and overbred. So here’s the first one flowering today. The daffodils also decided to offer their bit of light to a […]

Now what have I learned?

I’m having one of those wake up with a sore throat and head into Chinatown for noodle soup and drowse the rest of the day kind of days. This blog, oddly enough, seems unaffected. People are steadily passing by, looking at the damndest things.