Teaser Tuesdays: In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood

It's that time. Time when the approaching Key West Literary Seminar starts to morph from concept to reality. And what a reality this one will be, especially if you are a fan of speculative fiction -- or, in some cases, what people call scifi. High-quality scifi to be sure. We've got your William Gibson, we've got your Douglas Coupland and yeah, we have your Margaret Atwood. Along with a couple other people like Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Lethem, Gary Shteyngart and ... well, just check out the link above. The bad news, by the way, is that the Seminar is totally, completely, utterly and without hope sold out. There are something like 400 people on the waiting list. So there's no buying a ticket at this point. But there is the Sunday afternoon session, free and open to the public. I imagine the line for this one might start forming on New Year's Day.

Margaret Atwood, conveniently, has just written a book that is one of my absolute favorite kind of books -- literary criticism, or analysis, or description for the non-academic. Rescuing the examination of literature from the academy! God bless her! So anyway, In Other Worlds is my Tuesday Teaser this week, just under the wire since I started reading it on my lunch hour. The rules, as always, are to take two sentences from anywhere, then post the link in the comments section on the Should Be Reading blog.

"My field of specialization was the nineteenth century, and I was busying myself with Victorian quasi-goddesses; and no one could accuse [Rider] Haggard of not being Victorian. Like his age, which practically invented archaeology, he was an amatuer of vanished civilizations; also like his age, he was fascinated by the exploration of unmapped territories and encourters with 'undiscovered' native peoples." -- p. 109

Teaser Tuesdays: The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Nonfiction a-go-go continues: Now into The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, about the Renaissance rediscovery of Lucretius' poem "On the Nature of Things." I had requested it from the library even before it won the National Book Award for nonfiction. I'm only 50 pages in and I haven't hit real traction but that's not the book's fault -- it's more readable than I had thought, even. So here's the teaser (the rule is two sentences from a random page, post the link in the comments section of the Should Be Reading blog. Or if you don't have a blog, you can just post your teaser in the comments):

"Despite the vigorous efforts that Thomas More made, during his time as chancellor, to establish one, England had no Inquisition. Though it was still quite possible to get into serious trouble for unguarded speech, Bruno may have felt more at liberty to speak his mind, or, in this case, to indulge in raucous, wildly subversive laughter." (p. 236)

Folos

Couple items of note: In my review of Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin, my only complaint was that there weren't enough images (especially of the original dog) and my hope was that someone was putting together a documentary using Orlean's work as its basis. My prayers are mostly answered! Orlean herself has put together a visual presentation -- and she's coming to Key West! Hooray! She'll be at the Tropic on Monday, Nov. 21 -- you can already buy tickets and you should do so. They're $12 for Tropic members; $15 for nonmembers. This is especially welcome this year since I won't make it to the Miami Book Fair (though if you are anywhere in South Florida and have the time and are interested in reading at all, I highly recommend it). And, since I wrote about the Shakespeare authorship question and read a whole book about it -- Contested Will by James Shapiro -- I went to see Anonymous. As always, I enjoyed the Elizabethan sets and costumes. And it was way fun to see theater of that time presented in its original context. Vanessa Redgrave was great as Elizabeth and her daughter, Joely Richardson, was, too. I don't really have a problem with historical inaccuracy in service of telling a dramatic story -- Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, is one of my favorite movies ever. I watched the entire run of The Tudors, and enjoyed it, even though every single character was historically preposterous. But. I do have a problem with rampant inaccuracy (I'm no expert but I can rattle off about six in Anonymous without even trying) when you're purporting to be truthtellers who are correcting a giant historical inaccuracy/conspiracy. And, I have to say: Rhys Ifans' eye makeup. What was up with that???

Teaser Tuesdays: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

I am definitely on a nonfiction jag these days -- punctuated by bouts of mostly trashy fiction -- and the current one is Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. I'm a little over halfway through and it's great so far -- I'm fond of 19th century American history, especially about lesser known figures, and of historical true crime. This fits both categories. What I've learned so far is fascinating though heartbreaking: James Garfield, assassinated a few months into his unlikely presidency, was a good man who would have been a real asset to the nation in the middle of its Gilded Age excesses. And Charles Guiteau, the assassin, was even more of a wackjob than I realized after reading Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Anyway here's the teaser:

To submit your own teaser, post two sentences (spoiler free, please!) and submit your blog post in the comments section of Should Be Reading. Don't have a blog? Then post the teaser itself in the comments.

"To Americans in 1881, the principal danger their presidents faced was not physical attack but political corruption. With a determination that shocked even the most senior politicans, they turned their wrath on the spoils system, the political practice that had made Garfield the target of the delusional ambitions of a man like Guiteau." -- p. 249

Guilty pleasures: On reading Philippa Gregory

So yeah, I read Philippa Gregory's latest, The Lady of the Rivers, over the weekend. It's the third in her Cousins' War series, after The White Queen and The Red Queen. All concern women who were involved in the Wars of the Roses -- the battle over the English crown that was ultimately resolved with Henry VII's establishment of the Tudor dynasty -- and his wife, Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth of York's mother, Elizabeth Woodville, is the White Queen of the first book. Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort, is the Red Queen of the second book (even though she was never queen). The new book is about Elizabeth Woodville's mother, Jacquetta. People who sound knowledgable on sites like LibraryThing sometimes knock Gregory for historical accuracy. I understand their frustration; if you notice details about certain things, inaccurate portrayals can ruin an otherwise well-done production. I have a hard time with any TV or movie  portrayal of newspaper journalism, or horse riding, for that reason. But even though I'm a history buff (in the sense of someone who likes popular histories and will watch almost any costume drama), I'm not an inaccuracy cop when it comes to historical fiction. If someone in pre-New World Contact Europe were eating a potato or a tomato I might not even notice. And I take popular works of fiction like Gregory's as just that: fiction. I don't assume that she's got some kind of time capsule that gives her access to the definitive version of what happened. I assume that she's done some research into her characters and their situations and come up with her own portrayals of the events and how her characters viewed them. If I wanted rock solid factually based referenced and sourced account of the events I'd read ... nonfiction. Something like She-Wolves by Helen Castor, or the nonfiction works of Antonia Fraser or Alison Weir, whose new book on Mary Boleyn -- you know, the Other Boleyn Girl? -- is high on my TBR list at the moment.

In the meantime, I enjoyed this particular piece of brain candy. It's not a work of history; I'm not going to claim from now on that the York-Lancaster-Tudor settlement was in fact based on the magical properties Jacquetta of Luxembourg inherited from the mermaid Melusina and passed on to her daughter and granddaughter. But I do have a better understanding of the various players in the Wars of the Roses, and their relationships to each other.