Recently Read
The Annotated Bibliography. Sort of.

Update August 2005: This list got way outdated. First, I had to go through a kind of mini-grieving process around my late-in-life obsession with comic books (denial, bartering, denial, anger, spending too much money, acceptance, finding space for my collection, realizing that the average customer age at Million Year Picnic is mid-30s). Then, there was all that kerfuffle around starting a business and trying not to get kicked out on the street. Then I moved the Prosies to Livejournal, which left me even less of a reason to fire up the ol' HTML editor and FTP program. And then I went through some self-imposed reading deprivation as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way.

So it's been well over a year since I picked up Witch: The Wild Ride from Wicked to Wicca, by Candace Savage. Whatever kind of potboilers, wanking material, and whatnot I read between then and now I have most likely forgotten. Except for the many, many copies of X-Men comics in the recesses of my cabinets. And the volumes mentioned below in reverse chronoligical order.

• The Findhorn Garden, by the Findhorn Garden community. I'd like to call them goddamn hippies, but apparently the two women and one man who founded the Findhorn Community in Northern Scotland were not goddamn hippies, although they did have some "spiritual training" under their belt and there's no doubt that as the community grew it attracted its share of goddamn hippies. Still, the point of the community and the book is not how to grow your own pot, braid your armpit hair, or excel at underwater basketweaving. Instead it describes how three people who used to live and work in a luxury resort hotel found themselves camped out in trailers on the edge of the North Sea with almost no money and the overwhelming urge to build a garden. The soil was mostly gravel and sand, and none of the three of them had any experience working the land. But through their daily meditations, they received guidance, first from God and later from Devas and Nature Spirits, on how best to transform the soil and grow the food they would need to sustain themselves. This was in the 1950s and 1960s, long before crystal woo-woo types were flocking to Sedona to have their auras photographed, and 40 years before OneSpirit Book Club would start offering a monthly selection on the latest airy-fairy la-la fad. The result was vegetables twice the size of anything else grown in the area, a real paradise on earth. They were careful to remain circumspect about their contact with nature spirits until they'd been around for a while. The Findhorn Community still exists today: Findhorn.org



• Books by Sheri Tepper. A rather talented writer who appears to reside in or around Santa Fe, New Mexico. Has an appalling tendency to write off homosexuality as a genetic aberration, and more than a touch of gender essentialism in her writing. But still a very interesting read and seems to have gotten better at building suspense and holding the reader's interest as her career progressed. Excellent command of language and character. A much better wordsmith than MZB. Themes in her work are reminiscent of both MZB and Octavia Butler, one of the masters of the genre in my mind. She also the ability to imagine and create an entire society and then concentrate the reader's interest on one person within it, in a way similar to Ursula Le Guin.
  • Northshore
  The first in a series about a planet with a "world river". The presence of a funky fungus with interesting properties harkens back to one of her other novels, but the structure of the society holds its own fascination. The basic themes in this book -- sustainability, greed eating away at a world's resources, an uneasy balance of power among ruthless rulers -- echo those in others but are presented quite differently due to this society's unique setup. The plot remains unresolved. I haven't yet read Southshore to see what happens next.
  • The Gate to Women's Country
  The most provocative of the titles but a tad of a cliche in my book. I believe the premises (post-apocalyptic society, women take over the government) have been dealt with a few too many times. Still, Tepper manages to weave in some surprises and to create some genuinely sympathetic characters.
  
  
  • Singer from the Sea
  The first of her novels and so far the best by far in terms of overall story structure, imagery, characterization, and language. Takes place on a planet founded by rich old men who wanted to create a feudalistic society. Noble women are "given their youth" and have an appalling tendancy to die soon after childbirth. Explores the notion of the Gaia principle.
  
  
  
• Witch: The Wild Ride from Wicked to Wicca, by Candace Savage. Okay, here's the deal. During the 5 years I was the About.com Guide to Pagan/Wiccan Religion, publishing houses would send me boxes and boxes of review copies of books on all things related to paganism, Wicca, tarot, astrology, astral projection, feng shui, self-healing-by-standing-on-your-head-during-the-full-moon, and God/dess know what other kinds of crystal-woo-woo-fuji-fuji topics. This book is an entirely different story. Just holding it in my hands, I know it's a thing of quality. Someone cared enough about this book to invest in the best materials for making it. That was enough to motivate me to put it aside for a good 2-5 years before cracking it. That, and the pretty pictures inside. But what really blew me away was the well-researched and balanced coverage of a topic that generally attracts strong opinions and plenty of shoddy scholarship. Go. Get this book. Read it to your children. And then they will know.
  
  
• The Yeast Connection, by Dr. William Crook, M.D.. Some people think he's a crook, like Doctor Stephen Barrett over at Quackwatch. Others think he's a medical visionary, ala the guy who discovered that limes are a good preventative measure for scurvy back in the late 1700s, more than 150 years before they knew what Vitamin C was. I reserve judgment, although Dr. Crook's slick website, complete with ecommerce engine for ordering copies of his books, doesn't really reassure me.
  
  
• The Unicorn Creed, by Elizabeth Scarborough. Getting back in touch with my scifi/fantasy-preteen roots. This book is now out of print, but they had a copy at the local libary. You know what? It weathers well and includes enough pagan-positive material to have the I Hate Harry Potter Club burning it for decades to come.
  
  
• Song of Sorcery, by Elizabeth Scarborough. Prequal to The Unicorn Creed (see above). Also very good, even after 20 years and indoctrination into the roll of literary snobbery.
  
  
• The Minority Report and other classic stories, by Philip K Dick. Engaging, but the limited range of female characters begins to grate on one's nerves after a while.
• Radio Free Albemuth, by Philip K Dick
  
  
• Zodiac, by Neal Stephenson. My brother said it was his weakest book, but since it's located mostly in Boston I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of my fair city.
  
  
• The Dispossessed, by Ursula LeGuin. Another fascinating study of two cultures--a "what-if" kind of scenario. What if it were possible to build a successful collectivist/anarchist society? Does a good job of not idealizing the results.
  
  
• The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. If you read The New Yorker or studied any kind of creative writing or modern fiction, you've probably read the story of the same name, which describes the experience of American footsoldiers in Vietnam by cataloguing the items they carry on their backs. The rest of the book is a mishmosh of memoir and fiction. A compelling war novel—and that means a lot, coming from me, since I'm not very fond of war novels. Maybe it's all this crap happening in Iraq that makes it more relevant to me now. Especially evocative is the chapter describing his cowardice in not emigrating to Canada to flee the draft, but instead submitting to being sent to a war he did not believe in.

• Issola, by Steven Brust. Pulp science fiction thrills. Fascinating world he's created, but the novels have become somewhat formulaic.

• Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. My techie brother bought me the whole Neal Stephenson library during his July 4 visit. This the the third book of his I've munched through. It's more dense than the first two, and actually deals with historical events and present-day time. Still fascinating, though.

• The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. Can be loosely interpreted as a sequel to Snow Crash. This book takes place in the distant future and deals with nanotechnology—computers are microscopic and interactive media has been designed to run on just about every surface, including human skin. An EXCELLENT book, and with even stronger female characters than Snow Crash. Also follows up on Stephenson's riff of the Inanna/Enki Sumerian myths.

• Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. My techie brother bought me the whole Neal Stephenson library during his July 4 visit. This book totally rocks. Makes me want to learn Unix and Flash, too.

• Cunt, by Inga Muscio. Excellent book! Great 3rd-wave feminist writing. And any woman who is willing to reclaim this power word has my vote.

• Norton Anthology of Poetry, 2nd Edition. There's a VERY naughty poem in the anonymous 15th-century lyrics section they never assigned to us in college.

• Flesh, Blood and Bone by Lisa Forbes. Lush, fabulous, gorgeous, green. Read it. Just read it.

•   Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. Bleh. That's enough sand, grit, flint, and propechy for the decade.

•   Dune: Messiah

•   Dune: House Corrino

•   Dune: House Harkonnen (please see below for comments on the Dune series.

•   Dune: House Atreides, by Brian Herbert and another guy. Because all the copies of the original volume were lost at the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library.

  At one point, I think I described these books as "surprisingly good." I was obviously smoking crack when I wrote that. While the plot line keeps one interested, the actual quality of the writing is roughly of the same calibre of Sidney Sheldon or Jackie Collins.

  Written by Frank Herbert's son Brian and based on numerous notes. Covers the generations of scheming nobles and not-so-nobles of Herbert's universe. My latest escape from the everday.

  I tried reading Dune when I was a girl. I guess you have to have an adult's understanding of politics and history to really appreciate the subtleties and just downright hugeness of this world that Frank Herbert dreamed up.

• Practical Small Gardens, by Peter McHoy. $5.99 at Border's! And springtime is coming.

• Octavia Butler. Please see my comments below about this most excellent of authors. I've been munching through her books left and right. The books below are grouped by story line, as she often writes a series of 2-3 books about one particular "world" or scenario:
  
  
  1. The Parable of the Sower
  2. The Parable of the Talents
     In the not-too-distant future, civilization in the Southwestern and Western United States falls apart. Ranks of the poor and homeless grow and the shrinking middle class protects itself in walled enclaves. "Paints" addicted to a drug that makes lighting and watching fires seem as good as sex go around destroying the few remaining enclaves, killing, raping, and burning inhabitants in a misguided attempt to act as modern-day Robin Hoods.
     
     Out of this morass of chaos, one woman realizes a new philosophy and sets out to create a community of like-minded people. She and her followers face violence, poverty, homelessness, and the bigotry of Christian America in a struggle to survive and thrive. The Earthseed movement brings together all races and creeds in its effort to "take root among the stars."
  
  
  1. Wild Seed
  2. Mind of My Mind
  3. Clay's Ark
  4. Patternmaster
     Spanning more than three thousand years of earth's history, this saga centers around three or four strong characters—men and women from Africa, Europe, and the United States who have been bent and shaped by Doro, a spirit-man who feeds on the souls of others. Doro "breeds" humans selectively for psychic ability, partly for a better food source and partly to create a purpose to his interminably immortal existence. Human beings who challenge and ultimately defeat Doro include "Sun-Woman," a woman with the ability to shape her own body in whatever form she wants and with the power to heal others; Mary, a genetically perfected version of Doro; Eli, who returns to Earth carrying a virus that eventually creates a new breed of half-humans, the Clayarks; and Teray, who battles with his brother Coransee for control of the Pattern begun by Doro's daughter Mary centuries ago.

  Octavia Butler's books are similar to Marion Zimmer Bradley's (MZB's) in that they deal with entire worlds she has created and populated. But as much as I love and admire MZB for bringing us Mists of Avalon, I find Butler's writing to be far superior, more along the lines of a "real" fiction writer such as Barbara Kingsolver than the slightly lower quality usually associated with genre fiction. For more about Octavia Butler, take a look at this excellent biography:

  Voices from the Gap: Octavia Butler

• The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum. The book that gave rise to Matt Damon's attempt at starring in an action/espionage flick. While it lapses into melodrama and has some troubling scenes involving violence against women, the plot threads you along as you try to figure out who's working for whom, who's really dead, and who killed them. Plus, I admit it, I enjoyed fantasizing about Matt Damon and Franka Potente getting it on in a tub full of hair dye.

• Lilith's Brood, by Octavia Butler. This woman rocks! She's not only the first African-American science fiction writer I've ever read, but she's a kickin' storyteller. Her books deal with numerous issues, including the ethics of genetic manipulation, bigotry, social dynamics, and the moral conflicts of leadership. Plus, they're kinda sexy.

• Old Stones, New Temples, by I forget. This was about the time I gave in to Pagan/Wiccan Guide burnout and resigned from About.com.

• The Powerbook, by Jeanette Winterson

• Northern Mysteries and Magic, by Freya Aswynn

• Havana Bay, by Martin Cruz Smith

• The Old Girl's Book of Spells, by Cal Garrison

• The Ice House, by Minette Walters

• The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver

• The Mark of Voodoo, by Sharon Caulder

• An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Ian Pears. Great book; highly offensive to modern women. Until the end, anyway.

• The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Because there was so much reference to it in Laurie King's The Moor. Now I want to take a trip to Dartmoor itself!

• Red Square, by Martin Cruz Smith. Yes, I like his books and I'm not ashamed of it. Even if Smith does have a virgin-whore concept of women.

• Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Sweet, sensual, and seductive.

• The Telling, by Ursuala LeGuin. The long-awaited sequel (of sorts) to The Left Hand of Darkness. I love the way LeGuin can weave a cohesive world out of thin air.

• Norton Introduction to Poetry. It's nice to visit with old friends.

• The Moor, by Laurie R. King. I'm like this with authors I enjoy. I want to read all their books at once—at least with those who write genre fiction. These last four books are all about Mary Russel's, the precocious assistant of Mr. Sherlock Holmes after he retired from his London lifestyle. You have to read them to understand.

• A Letter of Mary, by Laurie R. King.

• A Monstrous Regiment of Women, by Laurie R. King.

• The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King.

• Oh, Jerusalem!, by Laurie R. King.

• To Play the Fool, by Laurie R. King. My partner introduced me to King's mystery novels -- this one is very thought-provoking, since it deals with the archetype of the Holy Fool.

• Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula LeGuin. Fascinating profile of a world in which inhabitants are neuter, except when it's time to mate, when they can become either male or female.

• The Partner, by John Grisham. Grisham's a misogynist pig, but he still spins a mean story. And it's refreshing to read a book that features neither sex nor bloodshed.

• Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, by Ursual LeGuin. Out of print, apparently, but I picked it up secondhand at the Harvard Bookstore. I love LeGuin's fiction -- the first piece is about a little girl who survives a plane crash and lives in the wild with Coyote and other animals.

• The Anything Tree, can't remember the author. Came in the same book as another Darkover novel.

• The Heirs of Hammerfell, by Marian Zimmer Bradley. Not the most interesting of the novels, but still, I'm on a mission.

• Rose, by Martin Cruz Smith. He wrote Gorky Park, and then he wrote this. It's even better.

• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, by Gregory McGuire. What really happened to Cinderella and her wicked step-family.

• Lammas, by Anna Franklin and Paul Mason. The latest offering from Llewellyn publishers, about the upcoming Sabbat.

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by David Eggers

• Anil's Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje

• City of Sorcery, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

• The Bloody Sun, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

• Walking to Mercury, by Starhawk

• The Keeper's Price, by Marion Zimmer Bradley and the Friends of Darkover. A collection of Darkover stories, most of them written by Bradley's fans.

• A Witch's Book of Dreams, by Karri Allrich. Fascinating combination of Jungian psychology and pagan theory.

• The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk

• Darkover Landfall, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I'm working my way through all the Darkover books - and there are a lot. Thank Goddess for the used book basement at the Harvard Bookstore.
  

• The Lottery Winner, by Mary Higgins Clark. A bit like "Murder She Wrote," if Angela Lansbury were a cleaning woman from Queens who won the lottery. One of the few books I haven't bothered to finish.
  

• The Burning Times, a historical novel by Joanne Kalogridis. An advance reader's copy sent by Simon & Schuster in hopes that I'd review it for my other site. Definitely worthwhile.
  

• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory McGuire. Excellent. The Wizard is a fascist and the Witch is a misunderstood Animal Rights Activist.
  

• A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, all by Madeleine L'Engle
  

• Thendara House, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
  

• Waiting, by Ha Jin
  

• The Moon is Always Female, by Marge Piercy