Hello St Marks

Boldly invested a share of a book voucher on a punt: the first 'Firebirds' anthology. 'Firebirds' is a fantasy collection, which promised to be interesting and was, in parts. Anthologies are taste tests, samplers of writing styles and story flavours. The problem was that if I liked a story it was over too soon. If I didn't like it, I'd skip it and feel a bit cheated. Overall, a reminder that most fantasy isn't for me. To predictable, too girly. One find: Nancy Farmer. One old favourite: Garth Nix. Queued in my reading list is 'Let the Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist (literary vampire horror, really), Bill Bryson's 'A Short History os Nearly Everything', Iain Banks' 'The Bridge' and one from W: 'The Reposession Mambo' by Eric Garcia.

A fantasy, perfectly forgettable, perfectly good. 'The Spell of Rosette' by Kim Falconer, first in a trilogy I have no urge to pursue. The premise is good: Earth in the near future is decimated by climate catastrophe sped along by human technical 'fixes' applied beyond reason by a power-hungry elite keen to retain a grip on the few remaining resources when the Earth goes to hell. The novel follows two threads: Earth, where a magical resistance bides its time through generations, and Gaela, a classic fantasy pre-tech world of warriors and witches. A sentient super-computer with the power to return Earth to rights is embodied in human form in Gaela, teaming up with the usual suspects to... the usual. To Kim's credit, the book stands alone and is neatly finished. I have just about enough patience for Sookie Stackhouse but can't be bothered with classic fantasy; brain the size of a gnat at the moment.

Only reading junk at the moment. More Sookie Stackhouse: books 5 and 6 now done and dusted and I'm craving more. K has a milder case, sufficient for us to organise a postal service swap of books (my number 5 for her library copy of number 6) and back again. I baulked today at spending $32.99 on book 7, so I've not entirely lost my senses. But how long will I hold out?

This is what has occupied me for the past 2 weeks, to the detriment of all interruptions (work, mothering, vacuuming): Charlaine Harris' "Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries". It's a humiliating admission, but began innocently enough with K bringing the first 2 books home from the US. P and I have been watching the HBO series "True Blood" on Foxtel, and loving the dirty white trash deep South vibe and nutty vampire plot. Book 1 of this series (9 books strong and still coming) is the plot of the entire first season of True Blood, and it's doubly engaging working out what the TV people decided to change (introducing a sassy black girlfriend and a fabulously camp black chef/drug dealer - recognise a theme, here?). Sookie is a telepathic waitress in a deep South bar, who falls for a vampire for the blessed relief of not being able to hear his thoughts, and his dead-cool sexual magnetism. It's 2 years since vampires came out of the closet (coffin?) and en...

It's odd that a blog read by no-one is still a burdensome responsibility. Here's an odd book read in May: 'The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation', futher subtitled 'Volume I: The Pox Party', by M T Anderson. What a title. The back blurb is enthusiastic but uncommunicative: "A tremendous read" - Nicholas Tucker, TES (what's TES?). I read the first page or so in Kinokuniya and came away with the impression that it was a fantasy borrowing its aesthetics and idiom from the 1800s. It's not. This is a book about slavery in Boston just before the Revolutionary War, human scientific experimentation, about racism and child abuse. A boy and his mother are raised and educated in a bizarre Scientific Society in an extended experiment to resolve the truth or otherwise of Negro intelligence. It was an odd read because for most of the book I was reading it as wonky fantasy with a Gothic tone, not political parable (parable? more a ti...