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The Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari, speaking to the Archchancellors Mustrum Ridcully of Unseen University and Henry (former Dean, UU) of Brazeneck College. "... when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme b...

I can't believe Gaiman is a Scientologist -- or at least a reformed one -- if there is such a thing. It's a fact that I'm now, not going to forget, but will forgive, and try not to think about. Read a lengthy article on the man, published in the New Yorker, five days from now (link below). He's still one of my favourite authors. in reference to: "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. . . . I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman." - Neil Gaiman's fantasies : The New Yorker ( view on Google Sidewiki )

China Miéville continues to amaze me with his imagination. I had only recently completed the Iron Council , and didn't know which book to take off my shelf to read next. Iron Council left me on such a fantastic high, I didn't want to risk coming down fast with a disappointment. So for a couple of weeks, I didn't pick up a book. Then unintended trip to the local used bookstore by my work a couple of weeks ago, presented me with a new Miéville book: The City and the City . I started reading it that same day, on the way home, and I couldn't put it down. While I don't have much time for pleasure reading, I stole time and even pulled a couple of late nights on Friday and Saturday to find out where Miéville was taking me. I'll refrain from delving too much into the premise of the book, because I think part of the pleasure was the journey Miéville takes the reader on. If you'd like a well written review, head over to The Mumpsimus . I will tell you howeve...

Liberty in the Age of Terror: A Defence of Civil Society and Enlightenment Values , by A.C. Grayling. I haven't read the book, but it's certainly of interest, although, like such books, it will already be speaking to the converted. Like so many things, I wonder if we're not continuing the polarization of ideas and positions. Grayling takes on the British government's invasion of civil rights and the public's acquiescing of the intrusion. And besides, even now many supposedly sensible people lazily believe that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. If a few Koran- toting chaps with beards and funny names get banged up in Guantánamo or have to put up with a "control order" to stay in Britain, so what? It is this complacency that Mr Grayling, with passion and elegance, takes on. He describes the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide argument as "one of the most seductive betrayals of liberty" imaginable. The assumption behind it is...

That's it, Amazon will no longer be getting any of my money. I will no longer use the online shop for anything until it changes a policy that now considers books with homosexual characters -- or positively deal with homosexuality -- as adult books , no different from pornography. It becomes another form of censorship, when an international bookseller purposely skews data or feed its clients ignorance, instead of keeping them informed. I conducted a non-scientific analysis of Amazon's treatment of homosexuality, by comparing how Amazon UK, Canada and the US treats homosexuality. The findings: Amazon UK Search term: homosexuality Results: Can Homosexuality be Healed? by Francis MacNutt - 1-star rating; A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality by Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Nicolosi - 1-star rating; A Natural History of Homosexuality by Dr. Francis Mark Mondimore MD - 4.5-star rating; The Greeks And Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality In Ancient Greece...

The following comes courtesy of Cecil's Facebook page, where he shared a link to April Winchell's post of Obama's potty mouth . Apparently, Obama read the audio version of Dreams From My Father , in which he quotes Ray, a fellow classmate who could swear up a storm. The post has audio clips of Obama quoting Ray as saying, This shit's getting way too complicated for me Ignorant motherfuckers That guy ain't shit. Sorry ass motherfucker Sure, you can have my number baby! You ain't my bitch, nigga. Samuel Jackson, eat your heart out!

I finished reading Charles de Lint 's the Onion Girl , a few weeks ago. It's only been a few months since I've discovered de Lint, and I've already read a number of his books. The Onion Girl is by far, my favourite, so far, with the Blue Girl following closely behind. The Onion Girl was not an easy read. It started out depressing, and didn't stop. By one third through the book, I was expecting things to start to turn around for the main character, Jilly Coppercorn, who, having survived childhood abuse, must now contend with being crippled by a hit and run, and being pursued by her younger sister, who's bent for revenge for being abandoned by Jilly to the abusive brother when she was a child. There is further exploration of de Lint's fantasy world, the Dreamlands or Manidò-akì -- a world just as real as ours, where everything ever imagined exists, and where we journey to in our sleep -- and those who know the doorways, can journey to, wide awake. ...

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow 's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (SCTSLT) -- completed as I was tussled and tossed on the TTC ride home tonight. That's how I pretty much read the book, reserving the morning rides to a pretense of sleep or the occasional article from the Economist , and the evening rides home to reading a novel -- SCTSLT being the latest off the piles that surround me in my office. I'm catching up to my reading -- I swear! This is the first Doctorow novel I've read. The sheer lunacy of the cover description compelled me to pick it up from BMV. Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur in contemporary Toronto who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in a bohemian neighborhood. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings -- wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan un...

My wife and I were at a small, local bookstore yesterday, specializing in African, African-American, West Indian, and even a little on North American natives. A Different Booklist is a small bookstore, carrying both fiction and non-fiction, with a healthy selection of children's books, and a smattering of related videos and magazines. You'll definitely not find these books in your local libraries in Toronto -- nor will you have much luck at the bigger bookstores. It's a small operation, just behind Honest Ed's , and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for something different. If you're in that area, you may want to have lunch at the Roti Palace , coffee at the Future Bakery , catch a movie at the Bloor Cinema , and drop by BMV for books on the cheap as well.

In honour of his service to literature, Terry Pratchett will receive a knighthood from her royal poo-poo-ness in the new year. Way to go, Sir Terry! Folks, There are times when the phrase "Absolutely, totally, gobsmackingly, mindbogglingly amazed" just doesn't cover it, but I find that in the Queen's New Year Honours list I am now a Knight, for services to literature. This means that fans, while not calling me Sir, must now refrain from throwing things. Regrettably, no sword is included in the box. :) What more can a modest Knight say? Happy New Year, which on Discworld is the Year of the Pensive Hare.

Before I read the book, I had seen the documentary based on it -- twice -- and it was every bit as effective -- disturbing, really -- on second viewing. The book, being read a couple of years after seeing the documentary, was chilling. I'm writing about the Corporation by Joel Bakan -- a book that many will regard as being anti-business, anti-globalization -- but I don't see it that way. The book is hardly anti-business. It's hardly anti-anything. It's actually a book that calls on us to exercise the epitomizes of our civil society: democracy, and social responsibility. Both of these however, run directly against the interests of a monster of our own creation: the corporation. Take some of these corporate misdeeds and ask yourself why it happened. Enron 's collapse. Monsanto 's terminator seeds. Blackwater 's creation of a mercenary army. Halliburton 's bilking of the US public funds. How did it come to be that people, working for a business...

I finished Terry Pratchett 's The Nation last night -- weeks after my wife had finished it, but not long after I had flipped it open on the bus, on the way to work one morning. Pratchett's books tend to be devoured in my house -- my wife, my daughters and me, where the addiction first got started. My wife and I picked up the Nation at Waterstone's on Sauchiehall Street, in Glasgow, when we were on holidays in Scotland. I think we got it before its North American release. We usually have to wait until after Christmas to read a new Pratchett book, since it's usually bought as a Christmas present for someone. Not this time around, however. The Nation is a departure of sorts for Pratchett. It's not a Discworld novel. It's set in a new world, very much like our own, but slightly askew. I'm not sure if the novel was intended for young readers, as it featured young protagonists -- but Pratchett doesn't do well writing for a young audience. If he...

I recently completed my second Charles de Lint novel: Someplace To Be Flying -- first published in 1998. I'm now going to have to find and read every de Lint novel. The man is an amazing writer. De Lint is a contemporary fantasy author, with his stories set in modern, urban settings. Someplace To Be Flying is set in his fictional city of Newford, and it's like every major North American city -- expect, around the corner, in shadows, the places hidden in plain site, magic is happening. In Someplace To Be Flying , that magic comes in the form of the First People -- the animal people -- those that were here before the world began; that saw the coming the humans and the changes they brought in the world. De Lint pays homage to Native American mythology in Someplace To Be Flying . He deftly crafts his prose around mythology that most of us will not be familiar with, but will seem more real than the overused Judeo-Christian mythology. The novel is quite an introspection, co...

I recently finished my first Charles de Lint novel -- The Blue Girl . I'm glad I had picked it up -- sometime ago, and just stashed it in the pile of books I had every intention to read -- eventually, someday. That someday came along recently, and I finished the book way too fast. It was a pleasure to read. Charles de Lint writes fantasy novels, in an urban, contemporary setting, weaving magic into the everyday world you and I wander through without a second thought. The Blue Girl is set in the fictional North American city of Newford, which I place in Canada, since de Lint lives in Ottawa. The protagonists are two 17-year-old high school girls, Maxine and Imogene, who meet for the first time in their final year of high school. Both are outsiders, not fitting into the cool kids crowd -- because they're too smart, and weird. Maxine is the smart one, cloistered by her mother and endures the bullying any nerd would be familiar with. Imogene is the weird one, new to Redd...

I just finished reading Janna Levin 's How the Universe Got It's Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space . As the book's title alludes, Levin is a believer in a finite universe, with all the implications, even as she declares herself agnostic on the plausibility of free will. Levin supports her assertions of a finite universe, with the machinations of mathematics -- specifically, the branch describing topology . Levin is a theoretical astrophysicist. The actual content dealing with topology and supporting the argument for a finite universe would actually fit into just one chapter of the book's 200-pages -- and it presented nothing revolutionary, nothing new -- at least to my popsci understanding of the topic. Levin wrote for popsci audience. [Speaking of the CMB] This archaeological remnant of the big bang had journeyed from the farthest reaches of the cosmos that we can access and carries information about these earliest times, and so encodes all kinds of...

I was introduced to the Vinyl Cafe a couple of years ago by Kevin, when we were both on the same team. Kevin is a mainframe programmer and a bit of a film and book buff. If I recall correctly, Kevin used to listen to Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe on CBC radio , and one Christmas, was looking for a particular Vinyl Cafe story to read over a Christmas gathering. I helped Kevin out by visiting Amazon.com and peering between the covers to gleam the story. I suspect Kevin's Christmas went a tad better than Dave's in the story -- I'm quite sure Kevin wasn't drunk and didn't take a turkey to a hotel. Stuart McLean has published many of his Vinyl Cafe stories collected in a few volumes over the years. What better way to enjoy the quirky Canadiana that it is his characters -- sort of Bob and Doug, but without the beer and hoser phenom. I had nearly forgotten about the Vinyl Cafe , until my wife and I happened to be in a strip mall in Gander, last fall. We were k...

After reading Un Lun Dun , I took the other China Miéville novel I had off the shelf, and dived into it, reading it as I lurched every-which-way on the daily bus rides. King Rat was Miéville's debut fantasy novel, published in 1998 and it is quite unlike Un Lun Dun . To begin with, King Rat is not written for younger readers. It is dark retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story -- wherein many rats are drowned and children are kidnapped. In the Rat King , the Piper is the antagonist. He's evil incarnate, with the ability to make anything he wishes, dance to his tune, and do his bidding. Back in Hamelin, he drowned the rats that had invested the village, except the King, who managed to escape. Through time, he's tortured other souls, including Anansi , king of the spiders, and Loplop, king of the birds. In modern day London, King Rat, Anansi and Loplop are plotting revenge on the Piper, with a secret weapon, King Rat's son, the half-man, half-rat, Saul Gar...

I recently finished Un Lun Dun , by China Miéville . It's been a while since I sat down to read a book of fiction, and since I was going to be spending hours in a flight to China, I decided to take a book along to fill the void. I had picked up Un Lun Dun sometime ago, and its been sitting on my bookshelf, calling to me. Un Lun Dun is a fantasy novel, set in an alternate London -- unLondon, as it were. Miéville sets out to write an unfantasy novel. The setup has been used many times by fantasy authors. There's usually a prophecy of an outsider who travels to a far off land to save it from a menace. There is a quest. There are trials that will test the mettle of the hero. Lessons will be learned; sacrifices will be made. The hero will be fair -- the blonde-haired, blue-eyed type. The villain will be evil. The hero will triumph just in time, and there will be a happy ending. Forget the usual however. In Un Lun Dun , the hero is a heroine, and is not the one that h...

The New York Times is running a piece on Susan Jacoby and her latest book, The Age of American Unreason . In her book, Jacoby despairs on the anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism of Americans. Not only are Americans ignorant of "essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters." So who's to blame? Jacoby points to the education system -- with Americans spending more years in school, but learning less; and, religious fundamentalism. Sounds like a book Americans need to read. Update: Feb. 19, 2008 Susan Jacoby writes of the Dumbing of America in the Washington Post. Check it out.

The US National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine has just published Science, Evolution, and Creationism -- a book "designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom." In the book , the Academy makes it quite clear that evolution is central to modern biology, yet continues to be challenged in the classroom by proponents of creationism and intelligent design. The Academy states in the book that science and religion can coexist, and present different ways of understanding the world. This book is an update from previous versions published in 1984 and 1999. The Academy is trying to appeal to religious moderates in the face of rising religious fundamentalism in the US and educate the masses of uneducated in the US (aka: the general public). In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based...