The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

[violent-rabbit.livejournal.com]

My 1st book:

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi


( Synopsis: (taken straight from Bloomsbury web site) )

I found it to be a wonderfully magical book. It is, at its core, a meditation on growing up biracial. It reminded me of Pan's labyrinth and Alice in wonderland as much of the fantasy elements had a sinister element to them. The fantastical elements were also used as vehicles for observations on post colonialism and have a wonderful ambiguity as to their concrete nature. (it is late I'm probably not making sense sry)

It seems to be out of print so I offer my copy to anyone who is interested because it is a excellent read and I highly recommend it.

"Shorts" #1 - Reza Shah-Kazemi, introduction to My Mercy Encompasses All

[waelisc.livejournal.com]

Full title is My Mercy Encompasses All: The Koran's Teachings on Compassion, Peace, & Love. Shoemaker Hoard, 2007.

The main body of this book is selected verses of the Koran, which I'm halfway through. The portion I'm addressing here is the introduction by Reza Shah-Kazemi, a scholar and founding editor of the Islamic World Report. I've done a bit of reading on the history of Islam before, but never on the theology of Islam. The 25-page introduction has very much drawn me in to wanting to read more. One of the reflections that struck me most was: "The boundaries separating oneself from all others are rendered transparent in the light of the intrinsic oneness of humanity. And this unity of humanity is itself a reflection of the oneness of God."

It mentions in the notes that Shah-Kazemi is also the author of (among other publications) The Other in the Light of the One: The Universality of the Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue. I'm going to look for that soon.

10)Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Several other people have read Minister Faust's The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad for this community, so I need to figure out how to say something different from them.

Last month, I finished reading David Copperfield. That's the sort of gigantic book that dominates the way you look at reading for a long time afterward. My writing has taken on Dickensian undertones. And in trying to make sense of The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, I found myself returning again and again to David's fundamental question: Whether I am the hero of my own story.

That problem is Hamza Senesert's in a nutshell. Along with his fellow Coyote King Yehat, Hamza works a low-paying menial job and quests after fulfillment and entertainment. Faust makes it clear that the pair are far too good for the position they're in, but what the Coyote Kings lack is not success, but agency. Their movement through life is not in their own control, and they cannot figure out how to seize control. It's the problem of David earlier in David Copperfield, too.

The process of discovery involves strange pan-global magical traditions, which isn't exactly my cup of tea, but Faust makes the journey lots of fun. He gives you a variety of unique viewpoint characters and gives them each a powerful voice.

Hamza and Yehat are big SF nerds, with Hamza more a media guy, loving Star Trek and Babylon 5, while Yehat glories in the classic hard SF writers. But they're not just lone nerds. Other characters might have a quiet passion for 50s disaster movies, or even just a barely hidden disdain for the Star Wars movies they watched as children. But as things go crazy, everyone reaches into that store of knowledge for how to cope. It's an incredibly simple way to make an SF novel feel way more realistic. I've long wondered why more writers don't use it