THE HUNGER GAMES, BY SUZANNE COLLINS

My God. I just finished THE HUNGER GAMES, and I am completely in awe of this writer. I thought it was another youth phenomenon like the TWILIGHT series, but it's so much more complex. Katniss Everdeen would eat Bella for breakfast, if the rules of the GAMES didn't prevent cannibalism. She's a fantastic heroine, strong, so often frightened but fighting not to show it, hungry all the time, an Olympic-level archer whose battle skills are the only things which will keep her alive.

Astonishing book, amazing writing.
It's what SURVIVOR would be if contestants were really eliminated--and all of them were children. COLLINS understands our sick morbid fascination with reality TV, and writes it large in letters thirty feet tall and dripping with blood. The games...
I sneaked ahead to read a blurb on the second book CATCHING FIRE, and the reviewer said that it ratcheted up the tension from the first. And the first one was a tiny little rubber-band wrist-slap? It's a fight to the death! A mandatory nationwide TV spectacle fought by teens! I can't wait for the sequel and it scares me silly to imagine it.

LAW AND THE MULTIVERSE, JAMES DAILY AND RYAN DAVIDSON

READ THIS BLOG! Lawyers James Daily and Ryan Davidson, who were interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered today, have created the blog "LAW AND THE MULTIVERSE: Superheroes, supervillains, and the law" to discuss what kind of laws might govern a superpower multiverse. For example, would BATMAN be liable under child abuse laws for endangering ROBIN? No, because both BATMAN and ROBIN are highly trained and experienced, and BATMAN prevents ROBIN from working in really dangerous situations. Does he have to pay ROBIN? No, because he doesn't take payment himself.

And in SMALLVILLE, CLARK gets into trouble when he throws a baddo onto the top of a sheriff's cruiser. He's sentenced to community service. Now the jerk wants to sue CLARK's family for damages. CLARK uses his X-ray vision to see that the "victim" takes off his brace--he's faking it. How they they get that information to the court? In SMALLVILLE this is an important plot point, but Daily and Davidson parse that concern. It is very difficult to fake injuries, they claim, because a person who complains of injury has to be examined by a competent medical examiner.

There are posts on Superhero estate settlement, and whether Superman's heat vision is protected by the Second Amendment, and how "finders-keepers" laws might work for those who get their superpowers from an object (Green Lantern and others.) Very fun.

HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT DESERVED IT, NON-FICTION, BY MIKE BROWN

Astronomer Mike Brown's novel is awe-inspiring and very funny. His research took him years to complete, and not all of it could be automated. He had to use a jeweler's loupe to study star maps, just like the astronomers a century ago. He finally found a world larger than Pluto, in the Kuiper belt, which is way out beyond Pluto's orbit, and called it Xena. Then he discovered that there may be several hundred objects of Pluto's size out there and decided that they couldn't all be planets.

What's baffling to me is exactly why Pluto and Xena had it coming. Brown and other astronomers simply objected to a solar system which contained too many planets. They decreed that "planet" means "one of a small number of large important things in our solar system." This does not make sense to me, and I'm unclear how the definition will be used in the new star systems we'll discover.

Many pages of the book record the sleep-deprived Brown's obsessive notations on his newborn daughter Lilah. It's been argued that if a female astronomer emoted so much about her baby, her professional reputation would suffer. Double standard, even if the Lilah posts are cute.

NIGHT AT THE OPERATION, BY JEFF COHEN, A DOUBLE FEATURE MYSTERY

In a continuing effort to find new humor writers, I checked out NIGHT. This is another cozy mystery series where the unlikely detective is a guy who owns an old movie theater which only shows comedies. He rides everywhere on his bicycle and must manipulate friends for car rides. I'm not quite sure why I'm not warming up to ELLIOT FREED, but I found this book annoying. The supporting characters, especially his theater employees, are quite endearing, but superfluous to the plot. FREED'S ex-wife, Dr. Sharon, is missing and a suspect in the murder of one of her patients. FREED and Sharon are so close that they still celebrate their wedding anniversary. His tender feelings for her are a huge motivation for solving the case. I've known many divorced couples, both professionally and closer to home, and I've never known any like this. Not happening for me.

I don't know why I can better believe in a Victorian housekeeper surreptitiously solving crimes for her Scotland Yard employer than I can in a down-on-his-luck English major who owns a movie theater, but I do. I might try another DOUBLE FEATURE mystery, but maybe not.

THE GHOST AND MRS. JEFFRIES, BY EMILY BRIGHTWELL

I'm well into this cozy Victorian mystery, and it's quite fun. Mrs. Jeffries is the housekeeper for the harassed Inspector Whitherspoon. He hates murder cases, but always has good luck in solving them, even if he can't quite remember how he did it. That's because the real detective is Mrs. Jeffries, who organizes all the servants into a crime-solving team. Then she feeds Inspector Witherspoon all the clues so that he can solve the mystery. It's her challenge to help him in such a subtle way he doesn't suspect a thing. It's a bright and funny concept.

If this works out well, there's a whole series ahead. EMILY BRIGHTWELL has written over twenty MRS JEFFRIES. My only concern is that they might begin to get a little silly. I'll keep you posted.

I'VE GOT A BAD FEELING

I've been noting how often the "bad feeling" phrase crops up--I can find it in most books. I knew I had heard in in Star Wars, but I wasn't aware that it had been spoken at least six times in Episode IV: A New Hope (the original Star Wars), and had become a running joke. I was thinking of:
"I have a very bad feeling about this."
―Luke Skywalker, when the Millennium Falcon approaches the Death Star
but had forgotten it had been said earlier:
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
―Han Solo, before the walls of the trash compactor start to close in

The latest place I noted it was in GHOST OF A CHANCE, on p.53, where Happy, the depressed telepath, says, "I've got a bad feeling," when the trio enter the haunted London Underground. Melody the tough tech nut replies, "You've always got a bad feeling. It's your standard default pattern. You probably had a bad feeling as you left the womb behind and headed for the light."

I thought I was really on to something no one else has noted, and then found out there's a website. I've got a bad feeling about that.

RELIEF TIME: HUMOR

As mentioned, I'm leaving SFF behind for a minute.* I really don't like horror and need a break. I checked out several humor books at the library and a couple of mysteries which seem to be light-hearted. More anon.

*Which won't stop me from mentioning CHRISTOPHER MOORE again, if your horror quotient isn't filled. One of the funniest, weirdest, authors I've ever encountered, it's typical for him to blend humor, terror, and very moving moments in the same novel, not to say in the same page even. I love him, in small doses.

NOT RECOMMENDED: A ghost of a chance, by SIMON GREEN

Oh, rats. I hate it when a book doesn't pan out, as it did for me with GHOST. It's about the ghost-hunting trio I mentioned, but it goes very quickly into real horror, not just urban fantasy. There is a definite line, even if both involve fighting monsters in a gritty present-day setting. This is a fill-the-London-Underground-with-the-blood-of-tortured-commuters type of book. Also, the main viewpoint character, JC, leaves his team alone for huge stretches of the novel, which is frustrating. SIMON GREEN'S Nightside novels have some, okay, a fair amount, of horror, too, but John Taylor is a fierce knight who stands by you and chases the terrors away.

WICKED, MUSICAL

I saw WICKED this afternoon, and can't find enough superlatives for it. It's the unexpectedly moving story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. She wasn't always wicked--she was green, ugly and smart, and Glinda, the Good Witch, was the clueless and selfish blond type. They became enemies--or was it friends? No spoilers--just go see it when you have a chance. Or buy the DVD. It's good. I mean wicked.

It's been out since 2003, so I'm a little late getting to it; seeing it as a stage production was splendid.

SERVICE WITH A SMILE, PG WODEHOUSE

My Wodehouse group is meeting this week, and this book provides a great break. I actually can't summarize the plot because Wodehouse himself says his books are like musicals without the music.

It's set at Blandings, the stately home of absent-minded Lord Emsworth, (Clarence) who loves his enormous pig, the Empress of Blandings. There are impostors, ("Blandings has impostors like other castles have mice")and star-crossed lovers. Two imperious old competitors of Emsworth are trying to steal the Empress, and Lady Constance Keeble, Lord Emsworth's bossiest sister, is trying to run his life. The usual, in the Blandings stories.

But Lord Emsworth's old friend, Fred Twistleton, is here to sort things out, in his own special way, by introducing the impostor to Blandings in the first place. His job is to re-unite lovers, provide them with financial add, foil the would-be-Empress thieves, and sort out the blackmailing secretary and bossy sister.

It's Wodehouse's genius that another outing with the usual suspects is still fresh and fun. And re-readable decades after I first found him. Did you really need to know the outcome?

THE HIDDEN FAMILIES SERIES, BY CHARLES STROSS

Charles Stross is another SFF author with several series to his name. THE ATROCITY FILES stars office workers in a banal cubicle-hell office whose job is corralling horrors, but The HIDDEN FAMILIES series is more fun.

In the first book,THE FAMILY TRADE, Miriam, an investigative journalist, looks at an old locket and is transported into a parallel world of apparently medieval culture—where guys on horses have machine guns. Miriam has been lost to this world because her mother escaped to the United States. Now that she's back, she is valued as a broodmare for more "world-walkers." The alternate world's economy comes from drug-smuggling, and when Miriam bravely tries to modernize it, the aristocracy plops her into a gilded prison.

Tension ramps up with a bloody civil war, and then it's learned that a faction has spirited away US backpack nukes. Now Miriam is fighting for the lives of the family she never knew.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT HAD IT COMING, NON-FICTION, BY MIKE BROWN

Today NPR interviewed astronomer Mike Brown, whose discovery almost came to be the 10th planet. It was bigger than Pluto, but new observations showed that hundreds more similar-sized objects could be found. Brown realized that he couldn't let his discovery become a planet. Instead, he campaigned successfully to have Pluto demoted from planetary status. This has become a new verb: when you're demoted or fired, you're "plutoed."

I love popular astronomy books, and I've put this on hold at the library. In the meantime, let's applaud Mike Brown (or more likely his publisher) for the coolest title of the year.

DESIGNING THE PERFECT PET, National Geographic Article

A long-running Russian genetics experiment (okay, hang on), has investigated animal domestication. Dmitri Belyaev chose the never-domesticated silver fox and bred each generation's least aggressive pups. In four generations, the foxes showed dog-like behavior of wanting to be picked up, wagging tails, and licking faces. Changes in color also came about, because the adrenal gland, which controls aggressiveness, also controls melanin.

It appears that primitive man, too busy with survival, did not domesticate wolves. Wolves who crept closer to refuse piles to feed, and their less aggressive pups, may have helped domesticate themselves. Fascinating reading, and video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-GHmuumAw&feature=player_detailpage

GHOST OF A CHANCE, DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE, BY SIMON GREEN

Is there no end to Simon Green's creativity? He shoots, he scores with one-off novel DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE, a fantasy about an ordinary man who follows a beautiful woman through a door into a magical realm and suddenly finds he's the focal point in the battle for the fate of the world. It's a little too weird in the end when a vicious character is unexpectedly revealed as a good guy, but still a wonderful tale.

In GHOST OF A CHANCE, which I'm still reading, he launches a trio of ghost hunters who destroy evil hauntings. In the first chapter, an ordinary grocery-store parking lot is the locus for an ancient horror. Believably menacing shopping carts! I love his great characters, J.C., the self-important but courageous leader of the team; Melody, who's comfortable only with the massive amounts of technology she brings to the hunt, and Happy, the nearly deranged telepath, who's frightened all the time by what he can see, and is only mellowed by his numerous drugs.

Um, I've got to lay off Simon Green for a while after this. He goes into real horror here, and actually has horror scenes pretty much in every book. I have to read some pages peeking through my fingers.