A short one.
Thanks to one of my readers’ gift of an Amazon voucher, I’m currently reading Chris Wooding’s excellent The Braided Path, which collects his three novels set in the Oriental-tinged, sort-of-China-by-way-of-Japan continent of Saramyr.
And I must say I’m very pleased with the story so far – the mix of fantasy elements, the Oriental flavor of the setting and the pace are just great.
Good old-fashioned fun, with a lot of new twists.
The only drawback is the weight of the omnibus volume – I guess I should have picked the ebook edition.
Just this – I thought I should let you guys know.
Category Archives: Books
The cup, the plough and the sword
One of the straightforward, instant side-effects of reading Christopher C. Beckwith’s excellent Empires of the Silk Road is, one sort of starts thinking we are all at least a little Indo-Europeans/Euro-Asians in the end.
While the approach might initially seem rambling to the uneducated (such as myself), in the long run the Princeton University Press book builds data upon data, creating a very organic, concise but complete picture of the comings and goings of our Indo-European ancestors in the last… make it ten thousand years.
Now, while I like the later part very much as it provides tons of information which I might use to tighten up the revision of my non-fiction ebook about the Silk Road, I must admit the first chapter, with its catalogue of creation myths, really got me hooked.
There is this very consistent myth, found almost everywhere from China to the Mediterranean and Western Europe, which goes more or less like this… Continue reading
China, Japan, Korea – a (very) quick introduction
I promised a short review of Corey Walden’s The Effect Of China On Korea And Japan In Pre-Modern Asia, a short (14 pages) Kindle text that was free until a few days ago, and now goes for about one buck.
The ebook is essentially a long article describing, well, the effect(s) of China on Korea and Japan in Pre-Modern Asia.
As an introductory text on the topic, this is fine – but I find it ultimately very lightweight.
It would be nice as a magazine piece, or as the introductory chapter of a far longer and detailed text.
It’s a good starting point, it can be read in one hour.
Is it worth a buck?
YMMV.
Sure some pointers to further readings would have been greatly appreciated
Prizes and Books
OK, I’ll brag, but not much.
In 2012 I took part in an independent short story competition, called Hydropunk, The Drowned Century.
The competition was for stories set somewhere in a drowned version of the 20th century – high tides, sunken cities, sea monsters.
My story, called Tempi Interessanti (Interesting Times) is set in a Venice-like Shanghai of the 1940s, and features nightclub singing, Triad gangsters, a certain tentacled god and his fish-men cultists.
It was great fun to write, and it won the second prize in the competition – a quite pleasant result, considering the first prize was won by Alessandro Forlani, Italy’s most awarded young SF writer.
The story will be out in 2013 in the Hydropunk ebook anthology, together with the other winners and runner-ups.
In the meantime, I cashed in the Amazon gift voucher which was part of the prize. Continue reading
A quick link to the Internet Archive repository for the electronic version of Harold Lamb’s biography of Genghiz Kahn, Genghis Kahn the Emperor of all Men.
Lamb was a superb author of historical adventure, and a great biographer.
The Internet Archive allows download of the book in various formats (ePub, Moby, PDF etc)
The Road to Oxiana
Today (well, ok, yesterday) the postman delivered a second-hand copy of Robert Byron‘s The Road to Oxiana, the 1980s Picador paperback edition, the one with the Bruce Chatwin intro.
I paid it about one euro.
It goes to replace my old Picador Edition, bought in a fancy Turin bookstore in the late 80s, and later… ehm, misplaced, by a friend who borrowed it.
It also replaces my rather expensive Italian translation, Adelphi edition, which a former girlfriend decided to keep when we parted company (together with a lot of other stuff, now that I think about it).
And the used Oxiana book goes to re-form the pair with Byron’s other book – First Russia, Then Tibet – the Penguin books edition which I bought all those years ago together with the misplaced book. Continue reading
Characters – a Handbook
I’ll admit it – I’m a sucker for a good book about writing.
I find writing manuals and books about the craft hugely entertaining.
There’s always something good to be learned, always some bit that can spark a whole new line of thought.
In this sense, my latest catch is exactly the sort of book about writing I love.
The Art of Character, by David Corbett (Penguin, 2013), is both an entertaining read, and the sort of book I’ll go back to in the future, and which will have me thinking as I read, write, watch movies.
This book hits deep.
Continue reading
Karavansara 