So last night's post about the blues was sort of accidental. I had intended to write about what I listen to when I read. For years I was the sort of person who could read anywhere, regardless of what was going on around me. In university, when reading suddenly became important to my future (in terms of my career, I mean; I'm a book critic—as in, reviewer—now, but I once wanted to teach university-level English Literature and work as an academic critic/theorist), I lost the ability to read in the same room as someone watching television. And then I couldn't read while listening to music with lyrics. And then I couldn't read while listening to any sort of music.

Most of that has passed, and I can once again listen to music while I read, although anything too heavy or uptempo, or with complicated lyrics I like to get lost in, is still a no-go. It's as though they occupy the same space in my brain as whatever it is I'm reading.

But anyway, I thought I'd give you a brief list of some albums I like to listen to when I read (my total "Reading" playlist is 1,983 songs, or approximately 6 days of continuous listening, so I won't be including it all), and if you like you can make suggestions for your own additions in the comments.

• Various Artists - In the Mood For Love Soundtrack
• Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - What Is Free to a Good Home?
• Alpha - Pepper
• Various Artists - Cinematic: Classic Film Music Remixed
• Cliff Martinez - Solaris Soundtrack
• Kronos Quartet - Pieces of Africa
• Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
• Alexandre Desplat - Birth Soundtrack
• Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
• Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Superwolf
• Esthero - We R In Need Of A Musical Revolution
• Headless Heroes - The Silence of Love
• José González - In Our Nature
• Barbara Morgenstern - Nichts Muss
• Masha Qrella - Unsolved Remains
• Massive Attack - Mezzanine
• Shugo Tokumaru - Night Piece
• Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul
• True Widow - True Widow
• Warpaint - Exquisite Corpse
• The London Haydn Quartet - Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 20
• Auryn Quartet - String Quartets Op. 76, nos. 1 - 6 (Haydn)
• Hesperion XXI cond. Jordi Savall - Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805): Fandango, Sinfonie & Musica Notturna di Madrid
• Various Artists - Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World Soundtrack
• Vangelis - Blade Runner Soundtrack (Extended Bootleg Version)

Again, I'd love to hear your recommendations in the comments.

It's no secret that I'm a huge blues fan. An argument could be made that the blues, as a genre, is at the core of all modern Western popular music, from jazz, rock 'n' roll, and country, right up to dubstep and digital hardcore. But that's not why I love it. There are so many things about it that appeal to me it's hard to know where to start. It's a music that has remained vital, emotionally and spiritually, for more than a century, maintaining both a strong connection to its roots and originating forms, and at the same time embracing new styles and techniques. Charlie Patton, who died in 1934 somewhere in his forties (nobody knows for sure how old he was), could rise from the dead and would be able to hear catl or The Black Keys and not only understand their music, but recognize it as his own.

The prevailing stereotype, which derives largely from '60s revivalist fans, is that it is a music of hardship and despair, sounding all too often like a cheap knockoff of Muddy Waters' spectacular "Mannish Boy" (a song full of raw sexual energy and the irony of a grown man gently mocking the näiveté of his younger, more cocksure self, and an answer song to Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man," itself written in response to Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man"). These stereotypes certainly ring true in particular corners of the blues world, but only if one listens uncritically.

The blues is also a music of spiritual revelation, of race and class struggles, of love and sex and a whisky-throated howl from the back of a juke-joint on a hot Saturday night. It is also a music of honesty and reflection. Rock 'n' roll, the most famous of the blues' bastard-children (and really, originally just a name made up to trick white people into buying R&B records), is about ego. Rock 'n' roll cries out, look how great I am, and says I love you because you are beautiful, because you're perfect, and sometimes, I can't believe you would hurt me. The blues won't tell you these lies. The blues understands atonement. For every blues song saying you've done me wrong, there is one that says I know that I've done wrong. It asks for forgiveness, knowing it doesn't deserve any. The blues says you aren't that pretty, but neither am I; you can be spiteful and I can be cruel, but I love you anyway, and I'm asking you to love me too. The blues knows you aren't perfect, and it doesn't give a shit, as long as you tell the truth, even when it's hard. Maybe especially when it's hard. The blues is honest, and it's raw.

If you know the blues mostly from artists like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, then I'm about to blow your mind. They are great performers, well-liked and respected for good reason. But they are slick and polished in a way that I think doesn't reflect the core of the genre, or the power it can really have. Last year a friend of mine asked me to put together a small sampler of blues songs, to give her a sense of the genre. I wound up making a five-disc, one hundred song collection, mostly of country blues (but also some proto-blues, blues-punk, and even rock 'n' roll), that I think is a good introduction to what the blues can really be. That shows its raw side, its love of strong drink and causing trouble and licking sweat from its partner's neck. I called it Drinking, Fighting, and Fucking: Lessons in the Real Folk Blues. I can't distribute it here, because that would be illegal, but I'm going to give you the playlist, so you can assemble it yourself.

This is important music, and I hope you'll seek it out.

Disc One

1. Rosie - C.B. And Axe Gang
2. Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues - Skip James
3. Ain't Gonna Study War No More - Lead Belly
4. Evil Blues - Mance Lipscomb
5. Down The Dirt Road Blues - Charlie Patton
6. Dry Land Blues - Furry Lewis & Frank Stokes
7. Stop Breakin' Down Blues - Robert Johnson
8. Shake 'Em On Down - Bukka White
9. Three Women Blues - Blind Willie McTell
10. Catfish Blues - Jack Owens & Bud Spires
11. I Got Mine - Furry Lewis & Frank Stokes
12. The Panama Limited - Bukka White
13. When I Lay My Burden Down - Mississippi Fred McDowell
14. C & A Blues - Big Bill Broonzy
15. It Hurts Me Too - Tampa Red
16. Drop Down Mama - Sleepy John Estes
17. I'm A Steady Rollin' Man - Robert Johnson
18. When Can I Change My Clothes? - Bukka White
19. Motherless Children - Felix Dukes, Mississippi Fred McDowell
20. Furry's Blues - Furry Lewis & Frank Stokes
21. Cross Cut Saw Blues - Tony Hollins
22. Working Man Blues - Sleepy John Estes
23. You Can't Get Stuff No More - Blind Willie McTell
24. I Am In The Heavenly Way - Bukka White
25. Me And The Devil Blues - Robert Johson
26. Midnight Special - Lead Belly

Disc Two

1. Jesus on the Mainline - Jame Shorty, Viola James & church congregation
2. Baby, Please Don't Go - Mississippi Fred McDowell
3. A to Z Blues - Blind Willie McTell
4. The Atlanta Special - Bukka White
5. Sweet Blood Call - Louisiana Red
6. Suffer - Jimmy McCracklin
7. Catfish Blues - R.L. Burnside
8. I Love You (Solo) - Asie Payton
9. Motherless Children Have A Hard Time - Blind Willie McTell
10. Goin' Down to the River - Mississippi Fred McDowell, Fanny Davis & Miles Pratcher
11. Down in the Alley - Big Bill Broonzy
12. Sissy Man - Josh White (As Pinewood Tom)
13. Shake 'Em On Down - Mississippi Fred McDowell
14. Boogie Chillen - John Lee Hooker
15. Hoochie Coochie Man - Muddy Waters
16. Mama Talk To Your Daughter - J.B. Lenoir
17. Messin' With the Kid - Earl Hooker & Junior Wells
18. Big Boss Man - Jimmy Reed
19. Killing Floor - Howlin' Wolf
20. Dust My Broom - Elmore James
21. Bring It To Jerome - Bo Diddley
22. Prison Bars All Around Me - Earl Hooker & Junior Wells
23. Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters

Disc Three

1. Nobody's Fault But Mine - Mance Lipscomb
2. Black Mattie - Robert Belfour
3. Standing in My Doorway Crying - Jessie Mae Hemphill
4. Peaches - R.L. Burnside
5. It Must Have Been the Devil - Jack Owens and Bud Spires
6. You Got to Move - Mississippi Fred McDowell
7. Please Tell Me You Love Me - Asie Payton
8. If You Like Fat Women - CeDell Davis
9. You Better Run - Junior Kimbrough & The Soul Blues Boys
10. I Found Out - Nathaniel Mayer
11. Jumper Hangin' on the Line - R.L. Burnside
12. She Asked Me So I Told Her - T-Model Ford
13. Done Got Old - Heartless Bastards
14. Teardrop - Magic Slim
15. I Got My Eyes On You - Robert Belfour
16. Have Mercy on Me - The Black Keys
17. Burning Hell - Canned Heat & John Lee Hooker

Disc Four

1. Back to the Bridge - Asie Payton
2. Keep Your Hands Off Her - Junior Kimbrough
3. Bad Luck City - R.L. Burnside
4. When The Lights Go Out - The Black Keys
5. Breaking My Heart - Robert Belfour
6. Feel Good Babe - Frank Frost
7. Pucker Up Buttercup - Paul Jones
8. Sail On - T-Model Ford
9. Boogie Chillen No. 2 - Canned Heat & John Lee Hooker
10. Modern Times - The Black Keys
11. Ride Like Hell - Big Sugar
12. Grind It Down - catl
13. Chicken Dog - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
14. Devil is on His Way - Joe Buck Yourself
15. The Criminal Inside Me - R.L. Burnside
16. Workin' Man's Soul - catl

Disc Five

1. Travelling Riverside Blues - Led Zeppelin
2. Memo From Turner - The Rolling Stones
3. Shake It Baby - John Lee Hooker
4. Boom Boom - The Animals
5. Groundhog Day - Big Sugar
6. Ole Man Trouble - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
7. Happy Wanderer - Chad Parks and The Near Death Experience
8. I Got Mine - The Black Keys
9. Skull Ring - Big Sugar
10. The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair - Led Zeppelin
11. Oh Death - catl
12. Blues X Man - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
13. Over the Hill - R.L. Burnside
14. Norene - Robert Belfour
15. Why Don't You Give It To Me - Nathaniel Mayer
16. Empty Head - Big Sugar
17. My Mind Is Ramblin' - The Black Keys
18. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues - Chris Thomas King

I've been reading The Children's Book recently, and came across a passage that struck me as important. If you want to understand A.S. Byatt's work, not the whole of it, of course (post title notwithstanding), but the catalyst, the detonator, the idea that acts as the prime mover, you'd do well to think very hard about this passage.

All you need to know in advance is that the book takes place in early Edwardian England, and that Patty Dace, Arthur Dobbin, and Rev. Frank Mallett have decide to organize a lecture series, and are meeting to discuss the topic and potential lecturers.

She put on her spectacles, and said to Frank that they should perhaps find a title for a series. Dobbin said he thought they should find exciting speakers first, and then make up a title. Although Dobbin had been shy and ill-at-ease at Todefright he felt in retrospect that he had been privileged and delighted to meet the glittering folk in their fancy dress. He wanted to hear them again — Humphry and Olive, Toby Youlgreave and August Steyning, the anarchists and the London professor who worked with Professor Galton on human statistics and heredity. He said that he had heard some very interesting ideas about folklore and ancient customs whilst in Andreden. Maybe she could think of those.

Miss Dace said she was interested more in change. She wanted lectures on new things, the New Life, the New Woman, new forms of art and democracy. And religion, she said, looking bravely at Frank.

Frank sipped his tea and said thoughtfully that in fact there was only an apparent contradiction. For many of the new things looked back to very old things for their strength. The theosophists looked back to the wisdom of Tibetan masters, for instance. William Morris's socialism looked back to mediaeval guilds and communities. Edward Carpenter's ideas about shedding the stultifying respectability of Victorian family life looked back also, to human beings living in harmony with nature, as natural creatures. And the same was true of the vegetarians and anti-vivisectionists, they required a wholesome respect for natural animal life, as it was before technical civilisation. In the arts too, Benedict Fludd, for instance, wanted to return to the ancient craft of the single potter, and to find the lost red glazes, the Turkish Iznik, the Chinese sang-de-boeuf. The Society for Psychical Research had rediscovered an old spirit world, and lost primitive powers of human communication. Old superstitions might furnish new spiritual understanding. Even the New Woman, he said, venturing a half-joke, sought freedom from whalebone and laces in Rational Dress but also in free-flowing mediaeval gowns. Women's work in the world appeared to be new, but in the old times abbesses had wielded power and governed communities, as principals of colleges now did. Maybe all steps into the future drew strength from a searching gaze into the deep past. He would almost dare to propose himself as a lecturer on this theme.

I'm a newcomer to the CBS legal drama The Good Wife, now in its third season. I've spent the last day and a half watching the first season from my sick bed. It was a combination of things that made me finally give in, despite the fact that a new network legal drama wasn't particularly high up on my priorities. People whose opinions I respect say good things about the show, and then I saw some really great things said about it on PBS's excellent recent documentary, America in Prime Time, so here we are. The premise is simple: Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) has to return to the law in order to support her family after her philandering husband, Peter (played by Law & Order veteran Chris Noth), an Illinois state's attorney, is disbarred and jailed for a sex/corruption scandal. Structurally, the show is divided into two slightly overlapping major elements. First, the main plot, which follows Alicia Florrick as she tries to balance the aftermath of a very public humiliation with the workload of being a junior associate and being a single mother of two, and second, the Case of the Week format common to nearly every courtroom drama ever to grace American television.

The cast is very strong. Julianna Margulies gives a surprisingly subtle performance that's more about cumulative effects than individual scenes. She's best with small expressions in scenes with a sense of stillness, but she also manages to go between genuinely tender and brutally cold without appearing inconsistent or in any way out of character. I haven't seen a lot of her work, but this is the best performance she's given of those I have seen.

Chris Noth doesn't have a lot to do, and Josh Charles (as Will Gardner, one of the named partners at Alicia's firm) plays a variation of the same character he's done in everything since Sports Night. It's not a bad character, but it would be nice to see something new from him. Christine Baranski's portrayal of Diane Lockhart (another of the named partners) is exceptional, in part because despite being cast as a rich, powerful woman (a common role for her), she easily sidesteps any potential accusations of typecasting by giving a really warm performance, one that's strikingly different from the borderline parodic ones she's given in comedic versions of that role in the past. Relative newcomer Archie Panjabi (who I know best as Maya from the original UK series Life on Mars) is also great as investigator Kalinda Sharma. She is particularly excellent at keeping a subplot about the question of her sexuality from overwhelming her character. The part is written very well, but an actress not on her game could easily wind up wielding that aspect of the character like a cudgel, which would be the absolute wrong way to play her. Alan Cumming is just Alan Cumming with the volume turned down a bit, and it works fine.

The show also uses an excellent array of quality character actors, people like David Paymer, Michael Boatman, Peter Riegert, Peter Gerety (who most will know from The Wire, but I liked him better in Homicide: Life on the Street), and personal favourites Joe Morton, Carrie Preston, Amy Acker, and Martha Plimpton (and of course Gillian Jacobs makes an appearance in the pilot).

The ongoing plot about Alicia, her career, and her husband that makes up half the structure of the show, is unique and exceptional, focusing not, as one might expect, on the political ups and downs of the prominent public figure Peter Florrick (you can catch Kelsey Grammar in the new series Boss if you want that), but on her balancing act. One could also argue that it's a show about balancing private and public spaces, but those spaces commingle significantly after Peter is released from prison, and we are offered glimpses of his life and career through cracks in the door and shots over the shoulder. The information accumulates over the course of the season, and what happened to Peter and how he's responding gradually becomes clear, but we still see it primarily through how people treat Alicia on the job. It almost seems like the early episodes can't seem to decide whether or not they're actually about Alicia, or if they're just about Peter as seen through Alicia's life, like drawing a figure by filling in the negative space. I say almost, because the writers use it as a way to push her towards establishing her own agency, and by the end of the season, The Good Wife is unquestionably about Alicia, almost as though it took twenty-three episodes for the writers to convince both the audience and Alicia herself that the show really should be about her.

If I were to have any complaints about the main plotline, it's with some of the children. Zach Florrick's unusual technical prowess is a little too much like "kids these days" hand-waving, while his girlfriend Becca's (not unrealistic) aggressive sexuality just seems like one plot point too many.

The Case of the Week element of the show is a bit more problematic. On the one hand it's the primary vehicle by which Alicia establishes her new sense of self (and how they sneak in all those great supporting actors), but there's nothing new there in terms of a network legal drama. I've seen these cases before, I've seen the legal trickery and the research and the late nights with empty pizza boxes and those cool folded cardboard cartons of Chinese food that you never see in the real world. I've seen the awkward opening statements and the love/hate relationships between opposing counsel. I have seen it all a million times before, and it's not even self-aware about it like Boston Legal (an unbelievably brilliant show, despite its problems). Eventually one case began to blur into another, and they started to lose their sense of urgency. I can't help but wonder if they were only included at the network's request.

Since my case of the plague (or rather this nasty head cold) doesn't show any signs of abating, I'll probably move on to the opening episodes of season two tomorrow. It is my hope that the main plotline will continue to be strong, and the kinks in the Case of the Week format will iron themselves out.

I don't do resolutions. Not because it's a cliché; I sometimes think those are all right. Rather it's because I just don't ever stick to them. Things happen, blah blah blah. I could give you excuses, but that's how things wind up going. So, inspired by Adrienne's post (and obviously aping her post title) I'm going to say a few words about what I hope the new year has in store.

First of all, I'm going to get a new job. This really isn't optional, since I've just been freelancing since August (and I'm definitely going to be doing more of that; I've already been doing some freelance editing this year, and I've been back from the holidays for less than a week), but at this point anyway, it's not paying the bills. I'm trying to keep optimistic, but this is honestly going to be simultaneously the hardest and the most important part of my new year, both in terms of the task itself, and keeping my spirits up.

I want to read more poetry. And I've already started! I'm nearly seventy pages into Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems. I've said for a long time that he's my favourite poet, but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case. I really admire his work, and "The Idea of Order at Key West" is my favourite poem of all time, but maybe that's not enough. I'm going to start with books of poetry already in my collection (the Stevens is a textbook left over from a Modern American Literature course I took with Stan Fogel as an undergrad), which means poets like Anne Sexton, E.E. Cummings, Anne Carson, Don McKay, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, David Donnell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a bunch of others who show up in various anthologies. I admire poetry as a form, but I don't feel like I understand it very well, particularly contemporary poetry, and I find that I either connect instantly and profoundly with a poem, or it bores me and I want to move on. I don't know if this is normal, but it's starting to bother me, and I want to work on it this year.

I want to start writing and blogging more, particularly about television. I've said things like this before, and it would be easy to say "and this time, I really mean it," but I've been a serious fan of television as a medium my whole life, and at this point I think I have a strong enough grasp of what's going on and the necessary critical language to write about it seriously. It would be nice if I could get paid for it, but I've come to realize that if I've got something to say I should just say it regardless. I plan to start with a series of posts about the amazing sitcom Community—and before you say anything, I've already got drafts started. As for blogging about other things, I also have drafts of book reviews and other posts, I just need to finish them. To be honest, the biggest obstacle is the stress of looking for work; it's difficult to concentrate on the writing I do for myself with that looming over my head. (I would also like to say that 2012 is the year I stop making excuses, but really, nobody keeps that resolution.)

This will surprise no one who knows me well, but I'm kind of a geek. I like Star Trek and Star Wars, video games, science fiction novels, anime, and roleplaying games (well, some). I own complete runs of Cerebus, Preacher, and The Sandman (or did before some folks borrowed some of the latter without returning them). Hell, I even got about a third of the way into writing my own tabletop RPG once. Yeah, that's right, I'm that guy. But over the years I've drifted away from those roots. I don't read as much SF/F as I used to, I haven't played an RPG in years, and I can't even remember the last time I watched a new anime series. The truth is, the deeper I got into "fandom," the more I found two equal but opposite impulses within the community extremely unappealing. The first was the impulse from some in the community to relentlessly nitpick every trivial little thing that was even a tiny bit inconsistent or outside their expectations—which goes beyond criticism and into entitlement—and the second was the impulse some have to go easy on people working in genre because it's been ghettoized for so long and "we're all in this together" (or some other sentimental nonsense the critic in me can't abide), which helps no one, as it gives us a false sense of the work. Anyway, neither of those impulses are representative of the fan community as a whole (and it's more a collection of related communities than a unified entity anyway), but they made me not want to be a part of it all the same. I got into James Joyce and art films, A.S. Byatt and The Wire, and for a long time didn't look back.

The thing is, you can't read a lot of contemporary literary fiction, or watch a lot of television and film—not even the art house versions of same—without seeing how they have been influenced by and intersect with what we talk about as genre work. I'm not ashamed of being a big nerdy goof. Long time readers will know that I've blogged extensively about William Gibson's books, for example, plus reviewed his last two for Quill & Quire, and even interviewed him for Canadian Notes & Queries; additionally most of my professional book reviews have been of books that straddle the line between genre work and "capital L" literature. But I never felt a kinship with the community, and drifted away in favour of other priorities. This year I want to change that. I spent most of December reading Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and now I've moved on to H.P. Lovecraft. I've also, almost clandestinely it feels like, been reading Raymond Chandler, Ian Rankin, Stieg Larsson, Elmore Leonard, Fred Vargas, Michael Dibdin, David Montrose, P.D. James, James M. Cain, and so on, and enjoyed pretty much all of them unequivocally. So I'm going to read a lot more genre fiction this year, and even try and see if I can connect a little with the community. We'll see how it goes. I may even write about some of it.

So that's a lot of rambling nonsense, but those are things that I hope will happen in the coming new year. As usual, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Please note that this review may include spoilers. As a general rule I do not share the SF/F community's aversion to that sort of thing (it quite frankly gets in the way of a critic being able to give a full and honest assessment), so I'm not going to be careful about it. This is your one and only warning.

If you're into media—any kind of media, be it books, music, film, whatever—there is a term you will eventually hear thrown around: crossover success. A crossover success is when a work or artist from one genre, say, a rapper, achieves success with the fans of another genre, like indie rockers, or even better, with mainstream audiences. Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are massive examples from the book world. Before King, horror had largely been relegated to the third tier of the genre fiction ghetto (although to be fair, aside from the big names it still sort of is), and Rowling probably did more to mainstream fantasy and kid-lit than anyone since C.S. Lewis. Most crossover successes are not that big, but they are pretty special things.

So with that in mind, I'm going to tell you two true things about Triptych. The first and most important thing is that it's a wonderful, complex novel in the traditions of Ursula K. Le Guin and Phyllis Gotlieb (the latter in kind of an oblique way), and it absolutely deserves considerable crossover success. The second thing is that it won't get it, and for the most ridiculous of reasons. It's not that the book deals frankly with difficult questions of sexuality to a degree that has the potential to shake-up mainstream audiences, though you'd be forgiven for thinking that. No, it's because it suffers from Porcupine's Quill Syndrome. You see, the Porcupine's Quill is a really amazing Canadian literary press (not Triptych's publisher, but they are notorious for this, so bear with me). They publish excellent books that deserve critical praise and popular attention, and they put them in the most off-putting, god-awful ugly, embarrassed-to-be-seen-on-the-subway-with-it covers you could possibly imagine. And Dragon Moon Press, who have clearly shown themselves to be excellent judges of what should go between those covers (by virtue of having published something as good as Triptych in the first place), have saddled Frey's book with a cover that conforms to just about everything mainstream audiences hate about SF book covers, implying so many of the stereotypes that make them think they don't like genre fiction in the first place that I can guarantee it will be enough to keep them away (because I have ignored books for the exact same reason, and I am a lot more SF-friendly than a great many of my mainstream literary-minded friends). As harsh as that sounds, I believe it to be the absolute truth. I encourage you to not be that person, because the book I'm about to tell you about deserves your attention.

Triptych takes its name from the relationship between the three main characters: Specialist Gwen Pierson, her partner Doctor Basil Grey, and Kalp, the alien who becomes the third in their aglunate (perhaps taken from agglutination, a term from biology that refers to a clump of cells usually bound together by a different kind of cell, its root being the Latin word for "glue"), which has its closest human analogue in the polygamous marriage, and is the primary social unit for Kalp's species. The book also has a three part structure, each (more or less) focusing on one of the main characters, with Kalp's being both the longest and the most engaging.

As is natural with stories involving time travel, events in Triptych don't always happen in the right order. It opens with Kalp's death, immediate and visceral. Frey does an excellent job of making the reader feel Basil's pain and shock at seeing Kalp killed in front of him, no easy feat given at that point we don't know—and therefore have no reason to care about—any of the characters. We then move almost immediately, via time machine, to Gwen's early childhood where she and Basil stop a murder and try to perform some emotional triage. At this point Triptych looks like it's being set up to be a thriller—an unusually emotionally aware thriller, but still. And then we get to Kalp.

The middle section of the book sees Kalp become the (third person limited) point of view character and Triptych suddenly stops resembling a thriller. Kalp and his people arrived on Earth as refugees, after their own planet was destroyed. Frey takes us through Kalp's culture shock expertly, using the alienness of his species' biology (which is where I see the Gotlieb)—particularly his unusual aural-sensitivity and a facial structure that makes recognizing and reproducing human visual cues difficult—to emphasize how similar, how recognizably human and familiar his situation is and what it does to him emotionally. Frey makes it impossible for the reader not to connect with Kalp, handily disproving all the stereotypes about SF being unable to do anything sophisticated with character. Even after opening with such a heavy emphasis on the thriller elements, Triptych is fundamentally about character. I wanted to spend a lot more time with Kalp, and it was genuinely heartbreaking when I came to his death the second time. Frey handles the thriller/time travel elements of the novel well, but her character work is so good I think that if she wanted to she could deliver an exceptional SF novel (or a novel in any genre she chooses, really) built on character alone.

Of course the aglunate and accompanying issues of sexuality are absolutely central to Triptych. Gwen and Basil are already partners when Kalp comes into their lives, and Frey is very delicate about how she works his curiosity and cultural norms into their world, until it becomes a natural part of that relationship. And for the most part it works. I say "for the most part," because it sometimes seems a little too smooth. Accepting sexuality as a spectrum, and polygamous (or other) relationships as being as valid as, and equal to, straight monogamous relationships doesn't necessarily move one's position on that spectrum, even though Frey is perfectly right about the pressures unexamined social structures put on how we see love. Gwen and Basil go through all the expected turmoil as they think about their position on that spectrum for perhaps the first time in their lives, realigning their expectations for themselves and their lives, but it sometimes seems too compressed a time frame, especially given how traumatized Gwen initially seems when Kalp makes his first timid, confused advances. Likewise with the speed that Kalp's people are accepted by governments and integrated into society; it seems overly optimistic to me (not because of his peoples' sexuality, but simply because paranoia and xenophobia seem like the default positions on the best of days, though they do get their fair share of bigots doing what bigots always do). The sex scenes themselves are very well done, though at times unsettling (if only because they are a bit outside my wheelhouse, as I kept picturing Kalp as a large blue cat or wolf with certain humanoid features, and that put him into uncanny valley territory, a combination that hits my creepiness button a little).

The thriller plot wraps up cleanly, although not as cleanly as it could have, which leads me to my only other issue with Triptych. For the most part, Frey's prose is quite good, and it is especially good when she's writing about Kalp. His voice (well, by proxy anyway) comes through with considerable sharpness and individuality. But when she's more focused on Gwen and Basil, specifically when writing about the violence that frames the story of their relationship, she is not always at her best. In the early days, pulp SF/F (I'm currently reading Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the '30s, but I have read quite extensively in early SF as well) leaned very heavily on modifiers to define its "style"—by which I mean using lots of adverbs and adjectives—and they still seem to show up in the prose of SF/F writers whose style otherwise eschews them, in the same way that detective novels still sometimes sprout overly-clever metaphors more than seventy years after Raymond Chandler published The Big Sleep, as if those things manifest on their own, a feature of the genre that asserts itself independent of the individual writer's will. Using three modifiers when one—or none—would do the job better just seems to be one of those things for SF/F writers. I find that when I encounter it I spend so much energy trying to parse how they all fit together that I can't always keep track of what's going on, and that happened to me one or two times at the beginning and end of Triptych, in particular during scenes of violence.

These are minor quibbles, though, and Triptych is definitely one of the strongest books I've read this year, and certainly one of the strongest SF novels I've read in quite some time. If there's an SF fan on your Christmas list, or even someone who isn't generally an SF fan but loves strong characters, Triptych would make them an excellent gift. While you're at it, pick one up for yourself.

Dear NBC:

I am a book critic by trade, but deep down, I'm also a TV person. I watch an enormous amount of television, and have since I was young. But I don't watch uncritically. I think TV has taken over from the movies as the place to go for the best in filmed entertainment, but aside from a handful of legacy programs, I have largely migrated from the shows created by over-the-air networks to those produced by cable channels. For a time I had given up on the sitcom entirely.

Community changed that. It's the smartest, funniest, most inspiring half-hour comedy that NBC—or any network—has produced since the demise of NewsRadio, and is single-handedly responsible for restoring my faith in the sitcom as a format where good work can be done, and where innovation can still happen.

The writing is stellar, the cast is the tightest ensemble on TV today, and the show is utterly fearless at the conceptual level. The end result is that Community is not only the best sitcom currently on television, but one of the best sitcoms in television history. Community's creators appear to love and understand the medium like no one else.

Nothing lasts forever, but Community has not reached the end of its run, in my opinion. The structure Dan Harmon and the others have set up has at least a fourth season left in it, and I believe they should be allowed to see it through. It may not be the highest rated show in its time slot, but it lends NBC considerable prestige, something that will help attract more talent, which in turn will lead to an audience willing to stick it out for the long-haul, and the advertising dollars that come with it.

I was tremendously disappointed to hear that Community was to be taken off the mid-season schedule. I think it's a mistake, and undermines NBC's own interest in reclaiming its place as the top network.

I would like to join my voice with the other fans who are calling for Community's swift return to television, and for its subsequent renewal for another season.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

August C. Bourré

A copy of this post was also emailed to the offices of NBC.

Some weeks ago I was at the Toronto launch for Robert J. Wiersema's sort-of memoir, Walk Like A Man. Because I know Rob in the let's-grab-a-beer kind of way, I was part of the entourage that wound up shuffling with him to some late night diner/bar combo down near The Esplanade, and there I found myself seated next to author Adrienne Kress. Kress, it turns out, is more fun than eight separate monkey barrels, and so I got her to write down the titles of her books so that I could look them up at the library. And look them up I did.

The obvious place for me to start was Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, as it's her first novel, and, based on the last page of the book, introduces characters that appear in her follow-up, Timothy and the Dragon's Gate. Now, I don't generally write about books for young people, not because I don't read them (though they are a long way from my primary reading material), nor because I don't enjoy them (I have enjoyed several in the last few years), but rather for the same reason I don't write about poems and books of poetry: I don't feel like I read enough of them, or understand them and the culture around them well enough, to offer anything like an informed opinion. I'm making an exception for Alex and the Ironic Gentleman because a) I liked it a lot, and b) I really enjoyed meeting Adrienne Kress, I think that if you can say something good (and genuine and honest and not at all sucking-up) about the cool things someone you've met or sort-of-know (ish?) has done, it's better to say it than not. So anyway.

Alex and the Ironic Gentlemen is about Alexandra Morningside, who is ten-and-a-half years old and lives above her uncle's doorknob shop. The novel opens as she is entering her sixth year at the Wigpowder-Steele Academy (the names in this book are great). Alex is smart, inquisitive, and capable, and she takes immediately to her new teacher, Mr. Underwood, who apart from being a bit charismatic, really engages with his students and teaches interesting and unusual things. He's also, it so happens, heir to a pirate fortune. When Alex's uncle is killed and Mr. Underwood kidnapped by a rival pirate after Underwood's treasure, Alex embarks on a quest to rescue him, boldly diving into a world reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland (in its quasi-episodic structure, and in Kress' use of clever, off-kilter almost-archetypes), but more about growing and trying things out in a world that is both modern and anachronistic, that is full of gomi (in the Gibsonian sense, "uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now-all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire"), than it is about standing firm in the face of Opium-trip fantasies as in Carroll's tales. Kress creates this world through a unique voice that blends British and North American dialects and structures in a way that's smart, clever (not the same thing!), and often belly-laugh funny.

There's a lot to be said about the plot, and about the consequences that come from not yet having learned the difference between attractive ideas and good ones, and about different ideas about what it means to be weak or strong (seriously, I could write a ton about the end of this book, but that would be giving things away), but mostly I'm going to focus on two of the peripheral, episodic bits that I quite liked.

First there's Lord Poppinjay, who runs a hotel in the middle of nowhere, and will be a figure familiar to anyone who's ever held a job, particularly one in the service industry. He's lit on the idea that his staff should perform "Mental Dictation" (Kress is quite fond of Capitalizing Important Things, and frankly so am I), ie. they should run his hotel by reading his mind. Alex sorts all this out with a craftier version of declaring the emperor, or in this case, Lord, has no clothes, but at the same time it winds up being a very entertaining send-up of what it can be like entering the work force, or being the boss, or even cooperating in any kind of endeavor where communicating expectations is key. Poppinjay is silly and over the top, but he means well, and the whole episode winds up resonating on so many levels, with implications about how children can experience the adult world, the demands of class, making decisions and dealing with others and blah blah blah there's just too many things that gobsmacked me with their rightness about Poppinjay and his hotel that there really isn't time to mention them all. Plus the bits with the fridge were very Douglas Adams.

And then there's the Daughters of the Founding Fathers' Preservation Society, which is remarkable in so many ways. The Society consists of a number of elderly ladies who are guardians of the town's one real historical treasure, the preserved home of Alistair Steele, philanthropist and all around good guy, but ancestor to the greedy folks who wound up causing all the piratical feuding in the first place. The Society figures prominently early on in Alex and the Ironic Gentlemen, as the Steele Estate is home to the treasure map indicating the whereabouts of the Wigpowder treasure, but after that they make only intermittent—but terrifyingly comic—appearances.

You see, there's this red velvet rope (is it velvet? Kress never says, but it is in my imagination), and Alex steps beyond it. This is a Big Deal. But here's the thing: you already knew it was a Big Deal. How could you not? Red ropes, velvet or otherwise, are signifiers of status and access and even agency that we learn to recognize at a very young age. They are the kind of archetypal boundaries we push as youngsters and respect with powerful rigidity as we get older. When we're kids it's daring to go past one, and generally speaking the worst thing that happens to us is that our parents are told to bring us into line, or we get the boot from wherever we are that needs red ropes. In themselves they are flimsy, completely ineffective obstacles, but they teach us to understand the nature of taboos and symbolic boundaries, and I think it's fair to say that along with respect, there may even be a few drops of fear attached to them for some of us. After all, as we get older they no longer just separate us from dusty libraries in homes preserved by a local Society, or corral us into the right theatre at the cinema, they also separate us from the wealthy, the famous, and the powerful. The consequences of crossing one of those red ropes without permission could be getting arrested, or even (if, say, Barack Obama were on the other side) getting shot. Red ropes mean serious business.

Alex crosses the rope, obviously, and it's an act with consequences. There are the silly ones, like the way the Society punishes her by making her hold a mug of water above her head (there is some genuine cruelty in the Society, but Kress' treatment of them is pitch-perfect in opening that up as an avenue for absurdity), but it's also a big factor in her quest to rescue Mr. Underwood, and people die in that enterprise (none of that is Alex's fault, really, but neither is she entirely blameless, and Kress does a really good job of exploring how responsibility and consequence are problems with solutions—our actions and intensions—that aren't always easy or clear or even clean, and in fact I wish more authors who write for adults would take some time to tease out those issues). There are so many things intertwined with the Society and that red rope. Authority doesn't separate good people from bad, symbols and boundaries are not absolute, but nor should they be addressed lightly, etc.

Anyway, I'm going on and on about things like growing and learning and all sorts of subtext and whatnot, perhaps a bit more than is proper (I really don't have a handle on the critical language to deal with books for young people), but I did see a lot of subtext. Alex and the Ironic Gentleman (the Ironic Gentleman is the name of (modern pirate) Steele's ship, and it turns out to be such a great name, and fans of Patrick O'Brian and other sea stories will find Kress' attention to nautical detail a pleasant surprise) is rich and dense, but it's also just super fun. I mean, yes, I found all these wonderful ideas in it that are about childhood and adults and so on, but it's not like they were wedged in there or even necessarily in there in a conscious way. Kress' first novel really is, first and foremost, a very entertaining adventure story that gets harder to put down the further into it you get. I've already got Timothy and the Dragon's Gate on hold at the library.

After a spurt of activity, vestige.org may be going dark again for a few weeks, and I thought I'd tell you why. First, there are health issues, and then there are job issues. Let's start with the health issues.

For years now I've been sick with a disease that I thought was Ulcerative Colitis. Recently I started seeing a new doctor who believes I have something far less severe. He ran some blood tests and scheduled some other things. So far all I've got are the results of the blood test, but he determined that I've had a severe vitamin B12 deficiency, probably for the better part of a decade, and that judging from my symptoms it's been getting worse recently. The side-effects of this deficiency include: severe fatigue, severe depression, forgetfullness, difficulty sleeping and focusing, and a bunch of similar things that have made doing anything other than my day job and a few (paid) freelance gigs all but impossible. I was napping twice a day, almost falling asleep at my desk at work, and even doing something simple like washing the dishes was so exhausting it would put me out of commission for days. The blog was not a priority in such a situation.

My doctor put me on 1000mcg (that's micrograms) of B12 per day, and I feel like a new man. I'm sleeping well for the first time in years, I have a full day's worth of energy, my moods have improved dramatically, it feels like a fog has lifted from my memory, and I can feel my thinking getting sharper and clearer every day. I feel stronger, more capable—hell, smarter—than I have since I was living in Sudbury in 2004. This is why there's been such a flurry of activity on the blog lately. I suddenly not only have goals and ambitions, I also find myself with the energy and confidence to achieve them.

Which leads me to the job issue, and why the blog will probably be silent again for a while despite all this good news about my health. I got laid off on Thursday. It wasn't just me; two-thirds of the staff where I work were laid off. There're no hard feelings about this: my boss had some tough decisions to make, and the circumstances were entirely beyond his control. Nobody's happy, but my split from my employer is entirely amicable. I still believe in the project, and I wish them all kinds of success in the future, and I get the impression they feel just as much good will towards me. But I'm still out of a job in a little over a month, and I don't make enough money to put the job hunt off by even a day. All my energy will be going into finding work, be it a full-time gig or more freelance writing assignments. The blog is important to me, but paying my rent is even more important.

The good news is that thanks to my doctor, I now feel like I'm able to take on this challenge, and maybe even find something that will help me get closer to achieving loftier goals than simply paying the rent. Thanks for hanging on all this time; I'm optimistic that I'll be back to posting in short order.

David, the narrator of Five Days Apart, is described on the dust jacket as "bright but tongue-tied," but I think that's a little optimistic. For most of the first half of the book it seems more like David has some sort of disorder, like a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome. His awkwardness isn't just outward facing; it's internalized as depression and paranoia. David meets Camille at a party and falls for her pretty much instantly, but he doesn't have the confidence or the social skills to engage with her, so he asks his charismatic friend Alex to help break the ice. The ice is broken, but not for David, and Alex and Camille begin what turns out to be the first serious romantic relationship of Alex's life. A devastated David can't cope, and breaks off the friendship, throwing himself into his work.

So here's the thing: Alex getting involved with Camille is kind of a dick move, because when your best friend asks you for help, especially help of that nature, you either help or don't help. What you absolutely do not do, is date the woman your best friend is interested in. Total dick move. But at the same time, David is unreasonably jealous and possessive, especially since he's not willing to make any sort of an effort to connect with the woman he wants a relationship with. He has a right to feel hurt (not because he has a right to her affection, but because he has a right to his friend's loyalty), but ending the friendship and retreating so far into himself just feels childish.

The whole structure of the novel seems to hinge on feeling sympathy for David, but in the first half of the novel he mostly just comes across as creepy. When Alex and Camille start to have problems he does his best to undermine their relationship without looking like that's what he's doing. David goes on a trip, and he has some experiences that lead to personal revelations that he seems to process as though under water. After that he becomes easier to relate to, but the decisions he makes aren't really any better. He does eventually get to know Camille for who she is, which is certainly progress from keeping her at a distance and behaving like he has a right to her affection. It's a weird assessment to make, but here's how Five Days Apart breaks down: the opening of the book is slow, irritating, and dull, the middle isn't much better, and then miraculously the ending is really, really strong, with subtle and authentic emotional inquiry. It was just too little, too late.