A few years ago my dad sent me a copy of David Weber's On Basilisk Station, a paperback version which was being sold cheap as a promotion for a later book in the series featuring the same characters. He and I (as well as a good chunk of science fiction readers) are fans of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, which feature several members of the Vorkosigan family as main characters, but mostly Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. My dad Joe wondered if Weber would be as successful in writing his female protagonist Honor Harrington as Bujold was in writing her male protagonist. I read On Basilisk Station and ranked it good enough to stay on the shelf but not nearly as interesting as the first Vorkosigan book I'd read (Barrayar, when it was being serialized in Analog magazine and I was so mad that I'd have to go home from my summer visit before the final portion was published). I had no urge to go and read the rest of the books about Honor Harrington.

I think it was only a few months ago that I spotted a later book in the Harrington series on the shelves of my friends Ben and Jodi. (I assumed it was Ben's because I never had any idea Jodi was a science fiction reader, but it turns out it's hers.) It was something I could read while Jon and I visited their place to catsit, but once I got started I wanted to keep going. Without pause. I think I just about did so; it didn't take more than two or three days to finish. The fact that the majority of the 10 novels in the series have some play on "Honor" in their titles makes it really difficult to keep the names straight; I had to look up the fact that it was Echoes of Honor, the eighth novel in the series. But after reading that one (and having skipped the intervening six books made no difference), in which Honor escapes from an enemy prison planet, I DID want to go straight to the library and check out all they had.

Unfortunately, our branch didn't have the whole series and I was about to go on a trip, so I didn't have time to have them sent from other branches. I took the four they had, one short story collection with stories set at different points in the series chronology, Changer of Worlds and the novels The Honor of the Queen (Book 2), Field of Dishonor (Book 4), and War of Honor (Book 10). All but the last and thickest one went with me on the trip; it wasn't until I got home that I discovered the CD-ROM in an envelope attached to the endpapers of War of Honor -- which just happened to contain the text of all 10 novels and 3 short story collections published so far, as well as several other novels and collections also published by Baen. In rich text format, HTML, and a couple of PDA formats. All this is apparently also available on Baen's web site, but a) I didn't know that and b) it's a lot faster to copy all that from a disk.

One of the things I like about this series and that I particularly noticed in War of Honor is that Weber writes both sides of the story. Indeed, all sides of the story, which frequently requires insight into the people high in the governments of at least three multi-planet nations, citizens of those nations' views on their governments and those of other nations, and even of non-human species. And the vast majority of them are portrayed as well-intentioned. There are certainly some evildoers who are flat-out amoral, but most of the characters really believe that they are working for the right cause (even when the reader, having knowledge the character doesn't, can see that they are doing exactly opposite). It may be adventure fiction, even space opera, but there are very few flat characters who only exist to provide enemies for the protagonist. Throughout all the series that I've read, the complexity of real life with real consequences for any action applies. (This may be why the most recent four novels, which delve a little more into political situations as Honor's rank and influence increase, are about three times the average length of the earlier ones.) The parallels with real life incidents are not always subtle (in case the government of the People's Republic of Haven after the coup against the Legislaturalists doesn't remind the reader of the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France, Haven's new leader is named "Rob Pierre" and his next-in-command is "Saint-Just") but perhaps remembering our history will help us analyze the events of real life.

But the core of the series is the symbolically named Honor, a member of the (space) Navy of the Star Kingdom of Manticore who takes a book or two before she comes across as a relatively normal human being. She is a wonderful leader and commander no matter what the situation is, but frankly, seeing her anger at a foreign planet's sexism and grief over the death of a mentor in The Honor of the Queen was the first place in the series chronology where the character herself really resonated with me. The books are generally written so that references are explained and reading them in series chronology is not necessary, so I would probably recommend leaving On Basilisk Station for later and starting with one of the other books.

Would my dad think these books are good as the Vorkosigan ones? Maybe. Despite both series' being military/adventure science fiction, Honor's position is always a lot more "within the system" than that of Miles Vorkosigan and his other family members. There's also a lot more technology and actual shooting war in the Harrington books; the Vorkosigans seem to do much more one-on-one conflicts with their enemies on Barrayar, a planet still working itself back up from years of being cut off from the rest of the universe, and even when visiting elsewhere. I note that Baen did not include any of the Vorkosigan books on the CD that came with War of Honor even though they do publish them -- perhaps they don't think there's much audience overlap, perhaps they just preferred to promote single books and shorter series on the disc, or perhaps Bujold didn't give permission to have her books made available this way. Nonetheless, both series are definitely worth reading.

I read a book recently that was a biography of two people; a modern history of one country; a family saga of three generations of love, break-up, and their repercussions; and a political mystery/thriller. How can all that go into one book? It's The Devil That Danced On The Water: A Daughter's Quest by Aminatta Forna, whose parents were Dr. Mohamed Forna, former finance minister of the African country of Sierra Leone, and his Scottish first wife. The book tells the story of her father's life and her own childhood (in and out of Sierra Leone, depending on the danger to her family from changing regimes). It is both a child's-eye view of having a father who is successively a doctor, a politician, and a political prisoner, and an adult's search for corroboration of her fragmented memories and information she never knew on the trial leading to her father's execution on trumped-up charges. The book makes clear the tangled politics of the decades since Sierra Leone's independence and the complex web of extended family, as well as brief jaunts into European and African racism and even the differences in children's stories. Overall, I found it so absorbing I had trouble putting it down to get other things done.

Your average American can't find, say, Yemen, on a map and probably forgot where Kuwait was about six months after the first Gulf War. Courtesy of Dr. ap Zylstra in Arts & Humanities Honors, I know a lot more geography but still suffer the standard American history education with regard to the Middle East (nothing later than ancient Sumeria in grade school; one college course that got up to Alexander the Great). The National Geographic Society's 2002 book Cradle & Crucible: History & Faith in the Middle East is a great introduction to geography, history, culture and religion for the region, making it a lot easier to understand whatever treaty, organization, or bombing is in the news at any one moment. (And given the publication date, this is probably why it was written and published, although one could say that about any time in the last 25 years.)

The history portion of the book is an easy-to-read overview of more than nine millennia, getting more detailed as it gets closer to the present, so the reader doesn't feel like they're getting flooded in a procession of ancient empires at the expense of events with a more direct influence on today's problems. Even if you have some knowledge of European history (and the Islamic world's role in preserving knowledge during Europe's Dark Ages), seeing everything from the Crusades to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire from the Arab and Muslim points of view (and remembering that the two are not identical groups) really makes you think of familiar history in a different way. I couldn't read the section on European powers' "mandates" to divide up the former Ottoman territory into new countries after World War I without thinking "Wow, the people actually living there got really screwed over!" -- and that's before Israel as a state even became an issue.

The book ends with a chapter each on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, discussing both the basic theology of each religion and the cultural experience of its practitioners living in the Middle East. (Being a Christian there certainly differs from being one in the United States, not only because of being a minority but because different sects of Christianity are prevalent there. However, the book points out the great differences between Judaism in Israel and Judaism overseas.) Since Islam is the majority in the Middle East, that chapter has the most political and cultural explanation attached, but members of all these faiths have to decide what degree of power religion is to hold in their lives and what power it should or should not hold in their governments. The book does not endorse extremism, but it helps you understand where it's coming from without being a difficult read.

The "sword & sorcery" subgenre of fantasy doesn't usually hold my attention. I got through the Lord of the Rings books, but just barely, and was never tempted to reread them. There are a few books that sort of fall into the category that I like -- T.H. White's The Once and Future King, Tamora Pierce's books in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, the Immortals Quartet, and the Protector of the Small Quartet (all chroncling one kingdom starting with Alanna: The First Adventure), and Diane Duane's Tales of the Five books (starting with The Door Into Fire. All of these are set in medieval-style kingdoms, though only White's bears any resemblance to the actual Middle Ages of our world. And they all tell stories of people and how they grow and change, with quests, battles, magical beasts, and spells only important in that they propel those changes. That is what makes them readable not just once but over and over to me, and what sets them apart from the other "sword & sworcery" I've read.

Lois McMaster Bujold has done the same in science fiction for quite a long time -- her Vorkosigan books, from the meeting of Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan amongs interplanetary conflict in Shards of Honor to their son Miles Naismith Vorkosigan's continued work as an Imperial Auditor in the most recent, Diplomatic Immunity, focus on people despite the very exciting "space opera" events that befall them. It should be no surprise that a recent venture into fantasy, The Curse of Chalion grabs the reader the same way. Though it is the will of the gods driving the plot rather than the march of technology in Curse, the politics of governments in the medieval-style setting is just as complex as in the Vorkosigan books' multi-planet empires, and the people just as human. Vorkosigan fans will not be disappointed in this book as some of them (myself included) may have been in her earlier fantasy work The Spirit Ring. I would also like to mention that the pentatheistic theology of the people in Curse makes far more sense without excessive explanation than the worship systems of any fantasy universe I've encountered, even the ones listed above as my favorites in the genre. (This may not be completely realistic, judging by the complexity of Greek mythology or any other polytheistic system I've read about, but it clicks into place immediately and provides a firm foundation for the events of the story.) I would definitely read more stories set in this universe.

For a few years around 1990 I loved all of Anne Rice's work. I picked up Interview with the Vampire partially because Slash of Guns 'n Roses said it was his favorite book, and partially because a high school classmate recommended it. I remember immersing myself in The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned over Thanksgiving break 1989. Non-Vampire Chronicles books Cry to Heaven and The Feast of All Saints fascinated me too, despite their lack of supernatural beings. And when I started college in 1991, my group of friends pretty much passed around the Beauty trilogy -- whether it was good or not, it was explicit!

But The Tale of the Body Thief bored me, and Memnoch the Devil wasn't even finishable. So I never bothered to pick up new Vampire books as they appeared. I thought Rice might have gotten back into readability with The Witching Hour, which I really like, but I can't really remember what happens in its sequel Lasher even though I own it, and I'm prety sure I sold Taltos to the used bookstore with The Mummy (as well as giving away the Beauty trilogy once I had access to better erotica).

Nonetheless, I had enough good memories of Anne Rice universes to pick up Blackwood Farm off the library's new books shelf and read the inside front cover. My curiosity was piqued by seeing that it claimed to combine the Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches series, so I checked it out. And once I started, I was as hooked as I was thirteen and a half years ago on the Vampire books. Really, there are three storylines in this book: the vampires, the Mayfairs, and the story of Quinn Blackwood and his family. The Blackwoods on their rural Louisiana estate are very different from the relatively urban Mayfairs of New Orleans, so their history doesn't feel like a retread of The Witching Hour. But Rice's strength seems to be in complex stories that span decades and generations, and the union of the different series gives her the opportunity to be even more complex. I've got to agree with the Amazon.com reviewer who says "Blackwood Farm has an unusual flaw: it isn't long enough." The ending is awfully sudden and leaves you wanting more, but I'd rather have that situation than end up disappointed in the book I've already read. I'm rather looking forward to the upcoming Blood Canticle -- not with the excitement of a kid waiting for the new Harry Potter, given the rather iffy summary given on Amazon, but curiosity to see if she can stay at this high level for a while.

It all depends on what you consider heavy metal music, and if you even think there's any heavy metal around anymore. Two books in the bookstores at the moment take quite different views of what constitutes metal, and which one you prefer will depend on how you define the genre. (Which makes me wonder what people with no prior exposure to metal will think -- too bad I can't think of any friends of mine who have lived under a rock that long.)

David Konow's Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal and Ian Christe's Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal start out in the same place: Black Sabbath as the progenitors of metal, with some help from Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. But Konow takes a much broader view of metal -- his 1970s include a lot more Kiss and Aerosmith than Christe's; his 1980s focus much more on bands that got MTV play during the daylight hours as well as the Headbanger's Ball on Saturday nights, while Christe prefers the bands most people only knew from reading the black t-shirts of their high school's headbanger clique. So Bang Your Head deals with the end of the most high-profile days of glam metal, while in many ways the relatively underground scene Christe chronicles had nothing to lose from changing fashions and the grunge explosion.

For me, Bang Your Head was a lot more fun to read -- it tells the amusing stories of the bands' attempts to life the wildest rockstar lives possible. One of the Amazon reviews calls it a "puff piece" for this reason, but seeing the details of the bands' lives is what many fans like (hence the popularity of such shoes as MTV's "Cribs" where the camera tours famous people's houses, and of course "The Osbournes" which enthralls people who never bought an Ozzy Osbourne album in their lives). Sound of the Beast loves to categorize -- power metal, death metal, nu metal, etc. -- and for those with eclectic tastes like me, putting everything into its own little box gets annoying pretty quickly. "OK, I own three out of ten albums on his list of definitive '70s progenitors, but only one of the list of paradigmatic New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands" -- well, the list titles aren't really so pompous, but they still made me feel like I was supposed to measure up to his standards or be considered a "poser." Remembering the comment in Chuck Klosterman's metal-fan memoir Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota about the surprising popularity of certain non-metal artists, like the B-52's, among his head-banging friends, I'm sure I can't be alone in wanting to ignore the habit of sticking a label on every group (then and now).

Metal music is escape -- the kind of escape you prefer is up to you. If you want to escape fluff and find something that holds up to even some non-fans' critical analysis, you'll probably prefer Sound of the Beast. If you want some energetic fun, you'd do better with Bang Your Head. However, if you just want to know about the evolution of the music that has held so many people (and particularly disenchanted young people, and those who remember being one) in thrall for decades, you might want to set aside the time to look through both.

I used to read Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero a lot as a teenager, mostly when I was depressed. When life didn't seem to matter to me, I felt in tune with Clay, the narrator, an 18-year-old coming home to Los Angeles after his first semester at college. Disconnected, nihilistic, willing to go out on a limb. The rich, wild, not-old-enough-to-drink cocaine users of the book had very little to do with my nerdy life, two hours a day on a school bus to the IB magnet school -- I was living vicariously through the characters, while some of my classmates were going out and drinking, fucking, whatever, stuff I only knew from bits of overheard gossip. But there was a sort of envy in me of people not saddled with shyness or a sense of responsibility; their lack of care about anything seemed kinda glamorous. They were doing something, not sitting at home with a science-fiction novel.

Now, I'm 30. I pulled the paperback off the shelf a few days ago -- it's been years since I last read it. Now, I'm no one's picture of "settled down into adult responsibility." I work part-time, sleep late the rest of the days, and cohabit with my boyfriend in an apartment full of Simpsons and Powerpuff Girls toys never touched by physical children. Nonetheless, Less Than Zero hit me in a new way -- as a chronicle of boredom. Constant boredom. Hanging out in restaurants and movie theaters waiting for your drug dealer to show up. Sitting around alone, watching TV. Going to parties that don't turn out to be very good. One gets the feeling that Clay isn't even bothering to look for something interesting -- he's just passing the time because he can't get rid of it any other way. It's not that the things he does couldn't be fun -- but the interactions and conversations transcribed are superficial and don't seem to bring people closer. Some of this is the narrative style -- Clay's story of accompanying his friend Julian, who's working as a prostitute to pay his drug bill, on a trick and having to go throw up in the bathroom, is given in the same tone as he talks about Christmas with his family or having a one-night stand. We don't know why Julian ran up such a drug debt, but when Clay has to do some lines of cocaine to get through lunch with his dad, and Clay's younger sisters steal his cocaine if he doesn't lock his door, Julian's problem seems like only a slight difference of degree. None of these people are seeking extensive thrills; they just want to bring their moods from negative to average. (The movie based on the book is a very different story and makes Clay an average guy with some feelings.) I don't find the book's characters at all glamorous anymore -- I think they need to find something to do with their lives, some people they can actually get close to, and maybe some anti-depressants. (And that change in my view makes me feel a little old.)