So You Want to Be a Wizard Diane Duane When I started  Diane Duane 's  So You Want to Be a Wizard  I had an idea of what it was going to be like. That idea was a lighthearted and amusing fantasy, like  Patricia C. Wrede  or  Sarah Jean Horwitz . I was wrong. That is not at all what  So You Want to Be a Wizard  is. For all that the main characters are a twelve-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl, this is more of an epic than a fun little story. We start with Juanita (Nita) Callahan being bullied by a gang of her classmates. When I say "bullied", I don't mean that they say mean things about her, although they do that, too. Nita is beaten by Joanne and her gang. Taking refuge in the library, Nita finds a book in the children's room,  So You Want to be a Wizard , that purports to tell a reader how to become a wizard. Nita is of course skeptical, but on the "What have I got to lose?" principle takes the book out and begins to read it. Nita finds somethi

Los amantes del Guggenheim Isabel Allende Isabel Allende  is, I think, my favorite Spanish-language author, and one of my favorite authors full-stop.  La casa de los espíritus  is a great work of Magical Realism, better even than  Cien Anos De Soledad  in my personal opinion. Thus I was delighted to learn of the existence of this story. I was taken aback to find that it is not for sale in Spanish anywhere that I could find, although Amazon will sell you an English translation by  Allende  herself under the title  Lovers at the Museum . However, it was easy to find free downloads of the Spanish booklet, e.g.  here . The Museum referred to in the title is  the Guggenheim Bilbao . One morning when the museum opens two lovers are found inside, a naked young man, Pedro Berastegui, and a young woman, Elena Etxebarría, in a bridal gown. (The names in the English version are different.) She is questioned by Detective Larramendi —¿ Por qué ibas vestida de novia? —la interrogó Aitor Larramendi.

Service Model Adrian Tchaikovsky Adrian Tchaikovsky  likes to disguise philosophical treatises as novels. As Uncharles might say, "This is neither good nor bad. It just is." That is to say, some readers enjoy novel-shaped philosophical treatises -- some not so much. If you've read a lot of  Tchaikovsky , you know how you feel about this. For the record, I'd have to classify myself in the "not so much" group. If you love it, please adjust my rating accordingly. There are really only two characters in  Service Model : Uncharles and The Wonk. Uncharles is a high-end valet robot, a gentleman's personal gentlerobot -- a metal and plastic  Jeeves . Except Jeeves never murdered Bertie, although he may at times have felt the urge.  Service Model  begins with Charles, the robot whom The Wonk will eventually rename Uncharles, discovering that his master is dead. Before long he figures out that his master is dead because he, Charles, murdered him. (This is not a sp

Pocket World in Figures The Economist I have only ever subscribed to two print magazines in my life,  Scientific American  and  The Ecomonist . ( The Economist , for historical reasons  they are happy to explain to you , calls itself a newspaper.) Contrary to what the name suggests,  The Economist  is not particularly a magazine about economics -- it's a news magazine. One of the perqs of subscribing to  The Economist  is that every Christmas they send you an updated version of this little book,  Pocket World In Figures . You can also buy a copy from Amazon, although I don't think you can get the most recent version. It is divided into two parts: World Rankings and Country Profiles. Each item in the Rankings section lists a bunch of things in order of some number. For instance, the first ranking is nations by land area, which begins with Russia, at 17,075,000 square kilometres. This is followed by the highest mountains, then the longest rivers, ... The Country Profiles contain

Head On John Scalzi The title of  John Scalzi 's  Head On  is what they call "antiphrasis" in rhetoric, or "flipping it" in Baltimore (at least, according to  The Wire ).  Head On  is about a sport called "Hilketa" (that's Basque for "murder"), in which players knock each other's heads off and attempt to throw them through a goal. But fear not! The players are Hadens using threeps (that is, telepresence robots, as you know if you've read  Lock In ), and they only knock the heads off of threeps. This, of course, is harmless to the Haden piloting the threep. So, as sports go, it is more violent than, say rugby or NASCAR, but less harmful to the players. Until it isn't. In the course of a game, player Duane Chapman loses his head (literally) three times, then dies -- for real. Chris Shane, our favorite Haden FBI agent and World Champion Destroyer of Threeps, happens to be at the game when Chapman dies. Soon he and his partner Les

Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments Sappho,  Aaron Poochigian (Translator) Sappho  (630-570 BC) was one of the most admired of classical Greek poets, so much so that  Plato  is said to have called her the tenth Muse. She was from the Greek Isle of Lesbos, and it is from her poetry about women loving women that the letter "L" in the abbreviation LGBTQIA+ is derived -- Lesbianism is called that because of  Sappho . She lived a long life for her time -- 60 years, as you see from the dates, and she was prolific. However, almost nothing survives of her poetry except fragments quoted by later poets and and a few bits revealed by archeology. This books collects all we have of  Sappho 's poetry, and it is VERY, VERY FRUSTRATING, just these little scraps of poetry, barely enough to leave you wanting more. The English translations by  Aaron Poochigian  are, to the extent that I can judge, quite good, and one occasionally catches a flash of  Sappho 's brilliance. The book begin

The Book of Japanese Folklore Thersa Matsuura, Michelle Wang (Illustrator) Thersa Matsuura 's  The Book of Japanese Folklore  is a reference work about strange and magical creatures from Japanese folklore. The long subtitle "An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth: The Stories of the Mischievous Kappa, Trickster Kitsune" is a better summary of the contents than the title. It is organized as a reference work. That is, it consists of an alphabetical list of articles about particular mythical creatures and characters. The alphabetical organization makes sense for a work intended to sit on a shelf for use in looking things up. The best way to evaluate such a work is to use it over a long period of time, asking, when one wants information about Japanese folklore, "Is that information present? Is it easy to find? Is it accurate and comprehensive?" In these modern times, any such reference work is in competition with the Internet. Indeed,