Lila: An inquiry into morals/ Robert M. Pirsig

This isn't a sequel from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's a totally different story, although it does make extensive reference to Pirsig's earlier work. I think this book might make more sense if you read the earlier book, but even if you don't, you won't lose too much. I can't help but think this book is even more of an autobiography of Pirsig.


NLB Call No.: PIR
Click here to check for item availability.

Chapter 3, P.33: Starts talking about a Professor Verne Dusenberry (there was such a person) who studied Native American Indian culture. The thesis (I think Pirsig's) was that modern (White) American culture and values (like "freedom") arose from Native American Indian values. Intriguing. I thought this part was like Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, in that it brought on an "intellectual hyperbole" of sorts.

P.34 - 35: Seems to me that Pirsig suggests there is no need, or one is unable, to have "objectivity in anthropological studies. Like saying that it's the same in Journalism . Somehow it reminds me of Carol C. Kuhlthau's Information Seeking Behaviour (see here or here).

Chapter 4, P.55 - This chapter provides that continuity from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It reinforced that the Phædrus character was a reference to mean Persig 'cos it says Phædrus published a successful book and Lila picks up the story 6 years later. Also mentions that Phædrus/ Pirsig had "enormous problems" (the death of Pirsig's son?), and that the book was on the subject of Quality.

P.66 - More references to Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Chapter 6: Switches from narrative from Phædrus' point of view to 3rd person "the author" - a literary device perhaps... Later I realised chapter 6 was written from the character Rigel's point of view. A bit disorienting but quite an interesting literary device.

p.91 - Rigel admonishes the message in Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig taking a dig at himself? Or mocking his critics?)

p.116 - Interesting point made on the Platypus -- that when the Platypus was discovered, scientists said it was a paradox. But Pirsig's point was it was never a paradox or an oddity. It didn't make sense only to the scientists because they viewed the nature of animals according to their own classification, when nature did not have any.

p.164: Quote:

A thing doesn't exist because we have never observed it. The reason we have never observed it is because we have never looked for it. And the reason we have never looked for it is that it is unimportant, it has no value and we have other better things to do.

p.185 - Quote:

Just as it is more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than patient, so it is more moral for an idea to kill a society than it is for society to kill an idea.

Chapter 20: p.286 - Pirsig makes reference to his schizophrenia.

p.312: Mentions background to the John Scopes "Monkey Trial" (1925), made into a movie "Inherit the Wind".

p.317: Quote:

Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a single moral. There aren't any there. They are all in your head.

P. 331: A glimpse into the root of Lila's neurosis.
See also chapter 30.
End of chapter 31: The link between Rigel and Lila becomes clear... you have to read the book.

P. 342: A discourse on the development of Philosophy.

P.355 - That you cannot deal with crime by talking crime to death. Quote:

Intellectual patterns cannot directly control biological patterns. Only social patterns can control biological patterns. The instrument of conversation between society and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his gun. All laws of history... all the Constitutions... are nothing more than instructions to the military and police. If the military and police can't or don't follow these instructions properly they might as well have never been written.

P.442: Quote:
In cultures without books, ritual seems to be a public library for teaching the young and preserving common values and information.

Science goes to war: The search for the ultimate weapon, from Greek fire to Star Wars/ Ernest Volkman

Found this highly entertaining. A history lesson on the development of war and warfare, from ancient times to modern and speculates what might be beyond.

It reads like episodes from the Discovery Channel -- very entertaining and I couldn't put it down. You have to read it to know what I mean.

This is not just a book "for the boys". I've gained insights to the rise and fall of Greek/ European civilisations, the descent into the Dark Ages, the development and demise of the Arab/ Muslim era, to name a few.

It's like a concise History of the World, from the war perspective.

NLB Call No.: 355.809 VOL (General section)
ISBN: 0471410071
[Check for item in NLB Catalogue]

Understanding comics: The invisible art/ Scott McCloud

What better way to understand comics than to have a book done in the comic artform. It could have been easily titled "The world of comics, according to Scott McCloud" (p. 214).

Alan McKenzie's "How to draw and sell comic strips for newspapers and comic books" was focused on the practical aspects of comic strips. This book by Scott McCloud focused more on the concept and theory of comic art. Like a textbook on comic theory. But far more engaging than the typical textbook.


NLB Call No.: 741.5 MAC - [ART]
Click here to check for item availability.
(ISBN: 006097625X)

Chapter 1: Setting the Record Straight
Tries to define what is "comics". Very interesting overview on the history of comics -- including interpretation of a pre-Columbian picture manuscript, the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman conquest, an Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Chapter 2: The Vocabulary of Comics
I understand this chapter as trying to say that comics can convey meaning using icons, symbols and pictures, rather than just words. That "visual iconography" being the vocabulary of comics.

Chapter 3: Blood in the Gutter
Explains the concept of "Closure" in comics (its grammar). I liked this particular quote:

Every act committed to paper by the comic artist is aided and abetted by a silent accomplice. An equal partner in crime known as the reader.

I may have drawn an axe being raised... but I'm not the one who let it drop or decided how hard the blow, or who screamed, or why. That, dear reader, was your special crime. Each of you committing it in your own style.

Explains various types of sequences (e.g. "moment-to-moment", "aspect-to-aspect"). Analyses the differences in styles from different countries. Pages 84 and 85 show how scenes can be cut and still retain the story in different perspectives.

Chapter 4: Time Frames
Shows how time sequences can be depicted using single panels or a series of panels, or repeat scenes, or even the length of the panel (something I in comics all the time but don't necessarily pay them any attention). Also motion lines etc. There's an interesting panel layout on P105, where reading it from any possible direction would tell you a different story.

Chapter 5: Living in Line
How lines rendered in different ways can convey different meanings.

Chapter 6: Show and Tell
Piecing together the words, pictures, panels, and sequencing to convey the story. Pages 157 to 160 shows how a simple storyline of a person going out of the apartment to buy ice-cream could be depicted in different ways.

Chapter 7: The Six Steps
Details the six steps (or aspects) to be considered in comic art: Idea/ purpose, Form, Idiom, Structure, Craft, and Surface. I found this chapter very theoretical.

Chapter 8: A Word About Color
Short chapter on the concept of color in comics.

Chapter 9: Putting It All Together
Well, as the chapter says, it sums all the previous chapters... Quote (p.199) on understanding comics:

The first step in any such effort is to clear our minds of all preconceived notions about comics. Only by starting from scratch can we discover the full range of possibilities comics offer.

A word to describe this book -- Wow (apparently, Tinkertailor felt the same way too).

This was like an undergrad course on comic art. It's precisely that the theory and concepts were conveyed via the comic artform that it makes it all so convincing.

Dreaming down under/ Edited by Jack Dann & Janeen Webb

This book has an interesting preface from acclaimed SciFi writer, Harlan Ellison. His following quotes alludes to the quality of the book:

"...I had no idea of the depth of richness that existed in the pool of Australian fantasists... I grit my teeth in frustration at how powerful a collection they have put together..."

The stories truly do not dissappoint. Each story begins with a short introduction to the author, and ends with a short note from the author on how they story came about. Some of the stories are really gritty (as most good Sci Fi is, it seems to me) so what I do is to read one story, then move onto to another different book that's of a lighter read.


NLB Call No.: DRE (Adult Fiction section)
Click here to check for item availability.

To give a review of each story would warrant several posts, so I'll just list them with brief annotation:

1. Entre les Beaux Morts en Vie (Among the Beautiful Living Dead)/ Sean Williams - Deals with concept of immortality; what it means to be 'Alive' as opposed to 'Living'. Futuristic setting, where only the unbelievably rich (with generations of wealth to support their immortal lifestyles) get to become immortal, through a process which essentially turns them into self-conscious living dead. Great for class discussions.
2. The Dancing Floor/ Cheery Wilder - Quite a complex story. More to do with societal norms about kinship and family than Science per se. Set in a off-world colony, about the investigation of an Alien species whose culture seems to be based on a dance.
3. Descent/ Cecily Scutt - Very short story that changes your view of death and Hell. More Fantasy than Science. About a girl's visit to her deceased grandmother who's residing in a Hell that's more like an institution than the fire & brimstone stuff.
4. The Soldier in the Machine/ Russell Blackford - Reminds me of "Ghost in a Shell", although the story isn't like that. I'd call this a SciFi-military-techno-thriller. Centres around an augmented human who hires himself out as a bodyguard. Has concepts like body morphing/ augmentation, personality uploads, high-tech devices, something called "Flickdancing" (you've got to read it to appreciate it). Interesting stuff, and easily turned into a book.
5. Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies/ Lucy Sussex - One of my favourites in the collection. This story gives a new twist to the "Waltzing Matilda" lyrics. Told from the angle of the "swamp spirit", it narrates what actually happened to the swagman, the jumpbuck, the squatter...
6. The Womb/ Damien Broderick - Told from two perspectives -- (1) the woman whose father was a cult leader and proclaimed UFO-abductee; (2) the father, who tells his own story of being abducted and confined by the government. In the end, the story suggests that the father really was abducted, and the woman was the creation of the alien experiments. Weirdly wonderful storytelling.
7. A Walk-on Part in the War/ Stephen Dedman - Another of my favourites. The Trojan War (of the Illiad), told from a different perspective. This time, it strips away the glory and myth, and makes the whole story very believable. There's still a Trojan Horse, but it's role in the breech of the city of Troy is something down-to-earth, but very different from what we've read in popular texts and stories.
8. Wired Dreaming/ Paul Collins - A detective story set in the future. The detective investigates a crime, where perverts watching VR porn seem to be dying off under mysterious circumstances. In order to learn more, the detective forced himself to watch the video. The crime was solved in the end. There's an interesting twist to the story in the end (which could be a bit subtle) -- the detective was supposed to have died after watching the VR disc, but didn't...
9. The Body Politic/ Tess Williams - This story is really about socio-political issues. It's the kind of SciFi stories that I like, where the background context (about the world, the characters) is slowly revealed in the telling. Set in the far future where humans are modified and augmented to have specialised roles. In this story, the woman is a prostitute of sorts, hired by the client but in the end, the client got more than what he bargained for. Nothing sexual or perverse, which makes the story even more interesting.
10. The Truth About Weena/ David J. Lake - A different version of H.G. Well's The Time Machine that delves more into the parts about Eloi and Morlocks. Specifically, the young Eloi girl (the love interest of the Time Traveller) was brought back to Industrial-age England, and thereby subtly changing the course of European history (where Hitler was a famous painter instead).
11. The Marsh Runners/ Paul Brandon - A horror Fantasy. Set in rural Australia, it's about a girl who's abused by her father, and how she finally escapes from him.
12. Prelude to a Nocturne/ Rowena Cory Lindquist - The Nocturnes are a class of humans who have not been modified at the genetic level to not suffer from puberty (i.e. the Preluders). A group of renegade Nocturnes has kidnapped a senator who's a Preluder. They attempt to force her to change back to being a "normal human". It's a story about family conflict and relationships; about class and prejudice.
13. Real Men/ Rosaleen Love - Well in some ways, I got the story and in some ways, I didn't. I don't know how to describe this. The author explains that the story was written in response to the 1997 Melbourne Grand Prix.
14. The Latest Dream I Ever Dreamed/ Norman Talbot - This is Hi-tech Military SciFi! About "Corporate Medical Espionage Teams" who raid dreams to scavenge secrets. Where the theatre of war really resides in operating theatres, or specifically in the minds. Funny twist at the end.
15. Ma Rung/ Steven Paulsen - Set in the Vietnam War, 1968. A "unexplained happenings in times of War" type of story. Reminds me of a Lucius Shepard story that I read before, that's also set in the jungles of Vietnam...
16. Dream, Until God Burns/ Andrew Enstice - Oooh, this one is really morbid. I'm afraid I'll be giving away the story if I explain what it's about. Let's just say you are in a coma, and actually you are conscious but no one knows...
17. Night of the Wandjina/ Wynne Whiteford - Another horror-fantasy story, about how a group of geological explorers disturbed a spirit in the Australian Outback.
18. To Avalon/ Jane Routley - Set in Glastonbury Tor, where Avalon (of the King Arthur fame) is said to have been. A couple of people holidaying there, and well, they see sheep disappear... (sorry, I'm being flippant).
19. He Tried to Catch the Light/ Terry Dowling - It appears to be high-tech SciFi, but it really deals with the issue of cultural notions of god and religion. Nothing controversial, I think. It's the kind of SciFi that I enjoy, where Science is used to set the context of a larger social topic.
20. The Third Rail/ Aaron Sterns - I really didn't get this, inspite of 2 readings. Not bad, except that I didn't get the story, so I can't really describe it here. The author says the story is "the dreaming of a lonely Australian amidst the dirt, destitution, and death of the archetypal city."
21. Jetsam/ Kerry Greenwood - A story involving the myth of the Greek god Dionysus. Woman finds this strange half-drown stranger, who goes away as mysteriously as he appeared.
22. And Now Doth Time Waste Me/ George Turner - Apparently, this story didn't manage to be completed as the author died of a stroke before it could be completed. The story is about a couple who managed to reverse the effects of ageing, and could live very long (but still equally human). They squander their wealth and that's when their longevity becomes a liability. Basically it points that having a long life isn't enough in itself. Too bad the story is left hanging.
23. The Man Who Lost His Shadow/ Isobelle Carmody - Nice in its own way. But I didn't get it. Well, the man lost his shadow! He didn't find it. Maybe you read it and tell me what it's about.
24. Unborn Again/ Chris Lawson - Not exactly a horror story. Maybe more a story where justice is served. Woman has Parkinson and goes for treatment (outlawed in Australia). Treatment supposedly involves the stemcells of aborted foetus. Then she starts experiencing residual memories of the people whom she received the stemcells, and realises the stemcells might be of developed babies. She gets her revenge for herself and the dead babies.
25. The Evil Within/ Sara Douglass - Set in the Dark Ages, it tells of a village plagued by demons. Interesting tale that suggests how the stone Gargoyles came to be a familiar sight on top of buildings.
26. Two Recipes for Magic Beans/ Rosaleen Love - No real point to the story (as the author explains). A fun piece that strings some familiar fairytale characters together.
27. The Doppelganger Effect/ Dirk Strasser - Something about parallel universes, and how it merges together. About the life of this man -- in one, he seems to have killed his wife (by accident) and being punished for it; in the other life, he's part of a team riding an alien-craft hurtling through space. Their paths seem to merge. Can't say I really understand the entire thing. Quite intellectual in a way.
28. Tamed/ Robert Hood - More horror fantasy stuff. Something about the monsters becoming uncontrolled, and this girl turns out to be the one who could control them.
29. Queen of Soulmates/ Sean McMullen - A sort of SciFi story in a Fantasy setting. A "recurring atomic bomb" of sorts called Weapon being discovered and detonated, to detrimental effects.
30. The Last Dance/ Ian Nichols - More fantasy than Science, but entertaining nonetheless. Fans of rock music from the 70s & 80s would identify with this. A small-time rock band playing a gig in a small rural town find themselves literally playing music to save their lives.
31. With Clouds At Our Feet/ Simon Brown - Interesting twist to the Vampire genre. Set in modern times Australia. Two brothers, half-human and half-vampire, spend a few days with their father (who's a true blue vampire). A kind of "coming of age"/ "self-discovery" story. Sensitively written and very believable.

Keywords (to search in OPAC):
. fantasy fiction, australian
. horror tales, australian
. science fiction, australian

The Reef/ Nora Roberts

Not my typical read, but I wanted to know why it was so popular with women readers. This was the first Nora Roberts book I read and it's not bad.


Click here or here to check for item availability.
NLB Call No.: ROB (Adult Fiction section)

Main characters:

• Tate Beaumont - the heroine who's in love with Matthew. She's got the looks, the brains, and is gutsy to boot.
• Matthew Lassiter - the hero, a treasure-hunter who's got almost nothing to his name but his pride.
• Buck Lassiter - Matthew's uncle, who after losing his leg to a shark, grew despondent and became an alcholic. But he recovered.
• Silas VanDyke - Billionnaire, egomaniac. The bad guy who murdered Matthew's father and is obsessed with the "Angelique's Curse".
• Marla Beaumont - Tate's mother. Great cook and seemed to be the perfect mother and wife. She came up with the idea to deal with the evil Silas VanDyke.
• Raymond Beaumont - Tate's father. A millionaire in his own right. An amateur teasure-hunter who turned out to be great friends to the Lassiters.

The story & plot, in brief:
The "Angelique's Curse" is a richly jeweled amulet that went down with a Spanish ship. Legend has it that the woman who wore it was wrongly accused of murder and burned at the stake. And though it was found a few times throughout history, the owners always suffered mishaps.

The Lassiters are treasure hunters of ancient sea-wrecks. Matthew has a vendetta against VanDyke, whom he believed killed his father. The Lassiters meet the Beaumount and end up as partners. They find treasure. Matthew and Tate falls in love. Then bad luck struck -- a shark maimed Buck. VanDyke took the opportunity to steal all the Lassiter's and Beaumont's teasure. Matthew and Tate break up with misgivings.

A few years later, the Lassiters and Beaumonts get back together to find "Angelique's Curse". Matthew meets Tate again and they have yet to find closure and they get together, they break up, they make up... ah, it goes on. VanDyke is in the background, plotting to steal from them again. Matthew is adament about killing VanDyke.

Then Tate and Matthew finds and amulet. VanDyke kidnaps Tate and sends someone to kill Matthew. Tate escapes, Matthew survives. Marla comes up with a simple plan to entrap VanDyke. They succeed. VanDyke doesn't give up and confronts Tate, and he almost manages to steal the amulet...

The last part alludes to some mysterious happenings with the amulet, so I shan't give it away.

To quote a page from the last chapter: '...You've got murder, greed, lust, scarifice, passion, sex--'

The sex scenes, to me, seemed to have been thrown in for good measure because it was a Romance book. More like the garnishing to a dish (i.e. didn't matter if you didn't eat it anyway). The book has a credible plot and storyline, and has enough twists to sustain till the end.

How to draw and sell comic strips for newspapers and comic books/ Alan McKenzie

Found this to be a practical book on drawing comics for newspapers and comic formats. Even if you don't draw comics, you might still find it useful as it covers (briefly) the development of comics in newspapers. I learnt how comics came to be syndicated.

There's a section that shows the step-by-step development of the story, storyboarding, preliminary drafts, layout planning, inking and lettering.

More details at Amazon.com
NLB Call No.: 741.5 MAC
Click here to check for item availability.

It also covers the tools used, the type and choice of materials. Also the technical aspects of submitting comics for publication. For instance, that you have to draw in larger formats which is then resized down -- I forgot what the term was. Also about colour-separation.

The book was published in 1987. I suspect with current computer technology, some of the more tedious and manual aspects is made a lot easier (like lettering and inserting speech bubbles).

Anyway, if you think producing comics is easy work, read this and think again.

Books on Blogging & Weblogs

Updated 21 May 05:

Some books on Blogs & Blogging, available at NLB libraries. For more titles, search the online catalogue using keywords like "blog", "blogs", "weblog" or "weblogs" (the pural & singular returns slightly different results).

We the Media: Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people [Available Online]

NLB Call No.: 302.23 GIL
Click here to check for book item availability in NLB libraries.

The cluetrain manifesto: The end of business as usual [Available Online]

NLB Call No.: 658.054678 CLU -[BIZ]
Click here to check for book item availability in NLB libraries.



Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs
Bonnie Burton c.2002/ 2003
Call No.: 081 NEV
Click here to check for item availability.


We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs
Paul Bausch c.2002
Call No.: 005.72 BAU [COM]
Click here to check for item availability.


Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs
Todd Stauffer c.2002
Call No.: 004.678 STA [COM]
Click here to check for item availability.


Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs
Biz Stone c.2004
Call No.: 006.7 STO [COM]
Click here to check for item availability.


Essential blogging
Cory Doctorow c.2002
Call No.: 005.72 DOC [COM]
Click here to check for item availability.


Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content
Biz Stone c.2002/ 2003
Call No.: 004.678 STO [COM]
Click here to check for item availability.

BLOG: 部落格线上出版, 网路日志实作
(BLOG: bu luo ge xian shang chu ban, wang lu ri zhi shi zuo)
艺立协著(Yi li xie; author)
CAll No.: Chinese 005.72 BLO -[COM]
Click here to check for item availability.


- Related post: 10 points on Blogs & RSS (Newsfeeds)

[Tag: rss, blog tutorial]

New Spring: A Wheel of Time novel/ Robert Jordan

This was the first time I read Robert Jordan. Found out that "New Spring" is a prequel in the Wheel of Time series. There are nine books in the series, if I'm not mistaken. How can I describe this particular book? It's a Fantasy genre, with the Budo-mythos mixed with a tinge of "Dungeon & Dragons" flavour.

Budo = 武道 (see "Definitions of BUDO on the Web" and also FightingArts.com)
武 = "Martial Arts", "Fighting"
道 = "Way", "Philosophy", "Path"


c2004 - ISBN 18 414 9338 4
NLB Call No.: JOR (under Adult Fiction)
Click here to check for item availability.

There's the Aes Sedai, a class of woman "priesthood" trained in the arts of sorcery and magic, harnessing saidar and manipulating elements of Spirit, Wind, Air, Fire. Then there's the warrior-class that Lan Mandragon belongs to -- the Malkier. Also the Aiel, the non-human enemy at war with men.

A child prophesied to destroy the world has been born (see p. 42). The Aes Sedai wants to find this child (Kill him? Neutralise his power? Harness his abilities? This is where I'm a bit hazy). But dissention seems to have broken out among the Aes Sedai, with the emergence of the "Black Ajah" (kind of like how the Sith is to the Jedi Knights in Star Wars). Moiraine and best friend Siuan, newly conferred Aes Sedai, goes out on their personal quest to find the child.

Lan (our hero/ reluctant Warrior King of a fallen nation), returns from fighting the Aiel and goes to confront what he thinks is his destiny. Some political game of sorts. He meets up with the heroine, Moiraine. They can't stand each other at the beginning; they confront the "Black Ajah" near the end of the story; they pair up as Aes Sedai and bonded Warder.

Just to give you a flavour of the fighting scene, where six men are attacking Lan:

"... and Lan danced the forms. Time like cool honey. The graylark sang, and the lean man shrieked as Cutting the Clouds removed his right hand at the wrist, and Lan flowed to one side so the rest could not come at him together, flowed from form to form. Soft Rain at Sunset laid open a fat man's face, took his left eye, and a ginger-haired young splinter drew a gash across Lan's ribs with Black Pebbles on Snow.

Only in stories did one man face six without injury. The Rose Unfolds sliced down a bald man's arm, and ginger-hair nicked the corner of Lan's eye. Only in stories did one man face six and survive. He had known that from the start. Duty was a mountain, death a feather, and his duty was to Bukama, who had carried an infant on his back."

(Excerpt from page 219, Chapter 16, "The Deeps")

The book includes a write-up about Robert Jordan. Says that Robert Jordan taught himself to read at aged four. He graduated from the Military College of South Carolina with a degree in Physics, served two tours in Vietnam, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star, and two Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry.

You can find out more about Robert Jordan here. I didn't know his real name is James Oliver Rigney, Jr.

BTW, if you're interested in the characters and places in The Wheel of Time, check out this book:

c1997 - ISBN 0312862199
NLB Call No.: 813.54 JOR(under Adult General non-fiction section 800s)
Click here to check for item availability.

And did you know that Robert Jordan wrote this?

c1997 - ISBN 0812531361
NLB Call No.: JOR(under Adult fiction)
Click here to check for item availability.

Search the NLB Catalogue for "Robert Jordan". Last time I checked, there were 10 item listed from the search results. He also writes under these pseudonyms: Robert Jordan, Reagan O'Neal, Jackson O'Reilly and Chang Lung.

The green man: Tales from the mythic forest

Edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling. Decorations by Charles Vess. A collection of stories & poems about the "Green Man" and other myths of the forest.
ISBN: 0-670-03526-2

Click here to check for item availability.
Call No.: Y 808.80351 GRE (shelved under "Young People" fiction section)

The introduction by Terri Windling, titled "About the Green Man and Other Forest Lore", gives a good overview of the origins of the Green Man myth. Explains that the Green Man is associated with Celtic lore but the true origin is a mystery. It is linked to Christian iconography, to rites and customs of early western societies, to Greek mythology, to Merlin, to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to the French Valentine and Orson, to Gilgamesh, to Tarzan, to Neil Gaiman, to Princess Mononoke (Japanese Anime), to Charles de Lint...

... I'm not doing justice to what's actually written. The introduction is worth a read if you're into western myths and linkages between different western societies and cultures.

Each story is accompanied by a short write-up about the author, and notes from the author (about the story). Sometimes after reading the author's note, I end up re-reading the story again 'cos I'd missed something, or I see something in a different light.

The illustrative panels by Charles VEss (each story has a unique miniture artpiece) is really interesting too. I felt like drawing one or two of the panels just to get a feel of his style.

This is a book written for teens, although as an 'adult' reader, I liked some of the stories as well. Here's the list of stories & authors (comments in [ ] are mine):

1. Going Wodwo (poem) - Neil Gaiman
2. Grand Central Park - Delia Sherman [I quite liked this one. How a young girl outwitted the Queen of Fairies. Blends in folklore into a modern day setting.]
   
3. Daphne - Michael Cadnum
4. Somewhere in my mind there is a painting box - Charles de Lint
5. Among the leaves so green - Tanith Lee
6. Song of the Cailleach Bheur (poem) - Jande Yolen
7. Hunter's moon - Patricia A. McKillip [Any title with "Hunter's Moon" always catches my eye. This story did not dissappoint. About a teenage girl, and her younger brother, who both got lost in the woods. It's Deer Hunting season and hunters with guns are out in the woods. The girl meets this stranger who turns out to be... there's a nice magical ending.]
   
8. Charlie's away - Midori Snyder [Seems this story could be used to illustrate a teenager's journey of self-discovery. Can consider this story for a book discussion for teens.]
   
9. A world painted by birds - Katherine Vaz
10. Grounded - Nina Kiriki Hoffman [This is probably my favourite story in the collection. About a young girl whose divorced mother meets a man, and the mum wants to marry him. The man has 2 other kids. So she meets them, feels that they were a bit weird. Well they are but in a good way. A feel-good magical fantasy in a believable modern setting. I liked the piano-scene in the last part.]
    
11. Overlooking - Carol Emshwiller
12. Fee, fie foe, et cetera - Gregory Maguire [Another good one. A re-telling of the "Jack and the Beanstalk" story, but from the perspective of Jack's mother and brother. Very interesting.]
    
13. Joshua tree - Emma Bull [I liked this 'cos I think teens would identify with the protagonist, a rebellious young girl who finds herself lost in the wilderness, and apparently saved by a magical tree.]
    
14. Ali Anugne O Chash (the boy who was) - Carolyn Dunn
15. Remnants - Kathe Koja
16. The pagodas of Ciboure - M. Shayne Bell
17. Green men (poem) - Bill Lewis
18. The green word - Jeffrey Ford

[Tag: young people fiction, teen fiction, fantasy books, fantasy, books]

Magazine: Scientific American

Scientific American - (website: www.sciam.com)

On Science and Technology. Published monthly.

The issue that I read was vol 13, no. 3 (Dec 2003). This issues was on our solar system and its planets. Facinating articles on each planet, including the sun, along with the moons. Spectacular pictures of the sun & other planets like Mars, Jupiter, etc. Not just the planets but also on asteriods, moons of Jupiter etc.

Insights into how unmanned space missions are done. Speculation of possible life on Europa (one of Jupiter's moon). Written by scientists actually involved in those missions. Those who enjoy Analog or Asimov's would love this particular issue. Written in a manner that non-scientific minds like me would still be able to appreciate what they are talking about.

This is a sample cover of the magazine from Amazon.com, although not of the Dec 03 issue:

Look for this in the Magazine section of NLB libraries (shelved according to Alphabetical order, so look under "S"). Click here to check for item availability.