Member: MaggieO

Thanks, I'm quite fond of it

posted by Nikkles at 9:12 pm (EST) on Nov 13, 2009

Hi Maggie,
Lois pointed me towards your review of "I'd Like" - I'm glad you enjoyed it. I like your take on it, being left with the details that you would have been left with having read a longer novel. I hadn't thought of it like that but actually that's exactly how I felt (still do, in fact).

Am off for a virtual mooch around your fabulous library now!

Rachel

posted by rachbxl at 12:31 pm (EST) on Oct 7, 2009

MaggieO - thank you very much for your comment, it's very kind of you. I know what you mean about learning French though. The translations of these books are very good, but the waiting is agonising. Mind you, I'd also have to learn so many languages I suspect my head would explode

Regards Karen C

posted by austcrimefiction at 7:02 pm (EST) on Aug 30, 2009

ps. I love that M. Corrigan quote!

posted by marise at 4:36 pm (EST) on May 21, 2009

Hi Maggie,
Lindapanzo recommends "Scuse me while I kiss this guy," which looks like a good source of musical mondegreens.

posted by pamelad at 12:32 am (EST) on Apr 23, 2009

Hi Maggie,

Thank you for your generous offer. I'm looking for The Patient in Room 18 for Project 1929, but perhaps you found it in a library? Also Poison in a Garden Suburb by G. D. H. Cole, Nemesis at Raynham Parva by J. J. Connington and Corpse Guards Parade by Milward Kennedy. Probably you're looking for the same books? If I find any of them, I'll send them your way.

Slogging away on The Roman Hat Mystery; nearly gave up, but have persuaded myself to return because it is an artifact of 1929 and has some bizarre features.

Glad you liked The Death of My aunt.
Pam

posted by pamelad at 10:18 pm (EST) on Apr 6, 2009

Maggie, that was an absolutely splendid review of the latest Julia Spencer-Fleming book. I was already having a hard time waiting for this one to come out but now you've got me just frothing at the bit for it. Very well written and very delicately done, with no spoilers! Thank you!
Tiffin

posted by tiffin at 5:51 pm (EST) on May 6, 2008

The book is

The Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry
edited by Steve Rasnic Tem

ISBN 0943422000 UmBral Press (1982)

http://www.librarything.com/work-info.ph...

It was small-press, a print run of something trivial (500? 1000?)
but it got a nomination for the Philip K. Dick Award.
It took me a year to track down a copy.
Mine seems to be the sole copy on LT.

Try these:

Mike Ford's "110 stories", hosted at Making Light:

http://nielsenhayden.com/110.html

and two of his sonnets:

IMMORTALITY

You do not want to live and never die
Till reason rots and humor disappears;
You'll have to wave the ones you love good-bye,
Or worse, endure them all those endless years.
You will be sorry that you soldiered on
When others chose as blissful dust to dwell;
When all your stock of anecdotes is gone,
All space and time look like a cheap motel.
You will not like the world your children build:
It will be strange and dull and bleak and mad;
You'll leave what span you're given unfulfilled
The same damn ways you wasted what you had.
To use Her basely Time will not forgive:
You do not want to live, who do not live.

and one of the few poems that moves me to tears:

Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

—John M. Ford

Last but not least, the Shakespeare/West Side Story pastiche that he tossed off in a few minutes one night:

Ro-Mo. Your windows are still mirrored; taunt me not,
But show your colors, dare to challenge me,
These lips are two shaped charges, primed and hot,
That wait the go-code for delivery.

J-Cap. The flag is to the deadly, not the loud,
Yet aim as well as posing shows in this;
The worthy throwdown’s always to the proud,
And hammer down is how the hard girls kiss.

Ro-Mo. My draft is stopped; I struggle toward the clutch.

J-Cap. And would a charge of nitrous make thee run?

Ro-Mo. Too much; but what else is there but too much?
Let me take arms, and elevate the gun.

J-Cap. Small arms but hint what demolitions say.

Ro-Mo. Then, gunner, gimme one round.

J-Cap. On the way.

[From Verona Total Breakdown (Liebestod), a forgotten
early work by Bill “Hoist This Petard” Shakespeare …]
- John M. Ford

Sheer genius. I was lurking in that conversation when he posted it.
"And hammer down is how the hard girls kiss."

That one line is his ticket to immortality, right there.

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 9:16 pm (EST) on Dec 17, 2006