Every year, in honor of Michael Ward's groundbreaking Planet Narnia, I award seven Summer reading books with to one of the seven heavens of Medieval cosmology. Prior awards can be found by following the "Summer Reading" tag at the bottom of this post. This year presents a bit of a challenge, as most of the books I read were technical in nature, but I think there were still enough idle hours to get us to our requisite "Seven Heavens".
Moon: The Heaven of Madness and Change belongs this year to Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, as he appears in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. I kinda, sorta, got this series in grad-school -it was perhaps too much for me at the time. All things have their season, however, and right now seems to be my time for The Sandman.
Mercury: The Heaven of Language goes to the most well-written grammar for any language I've studied: Wheelock's Latin. All one has to do is pick up Hanson and Quinn's Greek to see the massive difference not only in tone and tenor but in arrangement of content. Wheelock and his editors assume that "Latin est gaudium et utilis" and thus find every way possible to treat a dead language as if it were a living one. In their capable hands, Latin comes alive as a language and a literature rather than an archaic system of sign and symbol to be memorized on pain of death.
Venus: The Heaven of Love and Growth goes to a book about both, Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane. I had the pleasure of listening to this little volume as an audiobook read by the author, which seems to me the best way to encounter this particular work. Gaiman has a gift for exploring the scars that come with growing up without losing the wistfulness and nostalgia for childhood that makes books about children interesting to adults. I don't know what Mr. Gaiman's childhood was actually like, but I'm glad he's devoted time to help others process the traumas and griefs of theirs.
Mars: I read only a little of woods and battles this summer. Garth Nix's narration of the final battle between the Ancelstierre's tommies and Kerrigor's undead legions definitely deserves an honorable mention. Nix's work, however, I think belongs properly to another sphere. Instead, I'd like to honor another knock-down-drag-out, Mike Mignola's Frankenstein Underground. Mignola loves his monsters. He loves them so much, that even as cliched a creature as Frankenstein's Monster becomes a figure of power and pathos in Mignola's capable hands. As weird as it is, Frankenstein Underground is a solid and soulful contribution to the Hellboy Mythos.
Sun: The Heaven of Scholars is rather hard to assign this year given how many scholarly books I've had my nose in. Still, I'm going to venture on Egypt Beyond the Nile, edited by Spier, Potts, and Cole. This collection, and the exhibit at the Getty Center that it represents, could become a landmark in how museums present the Ancient World. Briefly put, the book is about the progress of Egyptian art and culture as they influenced and were influenced by the other cultures of the Mediterranean World. It's an interesting integration gambit, but the Getty team pulled it off.
Jupiter: The Heaven of Kings goes to an novella that almost works as it tries to envision a man who has become master of Time and Space. H.P. Lovecraft mentions it as one of the author's finest, if still flawed works. That said, Jupiter goes to the King of the Sargasso Sea, Mr. William Hope Hodgson, and his novella, The House on the Borderland.
Saturn: The Heaven of Endings goes to a book that takes us back and forth from Death to Life more times than Lazarus, Garth Nix's Sabriel. As I said in my review, Sabriel is a work of genius almost on par with Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea. In the creation of a living secondary world, it bears comparison with Frank Herbert's Dune and definitely explores new territory in the imaginative world opened up by LeGuin, Lewis, and Tolkien.
Moon: The Heaven of Madness and Change belongs this year to Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, as he appears in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. I kinda, sorta, got this series in grad-school -it was perhaps too much for me at the time. All things have their season, however, and right now seems to be my time for The Sandman.
Mercury: The Heaven of Language goes to the most well-written grammar for any language I've studied: Wheelock's Latin. All one has to do is pick up Hanson and Quinn's Greek to see the massive difference not only in tone and tenor but in arrangement of content. Wheelock and his editors assume that "Latin est gaudium et utilis" and thus find every way possible to treat a dead language as if it were a living one. In their capable hands, Latin comes alive as a language and a literature rather than an archaic system of sign and symbol to be memorized on pain of death.
Venus: The Heaven of Love and Growth goes to a book about both, Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane. I had the pleasure of listening to this little volume as an audiobook read by the author, which seems to me the best way to encounter this particular work. Gaiman has a gift for exploring the scars that come with growing up without losing the wistfulness and nostalgia for childhood that makes books about children interesting to adults. I don't know what Mr. Gaiman's childhood was actually like, but I'm glad he's devoted time to help others process the traumas and griefs of theirs.
Mars: I read only a little of woods and battles this summer. Garth Nix's narration of the final battle between the Ancelstierre's tommies and Kerrigor's undead legions definitely deserves an honorable mention. Nix's work, however, I think belongs properly to another sphere. Instead, I'd like to honor another knock-down-drag-out, Mike Mignola's Frankenstein Underground. Mignola loves his monsters. He loves them so much, that even as cliched a creature as Frankenstein's Monster becomes a figure of power and pathos in Mignola's capable hands. As weird as it is, Frankenstein Underground is a solid and soulful contribution to the Hellboy Mythos.
Sun: The Heaven of Scholars is rather hard to assign this year given how many scholarly books I've had my nose in. Still, I'm going to venture on Egypt Beyond the Nile, edited by Spier, Potts, and Cole. This collection, and the exhibit at the Getty Center that it represents, could become a landmark in how museums present the Ancient World. Briefly put, the book is about the progress of Egyptian art and culture as they influenced and were influenced by the other cultures of the Mediterranean World. It's an interesting integration gambit, but the Getty team pulled it off.
Jupiter: The Heaven of Kings goes to an novella that almost works as it tries to envision a man who has become master of Time and Space. H.P. Lovecraft mentions it as one of the author's finest, if still flawed works. That said, Jupiter goes to the King of the Sargasso Sea, Mr. William Hope Hodgson, and his novella, The House on the Borderland.
Saturn: The Heaven of Endings goes to a book that takes us back and forth from Death to Life more times than Lazarus, Garth Nix's Sabriel. As I said in my review, Sabriel is a work of genius almost on par with Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea. In the creation of a living secondary world, it bears comparison with Frank Herbert's Dune and definitely explores new territory in the imaginative world opened up by LeGuin, Lewis, and Tolkien.
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