The Scar

Did I mention that I finished Declare a few days back? Really good, but not as full of clever stuff as Last Call. Powers did an amazing job building a fantasy novel around the odd details of Kim Philby’s life, but parts of it felt a bit arbitrary. Reading the Arabian Nights beforehand paid off, though; lots of references.

So now I’m in China Miéville’s The Scar, which is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station. So far I like The Scar better than Perdido; the scene-setting italic section at the beginning was actually interesting. And I just have to like a setting where cryptogeography is a formal field of study. (It’s just a throw-away reference, so far, but still.)

Teresa's haiku

I know some of my readers here are fans of haiku (the informal, English-language kind that’s popular on the ’Net); Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s just written a triple handful of good ’uns about life in Brooklyn. My favorite:

Move it. Your mother.
Your grandmother. Yeah, bite me.
And have a nice day.

New York haiku

Over in the comment section of Teresa’s haiku entry people are having themselves a little haiku-fest, writing about their home cities. Here are my contributions:

After winter’s wrath,
Trains rattle briskly along
Beneath snowbound streets.

Smoked salmon’s nova.
Only the connoisseurs know:
Lox is brine-pickled.

Guns strictly controlled,
Abortion rights protected —
New York’s G.O.P.

If you’re a black man
Don’t show the cops your wallet;
Forty-one reasons.

City asks question:
What should replace Twin Towers?
Eight million answers.