Read A (ahem!) Book!

Pursuant to my last post about making books cool again...

( Warning: NSFW in most cases--language, sexually suggestive animated gyrations)

My Bookshelf Brings All the Girls to the Yard...

Godwin's Law* applies to pretty much any online discussion; however, for those involving the role of books in a Post-Literate Society a certain, uh, someone (ahem!) invariably posts this:

 

(with apologies to Gilbert Shelton and Freewheelin' Franklin)

It's probably a lost cause, though. On the other hand, while cruisin' reddit this morning I ran across this:

HELLS, YES! The Literary Lysistrata! Let It Begin Here!

The obligatory and surprisingly entertaining reddit Snarkfest can be found here.

* "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Corollaries here.

"Your Strength Won't Stop Him! He's A SATIRIST!"

If you know me at all, you know I'm easily amused. These two Fantastic Four panels, out of context, purloined from a website wherein various artists interpret their favorite literary figure/author/character, had me laughing loud enough to scare the cat and wake the neighbors.

For some reason I'm reminded of my friend Wayne and John Goodman in Barton Fink:



(if you're short on time, the relevant 49 seconds are here)

Upshot? Today I'm envisioning an entire Post-Modern Punk School of Literary Criticism.

You may also enjoy:

Dude Watchin'With the Brontes
George Orwell Writes A Novel
Poe & Verne, BFF

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Or Further Into the Basic Connectedness of All Things...

I'm currently on a Thomas Pynchon kick, reading both Vineland and Against the Day because, well, I like dense, complex, quirky, post-modern novels by dense, complex, quirky, post-modern novelists. Uh, novelists with mad skillz.

Relax. I'm not about to go on some kind of fanboyish tirade. Far from it.

Okay, so remember the "More Cowbell" sketch from Saturday Night Live? The one with Christopher Walken as "the Bruce Dickinson" ("Guess what? I've got a fever... and the only prescription... is more cowbell!") and Will Ferrell (you can listen to it here)? 'S funny, right? And I had to wonder which SNL writer came up with the idea and what, exactly, was going through his mind. I mean, sure, the absurdity of a cowbell in "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is self-evident, but what, exactly, inspired this sketch? What made the writer think of cowbell?

Fast forward to Dec. 31, at work, where one of my numerous bosses, who is also a Pynchon fan (in fact, he loaned me his copy of Vineland when I mentioned I was reading Against the Day) as well as a devotee of weird and unusual music, was expounding upon the works of Spike Jones and Thomas Pynchon (it was a slow day). He whips over to his office and prints out a little summary sheet and directs my attention to the following items...

--"Pynchon wrote that Spike Jones, Sr.'s orchestral recordings had 'a deep and indelible effect on me as a child.' "
--"Pynchon supplied the liner notes to Spiked! The Music of Spike Jones. In his notes, he writes of Spike's unique blend of music as being 'like good cowbell solos, few and far between.' " (emphasis added)
(hoc loco)

...then made reference to the SNL sketch.

Erudite bored pathologist say whaaaa?*

The moment was positively Pynchonesque.


*Okay, confession time: sometimes I watch TV shows intended for the 'tween set**, shows like (I am so embarrassed to write this) Hannah Montana. Yeah, I'm a 12-yr. old girl. Shut up. The show has its moments. One of the catchphrase formulas has the main character responding to something completely outrageous and unexpected with "(string of adjectives) (noun cluster) say whaaaa?" It's a guaranteed Diet Pepsi Nose Spew every time. Of course, I'm easily amused.

**This has led to some meta- (not mega-, though it could be mega) embarrassing moments, most recently when I was texting my friend Erica and made an iCarly reference to which she replied, "I don't know how I should respond to the fact you knew that."

Books Read In 2008

2008 was not a particularly good year for me (more later) and this is reflected in how few books I managed to complete. Yeah, I started a bunch and maybe got a third of the way through before I lost focus, set them aside, and went on to other things. Call it a strange form of literary ADD I hope will vanish in 2009. I still spent hours reading shitloads of other stuff, mostly online--blogs, discussion forums, and the like; the occasional magazine--but that was more like constant snacking.

Anyway, in 2008 I read:

1. 3/Jan/08--The Sign of the Book by John Dunning (2005).
2. 4/Jan/08--Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen (2006). *****
3. 9/Jan/08--The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (2003). *****
4. 11/Jan/08--Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (2007).
5. 16/Jan/08--New Orleans Noir ed. by Julie Smith (2007).
6. 22/Jan/08--Will Eisner: A Spirited Life by Bob Andelman (2005).
7. 24/Jan/08--JPod by Douglas Coupland (2006).
8. 27/Jan/08--Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006).
9. 28/Jan/07--If You Liked School, You'll Love Work by Irvine Welsh (2007).
10. 26/Feb/08--The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (2006).
11. 28/Feb/08--Skeleton Man by Tony Hillerman (2004).
12. 5/Mar/08--Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005).
13. 11/Mar/08--The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (1990).
14. 14/Mar/08--Shockingly Close To the Truth!--Confessions of A Grave-Robbing Ufologist by James W. Moseley & Karl T. Pflock (2002).
15. 21/Mar/08--Novel by George Singleton (2005).
16. 26/Mar/08--R Is For Ricochet by Sue Grafton (2004).
17. 5/Apr/08--Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology ed. by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel (2007).
18. 8/Apr/08--State of Fear by Michael Crichton (2004).
19. 11/Apr/08--The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver (2003).
20. 17/Apr/06--Voices From the Street by Philip K. Dick (2007).
21. 22/Apr/08--Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick (1964).
22. 24/Apr/08--The Blue Moon Circus by Michael Raleigh (2003). *****
23. 24/Apr/08--Me and Orson Welles by Robert Kaplow (2003).
24. 28/Apr/08--Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand (2007). *****
25. 29/Apr/08--Child of God by Cormac McCarthy (1973). *****
26. 5/May/08--Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (2008).
27. 13/May/08--The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (1994).*****
28. 21/May/08--The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (2007).*****
29. 10/Jun/08--The New Weird ed. by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (2008).
30. 19/Jun/08--Steampunk ed. by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (2008).
31. 17/Jul/08--Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999).*****
32. 18/Jul/08--Tank Girl--Armadillo! by Alan C. Martin (2008).
33. 22/Jul/08--Yellow Dog by Martin Amis (2003).
34. 19/Aug/08--Created By by Richard Christian Matheson (1993).
35. 26/Aug/08--Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton (2004).
36. 1/Oct/08--The Coin Collector's Survival Manual by Scott A. Travers (2006).
37. 2/Oct/08--Glasshouse by Charles Stross (2006).
38. 13/Dec/08--Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein (1984).
39. 24/Dec/08--Next by Michael Crichton (2006).

***** indicates books I particularly enjoyed.

The Xmas Orgy Begins

Well, I managed to survive Black Friday by the simple expedient of not leaving the apartment even once (I took the day off from work). I'm not big on shopping anyway and the whole concept of Black Friday gives me a severe case of the howling fantods, so I was glad to get a little validation via Gizmodo: "10 Reasons We're Doomed: Black Friday Edition" (I see the Wal*Mart Experience reached new lows as well).

I'm all for shopping online where the only person I'm in competition with is Sid the Cat (Sid believes my lap, chair, keyboard, and computer mouse--screw the overpriced catnip-filled dingus under the sofa--are his exclusive playthings and will run roughshod over me to get at 'em); unfortunately, when it comes to certain people I lack inspiration (and fundage).

Enter Boing Boing--A Directory of Wonderful Things and their Holiday Gift Guide:

"Well, it's coming up to the holidays and I've started to make my list and fill it in. As a starting point, I went through all the books and DVDs and gadgets I'd reviewed on Boing Boing since last November and looked at what had been the best-sellers among BB's readership, figuring you folks have pretty good taste! As I was taking a walk down old review lane, I realized that many of you would probably be interested in seeing these lists too, so I've turned them into a series of blog-posts that I'll be sticking up, one per day, for the next week or so."

Things I wouldn't know about otherwise, some overlap among categories, and heavy on the bookish side (but that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned!).

Part One: Kids (less for kids, more for 'tweens 'n' teens)
Part Two: Fiction
Part Three: Gadgets and Stuff
Part Four: Comics
Part Five: Nonfiction

Some highlights:
Baby's First Mythos, "an ABC/123 picture book for kids that uses the mad, horrific imagery of HP Lovecraft to help you bring up your littlun right."

Gloom: The Game of Inauspicious Incidents and Grave Consequences: "The really interesting thing about Gloom is the story-telling aspect of game play. Though not required, when you play an event card such as "Terrified by Topiary," you may explain how this event occurs. Each character develops as more and more event cards are placed on it, so the character’s life story becomes increasingly unfortunate and, well, abnormal."

Laika: "Nick Abadzis's graphic novel "Laika" is a haunting, sweet biography of Laika, the first dog in space, who died five hours after she was launched on Sputnik II."

St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business: "Before St Trinians was a (ho-hum with some bright moments) big-screen movie, it was a series of Charles Addams-esque cartoons by Ronald Searle."

Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook For Conjurers: "I discovered the book thanks to James D Macdonald, who uses it as a teaching aid in the Viable Paradise science fiction writing workshop, held annually on Martha's Vineyard.."

Uranium Ore. One of those WTF? moments. For an entertaining evening read the comments on Amazon.com:

Despite the fact it comes in a can
It is not cat food.

Does anyone know if there's a cure for sudden tentacles? The cat's huge and well, doesn't really look much like a cat anymore. She still answers to Muffin though. However, if she rubs against my bare leg one more time her new name will be calamari.

Needless to say, there'll be more later.

Image of the Beast

Speaking of books...

Okay, we weren't, but it's a dark, gray, and rainy Saturday morning as Tropical Storm Hanna passes through Virginia and I'm having difficulty mustering the motivation to do much of anything beyond some Intarweb-assisted free association, which means I'm thinking about books. Hey, at least I'm not Googling the names of former girlfriends and would-be-girlfriends-except-they-really-didn't-like-me-all-that-much; that's gotta count for something!

Oops.

Many years ago (during college in the '70s, actually) I got caught up in Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series (instead of focusing on the intricacies of microbial genetics or the workings of the Winogradsky column). Since I tend to become a tad... obsessed... about stuff, you might understand why I then sought out every damn thing the man had ever written, just as I do with every author who fascinates me.

With PJF that wound up being a mixed bag. The man has an incredibly odd imagination, which can sometimes be a bit...uh...let's say off-putting, and yet he's managed to publish and keep in print an absolute shitload of stuff.

Oh, and he pretty much introduced sex to science fiction.

So there's my awkward-ass, not-quite-a-segue to Image of the Beast and its sequel, Blown, a couple of multi-genre-crossing novels originally released by erotica/porn publisher Essex House.

Briefly (from the collection of reviews on Farmer's own web page),

"THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST (1968) is a tongue-in-cheek horror cum porno sf thriller set in an eerie smog ridden Los Angeles where Herald Childe*, a laconic gumshoe down on his luck gets involved in gruesome encounters with a curious sexual underworld where Farmer blends vampirism and alien invaders to good effect. If the symbolic structure of the book is somewhat awry at times, the shock effects and perverse encounters Farmer literally scatters throughout the plot are genuinely original."

"Farmer calls both THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST and BLOWN (1969) its less assured sequel (where Forry Ackerman and his famed book collection become major characters), exorcisms, and one supposes that what needs exorcising is the beast in man, the terrifying Dionysian destructiveness his hero encounters."

"The images Farmer uses are outrageous: we see the detective's partner being castrated by a beautiful woman with a set of false iron teeth and a sinister, almost parodic Dracula figure; another major character has a snake-like symbiotic character living in her vagina. Farmer had of course become a past master at outre' "biosexopsychic" situations in his earlier books and better short stories, but the editorial carte blanche of Essex House allowed his imagination to take full, fluent flight. It is not always in the best of taste, but he is certainly a master of startling speculative concepts. (Maxim Jakubowski)"

Note that "Forry Ackerman" reference; it's important. That's Forrest J Ackerman, noted SF fan, collector, former editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland (1958-1983), and, because of the latter, a seminal part of my childhood.

Now, when Ray Ferry revived Famous Monsters in 1993** he started things off with a huge launch party chock-full of SF/Fantasy/Horror celebrity guests including Forry. Since this event was being staged in Crystal City, VA and I figured never again would so many of my heroes be so close to my home (or alive, for that matter), I called up my friend Sam*** and coerced him into going with me for a weekend of autograph-hunting, celebrity-stalking, and intensive Monster Geekery.

And I took along my copy of Image of the Beast.

I figured it would be pretty cool to get Forry's autograph on something besides a back issue of Famous Monsters. That, and I wondered what, exactly, his reaction would be to something so off-beat and obscure, so I kept looking for an opportunity to corner him and get his signature, but, as you might imagine, he was pretty busy the entire weekend. However, at one point the organizers did set up a signing table and I quickly joined the long line of adoring fans while clutching my little paperback in my sweaty, not-so-little hand. Eventually my turn came and as I handed my book over to Forry he shot me this...look...and asked,

"Does your mother know you have this?"

I couldn't resist, not with such a perfect straight line.

"Does your mother know you're in this?

Bless his heart, he laughed, signed the inside cover, gave me a wink, and sent me on my merry way.


*Get it? Herald Childe? As in heralding a new age? As in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by Lord Byron? Oh, and later on in Blown we find out he's to be the leader of a gang of warring aliens because he's a descendant of--guess who?--Byron. About as subtle as a baseball bat to the crotch.

**Thereby unleashing a storm of controversy resulting in lawsuits a-plenty. See the Wikipedia article. Ray Ferry presents the his side of the story in Life is But A Scream! The True Story of the Rebirth of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

***The man who introduced me to Famous Monsters back in the '60s and, consequently, horror film fandom. Much of who I am today we can blame on Sam.

How Did I Miss This?

So last night (Sunday) Turner Classic Movies was showing Muscle Beach Party, the second of AIP's Beach Party films (beach party films being a particular guilty pleasure/closet obsession of mine--ask me about it sometime*) and for the life of me I couldn't remember the name of the actor playing bodybuilder "Mr. Galaxy" Flex Martian. I knew his name wasn't really "Rock Stevens" (as billed), that he'd played a character in the original Mission: Impossible series (Willy the strongman), and his first name was Peter (Peter Lupus, as it turns out), but other than that I was drawing a blank.

Well, as you can see (and as I so often do), I immediately consulted Wikipedia, which for a trivia junkie such as myself is the informational equivalent of heroin binge, and there I went progressively deeper into serious geekmode by scanning such peripherally related topics as Back to the Beach, a 1987 parody/homage, Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, and Maynard G. Krebs.

Now, the Maynard G. Krebs entry took me into a somewhat different direction. Apparently, there is this book that came out in 2003 deconstructing the story of Gilligan's Island:

Gilligan's Wake.

Sounds pretty cheesy, huh? Well, maybe not. From a review by Richard Romeo:

"Gilligan’s Wake is told in seven long chapters, each focusing on a different castaway – and if you know the old theme song, the order will come as no surprise. Appropriately, the novel begins in a madhouse, where Carson echoes the layered prose of Finnegans Wake through the bebop, thorazine-addled consciousness of a poor guy who thinks he’s Maynard G. Krebs. As this pre-Gilligan ("and I remembered what the G in my old name had stood for..."**) beatnik receives shock treatment, the novel’s main symbols, themes, and secondary characters emerge in a frenetic and surreal overture, from the Maxwell House Coffee clock outside the window to Richard M. Nixon, pregnant (yep) in the room next door. After shocking “Maynard” into a new level of consciousness, Carson turns to the Skipper, spinning a small war story involving PT boats, a certain naval commander named McHale, a dead Japanese soldier, Nixon (again), and a seemingly invincible, certain soon-to-be president. Thurston Howell III arrives next, a hilarious, buffoonish member of the upper class, harboring a secret love of jingoistic action comics and pining away for his Lovey. Like Coover, who brilliantly mustered up the soily, pathetic inner workings of Mr. Richard Nixon in The Public Burning, Carson shows Howell to be oblivious to the Cold War machinations revolving around his well-insured head as he helps Alger Hiss get his first government job. After so much mawkishness about his darling “L.,” Lovey’s chapter is a chilled martini flung in the face. A shallow socialite with a vague Electra complex, she wanders across a jazz age panorama, cultivating a heroin addiction and falling into a dysfunctional affair with The Great Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan. Although the idea of a lesbian affair between Daisy and the future Mrs. Howell might seem a bit too-clever on paper, their scenes have a brutal honesty that cuts right through the intertextual high-jinks, exposing the emptiness and brittle despair at the center of their sad lives."

(see also "The Minnow Found Again" by David Kelly)

How on earth did I miss this? It's...it's...so me!

Yet another link added to my ever-expanding Amazon.com wishlist.




*Oh, all right. Just a little. When I was a kid one of the (damned few) TV stations we received in those pre-cable days used to show these movies on Sunday mornings and I was fascinated by them. Remember: I was living in a small Southern factory town in the middle of Virginia at the time so anything involving California beaches, surfing, and Kustom Kulture seemed impossibly exotic and appealing. Plus, I thought Eric von Zipper was the funniest thing since Beany & Cecil even though I didn't have a sufficiently multicultural background (in either instance) to catch all the jokes.

**Walter. Yes, I know.

Anybody Remember Tank Girl?

And no, not the wretched movie version with Lori Petty, the real Tank Girl, that foul-mouthed, punked-out, hard-drinking, gun-toting, tank-driving, nose-picking, establishment-bucking, kangaroo-boinking, kicking, screaming, biting, farting, totally empowered specimen of feminine outrageousness.

Yeah, well, she's back.

In one of those purely serendipitous moments I relish so much and so rarely experience I happened to be wandering through my local Barnes & Noble looking for a copy of...well...a book* and as I turned down the science fiction aisle what should I see but this:

Tank Girl--Armadillo! and a Bushel of Other Stories

And now it is mine!

I don't know yet if it's worth the ten bucks, but hey! It's Tank Girl! And where Tank Girl goes anarchy and ass-kicking are sure to follow and those are good things!



* Okay, dammit, I was looking for a copy of the recently released Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition. There. I said it. Yes, I play D&D on occasion. Shut up. It's not a big deal. Leave me alone.

The "New Weird"

I'll never buy anything with Fantasy in the title. I have an irrational near-allergic reaction to the genre. I start seeing elves everywhere, and then I have to kill a puppy just to feel normal again.
--Warren Ellis

So I just finished reading/slogging my way through Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's The New Weird , a collection of stories attempting to define... uh... The New Weird.

I may have to kill a puppy.

The problem with being a fan of genre fiction is that certain practitioners feel a periodic and overwhelming need to establish their own little fuckclaves. I've watched "Horror" spawn "Dark Fantasy" and "Splatterpunk"; I've seen Science Fiction go from hard to soft to social and then get hard again. I've silently screamed as it masturbated and spewed forth "Speculative Fiction," "New Wave," "Cyberpunk," "Steampunk," "Slipstream," and an entire slew of other sub-sub-categories of which I'm simply unable to keep track.

In the immortal words of Butters, "Ow. That made my brain hurt."

And now there's The New Weird.

It's not a bad book...for people of a certain disposition. The introductory material flops and dances around whether there really is such a thing as "New Weird " and whether anyone cares, then refuses to settle the issue beyond "here's an anthology of similar stories; make of it what you will." Included is an entire online message board's worth of discussion, but, I dunno; it's not that "Weird" and it's not that "New." It seems to me that it's magical realism made palatable for people who can't or won't commit to (or be seen reading) more traditional fantasy but would rather not struggle with the MR Gang of Four (Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Laura Esquivel, and Carlos Fuentes).

All the stories seem to require a joyless neo-medieval urban setting with some form of alternate technology, possibly magic-based, and Chimeric characters who go out and...do stuff, usually while some sort of Festival is occurring (I got really, really tired of seeing the word "festival") and usually to no good end.

Again, yeah, it ain't all that new and it ain't all that weird. Go read Blindness by Jose Saramago instead. Or, even better, Cordwainer Smith/Paul Linebarger, especially "A Planet Named Shayol."

Bookstuff

It occurs to me that I haven't done a book-related post in ever-so-long--which is embarrassing for someone who lives by the creed "books will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no books."*

Now, people who know me also know I'm hopelessly addicted to books. My man purse, nominally intended for lugging around all the crap that won't fit into my pockets but I imagine I can't live without,** is first and foremost a book depository for whatever I'm currently reading plus at least one back-up book. Maybe two. Possibly three. Gotta have back-up books else I might not have something new to read OMG!

I'm not a collector by any stretch of the imagination (can't afford to be--have you seen the price of signed first editions recently?); at best, I'm an accumulator, which is akin to saying I'm a recreational heroin user: "Hey, I don't have a problem and can quit whenever I want and let's just ignore the innumerable hours I spend scouring the 'hood for my next fix or the things I neglect while immersed in litsmack."

Yeah, right.

Anyway, I've been amassing a slew of book-related links (because I have no life and I'm a big ol' geek and I have to keep out of trouble somehow) and thought I'd share 'em for those of you whom are similarly afflicted.

--Here's a great little article by independent bookseller Paul Constant, "Flying Off the Shelves--The Pleasures and Perils of Chasing Book Thieves."

When I worked at a big-box chain bookstore, shoplifters never crossed my mind; the corporation paid security guards for that. Employees were told not to get involved. The legal issues were too Byzantine for us peons to understand. The guards, instead, created problems: We had to fire one for masturbating in the children's section.

(which is probably the biggest book-related WTF? moment I've ever read)

--Confession time: one of my favorite places to read is in the bathtub*** so you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across the bathtub with built-in bookcase. One day, when I win the lottery and am simply dripping in disposable income, I'll have a couple of these installed in my mansion/Fortress of Solitude/Treehouse of Horror. Note the various links to other, uh, unique book storage solutions; in fact, there's even a blog on the subject: Bookshelf.

--Over at The Art of Manliness they've compiled a list of 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man's Library (warning: many annoyingly big-ass bookcover pics that spell death for dial-up users and irritate the hell out of me for disrupting the list flow) and, yeah, I've read most of them over the years but, somehow, manly manliness has eluded me. Perhaps it's because I refuse to slog through Plato's Republic, James Joyce's Ulysses, The Politics by Aristotle, and Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Perhaps other reasons. And what's with all the Teddy Roosevelt entries?

--Meanwhile, over at Sci-Fi Lists they've compiled a statistical survey of the all-time Top 100 Sci-Fi Books.

--Only in the past couple of years have I become aware of this: "Young adult sections in bookstore -- a parallel universe of little-regarded awesomeness."

Living in a space that no one watches too closely is one of the secret ways that people get to do excellent stuff. Science fiction's status for decades as a pariah genre meant that writers could do things with literary style, theme, and political content that their mainstream counterparts could never get away with (games, comics, early hip-hop, mashups, and many of the other back laneways of popular culture have also enjoyed this status). These days, a lot of the coolest stuff in the universe is happening in the kids' section of your bookstore (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of calling attention to a field that has prospered because it wasn't receiving too much attention to blossom).

Bookslut's Bookslut in Training column has turned me on to a couple of jewels hidden away in the YA section: King Dork by Frank Portman and The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga, both of which are really great reads (and you should now stop whatever the hell it is that you are doing and hie your ass on over to the nearest bookstore and grab some copies), and Cory Doctorow, who wrote the aforementioned article, has his own decidedly subversive entry in YA fiction--Little Brother, a "novel about hacker kids who use technology to reclaim the Bill of Rights from the DHS after a terrorist attack on San Francisco,"**** which really appeals to my Inner Anarchist/home-brew Resistance Fighter.

Okay, that's enough for now. Read hard!

This is the second in a long series of catch-up posts.



* Astute readers, i. e., aging Baby Boomers of a... certain... disposition, will recognize that line as a corruption of a Freewheelin' Franklin catchphrase.

** Mini Maglite, Hipster PDA, a wide assortment of pens, cell phone, digital camera and extra memory card, cigarettes, lighter, spare keys, cheap notebooks, bandana, quarters for the toll bridge, Swiss Army Knife knock-off, the occasional DVD... you know, Big Important Guy stuff. Or crap. Your choice.

*** Feel free to flense from your brain the image of me naked with the alcoholic beverage/hallucinogen of your choice, but think about it (not me naked)--assuming you don't drop your book in the water what better place to read? Warm, comfy, floaty, quiet, relaxing... screw isolation tanks; this is the way to Oneness with the Universe.

**** He even offers free downloads and a news section. Neil Gaiman raves about it here and someone named w1n5t0n (get it? Get it?) offers a series of book-related Instructables here. Go forth and get copies for yourself, your kids, your friends' kids, your kids' friends...

Post-Christmas Buying Orgy/Book Notes

So, Saturday, armed with a fistful of gift certificates and some parentally-donated Christmas Cash, I headed off to the local bookstores to do me a little book buyin'.

Because, you know, I don't have anywhere near enough books.*

My first stop was Books-A-Million, the poor man's Barnes & Noble and a store I rarely visit for just that reason (I'm a snob; sue me), but my co-worker Carolyn had given me four (!) gift cards meant for her and her kids saying she had neither the time nor inclination to use 'em. Oh well, her loss, my gain, and in less than ten minutes I settled on Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (because I'm LOVING The Fortress of Solitude) and Heart-Shaped Box by Joe "Stephen King's My Father But Don't Tell Anyone" Hill, which has been getting rave reviews in the horror community.**

A couple of oatmeal raisin cookies later and it was off to the more familiar stomping grounds of Barnes & Noble where I picked up A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, If You Liked School, You'll Love Work by Irvine Welsh, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology ed. by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, books that look really interesting (your mileage may vary) and have been languishing on my Amazon.com wish list for far too long.

Bottom line: I have a comforting pile o' books to read in the coming weeks.

In other news, author Tony Ruggiero {Aliens and Satanic Creatures Wanted (Humans Need Not Apply)} is making an appearance Saturday, January 12 at one of my favorite local bookstores, Creatures 'n' Crooks, which means, I suppose, that I'll be adding a few more items to the aforementioned pile.

Science fiction/science fact fans will have noted that Wednesday was Isaac Asimov's birthday, but, sadly, for devotees of Historical Novels Which Do Not Suck, this was also the day George MacDonald Fraser, creator of the wonderfully slapstick and outrageously funny Flashman*** series, died (nice tribute here). I've been a fan ever since reading Playboy's serialization of Flashman At the Charge way back in (gasp!) 1973 (and, no, I didn't buy Playboy for the articles, but I read 'em anyway), so I'm pretty much sad and nostalgic in equal parts.

By the way, I finished Sara Gruen's Water For Elephants the other day and in one of those...interesting (interesting to me, at least) coincidences, finished it on January 4th. "So, what?" I hear you thinking. "What's interesting about that?" Well, as you might have guessed from the title a crucial plot element revolves around a circus elephant named Rosie who, the author notes, is a composite of a number of real-life circus elephants including the notorious Topsy, responsible for the deaths of three men within three years (though, as far as I'm concerned, for good reason). Topsy was deemed dangerous and in 1903 was killed by electrocution at the (self-serving****) suggestion of Thomas Edison, who also filmed the event. The date? January 4th.


* There are those who claim my book hoarding is merely an attempt to create a gravitational locus strong enough to shift the earth's orbit in such a way as to end global warming. I only wish my motives were that honorable.

** Horror novels are strict adherents to Sturgeon's Law--90% of 'em are pure, unadulterated crap--and having wasted far too much money on what aren't even polished turds (*cough* Dean Koontz *cough*) I'm leery of anything not first recommended to me by people whose opinions I respect. In this case, however, the reviews have been so strongly positive I was more than willing to risk someone else's money.

*** You've got to love a character who freely admits his only talents are horsemanship, languages, fornication, and cricket!

**** Edison was pimping... uh... extolling the virtues of DC current and warning of the dangers of rival George Westinghouse's AC system. See Jan. 4. 1903: Edison Fries An Elephant to Prove His Point.

Books Read In 2007

--Books I Particularly Enjoyed Though Your Mileage May Differ: (marked with *****)
--Most Disturbing Book of 2007: Three-way tie among The Wasp Factory (#57), Gemma (#76), and Crooked Little Vein (#52).
--Biggest disappointment of 2007: Farewell Summer (#69) by Ray Bradbury.
--Biggest surprise of 2007: Gemma (#76) by Meg Tilly (yes, that Meg Tilly!).
--Book With Plot Holes Large Enough Through Which One Could Drive A Mack Truck Yet Remain Readable): The Ruins (#81) by Scott Smith.
--Best Use of a Substitution Cipher: The Boy Detective Fails (#1) by Joe Meno (beating out the only other candidate, Enigma (#60), by a substantial margin)
--Biggest Waste of Neurons: Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory On the Competitive Eating Circuit (#72) by Ryan Nerz.


1. 3/Jan/07--The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno (2006).
2. 6/Jan/07--Monster Island by David Wellington (2006). *****
3. 7/Jan/07--Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite (2006).
4. 13/Jan/07--Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (2006). *****
5. 16/Jan/07--Cosmic Trigger Volume II: Down To Earth by Robert Anton Wilson (1991, 1996).
6. 23/Jan/06--A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor (1955). *****
7. 29/Jan/07--Music For Chameleons by Truman Capote (1980). *****
8. 31/Jan/07--Monster Nation by David Wellington(2006). *****
9. 6/Feb/07--World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (2006). *****
10. 6/Feb/07--How To Smash Everyone To Pieces by Mike Segretto (2004).
11. 13/Feb/07--The Identity Club by Richard Burgin (2005).
12. 14/Feb/07--Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson (2006). *****
13. 16/Feb/07--A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore (2006).
14. 20/Feb/07--How To Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce (1963, 1992).
15. 23/Feb/07--The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990)
16. 8/Mar/07--The Big Chunk of Ice by Bertrand R. Brinley (1986, 2005).
17. 8/Mar/07--Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997).
18. 14/Mar/07--Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley (2003).
19. 20/Mar/07--Blindness by Jose Saramago (1998). *****
20. 27/Mar/07--Life House by Spider Robinson (1997).
21. 28/Mar/07--My Friend Leonard by James Frey (2005). *****
22. 3/Apr/07--Irons In the Fire by John McPhee (1997). *****
23. 4/Apr/07--Encounters With the Archdruid by John McPhee (1971). *****
24. 6/Apr/07--Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (2004).
25. 12/Apr/07--A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (2003).
26. 18/Apr/07 Visionary In Residence by Bruce Sterling (2006).
27. 23/Apr/07--White Noise by Don DeLillo (1984, 1998).
28. 26/Apr/07 Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo (2003).
29. 2/May/07--Bitterroot by James Lee Burke (2001).
30. 8/Apr/07--Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (2002).
31. 10/May/07--Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea (2005).
32. 15/May/07--The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (1996).
33. 18.May/07--Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992). *****
34. 23/May/07--The Prestige by Christopher Priest (1995). *****
35. 30/May/07--Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (1977).
36. 31/May/06 Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris (2006).
37. 4/Jun/07--Fabrication: Essays On Making Things and Making Meaning by Susan Neville (2001).
38. 12/Jun/07--Microserfs by Douglas Coupland (1995). *****
39. 15/Jun/07--Vamped by David Sosnowski (2004).
40. 21/Jun/07--A Specter Is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber (1968).
41. 27/Jun/07--Mammoth by John Varley (2005).
42. 28/Jun/07--Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick (1974).
43. 10/Jul/07--Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (2006).
44. 13/Jul/07--Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (2003).
45. 16/Jul/07--The Falling Season: Inside the Life and Death Drama of Aspen's Mountain Rescue Team by Hal Clifford (1998).
46. 17/Jul/07--It Was Gonna Be Like Paris by Emily Listfield (1984).
47. 20/Jul/07--Crimes and Misdemeanors: New and Original Stories of Love and Death ed. by Elaine Koster and Joseph Pittman (1998).
48. 26/Jul/07--How To Survive Anything, Anywhere: A Handbook of Survival Skills For Every Scenario and Environment by Chris McNab (2004).
49. 31/Jul/07--Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic by Redmond O'Hanlon (2003).
50. 9/Aug/07--An American Dream by Norman Mailer (1964).
51. 19/Aug/07--Spook Country by William Gibson (2007).
52. 22/Aug/07--Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis (2007). *****
53. 29/Aug/07-- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (2003).
54. 29/Aug/07--Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Letham (1994).
55. 7/Sept/07--All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (1992). *****
56. 15/Sept/07--The Rift by Walter J. Williams (1999). *****
57. 18/Sept/07--The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (1984). *****
58. 20/Sept/07--Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee (2006). *****
59. 25/Sept/07--The Backpacker's Handbook by Chris Townsend (2005).
60. 26/Sept/07--Enigma by Robert Harris (1995).
61. 2/Oct/07--The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt (2005).
62. 4/Oct/07--Hit Parade by Lawrence Block (2006). *****
63. 9/Oct/07--Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace (2006). *****
64. 17/Oct/07--Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Letham (2005).
65. 23/Oct/07--A Walk In the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (1998).
66. 25/Oct/07--The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson (2006). *****
67. 30/Oct/07--Jaguars Ripped My Flesh: Adventure Is A Risky Business by Tim Cahill (1987). *****
68. 5/Oct/07--Girlbomb--A Halfway Homeless Memoir by Janice Erlbaum (2006).
69. 14/Nov/07--Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury (2006).
70. 14/Nov/07--The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl (2007).
71. 20/Nov/07-- The Bookwoman's Last Fling by John Dunning (2006).
72. 27/Nov/07--Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit by Ryan Nerz (2006).
73. 29/Nov/07--The Messiah of Morris Avenue by Tony Hendra (2006). *****
74. 4/Dec/07--Travels With Alice by Calvin Trillin (1989).
75. 7/Dec/07--Lost Echoes by Joe R. Lansdale (2007). *****
76. 10/Dec/07--Gemma by Meg Tilly (2006). *****
77. 12/Dec/07--Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs (2006). *****
78. 16/Dec/07--A Pound Of Paper: Confessions Of A Book Addict by John Baxter (2002).
79. 18/Dec/07--Fast Company: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Motorcycles in Italy by David. M. Gross (2007).
80. 20/Dec/07--No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (2005). *****
81. 23/Dec/07--The Ruins by Scott Smith (2006).
82. 28/Dec/07--Red Thunder by John Varley (2003).

Book Buying Orgy II

Well, the title gives it all away, so I won't be constructing any clever, albeit derivative, openings such as "Hi! My name is G. W. and I'm a book addict..." or "Perhaps I'm in need of an intervention..." or "It's not my fault; no, really, it's not my fault..." (okay, so they're not clever; so sod off); I'll just come out and say I returned to Barnes & Noble Sunday and bought a bunch of books.

*sigh*

Let the rationalizing begin.

My original intent was to buy only three books: The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, and 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Richmond by Nathan Lott. Some explanation:

During my last Book Buying Orgy I actually picked up The Wasp Factory but somehow managed to misplace it between the "Fiction" section and the checkout counter. When you're lugging around a huge-ass pile of books this can happen and when you're a leeetle obsessive this is annoying. Majorly annoying. My sense of...completeness...was disrupted and, sheesh, well, we can't have that, so Sunday's task was to remedy my neurotic discomfort. And to grab a copy of 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Richmond, inspired as I was by my recent rambles through Forest Hill Park and the alleys of the Carytown/Museum District (remember, if you will, that when faced with any drive beyond an hour I'm more than likely going to stay at home. Remember, too, that even though I've lived here over 16 years I barely know anything at all about this place which, yes, I know, is sad). Oh, and The Crossing because friend Kevin (the quintessential Cormac McCarthy fan: "Blood Meridian is the only book where I finished the last page and immediately started over with the first").said "youhavetoreadityouhavenochoice" since I just finished All the Pretty Horses.

Three books. One, two, three. That's all. But B&N didn't have a copy of The Crossing and I figured since I was expecting to buy three and I had budgeted for three, I may as well find a third because... because... well, just because.

Long story short--I bought six.

I have a problem.

I don't care.

I did find 60 Hikes and The Wasp Factory; I also found:

Men And Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem (see the Bookslut entry here), a collection of short stories by the author of Gun, With Occasional Music, which I enjoyed for its out-and-out quirky-assedness. The Bookslut review promises more of the same so I'm all a-twitter.

Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee
To which I can only say Dudes! It's JOHN 'EFFIN' MCPHEE! I cannot imagine the subject he couldn't make interesting (and, believe me, I've tried), but TRUCKS and TRAINS and OCEAN TANKERS? Oh, sweet Jeebus, my inner 10-yr. old is having conniptions!

Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke
So I like Truman Capote's writing, so I think "A Christmas Memory" is one of the greatest short stories of all time, so I find the man with all his quirks and foibles and contradictions utterly, completely fascinating, so that doesn't make me gay (not that there's anything wrong with that!). No track lighting, Audrey Hepburn posters, or Tom of Finland collections in my apartment (okay, yeah, I've got a... few... musicals on CD and know the words to an awful lot of show tunes, still...). No, seriously, to me there's something about Capote, some strange... disparity... between the man and his work I'm hoping this biography will explain.

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
The darling little twenty-something Gothy/Emo female cashier with the nasal piercing, the all-black clothing, and the black-rimmed Nerd Glasses was dutifully scanning my books when she came to Consider the Lobster and said, "What do you think of David Foster Wallace? He intrigues me."

And, you know? For a moment I was at a complete loss for words. I mean, how do you sum up Infinite Jest? Or The Broom of the System? Or the stories in Oblivion? Especially when what I'm thinking is No, honey; you intrigue me! I want to marry you, to rob banks and knock over 7-11s so as to support you in a style to which you're unaccustomed, sell crack and run whores whereby to shower you with expensive hipster gifts from the profits, buy you Mark Ryden originals, gaze at you longingly by moonlight in Hollywood Cemetery, to...

Never mind.

What I said was "How do you feel about... footnotes? Because DFW's footnotes can run as long, if not longer, than his novels."

"I love footnotes. I love it when things take me all sorts of directions I don't expect."

And, oh, people, the... things... that were flitting through my mind... but I was good; I merely took my bag o' books, looked over my shoulder, and said:

"Infinite Jest. Grab a copy. You're going to have a great time!"

See that big ol' "L" on my forehead?

Yeah.

Book Buying Orgy

So how do I celebrate (my lack of) Labor Day? Well, by heading out to my local Barnes & Noble and buying a whole bunch of books!

How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes For Great Food by Mark Bittman
I've needed a good, basic, all-inclusive, one-volume cookbook for years, but with gazillions of 'em out there from which to choose and new ones being printed by the forestload the question has always been which one? My mother swears by her Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook from the late 'Fifties/early 'Sixties and many, many people recommend The Joy of Cooking, but I dunno, they've always seemed kind of...frumpy...with too many recipes involving the perturbations of Jell-O and suspended fruit. The first cookbook I ever bought for myself was The New James Beard, this at a book fair in Harrisonburg where I had to fight--and I mean fight-- my way through a crowd of cooking-crazed militant Mennonite women (my friend Lynn suggested next time I should shout "Hey! Is that Jesus over by the technothrillers?" to clear a path) and I liked Beard's writing style, but still wanted something a little more detailed. My other cookbook was a gift, The Stuffed Cougar, which I think the city of Richmond requires you to own if you want to live here, having been published as a fundraiser for the hoity-toity Collegiate School. Compiled in the '70s, it's basically a collection of recipes most of which involve opening cans and crumbling potato chips (there's even a "Six-Can Casserole" submitted by the mother of one of my ex-girlfriends).

Anyway, praise be to the Intarweb, for diligent searching revealed the highly recommended How To Cook Everything--"...a more hip Joy of Cooking"--and it looks to be pretty close to my ideal.

I Got Somebody In Staunton: Stories by William Henry Lewis
Hey! Staunton, VA! Nine miles from where I grew up! Well, that, plus I love short stories, all the reviews are highly positive, and this was a PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction finalist.

The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt
Could be good, could be bad, but with a title like that I had to check it out! And an art school drop-out/barista/comic book writer as a main character fighting Primal Evil? Yeah, I'm there.

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
Mixed reviews, but still--historical fiction about ol' Edgar's last days? Yeah, I'm there too!

Glasshouse by Charles Stross
"...a claustrophobic far-future helter-skelter ride through an experimental archaeology project gone horribly wrong." I've read a couple of books by Stross and this one sounded interesting, so why not?

The Sign of the Book and The Bookwoman's Last Fling by John Dunning
Look, I like mysteries and I like books, so when someone develops a character who's both a rare book dealer and an occasional private investigator I get all gooey inside. Dunning's previous books in the series have been decent enough, offering an insider's look into the antiquarian book trade (which I find utterly fascinating; Used and Rare: Travels In the Book World is something I re-read frequently and is a great companion piece for Dunning's mysteries) as an interesting backdrop for all the hugger-mugger.

The Rift by Walter J. Williams
Nine hundred forty-four pages about an American Apocalypse via earthquake? Have I mentioned recently how much I love The-End-of-the-World-As-We-Know-It novels? Lucifer's Hammer? On the Beach? A Canticle For Leibowitz? Alas, Babylon? Oh, yeah, baby, and now I have something new to add to the list!

Hit Parade by Lawrence Block
Bottom line: Lawrence Block rocks! Nah, it ain't Great Literature, but when I'm looking for a fun read, entertainment pure and simple, Mr. Block delivers the goods consistently. Here we have the third collection of stories about introspective, introverted hit man John Keller.

So there ya go, my stockpile for fall, because as we ALL should know by now, "Books will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no books."