02.21.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:13 pm by Frazer
One of these years, I’m actually going to figure this blogging thing out: learn to keep at it on a regular basis rather than saving up and releasing a month’s worth (or more!) in one great ungainly blurt. That’s the dream, anyway. But for now I’m deep into February with nothing said about January and it’s time to wax lyrical about the five books I read in January, and the ones I read in February, as well as some other things of possible import or interest.
January, no question about it, is a good reading month. Yes, large chunks of it do tend to be taken up by football (although not as much now that the heretics have moved the Super Bowl to–the very thought!–February). But the periods over New Year’s between bowl games and food stupors inevitably find me and Sally with our noses buried in books.(In contrast with my five, Sally read approximately forty books in January. Think she’ll read more than me this year?) Then the month ends with the ABA’s Winter Institute, which has some good airport, airplane, and hotel room reading time. Finally, I have (grit teeth) pledged to go to the gym more often this year than last (not very difficult, that), and the elliptical machine has provided a very pleasant reading venue.
So when I returned to Charlotte after New Year’s, the first thing I reached for was Michael Pollan’s new manifesto, In Defense of Food, which came out New Year’s Day, and which I had been waiting for for some time. Sally and I, of course, were huge fans of his previous The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book which actually inspired us to make changes in our own eating habits. (No, our habits still aren’t perfect, but we’ve given up feedlot meat and cut way back on processed foods; a love of cooking helps a lot.) One very important factor that made The Omnivore’s Dilemma such a powerful, life-changing book for us (and, clearly, for many others) is Mr. Pollan’s skill as a writer, which I rhapsodized at length about last year when I was reading his The Botany of Desire. In Defense of Food continues this tradition, though it’s a very different book from its predecessor (to which it is clearly designed to be a companion). It’s short, precise, even punchy, in contrast to the languorous, lushly descriptive pace of his previous work. Mr. Pollan’s exploration of the absurdities of our country’s food and agricultural systems seems considerably angrier this time around. He also makes some extremely interesting and provocative arguments about bad nutritional advice we have received over the years. (Just think about twenty years ago when nutritionists told us eggs could be dangerous and margarine was better than butter.) This leads him to question a lot of the conventional wisdom we’re still operating under, most notably between dietary fat and cholesterol and heart disease.
What lies behind Pollan’s punchy slogan that’s printed on the book cover and which will be getting repeated many times this year (”Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) is the idea that food itself is a system whose interactions with our bodies are incredibly complex, and therefore that trying to reduce any food to the sum of its parts is folly. As the rates of obesity and diabetes rise, it becomes increasingly clear that something in our nutritional thinking is flawed. Pollan doesn’t find all the answers, as he would be the first to admit, but he does suggest some means of improvement. Do not, for example, eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize. Don’t eat anything that claims to have added nutrients to make it better. In short, eat food. Not processed crap. Food.
I’ll get off the soapbox now. Just read Mr. Pollan’s book, and, even if you don’t agree with it, think hard about what he says. To me, that there’s a pretty serious problem in the way America eats is obvious. (One of the theses of The Omnivore’s Dilemma was that America has a “national eating disorder.”) See what you think. And with that abrupt angular segueway, we’ll move on to talk of fiction.
Second book I read this year was Stephen King’s new Duma Key. I guess I’m going to keep reading King as long as he keeps publishing (though I’ve never been able to get into his Dark Tower series, and I had very little interest in the recent “unearthed Bachman” Blaze), but this one was no classic. Yes, it was entertaining, he almost always is, and yes, he didn’t make fun of Southern accents for twenty pages the way he did in last year’s Lisey’s Story, but somehow I connected better with both of his last two books (the other one being Cell) than this one. Cell was good stupid fun, a kickass zombie movie, albeit one with a weird mystical conceit; Lisey’s Story, despite my irritation with King’s stylistic quirks (which he’s been nursing for decades), was an amazing, mature novel that dealt skillfully and insightfully with relationships both familial and marital. Duma Key tries for both and fails. Sure, there’s a good Lovecraftian villain and a lot of meditation on the nature of art, but the former waits until far too late in the novel to make its presence felt while the latter is much less incisive than King has been on the subject in the past. (The art in question is painting instead of writing, so perhaps Mr. King was a bit out of his element.) Nearly every single character turns out to be much less interesting than they seem when you first meet them, and pretty much all the scary stuff has been done better in previous King novels.
With all this said, if you are (as I am) a die-hard Stephen King fan, you will enjoy Duma Key. I don’t regret reading it for a second, and I’ll be chomping at the bit for whatever he does next. But the promises of his previous two novels–a return to his fun B-movie roots and growing maturity as a serious writer–don’t get fulfilled here.
Fiction rounds out January, and leads us inexorably to Louisville, Kentucky, and the Winter Institute. I’ve decided to give in to Harry Potter mania (conveniently, after the last book has been released), and so I’m going to plow through all of them in turn (with the exception of the first, which I had already read). I am currently nearing halfway through Order of the Phoenix, having dispatched with Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire this past month. I’m having fun, though probably not as much had I followed the series since its inception and waited on pins and needles for each new installment. And there was another novel too.
That would be Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. I’ve been interested in seeing the movie (I haven’t yet), and have tried several times, without success, to attempt to read Mr. McCarthy’s fiction. I wasn’t put off this time; the flow and pacing and extreme violence of No Country for Old Men sucked me right in. The writing is crisp and fine (the lack of quote marks and apostrophes may recall Faulkner, but the style is pure Hemingway, except that I liked this better than most Hemingway I’ve read), the characters perfectly drawn mostly through action and dialogue, and, oh yes, let’s not forget Anton Chigurh, one of literary fiction’s best villains ever. (I actually had a dream while reading this novel that Chigurh was coming to get me, but then I was in the process of getting sick.) Still, I find myself questioning a few of Mr. McCarthy’s decisions. I have no problem with the unresolved nature of the ending, but I do have a problem with one of the major events of the novel occurring offstage and being recounted secondhand, seemingly almost as an afterthought. I also notice that the story that seems to be the focus of the movie (to judge from commercials and reviews–again, I haven’t seen it) is not necessarily the primary narrative arc of the novel. That doesn’t bother me–if anything, it tempers the grimness of the denouement with a little bit of hope–but it does make me eager to see the movie. And, as much as No Country For Old Men engaged me, I still don’t feel the need to try another of Mr. McCarthy’s novels.
I finished No Country for Old Men on the plane to Louisville for Winter Institute. I almost didn’t go for two main reasons. First, I had finished my tenure on the ABA’s Bookseller Advisory Council, and so I wasn’t required to. (Sally, as past president of SIBA, still had to go.) Second, I’d been running a nearly 101 degree fever the night before, with plentiful aches and congestion. On the day of our flight, I decided I didn’t feel bad enough to cancel a $300 non-refundable plane ticket but realized I probably wasn’t going to feel too good much of the time there. And I didn’t. Spent too much time shivering in bed in the hotel room, got nowhere near enough time to explore Louisville, and while I might have had some great meals, I couldn’t taste anything.
There was, however, a bigger reason that I did want to go, which was that Louisville was the original home of my favorite rock band Antietam (who now make their home in New York), and I wanted to check out the scene that had nourished Tara Key and Tim Harris (who got married) and their friend Wolf Knapp in the late 70s and early 80s. All the members originally started out with punk bands, but their sound moved toward a more mainstream (if that’s the word) indie-rock sound powered by Tara’s amazing guitar work and Tim and Wolf’s odd two-bass attack. Now in 2007, Wolf has moved on and Antietam is a power trio with Tim on bass and Josh Madell on drums. Tara is a librarian at Columbia University, and looks like a librarian, but over the years she’s become one the best rock guitarists ever, with a very physical style and a sound that recalls Neil Young and the Clash without really sounding like either. (She refers to her guitar playing as “calisthenics for the short and unmuscular.”) They’re not prolific–eight albums in over twenty years, all but two of which are out of print. A lot of great indie bands of the 80s never really got all the recognition they deserved (Glass Eye, Great Plains, and Fetchin Bones spring immediately to mind, but there are hundreds of others). Unlike many other bands, Antietam has found a way to stick it out for the long haul, and Tara has said she plans to keep it up as long as she can play guitar.
This of course has nothing to do with books, so if you want to hear anything by Antietam, check out my MySpace page here, where I have one of their songs (you can also be my friend, if you like–won’t somebody please be my friend?). Or you can check out their bio at their record label here. All I really got to see of Louisville that wasn’t a hotel was the Bardstown Road strip (home of a great bookstore, Carmichael’s, and a great record store, Ear-Xtacy), which gave just a hint of what it must have been like back in the day. Damn winter viruses.
So, let’s see….since then, I’ve done two audiobooks (and yes, those damn well count), Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal, which was better than I expected, and Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up, which wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Krugman’s book is far from a rant–rather, it explains the historical details behind our current political situation very clearly. I figured Martin’s book would be a slam-dunk, as I loved his stand-up stuff as a kid (my dad let me listen to it, though he probably shouldn’t have), and he was reading it. I know from experience that Martin is a talented and interesting writer, but in Born Standing Up, he sounded peculiarly flat, as if he could remember the events he described (not hard, since he never became a big druggie) but not the emotion behind him. Still, there was one bombshell: his first lover was Stormie (Power of a Praying Wife) Omartian!
Beyond that, it has been Harry, Harry, Harry. I’m finding the Harry Potter books entertaining, but I’m also wondering what I was thinking when I decided to try all seven in succession, which is over 4000 pages. And, damn, Harry gets grumpy in the later books. But now I’m past the tipping point in #5, and so I’ll see it through until the end…whenever that may be.
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01.03.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:22 pm by Frazer
I think it was Nicki’s mention of my dormant blog in her most recent Lady Banks newsletter that has shamed me into sitting down at the computer to try to resurrect my reading journey. The phrase “Maybe next year”: It’s not just for Braves fans anymore. It is, of course, abundantly clear that I haven’t come close to 100 in 2007, but it’s also becoming unfortunately apparent that I may not be able to figure out how many books I read in the first place. Yep, that’s right–sloppy record keeping and household chaos have left me scratching my head. Let’s try to do the math: I’ve got nineteen listed on the blog, five in a stack on the desk beside me, and three more that I know definitively I have read and which I could probably locate somewhere in the house given sufficient time. That puts us at twenty-seven read, but I also know I’ve read more than one since my last blog entry, which put my total as of late July at twenty-six. That sound you might be hearing, by the way, would be my head banging down on the desk repeatedly.
I should not, of course, give any excuses for my failure, but I will anyway: I lay this squarely at the feet of the monster I call Family. My younger sister Amy moved down from Knoxville to Charlotte this summer along with her three year old daughter Haley, and moved in with us for six weeks; she eventually found a lovely house to rent, which happens conveniently to be about five houses down the street from ours. So suddenly there’s a lot more family in our lives–I should clarify that this is in no way a bad thing–and unfortunately blogging is one of the first cuts made when time demands come in over budget. Mea freakin’ culpa.
On the other hand, Amy and Haley’s arrival has in some senses been good for my reading pace. Amy is a Colbert freak, and we have been trading lines from I Am America (and So Can You) (as well as from the Onion’s acidly hilarious Our Dumb World), while Haley has introduced me to the wonderful world of Dora the Explorer books, all of which, for some reason, contain at least one repetition of the cryptic imperative, “Swiper, no swiping!” And now that we’ve got them settled down in their new place, I may actually have time to blog as well, and continue this exercise in futility well into 2008. Consider yourselves warned.
So let’s call 2007 a mulligan and hit the ground running in 2008. I’m excited about the new year for various reasons. I haven’t looked closely at the summer lists yet, but I know there’s gonna be some good stuff. First thing I’m anxiously awaiting is a new book from Michael Pollan laying down on New Years’ Day, called In Defense of Food. And from the non-book world, two of my favorite bands, Antietam and The Dirtbombs, have new records out, titled, respectively, Opus Mixtum and We Have You Surrounded.
Here’s a partial list of books I read and never got around to blogging about. All of these are worth your time, as noted below:
Monster Planet, Monster Nation, and 99 Coffins by David Wellington. The first two finish out Wellington’s kick-ass zombie trilogy, while 99 Coffins is the second in his vampire trilogy. 99 Coffins is especially good, with a killer ending that sets up many intriguing possibilities for the final book.
Void Moon by Michael Connelly. Fun stand-alone from a writer who very rarely disappoints.
Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay. I love me some Dexter, and author Jeff Lindsay hasn’t let me down yet. Each new novel features something new, along with Dexter’s engaging perfectly rendered voice. This time there’s an interesting hint of the supernatural running through the story. I’m happy to report that Dexter’s Showtime series is quite good.
How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millett. This satircal and yet poignant novel is, admittedly, something of a disappointment after Millett’s mind-blowing Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, but still delivers fine writing and interesting, multifaceted characters.
Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier. This is in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, a laudable idea of doing small books on classic rock and roll albums, in this case Double Nickels on the Dime by the great Venice Beach band the Minutemen. Problem is books in this series tend to be a) a highly personal essay that seems to refer to the album in question only tangentially or b) a song-by-song dissection of the album which is somewhat interesting but often less fun than you could actually have listening to the album. This one falls under b, which is in no way a knock on Fournier’s writing, which is skilled and energetic. But it can’t compare to the record itself, a dazzling collection of forty-plus songs (none longer than three minutes and many much less) by the first California punk band who could actually play their instruments and who thus forged a sound very unlike any band before or since.
And The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, a stunning Australian mystery Sally introduced me to. It’s got a great Harry Bosch-like tormented protagonist and a wonderful sense of place and environment. Peter Temple is, quite simply, a fantastic writer. I think the most interesting part of it to me was how similar the plot–two Aboriginal kids busted for the murder of a wealthy white man–would have been if the novel had been set in, say, Alabama.
So that’s it. Happy New Year, everybody. Look for more and better blog entries in 2008. I’m already reading–working my way, fairly quickly, through the Harry Potter novels (I’ve read the first two before so only 3 through 7 will count toward my total), with an interesting looking manuscript by our pal Ed Southern waiting in the wings. And I’ve finally got time to look through my summer catalogs and find books to get excited about. Huzzah!
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07.30.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:47 pm by Frazer
I am, at the moment, contemplating a year’s worth of blog work, and wonder what, exactly, I have to show for it. There do seem to be a few people who actually read what I put up–thanks much, Elisabeth, Pat, and Wanda, and anyone else who’s taken the time to listen to my blather. You’re the real stars here. Thanks also to my grad school pal Marcia Smith, who, for some reason, has made her way from Alabama to Utah, who found me on MySpace recently (my page is here, if you care, but turn your speakers down because I tend to have loud songs there) and has been bugging me to blog more.
Anyway, it’s time for a little status update, and also time to dispense quickly with some books that I did read but that don’t really warrant full entries of their own (which is in no way reflective of their quality). I’ll be happy to discuss these until the ends of the earth with anyone, but for now I have to get some minor entries cleared from my queue. Besides, I’m currently listening to an amazing soulful garage punk combo from Detroit called the Dirtbombs, who can cover skanky punk songs and Marvin Gaye with equal aplomb, and it’s got my writing mojo revving. Thank you to maniacal Norton/ Workman rep Bill Verner for that one!
Currently reading Book #26, so I’m nine below my total from last year. Will I hit fifty and compete with the Mighty Fist of (Kelly) Justice? Or will I spin down into Atlanta Braves-like mediocrity? Well, you won’t know unless you follow along, will you? The current book is Angel’s Flight by Michael Connelly, because, well, I’ve been in a bit of a funk in the last few weeks, and sometimes you just need a little Harry Bosch in your life, am I right?
So, briefly noted:
The Overlook by Michael Connelly. Yep, another Harry Bosch. There are at this point two or three I haven’t read, so when I get a craving, I have something to reach for. This one was serialized in the New York Times Magazine, and has been slightly expanded for its book release. It’s a quick, devious, twisty tale that unfolds quickly–a little less substantive than some of the other Bosch novel, but no less fun. All but the rabid can probably wait for paperback; that said, it’s pretty easy to become a rabid fan of Mr. Connelly’s excellent novels.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Another in my series of Vonnegut re-reads. This was my mom’s favorite Vonnegut, and was therefore the first one I read (age 12-13). I barely remembered it and most certainly didn’t get it at the time. I don’t know why this one doesn’t get talked about with the same level of intensity that Slaughterhouse-Five does; it’s a beautiful piece of work, so generous and good-hearted and at the same time so very bitter. Underneath the bitterness is the conviction that everyone matters, however pathetic they may seem, and it’s a sentiment we’d do well to think about today.
Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad doesn’t deserve much mention; it’s a good book, but it’s long out of print (I picked up a hardcover copy on abebooks.com for a buck plus shipping), and at this late date is no longer comprehensive (it doesn’t go far past the Murphy/Piscopo era). Still and all, it’s by far the best book I’ve read about SNL, a staple of my childhood and young adulthood, and fans should check it out.
Eat This: 1001 Things to Eat Before You Diet by Ian Jackman. A pleasant foodie travelogue that could be more substantial; think of it more as a travel book than a food book. I’d have liked more food detail, but Jackman has a cheerful, likable voice and a flair for finding good places to eat, especially in New York. (I wish I’d had this one before we went to BEA, not that we didn’t manage to get some great meals.)
And, gee, that only leaves me six to consider in detail (though two of them are #2 and #3 in a trilogy and will be reviewed together). I hope everyone’s reading something good, and I bet I’m not the only one feeling a sneaking sense of relief at having this whole Harry Potter thing done with…..
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:01 pm by Frazer
When Robert Kurson’s first work of narrative non-fiction, the masterful Shadow Divers, showed up at the store a few years back, I really didn’t pay it much attention. World War II history (which I at first took Shadow Divers to be, incorrectly of course) generally doesn’t appeal to me. However, Trudy Young, one of our wonderful booksellers, raved about it, and eventually, Sally and I grudgingly agreed to listen to the audiobook on a trip to the SEBA show in Atlanta. We were, predictably, hooked in short order by Campell Scott’s fine reading of Kurson’s thrilling tale. Long story short, we all went nuts over the book, sold a ton of them (and continue to sell a ton of them), and even got Mr. Kurson to do a signing at our store (the house was packed for that one).
I remember after he’d left the store, Sally and I speculated on what he might do next. We agreed that he’d have a tough time following up a grand slam like Shadow Divers. He was an excellent writer, but would he be able to find a story so incredibly compelling again? How could he possibly?
Silly me. Somehow, Bob Kurson found himself an even better story to tell. The result might be the best book I’ve read all year.
Back when I was in high school and college, one of my specialties was bad teenage angst poetry. It added to the nerdly appeal. Frequently, I would have one of those what-if-our-universe-is-just-an-atom-in-a-giant’s-toenail ideas (and without drugs, no less), and write a crappy poem about it. One of my better ones was about how a blind man would react if he suddenly got his sight back after never having had it. My opinion at the time was that it would cause instant and permanent insanity. Deep little guy, wasn’t I? If they’d had goths in Alabama when I went to high school, I probably would have been one.
But still, it was a poem I wrote, and even if it was bad, the question of what would happen if the blind could suddenly see has always been a little stuck in my mind. So imagine my surprise, when saying hello to Bob Kurson at the Winter Institute in Portland, that that’s exactly what his second book, Crashing Through, was about.
There were no galleys at that point, only a teaser sample chapter. I cursed and hunkered down to wait for a galley. My friend Toni Hetzel who works for Random House came through after what seemed an agonizingly long time. I pondered the galley with its somewhat garish cover (which I don’t really like, even though I understand why they used it), then took it home and gobbled it down (shouldn’t this be in Consuming Books?). I was amazed. Like the previous book–great writing, great story expertly told, characters examined in a depth you rarely find in narrative nonfiction. I did grumble a little bit that it wouldn’t be as easy to sell to the YA market–there is a lengthy sex scene, though it may be one of the least gratuitous sex scenes ever committed to page.
But the story–the story! Mike May, despite accidentally blinding himself in a chemical explosion at age three, is an accomplished guy who has lived life pretty fearlessly. His mom is a free spirit who doesn’t let Mike think of himself as “disabled.” And Mike’s hard to keep down anyway–his childhood is filled with climbing, riding his bike, and at one point driving a motorcycle (!). Sure, he can’t see, but his other senses are especially developed. And, more importantly, Mike doesn’t care if he takes a bruise trying things. He doesn’t care if he fails. His understanding of risk and reward is especially keen. And this informs his entire life.
In his early forties, May visits an optometrist with his wife, and learns that, in certain special cases, a new experimental (non-embryonic) stem cell procedure can restore sigh, and May just happens to be one of those special cases. And so May is faced with an unbelievable dilemma. His life, he knows, is complete without sight. He is happy with his wife and two young sons and his life in general (though he’s a little worried about a risky startup business he’s embarking on). To say the surgery is risky is an understatement: only one of his eyes can be restored (the other having sustained too much damage in the accident), success is by no means assured, and there’s no way to tell if the restored sight will last the rest of his life or into next week. Plus there’s the fact that he’ll have to take highly toxic carcinogenic anti-rejection drugs for years, possibly forever.
And yet, and yet. The other side of the coin is that walking away from a risky proposition is just not something that Mike May does. It’s not who he is. In the end, he has to do it.
Whar follows this is often very strange, exhilarating, and frequently scary. No one is sure what to plan for, because the number of cases of anyone this long blind getting their sight back is approxiately twenty throughout record history. One of the best documented cases is not at all encouraging–the patient slips into an unaccountable depression after restoring his sight, complaining that sight isn’t what he imagined, and dies less than two years later. May’s eye works, and he can see his children and his wife (the scene where they make love for the first time after the operation is striking and tender and beautiful) for the first time. May’s memories and Kurson’s skillfull writing make the the best part of the book. May’s vision is restored, but it’s also incomplete in puzzling ways. At first, for instance, he cannot recognize faces, and he cannot tell just by looking if a person is male or female. Optical illusions don’t work on him. Seeing wears him out; what you and I take for granted and comes to us instantaneously is hard work for him. The eye, his doctor tells him, is developing perfectly….so the problem must lie somewhere else, but where?
The only other thing I can tell you about this book is, for God’s sake, read it. By far the best nonfiction I’ve read this year, maybe since The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If you really need more, check out this article here and May’s own thoughts on his condition to be found here.
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06.14.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:41 pm by Frazer
Well, BEA has come and gone, and no blog entries….I need to quit talking about cranking up my blogging engine. Apparently, saying I’ll have an entry in by a particular day virtually guarantees that it will be late. Damn, damn, damn. We’re talking full-scale writer’s block here, friends and neighbors. Good thing I don’t do this for living.
The good thing in all this is that I’m certainly not suffering from reader’s block. 100 remains a remote chance, but I’ve just finished Book #20, the new Dexter novel from Jeff Lindsay, which had me turning handsprings (figuratively, of course) when it got to the store earlier this week. I’d been waiting for Dexter in the Dark for what I consider an unfairly long time, and so I put aside Lydia Millet’s excellent new novel (and I’m going right back to you, Lydia, I promise) and devoured it in two days. (Sally had finished it by 8 pm the day we got it, of course.) And I should be able to knock out the Millet, How the Dead Dream, in a couple more, since it’s proving to be rather delightful, if not quite as impressive (so far) as her last novel, the weird and flat-out spectacular Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. Then there’s a “new” Stephen King novel, Blaze, ostensibly written by Mr. King’s alter ego Richard Bachman. King first mentioned Blaze in one of his forewords or introductions back in the 80s, and I have to say I’m not looking that much forward to it. But I’ve been a King fan for a long time, and I’m always willing to give him the Nancy Pearl-mandated fifty pages to impress me.
Anyway, there are now seven books I’ve read and not blogged about. I’m going to tell you about one of them right now, and, then, well, I’ll do my best. I think I can combine two of them (Michael Connelly’s fun, short retooled serial The Overlook and Peter Temple’s intricate and powerful The Broken Shore) into one entry, since they’re both hard-boiled mysteries featuring tortured cops; the rest are fairly unclassifiable. Which, of course, means lots of extra writing, since, of course, it’s impossible for me to understand the concept of brevity being the soul of wit. So, then, the real suspense comes from wondering how many books I can read AND whether I’ll actually get around to blogging about them. What a bonus for my four or five readers! I do, in any event, think there’s a good chance that I will be able to read at least fifty books this year at my current pace. And if I can do fifty this year, then I can do sixty next year.
Book #11 (you thought I’d forgotten about that, didn’t you?), Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, is pretty much a complete delight. I loved it, as did Sally and my good friends Kelly Justice (shout out to the Iron Justice of Bookselling, yo) and John Magers (my Dungeons and Dragons buddy who patiently endures abuse from me, the Dungeon Master). Soon I Will Be Invincible is, as the title implies, a novel about superheroes. Not the DC or Marvel ones, but real, angst-filled superheroes with Web sites and publicists. Sally and I are, in general, not superhero fans; John, on the other hand sees every superhero movie the day it opens. (I think Kelly’s views are somewhere in between.) Yet we all adored Soon I Will Be Invincible. John thinks it may be the best book he’s read this year. In other words, even if you’re not a superhero fan, give this a try if you like funny, quirky, well-written action novels. If you are a superhero fan, consider it essential.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is told in two voices in alternating chapters. The first introduces Doctor Impossible, previously known variously as Count Smackula and Smartacus (he earned money wrestling early in his career, you see). Doctor Impossible is, after an accident, turned into a superbeing: physically powerful, nearly (but not completely) invincible, and possessed of an IQ in excess of 300. The problem, we learn, is that people with such a high IQ usually develop a condition known as Malign Hypercognition Disorder, or, more simply, being an evil genius. So the good Doctor, at the beginning, is imprisoned in an extremely high security facility where he mopes and grouses about having to meet with a therapist. (”The things I could tell him–secrets of the universe! But he wants to know about my childhood. I try to relax and remind myself of my situation–if I kill him, they’ll just send another.”)
Trading chapters with Doctor Impossible is Fatale, a young woman who lost half her body in an accident and had it replaced with robot parts. That’s right, basically the Bionic Woman, but she weighs a lot more. She is just joining the Champions, a sort of dysfunctional Superfriends, whose leader CoreFire has gone missing. The Champions squabble constantly, and Fatale rarely feels she fits in. But soon Doctor Impossible has broken loose, and it’s up to the Champions to stop his latest foray into world domination.
That’s most of the plot; the rest is given to angst, argument, and some extremely good writing. Author Grossman clearly has some formidable writing chops. He does, in some ways, need to polish them a bit. Some critics have said the voices of Fatale and Doctor Impossible are too similar; I can see why they’d say so, even if I mostly disagree. (I think they are well differentiated, but Doctor I is too much more interesting than Fatale.) And he needs to smooth out some of the transitions between present and flashback. But his ideas are excellent, and his writing is graceful with killer turns of phrase that let you see the people behind these, well, aberrations. Here’s my favorite, where the Doctor talks about the accident that made him who he is:
“The temperature went on rising. Spiderweb cracks formed on the glass of the containment chamber an instant before the explosion. The pain was like burning or drowning, and it went on and on, unbearable. I wanted to faint, to leave my body. When you can’t bear something but it goes on anyway, the person who survives isn’t you anymore; you’ve changed and become someone else, a new person, the one who did bear it after all. The formula saturated my body, and I changed.”
And in case you have trouble keeping the superheroes and villains straight, Grossman helpfully provides an appendix listing them, their powers, power source, and brief biography. Many are only cameo players in the novel, but they all have interesting stories, and dammit, I want to hear them all. I hope that Mr. Grossman will continue writing in this universe. Even if he doesn’t, I can hardly wait to see what he does next.
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05.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:41 pm by Frazer
My brother-in-law, Jamie Brewster, is, overall, a pretty good guy. I play Dungeons and Dragons with him and three other guys each and every Tuesday (sheesh, the things I’m willing to admit to you people). But one problem with Jamie is, if he’s not totally into a book you loan him, he takes forever to finish it. Right now I’m waiting for him to get done with Austin Grossman’s delightful superhero angst opera Soon I Will Be Invincible. Yes, I suppose I could write about the book without it being actually present, but it has lines in it that are way too good not to share. I also just finished #15, which was Robert Kurson’s astonishing new book, Crashing Through. It came out this week, so please do not wait for me to blog about it to read it–do it now. Now!
So let’s move on and do a few in brief here as I’m trying, for once, not to be so damn wordy. Number 12 is the new one from Dave Barry, though it’s not really a new one per se. It’s his guide to our millennium so far (title: Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium [So Far]), which means it’s a collection of his side-splitting year in review columns. I love Dave Barry, always have, and I’ll read anything he puts out. And his year-in-review columns have always been my favorites. But would I buy this one in hardcover? I’ll just say I think it might have done better as a trade paper original.
Next we have a re-read. I’ve asserted previously that I’m allowed to include re-reads as long as it has been at least twenty years since the last time. (See my earlier entry on Goldman’s Marathon Man.) I was a weird kid as a young teenager, and my mom was refreshingly non-restrictive of what I read. By the time I was 13 or so, Stephen King, John Irving, and Kurt Vonnegut were the mighty triumvirate of my literary life. Early on, my favorite was Vonnegut, who recently died leaving a gaping hole in the literary pantheon (so it goes).
And of all the Vonnegut, my favorite was Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, I enjoyed the aura of faux cool afforded by being “into Vonnegut” as I would say (cringing now, at the memory), but I enjoyed the novel’s funny parts, naughty bits (ahhhh, Montana Wildhack), and science-fiction overtones. I read it dozens of times, and don’t think I ever read the first chapter (which, told directly from Vonnegut’s perspective, functions as more of a foreword than anything else). I wanted to get unstuck in time and head off to Tralfamadore.
Well, I re-read Slaughterhouse-Five recently, and while it should be obvious how much I didn’t get when I read it as a kid, I was really unprepared for the raw, vicious impact the novel has. The parts that delighted me as a teenager were, I discovered as a forty-year-old, more like trappings to make the truths at the core of the novel less painful. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Re-reading Catch 22 a few years back had been similar–I had laughed myself silly over Milo Minderbinder trying to get Yossarian to eat chocolate-covered cotton, but it was only with age that I saw the real engine of the novel is when Snowden’s guts spill all over the plane. I’m almost afraid to go back now and re-read any other Vonnegut, though I know I will.
I did have the privilege of seeing Vonnegut speak once, when I was in college at Florida State in the mid-80s. It was a thrilling, hilarious speech, most of which can be found in Man Without a Country. But the part I remember most was catching a glimpse of the man himself, smoking a cigarette under a section of bleachers, alone, with no one above or around him realizing he was there. He looked lonely, a little tired, and had I not been petrified at the prospect, I might have gotten out of my seat, gone down, and had a smoke with him, tried to get him to crack a smile. But of course, I couldn’t. I wish now that I had, even if he’d wound up telling me to bugger off.
Our last book of the evening is one that my bookselling readers (probably three of the five of you) may have gotten a galley of delivered in an evidence bag. Ah, New York people, how I love you, always trying to find the gimmick that will make me and Sally notice your book. But the evidence bag opened easily, and therefore wasn’t as annoying as the wrapping jobs sometimes done on galleys; and there was no useless tchotchke with the book to make me grind my teeth and wonder why publishers couldn’t spend their money more wisely. Okay, fine, I| won’t gripe about the evidence bag. But I hope the final cover is more than just blank white with a bloody hand print and assorted spatters.
The gimmickry, it turns out, is pretty unnecessary anyway, because what made the mailing special was the book inside, a novel called Heartsick by one Chelsea Cain. Sally got it first; we had just returned from the Winter Institute in Portland, which is where Heartsick is set. She was skeptical at first, but afterward admitted that the novel had been, in fact, pretty damn good. So I picked it up, and found one of the best serial killer novels I’ve read since serial killer novels became a cliché.
It’s not that Ms. Cain is necessarily trying to take the genre in strange new directions. Numerous novelists have already tried that, with varying degrees of success (Jeff Lindsay’s delicious Dexter novels are in the lead in that pack); it’s just that she knows which conventions to keep and which to abandon, and constructs a novel with believable interesting characters that’s both well-written and absorbing. Haunted, obsessed cop Archie Sheridan still can’t forget his encounter with the vicious former psychiatrist Gretchen Lowell, who captured him and tortured him for ten days before turning herself in. Now he’s a broken man, an emotional wreck who can’t get Gretchen out of his head however much Vicodin he pops. And there’s a new killer in town. And only Gretchen can help him find the killer.
Right now, you’re thinking to yourself, “Gosh, this sounds familiar….Wasn’t there some novel a while back, about lambs or something, with this psycho doctor named, uh, Wexler….Schechter….something like that, helping a young woman named….don’t tell me….Grackle, or maybe Sparrow…find a serial killer?” Well, yeah, there was. But Heartsick is no ripoff. There is no shame at all in taking someone else’s skeleton and covering it with your own flesh. If there were, Jane Smiley would never have written a little book called A Thousand Acres. Maybe you’ve heard of it.
And this all leads me to something I very much liked about Heartsick, something that’s emblematic of my affection for it over and above the good characters, good writing, snappy pace, and general twistiness (and twistedness). I’ll explain it thusly. Ever since Harris’ first Lecter novel Red Dragon, the serial killer novel has been saddled with an unrealistic archetype, notably the Insane Genius Serial Killer. Now don’t get me wrong….I thought Hannibal Lecter was loads of fun, or at least in the first two novels, but in real life he doesn’t exist and never has. Serial killers are damaged products of hideous lives, and while many of them are cunning, they don’t tend to be genius doctors. Their very nature prevents them from accomplishments like making it through med school. But, in literature, the Evil Genius is one of the most beloved archetypes (see next post) over a variety of genres from horror to thrillers to mysteries. It makes for good theater, and often it’s worth the price of a little extra willing suspension of disbelief.
Where I’m going with this sub-English 201 rant is that, while Gretchen Lowell does fall into the unrealistic stereotype of Insane Genius, Chelsea Cain does the best job I’ve ever seen of turning this psychopath into a monster with some semblance of humanity. She’s a fascinating character (for the record, so are the other principals in Heartsick), and I’m very glad to see Cain plans to bring her back for a couple of sequels. If you like good, creepy entertainment, this is your book. I look forward to Ms. Cain’s upcoming novels.
Okay, that’s all….but Jamie’s finally given me back Soon I Will Be Invincible, and I’ve also got Robert Kurson’s scary good Crashing Through to write about, so I’m going to try to crank my blogging engine to Jewellian levels before BEA. A good weekend to you all.
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04.23.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:08 pm by Frazer
Wanda, you may have noticed, is blogging circles around me lately–way to go, Wanda! But not so good for my intentions to actually read and then write about it. I’m not as far behind in my reading as I may seem; I’m actually reading Book #12 now, but I’m probably not gonna finish it. It’s a smart, well-done novel, but at some level I can’t identify, it just isn’t clicking with me. Which is strange, since it would ordinarily be my kind of book. Oh well–these things happen–admit defeat and move on.
You did not, in any event, come here to hear me whine about my inadequacies as a reader and blogger. You came to hear about Book #10, even if it has been several weeks since I read it. And what a book it is.
Last year was a year full of wonderful surprises in the world of fiction, and one of the very finest was a startlingly good debut mystery/legal thriller by John Hart (who grew up not far from Charlotte, and still lives in North Carolina) called King of Lies. Sally devoured the book as we headed home to Charlotte from Atlanta, and pronounced it top-notch. And it was–dark, suspenseful, and full of twists. The writing was sure and confident, head and shoulders above your average commercial potboiler. Our customers agreed, and we went on to sell hundreds and hundreds of hardcover copies of John’s excellent book. A bookstore in Salisbury sold even more, though that’s partly due to the fact that King of Lies is set in Salisbury. And it wasn’t just us Carolinians. My Saint Martin’s/Minotaur rep Mike Cutforth told me recently that King of Lies had sold forty thousand copies around the country, an astonishingly high number for a hardcover debut novel. The word spread. The reviews were excellent. Publisher’s Weekly called the novel a “stunning debut, an exceptionally deep and complex mystery thriller.” Library Journal said, “The writing is beautiful and the story is gripping, but it is the character study of a damaged Southern lawyer that puts this debut novel on the must-read list.” And Booklist said, “Readers will breathe in this fine novel like a breath of fresh air and, immediately after finishing it, wish for more.” If you have not read King of Lies yet, I hope I’ve convinced you by now. Did I mention that it’s newly in paperback?
But wait. It gets better. Much better.
I really can’t say enough about the wonderful people at John’s publisher, Saint Martin’s. A special shout-out goes to Thomas Dunne, the unstoppable Harriet Seltzer, Peter Wolverton, Ken Holland, and our reps Mike Cutforth and Tamia Harper. I’m glad that John found a good publisher. And, as you know by now, when we at Park Road Books really like a book, we make sure the word gets put out. The Saint Martin’s folk were extremely grateful to us for our efforts in pushing King of Lies (though with such a good book, there’s not really much effort involved), and so they were kind enough to share a bound manuscript copy of John’s new novel, Down River, to be published in October. (A bound manuscript, for those that don’t know, is the stage a book goes through before it becomes a galley.) Both Sally and I dispatched it in short order.
Readers, you just have no idea what you’re in for. Down River is a grand slam, one of the five best mystery thrillers I’ve read ever. John keeps the elements that made King of Lies so special (fine writing, a wonderfully dysfunctional Southern family), and then cranks the amps to eleven. It starts with one of the most basic stories out there, the return of the prodigal son. (One of John’s great strengths is an ability to make the familiar seem fresh.) Adam Chase comes back to his North Carolina hometown five years after leaving under a cloud. He was accused of murder, with his stepmother the primary witness against him. His father, head of a very prominent family, took her side. Now he’s back, summoned home by an old friend who soon turns up dead. Naturally, since many of the townspeople think Adam was guilty all along, this causes him some problems.
And, well, I’m not going to tell you much more than that about the main plot. Yes, I know that’s chintzy, and there’s probably more than a little laziness involved. But I myself went into Down River cold, knowing nothing about it, and I really think it enhanced my experience. Here’s what I think about it, though: Wonderful as King of Lies| was, I sometimes felt it almost claustrophobic in its focus, and it needed a another redeeming character or two. With Down River, John Hart pulls out the camera for a wider shot. The world around Adam and his family comes vividly to life in a million little ways, most notably in an ongoing dispute between the Chases and some of the town over whether to sell their land for a power plant. The characters really shine–Adam, his tormented, complicated father, the father’s gentle sidekick Dolf, and the rebellious Grace are standouts, but John does right by all his considerable cast.
Sophomore slump? Not an issue. Our store sold a ton of King of Lies, but we’re going to sell two tons of this one. Anyone who likes a good mystery thriller will love it. (John is a lawyer by trade, but his novels have thus far downplayed the legal aspects.) To the booksellers in the audience: I understand galleys will soon be available (could someone from Saint Martin’s give us an update on the list?), so bug your VHPS rep until they send you one. Non-booksellers, you have a longer wait, but trust me on this one: Down River is worth buying in hardback.
I guess I’m being a little effusive here (no, I am not on the Saint Martin’s payroll), but I really think Down River is the best book I’m gonna read this year. I’m excited about it, impatient to sell it, and wondering if I should read it again. And, keeping pace be hanged, I probably will.
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03.21.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:12 pm by Frazer
Our Harper rep, Eric Svenson, is a great guy. I really need to do something nice for him one of these days. Mostly, what he gets from me is abuse: yelling about missed shipments, mocking of his list in meetings, trash-talking on an epic scale (since he and I play together on a very literate fantasy baseball league). He accepts my abuse with grace and good humor, and always makes sure I get the galleys he knows I want. Last time he visited, I was off on a tear–”Dammit, Svenson, what am I supposed to do with all these galleys from last season?”–when I spied, in one of his boxes, a book I’d been waiting some time for. “Who loves ya, baby?” Svenson said, grinning. Like I said, I need to do something nice for him, and I will. Just as soon as fantasy baseball season is over.
The book in question was the first full-length nonfiction work from the beloved novelist Barbara Kingsolver. I will admit, with some shame, that I have never read one of Ms. Kingsolver’s novels, but that’s an omission I intend to correct, and soon. Her new one is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. It will be out very shortly.
My four or five readers will recall that I was blown away last year by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Ms. Kingsolver’s new book takes Pollan’s book a step further: she and her family pledge. for a year, to eat only what they themselves grow or what they can get from neighboring farmers. As the book opens, she, her husband Steven Hopp, and daughters Camille and Lily, are leaving Tuscon, Arizona, where Ms. Kingsolver has spent much of her life to a farm in Southern Virginia owned by her husband, where the family had been spending their summers. When they arrive in Appalachia, they put their plan into action. They garden and raise chickens and turkeys, and get beef and pork from their neighbors. (They do allow themselves a few cheats, including olive oil.) They are forced, as perhaps we all should be, to understand the growing season of various items of produce. Without a year-round produce aisle in the grocery to fall back on, they subsist on things like potatoes and squash in the winter; during the summer, they are nearly overwhelmed with produce, which they freeze and can for later. Ms. Kingsolver’s graceful, informative, and often very funny writing really brings the experience to the reader–it has almost inspired me to try growing some vegetables this summer, despite my own gardening incompetence and my backyard’s rocky soil and inconsistent sunlight.
But, like Omnivore’s Dilemma, it’s about a lot more than that. Both books seek to show you that the phrase “you are what you eat” is not at all an empty cliche. Locally grown food is better for the world, it’s better for your local economy, and, oh yeah, it tastes better too. It hasn’t been genetically engineered for maximum yield and long shelf life. There’s strong evidence that it’s actually better for you.
Sally and I have been making an effort to leave mass-produced produce and meat, and processed food products, out of our diet. We’ve not been 100% successful yet, but we’ve made strides. We’ve been hitting the Charlotte farmers market every Saturday now, and find that, with a little planning, we can find what we need to eat through the coming week there. And we’ve made some great finds–last Sunday, I made a pot roast of grass-fed aged beef that we’d gotten at the market. The pot roast was so good I wanted to run through the streets of my neighborhood screaming, “Eureka!”
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, like that pot roast, is warm and satisfying. (I will say, however, that while I think it’s nice for Ms. Kingsolver to include sidebars from her husband and daughter, I found them somewhat distracting from the core narrative. Their hearts are clearly in the right place, but they’re merely pretty good writers while Ms. Kingsolver is a wonderful one.) There are delightful vignettes of making cheese, of Ms. Kingsolver finding herself mentioned in a despicable book by Bernard Goldberg as someone who is “screwing up America,” and of her daughter Lily’s triumph in capitalism as an egg vendor. But there’s one bit that really made me fall in love with the book that comes early on. The Hopp-Kingsolver clan is leaving the parched state of Arizona on their long drive to Virginia. They stop at a convenience store:
“As we gathered our loot onto the counter, the sky darkened suddenly. After two hundred consecutive cloudless days, you forget what it looks like when a cloud crosses the sun. We all blinked. The cashier frowned toward the plate-glass window.
“‘Dang,’ she said, ‘it’s going to rain.’
“‘I hope so,’ Steven said.
She turned her scowl from the window to Steven. This bleached-blond guardian of gas pumps and snack foods was not amused. ‘It better not, is all I can say.’
“‘But we need it,’ I pointed out. I am not one to argue with cashiers, but the desert was dying, and this was my very last minute as a Tusconan. I hated to jinx it with bad precipitation karma.
“‘I know that’s what they’re saying, but I don’t care. Tomorrow’s my first day off in two weeks, and I want to wash my car.’”
The family drive off, with some dismay. But hope returns when they reach Virginia, where they dine at a meat and three. Kingsolver notes that the southern states have been suffering drought too, even if “[t]he wooded mountainsides and velvet pastures of southwestern Virginia looked remarkably green to our desert-scorched eyes.” As the waitress comes to clear their plates, thunder cracks and the rain begins. The waitress looks out the window and says (and every one of my Southern brothers and sisters knows what’s coming next), “Listen at that. Don’t we need it!”
And Kingsolver writes: “It is not my intention to lionize country wisdom over city ambition. I only submit that the children of farmers are likely to know where food comes from, and that the rest of us might do well to pay attention. For our family, something turned over that evening in the diner: a gas-pump cashier’s curse of drought was lifted by a waitress’s simple, agricultural craving for rain. I thought to myself: there is hope for us.”
So read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, if you haven’t already. And with that, I’m ALMOST current on the blog. I have one book I’ve read that I haven’t written about, and another that I’m going to finish this weekend–which puts me, well, slightly ahead of last year’s schedule. But the next book I’m going to write about (looks like it will be next week, sorry) doesn’t come out until fall, but it will blow your mind. Remember a North Carolina writer named John Hart, who, last year, wrote an excellent mystery cum legal thriller called King of Lies? Well, his new one is called Down River, and, good as King of Lies was, this one is even better. My only regret is having to wait nine months before selling it!
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03.13.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:01 pm by Frazer
Lisa Simpson: Dad, do you know what Schadenfreude is?
Homer Simpson (sarcastically): No, I do not know what Schadenfreude is. Please tell me because I’m dying to know.
Lisa: It’s a German word for shameful joy, taking pleasure in the suffering of others.
Homer: Oh, come on, Lisa. I’m just glad to see him fall flat on his butt! He’s usually all happy and comfortable, and surrounded by loved ones, and it makes me feel…what’s the opposite of that shameful joy thing of yours?
Lisa (irritably): Sour grapes.
Homer: Boy, those Germans have a word for everything!
–From the “When Flanders Failed” episode of The Simpsons
Now that I’ve passed forty in a most ungraceful fashion, I find myself taking stock of certain behaviors, reading-related and otherwise. And it’s time for me to admit to myself and all five of my readers that a small but significant portion of my reading is devoted to delighting in the idiocy and misfortune of others. I love The Darwin Awards. I don’t care about the Oscars, but I always pay attention to the Razzies. I never miss the tales of weirdos and stupid crooks each week in “News of the Weird.” When Ann Coulter gets hit in the face with a pie or Mel Gibson gets busted for DUI, I really try not to let that put me in a good mood. I honestly try not to embrace the base and the negative. I should try harder.
So any list of biggest flops, gaffes, busts, or colossal lapses in judgment that I see in a newspaper automatically catches my eye. And when I came across a copy of Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes that Shaped America by Martin Smith and Patrick Kiger, well, as you can guess, the cockles of my heart got warmed. Especially when I noted its modest length and its breezy writing style that virtually guaranteed a quick read. I had Book #8 squarely in my sights.
And of course, Oops is a lot of fun. It won’t change your life, but it will soothe even the fiercest Schadenfreude jones with its tales of the improbable rise of the leisure suit, the arrival of and subsequent conquest of the South by kudzu, and of course, the introduction of the most despised animated character of all time, Clippy the Microsoft Office Paperclip. I relived my memories of Y2K (during which I never considered it might be a bad idea to try to go grocery shopping on the eve of the faux millennium), and read with great interest about the Cleveland Indians’ legendary Ten Cent Beer Night. (For those of you unfamiliar with this tale, all you need to know is that crappy team + lagging local economy + animosity between two teams and their fans + lots of cheap beer = a really bad evening for all concerned.) And why would you send Jimi Hendrix on tour to open for the Monkees?
Included, of course, is probably the biggest mistake of all: the career of chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., responsible for both the addition of toxic lead to gasoline and the invention and widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons or CFC’s, the latter of which put us in a hole we’re still climbing out of. But luckily, most of Oops isn’t that scary, and it really is interesting to see how the failures of so many Americans have shaped their–our–history and destiny.
This will be a brief entry; two more, both of five-star books, will follow in short order. Before I conclude though, just a couple of brief notes about my methodology. (You do remember that I’m trying–and currently failing–to read 100 books this year, right? I’m still on a faster pace than last year.) First of all, you will perhaps notice that the reviews here generally range from positive to gushing. While it is true that I don’t wish to make enemies via this blog, there’s a different reason for the sunny reviews. The simple fact is that I’ve started following what I call Pearl’s Rule, after superstar librarian Nancy Pearl. Her simple rule (which comes, I believe, from the first Book Lust) is that you give a book fifty pages if you’re under age fifty (which I am), and if, at that point, it has not grabbed you, let it go. There are more wonderful books in the world than any person could read in a lifetime, and so there’s no excuse for suffering through a bad book. I used to dither, let books languish, especially ones that were still good but not my cup of tea. No longer. So if a book doesn’t please me, I don’t finish it. Simple as that. I might be more flexible if I could read as fast as Sally, but I can’t.
The corollary here is, yes, I have finished every book I blog about here. No “almost” (which, as we all know, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades), no “partial,” none of that.
More in a day or two.
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02.15.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:30 pm by Frazer
Well, well, well. Even if I don’t read another book in February after this, I’ll still be on a pace to break last year’s record. (I supposedly don’t like math, but I love crunching and comparing numbers. Go figure.) And I’ve finally got some galleys to read that I’ve really been looking forward to, which will, I hope, mean that I will knock out more books in February and keep on my thus far scorching pace. But even if I keep this scorching pace up all year, I’m still not on track for 100. Maybe I should change the name to “50 Books in 2007.” “Because who can’t read a book ever 6.6 days?” Or perhaps, “Gee, I’d Like To Read 100 Books in 2007, But, Gosh Darnit, It Just Isn’t Gonna Happen”?
I have to go back to Book #3, and think about how all of this is a journey toward a goal, not something that reveals itself in a blinding flash of light.
So I am keeping myself submerged in the Fountain of Reading, as I’ve wanted to do since marrying a woman who read 268 books last year and 28 (we think) this January. But I’d been running a little dry on things that got me excited as a reader. Now I’ve struck gold. First, there came from Random House a new novel (another first in a trilogy) from one of the rising stars of horror fiction (about which I’m a bit of a geek), David Wellington. You’ll recall that I recently enjoyed his fine zombie novel Monster Island, and so I was thrilled to find Thirteen Bullets in a Random House mailing.
Unlike Monster Island, Thirteen Bullets is not a zombie novel. It’s a vampire novel. It’s also a very and hair-raising thriller. The vampires here are not of the sexy come-hither variety that’s so popular these days but vicious horrifying subhuman cannibals. They’re tall, pale, hairless, and red-eyed, and they carry an amazing array of teeth. They don’t care about crosses, and they’re nearly impossible to kill. Thirteen Bullets opens with U. S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley, his partner, and a full SWAT team taking on a single vampire. Only Arkeley survives. Twenty years later (during which it is thought vampires have become extinct), a Pennsylvania State Trooper named Laura Caxton makes a most unpleasant discovery at a DUI checkpoint, one that leads Arkeley to suspect that new vampires are somehow being spawned. How that can be is the mystery of the novel, since the only surviving vampire, a creepy Hannibal Lecter-ish creature named Justinia Malvern, has been under lock and key in a special holding facility the whole time.
Vampire fans will find this one an unusual treat. I’m a big fan of revisionist vampire stories, like John Marks’ Fangland or David Sosnowski’s wonderful Vamped, and I was impressed and entertained. Fans of action thrillers will enjoy it too–just think of the vampires as especially ugly serial killers (and the several vampires here leave long trails of mangled corpses). Like Monster Island, Thirteen Bullets is the start of a trilogy….I hope Mr. Wellington won’t leave me hanging too long!
At least I have part two of his zombie trilogy (Monster Nation) on the pile…but I’m going to be turning away from horror for a little while (probably much to the relief of some readers) and turn to a galley I got just yesterday from my most excellent Harper rep Eric Svenson (thanks, Sven!), namely Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the first full-length nonfiction book by Barbara Kingsolver. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear it calling my name.
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