I set my monthly record! Here's my January books. I don't have time to finish another. "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," Karen Russell (★★★★★) "The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories," Ken Liu (★★★★ 1/2) "The Inimitable Jeeves," P.G. Wodehouse (★★★★ 1/2) "In The River," Jeremy Robert Johnson (★★★★★) "The Executioner's Song," Norman Mailer (★ 1/2) "The Damnation Game," Clive Barker (★★★ 1/2) "Blacktop Wasteland," S.A. Cosby (★★ 1/2) "Drood," Dan Simmons (★★★★★) "Djibouti," Elmore Leonard (★★★ 1/2) "The Invention of Sound," Chuck Palahniuk (★★★) "The Loop," Jeremy Robert Johnson (★★★ 1/2) Let me just talk about the worst and the best. I'll ignore the stuff in the middle. They were just okay. The Executioner's Song (★ 1/2) Mailer, Norman 1,056 pp My god! I don't know what Norman Mailer's deal is. I've heard of some of his other books, and I suppose that in the day they were titles of great importance, but this book was terrible. I have never read a Pulitzer that is so dead on the page. It is absolutely lifeless. I think it's supposed to be dry and factual, and that dispassion somehow gives it authority. It doesn't come off that way though. There's something arrogant about its lack of effort. There are authors out there who write very simply with very little imagery (Paulo Coelho comes to mind) but they still tell a compelling story. This, though, is utterly lazy. It's poorly edited too. I've never seen a Pulitzer that needed line editing. There are actual mistakes, and I'm not talking about ebook transfer errors or anything like that. I mean screw-ups where sections are repeated in ways that cannot be deliberate. It's obvious that the editor (Norman Mailer, because he didn't actually write this, though his name is on the cover) could not clean up the text. At 1000+ pages, I'm not surprised. Story-wise, two things bother me a lot. 1) The MC is a manipulative psychopath and I'm not sure the author realizes this. Mailer seems actually impressed with the MC who is "smart, artistic, sensitive." 2) There are 500 pages of nothing but producers and reporters fighting over story rights. It is amazingly pointless. I can imagine Mailer himself thinking such things are exciting, because that's his bread and butter, but for a normal person . . . no. It's just tedious. I mean, it could be done. I'm thinking of the movie "Nightcrawler," which has the same sort of lowlifes doing anything for a story, but whereas that is completely engrossing with character corruption arcs and excellent tension, this is just beige, vanilla, nothing. It is what Truman Capote referred to as "typing, not writing." This was my 23rd Pulitzer read. It is the second worst Pulitzer I've read, worse than the lit-fic artifice of "Tinkers" and worse than the meandering alt-history nastiness of "The Underground Railroad." It still didn't sink below the nadir that is "The Overstory," so congratulations, Mailer, you long-winded, pompous, paparazzo blowhard. stupidest metaphor: "Schiller needed more money the way a farmer without a tractor needs a tractor . . ." most meta paragraph (the Pulitzer Committee actually thinks this is the best writing of the year!): He had been saying to himself for weeks that he was not part of the circus, that he had instincts which raised him above, a desire to record history, true history, not journalistic crap, but now he felt as if he was finally part of the circus and might even be the biggest part of it, and in the middle of crying, he went into the bathroom and took the longest fucking shit of his life. It was all diarrhea. His system, after days of running nonstop and nights with crummy sleep, was by now totally screwed up. The horrors were loose. The diarrhea went through him as if to squeeze every last rotten thing out, and still it came. When he thought he might be done, he looked out the window at the snow and made the decision that in no way was he ever going to sell Gary Gilmore's execution. No. No way could anybody convince him. He would not make that fucking mistake for greed or security. I wish you would have done the same, Mailer, bowel movement included. This story should not have been read. What an insult to every other contender for the prize. What a slap in the face that this was declared the year's best. ----------------------------------- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (★★★★) Liu, Ken 464 pp Ken Liu excels at stories that jump about in time. Storylines run in parallel at different time frames. Usually one of them is in a trippy sci-fi future while the other makes the future concepts possible or relates to them in some metaphorical way. Sometimes he'll rocket through a story, just kind of touching moments and going to crazy extremes. Some of the sci-fi is definitely hard sci-fi for nerds, so wear a pocket protector because it's not for the faint of heart. He's not afraid of fantasy stories either. "The Paper Menagerie," for example, is quite a sad fantasy read. It's about a mail-order bride's love for her son who is ashamed of her and has rejected her. Pretty powerful. "Sometimes, when I came home and saw her tiny body busily moving about in the kitchen, singing a song in Chinese to herself, it was hard for me to believe that she gave birth to me. We had nothing in common. She might as well be from the moon. I would hurry on to my room, where I could continue my all-American pursuit of happiness." My favorite story is of the girl whose soul is an ice cube. Everyone in this story-universe carries their soul as a random object, and the nature of the object defines them. The MC is afraid her ice cube will melt and kill her. The people around her don't care for her because of the chill that follows her. It's funny, her girlfriend's soul is a pack a cigarettes. When she (or anyone really) experiences their soul, then they are at their social peak. It's as if that moment of consumption brings out their exceptional aspects. Genius story! Not really sci-fi, definitely fantasy in the extreme, but really well done. "To be able to set your soul afire, she thought, to be able to draw men and women to you at your will, to be brilliant, fearless of consequences, what would she not give to live a life like that?" And there's much more to it than the MC understands . . . Really wonderful. There is one story in here that's a bit lacking. It's amazingly melodramatic. It almost borders on Mary Sue prose with lovable, misunderstood good guys and evil, ignorant bad guys. In the end, the whole town loves the good guys and affirms everything about them. It doesn't even really read like Liu. I'm not going to speak any more about it though because the rest of the stories range from good to exceptionally good. -------------------------- I overdid it again . . . I'll post my other favorites later.
Yeah, I know. That was the highlight of that 500 page stretch of "who gets the exposé?" I mean, at least something happened. So the best writing of 1979 was a Taco Bell fanfic.
Might not be a 'book' per se, but I've been editing the first three chapters of my novel with the use of a trusty thesaurus (I tend to forget which words I actually know - an excellent trait for a novelist, huh), and boy, it's really helping me out. No plot or character development though, bit of a disappointment on that front. I'll give it 3 stars. Although I will say this, when I was 13 or 14, I'd come home from school and if I was ever bored (which was a LOT), I'd literally read the dictionary just to pass the time. I was the coolest kid in class. Trust me.
I did get one last book in before January ended: "Oblomov," by Ivan Goncharov. It was okay. I award it 3 fat, reclining landowners out of 5. I didn't understand all of the motivations. Why was the MC's gal even interested in him? He was such an oaf. His whole personality was that he slept until noon and cared about nothing. He wasn't even making much money from his holdings. The peasants on his land were lazy too, so his income was pitiful. Somehow all of that got straightened out, and I don't understand that either. Goodreads gave me a lot of pages for the book, but my Kindle says it only has 162. I looked it up on Google because it's hosted there for free (public domain, naturally), and it looks like the original had very skinny pages. I will never top that monthly book count! Now I'm reading Jack Ketchum's "The Girl Next Door." I'm very concerned with where this is going . . . I kind of already know because I've heard rumors. Still, it's making me uneasy. Very good dialog though. It's always nice when an author can make teens sound authentic and not like silly parodies. Fun fact, "Jack Ketchum" is what they used to call the hangman. Because he would "catch 'em." har har!
Well, I've begun my month of Ann Radcliffe. Started out with A Sicilian Romance, which is quite charming in its contrasting imagery to create the sublime, but it is also over two hundred years old and the age shows. The novel is typical of a Gothic romance: evil governances and fathers, dark secrets, forbidden romances, labyrinthian tunnels and caves, and of course prison like structures. Religion is always seen in the paling light as well. Radcliffe hits all the wickets for a Gothic romance, probably because she is right there at the inception of them. Its plot is often comical in its drama. The chief character Julia faints all the time, then gets back up immediately, learns some new terrible thing, and faints again to be carried off somewhere. Apparently that's the usual transition... The imagery is gorgeous though. There's an emphasis on depicting sublimity, which was especially fashionable at the time, so there's many lovely contrasts. Stuff like a beautiful woman imprisoned in the darkness of castle dungeons, or decrepit structures rising out of lavish forest or coastal scenes. When you aren't laughing at the plot, there is a whole Hell of a lot to look at. None of the characters are particularly interesting, but that's also a factor of the time. These were the people still following long since dead Aristotle's direction of tragedies in which plot comes first and characters a far third or fourth in line. Still, I did get through it in two days. Relatively short and it does move quick for something of that age. I don't mind it at all.
Just started the epic journey that is The Expanse. All told, it's 9 books and another 7 shorts or novella's, although the last book in the series, book 9, isn't due until later this year. I read the first, Leviathon Wakes, a few years ago but got no further, this time I intend to follow on through the whole series, even if I don't do it all at once. The tv series on Amazon now is one of the best Sci-Fi tv series I've seen and I've seen a few. Given that they are having a 'break' in the series after season 6 (they insist it isn't the end but a break) I thought I would make a start on the read, it could be years before the tv series has finished otherwise.
The Girl Next Door (★★) Ketchum, Jack 370 pp All right . . . this may be the most sinister thing I've ever read. It was like the Brady Bunch meets Hostel. I feel absolutely sick. I guess that was the point. I will say this: Ketchum's writing is near perfect. It's that visceral Richard Matheson style. The dialog's excellent (which is very hard to do with kids). Imagery appears effortlessly and for a reason and never feels out of place. The setting and time period are perfectly realized. It's just that the story itself is so relentless and one-note sickening that the entire time you're reading, you're being bludgeoned with the torture. I would give the skill of the book four stars, maybe even four-and-a-half, and the enjoyment factor one star, and that's only if the scale doesn't go lower. I kept expecting the FBI to kick down my door. "This is a raid!" I cannot recommend this book. I read the author's explanation at the end, and I do understand what he was aiming for. The book's based on a true story. (Now I feel even worse!) Ketchum hated these people he was writing about, to say nothing of the absolutely deranged situation, and the book was his "vengeance" against them. That's understandable. I just don't feel it works as a story. It's more of a torture chronicle. I wanted all of these people to be packed in a short bus and then driven off a cliff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EXT. WINDING ROADWAY - BRIGHT OF DAY Music plays -- howling death metal played at high velocity, drums pounding (Track 5: LASHED TO THE SLAVE STICK) <<Ra pronounceth the formulae against thee! The Eye of Horus is prepared to attack thee!>> A short, battered SCHOOL BUS careens down a cliffside ROADWAY. There is no other traffic, only the bus. It weaves onto the hardpack shoulder and PLUMES OF DUST rise amid the GRINDING, SQUEALING TIRES. We are within the DUST and then the squeals turn to . . . ZOOM TO: INT. SCHOOL BUS Music fades as we enter the vehicle, muted as if it came from outside. Three rows of peeling vinyl SEATS. Each of the six bench-seats is occupied by two passengers, mostly young boys, one girl, the entire cast of TORTURERS. They are SCREAMING. Their cries mingle with, and then drown out, the ROAR OF THE BUS. The only passenger who is keeping her cool is the deranged MOTHER in the back seat. She is the most guilty of them all. She is too stoned to react. The music is swelling. PAN RAPIDLY ACROSS CHILDREN'S FACES. STOP AT EDDIE. ALL(screaming, flailing about) EDDIE(in the front seat behind the driver, shouting)Fuck! We're sorry! (he screams uselessly) VIEWPOINT OUTSIDE THE VEHICLE, FROM THE HOOD THE DRIVER(looks into the overhead mirror, sneers) CLOSE UP ON DAVID, STEADY SHOT DAVID realizes that though he is the main character, he is complicit. He is no better than a murderer. He preferred to ogle MEG while the others practiced their sadism upon her. His MOUTH doesn't move (it is held in a tight, bloodless line) and yet his voice rises up above the others. He speaks in thought. DAVID (V.O.)(inner speech broken by sobs)I was her only friend. I did nothing. I did nothing. Oh god, NOTHING! I deserve this. I deserve this. I . . . The music is even louder. Blast beats and pure rage. <<Your corruptible bodies shall be cut to pieces! Your souls shall have no existence!>> As the bus SMASHES through the guard rail, THE DRIVER swings the door open and leaps to safety. He rolls across the hardpack shoulder. The bus flies off the cliff. The PASSENGERS' SCREAMS swell into a howling MAELSTROM with the music, drowning out the BUS and the GRIND OF METAL, and then eclipsing the musical accompaniment, and then there is nothing but the SCREAMS. CLOSE UP ON DAVID. DAVID (Buries his face in his hands.) BUS plummets into the distant base of the rocky cliffs and explodes. Music fades to a LOW RUMBLE, like thunder over the horizon. PAN UP THE CLIFFS, PAST SCRAPS OF METAL AND DEBRIS STILL FALLING TO: THE DRIVER(He is rising from the shoulder. He dusts himself off.)That's how we ROLL 'round these parts. (Referencing his near escape with a witty one-liner . . . He returns his cap to his head and tips it jauntily back. With hands in his pockets, he wanders down the HIGHWAY.)
I hated this book and stopped reading new horror because of it. Crossed too many lines and I don't feel his reason justified his total lack of inserting any kind of moral guidance to offset the evil. For the times when I've harped that books don't need a point to be good, I think this book will make me stop doing that. Cause I seriously didn't care that Ketchum's writing was spot on there was no point to the novel. Evil wins and no one fights against it or feels remorse for taking part in it and the Ketchum didn't even have the guts to sneak in a metaphor condemning their behavior. I agree that it was pure snuff.
Yeah, there was a point where I almost set it down. It was just too much, and I thought I had no limits! The only thing that kept me going was the the MC's shift to hero later in the book. Somewhat of a shift. He was never a great hero. But when he's just standing around watching this . . . yuck.
After I read your review I thought I'd look up Google, and I recognized the title, it was also made into a film. I do remember a little about the film, not much, but your review kind of made sense to me with my memories of the film itself. I'm not into horror at all, so won't read the book, and I'm not sure I actually got through the film.
I love this series. While I think the TV show does a great job of giving just the right amount of information to keep the show entertaining, it does skip a lot of the book material and characters. The final book is due for release this autumn too, so it's a great time to start the books.
I love the series as well, and I've been debating about reading the books as I'm watching, and thoroughly enjoying. I did notice the next due date and maybe that's what spurred me on, I don't think I will reach the 8th book by that time but we'll see. I guess that leaving out interesting material is always a problem with tv and film adaptions, at least they have Frank and Abraham producing.
Won't say what I'm reading but I've started to read with a deadline so hopefully this will get me on track with actually gettings books read and not be diverted away from it all the time.
I'm about 4 chapters into Lifel1k3, by Jay Kristoff. Also reading Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood, by Terrance Dicks. I typically don't read two books like this, start one while already reading another, but I failed my Goodreads reading challenge miserably last year and I didn't get to participate in my monthly review of DW books. This will not do.
After a reading slump of three attempted books, probably due to writing issues and having read the insanely complex and exhausting Mabinogion recently, I tried Piranesi. One of the best books I've read in a long time. Going to finish it tomorrow.
I'm not sure what this is; I haven't read the post. But this is one of the strangest experiences I've had in a while. I was just nonchalantly scrolling, about to exit it after posting, then my eye jumped to 'lashed to the slave stick'. I read on--and found Nile lyrics. That's... insane? Nile are one of my favourite bands and I know the lyrics to practically all of their songs. Very obscure though, which is why I'm surprised.
It was just me getting carried away with a cast of characters dying. I'm not real good at script format and I know that you're not supposed to over-specify a scene with music, but I did anyway because I love that song. It's perfect death metal. It cannot be improved. I think it's the way the vocals come in, almost percussive. I picture the bus plummeting to the ground with that final scream from the song. You know the one that keeps rising at the end? I once wrote a whole story based around "Lashed to the Slave Stick." The story mentioned it too. It was about these evil characters who tried to save demons from possessions gone wrong. But I never did publish it. Too weird, I guess. Plus the antagonist wasn't a PC choice, though he made perfect sense in his role, so of course I wrote him in there anyway. I have a bunch of short stories that I've had publishers reject as they tell me that they're publishable. I'm just sitting on the ideas and wondering if I couldn't write them as novels instead. There's a few of them like that. I have one that's a post-apocalyptic body-horror campus-novel. It's really something else. (IMO, of course. It still makes me laugh.) I'm thinking it's the one I need to rewrite. It's based on a song too. Astronoid, this time. I fit every lyric into the story (thematically). Nothing was skipped. Though it's actually kind of sad now that I listen to it again . . .
Don't know what it is about my head these days, but I haven't been reading-reading a lot. I've been listening to fiction on audio, on free YouTube sites. In particular, I've gotten addicted to actor Simon Stanhope's renditions of 19th and early 20th century supernatural and horror stories on his Bitesized Audio channel. Currently I'm listening to a LibreVox version of Sheridan LeFanu's Uncle Silas. The volunteer reader is nowhere near proficient as Stanhope, but he's good of his kind. Interesting how listening to a familiar story brings out a lot I didn't notice when I read it with only my eyes.
Reading Joe Abercrombie 'Best Served Cold' part of the First Law world... I'm enjoying it. It's not as good as his first trilogy, but still worth it. Recently read Obama's book 'A Promised Land' - excellent read. To Kill a Mockingbird, which I thought was good but not as good as the critics. And the JFK book by King, really enjoyed that one.
These were the best two books I read last month. My post above got too long and I left them off. Drood (★★★★★) Simmons, Dan 800 pp I think Dan Simmons might be some sort of genius. This is the second book I’ve read by him, the first being “The Terror,” and both titles knock it out of the park. They’re long books. Both are immaculately researched and it shows in the setting. Simmons even cites his research sources at the end of each. There’s a lot of them! “Drood” tells the story of Charles Dickens and his contemporary, Wilkie Collins. It’s a story about jealousy and madness; criminals, corrupt cops and opium dens; mesmerism and secret cabals. The mysterious figure of Drood may or may not be real. Is he a man or a rumor or a supernatural force? Charles Dickens claims to meet him after a near fatal train accident, and then Drood proceeds to stalk first him and then his friend Mr. Collins across London. Drood is absolutely bloodthirsty and seems to defy nature. The whole book feels very Dickensian, just in the voice. It really seems to be 19th century novel. At no point did I find anything to edit. I can’t stress how rare that is. I’m reading Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral” right now and I’ve found slipups (a few). Obviously Roth is magnitudes of talent above me, but I'll always spot errors, even so. You would think that, compared to a Pulitzer winner, a genre book of Drood's length would have at least a few clunky lines, but there’s none. The editor of "Drood" (and “The Terror” because it was also flawless) deserves a reward, because authors can’t really do this on their own. You know how it is, each revision fixing issues on page X causes unforeseen problems on page Y. Somebody then has to realign the story. I’m impressed that someone did, especially in 800 pages. Maybe they had a lot of test readers or something. (Also, compare it to the mess that is "The Executioner's Song," which also won a Pulitzer. There is no justice. See my distant, previous post.) The ending is quite clever. It does explain Drood in a way that makes perfect sense. It relates it all to the characters in a way that is inspired, I think. Only these two exact characters could have told this story. --------------------------------------------- Vampires in the Lemon Grove (★★★★★) Russell, Karen 256 pp Karen Russels's "Swamplandia!" should have won the Pulitzer in 2012. Apparently the other two finalists were outstanding too. (They're still on my list to read.) The judges couldn't decide between them and since it was a three-way tie, nobody won. I can't tell you how stupid that is. What you do, is hire some split-decision judges, let's say another four expert readers, and then tally up a new total and announce a winner. There's no excuse for not handing out an award. "Swamplandia!" is much better than other titles that have won since. A travesty, really. I can't imagine how cheated Karen Russel must feel. It would not surprise me if she is a finalist in some upcoming year though. She's just too good. "VitLG" is a collection of weird short stories. There's sometimes a fantasy or horror aspect to them. Every one of them is just plain strange. There was only one that I didn't love, but the idea was clever. It was about a kid who finds objects from the future in the nests of these sea gulls. Now, it wasn't terrible, it just didn't grab me like some of the others did. Here's the ones I really liked: The New Veterans: A masseuse becomes possessed by a soldier's tattoo. She is able to move the artistic elements of it and change his past. The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis: Some schoolyard creeps find a scarecrow that looks like the kid they used to torment. They're convinced it's really him. Reeling for the Empire: Young girls are sold into factory work where they are mutated into human silkworms. My favorite was "The Barn at the End of Our Term." It is one of the funniest things I've ever read. It is so absurd, and yet it treats the subject with such seriousness. When the ex-presidents die, they go this barn in a field, where they are resurrected as horses. They're unsure if it is Heaven or Hell. What's so funny is that they keep carrying on exactly as they did as presidents. Every man is scheming in the privacy of his own horse-body. Andrew Jackson, a stocky black quarter horse stabled next to Rutherford, can barely contain his ambitions in his deep ribs. You can feel his human cunning quiver from the fetlock up. "Whoever the newcomer is, I will defeat him," he says. Jackson has been lonely for adversary. Every spring he runs uncontested for the office of the Spokeshorse of the Western Territories. Many of the presidents have sworn themselves in to similarly foolish titles: Governor of the Cow Pastures, Commanding General of the Standing Chickens. They reminisce about their political opponents like old lovers. There's a creeping emptiness to winning an office that nobody else is seeking. The ending is inspiring too. What a wonderful story!
The only novel I've read by him was Hyperion, which was so good. He's a great author for sure if that book is anything to go by.
Hyperion is sited as being a SF Masterwork on Amazon. I've seen books there by Dan Simmons before but haven't taken the plunge yet; being a reader of SF it's been on my 'to do' list for a while, but then so are many books lol. Since I've just started Corey's The Expanse series it's going to be a while before I get to it.
