(See all read2008 tagged posts)

19 novels.  I think my favorites, in no particular order, were The Road by Cormac McCarthy, lost boy, lost girl by Peter Straub, Mainspring by Jay Lake, and A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller.   Trends in my novel reading: 8 were YA--almost half.  Only 3 were by women authors (that I know of, and if you don't count Samantha Henderson's Heaven's Bones, which I read at the end of last year, then dipped into the coolest parts again once it was published.)  All spec-fic except Octavian Nothing.

In short fiction, 6 zines and 6 collections.  Collection standouts: the aforementioned Ken Scholes book, Josh Rountree's Can't Buy Me Faded Love, and Howard Who?   Favorite stories in my subscribed zines this year?  Joy Marchand's "Clementine" in Apex, "Events at Fort Plentitude" by Cat Rambo in Weird Tales, and I can't pick just one from Talebones, so I'll pick two.  Joy Marchand again with "A Secret History of Gluttony" and James Van Pelt's "Rock House"*.  Joy needs a collection.  Somebody go publish her collection, would ya? Thanks.

*in an issue I somehow failed to log reading....

Poetry: Star*line, places I was published, Charles Bukowski in fits and bursts, plus assorted "go look here" links from you folks.

Comics & Graphic Novels: 10.  Missing my newuniversal.  Favorites of the year: Solomon Kane and Y: The Last Man.

Nonfiction consisted of mental_floss, an audiobook, and two thin volumes on writing.  Plus a whole lot of news, history and informational articles I never bother to list.  Skimpy pickin's, though The Historical Jesus was quite an eyeopener.

I used to keep to a rather involved plan to ensure my reading was broad, deep and varied enough to prevent stagnation and keep feeding my writer brain fresh ideas, etc.  Life got in the way, with its demands for comfort reading and its way of putting new books to read! immediately! in the way of things I had meant to.  I'm not going back to the structured version of the plan, but I am going to give myself some guidelines for the coming year.  Maybe next year, I'll get back on the plan, for at least the first six months.  Anywho...

Intentional reading for next year:  More novels by women authors.    Read more online magazines.  More nonfiction, maybe a history or biography thrown into the mix.   Read something far outside my usual reading picks. 

Also plan time for: Lamentations by Ken Scholes.  Escapement by Jay Lake.  Finish up Applegate's Everworld YA series, if I can find them all in used bookstores, and also get up to date on Maximum Ride (ie, catch up with my daughter.)  The next Repairman Jack novel and YA installments.  Pick a "craft of writing" book to read early in the new year, alongside my yearly re-reading of Strunk (and now The 10% Solution, too.)  Want to read more Y: The Last Man, and the third League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book.  It's been a while since I read any Tim Powers, so he's due.  All that, and I need to make time for A Dance With Dragons in the fall.

First book of 2009 will be PKD's The Man in the High Castle.

mental_floss: chalk up another great issue.

DOKTOR SLEEPLESS "Engines of Desire" softcover by Warren Ellis.  This punched a lot of my consumerist-skeptical, anti-corporate-authoritarian buttons.  In a good way.  The Doktor's motives move from mystery to madness--but is it really? (And could I use another M-word or two in that sentence? I mean really!)  Near-modern Dystopian vibe, but with a lot of allegory going on.  (The town is called "Heavenside", frex.) If the story can be criticized for anything, it is the sense of self-containedness.  (not a word? so sue me.)  What I mean is that so much of the mischief Dok gets up to is tied to technology he left in place a while back, or new tech he's recently adapted for just that purpose.  All the problems and issues feel isolated to this "plot bubble" of Heavenside.  Given the allegory thing going on, and that the story entertains and makes you think, the "bubble" works, but I'd still like to see less deus ex "tech from before I left Heavenside" in the future stories.  Nonetheless enjoyable and provocative.  I'll probably be interested enough to pick up the next softcover and see where that arc goes. 

Long Walks, Last Flights, and Other Strange Journeys by Ken Scholes.  I had already read all of these stories but one or two, yet every single one of them drew me in with the kind of Platonic ideal of friendliness and welcome that seems to be lacking in our our own modern world.  I expected to feel like I was sitting down with an old friend to catch up and swap tales over coffee.  I got more than that; I got wowed all over again.  It was like discovering that the friend you just sat down to catch up with has been secretly living this life of jawdropping wonder, and you spend your days ever after trying to recapture just a hint of that wonder he told you about and kindle it into a flame that burns down every dreary corner of your own world, before you lose that last borrowed spark of it completely.     Incredible.  After reading "Metal Men" again, I find I'm waiting quite eagerly for Lamentation to hit the streets.

Another breathtaking installment of What Lon's Been Reading.

Solomon Kane #3.  Yup.  Still awesome.

Devoured the latest Talebones (#37).  This issue gets off to a rather quiet but powerful start, with the first few stories hinging on very emotional internal situations echoed and accented by the overt story. I liked the extra poetry and Mary K. Hobson's worldbuilding.  Edd Vick's "The Corsair and the Lady" was my favorite of the issue, though.  Maybe I'm just partial to sea stories.  :)  One rather neat aspect of this issue (apart from me being in it, he said, tigger-bouncing) was the way the wraparound cover art with it's images of floating bits of light was mirrored by William Mingin's "All That Glitters" at the end and its negative (floating bits of blackness within the protagonist's eyes) in James Van Pelt's opener.  

Before that I finished Brian McNaughton's collection The Throne of Bones, which is not for the faint of heart or easily squicked out.  Ghoulism is a major theme, and McNaughton fleshes it out rather uniquely, and often with quite raunchy, risque and revolting asides.  But if you can get past the plainly shocking subject matter, these short stories masterfully come together to create a world as dark and weird as any classic pulpster could have dreamed up.  Perhaps even weirder and darker, given the more permissive time McNaughton was writing in.  (This collection won the WFA in the mid-1990s.)  The prose was often gorgeous without feeling overly stylized and if I could eat the author's dead flesh and acquire some of his memories and abilities (as do the ghouls in his world) I would be thrilled to be able to come up with opening lines on par with his.




Jack: Secret Histories by F. Paul Wilson.  The first installment of the YA Repairman Jack books.  I throw all pretense of impartiality out the window.  I loved it, from beginning to end. The very beginning seemed to have a bit of a "Hardy Boys" kind of YA voice, which combined with a lot of 1980s product placement and stage dressing, but once things started happening I was hooked.  Jack fans who are up to date (see the next paragraph) will notice the numerous "easter egg" nods to later books and other books in his "Secret History of the World".  I wondered though, whether there would be enough action for today's YA reader.  As a nostalgic adult who was already a longstanding fan, this book rocked.  My gut suspicion is that this book sold to more adult fans like me than it did to actual YAs.  I hope I am wrong, because it is a great introduction to what is in my opinion, the very best supernatural thriller series going.  (Impartial, remember?)

By the Sword (A Repairman Jack Novel).  A very brave and welcome move by FPW here.  It opens with a letter directly to the reader, explaining that from here (book 12) through the end of the world series in Nightworld, it is going ot get harder and harder to completely close all the loops in each book.  We should consider the next few volumes as one book under many covers.  Here we see a bit less of Jack and the usual characters than in previous books, but don't worry there's still plenty to keep you hooked.  It's very tightly plotted, with more players being turned against eachother than ever before.  Jack's M.O. of "Let's You and Him Fight" doesn't work out how you think it will.  The teen mother arc from Bloodline continues and we see more and more of the characters of his larger "Secret History of the World" arc moving into position.  There's a lot going on in this novel, and a lot is made clear that hasn't been so before.  P. Frank Winslow (FPW's humorous analog of himself) makes another appearance at just the right time to provide a bit of light in the midst of so much grimness.  If you haven't been reading Repairman Jack, you don't know what you're missing.  If you haven't been reading F. Paul Wilson, ditto.  I suspect the rest of the world will be hearing more from the two of them whenver the Lion's Gate movie franchise hits theaters, but in the meantime, I'll be there with the rest of Jack's fans, waiting to buy the next hardcover soon as the ink is dry.

It’s been awhile since my last reading log post.  Fixing that on my lunch break.  (Not necessarily in order, since my piles are jumbled up, and one book I am deliberately withholding till I finish my current book so I can talk about them together.)

Periodicals:
 
Weird Tales # 350.  Good humor abounds in the weirdness this month.  Loved the much acclaimed “mainevermontnewhampshiremass” story, and being a poker buff, I got a kick out of “All In” as well.  Mike Allen’s “An Invitation Via Email” tickled my funny bone.  “The Stone-Hearted Queen” had an admirably controlled voice that conveyed the sense of deep myth and fable without falling too far into the schmaltziness that often would accompany this kind of faux-fairy tale.  Well done!
 
mental_floss.  Two more issues of goodness.  Politics and Olympics themed issues.  
 
Books:
 
The Ruins (audio) by Scott Smith.   A disturbing and creepy audiobook that did what it was supposed to:  make me all squirmy and tense and desperate to find out what terrible thing happens next.  Characterization was a little light, and there were of course a few gaps in believability.  But these were pretty much forgiveable, given how much genuine fear and aghast horror the story otherwise delivered. 
 
The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia.  A literal descent into the fable and psyche of modern Russia.  Held my interest throughout, but I did come away with the awkward feeling that, being relatively unversed in Russian culture and history, I had perhaps missed a lot of the texture.  Nonetheless, Sedia is a careful writer with an eye for the character-defining detail; as she introduced the reader to an ever weirdening cast, she never failed to make each one of them live and breathe. 
 
Which is the real treat of this book.  The plot is delightfully odd, sure.  At times it may seem like what’s going on and all these people we are meeting have no bearing on the overarching mystery.  Yet by the end of the novel it all makes sense.  And even better, you come to realize what a feat Sedia has accomplished here:  by showing us the myth-soaked underworld of Moscow, she’s crafted a lasting metaphor for  all the secret ways every culture is connected by their shared history and folklore, not just to their “country” but to each other.
 
Everworld V, VI by K. A. Applegate.  More guilty pleasure crack-reading, which takes me to the halfway point of this series.  These took on some hefty issues like racism and alcoholism, yet in a clear-eyed way that did not shirk or come across as heavy-handed.  Most importantly, the story did not suffer. I’m really enjoying the way she (?) has put this series together, with first person narration rotating character by character amongst the main four while somehow maintaining solid pacing, plotting and worldbuilding.   A surprising amount of plot and character and story is packed into each of these 35K nuggets of YA goodness.  Time to find a used book store and dig up the next few.      
 
From Idea to Story in 90 Seconds by Ken Rand.  A slim but powerful take on the creative process.  Some of the concepts I was already familiar with, but Ken’s engaging style and unique angle made this an enlightening read.  
 
The Ten Percent Solution by Ken Rand.  An incredible amount of editorial wisdom is packed into these pages.  I’ve added it to my Re-read in January list next to Strunk & White, it’s that worthwhile and continually rewarding.  If you do not already have these two books, you may be doing yourself a disservice as a writer.  They are a powerful pair of productivity and efficiency boosters—like vitamins for your writer brain.  Get ‘em at www.fairwoodpress.com.  You won’t be disappointed.
 
Comics and Graphic Novels:
 
Mage: The Hero Discovered.  An eighties classic, complete with floppy new-wave haircuts!  Found this in first edition at a used book store near Context… SIGNED no less.  Guess I ought to re-read the second book too. And then wait for the vaporware third volume.
 
Solomon Kane #1.  Dark Horse:  U R DOIN IT RITE.
 
newuniversal: conqueror.  Marvel IP corpse-plunderers:  NOT SO MUCH.  This had a nifty Borroughs kind of feeling to it, very pulpy, and yet… there just wasn’t any there there.   More in the modern continuity, please!  
 
Simon Dark (Year 1 softcover).  Gotham’s quirky blend of soft-hearted serial killer and hero.  (Kind of like Dexter--but in hiding, and with super powers!)  The storyline seemed to meander at times into revealing the villains and supporting cast with no real forward movement of the plot.  The tension just wasn’t conveyed in some of the key panels that it should have been.  But these were minor blemishes on an otherwise slow, but very promising start.  I suspect we’ll see more magic vs science themes develop in upcoming arcs—hopefully with supporting cast that start to feel more unique as the series figures out how much campiness they want in their tone and the other aspects of finding their voice they need to do.
 
Y: The Last Man (Vol. 2, 3). Josh turned me on to this one, and now I’m hooked.  I especially love the motif of how a question asked at the end of one scene is “answered” by another character in the next scene, who happens to be discussing some unrelated subject.  Neat format, art and an incredibly fresh concept.  Some of the science may be a bit wonky at times, but this is a kind of tragedy playing out, with a cast you care about, and so many neat moments of dialogue and thoughtfulness in plot and world construction that you hardly notice.  Wondering what the deal with the female ninjas is there at the end…

Got the latest Starline in the mail today. which reminded me I have been remiss in listing the last couple issues under my read2008 tag, and also that there's poetry news of my own to post as well.

Hence, this combined post.

I have two new poems up right now.  The first is a filler in the September Sam's Dot Newsletter.  Check out "Salted Earth" here.

The second is my poem  "The Roads Both Taken (a quantum response to Robert Frost)".  The reason this one is online is because it was picked for Editor's Choice (short form) in Starline May/June 2008.  It had to be a close call, because there was a lot of good stuff in this issue.   Check out the long form pick by upstart_crow  while you're at it.  Some of my favorites from this issue were by Gregory Benford, Anne K. Schwader, Lucy A. Snyder, mtentchoff , stillnotbored  and mtrimm1 . 

The issue before that, March/April 2008, the poems I most enjoyed were by  mtrimm1  (again), Teri Leigh Relf's "Still Life of Porphyria with Hairbrush", time_shark , upstart_crow  (again) and dreamnnightmare .  In the insert FAIRYTALE GRAVEYARD, I particularly enjoyed Stephen M. Wilson's horror-ku, and Michael Arnzen's addition.

As for the most current issue (July /August 2008): The conclusion of Duane Ackerson's article made me want to seek out more of his work.  World's Oldest Profession 2.0 by G.O Clark also got to me, a well gnawed SF premise invigorated with the personal approach.  jborneman , stillnotbored , mtentchoff  turned in some good stuff as well.  Mary Turzillo made me laugh out loud, and Helen Ehrlich's Sunday Picnic had some great imagery that built to an expertly constructed finale.

Often when I am taking in an older film or book, I try to imagine the context of the story in its own era.  Sometimes, the thing that I gain from this is an understanding of what made the "classics" so classic.  Sometimes the thing I gain is a better understanding of just how different humanity was as a culture then. Sometimes I am startled by how prescient (aka timeless) the story is.  And when I'm really lucky, I am left with an understanding (fleeting like fairies) of what makes a great story tick.

But let's put it in perspective with a couple examples from a culture very different from the one I grew up in:  1960s America. 

I was born in 1971.  I'm Gen X or whatever.  To me, the '60s are all but a mythical time.  (Yeah, yeah, I know it's about the same to some of you who lived through it!)  :)   So I feel like I lack a certain cultural perspective when I engage in popular stories of that decade; it makes me work harder to really understand what the author meant when the story was first told.  And even though I'm admitting right up front I was not there, I'm still going to spout off about the period as if I were some kind of expert.  (Home field advantage, yanno?)  ;P

Not so long ago, I watched the original Night of the Living Dead (1968)   Here is a good example of an aha! moment about that era, and how very different our own American culture was at that time.  Over and over throughout, one character or another appeals to the others that "Sooner or later, the authorities will come to save us."   It occurred to me (in the shower, no less.  Isn't that where everyone thinks about zombies?)  that a large part of what made this a lasting icon of horror wasn't just that there are dead folk staggering around looking for brains to chomp on.  That fearsomeness of something unexplainable and evil and beyond being reasoned with would be plenty for it to have just been another of the adequately scary movies of the late '60s/early '70s.  But I think what elevated it to cult/classic status was the second major theme of scariness:  the authorities are not going to come save us; we can no longer count on them.

Nowadays, the only folks in America who really think the authorities are there to save us are the extreme ends of the right and left--neither of which can agree what exactly we all need saving from (unless it's the other side), or how to accomplish the rescue (except by blaming the other side for getting us into such a pickle, and then finding some different pickle to put us all in.)  But at the end of the '60s, this realization had only just begun crashing into America like the surge of all those firehoses turned against protesters.  That is what made Night of the Living Dead rise above the other scary movies of its time.  That's what made it a classic. The burgeoning zeitgeist, expressed with the right metaphor.  A terrible, unstoppable change is coming and yesterday's answers are lost to us. If the exact same movie had made its first appearance when the remake was released in 1990, it would have been just another movie. 

All these zombie sequels we're swimming in today?  They would not be around if Romero hadn't struck the nerve he did, and spawned so many other attempts to recapture that horrific recognition of theme that viewers felt about the original.  To them, the story was deeper than just zombies; it expressed something true and deeply affecting.  Later zombie-philic efforts (at least initially) were little more than trying to re-invoke the deeper societal fear by relying on the visceral terror.  Even today, the motif still refuses to die, even though it is more often executed in a washed out, copy-of-a-copy way than it is done well.  

So there's an example of seeing how different a culture we had, just 40 years ago.

Now we're going to go back a few more years to 1960 to see the other major genus of classic--the one that stays relevant by showing how no matter how much things may change, the great themes remain the same.

Here's a quote:

The abbot snapped off the set.  "Where's the truth?" he asked quietly.  "What's to be believed?  Or does it matter at all?  When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier.  Evil, on evil, piled on evil.  Was there any justification in our "police action'' ...?   How can we know?  Certainly there was no justification for what they did--or was there?

That comes from near the heartfelt, angry, cathartic end of A Canticle for Liebowitz, which I only just moments ago finished reading.  But boy howdy could he have been writing that today (sans the words "in space" which I replaced with an ellipsis above.)  Which I guess is part of the overarching theme of the book--the repetition of the great battles between man and man, knowledge and ignorance, faith and reason, scientific possibility and ethics, absolute principles and relative morality, security and progress.  But most of all between hope and despair. These things will be with us always, Miller seems to be saying, and it is what you seek to preserve, and the stories you preserve that define the value of your own story.

That's part of the meta aspect of this novel, but I didn't begin to realize it till I was well along in the story.  Each of the three sections occurs about 600 years apart, with the first section about 600 years after our sainted Jew Liebowitz (did I mention he as a wry sense of humor?) founds an order dedicated to preserving the knowledge of mankind at the beginning of a post-apocalyptic Dark Age, a la Asimov's Foundation.  In the second section, you see how the history of what happened in the first has become as mutated as any of the generations of nomadic survivors--and come to realize how much the history of the apocalypse itself must have been altered in the first section.  By the end of the last section, Miller has shown the reader a handful of utterly different, even competing versions of the "history" you've already "witnessed."  He wasn't just pointing out how man's stories keep repeating themselves; he  went out of his way to underscore the importance of remembering our stories, of cherishing them even across eons and light years, even when they are no longer recognizable but for some small grain of metaphorical truth (as in the denouement of the Poet's glass eye.)  

It is no small wonder that A Canticle for Liebowitz won the Hugo and has not gone out of print in almost 50 years.  The book is about the things that are imperishable so long as mankind exists, no matter how far apart in time and space and ideology our cultures may be. 

As promised.  Two very different classics.  One might even say two very different genera (plural of genus, donchaknow?) of classics: the kind that become classics because of how strongly they resonate thematically with their time and the kind that become classics because of how strongly they resonate with all times.  

I suppose the argument could be made that Romero's Living Dead resonated with all times and Miller's Leibowitz resonated more strongly with the early Cold War/Nuclear Panic zeitgeist, and I'll respectfully tell you "maybe so."  But whether you see it as two independent genera or a yang that must always accompany its yin, I hope I've at least made a little bit of sense with my dissection.  

I know I feel like I understand (fleeting, fleeting) a little bit more about what makes a story "classic". 

Or at least what it is that makes sure that these stories (and their evolutionary descendants) continue to be told over and over, as long as there are people around to share them.

Thoughts?

OK, Armadillocon was a blast!  Austin is awesome, if a bit weirdly planned in the road department. (EX: "The Loop" is a straightaway....)  I recommend it wholeheartedly.  Some of the best parts were:

-Hanging with Josh and Kristen Rountree, Sam Henderson and soon to be in the Austin newspaper daughter Gennie, Abby Goldsmith, Eric Marin, Mikal Trimm, Dave Duggins and Ann.  Deb Layne and Patrick Swenson and Nancy Jane Moore and Ellen Van Hensbergen and so many other writer types that I am sure to be forgetting a boatload of names.

-Read part of Alamo Rising and it seemed to be a crowd pleaser.

-Got to meet many fine, cool folks from the comics-writing side of the house. Paul Benjamin, Alan J. Porter, Chris Roberson.  These fellows were all super nice and gave me a couple pointers about where to start looking for info about the comics business and adapting some of my stories to comic scripts. 

-Learned many nuggets of Solomon Kane goodness from renegade Robert E. Howard guru Mark Finn.  Oh yes, there will be subscribing!

-Sat in on readings by Josh, Sam, Rob Rogers (DEVIL'S CAPE sounds like a pretty enthralling superhero novel!), Mikal, and also got to hear Alan J. Porter read and discuss quite a bit from his upcoming 007 pop-culture book.

-Listening to Joe Lansdale pontificate in his trademarked folksy way about the influence of Westerns on SF.

-The characterization panel I was on went well.  The only other author on the panel I had read before was Stephen Brust, but as ever, I took home a few new ideas to try.  My three C's went over pretty well too.  Wish I still had the original article from the long lost journalscape blog.  It'd be worth reposting.

-Moderating the Lovecraft's Legacy panel was a bit of a minefield.  Of the seven folks up there, it seemed like only me (the moderator) and William Browning Spencer (whose RESUME WITH MONSTERS is now on my list) actually liked Lovecraft, or at least could get over the archaic prose enough to really get into what he was about.  I threw my handgrenade out there connecting HPL to fanfiction, but no one jumped on it.  William Spencer read a hilarious send up: "The Love Song of A. Abdul Al-Hazred".  Luckily, there were two pro-Lovecraft guys in the front row ready to pinch hit and balance things out with some insightful comments about why HPL still matters.  (Thanks again, Robert Read and Don Webb.)

-Austin is known for Live Music.  Bills itself as the live music capital of the world.  Rightly so.  Deb's son brought his axe as did a double handful of other folks and there was an awesome jam session of classic rock standards till well after midnight on Saturday.

-Looking at the list of attendees and some other folks' con reports, It seems I missed out on meeting a whole lot of other folks I wanted to, or at least of getting to talk more to.  Had to go all the way to Texas to catch up with near-neighbor John Scalzi; Joe and Gay Haldeman were there, but I didn't get a chance to chat about THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE, or get it signed. I finally met Sheila Williams, and was startled that she recognized my name.  Also present apparently, but I failed to meet:  THE SPEED OF DARK author Elizabeth Moon (MAN! I should have mentioned this novel on the Characterization panel!!!),  Martha Wells, Patrice Sarath.  Wish there had been more time to talk to everyone, but I guess there'll always be another con--or this one again next year.  I'd definitely come back, if my real life time constraints supported it.

-Last thing I did before heading out to the airport was attend the panel on challenges of writing for younger audiences.  Cynthia Leitich Smith and Paul Benjamin had all kinds of stuff to say that I should have written down, and the other panelists were no slouches either.  Only down beat was the moderator let the panel get co-opted by an audience member asking the tired off-topic basics like "How do you find an editor to buy your work?" and so on.  Sigh.  I suspect the answer will never be, "By attempting to rudely derail a conversation about something else" but whatchagonnado?

LET THERE BE BOOKS!
While in Austin, Josh took me to a local book store where I finally laid my hands on a copy of F. Paul Wilson's JACK: SECRET HISTORIES.  Also picked up the second volume of the Waldrop retrospective (featuring longer works) and some of Ken Rand's writing books from the Fairwood press table.  Sam gave me a copy of her new soon to be released novel HEAVEN'S BONES, which I cannot recommend enough to fans of weird history, gaslight gothic terror, and just plain morbid fun.

When I got home, I found in my mailbox contributor copies of ABOMINATIONS and STARLINE, plus the Shirley Jackson fundraiser-cum-murder-party JACK HARINGA MUST DIE.  Also, an ARC of the aforementioned HEAVEN'S BONES by Samantha Henderson. (Which again, is made of grue and win, and worthy of your bookbuying dollars!)  Another issue of Mental Floss trickled in as well.  (I am so far behind in my reading!!  Is it winter yet?)

BETTER READ THAN DEAD
Over the course of the week, Josh introduced me to Y: THE LAST MAN in trade softcover.  Truly impressive first volume.  I'll be hunting down more. 

Y dovetailed nicely with Cormac MacCarthy's THE ROAD, which I finished this evening and, yes, it did get a couple rolling tears at the end, I am not ashamed to admit.  Wow.  What a story, what a storyteller.  That said, though, it took me a while to get used to his minimal punctuation style.  Some of the conversations I had to go back and re-read because I lost track of who said what.  In the end, I liked what the style did for this particular end of the world story.  It amplified how everything was running down and wearing out.  I have to say, though, that if what I've heard about his other novels all using the same style is true--well, I won't dock points from THE ROAD, but my PretentiousTwaddleometer(TM) will probably prevent me from checking out those other books.

Also read Ken Rand's FROM IDEA TO STORY IN 90 SECONDS on the plane.  Finding ideas has never been my problem.  But converting the idea into story has occasionally given me pause. This little book gave me some solid, practical advice on bridging that gap, and also put into perspective what it is new writers are really asking when they say "Where do you get your ideas?"  Some of his concepts about the Cosmic Soup really hit home, especially since I realized how similar one of my YAs is to a YA written by a much more successful author, and the likelihood that they were both written about the same time. 

Oh, and I got some good writing (and reading!) news, but I am not sure if I can mention it yet.  So watch this space!

Of course, no one knew that they were a conspiracy of two.  Perhaps all great loves are like that: a secret that can't be shared

This book was an endearing, entertaining, picaresque hoot.  Fresh, clean prose that did nothing but amplify the sensawunda.  A good hearted worldview that's hard to come by in these cynicism-stained times.  I was hoping to find a copy of The Forever War, so as to fill an important gap in my reading, but came away with this instead when TFW wasn't available.  What a blast.  I think I need to find my own graviton emitter that's malfunctioning in some dimension above the 4th and set off for adventure!


Also read some Arthur Machen (dubbed by HPL as one of the 4 greatest living novelists way back when).  The Great God Pan and The White People.  I can certainly see HPL's attraction:  Long hidden secrets (of Fay and Roman-Celtic origin) gradually and unbelievably making themselves known to the one or two people erudite and patient enough to assemble all the disparate puzzle pieces seems to be a theme for Machen.  Also, 18 page paragraphs of spoken story as recounted in a diary, seem to be de rigeur.  I enjoyed TGGP the most of these two stories, but there wasn't enough of a draw for me to continue reading his Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, vol. 1.  Not without course credit, at least!  :) 

Lest I forget.

Weird Tales #349 -  Elric! Arkham!  The Blob! 85 Weirdos! With Sarah Monette and "The Talion Moth" like pulpy whipped cream and cherries on top of it all!  Usually WT for me is all about the fiction, but this issue had really exceptional articles as well. 

newuniversal 1959 #1 - Tony Stark 1959 cameo, very cool, appropriate role-- and it didn't even feel like standard issue gratuitous Marvel-brand incest!  Still ready for the regular "season" to get going again, but this was a good taste, and answered some niggling backstory questions.


Other Reading Stuff

Noted Warren Ellis stirring the pot on the big three, plus Interzone.  He wasn't much impressed and won't be renewing.  You can read his comments there.  I'm sure they will be discussed as vigorously by the SF blogemony as last year's edition.  :) 

As for myself, I was kind of sad to see the last issue of my subscription to Black Gate arrive today.  (Ignore the cranky part where I mention how aggravating it is to PAY for something and then see it given away for free on the web before you get what you paid for.  Yeah, ignore that!)  :P

Anywho, I've been around the block enough times to see where they're most likely headed.  Reports of uncommunicative editor + closing to submissions + "experimenting with online delivery" = soon we'll be shoveling dirt onto the coffin of their print edition, at least.  :(   I love what I read there over the last couple years, in particular the Dao Shi stories and Mark Summer's killer ant army serial--but it's too big of a leap of faith to renew.  Given the success of the Clarkesworld model, not to mention Baen's Universe and IGMS, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them headed that way before the next issue appears.  I wish them all kinds of crazy success, but I'm going to become a pay-per-issue customer of BG at this point.

Kind of sucks to see print zines dropping like flies though.  Even Apex Digest has moved to online only.  Still haven't heard what subscriber options are there as of yet, but it's only been a couple weeks since the announcement. 

So it is that I find my printed fiction subscriptions suddenly dropped in half... not because I did not like the content, but because economic forces are stronger than a niche market's whims.  With Apex Digest and Black Gate no longer greeting me at my mailbox every so irregularly, I'm glad I still have Talebones and Weird Tales to fill that gap.

A list of stuff read so far this year, with comment. 

1. Gaiman's Sandman - Nocturnes & Preludes - It didn't really seem to find its legs till it was almost over.  Then it took a quantum leap.  I loved the demon riddle contest though, and the personification of his little/big sister Death.
   
2. Apex #11 - Gary Braunbeck's moody tale got the issue off to a solid start, Jennifer Pelland never disappoints, and Dan Keohane shook the casbah around as well.
   
3. Weird Tales #346 - Ann VanderMeer's first issue with all her own selections. "Figure 5" and "Bufo Rex" were my two faves here, but the whole issue had an amazing degree of cohesion.  I was already excited to see what the new editorial direction had in store for us, but had I known just how far my expectations would be exceeded, I would have probably been doing backflips while I waited for it.
   
4. M.T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing (Audio) Loved the voice (prose and audible) for this amazingly spec-feeling story. It rouses real anger, sadness and worry as Octavian gradually discovers the true nature of his charmed life--just before it comes crashing down around him in the worst possible ways.
5. Pratchett's Thud! (Audio) My first taste of the grand master of funny fantasy; it won't be my last.  The bit where Death has a Near Vimes Experience got me laughing so hard I had to pull over to the side of the road!
6. Expiration Date by Tim Powers.  Not my favorite of his books.  Loved the new wrinkle on fractured identities, the carefully researched Hollywood history and the masterfully intricate plotting involved--but to me Edison's ghost was the most fully fleshed out of the characters.  (No pun intended.  SRSLY!)  I didn't feel fully invested or pulled along by the events and danger going on until right near the end.   I did note (and appreciate) the wryness of Tim's "Hollywood ending" where all the pieces fall into place for Koot to have a "new" ready-made family.  
7. Howard Who? The re-release of Howard Waldrop's first collection has some goodies from the retrospective I read last year, and many more stories that were new to me.  I continue to find myself in awe of his writing.
   
8. Weird Tales #347 - "Events at Fort Plentitude" by Cat Rambo stole the show for me, with Calvin Mills bit of magical realist nastiness a close second.
   
9. Coraline by Neil Gaiman.  Creepy and fun for an afternoon's read, but not very crunchy.  Felt like it should have been a deeper, more darkly resonant story than it turned out to be.  
10. Starline Jan/Feb 2008 - As usual, some stuff I really liked, and some I glossed past. Wish I could find the darn thing to give a shoutout or two to the ones who rocked my socks most.  Must have got lost in the move.
11. Straub's lost boy, lost girl - The man is an absolute master.  I read In the Night Room last year and thought it would be hard to top, but LB, LG totally wins the spine-tingly sweepstakes, whereas ITNR still comes out on top as the most amazing work of metafiction I have ever read. 
    
12. The Sworn Sword by GRRM.  Yup.  I got the paperback of Legends 2 just to read this novella, then popped it back to the used bookstore.  A good lagniappe while we wait for the dragons to Dance this fall, but nowhere near as satisfying or engrossing as The Hedge Knight or any of the big ol' honkin' books from the series proper.
13. Apex #12 - Shrews and Keene served up a Sam's Club sized vat of testosterony fun, and there was the awesome conclusion of Cain XP11, Maurice Broaddus and my fave of the issue: Joy Marchand's "Clementine."
14. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.  Others have said it better and louder, but this book RAWKED. The anti-authoritarian streak of (the movie) Pump Up the Volume, but with real, gut churning stakes and cooler technology (and geek culture!)  to thwart the man with.  I said before that this book should be bundled with Nick Mamatas' Under My Roof and marketed as a" Subversive Value Pack" wherever finer free thought products are sold.
15. The Historical Jesus (Audio) Thought this was the book on audio, but actually it was a series of lectures by the author on the same subject, but in more depth.  Fascinating look at the history of Christian thought, doctrine and dogma, as well as being a neat window into the culture of the world in the first few hundred years A.D.
16. James Patterson's Maximum Ride 1&2 -  Read these with (aka hot on the trail of) my oldest daughter.  She's probably re-reading through book 5 at this point, heh.  Probably have more to say on this later, but I really liked 'em.  Interesting to note how many more of the raves and comments in the front matter of these books were from regular folks' blogs rather than traditional review sources.  A shrewd marketer works for that publisher.  Surprisingly deep issues here, and some serious events you rarely see in lower YA.     
17. Mainspring by Jay Lake.  Putting it down with Hethor among the correct people so I could get some writing done was one of the hardest things I've done as a reader.  Picking it back up and polishing it off once my writing was done turned out to be a sweet, sweet reward.  I can't say anything here that hasn't been said better by Scalzi, Doctorow or Di Filippo on the back cover.  Incredible worldbuilding, Jay's trademark warm secularism shines like the beacon of God's Love oughta, and there's enough rip-roaring action here to satisfy the pulpiest of adventurers.
18. Strange Itineraries: The Complete Short Stories of Tim Powers.  The only disappointing word in the whole book is "complete" in the subtitle there.  Reading this collection, I realized all over again how much of a debt I owe to his influence for my story "All That Remains is the Middle".    "Pat Moore" was my favorite, and the most emotionally affecting in a slim volume with more than its fair share of "personality."  (That little in-joke was definitely intentional!)