So I read these...

Now that I'm back from the NYC and re-enmeshed in the workday, I've been reading more, and I've finished quite a few in the past couple of weeks.

Paul of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Pretty good, though since it's occuring in well laid-out time periods in the Dune-iverse, there aren't any big surprises. Still, I love spending time with the characters and the seventeen or so millenia in which the Dune-iverse unfolds.

The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America by Lawrence J. Epstein.
Interesting history of both the Jewish-American experience and the evolution of humor and stand-up comedy. A little dry for my taste, but still a brisk and fascinating read.

Silent Bob Speaks by Kevin Smith.
A collection of previously published pieces. Smith is a fun conversationalist and writer, but this collection feels like a cash-in. No offense to Smith, but his bloggery is more immediate and enveloping.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
A delightful little read, full of whimsy and deadpan humor. Sort of an Afro-Caribbean Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Light in tone, and, as always with Gaiman, witty and imaginative.

So I read this: River of Gods by Ian McDonald.

Imagining India circa 2047, this is a rather remarkable SF novel. It has an expansive but not diluted collection of main characters, its technology is advanced but comprehensible, and its knowledge of human behavior is remarkably consistent with who we are and where we most likely are headed to.

There's a playful cleverness to McDonald's work, and his embrace of the complex sociopolitical forces at work in contemporary (and alternate future-contemporary) India is impressive. I'd love to see this in a cinematic context, but it would be hard to find a happy synthesis that can make allowancwes for some of the extremely nonvisual plot points. But this book is an utter delight, and I recommend it to anyone looking for an evocative SF experience.

So I read this: Skinema by Chris Nieratko.

Loosely tied into the Jackass/Big Brother guys, Chris Nieratko took an ostensible porn review column and turned it into a Joe Bob Briggs-Proustian venting of his subconscious and drug-fuelled and sex-laden adventures. I admire what he accomplished, and I dig his style and utter disdain for what criticism truly requires, but I feel like there could have been more to it.

I mean, he's got a flair for picking stuff with great titles, but he jettisons an sense of giving a shit about the material, and in turn he comes off as a total asshole. He's got some wit and can tell a good story, but it can be deadening if you read it like a book. File it with your diaries, and it'll fit just fine.

My main hope after reading Skinema is that someday I will have the opportunity to publish some of my own rambling and tangential stuff. Sort of like here...

So I read this: Adverbs by Daniel Handler.

I didn't really know all that much about Lemony Snicket when I was given Daniel Handler's first novel The Basic Eight, which is exceptional- like Fight Club for girls. I also dug his novel Watch Your Mouth, which was written as an opera, which isn't that much of a surprise considering Handler is an occasional Magnetic Field and you know how good ol' Stephin Merritt is about operas and such.

But it makes me ecstatic that the success of the Lemony Snicket books has allowed Daniel Handler to experiment with the form under his own name, and Adverbs is a humdinger. I don't know if it completely works, but when it hits, it does so beautifully. Adverbs is a sort of rondelay that explores love, birds, and disaster, in many different varieties.

This isn't an easy book to get in to, and at times things seem deliberately difficult. The connections between stories and characters seem arbitrary and elliptical throughout, though when everything does in fact get brought together, it adds the kind of thematic and narrative urgency that makes you want to go back and reread all that you've experienced, so that's a recommendation.

So I read this: Hack/Slash: The First Cut by Tim Seeley.

Conceived in the spirit of Carol Clover and Misty Mundae, Hack/Slash is the ongoing story of Cassie Hack, an alienated girl whose mother was the slasher "The Lunch Lady." Now, along with her misshapen compatriot Vlad, she's made a life out of taking down slashers, those killers whose sprees extend from beyond the grave.

The First Cut, a birthday gift from the overmind at Safe in Heaven Dead Films, collects the first three Hack/Slash stories together, and it's pretty entertaining. The characterization is minimal, and occasionally dips into some predictable cliches, but things move quickly and Cassie and Vlad make for a good team.

Word has it that there's going to be a Hack/Slash film in 2009, and it's perfectly geared for that sort of thing. The second of the three main stories in The First Cut, "Girls Gone Dead," is perfect for the big screen. There's a little of everything that horror fans can dig on, and I look forward to seeing how the story of Cassie Hack continues to evolve.

So I read this: The Midnight Hour by Donald Bacon.

This book is kind of a mess. It's pretty much equally split between ancient evil/unspeakable pagan rite horror, reincarnated woman-in-jeopardy suspense, and Stokerian boxed narrative, with a leavening patina of graphic sex that feels out of place compared to the rest of the book.

Caroline Enders is an up-and-coming banker in New York City who, despite still attending banking classes, is finally making enough to get a place of her own and move out from the walk-up she's been sharing with her longtime friend Beth (and, more recently aplpha male Harry, the kind of brusque male presence who you know will eventually get hammered and honed down into the principal love interest).

Unfortunately for Caroline, she gets the apartment that used to belong to insane art historian Mondrian de Kuyperdahl, whose been the keeper of an ancient pre-Druidic relic that is the only thing keeping a demonic 'messenger' (the book's terminology) from decapitating the world and tormenting their souls forever while their heads are stored in an ominous wooden cabinet.

We've got a human follower of the messenger whom we know is evil because he messes up library books, lots of excerpts from de Kuyperdahl's diaries, which provide all the context, important information, and sex that we get in the story, and a couple of lengthy drives upstate to either get away from or sew the seeds of evil. Unfortunately, this has an inconsistent worldview and the most anticlimactic ending I've encountered in a while.

If you're at all into 80s-career-feminist horror or Druidic/Celtic history/mythology, there are some interesting moments within. But this isn't essential reading, and even as a devotee of 80s/90s mass-market horror paperbacks, I'd have to call this effort middling. The cover looks awesome, though.

So I read this: Watchmen by Moore and Gibbons

Pretty much everything you've heard is true. This really is the grandaddy of the postmodern comic book. It haunts me to no end that this came out back when I was a serious comic reader and collector and it completely passed me by. Though, truthfully, a lot of Alan Moore's more meta conceits would have gone right over my head. Certainly this was aiming higher than anything else at the time, but it still took Elektra: Assassin to bring me into the world of adult comix, and I still stand by that. You can take Frank Miller's hypersexed reactionary fever dreams of statuesque assassins and the grotesque violence they deal and respond to that from the perspective of a twelve year-old, which I was. But I worked my way through its fragmented and experimental narrative and found it rewarding. I would probably not have been able to appreciate anything about Watchmen had I been reading it back in '86-'87.

But I will say this, and it's the damned truth; Dave Gibbons' art is kind of boring. Perhaps that is intentional- a way to get some of the more baroque narrative touches across without triggering to many warning lights until Moore's ideas get their hooks into the soft grey matter. But if you could have had Moore working with Bill Sienkiewicz on Watchmen- holy shit. I mean, that would have been a work of art that society couldn't withstand. It would have been amazing.

But Watchmen on its own is something unique and well-worth exploring. The forthcoming (if you can call March of next year forthcoming) movie adaptation by Zack (Dawn of the Dead remake "yay," 300 "boo") Snyder has got interest in the title up, which is good. But it's not a particularly cinematic work, and I don't think that this movie will work. But it's good to have some of the concepts in Watchmen resonating throughout global culture.

So I read this: Whores of Lost Atlantis by Charles Busch.

An interesting and gossipy roman a clef from drag diva Busch, fictionalizing the circumstances behind his 80s-Off Broadway smash Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Fans of underground theatre and delicious dialogue should delight in this offering, even if it at times seems a little too glowing with regards to its author/subject.

Ideally, I'd love for someone to lay out who everyone's real-life counterpart is in the story, because there are some juicy tidbits that are crying out for an expose of some sort. But still, this was a pleasant read for a sweltering summer.

So I read this... Read Between My Lines: The Musical and Life Journey of Stevie Nicks by Sandra Halliburton.

I love celebrity tell-all books as much as anyone, and you just know that a life as interesting and chaotic as that of Stevie Nicks has got some dirt to dish and tales to tell. Sadly, this effort feels like an expanded research paper. It's almost all direct quotes from other materials, and it feels, honestly, like a biography-by-Google. That's nothing against Ms. Halliburton, who seems to have a profound respect both for Nicks and her fans, but the text of this book simply isn't up to snuff. It's like a several-hundred page Wikipedia article, but with an awkwardly-constructed timeline.

I will confess, I learned a few things about Stevie that I didn't know before (including one devastating anecdote about what happened between her and Prince following "Stand Back"). But I can't get past the fact that all the information in the book comes from other interviews. And then the very last chapter is just fan testimony. I would call myself a Stevie Nicks fan, but I don't think it's really something that belongs in a legitimate biography.

An unchallenging read with some decent tidbits, but nothing too explosive. Halliburton indirectly references the urban legend about Nicks having an assistant anally administer cocaine, but in a way that seems disingenuous; she mentions the rumor in order to acknowledge it and capitilize on its notoriety, but she leaves the terminology vague and nonexplicit, so as not to offend Nicks or her fanbase- which line do you want to walk?

So, I read this... Skinny Women are Evil by Mo'Nique and Sherri A. McGee

I like Mo'Nique. She's feisty, filthy, funny, and empowering for the large of size, and I respect her for it.

So when I came up on her book Skinny Women are Evil, I felt honor-bound to check it out. It's filled with countless examples of the frustration that fat people deal with, both from other people and from ourselves, as well as the deranged thinking that proliferates around body image in L.A. This is all good and effective.

Even better are the way Mo'Nique interweaves her own story of hammering out some success in spite of her womanly assets, and it's not hard for anyone, regardless of our own body circumstances, to get swept along in the vibe she carefully crafts. But some of the advice our girl Mo'Nique offers is just not healthy; and while I applaud any effort to give the plus-sized community some gumption, self-esteem, and motivation to keep in (plus-sized) shape, some of what she says just won't help, and may in fact hurt the reader.

The most egregious example of this is in her workout advice, when she says that to make sure to keep your energy levels up, don't drink water, drink Coke. And that's just wrong on a crapload of levels.

Again, much love for Mo'Nique- her jokes and her own personal stories are entertaining and inspiring. I'd love to meet and tackle some hot wing platters with her. But I wouldn't use her workout suggestions were I trying to get a serious workout program up and running.

So, I read this... House of Doors by Brian Lumley

Decent enough premise; a bunch of random folk get trapped in a many roomed anomaly that manifests itself as a castle with lots of levels and lots of doors, each a gateway to things. My thought on reading the back while on vacation visiting the family down south was that, being from '94, the book might have been an influence on Cube and might not have been subject to the same problems as that film.

Wrong.

The book is just not very good. None of the descriptions, setpieces, or deaths are enthralling, the alien subplot is matter-of-factly deployed, killing any sense of suspense, and none of the characters distinguish themselves in any fashion other than attempted rape and one-trait tokenism.

I love horror, and I love anything dealing with weird physical space made of unholy geometries. This satisfies neither condition.