To those who believe that the ongoing war on terrorism against Islamic fanatics is a war without end or a war that can’t be won, I suggest they read up on the anarchists’ 19th Century international terror campaign.
In Raven Stole the Moon, Jenna Rosen walks away from a life that is fractured. Two years ago, her young son drowned in a tragic accident at a resort in Alaska. Her husband seems to have moved on, but Jenna cannot let go of her grief. On the anniversary of their son’s death, they attend a party that turns out to be Jenna’s breaking point. She walks away from the party, gets in her husband’s car and drives… straight through to Bellingham, Washington. She gets on the ferry and heads to her home town of Wrangell, Alaska — and straight into a mystery. [Read more →]
Jake Adlestein, an American reporter working the police beat for a Japanese newspaper, begins his true crime story with a meeting he took with two members of the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime group.
“Either erase the story, or we will erase you. And maybe your family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die,” one of the yakuza members said to Adelstein.
Adelstein writes that this seemed like a straightforward proposition. [Read more →]
“[D]o not linger over your own ruins.”
Lesser minds examining Vladimir Nabokov’s posthumously published The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun), A Novel in Fragments will be tempted to begin by quoting index card D2, page 133, in which the great Enchanter writes, “Now comes the mental image. In preparing for my own experiments — a long fumble which these notes shall help novices to avoid — I toyed with the ides of drawing a fairly detailed, fairly recognizable portrait of myself on my private blackboard.” This is a trap of course, neatly set by that great player of literary games, that the present reviewer shall neatly sidestep by instead noting that when the great Nabokov passed away in 1977 (as harrowingly related by a character purporting to be Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, in T.O.O.L.‘s introduction), I was four years old, and had only just recently discovered his works. I was halfway through my second re-reading of Pale Fire — I hadn’t yet found all the clues as to the butterfly/Hazel Shade connection – and I was devastated in that way that only the near-infant fan of a great author can be when he learns his favorite author has shuffled off this mortal coil.
I have occasionally described books as “a wild ride.” Books are like trips we take — some are pleasant Sunday drives, some are fast and bumpy. John Dies @ the End is like a ride on a twisting, speeding, swooping roller coaster. On acid. With no seat belt. [Read more →]
I have been reading the Journal of Jules Renard, as translated and edited by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget. Originally published in 1964, it was reprinted a couple of years ago by Tin House Books. The complete journal runs to more than 1,200 pages. The Tin House edition, at 304 pages, provides a representative sampling. [Read more →]
Rich Trzupek at Big Journalism wrote an interesting piece about William F. Buckley, who died two years ago.
As Trzupek notes in his piece, Buckley spawned and inspired a new generation of conservative and libertarian thought.
I wish I were in Los Angeles. For if I were, I would surely take the Raymond Chandler tour I just read about .
I’m sure LA has changed much from Raymond Chandler’s day, as I’m sure the city has also changed from my frequent visits there in the early 1970s, but a clever tour guide is trying to preserve Chandler’s LA attmosphere (and make a buck at the same time).
Over the last decade Penny Arcade has been providing social commentary to a niche market over the Internet. I’ve been a fan since I was introduced to the comic in 2001. Their main focuses are video games and the surrounding culture, a truly vast and encompassing topic when you consider how little the Associated Press actually covers related issues other than addiction and violence. Gabe and Tycho, the artist’s and writer’s pen-names, are still making me and many other people laugh while making some good points.
[Read more →]
Historical fiction can be challenging, both for writers and readers. It doesn’t take much — just a word, a name, a description — to bounce you right out of the story. In the Author’s Note at the end of Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin says “It is almost impossible to write a comprehensible story set in the twelfth century without being anachronistic, at least in part. To avoid confusion, I have used modern names and terms.” Still, she manages to evoke a sense of the time that had me completely swept up in the story. It’s an excellent combination of a compelling story, interesting characters and the romance of an earlier time. [Read more →]
Although Philip K. Dick passed away in 1982, his novels and stories still have a feel of immediacy. These works of speculative fiction dealt with themes that still preoccupy our minds — the overreach of governments that lie to their subjects in order to increase their power, corrupt corporations that attempt to control every aspect of peoples’ lives, and the nature of identity in an increasingly confusing world. Hollywood studios love him, because his personal stories of alienation in modern society appeal to modern filmmakers, who have turned his fiction into classic films such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, and at least three other films that I have seen, but whose titles escape me at the moment.
For me, one of his best works is the novel The Penultimate Inconvenient Truth, which is the story of a conspiracy among scientists and various world governments to convince people that the planet’s temperature (“planetemp”) is rising. In fact, there is little evidence of this — the scientists and governments are just using it as an excuse to consolidate power. The first chapter, reprinted below, is so prescient that it almost feels like it could have been written today, just now, by me, as a satire. Except for all those classic Phildickian terms, of course:
Thirteen Misconceptions Surrounding National Shelve Your Indie Novel in the Superbookstore Month
1) America did not carpet bomb any lawless tribal regions with remaindered and pulped copies of confiscated counterfeit Indie versions of Sarah Palin’s autobiography.
2) 103,017 bottles and cans of Coke and Pepsi staged a walk out from 7-11 freezer space across the country in protest of the marginalization of indie novelists and collusive practices across the country. [Read more →]
I was told that Lieutenant Edwin Fay was thrilled with being a naval intelligence officer back in 1964. James Bond-mania was in full swing and Fay was a big fan of the novels and films.
Fay was pleased to learn that his true-life hero, the late President John F. Kennedy, a World War II naval officer, was also a fan of the novels and once dined with Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming. [Read more →]
Is George Orwell’s1984 the most influential novel ever written? That’s what Geoffrey Wheatcroft says in a recent essay in the New York Times:
No other [novel] can have so enriched the language. Try a Web search for countless contemporary uses of Newspeak, the thought police or doublethink – the expressions, that is: a glance at the political pages or op-ed columns provides plenty of examples of what those brilliant coinings describe.
My, with all this “coining” and “enrichment,” Orwell is practically the Royal Mint. Maybe Orwell’s words are still in circulation but are his ideas really in good condition?
Paddy Meehan is probably the most flawed heroine I’ve read in a while. By page 10 of The Dead Hour, she has already taken a bribe. She lies, she has an affair with a married man — but in her own way, she’s trying to do the right thing. Her way is just a bit roundabout. [Read more →]
Back in September, I reviewed The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. I was really impressed by the book — it wasn’t really something I expected to like, but I was sucked in and really enjoyed it. Garth Stein has a new novel coming out in just a few weeks: Raven Stole the Moon is currently available for pre-order. I hope to have a review here for you soon!
10. Although this sonnet be one quatrain short,
9. It’s filled with every drop of Love of mine.
8. It’s filled with all my caring and support.
7. I Love you so, my gorgeous Valentine.
6. I Love the fire burning in your eyes,
5. That melts our flesh eternally together
4. And, like the phoenix, soon enough we rise
3. And soar off starward, one bird of a feather.
2. To see sights that no mortal man has seen,
1. Forever one with my true Love: Maureen.
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears (except this week) every Monday.
Dear Roger Ebert,
Everyone suffers through the bittersweet pain of first love lost. Subsequent romances are never the same; are never remembered with quite the same quality of melancholic regret. Your first love is the only one to whom you can say things like “I will love you forever,” and not be lying just to get in her pants.
If you have a weak stomach, this book is not for you.
Wake Up Dead is probably the most violent, bloody, gore-splattered book I’ve read in ages, and that’s really saying something. A gang war in Cape Town, South Africa’s ghettos provides the setting and the gang-bangers, drug lords, junkies and an honest-to-goodness cannibal provide the action.
On a steamy night in Cape Town, Roxy and Joe Palmer have dinner with a cannibal and his Ukranian whore. On the way home, they’re carjacked. Joe is shot in the leg and, in a panic, the carjackers drop the gun and take off in Joe’s car. What Roxy does next will cause more bloodshed than she can possibly imagine. [Read more →]
In the movie Tapeheads — perhaps the last film featuring Tim Robbins in which the actor’s entertainment value outweighed his self-regard — a disreputable record producer named “Mo Fuzz” induced aspiring video producers played by Robbins and John Cusack to make music videos “on spec.” In case you didn’t know, “on spec” means “do this for free and maybe you’ll impress me so much that you’ll make some money in the undefined future.” If you’re a writer these days, everybody seems to be Mo Fuzz. And plenty of folks taking the Fuzzes of the world up on their speculative offers seem unconcerned as to whether the effort ever pays off. [Read more →]
