In preparation for Banned Books Week (September 26-October 3rd), the American Library Association has released their annual list of the books that the pro-censorship crowd tried to pull from library Shelves.  You can read the list here, as well as get prepped for the holiday with t-shirts and posters.

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing.”
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Now, I understand a parent wanting to know what their kid is reading, I really do.  I have a little sympathy (still not much, to be honest) with parents who are concerned about books in their schools.  I mean, I might agree that The Joy of Gay Sex is not suitable for a middle school library – but that isn’t where people tried to censor it.  They wanted to remove it from the public library, where adults also check out books.  So they didn’t just want to make sure their tween son or daughter didn’t have access to it, they wanted to make sure that NO ONE had access to it — and you haven’t seen cranky until you try to take my books away. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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I love after-the-apocalypse stories.  I always have.  As a kid, I was always planning for what I would do after the zombies attacked, after the nuclear warheads fell and it was just me and a rag-tag band of survivors.  There is something appealing about the start of a whole new world order, a chance to find a different place for myself, a chance to show just how resourceful I could really be.  I am not the only one interested in how the world will end, as evidenced by the thoughtfulness and creativity in Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.   This collection of twenty-two stories looks at post-apocalyptic life from all sorts of angles.  Some are sad and desperate, others funny, still more are crazy with imagination of what people could become. No matter what your plans for the apocalypse, there is something here that might be useful. 

Here’s one of my favorite end-of-the-world scenarios, by the way:
Carniverous plants.

“The End of the World as We Know It” by Dale Bailey

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Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Newsweek, it goes without saying, is a tedious, dreadful rag which nobody on earth should buy unless threatened with death or — at the very least — castration. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, on the law, on thrillers and crime by Daniel Kalder
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Y the Last Man, henceforth known as Y, is a long-running series that was greeted with amazing success. Critics loved it. Readers loved it. The parts I read floored me: I couldn’t put it down. The series won the Eisner Award in 2008 for Best Continuing Series. It was nominated for a Hugo. A few days ago I was in Barnes and Noble, saw the newest edition, and realized that I stopped trying to complete the series over a year ago — and wondered why. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, just fantastic by Steve Mazzeo
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Gary Gray wants nothing more than to be “normal.” He wants to fall in love, get married, have children, go to church, go to Disney Land and live the American dream. He’s got one little problem, though: he’s in love with his roommate, Russ, and lusting after other men is frowned upon at Southern Florida Christian College. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Imagine yourself wandering lost on the high plains of Nebraska and South Dakota with no companions and nothing but your wits to sustain you. Your only provisions are whatever you can kill or gather, and though you have a rifle to hunt game, you have no more than a few bullets. How long would you survive? What would you do to survive? Worse, what if the year were 1804, long before the advent of highways, gas stations, and nationwide cellular phone coverage?

My answers would probably be something along the lines of, “Not long”, “I have no idea”, and “What? No cell phone?”

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Tags: books & writing, living poetry by Les Kay
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This is the last, great beach read of the summer.

Let’s Get It On is the rather fanciful tale of LaShaWanda P. Marshall and her friends, Lydia Beaucoup and Acey Allen. They are the owners of a successful “full-service spa” (in other words: a brothel) for women in Reno, and they are opening their first franchise, on a yacht off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. These entrepreneurs are hoping to find a host of wealthy black women on the island who are willing to pay for the company of virile young men, if only the government will stay out of their way! [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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“I have sinned.”

These were, apparently, the last words English playwright John Osborne wrote. His wife found them scrawled on a cigarette pack beside his bed when he died in 1994. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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I just watched Schindler’s List again. It’s a film that tutors you in subtle response. I first saw it in 2002, when I was 26; I thought it good but too discreetly brutal, not quite as blood-spattered as I’d expected. My next viewing, in 2007, was very different: I’d seen enough cinema to be stunned by Spielberg’s craft, but I must also have grown subtler in my moral reckonings: the film seemed very brutal, visceral. I wrote a post about it on my notorious blog. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, movies by Walter Aske
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Hi all.  Sorry, but there will not be a review for this week due to it being finals week for my two summer school classes.  However, I will be reviewing Celeste Bradley’s latest novel Devil in my Bed in two weeks.  She is a wonderful author and I have been very excited for this book to come out.  Happy reading!

Tags: books & writing, romancing history by Katie Colvin
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Ultimate Galactus Trilogy is a dainty chode-licker. This retelling of a classic Marvel storyline does a nice job updating things and keeping it interesting.  Okay, I’m kidding. This book is a cosmic shit-heap. Marvel is a bunch of jack-offs for even considering retelling these archaic storylines. On the other hand, I really enjoyed reading it. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, just fantastic by Steve Mazzeo
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Portnoy’s Complaint was my first time. I read it when I was 17 and I can still remember the outlaw sensation. This was a best-seller? This was literary fiction! Wow!

Today, this famous/infamous book is still as funny, obscene, and obscenely funny as any book I’ve ever read. Terry Southern, in his Blue Movie, could only ape Roth’s tropes, but not his savage energy or laughoutloud uproariousness. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, now read this! by Christopher Guerin
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In Ellery Queen’s Book of Mystery Stories, first published under the title The Literature of Crime, the crime stories presented in the collection are written by writers generally not recognized as crime, mystery or thriller writers.

Edited by Ellery Queen, the pseudonym of the writing team of Frederic Dannay and James Yaffe, as well as the name of thier fictional detective character, the book offers crime stories by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and a dozen other writers.

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Tags: books & writing, on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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One of the problems with reading historical fiction is that you usually know how the story ends. You can write a book about the Titanic, but everyone knows that the boat sinks. The same is true, to some extent, about Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman: most people know at least a little about the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men, falsely charged with raping two white women and sentenced to die in the electric chair. So, how does an author turn this into a fresh, interesting story? [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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From the beginning, I misjudged Junk as a niche book. Based on the cover and what little I’d been told, I assumed incorrectly that Junk dealt primarily with Big Brother food regulation (the ban of trans-fats in NY, the regulation of fast-food products, and the censorship of junk food advertisement). [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing by Tyler Samien
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In the late 18th century, a fabulous new scientific oddity was the toast of Europe. The Turk, a chess-playing automaton built by Wolfgang von Kempelen, was defeating chess masters across Europe. It was a true marvel of the times — a machine, built after the fashion of a Turkish ruler, that was capable of thought. Built for the amusement of Empress Maria Theresa of Hungary, it played chess, the game of kings, against rulers and commoners alike.  In 1808, it played its most famous foe, Napoleon Bonaparte.  The Turk was eventually retired, sold, and was destroyed in a fire at Peale’s Chinese Museum in Philadelphia in 1854.  But what was the secret behind this machine that dazzled royalty and astounded the court machinicians?  Robert Lohr devises a tale for The Turk full of intrigue and heartbreak in his novel, The Chess Machine. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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David Ignatius wrote this book before the eruption of street protests in response to the rigged elections in Iran and the Iranian government’s subsequent violent crackdown on the protestors.

The Increment (Norton), a political novel as much as it is a spy thriller, concerns an Iranian scientist, “Dr Ali,”  who contacts the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via their public web site and offers to provide information about Iran’s nuclear program. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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This omnibus contains various mini-series featuring Barry Ween, a ten-year-old with an IQ of 350. The adventures are full of funny instances, classic science fiction plots, and tons of dirty language. I highly endorse this piece of art. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, just fantastic by Steve Mazzeo
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Apparently, I am not the only reader who thinks Jane Austen’s novels could use a little more excitement.  Last month, I reviewed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I loved.  Today, via USA Today, I got the news that Quirk Productions is negotiating a movie deal for the surprise best seller!  And there are more monster novels on the way. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing, movies by Lisa Hura
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Web Goodhue is a jerk. He’s down to his last friend, he’s got no job, he sleeps all day and he is going nowhere. (Sound like anyone you’ve dated? Yeah. Me, too.) At least, that’s what you see on the surface. There’s a lot more to Web than you see at first glance — a lot of good in him, and a lot of hurt. When his best (only) friend Chev insists he take a job with their buddy Po Sin, Web doesn’t have much choice and he’s too tired to argue about it.

That’s how Web ends up cleaning crime scenes. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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