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Sunday, December 29, 2013

10 Years of Word

In all the excitement around posting the rest of this year's books, finishing the remix of the Western, celebrating the holidays, and working on The End of the World As We Know It I forgot something important... This blog, Word, passed its 10th anniversary this month!

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Last Call at the Rusty Nail by Tim Fields

Christmas present for all you Western fans out there...

Over the last few days, here on the glorious Perpetua Coast near Yachats I fully re-edited the first book of the western I wrote in 2006 & 2007. At the urging of a good friend I published it on Amazon Kindle Direct. It's free, right now at least.

Last Call at the Rusty Nail

Jack Crow is a treasure hunter and a gunslinger. Robert Cogburn is a gregarious gambler and ladies man. Solomon David is a travelling archaeologist and scholar. When the three get tangled up in a plot to take over Texas they end up drawing their friends and lovers into an adventure that spans the breadth of the state and changes the course of history.

One part adventure story, one part mystery, one part reflection on the Western genre, Last Call at the Rusty Nail is a fast-paced tale of heroism, scholarship, gunplay, family, history, and the darkness of the imagined West.



This one is a frolicking action adventure set in Texas, 1902. It's a bit of a mystery, a bit meta maybe, and a lot of homage to Larry McMurtry, Frank Dobie, Zane Grey, and Elmore Leonard (RIP.) I hope some of you enjoy it. :)

N024A2 by Joe Hill

N024A2 by Joe Hill

Christmasland is not a place you’d like to visit. Lucky for you, you’re too old anyway. The Gas-mask man would just rape and kill you (maybe not in that order) and bury you in the House of Sleep. But if you’re one of my younger readers, say, Greyskull’s age, then you might get taken to Christmasland… Your parents won’t be too pleased about it, but in time you’ll learn to love it there. With so many games to play ("Scissors for the drifter!") and so much fun to be had, you can remain there in Christmasland forever. Never grow up, never deal with the hangover of New Years and the come-down of getting any older…

Joe Hill is getting better with every book. He’s got at least five memorable characters here, and a story that defies cliché at several turns. This is good horror, and if the worst criticism one can level is that he’s starting to sound a lot like his dad, well… Then we’ve all got a lot to look forward to from the rest of his career.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Munro won the nobel prize for literature in 2013 based on a body of work, but Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is a good place to start an exploration of her efforts.

She’s been called a “master of the [short story] form” by folks like Salman Rushdie. She’s written more than a dozen books of short stories which seem to mostly deal with small-town relationships, the uncertainty in the space between lovers, and the unpredictable cul-de-sacs of life.

This collection is beautiful and beautifully written, with a density of insight on personalities and character which is reminiscent of a more generous, less sexually-aggressive Kundera. (Even typing this, I worry that so imprecise a comparison does Munro a disservice.)

The stories all circle themes of the unknowability of the future and the lifelong impact of chance intimacies. Munro sees deeply into the secret heart of each of her characters, then presents them spread out for the reader in a way that makes you think about how little you probably really understand about the people you’re closest to…. And by extension how difficult it is to really see inside the motivations of more casual acquaintances.

Munro is eighty-two years old, and has declared that she is done writing. It’s a shame, because her ability to turn an emotional microscope on her characters is powerful. The good news for the rest of us is that she’s written quite a lot in her life – so there’s lots for us to learn.

I plan on picking up everything else by her I can find the next time I’m at Powell’s.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

A Chippewa boy’s mother is raped, but the perpetrator can’t be prosecuted effectively because of the complexities associated with jurisdiction on the rez. He and his friends, a largely indistinguishable collection of teen boys, live their lives and plot revenge while hanging out with various people who tell them old indian stories. There’s a couple of violent moments of climax and extremely little falling action.

The writing is highly uneven; most of the lyricism that Erdrich exhibited in some of her earlier work seems to be lacking here. Much of the language is borderline wooden, and the regular intrusion of italicized Chippewa words feels a bit forced, detracting from both the language and the narrative. Worse, the beautiful tangled web of intersecting lives which characterize the inbred relationships of the reservation are sacrificed on the altar of plot and structure here. The whodunit and procedural pontifications ultimately distract from the bits that make this interesting: the lives of three young friends on the reservation.

I quite respect Erdrich, and am loathe to disagree with a National Book Award committee, but in this case, I found the characters either stock clichés or largely forgettable, the language uninspired, the plotting obtrusive, and the overall package just plain dull much of the time. Dissapointing, but only because I thought so highly of some of her other work.

In short, as tale of crime and punishment, this would never make it into the top 50 tales. As a reflection on the modern experience of reservation dwellers in this strange new century, this falls quite short. As a coming of age tale, not in the top 500. As top native American fiction… but then, there’s the rub isn’t it? At the point where that’s what I’m looking for, (and it still wouldn’t beat her earlier work, or anything by Leslie Marmon Silko, or..) then I’m having to look for something good to say about a book that really just didn’t do much for me.

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

So now are you ready for Extinctathon? Like loads of other Atwood fans, I was delighted to pick up her newest novel, and the conclusion to the trilogy begun with Oryx and Crake. MaddAddam is… uneven. There’s a lot of brilliance here, and some fine language, but to be honest, Atwood seems like she’s tired of Jimmy and AdamOne and the rest of the crew. The novel plays out well, giving us some insight into Zed, one of the most interesting characters in the series, as well as a few other people we like, at least insofar as we feel sorry for them and sad when they are gone.

We also get to hear a muted account of what happens after most of the last of God’s Gardeners are gone, when the Crakers pick up the reigns of civilization.

A solid ending to a solid tale of apocalypse, with some good writing and memorable scenes. More than that I cannot say.

Thunderstruck by Eric Larson

Thunderstruck by Eric Larson

Marconi plays the mamba… But before his efforts were used to build this city (apparently on the backs of rock and roll), he was a slightly obsessed Italian inventor who caused quite a stir in England by experimenting with radio waves.

At the same time, a snake-oil salesman and his paramour are bouncing between London and the US Coast. Everyone gets caught up on a ship at sea… things unfold.

Interesting historical fiction unfolds, familiar if you’re familiar with Devil in the White City or Larson’s other works. Good stuff, weaving a tight line between history, education, crime, and storytelling.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Turns out, there’s a sequel to The Shining! Who knew?

Started this one when the weather had just turned in Burnaby; finished it on a glorious drunken evening in a small cabin on the beautiful shore of Discovery Passage, Quadra Island, BC. The lodge attached to the cabins was busy shutting down for the season. All the half-indian girls who worked the place were busy talking about their upcoming vacations to sunnier climes. (Belieze and Costa Rica were favorites.) A few of the older groundskeeper types were planning on staying the winter nearby to keep an eye on the place, just like Jack Torrence did for the Overlook Hotel long ago…

Doctor Sleep picks up with Dan, the little boy with the strange gift of “Shining” which allows him to see the future, communicate telekinetically, see ghosts, and a few other things. Dan’s gift is a curse as well, so he’s crawled deep into a bottle to try to blot out the ghosts that still follow him around. Eventually, he hits rock bottom (in one of the novel’s more contrived and silly scenes) and decides to go straight. Enter AA, which forms something of a framework and theme for the novel. (The Shining = addiction, Doctor Sleep = recovery.)

Dan forms a psychic connection with a little girl who also has the Shining, only much stronger than he. The two of them and a few of Dan’s AA buddies track down a wandering tribe of psychic vampire types who abduct and feed on children. Plot ensues.

The novel is fun, never dull, but very far from the tight plotting and genuine frights of its predecessor. King’s afterward at the end of the novel briefly addresses how difficult it must be for a creator to revisit one of his most successful works forty years later.

Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

Drowned Cities is the sequel to the mildly interesting novel Shipbreakers. So this is another tale of dystopian cities and populations scattered by war, resource shortage, and rising sea levels. Tool, the bioengineered dog-man from Shipbreakers, returns. This time he helps a young refugee girl and her friend, Mouse, try to escape a DMZ where warlords fight an endless feud for which there can be no victor.

The novel suffers from being written for the YA audience, which means that the dystopian nastiness Baculgulpi clearly wants to write (and did in The Windup Girl) has to be reigned in. The descriptions and his world vision are interesting; everything is sticky, damp, calorie-obsessed, violent, and makeshift. It’s a low-tech version of Gibson or low-magic version Miéville.

Ultimately, the novel steers a little too straight a line up the middle of standard adventure story plotting, and never breaks much new ground. A decent romp, but plays it too safe, coloring only inside the lines; and this amounts to a fatal flaw for a genre which is supposed to be pushing the boundaries.

The Limits of Software by Robert N. Britcher

The Limits of Software by Robert N. Britcher

An old friend reached out to me with a strange inquiry: “Can you please read this book and let me know if you think it is literature? You may be the only person I know with a sufficiently varied background to make this determination.” Aside from being quite a flattering way to engage someone, this was someone I respect a great deal but haven’t been close with in any way in about twenty years. (And barely corresponded with at all, truth be told.) How could I resist?

Britcher was involved with running a massive software project for the FAA in the mid-eighties. This was a sprawling, ultimately failed, multi-agency effort to replace the software used for air traffic tracking. In this subtly self-aggrandizing discussion of the effort, Britcher gives an overly florid collection of descriptions of the software development process, and of the challenges associated with large scale programming efforts. Ultimately, people form The Limits of Software, because we are all flawed, creative, organic human beings with lives and peccadillos that get in the way of pure logic and engineering. His basic point- that large scale engineering efforts now represent terrific investments of human capital, emotion, passion, and creation- is a good one. Fascinating to consider that the energy put into a game like, say, Grand Theft Auto V (an enormous software development and content creation problem, on par with the effort described here) is likely greater than the work that went into building, say, the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fascinating book filled with cloudy metaphors, which often obscure the mechanics of what is going on in an effort to make it sound impressive and ethereally interesting. Yes, it’s literature, I suppose, but then there’s a lot that qualifies out there, much of it more lucid and interesting.

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood

Collection of short stories about various Canadian writers. The language is good, as is the storytelling, but so much of this is lost in the shroud of history. Unless you have strong thoughts and memories of the Toronto writers scene in the seventies and eighties, I’m afraid many of these tales may lack punch.

Still, if you’re a student of Atwood, there’s plenty here to like, and it doesn’t feel like a waste, even if you can’t help but recognize you’re missing the punchline a lot of the time.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

God’s Gardeners live off the grid, more-or-less. They recycle, eat trash, eschew consumerism and products created by the corporate chemical-biological compounds. They are led by AdamOne, and they try to memorize the names of extinct (or soon to be extinct) species. They take in almost anyone, including our protagonist.

Meantime, a massive virus has wiped out most of humanity. Jimmy the Snowman and The Crakers, and a few ladies Jimmy once knew survive. Also some Painballers, which are pretty much exactly what they sound like.

This novel rounds out the world a bit, and introduces us to the brothers, Adam and Zed, who end up being pivotal to the early stages of the after-party.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Jimmy the Snowman, what have you done? You’re a half-size God, a lesser deity who has been manipulated into ending the world just because you were a misfit in High School. You poor fucker.

This kicks off the tale of Jimmy, Crake, Oryx, God’s Gardeners, and the end of the world as we know it by Margaret Atwood.

Book One tells us what brought about the specific mechanics of the end, but for the bigger picture of what brought us there, just look around. Inequality of wealth, society divided, genetic manipulation, pornography, fast food, and corporatization are what makes the world need destroying. Then Crake appears with the brains to really get the party started.

Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Would you like to play Extinctathon?

Malta & Gozo by The Lonely Planet

Malta & Gozo by The Lonely Planet

Malta and Gozo are both very small islands in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea. The Professor and I had the wonderful opportunity to visit in the summer of 2013. The trip itself was a strange and incredible experience; we visited ancient ruins, dined with interesting people, met with the minister of Finance in the Palace of Aragon, and dipped our toes in what HP would describe as “Gin blue waters.” Before our trip, we picked up this guidebook to give ourselves a crash course in the Islands.

The book itself isn’t very good. I have complaints about the way it is organized, and the appalling lack of pictures, given how cinematic the settings it describes can be. Instead, we get entirely too much focus on specific restaurants.

This is the second or third time I’ve been less-than-dazzled by the Lonely Planet as a publisher of guidebooks. Time to try a different press.

A Killing at Cotton Hill by Terry Shames

A Killing at Cotton Hill by Terry Shames

Very proud of my Aunt Terry for publishing her first novel! As diligent readers of this blog know, my Aunt had a tremendous influence on my taste in fiction, supplying me with age-inappropriate novels at an early age, and rewarding me with loads of books most birthdays and Christmases. So it was with great pleasure that I finally got to enjoy something she wrote.

Writing a review of a work created by someone you love is always difficult. Honest feedback? Saccharine praise? Seems like there’s no good way to win. So let’s play this one straight but sunny:

Samuel Craddock used to be the chief of police in a fictional town based loosely on Brenham, Texas. Now he’s a good natured widower who collects regionally inappropriate artwork, raises cows, and flirts aimlessly with the old biddies in his community. When a good friend is found murdered, Craddock gets involved, helping out her grandson and, ultimately, sleuthing out the guilty.

Terry’s novel is a fast read in a genre style known as the “cozy.” This is a mystery characterized by a plucky, relatable protagonist, relatively bloodless murders, and a focus on hobbyist details of some largely unrelated past-time. (Think “Murder, She Wrote.”) In this case, the hobby is art collection, which frequently ends up feeling like the real focus of the novel, with the poor old murdered lady regularly taking a backseat to discussion of various modernist painters and the talents of the improbable grandson of the victim, himself a young artistic phenom.

The writing is light, with dialog that generally rings true, sentences which don’t try too hard, and excellent pacing that keeps the action propelled forward. At first the tense struck me as slightly odd… first person present tense isn’t something I think of as very common. (“I set my bag down inside the kitchen and stand looking around.”) Perhaps this is a standard in cozies? Terry has a good ear for the language of rural Texas, and (mostly) avoids the tendency to have her characters speak in corn-pone regionalisms.

The mystery itself is (oddly) reminiscent of some of Travis McGee’s adventures, with seedy land speculators, fallen women, and incompetent local law enforcement all constantly crowding around the protagonist. Unlike McGee though, Craddock is a gentleman, and he avoids any sexcapades or bad language. This keeps the novel firmly in PG territory, bloodless and sweet, as opposed to sanguine and salty. Again, I suspect this is true to the cozy form.

As a debut novel, and one that I understand to already have a sequel in the works, A Killing At Cotton Hill is a fun introduction to a kindly old detective, in the least trashy small town in fictional Texas. I look forward to more of Samuel Craddock’s adventures.

Big applause to my awesome Aunt for her first novel!

In Other Worlds by Margret Atwood

In Other Worlds by Margret Atwood

Atwood grew up on science fiction. Then she became one of the top five writers of the genre (Currently living? Women sci-fi writers? Canadian writers? Why do I feel a need to further pinpoint her position in the firmament? Top sci-fi writer. Let’s leave it at that.)

In Other Worlds is Atwood’s loving retrospective and gentle effort at critiquing some of her favorites from the golden age of Science Fiction. Along the way we get a lot of autobiographical asides, and a pretty good look at why she writes the kind of fiction she writes.

Read this one as part of my Atwood binge in Q3 of this year. Thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s only for Atwood buffs or big sci-fi fans, or both.

I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman is likely one of the most fun people you could ever invite to a cocktail party. His ability to opine on almost anything makes him a national treasure, and when he gets rolling on a theme… Watch out!

I Wear the Black Hat is a meditation on villains, villainy, and why we lionize some and demonize others. Kobe Bryant, Bernie Goetz, Batman, George Bush, Charlie Manson, OJ Simpson, and a few hundred others get insightfully skewered in this collection of essays on why how we think the way we do about the bad guys.

Awesome brain-candy popcorn from a master of cultural criticism. Delightful collection of essays as usual.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman writes a great short work of fantastic fiction. I’ve found some of his longer works get a little tired by their conclusion, but I’ve yet to pick up a novella or collection of shorts stories by him that doesn’t deserve an A+.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is such a novella. A man returns to his childhood home and encounters an old friend, who helps bring back his memory of one extraordinary month long ago…

Fantastic, nostalgic, imaginative, moving, scary, fun. Enjoy.

Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan

Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan

I have a strong and visceral negative reaction to anything that comes couched in the language of mysticism or religion. (Shocking, I know.) Unfortunately, meditation has long been wrapped in the imprecise flakeology of mysticism and religion. So I’ve steered clear.
But when the esteemed LT came recommending Chade-Meng Tan I figured I’d try to be a little more open minded. Plus, it helped that Tan came with recommendations from people like the Dali Lama and Jimmy Carter. And he’s a Fellow at Google, where he teaches a course in mindfulness. So I bit.

This book is impressive. It’s a straightforward but exceptionally good natured introduction to mindfulness meditation, EQ, journaling, and a few other modern pseudo-Buddhist practices adapted to work nicely in a Silicon Valley lifestyle. If the previous sentence sounds cynical, please read it as it is: It’s still even hard for me to write about how much I learned from Tan, and how much I enjoyed this book. (I read it twice this summer.)

I think these practices are a great avenue to becoming a happier, kinder, healthier, more productive human being. Chade-Meng Tan has created a superb introduction to mindfulness meditation.

If we all followed these practices every day we would be a lot closer to the peaceful, fulfilled world than Tan has dedicated his life to helping encourage.

Joyland by Stephen King

Joyland by Stephen King

Nostalgia soaked tale of a young man’s coming of age summer working as a carny in one of the last indipendant carnival attractions on the East Coast. Joyland is a murder mystery, a love story, and a delightfully fun King bon bon without much lasting impact.

A fun yarn that gets occasionally a little bit heavy handed with the carny-speak, but is otherwise pretty vintage King. Lots to like here if you are a fan of his work.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

I got a lot more out of this the second time. Lightness vs. Weight… Are human lives worth more than shit? (Not Stalin’s son.) Do our lives more in circles or straight lines? Moving, brilliant, sexually explicit.

So much to like here, so much to dislike here. Kundera is brilliant, though to be fair, I do think that Immortality is a better book, and that this one just got so much love because of all the sex.

Shella by Andrew Vachss

Shella by Andrew Vachss

Hard guy gets out of prison. Goes in search of his former love, Shella, amongst the criminals and sex trade workers of the US South and Manhattan. Gets roped into doing a hit on a white supremacist leader. Sad, brutal tale with all the usual Vachss trappings.

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Downtown Owl introduces us to a small handful of residents of Owl, North Dakota, population 800, in the late fall of 1983. Mitch, Zebra, and their friends are juniors in high school. Julia is a history teacher and a transplant from Milwaukee. Horace is an old man. They intersect in a way that is more remniscient of Richard Russo than anything else Klosterman has written. While some of the dialog and banter might remind dedicated readers of his other work, and while the occasional bit of clever pop-culture criticism sneaks in, this is generally a novel of very mild comedy, limited insight, and only marginally successful attempts at pathos.

I think Klosterman is fantastic, and I've enjoyed everything he's written. But his novels are his weakest stuff, and this is the weaker of the two.

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Haldeman writes a good soldier’s tale, a passable science fiction story, and an interesting, if confusing tale of mankind’s ascension to the next stage of evolution. In Forever Peace we are introduced to Julian, an advanced physicist and a “soldierboy” who remotely pilots a giant mech for the US Alliance. The Alliance is at war with all of the brown people of the world, and uses its massive technological superiority to crush their various pathetic attempts at terrorist rebellion. Each such terrorist action is played out in the media as if it somehow justified the massive war-machine retaliation that invariably ensues.

All of this works well enough as a meditation on the War on Terror, but what makes this a bit more interesting than a simple sci-fi reflection on Gore Vidal’s notions in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace is how early it was written. In 1997 the “9/11 Might-Have-Been An Inside Job” notion floated here (nuked Atlanta) and much of the mildly cynical language surrounding Julian’s musings on the war effort ending up seeming a bit prescient.

The novel takes a turn for the strange with the notion of a sort of group mind as therapy takes center stage. From then on, we’re concerned mostly with the logistics of a plot to bring this type of transformative pacification to the entire world. All of this sort of dribbles out over the last hundred pages of the novel, with a few good scenes of action and a lot of fuzzy hope that humanity may be on the cusp of evolving away from the aggressive and murderous tendencies that comprise parts of our worst nature.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

Howard penned the original Conan mythos back in the Nineteen twenties, almost a hundred years ago now. He was a Texan, and one of the very early American writers of the fantastic, usually mentioned alongside his friend and mentor H.P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, Howard was published primarily in Weird Tales an early pulp magazine which catered to the macabre, the swashbuckling, and early sci-fi.

In this collection of republished tales, Howard addresses werewolves, dream-serpents, more werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. It is possible that at the time these tales felt innovative; my mental chronology of fiction from the time just isn't quite tight enough to be able to say for certain. But they all feel like retreads.

Harder to deal with than their lack of fresh content is the decrepitude that infects Howard's language, making each paragraph a wooden, plodding affair, in which subjects and verbs seem as soggy and downtrodden as the settings and characters within. I'm willing to give some fair amount of blame here to the simple passage of years; it’s equally challenging to fight through, say, Natty Bumpo tales. Language has evolved, and some types of construction used regularly here seem as if they would be better to have remained buried. However, since there are some writers from equally long ago whose prose remains supple, Howard must ultimately shoulder some of the blame.

As a result, this collection isn't so much dreadful as it is dreadfully boring. Even as vacation reading, it was a challenge to plow through.

Born Bad by Andrew Vachss

Born Bad by Andrew Vachss

Collection of short stories, sketches really, about sexually predatory criminals, their victims, and those avenging angles inside and outside of the legal system who try to bring Vachss brand of justice to the lot.

The language ranges from good-Vachss to poor-Vachss, all clipped, all street, all hood. The stories are… really only interesting if you’re trying to round out a complete study of the Vachss canon, which I was.

Otherwise, skip this one and go straight for the first few Burke novels.

Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman

Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman

Do you love rock and roll? Specifically, do you have opinions on the differences between Cinderella and Motley Crue? Thoughts on Def Leppard’s drummer? (Quick: How many arms does he have?) Which was the best song off Appetite for Destruction? Why was Lies such a letdown? Who would win in a cage match between REO Speedwagon and Cliff Burton? What if the fight happened in 1995?

If these sorts of questions bring a smile to your face, then you need to run, not walk, to pick up a copy of Fargo Rock City. It is Klosterman’s first major collection of essays, and it’s a wonderful collection of meditations on the question of why rock music (metal?) mattered so much to all us kids in the eighties.

Klosterman is brilliant, fun, funny, and (as many others have occasionally observed) a tad frustrating at times. But he’s just plan delightful to spend time with, and Fargo Rock City is like sitting around with your closest genius friends discussing the metal scene in the last two decades of the previous millennium.

Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

Why are we so obsessed with dead rock stars? What makes them so much more interesting than living rock stars? Why is this such a reliably good career move? (Consider well, Miley…)

Klosterman flirts with these questions while taking a road trip around the US and visiting the site of a number of famous rock star deaths (from that famous plane crash forever remembered as The Day the Music Died, to the more recent tragic nightclub fire at a Great White concert.) Along the way he gives us good young Klosterman gonzo journalism, getting wasted and thinking about girls.

This is great stuff if you’re into pop culture, snarky thinking, rock n’ roll, Americana, or anything else in the usual Klosterman wheelhouse.

Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

The grand betrayal here is pretty unsatisfying (Spoiler? Not really.) Still, The Bloody Nine, Grim, Threetrees, and the rest make this one worth finishing if you like barbarians, d20s, and the like.

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

Again, the Northmen steal the show here, though the demon-girl archer is fairly cool too. This is a tale of high adventure which owes as much to Dino deLaurentis and David Eddings as it does to Tolkien or Robert Howard.

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Logan Ninefingers, “The Bloody Nine” is a really fun character. So are Grim, Threetrees, Black Dow, and the rest of the Northmen.

If you’re into fantasy, the first book is a treat.

Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry

Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry

In this strong conclusion to the trilogy, shit truly goes awry, as we go from two or three vampires to about two hundred. Luckily, our heroes firepower escalates too.

I was delighted and surprised by the epic scope of the novels, and the tight way Mayberry managed to wrap things up.

Dead Man’s Song by Jonathan Maberry

Dead Man’s Song by Jonathan Maberry

Like vampires? Comic books? Werewolves? Necromancers? Criminals? Cops? Ju-jitsu? Shotguns full of garlic rounds? Chosen-one samauri kid Dhampir? Then you’d probably really like this series.

Mayberry is good at pop-culture action horror.

Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Mayberry

Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Mayberry

In a small town which is obsessed with Halloween an old evil necromancer type rises. A band of unlikely heroes fight him and his vampire minions.

Mayberry’s trilogy starts out as basic, fairly generic horror. But over the thousand or so mages of the Ghost Road trilogy, things get really interesting and turn into a Bruckheimeresque vampire high-action fest.

Leather Maiden by Joe Lansdale

Leather Maiden by Joe Lansdale

Vachss is a good friend of Lansdale, and I liked The Bottoms well enough, so I thought I’d try some more. After all, Lansdale is a bit of a Texas legend…

Leather Maiden is another murder mystery. Carson, our hero, returns to his hometown in East Texas to resume a career in investigative journalism. He gets on the track of a teenage girl who disappeared to less fanfare than one might expect.

The novel is a bit perverse, a bit lurid, and periodically interesting. Then the protagonist’s friend Booger arrives and the novel gets stupid. The wrap up to this decent setup is shallow and overly fast; I’m bored and mildly disgusted by Booger by the end.

I Was Blind but Now I See by James Altucher

I Was Blind but Now I See by James Altucher

Filled with typos, bad grammar, and foolish ideas. I really wanted to like Altucher's book. Unfortunately, his lack of attention to the basic mechanics of subject verb agreement and punctuation are a deal breaker for me. I was blind when I bought the book, but now I see that this is a self-published and self-aggrandizing manifesto by someone who may have a few interesting ideas, but is too careless to deliver them in an organized, error free fashion. Save your money. Stupidest thing I’ve read in years.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Merry Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas

What a year! While this blog may not yet reflect it, it has been a fine year for reading and writing in the Fields/Stout household. So many excellent books consumed, and a few fun books and stories produced as well.

We’re now hiding out in a beautiful little house on the Oregon coast, near the charming little town of Yachats. We’ll be here for the rest of the year, working a little, but mostly catching up on reading, writing, and maybe sipping a little wine.

I intend to get all the missing books from 2013 posted, and also maybe post a story or two. I also think that I’m going to take the good advice put forth by the wise LT, who suggested that I publish one or two of my novels through Amazon Prime direct. To date I’ve avoided any self-publishing efforts, because they carry the slight whiff of vanity and ego-stroking. But LT & The Professor have convinced me not to think about it that way. So stay tuned for either Hunted, The Arc, or both.

In the meantime, it’s a blustery but clear Christmas Eve near Yachats. We’ve got Sir the Siamese, a fire in the fireplace, a growler of Dead Guy Ale, the soft music of Sam Beam, Christmas lights strung up, a pot of Texas Chili on the stove, a stack of books, and the occasional FaceTime connection back to the festivities at 503.

Hope you’re all safe and warm out there, curled up somewhere with a good book, someone you love nearby, and the merry twinkle of holiday lights reflecting off your glass.

Merry Christmas & much love.

-tf

Familiar Shadows

Familiar Shadows

Once upon a time, in a gilded age long ago, there was a very sad girl.

She was a girl on the cusp of becoming a woman, but she had no one to tell her what that was supposed to mean.

Her mother was a terrible witch with thick raven hair and a wicked temper. She used her powers to ensorcell men, whose coffers she would then drain of all gold before feeding them poison and moving on to her next victim.

To escape the lessons and the poison of the witch, the girl ran away from home and took up with a spoiled prince and his band of travelling minstrels. They lived their lives for fun and music and art, and had very little understanding of the larger world. They took the girl in and taught her what magics they knew, which were paltry cantrips made of smoke and song, colors and words.

The very sad girl had no money and few skills, but she worked hard at a local tavern, serving ale and cleaning up spills. The owner of the tavern was an aged barbarian, once powerful and renown, but grown feeble and bespectacled in his dotage. She worked hard for the tavern owner, swiping her rag over the wooden tables where students from the arcanum came to drink.

While it was summer and even into the fall, the sad girl kept a brave face. She worked hard, while the spoiled prince and his minstrels played, while the students of the arcanum drank, while the kindly barbarian got older, while the witch ensnared a new wealthy soldier.

By the deepest part of winter, the sad girl could no longer face the world. She felt she had nothing in her future to be excited about. She was ready to become something different, but had no guidance and few true friends.

One night after cleaning up and closing down the tavern, while the spoiled prince and his merry band were away, she decided to take her own life. She bungled the job, or perhaps had no real will to succeed. And so she lived.

A week later, sensing that the girl was troubled beyond the ability of their paltry magics to cure, the prince and his merry band pooled their energies and summoned forth a familiar. This creature, made from smoke and fur and shadow was tiny. It too, knew little of the world, but it understood deeply how to work spells of binding and compassion.

The ritual naming of familiars is too difficult a matter for revelation here. But the creature took the name of Shadowcat. It revealed itself to the sad girl by springing forth from a stocking, hung above a burning yule log on the eve of Mid-winter's festival. The tiny dark creature bound itself to the sad girl, dedicated to a simple, singular goal: To remind her every day that she had at least one true friend, and one reason to remain among the living.

The sad girl was overjoyed, and had many adventures with her familiar, the Shadowcat. They traveled far, studying many things both wonderful and terrible. In time, she outgrew the antics of the spoiled prince and the minstrels, and ventured far to the frozen North Country, where the winds hit heavy upon the borders of the world.

There she met a woodsman, simple, but kind. They were wed and she gave him strong sons, three in all. These sons grew past the ailments and trials of infancy. The girl remembered, summoned each of them familiars of their own.

The Shadowcat watched them grow, and taught their familiars the secrets she knew - secrets of love and binding and compassion.

Then, one evening, as midwinter approached and the sun was again distant and pale, and the smell of a yule log hung in the air the Shadowcat looked around. She saw happy sons with familiars of their own. And she saw that the sad girl wore a smile most of the time, despite the usual travails of life. She had become a woman under the familiar's guidance, and had none of the witch's poison left in her. It was then that the Shadowcat knew her purpose had been fulfilled. She stretched and yawned, and drifted away in a puff of smoke and fur, leaving behind just a shadow and a smile hanging in the winter air.

RIP Shadowcat, Christmas 1995 - Christmas 2013

Love,
-tf