Book Round-Up: Better Late than Never Edition

The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn: Shinn's debut novel is about an apprentice wizard who studies under a powerful mentor and his odd wife. It's often (rightly) compared to Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn in style and vibe, but it also reminded me of Naomi Novik's Uprooted.

In Search of Lost Books by Giorgio van Straten: This is less a deep dive into known books that have disappeared, and more an idiosyncratic meditation on those books colored by Straten's tastes and experiences. Enjoyable as it it, but I would have preferred a more investigative work.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman: My battered paperback disappeared, so what better excuse to buy a lovely hardcover with Gaiman's preferred text? It's a gritty, magical, weird exploration of an alternate London that also forces us to think about the parts of society we'd rather not deal with.

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter: The premise is that of a TV producer who creates a true crime show to explore a brutal death that happened in his childhood. The text, then, is a transcript of the shows, plus emails and research, that gradually reveal what happened. But transcripts are an awkward thing to serve as the bulk of a novel. The mystery wasn't hard to figure out, either, but it was enjoyable enough.

Cat Tales by James Herriot: A collection of some of his anecdotes and stories involving cats, and just as sweet and comforting as you'd expect.

Book Round-up: Comics Edition

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll: This is a collection of short horror comics with a fairy-tale feel.  Like the best horror, they use tension and creepiness to scare, rather than gore and explicitness.  The illustrations are striking -- painted on black, the colors are mostly muted blues, browns, and greens, which makes the occasional use of red that much more vivid.

Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton: The second Hark, a Vagrant collection is filled with Beaton's signature kooky comics that take on everything from vintage illustrations to historical events to 80s pop music. These were lots of fun; Beaton has a knack for off-kilter takes on mundane subjects.

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon: Weldon's book is a comprehensive tour of Batman from his origins to the present day, covering not just the comics but also the movies, TV shows, toys, and even literary works inspired by the character.  The takeaway from this enjoyable book is that there is no one version of Batman -- every generation and every cultural group latches onto and embellishes certain traits.  Also, Weldon never misses an opportunity to stick it to Bob Kane, the co-creator of Batman, so that's fun, too.

The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman: Gaiman finally wrote another Sandman comic, and it's a treat to return to that world.  This story is a prequel, in a sense, of the original 72-issue comic, showing us what Sandman was up to right before he was captured in the opening pages, and why he was so weak.  The illustrations are lavish and detailed, meant to be explored and savored.  Now I want to reread the rest of the comics, in light of the information we are given here.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: Bechdel's highly-regarded memoir of her relationship with her father is moving, wry, and filled with literary allusions.  I particularly love the way Bechdel draws the faces of her characters -- simple, endearing, and quite expressive.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boysis a sequel of sorts to Gaiman's American Gods; it is set in the same world and follows the adventures of the sons of Mr. Nancy, a secondary character from the previous novel, and both are essentially Hero's Journeys, but there the similarities end.  While American Gods was grand in tone, dealing with matters of colonization, mortality, faith, and sacrifice, Anansi Boys is much lighter in nature, even farcical at times -- as befitting a novel centering on the offspring of a trickster god.

Fat Charlie Nancy has a perfectly ordinary life with an ordinary job and an ordinary fiance, but the death of his father and his reacquaintance with his long-lost brother, Spider, turns his world upside down.  To regain control of his life, Charlie must come to terms with both his heritage and his powers.  This is an old story, and so in terms of its plot it is completely predictable.  The originality of the story lies in the voices of the characters (it becomes gradually apparent that Charlie and Spider, so different at first, have more in common than either would have expected) and in the interweaving of British and Caribbean cultures (in a neat touch, the race of the Black characters is taken for granted, and it is the white people who are identified as such).  And, of course, it would not be a Gaiman novel if it were not stuffed with mythological and folkloric references.  While this book wasn't as satisfying or thought-provoking as American Gods, it was fun and enjoyable.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I recently reread American Gods, and it was just as wonderful as the first time.  The premise is a fascinating one -- for tens of thousands of years immigrants to the Americas have brought their gods along with them, and these gods thrive or not depending on whether anyone still worships them, or even remembers them.  It's a concept Gaiman has written about before, most notably in the Sandman comic storyline "Season of Mists." Here, the old gods, led by Wednesday (the American version of Odin), prepare for a battle against the new gods (Media, the Intangibles, the Technical Boy, and so on).  Shadow is a human who is hired by Wednesday to serve as his bodyguard, but of course Shadow turns out to have his own, significant, role in events.  Given the topic, faith and sacrifice are important concepts in the story, but Gaiman also has a lot to say about colonialism and the history of the Americas.

As with most of Gaiman works I read the novel with my laptop on one side of me and the Dictionary of Ancient Deities on the other side, the better to research every little scrap of folklore and history Gaiman seeds his work with.  American Gods is a fun story in its own right, but I also loved learning about different mythologies, particularly those I had little experience with.

I read American Gods the first time right when it came out, the summer of 2001.  Reading it now I can't help but put it as part of the pre-September 11th landscape.  The resolution of the war between the gods had a profound, if unseen, effect on the America of the novel, and the last chapters of the book mention the sense of hope and renewal, the idea of limitless possibilities for the people in this hemisphere.  Knowing what would happen just a few months later makes this section of the novel profoundly bittersweet.

Book Round-Up

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman:This is yet another collection by the prolific author.  What I like about his works is that they vary wildly in form and content -- novels, comics, short stories, poems, photo captions, storybooks, interviews, fantasy, fairy tales, science fiction, horror, comedy, hagiography, children's -- and yet there is an overriding sensibility that is unmistakably his.  That said, this collection was a little weaker than others.  I loved many of the stories: "Lunar Labyrinth" and "Black Dog" (wonderfully English and pagan), "The Thing about Cassandra" (I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it), Sherlock Holmes's final case, "A Calendar of Tales" (12 very short stories inspired by the months), and "The Sleeper and the Spindle" (a mash-up of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty).  Others left me cold, particularly the ones inspired by his relationship with his second wife and the Doctor Who story (the Doctor is just not my thing).

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen:I hate to say this, but I did not love this book as much as I loved Allen's other works.  The characters and plot were interesting enough, but the magic realism was almost absent, the secondary story set in the past (and with a fascinating antagonist) was far more interesting than the main story set in the present, and the resolution was a bit anti-climactic.

Father Brown: The Essential Tales
The Scandal of Father Brown
Watching the BBC's Father Brown series made me want to seek out G.K. Chesterton's short stories, which are nothing like the TV show.  Father Brown is somewhat of an enigma, and we learn very little about him (not even his first name) except that he is continually underestimated.  He does solve some mysteries, as one would expect, but in many of the stories it's not so much that he figures out what happened as he is simply witness to a bizarre crime, the motives of which only he can fully understand, even though the identity of the perpetrator is not in doubt.  What ultimately makes these stories interesting is not the puzzles and solutions themselves, but the remarkable insight Father Brown (and Chesterton) have into human behavior.

Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z. by Debra Weinstein:One of the upsides to Beadboy3's penchant for taking all the books off my bookshelves is that I'm rediscovering books I loved and want to read again.  One of those is Weinstein's academic and literary satire, set in the New York City poetry scene.  Annabelle is the titular apprentice, both too talented and too naive for the world she finds herself in, and while I was cringing at her acts of unwitting self-sabotage I was also rooting for her to escape and find her own way.  Weinstein herself is a poet, which means we are treated to a number of actual poems in the novel, some very good and some really not good (on purpose).

Book Round-Up

The Next Best Thingby Jennifer Weiner: Weiner's novel is based loosely on her experiences producing a short-lived sitcom for tv; as such, it gives one an insider's look at show business (to which I say, "blech").  It is a fun and light novel, better written and more interesting than a lot of other "chick lit," as is generally true for Weiner's work.  However, she includes at the end of the book the short story "Swim" which focuses on a different aspect of the heroine, and I think I'd have preferred a novel more about that than Hollywood.

The Ocean at the End of the Laneby Neil Gaiman: short and engaging enough that I read the whole thing late one night when I should have been sleeping.  It is an inventive and scary story with some thematic similarities toCoraline.

The Magiciansby Lev Grossman: Superficially, this book is a cross between Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia, but it would be a mistake to leave it at that.  The point of those two series is the stories they tell, the skirmishes and battles between good and evil.  The Magicians, by contrast, is more interested in how the introduction to a magical world affects a person -- the longing for a life as interesting as a fantasy novel, the benign contempt for ordinary people, the sense of entitlement the privileged develop.  It also touches on the danger of magic -- or any power or talent -- without a sense of purpose.  Even the most talented magicians must find meaning to their lives, and a way to cope with both dramatic events and ordinary days.

The Briar Kingby Greg Keyes: A straight-up fantasy novel (the first of four) about another world, like I haven't read in a long time.  Keyes's novel tells the story of kings, princesses, foresters, innkeeper's daughters, monks, and dashing swordsmen as they become aware of a grave danger to their world. My only quibble: in the prologue it becomes apparent that the humans, who were brought to this world by an evil race bent on enslaving everybody, are the "lost" colony of Roanoke.  This plot point, however, appears to serve no function at all in the greater story, and ends up being a little distracting as one can't help but try to match different cultures to their European counterparts (which makes no sense anyway; Roanoke was settle by the English only).

Friends, Lovers, Chocolateby Alexander McCall Smith: The second in the Isabel Dalhousie series, but the first I've read.  It's a quiet book with an unusual but low-key mystery, leaving lots of time for Isabel's musings on ethics, faith, love, and Scotland.  I enjoyed it, but feel no need to read any others in the series.

Last Call by Tim Powers

Boy, did I love Last Call: A Novel.But then, that should be no surprise -- an urban fantasy novel that incorporates ancient mythology, the Mob, Arthurian elements (including my beloved Fisher King), Tarot cards, mythic archetypes, and allusions to and quotations from "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot (my favorite poet) is pretty much guaranteed to please me.  Better yet, Powers is a great writer, whose prose is rich with symbolism and allusions to art, pop culture, history, and mythology. 

The story itself is about Scott Crane, a retired poker player who realizes he unwittingly sold his soul years ago to a man determined to live forever.  Scott's plan to win back his soul becomes entangled in a magical power struggle as various factions vie to become the new King of the West. Powers has a wonderful way of mixing together historical events and figures, oddball fictional characters, and inventive magic to create a narrative with real weight. 

I also recommend:

American Godsby Neil Gaiman, which has much in common thematically with Last Call.

The Anubis Gates,also by Powers.

Book Round-Up

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer: I first learned about Heyer through the (sadly, now defunct) book chats run by the Washington Post's book editor Michael Dirda, who was a big fan. Heyer is credited with starting the whole sub-genre of regency romances, and even today she is considered one of the best. The first book I read was The Corinthian (no, not that Corinthian), which I liked quite a bit. Then I read another, so tedious I can't remember the title. Devil's Cub was strongly recommended by the folks over at Smart Bitches, so that was next. I enjoyed it quite a bit; Heyer took the cliche of the love of a good woman reforming a rake of a man (it may not have been a cliche when she wrote it) and made it engaging and believable (well, believable in the context of the story).

Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas: I liked Smooth-Talking Stranger so much I wanted to try Kleypas's other books, so I picked up her first contemporary, Sugar Daddy. Unfortunately, it was not nearly as good. Kleypas is a good writer, better than most of the other writers I have read in this genre, but this book felt like it was two books smushed together. The first half was a coming-of-age tale as a young girl copes with hardship and the necessity of raising her baby sister after her mother dies. The second half was a romance, where she has to choose between two suitors -- one of which appears in the first half, then disappears until the very end, the other only showing up in the second half. I think this book would have worked better had she continued to focus on the heroine's development, and let the romance remain just a subplot.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill: After reading Dracula I immediately picked up this comic collection, which features Mina after her encounter with the vampire. League teams up several fictional characters from the second half of the nineteenth century -- Mina, Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Jeckyll/Hyde, and the Invisible Man (no, not that Invisible Man) -- as agents working for a mysterious man in the British government. It's a fun pastiche of nineteenth century storytelling and literature, but like all of Moore's work it is also quite dark and cynical; and as usual, being a woman in Moore's world is . . . not fun. The collection consists of the first 6-issue storyline, along with artwork, fake Victorian ads, and a prose story about Quartermain. This is an adventure tale told in a serialized format, telling of Quartermain's last adventure before joining the League, and includes Verne's Time Traveler and Lovecraft's Randolph Carter; the adventure itself draws heavily from Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. Moore was very successful in parodying the late-nineteenth century's literary style -- too successful, because all the adjectives and dependent clausees made my eyes glaze over. There is a reason why I am not a big fan of English literature from that time period.

Thai Die by Monica Ferris: I'm a sucker for cozy mysteries, particularly those that have as their theme some sort of hobby or interest, so it should be no surprise that I like Monica Ferris's series, centered around the owner of a needlework shop in Minnesota. Fortunately, Ferris is a better writer than most in this sub-genre, and she has neatly addressed the Mystery Magnet problem by coming up with fairly decent reasons why a woman in a small town keeps getting caught up in major crimes. Like the others in the series, Thai Die was light and fun, although I did think the character who got into trouble was ridiculously naive, and I grasped what was going on a lot sooner than the characters did.

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman: A longish short story for children about a boy named Odd who helps the Norse Gods reclaim Asgard from the Frost Giants. Pleasant, but not much to it.

Speaking of Short Stories . . .

I just finished another McSweeney's collection, the rather lengthily titled Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out (heh, the url is shorter than the title). It is a collection of young adult short stories from many authors, some quite prominent, and proceeds go to 826NYC, a non-profit tutoring center in NYC. Standouts were "Small Country" by Nick Hornby, "Grimble" by Clement Freud, "Sunbird" by Neil Gaiman (also found in his collection Fragile Things), and "The Sixth Burough" by Jonathan Safran Foer. Kelly Link's "Monster," which I had read in her collection Pretty Monsters, was incredibly creepy -- so creepy I refused to reread it in this volume.

This being McSweeney's, I was not at all surprised to find an unusual element to the form of the book. In this case, the dust jacket unfolds to show a short story started by Lemony Snicket, with space to write in one's own ending and instructions to fold the dust jacket into an envelope to mail to McSweeney's. Supposedly the best entry was to receive publication in another book and some goodies, but I can't find any more information about it (the book came out in 2005).