What I’m Reading

Hellboy, Heart-Shaped Box, and the Historian

July 5th, 2008

Used to be, when Husband was out all night working that DJ voodoo of his, I’d inevitably manage to scare the bejeezus out of myself with a horror movie. Not intentionally. I’d pick the dumbest looking, most innocuous movies I could find, but damn if they wouldn’t turn out to be unexpected little genre gems. By the by, I’m still swearing vengeance on whoever told me Skeleton Key was a romantic comedy. (It’s most assuredly not).

OK, yeah, I knew House by the Cemetery was a horror movie. I just didn’t know it would be scary. The cover art looked downright silly and it didn’t say it was a Lucio Fulci movie anywhere on the box. But I digress…

Tonight I decided to spare myself the jitters and leave the TV off. I thought I’d make some progress on the pile of books on the side table. After a few chapters, it occurred to me that Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, a nice little ghost story, was probably not the best choice. I’m still not sure how I feel about the book. I’m 3/4 of the way through and it’s interesting how engrossing the book is despite the fact that the main characters aren’t very likeable. But at the same time, they aren’t completely unlikeable. Perhaps that’s the answer - they’re really rather human, which makes them interesting and a bit unpredictable. Nevertheless, I suspected by the end I’d be jumping at my own reflection in the mirrors so it had better go back on the pile for the night. Every once in a while I still display a rare bit of common sense.

I moved on to a reread of some Hellboy (Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil) since Hellboy 2 hits theaters soon. (Plus, it always makes me laugh the way Mrs. Cavendish calls Hell boy “Mr. Boy.”)

I’ve picked up Elizabeth Kostova’s 800 page behemoth, The Historian and am about to drag it up to bed. I suspect it’s going to put me to sleep in fairly short order. Not because of the prose or storytelling, which seem quite competent, but because the book weighs a ton and it’s probably going to be too much work to keep both it and myself propped up in the bed. Maybe it would be safer to swim back in to that backlog of New Yorker’s. They don’t leave bruises if you drift off to sleep and they fall out of your hands and onto your chest. Safety first and all that.

reviewed by rebecca at 2:38 am on July 5th, 2008
classified as: books, comics, fantasy, fiction, graphic novels, horror | No Comments »

Actual reading: Tyrannosaurus Canyon, Jane Quiet, Buffy

June 24th, 2008

This week I’ve done actual reading of actual printed matter that’s printed on actual paper. Damned exciting.

I finished Doug Preston’s Tyrannosaurus Canyon, I’ve been carrying around for so long that I realized it should have racked up 10,000 frequent flyer miles of it’s own, seeing as it went to Florida, SF and Philadelphia. It was good fun and had a decent pace, the absurd length of time it took me to finish it was due to sheer exhaustion from reading a zillion emails a day and not the fault of the author. I picked it up as a “popcorn read” (a book you can read in a sitting or two, the equivalent of a blockbuster movie) but as you can see that didn’t work out so well. Preston’s science is always believable and his characters are always well-drawn, so I’m sure I’ll pass this along to a friend.

I also caught up on my comics reading.

Most importantly, I got to read K.A. Laity’s awesomely excellent new comic, Jane Quiet: Occult Investigator. Pen and ink goddess Elena Steier draws seriously cool monsters. This was a fun read because there’s no text - a most graphic Graphic Novel. There are some great bits of wordplay and humor (the other names on the mailboxes in Jane’s apartment building? excellent).

I also got caught up on Buffy. 8.14 and 8.15, that is. Yes, I’d already read 8.12. That link contains spoilers, by the way. And sweaty lesbians.

reviewed by rebecca at 4:53 pm on June 24th, 2008
classified as: comics, fiction, mystery, sci-fi | No Comments »

An evening with Chuck Palahniuk

June 3rd, 2008

Olsson’s Books is sponsoring an An on-stage interview with Chuck Palahniuk (moderated by author Eric Nuzum), followed by a reading and Q&A, presumably about Palahniuk’s newest book, Snuff. I can’t go, I have a Board meeting, but it sounds like it’ll be an amusing event.

reviewed by rebecca at 8:36 am on June 3rd, 2008
classified as: events, readings | No Comments »

Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Fridays

May 17th, 2008

These days, I read email. Lots and lots of email. It’s a rather unfortunate situation. So, I thought I’d send you over to Patti Abbott’s site, where she’s asking bloggers to contribute mini-reviews of books they love that don’t get the attention they deserve. Here’s a linky to a Fridays Forgotten Books post with lots of links to keep you busy surfing around and learning about all kinds of books you may have missed.

reviewed by rebecca at 11:45 am on May 17th, 2008
classified as: Bookblogs | No Comments »

Happy National Library Week!

April 14th, 2008

National Library Week

Amusing little piece in today’s Washington Post: “Check it Out: Finding Romance and Adventure at the Library.”

reviewed by rebecca at 10:23 am on April 14th, 2008
classified as: libraries | Comments Off

This isn’t neurotic at all

April 13th, 2008

I realize the teetering pile of New Yorkers on the coffee table is de rigueur for the so-called Washington Intellectual. The Stack demonstrates that one is witty and clever enough to subscribe, but much to busy and important to actually read.

Nevertheless, my constant low-level skirmishes with the encroaching clutter in my house have led to an unofficial household New Yorker policy. If an issue sits around for more than two months, I skim it and pull out any articles that fall into these categories:

1) Keep for my own research

2) To be read
a) by both Husband and myself
b) by me
c) by Husband

Then, they get filed.

Category 1 is simple. I place the article into my files wherever appropriate (story idea, background for work in progress, subject area, etc)

2a. Any that are being saved to be read by both of us go into a set of clipfiles arranged by broad category (food, culture, tech, politics, book reviews, general).

2b. These go into a folder. After being read, they are either tossed or filed in the research files.

2c. Husband throws these in a pile and may or may not get to them eventually. Husband is a nest-builder. See also: the constant war on clutter.

Laugh if you wish, but it’s very handy to have a file of articles one can pilfer for portable travel reading, particularly since most get tossed after we read them so there’s no need to cart around heavy books or a big stack of magazines. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. Please respect my delusions, I respect yours.

reviewed by rebecca at 6:45 pm on April 13th, 2008
classified as: magazines, non-fiction | Comments Off

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

March 29th, 2008

I’ve had to set aside Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein until I stop taking this cough medicine. It’s scrambled my brains. No matter what I try to read I swear the words on the page keep turning to ancient Sumerian. Then I fall asleep. I’d like to read it again before I pick up Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s Frankenstein: A Cultural History. Having worked for many years with an eminent Mary Shelley scholar (and chased many a citation or reference down for her) I’m looking forward to Hitchcock’s book. Just as soon as my brain starts working again.

reviewed by rebecca at 6:56 pm on March 29th, 2008
classified as: books, classics, fantasy, fiction, horror | Comments Off

Bookshelf etiquette

March 24th, 2008

Amusing piece in Paper Cuts (the NYTimes bookblog) about which books belong on your bookshelves, which was touched off by an even more amusing piece by Simpson’s writer Matt Selman, titled “The Unabridged Rules of Library Management.”

reviewed by rebecca at 11:54 pm on March 24th, 2008
classified as: Bookblogs, books | Comments Off

The Ruins

March 24th, 2008

I’d never heard of novelist Scott Smith until I saw the movie A Simple Plan. The film adaptation of Smith’s debut novel was directed by Sam Raimi, but the screenplay was also written by Smith. I enjoyed his second novel, The Ruins, but somehow was oblivious of the movie, which opens in just a few weeks. The book was really quite yucky, though. I’ll probably pass on the movie. Maybe I’m being too quick to judge, but it it’s being directed by an unknown fashion photographer, which isn’t really a big attraction for me.

reviewed by rebecca at 5:36 pm on March 24th, 2008
classified as: fantasy, fiction, horror | Comments Off

“Bookmarked to Die”

March 16th, 2008

I just finished another of Jo Dereske’s incredibly amusing murder mysteries from the Miss Zukas series. (aka the Library Murder Series).

I picked up a few of these once as a present for a friend of mine who’d just become a library director and somehow never managed to read these. The woman behind me in line tapped me on the shoulder and told me I’d be disappointed. She was in Library School and assured me that real librarians and real patrons in public libraries were neither as weird nor as psychotic as some of the ones in the books. I guessed, correctly, that she’d never actually worked in a library, public or otherwise. I thanked her for her opinion, bought the books, and wondered what kind of nasty surprise that woman was going to get when she got out of Grad School with her $60,000 degree and absolutely no clue about what she was getting into. I also wondered if maybe she’d read one of the books, seen herself in one of the more prickly characters, and was in denial.

But I digress.

I just finished Bookmarked to Die. It’s a bit unusual for me to read a series out of order, but Dereske is deft at supplying backstory without annoying her avid readers, but with enough detail that new readers aren’t left in the dark about who these people are and what their relationships are to one another. These book are entertaining and silly and suspenseful and very, very much like real life. In fact, I find the vividly drawn librarians and patrons more frightening than the murders. Dereske’s obviously as keen an observer as her heroine, the ultra-methodical Helma Zukas.

reviewed by rebecca at 10:23 am on March 16th, 2008
classified as: fiction, mystery | Comments Off