Summer 2003 and Thee:
A List of Not Particularly Timely Stories and Books to Keep You
Off the Street and Out of Trouble Until the Next Protest March
Beach
Well, obviously you should
(there's that word again) be on the beach reading a big fat book
that will not send you to sleep. We suggest Box
Office Poison. It's perfect, has a great story (doesn't
end up where you might expect it to) and it's a graphic novel,
so you can always just lie there and look at the pictures.
Also
Pantheon are doing great,
great graphic novels and you should (damn that word!) support
this small press's brave choice! Um, or something like that. If
any of your friends are confused as to why people like to draw
pictures to go with their stories, give them Marjane Satrapi's
Persepolis
which is up there with classics of the form such as Maus
and Joe Sacco's Palestine.
Like an editorial cartoon
that just goes on and on, Persepolis is Satrapi's autobiographical
tale of her early years growing up in Iran. Her family were happy
when the Shah was kicked out in 1979, but as the revolution went
on, her family and friends became targets for government extremists.
Airconcomfortzone
If you're not on the beach
and in fact are lucky enough to have air conditioning and therefore
have the capacity to read a book that might (scary) make you think,
there's the British Library's Alisdair Gray: Critical Appreciations
& a Bibliography. Come on, you know you want it. Interviews,
pages of color photos of his art, and essays by famous writers
(ooh) saying how good the man is. Especially recommended if you
have yet to read any of his books.
Depressed
Honey
Don't, by Tim Sandlin.
Reason 1 why this will cheer you up: the president dies in embarrassing
circumstances. It gets better, it get a madcappy, heypappy, jumpguppy
(what?) but this is Sandlin, he can carry it off. Great
stuff. Then go back and read the Gro Vont books.
Kevin Brockmeier's short stories
have appeared in all the best places (except LCRW, so far,
hmm) and have been awarded all kinds of awards. Despite all that,
he's written a novel. Or, at least I think he has, because The
Truth About Celia may in fact be by fantasy writer Christopher
Brooks. This one is not likely to cheer you up (that's what ice
cream and The Fast Show videos are for) but it will keep
you happy in a different way.
Neolithic
Apparently Newt Gingrich may
have a new book
out?
Nepotistic
Kalpa
Imperial
Trampoline
Foreigners, and Other
Familiar Faces
More
Ok?
It's a mystery
I tend not to read mysteries
-- all those dead people, the squishy bits coming out (they're
not meant to do that, you know) and all the boring murderers --
come on now, do something creative instead! Make clay ashtrays,
knit blankets for the underheated, learn how to make tofu. Make
a damn zine,
OK?
However, sometimes the form
can be used (oh wait, bullshitometer's squawking again. Let me
turn that off, OK) to -- well, have you ever read a Jim
Sallis book? This is a seriously smart guy (read some of his
book reviews) whose every book is worth reading. Some for different
reasons, Renderings
is not easy, but it'll make you think about why books are written,
what people want to say with them (not necessarily the story that
you read) and so on. Anyway, Sallis's new book, Cypress
Grove, set in the south features a retired cop slowly
finding out about his hometown as he helps investigate a murder.
Is it worth reading? Are the icecaps melting?
But, if that doesn't float
your boat, start on these.
Hey, isn't that the future?
Jim
Munroe is a great guy, which, as you know Bob (he said in
an instantly recognizable parody of early sci-fi writing where
infodumping was not yet a crime), doesn't mean he can write. Ah,
but, Everyone
in Silico is a great fast read into the future (another
review).
Munroe skewers corporations but still finds the time to investigate
what artists might be doing thirty years from now. (What were
you doing in 1973?) Zippy, I tell you.
Now for something different
-- short stories:
Douglas Lain, Identity
is a Construct
Joe Murphy, Ovigonopods
of Love
Scott Westerfeld, Unsporstmanlike
Conduct
Christopher Rowe, Kin
to Crows
John Wyndham, Consider
Her Ways (um, kicking it oldstyle? Slang help, anyone?)
Mars Needs Women
Science fiction: not just
for teenage boys anymore? (Tagline taken from 1957 copy of The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction). First up,
a few short stories for "breaktime" reading:
Karen Joy Fowler, What
I Didn't See
James Tiptree, Jr., The
Women Men Don't See
Maureen McHugh, Frankenstein's
Daughter
Carol Emshwiller, Boys
On the novel front, some of
these names are looking familiar:
Maureen McHugh's Nekropolis
is a slim novel that takes one person's story and somehow manages
to encompass the whole world in it. Perfect read for hot weather.
Hiromi
Goto, The
Kappa Child -- in the same way that the your screen cannot
display the intricacies of the beautiful cover for this book,
no plot summary is going to do it justice. The Kappa Child
is captivating and confusing, fractured and fascinating. A family
moves from Japan to the Canadian plains (deliberate shades and
echoes of Little House on the Prairie!). None of the three
daughters do wonderfully, but our narrator is in the oddest position
of the three.
Oops, I did it again, or
sequels can be ok, ya?
Really?
Not/Feeling the Pinch
The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, really, really nice edition.
All around the world there are hopeful hints being dropped from
the former group to the latter. Read this and see why some dumbclucks
decided to mess around and make a film of it. Did you read the most
recent issue? Ew, Mr. Hyde, ew!
Magazines
OK, just go to Chicago (it
won't take that long if you leave now. Best wear a hat.) and go
to Quimby's, otherwise known
as the MotherLodeOfAllMagazines. What to read, what to read? Get
3rd
Bed if only (but that would be dumb) for the amazing food
timeline (10,000 year old lentils anyone? (abusing the table,
tut tut)); new ish of Caboose-- all about karaoke!: Show
Me the Money (ah, noncorporate sponsored (I think!) politics);
Crude Noise has a cat playing drums on the cover, good
enough for me; Redbird Brand Comic Stories -- how do people
print this color stuff?; buy Stainless Steel Len and get
Allah Makes My Ass Tired free...; Caveman Robot --
yay!; and more to the point, if you're reading this at breakfasttime
(whether having just woken up or perhaps more appropriately if
you have yet to go to sleep), Greasy Spoon (the publication
formerly called Burger Boy -- good name change!) -- it's
all about the diners, oh yes.
Apparently there are some
other small zines out there, like The New Yorker (great
Metallica review there) which Quimby's doesn't carry. Maybe your
local bookshop will carry it if you ask nicely enough?
A few others that by now
I hope you'll have read.
Return
of John MacNab
Andrew Greig
The title refers to John Buchan's
novel, John Macnab, wherein three bored men undergo mid-life
crises and attempt three adventures. On seeing the book I was
curious and quite ready to dislike it. Pastiches, parodies and
sequels to old books or films that are often just to keep the
copyright annoy me and are generally awful. When I eventually
picked this up it was a happy surprise.
More
(Out of print, so if you can't find this read one of his other
books. Electric Brae, for instance.)
In
Search of Snow
Luis Alberto Urrea
I've been avoiding this novel
for years. This isn't as crazy as it sounds: I've been working
in a used book shop in Boston and the book passes through my hands
at least once a year. I knew it wasn't my type of book. The blurb
on the cover mentions 'prize-fighting, drinking and macho hunkery.'
Maybe it was the author's long hair, his shades. It seemed too
well packaged; as if inside I'd find some smooth modernist take
on the west, attitude without substance, a mirage. Something straight
out of Los Angeles, not the mythic west.
More
Say
Goodbye
Lewis Shiner
As I write I'm listening to
Texas, a Scottish band who have been the occasional soundtrack
to my life for more than ten years. At college I danced with the
rest of Britain to "I Don't Want a Lover" from Southside
(1989). Rick's Road (1993) was a critical success but they
disappeared from my radar until I came across a copy of 1997's
White On Blonde, an album full of white soul and unending
hooks. Until this album the focus had been the whole band, here
singer Sharleen Spiteri stepped forward. Suddenly they were sexy,
glamourous; they were catapulted to new levels of stardom: huge
concerts, hot singles, songs on film soundtracks.
More
Zod
Wallop
William Browning Spencer
Zod Wallop is a book
I picture lying in wait for readers in the space between REM's
"Let Me In" and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things
Are. What are you looking for in a book: the end of the world?
Death? Dismemberment? Slavering monsters? Romance? Conspiracies?
All of this and a monkey to boot, hard to beat that.
More
(Same as Return of John MacNab, except the recommendation
is Resume with Monsters.)
more
more more
Should keep you going all summer.
Report back in fall, OK?
