TRICK OR TREAT!: Some Scary Goodies for Your Book Bag from Bryan's Book Blog

Since it is Halloween, and I am a horror lit geek, I figured I better post my favorite scary novels for the holiday. After all, some of you out there might actually find this interesting. So, without any further dithering, here are some of the scariest or simply most-Halloween worthy books I have read (in alphabetical order):

Dracula by Bram Stoker. This one is a no-brainer, really. Vampires have come a long way since the Van Helsing pursued the Count through the streets of London, but none of them can hold a candle to this grand-daddy of them all.

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Quite simply one of the The. Scariest. Books. EVER! I will grant you that William Friedkin’s film is scary (perhaps one of the scariest) but the book is a completely different experience, and Blatty’s images and words are infinitely more scary that anything put onto the screen.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. There are a lot of good ghost stories out there, but Joe Hill’s debut novel blows most of them out of the water. This is a truly frightening read, and Hill’s description of the ghost is something that still haunts me.

Midnight by Dean R. Koontz. I have since become disenchanted with Mr. Koontz in my old age. He just doesn’t have the shine for me know that his books had while I was in middle school and high school, but there are a few (mostly his early books) that are truly frightening. Midnight is one of them that has stood the test of time. This update of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau is definitely worth picking up.

Off Season: The Author’s Uncut, Uncensored Version by Jack Ketchum. Inbred cannibal hillbillies living in caves along the Maine coast and feasting on unsuspecting tourists. Need I say more? This is an unflinching novel and as such if you do decide to pick it up, you must find the “Uncut, Uncensored Version” that was released by Leisure Books in 2006.

Psycho by Robert Bloch. Alfred Hitchcock so firmly entrenched this story in the American collective consciousness that I hardly need to say anything more about it, other than if you have not read the story that inspired Hitchcock, you really should. Bloch is one of the true masters of the genre, and if you haven’t yet read him, you are missing out.

The Return by Bentley Little. Little is another one of those “over-looked” authors in modern fiction. Usually he is eclipsed by the giants like King and Koontz and Hill. However, that is the reading public’s loss and something to be remedied right now. The Return is a good place to start, it has some of the freakiest imagery I have ever run across in horror fiction to date, but just beware … Little (like Ketchum) is unflinching in his writing, and so some of the subjects are not things that are usually discussed in “polite society.”

The Shining by Stephen King. Another that has become firmly fixed in the American pop culture landscape thanks to Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson … but if that is the only way you have experienced The Shining, then your experience is woefully incomplete. There is so much in King’s novel, and so much of it is truly frightening that it could never be fully and properly expressed on the silver screen. This is, without a doubt, King’s best, tightest, and most frightening novel. Hands down.

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Like Hitchcock with Norman Bates and Kubrick with Jack Torrance, Jonathan Demme has firmly fixed Clarice Starling and Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter in the American pop culture (though that may have less to do with Demme and more to do with Sir Anthony Hopkins) an so it hardly seems necessary to shill for this book … but if you haven’t yet read it, you really should. “Scary as Hell” is as good a descriptor as any I can think of.

The Totem by David Morrell. This is one of those books that sums up everything that a good horror story should have. Add to that the fact that, like Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot, it is a novel that redefines what a horror icon is and how it should act (in this case the werewolf) and you have one of the scariest books out there.

There are, of course, a couple of staples that no Halloween would be complete without: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson are all three worthy Halloween stories and have the added bonus of being on the shorter side and can be read aloud at your Halloween party or (as they are not too scary nor gory) to your little goblins at bedtime.

SOME HONORABLE MENTIONS ARE:

• Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell
• Bag of Bones by Stephen King
• Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
• The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell
• Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• Ghost Story by Peter Straub
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis
• ‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Novel—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Jane Austen and Seth-Grahame Smith
• Watchers by Dean R. Koontz
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
• The Works of Algernon Blackwood
• The Works of Edgar Allen Poe

It goes without saying that this list is by no means exhaustive and definitive. It is entirely subjective to my personal tastes and opinions, and if you agree or disagree (particularly if you disagree with any of my choices, I’d love to hear from you in the comments—the only disagreement I will not entertain is that Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series belongs on the list—that is heresy of the highest order and beatings will be administered for suggesting such).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Friday 56: Now, That's What I Like to Call a "Bad Thing"...

The Friday 56 is hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends

RULES

1. Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
2. Turn to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like).
5. Post a link with your post to Storytime (and here on Bryan’s Book Blog, I’d like to know what book you’ve got at hand).

This week, Joe Schreiber’s Star Wars: Death Troopers is the closest book to hand (other than the audio edition of Dan Simmons’ The Terror, which—as an audiobook—is manifestly is ineligible for The Friday 56). I reviewed it HERE, and so since it therefore needs no introduction here is the fifth sentence from page 56:

“Steeling himself, he hooked the first two fingers of his right hand and raked them as hard as he could into the muscle above his hip, ignoring the dry-ice spike of pain and thrusting in deeper to peel back the outer tissue layer.” (56).

Well, a sentence like that just screams out for more (no pun intended), don’t you think? So here are the next two:

“The fat came loose from his flank with a sickening ease. Blood gushed out of his side, hot and streaming, running down his legs and filling up his boots” (56).

And, since I can’t leave you hanging like that, and if you’ve read this far you deserve to be rewarded for your diligence, click HERE to read the next sentence.

Friday Finds: October 30, 2009

Friday Finds (hosted by Should Be Reading)

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week?

Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

So, since tomorrow is Halloween and all, I thought I’d put up some of the scarier books I have come across lately. Of course, they can’t all be scary, but in this instance, all but two (maybe three) are what I would consider “good Halloween Reads.” Feeding Ground is Sarah Pinborough’s follow-up to Breeding Ground and is about mutant spider-things and unspeakable horrors, and speaking of unspeakable horrors, Lovecraft Unbound is a lovely little collection of short stories from twenty authors in the horror or dark fantasy genre that are all set in or inspired by the world(s) of H.P. Lovecraft. On Monsters looks at the real monsters in our world. Dark Places is Gillian Flynn’s follow-up to Sharp Objects and promises to be very frightening. I don’t know much about Dark Harvest other than it was recommended by Joe Schreiber (author of Death Troopers) on his blog and, really, how can you resist a book with a cover like that? Then, of course, there is the third entry from Quirk Classics, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls which I have mixed emotions about. And we round out our Halloween recommendations with The Terror by Dan Simmons, not a new book, and a book that has been on my shelf for some time now, but I have rediscovered it, so to speak, in audio format and it is up next in my audio queue as soon as I finish with The Last Town on Earth. As for the other three: I heard about The Big Burn on KUOW here in Western Washington (it is about the 1910 fire in the Pacific Northwest that was one of the largest in American history; and Because I Am Furniture and Stone Gods were brought to my attention by fellow-book bloggers in the last week or so and caught my eye, so I thought I’d share them here.

Because I Am Furniture was recommended by edge of seventeen. On Monsters was brought to my attention by Misfit Salon. The Stone Gods was recommended by ReviewsbyLola’s Blog.

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan

Feeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough

Lovecraft Unbound edited by Ellen Datlow

Because I Am Furniture by Thalia Chaltas

On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears by Stephen T. Asma

The Stone Gods by Jeannette Winterson

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

Pride and Prejudice and Zombie: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Jane Austen and Steve Hockensmith

The Terror by Dan Simmons

And the Title of Quirk Classics 3 Is...

Pride and Prejudice: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

by Jane Austen and Steve Hockensmith

Trade Paperback, 320 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9781594744549, US$12.95

From the Cover: In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early-nineteenth century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennett evolve from a naïve young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry. Written by acclaimed novelist (and Edgar Award nominee) Steve Hockensmith, Dawn of the Dreadfuls invites Austen fans to step back into Regency England, Land of the Undead!

Quirk Classics’ website is HERE.

Now, I don’t know how I feel about this one, because up until this point, Quirk Classics has had a winning formula: you take a “stuffy” classic novel and put something unexpected in it, hence Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Now, though, they’re mixing it up and creating a new text out of something that didn’t exist before. To the best of my knowledge, there was no prequel to Pride and Prejudice and so I’m somewhat dubious as to how effective this particular one will be. I would have preferred Wuthering Heights and Werewolves or Mansfield Park and Monsters or Persuasion and Poltergeists personally.

March 24, 2010 is the release date for this one, so … I don’t know … mark your calendars?

Star Wars: Death Troopers

by Joe Schreiber

(New York: Ballantine Books, 2009)

Hardcover, 265 Pages, Science Fiction

ISBN: 9780345509628, US$24.00

ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

From the Cover: When the Imperial prison barge Purge—temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves—breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back—bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine. And death is only the beginning. The Purge’s half-dozen survivors—two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers, and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board—will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

My Review: There are books that you just know you are going to hate when you pick them up. There are books that you just know you are going to love when you pick them up. And there are books that you aren’t sure what you are going to think about them. Can you possibly guess into which category falls Joe Schreiber’s Death Troopers?

I’ll give you a hint: I love horror novels. I love zombie novels.

Can you guess?

I thought so. Now, in spite of the fact that this is a Star Wars novel (I’m becoming less and less of a fan of Star Wars in my old age) the fact that it was a Star Wars horror novel was something that I could get behind. It also helps that it eschews the more mundane Star Wars characters (no whiny Luke Skywalker-types here) and there are absolutely no Jedis or Force references in the entire 265 pages which is a BIG plus in my book. I always liked the parts of Star Wars that were more like a Western anyway, and this novel has that in spades. Lots of shoot-outs, plenty of blood and it is—perhaps—the most visceral and stinkingly slippery Star Wars novel that is out there … and believe you me, that’s a good thing. Nay, even a great thing.

What Schreiber has done is taken a world of Imperial Stormtroopers, Star Destroyers, X-Wings, Wookies and Droids and grafted on to all that one of the most chilling horror stories I have read in a long while. Honestly. Think Star Wars meets the 1978 Dawn of the Dead and maybe even a little bit of 1985’s Day of the Dead (the “sadistic captain of the guards” Jareth Sartoris is quite reminiscent of Day’s Captain Rhodes) … with a bit of the old school ghost ship/plague ship stories thrown in for good measure. This is a fast-paced, very exciting story and one in which the Reader is carried along on an incredible ride from page one.

Just to give you an idea of how quickly I got through this book. This morning at 10:00 a.m. I received an email notice from my local library that Death Troopers had arrived for me to pick up on hold. At 1:30 p.m. I was able to make it to the library to pick up Death Troopers. When I got back home at about 2:00 p.m. I started reading Death Troopers. I finished it just about an hour ago around 9:00 p.m. That’s how good this book is.

I think what I liked most about the novel was the B-grade horror value that it had. This is a really edgy book for Star Wars ad Schreiber does a wonderful job of walking the line between staying faithful to the feel of Lucas’ universe and pushing that universe to its most gut-wrenching and terrifying level, and Schreiber really ratchets up the sense of dread and terror with each page. And while the resolution is a little contrived and leaves something to be desired in completeness, but I guess since there are no zombies in A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi Schreiber has to wrap it up somehow. Still, it is definitely worth getting your hands on.

Check out reading by publight for another review of Death Troopers.

A-Z Wednesday: The Lodger

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week and post the following:

1. A photo of the book
2. Title and synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: L

My “L” Book is:

The Lodger

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

(Chicago: Academy, 1988)

Paperback, 224 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780897332996, US$8.97

From the Cover: The murders seemed to be the work of a woman-hating fanatic. There were a number of likely suspects, but all had alibis. The police were baffled and the citizens terrified, for somewhere in the gaslit, fog-bound alleys of London a madman was at large. And the one night there came a knock at the door of a quiet lodging house on Marylebone Road … When The Lodger was first published in 1913, about twenty-five years after the gruesome “Jack the Ripper” murders in London’s Whitechapel section, praise was forthcoming from both sides of the Atlantic. The British Spectator called it “an extremely ingenious and engrossing commentary on one of the most horrifying episodes of modern crime.” The New York Times of February, 1914 praised the book: “[Mrs. Lowndes] can be depended upon to produce work of a very excellent quality—work that has just that touch of reality, that feeling of ‘atmosphere’ that gives to a novel of this character genuine and permanent value.”

My Thoughts: Since we’re coming up on Halloween, I thought a good “scary” book would be an appropriate choice for this week’s A-Z Wednesday, and since the letter was L it came down to The Living Dead (an anthology of zombie-themed short fiction edited by John Joseph Adams) and The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes. Now, I lurve me a good zombie story, and I’ve been percolating something in the back of my head—a paper on the appeal of apocalyptic fiction (and zombie fiction in particular) and so I have quite a few zombie books in my collection, but when it came right down to it, The Lodger won out because it is a little more obscure than The Living Dead, and if nothing else, I like to showcase books that are a little off the beaten path, so to speak. So that brings us to The Lodger.

Somewhere between eighth grade and tenth grade I became obsessed with the Jack the Ripper murders. Not in a creepy way … I don’t think … but in a teenage boy seeking out the more prurient aspects of life. In that total absorption of the Jack the Ripper case, I came across Lowndes’ The Lodger in my local library, and I devoured it, and remember liking it. Loving it even. Then, over the years, I had forgotten about the novel until, recently, when it was remade for the silver screen starring Alfred Molina and Rachel Leigh Cook. (I say remade because Hitchcock filmed it in 1927 as a silent film titled The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.) After being reminded of Lowndes’ book I immediately ordered myself a copy and, while I haven’t revisited it yet, it is certainly on the shortlist of my TBR pile.

An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition, More Than 1,000 Terms

by James Lipton

(New York: Viking, 1991)

Hardcover, 324 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780670300440, US$20.00

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

From the Cover: An “exaltation of larks”? Yes! And a “leap of leopards,” a “parliament of owls,” and “ostentation of peacocks,” a “smack of jellyfish,” and a “murder of crows”! For those who have ever wondered if the familiar “pride of lions” and “gaggle of geese” were only the tip of a linguistic iceberg, James Lipton has provided the definitive answer: here are hundreds of equally pithy, and often poetic, terms unearthed by Mr. Lipton in the Books of Venery that were the constant study of anyone who aspired to the title of gentleman in the fifteenth century. When Mr. Lipton’s painstaking research revealed that five hundred years ago the terms of venery had already been turned into the Game of Venery, he embarked on an odyssey that has given us a “slouch of models,” a “shrivel of critics,” and “unction of undertakers,” a “blur of Impressionists,” a “score of bachelors,” and a “pocket of quarterbacks.” This ultimate edition of An Exaltation of Larks is Mr. Lipton’s brilliant answer to the assault on language and literacy in the last decades of the twentieth century. In it you will find more than 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions to the most endangered of all species, our language, in a setting of 250 witty, beautiful, and remarkably apt engravings.

My Review: This is one of those books that makes it into my hands in a roundabout way. A couple of days ago my wife asked me what you call a group of ducks. I didn’t know. We looked it up, and in doing so came across a reference to a book titled An Exaltation of Larks that purported to explain the reasoning behind collective nouns. And it was written by James Inside the Actor’s Studio Lipton. How could I resist? I put it on hold at our local library and it came within a day or two of my requesting it, and now, after just a couple of days, here I am talking about this book.

And, really, I can’t stop talking about this book. An Exaltation of Larks is one of those books that is just fun. Lipton breaks the book into—more or less—three loose section: well-established collective nouns (or titles of venery, as they are officially called), more recent (or less well-established) titles of venery, and unofficial titles of venery that either Lipton himself has coined or that readers have sent in since the first printing of the book. While the first two sections are fascinating and Lipton goes to great lengths to explain some of the more obscure or confusing titles of venery, and while those stories are absolutely fascinating, it is the last section—the unofficial titles (many of them describing modern terms)—where the real fun and humor of venery is found.

Some of my favorites from this section:

• A keyhole of voyeurs
• A falsetto of transvestites
• A handful of gynecologists
• A hive of allergists
• An angst of dissertations
• A culture of epicureans
• A nullity of nihilists
• A drift of lecturers
• A shush of librarians
• A Boo! of teratologists
• A splat of high-jumpers
• An attitude of rappers
• A set of designers (this one is under the “Stage” category)
• A cel of animators
• A cacophony of TV channels
• A glut of commercials
• A deconstruction of post-modernists
• A book of Mormons
• A profit of televangelists
• A click of photographers

Just to name a few.

The best ones, of course, are those that have the delicious play-on-words that, say “a set of designers” (to describe set designers for a stage production, and playing off the legitimate title of venery of set) or a “click of photographers” (playing on the homophonic sounds of click and clique) and “ a cel of animators” (again, the homophonic sounds of cel and cell), but then there are the ones that are just plain funny: “a handful of gynecologists,” “a drift of lecturers” (though this one also has the play-on-words aspect, since drift is a legitimate collective noun), etc., etc.

Even better, Lipton encourages his readers to come up with their own titles of venery, and even has instructions in the back of Exaltation for the Game of Venery (which is a pass-time that has been around, according to Lipton, since the 1400s!).

So, in the spirit of the book, I now give you some of the titles of venery that my wife and I thought of while I was perusing this book:

• A poverty of graduate students
• A confusion of college freshmen
• A cuddle of co-sleepers
• A prick of vaccines (also a pain of vaccines)
• A pride of breastfeeders
• A babble of toddlers (also an exuberance of toddlers, and a tumble of toddlers)
• A snuggle of infants
• An intrusion of C-sections (also an invasion of C-sections)
• A snip of circumcisions

Just to name a few (and to betray our parental philosophies).

While I read this book from cover-to-cover that is by no means the best way to read An Exaltation of Larks. Perhaps this is one of those books to leave lying around and just pick it up every so often and open to a random page and enjoy a page or two of venereal titles (stop snickering, that’s the actual term for them). An Exaltation of Larks is a book that is a lot of fun, and if you, like I, enjoy the possibilities and wittiness and sheer absurdity that the English language can have, then you should probably find yourself a copy of Lipton’s book.

Teaser Tuesdays: A Flurry of Collective Nouns

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

A couple of days ago, my wife asked me what the collective noun for a group of ducks was, and I didn’t know. Is it a flock? Is it a herd? So, I looked it up. (It’s a paddling of ducks, by the way, but if they are in flight, it’s a team of ducks.) In the process of looking it up, I came across a reference to a book: An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton (yes, that James Lipton) and since I am a sucker for collective nouns, I had to find it. It’s a lot of fun, and here is today’s Teaser:

An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition, More Than 1,000 Terms

by James Lipton

(New York: Viking, 1991)

Hardcover, 324 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780670300440, US$20.00

My Teaser: “A slouch of models. A rictus of beauty queens. A score of bachelors. A freeze of virgins. A hangout of nudists. A spread of centerfolds” (158-159).

Meme Your Library

Here’s a little book meme taken from The Boston Bibliophile (who got it from Nikola’s Book Blog) to pass the time today.

1. What author do you own the most books by? Far and away the answer is Stephen King. Including audiobooks, I own 118 King books. Forty-two audiobooks, four hardbacks, and seventy-two paperbacks (both trade and mass-market). But, as I have stated before on this blog, I have staked my academic career (both my undergrad and my grad) writing and presenting papers about Stephen King … so it’s no wonder I own so many.


2. What book do you own the most copies of? Again, and no surprise here, it is a Stephen King novel … ‘salem’s Lot in fact. I own the audiobook (read by Ron McLarty), the paperback (which was one of the first books I ever bought with my own money), a hardcover from 1976 and the Illustrated Edition that has deleted sections, author commentary and illustrations. Though, I also own four copies each of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: audiobook editions, mass-market paperbacks (that I’ve owned since high school), a trade paperback edition (they were texts for a Gothic Lit class and a Romantic Lit class), and an anthology of Dracula, Frankenstein and Jekyll & Hyde with an introduction by … of course … Stephen King.


3. Did it bother you that those questions ended with prepositions? No, first of all because I didn’t notice it, and second of all because once it was pointed out to me I remembered something that my undergrad grammar professor told us and that was that most grammar rules for the English language are completely arbitrary because when the rules for grammar were codified they were made based on rules for Latin-derived languages and most don’t really apply to the Anglo-Saxon/Germanic-derived language that is English. For example: splitting infinitives. Not an issue in the English language because our infinitives are two words any way (to love, for example) as opposed to a Latin-based language—like, say Portuguese—where infinitives are one word (amar, for example). You wouldn’t want to split that, but in English … it’s not an issue.


4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Well now, if I told you … it wouldn’t be a secret, would it? But, really, I dunno. Maybe Tika Waylan from the Dragonlance series, but then, I have a thing for busty, feisty red-heads, right Hon?


5. What book have you read the most times in your life? At the risk of making this a meme about Stephen King, the answer is probably King’s epic The Stand (in both its abridged and unabridged forms). If it isn’t The Stand, then it is King’s It.


6. Favorite book as a ten-year-old? Oh, I dunno. Ten? That would have been 1986? Fifth grade? That was the year I read (drum roll please) my first—you guessed it—Stephen King book: Cycle of the Werewolf, so if that is the only one I remember reading in the fifth grade as a ten-year-old then that must have been my favorite.


7. What is the worst book you have read in the past year? What do you know? Another Stephen King-related answer. Easily, the worst book I have read in the past year was Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg’s The Science of Stephen King: From Carrie to Cell, the Terrifying Truth Behind the Horror Master’s Fiction. Why? Find out HERE.


8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year? There have been a lot that I have rated as ACQUIRE on this blog, and some of my favorites of those have been the Doctor Who audiobooks that I have discovered, but it comes to a tie between two books: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (reviewed HERE) and Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! (reviewed HERE).


9. If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be? Surprisingly, not a Stephen King book. It either would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, both of which are amazing books!


10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? While I would never actively wish any book made into a movie (how’s that for literary snobbery?) the book I have always wanted to see made is Caleb Carr’s The Alienist. This is an amazing book, not least of which is the fact that when I first read it in 2000 it was the book that launched Bryan’s Book Reviews in its prehistoric email format. There would be no way that a film could do any kind of justice to Carr’s novel, but I have always wanted to see it on the silver screen, preferably with Gary Oldman in the role of Laszlo Kreizler and maybe Christian Bale as John Moore.


11. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read? Hmmm … it probably comes down to a tie between an unabridged edition of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and my current literary critical theory class text The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends edited by David H. Richter. That’s some heavy stuff, Freud, Lacan, Baudrillard, Foucault, Marx, Barthes, hooks, Derrida, Kant, Nietzsche … well … you get the idea.


12. What is your favorite book? Well, here we come back to Stephen King. Definitely The Shining. Definitely.


13. What is your favorite play? William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.


14. Poem? I’m kind of partial to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl but there is also William Carlos Williams’ “This is just to say.”


15. Essay? Easy. My wife and I were just talking about this particular essay the other day: Jonathan Swift’s 1792 essay A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. It’s in the public (publick?) domain, so if you haven’t already read it, head on over to Project Gutenberg and enjoy!


16. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Well, The Boston Bibliophile answered this with “If you don’t have anything nice to say…” and that’s a pretty good answer, but in all honesty I’d have to say that I think that the most overrated author alive today is (drum roll please) … STEPHENIE MEYER.


17. What is your desert island book? Stephen King’s The Shining. (echo echo echo echo echo…) Though maybe the U.S. Army’s Survival Field Manual would be a better choice n’est-ce pas?


18. And … what are you reading right now? Well, I’m currently reading Stephen King’s Rose Madder (I’m writing a paper on King’s portrayal of women for my Lit Crit class), and I’m also reading An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition, More Than 1,000 Terms by James Lipton (yes, that James Lipton), and I’m listening to the audiobook edition of The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen.

The Friday 56: Venusian Lizards? ... That's the Oldest Excuse in the Book

The Friday 56 is hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends

Rules

1. Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
2. Turn to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like).
5. Post a link with your post to Storytime (and here on Bryan’s Book Blog, I’d like to know what book you’ve got at hand).

This week, SF 4th Annual Volume: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy edited by Judith Merril is the book closest to hand. This book is especially cool … I found it on the Free Shelf at my local library. How cool is that?! It is a vintage First Edition Dell Paperback from 1959, and the cover price is 35¢. This weeks Friday 56 comes from the short story “The Yellow Pill” by Rog Phillips. This is what the editor has to say about Phillips’ story: “‘The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,’ that Scotsman said, ‘gang aft a-gley.’ Which, in American, means: man or mouse, one can be just as crazy, mixed-up as the other. The late Robert Lindner, in his fascinating The Fifty-Minute Hour, wrote about a patient whose fantasy-world took the form of a space-travel story so credibly constructed that the psychiatrist himself kept drifting into near-acceptance of the reality of the alien planet. Now Mr. Phillips asks: How does the doctor know—for sure—who’s crazy?” So, without further ado, here’s this week’s Friday 56:

“When captured, Boeck insisted that the people he had killed were not people at all, but blue-scaled Venusian lizards who had boarded his spaceship, and that he had only been defending himself” (56).

Friday Finds: October 23, 2009

Friday Finds (hosted by Should Be Reading)

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week?

Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

I’m not feeling up to regaling Readers with the usual intro on my Finds this week, so I’ll just let the books speak for themselves.

Waiting for Columbus by Thomas Trofimuk

Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Taken by Norah McClintock

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt

The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen

Under the Dome by Stephen King

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition, More than 1,000 Terms by James Lipton

Booking Through Thursday: Questions for the King

Well, another Thursday is upon us, and that means it is time for yet another Booking Through Thursday prompt. What will it be this week, you ask? Here you go…

Prompt: If you could as your favorite author (dead or alive) one question … who would you ask, and what would the question be?

This is a tough one, because the obvious answer is Stephen King but I can’t think of a decent question to ask, and I detest the Where do you get your ideas? question. Though I may ask him if he intends his stories to be chauvinistic and prop up the patriarchal system by objectifying and denigrating women. But I can already imagine the answer in my head: a very emphatic “NO,” and this in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, but that may be because this would come out subconsciously … a part of the latent text of King’s books. So, maybe that’s not a good answer to this BTT prompt, but that’s the best I can come up with.

Though, thinking about this after I posted, I might pick Ambrose Bierce … because I’d love to know what the hell happened to him.

A-Z Wednesday: The King is Dead: Tales of Elvis Postmortem

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week and post the following:

1. A photo of the book
2. Title and synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: K

My “K” Book is:

The King is Dead: Tales of Elvis Postmortem

edited by Paul M. Sammon

(New York: Delta Books, 1994)

Trade Paperback, 381 Pages, Short Fiction and Nonfiction Anthology

ISBN: 9780385312530, US$12.95

The King Insists on Popping Up in the Strangest Places…

From the Cover: Elvis, dead since August 16, 1977, is everywhere. On postage stamps and CDs, scrawled on Kuwaiti walls during the Persian Gulf War, waking up the astronauts with his songs, branded onto our politics, culture, and art—and inspiring thirty-one authors in this star-studded collection of contemporary writing. Joyce Carol Oates’ signature themes of frustration, violence, and the search for identity resurface in the wittily titled but fundamentally chilling short story “Elvis is Dead: Why Are You Alive?”; Roger Ebert reviews Elvis’ only good movie; both Harlan Ellison and Chet Williamson offer fanciful stories that share a common protagonist—Elvis’ dead-at-birth twin, Jesse—and a common theme: what if Jesse had lived? And Lawrence Block brings back Bernie Rhodenbarr, the hero of his acclaimed mystery series, in a clever caper to photograph Graceland’s secret second floor. A commentary on American life from Graceland to the White House, from “Love Me Tender” to the heart’s secret desires, this offbeat and unpredictable anthology explores the myth of Elvis as a reflection of our nation, our dreams, and ourselves … as it brings vividly to life the King’s all-pervasive influence on American culture.

This collection contains the following pieces: “Burnin’ Luv” by Robert Zasuly, “Damaged Goods” by Lou Reeds, “Elvis Lives” by Lynne Barrett, “Backstage” by Del James, “Double Trouble” by Chet Williamson, “Someone You Never Forget” by Greil Marcus, “The Burglar Who Dropped in on Elvis” by Lawrence Block, “Elvis Is Dead: Why Are You Alive?” by Joyce Carol Oates, “The Shoemaker’s Tale” by Lewis Shiner, “Want” by Christopher Farley, “Limited Additions” by J.S. Russell, “Bubba Ho-Tep” by Joe R. Lansdale, “This Is Elvis” by Roger Ebert, “Elvis Meets Godzilla” by Michael Reaves, “The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its War and Makes Change” by Harlan Ellison, “The Sacred Treasures of Graceland: Excerpts from the Sanctioned Museum Catalogue” by Nancy A. Collins, “Return of the King” by D. Beecher Smith II, “Notes on St. Elvis” by Clive Barker (in Conversation with Paul M. Sammon), “Deep in the Depths of the Acme Warehouse” by Karl Edward Wagner, “Wooden Heart” by Janet Berliner Gluckman, “Donna Rae” by Neal Barrett, Jr., “The King and I” by Stephen A. Manzi, “Fitting Time” by Alan Dean Foster, “Presley 45” by David Morrell, “Love Me Tenderized or You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hot Dog” by Nancy Holder, “Elviscera” by Wayne Allen Sallee, “‘I’m Having Elvis’ Baby!’ by Miss Janet Carter of Pope County, Arkansas” by Kevin Andrew Murphy, “Elvis: He Did It his Way” by Martin Amis, “The Heart of Rock ’n Roll” by Paul M. Sammon, “When Elvis Died: Epilogue” by Neal and Janice Gregory, and “The Eagle Cape” by Victor Koman.

My Thoughts: Picking a K book was easy compared to the last couple of letters, because how can you not want to pick up a book like this? I mean, really? I first became aware of this book when I saw the film Bubba Ho-Tep (starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis (and which is a brilliant film, and you really should check it out)) and learned that the film was based on Joe R. Lansdale’s short story of the same name and anthologized in a book titled The King is Dead: Tales of Elvis Postmortem. My lovely wife surprised me with it the very next Christmas (Thanks again Hon!) and while I haven’t had the chance to crack it open yet (though, I think that when I am done with Rose Madder, I probably will pick this up) I am so glad that I have it on my shelves. This is one of those quirky little books that is really fun to spring on people when they are admiring your book shelves. Oh, you think these are impressive? Well, check this book out! An incredulous laugh and a shake of the head are the most common response … and really, what better reaction to a book could you want? Plus, how could you not want a book with stories by Harlan Ellison, Joe R. Lansdale, David Morrell, Clive Barker, and Joyce Carol Oates (to name just a few) and that has such entries as the aforementioned “Bubba Ho-Tep,” “Elvis Meets Godzilla,” “Love Me Tenderized or You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hot Dog,” “Elviscera,” and “‘I’m Having Elvis’ Baby!’ by Miss Janet Carter of Pope County, Arkansas”?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel like listening to some of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s greatest hits…

Teaser Tuesday: "[He's] Coming to Get You Barba—I Mean ... Rose."

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’ve picked up Stephen King’s Rose Madder after finishing The Peshawar Lancers in order to prep for the literary critical theory paper I’ll be writing in my lit crit class this semester. So, this week’s Teaser comes from the world of Rose and Norman:

Rose Madder

by Stephen King

(New York: Signet, 1996)

Paperback, 479 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780451186362, US$7.50

MY TEASER: “‘When you least expect it, Rose,’ he murmured. ‘That’s when I’ll come for you.’” (174).

Doctor Who: The Nemonite Invasion, An Exclusive Audio Adventure (Audio)

by David Roden

read by Catherine Tate

-Doctor Who, Series 4-

(London: BBC Radio, 2009)

MP3 Audiobook, 65.5 MB, 2.3 Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9781602837621, US$24.95

ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE

From the Cover: Catherine Tate reads this exclusive thrilling story, in which the Doctor and Donna take on a race of dangerous bloodsucking aliens. When the sky rips open, two objects hurtle out of the Vortex and crash-land in the sea. One is the TARDIS, out of control and freefalling—but the other, a mysterious crystalline sphere, is far more sinister. The Doctor and Donna are rescued and taken to a secret command centre in the Dover Cliffs. It’s May 1940, and Vice-Admiral Ramsey is about to finalize one of the most daring plans of the Second World War: Operation Dynamo. But something else has got inside the War Tunnels, a parasitic Nemonite from the crashed sphere. Its aim is to possess all humans and spawn millions of young. The Doctor and Donna must fight for their lives in order to save both Operation Dynamo and the world at large.

My Review: There are a lot of things that will keep me coming back to these Doctor Who audiobooks, not least of which are the various Readers that BBC Audio manages to rope into their studios to narrate the adventures of the Time Lord from Gallifrey. This time around, what really drew me to The Nemonite Invasion was the fact that it was narrated by Catherine “Donna Noble” Tate which—if you are a Whovian—means a lot. The fact that Nemonite employs one of my favorite Doctor Who conventions, the Doctor and his Companion meeting historical figures and getting caught up in the middle of historical events and (A) needing to make sure that they happen or (B) discovering that they are the cause of these events, also helped. This particular audiobook follows Path A and throws the Doctor and Donna into WWII and finding a way that Operation Dynamo (the rescue of 338,226 Allied soldiers (mostly British and French) in the early days of the war (after being routed by the Nazis and finding themselves stranded in Dunkirk) by 850 hastily assembled boats (including Royal Navy vessels, fishing boats, pleasure craft, etc.)) is pulled off and, most importantly, pulled off on time, is a very tense story.

And that is what I find most brilliant about Nemonite (and the other Doctor Who stories that work in this same format): that their authors are able to create such tension surrounding an event (such as the Dunkirk Evacuation) and make the Reader/Listener wonder if the Doctor is going to be able to sort it out in time. I know that the Dunkirk Evacuation happened in reality and that it happened in the reality of Doctor Who, and so there is no real surprise (or spoiler) in saying that Operation Dynamo goes off without a hitch in The Nemonite Invasion … but the fact that David Roden is able to make it doubtful that the rescue will occur is absolutely brilliant.

The other aspect of Nemonite that makes it stand out in my mind as a stellar example of what the Doctor Who audiobooks can do is the fact that this is a Donna Noble story. Now, for those of you who are uninitiated in the world of the rebooted series, briefly Donna Noble was the Doctor’s companion in the fourth season. She is my favorite companion of the reboot winning hands down over Billie Piper’s Rose and edging out Freema Agyeman’s Martha Jones. She was played by the redoubtable Catherine Tate and injected so much heart and pathos and fun into the series. She and David Tennant’s Doctor played very well off of each other, and at the end of the fourth series, Donna’s character creates some of the most emotional scenes of the four seasons to date. It is really amazing what Tate was able to do with the Super Temp from Chiswick. (She also provides some of the absolute best moments from the series, as evidenced HERE, HERE and, my favorite, HERE). That heart and wonderful tenderness that Tate’s Noble brought to the series is also evident in this audiobook. As much fun as the Doctor’s manic and zany energy is, it is Donna who always, in my mind at least, managed to steal the show when she was funny and when she played it straight. There was so much love and emotion and raw power in Tate’s performances that it made Donna Noble come to absolute life, and Tate manages to do that same magic in this audiobook. Donna, especially at the audiobook’s close, is the real hero in a story full of more conventional heroes … but that’s what Donna’s character was always all about: quiet heroics.

As I have ranted again and again as I talk about and review these various Doctor Who audiobooks is the brilliance of the authors’ storytelling abilities, and Roden and The Nemonite Invasion is no exception to that rule. In fact, Nemonite’s story is one of the tightest that I have yet experienced and I dare say that it has some of the most frightening villains that the Doctor has yet encountered, and I’m not just talking about the parasitic Nemonites; Commodore Jarman (at least, I think that that is what his name is … that’s what it sounded like (that’s one of the drawbacks of an audio-only publication)) is one of the scariest and most horrific “bad guys” that the Doctor has yet run across, in my opinion, and one that haunted the entire experience of listening to this audiobook.

David Roden’s The Nemonite Invasion is a definite keeper. Keep a weather-eye out for this one, it is worth going out of your way to experience.