Stuff I've Been Reading October

“Tessa’s feet were screaming in her fasionable boots.”

This sentence, dropped in the middle of a chase scene involving dozens of vicious automatons, apropos to nothing, should let you know all you need to about Cassandra Claire’s immense deficiency as a writer.

In my line of work it behooves me to keep abreast of at least a few YA titles. So when I came across Clockwork Angel, I realized “Hey I like both Victorian London and Eternal Battles against the Darkness! How bad can this be?” Hoo boy.

The blending of Victorian and Occult fiction is a natural one. Both depend upon the thrill of the hidden society concealed within the world. Wheels within wheels powered by arcane codes of conduct.

Anyway the story is the usual mumbo jumbo of a young girl caught in between the forces of darkness represented by blah blah blah. The point is she soon ends up predictably caught between two life support systems for abs and we go on from there.

All the usual flaws are here, characters who range from vapid to merely dim. A plot we’re several steps ahead of at all times. Writing that’s declaritive and dull (It doesn’t help that Claire makes the decision to start each chapter with some of the finest lines of Victorian verse. Reminding our poor brains what good writing does look like) and Banter that is jarringly contemporary.

But here’s the real bad news. There are scenes here, isolated though they may be. That actually suggest Claire could become a good writer. A scene where our young heroine stumbles into an abattoir where the corpses of the innocent are being fused with machines, are written with a vividness that suggests a dark and fertile imagination that Meyer’s and most of her ilk never had.

Should Claire ever shrug off her bad habits it’s possible she could become a hell of a writer.

As she has already been amply rewarded for those bad habits, that seems rather unlikely.






I have begun a delightfully unexpected late in life love affair with Ray Bradbury.

When I was the age when most discover Bradbury his indirect florid prose frustrated me. And to a certain extent, say in something like "Jack In The Box", it still does. But setting aside his stylistic ticks Bradbury is one of those treasured authors who marches in no one’s territory but his own.

Most of the stories in October Country aren’t quite horror, fantasy or sci fi, though some like The Small Assassin would fit quite comfortably. Most just hum along on a kind of all American wrongness. A feeling like you’re conversing with Will Rogers after ingesting a few tabs of acid.

The Halloween Tree exists on the same inimitable plane. It’s hard to imagine a children’s book with scenes as intense as the children’s encounters with Samhain and it’s grisly aftermath being released today. At least not without the school board getting buried in letters. But The Halloween Tree maintains a feeling of good natured malice, if not comprehensibility.




Yeah I’m pretty sure I dug this one.




Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk finds David Sedaris in an unusually vindictive mood. Though there are few writers better at ripping apart people behaving badly, Sedaris more vicious tendencies are usually countermanded by his inherent amusement and affection for people.

He apparently feels no such need when faced with animal characters, and most of his stories quickly fall into levels of bad behavior and misanthropy which are Ellisian. Things pick up a little at the end, when Sedaris lets up on his targets just a little. And his prose is witty and graceful as ever. But it can’t help but all feel more then a little pointless.

I was lucky enough to attend a reading of Sedaris earlier in the week, where he read a few stories. And as expected they worked much better (though unexpectedly, despite what his persona may have you believe Sedaris is borderline gregarious in person. He also drew an owl in my copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day. I have no idea of its meaning and it haunts me) Sedaris reading of his own material has always been as much a key to his success as his prose itself, if not more so. And Squirrel is no exception, in this regard. But perhaps it is an exception as it is the first of his works that cannot stand without it.



Bill Bryson an author of boundless curiosity, humane temperment, lucid civilized prose and a lacerating dry wit is one of the most purely pleasurable authors I know of. A Walk In The Woods is of course, no exception, and arguably his masterwork.

The saga of Bryson’s attempt to walk The Appalachian Trail, A Walk In The Woods is hilarious and unsentimental, and yet full of wonder. Accompanied by his obese fouled tempered Sancho Panza, Katz Bryson chronicles his attempt to hike the AT, intercutting it with musings on the trails history, the disastrous ecological state of America, bemused vignettes on the short comings of other hikers, a fear of bears to rival Stephen Colbert's and whatever else enters his mind.

It’s a worthwhile trip as it always is with Bryson, even if he grows a little defensive at the end. But for anyone who has yet to walk with him, this makes for a perfect introduction.




But in all these tales the dog is the innocent shoot star/
We all wish upon/
Until It burns up, aging fast and disappearing/
Beyond our jagged horizen

I already covered these in my five horror books column. I’ll just note that beyond all it’s affectation Sharp Teeth is a truly human horror story. And even if the master plot never really holds together as much as it seems it is going to, watching it get there is still a thing of beauty.

John Dies At The End is a tough book to review. Since so much of it’s pleasures come from it’s unpredictability. It’s rare when one of its 375 pages does not contain a turn on a dime plot twist, hilarious joke, or truly horrifying concept.

I regret even to inform you that there is a cock punching demon named Shitload (One of the books cleverest jokes. Think about it for a second.) Feeling vaguely like I’m robbing you of something. So if talking about what I like about the book spoils it, and talking about my very minor quibbles, like the fact that it’s really more of two or three novellas stitched together then a cohesive novel, make me feel grinch like, what does that leave me with to talk about?

Well how about this. Buy it! Buy it Now!



I’ll admit I did not have high hopes for American Vampire. I have an aversion to co-authored work And it seemed at first glance to be yet another toss off in a year of toss offs for King. Which he’s used to clear the pipes after Under The Dome.

So it as suprising and thoroughly gratifying to learn that I had thoroughly underestimated American Vampire.

It’s a stylish, funny, badass, dark, substantial, and yes scary reworking of the vampire mythos.

King sums the mission statement up perfectly in his introduction.

“Here’s what Vampires shouldn’t be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and only work at Night, lovelorn southern gentlemen, anorexic teenage girls, and boy toys with dewy eyes.

What should they be?

Killers. Stone Killers who never get enough of that tasty type A.

At the heart of American Vampire lies a surpringly potent metaphor. The title is not accidental. The story follows as the increasingly decrepit and outmoded European Vampires fall in the wake of WWI as the titular American Vampire Skinner Sweet (Who puts the anti in hero then goes ahead and throws away the hero part) rises. His vitality inextricable from his viciousness.

If there is a flaw in the book its that the parellel stories really are parellel stories. Never quite meeting despite the final stinger.

They’re both fine they just plain don’t touch on each other. In the intro King writes that he requested to write Skinner’s origin. And given how the book is structured it’s hard to believe that Scott Synder wouldn’t have waited to reveal Skinner’s origins for a later issue, or perhaps even a miniseries. And for those annoyed by them, be aware that King’s idiosyncrasies as a writer are in full affect. Only King would introduce his full formed Vampire lead by having him burst out of his watery grave, like a pissed off jack in the box with the line “HELLO MOTHER FUCKER GOT ANY CANDY?”

Still I found American Vampire the perfect way to wrap up the holiday season.

Stuff I've Been Reading: June

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson
The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
Imperial Bedrooms, Brett Eaton Ellis
The Passage, Justin Cronin



“Now for a time there is glory in your might; yet soon it shall be that sickness or sword will diminish your strength, of fire’s fangs or flood’s surge or sword’s swing or spear’s flight, or appalling age; brightness of the eyes will fail and grow dark; then it shall be that death will overcome you.”

-Beowulf-

All fantasy fiction, hell most heroic fiction in general, is about death. This is true from everything from The Illiad, to Beowulf, The Sandman, The Chronicles Of Naria, The Lord Of The Rings, even Harry Potter. They all build to a moment when the hero for all their trials and tribulations, for every insurmountable obstacle they have encountered, faces the one that trial that none of us will best.

Whether the death is metaphorical or literal, whether the hero is resurrected in a blaze of glory, sinks gently into the abyss, or is whisked to the grey havens, all fantasy fiction brings us to the point, the absolute limit of our experience.

But I don’t know if I’ve ever read a fantasy novel that crystallizes this idea so perfectly as The Passage. Like The Fountain, its uses genre fiction to explore death not as subtext, but as text. And creates what is probably the most startling work of genre fiction I’ve read since The Stand.

This is not the world wiped clean and about to rebuild. This is a dead world, where even the animals have been scourged from the earth. Not since Children Of Men have I seen a work of art so stunningly depict a world without hope.

It wouldn’t be fair to give away The Passage's story. Suffice to say, what starts as your standard boilerplate about a military experiment gone awry, does such a graceful literary sidestep about two hundred and fifty pages in that it blows my mind.

And just when it seems that the story has gotten off track. (It does contain one pretty big narrative misstep involving an epidemic of psychic contamination that is never explained.) Just when it makes its strokes just a bit too broad and on the nose. Just when it seems the stories becoming too episodic, it resolves itself in a conclusion so strikingly resolved in its purpose, that its just incredible. The finale of The Passage, where everything the hero cares about is taken from him piece by piece, has a narrative purity and resonance to it.

It’s a sequence that reminds us how powerful and necessary heroic fiction can be. How essential it is. As does the book.



I’ve never been a huge Haruki Murakami fan, but I’ve recently started running again and picked up this book on a lark. And have made a habit of reading a chapter after each workout. Finding that I’m more responsive to his spacey detuned prose when my brain is swimming in endorphins.

What I talk about When I Talk About Running is a part memoir part manual as Murakami writes about his history as a writer and a marathon writer. But if you thought that Murakami would be any more straightforward when talking about himself, you don't know him very well.




Everything Bill Bryson writes is witty, interesting, warm and wonderful. He could right a pamphlet on Lawn Mower parts and I would be sure to pick it up. These are both minor pieces of work for Bryson. The first a light etymology. The other a series of columns about adjusting to American life he wrote for an English newspaper. Still no matter how well worn the ground Bryson makes the trip worthwhile.

I have an odd relationship with Hemmingway. I’ve never bought into the cult of Poppa (a nickname that If I hear someone use will guarantee I will never take anything they have to say seriously again). But neither do I dismiss him as so many do, all the dull predictable things the PC critics throw against him. Hemmingway is simply put a valuable 20th century author. He is not however THE valuable 20th century author. And I can easily name a dozen authors from the same time period whose works I’d save from a burning building, before I snatched A Movable Feast.

I buy into the doomed romanticism of The Lost Generation. Perhaps more then I should. And The Sun Also Rises is famous for two things, being the definitive depiction of such, and its rampant anti Semitism.

On one hand it is an appealing depiction of damaged, affluent Americans using Paris and Spain as their playground between the wars. It features Hemingway’s style at his best and worst. His most cartoonishly macho, and haltingly fragile. And it also makes Mel Gibson look like a Zionist.

I actually have pretty strong issues with how easily some stuff gets labeled as racist or misogynistic. A lot of times people seek to penalize authors and directors for their supposed racism or sexism, when what they’re actually doing is commenting on said characteristics (DePalma) or portraying them honestly. These critics seem to live in a world where people aren’t often misogynistic racist assholes. And while that sounds like a pretty great place, the world I live in is chock full of them.

That being said, The Sun Also Rises crosses the line between Joe Friday style “Just the facts reporting.” And actually inexcusable about the eight millionth time Cohn is asked to stop being such a dirty hook nosed kike (not a paraphrase). It’s not the harshness of the language or attitude towards Cohen, which were probably accurate. Nor the fact that Hemingway’s protagonists all agree that Cohn should stop being such a Heeb. This could also be labeled under simple accuracy. No what pushes The Sun Also Rises firmly into troubling is that COHN himself seems to agree that he should stop being such a Jew. His entire role consists of him being a punching bag for people who despise him, because he’s too much of a Jew to either A) punch them in the face or B) tell them to go fuck off. It’s a concept of Jewishness not far removed from Eric Cartman’s.

This is of course not to say that The Sun Also Rises is not worth reading. The difficulty of its subject matter does not preclude its occasional genius. Only mars it.



That The Killer Inside Me should end up pissing a lot of people off should be no surprise to anyone at all, should they have actually read the book. Whatever horrors the scourge of Sundance has on the screen I can more or less guarentee that there are worse ones here on the page writ large in Thompson’s inimitable barb wire prose.

The story of a small town deputy, who loses the carefully maintained control he keeps over his psychosis, partially in a convoluted attempt at revenge, partially to cover up said attempt, and partially because he just plain likes it. Is as merciless as they come.

Reading it is like watching the temperature gauge on a faulty boiler. It quakes in the yellow most of the time, dipping occasionally into the green for some lucid exposition. But every once in awhile it richocets up into the red. And when Thompson does that, when he gives us madness at full bore. It is terrifying.


Fragile Things is basically a collection of B Sides from Neil Gaiman, he admits as much in the prologue, but it’s a reminder of how entertaining even a collection of B-Sides from Gaiman can be.

Its uneven to say the least, and has the distinction of carrying both my favorite and least favorite Neil Gaiman stories ever written. And while its not something I would ever recommend to a beginner, it does offer a wide survey of his styles and obsessions.

Meta fiction becomes Bret Eaton Ellis (I can more or less guarentee that will be the last time you see me type that sentence). Lunar Park is as far as I’m concerned the most underrated book of the decade. A startling meditation on the responsibility of artists (this from a man accused of being among the most irresponsible), post 9/11 tension, Stephen King, and the complicated currents of love and resentment that can flow between father and son. It’s a masterpiece.

And if Imperial Bedrooms never fully coalesces into something worth reading, well for a long time it seems like its going to. Less of a sequel, then an “Elseworlds piece” Imperial Bedroom’s spends its first fifty pages or so gleefully poking its finger into the meeting place between fiction and reality, following Clay the protagonist in Less Then Zero, in a world where Less Then Zero (Both the book and the film) exist.

The insurmountable Problem with Imperial Bedrooms, is that while Less Then Zero was about a group of people watching the last remaining bits of their souls flicker out and die, Imperial Bedrooms is about characters who are already dead inside. They have finally become the “cock sucking coke snorting zombies” Ellis so famously derided in the no hold’s barred opening of Lunar Park.

Ellis has always been an author who is often unfairly accused of being immoral because he portrays immorality so well. Its odd because there’s nothing glamourous about Ellis’s depiction of evil. Its empty hunger and venality fueled to abhorrent levels by boredom and fear. Empty consumption driven to the breaking point by the characters numbness.

And yet even as the main character in Imperial Bedrooms falls to depths yet unseen by Ellis characters, the effect is curiously underwhelming. The resulting Damnation or redemption only matters if you care one way or the other. And for the first time with Ellis, I didn’t.