Sunday, September 10, 2006

Book-A-Day #53 (9/8): Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

This is the first novel (publishing in February) by the noted and award winning short-story writer who's been trying to keep quiet the fact that he's the son of a certain famous horror writer, so that his work can succeed on its own merits. (Given how wonderful his debut collection 20th Century Ghosts is, he certainly has a lot of merits of his own.)

My conflicts of interest include:
  • my parent company just bought the bookclub rights to this book, and it will be offered in the SFBC (in fact, I'll probably do a little "handsell" about it)
  • I am a World Fantasy Award Judge this year, and Hill is nominated three times -- for Novella, Short Fiction, and Collection
So, in the interests of not having Strange Horizons claim that I was granted the Secret Order of Mu for agreeing to puff up this novel, I think it's best that I not tell you how much I liked it. (Though it is a ripping yarn, and the best comparison I could make is exactly the one Joe Hill would prefer that I didn't.)

Anyway, you'll probably all be hearing a lot about this book come February, so I'll just say: nyah, nyah, I've read it already.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just realized you have the best job in the universe. You get to read all day. Sigh.

I'm reading Dan Simmons' The Terror right now and so far I love it!

JeffV

Andrew Wheeler said...

Read all day? I laugh and fall to the floor, frothing at the mouth.

Now that I have kids, I can't even managed to read all day on Saturdays, which is when I used to. During the week, it's all the usual desk-job stuff -- pushing these papers over there, entering that stuff in Computer Database # 763, meetings and so on -- and even the catalogs have been piling up, since I haven't had a chance to read them at the office.

I don't think there ever was a time when editors got to sit and read all day -- I've never known of any who did.

Anonymous said...

Well, crap. There goes my last naive assumption...

JeffV

Anonymous said...

Well, crap. There goes my last naive assumption...

JeffV

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