, which was edited by Brendan Burford. It's got a very low-key, serious package, but it's full of good, interesting comics, so I hope it doesn't get overlooked in favor of flashier competition.
This is the expanded and revised edition, published in hardcover in 2000 -- it sat on my shelves for several years, and then I've been reading it, an entry here and there, for the past two years. (It was my bathroom book, actually -- I may have an odd sense of what makes a good bathroom book.)
:The Governor paused and looked reflectively over at Bond. He said: 'You're not married, but I think it's the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good. That particular insult to the ego -- worse, to the instinct of self-preservation -- can never be forgiven. I've noticed this in hundreds of marriages. I've seen flagrant infidelities patched up, I've seen crimes and even murder forgiven by the other party, let alone bankruptcy and every other form of social crime. Incurable disease, blindness, disaster -- all these can be overcome. But never the death of common humanity in one of the partners. I've thought about this and I've invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in human relations. I have called it the Law of the Quantum of Solace.'----------------
To reiterate what I say every week: I love getting books to review in the mail, but I feel guilty about it as well, since I know I'll never manage to read all of the books I see, let alone write anything coherent about them afterward. So, to make sure I can give everything at least a little attention, I do weekly round-up posts of the books that have just arrived at La Casa Hornswoggler.
. I didn't read the first book (Acacia), though several people whose opinion I respect liked it a lot have praised it highly. (I haven't started any new epic fantasy series since I left the old job, though -- I may have burned out on the subgenre for a few years.) Other Lands will be published in hardcover by Doubleday on September 15th.
To switch gears immediately, the next book on the pile -- this week, I didn't reorganize it, for once, so I'm just running through things in the reverse order that they came in the mail -- is a manga volume from Del Rey, by Hosana Tanaka, called Ninja Girls, Vol. 1
. It's the usual lost-heir stuff -- common to both Westerners and Easterners -- with the typical manga fillips that this lost heir can be told by the small horn in the middle of his head, and that a group of "beautiful ninja girls" are going to try to restore him to the throne. I can say nothing against a book called Ninja Girls; this hit stores August 11th.
. It's a highschool love story, in which the heroine has just declared her love for an older boy at school, and had him reject her...and then goes to live with her long-estranged mother, and learned that the dreamy boy is actually her older brother. (Well, half-brother. No, wait! He's actually the son of mom's first ex-husband, so he's no blood relation at all! Whew!) Manga love to traffic in near-incestual relationships, for reasons I won't try to characterize, and this is yet another one of those. I also note from the back cover that the heroine has seaweed-green hair, which matches her eyes.
Red Snow
is another translation of Japanese comics, but it comes from the other end of that tradition -- it's a collection of short stories by Susumu Katsumata, who was part of the gekiga movement for realist and adult themes and has published extensively in the seminal avant-garde magazine Garo. Red Snow collects stories of rural Japan, based on Katamata's childhood, and it won the Japanese Cartoonists Association Grand Prize in 2006. Drawn & Quarterly will publish Red Snow in September in hardcover.
, another book in James Barclay's heroic fantasy series "Chronicles of the Raven." (That Raven being, as I never tire of quoting, "six men and an elf," which sounds more and more like a World of Warcraft-themed porno the more I think about it.) It was originally published in the UK in 1999, but it's only making its way across the Atlantic now, with this spiffy trade paperback from Pyr, which will be in stores September 15th.
My eternal suspicion that my mailman reads some of my mail -- fueled by the fact that I've occasionally gotten two issues of The New Yorker the same day, one of them a week late -- has been aroused again by the arrival of Kim Dong Hwa's The Color of Water
, second in the graphic novel trilogy about the coming of age of a young Korean woman about a century ago. I blame my mailman, because I saw the third book, The Color of Heaven, about three weeks ago, and Water was publishing earlier (in September). So, if you happen to be reading this and are my mailman, know this: I'm watching you.) Also, see my review of the first book, The Color of Earth.
Those who get hissy-fits at "spoilers" shouldn't even look at the title of David Wong's John Dies at the End
, a webserial-turned-small-published-book-turned-big-published-book (and in the process of turning into a movie, too) coming on October 2nd from Thomas Dunne Books. From what I've heard -- I haven't read any of the iterations of this story so far -- it's one of those comic horror stories that all the kids love these days. (I'm getting old enough now to say that ironically, right?)
These Fantastic Books are all reprints of existing material, but are mostly new collections of stories, which is always good to see. Those books are:
, collecting four novellas (originally published in 2009, 1982, 1980, and 1964) by Damien Broderick.
, a collection of fourteen stories by James Gunn, originally published between 1972 and 2001 (mostly in the '70s and '80s). This is probably identical to the 2002 Five Star collection by the same name.
, which collects fifteen stories by T. Jackson King, mostly from the early '90s.
, James Gunn's first novel, originally published in 1955.
-- finale of the Crossroads Trilogy -- back in May in bound-galley form, and don't really have anything new to say about it now. It's a Tor hardcover that published last week.
And last for this week is the paperback of Marisa Acocella Marchetto's Cancer Vixen
, a graphic-novel memoir of her falling in love and getting breast cancer. I thought I'd done a full-fledged review of it, but I'd misremembered -- I just mentioned it briefly in this monthly round-up last February. Marchetto is a real character -- she portrays herself as very much the thin NYC fashionista, but with a wink -- and she tells her story with a cartoonist's eye for the telling details and for dialogue. This paperback edition will be published by Pantheon on September 29th.
I was a teenager in the '80s myself -- though I never worked at an amusement park -- so I was pre-disposed to like Adventureland, in which Jesse Eisenberg (whom The Wife and I just saw in his far more obscure movie Roger Dodger earlier in the week; it's truly an odd and random world) plays the Michael Cera character: young, earnest, tongue-tied, sexually inexperienced and naive, and amazingly good-natured.
Bond is a broken man as You Only Live Twice begins, the one thing he cared about in life (however clumsily Fleming had set that thing up in the previous novel, One Her Majesty's Secret Service) taken from him. He's fumbled two missions in a row, and this time he's not amusing himself with writing mental resignation letters -- he's beginning to expect M to demand his resignation, for cause, at any time.
.
:'This underground war I was talking about, this crime battle that's always going on -- whether it's being fought between cops and robbers or between spies and counter-spies. This is a private battle between two trained armies, one fighting on the side of law and of what his own country thinks is right, and one belonging to the enemies of these things.' Captain Stonor was now talking to himself. I imagined that he was reciting something -- something he felt very strongly about -- perhaps had said in speeches or in an article in some police magazine. 'But in the higher ranks of these forces, among the toughest of the professionals, there's a deadly quality in the persons involved which is common to both -- to both friends and enemies.' The captain's closed fist came softly down on the wooden table-top for emphasis, and his inward-looking eyes burned with a dedicated, private anger. 'The top gangsters, the top FBI operatives, the top spies and the top counter-spies are cold-hearted, cold-blooded, ruthless, tough, killers, Miss Michel. Yes, even the "friends" as opposed to the "enemies". They have to be. They wouldn't survive if they weren't. Do you get me?" Captain Stonor's eyes came back into focus, Now they held mine with a friendly urgency that touched my feelings -- but not, I'm ashamed to say, my heart. 'So the message I want to leave with you, my dear -- and I've talked with Washington and I've learned something about Commander Bond's outstanding record in his particular line of business -- is this. Keep away from all these men. They are not for you, whether they're called James Bond or Sluggsy Morant. Both these men, and others like them, belong to a private jungle into which you've strayed for a few hours and from which you've escaped. So don't go and get sweet dreams about the one or nightmares from the other. They're just different people from the likes of you -- a different species.'----------------
On Her Majesty's Secret Service is implicitly the second book of a trilogy; it follows Thunderball and precedes You Only Live Twice in what I'm sure someone has called "the SPECTRE trilogy." This time, Bond actually comes face to face with his supposed nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, though Blofeld doesn't really stack up well against Doctor No and Goldfinger, or even Hugo Drax from Moonraker.
My sons love Robert Rodriguez's movies. Oh, sure, they only know his stuff for kids -- the three Spy Kids movies and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl -- but they really like those movies. That's not to say that they even realize that one guy directed all those movies, because I don't think they do know that. But they know what they like, and they like Rodriguez movies for kids. So they've been bugging The Wife and I about Shorts for as long as the previews and ads have been running, and I took them to see it this Saturday afternoon, after the rain and general bad weather put the kibosh on our planned trip into NYC.
Campbell Scott is one of those actors you recognize from his face rather than from his name; he works a lot -- and he has a type of character he plays regularly -- but he doesn't generally headline movies. Roger Dodger, for whatever reason, is the story of a Campbell Scott character, and he's as caustic and demanding in each one of these hundred-odd minutes as he usually is in his typical three-to-five minute scene in a more normal movie.
:Women are often meticulous and safe drivers, but they are very seldom first-class. In general Bond regarded them as a mild hazard and he always gave them plenty of road and was ready for the unpredictable. Four women in a car he regarded as the highest potential danger, and two women nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk they have to look into each other's faces. An exchange of words in not enough. They have to see the other person's expression, perhaps in order to read behind the other's words or to analyse the reaction to their own. So two women in the front seat of a car constantly distract each other's attention from the road ahead and four women are more than double dangerous, for the driver not only has to hear, and see, what her companion is saying, but also, for women are like that, what the two behind are talking about.----------------
But this girl [Domino] drove like a man. She was entirely focused on the road ahead and on what was going on in her driving mirror, an accessory rarely used by women except for making up their faces. And, equally rare in a woman, she took a man's pleasure in the feel of her machine, in the timing of her gear changes, and the use of her brakes.
, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Guy Davis.
Dick is an absolute hoot, and I don't know how I managed not to see it for the last ten years. It's a secret history movie -- one in which what we all think really happened during some period in the past didn't really happen that way -- in which two bubble-headed teenage girls were responsible for the downfall of Richard Nixon.
This is the real oddity among the Bond novels: it's much shorter than the others, and is the only one of the books told in the first person. Even more oddly, it's not in Bond's voice, and he only shows up about two-thirds of the way through this slim novel.
:There was the blur of a pretty face hidden by white motoring goggles with dark blue lenses. Although Bond only saw the edge of a profile -- a slash of red mouth and the fluttering edge of black hair under a pink handkerchief with white spots, he knew she was pretty from the way she held her head. There was the authority of someone who is used to being admired, combined with the self-consciousness of a girl driving alone and passing a man in a smart car.----------------
Bond thought: That would happen today! The Loiure is dressed for just that -- chasing the girl until you run her to ground at lunch-time, the contact at the empty restaurant by the river, out in the garden under the vine trellis. The friture and the ice-cold Vouvray, the cautious sniffing at each other and then the two cars motoring on in convoy until that evening, well down to the South, there would be the place they had agreed upon at lunch -- olive trees, crickets singing in the indigo dusk, the discovery that they liked each other and that their destinations could wait. Then, next day ('No, not tonight. I don't know you well enough, and besides I'm tired') they would leave her car in the hotel garage and go off in his at a tangent, slowly, knowing there was no hurry for anything, driving to the west, away from the big roads. What was that place he had always wanted to go to, simply because of the name? Yes, Entre Deux Seins, a village near Les Baux. Perhaps there wasn't even an inn there. Well, then they would go on to Las Baux itself, at the Bouches du Rhone on the edge of the Camargue. There they would take adjoining rooms (not a double room, it would be too early for that) in the fabulous Baumaniere, the only hotel-restaurant in France with Michelin's supreme accolade. They would eat the gratin de langouste and perhaps, because it was traditional on such a night, drink champagne. And then....
Bond smiled at his story and at the dots that ended it. Not today. Today you're working. Today is for Goldfinger, not for love.
We've hit the point where it's possible for one person to make a movie -- except for voices, Nina Paley was entirely responsible for Sita Sings the Blues.
We've given up on the last decade or two of Bond movies, at least for now, but we're still watching movies as a family just about every Saturday night. Last week was Ponyo, before that was Ghostbusters, and this week we saw a massive wedge of cheese The Wife and I hadn't looked at for nearly thirty years: Flash Gordon.
Thunderball is to the Bond novels what For Your Eyes Only would later be to the movies -- a moment where the series steps back from cartoonish excesses, integrating some of the new baroque elements and dropping others to return to the strengths of earlier works.
First, the obligatory explanation: since I review books, publishers send me books to review. I appreciate that, and -- particularly since I'm a book marketer myself, though for things much drier and useful than fiction and comics -- I want to do what I can to help those books find the readers that will enjoy them. But I know that I won't manage to review them all -- and I'll certainly dislike, even loathe, some of those books, so they wouldn't all get positive reviews.
, an attempt to turn the very popular American superhero property X-Men into something like the very popular Japanese manga format and style. It's written by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman (both of whom are cartoonists in their own right), with authentically Japanese art by Anzu and her studio. (There's the usual manga page in the back, where Anzu introduces her helpers, apologizes for missing her deadlines, promises to do better in the future, and all the rest.) In this version of the X-Men, the focus is on teenage Kitty Pryde, who's enrolling in a special school for people with extraordinary powers -- so far, so very similar to many manga, right?. But this school, before she got there, was all-boys -- another very manga-style concept -- which I take to mean that Phoenix, Storm, Rogue, et. al. don't exist in this continuity. I know just enough of the X-Men basics to be interested in this very different version, and have been out of the loop long enough that I doubt I'll care (or necessarily notice) the things Telgemeier and Roman have changed. So this looks like fun to me. Del Rey Manga published it, in the usual manga format, on August 18th.
Next is something very unlikely; the 11th book in a series I've never read and never had any thought I would read -- Babymouse: Dragonslayer
. (If my children wre girls instead of boys, I'm sure I'd know this series well -- but they're not, so I don't.) As I understand it, Babymouse is a very popular character with tween girls (I may be overstating the age of the target audience, actually), and her graphic novel adventures have led to various other products with her image on them. This book is one part fantasy quest -- all in Babymouse's head, as far as I can tell -- and one part math-is-tough-but-worth-it school story. It's by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm -- the brother-and-sister team that created the character and did the previous ten books -- and will be officially published tomorrow by Random House.
I reviewed Jack O'Connell's The Resurrectionist
when it was published in hardcover last summer; it's now coming out in a trade paperback edition this September 22nd from Algonquin. I didn't entirely like the book, but it's full of interesting bits, and plenty of other smart readers liked it much better than I did.
. The first book, The Traveler, came into the SFBC back when I still worked there, but my boss (World Fantasy Life Achievement Award-designate and upcoming Worldcon Guest of Honor Ellen Asher) read it instead. And that's fine -- it's a metaphysical thriller set in the modern world and a secondary one, which isn't usually my thing. But it does mean I can't say much about this one. It is the big finish to the series, which presumably means that the heroes will win and the villains will be defeated -- that's what makes it fiction -- but I don't really know who either of those groups are. Anyway, this is a big book for Doubleday, coming in hardcover on September 8th, and they really hope that you, or someone like you, will go out and buy it.
:Many unlikely people play golf, including people who are blind, who have only one arm, or even no legs, and people often wear bizarre clothes to the game. Other golfers don't think them odd, for there are no rules of appearance of dress at golf. That is one of its minor pleasures. But Goldfinger had made an attempt to look smart at golf and that is the only way of dressing that is incongruous on a links. Everything matched in a blaze of rust-coloured tweed from the buttoned 'golfer's cap' centered on the huge, flaming red hair, to the brilliantly polished, almost orange shoes. The plus-four suit was too well cut and the plus-fours themselves had been pressed down the sides. The stockings were of a matching heather mixture and had green garter tabs. It was as if Goldfinger had gone to his tailor and said, 'Dress me for golf -- you know, like they wear in Scotland.' Social errors made no impression on Bond, and for the matter of that he rarely noticed them. With Goldfinger it was different. Everything about the man had grated on Bond's teeth from the first moment he had seen him. The assertive blatancy of his clothes was just part of the malevolent animal magnetism that had affected Bond from the beginning.One feels the need to note that Fleming specifically denies that Goldfinger -- ugly, grasping, uncouth, obsessed with gold -- is Jewish. That's good to know. Wouldn't want to think he's a stereotype or anything.
I'm on the Borders e-mail list, so I get some kind of offer from them at least once a week -- usually it's something like "all DVD box sets 30% off in stores" or "buy one paperback, get another for 30% off, limited to store stock only." And usually I put the coupon aside, sometimes with a vague intention to go to the (very close) Borders to see what they have. But recently they sent me a coupon with a better offer, which was also good at their website, and so I've actually spent some money.
is Silverberg's memoirs of his life in the science fiction world -- conglomerated and adapted from various things Silverberg has written (introductions, columns, etc.) over the past few decades for various reasons. It seems to be all edited together to form a coherent narrative -- and, even if it isn't, I've mentioned several times in the past that I have a weakness for collections of fiction writers' occasional nonfiction, so I expect I'll like this even if it is choppy and disjointed. It's published by an outfit called Nonstop Press, whom I've never heard of. (They say that they're in New York, which is even more surprising -- the book credits Luis Ortiz as editor and Bret Erway as copy editor, and I haven't heard of them. Have I been out of the SF world that long?)
And the other Silverberg book is the third in the ongoing Subterranean Press "Collected Stories" series -- the first of them that I think I've bought, which shows how far behind I am -- Something Wild is Loose
, which collects stories from 1969 to 1972. Silverberg is and was an amazing writer of short fiction, and that's perhaps his best period. So -- assuming I ever have time to get to this book, which is a big assumption -- I've got a great book of short stories to look forward to. And now I'm officially collecting this series, so I'd better hurry and find the other books.
I can't tell you the last time that I saw a movie on opening day, but I did it for Hayao Miyazaki's new film Ponyo, and the whole Hornswoggler clan (The Wife and my sons Thing 1 and Thing 2) loved it.
For Your Eyes Only is the only break in the novel-a-year pace of the Bond books; one wonders (without bothering to do any research) if Kruschev's real-world dismantling of SMERSH, Bond's overall nemesis, in 1958 might possibly have caused a novel to run onto the rocks and sink. (Or perhaps Fleming was caught up in one of the earlier schemes to make a Bond movie, or just took more time with the next year's Thunderball -- which was based on a screen treatment by Fleming and two others, after all -- or maybe there's some reason I couldn't even guess.) It collects the five Bond short stories that had been published to that point, which were::A repainted sky-blue Ford Popular with large yellow ears was scurrying along the crown of the road ahead. Mechanically Bond gave the horn ring a couple of short, polite jabs. There was no reaction. The Ford Popular was doing its forty. Why should anyone want to go more than that respectable speed? The Ford obstinately hunched its shoulders and kept on its course. Bond gave it a sharp blast, expecting it to swerve. He had to touch his brakes when it didn't. Damn the man! Of course! The usual tense figure, hands held too high up on the wheel, and the inevitable hat, this time a particularly hideous black bowler, square on a large bullet head. Oh well, thought Bond, they weren't his stomach ulcers. He changed down and contemptuously slammed the DB III past on the inside. Silly bastard!----------------
:What else could he guess? Bond always distrusted short men, They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big -- bigger than the others who had teased them as a child., Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world. And what about a misshapen short man with a red hair and a bizarre face? That might add up to a really formidable misfit. One could certainly feel the repressions. There was a powerhouse of vitality humming in the man that suggested if one stuck an electric bulb into Goldfinger's mouth it would light up. Bond smiled at the thought.----------------
, the latest in his series about infamous murders.And I was one of the contributors to that meld, along with Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Rose Fox, Pablo Defendini, and several others.First it seemed like everyone was writing a blog. Then it seemed like everyone was getting a MySpace page. Now it seems like everyone is hopping on the FaceBook and Twitter trains. We asked this week's panel about it:
Q: How has blogging and the emergence of social networking changed the face of publishing? How has it affected you personally?
:Doctor No said quietly, 'You said that power was an illusion, Mister Bond. Do you change your mind? My power to select this particular death for the girl is surely not an illusion. However, let us proceed to the method of your departure. That also has its novel aspects. You see, Mister Bond, I am interested in the anatomy of courage -- in the power of the human body to endure. But how to measure human endurance? How to plot a graph of the will to survive, the tolerance of pain, the conquest of fear? I have given much thought to the problem, and I believe I have solved it. It is, of course, only a rough and ready method, and I shall learn by experience as more and more subjects are put to the test. I have prepared you for the experiment as best I could. I gave you a sedative so that your body should be rested and I have fed you well so that you may be at full strength. Future -- what shall I call them -- patients, will have the same advantages. All will start equal in that respect. After that it will be a question of the individual's courage and powers of endurance.' Doctor No paused, watching Bond's face. 'You see, Mister Bond, I have just finished constructing an obstacle race, an assault course against death. I will say no more about it because the element of surprise is one of the constituents of fear, It is the unknown danger that are the worst, that bear most heavily on the reserves of courage, And I flatter myself that the gauntlet you will run contains a rich assortment of the unexpected. It will be particularly interesting, Mister Bond, that a man of your physical qualities is to be my first competitor. It will be most interesting to observe how far you get down the course I have devised. You should put up a worthy target figure for future runners. I have high expectations of you. You should go far, but when, as is inevitable, you have finally failed at an obstacle, your body will be recovered and I shall most meticulously examine the physical state of your remains. The data will be recorded. You will be the first dot on a graph. Something of an honour, is it not, Mister Bond?'----------------
Goldfinger is Doctor No done again, with slight variations -- in some ways, it's more refined and tightened (particularly in the three-encounters structure), and in others, it's clumsier (as with the shuffling of three Bond girls, and the anti-climax at Fort Knox). The most interesting lesson of Goldfinger-the-book is that Goldfinger-the-movie is faithful to all of the things that are good about it, and deviates only to be more like Doctor No (the book and movie), only to be more like the Platonic ideal of a James Bond story.
It was written by a TV guy, Glenn Eichler, and illustrated by Nick Bertozzi., in which James and Honey are the unwilling guests of the titular Doctor:He stood away and held her at arms' length. For a moment they looked at each other, their eyes bright with desire, She was breathing fast, her lips parted so that he could see the glint ot teeth. He said unsteadily, 'Honey, get into that bath before I spank you.'What is it with mid-20th century guys threatening to spank their girlfriends?
For some reason, I thought How to Lose Friends & Alienate People was a Run Fatboy Run-level Simon Pegg vehicle, so I didn't rush to see it, and came in with very low expectations. But it's actually pretty good -- oh, it's no Hot Fuzz; I'll admit, but it's funny a lot of the time, and the "only a non-elite life is worth living" message doesn't become dull and blunt until near the obvious end -- so I was happily surprised.
See this morning's first post for the reasons for the split and my weekly attempt to explain why I do this in the first place; here are the books that arrived last week that have just words on their pages:
pride of place here because it has my favorite SF/F cover this week -- a gorgeously evocative painting from Kinuko Y. Craft. (Goes to check the flap to see if he got it right -- Yes!) Warrington is a British writer with seventeen novels under her belt, but Elfland is the first one to be published in the US, and is the first novel in a series that the book itself calls "Aetherial Tales" but the letter refers to as "Books of the Silver Wheel." It's a contemporary fantasy about a society of Aetherials -- humanoids who came to Earth from the Otherworld some long time ago, and presumably have some variety of magical abilities -- and their travails when the usual every-seven-years opening of the Gates to their homeland doesn't happen on schedule. Tor will publish Elfland in hardcover on August 18th, which is tomorrow.
The Silver Skull
is a Cold War novel, about an island nation under secret siege from an implacable enemy that seeks to overwhelm and conquer it, and the superspy who battles those enemies to save his Queen. It is England, but the Queen is the first Elizabeth and the spy is Will Swyfte (a name that possibly seemed more glamorous in the 1560s than it does to my ears). And the enemy is the forces of Faerie. Now, it may be just because I'm in the middle of reading all of the James Bond books, but that sounds like a damn good premise to me. But Mark Chadbourn thought of it first, so my hat is off to him. (And my cloak is covering a mud puddle so he can cross the street.) Pyr will publish The Silver Skull in November as a trade paperback, and I imagine they will have more in the series down the road.
From DAW as a September mass-market is Seanan McGuire's debut novel, Rosemary and Rue
, the first book in a contemporary fantasy series with a strong Faerie strain. I'm sorry to inform you that McGuire's series heroine has the stripperific name October Daye, though. But it's entirely possible that she's already tormented her (fictional) parents sufficiently for that.
-- about a high school overrun with zombies in the middle of the heroine's junior year -- when I saw the bound galley a few weeks ago, but I now have the finished book, so I'll mention it again. I like the title, I like the cover, and I particularly like (given the books I've been reading this past year, like How To Ditch Your Fairy and Flora's Dare) YA novels with first-person female narrators. So, if I ever get the time to actually read it, I expect I'd like Never Slow Dance With a Zombie. Tor Teen is publishing it as a really cheap trade paperback ($8.99!)...tomorrow!
Barely Bewitched
is the second novel in a humorous and romantic contemporary fantasy series that prides itself on its southern flavor. (Although it's set in Texas, and I know plenty of people who argue that Texas is not part of "the South," in its Platonic form.) The author is Kimberly Frost, the first-person witch narrator has the very southern name Tammy Jo, and the first book (in case you remember it) was Would-Be Witch. Berkley publishes Barely Bewitched on September 1st as a trade paperback.
and the editor is Denise Little. It has eleven original SF stories -- from writers like Laura Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jody Lynn Nye, and Janny Wurts -- on the subject of evolution vs. creationism. (I expect a fair number of alien gods to be involved, but I could be projecting a '50s mindset onto it.) The Usual Suspects should note that six of the stories here -- more than half -- are by women, so they can't complain about it. Perhaps they'd prefer to celebrate something instead? Intelligent Design is a September DAW mass-market paperback, making its way through the distribution chain right this moment.
Violette Malan's new novel The Storm Witch
-- a September trade paperback from DAW -- is another adventure of yet more people with interesting names, Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane. Dhu and Par -- I call them by their nicknames, the little scamps -- are both Partners with a capital P and members of the Mercenary Guild with a capital MG. (Though, sadly, they don't drive an MG, which would be a totally awesome thing to toss into an otherwise normal sword-and-sorcery novel.) Please do not confuse Malan's The Storm Witch with Jam'es Clem'ens' Wit'ch Storm
, which is completely different and has the capability to completely fry your brain.
. It sees Reichert return to her most popular series for the first time since 1998's The Children of Wrath. And it's got a nice Jody Lee cover of a man who doesn't seem to have any eyeballs. (I am assuming, tentatively, that this is a plot point.) He does have a couple of cool swords, though, and the requisite flowy red hair to show that this is a Norse-inspired fantasy. Flight of the Renshai will hit stores in hardcover on September 1st.
There's usually one week each month where the mail is much heavier than the others, and, for August, that would be this week. (Unless one of the next two weeks turns out even heavier, which would be awesome in more than one way.) So my usual single post is being broken into two pieces; the second half will cover SF and Fantasy books, and should be popping up here in a couple of hours.
, which W.W. Norton will publish in hardcover on September 8th. I've only just seen it now, because I only got to BEA on Saturday, after the buzz had gone around the hall several times and the galleys had evaporated. Small is an award-winning children's book author -- he got the Caldecott, among others -- but this is his first work for adults, and his first graphic novel. Small grew up in the '50s, in one of those families we now call dysfunctional, but were just "families" back then. It's one I'm really looking forward to.
On a whole different level -- but also wonderful in their own way -- are three collections of Antonio Prohias's long-running "Spy Vs. Spy" feature from Mad magazine: Danger! Intrigue! Stupidity!
, Missions of Madness
and Masters of Mayhem
. If you read Mad any time from the '60s to the '80s, you know Prohias's work: those two color-coded, beaked agents of destruction, forever scheming to destroy each other and neither of them ever being successful. Prohias's strips are reminiscent of Chuck Jones's Roadrunner cartoons -- only with two coyotes and no roadrunner. Each of these three medium-sized trade paperbacks -- a little bigger than a mass-market -- collects nearly two hundred pages of wordless Spy Vs. Spy strips, with all of their attendant inventive violence and intrigue. They're all available this month from Watson-Guptill.
The Big Kahn
is a new graphic novel by Neil Kleid (Xeric Award-winning author of Brownsville
) and Nicolas Cinquegrani. It's the story of a beloved Rabbi -- except that, after his death, his family and congregation learn that Rabbi David Kahn wasn't Jewish in the first place. The book description mostly talks about Kahn's two sons, and how they deal with the revelation...but (and I'm sure I'll have to read the book to figure out how this comes into play) Judiaism is determined matrilineally, so they're still precisely as Jewish as they were before, and that all depends on their mother (who, presumably, is just as Jewish after her husband's death as she was before it, no matter how Jewish, precisely, that was). The Big Kahn is being published in September by NBM.
Adam Rapp is a writer in various media (plays, novels, films) who seems to specialize in the horrific and the unpleasant -- his one adult novel is called The Year of Endless Sorrows
, for example -- and he's now come to comics with the graphic novel Ball Peen Hammer
, joined by George O'Connor on art. (And can I complain about the credits on this book? It's a graphic novel, not an illustrated piece of prose, so it's insulting to O'Connor's work to credit it as "by Adam Rapp; artwork by George O'Connor" unless Rapp actually laid out the damn thing and O'Connor just followed his thumbnails. The art in comics is as important as the words; turning a script into a page is more than just "illustrating.") Ball Peen Hammer takes place in one of your obligatory nihilistic near futures, in a conveniently nameless city where the survivors of "war and plague" (why not throw in famine and death while you're at it?) form "diseased deranged mobs that roam the streets." I warn you: the publisher calls it "an unflinching meditation on art and human nature," which usually means that none of the characters are pleasant, that most of them die in hideous ways, that the ending is bleak and depressing, and that you may not be able to understand large stretches of it. Of course, I may be wrong. Ball Peen Hammer will be published October 1st by First Second.
Del Rey and the Dabel Brothers extend their beachhead into graphic novel urban fantasy (already established with the Jim Butcher books together, and with other Dabel projects with other co-publishers) in Mercy Thompson: Homecoming
, an original graphic novel in Patricia Briggs's popular werewolf series. It's written by Briggs and David Lawrence (an editor at Dabel and the creator of the Ex-Mutants) and has art by Francis Tsai and Amelia Woo, and it will be on shelves as a hardcover on August 25th.
I've only seen Johnny Ryan's work -- which is deliberately offensive in nearly every possible way, showing an impressive comprehensiveness -- in small doses before, but now I have a concentrated shot of Ryan at his best/worst. Prison Pit: Book One
is the first in a new series about ultra-violence among a group of nasty characters inspired equally by pro wrestling, Fist of the North Star, and Grand Theft Auto. I expect epic levels of scatology and violence with a vague SFnal skin, all in Ryan's only slightly grown-up version of the notebook drawings of that creepy boy we all knew in seventh grade. Prison Pit is publishing on October 20th.
is a major graphic novel, in a vaguely steampunk style, from Hans Rickheit. I don't know Rickheit's work, but it looks to fit in well with the general run of Fantagraphics' creators: careful detailed art slightly reminiscent of Rick Geary, and a deeply symbolic, surreal story that follows image much more than narrative. It's also coming October 20th.
I complain about the world sometimes -- who doesn't? -- but it's hard to find fault with a world in which Love and Rockets: New Stories, No. 2
lands on my doorstep when I didn't expect it. That's a world that still has grace and surprise in it, a world I can believe in. The current incarnation of Love and Rockets -- one of the best comics of all time, with separate but compatible universes of story created by brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez for the past almost thirty years -- is a yearly trade paperback with about fifty pages of comics from each of them. It's also coming on October 20th.
includes two new stories by South African cartoonist Joe Daly, both of them featuring stoners Dave and Paul. I don't know Daly's work -- his previous book is Scrublands
, from 2006 -- but Fanta describes this one as "stuffed to the gills with mystery, suspense, action, adventure, conspiracy theories, cool cars, and massive amounts of killer weed." It's yet another piece of Fanta's attempt to utterly dominate the comics world on October 20th.
You know, all of these books from Fantagraphics are publishing on October 20th, so I probably don't need to say that every time. Hmm. Anyway, next is Giraffes in my Hair: A Rock 'N' Roll Life
, by Bruce Paley (who lived it) and Carol Swain (who drew it). Paley and Swain "live together in London," according to the publicity materials for this book, which I guess means that Paley is still far too rock 'n' roll to get married. Giraffes tells stories from ten years of Paley's life, from the late '60s through the late '70s, from his late teens to about thirty. Swain is an acclaimed British cartoonist, and this book was well-reviewed when it was originally published in France.
, a noir graphic novel adapted by Tardi from the novel Le Petit Bleu de la Cote Ouest by Jean-Patrick Manchette (the novel has been translated into English as Three To Kill
) and originally published in 1976.
:Doctor No said, in the same soft resonant voice, 'You are right, Mister Bond., That is just what I am, a maniac. All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders -- all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their genius, would have kept them in the groove of their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum, the lack of follow-through -- these are the vices of the herd.' Doctor No sat slightly back in his chair., 'I do not possess these vices. I am, as you correctly say, a maniac -- a maniac, Mister Bond, with a mania for power. That' -- the black holes glittered blankly at Bond through the contact lenses -- 'is the meaning of my life. That is why I am here. That is why you are here. That is why here exists.'----------------
I guess I shouldn't call I Love You, Man a "romantic comedy," since the world wants to call it a "bromance" -- more than that, the movie that revitalized "bromances," as if there was a vast pool of previous movies in that category. But it's a movie about love with a lot of jokes in it, which makes it a romantic comedy by any standard other than the most blinkered Hollywood definition -- the kind that includes notes of demographics and discussions of Reese Witherspoon's oevure.
I don't feel bad about missing The Wrong Guy, because everyone missed The Wrong Guy. It's a Dave Foley vehicle from 1997 -- back when it seemed like "a Dave Foley vehicle" could be a category; probably filmed in the hiatus after NewsRadio's first season -- that has something of the feel of mid-period Kids in the Hall.:'Well, anyway we all lived happily together until I was fifteen and Nanny died and then things got difficult. There was a man called Mander. A horrible man. He was the white overseer for the people who own the property. He kept coming to see me. He wanted me to move up to his house near Port Maria. I hated him and I used to hide when I heard his horse coming through the cane. One night he came on foot and I didn't hear him. He was drunk. He came into the cellar and fought with me because I wouldn't do what he wanted me to do. You know, the things people in love do.'----------------
'Yes, I know.'
'I tried to kill him with my knife, but he was very strong and he hit me as hard as he could in the face and broke my nose. He knocked me unconscious and then I think he did things to me. I mean I know he did. Next day I wanted to kill myself when I saw my face and when I found what he had done. I thought I would have a baby. I would certainly have killed myself if I'd had a baby by that man. Anyway, I didn't, so that was that. I went to the doctor and he did what he could for my nose and didn't charge me anything. I didn't tell him about the rest. I was too ashamed. The man didn't come back. I waited and did nothing until the next cane-cutting. I'd got my plan. I was waiting for the Black Widow spiders to come in for shelter. One day they came. I caught the biggest of the females and shut her in a box with nothing to eat. They';re the bad ones, the females. Then I waited for a dark night without any moon. I took the box with the spider in it and walked and walked until I came to the man's house. It was very dark and I was frightened of the duppies I might meet on the road but I didn't see any. I waited in his garden in the bushes and watched him go up to bed. Then I climbed a tree and got on to his balcony. I waited there until I heard him snoring and then I crept through the window. He was lying naked on the bed under the mosquito net. I lifted the edge and opened the box and shook the spider out on to his stomach. Then I went away and came home.'
'God Almighty!' said Bond reverently. 'What happened to him?'
She said happily, 'He took a week to die. It must have hurt terribly. They do, you know. The obeahmen say there's nothing like it.' She paused. When Bond made no comment, she said anxiously, 'You don't think I did wrong, do you?'
'It's not a thing to make a habit of,' said Bond mildly. 'But I can't say I blame you the way it was.'
, a novel published in 1959 and written by Ian Fleming, a man born in 1908:Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterson was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits -- barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.For comparison, note this 2009 work by John C. Wright, born 1961. And what's all this about progress, anyway?
, in which 007 sees Honeychile Rider:It was a naked girl, with her back to him. She was not quite naked. She wore a broad leather belt round her waist with a hunting knife in a leather sheath at her right hip. The belt made her nakedness extraordinarily erotic. She stood not more than five yards away on the tideline looking down at something in her hand. She stood in the classical relaxed pose of the nude, all the weight on the right leg and the left knee bent and turning slightly inwards, the head to one side as she examined the things in her hand.Note how careful Fleming is to point out that Miss Rider may be tanned, but she's certainly not coloured. It was 1958, after all.
It was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform cafe au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and the behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy's. The legs were straight and beautiful and no pinkness showed under the slightly lifted left heel. She was not a coloured girl.
Her hair was ash blonde. It was cut to the shoulders and hung there and along the side of her bent cheek in thick wet strands. A green diving mask was pushed back above her forehead, and the green rubber-thong bound her hair at the back.
The whole scene, the empty beach, the green and blue sea, the naked girl with the strands of fair hair, reminded Bond of something, He searched his mind, Yes, she was Botticelli's Venus, seen from behind.
Doctor No is the prototype of the modern American thriller, via the movie version -- all of the big Hollywood action movies of the past forty-five years (and their parodies, and the TV and literary versions of the same plot) derive from this slim fifty-year old book. Oh, there were definitely precursors -- Doctor Julius No himself is in large part an updating of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, for one example -- but Fleming put together all of the important elements here, in a neat package suitable for use and copying by a million subsequent hacks, copyists, and admirers.
Whenever I see a movie based on a true story, I always wonder just how much is "true story" and how much is "based on." About midway through Bottle Shock, when the blond girl inexplicably starts ignoring the brown-skinned guy (whom she'd previously liked better, and even slept with) to take up with the dull-witted blond guy, I started to have the suspicion that this movie is very much the Hollywood Version of the famous-to-wine-snobs "Judgment of Paris."
, in which he thinks about a woman he just spied on, and tries to decide if it's plausible that she fell in love while spying on him:Bond finished his drink and lit another cigarette. He put the problem away and turned his mind to the girl.
Tatiana Romanova. A Romanov. Well, she certainly looked like a Russian princess, or the traditional idea of one. The tall, fine-boned body that moved so gracefully and stood so well. The thick sweep of hair down to the shoulders and the quiet authority of the profile. The wonderful Garboesque face with its curiously shy serenity. The contrast between the level innocence of the big, deep blue eyes and the passionate promise of a wide mouth. And the way she had blushed and the way the long eyelashes had come down over the lowered eyes. Had that been the prudery of a virgin? Bond thought not. There was the confidence of having been loved in the proud breasts and the insolently tilting behind -- the assertion of a body that knows what it can be for.
On what Bond had seen, could he believe that she was the sort of girl to fall in love with a photograph and a file? How could one tell? such a girl would have a deeply romantic nature. There were dreams in the eyes and in the mouth. At that age, twenty-four, the Soviet machine would not yet have ground the sentiment out of her. The Romanov blood might well have given her a yearning for men other than the type of modern Russian office she would meet -- stern, cold, mechanical, basically hysterical, and, because of their Party education, infernally dull.
It could be true. There was nothing to disprove her story in her looks. Bond wanted it to be true
The cover to the next Jim Butcher "Dresden Files" book (Changes) has been posted a bunch of pages around the 'net, sparking the usual conversations. (So far, I haven't seen anyone say that he utterly loathes it, or that it's raping his childhood, but the day is still young.)
They are sitting in a neat pile back in New Jersey. I, on the other hand, am in Montreal at the Worldcon. So the real post will be delayed by at least a day.
, from the folks at Tachyon. Looking more closely at it, I see that it's not only about a nine-year-old girl (and the magical hotel she discovers), but it's officially a middle-grade novel (ages 9-12, grades 4-7). I do wonder if Tachyon has the distribution and contacts to get this book into the right section -- it can be a hard and thankless thing, to publish a book when you have no relationship with the buyer for that section of the chain book store -- but good luck to them for trying it. The Hotel Under the Sand is a trade paperback, and was published last month -- it's also (as is common with books for younger readers) quite inexpensive, so, if you see it, you might as well buy it.
Patricia Brigg's "Alpha and Omega" werewolf series continues with Hunting Ground
, a mass-market paperback coming from Ace at the end of this month. I note that the back-cover copy refers to the heroine being "mated to" another character -- in context, essentially the Prince of All Werewolves, and probably a big slab of man-titty, as the Smart Bitches would say -- which may be a fancy way of saying that they're "partners," in the modern no-strings sense, or may have a more early-Pern implication about the series. I dunno which, so I will hereby express my ignorance and see if anyone sets me straight.
, the third in the Allie Beckstrom series. Is it catty of me to note that "Allie Beckstrom" is a more plausible name than "Devon Monk"? (And does that mean anything, when so many urban fantasy writers really do have unlikely names?)
I now have a finished copy of My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie
, a middle-grade novel by David Lubar. And that means I can read one and give one to my sons, both of whom I think would really like it. Maybe we can all read it and give our combined thoughts? Let's see if I can organize that...some time soon. Anyway, My Rotten Life is an August paperback for all of the middle-graders (particularly boys) in your life.
, the first book in a manwha (Korean comics) historical trilogy of coming-of-age graphic novels by Kim Dong Hwa, for ComicMix back in April. I somehow missed seeing the second book, The Color of Water, because now I have the third one, The Color of Heaven
, in hand. Heaven will be published in September by First Second, and I might just try to read it without the middle book, because the first one was a luminously specific story that really impressed me.
Nine Gates
is the new Jane Lindskold novel, the second in the "Breaking the Wall" series, after Thirteen Orphans. It's a Tor hardcover publishing next week, and it's a fantasy novel set in the modern world in which the magic of Chinese folklore is real. (And that's about all I know about it.)
, the first novel by L. Jagi Lamplighter (and the first of at least two, since Prospero in Hell is promised). I met Ms. Lamplighter briefly at Worldcon, but forgot to mention to her that I'd just seen this -- she was very happy, in the way that only a first-time author who has very recently seen her own words in hardcover can be. It's a fantasy set in the modern world, in which the sorcerer of The Tempest and his family are still alive and active in the present day -- well, Prospero was recently alive and active, but you can see from the title that there is some doubt as to his current health. Prospero Lost has an interesting premise, a great cover, and glowing quotes from a whole bunch of people -- Kage Baker, Wen Spencer, Laura Resnick, James Stoddard, Lamplighter's husband John C. Wright -- so I hope to make time for it "soon." (I've hit the point where I can't say I'll read anything soon without sarcasm quotes, he said, glancing up at the pile of unread books literally looming over his head to the immediate right and threatening to fall on that very head.)
[I]t turns out ice only floats when you're not very very angry at the people riding in little submarines under it. Once you're sufficiently annoyed it falls right down on top of 'em.And now you know.
:'There only one thing I want to know,' said Bond flatly. 'What do you think of this girl? Do you believe her story or not? Her story about me? Nothing else matters. If she hasn't got some sort of a hysterical crush on me, the whole business falls to the ground and it's some complicated MGB plot we can't understand. Now. Did you believe the girl?' Bond's voice was urgent and his eyes searched the other man's face.Is this perhaps the very first instance of adding "in bed" to the end of anything?
'Ah, my friend,' Kerim shook his head. He spread his arms wide. 'Tat is what I asked myself then, and it is what I ask myself the whole time since. But who can tell if a woman is lying about these things? Her eyes were bright -- those beautifully innocent eyes. Her lips were moist and parted in that heavenly mouth. Her voice was urgent and frightened at what she was doing and saying. Her knuckles were white on the guard rail of the ship. But what was in her heart?' Kerim raised his hands, 'God only knows.' He brought his hands down resignedly. He placed them flat on the desk and looked straight at Bond. 'There is only one way of telling if a woman really loves you, and even that way can only be read by an expert.'
'Yes,' said Bond dubiously. 'I know what you mean. In bed.'
It wouldn't be a trip if I didn't come home with new books, and this was a trip. (And, if you can follow that logic, I'll be back later with the ol' "All men are mortal" wheeze.) Some of these I picked up various places and some of them I bought in the various used bookshops of Montreal. All of them are things that looked worth reading, but I'm so far behind that I'll need to pencil them in for 2017:
by Chris Roberson, one of the launch titles for the mighty Angry Robot imprint from Harper UK. Chris is a great guy whom I've only read a few things by, and he writes so damn fast that I'm getting two or three novels behind on him every year. This novel is packaged to look precisely like a Da Vinci Code knockoff, but I suspect it may not be -- particularly since the original edition of Book of Secrets was published in 2001 (by Roberson himself), and Da Vinci only came out in 2003. But it's a secret-society thriller of some kind, I think.
How to Be Idle
by Tom Hodgkinson is one of those books I'm sure I've been hearing about for years. (I'm slightly less sure that I didn't actually read it ten years ago, or that I don't have a copy lurking somewhere in my stacks. But searching for evidence of either of those things would be deeply non-idle, so I won't do it.) Hodgkinson founded the magazine The Idler in 1993, and this is his manifesto of non-work. Suddenly, I'm worried that he's the writer of the turgid, dull introduction to The Idler's Glossary
, which I'm currently poking through -- if so, I hope this is better.
-- on a random bookstore shelf, I automatically picked it up. (Jeff and I were World Fantasy judges together, so I have a half-decent sense of where his tastes and mine intersect.) It sounds like it's the kind of book that I wished China Mieville's The City and the City had been more like -- a gritty but well-written story about an unnamed detective, investigating thanklessly for the Department of Unexplained Deaths. I don't know when I'll get to it, but there are three more after this one.
I picked up Slights
at the Angry Robot party -- and only afterward wondered if I was supposed to (Anticipation's parties looked like closed parties --- lots of alcohol -- but seemed to be open, so I may have treated decorations as freebies) -- entirely because I spent fifteen minutes or so talking with its author, Kaaron Warren. Slights is a horror novel about a female serial killer, written in the first person (from what I assume will become the serial killer's POV, though I've only read a few pages in), and it's very much the kind of novel I claim loudly that I don't like. Well, I haven't read this one yet, so I'm not sure if I like it, but it sure as hell looks compelling.
rather than for tongue-kissing Hitler, writing upper-crust novels, or marrying rich heirs. The book is called Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking
, it was published in 1979, and it even has an afterword by Carl Bernstein (who was about as famous as a muckraker could be, in 1979). Mitford intersperses the collected pieces with then-new commentary about how she became a crusading journalist and how others could do it as well.
Nick Mamatas's novel Move Under Ground
was in large boxes in the giveaway area of the giant space containing the dealer's room and art show, which I take to mean that B&N or Borders (or both) decided to return a whole lot of them sometime in the recent past. I hope it did OK for Mamatas and Prime (the publisher) before that, and now I have a chance to read it. This is the novel in which Jack Kerouac squares off against a cult that worships Cthulhu, so I have to read it at some point.
is another book from Angry Robot that walked away with me from their party. It's by Lauren Beukes and I grabbed it almost entirely because the back cover reads "What's really going on? Who's really in charge? You have no fucking idea." I respect an imprint that drops the f-bomb on the back cover of a paperback book, I really do. Angry Robot's little "if you like this try that" stripe -- a great idea, which is on all of their launch titles -- also compares this to This Is Not a Game, Little Brother, and Halting State, three novels that I've actually read and enjoyed, which is also a plus.
:The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead.And: no, it isn't. He's not, and it's not him, either.
He might have been drowned and fished out of the pool and laid out on the grass to dry while the police or the next-of-kin were summoned. Even the little pile of objects in the grass beside his head might have been his personal effects, meticulously assembled in full view so that no one should think that something had been stolen by his rescuers.
To judge by the glittering pile, this had been, or was, a rich man. It contained the typical membership badges of the rich man's club -- a money clip, made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece and holding a substantial wad of banknotes, a well-used gold Dunhill lighter, an oval cigarette case with the wavy ridges and discreet turquoise button that means Faberge, and the sort of novel a rich man pulls out of his bookcase to take into the garden -- The Little Nugget -- an old P.G. Wodehouse. There was also a bulky gold wristwatch on a well-used brown crocodile strap. It was a Girard-Perregaux model designed for people who like gadgets, and it had a sweep second-hand and two little windows in the face to tell the day of the month, and the month, and the phase of the moon. The story it now told was 2.30 on June 10th with the moon three-quarters full.
:'Yon man was here again last night about the Televeesion.'Communist infestation or good old-fashioned capitalist entrepreneurial spirit? You decide...
'What man was that?' Bond looked among the headlines.
'Yon man that's always coming. Six times he's been here pestering me since June. After what I said to him the first time about the sinful thing, you'd think he'd give up trying to sell us one. By hire purchase, too, if you please!'
'Persistent chaps these salesmen.' Bond put down his paper and reached for the coffee pot.
'I gave him a right piece of my mind last night. Disturbing folk at their supper. Asked him if he'd got any papers -- anything to show who he was.'
'I expect that fixed him.' Bond filled his large coffee cup to the brim with black coffee.
'Not a bit of it. Flourished his union card. Said he had every right to earn his living. Electricians Union it was too. They're the Communist one, aren't they-s?'
'Yes, that's right.' said Bond vaguely. His mind sharpened. Was it possible They could be keeping an eye on him? He took a sip of the coffee and put the cup down. 'Exactly what did this man say, May?' he asked, keeping his voice indifferent, but looking up at her.
'He said he's selling Televeesion sets on commission in his spare time. And are we sure we don't want one. He says we're one of the only folk in the square that haven't got one. Sees there isn't one of those aerial things on the house, I dare say. He's always asking if you're at home so that he can have a word with you about it. Fancy his cheek! I'm surprised he hasn't thought to catch you coming in or going out. He's always asking if I'm expecting you home. Naturally I don't tell him anything about your movements. Respectable, quiet-spoken body, if he wasn't so persistent.'
Could be, though Bond. There are many ways of checking up whether the owner's at home or away. A servant's appearance and reactions -- a glance through the open door. 'Well, you're wasting your time because he's away,' would be the obvious reception if the flat was empty. Should he tell the Security Section? Bond shrugged his shoulders irritably. What the hell. There was probably nothing in it. Why would They be interested in him? And, if there were something in it, Security was quite capable of making him change his flat.
'I expect you've frightened him away this time.' Bond smiled up at may. 'I should think you've heard the last of him.'
, and I suspect it is precisely as sexist as it it true:'Up to forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story. Of the two it's the story that hurts most.'----------------
After the sidetrack of Diamonds Are Forever into the American underworld, From Russia With Love gets Bond back to his most obvious (though not most common) home: European East-West intrigue. The first two-fifths of this book, a section called "The Plan," traces a plot hatched by SMERSH, the secret Soviet terror agency, to cripple its enemies by framing and killing a Western spy in a place where they can guarantee immediate, scandalous media coverage. And, as you might have guessed, the Western spy they decide to trap is 007.:The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not.----------------
There were only two entrances, one from the street outside, and one from the bedroom buildings and the swimming pool. Once you had come in through either of these, whether you wanted to buy a paper or cigarettes and the news stand, have a drink or a meal in one of the two restaurants, get your hair cut or have a massage at the 'Health Club,' or just visit the lavatories, there was no way of reaching your objective without passing between the banks of slot machines and gambling tables. And when you were trapped in the vortex of the whirring machines, amongst which there sounded always, from somewhere, the intoxicating silvery cascade of coins into a metal cup, or occasionally the golden cry of 'Jackpot!' from one of the change-girls, you were lost. Besieged by the excited back-chat from the three big craps tables, the seductive whirl of the two roulette wheels, and the clank of silver dollars across the green pools of the blackjack tables, it would be a mouse of steel who could get through without a tentative nibble at this delicious chunk of lucky cheese.
Partially as a reward to myself for getting through this year's American Accountants Association meeting, and partly because I hadn't been to a comics shop in a month or more -- which is becoming my usual pattern; I'm one of the many, many people who are far too busy to go to a store every Wednesday -- I hit both of the major midtown Manhattan stores yesterday: both the one actually called Midtown Comics, and the outpost of Jim Hanley's Comics Universe, which could be one of the great comics stores if it weren't for eccentric shelving strategies and less-than-perfect fixtures.
Astro City: The Dark Age, Vol. 1: Brothers & Other Strangers
by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson, which is only superhero-y book I still buy. And, even then, when there's a collection every four or five years, I pick it up, and try to decide if it's worth spending money on. Busiek tells good stories, but it's become very clear that he cares deeply about the history and psychology about people who dress up in silly clothes to punch each other, which is a very odd thing to care deeply about. is the first in a series of adaptations of a great run of crime novels (by Stark, a pseudonym for Donald E. Westlake) by Darwyn Cooke. I've only seen bits of Cooke's work before -- he's mostly done "mainstream" comics, and I've already noted my distaste for most of those -- but his stuff has always looked really good to my eye: thoughtful and stylized, the art and story of a creator who always has his own viewpoint. So now I'll see what he does to a story I already know -- and, from a first glance, this book looks gorgeous, from the blue-toned art on lightly green-yellow pages to the classy early '60s look of the book design.
Rick Geary's The Adventures Of Blanche
collects three widely-spaced single issues from the last decade or so, telling adventures of the title character in three different cities. I have two of those issues, but, still, I'll buy almost any new book by Rick Geary -- particularly one that showcases his sly underhanded sense of humor, like these stories do.
. On the positive side, it's got a neat cover and it was the cheapest of the Jason books I saw. On the negative side, it's about zombies, which I'm generally allergic to. But I suspect Jason's deadpan style will go well with the walking dead, so I'm up for it.
I'm stalling out on buying collections of strip cartoons ever faster these days -- I think I've broken my three-decades-long Doonesbury habit, and just one volume of Sheldon seems to have been enough -- but I did get the sixth collection of Scott Kurtz's PvP strip, Silent But Deadly
. Maybe it's because these strips are still from just before I started reading it regularly, I don't know. But Kurtz does everything a good newspaper strip should: delivers a funny gag nearly every day and tells larger stories along the way, with great characters, nice art, and only the obligatory Internet-required level of fan references.
I am a comics blogger, so I'm required to read and write about Asterios Polyp
, the graphic novel David Mazzucchelli has apparently been working on all this time. I just hope that it's half as good as the hype says it is.
, third in Bryan Lee O'Malley's series about the young Toronto slacker whose life is like Slackers crossed with Super Mario. I may even manage to catch up by the sixth book!
, another collection of funny webcomics by Julia Wertz, which you should all go and buy, because she totally needs the money. (And it's good slice-of-life stuff, smart enough not to go too heavy on the woe-is-me-I'm-a-poor-twentysomething-living-in-squalor material.)
