Book-A-Day #23 (8/9): Divided by a Common Language by Christopher Davies

This is a shortish book on the major differences between UK and US English; as such, it's mostly lists of cross-referenced words, with lots of definitions.

It's not a bad reference, but I noticed some things that are clearly wrong about American English (the author is a Briton who now lives in the USA, so I suspect he might be taking some regionalisms, or ways that his friends speak, to be generally American), so it can't be relied on 100%.

In general, I'd still recommend the much larger and more comprehensive British English, A To Zed by Norman Schur for Americans; I'm afraid I don't know of a similar book for Britons, so Divided by a Common Language may be more useful for them.

Another Great Holiday To Celebrate

Were you aware that today is National Underwear Day?

Quick -- do you know where yours are?

Movie Log: Barnyard

I gave the boys a choice this weekend: I said that we'd go see something in the theater for Boys Movie Saturday (a tradition I recommend to anyone who has kids all day only one or two days a week), and they could pick Monster House (which I was hoping for; it looks like the best of the current crop), The Ant Bully (which they were all excited about a week ago) or Barnyard.

As you might have guessed, they picked Barnyard.

Since my mother always told me to be positive, we'll start with the good points:

• It's vocally well-cast; the biggest roles are played by people like Kevin James and Sam Elliott. No major celebrities, no stunt casting, no one's name above the title; just actors chosen because they're right for the part. That's actually refreshing in an animated movie these days, when even Pixar is trotting out a tarted-up Paul Newman vehicle. (And I saw some great voice-over names in the credits, like Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche, which I also like to see: those people are just better at this than random movie actors are.)
• The backgrounds are gorgeous, and generally very realistic, while the character designs are more stylized in an interesting way. The characters do look a bit plastic-y, but it seems to be intentional. And the hyper-detailed background combined with cartoony foreground figures style has been very successful for a whole lot of cartoonists and animators over the years. The human characters in particular are amazingly grotesque, in a Jimmy Neutron-esque way, but it works.
  
• And it's not very long.

OK, now that I've got that out of the way, I can get to the meat of it: the story sucks. It's incredibly derivative, completely predictable, and often stupid. Several times the movie turns into an idiot plot (as when our hero the cow goes off to fight a pack of coyotes on his own instead of organizing a team of other animals because...well, I think it's just because that's what always happens in dumb movies like this). So it's a nice-looking stretch of celluloid that's impossible to believe in or take seriously as a movie. Nice pictures, though.

I can't recommend that anyone see this movie unless your kids are dragging you to it. But, if they do, try not to spend too much time thinking about the story; just listen to the soothing sound of Sam Elliott's voice and look at the very pretty pictures.

Book-A-Day #22 (8/8): second in a contemporary fantasy series

This is the sequel to the book I read two days ago, though, oddly enough, it's set earlier in time than the first volume.

On to something else now, mostly likely a book I can tell you about.

Incoming Books: 7 July

I picked up two books at the office recently, and brought them home today:

• Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke
  I've enjoyed all of his books that I've read, but I have to wonder if I'll ever get to this; I've already got four Burke novels on the to-be-read bookshelf, including the previous three books in this series.
• Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee
  I've already read one section of this in The New Yorker, so I've got a leg up. Still, I'm unlikely to pick it up this year.

My motto when it comes to books is "Get 'em while you can." You can always read a book later; it's not always possible to find it later.

Book-A-Day #21 (8/7): Samurai Executioner, Vol. 10: A Couple of Jitte by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima

The pile of comics & such next to my computer at home is now only about a foot higher than my head when I sit down, which is a great improvement. And the emergency auxiliary pile off to the side has been completely depleted as well. Now if I can only do the same to all the other piles!

There's not much to say about this book: it's the last in the Samurai Executioner series, which itself is a loose continuation of the themes and ideas of the Lone Wolf & Cub series by the same authors. I don't know all that much about manga, but I do think these are good stuff, and a window into a world that's very different from the one I live in. (Some of my readers may actually live in Edo-era Japan, so I won't speak for you.)

Favorite Song Meme

Stolen shamelessly from Scott Lynch, because it gives me a chance to natter on about music (as opposed to books and movies, which are more usual here).

1. Favorite Beatles song: "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
2. Favorite Rolling Stones song: "Let It Loose"
3. Favorite Doors song: "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)", but it's not a strong preference
4. Favorite Bob Dylan song: "Is Your Love In Vain"
5. Favorite Led Zeppelin song: "Kashmir"
6. TV Theme Song: The Kids In the Hall ("Having an Average Weekend" by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet)
7. Favorite Prince Song: "Purple Rain"
8. Favorite Madonna Song: Not Applicable
9. Favorite Michael Jackson Song: Not Applicable
10. Favorite Queen Song: "Under Pressure" (slightly a cheat, since it's with David Bowie)
11. Favorite Motorhead Song: Not Applicable
12. Favorite Ozzy Song: "Crazy Train" if it has to be Ozzy solo; "Iron Man" if I get his whole career
13. Favorite Public Enemy Song: Not Applicable
14. Favorite Song from a cartoon: "Requiem," by Geinoh Yamashirogumi, from Akira
15. Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: I'm from Jersey, so I can't pick just one -- "Downbound Train," "Candy's Room," "Stolen Car" (demo version) and "Atlantic City" are all up there.
16. Favorite Depeche Mode song: I can stand "People Are People," I guess
17. Favorite Cure song: "Disintegration," of course
18. Favorite song that most of your friends haven't heard: "Don't Let Me Down, Gently" by The Wonder Stuff
19. Favorite Smiths song: "Every Day Is Like Sunday" (though I prefer the 10,000 Maniacs cover)
20. Favorite Beastie Boys song: the closest I can get is "Hand In Your Head" by Money Mark
21. Favorite Clash song: "Somebody Got Murdered"
22. Favorite Police song: "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"
23. Favorite Eurythmics song: "Here Comes the Rain Again"
24. Favorite Beach Boys song: "God Only Knows"
25. Favorite Cyndi Lauper song: "Money Changes Everything"
26. Favorite song from a movie: "The Trio (Main Title)" by Ennio Morricone, from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
27. Favorite Duran Duran song: "Wild Boys"
28. Favorite Peter Tosh song: "Electric Avenue," I guess, if I'm not mixing him up with some other guy.
29. Favorite Johnny Cash song: "Ring of Fire"
30. Favorite song from an 80's one hit wonder: "What Do All The People Know" by The Monroes
31. Favorite song from a video game: Nothing I can think of
32. Favorite Kinks song: Too hard; I can't pick just one -- I'll take both "Demolition" and "The Village Green Preservation Society"
33. Favorite Genesis song: "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel; if that's a cheat, then "Misunderstanding"
34. Favorite Thin Lizzy song: "The Boys Are Back In Town"
35. Favorite INXS song: "This Time"
36. Favorite Weird Al song: "Another One Rides the Bus"
37. Favorite Peter Gabriel song: "Games Without Frontiers"
38. Favorite John Lennon song: "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
39. Favorite Pink Floyd song: "One Of These Days"
40. Favorite cover song: "Such Great Heights" by Iron & Wine
41. Favorite White Stripes: Not Applicable
42. Favorite dance song: "Aeroplane" by The Psychedelic Furs
43. Favorite U2 song: "All I Want Is You"
44. Favorite song from an actor turned musician: Nothing comes to mind
45. Favorite disco song: Disco sucks, dude. I was born in 1969 and I show it.
46. Favorite Power Ballad: "Patience" by Guns 'n Roses
47. Favorite Guns N' Roses song: "Used to Love Her"
48. Favorite The Who song: "Christmas" from Tommy
49. Favorite Elton John song: "Crocodile Rock"
50. Favorite song, period: "Wall of Death," Richard & Linda Thompson

Damn! That was a long list; it stole more time than I expected.

Book-A-Day #20 (8/6): first in a contemporary fantasy series

There are times when I'll be less than forthcoming about what I'm reading. Now, for example.

Generally, from now on, when I'm reading books for possible SFBC omnibuses I'll avoid mentioning it or post something nonspecific (like this).

Today I read the first book in a contemporary fantasy series, of which there are legion. I'll be reading more in this series over the next few days and then, I hope, buying them for the SFBC. If that works out, I'll probably let you know what they were.

Book-A-Day #19 (8/5): Flaming Carrot Comics, Vol. 6: Special Women Trouble Issue by Bob Burden

The above is what the cover and spine seem to think the title is; the title page has this as Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics: Unacceptable Behavior and the copyright page is just Flaming Carrot Comics, Vol. 6. So I gather we can choose our own subtitle for this one.

The Carrot is one of the quintessentially indescribable comics characters: he's this guy who wears flippers and a giant carrot mask (with a flame on top, natch). And he fights crime. And zombies. And chases pretty girls (with quite a lot of luck for a guy with a giant carrot on his head.) His adventures at least border on the surreal, sometimes from the other side.

There's a short Carrot story online, which can give you the idea. If you don't feel like clicking, here's his first speech balloon:

Am I a killer?...Yes.
Am I a monster?...Perhaps.
Am I wrong?...Hardly Ever!
I am Flaming Carrot!
Even best friends fear me a little!

Anyway, this collection, whatever it's called, is not the place to start -- find the first Dark Horse trade paperback, Man of Mystery (or maybe issue #12 of the comic, "The Dead Dog Jumped Up and Flew Around the Room," which is where I started, twenty years ago). The world has long needed a dada superhero, and the Carrot is it.

Movie Log: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Wife and I watched this a few nights ago. There was a point when I'd seen all of the Coen Brothers' movies and considered myself a big fan of theirs, but somehow I missed a bunch after Fargo and have been catching up ever since. By the evidence of this week, I'm still five or six years behind.

I'm afraid the details of the movie are swiftly escaping me; it was a good picaresque story, but I'm already losing track of what happened before what. It was a gorgeous-looking movie, full of interesting actors given good lines to say, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. But I don't have much more than that to say about it; I guess I'm better at talking about things I don't like.

World Fantasy Award Nominees

I'm posting a notice here as well as the SFBC Blog out of pure ego-boo: I am one of the WFA judges this year. Well, maybe it's not pure ego-boo; I also think all of these works are worth celebrating and I want to see them get the widest possible recognition. The list is from the official WFA site.

Novel:

• Hal Duncan, Vellum (Macmillan; Del Rey)
• Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park (Knopf; Macmillan)
• Graham Joyce, The Limits of Enchantment (Gollancz; Atria)
• Patricia A. McKillip, Od Magic (Ace)
• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (Harvill; Knopf)
• Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania (Tor)

Novella:

• Laird Barron, "The Imago Sequence" (Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2005)
• Michael Cunningham, "In the Machine" (Specimen Days, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Joe Hill, Voluntary Committal (Subterranean Press)
• Tanith Lee, "UOUS" (The Fair Folk, Science Fiction Book Club)
• Kelly Link, "Magic for Beginners" (Magic for Beginners, Small Beer Press; Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2005)
• Simon Morden, Another War (Telos Publishing)

Short Fiction:

• Peter S. Beagle, "Two Hearts" (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2005)
• Joe Hill, "Best New Horror" (Postscripts 3, Spring 2005)
• Holly Phillips, "The Other Grace" (In the Palace of Repose, Prime Books)
• Caitli­n R. Kiernan, "La Peau Verte" (To Charles Fort, With Love, Subterranean Press)
• George Saunders, "CommComm" (The New Yorker, 08/01, 2005)
  

Anthology:

• Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth ed. Stephen Jones (Fedogan & Bremer)
• The Fair Folk ed. Marvin Kaye (Science Fiction Book Club)
• Polyphony 5 ed. Deborah Layne and Jay Lake (Wheatland Press)
• Adventure Vol. 1 ed. Chris Roberson (MonkeyBrain Books)
• Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction ed. Neil Williamson and Andrew J. Wilson (Crescent Books)

Collection:

• Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts (PS Publishing)
• Caitli­n R. Kiernan, To Charles Fort, With Love (Subterranean Press)
• Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners (Small Beer Press)
• Holly Phillips, In the Palace of Repose (Prime Books)
• Bruce Holland Rogers, The Keyhole Opera (Wheatland Press)

Artist:

• Kinuko Y. Craft
• James Jean
• Dave McKean
• Edward Miller (Les Edwards)
• John Jude Palencar

Special Award: Professional:

• Susan Allison and Ginjer Buchanan (for Ace Books)
• Lou Anders (for editing at Pyr)
• S. T. Joshi & Stefan Dziemanowicz, Editors (for Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia, Greenwood Press)
• Peter Lavery (for Pan MacMillan UK/Tor UK)
• Chris Roberson and Allison Baker (for MonkeyBrain Books)
• Sean Wallace (for Prime Books)

Special Award: Non-Professional:

• The Friends of Arthur Machen (for Faunus, Machenalia, and The Life of Arthur Machen)
• Leo Grin (for The Cimmerian)
• David Howe and Stephen Walker (for Telos Books)
• Jess Nevins (for The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, from MonkeyBrain Books)
• Rodger Turner, Neil Walsh, and Wayne MacLaurin (for SF Site)
  

(Let me note in passing that I learned that these had been released by reading Darkecho Blog; I'm going to go check my work e-mail now and see if I should have known ahead of time. Five minutes later: yes, they did e-mail me early yesterday to say the list was being released, and it's my own fault for not keeping up with e-mail.)

In Which Thing 2 Unknowingly Re-Enacts a Calvin & Hobbes Cartoon

I know there's at least one person out there who wants more Thing 1 and Thing 2 stories, so this is for you...

Last night I was reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to Thing 2 (Thing 1 now reads to himself; he'd just stalk the room when I was reading, which did not make for peace in the household). Thing 2 is not as attentive as I might like -- he's five and finds it hard to sit still for two nanoseconds at a time -- but I think he's mostly listening. Well, at least some of the time. And I do try to keep him quiet, so that he's potentially listening.

Anyway, he's also playing with various toys around his room, though I can usually see that he's got his head cocked towards me, so I'm getting at least a fraction of his attention. (Have you guessed yet that I'm paranoid about the are-you-listening-to-me thing?) But then he picks up a red sports car, and starts talking about jumping the Grand Canyon. The car jumps once safely (all the way across the room), but falls on the return trip. Thing 2 says something about the driver trying to jump out, but it's too late -- and I'm getting a gigantic feeling of deja vu.

So, when I get him into bed, I head down here to the basement and start poking through The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, Vol. 1 (which I've been reading at the computer, off and on, over the past week or two). I finally found the above cartoon: February 15, 1987 (a good thirteen-and-a-half years before Thing 2 was born, mind you). The details aren't completely identical, but it's very close. (I couldn't find this strip online, but I made this very bad scan myself so you can get the idea.)

There is only one possible explanation. My younger son -- the normal one -- is actually Calvin. (Which means his invisible friend May, about whom I haven't heard much lately, is Hobbes.)

Reading Into the Past: Week of 7/30

I rolled two dice this week and got a 5, so these are the books that I was reading this week in 2001:

• Sue Grafton, "P" Is For Peril (7/23)
  I always enjoy these books while I'm reading them -- Grafton is one of the better mystery writers working today -- but I can't remember which one was which five years later. The titles certainly don't help.
  
• Dave Sim & Gerhard, Church & State, Vol. 1 (7/4)
  Over the past decade, I've tried to catch up on the comic Cerebus several times; each time, I start at the beginning, gain speed through the really good years (High Society, this volume, most of the second half of Church & State, and particularly Jaka's Story), and then hit the brick wall that is Reads. I have five of the collections after Reads (though not the last two), and I'm afraid that I'll never get to them. Perhaps I'll try again one day, and that time actually blast through the Sucky Barrier of Self-Indulgent Wankery. Anyway, this is really good, but it's one half of a giant comics novel, and doesn't stand on its own. High Society and Jaka's Story do, though -- try leafing through them in a store and see what grabs you.
  
• John Edward Dell, editor, Visions of Adventure: N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists (7/25)
  I think I got this as a remainder, because I keep thinking those old adventure-story illustrators are probably right up my alley. I didn't absolutely love it, butt it does have a lot of good art in it.
  
• Joe Gores, Cons, Scams & Grifts (7/26)
  One of the DKA novels, a series notable mostly because it's about a realistic private detective agency (lots of people, lots of paperwork, no crusading, no solving of murders, no hard-boiled redheaded dames) doing mostly realistic PI work (a lot of car repo'ing). By this book, the realism had slipped a bit, since there's a band of almost preternaturally-skilled-at-car-thievery Gypsies running around, but Gores is still mostly trying to ground this in the real world. The earlier books were better, but this was still OK.
  
• Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator (7/27)
  I don't know if it's fair to call this the point where the series got really dark -- since, of course, the whole thing started with a pretty depressing set-up and continued on as the Platonic ideal of Goth pre-teen misery -- but I still remember the climb up the elevator shaft, and that was an awfully powerful scene, especially for a kids' book. This series is sneaky and nasty and subversive in all the right ways; I can't wait until the final book this fall, and I hope the ending is as horrible as I suspect it will be.
  
• Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (7/28)
  The first of the Discworld books to be officially a "YA" novel, which meant that it had chapters and didn't use the word "Discworld" anywhere. I think the discipline of chapters does good things for Pratchett, since the YA Discworld books are probably his best recent work.
  
• Bob Mankoff, editor, The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collection (7/29)
  A gigantic book of witty cartoons, created for the urban literatti of the past three generations. I enjoyed it; I really like the New Yorker cartoon style.
  
• Gilles Neret, editor, Taschen Icons: Erotica, 19th Century (7/30)
  A small-format book, part of a large series of art books (not all porn, I think, but containing, as usual for Taschen, a whole lot of porn). Other people's porn can be a very weird thing, especially if those other people have been dead a hundred years and can't hide their stash or explain themselves. This stuff also vibrates (sometimes uncomfortably) between "fine art" and "porn," which makes it doubly interesting, Plus, y'know, boobies.
  
• Daniel Handler, Watch Your Mouth (7/31)
  You know that Handler is the real name of the guy who writes as Lemony Snicket, right? This is his second novel, which does have a fantasy element which I will not spoil here. It's also a novel in large part about sex, providing us a double-theme for this week's reading. Watch Your Mouth isn't quite as successful as Handler's sublime first novel The Basic Eight, a modern masterpiece of unreliable narration, but it's very good.
  
• Vernor Vinge, The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (7/31)
  Vinge's stuff tends to leave me cold for some reason, and I'm not sure why. I particularly disliked "Fast Times at Fairmont High," the new novella here, which seemed to be dedicated to the dystopian idea that only the very smartest, fastest, sneakiest, luckiest, and best-connected few people will have any work at all to do in the near future (and that this is a wonderful thing, because we're following those stuck-up dweebs). I don't know what it is, but I just don't seem to connect with Vinge's stories; I probably need to try his novels and see if they work better for me.
  

Well, I managed to get this done before the week was over, which is an improvement.

Incoming Books: 4 August

Three things came home with me from work today:

• Phaic Tan, a joke travel guide from the people who did Molvania.
• Your Call Is Important To Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny -- in hopes that it's more interesting than On Bullshit
• The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

And this when I already have approximately eight shelves worth of books overflowing from my to-be-read bookcase...

Book-A-Day #18 (8/4): The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman

This is a very funny, very witty book, but reading it straight through probably wasn't a good idea (especially in my current, lackadaisical post-WFA state). The Areas of My Expertise is made up of dozens of sections of various lengths, all detailing unlikely information about all manner of topics, and all completely made up by Mr. Hodgman.

(Hodgman, if anyone is trying to place him, is the actor who plays "Windows" on the current series of Mac TV commercials. He was also the "Deranged Millionaire" on They Might Be Giants' last record, Venue Songs -- the supposed set-up was that the D.M. had challenged them to make up a new song for every place they played on that tour, or lose their magical song-writing talisman. That story is similar in tone and style to the pieces in this book; Hodgman is magificently deadpan, with a fine sense of what's just weird enough.)

This book is full of wonderful stuff, and is alternately laugh-out-loud funny and just plain odd. Hodgman throws off asides that sound like unwritten Paul Di Filippo or Howard Waldrop stories, about the hobo wars of the '30s or the secret history of lobsters in Central Park. The Areas of My Expertise also features the exceptionally valuable Lycanthropic Transformation Tables, correlating type of lycanthrope with the phase of the moon. It is strange and wonderful, and its particular kind of strangeness would be particularly interesting to SF readers.