A bit of this and a bit of that

Steve sent along the best tumblr I have seen in awhile. It relates to the New York Review of Books Classics line. I don't want to spoil the title, so just click through. I am sure you will agree. These books are so lovely and so great, I would love to have a row of them on my bookshelf.

Last year there was a spate of literal versions of videos. As you probably recall, the singing is dubbed over with a description of what is actually happening. The greatest was Total Eclipse of the Heart, but I just came across a version of Journey's Separate Ways. It isn't as consistently funny as the Bonnie Tyler one, but it has some excellent moments. Separate Ways is one of the worst videos ever, so they have a lot to work with.

Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum calls for people to read more nonfiction books or risk being uninformed. Its a good piece.

Remember the what's your porn star name game. Well how about the STD name game!

A movie or two

I got Taken from Netflix last night. Hey, it isn't bad. Mostly because Liam Neeson is just awesome. In his review, Roger Ebert gets it just right, if the movie description (former spook Neeson flies to Paris to rescue his estranged daughter from white slavers) sounds good, you will like it, if you are rolling your eyes, avoid it. There is definitely some Jack Bauer action, but I greatly enjoyed Neeson's cold determination and his positively frigid dispatch of his foes. His dismissive line to a betrayer is a classic.

In other film news, Steven Soderbergh is making a plague movie with some big names.

If you are thinking about looking in that mirror...DON'T

Check out this compilation of scenes from horror movies in which something scary is in the mirror.

Death comes ripping

Debut novelist Robert Jackson Bennett has gotten some buzz for his Mr. Shivers. I'm not quite sure what I make of it. Set in Depression America, it features a determined father named Connelly seeking vengeance for the death of his daughter. A man the hobos call Mr. Shivers is responsible, and Connelly follows Shivers into the Hoovervilles, the hobo camps and the desolate and abandoned dust bowl. He winds up joining a small band of men hunting the same man.

Thanks to the setting and the escalating sense that all is not what it seems, the book is called a marriage of Steinbeck and King. I think it is closer to Cormac McCarthy and a certain James Blish novel. I tend to think of California when I think of Steinbeck, whereas the wild, Biblical West is McCarthy's territory. Bennett's writing is also McCarthy like, with lengthy and symbolic descriptions of the barren landscape. He goes one better than McCarthy by pushing past the metaphor straight into reality.

Some of the scenes in the book are great. I particularly liked one where Connelly and his gang of vengeful seekers follow Shivers to an empty down about to be consumed in a dust storm. Bennett creates a great sense of dread and makes a pristine house particularly disturbing.

So why my hesitation? I think the prose weighs down the story of Connelly's dark quest of vengeance. His transformation from grieving father to vengeful destroyer didn't quite work either. Some of the mythological elements also felt a bit forced. In the end, I would recommend it to horror fans who like their books well written and their plots large scale.

Young punk had to pay

There is a MUST-READ discussion of bad asses over at AV Club. Like the inspiration of the story, I had to go with the Wire's Omar, but there are arguments for many others over there. Not sure about the best bad ass on film, but this scene from of Terrence Stamp in Limey is the probably the most bad ass scene ever filmed (you may know it as the "you tell him I'm coming" scene.

I wonder though who the greatest badasses in fiction are? Any number of James Ellroy's doomed heroes will do. Dwight Holly in the most recent book certainly counts. I think my absolute favorite is Takeshi Kovacs, at least as he is portrayed in Altered Carbon. Like Terrence Stamp, he takes a licking and then delivers a much worse one. Even better, he is loaded up with all kinds of special forces biotechnology making him even nastier. He doesn't want to kick your ass, unless you make him. Readers like it better when the people getting beat down bring it on themselves. It lets you enjoy it without the guilt.

Crime fiction also has plenty of sidekick badasses who let the hero bring or threaten the pain on people without doing it themselves. Scary Bubba from the Dennis Lehane books or Mouse from the Mosley novels are good examples of these, but main character bad asses are far more interesting.

I've got links, piles and piles, so many links that they're wastin'

Did I already post this list of Pavement B-sides? It's worth your time, especially since they nod their heads to Kentucky Cocktail, which is awesome. Can't find an original, but this live version is fairly sweet, the hook comes through perfectly, if some of the vocal goofiness is lost. Only problem is there is no Harness Your Hopes, which is easily as good as your favorite Pavement song. Why Malkmus is not better acknowledged for his guitar work and hooks is beyond me.

Speaking of the Nicene Creeders, check out Carrie Brownstein's letter from Portland, which ends with a Box Elder aftertaste.

Via Am Con Blog, check out Utne Reader's story of the Iraq war told via magazine covers.

I've seen lots of best of beers lists in the past few weeks. Most of the time, I look at them and get the same feeling I do when I drop by Pitchfork, namely, what the fuck is all this? I like this list from Wine Enthusiast, since it includes bottles that cost about as much as a six pack of crap beer, along with the $25 bottles from Russian River.

Check out the world's largest book.

Hee, hee Lost vs. Avatar in the LoLcats style.

Tyler Cowen doesn't like the new Henry Paulson book.

Looks like the Spanish are trying to out-weird the Japanese in game shows.

A new Boyd is here

I adore William Boyd, one of the finest of Britain's literary writers. His Any Human Heart is just fantastic, right up there with Atonement and Kavalier and Klay in my book. An Ice Cream War is one of my favorite war novels. In his last book, he took a turn into genreland, with his spy novel Restless. His newest, Ordinary Thunderstorms, makes me think he likes the genre fiction. Hey, so does Chabon. This one is a thriller (!) about climate change set in London. Sure, climate change is topical, but I would at least try anything he wrote.

NYRB does scifi

The New York Review of Books Classics line is so good that I will often pick up a book just because they published it. I'll do the same with few others ( Black Lizard and the Library of America come to mind, but the LOA books require a significant time investment.) So, on the rare occasion that the NYRB puts out a scifi book, I get pretty excited. It's such a joy to get my nerd on, while also basking in the glow of the annointed. Inverted World is an early (1970s) novel from Christopher Priest, best known for the Prestige.

The story is set in a bizarre city that rolls down a set of rails on a bizarre planet. The rails are limited, so one set of people takes up the old ones and another sets them down as the old ones come up. The residents of the city do this thanks to a peculiar geophysical effect on their planet. The city is ruled by guilds of engineers that manage the cumbersome process of moving the city. The story is told from the perspective of Helward, a young guildsman. Using a coming of age scifi storyline, Helward, and the reader, slowly comes to understand what is happening to this world and he eventually faces two great crises that threaten to destroy the city.

It's a great adventure tale and it is well told, but this is Christopher Priest, who likes to play with narrative and the ideas of reality, so you know something odd is afoot. As the afterword by John Clute notes, Priest was critiquing the prevailing style of American science fiction at the time. I am happy this was included as an afterword, rather than as a forward, as it is spoiler rich. I don't want to spoil it either, but I do say pay attention to the changes in narrative mode and keep the peculiar introductory chapter in mind. You can enjoy this as a straight scifi novel, but I suspect you will appreciate it more after you read Clute's piece.

Slipping into Fanboy status

I think I am becoming a Ed Brubaker fanboy. I know because I just bought issue 4 of the new Criminal Tale, The Sinners, even though I have purchased, but still not read issues 1 through 3. Why am I doing this? I want to be able to sit down with all of them and read them all at once? I made a mistake with Incognito, where I went back for more and they were sold out!

I read the first issue of Incognito when it came out and it didn't quite click. I then went back for number two and it sat on my shelf for months. Then I read and loved it! That's when they were all sold out. Fortunately the trade just came out.

The story in this one is great. A supervillain is put into a witness protection program, but he finds he can't stop kicking people's asses. He tries to be covert by stopping criminals and finds he likes it. This gets the ire of his former employers, a none too nice group of folks and he also manages to piss off the a secret superhero-staffed version of the FBI. Bad times all around.

The book is great because it infuses the superhero story, with its constant, but generally nonconsequential violence, with the depth of a crime story with its very consequential violence. People die in this story and they tend to die badly. Now in a realistic crime book, there would be one or two terrible acts, but this is a superhero book so the chaos is constant.

The only reason I was happy it ended was the hint that there is more to come. Now I have to get a hold of his Gotham Central which tells story's of Batman's city from the perspective of the town's cops.

Pixies fans, say goodbye to the next hour

Sound Opinions is the one radio show I wish my local NPR station carried (at a reasonable hour -- Saturday 11PM may as well be in an alternate universe). Co-hosted by Greg Kot, the author of Ripped, a book I recently reviewed, the show covers the world of popular music, especially rock music.

They recently talked to Frank Black (AKA Black Francis and Charles Thompson) about Doolittle. It's great fun and any fan will dig the interview. The hosts know and love the music and they talk to Frank like you would if you were there.

Q&A with Joe Schreiber

I used to think of him as one of the great new voices, bu you can't call Joe Schreiber a new horror writer any more. He has four novels under his belt, with another on the way. He is perhaps best known for his Star Wars novel Death Troopers in which dark things happen upon an abandoned Star Destroyer. My favorite is probably No Doors, No Windows, a story about a very nasty haunted house. In his responses below, Schreiber hints that King is his greatest influence. His novels remind me of the early King novels with their flawed characters, excellent use of the supernatural and flat out creepiness. You can follow him at his blog The Scary Parent.

1) What do you think makes the difference between a good horror novel and a bad one?

The same thing that differentiates any novel, I think: the characters and quality of writing. Losing yourself in a work of fiction -- any work of fiction -- requires a certain degree of confidence in the writer. As a reader, you can usually tell in just a few pages whether you trust the guy in the driver's seat, or whether you'd rather get out and walk. At least I can.

2) Your books consistently evoke feelings of dread and fear in me. I particularly like how sometimes you merely suggest what a character sees, letting the imagination fill in the details. How do you decide when it is best to suggest and when it is best to explicitly describe what is happening?

When in doubt, leave it out. Seriously. If you've done your job developing the tension and atmosphere along the way, you can absolutely step out of the way of your own prose and let the reader's imagination do the heavy lifting. It's the most powerful tool in the horror writer's toolbox -- it's working even when the reader's not actively reading the book.

3) Your Star Wars novel, Death Troopers, blends elements of the science fiction and horror genres. Did the science fiction setting lead you to write this book differently than you did your other novels?

Not really. If anything, I had to resist the temptation to "write different" and focus on getting myself involved in the story. As soon as I was there onboard the Destroyer with my characters, I relaxed, because I was having fun.

4) Eat the Dark is set in a hospital, a setting you are familiar with thanks to your work as an MRI technician. Does personal experience inform any of your other novels?

My first horror novel, Chasing the Dead, was based on some very uncomfortable days as a 30-something dad returning to school so I could support my new family. I got up very early in the morning, when it was still dark and cold, and drove a half-hour to radiography school and work, and drove home in the dark sixteen hours later. If a cold dead hand had reached up from the back seat of my Olds 88 at any time while that was going on, it would have made perfect sense, in a horrible sort of way.

5) What would you say is your favorite book and how, if at all, has it influenced how or what you write?

It's probably safe to say that, without Stephen King's The Shining, I would probably be writing greeting cards, if anything.

Some restaurants are more equal than others

I'm not much of a fan of McDonalds (Minty Patrick's Day Shake and McRib aside) but I love this promo photo of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the first McDonalds.

Stray thoughts about Inglorious Basterds

Finally saw the movie. Loved it, of course. Everybody wins with this movie. You get lots of dead Nazis, which everyone enjoys. You get that wild ending. You get the dialogue and pop culture references. 1940s references but still.

I do wonder if Tarantino is trying to wave his magic wand of star creation again. Will Mike Myers be the next Travolta? Reading this old EW profile makes me think he is screwed. Still I would love to see all those awesome German and French actors in movies over here.

I think I need to go back and watch all the others again.

Superman didn't get into heaven, saving the world for Marx and for Lenin

I've been introducing my kids to the What If? Comics from Marvel. They are wacky takes on what would have happened to classic Marvel story lines if some bit of history had been altered. One classic has Spiderman stopping the criminal that would have gone on to kill Uncle Ben. So instead of changing his ways and becoming a crime stopper, he just stays an entertainer. A lot of them are tongue in cheek like that.

DC, generally the lighter in tone line, has a darker set of alternate universe books called Elseworlds. One of those tales is called Red Son. It's big twist is that instead of landing in Kansas, the young Kal-El lands in the Ukraine and Superman grows up to be a Hero of the Soviet Union. This is not good news to the US, but they can rely on their own super-power, the brain of Lex Luthor. The Russians have their own home grown threat, thanks to the callous murder of dissident parents before the eyes of their child.

This could have been played for laughs or made into a simple role reversal, Mark Millar makes it a study of tyranny and the perils of pursuing complete security. In the US, Superman took on the American ideals, in Russia, he takes on the communist ideals. Everyone must be safe, equal and obedient. This leads to a Welcome to the Monkey House state in Russia, that comes to dominate the entire planet.

The book has an excellent finish as well. It's a nod to many other science fiction stories as well as being true to the Superman lore.

Understanding food

Nice column in the Oregonian about the gradual dumbing down of cookbooks. Here is an excerpt:

Bonnie Slotnick, a woman who owns a rare cookbook shop in Greenwich Village, was quoted in an article about the uptick in culinary cluelessness, saying:

"Thirty years ago, a recipe would say, 'Add two eggs.' In the '80s, that was changed to 'beat two eggs until lightly mixed.' By the '90s, you had to write 'in a small bowl, using a fork, beat two eggs.' We joke that the next step will be: 'Using your right hand, pick up a fork and. ...'"

The solution in the course is to bring Home Ec classes back to the schools. I think there is something to this. I certainly well educated by most standards but I can be flummoxed by some recipes. I just lack the education. The clear, educational cookbooks of Mark Bittman and those from the people at Cooks Illustrated, but I lack a certain foundation.

Thanks to the kindness of Neill, I now have a book I will be reading for a long, long time, Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. This book explains the history of food as well as the science. You see, for example, where cheese comes from, how it is made and how it develops. This helps you understand how to better use it as well as how it might react when you cook it. This isn't the kind of book you sit down and read, instead you turn to it time and time again as you build your understanding of how to use food and to cook. There are a few books you keep for your lifetime, not for nostalgia or for their looks, but because you can use them, this is one.