Some recent reading

Been a while since I mentioned any of the books I’ve been reading… the last post was a month ago. Here’s some of the stuff I read in that month, with very brief reviews.

Cell: A Novel, by Stephen King. Cell phones turn people into zombies. This is what I think of as “King in midlist horror writer” mode, as opposed to the incandescent writer who can produce stuff like Misery, The Colorado Kid, or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Fun but completely forgettable.

The Big Picture : Money and Power in Hollywood by Edward Jay Epstein. If you want to know how the movie biz really works, this is the one to read.

The Hallowed Hunt (Chalion, Book 3) by Lois McMaster Bujold. Lois McMaster Bujold’s books go down smoothly, have engaging characters, and do a more than journeyman’s take on their genre — while somehow managing to never blow your mind. The Chalion books are no exception: a well-imagined fantasy world with interesting magic, great characters, and (blessedly) no need to read the other books in the series — though they are all just as worth reading as this one is. Which is to say, if you find this sort of thing worth reading, this one is worth reading.

Radical Simplicity: Creating an Authentic Life by Dan Price. This is a book about a guy who decided that living alone first in a tipi and then in a hole in the ground (yes, literally) was a better way of staying in touch with who he really was. Entertainingly illustrated, and leaves you constantly marveling at the why of it all. And yet, the underlying message of living with only your essentials resonates.

The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl (Bantam Spectra Book) by Tim Pratt. If Charles deLint lived in Santa Cruz, he’d have written this book, which is complete with artist counterculture heroines, lesbian bikers, madmen who have links to an otherworld, demonic incarnations of adjectival attributes like “survival in the desert,” intelligent people who hang out in coffeehouses, doorways into mystical lands where your thoughts come to life, and of course, a few scary monsters. That doesn’t make it bad, not at all — it’s quite enjoyable. But somehow the heroine never has any setbacks — the only real one she had is revealed as backstory. All obstacles are there to be conquered with dismaying ease; in fact, even the climactic battle is won not by her but by the people around her.

The Lincoln Lawyer : A Novel by Michael Connelly. I didn’t think it was as impactful as some of his Harry Bosch books, but if you like the hardboiled thing, the unflinching examination of the squalid interiors of gray-souled people, then this is for you. Connelly likes to write about heroes who are dark compared to the average person, and villains who are even darker. That this one happens to be about a slimy defense lawyer just adds to the vibe.

School Days by Robert B. Parker. It’s a new Parker novel. Once again, you’ll find yourself thinking that he is one of the great dialogue writers. He’s made his prose so spare that it’s almost like a Hemingway parody. And he does dig a little bit deeper than usual for a Spenser book, examining what mnake a Columbine-style killer. But mostly, it’s another Parker novel.

At All Costs by David Weber. The Honor Harrington books are the slowest-moving space opera you’ll ever read, dense with mechanical prose and political menuvering. This one is bigger and denser than most. On the other hand, it comes with a CD with everything else the man has ever written, so you can start with this one and finish with it too. I got hooked on these somehow, and now I buy them all… sigh.

Hanging Out With the Dream King: Interviews with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators by Joe McCabe. I am two degrees of separation away from Neil Gaiman in three different ways at this point: I know a lot of folks who know him, but have never met him (though I’ve stood 15 feet from him). And I’ve loved his writing for a long time, since I was first handed a copy of Black Orchid while in college. Perhaps the best thing about this book is the insight into the comics business, however, because you won’t actually learn very much about Gaiman himself.

The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky and Kent Williams. I picked this one to represent the vast array of DC comics I have been reading lately. Why this one? Because it isn’t an Infinite Crisis book. I currently have (I kid you not) two cubic feet of comic book backlog…
In any case, I wondered before what a movie director would make of a comic. The answer, apparently, is something that looks nearly unfilmable. It’s visually compelling, and it’s a complex story of yearning and love — more complex, frankly, than the yearning and love in King’s Cell.