.
To order The Tear of Living Biblically from amazon.com, click here.
WITH SIGNS & WONDERS
edited by Daniel M. Jaffe:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/23/2004]
Daniel M. Jaffe's WITH SIGNS & WONDERS (ISBN 1-931-22930-9,
Invisible Cities Press) is an anthology of "international Jewish
fabulist fiction." I think that means halfway between fantasy and
magical realism, but even if not, that's a reasonable description.
I don't think this would appeal to everyone, but it seems a
reasonable representation of this sub-genre. (The idea that a
small press in Montpelier, Vermont, published this is almost as
odd as that Martin Gidron's alternate history about Yiddish
culture, THE SEVERED WING, was published by Livingston Press at
the University of West Alabama.)
To order With Signs & Wonders from amazon.com, click here.
THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF COMIC CRIME
by Maxim Jakubowski:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/20/2004]
And if whether mysteries work is very specific to the reader, that
is doubly true of humorous mysteries. Maxim Jakubowski's THE
MAMMOTH BOOK OF COMIC CRIME (ISBN 0-786-71002-0) is a mixed bag--
some I found very funny, others I found too obvious, and some just
fell flat. The same will probably be true of you, but it is
unlikely that you will put the same stories in the same
categories.
To order The Mammoth Book of Comic Crime from amazon.com, click here.
"The Aspern Papers"
by Henry James:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
Our library reading group read "The Aspern Papers", a novella by
Henry James about a literary biographer who goes to Venice to try
to recover some letters written by his idol. These letters are
now in the possession of an old woman and her niece, so he uses
his charm to try to obtain the papers from the niece. I won't say
whether he succeeds, but frankly, it was hard to care.
To order The Aspern Papers from amazon.com, click here.
THE GRIZZLY MAZE: TIMOTHY TREADWELL'S FATAL OBSESSION WITH ALASKAN BEARS
by Nick Jans:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/09/2005]
THE GRIZZLY MAZE: TIMOTHY TREADWELL'S FATAL OBSESSION WITH
ALASKAN BEARS by Nick Jans (ISBN 0-525-94886-4) (and the related
film GRIZZLY MAN, reviewed by Mark in the 12/02/05 issue) both
focus on what motivated Treadwell to live with bears for several
years before eventually being killed by one. Watching the footage
of him, the term that came to mind was "eco-flake": well-meaning
but completely misinformed and ultimately more damaging to his
"cause" than helpful. The book points out that Treadwell did
manage one amazing feat: in the eighty years of record-keeping, he
was the first person in the Alaska wildlife preserves to be killed
by a bear. (Treadwell himself seemed to swing between claiming
that the bears would never harm him and that the bears might kill
him at any moment if he showed weakness.) Treadwell also claimed
he was protecting the bears from poachers, though there is no
evidence that there was any substantial poaching going on in the
preserves, and Treadwell's "evidence" was either questionable or
fabricated. (E.g., he shows a party of men photographing a bear
and claims they are poachers, though they don't shoot the bear
that is only twenty feet away.) It is an engrossing study of a
delusional person.
To order The Grizzly Maze from amazon.com, click here.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
by Ben Jeapes:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/01/2005]
Ben Jeapes's THE NEW WORLD ORDER (ISBN 0-385-75013-7) is an
alternate history where scientifically advanced Neanderthals from
a parallel timeline invade Jacobean England and start affecting
the English Civil War. The high concept description would be
"Robert Sawyer ('Neanderthal' trilogy) meets Harry Turtledove
(THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH and the 'World War' tetralogy), written as
a young-adult novel." It didn't do much for me because I kept
seeing its antecedents, but younger readers unfamiliar with the
genre might like it, and at least the setting is much less
frequently used.
To order The New World Order from amazon.com, click here.
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS
by Sarah Orne Jewett:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/03/2003]
Sometimes when you read a book, or the context in which you read
it, can affect how you view it.
For example, I just re-read Lisa Goldstein's TOURISTS as a bit
of research on magical realism. I then read Sarah Orne Jewett's
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS, a turn-of-the-century series
of vignettes about coastal Maine. Though it certainly wasn't
intended as magical realism (and indeed, the notion of magical
realism hadn't been invented yet), it certainly read that way.
To order The Country of Pointed Firs and Other Stories from amazon.com, click here.
CHRISTOPHER LEE FILMOGRAPHY
by Tom Johnson and Mark A. Miller:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/21/2005]
At $55, Tom Johnson and Mark A. Miller's CHRISTOPHER LEE
FILMOGRAPHY (ISBN 0-786-41277-1) is probably too expensive for
the casual reader or film-goer. (We got ours used at a
convention.) But it is a valuable resource, not just for people
interested in Christopher Lee, but also for people interested in
the filmmakers that Lee has worked with, and in the business in
general. For example, Lee recounts a couple of times when he was
given a script with a part which he agreed to play, and then later
discovered that his innocuous speeches were inter-cut with scenes
of a Satanic orgy or some such, making it appear he had actually
been in that scene. (Or the time that a still from a movie of him
as a detective leaving a pornography store was printed in the
newspaper purporting to be of him as himself in real life leaving
a pornography store!) For each film there is a list of credits,
a synopsis, commentary on the film, and comments by Lee himself.
(There are a few films for which Lee doesn't comment, usually
minor films in which he had very small roles.) Recommended, but
expensive. (If McFarland brings out a trade paperback edition,
that will be more reasonably priced.)
To order Christopher Lee Filmography from amazon.com, click here.
IMPLOSION
by D. F. Jones:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/02/2007]
Spurred by comments from various readers about books similar to
CHILDREN OF MEN, I read IMPLOSION by D. F. Jones (no ISBN).
Jones is better known as the author of COLUSSUS (made into
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT). The premise of IMPLOSION is that
an Eastern European scientist is working on a way to get rid of
rats. He comes up with a drug that vastly decreases the
fertility of rats, and then his government decides to modify it
to work on people. Why England is the target is a bit contrived,
and the degree to which its use is limited as long as it is, will
seem unlikely to modern readers. And the reaction of the English
to the discovery that 80% of the female population is sterile,
and to the measures imposed, seems very "well-behaved"--more like
what one hears of their reaction to World War II than what it
would probably be today. My main criticism is the depiction of
women seems very sexist by today's standards (though rather
Heinleinesque, I think). One finds characters saying things
like, "A strong maternal woman is close to nature--she knows kids
are her business--she knows too that Mother Nature produces
nothing useless; yet a sterile women with strong maternal
instincts *is* useless, and knows it. She feels useless--that's
why some of 'em are so bitchy." Still, it is a novel of its time
(1967) and quite worth reading if one keeps that in mind.
To order Implosion from amazon.com, click here.
COUNT DRACULA GOES TO THE MOVIES: STOKER'S NOVEL ADAPTED, 1922-1995
by Lyndon W. Joslin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/03/2004]
Lyndon W. Joslin's COUNT DRACULA GOES TO THE MOVIES: STOKER'S
NOVEL ADAPTED, 1922-1995 (ISBN 0-786-40698-4) is a fine book from
McFarland, who publish many fine books. Anyone interested in how
Bram Stoker's novel (and the Count) has been portrayed in films
should get this book. Joslin does a very thorough job comparing
the films with Stoker's book, and with each other, and with
traditional folklore. (Montague Summers is often cited.) He does
cover only the films based on the book--with the addition of the
other films in the Universal and Hammer series--rather than all
vampire films. However, this serves to focus the comparisons, and
was (I think) a wise decision on Joslin's part. Highly
recommended, but be warned--you're going to want to go back and
watch these films again after reading about them.
To order Count Dracula Goes to the Movies from amazon.com, click here.
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