Crash and Byrne

And we're reading...

2012-04-01T23:32:00.000-04:00

I'm still working on The Arabian Nights. Whoa Nelly, this is going to take a while. So I decided to put it aside for a bit and read (at long last) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I've seen and read the play that was based on the book, so I figured I could knock out the book pretty quickly while I was out of town last week.

Nope. This sucker, while not as long as The Arabian Nights, is still pretty damn long. I'm only a little over a third of the way through the book. Plus, Stowe had the unfortunately tendency to write in dialect. Makes for a tough slog.

After I get through these two, I'm doing nothing but short stories for a while. And maybe catch up with some magazines.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant

2012-03-27T18:08:00.000-04:00

I don't read political nonfiction. Don't generally like it. I usually find that people spout ideology without bothering to back up any of their assertions, which basically just makes me angry.

So it was with some trepidation that I read Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant. Surprisingly (or perhaps not, given that it tends to support my view that the lower income Republican base has no idea that they are supporting a party that consistently works against their best interests), I really liked this book.

Bageant doesn't come across as shrill and angry like most of the political commentators I've seen and heard. I think it helps that he knows the people he's writing about. After leaving his hometown to pursue a career as a journalist, he returned in his late 50s to find that many of the people he grew up with were decidedly worse off than they had been. His view of the red state working poor and what motivates them is really an interesting read.

In some respects, this reminded me of reading Bill Bryson, but with a more political bent, in that Bageant is a storyteller who is also an affable guy. He wants to talk to people, to hear their stories, and to try to make sense of them.

I was disappointed to find out that Bageant passed away last year, but I look forward to reading his previous work.

Ghostly Men by Franz Lidz

2012-03-27T17:45:00.001-04:00

After reading E.L. Doctorow's take on the Collyer brothers, I decided to check out a more historically accurate version of their story, Ghostly Men: The Strange But True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders by Franz Lidz.

I liked this one, not only because it got more into the true story of the Collyer brothers (and the myth that grew up around them at the time), but also used the author's uncle as an example of another person with hoarding problems, and compared the family issues the Collyer brothers faced with his own family drama.

A very good read, not just for the interesting historical details, but because the Lidz is a good storyteller and the way he weaves the two stories together is particularly well done.

Now I want to go clean out my apartment.

House of Thieves by Kaui Hart Hemmings

2012-03-22T19:37:00.000-04:00

Recognizing that reading The Arabian Nights is probably going to take 1,001 days, I put it aside today to read Kaui Hart Hemmings' House of Thieves.

I knew nothing about Hemmings, other than the fact that she wrote The Descendants, which I've heard is a good film. Other than that, nada.

After reading the description (I seem to recall that Amazon had it on sale), I was intrigued. The stories (it's a collection of short stories) are set in Hawaii, a place I've never been, but have wanted to visit for some time. Reading the stories was a little like visiting, or more to the point, having a look at the lives of the people living there. These aren't the tourists at the beaches and the bars. It's the stories of the families who live and struggle there.

All of the stories deal with loss and abandonment. Usually the loss, either metaphorically or literally, of a parent, and the effect this has on the spouse or child left behind. The stories are excellently written and very moving. They are particularly good at dealing with the dynamic between a parent (or surrogate parent) and child.

Well worth a read.

Next up

2012-03-21T20:32:00.000-04:00

I just started reading The Arabian Nights: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night by Richard Burton. Good book so far, but my word, it is long. I've been reading for days and have barely made a dent.

So far my takeaway is this: Wives are not to be trusted. As soon as you leave them alone, they'll have an affair (usually with a black dude). And if you want to distract someone, tell them a story, within a story, within a story, within a story...

Also, if you fall in love with someone who is more lovely and beautiful than anyone else you've ever seen, it's going to end badly. Very, very badly.

Blue World by Robert R McCammon

2012-03-21T20:21:00.001-04:00

I read Blue World by Robert R. McCammon some years ago. Probably college, or not long after. I was in a major horror novel phase back then (King, Koontz, McCammon, Saul, etc.), and read a bunch of his books.

Most of the stories in this collection had stuck with me, but the details had faded, so it was fun to read them again. This book is a collection of short stories, mostly horror, and is a terrific read. The standouts include "Night Calls the Green Falcon," about an aging Hollywood serial actor, best known for playing a superhero called the Green Falcon, who dons his costume and fights real evil after a young friend of his is murdered (added bonus in this one, is that the chapters end with a bit of a cliffhanger, just like the lead character's serials would have); "Nightcrawlers," about a Vietnam vet and the horrors he unleashes when he sleeps; "Pin," which is really, really hard to read... no spoilers here, but you need to have a strong stomach; and a novella, "Blue World," about a priest who becomes obsessed with a porn actress, not knowing that there is a serial killer obsessed with both of them.

One of the other stories that I enjoyed for a different reason is "Something Passed By." The story deals with a world where the laws of physics and nature have gone crazy. The story is a pretty good read, but what I enjoyed most is that McCammon names all the local landmarks in the town after famous sci-fi and horror writers. It's a nice touch, and gives you a list of who's who in case you want to read more in this genre.

The Walk by Lee Goldberg

2012-03-19T14:13:00.000-04:00

The Walk is a pretty good book, all in all. Set in Los Angeles immediately after "The Big One," the story follows a TV executive who has to make it through the ruins of Los Angeles (he was visiting the set of a police procedural when the earthquake hit) to get to his wife (assuming she is still alive).

The story was good, if somewhat predictable in a lot of respects, and I'm a sucker for a good disaster novel. This one has what you would expect - fire, flood, poison gas, looters, psychos, and the rest. Goldberg is a good storyteller, and keeps the pacing as frantic as one would expect life post-disaster to be.

Some of the nice touches dealt with the fact that Martin, the protagonist, is a TV executive. It informs so much of his character, and nearly everything he experiences he has to process in terms of the disaster movies and similar TV shows he's seen or worked on. Naturally, Goldberg is a TV writer himself, so this is no surprise.

My favorite little touch of TV/movie theatricality in the book is the names of the chapters. Most of them reference TV, movies and songs. Nice touch.

Homer & Langley: A Novel by E. L. Doctorow

2012-03-18T23:18:00.002-04:00

I've been a fan of Doctorow since reading Ragtime, though that was the only one of his books I'd read. Since I've been interested in the Collyer brothers (two of NYC's most famous hoarders), I thought Homer & Langley would be a good read. It was.

Homer Collyer narrates the story of his life, from a well-off childhood, through his loss of eyesight in his teens, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the World Wars, and the increasingly bizarre behavior of his brother and his obsessive collecting. As he did in Ragtime, Doctorow manages to infuse his story with the societal and technological changes that happened over the brothers' lifetime - Victorian formality replaced by the summer of love, Model Ts by moon launches, and an upper-class 5th Avenue neighborhood crumbling with the onslaught of the '70s (Doctorow takes major liberties with their true life stories, reversing the order of their birth, pushing their birth years forward, letting them live to see the '70s, changing the details of their parents' deaths, etc.).

Anyone familiar with the history of the Collyer brothers knows what fate is waiting for Homer at the end of the tale, but Doctorow handles it so aptly, that the emotional impact of the final paragraph of the book is astounding.

Two Burglar Short Stories by Lawrence Block

2012-03-18T00:04:00.001-04:00

I've been a huge fan of Lawrence Block for many years (even more so once I moved to New York). In particular, I've really enjoyed his Matthew Scudder series (hardboiled mysteries), his Bernie Rhodenbarr "Burglar" series (more comic mysteries), and his Tanner series (about a spy who can't sleep due to a brain injury).

I was happy to see that some of his short stories featuring these characters are now available for Kindle, in addition to the novels.

I read two today, The Burglar Who Dropped in on Elvis (Bernie is hired by an unscrupulous tabloid editor--the kind of tabloid that makes the National Enquirer look like the New York Times--to break into Graceland and get picture of the rarely seen second floor and Elvis's bedroom) and The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke (a terrific locked-room murder mystery about the death of a wealthy book collector).

Both were fantastic, and at $.99, quite a bargain.

I'll continue to read most anything I can get by hands on by Block (with the exception of his Hit Man series, which I just couldn't get into), and I have a bunch of his reissued early work on my Kindle, so I'll be covering that at some point.

Next up is Homer & Langley: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow about the Collyer brothers. This is my second Doctorow book, and I'm enjoying it just as much as I did Ragtime. Fantastic storyteller and historian.

After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh

2012-03-17T23:46:00.000-04:00

So after reading the recommendation of this book in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, I decided to give After the Apocalypse a try. It was well worth it.

This series of short stories all feature an apocalypse theme. My two favorites were "The Naturalist" in which prisoners are released into a zombie-infested wasteland, or more correctly speaking a zombie nature refuge, and one of the prisoners sets out to learn as much as he can about these creatures, and "After the Apocalpyse," a tale in which America has been crushed by economic collapse, a massive crime wave, and the complete destruction of its basic infrastructure, and refugees flee the cities and head to Canada, and they hope, a return to the life they used to know.

Not all of the stories deal with apocalypse on this scale. Some deal with a more personal apocalypse, the end of one way of life and the beginning of something new and unknown.

McHugh is a really strong writer, and she does a marvelous job creating characters that are interesting (even the cold blooded killers are fascinating), and stories that are enjoyable to read. I definitely want to check out more of her work.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

2012-03-14T23:32:00.001-04:00

How is it possible that I have never read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? Absolutely delightful. It's especially interesting coming at the book having only seen the movie (and, I suppose, seen Wicked and read Gregory Maguire's books), to see how the writers of The Wizard of Oz screenplay manipulated the book to make it fit the film format. They did an amazingly good job of it.

Going to have to read all these books now (and they're all free on Amazon).

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

2012-03-13T00:15:00.000-04:00

My only experience with Doctor Dolittle is bits and pieces of the Rex Harrison movie. Talk to the Animals and all that.

Since the book was free (thanks Amazon) and it's a short one, I decided to read it. A 30 min workout and two subway rides was all it took. A children's book, clearly, but still a fun one to read (albeit one with a very 1920's view on black people... it wasn't Song of the South, but wow, it certainly isn't politically correct).

I also had no idea there were 9 Doctor Dolittle books (and a few more that were published posthumously).

I'll probably check them out at some point, but I think I want to see what Oz holds next.

Fantasy & Science Fiction - March/April 2012

2012-03-13T00:09:00.001-04:00

One of the best things about my Kindle is that I can once again subscribe to some of my favorite magazines without making my apartment any more cluttered than it is. So far I've subscribed to Ellery Queen Mystery, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Fantasy & Science Fiction.

This month's F&SF features a number of good stories. Among the highlights - Electrica by Sean McMullen (about a creature from prehistory whose consciousness is trapped in amber), Twenty-Two and You by Michael Blumlein (showing the unexpected consequences of messing with your genes), Gnarly Times at Nana'ite Beach by KJ Kabza (not cyberpunk, not steampunk, but beachpunk), One Year of Fame by Robert Reed (an author briefly becomes the most famous person on Earth), The Queen and the Cambion by Richard Bowes (Queen Victoria discovers a way to summon Merlin), Perfect Day by C.S. Friedman (a glimpse of the future online, plugged in, popup world that we're creating for ourselves).

In the book review section was a description of a short story collection by Maureen F. McHugh called After the Apocalypse. Sounded good, so I bought it.

There was a great short story, Pimp My Read by Paul Di Filippo, about the increasingly absurd lengths authors must go to in order to get their books read.

And just a note to myself - find a copy of Anthony Trollope's The Fixed Period. A little bit of Logan's Run, a bit of the ST:TNG episode Half a Life, but written in 1882. (Turns out Amazon has it, and it's free)

Murder in the Irish Channel by Greg Herren

2012-03-10T18:35:00.002-05:00

Today I finished Greg Herren's latest Chanse MacLeod mystery, "Murder in the Irish Channel," and it's a really good read. It features a missing mother and a whole host of people who have a reason for wanting her dead. Hired by her son, an MMA fighter, Chanse has to find out who would benefit most from her death or disappearance. Lots of distractions and red herrings, leading to a satisfying (and fairly unexpected) ending. I like those mysteries that surprise me, but where all the clues were laid out (no deus ex machina).

While the story was great, and lord knows Herren has a real talent for creating memorable characters, what most impresses me about his books is the way he brings New Orleans to life. The city is just as important a character as Chanse or any of the others who feature in this series.

Every time I read one of his books, I just want to get on a plane and head down there.

Zombiality: A Queer Bent on Zombie Fiction

2012-03-10T18:22:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I finished reading an anthology of short zombie stories featuring some LGBT aspect, "Zombiality: A Queer Bent of Zombie Fiction." Overall it was okay, but frankly, a lot of the stories sounded like they came from a creative writing class.

That said, one of them was terrific - "Sweetness" by B.C. Edwards. A great little story about a couple, one who has been infected with a virus that causes the person to become basically undead. It starts with a sweetness in the back of the throat, that eventually sends the person into madness. The story did a particularly good job about showing the difficulty of an infected person dealing with his fate, and the strain on his relationship (his boyfriend starts running with a group of zombie killers).

The best thing about this was its explanation of why zombies become flesh-eaters. It was a nice twist, and really well done. Worth checking out.

Take 2

2012-03-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

Since I'm still hardly ever using this, I think I'm going to start using this as my reading list. Maybe that will get me back into blogging. Or not. But at least I can keep track of the books I read.

So this weekend I read the latest Gale Carriger book, "Timeless," the fifth book in the Alexia Tarabotti/Parasol Protectorate series. Yet another marvelous story about vampires, werewolves and other preternaturals in Victorian England. Lots of steampunk influences and a wicked sense of humor abound. And two of my favorite characters in the series finally hooked up. A fun read.

Letting Go

2011-07-13T22:53:00.000-04:00

I'm a pack rat. I mean, I'm no Collyer brother, but well, let's just say I'm more like them than is probably healthy (I'm still way better off than anyone on those hoarder shows).

That said, I've been reading a ton of minimalist blogs recently and have started looking for ways to get my house in order, literally. The hard part is that I have too many attachments to what I own. First, there is the obvious sentimental attachment - "I can't throw that away, it was a gift from..." or "it reminds me of a time when..." (concert t-shirts, programs, my rugby kit, tons and tons of keepsakes, etc.)

The second is the attachment that says, "but I may need/want that in the future". Clothes that no longer fit? I'll get back into them someday. Receipts, tax returns? I may need them. Old textbooks? Well, you never know.

So I'm trying to get over that. I have a deal with my coach that I will tackle this huge-ass pile of crap in front of my dresser in the weeks to come. Looking at it, I have no idea where to the stuff is going to go, though I do know (hope) quite a bit of it can be tossed.

In an effort to make some room, I decided to start with something easy. Porn.

I can't remember the last time I even looked at a porn tape. Has to have been 5 or 6 years at least. Probably longer than that. And I have a rather prodigious collection. So I started throwing it out. Oddly, I had those first little feelings of worry (maybe I should sell this, maybe I should keep it...), but once I started bagging it up, worry gone. I couldn't care less about it.

Now let's see if I can keep up that feeling when I start in on my wardrobe. Or, God help me, my books.

Chalk one up for my moral compass

2011-02-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

I have some marvelously embarassing photos of a famous playwright. Rather than show them to everyone I know, I took the moral high road and deleted them.

Karma owes me a pony.

Damn you, Easy Listening Station

2011-02-08T00:49:00.001-05:00

So I'm in my office and the radio is playing. Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" comes on, and 15 seconds into it, I'm crying. I had to turn the bloody thing off.

FML.

I assume these little emotional ninja attacks go away at some point. But that will suck in a completely different way.

Glee

2011-02-07T00:49:00.000-05:00

So what does it say about me that the character I'm most attracted to on the show is the homophobic bully?

Totally fucked up.

Re: Lent

2010-03-09T01:37:00.000-05:00

It isn't technically "watching TV" if I watch an episode of Better Off Ted on my computer.

No reviews at this time, it's late, but I read three books this weekend, Best Gay Erotica 2010, Best Gay Romance 2010, and Sense and Sensibitity.

"No pain no --" "STFU!"

2010-03-03T23:30:00.000-05:00

After a bitch of a day at work, I had my second "new project" workout with my trainer. My plan is this - no matter how bad it is, I won't bitch. He tells me to do it, and I do. If I can't do it, I take a rest and try again.

He seems to like this approach.

Everything aches right now, but that's just how it is.

Whatever.

At least I have a four day weekend coming up. Which I have to spend working out, and writing, and surreptitiously taking care of work stuff so I don't come back to absolute chaos.

You know, when I gave up TV, I assumed that it would free up some time. But I have had so much less free time than before. How the hell is that even possible?

Mantra

2010-03-03T00:31:00.002-05:00

I will be happy for my friends when good things happen to them. I will be happy for my friends when good things happen to them. I will be happy for my friends when good things happen to them.*

*Mostly

"I know. That's what makes me so nice."

2010-03-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

My trainer told me today that I'm his new project. He doesn't feel like we're making progress and has determined that we - meaning I - need to step it up a few notches. Or as he so succinctly put it, "I'm going to kill you this month."

Well, if today was any indication, he may very well do just that. The name of the game was interval training - work out for a set time, take a 30 second break, work out for another set amount of time, take a 30 second break, ad nauseam (literally). We did this for 45 min. or so, then I got to stretch.

I'm exhausted. Between work and the theatre blogs and everything else, I'm just so damn tired.

But whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And if it does kill us, well, that's that.

Pissing into the wind

2010-02-28T17:07:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while the self-doubt gets overwhelming, and it feels like everything I do is futile. Why do I write, create, try? It seems that I put things out there to a world that doesn't want them.

It's so easy not to. To quote Wicked (sorry about that), "those who don't try never look foolish." So why do I keep trying?

Anyway, today is a big old self-doubt day. However, I'm going to "beast through it," as my trainer frequently exhorts me to do when we're working out.

Maybe no one gives a fuck about what I write. Fine. I'm still going to write it. And while I feel like I'm not getting any validation right now, that's just my self-doubt talking. When I'm in a better place, I won't feel this way.