Happy Halloween!

A Rant-worthy Week and Two Reviews

It has been a relatively trying seven days. Nothing major or life shattering, but rather more frustrating than anything. Last week, my car battery died, but thankfully I was only a couple of miles from home.

Saturday, driving home, I hit a deer with my car. Or rather, the young deer ran into my car. In the area of NJ where I live, I see about one dead deer on the side of the road for every couple of miles I drive. One could say I live out in the country. In fact, when I first moved into the house last year a deer was hit right outside my house (not by me). I was woken by the gunshot which put the poor creature out of its misery. Between where I live now and where my In-Laws live, I've been avoiding deer on the roads for a while, I've become relatively skilled at spotting them. However, this little guy came out of nowhere and with the hour being dusk, it was even more difficult to see the road and my surroundings. I pulled over to check the car and glance back at the deer, the deer struggled for a minute or so, got up and bounded away. The car is driveable and Mrs. Blog o' Stuff and I are fine, just a little shaken and stirred.

Sunday, the Yankees lost to the Tigers. Considering the tall goofball who pitched on Sunday, and the whiny prima-donna who pitched on Saturday, I'm not too suprised. The Yankees loss is another rant, which I don't care to go into at the moment.

Monday, I had some plumbing issues in the house and had to have Roto Rooter come out today. Getting ready for work today, I lost a contact. Luckily, I had a spare set. Getting into the car, I spilled coffee all over my seat.

So while on the whole, life is generally "OK," I still (as I told my wife) would like to, if they were a perseon, take the past 7 days outside in the back yard and beat it about the face with a large frying pan.

I joined the revolution today and signed up with MySpace. What I'll do with it, is probably minimal.

Last and not least, I posted a couple of reviews in the past week:

The Black Tattoo by Sam Enthoven - a little bit epic fantasy, a little bit horror, and a little disappointing.

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor - A retelling of Alice in Wonderland vis a vis Gregory Maguire's Wicked.

The venerable Hobbit of SFFWorld posted his review of Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts, making me want the book even more.

The new seasons of Lost and Battlestar Galactica are doing exactly what they did last season - leaving me wanting more.

Latest sign of the apocalypse: Mr. T. has reality Show.

Enough ranting for now.

9 Unread Books Meme and a Review

I posted my review of The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. In the same vein as Maguire’s Wicked, though not quite as good.

Hornswaggled from the Hornswaggler himself… The 10 Unread books mem

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher – I really enjoyed Storm Front and with the TV show upcoming, I want to get into this soon.

Son of the Witch by Gregory Maguire – I loved Wicked, got this about a year ago, but haven’t gotten to it yet.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson – I never got around to reading Elantris, so I figured this might be a good starting point for the new author.

Innocents Aboard by Gene Wolfe – really, is there a defendable excuse for having an unread Gene Wolfe book on my shelf? I didn’t think there was.

The Hidden Stars by Madeline Howard – Ms. Howard has a forum at SFFWorld and I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, shame on me.

The Chosen by Ricardo Pinto – Gary Wassner spoke very highly of this book as have others.

Tales of the White Wolf edited by Karl Edward Wagner – a collection of short stories about Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone. 

A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo – SFFWorld forum member Ouroboros goes on quite a bit about this book and series. I saw it in the local used bookshop and figured I’d give it a try.

The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock – this one has been on the shelf for at least a year, and I’ve heard wonderful things about Blaylock.

I’m sure most people who read my blog already know this, but it is worth mentioning: Clarkesworld Magazine launched yesterday. Good luck to Neil and Nick.

Last but not least, the latest installment of Greenhorn made me smile very broadly.

Greenhon & Armageddon

A couple of the folks over FantasyBookSpot started up a cool, snarky Web comic called Greenhorn. It reminds me a bit of Dork Tower, which isn’t such a bad thing. Paul has had a couple of short stories published and Damon does a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff at FBS. Best of luck to them with Greenhorn.

Despite the kerfuffle last week, I’m still writing book reviews. The most recent of which is the review I published ast night, Armageddon’s Children by Terry Brooks. What was most frustrating about the book was how much I wanted to like it. As my review points out, there were too many negatives about the book for me to really enjoy it. I didn't mention it in the review, but I often wonder how he comes up with some of the names for his characters.

Interview, Review, and Criticism

I recently posted my interview with David Louis Edelman, author of the fantastic Infoquake. After I posted my review a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Edelman asked if I would like to conduct an e-mail interview, who was I to say no? I also posted my review of Delia Sherman's Changeling, an entertaining YA Fantasy.

It seems a review I wrote a few months back has instigated something of a stir. This is the type of shitstorm that hits the Intraweb every couple of months; and Gabe is as good as, or maybe better than most at instigating good debate and discussion. However, this time I find it particularly odd, since I've watched some of these things from the 'sidelines' of the Intraweb and not been involved. Gabe brings up some fair points, I suppose, and some things I've been considering over the past few months as my review output has been increasing. With Emerald City closing down and the validity of on-line reviews continually in question, Gabe's essay / critique / rant comes at an interesting time, especially since he singles me out early in his rant. The point I probably agree with the most is that I could have expounded further on one of my initial points in the review. However, I think the remainder of my review is fairly strong (if not explicitly a criticism piece) - it gives a feel for the book and a good indication, via comparisons of other writers/books, if somebody might enjoy the book. After all when I read reviews; that is, the gist of what I am looking for in a review is the answer to this question - is the book worth my time? In essence, I felt I delivered on what I look for when perusing book reviews of a book I'm interested in reading.

From my vantage point, criticisms can tend to be long winded and stray too far from the question I want answered. This isn't intended as a slight on lengthier criticism, despite what I just said. Gabe, more often than not, has a lot of interesting things to say, that's why I often read his rants/criticisms. Very often, though, if the review/critique is too long, I zone out and lose interest. Thus I try to keep my reviews between 500 and 1200 words. This is not to say that reviews can't or shouldn't include some form of criticism. After all, I want to know why the book is worthy or unworthy of my time and critical examination is healthy.

I always want the quality of my reviews to be top notch, of course. I also know some of my reviews are stronger than others, such things are only natural. What Gabe says about reviewers and critics is fodder for debate, which is always good. I don't consider myself a critic under Gabe's definition in his various pieces over the past couple of days. While I received my BA in English (what can you do with that?) and wrote my fair share of essays and rudimentary criticisms, I never read much on critical theory - literary and/or sf. So if I were to start spouting some theories and what not in my review, I would sound hollow to myself, if nobody else. Does that make me any less qualified to be reviewing books for a fairly large genre community/Web site? Am I just a fan with an opinion and an outlet to voice my opinion? I suppose that's a bit part of what I am, as a reviewer for SFFWorld.

I'm not going to lie and say I don't enjoy getting the free books, because I do. But that's just part of the package. What I find gratifying is when my review encourages somebody to pick up the book I reviewed and that person get as much enjoyment out of the book as I did. Or conversely, if I helped somebody avoid a book that I thought was sub-par. However, I feel I should try to read and review every book I receive from publishers, though it doesn’t always happen. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I feel it is something of an unwritten contract between the publisher/publicist and me.

So part of this, I think boils down to the difference between critcisim and reviews. Where does one drift into another? Is a review in Publishers Weekly or the New York Times Book Review any more valid than a review I publish at SFFWorld or a review that appears at SciFiWeekly? Ultimately, I don't know, I can only say from my perspective - no. The current genre reviewer for NYT BR caused something of a stir when his first couple of pieces were published. Response ranged from outrage to "hey, at least genre stuff is still being looked at in the NYT."

Will I try to improve my reviews? Of course, I want to improve over time. Do I think the review in question over at Gabe’s journal is one of my lesser reviews? No, I really don’t, nor do I feel it is my strongest. As a piece of criticism, it perhaps falls short.

All that said, I bear no ill-will towards Gabe, he’s been an online pal for a while now. I don't think I've said all I can say on the subject, since it is something of an ongoing dialogue. Comments?

The Blog is Still Alive

I've been very busy with work lately and as such, I haven't had much posting time here at the 'o Stuff. In better news, two weekends ago I went to the see Opie and Anthony's Traveling Virus Comedy Tour at the PNC Arts Center and laughed the entire night. My jaw was actually sore the following day from laughing so much. Great comedians like Otto and George, Jim Norton, Dirty Bob Saget, Bob Kelly, Patrice O'Neal and Carlos Mencia will do that to a person.

I was at the Arts Center again this past Friday for the Godsmack/Rob Zombie/Shinedown concert, which was great. Despite the funky acoustics at the arena, Godsmack still sounded great.

Since my last post, I've published a couple of reviews and interviews at SFFWorld. My interview with Scott Westerfeld, and review of The Last Days went up last week and last night I published my review of the terrific new collection from Mike Resnick, New Dreams for Old.

Nice Bird, Asshole.

I know I may be a bit late in singing the praises of Scott Lynch's debut novel, but I should hope this doesn’t make these praises any less worthy. After just finishing Infoquake, I suppose I can consider myself lucky at having read two of the best debut novels in their respective branches of Speculative Fiction in the past few years. So far these are the two best books I’ve read this year, although Sean Williams The Crooked Letter might make it a three-way tie for my top pick from this year’s bunch of books.

The Lies of Lock Lamora was a great, entertaining, balls against the wall story. Its no wonder the book has been optioned by Hollywood, Mr. Lynch writes with a very cinematic style. Few people have as good a pen for dialogue as him, except maybe Matthew Stover. For a book that isn’t explicitly comedy, it has some of the best one-liners in any genre or book.

I loved the alternating chapters, between Lock’s “now” and his youth with Chains. It is a good technique to shuffle the reader’s perceptions about the characters with each past revelation. It also worked to build the tension enough at the end of each chapter with the slight shift in tone from past to present.

The book reminded me in parts of Steven Brust, Goodfellas, Matthew Stover and the film Snatch. This works great for me since I love Brust and Stover’s writing and count Goodfellas as one of my top 10 favorite films.

Besides, how can you NOT like a book that’s got a quote for the crazy old closer from the Phillies, Mitch Williams?

I’ve a strong feeling* The Lies of Lock Lamora is just the tip of Lynch’s iceberg. This is a very good thing indeed.


*well duh, the second book comes out next year and just about everybody who reads in the genre knows about the project 7 books in the series, not to mention the three novellas.

A Genre Reawakening

Infoquake just might be THE Science Fiction novel of the year, if not the past five years. David Louis Edleman has done so many things right in this book, from the plausible next steps in human society to the characters, all the notes ring true.

The future history only begs for MORE background, to the Reawakening to the Three Jesuses to the typical lunar colonies, he has it all mapped out and Infoquake is only the tip of the iceberg. Edleman has a fascinating background and timeline mapped out at http://www.infoquake.net.

I hope most of my reviews are fair, though I know a share of them tend to be enthusiastic. I hope my earlier praise of some novels doesn't lessen my enthusiasim for Infoquake. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Pyr is publishing some great books, but this might be the book that puts them over the top in terms of US genre publishing.

The last book I read when it first came out (I know that is something of a qualifier) that had me this enthusiastic was Greg Keyes' The Briar King.

I also posted my review of Wayne Thomas Batson's fine young adult fantasy Rise of the Wyrm Lord.

I need to see thos motherfucking snakes!

Boston Massacer 2006 - Holy Crap! I expected the Yankees to win three, but a sweep. That was very nice.

Short Book post

Yesterday, I posted my review of Novik's Black Powder War by Naomi Novik. I've also been making my way through the John Scalzi edited cliche issue of Subterranean. So far, I think Allen Steele's The Last Sceince Fiction Writer is the best of the bunch. I just finished David Louis Edelman's Infoquake and loved it. Easily one of the best of the year, and maybe last couple of years. More when the review goes up on SFFWorld.

Darkside

Tales from the Darkside is coming to the SciFi Channel. I have a lot of fond, terrible memories of this show from the 80s. It was an anthology, much like The Twilight Zone, except with a much darker tone, as evidenced by the opening voice-over:

Man lives in the sunlit world
of what he believes to be reality.
But, there is, unseen by most, an underworld,
a place that is just as real,
but not as brightly lit.....
A DARKSIDE.

Some of the episodes were kind of cheesy, and I don't know how they would all hold up today, but I liked them well enough back then. I'm surprised it took this long for SciFi to pick up the series.

I’ve seen this on the blogs/LJs and The Hornswaggler tagged me, so here goes.

1. One book that changed your life?
One? Only one? Don’t know if I can narrow it down all that much. A lot of books changed me in discreet ways I have only noticed years later.

2. One book you have read more than once?
The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub – I traveled with Jack to the Territories about once a year in high school and was heartbroken each time I read of Wolf’s fate. I’ve read many books multiple times, but this was the first book I probably read more than once.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
“How to Survive on a Desert Island and Not Go Apeshit” Oh, a real book? Maybe some kind of survival guide I suppose.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Terry Pratchett's Small Gods

5. One book that made you cry?
Old Yeller when I was twelve.

6. One book you wish had been written?
Respect: How a Young Man from New Jersey Made It

7. One book you wish had never had been written?
I don’t know, maybe Mein Kampf?

8. One book you are currently reading?
Infoquake by David Louis Edleman during lunch breaks at work and The Year’s Best Science Fiction, 23rd Edition edited by Gardner Dozois at home.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

10. Now tag five people.
I'm so late to this meme, I think most people have already done it. If you haven't I'm tagging you. YES, YOU!

Subterranean Ghosts

I posted my review of John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades today. For the SFFWorld Science Fiction Book Club this past May, the discussion book happened to be John's Old Man's War, which I enjoyed a great deal. If ound the book to be a good balance of action, character, humor, and story, so I was looking forward to The Ghost Brigades. While TGB was a different book, I enjoyed it no less and liked it probably just as much, although for different reasons.

As serendipity or coincidence would have it, when I stopped by the local Borders for Locus yesterday, I was surprised to see they had the SF Cliche issue of Subterranean magazine guest edited by Mr. Scalzi. I'll be diving into the magazine tomorrow.

It is hot as balls in New Jersey. My pool is in the middle of my back yard and as a result, is under the shade of no tree. Today, the pool water was up in the 90s. I might have a shipment of ice delivered to drop in this weekend.

Knight Clerks

I saw Clerks II on Friday and absolutely loved it. After Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I was expecting a bit of a letdown. I shouldn't have worried. I thought it was perhaps his second best movie. Kevin Smith hit every note correctly on this one. Dante and Randall didn't seem to skip any beats and worked just as well together. I also thought Smith did a great job of making the film accesible to people who might not have seen Clerks. Of course, there was plenty in there for folks like Mrs. Blog o' Stuff and I who have seen all of his films.

Of course, some people will disagree with me on the film, but Kevin knows his movies aren't for everyone. I happened to hear the O&A show when he and Siegel had it out and thought it was pretty funny.

In book news, I just posted my review of Greg Keyes' The Blood Knight. As I said in an earlier post, I loved this book. Every page. I just didn't want it to end.

Random Rob Fact

I can do backflips.

Over the weekend, Mrs. Blog o' Stuff and I had some family over my house to barbeque and hang out poolside. I decided to try and do a backflip off my diving board. I can pull off front flips very easily. However, considering my size and less than graceful self, I didn't think I would be able to do it. When I pulled it off, I surprised myself more than anybody else.

That is all.

I posted my review of Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade over the weekend, and for the most part I enjoyed the book. Novik continues to entertain me with this series after two books. My review of the third book should go up soon, as will my review of Greg Keyes' The Blood Knight. Wow. Keyes is continuing to impress me with this wonderful series, I just hope less time elapses between the 3rd and 4th book than the 2nd and 3rd. Still, if I was able to wait five years for one series, I suppose I can be patient for this one, too.

I spent the majority of Sunday outside enjoying the glorious heat. I worked on the yard for about half the day and barbequed and stayed in my pool the other half of the day. Speaking of the heat, anyone in the NJ/NY area can attest to the ridiculous taglines the local news channels tease us with during the evening - "How to stay alive in the the most oppressive heatwave of the season, tonight at 11!"

Back to the pirate story and watching the rest of Eureka.

Confession of an FSF Biblioholic

One of my major problems as a reader is how many interesting books are on the shelves right now. Very often, the sentiment arises in FSF that the quality of the genre is not what it once was. I suppose I’m a lucky reader then, much of what I’ve read in the past few years has really pushed the right buttons. From the Epic Fantasies of Greg Keyes, to the near future SF of new authors like Marc Giller to the genre-bending thrill of Chris Roberson’s Paragaea to the Epic scale of Peter F. Hamilton’s space opera to the pulpy goodness of E.E. Knight’s Vampire Earth to the pure imagination of Jeffrey Ford’s fantasies to the heroic fantasy of Matt Stover to… I could go on, really. Most of the books I’ve read in the past few years have been very good, or at the leas enjoyable on some level. Of course, there are going to be clunkers, but those books help you appreciate the good books even more.

This does present a problem though. For as many books as I’ve read and enjoyed, there are as many, maybe more that I want to read. Just from this past year or so alone, I wanted to get to Abraham’s A Shadow in Summer, Hartwell’s Space Opera Renaissance, Keck’s In the Eye of Heaven, Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin, Sean Williams/Shane Dix’s Geodesica duology, John C. Wright’s Orphans of Chaos, Cory Doctrow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves to Town, etc.

Add to that all the classics I want to revisit (or read for the first time, embarrassingly), like Dune, Starship Troopers, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ringworld, Stand on Zanzibar, 1984, Clark Ashton Smith, The Land of Laughs, Snow Crash, The Dying Earth, etc.

This doesn’t even include all the short fiction I want to read in the anthologies and magazines. I can barely trim down my own to read pile before wanting to add to it.

That was the long of it. The short of it is – there is just too much out there I want to read.

Ahoy Matey!

Between this and this, my inner swashbuckler is itching at the barnacle to be unleashed. Apropos of the location of tonight's All-Star game, I've begun chronicling the journey of Vette the Pirate.

Speaking of the All-Star game, this coverge is awful. Twice when they announcers broke away from covering the game to go to either a mic'd up manager or a reporter on the 'sidelines,' exciting things happened in the game. Focus was taken away from the game on the field when great things happened - Vlad Guerrero's homer and Alfonso Soriano getting thrown out at home. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Fox is one of THE worst things to happen to baseball in the past 10 or fifteen years.

Bring out yer dead!

Mrs. Blog o' Stuff and I just returned from Spamalot, which was a helluva lot of fun. It was funny, entertaining and well-acted. I just wish we would have had a chance to see the original cast like Hank Azaria and Tim Curry. We've always both enjoyed Monty Python and have been wanting to see it for a while.

I posted my review of Martin Sketchley's The Destiny Mask earlier in the week. I thought it was good, but not as good as the first book in the trilogy.

One year ago (8th) we closed on our house and moved in on the 9th. It has been a very interesting and crazy year, to say the least.

Vampires, Knights, and Spaceships

I posted my review of Scott Westerfeld's Peeps today. I liked this one very much, one of my favorite reads so far this year. I know I just said that with Paragaea, but it holds true for Peeps, too. This was one of the more clever spins on the Vampire legend/myth/cliche I have read in quite some time. There are too many Vampire novels out there to read all of them; this is one I would suggest NOT missing. I read the sequel, The Last Days, too. I'll post that review once the book's publication date draws closer.

As my sidebar indicates, I've got two books on the docket right now, John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades and Greg Keyes' The Blood Knight. I think, outside of George R.R. Martin, Keyes is writing the best Epic Fantasy saga on the shelves right now. I've been looking forward to this one since I finished The Charnel Prince almost two years ago.

As for John's book, I really enjoyed Old Man's War when it was the discussion book back in May at SFFWorld's Science Fiction forum.

Thank God and Mother Nature the weather finally broke today. After the soggiest week I can remember, we actually had a full day of sun here in Central New Jersey. Mrs. Blog o' Stuff and I were finally able to get some outdoor projects around the house closer to completion.

The next county over really did get hit bad with floods and water damage. Towns were flooded for a majority of the week and Main Street in New Hope, PA (a relatively popular day trip for Jersyians) was completely underwater with some businesses ruined.

Kal-El

Sunday was six years of marriage for Mr. and Mrs. Blog o' Stuff. Six of the best years of my life. One year ago, we spent the weekend in Washington D.C. and were anxiously preparing for the move into the new house.

This year we celebrated by seeing the aforementioned X-Men III before I cooked a batch of my world famous chile, one of Mrs. Blog o' Stuff's favorites. On the whole, it was a relatively relaxing day, despite the rains. She got me an official Martin Brodeur jersey, something I've been wanting for a while. Not too surprsing, since Mrs. B is responsible for all of my sports jerseys. I got her, well actually us, tickets to go see Spamalot. It was a toss up between that and seeing the hilarous Stephen Lynch in The Wedding Singer. The British humour won in the end, but we do need to see Lynch on stage again.

Today, we went to see Superman Returns. I had heard so many mixed things about the film, I wasn't sure what to expect. I liked it quite a bit, despite some misgivings, including the suit. I bought Routh as Clark Kent much more than Superman. I was never a fan of the Lois Lane character, and Bosworth was effective, I guess. I liked the story, I thougt Superman's pure power and his powers were displayed very effectively. Spacey nailed Luthor. On the whole, I was entertained and on the edge of my seat in the right scenes. The movie does bode well for the future of the franchise, as long as Routh packs on about 25 pounds of muscle.

Back to the fiction and forums.

Time Dancing Away

I posted my review of Steve Cash's Time Dancers a day or so ago. Despite it being written pretty well, I just didn't feel engaged by the characters or the barely-there plot. Perhaps if I read the first book, The Meq, I would have had a different reaction.

Finally, I caught the new X-Men movie over the weekend. I went in with very low expectations, based on what others have said, but still hoping to be entertained. I thought it was entertaining, but I did have problems with it, especially the characters who didn't quite make it to the credits. I know movies and comics are different mediums, but when there is such an established universe and set of characters, I see no real reason to mess with what has worked before.

This blog really is becoming something of a wasteland, no? Perhaps I should take it out in the backyard to shoot it and put it out of its misery. Ah, at least I have all my links here, which is what I've been using it for lately.

A new job will do that (especially when a lot of the posting prior to this new job were done during work hours at the previous job). I have been focusing on writing fiction, I finished a short story last week and started another one very recently. I haven't jumped back into a full-length novel yet, though. I want to work on some more stories first.

Enough rambling, back to the fiction.