Weekly wrap up 11/23-11/29

Hey readers, hope you had a great thanksgiving. I went home to Pennsylvania for a few days to spend time with my family. It was really relaxing and I had a good time.

This weekend was my first experience working retail on black Friday and small business Saturday, which was a really crazy two days.

I had a pretty fruitful week as far as reading, and finished a few really good titles. On the radar are about three advanced reader copies that I was chosen for, so as soon as those come in the mail I’ll be tearing into them.

Here’s a rundown of the weeks selections:

Definitely Dead – Charline Harris (Southern Vampire Mysteries #6) Rating: 6.5/10

Sookie is back on my list, I moved last weekend and I needed something familiar to read.  In the 6th instalment, Sookie and her shifter boyfriend deal with a murder and the politics of vampire leadership, the series takes a turn to look at the bigger picture of the supernatural world, and seems to be ramping up for some important events.

Love Me – Garrison Keillor – Rating 9/10

I had the pleasure of meeting Garrison Keillor back in June, he was speaking at the national archives before recording a live episode of Prarie Home Companion at Wolf Trap. After telling us the story of how he got into writing (an amazing story, something I’m sure I’ll write about in the near future) he had a signing for his new collection of essays and excerpts. He was lively and friendly, and was a great sport. We took this selfie together.

Love Me is a much different pace from Keillor’s usual fair. No familiar tones of Lake Woebegone or Guy Noir, this novel strikes like a poignant, modern piece. Focusing on a failed author currently separated from his wife, Love Me tells a tale of loneliness, frustration, and advice columns.  Our hero, Larry, moves from Minnesota to New York to extend his literary career, but after some failed attempts to follow a successful novel, ends up writing an advice column called “Ask Mr. Blue.”  Love Me stands out as one of my favorite Garrison Keillor Novels.

White Noise – Don Delillo – Rating 8/10

White Noise serves as the inspiration for one of my favorite bands, The Airborne Toxic Event. This novel took me a few tries to get into, but it was certainly worth it. I read it over my  thanksgiving visit, which provided an interesting setting for a novel that explores the idea of cultural noise. The protagonist and antagonist of White Noise exist in the character Jack Gladney.  Gladney is a professor of Hitler studies, and is currently married to his 4th wife Babette.  The first half of the novel focuses on his daily life and the mundane things that take up such key portions. The mid point of the novel is a chemical incident, known as the airborne toxic event, that changes the lifestyle of everyone in the town. People begin to worry over radiation levels, future events of similar nature, and the meaning of their lives. The book takes a deep look at the meaning of the stranger elements of culture and does so with a great voice.

The Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker – 7/10

I’m not going to lie, I love cheap horror movies, especially slasher series, so when I saw a copy of the Hellbound Heart on my friend’s coffee table I knew I had to read it.  For those of you unfamiliar with the novela, it is the original story on which the Hellraiser series is based.  Barker had very little to do with the series after the first film, but had creative control over the first. While the characters become more important as the series goes on, Pinhead and the Cynobites play a very minor role in the book.  The main focus is on the family of the deceased Frank, an extreme hedonist who summons the Cynobites in his search for the ultimate pleasure. He is dragged to Hell by the monstrosities, discovering that to them, ultimate pleasure has blurred with ultimate pain. The rest of the book focuses on his family, and their strange experiences in his house after his disappearance. Frank eventually returns, flayed of flesh and looking for revenge. The Hellbound Heart is a great piece of horror and good for those times when you just want something fast.

All in all it was a good week of reading. Looking forward to sharing more good finds with you all.

Cheers

-Josh

Know your monster!

Hey guys, or should I say, Boo!

Sorry. I really am. I’m just getting into the Halloween spirit, if you’re at a party in DC this year and see a very disoriented Bojack horseman, that’s probably me. (I’ll be disoriented because Those masks are hard to see out of!)

I’ve been dabbling in monster and fae related literature lately, Dresden, Sookie Stackhouse, James lovegroves’ Redlaw, the walking dead novels, and season 10 of supernatural of course.  But I’ve noticed a growing trend, there’s a lot of different kinds of creatures that happen to share the same name.

  Before we move on, I’d like to give warning, this is a fantasy heavy blog post, so if you don’t like fantasy, click away now or be subjected to a barrage of magical beings.

My investigstion began about a week ago, when a friend and I were arguing the necessary qualities of an elf. This began because I told her that I didn’t like elves in Skyrim, due to their strange looks. My friend told me that was absurd, elves didn’t have to be beautiful, and pointed out Santa’s elves,  the shoemaker elves, and the keebler elves. My reasoning was that those are hardly the standard elves, and would be considered more gnomeish by today’s fantasy standards.

My first real encounter with divergent types of fantasy characters were the vampires in magic the gathering.  In the Zendikar block, vampires are a dark, tribal race of blood suckers. Two years later in Innistrad, they were re introduced as a aristocracy that held humans in terror of their power. So what’s the difference?

The difference is how you write your characters.  It’s no secret, fae, zombies, and monsters are still in the spotlight of trendy literature.  One of the big tricks to writing a well thought out story is making sure you know your characters.  If your zombies are the result of a voodoo witch doctor, don’t use the characteristics of world wide disease zombies. (See Age of Voodoo by James Lovegrove.) If your werewolves are actually sharpshifters, they don’t need to worry about the full moon (Fool Moon by Jim Butcher explains 4 varieties of werewolves.)  if fae are a parallel race of beings, they need to be more unified than if vampires and fairies and demons are separate races (Lost Girl vs. Supernatural.)

My overall point is, make the creature you write your own. Don’t rely on others explanation of how a race operates, unless of course you’re deciding to make vampires not drink blood. That’s just crazy talk.

Until next time

-Josh