Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman I expected this to be like Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. And I got what I wanted. It’s a tightly paced retelling of the old Norse creation myths. Problem is, there aren’t many of them. I suspect that’s more to do with lack of surviving source material, given what Neil Gaiman says in the foreword. Maybe a long time ago there were scrolls and scrolls of Loki and Thor stories. Now all we’ve got are comic books. And if you’re any fan of Marvel’s interpretations, this is required reading. The nice thing is that the re-tellings are up to date. I expected something Shakespearean or textbook-dry, like…
-
-
The Books I Read: November – December 2016
Rejected Princesses: Tales of History’s Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by David Porath I fell in love with this book immediately, which has never happened to me before. I am not an early adopter, and it’s the onus of every book to entice me. Of course, by the time I know that, I’m usually victim to time sink fallacy. But look at this cover. It looks like all the books in the old Disney movies. You know, like in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty where a live-action book opens at the beginning and closes at “the end”. Now I have a book like that. I can look like I’m reading an…
-
The Books I Read: November – December 2013 (Part 1)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick It’s definitely unlike the movie. I’ve complained before about Blade Runner, and that it’s all style and lacking cohesion. The book feels a little more satirical, a little more biting, and not so concerned about looking and feeling cool. It’s really steeped in allegory and metaphor and THE MESSAGE. It’s interesting how the director saw a movie in this. The portion that made it into the film is quite minimal. He probably could have saved some money by filing off the serial numbers. The book itself? Well, it’s hard to put an opinion on it. It’s a novel to be…
-
The Books I Read: July – August 2013
The She-Hulk Diaries by Marta Acosta I had high expectations for this book — a novel about a superheroine who usually doesn’t make it past the comic books. I was hoping that, since Jennifer Walters is a lawyer, the book would be about some courtroom drama, a la John Grisham, but with the added complication of superheroes. Despite it being The She-Hulk Diaries, She-Hulk is barely in it. It’s more about Jennifer Walters, her human form, and her “girl problems”. The crux of the story is Jennifer tooling around, talking to her friend, and trying to get a job. She spends way too much time obsessing over boyfriends — past,…
-
The Books I Read: May – June 2013
The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by D.C. Pierson You might remember this story from the famous “Yahoo! Answers” response to someone who asked for a summary, wanting to skip the summer reading. The D.C. Pierson himself responded, saying how disappointed he was trying to avoid it because it sounded like work, when the book is much better than other classics that could pop up on such a list. (Christ, Charlie Brown got assigned War and Peace, and that was just for Christmas vacation!) But the book is everything Pierson said it was. The thing is it’s really rather… how do I put this… The title promises…
-
The Books I Read: September – October 2012
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle My mom was surprised I’d never read it. And I saw the movie, which I loved for its campy 80’s-ness and animation that wasn’t Disney. The book follows the movie pretty damn well. It’s almost word-for-word. So much that I’m afraid my experience with the movie colored my opinion of the book. I guess it’s like when you hear the remix to a song first, then you hear the original version. But the remix was the first one you heard so you like that better. I’m sure there’s a name for that phenomenon. Anyway, I wish I could say I enjoyed it and…
-
The Books I Read: July – August 2012
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline I was really looking forward to this one. I kept hearing all these tales about how it’s made for my generation and persona type, the geek who grew up in the 1980’s. It is not a grand epic book with grand themes. It is meant for a specific audience and never deviates from that. But if you are in that audience, you will love this book. Unfortunately for me, I found out I am juuuuust a bit outside that audience because I was born in 1981, and most of the nostalgia is too early for me. Video games are Atari and arcade cabinets, not…
-
My New Mantra
“If you don’t do it, nobody else is going to. So you may as well finish it. And when it’s all done, pretty soon you won’t be able to remember quite which bits left you certain it was terrible and that you should abandon it, and which were the bits where you knew it was the best thing anyone had ever made ever.” (paraphrased from Neil Gaiman)
-
Give Google+ Some Time
I was fortunate to be invited to Google+, the new social media dealy-bobber that everyone’s talking about. Why is everyone talking about it? No idea. I haven’t seen one article that says why the big deal, besides that it’s Google. But it doesn’t matter, I know the reason: everyone’s wondering if it’s going to be a Facebook killer. People are wondering if the Facebook king can be toppled. Facebook permeates everyone’s lives these days. It’s a genius app and it’s making Markie Z a ton of money. (Can you imagine what a kid with that much money now is going to be like in twenty years?) Anyway, the big debate…
-
Graphic Novelists Make Good Writers
I have discovered something quite interesting. Actually, I discovered it a long time ago, just haven’t written about it. Graphic novelists make really good writers. I mean really good. All of my favorite authors, the ones with books I could read over and over again, started off as comic book writers. Those authors are Richard Kadrey, Peter David, Neil Gaiman, and Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash was originally going to be a graphic novel, and it sure reads like one). There may be others that I don’t know of. I don’t know what it is about the comic style that makes good novelists. Maybe you learn a lot about pacing and…
