March 2018 Reading Round-Up

Being the third of my monthly reading summaries for 2018. Here’s what I read in March:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 22 books in February: 18 in print, 2 in audio, and 2 in ebook format. They were:

1.       DC Archives Editions: The Golden Age Green Lantern Volume 2 by Bill Finger, Martin Nodell and Irwin Hasen. A hardcover collection of long-out-of-print Green Lantern (Alan Scott) stories from the early days of the Golden Age, with his sidekick Doiby Dickles. What struck me was the absence of costumed and powered villains (he fights mostly mobsters) and the fact that the love interest he had in these early stories has been completely forgotten since the character was revived in the Silver Age.

2.       Lightspeed Magazine #94 (March 2018 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual great assortment of science fiction and fantasy short stories and non-fiction. Favorites this issue were Seanan McGuire’s “And Men Will Mine the Mountains for Our Souls,” Ken Liu’s “Cosmic Spring,” Beesan Odeh’s “Al-Kahf,” and A. Merc Rustad’s “Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn.”

3.       Rings of Anubis (Folley & Mallory Book 1), by E. Catherine Tobler. The first of Tobler’s alt-history/steampunk/Egyptian legends series introduces us to former archeologist Folley, searching for the rings of the mummy that stole her mother from her, and Mallory, intrepid government agent and reluctant werewolf. Exciting, fast-paced and just fun. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

4.       Lumberjanes Vol 8: Stone Cold by Watters, Leyh, Pietsch and others.  The Roanoke cabin is excited for Barney’s first day as a Lumberjane, only to discover Barney’s whole cabin group has been turned to stone. Was it a gorgon or something more horrific? And how does a fomer camper-adversary fit into the mix?

5.       Tricks For Free (InCryptid #7) by Seanan McGuire. Antimony Price is on the run from the Covenant, estranged from her family, and working at LowryLand amusement park when she comes to the attention of the park’s secret board of magic-users. With help from new and old friends and her dead aunts Mary and Rose, can she remain off the radar but still save the day? This was a fun one, and I find the more I read of Antimony the more I like her (although Verity is still my favorite Price sibling of the current generation). And I really, really like Antimony’s boyfriend Sam.

6.       A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet #1) by Madeleine L’Engle. One of my childhood favorites, re-read countless times over the years, and it never disappoints. With a brevity of language that somehow is still descriptive and poetic, L’Engle sweeps us along on a journey across the galaxy with characters we come to love very much, faults and all.

7.       Changing The Grade by Jonathan Cornue.  Educator Cornue describes the need for a new, less “open to interpretation” method of grading student work, and discusses how hard the process of change will be for districts set in their ways. This is a book every educator, administrator, parent, and college admissions director should read and discuss.

8.       Coming To You Live: A Newsflesh Novella, by Mira Grant. As I haven’t gotten around to reading all of Grant’s collection of Newflesh novellas, I was really glad Orbit Books decided to release this one as a stand-alone ebook. It was great, after years of reading novellas focusing on various series secondary characters, to return to the point of views of the series’ original main characters, Shaun and Georgia Mason. This one opens up a new level of future possibilities for the series, and really packs an emotional punch for long-time readers.

9.       Widow’s Point by Richard Chizmar and Billy Chizmar. The story of a haunted lighthouse told in the style of a “found footage” horror film: the main character is a paranormal investigator who narrates his experiences in the lighthouse, interspersed with his description of its bloody history. Very effective with the sense of unease, the chills, etc. Reminded me of the much longer House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

10.   Binti: Home (Binti #2) by Nnedi Okorafor.  This was a re-read. Well, a re-listen. I’d read the second novella in Okorafor’s series last year, but it finally came out in audio once again with the amazing Robin Mills narrating, and I had to listen to it. It’s just as good in audio as it was in print, and I still felt all the emotions I felt on the first read.

11.   Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Rising by Jim Shooter, Frances Manapul and others. A collection from the Legion’s “ThreeBoot” period (which will mean nothing to you if you’re not a Legion of Super-Heroes fan). The art is great in places, not so great in others. The story itself is a bridge between earlier volumes and the next big battle for the team, so there’s lots of character building interspersed, but it all felt a bit hectic and disorganized. Not my favorite LSH story.

12.   Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith. I’d forgotten just how adorable and breezy this story (which I first read in monthly issue format) was. Smith captures the whimsy of original Golden Age Captain Marvel stories by Otto Binder and CC Beck, but adds his own story-telling voice and twists to the mix. I had a smile on my face the whole time I was reading it.

13.   Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come Volume 3 by Geoff Johns, Alex Ross, Dale Eaglesham and others. The end of a popular JSA arch that brought the Superrman from the Kingdom Come miniseries into the then-current DC Universe main Earth, and also addressed (in sections with art by Jerry Ordway) whether Power Girl could ever find her way back to the original Earth-2. This arch overall felt drawn out, especially here in the final section. Great art, some great character work, but it probably could have been a few issues shorter overall.

14.   Black Bolt: Hard Time (Black Bolt #1) by Saladin Ahmed, Christian Ward and others. I have to give Saladin Ahmed credit: he made a character I’ve always found boring (Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans) interesting. He did it by removing the character from all of his traditional trappings and putting him in the middle of a “fight your way free with unlikely allies you’re not sure you can trust” situation. I’m interested to see where Ahmed took the story in volume 2 later this year.

15.   The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman. My second audiobook for the month. A lovely modern YA fairy tale about a runaway teen boy who finds refuge with a supposedly evil wizard in a magic bookshop hidden on the seacoast of Maine, who then gets involved in saving the local town and his mentor from another evil wizard. I loved every word of this, and all of the character development.

16.   The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring Stone. This was my March read for my 2018 To Be Read Challenge. A longer review will be coming in a separate post. Short version: it was okay, but didn’t blow me away the way the introduction thought it would. Part of Vintage Books’ Vintage Movie Classics series, which I’m also trying to work my way through this year (with the intent to see the movies based on the books as well, where possible).

17.   Dog Men: A Dresden Files Graphic Novel by Jim Butcher, Mark Powers, Diego Galindo and others. Another original graphic novel filling in the space between the novels Small Favor and Turn Coat in Butcher’s urban fantasy series. This one finds Harry Dresden, with a huge chip on his shoulder comprised of anger and guilt, and Mouse on an impromptu road trip with elder wizard Listens To Wind, investigating a bloody family slaughter that is not what it seems. There are ties to the previous OGN “Goblin, Ghoul,” and to the novels preceding this in the timeline. Diego Galindo’s art is among the best in the series.

18.   Astro City Volume 9: Through Open Doors, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross and others.

19.   Astro City Volume 10: Victory, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross and others.

20.   Astro City Volume 11: Private Lives by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross and others.

21.   Astro City Volume 12: Lovers Quarrel by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross and others.

22.   Astro City Volume 13: Honor Guard by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross and others. I got sick over Easter weekend and went on a bit of a graphic novel reading binge, deciding to finally catch up on one of my favorite, but long-neglected, series. Astro City is a complex and wonderful creation, Busiek’s love-letter to and sometimes criticism of the super-hero comics industry, and I hope he never stops telling stories set here, especially working with co-creator Anderson on art and Ross on covers. Some of these volumes are novel-length (“Victory” and “Lovers Quarrel”) and some are collections of one- or two-issue shorter stories (“Through Open Doors,” “Private Lives,” and “Honor Guard”), but they all show off Busiek’s world-building and his and his co-creators creativity. In the shorter-story volumes, various artists give Anderson a break, and it’s clear Busiek’s scripts were written to the skill sets of the individual artists. And while all of the Astro City volumes can be read in any order because of the way the tales jump around in the city’s history, it’s very clear this run from Vertigo is building towards something big a few more volumes down the road.

That’s 22 books in February, to a Year-To-Date total of 45, which Goodreads says me puts me 20 books ahead of schedule for my 100 Books Challenge.  The Bitter Tea of General Yen is the only book read this month for the 2018 To Be Read Challenge. A Wrinkle in Time counts towards the “Bustle Reading Challenge.” Twelve graphic novels exceeds my “one graphic novel per week” reading challenge and puts me ahead for the year-to-date there. Rings of Anubis and The Bitter Tea of General Yen helped me start a couple of the “Complete the Series” challenges. All but the To Be Read Challenge were described HERE.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “The Independence Patch” by Bryan Camp, from Lightspeed #94, March 2018, edited by John Joseph Adams

2.       “Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn” by A. Merc Rustad

3.       “Cosmic Spring” by Ken Liu

4.       “The Effluent Engine” by N.K. Jemisin

5.       “The Dreamers of Alamoi” By Jeremiah Tolbert

6.       “Al-Kahf” by Beesan Odeh

7.       “And Men Will Mine the Mountains For Our Souls ” by Seanan McGuire

8.        “You Do Nothing But Freefall” by Cassandra Khaw and A. Maus

9.       “The Proving Ground” by Alec Nevala-Lee

10.   “The Haunted Ceiling” by H.G. Wells, from The Strand Oct 2016, edited by Lamia Gulli

11.   “The Adventure of the American Drifter” by Larry Millett

12.   “The Recitation of the Most Holy and Harrowing Pilgrimage of Mindy and Also of Mork” by Seanan McGuire, from Tricks For Free (additional novella in the hardcover release)

13.   “Now Rest, My Dear” by Seanan McGuire, from the author’s Patreon page

14.   “Last Call at the Last Chance” by Seanan McGuire

15.   “Cabbages and Kings” by Seanan McGuire

16.   “From A to Z in the Book of Changes” by Seanan McGuire

17.   “Pop-Pop” by Brian James Freeman, from the author’s Patreon page

18.   “The King of the Animals” by Josh Russell, from One Story #238, February 15 2018, edited by Patrick Ryan

So that’s only 18 short stories in February, far less than one per day, bringing me Year-To-Date to 87 stories. As March 31th was the 90th day of the year, this puts me 3 stories behind of schedule for the year so far.

Review of Chinua Achebe's THINGS FALL APART

TITLE: Things Fall Apart (The Africa Trilogy #1)

AUTHOR: Chinua Achebe

209 pages, Anchor Books, ISBN 9780385474542, $11.95

PREMISE: (back cover copy) Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: When I was setting up my various reading challenges for 2018, one of the things I was aware of is how woefully under-read I am regarding literature from the African continent and the African Diaspora. In the past year or so I’ve made efforts to correct this; in fact, Things Fall Apart was purchased almost two years ago for this exact purpose (along with a bookstore clerk’s emphatic recommendation). It affected me enough that I immediately purchased the remaining two books in Achebe’s Africa Trilogy, and made the series part of my “Complete The Series” Challenges for 2018.

Achebe’s writing is lyrical, poetic, descriptive, emotional, but also spare and pointed. He doesn’t waste words describing Okonkwo’s pre-colonial world; he gives us the broad strokes of how the village (and Okonkwo’s compound within it) functions, how the village relates to other villages, but he lets our imagination fill in the color and proliferation of fauna, the exact facial features of the main characters, the way the villagers dress. Nor giving us the exact years as to when the story takes place; he assumes we are either familiar with when European colonialism swelled across Nigeria or that we can look it up for ourselves after the fact. Achebe also doesn’t waste words, or time, explicitly showing us any scene that doesn’t propel the narrative: years go by between chapters, and sometimes even between scenes. The lack of these physical and time details helps maintain the novel’s fable-like structure and tone.

Another thing that intrigued me: Achebe doesn’t go out of his way to make his main character likeable. Oknokwo is domineering, mean, judgmental, rigid, closed to advice from even his closest friends unless that advice involves “saving face” in the community, quick to blame others for things that are clearly his own fault … essentially full of what we would now call “toxic masculinity.” And yet, he’s also a captivating figure. I could not look away from the narrative, had to know what would happen next. As much as I didn’t like Okonkwo, I had to know how he would navigate (or fail to navigate) the cultural changes around him – both those of his own doing (like his banishment to the village of his mother for something he was advised against doing) and those outside his control (the mesmerizing hold of the European Christian missionaries on the disaffected youth of the villages).

I did like a number of the other characters in the story, especially Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma who starts out seeming a little bit spoiled but grows to a strong, impressive woman by the end of the book. Ezinma’s mother Ekwefi also stood out, as an exemplar of how far a mother will go to protect her daughter, whether that protection is wanted or not. Okonkwo’s friend Obierika provides some moments of good counsel and some moments of comic relief. But Ezinma, Ekwefi and Obierika are about the only characters Okonkwo lowers his guard and shows love to.

Okonkwo has a number of sons, but the only ones whose names we learn are his foster son Ikemefuna and his natural son Nwoye. Repeatedly, Okonkwo laments how he wishes Ezinma was a man because his sons are disapointments to him. Okonkwo ignores Obierika’s advice about Ikemefuna’s fate and pays the price later; his relationship with Nwoye is an almost textbook example of how withholding love and affection results in deep family rifts.

Ultimately, Okonkwo is so rigid in his beliefs, and in his own sense of self, that he cannot bring himself to accept the way the world is changing around him, nor can he see himself as a part of that world as it moves forward and envelopes all he loves. I read the closing pages thinking “I know people like this; I know men who can’t talk about what they really feel because it would make them ‘weak,” men who are still so mired in what they believed decades ago that they are driving their children and grandchildren away.” This not to say that everything Okonkwo believed was wrong, or that he was wrong to react strongly to certain changes – I cannot imagine what it feels like to see one’s history and belief system not just subsumed but obliterated. In the end, although I didn’t like Okonkwo I could feel pity for him, could understand where such a strong-willed and rigid man would be battered by the sea-changes around him and find himself unequal to the task of changing. And that, more than anything else, is what moved me about the book and made me want to read the rest of the Africa Trilogy as soon as possible. I need to see where Achebe takes these themes in the succeeding books.

Things Fall Apart was the second book I read this year towards the TO BE READ CHALLENGE hosted by RoofbeamReader. Click here to see my original post about the challenge and which books I chose for 2018.

Review of Philip Jose Farmer's IRONCASTLE

TITLE: Ironcastle

AUTHOR: Philip Jose Farmer, after J.H. Rosny Aine

175 pages, Daw Books, ISBN 9780879972257

1976 paperback edition, cover price $1.25 (I got my copy for $3.00 at a used bookstore)

PREMISE: (back cover copy) Somewhere in the unexplored heart of Africa a part of this Earth had been taken over by an intelligence from outer space. Such was the message that reached the explorer Hareton Ironcastle, member of the famous Baltimore Gun Club. In that hidden and transformed valley would now be found monsters and pre-humans not to be seen anywhere else.

Such a challenge could not be ignored, and the account of Ironcastle’s expedition of daring but inexperienced amateurs became one of the classic novels of the French writer J.H. Rosny, who was a contemporary of Verne, Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now Philip Jose Farmer, Hugo winner and chronicler of the adventures of Tarzan and Doc Savage, has translated and retold Rosny’s novel, making it a marvel adventure novel to stand alongside the works of Burroughs, Haggard and Farmer himself.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In the early 1970’s, science fiction grandmaster and pulp adventure aficionado Philip Jose Farmer realized that French author J.H. Rosny Aine’s 1922 novel L’Etonnante Aventure de Hareton Ironcastle had never been translated into English, and so he set out to repair that oversight. What Farmer gave us, by all accounts, is more adaptation than direct translation (I’m pretty sure, for instance, that the Rosny original didn’t mention Doc Savage, as that august personage did not debut in print until 1933; I also wonder if Rosny mentioned Verne’s Baltimore Gun Club), but 40+ years later, Farmer’s long out-of-print version still seems to be the only account of Hareton’s adventure that we have in English. (EDIT TO ADD: After hitting "publish," I was made aware that Black Coat Press has a collection of three of Rosny's works translated into English by Brian Stableford entitled THE MYSTERIOUS FORCE, which includes Ironcastle. It can be purchased at the Black Coat Press website.

And what a fun adventure it is, for lovers of pulp adventure and “lost world” type stories. If you love Doyle’s The Lost World, the various Tarzan stories featuring Opar and such cities, or even more recent fare such as Marvel Comics’ Savage Land or DC Comics’ land of Skartaris (from Mike Grell’s Warlord series, which DC really needs to collect in nice trade or hardcover editions, but I digress…), then you’re bound to enjoy Ironcastle.

Unlike the Doyle, Marvel and DC hidden lands, the transformed piece of Africa Ironcastle explores with his inexperienced but intrepid team doesn’t heavily feature dinosaurs .Instead, we get mutated humans, great apes, animals, and plant life in a setting that becomes increasingly more dangerous and unfamiliar the deeper into the heart of it Ironcastle travels. The descriptions of the flora and fauna are so detailed the reader can’t help but feel right in the midst of things.

Characterization-wise, the book is classic pulp and classic Farmer. By that I mean, the characters hit all the expected tropes (intrepid and strong leader with a team that includes a huge brute of a man who seems invincible, a marksman, a smart (lawyer/scientific) guy and a willful, headstrong woman, but in Farmer’s hands they all get very introspective, analyzing in their heads (but rarely aloud) what has brought them on this journey. Farmer makes the headstrong woman, Muriel, Ironcastle’s daughter rather than cousin or girlfriend, which I think bucks the pulp stereotype a bit; she’s also, as so many of Farmer’s female characters are, very capable of taking care of herself and far from the fainting damsel-in-distress one might expect in stories like this. (Towards the end of the novel, I found myself wondering what a team-up between Muriel, Jane, Dejah Thoris, and Patricia Savage would look like. Muriel could stand equal to those more well-known women, without a doubt.) The dialogue can be a bit Melodrama/Pathos-inflected (especially when the young Frenchman/marksman Phillipe is pining over/concerned about Muriel).

Pacing-wise, the novel never really slows down. This is a tightly-packed 175 pages, and the characters have a lot of ground to cover after the initial two chapters in Baltimore set the stage for what’s to come. Farmer keeps things moving, and works the character-building moments into the action. And throughout most of the journey, the world-building is fantastic. If I have one complaint, it’s that once Ironcastle and company find the man they’re looking for at the heart of this strange hidden world, the novel ends abruptly. So abruptly that I thought perhaps my used bookstore paperback purchase was missing a chapter, but the other side of the last page has a house ad for other Daw adventure/sf novels. I’m not sure if Farmer just decided the part of the story that interested him was over and stopped, or if the publisher set a strict word-count that the author ran up against, or if perhaps there were behind-the-scenes issues with translating/adapting more of the book (if there was more). Regardless the reason, the story ends where it does and we’re left wondering if Hareton Ironcastle and Muriel and Phillipe and Guthrie and the rest had any other adventures to be consumed.

While I can’t say Ironcastle is my favorite Philip Jose Farmer work, it does have all of the hallmarks of the works by him that I do love: the interconnectedness with works by Burroughs, Dent and Verne (and an off-hand reference to the “fantasies” written by H. Rider Haggard), the deep world-building, the strong female characters. And Farmer’s sheer joy at writing this type of thing is evident on every page. Well worth seeking out in a used bookstore.

Also, for those interested, Farmer experts and protégés Win Scott Eckert and Christopher Paul Carey wrote a tale teaming Ironcastle with French pulp adventurer Doc Ardan (an obvious stand-in for Doc Savage) called “Iron and Bronze,” which is available in eBook form via Amazon. Carey's novella "Exiles of Kho" also ties closely to Farmer's version of Ironcastle.

Also of Note: Ironcastle was the first book I read this year towards the TO BE READ CHALLENGE hosted by RoofbeamReader. Click here to see my original post about the challenge and which books I chose for 2018.

READING ROUND-UP: February 2018

Being the second of my monthly reading summaries for 2018. Here’s what I read in February:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 8 books in February: 4 in print, 1 in audio, and 3 in ebook format. They were:

1.       Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner by Donald E. Westlake. A prison break / bank robbery / military base caper /comedy of errors by a true master. There was at least a chuckle on every page, if not more, and Westlake made me really honestly laugh out loud several times. He piles the complications onto our hapless narrator, who just wants to get through it all in one piece. FULL REVIEW HERE.

2.       The Rainbow Comes And Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Loss and Love by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.  Listened to this on audio, and loved the honest interplay of emotion between son and mother as Anderson learns more about his mother’s childhood and early marriages before discussing their shared history. Very, very touching.

3.       Lightspeed Magazine #93 (February 2018 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual great assortment of science fiction and fantasy short stories and non-fiction. Favorites this issue were Ashok K. Banker’s “The Goddess Has Many Faces,” Bogi Takacs’ “Four Point Affective Calibration,” Rahul Kanakia’s “A Coward’s Death,” and An Owomoyela’s novella “The Charge and the Storm.”

4.       Teenagers From The Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes, edited by Timothy Callahan. The Legion are among my favorite comic-book super-teams (I seem to really love teams whose adventures take place in the past, like the Justice Society, or the far future, like the Legion). This book of essays spans the published history of the group.

5.       Things Fall Apart (The Africa Trilogy #1) by Chinua Achebe.  A fifty-year-old classic of African literature that I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t read before now. Sparsely written but with true poetry in the language, it captivated me from beginning to end, and inspired me to seek out the other books and add the series to my “Complete The Series” Challenge for 2018.

6.       Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney. A collection of five wonderful novellas that each deserves their own review. Two (“Bone Swans of Amandale” and “How The Milkmaid Struck A Bargain With the Crooked One”) are retellings of familiar fairy-tales with new twists and points-of-view (Bone Swans retells The Pied Piper with a bit of “swan princess” and “three musicians of Bremen” tossed in; Milkmaid is Rumplestiltskin with perhaps a bit of “faerie queen” for flavor). The other three are completely original tales that don’t feel particularly fairy-tale-ish but still ring out in Cooney’s inimitable style.

7.       Darkstar and the Winter Guard by David Gallaher, Steve Ellis and more. A graphic novel collecting Gallaher and Ellis’ mini-series featuring Marvel’s Russian state-sponsored super-team (and which also includes a classic Hulk tale from Peter David’s acclaimed run on the book). I really wanted to love this, given how much I loved the characters back when Darkstar debuted in The Champions and then an early version of this team appeared during Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America run … but for a variety of reasons, the story just didn’t grab me and I finished it feeling disappointed. I liked some of the newer characters, and missed some of the originals. I do wonder what Gallaher could do with the characters given a longer run.

8.       Shimmer Magazine #41 (January 2018) edited by E. Catherine Tobler.  A solid set of four spec-fic short stories by authors Sam Rebelein, Rebecca Campbell, Dee Warrick and Ian O’Reilly. I actually read the Rebelein story back in January, but read the rest of the stories this month. The Rebelein and Warrick both moved me in different ways, and the Campbell physically disturbed me (a good thing), and the O’Reilly was an excellent read as well.

So only 8 books in February, which Goodreads told me puts me six books ahead of schedule for my Goodreads Reading 100 Books Challenge.  Things Fall Apart is the only book read this month for the 2018 To Be Read Challenge, and along with Teenagers from the Future helped begin meeting the “Bustle Reading Challenge.” Only one graphic novel read in the month puts my “one graphic novel per week” reading challenge three weeks behind, and nothing I read in February helped meet any of the “Complete the Series” challenges that were on the list before I added The Africa Trilogy this month. All but the To Be Read Challenge were described HERE.

(Note: I am supposed to be posting full book reviews for the To Be Read Challenge, and have yet to post either. Longer reviews of Philip Jose Farmer’s Ironcastle (read in January) and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (read this month) will be posted soon.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “Regulation” by Seanan McGuire, from Galactic Games, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

2.       “Minor Hockey Gods of Barstow Station” by Beth Cato.

3.       “Into the Green” by Seanan McGuire, from Bloodlines, edited by Amanda Pillar

4.       “The High Cost of Tamarind” by Steve Berman, from Time Well Bent, edited by Connie Wilkins

5.       “Blank” by Neil Bailey, stand-alone story e-published for Kindle

6.       “The Man With the Power to Kill With His Eyes” by Neil Bailey

7.       “Live in Brass” by Seanan McGuire, a “Patrick and Dianda” story from the October Daye-verse, self-published on the author’s Patreon

8.       “Eeny Meeny Miney Mi-Go” By William Meikle, ebook reward from the Occult Detective Quarterly Presents… Kickstarter

9.       “Black Fanged Thing” by Sam Rebelein, from Shimmer #41, January 2018, edited by E. Catherine Tobler

10.   “An Incomplete Catalogue of Mysterious Births, or, Secrets of the Uterus Abscondita ” by Rebecca Campbell

11.    “Me, Waiting For Me, Hoping For Something” by Dee Warrick

12.   “Held” by Ian O’Reilly

13.   “Filigree, Minotaur, Cyanide, Bloom” by Damien Angelica Walters, from Adam’s Ladder, edited by Michael Bailey and Darren Speegle

14.   “Ch-Ch-Changes” by Chaz Brenchley

15.   “My Father, Dr. Frankenstein” by John Langan

16.   “Swift to Chase” by Laird Barron

17.   “Faint of Heart” by Amanda Rea, from One Story #237, edited by Patrick Ryan

18.   “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” by Tobias S. Buckell, from Lightspeed #93. February 2018, edited by John Joseph Adams

19.   “Jamaica Ginger” by Nalo Hopkinson and Nisi Shawl

20.   “Four Point Affective Calibration” by Bogi Takacs

21.   “The Quiet Like A Homecoming” by Cassandra Khaw

22.   “The Seventh Expression of the Robot General” by Jeffrey Ford

23.   “A Coward’s Death” by Rahul Kanakia

24.   “One True Love” by Malinda Lo

25.   “The Charge and the Storm” by An Owomoyela

26.   “Paper Trail” by Sabrina Vourvoulias, from GUD magazine, edited by Kaolin FIre.

27.   “Adrenaline, Inc.” by Mithran Somasundrum.

28.   “Life on the Sun” by C.S.E. Cooney, from her collection Bone Swans: Stories

29.   “The Bone Swans of Amandale” by C.S.E. Cooney

30.   “Martyr’s Gem” by C.S.E. Cooney

31.   “How The Milkmaid Struck A Bargain With The Crooked One” by C.S.E. Cooney

32.   “The Big Bah-Ha” by C.S.E. Cooney

33.   “Dirty Old Town” by Richard Bowes, from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction May-June 2017 issue, edited by C.C. Finlay

34.   “Rings” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

So that’s 34 short stories in February, more than one per day. As February 28th was the 59th day of the year, this puts me 10 stories ahead of schedule for the year so far.

Review of Mickey Spillane's THE LAST STAND

TITLE: The Last Stand

AUTHOR: Mickey Spillane

285 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785656869 (Print)

Publication Date: March 20, 2018 (I received an uncorrected proof ARC in exchange for an honest review), hardcover, $22.99

PREMISE: (back cover copy)  On Mickey Spillane’s birthday – a brand-new novel from the master.  A tarnished former cop goes on a crusade to find a politician’s killer and avoid the .45-caliber slug with his name on it. A pilot forced to make an emergency landing in the desert finds himself at the center of a struggle between FBI agents, unsavory fortune hunters, and the local Indian tribe to control a mysterious find that could mean wealth and power – or death. Two substantial new works filled with Spillane’s muscular prose and the gorgeous women and two-fisted action the author was famous for, topped off by an introduction from Max Allan Collins describing the history of these lost manuscripts and his long relationship with the writer who was his mentor, his hero, and for much of the last century the bestselling author in the world.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: As indicated in the back cover copy, this is not one new Spillane novel, but two. The first, A Bullet For Satisfaction, is an unpublished piece from early in his career, while the titular novel is the last full novel Spillane completed before his death. He also left plenty of unfinished stories and novels for Max Allan Collins to complete and publish over the last few years, but Collins (wisely, I think) decided to save The Last Stand for an auspicious occasion: the great author’s 100th birthday.

Collins’ introduction traces Spillane’s life history, concentrating on his writing and how it changed from the early bloody days of the first Mike Hammer novel to the later, more circumspect tales written after he’d converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That difference is pretty apparent when one compares the two short novels in this collection.

A Bullet for Satisfaction is classic noir: rough-and-tumble guys and not one, not two, but three femme fatales. There’s plenty of violence and double-crosses to go around; the violence especially may have been the reason that Spillane chose not to release this after his conversion, as Collins suggests in the introduction. The novel hits all the noir beats: Upright police captain Dexter quickly becomes unfairly disgraced former-captain Dexter, who decides to take a murder investigation into his own hands even though it will shake up city politics and might cause him to become real dead real fast. He falls quickly and deeply in love with a woman who may or may not ultimately do him wrong, falls in lust with another woman from the opposite end of the social scale, and survives more double-crosses and near-death experiences than the reader can count. Still, he carries on, his mind on a combination of justice and vengeance, no matter how many people have to die for him to accomplish it. The descriptive language is dark, dreary, with a lurking undercurrent of menace. The dialogue is snappy, tight, almost violent without being excessively vulgar. The entire story, in fact, is tightly told. There are no padded scenes, no wasted moments. Everything propels plot and sets up character. Each reveal is perfectly timed, leading to the next, leading to the final reveal – and they all make sense, the clues are all right there to pick up as you go along.

The Last Stand, by comparison, is almost laconic. It clocks in at about 70 pages longer than A Bullet for Satisfaction, and Spillane not only takes his time getting to the big pay-off, he takes his time even clueing us in to what the real story is. There’s lots of set-up before the requisite twists and potential double-crosses. Despite some trappings, the story isn’t noir but rather “men’s pulp adventure via Clive Cussler.” As fits Spillane’s religion-based change of heart, there’s far less violence to be seen, and what is there is more damage to vehicles than to people (other than a well-placed sucker-punch or two). The setting is present day, on an unnamed Indian reservation in the southwest. The main characters are the tropes of a different kind of genre lit: the lonely white man who has everything except love, the Indian loner with a secret, the Indian’s lovely but unsurprisingly capable and headstrong sister. This is pulp adventure fiction writ modern and a bit bright and large compared to the dark intimacy of the noir story. Spillane still makes the desolate desert environment as much a character here as the dark small city streets and darker swampy outlands are in the previous story. But while the plot feels like classic Spillane, the longer story length works against the author. There’s a lag in the middle, several scenes that feel like their only purpose is to drag out the tension, and two subplots (the FBI’s hunt for a mysterious arrowhead and the local bruiser looking to rough up the main character over a woman) feel shoe-horned in. I think The Last Stand could have been forty pages shorter, with at least one less sub-plot, and been a much tighter and more exciting story. The dialogue attempts the usual Spillane snap but feels lifeless and repetitive compared to that of the story preceding. We get to know the three main characters well enough by the end thanks to the amount of time they spend together, but I’m not sure how well they get to know each other; the connections seem superficial at best. The potential and perceived bad-guys (gangsters and FBI agents and that big ol’ bruiser of a local who wants the lovely sister to be his own true love) remain personality-less cyphers until the last pages, more place-holders than actual threats. And the end, when it comes, feels a bit too abrupt after the twists and turns Spillane has put us through. The Last Stand is still a solid story, with a couple of riveting action scenes and some really cool ideas embedded along with some great descriptions of the desert. But ultimately, for me it’s just not as exciting as the older story (although your mileage may vary).

Spillane completists of course will flock to the book when it comes out, as they should. People who have read a bit of Spillane before, like me, may enjoy one story or the other even if they don’t enjoy both, and consider the cover price worth it either way.  At the very least, in pairing these two stories under one cover Hard Case Crime and Max Allan Collins have given readers a chance to see how Spillane’s storytelling changed over the long span of his career. And to me, that alone is worth the cover price.

GUEST POST: Changing The Grade

Today's post is by guest blogger Jonathan Cornue.

So friend Anthony says to me, “Congratulations on your new book!  Would you write something for my blog?”

“Sure!” says I, because I am a twit who struggles to recognize his limitations.

Two days later I think to myself, “How do I write a piece about my education-focused, non-fiction book in a manner that will be interesting to Anthony’s typical audience, which is primarily fiction focused?” 

Four weeks after that, I think I have an answer. 

Let me tell you some very short stories that most people, having at least attended school, can relate to.

A high school English teacher looks at an on-demand essay and gives it a 94.  Her colleague across the hall looks at the same essay and gives it an 86.  Another teacher in a neighboring district gives the same essay a 72.

A middle school mathematics teacher is told that he must assign homework, as district policy states that homework will account for 20% of a student’s grade.

A third grade teacher sees that a student with an IEP has placed significant effort into a project, and even though the student does not have a full grasp of the materials, she bumps his grade up to reward him for his hard work.

A difficult student does little work over the course of a marking period.  She earns a 32, but district policy states that the teacher must give her a 50.  Some teachers complain about this policy.

An elementary teacher assigns a project to be completed at home.  The grades on the project clearly delineate student income.

A middle school teacher assigns a project in class.  Students are then graded not only on the project, but on how well they present their material to the rest of the class.  They have never been taught presentation skills.

A wonderful, driven, and kind young lady is placed in remediation courses during her first year of college due in large part to her application essay, which is disjointed and poorly written.  Her high school report card shows that she received straight A’s in English.

A teacher is surprised by a student’s low unit assessment grade, as he aced all of his homework assignments.  What she doesn’t know is that he copied the assignments during “homework club” at the lunch table.

A parent requests a different fifth grade teacher for her child because he is an “easier grader,” and she feels that her child needs his confidence boosted.

A district moves to a four-point standards based grading system over the summer.  Teachers are not given time during the school year to ensure that everyone sees a “3” the same way.

A high school student does his homework in an abandoned car at the edge of his parents’ property because his father thinks that he has had enough of an education and should go get a job.  He will not allow school books into the house.

An elementary student’s report card indicates that he needs to place “more effort” into his work in art class.

These are stories found in the reality of the American education system, and every one of them is true.  I have seen them. 

Here are a few things everyone should know about grading:

·         A grading system should not be based on 100 point scale that gives students 64 chances to fail and 36 chances to succeed. 

·         A grading system should not average a learning process, but identify what was learned. 

·         A grading system should be based on the standards, and those should be evaluated separately, because “Social Studies – 72” does not tell a student how she can improve.

You should also know that change is hard, and systemic change is even harder, so be patient with your school districts if they haven’t gotten there yet.  At the same time, feel free to ask them about standards-based grading and their grading policies in general!

There is more of course.  Homework and assignments and how we evaluate group work and the like, but for that you should probably read the book.  (Oh yeah, it’s called Changing the Grade:  A Step-by-Step Guide to Grading for Student Growth.)  Or you can send me an email – jcornue@moboces.org – I am always happy to discuss this further!

Jonathan Cornue is a staff and curriculum development specialist for the Madison-Oneida Board of Cooperative Educational Services (MO BOCES). He creates and presents workshops on, among other topics, brain-based learning and rubric development. Jonathan has served on the board of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum and as a member of the New York State Amistad Commission and the New York Statewide Professional Development Group. He presented his thoughts on grading changes at the 2015 ASCD conference in Houston.

WORLD-DELVING: Seanan McGuire’s “Incryptid” Short Fiction

Delve: verb (used without object), delved, delving.

1.       to carry on intensive and thorough research for data, information, or the like; investigate:

to delve into the issue of prison reform.

2.       Archaic. to dig, as with a spade.

verb (used with object), delved, delving.

3. Archaic. to dig; excavate.

Synonyms: research, inquire, probe, examine, explore.

(from dictionary.com)

I admit it: I am fascinated by Seanan McGuire’s productivity and creativity. I cannot imagine how she keeps track of the myriad worlds she’s created under her own name and her Mira Grant pseudonym. By my count, she’s got 6 current on-going series (novel series October Daye, Incryptid, Newsflesh, Wayward Children, and the “Deep” books; and the short story series featuring The Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad) and several that seem to be on hiatus but could return at any moment (Parasitology, Velveteen, Indexing). They are a marvelously disparate group of worlds featuring an endlessly diverse group of characters. Seanan McGuire builds worlds that readers love to become immersed in. But she doesn’t just build worlds to hang series of novels on – she delves those worlds, too.

“World-delving” is a term I may or may not have made up. I haven’t seen anyone else use it, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been used. Regardless, it’s the perfect word for what Seanan McGuire does in the short stories she writes to accompany her on-going novel series. She’s written short stories and novellas (and even, I believe, a poem/song or two) to dig deeper into the worlds of October Daye, Newflesh, and Incryptid. These stories occasionally take place in the “present” of the parent series, filling in events between novels (and usually featuring favorite supporting characters). But more often, they probe and explicate the past events that shaped the world the current characters live in.

Take world of Incryptid as an example. The novels (six so far, with #7, “Tricks For Free,” due in bookstores next week) give us the adventures of the Price siblings (Verity, Alexander, and Antimony) as they work in secret to protect the cryptid populations of North America from extermination by the Covenant of Saint George – a European-based secret society the Price kids’ grandparents and great-grandparents split from, on pain of death, in the early 20th century. While the novels throw in occasional references to that past, the majority of the plots and sub-plots and even sub-sub-plots are about the here-and-now of the Price kids’ lives (romance included).

There are short stories available filling in events between novels (mostly featuring Verity or her cousins) or events shortly before the novels begin (most focusing on Antimony’s roller-derby career), but fully half of the Incryptid stories McGuire has published for free on her website explore the Price family’s history. These stories deepen the reader’s understanding of the history that affects every one of the modern Price kids (whether Verity and her siblings and cousins are aware of the influence or not), as well as the reader’s understanding of the North American cryptid population the family strives to protect.

The first arc of stories, now seemingly complete, runs from 1928 to 1945 and gives us the love story of Jonathan Healy and Frances Brown (the Price kids’ great-grand-parents). Johnny is the only child that Alexander and Enid Healy were allowed to take with them when they split from the Covenant of St. George; he’s grown up in hiding and learning what it means to protect rather than destroy cryptids. On one such mission out west, he meets the fascinating and frustrating Frances Brown, nick-named “The Flower of Arizona, The Star of New Mexico.” Over the course of fourteen stories (each 20-28 pages in length, all but two available for free on McGuire’s website), we see how timid, uptight Johnny finally lets his guard down and brings new blood into the Healy family fold. We experience, in short bursts, not the entirety of Johnny and Fran’s life together but rather the highlights – the grand love story of a quiet man and bold woman that will reverberate through to those same great-grand-children. And if you’ve read the novels, you know that despite their outward demeanor, the Price kids all want to find lasting love like that of their grand- and great-grand-parents. Through Johnny and Fran’s cross-country trek home to meet his parents, we also get to know cryptid families that will play a role in their great-grand-children’s lives, to examine how those relationships were formed and firmed, in particular the folks who inhabit the traveling circus Fran was a part of when she and Johnny met. But these stories aren’t just about romance and building friendships: the shadow of the Covenant of St. George falls over everything the Healys experience, regardless of the Covenant’s physical presence. The fear of discovery, of their carefully-built world coming apart because of one slight slip in awareness, is palpable throughout – and that’s disregarding the very real dangers Johnny and Fran encounter from cryptids who don’t want their help or don’t believe they should have to stay hidden from humans any longer.

The second world-delving arc probes the next generation, commencing from 1954: Johnny and Fran’s headstrong, willful, adventure-seeking daughter Alice and her eventual husband Thomas Price (this is not a spoiler, as one of the sub-sub-plots of the novels is Alice’s interdimensional search for her missing husband). While the tension of the earlier arc involved the Healy’s (and particularly Johnny’s) willingness to let someone completely unknown in, the tension of this arc (three stories in, so far, all free on the site) sits firmly in the realm of “what happens when the enemy moves in next door, but doesn’t seem so bad?” Thomas is being tested by the Covenant, punished for recent failures, and the Healys have every right to be concerned he’s about to bring the wrath of the Covenant down on them, no matter how much he may profess otherwise. Again, the threat of the Covenant is clear and present, even if they never make an appearance. And again, through headstrong Alice and quiet, bookish Thomas, we see opposites attract, and we get to experience more of the Michigan-area cryptid community that will play roles in the adventures of Verity, Alexander, Antimony and their cousins. They say “the past is prologue,” and in these short story arcs, Seanan McGuire takes that adage to heart. She excavates here the nuggets of wisdom and experience that have been handed down to the present-day carriers of the Price-Healy banner.

For readers of the novels, these stories are world-delving, deepening our knowledge of the family history and world around them. But I don’t want to drive potential new readers away from a great free opportunity to dip their toes into the world of Incryptid. These short stories work as well as introduction as they do explication. Someone completely unfamiliar with the Incryptid novels could read these short story arcs and not feel like a clueless outsider dumped into a world the author presumes the reader is familiar with. McGuire peppers the stories with everything you need to know to understand the world and time these characters exist in; there are no references to what their grand/great-grand-kids will experience in the novels. For folks new to McGuire’s Incryptid world, these stories are world-introducing. They work on expertly on both levels.

Each story in each arc is complete unto itself and vital information is repeated from story to story. But the arcs also have a beginning, middle, and end. The Johnny-and-Fran sequence, essentially complete unless McGuire decides to go back and add more installments later, really needs to be collected in print form (Subterranean Press, I’m looking at you). It works very well as a mosaic novel of inter-connected short stories.

If you’re not familiar with the Incryptid novels and want to get a sense of the world, I recommend hoping over to Seanan McGuire’s website and clicking the sidebar menu for Incryptid. You’ll find links to descriptions of the novels, as well as to the page for all of the short stories. (Fair warning, though: events of the novels will be spoiled if you read the Verity-and-Dominic  or Sarah-and-Arthur stories on the page.) If you’re already familiar with the Incryptid novels but somehow didn’t know there were more world-delving short stories out there … well, now you know.

Reading Round-Up: January 2018

Reinstating what I intend to be a monthly summary of everything I’ve read, since I’m not reviewing every single book or story the way I used to try to do on Livejournal. Here’s what I read in January of 2018:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 14 books in January: 11 in print, 2 in audio, and 1 in ebook format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #92 (January 2018 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories and novellas. This month’s favorites for me were Catherynne M. Valente’s “Golabush, Or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy,” Sarah Pinsker’s “The Court Magician,” and José Pablo Iriarte’s “The Substance of My Lives, The Accident of Our Birth.”

2.       Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz.  A wonderful first-person gay coming-of-age story about two Latino boys in the Southwest in the 80s, endearingly read on audio by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I didn’t quite get the sense that Ari was as angry as the cover-copy made him out to be (conflicted yes, over-the-top angry not so much).

3.       Wonder Woman ’77 Meets the Bionic Woman, by Andy Mangels, Judit Tondora and others. Fun, fun, fun team-up between two of my favorite 70s TV icons. Mangels skillfully melds bad-guys from both shows into a formidable menace, and there are lots of great nods to both shows’ supporting casts (especially the female members). But there’s also an sub-plot that’s never resolved, indicating Mangels expected there to be a sequel mini-series/trade paperback. And Judit Tondora’s art is just wonderful to look at.

4.       Beneath The Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3), by Seanan McGuire.  The story of the portal-children at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children continue, this time with a quest into a Wonderland-like candy world that could have dire consequences for several members of the cast. What I love about these novellas is that you don’t have to have read the previous installments at all: McGuire tells you everything you need to know in each installment. But of course, reading them (in or out of order) gives you a much bigger picture to absorb.

5.       Sherlock Holmes and the Green Lama: Heir Apparent, by Adam Lance Garcia. Love Holmes pastiches, love the “modern pulp movement.” Not overly familiar with the pulp history of The Green Lama, but that didn’t affect my enjoyment of this crossover which draws on both the Lama’s and Holme’s overlapping experiences in Tibet. The tension is well-spooled-out, the action sequences well-done. I’m sure I missed some of the nods towards other pulp characters and settings.

6.       The Squirrel on the Train (Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries #2), by Kevin Hearne.  Another fun novella in the Iron Druid Chronicles narrated by everyone’s favorite Irish wolfhound, Oberon. The IDC novels and short stories told from the human characters’ perspectives are fun and exciting, but the voice Hearne gives Oberon is more endearing and intimate and just plain joyful.

7.       Binti: The Night Masquerage (Binti #3), by Nnedi Okorafor. The Binti trilogy of novellas concludes as solidly as it started: with amazing poetic prose, beautiful descriptions of people and places, action propelled by characterization, and at least one story twist I personally did not see coming. Folks whose first exposure to Afrofuturism was the Marvel movie Black Panther really need to check out this series.

8.       Lumberjanes Vol. 7: A Bird’s Eye View, by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Carey Pietsch, Ayme Sotuyo, Maarta Laiho. After a couple of volumes where I felt the story had slowed or the art wasn’t quite up to the standard of the first few, I feel like Volume 7 is both a return to form and a departure, with several new interesting supporting characters introduced and other supporting characters returning and being given more depth – all without shirking development for the core cast. I hear there might me a television version in development, and I hope none of the spark and strength of these girls is lost in adaptation.

9.       Ironcastle, by Philip Jose Farmer, adapting J.H. Rosny Aine.  It’s taken me way too long to get around to reading this Farmer classic. I enjoyed it. There will be a longer review sometime next week, since this is one of the books I read to meet this year’s To Be Read Challenge, which requires an individual review to be posted.

10.   Superman: The Phantom Zone, by Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Tony DeZuniga, Rick Veitch, Bob Smith and others.  I loved this four-issue mini-series when it was published in the early 80s, before DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, as goofy as the story is. Gerber told a great story (although the follow-up story in DC Comics Presents was a bit more convoluted upon re-reading than I remembered). Colan’s art here is not necessarily his best compared to Tomb of Dracula, or even the Silverblade and Nathaniel Dusk minis he was drawing for DC around the same time, but it’s still fun. The man was a master of shadow and fluidity of movement.

11.   Kiss Me Like A Stranger, by Gene Wilder.  I can’t believe I haven’t read Wilder’s memoir before now. It’s become my habit to listen to, rather than read, memoirs if they’re read by the author, and I feel like I got a better sense of what Gene was trying to say (and what he was shying away from saying) by listening to him. I think, especially when it comes to the estrangement from his adopted daughter, he had blinders on as to what the problem actually was, but then again it’s very easy to judge from the outside things that aren’t as obvious when you’re in the middle. And his love for Gilda as well as the woman he married after her passing are very very strong and clear.

12.   Iceman Volume 1: Thawing Out, by Sina Grace, Alessandro Vitti, Edgar Salazer, and others.  I really intend to write a longer blog-post about this eventually. As I said on Twitter, I felt like Grace really captures the act of coming out “later in life” (a subjective term, to be sure, but I think Bobby Drake coming out as gay in his late 20s, after having “come out” as a mutant in his teens, qualifies), and the different pressures and roadblocks that come with it. Bobby’s journey in these few issues very much matches my own coming out in my late twenties after years of trying to convince myself I was straight and having lots of failed relationships with otherwise wonderful women, many of whom are still good friends.

13.   Cry Your Way Home, by Damien Angelica Walters. A wonderful short story collection by one of my favorite authors, about which I don’t want to say too much here because my full review will be forthcoming at Strange Horizons in about a month.

14.   The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 3), by Rick Riordan.  I have not been as captivated by the Magnus Chase books as I have by the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles series, but this concluding volume of the first trilogy (which features a short guest spot by everyone’s favorite son of Poseidon as well as Magnus’ cousin Annabeth) grabbed me. A slightly slow start gives way to a fast-paced adventure that resolves all of the extant main and sub-plots and gives us more depth to the supporting cast of Magnus’ hotel-mates.

So fourteen books in January, which Goodreads told me was a few ahead of goal for the month/year. Ironcastle is the first book read for the 2018 To Be Read Challenge. Four graphic novels meets my “one graphic novel per week” reading challenge, while nothing I read in January helped meet any of the “Complete the Series” challenges, nor the “Bustle Reading Challenge.”  Those Reading Challenges were described HERE.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “The Streets of Babel” by Adam-Troy Castro, from Lightspeed Magazine #92 (January 2018 issued), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Golabush, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy” by Catherynne M. Valente

3.       “The Eyes of the Flood” by Susan Jane Bigelow

4.       “Someday” by James Patrick Kelly

5.       “Auburn” by Joanna Ruocco

6.       “The Substance of My Lives, the Accident of Our Births” by Jose Pablo Iriarte

7.       “Divine Madness” by Roger Zelazny

8.       “The Court Magician” by Sarah Pinsker

9.       “A Thousand Nights Till Morning” by Will McIntosh

10.   “Written in Water” by Seanan McGuire, a Patrick-and-Dianda story, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “Guerilla Marketing” by Sanjay Agnihotri, from One Story #236, edited by Will Allison

12.   “Our New Lives” by Helen Coats, from One Teen Story #53, edited by Patrick Ryan

13.   “Trouble Comes” by Neal Bailey, stand-alone ebook available on Kindle

14.   “Tooth, Tongue and Claw” by Damien Angelica Walters, from her collection Cry Your Way Home, edited by Leslie Connor.

15.   “Deep Within the Marrow, Hidden In My Smile” by Damien Angelica Walters

16.   “On The Other Side of The Door, Everything Changes” by Damien Angelica Walters

17.   “This Is The Way I Die” by Damien Angelica Walters

18.   “The Hands That Hold, The Lies That Bind” by Damien Angelica Walters

19.   “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale” by Damien Angelica Walters

20.   “The Judas Child” by Damien Angelica Walters

21.   “S Is For Soliloquy” by Damien Angelica Walters

22.   “The Floating Girls: A Documentary” by Damien Angelica Walters

23.   “Take A Walk In The Night, My Love” by Damien Angelica Walters

24.   “Falling Under, Through the Dark” by Damien Angelica Walters

25.   “The Serial Killer’s Astronaut Daughter” by Damien Angelica Walters

26.   “Umbilicus” by Damien Angelica Walters

27.   “A Lie You Give, And Thus I Take” by Damien Angelica Walters

28.   “Little Girl Blue, Come Cry Your Way Home” by Damien Angelica Walters

29.   “Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice” by Damien Angelica Walters

30.   “In The Spaces Where You Lived” by Damien Angelica Walters

31.   “How The Marquis Got His Coat Back” by Neil Gaiman, the full-cast BBC Audio production available on Audible.

32.   “The Way Home” by Seanan McGuire, an Alice Healey /Tom Price “Incryptid” story, on the author’s website

33.   “The Lay of The Land” by Seanan McGuire

34.   “Target Practice” by Seanan McGuire

So that’s 34 short stories in January, more than one per day, putting  me exactly on schedule for the year so far.

Review of Donald E. Westlake's Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

TITLE: Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

AUTHOR: Donald Westlake

255 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785656828

Publication Date: February 13, 2018 (I received an uncorrected proof ARC in exchange for an honest review), trade paperback, $9.95

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): JAILED FOR A JOKE

It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters - so jail is where Harold Künt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose...

HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER is Donald E. Westlake at his funniest and his most ingenious, a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades.

MY RATING: Five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: I admit I haven’t read a lot of Donald E. Westlake. Some short stories, maybe a Parker novel back in my ill-remembered high school days at the behest of a friend, and last year’s Hard Case Crime release of Westlake’s previously-unpublished novel Forever And A Death. Despite multiple people telling me how comedic Westlake could be, everything I’ve read by him has been on the more serious/adventure side of things. Those books had funny scenes interspersed, but weren’t wholly comedic tales.

I’ve now experienced Westlake’s full comedic prowess, and I’m hooked. Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner is a fast, funny romp of a story, virtually “unputdownable.” There’s a catchy turn of phrase, or a crackling bit of dialogue, or a tongue-in-cheek wink at the reader, on almost every page that should bring a chuckle, if not an outright laugh (and I did actually laugh out loud at least four times), to any reader with at least a moderate sense of humor. I suspect there are people who will not find Westlake’s wordplay or the main character’s antics funny – those people are the real life versions of characters Warden Gadmore and guard Fred Stoon – but I really enjoyed the book.

It can be hard to make humor based on mispronunciations work in print, but Westlake pulls it off on the first page. Our narrator has a name people have been saying wrong his entire life: Harry Künt (“with an umlaut,” he repeatedly tells people). He never quiet spells out exactly how people are mispronouncing his name, but the reader can guess pretty easily. This becomes a running joke throughout the book, and serves as character motivation for why Harry became a practical joker early in life. (Okay, it might be thin character motivation, but it works as a launching point.)

The entire book really is a comedy of errors, as Harry gets further and further in over his head. But it’s a comedy of errors that never quite veers into farce despite some of the stock characters Harry finds himself surrounded by (the officious and humorless warden; the threatening gang leader who just won’t give up the plan; the fellow in-mate who gets a little too lost in the character he’s playing outside the jail walls). In a way, it reminds me of classic episodes of The Simpsons or the Dick Van Dyke show: just when you think you know where the story is heading and what the punchline is going to be, Westlake adds a new complication to poor Harry’s life. And this includes the titular sub-plot: someone else in the prison is pranking the warden by having the title phrase pop up in unusual places; we know from the start this is one practical joke Harry is innocent of, but of course the warden, head-guard and other officials think it must be him because that’s what he got sent in for.

The author also seamlessly blends in the other genres he’s famous for (and some he's not): it’s a jail-break caper, a bank robbery caper, a feel-good prison-buddy story (Harry bonds with a fellow prisoner who is in charge of all the gardening), a military-base escapade, a romance. The comedy works because Westlake knows the tropes of all of these genres and tweaks them just enough to make each scene funny without losing the tension (the military-base scene in particular is equal parts Lee Marvin movie and M*A*S*H). I have no doubt that, had he wanted to, Westlake could have written this as a straight-up thriller and the story would have hung together just as well.

(Side-note: I’m actually surprised this has never been adapted to film. It’s an ideal vehicle for someone with an everyman look and solid comic timing, surrounded by character actors with the right mixture of menace and buffoonery.)

As seen above, Hard Case Crime’s re-release of this 30 year old long out-of-print Westlake classic comes with an equally humorous cover painting by Paul Mann that simply and expertly captures the mood of the book without being cartoony or too cutesy. This is the eighth Westlake novel HCC has released, following 361, The Comedy Is Finished, The Cutie, Memory, Somebody Owes Me Money, Forever and A Death, and Lemons Never Lie, (under Westlake’s Richard Stark pseudonym).

Fans of loving send-ups of classic genres, written by authors who know those genres well, really should check out Help I Am Being Held A Prisoner. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

2017 Reading By The Numbers

In which I analyze exactly what I read, in what formats and genres and such-like. (I like my personal counts to match my Goodreads page, so I count fully-read magazine issues and individually-published short stories and novellas as “books.”)

BOOKS

I exceeded my Goodreads initial goal of 100 books, and my updated Goodreads goal of 125. I did not attempt “To Be Read” Challenge this year.

TOTAL READ: 139

FICTION: 131

·         Anthologies: 8

o   Horror: 1

o   Christmas: 1

o   Weird West: 1

o   Transgender Spec Fic: 1

o   Pulp Adventure: 1

o   Science Fiction 2

o   Crime: 1

·         Chapbooks: 2 (both pulp adventure)

·         Single-Author Story Collections: 10

o   Horror: 1

o   Christmas: 1

o   Crime: 1

o   Mystery: 5

o   Science Fiction: 1

o   Mythology: 1

·         Graphic Novels: 37

o   Super-Heroes: 17

o   Horror: 8

o   Crime: 2

o   Comedy: 1

o   Fantasy: 2

o   Urban Fantasy: 2

o   YA Urban Fantasy: 3

o   YA Comedy: 1

o   Pulp Adventure: 1

·         Magazines: 12 (all Lightspeed)

·         Novels: 38

o   Alt-History Fantasy: 2

o   Christmas: 2

o   Fantasy: 8

o   YA Fantasy: 2

o   Urban Fantasy: 4

o   Historical Fantasy: 1

o   Steampunk: 2

o   Science Fiction: 5

o   YA Science Fiction: 1

o   Crime/Mystery: 5

o   Super-Heroes: 1

o   Horror: 3

o   Adventure: 1

o   YA Literary: 1

·         Novellas: 19

o   Christmas: 2

o   Alt-History Fantasy/Romance: 1

o   Science Fiction 5

o   Fantasy: 3

o   Mystery: 2

o   Horror: 2

o   Urban Fantasy: 3

o   Historical Fantasy: 1

·         Short Stories: 5

o   Romance: 1

o   Pulp Adventure: 1

o   Urban Fantasy: 2

o   Alt-History Fantasy/Romance: 1

NON-FICTION: 8

·         Memoirs: 7

o   Alison Arngrim

o   Carrie Fisher (x2)

o   Debbie Reynolds

o   Joel Grey

o   William Daniels

o   Dick Van Dyke

·         Book of Essays: 1 (Neil Gaiman)

OTHER DATA:

# OF AUTHORS/EDITORS/ARTISTS: roughly 107

SHORTEST READS: 20 pages (A Very Merry Blue Christmas; Caesar’s Children; In Sea-Salt Tears)

LONGEST READ: 459 (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor)

FIRST BOOK READ IN 2017: Locke & Key Vol 1: Welcome to Lovecraft, by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez & others

FINAL BOOK READ IN 2017: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

TOTAL # OF PAGES READ: 26, 987

AVERAGE # OF PAGES PER BOOK: 197

FORMAT SUMMARY:

·         Audio:27

·         Ebook: 26

·         Hardcover: 21

·         Softcover: 65

STORIES

I exceeded my goal of 365 short stories. I did not really track how many in each genre this year.

TOTAL READ: 380

# OF AUTHORS: 212

SOURCES:

·         Anthologies: 14

·         Single Author Collections: 9

·         Magazines: 10

·         Author Websites/Patreon/Self-Pubbed: 17

First Story Read in 2017: “Rate of Change” by James S.E. Corey, in Lightspeed #79

Final Story Read in 2017: “Pups” by Kate Folk, in One Story #235