Okay, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that my favorite author is Haurki Murakami.  So, naturally a couple years ago, I picked up a book called Shipwrecks by fellow Japanese existentialist Akira Yoshimura.  Although Murakami brings to mind authors like Kafka, Yoshimura is really reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Alan Paton and even Flanner O’Connor.  So, when I saw Yoshimura’s name on another book, On Parole, as I was browsing one day on my lunch, I picked it up, even though it was based on a movie, The Eel, that I didn’t really like.  I finally got around to actually reading it.  And goddammit, what a perfect book.  And although I’m not really one to judge a book based on its ending or what kind of twists are thrown at you, Yoshimura ended this story beautifully with a development that was surprising but at the same time felt like the most natural thing in the world.  On Parole, just like you’d gather from the title, follows a man from an indefinite prison sentence for a horrible crime through the few years that follow his unexpected parole.  Yoshimura carefully examines what we have traditionally come to think of as freedom and imprisonment.  He makes a compelling argument that these are states of mind and not a matter of physical restraint.  The narrative of our every-man anti-hero (Sorry for the two hyphenateds in a row and also for using the word ‘hyphenateds’ which doesn’t exist..  You’ll live; worse things have happened.) is harrowing to say the least but we have a certain comfort level with this man who may or may not be disturbed, may or may not be a sociopath, and may or may not be capable of remorse.  We are asked to think about not only whether or not this man deserves redemption, but whether or not he wants it.  Seriously.  Buy this book, then buy Shipwrecks.  I’m going to have to re-watch The Eel now because unless Shohei Imamura is simply the most incompetent filmmaker ever, I obviously missed something on my initial viewing.

We have eyes and we have nervses

We have tails we have teeth

You’ll all get what you deservses

When we rise from underneath

I read Coraline by the great Neil Gaiman.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Any list of the greatest minds of the 20^th century would have to include, along with people like Einstein and Hawking, Dr. Seuss and I am officially declaring Neil Gaiman to be his successor.  You can see parts of Seuss, Clive Barker, E E Cummings, Lewis Carrol and Kafka in Gaiman’s work, but it is not at all derivative.  His vision is fresh and full of imagination.  And it’s a tightrope Gaiman walks, painting genuinely frightening images that are still suitable for children.  Coraline is made from the same stuff as nightmares and beautiful fantasies alike.  Yes, it’s a kids book, but suck it up and read it anyway because, like The Cat and the Hat, it is also a work of art.

Okay, I read The Comics Go To Hell: A Visual History of the Devil in Comics, which I’m not really sure how to categorize.  It goes through the evolution of our perception of Satan as portrayed in comic form.  He has chapters exploring several facets of Satan and how he is presented including how he comes into play in the superhero genre, how he is used humorously, how he is used to represent the evil in ourselves and how and why he is used to frighten.  He even has a chapter devoted to the endless adaptations of the story of Dr. Faustus.  While this is hardly a comprehensive analysis of how our civilization has come to think of the Devil and evil in general, it is a fascinating read and Stromberg even surprised me a few times at just how deep he was willing to go.  One of the things that amused me so as I read this was how I was constantly reminded of how intimately I know this subject matter in comparison to the public at large.  Anytime he would explain the context of something as far as how it references the Bible or just Christian popular culture, I found myself thinking, “well, duh.”  Then I’d remember that most people probably weren’t aware of whatever he pointed out.  I was very pleasantly surprised that Stromberg referenced the Chick gospel tracts.  These comics scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.  The images of Satan in these tracts are far more unsettling than any horror movie I have seen.  The Satan that terrorized me the most when I was young, the one that gave me endless nightmares and caused me to accept Jesus into my heart over and over and over just in case I hadn’t done it right the first time was Satan as drawn in the last panel of Somebody Goofed.  I still see this as an absolutely paralyzing image.

Okay, I was at a flea market and I saw these two books, Witch Child and Sorceress by Celia Rees.  They looked supernatural and were like a buck a piece so I figured, what’s the worst that could happen?  Well, I got halfway through the Witch Child and I looked it up on Amazon just to see what else this author had written, etc because I was really enjoying it.  Well, much to my chagrin, it turns out that these books are written for pre-teen girls.  That’s right.  Pre-teen girls.  Imagine my shame when I saw that these were featured on lists like “Books For Teenage Girls That Will Rock You Soxs.”  Okay, I can take being lumped in with teenage girls, but can we please watch the spelling?  And, I’m just going to come out and say it.  I was into the story enough to finish it anyway.  And also read the second book.  So there.  The first one, Witch Child, was quite simply a very beautifully written first person narrative.  It follows Mary, a fourteen year old witch-girl from the site of her grandmother’s hanging for witchcraft across the ocean to the New World where she settles with Puritans.  Of course, lots of light-hearted fun ensues.  The narrative ends very abruptly, (fitting, as it’s being told in the first person) and it is suitably jolting. 

Alas, Sorceress is less of a success.  Rees jumps back and forth between Mary’s story and the story of one of her present-day descendents, Agnes, also known as Searching Sky.  (Yes, apparently Mary got in with the savages after being shunt by the paleface dicks.)    The shifting in the narrative from one point of view to another, to in some chapters, even another is not something Rees really accomplishes with any kind of fluidity.  It would have been much better to just stick with Mary’s story, but then you she would have had to lose a clever gimmick.  Sadly, sometimes an idea, shrewd as it might be, just does not serve the story.  It happens to the best writers.  It’s hard to let go of a brilliant idea.  But this concept isn’t quite sharp enough to distract us from noticing just how disjointed this narrative feels.

So there.  Witch Child was very good.  Sorceress kept my attention when it was following Mary.  So if you’ll excuse me, now I have to go put on my training bra or listen to Panic at the Disco or Creed or arrange my Hello Kitty things or whatever the shit twelve year old girls are doing these days.

Okay, I read Gluttony, a collection of shorts, poems and essays about well, Gluttony.  Hence the title.  I picked it up like a couple of years ago because it was on a clearance rack (actually, it might have actually been at Deal$.) or something and one of the stories was written by Woody Allen so I figured, “Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?”  Well, I’ll tell you.  The worst that can happen is you can have to read a lot of tedious shit.  There were a couple of pieces that were pretty entertaining, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Notes from the Overfed by Woody Allen were pretty damn funny.  And Feast by Diane Mason was surprisingly creepy.  I’m pretty sure it was supposed to represent what gluttons have to look forward in Hell.  On the whole, though this collection really didn’t amount to much.  But if you’re in Deal$ and have a dollar, these three pieces are probably entertaining enough to justify paying 33 & ½ cents apiece for.

Hiroshima by John Hersey follows the stories of six survivors from about an hour before the bombing until a year after.  As an aside, I’d recommend Isao Takahata’s film Grave of the Fireflies as a companion piece.  It goes without saying that the accounts of what happened that day are horrific.  The scale of the devastation was so great and survivors unarmed enough to help were so few that they had no choice but to ignore the countless cries for help from people who were buried alive, being slowly crushed or suffocating because they simply couldn’t get to them all.  There were so many devastating moments in the story, like how after a few days, the Reverend Tanimoto became so used to the carnage and trying to move living bodies from one place to another that he had to keep repeating aloud, “these are human beings” just so he could keep going.  There is another moment when Reverend Tanimoto had helped drag dozens of the injured to lie by the side of the river only to find when he had come back that the waters had risen and the wounded were so weak that they couldn’t crawl even a few feet to safety, so they had all drowned, helpless.  And while the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were appalling acts, what struck me when reading this was how Hersey refuses to make any overt moral judgments or political statements.  He simply lets the narrative do its work.  This is a very important book.  It should be read by everybody, no matter what you think about whether dropping the bomb was the right thing to do or not.  Even if action must be taken, no matter how justified one is in using deadly force, we should always be reminding ourselves, like Reverend Tanimoto that “these are human beings.”

Then, I read Dude, Where’s my Country? by Michael Moore.  There’s nothing like reading a book on current events 4 &1/2 years after it comes out.  Sadly, this shit it still relevant, though.  If you’ve seen Fahrenheit 911, you’ve already been exposed to a lot of the information in here, but there’s still enough to justify reading this book, most notably an open letter from God to America and a dream conversation Michael Moore had with his great granddaughter 50 years from now.  One of the things I appreciate about Michael Moore is the importance he places on the 4^th amendment.  It’s really not given the weight it should be.  Moore argues, and I could not agree more that the right to privacy is freedom itself.  The argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about is not one made by anybody who understands or cares about freedom.  If we are free to do as we wish while being monitored, then we are not free!!!  So fucking fight the power.  Yeah.

Okay, it’s one of my favorite movies.  I’m a huge fan of horror and a huge fan of Satan.  So why is it that in the year 2008, I’m only reading Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin for the first time ever now?  I’m sure that you’ve either seen the movie or know the basic plot, but it’s a story of a woman who is raped by Satan and the subsequent pregnancy and birth of the anti-Christ.  You wouldn’t think that this story could be told in such a delicate, patient, gentle way, but that’s exactly what Levin manages to do here.  The attention given to the mind frame of Rosemary is so lovely and deliberate that we are lulled into a false sense of security.  We forget that we are in fact, reading a horror novel.

What struck me, now that I’ve read the novel is just how faithful Polanski’s adaptation was.  It’s as if he didn’t even bother with a screenplay but rather just storyboarded the novel.  The only thing that the book goes into more than the film is the intimacy between Rosemary and Guy, making his betrayal all the more sickening.  I pretty much read it straight through without putting it down except to work and sleep; it took me less than two days to tear through it.  So now, after finally getting around to reading this, I have to track down Levin’s other novels.  Here’s hoping that, like Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and A Kiss Before Dying are as brilliant as the films they spawned.  (That last sentence was sarcastic.)

“How many lost souls do you need, Lord, to satisfy Your hunger?  God, in His infinite silence, looked at him without blinking.”

Okay, I have to concede that while we don’t share common tastes in pretty much everything, Joia’s recommendations have proven to be trustworthy.  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron is quite simply one of the most elegant and beautifully crafted novels I have ever read.  Once, in an interview Salman Rushdie said that when he was growing up, it was a rule in their home that if somebody dropped a book, if a book touched the floor, he had to kiss the book before returning it to its shelf.  I found myself remembering that frequently while reading Shadow.  The story opens up with a prologue of sorts where a child is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books to select a book.  The rest of the book is about how profoundly literature and art can affect our lives.  Every character Zafron draws is fascinating, whether repulsive, charismatic, evil or saintly, we care a great deal about these people and, like people in real life, they keep surprising you.  The book is basically about how one’s concept of art, God and especially death shapes their choices and actions.  His characters are drawn with the greatest of care and what defines them is how they think about art, God and death.

There was a point in the book, when a major revelation had been made when I was afraid that Shadow was going to take a downward spiral into the realms of cheap melodrama.  If you’ve read the book, I’m sure you know what I’m referring to.  But rather than having it be just a twist, the kind that writers use to show off how clever they are (Mr. Shyamalan, I’m looking at you) Zafron weaves it carefully and deliberately into the events that lead from the revelation to the book’s climax.  Zafron, if I read another of your novels, I promise never to doubt you again.  This is the rare author that you can trust implicitely to take you to the most profound, beautiful and terrifying places.

Please, please, please go out and buy this book.  There is an acute grace in every character, every image, every action, every plot point.  Zafron is a master worthy of comparisons to Dickens, Hugo and countless others who have taken what could’ve been melodrama and elevated it into an art form.

Okay, I read New Rules by Bill Maher.  There’s not much to say except that if you find him funny, you will enjoy this book.  If you do not, it will just piss you off.  It is sad to think that a comic digs deeper and challenges presuppositions than most journalists in this country.  For shame, everyone in my field.

Okay, World War 3 Illustrated: Life During Wartime isn’t even a graphic novel, it’s an issue of a ‘zine, so I’m not counting it as one of the fifty, but I read it and thought I’d report it regardless.  I actually thought, by the cover that it was going to be funny, but suffice it to say it was very hit and miss.  There were a few clever pieces here, most notably, Nakedness and Power, about women protesting the presence of oil companies in Africa, but more often than not, what you get is very obvious and unimaginative political criticism.  There was a lot of shit I already knew and had already heard said in more imaginative ways.  So, despite a couple of good jokes & a couple of fun images, it really was a letdown. 

Okay, I’ve been sick for the last few days and my doctor was gracious enough to let me have some vicodin for the headaches that go with this bug, so I’ve been at home in a daze.  So, I’ve been sticking to Graphic Novels, since they’re easier to follow when I’m high.  First off, I read Buffy the Vampire Season 8: The Long Way Home.  

Dear God, what the hell is up with you?  Sex and the City gets a movie but not Buffy?  What the fuck, dude?  Not cool.  Please stop falling asleep on the job.  Amen.

Okay, for what we got, which is a series of comic books for season 8, it’s very entertaining.  Joss has not lost his sense of humor or his ability to surprise us.  He has an amazing ability to follow a story arc, not just through a single season, but through the entire series.  His gift for foreshadowing without disappointing in the payoff is staggering.  Yes, I would rather have more episodes to watch or even a movie, but Joss is a master storyteller and at this point, we’ll take what we can get.  The story here for season 8 is very compelling, moving, frightening and funny.  Plus, bringing back the one villain we have absolutely no fascination with (Adam, the First, Gloria) or any affection for (the Mayor, Faith) is a master stroke.  The only thing we have ever wanted in Buffy’s dealings with Warren is for him to die and die horribly.  I sense a very gratifying end to this season when at last it ends.  (I don’t know if it’s been completed or not since I’m waiting for them to come in graphic novel form and don’t plan to waste my time with just the comic books.)

Then, I read Bad Blood which is actually an anthology of three different graphic novels, Sweetmeats by Steve Tanner & Pete Venters, Sugar Virus by Warren Ellis, Martin Chaplin & Garry Marshall and Night Vision: Intermezzo Bette Noir by David Quinn & Hannibal King.  Then, there’s some naked vampire artwork by John Bolton thrown in at the end and you know, you just can’t go wrong with that.  Sweetmeats, the first in the anthology is by far the best of the bunch.  We follow a young vampire from her days as a child prostitute (don’t worry, the would-be sexual predators ended up getting more than they bargained for) through her adolescence in an asylum to her liberation by a young doctor.  The characters are very complicated and interesting and the story has several effective surprises.

Sugar Virus leaves a lot to be desired, from a storytelling standpoint.  It’s more than a little muddied, but the artwork really makes it worth checking out.  At one point, we get to see what happens when somebody tries to see just how far he can go in torturing a vampire while keeping her alive.  (Okay, since we’re talking about vampires, alive really isn’t the right word.  Animated probably fits better.)  At any rate, the pictures of that poor, tortured vampire are the stuff that nightmares are made of.  Very chilling, disturbing imagery.

The third story, Night Vision just isn’t very good at all.  But, Bolton’s naked vampire art at the end is definitely worth looking at.

Then, it was on to 300 by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley.  If you’ve seen the movie, you pretty much get the point.  I think I actually enjoyed the graphic novel more than I enjoyed the film which I thought was good, if a bit over hyped.  If you liked the movie, you’d probably enjoy reading the book.  If not, I’m not sure it’s going to win over any new converts.

Now, we’re on to the best of the bunch, The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller.  It’s one of the books in his Sin City series.  For those of you who’ve seen the movies, The Hard Goodbye is the one with Mickey Rourke as the big galoot avenging Goldie, the hooker with the heart of gold, blah, blah, blah.  I’m making it sound trite and this story is anything but.  It’s my favorite of the three segments of the film.  Marv is just such a compelling character.  He is sympathetic and terrifying at the same time.  We’re not sure if he’s the kind we’d want to protect us or if he just scares the fuck out of us.  If Goldie was the hooker with the heart of gold, Marv is the sadistic, homicidal thug with the heart of gold.  Miller’s work, all of it, the story, the dialogue, the characters, the artwork, all of it comes together so beautifully here.  For those of you who’ve seen Sin City, but as of yet have not read any of the books, The Hard Goodbye is a great jumping off point.

I read Tales From the Crypt Volume 1, adapted by Elanor Fremont.  It’s a compilation of six shorts, five of them very disappointing.  Okay, so I picked it up at a flea market for 50 cents, but still.  As a big fan of the series, I was kind of looking forward to some goofy, funny, stupid stories.  Instead, it was just lame.  The exception is Auntie, it’s Coal Inside! It was actually pretty damn funny.  Other than that, I think from now on I’ll stick to the comic books and TV series.

Okay, I read Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill and fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, what a great goddamn book.  On the back cover, Neil Gaiman says that he thought it was the best debut horror novel since Clive Barker’s Damnation Game and fuck if he isn’t spot on.  The premise does sound cheesy (a rock star buys a ghost online and gets more than he bargained for) but Hill has written what might just be the perfect ghost story.  It’s in turns funny, terrifying, touching and most importantly of all, surprising.  Seriously, don’t go to the library, just go and buy this fucking book (unless you don’t like horror novels, in which case, well, you just won’t want to read this.)  And, unlike the last book I read, the romantic interest here feels very organic.  It’s as natural a part of the story as any of the supernatural elements.

Okay, I read Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin.  I read the description and was expecting kind of a gothic horror novel, maybe with a little mystery thrown in.  And I did get some of that.  It’s a story of a forensic scientist, a woman no less, back in the 12^th century when the idea was obviously unheard of, tracking down a child killer.  Now, I have to say that this book was involving, if not entirely engrossing and there were many truly disturbing and chilling moments.  However, this novel seemed to suffer from schizophrenia.  At times, it was a mystery, at other times, historical fiction, at times, chick-lit.  And I’m sorry, but the romance that Franklin tacks on is unnecessary, not believable and just downright annoying.  It was a bit chicky for my taste but again, when it was concentrating on the basic plot of our protagonist trying to catch the killer, it was a very good read.  Since most of you are women, I’m sure any of you would enjoy it even more than I did.

First, Joia made me read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  When she described it to me, it sounded like Slaughterhouse 5 for chicks.  And that's pretty much what it was, but I'm not just going to discount this book so easily.  I have to admit, I was totally drawn in by Henry and Clare.  It's not very common for an author to get me to care this deeply for their characters, but I was very moved by this book.

Second, since I read Slaughterhouse 5 for chicks, I thought that next, I should read the actual Slaughterhouse 5 again.  It's my forth or fifth time, but you really can't read this book too much.  Vonnegut is so unique in that he may be the only fatalist I can think of who is just so damn cheerful.  

Next, I read Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie.  I've been meaning to pick up something of Rushdie's for quite some time and I have to say that I was not disappointed.  For a story with such a sweeping backdrop that ranged from the French Resistance during World War II to the India/Pakistani conflict over Kashmir in the mid '60s right up to the rise of modern Islamic terrorism into the early 90s, this is an intensely personal work.  It starts with an assassination which seems at first to be political, but turns out to be nothing more than a vendetta of a jealous husband.  This typifies the tone of this story.  Every political struggle, every part of history revolves around very small, often petty individuals.  Rushdie asks if one can be a great man and a bad person at the same time.  

And next came the one half book.  It's a graphic novel, so I'm not sure it fully counts.  It's Wanted by Mark Millar & J.G. Jones.  Basically, the super villains have knocked off the superheroes and are now pretty much in charge of things.  It's brutally violent and very funny.  I highly recommend this and can't wait for the film to come out.  Any literary piece that includes phrases like "Holy two idiots getting eaten by an octopus!" and "Calling all Superfucks!  Calling all Superfucks!" automatically gets a certain measure of affection from me.  

So, I realize that I'm behind schedule if I'm to get to 50 books this year, so I'm on to reread book one of The Abarat by Clive Barker, since I just bought book 2 last week..