tuesday october 31
We tend to think of scary books at Halloween, and I'll take this chance to promote some of my favorite creepy audio books and reading for any dark night.
The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection is read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone. Poe's work distills all that is eerie, and these two masters of voice bring the recordings to chilling life.
The Shining by Stephen King is a perennial favorite, good at the movies but terrific as the original book.
Peter Straub's Lost Boy Lost Girl is as creepy as it gets, an excellent read along with its sequel In The Night Room.
And don't forget the Classics: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Dracula by Bram Stoker and the wonderful silent film Nosferatu; and even War of the Worlds by HG Wells, which was a written work long before it was performed as a radio play or movie.
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monday october 30
Election Day looms. It should comes as no surprise that political fiction, especially thrillers (
David Baldacci,
Vince Flynn, Brad Meltzer, etc.), are always very popular. Novels of political satire (
Larry Beinhart, Roy Blount, Charles McCarry,
Peter Lefcourt, etc.) also have their fans. And the books by well-known pundits (
Jeff Greenfield, Joe Klein,
William F. Buckley, Jr., etc.) who dabble in political fiction similarly receive attention this time of year.
How about fiction written by politicians and their minions? Let's take a look at some titles from recent years.
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sunday october 29
It’s the perfect time of year to read Roger Zelazny’s delightfully clever spoof of supernatural fantasy, A Night in the Lonesome October.
A group of animal “familiars” led by our narrator, Snuff the Watchdog, are helping their masters (including a knife-wielding Jack, a Count, and the Good Doctor and his Experimental Man) prepare for a rare Victorian-era conjunction of Halloween and the full moon.
It seems that such conjunctions are the only times when a Gate can be opened for the return of the old gods, and magical combatants must gather to prevent its opening.
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friday october 27
If you haven't yet read Elizabeth Kostova's blockbuster debut The Historian, you might want to pick up a copy. Kostova, who graduated from Yale, took 10 years to research and write her vampire tale. Apparently her persistence paid off--Little, Brown and Co. purchased the book for $2 million, and Sony shelled out another $1.5 million for the movie rights. It also won the 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year Award and the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year. It has been published in 37 different languages, had an initial print run of 300,000, and hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
The book opens in 1972 Amsterdam, where a 16-year-old American girl discovers an ancient book in her father's library. The book is blank except for a creepy drawing inscribed with the word "Drakulya", but it is the letters hidden inside it that intrigue her. Letters which begin with the ominous salutation "My dear and unfortunate successor..."
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wednesday october 25
The winners of the Ignatz Awards – named for Krazy Kat’s nemesis mouse in the George Herriman strip – were announced on October 14 at the 2006 Small Press Expo in Baltimore. The mission of the annual event is “the exhibition of independent comic books and the discovery of new creative talent.” A panel of five cartoonists sets the ballot, and the attendees at SPX decide the winners.
Some of the Ignatz honorees will be familiar as winners or nominees from the Eisner and Harvey Awards given earlier this year (see my post about the Harvey Awards). It’s been a very good year for Alex Robinson, Andy Runton, and especially Charles Burns, whose legendary Black Hole collected all three prizes for best collection/graphic album.
Outstanding Anthology or Collection
Black Hole by Charles Burns
Castle Waiting by Linda Medley
Drawn and Quarterly Showcase #3
The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Squirrel Mother by Megan Kelso
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tuesday october 24
One of my high-school teachers got off topic and repeated her personal anecdotes a lot. I've forgotten Latin, but I remember the anecdotes. One was about a big, strong husky boy who nevertheless didn't try out for the football team because he was "yellow." Some other boys beat him up, and the Latin teacher was glad. Then again, she thought, he probably had dementia praecox (or else he would have been on the team), so his "yellowness" wasn't exactly his own fault.
Dementia praecox, I knew, had not been a diagnosis since the 1950s, when we became enlightened and started using good drugs (Thorazine) instead of bad surgeries (lobotomy), and the word "schizophrenia" replaced "dementia praecox." Then things got even better in the '90s, when atypical antipsychotic medicines with fewer side effects were created.
According to Robert Whitaker's 2002 Mad In America, though, I've been completely wrong.
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Like many working people, I spend about an hour and a half in the car on my way to and from work. Enter my friends, Audio Books. I have passed many a happy commute listening to accomplished readers share books with me.
I greatly enjoyed Thomas Harris's creepy Hannibal Lector trilogy, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. I was fascinated by the twists and turns of Maeve Binchy's Tara Road. I laughed helplessly at the antics of Georgia Nicholson in the teen series by Louise Rennison that starts off with Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging. I was drawn completely into Diane Setterfield's dark and mysterious 13th Tale.
J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books are fabulous, read by the incomparable Jim Dale. If you start with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and travel through the whole series, you will be set for a long time. Let's see, if I add it up that's almost 95 hours of happiness on your commute!
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