Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

by Seth Grahame-Smith

(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010)

Hardcover, 337 Pages, Historical Fiction

ISBN: 9780446563086, US$21.99

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? —Edgar Allan Poe

FACTS

1. For over 250 years, between 1607 and 1865, vampires thrived in the shadows of America. Few humans believed in them.
2. Abraham Lincoln was one of the gifted vampire hunters of his day, and kept a secret journal about his lifelong war against them.
3. Rumors of the journal’s existence have long been a favorite topic among historians and Lincoln biographers. Most dismiss it as myth.

From the Cover: Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother’s bedside. She’s been stricken with something the old-timers call “Milk Sickness.” “My baby boy…” she whispers. Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother’s fatal affliction was actually the work if a vampire. When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, “Henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose…” Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House. While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving the Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years. Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time—all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

My Review: So, when I learned back in October that Quirk books would (1) be publishing a prequel to their wildly successful Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and that (2) it would not be penned by PPZ scribe Seth Grahame-Smith, I was very disappointed. However, I then learned in November that it was because Grahame-Smith was writing his own book: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and I think that Grahame-Smith made the right decision. For, as fun as the PPZ prequel was (and I think Grahame-Smith would have made it better than Hockensmith managed) had Grahame-Smith decided to reenter Austen’s zombified universe, the world would have been denied the raucous history-rewriting adventure that is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

I think that what I enjoyed most about this book was Grahame-Smith’s devotion to the central conceit: chiefly, that vampires have been a part of America’s history, to the point that all of the major events of America’s birth are directly attributable to vampire influence. Grahame-Smith even goes so far as to rewrite his own history to fit the events of the novel, writing himself into the Abraham Lincoln-vampire timeline. My only “complaint” (for lack of a better word) about this total commitment to “historical accuracy” is that I wish Grahame-Smith had taken it the final step and made the whole book look like a work of nonfiction complete with an index and faux-Works Cited/Bibliography page. I think that would have gone a long way further down the road to making this seem even more real than it already does.

That aside, however, the book is an amazing read: unputdownable even. I blasted through it in about three days and thoroughly enjoyed ever minute of it, which at this point (now that my Winter Quarter is over) is the best thing I could ask of a book. What’s more, though, is this is not a brainless book. In fact, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a surprisingly smart book. There is a lot of interesting things going on in the book with race and class (as represented by the vampires).

I used the word “raucous” earlier to describe ALVH and I really cannot come up with a better description than that. This is a raucous adventure book that has a lot of fun with its central idea and even manages to serve up some surprises. The ending caught me completely off guard, and there are a number of fun cameos within its pages. When it comes to the strange and weird, Seth Grahame-Smith does it better than anyone I have come across in a very long time … and he certainly enjoys doing it, which translates into a joy for the Reader to pick up.

Make no bones about it, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a page-turner that will keep you up and reading into the early hours of the morning … begging for more. I eagerly await Grahame-Smith’s next project…

Under the Dome (Audio)

by Stephen King

read by Raúl Esparza

with an Afterword by The Author

(New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2009)

MP3 Audiobook, 2.88 GB, 34.4 Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9780743597302, US$75.00

From the Cover: On an otherwise normal, beautiful day, the town of Chester’s Mill, Maine is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world in Under the Dome, Stephen King’s biggest, most riveting novel since The Stand.

My Review: So, I feel like I am in an abusive relationship with Stephen King.

When we first started our relationship together, he was wonderful. He never failed to disappoint, he was intriguing, he had interesting things to say, I enjoyed spending time with him, and even lost track of time when we were together. Then, after fifteen or twenty years of being together, the relationship started to get a little stale, and often we had to fall back on the “good times” we used to have together, and I started looking at other people, even enjoyed spending time with other people. Then, things got violent. He would promise me something new and exciting and I would, like a fool, keep coming back in spite of the fact that I kept getting hurt. However, I kept telling myself that maybe this time it would be different. This time would be more like the early days of our relationship. Yet, in spite of all that I was hurt time and time again, some times painfully hurt. Then, just when I was about to give up entirely on our relationship and begin divorce proceedings, he came to me one more time and told me he was sorry about everything he had done over the last decade or so, and that he really had changed, and look … I can make it just like the old days. Without daring to hope for much, I started to believe what he was telling me and I went crawling back; expecting to be hurt at every turn, but daring to hope that he really had changed.

I think he has … but we’ll get to that in a minute.

After the stinker that was Duma Key and the disappointment that was Just After Sunset I had almost decided that I was going to stick with King’s earlier stuff (i.e. pre-2000) and then the hype surrounding Under the Dome started and I began to believe again … mostly because this was a retooling (and updating) of material that he had started and stopped in the late 70s and early 80s. I got the hardcover from my parents for Christmas and was able to get my hands on the audiobook and decided that that would be a much easier way in which to get through this book (given that I had readings for two classes to do as well as prep and readings for an English 101 class I was teaching and picking up King’s largest book to date (1,074) just didn’t seem feasible).

There is a lot to say about this book and I’ll try to get to it all, but we’ll see. I scrupulously (maybe even neurotically) stayed away from any and all reviews of the book in order to experience it on my own and form my own opinions of it (this was hard to do since I subscribe to a number of not just book blogs but also blogs that are concerned with the horror industry) and as of this writing, I still have not read any outside reviews of the book.

First and foremost, I will unconditionally say that this is the best Stephen King novel in at least the last four or five years (since Cell). Why? Well, since King’s accident in 1999 there has been a change in the tone of King’s novels. Dreamcatcher, From a Buick 8, Lisey’s Story, Duma Key … they’re all much different than, say, The Shining, It, The Stand. They are much more intimate novels, and I don’t know that I can explain it any better than that. They don’t seem as encompassing in their scope as some of King’s prior novels did (the exceptions to that rule are, perhaps, the last three novels in The Dark Tower series). With Under the Dome, though, some of that scope is brought back. This is a much bigger novel than any King has produced recently, not only in length, but also in scope. This is a novel on a par with The Stand and It. (Though as such, it suffers from some of the same problems that those larger novels do) and shows off King’s real talent for creating characters.

Second, this is a long book. That may be the understatement of the year, but I think it still warrants saying. In print it is 1,074 pages long, and in audio it is 34.4 hours long. It takes a major commitment to sit down and read or listen to Under the Dome. It took me 45 days to through it. Often I had to roll back the time on my iPod to remind myself what was going on if it there had been some time between listening sessions. I imagine that reading the book would present some of the same problems, though I would imagine that it would be (1) easier to backtrack in the print edition and (2) the fact that there is not only a map in the front of the book but also a Dramatis Personae list of a kind. (Though, I will say that when I was done with the audiobook and looked at the map in the front of the book, my vision of the geography of Chester’s Mill was much different than that of the map’s, and I’m not even sure that the map’s conforms entirely to King’s descriptions, in that it seems that on the map things are much closer together than they are in the book.)

Third, and this holds true for many of King’s longer books (especially It and The Stand), the build-up in the book is much more exciting than the denouement and conclusion. The set-up to Under the Dome is absolutely brilliant, and King constructs some very interesting inter-personal dynamics as things start to unravel (Second Selectman “Big Jim” Rennie is a good (if somewhat stereotypical) villain (if there was any sort of cosmic justice, he’d be played by the late-J.T. Walsh in any sort of film adaptation of the book)) but when the novel takes 900 pages to set up and only 100 to get out … it was bound to be somewhat disappointing. When the explanation for the dome arrived, I felt quite let down and it seemed more like an original Star Trek episode-like explanation (with Shatner and Nimoy and the rest) than something from Stephen King. But that kind of deus ex machina is what happens in The Stand and It and so I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything different from a novel of similar length, but I was kind of hoping … I was also a little disappointed in the finale of “Big Jim” Rennie’s character. I was hoping for something a little more dramatic, once again, there is a lot of set up but very little pay-off, though one might be able to read a certain amount of karmic intervention in what happens to Rennie.

Fourth. While I miss having the late-Frank Muller growl his way through Under the Dome, and would have thought that either Campbell Scott or Ron McLarty would have been the choice to narrate this tale. I have to admit though, that Raúl Esparza (a new audio Reader to me) does an excellent job of bringing King’s words to life. My one nitpick with his reading though, is that all the children under the age of ten in the book sound like their noses are stuffed up.

What it boils down to is that if King’s next books (he has talked about an eighth Dark Tower book The Wind Through the Keyhole, writing a sequel to The Shining titled Doctor Sleep, a collection of novellas (coming out November 2010) Full Dark, no Stars, and a third part to The Talisman-Black House series) are anything like Under the Dome, I think that I’m prepared take him back, even though he’s hurt me in the past. With Under the Dome he’s promised he won’t hurt me any more.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

by Steve Hockensmith

illustrations by Patrick Arrasmith

(Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2010)

Trade Paperback, 287 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9781594744549, US$12.95

From the Cover: Readers will witness the birth of a heroine in Dawn of the Dreadfuls—a thrilling prequel set four years before the horrific events of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. As our story opens, the Bennet sisters are enjoying a peaceful life in the English countryside. They idle away the days reading, gardening, and daydreaming about future husbands—until a funeral at the local parish goes strangely and horribly awry. Suddenly corpses are springing from the soft earth—and only one family can stop them. As the bodies pile up, we watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a naïve young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. Along the way, two men vie for her affections: Master Hawksworth is the powerful warrior who trains her to kill, while thoughtful Dr. Keckilpenny seeks to conquer the walking dead using science instead of strength. Will either man win the prize of Elizabeth’s heart? Or will their hearts be feasted upon by hordes of marauding zombies? Complete with romance, action, comedy, and an army of shambling corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls will have Jane Austen rolling in her grave—and just might inspire her to crawl out of it!

My Review: Okay, when I first heard about Quirk Books was going to be releasing a prequel to their breakaway success Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (my review is HERE) I was of two minds. This is what I said when I first heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls:

Now, I don’t know how I feel about this one, because up until this point, Quirk Classics has had a winning formula: you take a “stuffy” classic novel and put something unexpected in it, hence Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Now, though, they’re mixing it up and creating a new text out of something that didn’t exist before. To the best of my knowledge, there was no prequel to Pride and Prejudice and so I’m somewhat dubious as to how effective this particular one will be. I would have preferred Wuthering Heights and Werewolves or Mansfield Park and Monsters or Persuasion and Poltergeists personally.

After reading Dawn … I don’t know that I am ready to back away from that statement. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t like Dawn of the Dreadfuls, it just means that I need to reassess my position vis-à-vis what this book is.

It is not a strict mash-up in the way that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (reviewed HERE) were or like what I expect Android Karenina will be. This is a whole new animal and a number of times as I was reading I had to remind myself that this is not a mash-up.

Now, before we go any further, I need to mention that the copy of the book I got was an ARC that Quirk Books sent to me as part of their “All-Out-Worldwide-Zombie-Blog-Explosion-2010” wherein bloggers all over the interwebs are posting advanced reviews of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls on March 3, 2010.

That said and all that legal mumbo-jumbo out of the way … I loved this book for what it was. This is a really fun read. What Hockensmith has done a really good job of recreating Jane Austen’s style as well as recreating the feel of its predecessor. I bring this up because that was one of my chief concerns regarding this book was “Would it sound like an Austen novel?” Because that was the point of both Zombies and Sea Monsters: they simultaneously spoofed and honored Austen’s novels. They amplified Austen’s social comedies, heightening the absurdities of Austen’s time (class differences, social manners, etc.) with the inclusion of zombies or sea serpents.

I was worried that Dawn of the Dreadfuls, as a completely original novel, would not achieve the same level of pastiche and satire. As I said, above, my fears have been laid to rest (no pun intended) on that fact because Hockensmith does manage to do what Grahame-Smith and Winters accomplished before him.

In fact, Dawn of the Dreadfuls reminds me a lot of Simon Pegg’s 2004 self-described “Rom-Zom-Com” Shaun of the Dead. Much in the way that Shaun employs the conventions of zombie and horror films at the same time that it satirizes them and satirizing the conventions of a comedy of manners, Dawn of the Dreadfuls does that with not just zombie conventions, but the conventions of the Jane Austen-esque social comedy as well. Yes Dreadfuls is a zombie novel. And yes Dreadfuls is, technically speaking, a horror novel, but really, at the heart of it, Dreadfuls is a romantic comedy setting Elizabeth Bennet up in a series of pas de deux relationships (occurring in and amongst beheadings, dismemberings and devourings) that set the stage for her personality and quirks in Pride and Prejudice (and Zombies).

Now, for as much as I enjoyed the book—and I do always love a good and bloody horror story—I did have some issues with Dreadfuls.

First and foremost, the story that Hockensmith sets up in Dawn of the Dreadfuls is one that would benefit best from a sense of danger or peril for our main characters, i.e. the Bennet sisters. However, knowing that Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia all show up not just Pride and Prejudice but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies along with their father and mother, and that Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Wickham are all in the future of the Bennet sisters … there was no sense of any kind of anxiety when any of the girls are in peril during the final third of the book. This is, admittedly, a problem with any prequel and not just Dreadfuls and one which, for all of Hockensmith’s other accomplishments in the book, he is unable to overcome. There absolutely is no sense of urgency and anxiety surrounding our heroines. Certainly secondary characters are in peril, but since none of them are as strongly created as the Bennets, it is hard to make any kind of connection to Master Hawksworth, Dr. Keckilpenny, Captain Cannon and Lord Lumpley and so when they are imperiled by the hordes of undead, I had a hard time caring about them.

Perhaps this speaks to Hockensmith’s abilities to create believable and sympathetic characters since the best characters in the book are in fact Austen’s creations and everyone else are cardboard cutout characters from various horror stories. And don’t even get me started on the character of Lord Lumpley—one of the most repulsive characters I have ever had the displeasure of running across in literature, to the point that when (at the risk of spoiling) he meets his inevitable end (though from an unexpected source, I will give Hockensmith that) I was just glad that he was out of the way and I didn’t have to endure his presence in the novel any more. He really is an unpleasant and distasteful character, and not even in the good You-Love-to-Hate-Them way … he is repulsive in every sense of the word.

I was also disappointed in the character of Master Hawksworth, but I’m not sure how I could discuss the problems I had with him without giving away any major plot points, so I will leave it in the realm of generalities and say that what I found so objectionable was what Hockensmith considered a tragic flaw in Hawksworth’s character was obviously a convenient way in which to remove the character from the action at a key moment. I felt it was beneath the character and insulting to my intelligence as a Reader.

However, all of these flaws that I found with the book do not diminish the overall affect of the book and the enjoyment I had in reading it. This is a really fun romp of a book, all things considered, and while I received my copy free of charge, I was ready to shell out the cover price for the book, and at the end of the day, I would not have felt cheated of my $12.95 had I needed to pay, and neither should you. This book is well worth the price of admission. (And be sure to stick around for the great post-credits-esque cameo at the end of the novel. A lot of fun in that Ferris-Bueller-walking-down-the-hall-and-shooing-the-audience-out-of-the-theater-kind-of-way.)

Now, I should mention that the book is not available in stores for another two weeks. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls will be available for purchase on Wednesday, March 24, 2010. (The link in the ISBN in the header of this post will take you to Amazon’s page for DoD where you can pre-order.) However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the gooey, bloody zombie goodness in the meantime. First of all, get thee a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies if you haven’t already. This is definitely a situation where a knowledge of the “original” (using that word loosely) adds to the experience of the sequel/prequel.

Second: you can find Dawn of the Dreadfuls online at Quirk’s page for the book HERE

(Yes, I’m shilling shamelessly for Quirk Books, but hey, free advance review copies of good books make whores of us all.)

Until next time…

Watchmen

by Alan Moore

illustrated by Dave Gibbons

(New York: DC Comics, 1987)

Trade Paperback, 416 Pages, Graphic Novel

ISBN: 9780930289232, US$19.99

From the Cover: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who watches the Watchmen? Someone does. Someone who’s trying to kill them all, one by one. Time’s running out for the Watchmen…

My Review: So, I’ve been avoiding doing any actual work the last two days. I have two papers to write and had papers to grade, but I just haven’t been “feelin’ it” lately, so I pulled Watchmen off of the library shelf in the front room Sunday afternoon (I had checked it out on a whim on our Saturday trip to the library) and have been reading to, as I said, avoid doing any real work.

In my misspent youth, I was into comic books. I was a Marvel reader. I enjoyed the exploits of Gambit, Wolverine, the Punisher and Ghost Rider, little knowing that a lot of what I liked about those characters—their moral ambiguity, their personal character flaws, their equivocation—owed so very much to what Alan Moore penned in the mid-1980s. The Comedian, Rorschach, Nite Owl, Ozymandias are all direct influences on the characters that have come after them (and even some that have come before). Really from what I understand of the comic book/superhero world (of which I only have a casual knowledge of), it was the immense popularity of Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (which, incidentally came out the same year as Watchmen) that changed the way the public viewed their superheroes.

All this aside though, as a burgeoning literary critic and academic-in-embryo, Watchmen fascinates me on a literary level. This is a plot and story that is easily the equal of the best Cold War-era writers, such as Philip Roth and Don DeLillo. As some one who has been working to make the case that Stephen King is not only worthy of critical inquiry but can sustain it, far be it from me to dismiss Watchmen because it is “just a comic book.” That statement oversimplifies a very snobbish literary world view and causes one to overlook the fact that while, yes, this is “just a comic book” it is a comic book unlike any comic book before it … and after it for that matter. There have been many pretenders to Watchmen’s throne, but all have fallen short (if that doesn’t sound too pretentious). The cultural critique and insightful Cold War commentary that Moore has created in this format is nothing short of amazing. I don’t mean that to sound patronizing either, I’m not saying “Oh, look at what the comic book writer was able to do. You deserve a gold star.” No, what I am saying is that Moore took a format that was relatively simplistic and black-and-white in terms of its politics (as well as being deeply conservative) and turned it into something that was insightful, biting, relevant in its immediacy and even revolutionary (if that’s not too loaded a term for you).

Add to all of this the fact that Moore does this in the mid- to late-80s and it is nothing short of astounding. That Moore is able to do what he has done in Watchmen from within the Cold War rather than from without (i.e. at a distance of time) in terms of social commentary and critique makes Watchmen worthy of anyone’s attention, setting aside that it has a kick ass story; the story, in my mind is secondary to the critique.

Before I go (it is nearly 3:00 a.m. on the West Coast as I write this and I have to be up and teach English 101 at 8:30) I want to say that I think Watchmen has taken some unfair hits in the last decade (it’s weird to think that 2000 has been a decade ago) as tired and predictable from mainstream critics and especially in the run up to and in the wake of the 2009 film. What one has to remember, especially as the release of Watchmen fades into the fog of the last 24 years, is that Watchmen was existential and morally ambiguous and ambivalent before many of the other comics were. Yes, there was The Punisher, and Wolverine, but they still operated on a level of “good,” “justice” and “right.” In Watchmen, what’s “good” and “just” and “right” isn’t always obvious, and these are concepts that are often contradictory in Moore’s universe, and as such, it all makes for a much more interesting and complex story.

Shutter Island (Audio)

by Dennis Lehane

read by Tom Stechshulte

(Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, LLC, 2003)

MP3 Audiobook, 881.9 MB, 9.6 Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9780061906282, US$19.99

From the Cover: Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane looms like a fortress on Shutter Island. As a massive hurricane swirls toward the island, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels arrives with his new partner, Chuck Aule, to track down an escaped patient—a murderess who may hold the key to what really happens in the locked wards and laboratories. But as Teddy digs deeper into the workings of the hospital, nothing is as it seems…

My Review: I have had this book on my To-Be-Read List for quite some time now, but had never gotten around to it. Then, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio decided to turn Lehane’s book into a film, and I knew I had better get on the horn and read (so to speak) before I had the plot’s twists and turns spoiled for me by some careless movie reviewer or movie goer. It was a rough road, but I scrupulously avoided any and all discussions of the film and potential plot spoilers as I worked my way through Shutter Island and in the end, it was very much worth it because I was genuinely taken along for the twisting ride that Lehane has created and enjoyed every minute of it, trying to work out the mysteries of Ashecliffe for myself.

Now, any real discussion of the plot of Shutter Island is going to run the risk of spoilers, but I will do my level best not to spoil anything for those who have not either already read the book or seen the movie. It will be difficult however, since there are, by my count, four major Sixth Sense­-style rug-pulling plot twists that make the Reader/Listener completely reevaluate their understanding of what has been going on. I hope that that is as plot-spoiler-y as it gets, but no promises.

As much as I tried to avoid any exposure to the plot, a few things leaked through here and there, so I had a general sense from the beginning that nothing was as it seemed that knew to be wary of any and all characters that waltzed across the page, including that of Teddy Daniels (whose view and perspective frames the story (even though it is not told in the first person)), however, when the revelations started coming it was fast and furious and, as I said above, absolutely enjoyable. Though, I do have one bit of the plot that didn’t work for me, given what the eventual outcome of the plot. Being as vague as possible, I felt that the woman in the cave is never satisfactorily explained by the penultimate twist. What she reveals and what she represents flies doesn’t exactly contradict the end, but neither is it supported by the end, and so I’m left to wonder what the point of including her in the story at all does, other than to deepen the ominous atmosphere and sense of paranoia that Lehane is seeking to create.

I will say that one of the key factors in enjoying this book was the Reader. Tom Stechshulte is one of the best Readers that I have come across, and I will definitely be on the look out for more audiobooks that he reads. His gravelly bass voice is ideal for the noir sensibilities that Lehane injects into Shutter Island and what he does with the text by way of performance is sublime.

I think that Lehane himself summed it up best when he said that he was deliberately channeling the Brontë sisters when he wrote Shutter Island. That Romantic/Victorian influence is quite clear (possibly with a little Poe thrown in for good measure) and all one would have to do is replace Ashecliffe with Bedlam and U.S. Marshalls with … oh … I dunno, a Revolutionary-Era Redcoat, or (if we’re going the Poe route) an ex-Union soldier (though if we are going the Poe route (with a side trip into Ambrose Bierce) Federal Marshalls have been around since the 1780s, so…). Anyway, the point of all of that was that in spite of all of its post-WWII and Cold War-era and film noir/B-movie trappings, Shutter Island is, at its heart, a novel deeply steeped in the tradition of the Romantic and Victorian eras.

I cannot recommend this audiobook highly enough, and if you haven’t yet had it all spoiled for you, get your hands on Shutter Island right away, and even if you have seen the movie and do know all the twists and turns, I would still say that you will enjoy Shutter Island in much the same way that, say, The Sixth Sense holds up to a second viewing because now, you’re in the know (and, from what I understand, there are some key plot points in the movie that does not get satisfactorily explained (the anagrams, for instance) that are explained in the book’s dénouement, so that ought to be worth the price of admission right there).

The Spellman Files

by Lisa Lutz

-The Spellman Series, Book One-

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007)

Hardcover, 358 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9781416532392, US$25.00

From the Cover: Meet Isabel “Izzy” Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors—but the upshot is she’s good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people’s privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman. Part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry, Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties include: completing assignments from the bosses, a.k.a. Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny); appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress); setting an example for her fourteen-year-old sister, Rae (who’s become addicted to “recreational surveillance”); and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed “Lost Weekends”). But when Izzy’s parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy’s new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there’s a hitch: she must take one last job before they’ll let her go—a fifteen-year-old, ice-cold missing person case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life.

My Review: So, as I’ve said twice now on my blog, I belong to a discussion board book thread where The Spellman Files all of a sudden became all the rage, and rather than get run over by the bandwagon I decided to jump on … and I’m glad I did.

I think I had more fun reading this book than any other book so far this year. What Lutz has done in The Spellman Files is create a cast of some of the quirkiest characters this side of Elmore Leonard and infused it with a tongue-in-cheek sensibility that makes it a pure delight to read.

If pressed, I’d have to say that my favorite aspect of the novel was either Lutz’s protagonist, Izzy and all of her strangely and simultaneously dysfunctional and completely rational approaches to family and friends and dating and employment; that, or Izzy’s little sister Rae who is easily of the greatest teenage characters not currently enrolled in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (though one can only imagine the problems Rae would give Argus Filch and Severus Snape as she prowled the castle’s corridors after hours). Rae’s “this is what ‘normal’ people do” approach to everything from extorting money out of relatives and conducting surveillance on both relatives and complete strangers is so over-the-top and absolutely ridiculous making it a brilliant parody of such beloved childhood literary characters as Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew. I loved every minute of it.

I do have to wonder, though, if Lutz’s approach to Izzy’s character isn’t a little reductive at times. Perhaps it is just the literary grad student in me coming out to strongly but it gave me pause that Lutz constructs such a strong character as Izzy and then reduces her quest for happiness and fulfillment to something as simple as finding a boyfriend to settle down with. That seems counterproductive to me, but perhaps I am over analyzing. Once it’s turned on, the literary critic is hard to turn off.

Over all, though, this was a lot of fun to read, and—as I said at the outset—I am glad I jumped on the bandwagon rather than letting it run me over, because I would have missed out. So, come on, jump on the bandwagon, have some of the Kool Aid (it’s delicious) and check out The Spellman Files, you won’t be disappointed.

'salem's Lot (Audio)

by Stephen King

read by Ron McLarty

(New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2004)

MP3 Audiobook, 868.2 MB, 17½ Hours, Fiction

ISBN: 9780743536967, US$59.95

From the Cover: A dark wind is blowing into Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, in the guise of antique furniture dealers R.T. Straker and Kurt Barlow. Novelist Benjamin Mears has returned to the village near Portland to exorcise his childhood demons. Immediately, townspeople begin suffering from strange flu symptoms, or disappearing altogether. Mears and local high school teacher Matt Burke understand the peril the town faces. Soon they’re joined by an artist, a doctor, an alcoholic priest, and an 11-year old boy, forming a modern-day team of vampire hunters.

My Original Review: 11/22/2005 – 08:50:00 PM

My Redux Review: Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot is a story that holds a lot nostalgia and fond memories for me. It was one of the first novels I ever owned, it was the first Stephen King story I ever read at the tender age of eleven (with the blessing of my Mother though—looking back—I have no idea what she was thinking when she okayed that, I don’t think I’d let my son read it when he turns eleven), and it is one that even now never fails to induce chills and thrills. I have even used it to make arguments for my ever-evolving academic paper on passive-sexism in Stephen King’s The Shining (showing how ‘salem’s Lot is a kind of “run up” to what he does in The Shining).

I find so much about ‘salem’s Lot to be so very fascinating, that it is difficult to know where to start. Well, perhaps it is best to start with something small. This time through the book I was struck by just how dated ‘salem’s Lot is. It really is a relic from the early- to mid-1970s when it was written. So much of the novel is so outdated that I found myself wondering just how well Mssrs. Barlow and Straker would fair if they were to plunk down in Jerusalem’s Lot in an era of cell phones and the internet. This is addressed, somewhat, in the 2004 TV miniseries which is, all things considered, not a bad adaptation, given the problems of updating such material. Still, as I said, I am struck at just how dated the book is.

Another “theme” of the novel (for lack of a better word) that I have been dealing with (mostly because it jives with my paper on Stephen King) is just how passively sexist the works of Stephen King are, and ‘salem’s Lot is no exception. In fact, it is a pretty good example of what I am talking about. Two characters come to mind as I have run this through my mind: Susan Norton, of course, and Bonnie Sawyer. Susan is, to all appearances, a pretty “liberated” and “strong” female figure, holding her own with man and vampire alike, and yet, looking a little deeper she is a “shackled” character; very one-dimensional when compared to the male characters in the novel. She plays little more than the role of girlfriend and tragic victim. Susan makes some very poor decision in the course of the novel (the kind that would have you shouting DON’T GO DOWN THERE to the screen if this were a movie) and as a result of these decisions (and, I would argue, due to King’s indifference to his female characters) she pays the price.

The same could be said for the character of Bonnie Sawyer, a bit player in the overall drama, but one that King keeps coming back to. She is the “Jezebel” character type; the “wanton woman” who is having an affair with a younger man, but when they are caught by her husband, she is literally beaten into submission and—as King puts it—raped by her husband regularly, until their end comes in the final third of the book. I bring up their characters because they both are women who initially seem liberated and in control of their destinies, but ultimately are brought down by their inability to listen to the male authorities in their lives (in the case of Susan it is Matt Burke and Ben Mears and even the teenage Mark Petrie whom she ignores, and for Bonnie, of course, it is her husband whom she disobeys) and as a result they are brought to ruin.

This passive-sexism (as I’ve chosen to call it) and assertion of male dominance (culminating in the staking of the vampiric Susan (which Freud would undoubtedly call “phallic” and a violent sexual act in and of itself, a rape of a kind) and the beating and raping of Bonnie Sawyer) really show King’s true colors as a closet-conservative in spite of all his trappings and claims of open-mindedness and liberalism. He falls back on the conservative world view whenever a female comes into the pages of his novels (they are usually either a milquetoast hausfrau or a wanton jezebel) that bucks the male authority structure and have to be either saved or dispatched (in the case of Susan, they come to one and the same). It is true of Susan Norton and Bonnie Sawyer in ‘salem’s Lot, it is true of Wendy Torrance in The Shining, it is true of Rose Daniels in Rose Madder, it is true of Emily in “The Gingerbread Girl” and it is true of Lisey Landon in Lisey’s Story.

But enough theorizing. In spite of these “flaws” (for lack of a better word) I still think that ‘salem’s Lot is one of Stephen King’s finest, and is certainly in the Top 5 of my favorite King books. King has crafted a very believable world in ‘salem’s Lot, one that is described as Peyton Place meets Dracula, and I think that that is a pretty fair assessment. It is hard to imagine which the greater evil in the township is: the external force of Barlow and his vampirism, or the internal forces of the town and its small-town insularism. King has stated in interviews that ‘salem’s Lot was written at a time of great social and political upheaval: the Ellsberg break-in, Nixon’s tapes and enemies’ list, Liddy and the CIA, Watergate, the invasive federal investigations of war protestors, Vietnam … and so it is no wonder that these feelings of paranoia bled over (no pun intended) into ‘salem’s Lot and informed the novel; paranoia of vampires, paranoia of outsiders, paranoia of the unknown, paranoia of the future … it’s all there in the pages, and makes for one hell of an atmospheric novel.

Atmospheric and arguably one of the scariest of King’s tales (his early ones are so much better than his later). I’ve mentioned it in my prior review of this audiobook, but the scenes with Mike Ryerson in Matt Burke’s house (both times) and then the scene with Marjorie Glick’s body in the mortuary are some of the scariest scenes that have even been penned. They never fail to give me the chills (and this time around, it didn’t help that I was listening to the Marjorie Glick scene as I was taking a late night walk to clear my head after a stressful day and as a thunderstorm passed overhead, I have to admit that I looked over my shoulder more than once as I walked the storm-darkened streets).

Also, what makes this such a great audiobook is Ron McLarty’s reading. If you have never experienced a book read by Ron McLarty you need to, and ‘salem’s Lot is as good a place as any to start. It is amazing how much the story comes to life in McLarty’s capable hands. It really brings an already great book to an even more sublime level.

You don’t have to be a Stephen King fan to enjoy ‘salem’s Lot, and since vampires are very much in vogue right now, take the time to listen to (or read) a real vampire story. Yes, it borrows heavily from Dracula (with Matt Burke playing Van Helsing, Susan playing Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker, Dr. Cody as Dr. Seward, Ben Mears playing Arthur Holmwood and Jonathan Harker, Straker as Renfield and, of course, Barlow as the Count) but I would say that that is intentional, since the idea behind ‘salem’s Lot was what would happen if Count Dracula came to America and settled not in New York City (where, in King’s words, he’d “be killed by a taxi cab like, Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta”) but in rural, small-town Maine.

It is a question that I think King has answered well. As I said, in spite of its “flaws” ‘salem’s Lot is a stellar novel and one that every vampire groupie needs to have under their belt, and if you’re going to try it, why not pick up the audio edition, since Ron McLarty’s reading is nothing short of amazing.

Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils

by Rob MacGregor
-Indiana Jones Series, Book 3-
(New York: Bantam Books, 1991)
Paperback, 291 Pages, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553293340, US$4.99

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

From the Cover: Having barely survived a hair-raising archaeological dig in Tikal, Guatemala, Indiana Jones has returned to New York just in time to get caught up in a controversy. The mysterious writings of Colonel Percy Fawcett, a missing British explorer, have turned up, and what they describe could revolutionize history—and make or break several scientific reputations, for Percy paints a tantalizing picture of a lost city in the Brasilian jungle and a mythical red-headed race who may be the descendents of ancient Celtic Druids. … No one loves mystery or adventure more than Indiana Jones. So with his trusty bullwhip in hand and the lovely Deirdre Campbell firmly in tow, he sets out for the wilds of the Amazon. But Indy has more enemies than he knows, including a bunch of hard-nosed thugs and a cannibalistic Indian tribe who are out to make him instant history. And if he survives what they throw his way, there’s still the fabled city itself … where the inhabitants practice the magic of the “seven veils” and no one leaves alive!

My Review: I first heard about this book when I was listening to David Grann read his book The Lost City of Z. In Z, Grann mentions the impact that Colonel Fawcett has had on popular culture, including—most notably—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Indiana Jones. Grann mentioned that in 1991, Indy was able to “meet” his progenitor in Rob MacGregor’s novel Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils, in which a reluctant Indy is pressed into finding Colonel Fawcett and the Lost City of Z by Marcus Brody. Adventure ensues. I was captivated by the story of Colonel Fawcett, one that reads like a great Hollywood cliffhanger serial, and with the possibility of Indiana Jones thrown in for good measure, it was all too good to pass up, so I order a copy of The Seven Veils and now, here we are.

That is not to say that I did not have some trepidation as I picked the book up and started to read. It is, after all, based on a film character, and often novels like this fall flat … being but poor imitations of their silver screen counterparts, with the film novelization being one of the worst types of books to be written. However, The Seven Veils starts off with typical Indy flair … on a dig in a booby-trapped temple in Guatemala where Indy soon finds himself surrounded by incompetent superiors, grave robbers, and a damsel in distress. From there he is catapulted into the hunt for Colonel Fawcett, and the action is pretty much non-stop.

With a few exceptions, the book has a fairly blistering pace that compels the Reader to want to read “just one more page.” MacGregor does a fine job of making Indy and Marcus (the only two characters from the films to make appearances) similar enough to their film counterparts while making the characters his own; make no mistake, that is a fine line to walk, and one that has sunk better authors than MacGregor. Also, there are some great additions to the cast, most notably Deirdre Campbell who is every bit as spunky and resourceful as Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood (from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

For the most part I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is every bit as exciting and engaging and thrilling as any of the Indiana Jones films. There were a few aspects, in particular the book seems to become a completely new story once Indy and Deirdre find Colonel Fawcett and the Lost City, more supernatural and “spacey,” like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that I did not like—I prefer my Indy to be a little more historical (like the Ark of the Covenant, the Cult of Kali and the Holy Grail) and a little less New Age-y (like crystal skulls and lost Atlanteans) but, as I said, on the whole, this is a delightful adventure novel and a lot of fun; perfect for the end of summer as I get ready to head back to the world of academia.

Also, as one last endorsement for this book: Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils is book three in a twelve book series that predates the films (so, coming before Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and I fully intend to get my hands on the remaining eleven. It is a fun book, and looks like it will be a fun series.

And with that, I leave you with this in parting:

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

by Judi Barrett

illustrated by Ron Barrett

(New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1978)

Hardcover, 32 Pages, Children’s

ISBN: 9780689306471, US$16.95

From the Cover: The tiny town of Chewandswallow was very much like any other tiny town except for its weather which came three times a day, at breakfast lunch and dinner. But it never rained rain and it never snowed snow and it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and juice. It snowed things like mashed potatoes. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers. Life for the townspeople was delicious until the weather took a turn for the worse. The food got larger and larger and so did the portions. Chewandswallow was plagued by damaging floods and storms of huge food. The town was a mess and the people feared for their lives. Something had to be done, and in a hurry.

My Review: This “Blast from the Past” came to my attention again when, a couple of weeks ago, I saw the trailer for the animated film adaptation online. After remembering Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the next time we went to the library, I made sure to check it out so I could read it to my son and daughter.

My son loved it. My daughter … well, she’s one, so it’ll take some time for her to appreciate it. But, as I said, my son loved it. He liked the drawings and the wacky idea that hamburgers and juice and spaghetti fall from the sky. (He’s sitting next to me looking at it and laughing and calling it “silly” as I type this review. SCORE!) For my part, this is a book that is filled with nostalgia. I remember this book from my childhood, and I loved the whimsical premise, and, like my son, I thoroughly enjoyed Ron Barrett’s great illustrations. They are absolutely marvelous, and looking at them from the perspective of nearly three decades, they almost seem to have a MAD Magazine-like quality to them.

They are also quite memorable. The drawings of the giant pancake on the school, the pea soup fog, the roofless restaurant, or the lady with the stroller running from a giant donut—to name just a few—are images that have stayed with me since my childhood, and I am thrilled to be able to share it with my children.

As for the film adaptation, I am torn. Independent of the book, it looks like a lot of fun (and the fact that it stars Anna Farris, Bruce Campbell, Bill Hader and Mr. T is a big plus). However, taken together with the book, it looks like a disappointment on two levels: (1) it explains why Chewandswallow has the weather it does. That was part of the original charm of the book, that it was unexplained and just taken as fact. And (2) the makers have departed from Barrett’s illustrative style creating a more cartoony look for the film, which is just the biggest disappointment I could think of.

So, in my opinion, skip taking your kids to the film, and read them the book instead. They’ll thank you for it, I promise.

The Road

by Cormac McCarthy

(New York: Vintage Books, 2006)

Trade Paperback, 287 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780307387899, US$14.95

From the Cover: A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

My Review: I have had this book on my shelf for three years now and each and every month for those three years I took this book off of the shelf and said “This month, I’m going to read The Road” and each time I put it back on the shelf and said “Not yet. I’m not ready to read this.” Let me explain: this book came out shortly before my son was born, and I got it after he was born, and as a new father, I just couldn’t bring myself to read a book in which, as the back of the book says: “A father and his son walk alone through burned America.” It cut just a little too close to the bone, so to speak.

That all changed when, within the course of twenty-four hours both my brother (a recent father himself) and my father told me I needed to read it. I expressed my reservations about the subject matter of the book, and they both said that I needed to read it in spite of those concerns. So, when I finished The Ayatollah Begs to Differ I finally picked up The Road and dug right in. Forty-eight hours later I was done with the book.

I will say this … it was a very raw and emotional forty-eight hours. It was a forty-eight hours in which I hugged my son more, and in which I was depleted emotionally and physically. Cormac McCarthy’s book is, as I have said, a very raw read, and one which was both very hard to get through and which I simply could not put it down. McCarthy’s prose is extremely sparse—reminiscent of that of Ernest Hemingway in fact—and holds back no punches. His decision to eschew quotation marks and apostrophes (turning can’t and won’t, for example, into cant and wont) are decisions that I usually detest, however, in McCarthy’s hands, it only added to the overall atmosphere of total breakdown and the loss of control that the book exudes.

That feeling, of what one father does in the face of the collapse of not only society but of the natural world took so much out of me in the reading of it. No names are ever given in the book, the characters are only ever “The Man” and “The Boy,” or “Son” and “Papa” or any such permutations of those pronouns, and this invites, demands even, that the Reader, especially a father such as myself places himself and his son into the book, my and my son’s faces on McCarthy’s characters, our voices in their mouths. The emotional connection that this creates with the characters in the book is a connection that is very very visceral.

When the man says to his son “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?” (77), I found myself making the same mental promise to my son. Every success and failure that the man and the boy experienced is a success and a failure that I experienced vicariously. By the time I had, in the moment, reached the end of the book, I was so emotionally drained by the 287-page trek that I had taken through McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic landscape, I didn’t really care that the ending seemed contrived or “too easy an out,” a deus ex machina as it were.

Even looking back on the book, I can forgive McCarthy (a father himself, who was inspired to write The Road while travelling with his son) the story’s end because of the rest of the book. The devastatingly real characters, the truly hellacious situation into which the man and the boy are thrown, the completely accurate and heartbreaking depiction of a desperate father, all of these aspects of The Road not only allow me to forgive McCarthy’s ending but also embrace the ending as in a book about hope that has very little hope, the ending makes me, as a father, feel much better about myself in the role of “the man” and my son in the role of “the boy.”

I know I have used the words “raw” and “emotional” a lot in this review, but those are the best words to describe The Road which is, without a doubt, one of the best—and most difficult—books I have read to date.

For another review, check out reading by pub light.

There will be a film adaptation of McCarthy’s book released this coming October (October 16th, to be exact), directed by Joe Hillcoat, and starring Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, and Robert Duvall.

The Composer is Dead

by Lemony Snicket

illustrated by Carson Ellis

read by The Author

with music composed by Nathaniel Stookey

(New York: HarperCollins, 2009)
Hardcover, 36 Pages, Children’s Fiction

MP3 Audiobook, 56.5 MB, 30 Minutes, Fiction

ISBN: 9780061236273, US$17.99

The composer is dead. “Composer” is a word which here means “a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.” This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing.

This is called decomposing.

From the Cover: There’s dreadful news from the symphony hall—the composer is dead! If you have ever heard an orchestra play, then you know that musicians are most certainly guilty of something. Where exactly were the violins on the night in question? Did anyone see the harp? Is the trumpet protesting a bit too boisterously? In this perplexing murder mystery, everyone seems to have a motive, everyone has an alibi, and nearly everyone is a musical instrument. But the composer is still dead. Perhaps you can solve the crime yourself. Join the Inspector as he interrogates all the unusual suspects. Then listen to the accompanying audio recording featuring Lemony Snicket and the music of Nathaniel Stookey performed by the San Francisco Symphony. Hear for yourself exactly what took place on that fateful, well-orchestrated evening.

My Review: I have to admit that I love Lemony Snicket. The man’s writing is simply wonderful, I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events (in spite of my misgivings about the final book in the series) and The Composer is Dead is no exception to that love of Snicket’s writing.

This is a delightful book that walks the Reader through the orchestra pit—on the premise that the composer is dead, and the Inspector is investigating that death and questioning all of the orchestra’s various sections. Along the way to the conclusion (this is C.S.I.: Orchestra Pit or maybe Law & Order: Orchestral Investigation) the Reader (ideally parent and child together) learn all about the various jobs of the instruments in the orchestra, what they do and how they sound. It’s learning, but it’s fun!

Even better, the book comes with a CD which includes a reading of The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket himself accompanied by the Nathaniel Stookey and the San Francisco Symphony. Usually, a reading by Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Daniel Handler) is something dreadful, a word which here means that Daniel Handler is a poor performer and his readings sound overly scripted and stilted and are not pleasurable to listen to in the least. However, Handler has obviously been working on his reading out loud skills as his performance of The Composer is Dead is top notch and quite enjoyable (or perhaps it is the fact that he is not following in the footsteps of Tim Curry as he was in the A Series of Unfortunate Events).

In fact, my only complaint about the book is that Brett Helquist, the illustrator for A Series of Unfortunate Events, did not illustrate this book, because while Carson Ellis’ illustrations are nice, they lack the whimsy and sheer beauty of Helquist’s for the exploits of the Baudelaire orphans.

All-in-all I have to highly recommend this book to any and all comers. This is a very fun book to read through, especially with the youngsters in your life, and would make a wonderful bedtime story. Or, bring the book and CD along with you in the car during a trip and enjoy a wonderful half hour together with a great book and some wonderful music.

This review also available at Bryan's Book Blog