Tag: book review

On Creating a Main Character . . . When you can’t give the reader any obvious information about that character

I firmly believe that character is the most important part of a novel. That's the hill I'll die on. Plot keeps us turning the pages, setting immerses us, but character makes us care. If you're racking your brain for story idea, character is a terrific place to start. Of course, developing a compelling character is easier said than done. There are, however, some tricks that can help you. So what happens if you can't use some of the obvious tools?

If you want to write, read!

I've wanted to write since (at least) the third grade. My urges to become an astronaut or a dinosaur-seeking paleontologist faded (although my love for astronauts, space exploration, and dinosaurs remains undimmed), but my longing to create stories never did. In fact, I can still remember the exact books that made me want to make … Continue reading If you want to write, read! →

Book Review: Jo Walton’s amazing “Among Others”

I readily confess: I am not above flights of hyperbole. Nonetheless, I don't think I am indulging in it even in the least when I say, Jo Walton's lovely, startling Among Others is more than amazing. It's a book that's going to save someone's life some day.

Belated Book Review: “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke

If there was ever a book I truly don't know what to say about, it's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Don't get me wrong—I adored it. I've recommended it to dozens of my friends. But not all of them. I don't even recommend it to all of my friends who like fantasy, or mythic fiction, or British drawing room comedies of manners. It's a massive book, something like 400,000 thousand words (that's a guess; I haven't actually counted them). Nonetheless, I found myself enchanted from page one. Magic and sly witticisms were so thick I had to swat them away like flies, and the oh-so-English narrative delighted me. The characters are engaging and well-drawn, and the period voice, complete with obsolete spellings and elaborate, fanciful footnotes (don't dare skip them!) delighted me. All the same, when I was nearly halfway through, I found myself still wondering when the actual story was going to get started. It had been going all along, but Ms. Clarke, like any good magician, had distracted my attention.

Book Review: “Guardians of the Desert” by Leona Wisoker

The sequel to Secrets of the Sands, Guardians of the Desert, actually expands on the earlier book's strengths—the world is deeper and more complex and the characters have grown. Leona's sense of pace hasn't dulled, and the mental pictures conjured by her spare but elegant prose and much more vivid. Her subtle, wicked wit is still apparent—and still luring to catch the reader unaware.

Book Review of something utterly new, strange, and powerful: “The Orange Eats Creeps”

It makes me uncomfortable to picture Grace Krilanovich crafting The Orange Eats Creeps. I get these fleeting, nightmarish image of a young woman, wild-eyed and too thin, scrawling the words on the underside of a bridge somewhere, or on the walls of the kind of bar I'd be afraid to enter, even if I was cool enough to know how to find it. I picture her mainlining caffeine laced with meth, or something, some drug I've read about in newspapers, not for stimulation but to dull the fire of stranger substances screaming though her veins like electricity. Because you see, witnessing the birth of an new kind of literature, a utterly new way to pound and twist blocks of English into something mind-blastingly fresh, is a little frightening.

“Total Oblivion, More or Less” by Alan DeNiro

Read Total Oblivion, More or Less: A Novel Total Oblivion, More or Less is a strange novel. In a lot of ways, in fact, it's a novel about strangeness, and how ordinary people deal with it. Imagine Huck Finn's raft drifting through a post-apocalypse American wasteland. Things have changed. The government has disappeared, geography itself … Continue reading “Total Oblivion, More or Less” by Alan DeNiro →

“The Angel’s Game” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Yesterday, I reviewed Carlos Ruiz Zafón's brilliant novel, The Shadow of the Wind. Continuing with the "holy crap this is good" theme, today I'm taking a look at his follow up, The Angel's Game. While both The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game are completely stand-alone novels, they are subtly connected. The two novels both a part of what Zafón says will eventually be a four-book cycle of loosely connected stories with overlapping narratives and characters. While either can be read alone, reading both makes each a deeper and richer experience. In fact, I read The Angel's Game at the same time that my wife Carol and I were reading The Shadow of the Wind aloud to one one another, a strange and wonderful experience.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I've wanted to review Carlos Ruiz Zafón's brilliant and lovely The Shadow of the Wind for a while now. I've hesitated largely because I needed to think of something to say other than simply, holy crap this is good! I first read the book back when it was first published in the United States—it was already a best seller in Europe—about four years ago or so. Over the holidays, faced with some sixteen hours in the car with two trips to Morristown Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama, my wife and I decided to take turns reading it aloud to each other. I wondered, frankly, if it could possibly be as good as I remembered. It was. No, wait. It was even better.

“The Magicians” by Lev Grossman

When I first browsed through Lev Grossman's The Magicians at Blue Elephant Bookshop, I knew it was a book that was coming home with me. The jacket blurb promised a book for adults who, as young readers, had adored the Narnia, Oz, and Harry Potter stories, and books like T. H. White's The Once and Future King. And indeed, The Magicians draws liberally and lovingly from those sources. There is a magic school filled with eccentric professors and strange wonders, teaching by turning students into animals (as Merlyn does with the Wart in The Once and Future King), and even a hidden fantasy world accessed through a sleepy "between" world filled with pools, a motif familiar to anyone who has read C. S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew, one of the best of the Narnia books. Even the characters in The Magicians grew up reading and loving a series of fantasy books. That fond, nostalgic love is one of the reasons we are so drawn to them. But don't get the idea that The Magicians is a mere pastiche. The Magicians is told from a decided, utterly (even ironically) original, and heartbreaking, adult point of view.

The Book of Ratings and Fail Nation: like the Internet, only on paper!

The book versions of Failblog and The Book of Ratings are every bit as funny as the sites themselves. That’s not a great surprise, I suppose, since the content is the more or less the same. All the same, the print versions are worth their respective prices for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t cost that much, and it’s nice to see the content creators rewarded, at least a little, for their efforts. Second, you never know when the Apocalypse might come along, causing the Internet tubes to fall as civilization descends slowly and inevitably into barbarism. If that happens, you’ll be glad to have a few chuckles, I dare say.

Two books (that aren’t quite) within other books

It's a joy to discover, after the last page of a good book is turned, that there is still more content to discover. Especially when the storytellers have the talent of Alice Hoffman and Catherynne Valente. This kind of expanded "book within a book" content is a trend I applaud enthusiastically. I hope we'll see more.

“Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO” by Zachary Steele

"When the Anti-Christ and Satan entered the bar, nobody took notice."

That's a great first line. Believe it or not, it's not the start of a joke. It's the first line of Zachary Steele's novel "Annointed," which is a scream. If you're a fan of people like Christopher Moore or Douglas Adams, take a look. Sadly, (in my humble opinion) it hasn't received the attention it deserves.

“The Gnostic Bible” Edited by Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer

For those interested in the Gnostics and their actual beliefs and mysteries, as well as the early history of Christianity, The Gnostic Bible is a welcome resource. As a matter of fact, The Gnostic Bible is quite possibly the most comprehensive collection of Gnostic materials ever gathered in one volume. The Gnostic Bible collects a wealth of primary sources, Gnostic texts from a wide variety of sources, including three continents and spanning more than 1300 years. The expected texts are present, of course, including the famous Gospel of Thomas, along with some unexpected resources. Making the volume especially useful to students of Gnosticwisdom traditions, the texts are well-organized into distinct movements of Gnostic tradition: Sethian, Valentinian, Syrian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, and even, surprisingly, later Islamic and even Cathar texts.

“Coyote Moon” By John A. Miller

As fond as I am of trickster tales, it's hard to imagine anything with a title like Coyote Moon can be anything other than mythic. Coyote Moon doesn't have a lot to do with coyotes, or even with tricksters (although I have a feeling that author John Miller himself may qualify), but the novel is certainly mythic. First, baseball plays a major role in the story. As the brilliant book Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth shows, baseball is a goldmine for mythic material. Add in liberal doses of cutting edge physics (if you're not up on your science, don't worry), possible reincarnation, and the search for meaning and miracles, and the result is a myth lover's delight.