Good day, jive turkeys! Now that we have you wrapped in a wooly blanket of tryptophan and some kind of gluttony-related guilt. We would like to discuss your reading habits.

SugarFree

My October horror kick held on through November. I read my first John Farris book. As much as I like the 70s and 80s horror novel boom, I missed Farris somehow. His biggest claim to fame is The Fury, the novel adapted into the film of the same name by Brian DePalma–DePalma and Amy Irving’s second swing at the telekinetic teen revenge drama that came out right after the masterful Carrie. I read All The Heads Turn As The Hunt Goes By, a pleasing blend of High Gothic’s Cursed Family, voodoo, and H. Rider Haggard’s She Who Must Be Obeyed. It starts strong, slows down for a good bit of exposition and then all hell breaks loose. Highly entertaining.

Less so, was Colin Wilson ham-handed attempt at Lovecraft, The Mind Parasites. Written on a Dare from August Derleth after Wilson insulted Lovecraft, The Mind Parasites starts off well enough–Cyclopean cities pre-dating human civilization, madness, industrial psychology and mescaline–but collapses in a confused mess of vast mental powers unlocked through discovery and resistance to the titular Mind Parasites. If you are going to delve into Wilson, The Space Vampires is the way to go, even if, for some deranged reason, you aren’t a fan of Tobe Hooper’s lunatic 1985 adaption as Lifeforce, that movie people only watch for the nude mute space vampire girl that nearly destroys London. (Link is SFW)

jesse

I’ve been a bit audiobook heavy this month with Victor Gischler – Ink Mage: A Fire Beneath the Skin, (Book 1), Michael Crichton – The Great Train Robbery, and A. G. Riddle – Pandemic: The Extinction Files, (Book 1) Crichton remains a favorite light read and I’d never gotten to TGTR. The content was different than I expected but the pacing, informativeness and balance of tension and humor were exactly what I hope for when picking up a Crichton novel. Ink Mage was a solid fantasy novel that works fairly well as a standalone, but left enough hanging to make the sequel seem worthwhile. A young woman’s life is torn away from her by quisling traitors and by god she’s gonna get her duchy back. Pandemic actually reads (listens?) like a Crichton novel, although not quite to the level of one. If you like fictional conspiracies, pandemics and heroic epidemiologists, this may be the book for you.

Napoleon Hill – Outwitting the Devil. Napoleon Hill is the godfather of the self-help movement and (allegedly) a “fraudster.” Outwitting the Devil was written around the same time as his other works but was withheld from publication until everyone remotely associated with it had died. It’s a fascinating bit of autobiography and a rambling conversation with the Devil about what the Devil does to trip people up. My mother had started reading it and put it down because it was too weird (this is a woman who was telling anyone who would listen that a tetrad of blood moons on Jewish holidays over an arbitrary period of time was a portent of doom!). I’m glad I took it off her hands because while it’s an absolute hate-read, it’s an interesting insight into the completely bonkers source of modern self-help.

Kai Ashante Wilson – A Taste of Honey is a short novel by the same author as The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. These stories take place in a future earth with a set of gods who are really just more genetically advanced humans and mortals who are pretty standard issue, but have a bit of mutagenic witchery to them. Wilson has been lauded for queer characters of color enough that I thought I’d find Sorcerer a hamfisted trainwreck, but the diversity was handled deftly and never got in the way of storytelling. When I saw another book out, I picked it up immediately and have been delighted by the level of world-building Wilson is able to do in ~160 pages.

Brett L

What did I read this month? Ah yes, Mark Lawrence’s collection of shorts set in the Broken Empire world, Road Brothers. Two of these were really good and added to the whole Mark Lawrence does a great job of standing traditional fantasy on its head. The rest were not bad. The one featuring Jorg’s younger brother alive is — a bit heavy-handed.

I also read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. I have read a good bit of the Gulag Archipelago, but this book has been much discussed by Jesse in particular of late. It seems like another planet where people could be worked and/or starved and/or beaten to death with great regularity for basically being exposed to other cultures. I had forgotten just how banal it all seems on the page there.

JW

Did you know that there’s 120 calories per serving for these Grape Nuts Flakes?

Old Man With Candy

SP laughs her ass off every time she sees the books in the bathroom. I’m currently immersed in Technology for Waterborne Coatings, which I got at a book sale for a buck. It’s delightful, every chapter making me wonder what’s going to happen next.

A mystery in my life is who sent me Cork Dork, a saga of a writer’s quest to achieve the status of Master Sommelier. I know quite a few of the people she meets or discusses in this book, and if you want an account of all of the things I hated about the world of fine wine, it’s here. All of the shallowness, pretension, unhealthy obsession, gaudy show-off, and wasted lives are on display. Interestingly, at some points, you can see the author starting to face some basic economics, then quickly back away. One telling point for me was the New York restaurant-centric approach, which manages to miss the best sommeliers, Masters of Wine, wine lists, wine writers, and importers in the US- her mentors had never heard of Ann Noble, for example, which is like finding physicists who never heard of Poincaré. I have been sorely tempted to write about wine and how to avoid the sort of shit the author rolls around in. (And yes, I thought “Sideways” was an absolutely terrible movie)

Riven

I’m still working on The Skinner by Neal Asher. It’s been a busy month, so I’ve probably only read another chapter or two since weighing in last month. Wah wah. Maybe I’ll get more read this weekend while visiting in the in-laws?

SP

I’ve been enjoying revisiting the Cliff Janeway mystery series by John Dunning. I’d forgotten what a pleasure they are to read.

Janeway is based in Denver, and although somewhat predictable in plot, I love the main character and I love the book seller tidbits sprinkled throughout. In a past life, I was tangentially involved in the rare and antiquarian book trade and these details are such fun.

I listened to one volume from Audible while doing a cross-country drive recently. It was brilliantly read by George Guidall, perhaps my favorite book narrator of all time. It’s super handy that the audio book syncs with the e-book; a seamless transition from one device or location to the next.