GIRL IN A BAND – Kim Gordon

Posted by Daniel on July 22, 2017
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I’m pretty fascinated by music and musicians (if I could live my life over again I would try to write music) and when I saw this biography of a founding member of Sonic Youth, I thought I would try it out.  I borrowed the audio version from my local library for my drives to/from work.  The audio is narrated by the author, Kim Gordon.

Though I’m a fan of most music, Sonic Youth appeared on the scene during one of the very few points in my life when I was not listening to much music and so I know little-to-nothing about the band. Still, I recognized the name and wanted the inside scoop, as it were, on this group.

Gordon approached her story very distantly, which strikes me as surprising.  It’s almost as though she has no vested interest in the subject;s life, even though it’s her own. In some ways it’s hard to differentiate between the story and the narration. Her vocal attention was very laid back and calm, showing almost no emotion even during some very emotional times.

Gordon’s life is interesting but it never comes across as anything special.  I understand that from a personal point of view she may not have recognized that what she was experiencing – being a lead female in a very male-dominated art form and creating something ‘new’ – but if she still doesn’t see it after the fact, reflecting on the scene, then she’s kind of blind and a biography/memoir is sort of pointless.  What we do get is a fair amount of name-dropping from the art and music scene of the time.  I’ve never been much impressed by name-dropping and less so when I don’t even know the people being mentioned.  I guess I’m just not hip enough to ‘get’ it.

All in all, this was a disappointing read/listen.

Looking for a good book? Girl in a Band is an autobiography/memoir by Kim Gordon of her lead up to and involvement in Sonic Youth, a popular rock band from the 1980’s-90’s.  It’s not quite as titillating as one might expect.

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Girl in a Band

author: Kim Gordon

narrator: Kim Gordon

publisher: HarperAudio

ASIN: B00RDBK37Y

7 hours, 14 minutes

AND SOON I HEARD A ROARING WIND – Bill Streever

Posted by Daniel on July 21, 2017
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

When I request an ARC of a book, I generally request books that I expect to like – typically in a genre that I am fond of, or an author that I enjoy reading.  Occasionally, I go outside my typical reading box and request books that I know nothing about but for one reason or another appeal to me at the moment. Usually I don’t have a clue as to what to expect from such books which is actually rather exciting.  And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind was such a case.

Author Bill Streever has done more than write a fascinating history on wind and man’s attempts to understand it, record it, and predict it.  Streever has also written a memoir.

Streever writes about a sailing voyage he and his wife take, leaving Texas and heading to a port in Guatemala, sailing, then, through the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.  Naturally, as a sailor – and one perhaps not as accomplished as you might hope for such a voyage – he expresses concerns about the weather he might face and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.  This leads, quite smoothly, into his research on wind and wind-and-weather study and prediction.

Streever navigates his story and research as well as his sailboat on the sea, guiding us from one biographical anecdote to a story from history and back with ease.

I quite enjoyed this format, though there were times when I was learning things about the history of wind and weather prediction and didn’t necessarily want to go back to hear more about his sea voyage.  And vice versa.  Either one could have made an interesting book in itself, though again, I rather enjoyed this concept.

However, I will remind the reader of this review that I had no expectations of the book going in.  I didn’t know if I was going to be reading a history of wind (prediction) or a memoir or even if it might be a book of fiction.   You aren’t disappointed if you have no expectations.  However, I’ve looked at some of the reviews of others as I prepared to schedule this review and I see that some are disappointed, expecting a stronger focus on one subject.  If I were doing research on “a natural history of moving air” then I might be disappointed, but as someone who simply likes to learn new things, and likes to be entertained by the written word, this was really a tremendously enjoyable book.

Any weekend sail-boater or anyone with an interest in nature/our natural world, should enjoy this book.

Looking for a good book? And Soon I Heard A Roaring Wind: A Natural History of Moving Air by Bill Streever is a clever combination of a sailing memoir used to prompt the history of wind and weather prediction.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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And Soon I Heard A Roaring Wind: A Natural History of Moving Air

author: Bill Streever

publisher: Little, Brown US

ISBN: 0316410608

hardcover, 320 pages

THE BURIED LIFE – Carrie Patel

Posted by Daniel on July 20, 2017
Posted in: MYSTERY, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

If you’ve read many of my reviews you’ve probably seen me mention one of my favorite sci-fi publishers, Angry Robot Books.  No…I get no kickbacks or preferential treatment for mentioning them.  I like them because they take risks.  They remind me of what DAW books was like in the 1970’s … edgy sci-fi that didn’t fit into the big publisher models. And Angry Robot does that today… sci-fi that doesn’t conveniently fit under the labels.  And so I never know quite what to expect when I start a new series from Angry Robot.

What surprised me most about Carrie Patel’s The Buried Life is how little sci-fi/fantasy there appears to be in the book.  More than once I scrolled back to the front of the book to see the publisher’s imprint because this struck me as a mystery and not a sci-fi story.  But there’s Angry Robot surprising me once again.

The Buried Life is a mystery in a post-apocalyptic world.  The city of Recoletta is an underground city, as is much of the United States, following a great war a hundred years prior.  But it hasn’t taken long for a division of elite and labor classes to develop, and though this is set in a post-apocalyptic future, the feel is very Victorian, making this a bit of a steampunk-like read.

One of the elite is murdered and inspector Liesl Malone is tasked with solving the case.  This world of the upper class is new to Malone and it isn’t easy to get information from a crowd unwilling to welcome someone from a different class.

In addition to Malone, we get an insider look at the upper class from a servant.  Laundress Jane Lin is also looking for a truth in the case of this murder and because of her position as someone who generally has access to the elite areas but remains invisible to those around her she has a unique perspective.

While the sci-fi/fantasy aspect is important to the story, it tends to hang like a backdrop rather than a front and center curtain for the reader.  Really, it’s the mystery that is in play here and the development of the major characters (Malone and Lin) that drives the story.

I found the mystery interesting.  Though a little tame by some standards, the characters of Malone and Lin helped this.  I definitely want to get to know these people better and hopefully there will be a little more depth to them and to some of the surrounding characters in future books.

Looking for a good book?  The Buried Life is the first book in a new series by Carrie Patel.  Mostly a mystery in a sci-fi setting, this promises to be an interesting series.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Buried Life

author: Carrie Patel

series: Recoletta #1

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857665219

paperback, 359 pages

THE CHANGE: ORBITAL – Guy Adams

Posted by Daniel on July 19, 2017
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Combine World War Z and Mad Max and put it into a comic book without pictures and you get the fast-paced feel for The Change: Orbital.

“The Change” came about suddenly, turning the world into an instantaneous post-apocalyptic, dystopian world.  Howard wakes up in a car on a highway to discover the change and is confused by what he sees, and his surroundings.  Nature has become cruel – with pigeons attacking like zombies – and men have formed scavenger gangs.  Howard runs into an odd fellow who goes by the name of ‘Hubcap’ who brings Howard into the safety of his gang.

But Howard has a secret that even he isn’t sure of.  He has a very strong feeling that he and Hubcap are supposed to make a journey into another territory to explore what’s at the heart of this change.  A dark blob of goo appears, gobbling down members of a biker gang.  Howard and Hubcap must pursue Howard’s intuition.

In many ways this is a pretty standard post-apocalyptic sci-fi story.  Author Guy Adams doesn’t need to spend much time describing the setting or giving s a lot of background because most of us are already familiar with the genre and the look and feel of the world because we’ve watched The Walking Dead or the Mad Max films or any one of dozens of similar films.  What the book has, then, that makes it a little more unique, is a mystery.  This is not a survival at all costs story, there’s something afoot and Howard is a part of it, and that’s about all we know.

Even at the end.

Yup…this book doesn’t end.

Like comic books, or graphic novels, this appears to be written in serial style.  ‘Book One’ really means ‘Chapter One’ of a larger story.

There’s a good history of serialized fiction, especially among the British (thank you Charles Dickens!) and while I’ve more than once bemoaned the lack of ending in a book because of the attempt to get you to buy the next volume, thus lining the publisher’s pockets with your pennies or pounds, this feels a little different.  First this is a short book.  A novelette, perhaps?  And it doesn’t try to pretend to be a complete book, which I think is the main difference. Going in to this you have a pretty good clue that you’re not going to get the whole story in this one volume.

Still…I’m not a fan of leaving so many questions unanswered simply to sell another volume.  The book loses one star for that.

If you like the genre and don’t mind some familiar tropes in order to begin a mystery, then you might want to consider giving this a chance.  It’s a quick read, so it won’t take up a lot of your time.

Looking for a good book? The Change: Orbital by Guy Adams is the first, slim, book in a series about a strange sudden change that came over the world, casting it into a dystopian wonderland where something dark and evil lurks at the heart of it all, but you may have to pay out for many more volumes before you get a better sense of the whole story.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Change: Orbital

author: Guy Adams

series: The Change #1

publisher: Endeavour Press

ASIN: B008SU060

Kindle Edition, 94 pages

THE CIRCLET TREASURY OF EROTIC WONDERLAND – J. Blackmore, editor

Posted by Daniel on July 18, 2017
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, OTHER, ROMANCE, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

**WARNING — THIS BOOK AND REVIEW CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT**

Yes, this is a bit of an odd choice for me to read.  I haven’t rated some previous erotica very well, but it wasn’t because of the subject matter, but the execution of it. Still, requesting to review erotica did feel strange. However, it was the subject matter that struck me. …The Alice in Wonderland theme to be more precise.

The first thing to know is that ‘erotica’ is just the polite way to say ‘porn.’  …That may not be entirely true, but if you search the web to define the difference between the two, you will find no definitive answer but a lot of suggestions that the only difference is in how an individual perceives it.  So whether you want to call this erotica or porn makes no difference.

The theme here is that a number of different writers (all of them unknown to me) were telling stories based on the Lewis Carroll classic characters.  Some of the stories were pretty directly set in Wonderland or at least with the familiar characters, while other stories took more of an abstract look at the “down the rabbit hole” (bizarre happenings) theme.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed many of these stories.

The first story in the book, “Lily White” by Morwenna Drake best captured the sense of Carroll’s Wonderland and gave us a feel for what we would encounter if we continued on.

I also enjoyed “Tarts and Tea” by Holly Abair in which Alice has a spat with her sister which causes her to prefer Wonderland over the ‘real’ world and, being older now, she experiences some new, strange wonders that are much more adult oriented. This story felt the most like a genuine sequel (in tone, though certainly not content).

Bernie Mojzes’ story “A Perfect Creature” was probably the best ‘erotic’ story.  It manages to be sexy, hot, and aptly describing longing.

The rest of the book was generally pretty average, though nothing stood out as being truly terrible (which, I admit, really rather surprised me).

Be forewarned that the stories are generally pretty graphic, describing sex acts and using modern slang for the human anatomy.  If you want your sex-in-literature to be a little more subtle (and let’s be frank…most best-selling books have a fair amount of sex – just not quite so graphic) then this probably isn’t for you.  But if your curious about sampling some erotica with characters that are grown up versions of favorite childhood characters, then you should give this a read.

This collection contains the following:

Introduction – J. Blackmore
“Lily White” – Morwenna Drake
“A World of Her Own” – Alex Picchetti
“Tarts and Tea” – Holly Abair
“A Wasp, a Wig and Wanton Woman” – Gary Westfahl
“Wonders Wild and New” – Verity Penvenen
“If This Be Not Love, It Is Madness” – Theresa Sand
“A Perfect Creature” – Bernie Mojzes
“Midway Rides” – Alex Picchetti
“Waking” – ADR Forte
“The Boiling Sea” – Angela Caperton
Looking for a good book? The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Wonderland is an anthology of erotica based on Alice in Wonderland, edited by J. Blackmore that manages to be erotic and often brings us back to the familiar Lewis Carroll wonderland.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Wonderland: Erotic Tales of Alice and Beyond

editor: J. Blackmore

publisher: Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 1626012822

ebook, 126 pages

WHAT IS A SUPERHERO? – Robin S. Rosenberg & Peter Coogan, editors

Posted by Daniel on July 17, 2017
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, GRAPHIC NOVEL, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

You can hardly turn around today without seeing a movie or television show featuring a superhero and they’re often on the covers of magazines and there are novelizations of their stories.  And of course there are the comic books and graphic novels from which many of them sprouted.  But what is a superhero?  Such is the general question asked and addressed in the collection of essays edited by Robin S. Rosenberg & Peter Coogan.

There is a strong collection of writers included here, musing on what makes a superhero and the social issues surrounding a society’s reasons for having superheroes.  The collection includes essays from those who might understand the genre the best – writers of superhero stories such as: Stan Lee, Dennis O’Neil, Kurt Busiek, Joe Quesada, and a few others.

I was impressed right out of the gate with Peter Coogan’s article, “The Hero Defines the Genre, the Genre Defines the Hero.”  I’d like to quote from the article but the truth is I would simply copy the eight pages and reprint it – the article was packed with thoughtful reflection and commentary.  Coogan clearly understands the modern mythology of superheroes.

I did a lot of comic book reading in the 1970’s so it’s no surprise that talent from that era has a big impact on me.  And perhaps it’s because of this that I found Denny O’Neil’s article, “Superheroes and Power,” so meaningful.  After all, who should know how to write about superheroes and their power than someone who did it so well?  His words can be applied not just to superheroes, but to any character who is worth writing about.  I really appreciated his comment:

A writer fails the genre when a story depicts superheroes who are weak or do not use their powers. What makes a character interesting (both superheroes and other types of characters) is what he does to solve problems. You give him a knotty situation and he gets out of it. Well, by definition, superheroes use extraordinary physical means.

While I’m only pointing to two articles, this is one of those rare collections in which there are no duds.  Every essay is thoughtful and well articulated.  I gained some insight and felt that I left the book smarter than when I started.  I like that feeling.

This book contains the following:

Foreword – Michael Uslan
“Introduction: What Is a Superhero?” – Robin Rosenberg & Peter Coogan
Super and Hero: Powers and Mission
Section Introduction
“The Hero Defines the Genre, the Genre Defines the Hero” – Peter Coogan
“We Could Be Heroes” – Will Brooker
“What is a Female Superhero?” – Jennifer Stuller
“Straddling a Boundary: The Superhero and the Incorporation of Difference” – Clare Pitkelthy
“Save the Day” – A. David Lewis
Context, Culture, and the Problem of Definition
Section Introduction
“Superheroes and the Modern(ist) Age” – Alex Boney
“Heroes of the Superculture” – Richard Reynolds
“Superhero by Design” – John Jennings
“The Experience of the Superhero: A Phenomenological Definition” – Dana Anderson
“What is a Superhero? No One Knows—That’s What Makes ‘em Great.” – Geoff Klock
Superheroes Need Supervillains
Section introduction
“Why Supervillains?” – Paul Levitz
“Superheroes Need Supervillains” – Frank Verano
“Superheroes Need Superior Villains” – Stanford Carpenter
“Super and Villain: A bad guy with superpowers” – Curtis Deis
“Supervillains Who Need Superheroes (Are the Luckiest Villains in the World)” – Andrew Smith
“Sorting Out Villainy: A Typology of Villains and Their Effects on Superheroes” – Robin Rosenberg
From the Experts: Comic Book Writers Define the Superhero
Section Introduction
“More Than Normal, But Believable” – Stan Lee
“Making the World a Better Place” – Jeph Loeb
“Nobility of Purpose” – Danny Fingeroth
“Superheroes and Power” – Dennis O’Neil
“The Importance of Context: Robin Hood Is Out and Buffy Is In” – Kurt Busiek
“Superheroes Are Made” – Tom DeFalco
“Extraordinary” – Joe Quesada
“The Superprotagonist” – Fred Van Lente
“Superheroes and Supervillains: An Interdependent Relationship” – Ivory Madison

Looking for a good book? The collection of essays, What Is a Superhero? edited by Robin Rosenberg and Peter Coogan is a thoughtful reflection on superheroes – who are our modern mythological figures.  The book is highly recommended.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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What Is a Superhero?

editors: Robin Rosenberg & Peter Coogan

publisher: Oxford University Press, USA 

ISBN: 0199795274

hardcover, 175 pages

ELVES – graphic novel

Posted by Daniel on July 14, 2017
Posted in: GRAPHIC NOVEL, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Elves, Vol. 1 is a beautiful graphic novel.

This graphic novel contains two parts, written by Jean-Luc Istin and illustrated by Kyko Duarte.

A pair of individuals has discovered that an Elven city has been slaughtered.  It looks as though humans may be at the cause of it, further fracturing already tense relations between the species.  But not everyone is convinced as to what happened and set out to further investigate.  And of course there are some who don’t want anyone poking around.

What works so nicely here is that we are getting a story of epic proportions – an entire race war is on the edge – while we are more directly experiencing the moment to moment journey of just a few individuals.  It’s the frame of epic works as you might find in opera (think Wagner’s The Ring Cycle).  I tend to really like this sort of story-telling.

On the other hand, it is so incredibly difficult to tell a story with elves and orcs and humans and not immediately place it in the world of J.R.R. Tolkein.  Even the gorgeous art is incredibly reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s iconic films.  There are some small differences … some of the elves here are blue, for instance, but since a mythos has been set that elves are lithe, with pointy ears, that’s what we get.  And since orcs are brutish and swamp-water green, that’s what we get.

The dialog here is more than a little bit simple and stilted.  Is it because of the translation?  Or is the translation merely capturing the simple language of Jean-Luc Istin?  That’s something I can’t tell.  But know that it’s the over-all story that will draw you in (along with the art), and not the character patter.

The art is above-average comic-book art.  If what you like most in your graphic novel is the art, then this is definitely one you want to consider.

Looking for a good book?  If you want a page-to-page-turning excitement, then you might be really disappointed here.  But if you like a beautiful art and a high-reaching story that spans the pages rather than living on each one, then the graphic novel, Elves, Vol. 1, by Istin and Duarte, is the perfect selection.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Elves, Vol. 1

author: Jean-Luc Istin

artist: Kyko Duarte

publisher: Insight Comics

ISBN: 1608878775

paperback, 177 pages