Matt
Thorough and entertaining. Puts to rest any suggestion Keaton spent the second half of his life as a has-been. The guy worked and thrived almost until the very end.
Although I share a name with the protagonist, our life circumstances are very different. But I found myself nodding several times at our shared darkness. I would say that pain is Sam Miller's medium, if he wasn't so skilled in the other corners of human experience.
Ted Sturgeon, for all his varied story ideas, said that the only thing he ever wrote about was love. Sam writes about love. When you put this book down, you'll want to go to someone you love and maybe hug them, or maybe just be in their presence for a little while.
Holy shit. Tears were running down my face. I can't remember when a book did that to me.
Read this when I was around 15 and loved it. It became one of my all-time favorites. Just read it again, some 36 years later. I was worried it might not have aged well, but damn it, it's still a great book!
I re-read this after thirty or so years. Glancing through it, I was afraid it was going to disappoint. But I think I liked it even more this time. Miller was seriously on top of his game.
A fun and concise adventure that combines science fiction and romance. The ideas are cool and the sex is sweaty, so what more could you want? Check it out!
A powerful story set in a very quick read. Kyle Baker is one of my favorite comic artists and he has employed a wide range of styles in his career. His work here is heart-breaking, brutal, uplifting, and disturbing. Brilliant.
When I heard John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats had a novel coming out, there was no question in my mind that I'd be gobbling it up as soon as I got my hands on it. Darnielle writes the most visceral lyrics I've ever heard, with a knack for cutting right to the pain, whether emotional or physical, in just a line or two. I got what I expected from Wolf in White Van's prose by the second paragraph:
“Every other day they'd bathe me, and every time, I'd feel like it wasn't so bad for a few minutes; and then the heat would slacken the resewn flaps of my cheeks a little, and the tingling would start up, a rippling alarm traveling down confused wires.”
If you figure the paragraph which precedes that one explains what's led up to that point of the narrator's life, you're no expert figurer. Answers come in time, but not all of them. There are a couple of things going on here. The telling leaps all over the story's timeline and it's meant to be disorienting. There are times the reader isn't quite sure when an event is happening or which of the other narrative strands it might be connected to. We're left to attach the pieces with little reference, perhaps echoing the reassembly of the narrator and his life after the accident that is central to the story. And centers are important here.
A little Robert Frost:
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
There are many unknowable centers in the book, from the imaginary fortress which sits right in the middle of the country and is the unachievable goal of the narrator's play-by-mail game, Trace Italian; to his motivation for the central act of the novel, which may be unknown even to him; to the unspoken feelings of so many of the characters.
It's the search for what lies in those centers that drive us on through the book and drive the characters through their inner turmoil. The answers at the core of everything are cloaked in many layers of protection, the innermost wrapping being the hardest and most inviting of them all: the apprehension of the seeker. Darnielle lays out the story so we can see the ending coming, and it's probably for this reason the last ten pages of Wolf in White Van filled me with dread.
Not great literature and I didn't expect it to be. Entertaining and a lot of fun. It took me back to my science fiction adolescence. I've had some problems with a few of Harrison's novels because of dialogue, but the dialogue here was good enough that it didn't pull me out of the story.
I've been reading comics for four and a half decades. Williams' art is some of the most astonishing and creative I've ever seen. The variety of styles he works in for this mini-series is incredible. Gaiman's story is great and adds to the enjoyment of the original series, but even if you're not a fan of Gaiman, Morpheus, or this particular story, you must see this art.
I've never had any interest in urban fantasy, but I'd heard great things about Richard Kadrey. Good writing can make anything great, and this is some spectacular goddamned writing! I look forward to the rest of the series.
When people talk about books that changed their lives, they usually talk about novels. The power of fiction is incredible and stories like “[b:The Lord of the Rings 34 The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) J.R.R. Tolkien http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156043001s/34.jpg 3204327]” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” resonate for decades. But if someone asked me what book changed my life, I'd have to point to “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.” Yes, I'd immediately be branded a super-dork, but this book transformed my work like nothing before or since. For ten years, I'd been struggling with “Show, Don't Tell.” Everybody said it, but nobody explained it. “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” took my hand and guided this dumb little pup through example after example, telling me exactly how to improve my writing. The difference between my before stories and my after stories is remarkable. This is one of the only books I recommend to people who ask me about writing. It's clear. It works.
Oh, the names, the names! (There's a guide in the back of the book) What a great novel. It moved quickly, though there wasn't a lot of action. The story was gripping as our protagonist stumbles his way to learning how to be an emperor. I'd love to know exactly how Addison pulled it off.
Nota bad book, but I was disappointed in the distance between my expectations and what the author delivered. It's mostly pointing out the problems with established religions and doesn't seem to approach creating your own religion until the final chapter. In the book's defense, the subtitle clearly states "without instructions," but a more accurate title might be Why Religions Mostly Suck.
I have a rough idea of what happened in this story. I was often lost from panel to panel, but understanding was secondary here. Trad Moore's art is astonishing. I'm on board for whatever he wants to do.
This might sound silly, but this small book of simple language confounded me. The story is told, not just by a Neanderthal, but by the dumbest Neanderthal in the book. His struggle to comprehend the changing world around him and to pin down the advanced technology of modern humans with concepts he could understand made parts of this story completely baffling. He sees boats as logs and paddles as leaves and representations of things as the real things they represent. It's a testament to Golding's brilliance that he could stage a whole book this way. This is definitely something I'm going to have to read a second time and maybe then I can give it a better rating.
An okay book, but I thought I'd be getting forest adventure. Instead I got an episode of Law and Order.
McKean's art makes this book. I only read this once, maybe fifteen years ago. The image of Maxi Zeus still sticks with me. Two-Face's tryst with the I Ching was a fun idea.
Much better than 1969, I think, but the second book of a trilogy always suffers a bit. 2009 was faster moving, enjoyed a wonderful Antichrist, and his foe was delightful. As always I know there were references that went right over my head, but I'll never be able to keep up with Messrs. Moore and O'Neill. That's what the Internet's for. I hope there will be more of the League to come, no matter what the period.
I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick, but I read his stuff years ago. I eagerly sought this book out because I heard from a couple of people that this one was one of his best. Maybe I merely disagree, maybe my affection for PKD has waned, maybe I need more now than he can give.
Dick is famous for his drug use and for taking speed before cranking out an entire novel in fifteen hours flat. This book, to me, feels like his most drug-influenced book. Not because of his crazy ideas, those are to be expected. It's because you get the feeling that he throws things into the story as they occur to him and made no effort to smooth things over in a subsequent draft. He switches gears on a whim and those whims come at the rate of about fifteen to twenty per scene.
If you're a big fan of PKD, go ahead and check this out. If not, you'll probably want to avoid it.
Wow! Great story. A detective investigates a suspicious suicide in a deteriorating world. An asteroid is hitting earth in a few months and nearly everyone has recalibrated their behavior accordingly. Bucket lists, suicides, criminal behavior, a lot of people aren't holding down the jobs that made society run anymore. But if you're a criminal who gets caught, even six months is a life sentence. A great police procedural in a world with a new set of rules.
Delany always makes me feel like a bit of a dim bulb, but most of this book was accessible , entertaining, and thought-provoking.