- The demolition is sponsored by Burger King. Everyone is used, now, to rotvertising, the spelling of company names & reproduction of hip product logos in the mottle & decay of subtly gene-tweaked decomposition - Apple paying for the breakdown of apples, the bitten-fruit sigil becoming visible on…
The Crow (1994)
“People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.”
- Sarah (voiceover)
I have a thing for book porn - yeah, I’m one of those sick bastards who likes to read books about reading books - and the best of the season is My Ideal Bookshelf by Jane Mount and Thessaly La Forge. The book is full of brief interviews with writers, musicians, cooks, architects, and various other creatives about what reading has meant to them; each interview is accompanied by one of Ms. Mount’s absurdly appealing and simple paintings, depicting what would be on each person’s perfect bookshelf.
I couldn’t help myself. Here’s mine. From left to right: The Riverside Shakespeare, The Dead Zone, The Fixer, The Complete Stories (Bernard Malamud), The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, True Grit, The House With A Clock In Its Walls, Lonesome Dove, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. 1, and Batman: Year One. Also shown is Moby Dick, which I haven’t read yet, but will start on the first of next year… because I think any ideal shelf would have to include at least one book I haven’t read, but which I’m really looking forward to.
Not pictured: a notebook, a pen, a mug, and some Weeping Angel tea from @52teas. Because these things go with my perfect bookshelf.
All this is by way of saying that I think My Ideal Bookshelf is a great little read, and The Ideal Christmas present for the bookworm in your life.
Lots of asks come in from people wondering which of my books they should read first.
Support this brilliant Kickstarter and Erin Morgenstern will tell you all:
The thing is, they pay you the big bucks to be able to finish.
Stephen King in conversation with Craig Ferguson. Complement with King’s advice on writing.
I just started reading The Reapers are the Angels, by Alden Bell (pen name of Joshua Gaylord) after accidentally dropping in on a sale in my local indie book store (did I just use an adverb in a post where I intend to bash them mercilessly? (oh damn!, I did it again)). This isn’t going well.
Anyhow… the book starts off very well. The main character is interesting, though it took me a while to get a grip on her age, and so is the setting (Zombie apocalypse? yes please.) Alden Bell’s prose is a mix of Hemingway and McCarthy but slightly less taxing on the reader. So, overall, rather good. But then, much like the zombies in the book, I ran into a literary tool that just won’t die.
And then the zombies stagger in.
The following short paragraph is from a point early in the story where our hero, Temple, enters a house and meets three of the undead.
Temple has forgotten how bad they smell – that muddy mixture of must and putrefaction, oil and rancid shit. She sees a faecal ooze sliding wetly down the back of the woman’s legs. They must have fed recently, so they will be strong. And they are between her and the stairs.
Did you see that? Did you? How about this, on the very next page:
She reaches behind her, feels around for anything and comes up with a screwdriver which she grips hard and drives into the man’s neck. He lets go and totters backwards, but the angle of the screwdriver is wrong, it goes straight through rather than up into the brain, so he begins to walk in circles gurglingliquidly and opening and closing his jaw.
If I hadn’t been reading about a girl literally kicking the shit our of three zombies I would have thrown the book to the floor. Not because the adverbs are bad, per se, but because they are so frighteningly unnecessary (see what I did there?).
I still recommend the book though.
George Martin, on the other hand, made me shout at one of his books (I’m pretty sure it was A Storm of Swords) when he described a character, just seconds after sex.
His manhood glistened wetly.
Really, George, really? Really?
** EXTRA EXTRA**
This post originally appeared on my *gasp* Wordpress blog, where Alden Bell himself responded in the comments. Turns out he’s not just a good author (despite occasional adverb overuse), he’s also a really cool guy.
