Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache by Grenville Goodwin

The Cylons' Secret: A Battlestar Galactica Novel by Craig Shaw Gardner

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint

People have been recommending this book to me for quite a while. They've been saying that given my taste in authors I'm sure so to love Charles de Lint, and that this is his best book to date. I'm about 200 pages (of 500) in already. I didn't realize that it was part of a series, but I don't think that's detracting from it at all. There are allusions to other books, maybe little bits of plots that if i had read others I'd understand better, but I don't feel lost without having read the previous novels.

Here's the publishers blurb.

"Charles de Lint has brought an entire imaginary North American city to vivid life, Newford: where magic lights dark streets; where myths walk clothed in modern shapes; where humans and older beings must work to keep the whole world turning." "He has peopled this city with extraordinary characters - people like Joseph Crazy Dog, also known as Bones, the trickster who walks in two worlds at once; Sophie, born with magic in the blood, whose boyfriend dwells in the otherworld of dreams; Angel, who runs a center for street people and lives up to her name; Geordie, creating enchantment with his fiddle; Christy, collecting stories in the streets; the Crow Girls, wild and elusive; and many, many more." "At the center of these entwined lives stands a young artist named Jilly Coppercorn, whose paintings capture the hidden beings that dwell in Newford's shadows. Jilly has been a central part of the street scene since de Lint's very first stories. With her tangled hair, her paint-splattered jeans, a smile perpetually on her lips, she's darted in and out of the Newford tales. Now, at last, we have Jilly's own story, and it's a powerful one indeed...for behind the painter's fey charm there's a dark secret, and a past she's labored to forget. And that past is coming to claim her now, threatening all she loves." "I'm the onion girl," Jilly Coppercorn says. "Pull back the layers of my life, and you won't find anything at the core. Just a broken child. A hollow girl." She's run from the past and the truth for so long. She's very good at running. But life has just forced Jilly to stop.

Marvel Civil Wars

I haven't read any comic books in a while. There haven't been any series that get my attention . And the stories in most comic series either frustrate or bore me. I still look for good graphic novels, but I've pretty much given up on comics.

Then Blair Butler on G4 TV recommended the Marvel Civil war series. She has always steered me right in the past, so I got the first comic. It was good. So i got a bunch more.

The "Civil War" event has 2 core short series. "Civil War", and "Civil War Frontline". The first is sort of an overview of events as they unfold, and the second is the story told through the eyes of two reporters, one a liberal, one a conservative. These two series have done a good job of summing everything up. They tell a good story, and the dialogue is smart and peppered with current culture references.

There's one part from "Civil War Frontline" where the two reporters, Sally and Ben, are sitting in a bar. Though they work for papers on the opposite end of the political spectrum they are friends.

Sally: I don't want to beleive it just yet Ben. But i don't think anyone at the White House could have scripted this Nitro thing any better. A school full of kids wiped out in a punch-up involving untrained, unsupervised, underaged super heroes. How's Jonah taking it?

Ben: Like he won the lottery.

Sally: Oh, God... I can just imagine: "Laydeez and gentlemen... In the red corner, the United States Constitution." "In the blue corner, the unstoppable tag-team of disinformation and paranoia, winner by two falls and a submission."

Ben: Hehh... That's the Bugle, all right. What did they give you at the Alternative?

Sally: Carte Blanche to write about the erosion of civil liberties in America. And can I link it to the wiretapping thing, if I would be so kind?

That sort of sums up the premise as well. That there was an incident, innocents were killed, and the government takes action. This action that the government takes splits the heroes we know down the middle. You end up with heroes like Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four lining up on opposite sides of the line.

Since this is an event that touches on almost all aspects of the Marvel universe, there are single, or sets of issues in the other series that you need to read to get the whole story.



Here's a checklist that helps.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

I'm also reading this book currently. It's on my headboard and I read a bit of it every night before going to sleep. I'm not sure I should willingly admit this about a literary classic, but it does help me fall to asleep.

Critic Vivian Mercier said of the book "Nothing happens, twice."

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Joan Didion's book put me in the mood to reread this. "Slouchin Towards Bethlehem" will make a nice compare and contrast. That and I've heard a rumour that they are going to republish Jack's book with the original names. I'd like to reread the versions I'm used to one more time before they do.

Here's the publishers blurb
"Essential Edition handsomely packaged with french flaps, rough fronts, high-quality paper, and a distinctive cover look

On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.

Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago.

I've gotten behind

I've gotten very far behind in posting what book I'm curently reading. So I'm going to try to catch up with super short summaries.



Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Just finished this one. It is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Collected essays from the late 60s. The one from which the book takes its title is simply amazing.





Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

Gibson has such a viscious grasp on this genre. This book takes place in the same world that his other books do. It's a world that is a bit further down the road than ours (I can't remember if he puts any dates in it) but at sometime int he past developed just a hair differently. The thing is, the difference is so little, but the "future" part is so prophetic. He nails so many things about the internet and the culture that develops around it. His divergence is in the notion that there would need to be some interface (he calls them "decks") to get someone into the internet (or cyberspace, a term Gibson coined). But he gets the cyber culture and the dangers and possibilities that the web (or Matrix in his books) brings. If you are interested in Gibson, and either don't want to start with Neuromance, or you've read it and want to try another one, I would reccomend Mona Lisa Overdrive.



2006 Best American Short Stories

Still working on it.


Aother installment in the Hellboy Saga. I've said it before, I'll say it again, as graphic novels go, this series is good. There's a good, well grounded story. Even though the characters are supernatural, they are have personalities that are not cliche.


I've been waiting to read this one for years. I haven't seen the movie, and I'm not sure I want to now. I'm afraid it will ruin the graphic novel. I can't imagine they did it justice.


Bad Twin by Gary Troupe
Ya fine, I'll fell for the marketing. But you know what.... it wasn't bad. Of course I was expecting crap that I'd have to endure to pick out a few clues for the TV show (the book is a tie in with the TV show LOST. There is no Gary Troupe). I don't read mystery novels, so maybe they are better than I give them credit for. But this one didn't suck.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
I've seen the movie, this was the first that I've read the book. The more Phillip K. Dick i read the more i like him. I highly recommend this, though with the warning that it is very different than the movie. The characters are different, the plot is different, and the ending is different.


Unnatural Selection by Tim Lebbon
Of all the Hellboy books I've read, this was the worst. The Hellboy novels have been my "fluff read" that I've always been able to count on. Just good fun brainless reading. A little mytholoy thrown in to set the hook, a big red guy with a heart of gold that likes to smash things, a little religious mysticism.... But this one.... this one i didn't enjoy so much.


Pirates Angus Konstam
Oddly enough, even though this was about pirates, it wasn't an easy read. I ended up taking away a decent bit of information (nothing anyone who know's spit about pirates wouldn't have know already, but i'm still trying to earn my junior eyepatch) but it was research reading it, not enjoyment.

Myths and Legends of Japan by F. Hadland Davis

Myths and Legends of Japan by F. Hadland Davis



Continuing with my mythology kick....

...and here's the blurb from the publisher


This handsomely illustrated book includes myths of gods, heroes and warriors; legends of Buddha, Benten and Daikoku; tales of the sea and of Mount Fuji; accounts of superstitions and supernatural beings; and much more. 32 full-page illustrations offer compelling images of Buddha and the Dragon, A Kakemono Ghost, The Jellyfish and the Monkey, The Firefly Battle, Tokoyo and the Sea Serpent and other subjects of these enthralling myths. 32 plates. Many useful appendixes. Index. Bibliography.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I've been meaning to explore some of Philip K. Dick's books for years now. And it just seemed like it was time. I didn't realize how long ago he wrote. This book was written in 1969. I know, that's not centuries ago, and it isn't ancient by any means. But it is getting close to half a century old. And it takes place in 1992. So at the time it was written by someone trying to imagine the world almost 25 years into the future.

Here's the Publishers blurb:

Philip K. Dick's searing metaphysical comedy of death and salvation is a tour de force of panoramic menace and unfettered slapstick, in which the departed give business advice, shop for their next incarnation, and run the continual risk of dying yet again.

Shamans and Kushtakas: North Coast Tales of the Supernatural

Shamans and Kushtakas: North Coast Tales of the Supernatural
by Mary Giraudo Beck, Marvin Oliver (Illustrator)

I'm still reading Labyrinth , but it's a big hardcover, and just not very portable. I like having a book that I can

take to lunch or on the walk to the park with me. So I'll keep reading Labyrinth at home and on the weekends,

but I need a book to take with me to work. Something that I can read little bits of while I wait on a bench somewhere as

my Wife runs errands or visits the *shiver* craft store.

And I think I've got the the perfect one. Shamans and Kushtaka is a 127 page book of nine Tlingit and Haida

(Pacific Northwest Coast Natives) legends. Legends and myths from that culture are some of my favorite.

Here's the oddly short Publisher's Blurb:

"A powerful mix of history and legend dramatizes the values and traditions of Tlingit and Haida societies in Southeast

Alaska."

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

I was very tempted to start the next Hellboy book, but I know I get a bit obsessive sometimes, and variety is the spice of life, right? We picked up the hardcover Labyrinth recently. It was a book that both Sarah and I thought we could read and discuss. She's still got a few books to go before she'd be ready, but she reads a lot faster than I do. So I'm hoping if I start it now she'll be ready about the time I'm done.

Here's the publishers blurb
"July 2005. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth; between the skeletons, a stone ring, and a small leather bag.

Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade to stamp out heresy that will rip apart southern France, Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father as he leaves to fight the crusaders. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. As crusading armies led by Church potentates and nobles of northern France gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take great sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.

In the present, another woman sees the find as a means to the political power she craves; while a man who has great power will kill to destroy all traces of the discovery and everyone who stands in his way."

Hellboy: Odder Jobs edited by Christopher Golden

Hellboy: Odder Jobs edited by Christopher Golden




What can I say, I'm on a Hellboy kick.

Here's the publusher's blurb

As part of the ongoing Dark Horse celebration of Hellboy in 2004, Christopher Golden (author of the Hellboy novels The Lost Army and The Bones of Giants) has brought together a stellar array of talents to further the Hellboy canon. Included in this illustrious group are filmmakers Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Majestic), Mick Garris, Guillermo del Toro (Blade 2, The Devil's Backbone, Hellboy), and novelists Charles de Lint, Graham Joyce, Kim Newman, and Sharyn McCrumb, as well as many others. Lavishly illustrated by creator Mike Mignola!

B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs by Mike Mignola and Guy Davis

B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs
by Mike Mignola and Guy Davis
ISBN 1593072880

When Hellboy dropped out of the Hellboy comics I was more than a little skeptical. But the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense carries on. This is the third in the BPRD series, and even without Hellboy it's a good story. If you aren't much of a graphic novel reader the Hellboy series makes a great starting point. It's a fast fun series with well developed characters and a good story behind it.

Freaks of the Storm by Randy Cerveny

Freaks of the Storm
By Randy Cerveny
ISBN 1560258012



This novel is split up into separate sections dealing with different weather phenomena. Snow, rain, lightning, tornadoes, etc. And then each chapter give a few examples of some of the stranger event recorded by man. Each chapter ends with a little bit on safety for that given weather event.

The stories are well told. It's obvious that the author is a true weather enthusiast. I got the distinct impression that with each retelling he gets excited by his own stories all over again. There are stories of blood rains, and ball lightning, frog storms and frigid snow storms. When possible scientific explanations are given for some of the stranger occurrences. But there are still plenty of unsolved mysteries.

The books lends itself nicely to reading chunk by chunk. A chapter before bed, maybe another chapter on lunch break, and before I knew it the book was over. Sometimes I wished that the chapter could have been longer, and that the stories would have been flushed out a bit more. The book was well edited, the fat was well trimmed, and what you get is the best of the stories the author has to share told in a precise quick moving fashion.

7 out of 10

Dragon and the Unicorn by A. A. Attanasio

I was fated to read this book. We were at Barnes and Noble and I had forgotten my book list. And I'm kinda in a dry spell right now anyway. I need to find some good books. I decided to just wander up and down the isles in the fiction arena. As I was just starting down the fantasy isle a book with a stark black and white cover caught my eye.

When I got cloer the book, perched face outward on the shelf, fell into the isle at my feet. Fate? or over stocked shelves? And aren't the two really the same thing anyway?

Raisins are graps, pickles are cucumbers and fate is jsut an over stocked shelf....

So I bought the book.

Here's the publishers blurb.
"Beneath every beloved legend there is a deeper legend still, etched in

ancient stone. The Dragon and the Unicorn begins before the beginning

of Time, as light first cools to matter, bearing within it the electron

glow of lost Heaven. Attanasio's epic tale of a quest for immortality

spans all history, human and demihuman, from the dung fires on the

steppes to the snows of the Himalayas, from the mudhut cities on

the Euphrates to the glass and steel towers of tomorrow, from the

hunt for the Unicorn's horn to the ceaseless wars of elf and dragon,

Celt and Roman. It is a quest that ends - and begins - in a

legend-heavy place at the edge of the Western Sea, with the first

cry of a King new born. A place called Tintagel. A King, the heir

Pendragon, called Eagle of Thor, or...Arthur."

Beyond Coincidence, by Martin Plimmer and Brian King

The premise of this book intrigued me. Along the lines of that everyday magic sort of thing. The notion that there is something bigger going on beneath the surface appeals to me.


Here's the publishers blurb.

"Coincidence? Or something beyond coincidence? Is someone playing with us? Could it be God? Or are we, as some scientists have suggested, hyperaware of our hyperconnected universe whose weblike workings we can only dimly discern?" From magic and religion to subatomic particles and the laws of probability, Beyond Coincidence deeply explores the roots of luck, odds, and circumstance, while telling amazing stories that will have you shaking your head.

The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny

I'm a sucker for vampire books and dream books. If they look even vaguely interesting, or if they look like they might have a new approach to either topic, I buy them. As a result, I've got more than a couple that i picked up on a whim and haven't read yet.

This one for instance was half pushed under the bad and had gathered an admirable layer of dust. Something about the premise seems familiar, but I don't remember anything about the characters or story line. So I'm reading it again.... or for the first time.... I'm really not sure.


Here's the publishers blurb

"His name is Charles Render, and he is a psychoanalyst, and a mechanic of dreams. A Shaper. In a warm womb of metal, his patients dream their neuroses, while Render, intricately connected to their brains, dreams with them, makes delicate adjustments, and ultimately explains and heals.
Her name is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry. She wants desperately to become a Shaper, though she has been blind from birth.

Together, they will explore the depths of the human mind — and the terrors that lurk therein. "

The Dream Book by Gillian Kemp

The Dream Book, Dream Spells, Nighttime potions and rituals and other magical sleep formulas by Gillian Kemp


I picked this book up on a bargain bin again. 30% off 14.95, and I'm a sucker for these little dream encyclopedias. I admit it, most of them turn out to be crap. But I keep buying them anyways. I think I've gotten a little pickier, but I suspect my wife would disagree. When I picked this one up she said "you'll never read that anyway, it will just sit on the shelf."
"nah-uh" I said, summoning all my intellectual powers of retort, "I'll start it tonight in fact".
So I bought the book, and I'm starting it tonight.
Here's the publishers blurb;

"Discover why you dream and the magical meanings behind your sleeping symbols. Learn how to keep a dream notebook, create dream spells and magical sleep formulas, and how to tell the future and make wishes come true. The extensive A-Z dictionary includes updated definitions for the new millennium.

Author Biography: Gillian Kemp has been telling fortunes since the age of twelve and is the author of The Good Spell Book, The Fortune-Telling Book, and The Love Spell Box. Using her experiences as a clairvoyant medium, she is a frequent magazine and cable television contributor in her native country of England.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

I've just started The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

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I'm excited, she's always been one of my favourite authors and I've had this book sitting on the shelf for a while. I just got through the preface last night when I fell alseep (hey, it was late, and I'm not young anymore).

But here's the publisher's blurb.
When The Left Hand of Darkness first appeared in 1969, the original jacket copy read, "Once in a long while a whole new world is created for us. Such worlds are Middle Earth, Dune - and such a world is Winter." Twenty-five years and a Hugo and Nebula Award later, these words remain true. In Winter, or Gethen, Ursula K. Le Guin has created a fully realized planet and people. But Gethen society is more than merely a fascinating creation. The concept of a society existing totally without sexual prejudices is even more relevant today than it was in 1969. This special 25th anniversary edition of The Left Hand of Darkness contains not only the complete, unaltered text of the landmark original but also a thought-provoking new afterword and four new appendixes by Ms. Le Guin. When the human ambassador Genly Ai is sent to Gethen, the planet known as Winter by those outsiders who have experienced its arctic climate, he thinks that his mission will be a standard one of making peace between warring factions. Instead the ambassador finds himself wildly unprepared. For Gethen is inhabited by a society with a rich, ancient culture full of strange beauty and deadly intrigue - a society of people who are both male and female in one, and neither. This lack of fixed gender, and the resulting lack of gender-based discrimination, is the very cornerstone of Gethen life. But Genly is all too human. Unless he can overcome his ingrained prejudices about the significance of "male" and "female," he may destroy both his mission and himself.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susana Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susana Clarke

Finally! I've finished the book. This has to be the longest I've spent on that number of pages. 1 Month, 4 days. That's almost unheard of for me. Not that I'm a speed reader. But I keep a fairly steady pace.

The last 100 to 150 pages almost redeemed the rest of the book. Then ending was good. But it's where evverything interesting took places. The previous 700 and some pages were all set up. Now I know that you need set up to build up the characters, to get the reader engaged in the story, to build the tension and get ready for any plot twists. But this was a bit too much. This could have been a fun 500 page novel.

So many of the asides or little tales that were insterted were neither interesting, nor neccessary. The reviews for this book were great. The critics loved it. And I'm left feeling like maybe I didn't get something. Maybe there was some joke, or angle that I missed out on.

I know that the humor is dry, and I'm not so thick headed as to not catch sarcasm. But dry without witty just isn't funny, and ironic without purpose just doesn't get to me. Almost every critical review that i read acknowledges that it takes her a while to get up to speed. Some say it took 100 pages to find her pace, others admit that they were half-way through the book before they realyl started to enjoy it. I put it at closer to 4/5th myself. And remember, those are people paid to read and review. So they were going to finish it, no matter what. Most people find that if a book hasn't grabbed them by the first 100 pages, or heaven forbid, the first half of the book, they are either going to put it down and pick up something else, or plow through it with a sense of duty rather than enjoyment.

And I still feel like I was misled. It's nothing different. An intersting story, drawn out too long, but nothing different. The elves are elves, the faeries are faeries, and magicians recite spells like you've always imagined they would. There's nothing new there.

I've read worse fantasy. Much much worse. And if I was coming form one of those books into this one, I might have held a higher opinion. But int he last 2-3 years I've stumbled upon some really great authors and some fantastic books. And this just doesn't measure up.

Over all, I'm glad that I finished it, and the interesting ending raises my opinion of it. But it only managed to raise it to just a smidge below an average book.

I wouldn't recommend it, and had I known what it would be like from the beginning I wouldn't have started it myself.

4.5 out of 10