The Poison Eaters & Other Stories

So unless you've been living under a rock, or perhaps a bridge, you should have heard of Holly Black. She did this Spiderwick series... which became a movie after selling more copies than there are specks of glitter in Stephanie Meyer's work. And before that she wrote Tithe, an amazing surburban dark fantasy. So what the hell is she doing writing short stories? The answer is simple: she's kicking ass!

The Breach by Patrick Lee

First, a word of warning about Patrick Lee's The Breach: there are some disgustingly gruesome scenes in here, including one that is almost Gretchen Lowell-worthy.

Anyway, I went into this novel expecting fast-paced, adrenaline-filled entertainment, and this is exactly what I got.

After spending more than a decade in jail, Travis Chase left Minnesota for Alaska. On the first anniversary of his release, Travis sets off on a solo hike, avoiding as many people as possible. A few days into the hike, he spots the wreckage of a plane. The crash is recent, but strangely, there is no sign of helicopters or search-and-rescue teams in the area. Even more disturbing, everyone on the plane is dead, and not because of the crash itself. They'd all been shot.

Have Clues, Will Travel: Luke Harding, F.I.

How would you like your mystery served with a side of science fiction? I found I liked it just fine.

Published in the UK and the US between 2005-2008, the Traces books by UK author Malcolm Rose are the tightly written first cases in a young Forensic Investigator's professional life.

In Futuristic England, where the North is posh, and the South -- including London and Cambridge -- is a lawless, slum-infested disaster, the Authorities have taken over.

The Authorities are everything -- your parents, your teachers, and Big Brother, all rolled into one. They've instituted a few programs, to insure maximum productivity, prosperity and satisfaction for those who participate. The Authorities are in charge of childcare centers, educational facilities and job placement. When you come of age, The Authorities will also arrange a Pairing for you, because they know you best, and can do better at hooking you up with your future mate than you could ever do yourself.

There are few surprises in this new world, because The Authorities strive to take the surprises out of life. There are no more extremes -- most people are a homogeneous light brown -- a perfect multicultural mix. Most people do what they're told, take the jobs they're suited for, and the Pairings they're given. The Authorities don't seem that bad...to most people...mostly...

Short Story Remix 2: Discovering some classics

About a year and a half ago, I mused on the possibilities of creating your own short story collection. How, in this day and age of music shuffles and home-grown compilations, that it would be cool to put together a list of short stories that you would put into your own anthology. It’s about time to do that again, I think. Only, this time, I want to make a collection composed of nothing but freebies, works in the public domain. And to do so, we’re going to reach way, way back, to old stuff, and see if, in putting them together in a new context, we can see them not in a moldy-oldy kind of way, but see them fresh, see them as something new…

When being a teen is really all about survival

Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes just might be one of my favorite reads of all time. Set during one week in 1973, it's the story of high school senior Karl Shoemaker’s last-ditch attempt to be normal. Achieving that goal is no easy feat, however, for Karl is a long time member of the “Madman Underground," a group of teens with a variety of troubling family issues that has marooned them in mandatory group therapy sessions. Karl’s father, the town’s former mayor, is dead from cancer, and his hippie mother is a binge partier who has filled their house with cats. The other kids in the group are struggling with incest, alcoholism, physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and just flat out family weirdness. What they have in common is being branded by teachers as screw-ups, then doomed to an endless array of therapists who don’t know what they're doing. The Madmen struggle along through chaos at home, varying degrees of teasing at school, and some true terror in their own minds. The week of normal that Karl embarks on ends up being a hugely significant period in all of their lives, culminating in the moment they embrace a communal friendship long denied, but stronger than any of them had anticipated. It’s also about a hell of a lot more than that and has some killer writing that should not be missed.

Barnes covers dozens of high school tropes, but turns them on their heads with ease. From the coach/lit teacher who insists that Huck Finn is not “a story about a couple of queers on a raft,” to the idiotic bullies, jocks, socials, farm boys, band geeks, drama queens, hoods, and on and on. Everyone you expect is here, but by definition the Madmen belong to themselves more than any clique, even though several walk a border between popular and weird. They can never separate themselves from the fact that once a week they are all together because something is wrong with them, and it can’t be fixed. Operation Be Fucking Normal is all Karl can think about, but high school is a narrative all its own, that can't be stopped no matter how hard you try. Karl juggles four jobs, keeps the house clean, buries the cats when the raccoons get them, attends AA meetings faithfully, and dreams of normalcy, but there is still the fact that the people he cares about most in the world -- and the ones who understand him better than anyone -- are all different kinds of not normal. Fortunately, Karl figures that out early on, and the story becomes more about survival and the benefits of being true to who you are, and who you want to be.

This is not a sweet or simple story, and at moments, the reality of what the Madmen suffer through can be quite daunting. But that is the point, as Barnes illustrates so perfectly in one passage: "While Huck had these problems, Tom Sawyer just wanted to play stupid games about being robbers and things -- that was something us Madmen talked about all the time, the way kids getting raped or beaten were sitting in class next to kids whose biggest concern was what to wear for homecoming.” Karl has problems, and so do his friends. Separately they're adrift, but together, even in the unlikeliest of circumstances, they save one another. In the end, there are a few adults as well who chip in when Karl needs them, and while no one in this story is perfect, a lot of them are decent and kind and good. And the Madmen prevail against mean classmates and foolish parents and really crappy circumstances. If that doesn’t make for a truly epic coming-of-age tale, I don’t know what does. Tales of the Madman Underground is one for the ages, pure and simple. A must read.

Cross posted from my Bookslut column - Tales was named a Printz Honor title for 2009.

Ronald Kidd's The Year of the Bomb

Ronald Kidd's The Year of the Bomb is a book I wish I'd thought of. I don't say that about many books. I don't particularly wish I'd thought of Harry Potter, for example (though it could be fun living in a Scottish castle, if you could keep the thing reasonably temperate), since it's different than what I write. But Kidd's "Bomb" is a very unusual stew of politics, film iconography, history and California specificity -- all in a terrific cautionary tale about what happens when we let fear dictate laws and policy.

It's the kind of blend I've attempted to go after in my own writing, but was here duly impressed with the easygoing way Kidd mixes his elements: In the mid-50's. a group of 12(ish) year olds are watching a film being shot in their home town of Sierra Madre, California: The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel, and staring Kevin McCarthy. Based on Jack Finney's cautionary tale about pod people taking over "real" personalities, it's been remade several times, though the original served as a kind of postwar Rorschach test: Was it about the perceived threat of "Communist" conformity we were allegedly fending off from the East? (Before all our factories were located there) Or was the story about Americans giving up their own "free will" in the face of Senator Joe McCarthy's paranoid investigations of "domestic enemies?"

Or both?

Here, Kidd pretty firmly comes down on the latter interpretation, while following the adventures of a certain Paul, and his pals Crank, Oz, and Arnie. They're already movie buffs, having ventured into L.A. to catch matinees, and when Body Snatchers comes to their own town, they're smitten with the Klieg lights of Hollywood. They're also smitten with a young actress named Laura, after whom they lust and love. Which means -- speaking as a former 12 year old boy -- they're constantly awkward and tongue-tied in her presence.

Kidd also brings legendary physicist Richard Feynman into the plot. Feynman lived nearby, and taught at Caltech in Pasadena. In his pre-Nobel Prize days, he was also briefly suspected of potentially being a spy, primarily because he expressed well-founded regrets on having helped develop the atomic bomb.

And of course, as Kidd's story ably tells us, once a state confuses healthy dissent with treason, we're all on the way to becoming Pod People, ourselves.

This is just one of the realizations Paul has in this coming of age -- hitting that age while simultaneously wishing he could be a grown up (in his pursuit of Laura), while also realizing grown-ups are much less sure of themselves, or life's "answers," than they let on.

But aside from its necessary and timely themes, the book's pleasures also rest in the deft blend of real characters with fictional ones, and its assured sense of place (SoCal of the era is vividly recreated), along with its knowledgeable grounding of movie making, and what sets and sound stages are like.

As the publishing biz itself becomes more and more like Hollywood filmmaking, it's somewhat surprising "a book like this got made" -- as we say about studio films that still manage to, well, surprise us.

I am, however, very glad it did.

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

Definition of monstrumology:
1: the study of life forms generally malevolent to humans and not recognized by science as actual organisms, specifically those considered products of myth and folklore.

2: the hunting of such creatures.

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey is the tale of Dr. Pellinore Warthrop and his assistant Will Henry. Will is an orphan under the care of Dr. Warthrop, a peculiar man who studies dangerous creatures and monsters. In the middle of the night in 1888, a nightmarish specimen is carted to the monstrumologist's home. Will can barely stand the sight of a half-eaten girl and an anthropuphagi, which is a vicious man-eating creature without a head. Will is forced to assist the intense doctor and is eventually led on a quest to find more of the creatures. Encased in this book are the three folios compiled by Will during their adventures.

Yancey, author of the memoir Confessions of a Tax Collector, has created quite a story here. It is as much about fear, perseverance and what we don't understand about our world, as it is about monsters with sharp teeth. Dr. Warthrop identifies fear as "the enemy" and relentlessly ignores the emotion, while Will is developing a healthy respect for fear. I'm glad to see this on some "best of" lists from 2009 because it is quite worthy of that distinction. This is a well-written, creepy read
in the vein of David Almond's Clay .

Be a Super-hero . . . Until You Grow Up.

Graphic novels and comic books aren't the only place to find super-heroes these days. Just have a look in Noble's Green, a town where kids can fly, have super-strength, can turn invisible. But in the novel Powerless (by Cody), the super-kids know there are four laws which guide their lives: 1. Use your powers to help. Never hurt. 2. The North Face and the Old Quarry are off-limits. Danger waits there. 3. It ends at thirteen. 4. Never, ever let grown ups know. From this great high concept, Cody tells the story of the new kid, the one who doesn't have the powers, but nevertheless finds himself in charge of unraveling the mystery behind these rules. And new kid Daniel can imagine, like any reader, what a remarkable gift it would be to have such extraordinary powers, just as he can imagine how horrible it must be to see your thirteenth birthday closing in and know it's all about to end. Worse yet, when your powers go, so does your memory of them, your memory of your friends; an entire part of your life simply disappears. Powerless is not only an exciting adventure that remembers the magic of old comic books, but a great mystery with surprises that keep coming. Most importantly, it's also a powerful statement on being a kid and being a hero (even without the powers).

And speaking of kids and super-heroes, what about the Marvel Adventures titles? All the big guys (and gals) in fast, fresh stories without the burden of continuity slowing them down. Just because they're labeled "All Ages" shouldn't give you pause either. Of all the comics out there, these comics most passionately and cleverly reflect the sense of fun and character-driven action that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko pioneered back in the day -- and believe me, I do not say that lightly. There's a lot of collections out there already, but if you're interested in investigating, check out Marvel Adventures Thor Featuring Captain America, Dr. Strange & Ant-Man Digest (by Tobin, Van Lente and Simonson), which includes a hilarious re-telling of Ant-Man's origin and also stars Spider-Man (even though they don't tell you). Marvel Adventures Spider-Man Volume 14: Thwip! Digest (by Tobin and Lolli) is also an excellent jumping-on point, filled with great fights, but also the human drama that Spidey is famous for.

Super-heroes aren't just for kids any . . . wait a second, maybe they are.

For Lincoln's Birthday

Tomorrow is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Self-educated, with "a passion to right wrong, a courage to translate that feeling into action, a resolution that carried him through any opposition, a belief and trust in God... A tragic intensity strangely coupled with a saving sense of humor marked all his days... he never lost... his human compassion..." (from a Dictionary of Names, published by Rodale in The Phrase Finder).

I thoroughly enjoyed a three-volume, shortened biography of him written by Carl Sandburg. Not sure if I'll ever read the original six-volume (!) set, but I love Sandburg, and he loved Lincoln, so who knows? David Herbert Donald's Lincoln was a best-seller, and is wonderful. Seriously. It blew me away.

But it, too, is rather long. So I want to recommend Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman.

An Anthology of Fantastic Zoology

The Book of Imaginary Beings is exactly the sort of book I would have been discouraged from reading as a teen. No plot, no scholarly analysis required, and in many ways probably seen as a shortcut to "real" reading in literature. Just one author's cyclopedic reference of the beings he has encountered in his life's reading – a literary Cliff's Notes as it were.

But this is exactly the sort of book I was craving. This alphabetic arrangement of the fantastical creatures would have done more to push me toward exploring other books than any teacher or librarian recommendation. I consider books like this a sort of "gateway" guide into possibilities for future exploration in reading; I would have then and I do even now.

Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine surrealist-fabulist, not only collects the fantastic beings of classic literature, but also the creations sprung from American and Chinese tall tales, the beasts from religious texts around the world, and the creatures recorded from the dream journals of other literary luminaries like Kafka, C.S. Lewis, and Poe.