Collected Miscellany

Kath Trevelyn by Jeremy Cooper

Booklist

Kath Trevelyan, a 72-year-old widow with 3 grown daughters and 5 grandchildren, “intends to remain alive until the moment she dies.” She lives at Parsonage Farm, in the foothills of the Kingsways in Somerset, England, and spends part of each day in her workshop with an ancient Albion printing press–“her joy.” After years of “contented widowhood,” Kath unexpectedly begins to enjoy the companionship of her neighbor, John Garsington, a retired art dealer 14 years her junior. Over tea or wine they carry on esoteric discussions of British illustrators and engravers and literature they mutually admire; their day trips are embellished with dollops of local British history. Alongside Kath and John’s burgeoning relationship, Cooper makes astute observations on the generational interplay between both Kath and her middle daughter, Esther, a frequent visitor, and John and his distressingly pompous and emotionally detached mother. Interjected with thoughts on the meaning of art, the often fragile artistic psyche, and the conundrum of aging, Cooper’s engaging third novel challenges the intellect in diverse ways.

The Alpine Fantasy of Victor B: And Other Stories by Jeremy Akerman

Book Description

The Alpine Fantasy of Victor B and Other Stories brings together seventeen of Britain’s leading contemporary artists in one collection. Moving, humorous, and sometimes deeply macabre, these stories deal with dementia, mortality, mass murder, and madness. The Alpine Fantasy of Victor B and Other Stories is a haunting exploration of the impulses that drive today’s artists.

Crossing the Dark by Heidi W. Boehringer

Tangled Web UK Review:

This is first of all a raw, heart-breakingly personal story, hard-hitting, urgently and unflinchingly written, that happens to have important things to say about the treatment of rape in our society. Be warned, there is no feel-good ending. But the despairing if finally ambiguous closing pages, leave you, like good fiction should, with more questions than answers. You won’t forget this one in a hurry.

Congrats to Olen Steinhaurer are in order as it seems his forthcoming novel, The Tourist, has been optioned by Warner Bros and George Clooney.  Nice to see Olen get some mainstream success given his obvious talent.

His fellow Nomad, Kevin Wignall, has a new book coming out, Who is Conrad Hirst?, which is also on track to be made into a film.  Look for my review of the book next week.

As I noted in a comment, I am excited about how I can coolly note that I was a fan of these writers before they became rich and famous.  You know, like people used to do with REM.

Congrats to Olen.  I can’t wait to read the book that is garnering such success in manuscript form.

The whole build it and they will come thing doesn’t seem to apply to this blog.

I was hoping that re-establishing this blog at its original url might jump start things a bit and get me back on the book blogging bicycle so to speak.  So far, not so much.

Despite a link from Frank, my attempt to solicit some interesting comments and give away some comic books generated literally not one single comment or attempt to win the comics.

So far the traffic from this blog is about 99% Google and other search engines.

This is going to come off sounding like sour grapes or whining, but I don’t mean it as such.  Really, I don’t

I have come to realize that there is so much content on the web that it is increasingly difficult to break through the noise and develop an audience.  It takes a lot of work.  I thought that I could just send out a few emails, post some content and begin to attract readers.

But I think it is going to require more than that at this point.  For a variety of reasons I have lost all the momentum I had built up over the years of blogging.  Now I am trying to find a “value added” proposition for both myself and for potential readers; a process and product that I both enjoy producing and one that readers find worth reading.

Despite the nature of this post, I don’t plan on having a great deal of naval gazing posts or lame posts about how I am too busy to post.  I hope to simply share my thoughts about books and ideas in a way that is thought provoking, entertaining, and/ or useful. 

That should be challenging enough.

You may be asking yourself the age old question: why does a grown man continue to read children’s and young adult books? Well, I could offer the excuse that as a father I want to be in touch with what kids are reading, but my children (age 32 months and 3 weeks respectively) aren’t really reading at this point.

No, I read them because I find them interesting and entertaining. They are often uniquely designed and illustrated and full of  the kind of imagination that sometimes gets left out of “adult fiction.” They make for a quick – depending on the size – but fun read. I particularly enjoy books that develop characters and explore a magical or fantastic setting over the course of series. 

One such series I have enjoyed is the Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. I enjoyed the first five books and was happy to see that the author’s were taking the fun in a new direction. The Nixie’s Song is the first book in a new series called Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles. Here is a quick description from the publisher:

The Spiderwick Chronicles leave the old-fashioned charm of New England far behind and head south for some fiendish faerie fun in the hot Florida sun. Eleven-year-old Nicholas Vargas only thinks his life has been turned upside down after his developer father remarries and moves his new wife and daughter into the soon-to-be completed Mangrove Hollow. But an “expedition” to a nearby lake turns up a little nixie with a giant problem – the huge, lumbering, fire-breathing variety – and it’s up to Nick; his stepsister, Laurie; and his big brother, Julian (plus a familiar face from the original Spiderwick Chronicles) to figure out the best way to stop a host of rampaging giants before all of Florida goes up in smoke.

DiTerlizzi and Black have a good sense of humor – they even make a rather satirical appearance in the book – and have created an imaginative concept (or adapted one) but the books also deal with real life issues and relationships (divorce and relocation; sibling rivalry; or what it is like to have step mom and sister in the most recent volume) in interesting ways The stories are fast paced and fun and have just the right mix of the whimsical, the frightening, and the fantastical. Plus, they have great illustrations and cover art. 

So if you have young readers, or not so young ones, who haven’t yet discovered this entertaining series I highly recommend they check it out.  The web site is a fun place to click around as well.

– A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 – The Space Race Begins by Michael D’Antonio

Booklist

Competing with Matthew Brzezinski’s Red Moon Rising (2007), D’Antonio’s story of the space age’s opening shots has less about politics, more about rocketry, and is archly exuberant about the improvisations of the first orbital objects. To call them satellites might overdignify Sputnik and America’s first astronaut, Gordo the squirrel monkey. D’Antonio sardonically stresses that they and the unreliable rockets that blasted them into the heavens were ad hoc gadgets, rushed to launch pads in the frantic propaganda competition between the U.S. and the USSR. Any weird rocket idea in 1957-58 seemed like a sane idea, such as launching atom bombs into space or the recorded voice of President Eisenhower, assuring earthlings of America’s desire for peace. Besides narrating countdowns, missile failures, and nuclear explosions, D’Antonio also evokes the boomtown atmosphere of Cape Canaveral through two young reporters, Jay Barbree and Wickham Stivers, who cut their teeth on the space-age story. An entertaining writer, D’Antonio delivers the technological heroics on which spaceflight fans are keen.

– Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics by William Bonner

From the Inside Flap

Collectively, people think and act in ways that are different from how they think and act as individuals. Understanding these differences, says William (Bill) Bonner–a longtime maverick observer of the financial world and the vagaries of the investing public–is vital to preserving your wealth and personal dignity. From the witch hunts of the early modern world to the war on terror, from the dot-com mania to the real estate bubble, people have always been caught up in frauds, conceits, and wild guesses–often with devastating results. In Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, Bonner and coauthor Lila Rajiva show groupthink at work in an improbable array of instances throughout history and reveal why swimming against the current pays. They explain why people so often abandon good sense and good behavior to “follow the crowd” and show you how to avoid getting caught up in the public spectacles around you.

Continue reading →