I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (SEPTEMBER 2011 EDITION)

[defrog]

Because it’s not worth reading unless I blog my half-assed idiosyncratic opinion of it.

JUST FINISHED

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
I’ve mainly avoided the literary mash-ups that Grahame-Smith practically invented with Pride And Prejudice And Zombies partly because I had no interest in the original versions and didn’t believe just adding zombies would help, and partly because I didn’t really believe the joke would be sustainable for a whole book. But I picked this one up since it’s not based on a literary work. And as a “secret history” of vampires in America, Lincoln’s life-long battle with them and how it all ties into the Civil War, it’s actually pretty good and strikingly well researched enough to make it believable, apart from the occasional helpings of cheese. I do think Grahame-Smith really pushes his luck at the end, but otherwise I’d recommend it, although not if you don’t like depressing books (Lincoln’s life was a tragic one even without vampires figuring into it).

JUST STARTED

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein
One of the books from the NPR Sci-Fi/Fantasy list that I hadn’t read yet, but did have in the queue. The basic premise – Luna is a penal colony, and a small group of residents plot revolution – sounds promising enough, and I generally like Heinlein, so we’ll see how it goes.

RECENT TITLES

Fool by Christopher Moore
In which Moore rewrites King Lear with the court fool as the protagonist. It’s more of an ode to British comedy than a Shakespeare tribute, with Moore taking more than a few liberties with the plot and characters, particularly when it comes to shagging and grammar, as well as the fool’s role in all the skullduggery. It’s good fun, and you don’t need to have read King Lear to get any of it (and I never read Lear, so take it from me).

The Grave Robbers’ Chronicles 1: Cavern Of The Blood Zombies by Xu Lei
An English translation of a best-selling series from mainland China (written by a guy who runs a trading company and wrote it in his spare time) about modern-day grave robber Uncle Three raiding booby-trapped tombs and fighting vampires, corpse-eating bugs and zombies with his nephew. Volume 1 is pretty much just that, and ends on a cliffhanger, but I don’t know that I’ll be up for Volume 2. The actual story is okay and puts a Chinese twist on the whole Temple Of Doom subgenre. The problem is that there’s not a single likeable character in it – everyone in it pretty much acts like a jerk. It may be a cultural thing, but it’s not really for me.

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
In which Discworld discovers Rock’n’Roll, and the human granddaughter of Death suddenly finds she’s inherited the job. It’s one of the better Discworld books, at least if you appreciate all the rock/music business in-jokes. Apart from that, there’s not much I can add. 

Doom Patrol, Vol 2: The Painting That Ate Paris, by Grant Morrison, Richard Case and John Nyberg
More weirdness from Morrison’s take on Doom Patrol, in which the Brotherhood Of Dada seeks to change reality by stealing a painting that can literally consume whoever looks at it, followed by a story arc where the Cult Of The Unwritten Book seeks to summon the Decreator to destroy the world. Only Grant Morrison could come up with plot lines like that.

That’s absurd,

This is dF