I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN: MAY 2009 EDITION

[defrog]

Book reports! Swoooooooooooooon!

JUST FINISHED

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
I’ve never read Hammett (or seen any film version of his books), so I thought I’d start with the classic shamus Sam Spade chasing after a priceless MacGuffin. It’s a good yarn with a memorable cast of characters, but Hammett’s eye for detail and stage direction gets a little distracting for me. And I know Hammett/Spade was a heavy influence on Raymond Chandler, but given the false choice between Chandler’s hardboiled lyricism and Hammet’s functional prose, I’d give the edge to Chandler. Still, a good read, so I’ll give Hammett another go later.

JUST STARTED

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
It seems like a number of superhero novels appeared after Heroes became a TV hit, but this one seems more directly inspired by the classic comics, and also looks like a lot more fun with its ruminations on the life and times of a genius supervillain. Great title, anyway.

RECENT TITLES

Maul by Tricia Sullivan
Another attempt to add more female writers to my shelf, and this one paid off. It starts off with a teenage girl using a gun for a dildo, and things just get weirder from there, with two threads revolving around a siege in a shopping mall and a world where a virus is killing males and a mad scientist is experimenting on a clone to try and stop it. It’s one of the most twisted WTF things I’ve read in awhile. And it’s good. If you like Warren Ellis at all, you’ll dig this.

The Invisible Man by HG Wells
I’ve seen the movies but never read the book until now. It’s actually pretty good. Griffin is a well-written villain who’s clearly out of his mind, and illustrates that being invisible has its price. I created my own ‘invisible guy’ character ages ago, and he’s next on my “to do” list for novel projects, so this will help with my “research”.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Having seen two out of three film versions (the Vincent Price/Charlton Heston ones) 20 years ago, I figured it was time to see how the book held up, as I’ve never read Matheson. The overturning of vampire-genre conventions is good in itself, but Matheson also does a good job of capturing the frustration and loneliness of being the last living person on Earth.

Island Of The Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
This time Moore has fun with the idea of cargo cults in the Pacific Islands, where a disreputable pilot on the run from a cosmetics company CEO finds himself working for a missionary and his sexpot wife who are up to no good. There’s also a talking fruit bat. Starts off slow but kicks into gear about halfway through. Not his best, but enjoyable.

Spiderweb by Robert Bloch
Hard Case pulp fiction from the author of Psycho about a washed-up actor who gets blackmailed by an evil psychologist into swindling neurotic Hollywood producers. Better than it sounds, but didn’t really knock my socks off.

Evil genius,

This is dF