I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN: JUNE 2010 EDITION

[defrog]

Book reviews: part of a balanced breakfast.

JUST FINISHED

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson
I haven’t read Jackson since high school (and those being her two most famous writings, The Haunting Of Hill House and “The Lottery”), and I don’t see her books on the shelves here much. So I thought I’d revisit her with this, her last novel, about Merricat Blackwood, who lives on the edge of a small town with her sister and uncle. They are hated by almost everyone because one of them allegedly murdered the rest of the family with poison. It’s a masterful study of agoraphobia and small-town hatred, and Jackson makes it seem intense yet almost magical in a way. Neil Gaiman cites Jackson as an influence, and you can see it here, so if nothing else, Gaiman fans should definitely try this. And the rest of you should too.

JUST STARTED

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
I like Asimov’s robot stories, but the Foundation series always looked too epic for my taste. But puffdoggydaddy  and bedsitter23  have assured me repeatedly that it’s worth reading, so I’m taking a chance with it – and so far, it does seem to be paying off.

RECENT TITLES

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Part memoir and part running diary, Murakami writes about his experiences as a marathon runner, why he does it and how it relates to his writing. It’s written in Murakami’s usual breezy, engaging style, so you don’t have to be into running to get something out of it, but if yr looking for a lot of insights into his novels or writing process, you won’t find much here.

Thicker Than Water by Mike Carey
The fourth book in what’s going to be a six-book series with Felix Castor, hard-boiled London exorcist at a time when the dead are coming back as ghosts, zombies and worse. The basic plot revolves around a housing estate whose residents are becoming increasingly dangerous, and the murder of one resident who writes Castor’s name in blood at the crime scene, and like the other books, Carey populates a complex but interesting story with even more interesting characters, with plenty of black humor all round. Unlike the others, this one ends on a cliffhanger, so be warned. Anyway, Carey continues to impress me, and given the revelations in this episode, I’m looking forward to see where he’s going to take this.

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski
Modern pulp fiction with an attention-grabbing premise: employees are informed at a meeting that their company is actually a front for a secret spy agency that’s closing them down ... to include killing all the employees. Chaos and grim violence ensue, as well as spook surrealism as we find out everyone’s agendas. It’s all pretty far-fetched, and in some ways that’s the whole point, but somehow I just wasn’t really sold on the idea.

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
A series of slightly interconnected short stories, mostly about Trurl and Klapaucius, two “constructors” in a mechanized universe and their adventures. But this being Lem, who saw SF as a vehicle for satire and philosophy, this is nowhere near that straightforward – it’s SF only if you consider The Little Prince to be SF. Lem’s prose is normally fast and fantastical to the point that you really have to pay attention to follow it – that’s three times as true here, as the details and stories are pretty surreal (imagine Asimov’s robot novels writen by the guys at Fafblog). There’s a lot of good stuff here, but you do have to work for it.

A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
This was my first time ever reading Burroughs, and ... well, it may be the last for awhile. To be sure, Burroughs had a very rich imagination in terms world-building Barsoom (and of course I can forgive the scientific inaccuracies, though the question of how he gets to Mars takes some serious belief suspension), but it does read more like a travelogue than an adventure novel. I realize it’s his first-ever novel, and I’m assured by fans that the series gets better as it goes. Still, I’m not in any hurry to come back to this.

Life on Mars,

This is dF