Summer Reading

I made this list for a friend, and thought it might be of interest to anyone else who doesn't know what to read next. If that's you (or if you, like me, are always looking to increase your reading list), here are 10 books (in no particular order) you might like to check out this summer: 

1. I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive by Steve Earle. [If you only read one novel this summer, make it this one. It's extraordinarily lovely.]

2. archy and mehitabel by Don Marquis. [Marvelous light reading if you've a fondness for century-old pop-culture witticisms and wickedness disquised as whimsicality.]

3. The End of the Line by Charles Clover. [If you only read one work of nonfiction this summer, make it this one. Fascinating, motivating, and tragically relevant. Please read it (and make everyone else read it, too).]

4. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler. [A prime example of why Mr. Chandler remains, for many of us, the king of the detective novel. I recommend reading this in a hammock while sipping a highball.]

5. Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger. [This is really interesting - especially if you've any interest in psychology, East Asia, global economics, and/or the really f*cked-up bits of modern societies and how they make sane people act crazy.]

6. Thousand Cranes by Kawabata Yasunari. [Probably my personal favourite Japanese novel (so far, anyhow). Slender, elegant, and bittersweet - a perfect read for a cool summer evening spent outdoors and alone.]

7. Kill Your Boyfriend by Grant Morrison, Philip Bond, & D'Israeli. [This is my all-time favourite comic book. Stylish, snappy, horrifying, hilarious, and, weirdly, kinda heartwarming. Strong storytelling and beautiful artwork.]

8. Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner. [A classic adventure novel. Smugglers, treasure, backgammon, England, scoundrels, thieves, rats, and the sea... If you love Treasure Island, don't miss this! An especial favorite of my Dad and myself.]

9. Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner. [If you happen to like fantasy novels, this one is particularly good. Kushner is an elegant stylist and a masterful storyteller.]

10. Lost Horizon by James Hilton. [This appeared rather mysteriously on my bookshelf, and, not one to turn my nose up at magically appearing books, I have been thoroughly enjoying it. Another classic, best known for originating 'Shangri-La,' this is surprisingly thoughtful for a paperback adventure romance. Delightfully '30s, and charmingly British in a slightly antiquated sort of a way.]

Film: 'Versus' (2000)

Despite this film's near-total lack of acting, dialogue, and a plot, it remains one of the most compulsively watchable I've seen. Is it the zombies? The thugs? The zombie thugs? All I can say is that I've seen this movie more times than I'm willing to admit, and will be seeing it at least that many times again. I watch it whenever I'm feeling down; how could anyone fail to feel better when faced with swords, guns, and leather-clad prettyboys kicking zombie heads off? This is comfort cinema at its very best.

Despite the fact that, lacking a plot, the movie goes from one fight scene to the next with almost nothing in between, the beautiful and rather dreamy choreography makes it feel like an arty Yakuza-themed ballet rather than non-stop murderous violence. Endearingly sweet-faced tough guy Sakaguchi Taku stars as an amnesiac escaped convict with an unerring eye for fashion (even if he has to rob a corpse or three to complete his 'look'), who never loses a fight and has no compunctions whatsoever about hitting girls. Toss in a reincarnated megalomaniac, a bizarre duo of extraordinarily dumb detectives, and a creeptastic 'Forest of Resurrection' where even the dead keep on fighting, and somehow that all adds up to the most enjoyable action movie since - um - actually, I can't think of any other action films as enjoyable as this one (not even Terminator 2, or the countless Van Damme and Lundgren flicks that were my bad-day blanket movies before I discovered Versus). I think this is as good as the genre gets.

Film: 'The Commitments' (1991)

[Yeah, I know this update is long-overdue. I was ill, and then I was ill, and then I was ill, and then I got my arm out of a cast and had hideously painful physiotherapy and hurt too much to type. Bite me.]

Have you seen this movie? No? Man, what are you still doing on this blog?! Go beg, borrow, or st - er, 'rent' - a copy, right now! I just saw this for the first time, and it's definitely a new all-time favourite. Why, you ask? Well - there's the soundtrack, for one. And the soundtrack. Oh, and - the soundtrack... (The rest of the film is fantastic too, but, as you can probably tell, I can't get over how good the music was.)

Based on one of Roddy Doyle's novels (which I, shamefully, have yet to read), the film chronicles the making and breaking of a North Dublin soul band. It's a good story, produced and acted unusually well - and the cast really did perform their own songs, which makes it even better. A skillful blend of high-flying hilarity and grim reality keeps any potential dull moments from rearing their monotonous heads, and the irresistible energy of great music drives the film from beginning to end with never a note out of place. If you like music, you will love this movie.

Film: 'Yojimbo' (1961)

This film should probably be renamed "Mifune Toshiro Kills Everyone." The very process of sitting still and watching it will make you feel completely epic, awesome, and every other commonly (and delightfully) misused adjective you can think of. Seriously, why are you still looking at this when you could be looking at this? :

Film: 'House' (1977)

This is really odd. It's supposed to be a horror movie, but it never quite feels like one. There's this gentle dreamlike quality to it that mutes the horror aspects in the most curious ways; afterwards I felt like I'd just watched something happy despite all the technically rather horrible deaths. I'm not sure why, really, but I enjoyed it immensely - particularly the beautiful saturated colours, which unlike many late-70s films don't feel overdone; the intense palette is really well suited to the fairy-tale nature of the piece.

Perhaps the oddest part is that, despite a few very '70s costumes, the film really doesn't feel dated at all. The special effects are very fake in a way that looks completely intentional, which makes them seem strangely modern rather than clumsy, cheap, or old-fashioned. I really liked the soundtrack, which is understated and pretty. It's kind of a baffling film, and I definitely recommend it.

Book: Grant Morrison 'Supergods' (2011)

This may be the most appetizing of all books about comics. Part evolutionary history of the superhero, part memoir of a life defined by this quirky and oft-maligned medium; served up in bite-sized chapters (I defy you to read just one!) by the quirky and oft-maligned writer of Arkham Asylum, The Invisibles, Kill Your Boyfriend (plug: this may be my favourite comic in the whole world), and All-Star Superman. Fascinating read - there are so many superheroes I've never even heard of! - best enjoyed with a notebook near at hand for keeping track of all the comics (also books, films, and records) you'll want to look up. A nice mix of straight-up history and personal commentary; Morrison manages to insert his opinions regarding most of the content without being obnoxious about it (a neat trick, that). The main thing is that his book is just plain entertaining, as books about comics ought be be and so often aren't. It's quite good fun to know why he thinks Watchmen was important even though he doesn't really like it, and an entirely different kind of fun reading about his transformatively psychedelic out-of-body adventure in Kathmandu. I really like the way he's woven strands of his life story in and out of the narrative, so that the book is never really about him but also never really not about him; it's an unusual and a lovely method of autobiography. Highly recommended!

Film: 'The Hunger' (1983)

This one's been on my watch list for years, and, laid up with a nasty cold and lured by the promise of vampire David Bowie, lesbian Catherine Deneuve, and Bauhaus, I watched it. Poor, misguided me.

It starts off alright, with a vaguely creepy club scene involving a very brief appearance by the promised Bauhaus (inevitably performing Bela Lugosi's Dead, of course). From there it's all downhill...

First Bowie, who's not really a vampire (more of a bloodsucking groupie, really) shrivels up into an ancient zombie-thing, kills an annoying teenybopper, and then - flakes - away. Then Susan Sarandon (ecch) gets naked for no good reason at all (double ecch). Catherine Deneuve doesn't really get naked at all, which is quite disappointing. Everyone acts like a jerk and then dies, except for Catherine Deneuve, who shrivels up into a witchy old thing and gets locked in a box forever and ever, and Susan Sarandon, who takes over as head slutty vampire (ecch x eternity).

Film: 'Priest' (2011)

Q: Is it good?
A: No.
Q: Is it predictable, derivative, poorly scripted, and full of obviously fake special effects?
A: Yes.
Q: Do I love it?
A: ...Yes.

Okay, so the acting is wooden, the dialogue is bland, the story is...thin, to say the least, and the critics hated it. But it's fun! The unconvincing but spooky theocratic post-apocalypse setting is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of chilling escapist fantasy. The monochromatic desertified wastelands are quite beautiful despite being so obviously computer-generated, and the solar-powered bikes the characters race across the sands on at ridiculously high speeds are really quite cool. Oh, yeah, and it always makes me happy when movie vampires are grotesquely portrayed as slimy, insectoid, eyeless, cave-dwelling monsters rather than sparkly undead noblemen. These vamps are definitely not sexy, unless you have a massive thing for drippy grey slime. I suppose they'll never make a sequel to this film, but I really hope I'm wrong!

Book: Otto Penzler, ed. 'Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!' (2011)

Dude. There are so many zombies in this book. George Romero would plotz if he saw all the zombies in this book, that's how many there are. Verdict? Awesome!

I'm actually pretty goddamned zombied out; their constant influx in recent years has raised the durned varmints to nearly the same pinnacle of ubiquity as vampires (well, okay, maybe not quiiite that high a level of cultural saturation). What makes this anthology cool and different is that most of the stories are old, and when I say old, I mean even older than your mom (well, okay, maybe not your mom; I hear she was the one who wrapped The Mummy...). The majority of these zombies date from the 1920s through 40s, when they originally graced the pages of delightfully lurid pulp productions like Weird Tales, and the prose surrounding them is satisfyingly over-the-top. H. P. Lovecraft puts in a few token appearances, as do a great many views of Haiti. The shambling brain-eater is almost (though not entirely) a non-presence here; in hisorher place we find the Svengali-drugged sleepwalker; the unearthed corpse controlled by one sick bastard of a shaman; the accident victim returned to something resembling life by the Powah of Troo Luv (sickening but sorta sweet, like rotten candy)... If you're in the mood for delightfully diverting trash, give this landfill of undead 'literature' a go.

Book: Walter Jon Williams 'This Is Not A Game'

I grabbed this off the sci-fi paperback shelf at the library without really looking at it, because I was desperate and because the tagline on the cover is sort of cool ( 'a novel of greed, betrayal, and social networking'). This technique of reading-material-acquisition usually leads to me reading half of a boring book, getting bored, and giving it to someone else so they can become bored too. I actually made my dad, Mr. Scientific Guinea Pig, read this one first, because I was worried it would be too boring for me. He loved it! After I watched him rapidly turn pages while gleefully chortling for a couple of days, it became imperative that I read the book myself. I'm awfully glad I did, because it's awesome!  The combination of ARGs, rampant gold-farming bots running amok, product-of-Caltech geeks who accidentally crash bits of the global economy, and also a handful of murders, makes for a most excellently thrilling read.

Special bonus: a lot of writers in the cyberpunk genre seem to find it impossible to write convincing female characters*. I think this is mostly because they sit down and try to write about a 'girl' as opposed to writing about a 'person,' and everyone knows that girls don't think or act anything like normal people do. Mr. Williams understands that gender is irrelevant to geekery; protagonist Dagmar, who is most definitely a geek, is a very believable girl character just because she thinks and acts like a geek rather than like a geek's idea of a girl. This is delightful.

* excepting the illustrious William Gibson, whose Bigend Trilogy is full of wonderfully lifelike ladies who bear a suspicious resemblance to human beings.

Book: Daniel Silva 'Portrait of a Spy' (2011)

I think it's time for Mr. Silva to make good on his often-broken promise to let poor Gabriel Allon retire. Allon had a great run in his blood-and-paint-spattered career as mild-mannered art restorer by day, Israeli James Bond by night, but he has at last fallen prey to one of the hazards of being a long-running fictional character: he's become a formula. Portrait is book 11 in what has been a pretty good series of politically-based espionage thrillers. The first few were entertaining; the middle books were outstandingly good. Sadly, the later books seem mostly comprised of reworked bits from those excellent middle books.

The recipe: Gabriel and his beautiful young wife retire to Cornwall so he can paint in peace. An international terrorism crisis occurs. Gabriel says 'oh, yes, of course I will un-retire and save the world from the Arabs, but just this once. Again.' He and his team of super-spies come up with a dangerous plan to catch the terrorist leaders, which inevitably hinges on recruiting a beautiful woman who is rich, famous, or otherwise special. She bravely does her part, then gets captured and tortured. Gabriel kills a lot of bad guys, then sacrifices himself to save her. Then he goes back to Cornwall to recover, and swears he'll never spy/kill/save the world again. Until the next book.This one's a little different because the beautiful rich woman gets killed, but it turns out to be okay because she was dying anyhow.

Book 12 comes out later this year. I'll probably read it, out of morbid curiosity, habit, and the hope that something different will happen this time...

Film: 'The Graves' (2009)

Spoiler alert: BOOBS!

Joking aside, this film is, sadly, pretty awful. It's supposed to be a horror film, but it's not even a little bit scary. It's also neither funny nor original, which puts it pretty far down the list of things you might want to see. I watched it solely because it contains the only candidate I support for the upcoming United States presidential election (read his blog, it's kind of wonderful). Unfortunately his part is far too brief, and there's really nothing else to look forward to. Except the aforementioned boobs. Leading lady Clare Grant, though her role is rather flat, is possessed of a truly impressive rack. Thankfully, she spends most of the film running. While wearing a really low-cut shirt.

 Checkitout, even the trailer is bad!

Book: Steve Earle 'I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive' (2011)

Okay, I promise not to mention Steve Earle again for at least 10 posts. After this one, that is - Mr. Earle's debut novel has my vote for the best book of 2011, so I have to write about it. First of all, the man can write - anyone who pays attention to that sort of thing will be deeply satisfied by the style and grace with which he strings words together. Secondly, it's awfully rare that someone takes grim subject matter (in this case junk addicts, slums, whores, the Kennedy assassination, an accidentally-pregnant Mexican girl, and a discredited doctor turned back-alley abortionist who is haunted by the ghost of Hank Williams) and manages to create something which isn't depressing, disheartening, or just plain ugly. This book is so far from being ugly I think I'd have to label it something pretentious like transcendentally lovely, which, on second thought, doesn't seem excessive as a description for a story that travels from a Texas brothel to a Mexican valley full of Monarch butterflies. The book is named for Hank's last song, which you might like to listen to for context; there's also rather a good record of the same name which Earle released last year. I love, love, love this book - it's beautiful and heartbreaking and lyrical and sometimes funny, and also just a plain ol' good story - please, please read it.

What I originally wrote after reading this: 'I'm going to write a review once I can find the words, but in the meantime, please read this astonishingly beautiful little book. It will touch a corner of your heart that you might not even have known about.'

Book: Jeanette Winterson 'Sexing the Cherry' (1989)

I've labeled this piece a book, but I think it may really be a song disguised as a sheaf of pages. It's funny - I've avoided reading it for years, purely because I loathed the title - all that time I've been missing out on one of the loveliest little novels I've ever experienced. Winterson's writing is as exotically musical as any of the finest compositions by Mozart and Hindemith, or perhaps the gold-threaded concerti of Aram Khachaturian; as sensually, synaesthetically pleasing as a night breeze, a glass of darkest china tea, a sea of ragged-edged silks. An enchanted fairy-tale of sailing ships, never-before-seen fruits from unmapped countries, twelve dancing princesses, gardeners of kings, a giantess with a flock of hounds and one far-reaching, roving, foundling son. Do read it; you couldn't possibly regret  doing so.

Book: William Gibson 'Spook Country' (2007)

This is my new favourite book. I love Gibson's writing, which improves with every book, and I especially love the trilogy this is in the middle of (which starts with 'Pattern Recognition' and culminates in the glorious 'Zero History'). I loved this book so much I didn't read the last 6 pages for a whole week, because I couldn't bear for it to be over. It always impresses me how, 20 pages into a novel, he's got me caring about his characters, worrying about all the s*** he puts them through, and mentally begging him to give them a happy ending - which, mercifully, he nearly always does. Beautiful prose, touchable tasteable breathable atmosphere, intriguing plot. I rarely buy books, because the library's good at ordering things for me for free, but I bought this one so that I can read it until it falls apart and then buy another copy.

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