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Happy Birthday, Edgar

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Today in 1809 Edgar Allan Poe was born. Its safe to say that my regular readers know my affection for one of America’s greatest writers. If not, you may read here. Happy 197th Edgar!

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This portion of the post may contain profanity…haven’t decided if my annoyance has worn off yet!

Despite the pretty picture, stamps have been a bane to me this week. Let me first assure you that 364.9 days out of the year I love old people. Tuesday was not one of them. What is the deal with the elderly and the post office. I got in line to mail one letter. Should be simple, no? I had a half hour before my meeting started…no problem. I should have known things would be bad when there were only two tellers and the line was exceedingly long. By the time I got into the main room I could see that one teller had decided that rather than help the line move along faster she would hide behind a wooden screen and play with her computer…I truly understand why people “go postal”! What made this worse was the fact that several old people had decided that they needed to get any number of odd denominations of stamps…WTF? Just buy stamps! I had no idea there were stamps in so many different price ranges. And I didn’t want to know. I thought maybe the first lady I saw doing this was a fluke. Oh hell no…two more people after her had to buy every strange, odd numbered stamp they could get their hands on. It would not have been so bad if they did not have to stand at the counter doing complex math equations to figure out how they could save a few measley fucking pennies! If I ever get to the point that I cannot just slap a stamp on a letter, possibly donating a few extra cents to the post office in the process, please put a bullet in me. I see they upheld assisted suicide in Oregon…how about assisted murder!?!?!?

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Not too bad! As I left the post office, letter unmailed, the post I was dictating in my head had many more venemous and creative uses of profanity and not a few unkind thoughts about getting old and senile. Thanks for letting me vent. Sorry. I now return you to your day.

Young Adult

The Water Mirror

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I came across a mention of Kai Meyer’s The Water Mirror on the Endicott Studios website in their Young Adult Book Recommendations for Autumn/Winter 2005/2006. I was at once struck by the artwork of Jonathan Weiner. The cover art, including the creepy back cover image of a sharp toothed mermaid, instantly made me want to pick up this book to see what it was about.

In The Water Mirror a medieval Venice is in the midst of a 36 year seige by an Egyptian mummy army who has decimated the rest of the known world. Venice has thus far escaped destruction due to the beneficence of an unseen entity known as the Flowing Queen. This Venice is not quite the same one that exists in our world. In Meyer’s Venice, stone lions patrol the city, mermaids with razor sharp teeth inhabit the canals, and the denizens of Hell itself are edging ever closer to the surface. Into this world two teenage orphan girls, Merle and Junipa, are apprenticed to a magic mirror maker. Each girl is, of course, more than what she seems, having a destiny that only just begins to unfold in this first of a trilogy of novels known as the Dark Reflections series. At 250 pages this book is a quick read, but Meyer manages to pack an amazing amount of story and detail into those pages. Magic mirrors, mermaids, flying lions, plots to usurp the Flowing Queen, thieves, phantoms, mummys, pharoahs, creatures from the underworld…The Water Mirror has these and more. The story is filled with mystery, suspense, adventure, magic, treachery…and all the while the symbolism of mirrors and reflections is interwoven making you realize that you know very little about the characters and are bound to discover interesting and possibly terrifying truths about them as the series continues. The book is filled with plot twists and enough unresolved issues to ensure many more surprises before this series is completed.

This book is translated from the original German by Elizabeth D. Crawford and I can only assume that she does a marvelous job as the story flows very well and is highly entertaining. On a few occasions sentences seem slightly odd and I wonder if this is due to translation issues. By and large though the book makes me understand why Kai Meyer is so popular in his native Germany.

The Water Mirror is indeed a young adult book but despite that has some fairly creepy descriptions of the few beings from the netherworld who make an appearance. The descriptions, though brief, instantly brought to mind the eerie, dark art of Brom. I would suggest an appropriate starting age for reading this to be 12 and it is definitely well written enough to be thoroughly engrossing to adults who love their fantasy laced with sinister suspense. Very engaging!

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Three Day Weekend

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The weekend started out well, our daughter was invited to a friend’s home to stay overnight so the missus and I settled down to watch a couple of flicks, Bourne Supremacy and Happy Accidents. Looks like the wait will be another year at least before Matt Damon reprises his role as Jason Bourne in the third installment of this series. I think the two Bourne movies are my favorite Damon movies. Happy Accidents is a wonderful, quirky independent film with Vincent D’Onofrio and Marisa Tomei. It was recommended to me a few years back by my brother-in-law and Mary and I love it. If you like D’Onofrio in Law and Order: Criminal Intent you’ll enjoy him in this…he has the same bizarre mannerisms just slightly more so. And how can you go wrong with Marisa Tomei! Happy Accidents is an off-beat romantic comedy in which D’Onofrio’s character is either slightly crazy…or from the future!

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Saturday found me cleaning up the house before the guys came over to watch the playoffs. It has obviously been awhile since I performed spring cleaning on the computer room…a place I believe I once referred to on the blog as “the place where the magic happens”. It looked more like Shelob’s Lair as I found cobwebs everywhere that had seemingly defied discovery on other occasions. I am surprised I was not carried off in the night by a mob of angry arachnids as an act of vegeance for my wanton destruction of their work.

The playoffs Saturday night were every bit as sickening as we all thought they would be. Denver was handed the game by an inept Patriots team and now they only have one more game to win to make it to the Super Bowl. Thankfully there was good food (Zarda BBQ and homemade brownies) and good company (James and Jeff) to dull the pain.

Sundays’ games were no much better. I jokingly predicted that the Bears/Panthers game would end up being the best game of the weekend and am sad to report that it actually was. I really hope next weekends’ games redeem what has been a sad playoff season so far.
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I have been wanting to redecorate the bathroom for some time (it is on the Uberlist!). Mary has a color in mind that she wants and I have been wanting to add a slight classic science fiction element in there somewhere so I was excited to win the following 2 small prints from Ebay on Saturday.

They are 1976 prints of two 1950’s Famous Funnies Buck Rogers comic covers drawn by Frank Frazetta. Being almost 30 years old the prints have an ever so slight amount of wear which is just the look I was going for because I don’t want something that looks like it is brand new off the press. I cannot wait to get these and get started on the bathroom…looks like I might get that done ahead of my target date on the Uberlist.

I also won a hardback copy of a John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs double volume featuring two stories from the series with a wrap-around dust jacket featuring John Carter, Dejah Thoris and a large lion-like creature(scroll down for image) by Frank Frazetta. The copy I won looks to be in amazing shape.
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Today is the day we honor the birth of one of the greatest leaders of the last century, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So much has already been said in his honor over the years that I will just add that he is indeed an inspiration…his spiritual and social convictions were quite admirable and the world is a better place for having him in it.

Mary and I are off of work today due to the holiday and Tori is out of school. I plan on doing some more work in the basement and then we will relax, read, play games and watch movies. I love these three day weekends, especially coming so soon after Christmas vacation. The next will be in February for President’s Day!!!

I hope you all have a marvelous Monday!

Science Fiction, Short Stories

Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories

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Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories by James P. Blaylock is a book that jumped out at me last year as I was walking through my local Barnes and Noble bookstore; I recognized the cover art as a work by Greg Spalenka. As I picked up the book to examine the cover I felt like the proverbial fish being caught by the shiny worm…there on the front cover was a quote of recommendation from none other than Neil Gaiman. Flipping the book over was like biting down harder on the hook as there was an even longer quote from Patricia A. McKillip! Needless to say this little unassuming paperback book of short stories ended up coming home with me. And I am so glad that it did.

Patricia A. McKillip’s quote alone makes a perfect review of the book: “[James Blaylock’s] range is quite wonderful…He brings magic into urban fantasy…His characters are people who might occupy the house next door to us; they might be spooky or unkind or even dead, but they are always fully realized. His instinict for the quirky detail is unerring; he takes a clear look at the marvels in his world and makes us remember the marvels in ours.”

Herein Blaylock gives us 16 engrossing tales that find their home in no one set genre: within these pages lie modern fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, steampunk, comedy, and suspense. The titular story alone was worth the $6.99 cover price. Like any book of short stories there are some that make more of a connection than others, however each was worth reading at least once and several were so good that I turned around and immediately read them aloud to my wife. Two tales in the later half of the book, Two Views of a Cave Painting and The Idol’s Eye, featured a cast of early 20th century English scientific adventurers that read like a cross between P.G. Wodehouse, G.K. Chesterton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells. Needless to say I was thrilled to later find out that these characters are featured in two Blaylock novels, Homunculus and Lord Kelvin’s Machine: A Novel. Another favorite was the World Fantasy Award winning story, Paper Dragons. The language of Paper Dragons evoked reminiscences of the beautiful language found in Patricia A. McKillip’s work. There is even a story celebrating the wonder of doughnuts.

At the risk of sounding like Forrest Gump, reading a book of short stories is like eating a box of chocolates. If short stories are not to your taste I would venture to say that you have just cracked open too many coconut filled ones. The short stories of Neil Gaiman, Patricia McKillip, Roald Dahl, Gene Wolfe, P.G. Wodehouse (the list could go on and on) and now James P. Blaylock are like sitting down to a large assortment of the best Godiva truffles with each bite better than the last…where each is a favorite to be savored and treasured and the memory shared with friends. Take a bite…you won’t be disappointed.

Fantasy, Short Stories

Angels and Visitations

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Angels and Visitations is a collection by Neil Gaiman, given to me by Jeff as a birthday gift. It is a wonderfully illustrated book containing short stories, poems, and book introductions. At least half of the short stories are also included in Gaiman’s later short story collection Smoke and Mirrors but there were a handful of gems that I had not had the privilege to read.

Let me start by talking about the packaging. I frequently find myself thinking that the ability to make a good book is a lost art. On fewer and fewer occasions do I find new books that show craftsmanship and attention to detail. Angels and Visitations is published by a small publishing company, DreamHaven Books, which also runs a local comic shop in Neil Gaiman’s residence of Minneapolis. DreamHaven got it right. The book has a terrific dust jacket illustrated by Gaiman’s Sandman cover artist and fellow movie maker (Mirrormask) Dave McKean. Underneath the dust jacket lies an amazingly solid book with a cool gold embossed angel of death design. Inside are illustrations by graphic artists Charles Vess, P. Craig Russell, Michael Zulli, and Bill Sienkiewicz to name a few.

But what about the stories? If you have read Gaiman, then you know they are good. Angels and Visitations combines some of my absolute favorites that are in Smoke and Mirrors and adds some great new work. Among the previously read stories are two wonderful stories, Chivalry and We Can Get Them For You Wholesale. Chivalry is a quaint story in which a little old woman in modern day England discovers the Holy Grail in a second hand store, buys it, and begins getting visits from Galaad, a Knight of King Arthur’s Court, who hopes to barter for it thus completing his Holy Quest. We Can Get Them For You Wholesale is a Twilight Zone-ish horror story about a guy who just cannot pass up a good bargain. New stories for me included Webs which is a creepy fairy tale with spiders and the The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a comical hard-boiled detective story set in the world of Mother Goose. There was also a terrific review of Josiah Thompson’s book Gumshoe that primarily involved the reviewer’s inability to find the book he was meant to be reviewing…quite entertaining. The book also includes poems, a prologue written for someone else’s story and a wonderful essay about G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries. Being a fan of Chesterton after only reading one book I had been wondering about these stories and am now anxious to add them to my reading pile.

If you love a good short story you owe it to yourself to check out Neil Gaiman’s work. When he is at his best his shorter fiction can stand to anything. If you are a Neil Gaiman addict like myself, this book also makes a marvelous collector’s item as its production quality is marvelous.

Eclectic Musings of a Renaissance Geek