Archive | June, 2010

Biblioholic Review: The King’s Best Highway

30 Jun

From Indian trail to railroad line to snaking macadam, the Boston Post Road can be rightly called America’s first artery of commerce, revolution and innovation.

But many Americans- especially outside of New England and not U.S. history majors- have not a clue of what the Boston Post Road is or was and how important the simple pathway was to the growth and prosperity of a colony that became a nation.

Author Eric Jaffe ably informs the historical novice by retracing the long forgotten past of the Boston Post Road and its undeniable impact on the budding nation in The King’s Best Highway from Simon & Schuster.

Jaffe’s popular non-fiction book is 3/4 light history and 1/4 travelogue. It starts at the beginning of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its first tentative growth outward. To expand, to find new lands, a meandering sometimes coastal, sometimes overland  pathway that ran from Boston to New Amsterdam, would become the primary route of travel for a nation.

To keep the reader engaged Jaffe selects some luminaries from U.S. history to chronicle the Boston Post Road’s story. From Winthrop, to Franklin and Washington; Lincoln, Morgan and Barnum, Jaffe demonstrates how the road served the political machinations of the wonderfully seditious founding fathers.

Jaffe’s journalism background helps create solid features within the larger story, spending time to illuminate a story and bring it to conclusion before segueing quite naturally to the next chapter in the road’s history.

Yet The King’s Best Highway is at its strongest is when it’s about the lesser luminaries. Sure the iron-wills of transportation barons is interesting, as is the perfectly sketched out origins of the postal service; but to us the one character that made the whole book worth it was one Lt. Col. Albert Augustus Pope.

We loved Pope because he was a massive proponent of improving and bettering the roadways of America in the late 19th century. The Industrial Revolution was altering the landscape of the United States, turning paths to rails, and eventually rails to highways. But we loved Pope so very much was because the Civil War veteran was also a maniacal proponent of bicycling.

Pope was enamored by the wheeled contraption so much he cornered the market on bike patents, forming the League of American Wheelmen; as well as helping to foster bike travel throughout the east while vigorously defending bicyclist rights against those who sought to infringe upon them.

In The King’s Best Highway it is ironic that the greatest proponent for better roads was a bicyclist. Where today, motorists think they and they alone have the right to asphalt, everyone else should make way and improvements are for their convenience. Think again gas guzzlers! Yet in another ironic twist, Pope’s declaration of freedom enforced by the bike, Jaffe points out, primed the American psyche for the even great travel freedoms of the automobile.

If we’re going to be the skunk at The King’s Best Highway garden party, it would be about the final journey Jaffe takes to track-back the old post road. For some reason we found it a bit rushed, less nuanced and more prose prone.

For New Englanders this book is enticing because it ensconces you in a region you know, with street names that haven’t changed in 400 years, but recalls days long gone and men since forgotten.

Overall however The King’s Best Highway demonstrates time and again that Boston truly gave birth to the ideas, innovations and unbridled ambitions that set the standard for a nation. (We love the audacious vivacity and magnificent scope of NYC, but still Boston is our home and soul.)

We find this book especially appealing, partly because of the impending national birthday, but also because it reminds us that no matter how territorial our instincts make us about our homes, cities, states or yes, even sports teams, that at one point it was ‘us against them,’ ‘colonists vs. an empire.’

And that skinny, rutted wild and dangerous road became a backbone to a people who stood up and declared…freedom.

The King’s Best Highway by Eric Jaffe from Simon & Schuster was received by the Boston Book Bums as a free review copy.

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Can a LitMob Make a Bestseller?

29 Jun

We received a note from author Katherine Howe this month about something she thought might be interesting to us bookish Bostonians. Well Howe (author of our favorite book read thus far The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane) was right, we did find intriguing the concept of a group of web-denizens banding together to promote and possibly create a crowd-promoted bestseller.

Over on Facebook there is a mob of literati frequenting I Bet We Can Make These Books Bestsellers. Their mandate is simple but Herculean: Find really great books that have languished in obscurity and by using the brisant effect of blogging and online discourse create a best seller.

And so, about a month in the group has picked two books to champion, Jessica Z & Two Years, No Rain,  both by Shawn Klomparens.

Jessica Z follows copywriter Jessica Zoritch through her love-lorn single life in a tomorrow San Francisco. But unlike typical genre lit, Klomparens throws in a series of suicide bomber attacks, pushing Jessica Z in a different direction.

Klomparens next book being championed by the Facebook group is Two Years, No Rain, the story of a weatherman who’s lackluster life is reinvented overnight by a gig on a children’s television program.

Last we checked the common folk best-seller promoting machine was at 750 followers and growing. Given time and promotion, who knows what a group like that can do in the digital age.

We wish that motley crew the best of luck! Let’s spread the word!

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Biblioholic Review: As Husbands Go

28 Jun

As Husbands Go, author Susan Isaacs 12th novel, is the story of the demise of a seemingly perfect life and picking up the pieces afterward, but in as happy go lucky way as possible.

One would think the unexpected, seedy murder of a beloved husband and father in NYC would leave a mother of 4-year-old triplets in despair but Susie, the rich, long island mother and wife has what could only be described as chutzpah.

When her successful plastic surgeon husband is found murdered in a Manhattan call girl’s apartment, she trusts her gut and doesn’t believe the open and shut case the DA’s office is pushing.

Standing up to her overbearing, snobby in-laws and finding unlikely but infallible support in her spunky look alike grandmother, Susie asks questions that nobody wants to hear and finds herself in some potentially dangerous situation in pursuit of the truth.

The main character, Susie,  reminds us of a conversation had with a writer friend a few months back. The conversation was about what would motivate a character who would not normally seek out dangerous situations, knowingly pursue danger and still be believable.  This was a major sticking point for the local writer, but not for Isaacs. The author doesn’t let something like believability stop her heroine from leaving her gated Shorehaven community to knock on the doors of whorehouses or impersonate a reporter to interview the accused hooker.

Maybe Issacs has some chutzpah of her own or a good sense of humor.  I  guess when you name you character Susie B. Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten , you are asking your readers to let loose a bit and enjoy the ride.

This book is marketed as a mystery and yes there is a bit of who-dunnit to the story,but  one wouldn’t expect to find this in the mystery section at your local bookstore. 

As Husbands Go is fun, frivolous women fiction that really belongs more to genre of chick lit than murder mystery.  The wacky characters are more to the point than the mystery and Isaacs doesn’t pretend it is otherwise.

As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs from Simon & Schuster (to be released July 6th) was received for free from the publisher.

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B3: The Week That Was

27 Jun

We came out with a tentacle whipping crack this week with a review of China Mieville’s Kraken and ended with questions whether vampires and werewolves are still “monsters.”

Monday: China Mieville’s Kraken is an occult shell game, bursting with trippy slang, pop-culture riffs & tentacle like plot that twists to climax.

Tuesday: What the bloody umlat!? We wondered why Scandinavian crime fiction has suddenly become so popular? Considering how gentile they seem to us in the States, when did places like Sweden and Norway become hot beds of murderous writings?

Wednesday: Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy is a collection of short stories are concise and deep, not something you often find together. Eleven stories in 232 pages that universally explore loneliness in all sorts of characters.

Thursday: It crossed our minds recently that vampires and monsters when we were growing up were monsters, something to be feared and hunted. Now, the fanged ones are hunky loners with blood lusts but hearts of gold. Are they still monsters to you?

Friday: We tackled the review of Metrophilias, a short story collection that tracked and delved into the nature of lust and desire in 36 stories spread through 36 cities.

Saturday: Sometimes you think you have an iron clad memory when it comes to books read as a kid. Well recently we were reminded of two foundation books that changed one readers life.

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Memories of Book Covers Past

26 Jun

One of the marvelous things about websites and blogs is they can spark the most vociferous of arguments or wonderful exchange of ideas. Last week Suvudu ran a piece on nostalgic books, followed up by SFSignal’s own recollections.

Normally a single wistful recall of a childhood don’t spark much in the way of writing camaraderie. Yet both posts individually had books that we’d forgotten about and prompted this entry.

One book was Loyd Alexander’s The Book of Three and a Star Wars serial, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. Both had completely bad-ass covers, the type of late 70s to early 80s artwork that made science fiction and fantasy books worth buying for the covers alone. Both of these works were prime examples of covers selling the book.

With Splinter of the Mind’s Eye an ominously back lit Lord Vader looming over prostrate Luke and Leia was powerful. Whether the story was any good, it didn’t matter, the cover was awesome! Same could be said for The Book of Three. On it (left) was a crimson horseman, sword in hand, steed rearing and his head, a bleached white skull with massive stag horns.

The Book of Three was picked up right before The Hobbit, the craving for fantasy needing satiation. The Star Wars book (and the universe in general) launched an interest in 80s sci-fi as well as its progenitors.

What followed were a series of iconic books in both genres, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Black Cauldron, Dune, The Best of Isaac Asimov, Starship Troopers, War of the Worlds. The list could go on and on. Then of course there were the obsessions with Bigfoot, Loch Ness and UFOs, stoked by monsterific covers of books quickly bought.

There were science books snapped up because the cover showed the exploded view of a Formula One race car. Inside was filled with cutaways of mountain fortresses, submarines and spacecraft. Books showing British commandos charging into battle prompted feverish buys, with hopes the glory on the cover was matched by the text inside.

Every so often, a website can spark a recollection of memories once sharp, dulled by time, but quickly re-honed by a flash of artwork.

What book cover caught your eye and started your biblioholic adventures?

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Biblioholic Review: Metrophilias

25 Jun

When Boston Book Bums received a copy of Metrophilias, we were not sure what to make of Brendan Connell’s short story collection.  At first glance, it is a slim book with small font and narrow margins that manages to squeeze 36 stories and 36 cities into an economic 100 pages.  The stories are organized by metropolises, starting with Athens, working its way through the list, ending with Zurich.

After reading the first story and we were hooked.  Athens, in just over a page, was like drive-by fiction.  It was over before we knew what happen and in that brief time, Connell successfully introduced us to a new world, a world that included the crime of statuary prostitution, literally statues.  If Connell can be that influential in a page, what can he do in a 100 pages?  Couldn’t wait to find out.

In each story, Connell effectively and efficiently explores desire, the journey to ecstasy and often what his characters desire is beyond imagination.  He so thoroughly describes his characters erotic quests that it is little consequence what the object of desire is.

Metrophilias is a whirlwind of a book.  The prose is so fast-paced and lyrical that at times it is poetic.  It is reminiscent of a carnival tilt-a-whirl, the story spins your head and before you know what happened the ride is over.  It is not for everyone but you are someone who occasionally likes to fly by the seat our your pants, this may be for you.

And bring an open mind to these stories as the they could be considered a bit risque.

While you might roll your eyes at the deep yearning and emotions expressed, appreciate that last year, a real live Japanese man married his beloved virtual video game girlfriend.  Connell’s imagination is boundless and his repertoire of erotic pursuit is mind boggling.

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When Did Vampires & Werewolves Stop Being Monsters?

24 Jun

For the better part of twenty years vampires have been the seductive malcontents of the literary world. Starting with Ann Rice through the current Stephanie Meyer Twilight mania, the vampire emerged from the scrap heap of camp a vigorous and apparently immortally popular character.

Yes the raw lustiness associated with vampires throughout their literary history is undisputed, starting with the Gothic German poem Der Vampire of 1748, but the past decade vampires have been cooped by increasing numbers of authors: once raw and vicious creatures have been diluted and their fangs ground down slightly.

But we ask, at the end of the day, vampires are still monsters, right? And a recent addition to the primal pantheon , werewolves, have become hunky loners, due in large part to the popularity of  Twilight. But they too are monsters, right?

Oh, but some cry, ‘But at their heart they are men. Misunderstood, cursed men.’  It seems to us that they may be ‘men,’ they are still creatures that feast on human flesh and blood. Hard for some readers to get past, no matter how brooding or hunky they are portrayed.

The first vampire fiction is believed to be Der Vampire, an 18th century short poem featuring a male vampire visiting a devoutly Catholic woman every night, kissing her and drinking her blood. Later that same century Goethe’s The Bride of Corinth followed an undead woman as she rises from the grave each night.

From my grave to wander I am forc’d,
Still to seek The Good’s long-sever’d link,
Still to love the bridegroom I have lost,
And the life-blood of his heart to drink;
When his race is run,
I must hasten on,
And the young must ‘neath my vengeance sink.

Vampires have been dour and remorseless in their quest to slake their taste for human blood. Through time it’s natural to expect a character become less gore obsessed and more introspective, hoping for a redemption from their cursed life.

Werewolves have only more recently been depilatoried of their monstrosity. In literature, werewolves have been mainstays of animalistic evil since 61 CE the Satyricon, which includes a passage about a Roman soldier turned wolf by night. While later werewolves of fiction modified the basic cursed fiend, the origins were purely malevolent and flesh eating.

Irrefutably, werewolves and vampires have been sensual creatures since they began appearing in fiction. It seems to be those more sexual overtones (or undertones) that draw particularly women to the genre of vampire fiction, running the gamut from straight love stories to more complex supernatural trysts.

In writing about the werewolf and vampire genre, we wonder where gender plays a role if at all. Are men conditioned in society to look at the monster first and being second? Viewing those beasts as baneful threats to loved ones and to be stopped at all costs? Or, more deeply, are they threats to masculinity?

What do you think, are vampires and werewolves still just monsters? Or are their current incarnations acceptable variations on men first, monsters second?

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Biblioholic Review: Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It

23 Jun

Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy was released last July to rave reviews, settling in among the top ten best books New York Times Book Review 2009.  This July it will be released in paperback and Meloy will be making the bookstore rounds, stopping at Harvard Bookstore on July 28th, lucky for us.

This collection of short stories are concise and deep, not something you often find together. Eleven stories in 232 pages that universally explore loneliness in all sorts of characters.  There are three stories that deal with philandering husbands but they are written from different perspectives and never place blame but rather explore human nature, specifically our nature to ‘want our cake and eat it’.

In the 2nd to last story, The Children, the  main character Fielding  provides the title namesake when deciding to leave his wife or break-up with his mistress, quoting A.R. Ammons, “…both ways is the only way I want it.”  Fielding, like all the characters in this collection, is seemingly paralyzed by indecision.  Meloy prose is straight forward and deceptively provocative, allowing one’s mind to delve the deeper meaning of the stories than the words themselves.  She masterfully creates a complete and meaningful portrayal of a character at a crossroads and unable to decide which way to go, in 26 pages or less, time and time again.

Some of these stories are dark, specifically in the beginning of the collection and make us at BBB wonder, is it a trend to write about implied child molestation, raffling off sex and drunken accidental deaths in short story format?  Having recently read and reviewed another short story collection, More of This World or Maybe Another that also explored troubled aspects of human nature, it seems Meloy and other short story authors are using this format to write intense stories that may be a bit too much if it lasted more than 30 pages.   We are enjoying this melancholy trend.

Bothy Ways Is The Only Way I Want It was received as a free review copy

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Bloody Umlat: Scandinavian Crime Fiction

22 Jun

Remember in 2006 when Henning Mankell was the hot crime writing property on this side of the pond? Well, the scribe that created the iconic Kurt Wallander has been eclipsed by the super nova that is Stieg Larsson, father to the “Millenium” trilogy.

But what about authors Jo Nesbo or Arnaldur Indridason? Ah, not quite on your crime-fiction-culture radar yet? Well they should be as they are just two non-Swedish crime writers that are bathing the edges of the Arctic Circle in literary blood.

What makes this blast of crime from the northern reaches of Europe so interesting to the rest of the reading world is it completely contradicts our notions of a serene, socially controlled, chilly but blissful Scandinavian existence.

It’s been said that since the fall of the Berlin Wall and broadening of the European Union, that crime has seeped into placid nations like Sweden and Norway, arming imaginations there with dashes of spectacular offenses that were once unheard of in any number.

A quick look at EU crime rates show, outside of the UK, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands all land in the top ten nations of violent crimes.

Just last week Swedish crime siren Camilla Lackberg arrived in the States with her first translated novel, The Ice Princess. Lackberg has penned seven books and is tremendously popular in her native country, as well as numerous other nations.

Then we have Jo Nesbo, which the Boston Book Bums had the pleasure of reading a UK copy of Redbreast well before it landed here, who’s books featuring policeman Harry Hole (yes in English it does sound silly) have been translated into 40 languages.

Also, a UK plunder brought the B3 team a copy of Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason, an Icelandic author who creatively reveals a body in a lake after it is, yes drained, by a seismic event. Before we know it, our Icelandic cop is off chasing murderous ghosts of the Cold War.

To us as readers the first hurdle is simply getting these books discovered and then translated. Nothing can kill a perfectly good book like a shoddy translation. Even some current Scandinavian crime we’ve read has been a bit wobbly when it comes to reconstructing sentences. But luckily that is an insignificant barrier in the 21st century.

Time and again Scandinavian crime chasers are compared to the American or UK counterparts. Called brooding and melancholy, most of the heroes are tapped out drunks braced against the cold by alcohol and  by the fire of personal demons. But maybe that is why Scandinavian crime appeals to the Anglos now reading the translations? Here in the U.S. detectives are more often than not strapping gunslingers, Feds or private detectives. Down on their luck American-style isn’t quite as bleak as those detective in the northern EU nations?

But in places like Sweden and Denmark, the cops are sandy haired rejects going through the paces until a crime snaps them, albeit temporarily, back into their crime fighting peak. Perhaps these frumpy denizens of cold places, dark for months at a time, seem a different kind of exotic to American readers thus drawing them into tales of murder and intrigue.

Or perhaps these Scandinavians simply know how to write a good book? We suspect it’s just that simple.

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Biblioholic Review: Kraken

21 Jun

We’ve been chomping at the bit to snag a copy of China Mieville’s Kraken for so long. We begged for a domestic ARC, but to no avail (we’re relative book reviewing newbies, completely understandable.) So, we decided to fire up our every useful UK book buying account and snagged a Brit copy for review.

With a book like Kraken, you really don’t know where to start when reviewing it. Can’t get too deep into the plot for fear of spoilers. Can’t dwell on the metaphysical minutia, because that’s magical somnus powder to a casual reader.

That being said, we’ll just jump right in and declare this was a damn good book! Kraken is literary pointillism, a million little dots of detail, characters and themes that create a marvelous and bewildering universe.

Smartly, Kraken starts of with the drone of normality. The din of dull reality. We’re introduced to Darwin Centre curator Billy Harrow who Mieville perfectly captures in one line “..he would, DiCaprio-like, simply become like an increasingly wizened child.” Harrow, the everyman, is thrust into an impossible situation when the museum’s prized exhibit, the giant squid Architeuthis, vanishes. The specimens collected during Charles Darwin’s Galapagos journeys are left untouched. But this giant squid completely and entirely vanishes.

Unsuccessfully recruited to join the hunt for the squid’s captors, Harrow is harrowingly introduced to a magical world of London unknown to him. The scene in which everything changes for Harrow starts off, like the book’s intro, normal. But literally unfolds in a way that has you grip the page and declare, ‘Did I just read that right?’

There are the Krakenists, Londonmancers, a malevolent Tattoo, a dizzying number of household gods, magical gangs, talismans, omnipotent elements, everything but a warlockian kitchen sink (but even that is not far off.)

If there is a single criticism it is that Mieville dives fast and deep into this occult short-hand. One could use a Kraken-occult-opedia to keep up. That causes the staccato style of his writing to hiccup occasionally as we’re left trying to understand the omnipresent magic that everyone but Harrow and the reader seem to know about. But again, that is a small beef.

Kraken has authorial splashes reminiscent of Bradbury, Gaiman, Pullman, Moorcock and Lovecraft. The novel is also very British, with dozens of local or national references that are sure to go over the heads of some readers on this side of the pond.

The London crime fighters trying to chase down the kraken-napped in this tale are odd and elite, they are the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit, riffing off like a magical version of the BBCs Waking the Dead team. Our favorite character from Kraken wasn’t Harrow, but a member of the occult ‘Old Bill’ team, wise-cracking, chain smoking female Police Constable Collingswood. We’d like to see more of this sassy lass.

As we read Kraken, a work popped into our heads, a purportedly non-fiction travel work, Occult London. The book, penned by Merlin Coverley provided us a nice literary dipping sauce to compliment the main cephalopod dish.

What makes Kraken so interesting is that it is not just one book. It’s not a straight up urban fantasy gone amuck. To the contrary, we race around with cops and occult criminals searching for Harrow, who is also searching for the Kraken, while being assaulted and waylaid at every fantastical turn. Mieville invests proportionally in each little genre, fantasy throughout with dashes of detective, horror and dark comedic tales. Kraken never fills you up with these sub-genres, but appropriately whets your appetite.

Also, Mieville’s creativity investing time in new and odd religions screamed of Roman antiquity in the modern age. We have every manner of faith, god and deity floating around the near-apocalyptic age, but no one bird rules the roost. We imagine this is what ancient Rome was like, a god here a god there, soldiers, merchants and sailors each having their own trinket or talisman. It was practical, but not world weighing serious.

And yet the search for the deity squid and the secrets it may hold are deadly serious for Harrow and the rest of the Kraken inhabitants.

Kraken’s pay off  is near perfection because Mieville expertly foreshadows our climax while engaging in brilliant literary slight of hand until the last possible moment.

Kraken is an occult shell game, bursting with trippy slang and pop-culture references and a straight line plot that takes dozens of tentacle like twists to climax.

Kraken by China Mieville (drops June 29th here in the States) was purchased by Boston Book Bums.

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