As I've been lax in reporting the contents of the ever-changing reading shelf on a monthly basis (updates have been happening about every three-to-six months since I started), I'm going to stop pretending that it's a "monthly" update and try the quarterly/seasonal approach. Thus, this is the "Spring" update. Expect another one in the summer. Or maybe fall. We'll see.
It has been about five months since I last mentioned the goodies on my reading shelf, so I'm going to give all the books at least a brief re-mention. If I've already rambled on about a book, I'll just link to the rant wherein it was originally blathered about. Many of the books have been sitting on the shelf for a long, long time waiting for me to take notice.
A few books have appeared on the shelf very briefly, but they were read before collecting any dust: John Grisham's The Appeal, JK Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard, Roal Dahl's Charlie and the great Glass Elevator, and SM Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years and On the Oceans of Eternity (I'm still working on this last novel). I'll probably get around to mentioning them sooner or later.
So, in relative alphabetic order by author, these are the books I hope to actually get around to reading before I die...
The Hitchhiker's Trilogy by Douglas Adams
Yes, I've read the Hitchhiker books many times already (except for Mostly Harmless, I've only read that one once), but I've never had a leatherbound copy of "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide" before with its pretty gold leaf around the pages and the built-in bookmark ribbon. So I'm going to read it again and cherish every moment.
Hitchhiker by MJ Simpson
I've been looking for this biography of Douglas Adams for years, but could never find it. And then, surprisingly, I found it in the unlikeliest of places: on the shelf of a Crown Books store filled with unsellable stuff and cast-offs that other book stores had given up on. This is also where I picked up the leatherbound copy of The Hitchhiker's Trilogy. I got each of these full-sized hardcover books for about $5, which was a nice bonus.
The Red Star by Arthur Byron Cover
This is a novel based on a comic book (which seems to be sort of a backward way to go about it, but whattya gonna do?) that I've been a fan of for many years. There's even a mini comic in the center of the book, which is kind of cool (I don't know if it's just a reprint of one of the original issues or if it's a new story yet). I've read a couple of things by Arthur Byron Cover (one of which was a novelization of a classic Infocom text-based video game called Planetfall,if my memory is correct).
The Knights Templar by Susie Hodge
I've read most of this short non-fiction examination of the Templars, but I keep getting distracted by shiny things before finishing.
Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon
This is another Crown Books acquisition ($5 for a hardcover). I've never read any of the many books by Elizabeth moon, so I don't really now what to expect with this book, but the covers have always been intriguing. That's a poor way to choose reading material, I know - but I might not have discovered how wonderful Terry Pratchett's writing is if it wasn't for the eye-catching cover art on the The Colour of magic and The Light Fantastic paperbacks done by Josh Kirby.
The Satantic Verses by Salman Rushdie
I've often wondered what Rushdie could have said about islam that would have prompted the islamic nations of the middle east to put a price on his head. One of these days I guess I'll find out. I'll bet it's not a whole lot more shocking that the peeks into islam that Rushdie delivered with Shalimar the Clown.
The Orc King (Transitions I) and The Pirate King (Transitions II) by RA Salvatore
I've really enjoyed the Salvatore books I've read in the past, so I figured these novels (which appear to be continuations of the Tolkienesque tales of Drizz't Do'Urden and his band of merry adventurers) would be good escapist fun.
I read another another collection of David Sedaris stories a couple of months ago, Holidays On Ice. It was being pushed at Christmas time (being a seemingly "Christmas-related" type of book), but I didn't pick it up until January or February (though from the moment I saw the cover, I knew it would eventually be mine) - and then I didn't read it until at least a month later.
Sadly, I had already read many of the stories published in Holidays On Ice in Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. But there was still plenty of fresh hilarity to make the effort well worth the while.
"Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" and "SantaLand Diaries" previously appeared in Barrel Fever;
"Dinah, the Christmas Whore" previously appeared in Naked;
"Jesus Shaves" previously appeared in slightly different form in Me Talk Pretty One Day;
"Us and Them," "Let It Snow," and "Six to Eight Black Men" previously appeared in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim;
and "The Monster Mash" previously appeared in When You Are Engulfed in Flames.
Here's a really short excerpt from Santaland Diaries that will make you chuckle. This story recounts a Holiday season spent working as an elf for a ginormous New York department store (I envision the following events happening in a queue of people similar to the one from A Christmas Story - only worse).
And people got excited. So I said, "Step on the Magic Star and you can see Mike Tyson!"
Some people in the other line, the line to sit on Santa's lap, got excited and cut through the gates so that they could stand on my Magic Star. Then they got angry when they looked through the Magic Window and saw Santa rather than Cher or Mike Tyson. What did they honestly expect? Is Cher so hard up for money that she'd agree to stand behind a two-way mirror at Macy's?
The angry people must have said something to management because I was taken off the Magic Star and sent to Elf Island, which is really boring as all you do is stand around and act merry. At noon a huge crowd of retarded people came to visit Santa and passed me on my little island. These people were profoundly retarded. They were rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and staggering toward Santa. It was a large group of retarded people and after watching them for a few minutes I could not begin to guess where the retarded people ended and the regular New Yorkers began.
Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.
There was a line for Santa and a line for the women's bathroom, and one woman, after asking me a dozen questions already, asked, "Which is the line for the women's bathroom?" I shouted that I thought it was the line with all the women in it.
She said, "I'm going to have you fired."
I had to people say that to me today, "I'm going to have you fired." Go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are?
"I'm going to have you fired!" and I wanted to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed."
These events occurred after David Sedaris had graduated from college with at least a BA (he may have had an MFA, I don't remember), so if you think you've got it bad, young college graduate, you could always be directing traffic for Santa at Macy's.
Another laugh-out-loud moment while reading this book came from Six to Eight Black Men, which was previously published in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, so I may have actually already quoted this excerpt, but it's worth a re-quoting, if I have.
While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas story remains relatively dull. Santa lives with his wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If you're bad, he leaves you coal. If you're good and live in America, he"ll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their great bounty. A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared."
This is the reward for living in the Netherlands. As a child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat it. As an added bonus, the government has thrown in legalized drugs and prostitution - so what's not to love about being Dutch?
So in summation...this is another funny David Sedaris book. But it's not a book you'll be reading to the kids around the tree on Christmas eve.
I've been meaning to mention a comic book I discovered a few months ago, tucked away in the corner of a comic shop, but I just haven't quite ever gotten around to it. It's a book called Leviticus Cross that is illustrated by one of my favorite comic book guys, Hector Sevilla, the artist who did another favorite, Lullaby.
Before I get into why I found Leviticus Cross tp be worth mentioning, I'm going to jump into the watback machine and talk about Lullaby to help explain why I was so excited to see another book illustrated by Hector Sevilla.
Lullaby is a story that merges Alice in Wonderland with other fables and children's stories (Treasure island, The Pied Pier, and Pinocchio are a few). The characters in the twelve page story are drawn with the exaggerated features that are typical of manga-style books and the landscape is very Wonderland-ish and surreal.
When I picked up the Lullaby preview a few years ago, I had serious doubts that I would ever see anything beyond this initial offering. Fortunately though, my predictions were wrong and the story spawned two story arcs before the publisher disappeared as small press publishers often do. But if you can get your hands on these comics, they're well worth the effort and cost.
Life used to be a fairytale.
Maybe not in a real sense, but like many children, life seemed a lullaby to me.
Where fathers are heroes who keep you from harm.
And mothers nurture you and fill your life with happiness.
Yes, life was a fairytale indeed.
The cover art, typical of comic books, is very striking. But, unlike most other books, the interior art is just as vibrant and every bit as well done. The interior pages of the preview issue were black and white (and even though they felt only half-finished, they were still beautifully done). The fantastic elements of the art, though less than clear in this unfinished state, were still apparent and promised great things to come - as you can see in the finished versions of the pages from the first issue.
A brief explanation of the story and characters: In this version of the Alice legend, Alice is thrust into Wonderland by a white rabbit, via a much different portal - an automobile accident. She has almost no memory of her origins, beyond her first name. Through a series of events that are only briefly alluded to, she becomes "the Hand of the Queen" (of Hearts) and a matchless warrior in Wonderland. The preview issue was kept intentionally short, so it wasn't until the first full issue that I met the other primary characters from other familiar tales and learned more about Alice and her mission.
In the full length first issue of Lullaby, Alice's character and her "mission" for the Queen are explained more thoroughly. Alice is seeking an unexplained evil in Wonderland and all clues point to Oz (yeah, that Oz). On her way, she meets and joins with several other familiar faces. The locations and the characters are all familiar...but none of them are exactly as you might expect them.
The main cast consists of five characters: Alice (from Alice in Wonderland, with the Cheshire Cat ever near at hand), Piper (heir to The Pied Piper), Pinnochio (the very same), Red Riding Hood (from Little Red Riding Hood) and Jim Hawkins (from Treasure Island). There are other characters (Hansel and Gretel have a brief role), but these five are the focus of the various plot lines. Pinocchio and Jim Hawkins are traveling together, as are Red Riding Hood and Piper, until the groups converge and discover that their destinations are the same: Oz.
My name is Alice.
I have many titles.
General.
Hero of the War of Six Armies.
Champion of Wonderland.
Hand of the Queen of Hearts.
And most recently, leader of this ragtag band of travelers.
My name is Red Riding Hood.
And I Hate the way she says it.
She uses it to call me like a dog!
But I am not a dog.
I may smell like a dog - heehee, that's not what I meant! - but I'm a girl, and ever since I was bitten by Big Bad Wolf, I think I'm a little bit wolf, too!
It was given the name Pinocchio by its creator.
It wishes it had a new name. Not because it hates its creator, but because its creator would not like what it has become. It was once a wooden boy whose one wish was to be a real boy.
That wish came true.
Then that wish was torn from it, and now it is wooden again.
And something a bit more...
It is different now, but its name is the same.
It is called Pinocchio.
I've carried the name Hawkins with pride since I was a young lad.
And now that I be an older lad, it still swells the sails of me heart with gales of pride when I think of me dear mother.
Me thirst for excitement overtakin' me soul, dear mother consented not once, not twice, but thrice to allow me to search the seven seas fer adventure, though break her heart it did.
Dear old mother, the only woman for me...
My name is Piper.
At least, That's the name my father gave me after he stole me.
My father was a kidnapper and a thief.
No matter how the legends spin themselves, the Pied Piper was a kidnapper who stole children right from under their parents' noses. I know that for a fact.
He said he only took children from bad parents and gave them to good parents - had some sort of deal with the storks - and that may have been true.
But he stole children and after he stole me, he kept me.
Saw my aptitude for the flute, he said.
He taught me to play, and play well.
But I rejected his vocation.
Still, I think it was his legacy of darkness that makes it easier for some evils to overtake me.
He gave me that legacy. And he gave me my name.
My name is Piper.
The first arc of the story was published by Image Comics (with Alias receiving a brief mention inside the front cover), but the second arc was published solely by Alias Comics (a local company from La Mesa, California). Sadly, Alias foundered and is no longer around. The guys behind Alias tried to re-open as Abacus, but that company seems to be stuck in no ma's land as well (it has been "about to open its doors" for a couple of years now).
Speaking of the Pied Piper, there's an older comic mini-series called, appropriately enough, The Pied Pier of Hamlin. It was published in the early nineties and has some really cool black and white art by Dave Cooper. I don't think (it's been a few years) there are many surprises in the book, but it is a fun story with unique art. Maybe I'll mention it in more detail one of these days. The Pied Piper story is also the basic premise for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett - a story for children that doesn't feel like a children's story.
An now, back to the original subject of the post: Leviticus Cross. It's probably easiest to just give you the Prologue from the first issue (which is, sadly, the only issue I've ever seen - it's probably time to try and order it somewhere online) than it would be to try an explain what I've read so far.
Prologue
When men began to increase on earth and daughters
were born to them, the divine beings saw how
beautiful the daughters of men were, and took wives
from among those that pleased them. The Lord said,
'My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he
too is my flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred
and twenty years.' It was then, and later too, that
the Nephilim appeared on the Earth: when the divine
beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who
bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the
men of reknown." - Genesis 6:1-4
Gods and mortals have always had something of a
complicated relationship, as much of it has been
formed by whimsy as by careful planning, or even
on occasion by war. The root of this most volatile
relationship is found in the feud between divine
offspring, namely the Giants and the Demi-gods.
There had never been war between them - only
festering hatred. The most powerful of the mortals,
Giants had been designed to act as the personal
guard to the Angels.
But when Angels started interbreeding with
humans, the Giants found their official connection
to be a poor substitute for a blood relation. Pushed
into the shadows by the Demi-gods' gaudy and
capricious antics in the mortal world, the Giants
retreated to the North Mountains.
They chiseled their home out of the mile-high peaks
of granite, all the while keeping careful note of how
the Demi-gods abused their power over the mortals.
When the Demi-gods eventually tired if "lesser
company," they also retreated to build their own
city. At this the Giants smiled.
This meant war...
Actually, Genesis 6;1-4 in my Bible reads a little differently, but there are so many versions out there that the above could be in one of them. Or maybe the above is just a creative interpretation of the original. Who knows?
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Thor is a major player in this story, as are the other residents of Asgard. And the art is just as well done as in Lullaby.
But, to be honest, the writing/storyline of Leviticus Cross doesn't appeal to me in the same way that Lullaby does. Still, I'm hoping that it grows on me. Obviously (if you've read any of my other rants), I have a soft spot for Children's books.
Alice
Red Riding Hood
Pinnochio
Jim Hawkins
Piper
