Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: Books ‘n’ Authors
The Lapses of Lynch’s Locke
I don’t want to piss off protected static and SxKitten, both of whom recommended The Lies of Locke Lamora, so let me first speak this novel’s praises. First: phenomenal cover art.
Either the artist read the book, or he received (and paid attention to) specific directions from the publisher. Look! Five towers! And they’re the right colors, and they have those little gossamer threads between them representing those thingies the nobles use to travel between towers! Damned impressive.
Famous Last Words
I know I’ve been a drag lately. Illness does that to me. I’d do a whole post of sobs if I could: Waaah! I’m coughing up a lung! Waaah! My colon’s trying to turn itself inside out!
To make it up to you, I thought up a fun quiz. Below, you’ll find the last words of works which are considered classics of their genre. Read the words, guess the author. Answers in the Comments.
No prizes for this one; you cultcha geniuses will have to be content with the newly reaffirmed knowledge of your intellectual superiority. Mensa will be contacting you posthaste.
Oh, one complication: in cases where a name would give away the answer, I have substituted a different name. Ain’t I a son of a bitch?
The Gimme A Good Book Contest
(Not literally “gimme.” I’m not begging for books.)
We have some vacation time coming up — the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, Vegas for Christmas – New Years. That means I’ll have access to real bookstores and won’t be dependent on Barnes & Noble online or Paperback Swap. But I need ideas, people, because whenever I have time for a REAL bookstore, I never have enough time to browse. And if I browse, who knows, maybe I’ll miss something great.
Here’s the contest: in the comments, sell me on a book. Authors, feel free to pimp your own books; the rest of you, pimp your friends’ books, if you like. Or just sell me on the best damned book you’ve read lately. Distant past, best-book-I’ve-ever-read is fair game, too. Easy, isn’t it? As I read through the comments, I’ll keep a running list of the books I want to buy. Of those, I’ll pick two people as winners, and each of you will get a $20 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble or Amazon or whichever bookseller you choose.
The contest ends Saturday, Nov. 17, since we’ll be leaving next Sunday.
Likes, in general: genre fiction, but no horror or cowpunchers, please. I like SF, fantasy (interesting stuff like Neil Gaiman or Tam’s novels, not the 900-page Tolkien wannabes, please), romance (especially if it’s funny or nasty — preferably both), hardboiled/noir, and the occasional crime novel.
I dislike SERIOUS fiction, the kind of novel that aims at revealing the Deep Thoughts of Life and forgets to entertain.
Technical excellence is important.
***
I should have a nifty food photo-blog for you later today. Stay tuned.
If you would be interested in guest-blogging while we’re on vacation, email me at (azureus at harborside dot com). We’ll have our laptop with us, so I should be able to do some blogging; nevertheless, Balls and Walnuts hasn’t had any guest bloggers in a long time, and it could be great fun.
D.
Damn you, Sughrue
I’m ticked off at a character, C.W. Sughrue, and since he’s not my character, there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. See, I just finished James Crumley’s The Right Madness, Crumley’s most recent (and who knows, maybe his last) Sughrue novel. I’ve been with C.W. through The Last Good Kiss, The Mexican Tree Duck, and Bordersnakes, and even if he is one mean bastard son of a bitch detective (C.W. likes his parents and objects to such aspersions), I still care about him. I wanted Crumley to leave C.W. in a happy place. He’s not in a happy place. He’s more damaged than ever.
Unless you’re a hardboiled/noir fan, the name Crumley probably doesn’t mean much to you. And if you’re not an HB/noir fan, I could tell you that lots of folks consider Crumley a latter day Chandler and that wouldn’t mean anything to you, either. Or that his character, C.W. Sughrue (“Shoog as in sugar. And rue as in rue the goddamned day”), is a latter day Philip Marlowe, if Marlowe popped amphetamines and did the occasional line of coke. But, like Marlowe, C.W. lives by a code: Family and friends are gold, and anyone who threatens them can and will rot in hell.
The first C.W. Sughrue novel, The Last Good Kiss, has an opening line that sings. Lots of HB/noir fans really dig this line, myself included.
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonora, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
Seemingly, the story begins at the end: C.W. has been hired to find Trahearne, a novelist-drunk, by Trahearne’s ex-wife. But he takes on a charity case for a friend who wants him to find her runaway daughter, and soon C.W. and Trahearne are traipsing across the USA, ripping through their stash of booze, tobacco, and coke. And when that tale ends, the reader is still only halfway through the novel.
Over the course of these four novels, C.W. gets gutshot and left for dead, kills some baddies, does some drugs, runs afoul of the DEA and the FBI and I-don’t-know-how-many police departments, acquires a makeshift family, defends them from some mean sons of bitches, does some more drugs, kills some more baddies, gets betrayed more than a few times, and loses his family.
That last part, that’s the part that stings. The one thing that tied C.W. to humanity was his wife and adopted son, and now . . . And now Crumley is 68 and I have to pray he lives long enough to write another C.W. Sughrue novel. He’s had some weird health problems (which he discusses in this interview) so his survival is not a moot question. So I have to worry, will Crumley’s next novel feature one of his other regulars, C.W.’s partner Milo Milodragovitch? I like Milo, but I love C.W. Crumley has to write another Sughrue novel.
I can’t think of too many other fictional characters who have come alive for me like C.W. Sughrue. Sticking to the HB/noir stuff for the moment, there’s Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko. Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. John LeCarre’s George Smiley. (Yeah, not quite the same genre, but close.) And that’s about it.
What characters have come alive for you? And have you ever felt like this — dying for the author to write the next one, so that your character can get his ass out of a sling?
D.
The Library Thing Meme
Yeah, thanks, Darla, thanks a BUNCH. Does anyone really read these list-meme posts? I mean, what could possibly be interesting about this. And how did this post end up in a different font? And what are the numbers in parentheses?
The instructions: “These are the top 106 books most often marked as ‘unread’ by LibraryThing’s users. The rules: bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn’t finish, strike through what you couldn’t stand and underline those you have no intention of reading.”
We have a winner!
Lyvvie wins the Challah baloo contest. This evening, I’ll check to see if I have your snail mail addie, and if not, I’ll drop you a line.
I wish you all could have won, but that damn cookbook is spendy. Oh, but I love it. I’ve been reading through it this past week, and I’m itching to try Julia’s rye bread, rugelach, brioche, and pumpernickel.
***
A. J. Jacobs must have the most sadistic muse on the planet. He’s the guy who wrote The Know-It-All, a memoir about the time he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica; and if you think that’s High Concept, you haven’t heard about his latest: The Year of Living Biblically, which documents his attempts to abide by every last commandment, including the stoning of adulterers. (He gets around the obvious lawbreaking aspect of the commandment by hurling tiny pebbles.) The man has a fine sense of humor, I’ll give him that:
This isn’t a cutesy grumpy old man. This is an angry old man. This is a man with seven decades of hostility behind him.
I fish out my pebbles from my back pocket.
“I wouldn’t stone you with big stones,†I say. “Just these little guys.â€
I open my palm to show him the pebbles. He lunges at me, grabbing one out of my hand, then chucking it at my face. It whizzes by my cheek.
I am stunned for a second. I hadn’t expected this elderly man to make the first move. But now there is nothing stopping me from retaliating. An eye for an eye.
I take one of the remaining pebbles and whip it at his chest. It bounces off.
“I’ll punch you right in the kisser,†he say.
“Well, you really shouldn’t commit adultery,†I say.
We stare at each other. My heart is racing.
Yes, he is a septuagenarian. Yes, he had just threatened me using corny Honeymooners dialogue. But you could tell: This man has a strong dark side.
So . . . what should A.J. do next? That evil muse of his will probably convince him to become a homeless person entirely dependent upon the kindness of strangers, but I think A.J. needs to take the reins here. His long-suffering wife has proven her ability to weather the most obnoxious of projects; surely she won’t object to a year of nightly sex, rain or shine, no heed paid to backaches or headaches or intestinal flu, and to really spice it up, every night has to be something completely different.
I can hear him now. “Come on, honey — it’s for my art!”
D.
Coming soon (not)
Fans of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen have been waiting for the movie version. And waiting. And waiting. According to the official website, the release date is 3/6/09. What’s taking so long?
Moore’s graphic novels have led to other successful movies: V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell. Seems obvious that Moore’s greatest work should at least have the potential of becoming a successful film adaptation.
According to this story at MTV.com, the production has had trouble — it “has already chewed up and spit out such esteemed directors as Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass.” Now, Zack Snyder, director of 300 (adapted from the Frank Miller graphic novel) and Dawn of the Dead, is at the helm.
Man, that MTV.com story is one long (and from what I can see, empty) article. I WANT MY WATCHMEN. Its message of the dangers of well-intentioned fascism is more important now than ever before; I wish we could see a release date before the ’08 elections.
Here’s the IMDB writeup on Watchmen. Recognize anyone on that cast? I don’t, except maybe Billy Crudup.
Here’s a short and sweet review, and here’s Watching the Detectives, a Watchmen wiki. Enjoy.
D.
Smart Bitches Day: Who says it ain’t still Summer?
My first thought on Summer Devon‘s new erotica novel, Revealing Skills: damn, that cover model looks like Geena Davis. My second thought, experienced while trying to find an image to prove the first thought: damn, there are a lot of topless photos of Geena Davis on the Intertubes!
Here’s the review. Revealing Skills? Loved it. Cue William S. Burroughs’s voice: “I give it five out of five erect penises.” Actually, Burroughs wouldn’t have given it any erect penises, but he could surely have drawled that line with all the gravitas it deserves.
Gilrohan’s a shape-shifter spying for his king. In fesslerat-form, he’s captured by one scullery maid and saved by another — Tabica, a comely slave with the odd ability to understand his squeaks. And that isn’t her only power. Her touch transforms him back into a man, which is convenient, really, since human-fesslerat sex would be an entirely different kind of erotica.
Tabica has all kinds of power, much of it centered in her womb. She’s the vagina dentata of female love interests. Gilrohan recognizes her for what she is: the rarest and most powerful of magicians, an ereshkigal. Her abilities are wild from a lack of childhood training, possibly as dangerous to her as they are to any man foolish enough to bed her. Can Gilrohan rescue Tabica — and himself — from Lord Lerae’s castle, and can he survive the charms of her warm, wet, and fuzzy?
She again lightly stroked his penis, which twitched, delighted by her smallest attention.
Thank God it’s a penis and not a member or a man-shaft or whatever else some of you erotica writers call it.
Hot enough for you?
Remember Jackie Kessler? She looks so sweet in that photo; hard to imagine a face like that concealing a mind capable of writing like this:
He pulls his hand out of me and mounts me, thrusts himself deep inside, deep to the breaking point, then slides out and back in, and again, pumping, faster, faster now, his hands gripping my shoulders and my heart slamming against my chest and my groin is on fire, on fire, oh bless me I’m on fire and he’s smiling at me as he fucks me, fucks me raw and he says, “You’re mine.”
No, Jackie! Please say it wasn’t you who penned those words — not you, the nice Jewish girl (I’m guessing) my mom no doubt wishes I would have married. No! Please say it was a group effort from this trio. I could see them writing a few steamy sex scenes.
Sigh.
The one question I never asked Jackie in that interview (linked above): Do your parents know you write this stuff?
Monday Night Pimpfest, Part One!
Received in mail today: the ARC for Jackie Kessler‘s The Road to Hell, sequel to Hell’s Belles. (Read my interview with Jackie here.) Karen and I both give Hell’s Belles thumbs-up, FYI. Smart and funny writing does it for us every time.
Undoubtedly, Jesse returns for more nasty demonic action. Don’t know for sure, just got the book, can’t speed-read like all of you Harry Potter-philes. But here’s a snip from the middle of the book. Apparently, Jesse’s coming on to an angel:
“Feel that?” I asked, my voice low, one conspirator to another. “That tingle in your breasts, that touch of heat in your crotch?” The widening of her eyes told me I’d hit the description right on the head. Of course I had—maybe I wasn’t a Seducer anymore, but I still knew how to kiss with power, magic or no magic. “That’s lust.”
Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “How do you know what I’m feeling?”
“Your nipples are erect.” Pointing with my chin, I motioned toward the two bumps on her boobs that pushed against her white scrap of clothing. Until that moment, I’d wondered if angels had the anatomy of Barbie dolls—breasts without nipples, a slit with no clit. “That’s not just from the air conditioning.”
Ooh, baby, that’s my Jesse. Hey, Jackie — mind if I read this out of order?
One criticism, though. That cover? I like my succubi with more junk in the trunk, if you know what I mean.
But I’m really looking forward to this one . . .
D.