Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: Reviews
Escapist alligator brain candy
Being confused with the Son of God turned out to be the highlight of my day. What now? I could walk that fine line between (A) engaging my readers in an impassioned discussion of sensitive medical issues, and (B) violating patient confidentiality, or I could post this cool shot of Clive Owen from the movie, Shoot ‘Em Up.
I put Shoot ‘Em Up on my Netflix lineup when Darla raved about it and only got around to watching it Sunday night. Clive Owen plays Smith, Not His Real Name, which I suppose is a fine shading on the ol’ trope of the Man With No Name, because at least Smith HAS a Name, albeit a fake one. But it’s easy enough imagining Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson in this role, except for the lovemaking. Naw, forget it. He’s Smith.
The Last Thirteen Books
In tonight’s debate, I heard Senator Obama say, “. . . the white thing to do.” Meant to say “right,” came out “white.” Okay, the R/W thing is a common enough lingual slip. But what about when Chuck Todd (on Countdown tonight) said “Hitlery” when he meant to say “Hillary”? Come on — you don’t just accidentally slip Ts into your words.
Weird.
For tonight: here’s a brief look at the last thirteen books I’ve read. (No romance here. What’s up with that?)
Review of The Hub, Issues 39-42
What’s not to love? The Hub is an e-zine, it’s free, and it publishes some fine short fiction. They’re closed to new submissions, but nothing is perfect.
Here’s my review of Issues 39-42, up at The Fix.
Stay tuned. I’m sure I’ll think of something to say later on tonight.
D.
Wastelands
If post-apocalyptic stories* float your boat, check out The Fix’s review of Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. There are some big names among the contributors, if that matters to you.
See if you can guess which reviews were written by yours truly.
D.
*I’m still partial to one old novel, Earth Abides, which I remember well after all these years.
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.
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?
SBD: Harvey, meet Eck. Eck, Harvey.
I must confess to irrational reasons for avoiding Erin O’Brien‘s novel, Harvey & Eck. True, Dean liked it, and so did SxKitten and Shaina. But I had these disturbing childhood associations with the word Eck — Los Angeles-based off-the-beaten-path-religion associations. You see, in Eckankar, ECK = spirit, but also represents the audible life stream, and at that point my eyes glaze over.
Let me reassure potential readers that Harvey & Eck has nothing to do with audible life streams, although it does have lots of spirit.
In Harvey & Eck, Harvey (short for Harvest Moon) writes letters to Eck (short for Timothy J. Ecklenburg), who at first is little more than a name she has chosen at random from the phone book. Harvey is young, broken-hearted, soon to be unemployed, and pregnant, and she has no one to talk to. So she decides to spill her guts to Eck.
Before long, Eck responds in kind, but since Harvey’s letters have no return address, Eck has no choice but to save his letters in a cigar box. From the outset, the relationship is uneven: Eck learns everything about Harvey, while for Harvey, Eck remains a black box mystery. The reader, of course, gets to see both their worlds.
Labyrinthine errors
I came to Pan’s Labyrinth ready to be entranced. Or, at the very least, entertained. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro is a favorite of mine, has been ever since his creepy 1993 vampire flick, Cronos. Cronos took vampirism to new places. Forget repressed and awakened sexuality; Cronos was all about obsession and addiction.
Del Toro followed Cronos with a string of successes, most notably Hellboy, but also Blade II and the less commercial ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone. The man consistently delivers cinematic eye candy, material so interesting, disturbing, and beautiful that you could ignore the story and still come away satisfied. Pan’s Labyrinth is no exception, and in fact, you might do well to do just that. This film falls down on story.
The time is 1944, the setting, the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s Nationalists have control of the country, but they find themselves fighting Communist guerrillas. Our protagonist is an 11- or 12-year-old girl, Ofelia, the sensitive daughter of a tailor’s widow. The widow has remarried the cartoonishly evil Captain Vidal, commandant of a Nationalist base charged with rooting out the local Communists.
SBD: Too stupid to live!
For a change, I have some real, honest to Gaaaaah bitchery for today’s Smart Bitches Day post. To wit: Maddie Faraday, heroine of Jennifer Crusie’s Tell Me Lies, is too stupid to live.
I don’t often bail out on a book when I’m past the 100 page mark. I really don’t usually bail on mysteries, no matter how far I am into the book. But in Tell Me Lies, I made it past page 200 and THEN bailed.
I don’t care who done it. As far as I’m concerned, Maddie deserves to get framed with the murder of her cheating, embezzling husband Brent. She has done nothing to earn the love and protection of stock-hunky-hero C.L.; she hasn’t even earned the love of the Requisite Crusie So-Ugly-Is-It-Even-a-Dog?® dog, Phoebe. She definitely doesn’t deserve to retain custody of her lovely daughter Em. The woman will be the death of that child. There should be a special Darwin Award for people who take not only themselves but their children out of the gene pool.
I mean — seriously. Hiding the murder weapon in a Spam casserole? Why is she even touching the murder weapon any more than she has to? And the crap she does with the embezzled money. Why, why, why? Why, if not to further the plot?
And that’s the real bitch of this novel. If Maddie’s gonna get set up, let the murderer set her up. She shouldn’t set herself up. She especially shouldn’t set herself up since she knows she’s the number one suspect!
Soon after Maddie stashed the gun and the money, I closed the book in disgust. Enough already. I admit I’m tempted to flash to the end, but only if it’s to read about Maddie cleaning the Women’s Prison toilets with a bristleless toothbrush; to see her visited by C.L. with a new girlfriend it tow (“Sorry, Maddie, but she was there, and you weren’t. Have a good life”); and to watch as her daughter is raised by Maddie’s evil in-laws, who will lie to the girl and tell her that her mother died in an attempted prison break.
Yeah, sure, I’m cruel. I’m a bastard, in fact. But I wasted over 200 pages of my reading life on that book and I want ’em back.
Oh — forgot to say it. Better late than never.
Spoilers!
D.