Bookpusher

Great. Thanks to another excellent Tied to the 90s entry by Yostal over at DeadOn…, I’m now going to have Rancid’s “Time Bomb” playing in my head all day long.

The release of a new Michael Connelly book is something like a national holiday in my house, so I freely admit I may have some bias issues here. The Overlook is a Harry Bosch story that was originally serialized in the New York Times last year, then reedited with additions made and put out for publication. It’s a slim volume, about half the size of a usual Connelly book, and also reads a bit quicker as he’s amped the intensity up.

Harry has to play politics here, dealing with a possible Homeland Security issue when a doctor who handles radioactive material is found murdered. Fearing a terrorist plot, the FBI swoops in, including an old flame, Rachel Walling, and Harry has to fight to keep ownership of the case as well as breaking in a new partner, Ignacio Ferras.

Aside from the underutilized Ferras, who we never really get to know, Connelly does a fine job here. The terrorist plot angle is new to the Harry Bosch novels, which usually deal with old-school Bosch grappling with demons while getting the bad guys, and is a nice nod to the new realities of post 9/11 law enforcement. The Overlook is a fine addition to the Connelly canon.

I have nothing against Prospero’s Books. It’s an independent bookstore along the hip 39th Street corridor in Kansas City, Missouri. They go out of their way to support local authors and poets and help the community. A good friend of mine worked there part-time for a year or so. I’ve even bought books from them. I like them and what they do. Except when I read this article in this Monday’s Kansas City Star.

The owner of Prospero’s, Tom Wayne, apparently has a warehouse full of used books that, according to him, will not sell. So he’s doing what any reasonable person who loves books would do: he’s burning them. In a feeble, misguided attempt to raise awareness of the decline of the printed word – apparently the kids are more apt to get their information from that pesky internet – Wayne started burning his backlog in an oversized Weber grill in front of his store the other day until the city shut him down for not having a permit for it.

I understand perfectly what he’s trying to do: burning some of the books in a high profile  manner – I’m sure he called the Star and there was a reporter and a photographer on site before he lit his first match – will raise the ire of booklovers around the area, and offers to buy his backlog will flood in, and Wayne will make his money. But burning books, the tool of censors and nutjobs like Fred Phelps, is cheap and manipulative and dumb.

Hey, Wayne, how about donating those books to a local school or a homeless shelter or a nursing home or an ESL program? Oh yeah, you wouldn’t get your name in the paper. I’m taking my indie bookstore money elsewhere, and I hope others do the same.

(Hat tip to the mighty TKC, who said what I said better, more snarkily, and in far fewer words.)

I’ve been memetagged by my friend Josh Neff, however I’m not worried, because I know he’s had all his shots. He was originally memetagged by library goddess Rachel Singer Gordon, so I feel important in some vague way. So: Eight Random Things About Me:

8.) My favorite book as a child was “The Monster at the End of This Book.”

7.) I can’t eat any sort of berry that bursts in my mouth. I can’t explain why except to say that it’s a texture thing.

6.) I met my wife at the wedding of our best friends. She was a bridesmaid, I was an usher in tight pants. (Long story.)

5.) I attended Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. Twice.

4.) It’s very rare that I ever remember what I dream. Unless I happen to wake up suddenly, 95% of the time it’s gone from my head by the time I reach the shower.

3.) I was the lead in two plays in high school. In one of those plays I had to wear a bright orange superhero costume, and to my enormous embarrassment, there likely exists a video of it somewhere.

2.) I don’t like to listen to sad songs. So much so that I’ll immediately switch to another station if I hear one start up on the radio. I like happy music, darn it.

1.) I’ll go to my grave with the belief that The Thirteenth Floor was every bit as good a sci-fi film as The Matrix, just without the kung-fu. Neither films are a patch on Dark City, though.

If you’re reading this, assume you’re tagged.

Librarian types that read this blog are probably familiar with the story of the library system in Jackson County, Oregon, which had to close its doors recently because of lack of funding. For years it relied on a federal subsidy from the local timber industry, but after the feds yanked it, the library and its branches were forced to find local funding. A proposal to increase property taxes was shot down twice by the community, and the libraries were shut down for good.

But someone has stepped in to fill that void. Even though the library as they know it is gone, people still want that service and sense of community they get from the library. They have tried to create their own. That show me more than anything else how much the library is needed. Who knows? This might be the new emerging library model.

Go Ashland Media Exchange!

Part novel, part graphic novel, part picture book, and part movie, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is a dizzying, dazzling book, full of magic, wonder, and possibility. You’ll likely find it in the children’s section of your library, but nudge your way past the twelve-year-olds and grab this one for yourself.

Half of what makes this book so compelling is in how the author tells the story. Selznick weaves different methods of storytelling into his tale. The book may look intimidating because its 300-plus pages make it look more like a college textbook, but it’s a surprisingly quick read, as most of the pages are large, amazingly detailed charcoal drawings sprinkled with a page or so of text. Selznick steps back to allow the pictures to tell the story, and lets words handle things like dialogue or fast-paced action. He captures motion in his drawings by increasingly focusing on an object during several pages of sequential drawings – it’s as if he’s placed a movie camera in the story that glides and swoops around the characters.

The Hugo of the title is a young man full of secrets who lives in a train station in 1930s Paris, making sure the clocks keep proper time. A mystery draws him towards a bitter old toymaker who runs a booth in the station and a bookish little girl who sometimes attends the booth with him. Hugo’s quest is intertwined with the old man’s past, and I can’t give away more than that, aside that it involves the history of filmmaking – which is apt, considering Selznick’s cinematic drawing technique I mentioned earlier – and the strange world of automata.

The “Invention of Hugo Cabret” is a stunning work that ignites the readers’ imagination, whether youth or adult.

Excellent ending to an amazing season. Well done. I had told friends I was going to be disappointed if there wasn’t going to be a world-class Sylar/Peter superpowered smackdown, but after watching the finale last night I’m actually glad they didn’t go that direction. “Heroes” works because it’s a show that borrows from the comic book medium while not being a comic book if that makes any sense. It’s a show about relationships and characters, and to end a show like that with a f/x-heavy battle royale in downtown Manhattan sort of goes against the whole point.

Thoughts:

Sylar’s still alive – next season’s Big Bad drug him into the sewers. But he has lost all his powers he gained during the series – he’s back where he began.

Hiro will meet Kensei and discover that his hero isn’t a good guy after all.

Parkman? He dead.

Thoughts?

Just finished “The Chemistry of Death” by Simon Beckett. It was passed along to me by my wife, who had plucked it randomly off the library shelves and enjoyed it, even though tales of forensic science and serial killers aren’t really her thing. I dug it down to the ground – it’s a contemplative thriller that immerses the reader in forensic details without ever being gross-you-out over-the-top gory. The novel takes a decidedly mature approach to its subject matter, probably because it’s written by a Brit.

David Hunter is a forensic scientist in London who had studied at the famous Body Farm at the University of Tennessee. (Which you’ll remember from the excellent “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach.) His wife and child were killed in an auto accident, so he packs up and retreats to a remote, desolate corner of England to become a village doctor and forget his previous life. His skills are called upon by the local police after a series of grisly murders terrorizes the small-town community. The twists and turns of “Chemistry” are gripping instead of cliched and tired, and like all good thrillers, the clues were there all along once you know the whole of it.

What really made “Chemistry” stand out was the care taken to present the village as a character itself – the small, tight-knit community begins to turn on itself and unravel as the murders progress. It made me think of another book, “The Church of Dead Girls” by Stephen Dobyns, about murders in a small town in upstate New York. It’s one of my all-time favorite novels, a contemplative study of the secrets people keep from each other in a community, something that Robert Frost might have come up with if he ever tried his hand at a serial killer novel. Unlike “Chemistry”, the narrator isn’t really part of the murder investigation – he is a high-school science teacher who admittedly doesn’t know all the details of the narrative he’s presenting to us – but his slightly detached, outsider view of the town and the carefully constructed tale, like a piece of intricate origami artwork, makes for compelling reading.

Currently reading: “Then We Came to the End”, by Joshua Ferris.

Found via Metafilter:

It’s Bookswim! It’s like Netflix, except with books! And it’s only twenty-five bucks a month!

I wonder if the marketing geniuses behind this know that libraries are, y’know, free. You can even renew books if you aren’t done with them by the due date. That’s also free. And if you want a book your library doesn’t have, they can use interlibrary loan to get it from another library that does have it. That’s free, too.

The only way I can ever imagine this working would be for the big bestsellers, like the Harry Potter books, where there would be a wait list involved.  Or maybe a community that doesn’t have a library in easy distance. Otherwise? Going the way of pets.com.

The Good News: How I Met Your Mother is officially renewed for next season. The Bad News is that Veronica Mars is very probably canceled. It’s just as well, I guess, as the show has never really lived up to its brilliant first two seasons. It will be remembered as yet another tragically canceled Rob Thomas-created show – and who also wrote the amazing YA novel “Rats Saw God” – and as the launching point for Kristen Bell’s career.

I’m glad that “Lost” has pulled out of the creative tailspin that was the first half of this season, but even though it’s back on track heading into next week’s finale I can’t say I’m half as excited about it as I am about “Heroes”.  I’m going into full lockdown on Monday night. Just thinking about it I’m trembling like a twelve-year-old girl on American Idol results night.

Oh: Pan’s Labyrinth? Now out on DVD. You have no more excuses.

Currently reading: “The Chemistry of Death” by Simon Beckett.