Recently in Books Category

"Now if I live longer, you'll grow faster" - Sia, Little Man

The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime, 2005). Since I talked Walter Mosley, it's only appropriate I talk Stephen King. The Colorado Kid is more hit than miss. It is a tight, character-rich, crime mystery with no resolution, but satisfying none the less. Not much more to say, really. The lead character, Stephanie, is a fresh-out-of-J-School curious reporter working for a small-time, small-city paper who obviously is on her way to becoming a hard-boiled investigative reporter. She's the kind of character you'd want a good PI show to be based around. The mystery itself is told entirely in conversation between her and her mentors and loses none of it's intrigue because of it. Every time Stephanie asks a question, she's asking the one you want answered and the responses she gets are always worth it.

I think I'm going to try more of the Hard Case Crime series.

Recommended because good Stephen King is good Stephen King.

tags: books | stephen king | crime fiction | mystery | 52 in 52

"You can run away as long as you choose but at the end of the day, you're gonna lose." - Breakestra, At The End Of The Day

Life Out Of Context by Walter Mosley (Nation Books, 2006). I think it is pretty well established that Walter Mosley and Stephen King are my two favorite authors, right? King has been much more miss than hit lately, for me, but Mosley is consistently strong. His fiction is filled with tight dialogue and atmosphere and settings I can envision crisply in my mind. I walk those LA streets with Easy Rawlins. I found my way in the world of tomorrow in Futureland.

I've had less success with his non-fiction. I'm still not finished with his very short treatise on world peace and while I blew through Life Out Of Context last Sunday on the plane, I still don't quite know how I feel about it. Maybe it's too personal. It is a lot like reading his diary or a workbook of political & social re-thinking and as he breaks down and builds up what matters to him and what he thinks can be done, I'm left feeling a little on the outside looking in. If this is a call for revolution, it isn't a very convincing one. I didn't get off the plane searching for my signs or my megaphone ready to march on Washington.

But Mosley raises some interesting points. He is outraged that more of us aren't outraged at what is happening in most of Africa. He suggests that America is no longer the model for which the world should seek to emulate; that contemporary South Africa is really the type of social and political benchmark that could guide other countries towards non-violent reform.

Those two ideas, at least, hold some weight with me. I want to know more about the current state of affairs in Africa (and this blog is going to reflect that) and my complete and utter disgust with our current political system (which is not working on a national level and which I'm less and less inclined to think can ever work again on a national stage) makes the idea of looking elsewhere for useful, positive and global action awfully appealing.

Alternet is running an excerpt from the book today.

Recommended for being thought-provoking.

"Better take your time. Don't miss this" - Mark Rae, Fold or Flower (featuring Veba)

Powers by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Oeming (Image). Last year, I debated heavily with myself to include graphic novels in my list of reading material. I eventually relented and included Sin City (the entire collection) and the hard-bound Batman: Year One on the list but I left Powers off. I thought it was a little too "comic book" and not enough "artsy" or "literary". Having now read 4 of the 11 volumes, I've now decided it makes the cut. The density of language and break from traditional comic writing structure wins out. It also helps that, in each of the collections, Bendis includes source material like his scripts and the sketch work and notes between him and Oeming so that I can see the process of comic writing. In junior high school, I spent way too much time in Dungeon Comics (now Alternate Reality Comics) with aspiring artists and comic book nerds and once thought I might write super hero books. I like being able to see inside that world.

Powers is built on a pretty simple premise: how do regular police deal with crime involving super powered beings? And, more interestingly, what happens in cases in which super powered beings are the victims of the crime? How does a coroner do an autopsy on someone with inpenetrable skin? How does a detective go about investigating the lives of people with secret identities? How does one mete out systemic justice in a world of vigilantes? This is a popular theme for those who write and draw superheroes of late. On TV, the main story arc of Justice League Unlimited has been about the world putting blind faith in heroes while few worry about how to protect against them should their benevolence become malevolence. A similar theme runs through DC's current Infinite Crisis and my guess will also be the main subject of Marvel's upcoming "Which Side Are You On?" mega-event. It also is a constant concern in the more "realistic" Ultimate Universe that Marvel puts out.

Have I comic-book nerded you out too much yet?

Anyway, as I started reading The Colorado Kid this morning, I realized that Bendis's dialogue and Oeming's art is just as hard boiled as the classic crime fiction novels but with the cinematic style of contemporary TV cop shows. Powers is comic book Homicide: Life on the Street or Super Hero NYPD Blue.

I dig it.

"I said, 'What ya wanna be?' She said, 'Alive.'" - Outkast, Da Art of Storytellin', Pt. 1

And It Don't Stop - The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years, edited by Raquel Cepeda (2004, Faber & Faber). Maybe I'm a fugitive like Rakim - hard to reach. While Can't Stop, Won't Stop made me expressive, a bundle of hip-hop energy ready to pounce, And It Don't Stop has me reflective, thinking about who I am and where I am at this moment in time. The 30-year-old hip-hop head. Does that still mean something? I was listening to Slim Thug's Already Platinum last night. Really listening. The beats are very nice. Slim has a commanding and distinctive voice and a nice flow. In Toure's The Birth of a Hip-Hop Nation, he talks about what the MC. It includes all those things - the tone, the wit, the flow - but Toure argues we need more. We need  unique political or sociological insight coming through those speakers. Real MCs have something tosay. Slim Thug has exactly one topic - how he's come up and is living well. If hip-hop, as Toure claims, is built to worship urban male blackness, it would seem we are currently only celebrating it's excesses. To a cartoonish degree.

But this is old news.

It's interesting how the anthology flows. Those early hip-hop articles are built on definitions. Every story is essentially asking the same questions - What the fuck is this new shit and how in the world did it come about. It is less about defining the personalities and more about exploring the culture. Even a profile piece on Russell Simmons is really about the creation of the hip-hop aesthetic and not about Russell as a man. Who he is helps explain what hip-hop is.

Who we are.

By the 90s, there's a lot more written in the vein of star making. Everyone is larger than life. More intense. More determined. Less sane. Dangerous. Good lord, everyone is dangerous in the nineties. From Ice Cube to Foxy Brown, whether it is an act or not isn't what matters. It's hyper-real. And looking at it now, much of it is sad. There's such a visible transition from early nineties hip-hop to late nineties hip-pop. That you can see it in the stories selected is depressing.

But back to Rakim. Robert Marriott asks Ra whether he is Bigger or Invisible Man. Who in today's hip-hop landscape could answer that question? Who would you even want to hear answer that question? 

And where does a 30-year-old hip-hop head fit in all of that?

Recommended.

"Her daddy was a hustler so she loved them." - Common, Testify

Sin City by Frank Miller (Dark Horse). These really should all be counted separately but, like I said, I have a problem. I can only justify adding Sin City if I count all 1000 pages (give or take) as one story. That kind of thinking does a disservice to the amount of work Miller put in to making these hard boiled tales (and how much time I've spent getting through the dense dialogue and intricate art) but, yeah, it is what it is.

My Sin City revival (and growing Frank Miller obsession), of course, is a direct effect of the exceptional film adaptation. I wanted the source material. Sin City on film is manic and hyper-violent. The comic books are even more so. The characters are even less sympathetic. The bent moral compass of Basin City is so off-kilter that good deeds never go without a usually fatal price. One indiscretion is likely to put you in the path of a blue dressed assassin without even knowing it. Disrespect a woman and Miho will bring you down. There is no gray (quite literally in the art) in this world of black and white.

My favorite of the long form stories was also my favorite in the film - The Hard Goodbye. Marv is the perfect archetype of the Sin City man and a constant presence throughout the series. The best of the books overall, though, is probably Booze, Broads & Bullets. B, B & B is essentially a short story collection featuring the poetic Rats and Blue Eyes. The truly fucked up Blue Eyes.

Taken separately or as a whole, Miller's dark city is worthy of being called a novel. His artwork only enhances the story and never detracts.

And maybe I will stop turning up my nose at the graphic novel. If the storytelling is there, it matters not if its in a panel or a paragraph, right?

Highly recommended.

"Is it too late to tell you that I don't mind?" - The Decemberists, I Don't Mind

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzacchelli (DC Comics). I don't know why it is such a struggle for me to include graphic novels as legitimate titles on my 52 in 52. I don't know why the addition of illustration somehow makes compelling story less of a "book" in my mind but it does. I need to get over it. Especially considering how much of it I've been reading. I'm making some mental justifications for what can get included. Batman: Year One makes it because its hard bound, it initially was the base material for what (for the most part) was the very cerebral Batman Begins of this summer -- competing with Kung Fu Hustle as my favorite film of the year -- and because Frank Miller is just very good.

I like the idea of looking at the world of Gotham mostly through the eyes of Jim Gordon - an upstanding policeman new to a wholly corrupt police force and city. I like a Batman knew to crime fighting. Unlike the film, we don't follow the moral trajectory of Bruce Wayne much in the graphic novel. His story is more a physical one. He's not as prepared for the criminal element as he thought he was. He realizes he can't do it alone. He begins searching for an ally in a sea of enemies. All while Jim Gordon, just a man, is bending under the pressures of his seriously screwed up life.

I like all of that. I'm just not a fan of Mazzucchelli's art. It is a throwback style reminiscent of the early days of comics. Square jaws, soft strokes, sloppy but intricate detail. The dark and heavy inks are more contemporary but it isn't the style I like in my comics (although, oddly, I kind of enjoy it in Powers). This is a minor quibble, though, because I see why he was chosen. Batman looks more human than hero. These characters look like real people in a real world of grit and grime. A world in need of people willing to take risks in the face of so much evil.

Maybe this is why I've been so drawn to the world of comics lately. We are a world so desperate for people willing to take a risk for right...and not lose their humanity in the process. That might be the true morality play of Year One.

Recommended.

"Make moves then your life will really improve" - The Perceptionists, 5 O'Clock (featuring Phonte)

The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke by Suze Orman (Riverhead Books). I suck with money. I always have. For what I make, for what I pay in taxes, I really should have money in the bank and a retirement plan and probably some other long term investments. I don't know where the money goes. One day with Suze Orman's book and my money life is changed.

I know my FICO score. What?! Shit, I practically know what I was eating for breakfast in July of 1995 considering all the information Experian has on me. I know what a Roth IRA is and why I should have one. I want to talk about money market accounts. I want to change my insurance deductibles and get down to the nitty gritty on my debt to credit ratio. Suze talks some money shit straight to me about buying drinks for everybody and footing the bill at dinner. I don't even care that she writes the book like a junior high school science text. I can get with the word problems and the colored boxes. That makes sense to me.

Or is it making cents for me?

Suze Orman has me making bad puns about money, y'all.

If you're broke like me and don't know why, highly highly highly recommended.

p.s. I only picked it up because Tiffany B Brown was talking about it on 43 things.

"Lately, I find myself out gazing at stars, hearing guitars, like someone in love." - Bjork, Like Someone in Love

Susie Bright Presents: Three Kinds of Asking for It by Eric Albert, Greta Christina and Jill Soloway (Touchstone). Everyone knows about Courtney Cox's Asshole right? Jill Soloway's first short story, an internet treasure that was probably brought to my attention by Susannah Breslin and her Reverse Cowgirl* blog back when there was a Reverse Cowgirl blog. Soloway writes and produces episodes of Six Feet Under now and has a memoir coming out in September that I have an advanced reviewer's proof of for review at LAist. I might sneak and read it first before I give it to our reviewer just because Jill is that interesting.

I should talk about the sex, the erotic sensibilities of it all, but what I really want to talk about is the technique Soloway uses in "Jodi K". It is written as a diary written by a 14 year old in 1983 Chicago as she has a kind of sexual awakening. It is the kind of story where I ask myself, "Is this written with the entire audience in mind? Is this for everyone...for me?" I get caught up in the prejudices that flow so freely from this fictional Jodi. They are the kinds of prejudices that come with priviledge and social stature. I get caught up because for much of the story I find her likeable. Her self-esteem and sense of self-worth are endearing and welcome but several of her choices aren't. Her assumptions aren't. Her equivocating isn't.

Yet still it is a great story written in this voice that feels so genuine. I don't have to like Jodi K to get it, to appreciate the call of her desires guiding her actions. Those jarring moments that pull me out of the story fade quickly and I'm back into that curious in-between time of sexual innocence and sexual adventure. Besides that, Jill makes me laugh.

The other stories are both deliciously filthy but not quite as thought provoking or technically interesting as Jodi K.

I should read more erotica. I blow through this stuff like candy.

"What they goan tell us about us, huh?" - Clipse, Ma, I don't Love Her (featuring Faith Evans)

Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler (Perseus Books). There was a time when I fancied myself a writer, at the least, an aspiring one. I don't think of myself that way much anymore. I'm a blogger and an uninspired one at that. I go through my archives on rare occasion and find some of my writing -- true, honest-to-god storytelling whether it be autobiographical or fictional -- and I wonder where that went. I wonder where the time has gone? I blog all the time at LAist but I rarely "write" there. I'm too caught up in trying to get the information out and taking the information in. I've become an all consuming media beast. I'm no longer much involved in the conversation between the world in my mind and the audience I hoped to share it with.

Bookmark Now has forced me to re-examine my relationship with the words I so love. The language I used to enjoy manipulating. The stories I used to need to tell. The authors of each essay, almost to a person, speak of the work of writing with such passion that I feel shamed. I've lost my path. I want to get it back. I'm not sure I know how.

No, that's bullshit.

The how is to sit down and write. Write the story I've been thinking of about loyalty and loneliness. Tell you the tale of the mouse that is living on my patio and wants desperately to get into my house (in truth, I believe he's already been in once). Share my fears and angst and joy. My worry. I can complain that there's too much media. There are 800 unread blogposts in my bloglines and there are video games to be played and books to be read and DVDs to be watched and movies to be seen and TV shows on my DVR and comic books to be flipped through and email to be responded to and all that but...but there was a time, a more writerly time, when I would sit down at the computer just shy of midnight with headphones on my ears and a Smirnoff Ice on my desk and I'd bang out words. Words written in this virtual space but that I thought just might be worthy of paper.

Bookmark Now is funny and touching and intense and familiar. These are the voices of our contemporaries. People I enjoy like Meghan Daum and Elizabeth Spiers and Stephanie Elizondo Griest and new voices (at least to me) like Nico Cary, Kelly Eskridge and Nicola Griffith. They write. They blog. They just fucking do it.

For the critical eye it turned back on me, I must recommend it.

And, hopefully, I must write.

"Girl, I'll give you all I've got to give." - Michael Jackson, Baby Be Mine*

Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, And Forgotten Items From Around the World by Davy Rothbart (Fireside). Found was first a Christmas present for someone else. She'd pointed me towards the Found Magazine site on several occasions and when it popped up as a recommendation for me, I knew it was perfect for her. She's an archaeologist by trade, insatiably curious by nature and his given me one of the coolest reads ever: a letter from freedman to former slave master explaining why, after the end of the Civil War, he won't be returning to the plantation in the south and leave his full of promise life in the north.

It is brilliant (and brilliantly funny) and a found letter in the most real sense. A stranger's words on paper, a snapshot of unknowns without context, an odd object with a story to tell but no one to tell it...they are time capsules of humanity. After hearing her raves about the book itself, I figured it had to go onto my 52 in 52.

The best parts of Found are the pieces that are built on raw emotion -- a student's complete frustration with his or her lack of knowledge; a lover's plea for forgiveness for the stupid things he's done during his depression; records and lists of a day in someone's life. Amazing.

Nearly every piece is a revelation. I get caught up in the poor grammar on lost materials, in the large looping letters or chicken scratch scrawl of people with poor penmanship (for a refresher on my word nerd-dom perhaps an earlier 52 in 52 review?) and overt sexuality or overt emotional candor. The latter two are simply not a reflection of me, so to see it all laid out there is fascinating.

Found is a lightning quick read and well worth it. I laughed aloud several times and was nearly brought to tears on at least two occasions. The human condition is powerful. Perhaps even more powerful when we can connect with someone we know nothing about.