Criticult.Com

True Blood - Book 1.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

Excellent post-apocalyptic story that is more The Road than Road Warrior.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

I'm not usually a fan of true crime, but this book was excellent. Recommended for Preston fans and true crime fans.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

It is difficult to explain a Thursday Next novel without sounding like a goddamn lunatic so I’m going to let the Amazon description of Something Rotten do the heavy lifting. Seriously, I’ve sat here for 20 minutes and tried to write this 5 different ways and it always is as clear as mud in a dark closet. Admittedly, I’m cheating a bit. Deal with it.

(5 MINUTES LATER)

Well, that didn’t work at all. Their description is worse than what I was trying to do. Let’s see what else I can find.

(10 FRUITLESS MINUTES OF GOOGLING LATER)

Nothing. Great. Ok, fuck it.

Something Rotten finds Spec Ops Literary Detective Thursday Next and her 2 year old son Friday still living in the Bookworld. Thursday has been working as the Jurisfiction Bellman (a policing agency inside the realm of books) for the last couple of years, but decides to return to the real world and try to un-eradicate her husband, Landen. She finds things are less than ideal in her real world (an alternate universe 1985 England) as the evil multi-megacorporation Goliath (responsible for Landen’s eradication in the first place) is attempting to become a Church to loophole its way out of a prophecy predicting the corporation’s demise, and the megalomaniacal fiction escapee Yorrick Kaine may be inadvertently going to cause Armageddon because if Swindon fails to win the World Croquet Championship it will set in motion a series of events that will see Kaine become President of England.

Hamlet (yes, THAT Hamlet) accompanies Thursday into the real world to see how he is viewed by readers and his absence causes irrevocable damage to his play as in Hamlet's absence Ophelia decides to merge Hamlet with The Merry Wives of Windsor . The only way out of that mess is to re-write the play into its original version, but where is Thursday going to find William Shakespeare in 1985? How will she deal with the attempts on her life from the Windowmaker, a lethal assassin (and wife) of her friend Agent Stoker? And somehow she still has to find time to locate an on-the-run Minotaur and figure out just what the hell an Obvinator does.

Still with me?

Ok, enough of the plot synopsis. Let’s get this straight. If nothing above made any sense to you, stop reading and go get The Eyre Affair to see where it all began. I promise it makes sense in context but when reading a Thursday Next novel you are taking an E-train to Lunacy Town . Either you are with the madcap insanity or it just ain’t your thing. I loved the series and was rather shocked by Something Rotten’s outcome. I had no idea this was the end to the series. Yes, I am aware there is a fifth book called First Among Sequels but Something Rotten wraps up nearly all of the plot threads of the previous 3 books and does so with impeccable style.

The book is complex, but not overly confusing, and retains all of the charm of the earlier books and all major characters return at some point for the finale. There is one twist that is so good, so well done, so unexpected and so absolutely shattering that I had to read it twice. I’m not going to go into it, but I will say that if you have followed the series from the beginning you will meet this twist with confusion, dawning realization, and finally wonder as you try to piece together this final complete mindfuck. More than anything, you will want to re-read the books again to see the details you missed that possibly portended it.

I was very pleasantly surprised with Something Rotten. I have enjoyed every Thursday Next book but this is the first one since The Eyre Affair that was absolutely satisfying. I have not yet read First Among Sequels, but I know it takes place 16 years after Something Rotten. So I’m treating it as an epilogue. As a finale, Something Rotten excels and easily holds its own among the greats of the fantasy genre. As a series, the Thursday Next books should absolutely not be missed by any fans of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. If that describes you, you owe it to yourself to dive into this series.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist. Some cities are too wicked to be suffered.

Thus begins Dan Simmons' Song of Kali. This is the third time I have read this book, and familiarity does nothing to blunt the impact of the narrative. What begins as an academic description of the squalor in the teeming city of Calcutta soon immerses the characters and readers fully into the fetid underbelly of the most notorious city on earth.

The year is 1977, and Americans Robert Luczak, his wife Amrita, and their baby daughter Victoria journey to Calcutta so that Robert can acquire the final manuscript of a long suspected to be dead poet named M. Das. Once there he becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding where the poet has been and why it is so important for this final poem to be published. As the mystery deepens and the Luczaks' become unwittingly pawns by a secret society that worships the goddess Kali, Robert begins to see that there may be no escaping the city's madness.

Simmons describe Calcutta in such a way that there is no room for beauty. From the alleys teeming with garbage and human waste to the upper middle class homes of the Writer's Union there is always some bit of decay that taints even the sunniest of scenes. Like all great thrillers the book begins with a sense of foreboding that becomes suffocating by the final pages. There is no happy ending, not really. There is only chaos, a mystery with no answers, or at least no rational ones.

Song of Kali is a brutal reminder of the anarchy that exists just beneath the surface of humanity. The jacket touts the novel as one the reader will never forget, and for once the blurb whores are right. Any horror fan that has yet to read Song of Kali should do so immediately. This is not a novel of things that go bump in the night and can be easily vanquished, true evil can never be defeated, only delayed.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have finally done what not even uber-villain Diogenes Pendergast could achieve: they have killed off a main character. No head-fake like the supposed murder but really just critically injured Margo Green in Dance of Death. No, this is the real thing. In the opening chapter of the slow burn new thriller Cemetery Dance, NY Times reporter and longtime Preston/Child character Bill Smithback is killed. As in dead. Forever. Sort of.

What begins as an intensely personal case for Preston/Child regulars NYPD Homicide Detective Vincent D'Agosta and FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast soon drags them deeper into the most dangerous case of their careers. Given the amount of scary ass shit they have dealt with in the past this is saying something. Trouble starts when the primary suspect in Smithback's murder, seen on multiple security cameras, turns out to have been dead for a month. Soon zombii (the book helpfully points out the double i is the correct spelling) begin popping up in the city and all signs point to a cult of animal sacrificing nutbags that have held residence in a North Manhattan warren of buildings known as The Ville.

Along for the ride are other series regulars Nora Kelly, Smithback's wife, and Laura Hayward, NYPD Captain and on again/off again girlfriend to D'Agosta. Through the course of this adventure all the regulars are in serious trouble and after the initial murder of Smithback you are really kept guessing who is going to survive long enough to figure out just what the hell is going on.

Cemetery Dance is a much more intimate story then the last several Preston/Child novels. Although limited in scope, the murder of their friend clouds everything these characters do throughout the book. They make mistakes, they act rashly, and even the brilliant and seemingly unflappable Pendergast is thrown by the conflicting clues in the case. Preston/Child don't write mysteries, but this one was set up in such a way that you could deduce what was going on (faster than the characters to be honest) but not why it was going on. Rather then making the book tedious it heightened the suspense as you realize just how much danger the characters are in.

After the good but exhausting Diogenes Trilogy (Brimstone, Dance of Death, Book of the Dead) and the fun but nutty Wheel of Darkness, it was great to see a self-contained case that still brought all the thrills that fans of Preston/Child expect.


NOTE:: For new readers to Preston/Child I recommend starting where they did, The Relic. An incredibly good monster-thriller that was made into one of the worst movies of all time. Nora Kelly and Bill Smithback were first introduced in my personal favorite Preston/Child book, Thunderhead, about an archeological expedition searching for the lost city of gold.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

Ah, the continuing adventures of the 70 foot, 100 ton Megalodon shark, Angel, and the family that keep and fear her. Hell's Aquarium is book 4 in the MEG series and it starts with things not going well and ends with things considerably worse.


It has been near 30 years since Jonas Taylor first discovered that the once thought extinct Carcharadon Megalodon sharks have been living in the depths of the Marianas Trench. After 3 books worth of mayhem caused by the sharks they are now safely (HA!) ensconced in a custom built aquarium in San Diego. Trouble brews when Angel's (short for The Angel of Death) truly terrifying brood (Bella, Izzy, Mary Kate, and Ashley...no lie) start turning on each other.

To combat this Jonas decides to sell 2 of the pups (each one 15 foot long) to a Dubai prince for his upcoming Hell's Aquarium, the most advanced, largest sea enclosure, and future home of the scariest fishies in the history of the planet. Ever. As part of the deal his son David goes along to care for the sharks and train a team in the operation of a prototype submersible. Their mission is to go to the newly discovered Panthallasic Sea (hidden beneath the sea floor off the Philippines) to find the many, MANY prehistoric monsters that have made their home there for millenniums for display in the aquarium.

Meanwhile a go-gooder animal rights group, suffering from some sort of brain damage, seem to think that releasing the 30 foot Bella and Izzy into the wild is a good idea and begin sneakily trying to do just that. But Angel is growing restless in her enclosure and drastic measures are needed to control her, which results in Angel getting some unexpected drop ins for dinner.

This is all potboiler nonsense but makes for a hell of a fun read. Alten writes in the present tense which takes a bit to get used to but tends to make everything more suspenseful. It's an interesting trick that works for a thriller. The book gets bogged down in the over-long ending that introduces lots of creatures in a small time frame in a "that one was big, but THIS one is huge!" constant one-up manship that gets a little irritating. The primary issue I have with the book is the extremely sloppy epilogue that fails to wrap up anything but sets up book 5 (to be called Night Stalkers) and the supposed finale to the series.

I've been consistently surprised Alten has gotten as much mileage out of this silly series as he has so I'll happily go along for one last harrowing dive to the depths of the ocean when Night Stalkers comes out in a couple of years.

But I have about 100 unanswered questions I hope he bothers to address this time.

{Further books in the MEG series are: MEG, The Trench, and MEG: Primal Waters}

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

I don't know how the game is going to be, but this video for upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is pretty much what I envisioned the prequels to be and instead got rastafarian rabbit creatures and emo-Anakin.

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/deceived-cinematic-trailer

Labels: TylerDFC

There isn't a great deal to say about When You Are Engulfed in Flames. It's David Sedaris so you know what you are going to get and are either a fan or you are not. There are stories about living in France and other countries abroad, there are stories about his family, and stories about the everyday things that he notices. After 6 books the descriptions are all pretty much the same.

However, I would put When You Are Engulfed in Flames second only to Me Talk Pretty One Day. This is his tightest collection yet, and every story has at least 1 or 2 laugh out loud moments and most have several. The focus is off his family this time and really concentrates more on his life with his long time partner Hugh. This helps the stories to not feel like they are treading over the same ground, while still linking nicely to the earlier books.

A large chunk of the book is dedicated to David's attempts to quit smoking and offer a very funny history lesson in how cultural acceptance of smoking has changed dramatically from the 60's until today. After several failed attempts to quit, he and Hugh move to Tokyo for the winter for a change on scenery. Here, David enrolls in a class to learn to speak and write Japanese. The 50 page story expertly interweaves the trials of trying to quit, along with doing something very difficult (speaking Japanese) without the crutch of a cigarette, and also several observations of Japanese culture vs. US and European. It is easily the highlight of the book.

The book is a fast read but just as engaging as his previous works. There was just something here that made me like it more. Naked tread some very dark material and the lighter touch just
works better for the humor.

Labels: Cannonball Read, review, TylerDFC

Despite what is going on at my other site hereRUFKM reviews May 8 West Palm Beach NIN/JA Tour Kick Off Show, I have to admit this video is pretty damn great.

Labels: music, TylerDFC, video

Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in some time. Is it great literature? No, it most certainly is not. But that really doesn’t matter because the book is just so damn fun. I decided a while ago that if I happen to luck into a vast fortune I would open my own movie studio and option the rights to the novels I love. This book would definitely be on that list. {Along with Song of Kali, Dies the Fire, The Eyes of the Dragon, Dead in the Water, and The Eyre Affair to name but a very few.}

The blurb on the cover calls Go Go Girls a cross between Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Moore. The book does take place partly in a strip club, but otherwise I don’t know why Tarantino’s name came up. I would say it is a cross between Terry Pratchet, Carl Hiaasen, and the Fallout games.

It has been 9 years since a financial meltdown and nuclear war (among other calamities) decimated the world. All that time, Mortimer Tate has been hiding in a cabin in the mountains in Tennessee with a very healthy stash of supplies and weapons. One day he sees some men coming up the mountain toward his house. He hasn’t seen another soul since the apocalypse years before. He goes out to try and greet them but ends up startling them with his sudden appearance - his cabin is hidden in a cave – and is forced to kill the 3 men. This encounter spurs Mortimer to try and rejoin what is left of society and sends him careening from one adventure to another with his friend Bill, a gunslinger, Sheila, a stripper. He quickly learns that the new economy hinges entirely on Armageddon Dollars, found exclusively at Joey Armageddon’s Sassy-A-Go-Go and its franchise locations. Joey’s is a strip club/brothel that is also a hotel, armory, and supply station and our heroes visit them often, but it is only in the final chapters that the importance of the club becomes apparent from a story telling perspective.

This book is all plot and comic details and unfolds much like a video game. There is little time for deep characterization as Mortimer and his friends get in one scrape after another while fighting (and running) from cannibals, asylum inmates, scavengers, and other denizens of the post apocalyptic world. Just when they seem to be safe some new danger erupts and they have to react quickly. This is repeated throughout the novel. The middle chapters get a little tedious as it jumps from action scene to action scene but the final 100 pages settles down as the plot comes fully into focus and sets the stage for an epic - yet very funny - war.

To say more would be to give away too much. The fun with this book lies in getting sucked into this weird post-apocalyptic world as the little in jokes and references begin to pile up. I laughed out loud several times and had a blast with it and was surprised by the ending, but completely satisfied. Even as I read the last page of the epilogue I could see it unfolding as a movie, down to the final line as the music gets louder and the credits begin to roll.

The next time you are complaining there are no good movies get yourself a copy of this book, a nice comfortable chair, and your drink of choice and read the best summer movie that has yet to be made.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

Labels: Playlists, TylerDFC

In an instant, the world changes. The power goes out, planes fall from the sky, and most frightening of all, gunpowder and gasoline stop igniting. Humanity is sent back to the dark ages in an instant. Welcome to The Change.

Dies the Fire by S.M Stirling follow 2 groups of characters in Oregon that spend much of the narrative apart but their stories run parallel. First we meet ex-Marine and private pilot Mike Havel. He is ferrying the wealthy Larsen family to their mountain home outside of Salem when the Change occurs. All instruments on his plane cease to function and he crashes into a river. Mike rallies the Larsens and they make their way across the wilderness to try and reach civilization.

In Corvallis we meet Juniper McKenzie, folk singer and Wiccan, her daughter Eliir, and bar owner Dennis. She is playing a gig when the lights go out and before confusion really sets in, a boom sounds from downtown as a 747 smashes to the ground and sets fire to the town. People quickly learn it’s not just the lights that are out, but all electronic and electric devices have ceased to function, battery operated or not. As looters smash in a nearby electronic store a cop pulls his gun to dissuade them and fires a warning shot only to be met with a dull click. The thugs see this, pull their own guns and fire and theirs fail to go off as well.

Sensing that it’s time to get out of dodge, Juniper, Eliir, and Dennis head for Juniper’s cabin in the woods outside of town, picking up friends and stragglers along the way.

As the story progresses Mike and Juniper’s groups fight for survivival and attempt to adapt to a world where sword and chainmail have once again become cutting edge technology.

Dies the Fire is the first part in a 9 book (and counting) series called The Emberverse. The series is divided into 3 self contained trilogies. It is tied to Sterling ’s previous series “Island in the Sea of Time ” which dealt with the island of Nantucket being enveloped in a mysterious storm and being transported back to the Stone Age. The Emberverse series is about what happened to everyone left behind.

The strength of the novel comes from Stirling’s detailed descriptions and logical progression of events in the post Change world. Apocalyptic fiction is one of my favorite genres and Dies the Fire stands with the best just on premise alone. Whether or not it is ever explained in the series, it is a stroke of genius to eliminate gunpowder, electronics, and explosives from the equation. This alone is enough to set the novel apart from typical apocalyptic stories. Where it really shines is in the recounting of how Mike and Juniper’s groups grow from a handful of scared survivors to hundreds of battle hardened warriors fighting together in alliance.

The story is detailed without being particularly dense but there are times where the action slips out of control from the narrative. In a couple of instances I had to re-read a couple of pages to catch what happened to a secondary character. Also, the ending seems to arrive with little run up as the heroes join forces in a joint assault on a mutual enemy.

Speaking of the enemy, very little text is given to Professor Norman Arminger, the self proclaimed Protector of Portland and the Willamette Valley . When the change occurs he uses his knowledge of medieval warfare and gang society to convince the criminal element of Portland to join forces with him in order to rule this new world. His building of a fort to try and control the Valley where Mike and Juniper’s groups make their home is the impetus for the final battle. The second book in the series is called The Protector’s War so I am guessing it will go into more detail on Arminger and his plans.

As the first in a series Dies the Fire sets the stage for epic battles to come.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

I'm a big fan of Wicked, and I'm happy to say that A Lion Among Men gets the series back on track after the meandering and unsatisfying Son of a Witch. This time around Gregory Maguire is focusing on Brr, known to us as the Cowardly Lion.

As Oz prepares for war, Brr is sent on a mission from the Emerald City to gather information from an old nun named Yackle. In order to interview the nearly dead maunt Brr must travel to the Cloister of Saint Glinda, a convent that unfortunately lies directly between the approaching army of the Emerald City and the resistance fighters of Munchkinland. Also caught in the middle is the mysterious fortune-telling Clock of the Time Dragon and its' keepers.

Some background: When Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and her sister Nessarose (killed by Dorothy's house) were killed, their half brother Shell became Emperor of Oz. He has taken that mantle (after Glinda and the Scarecrow took a turn) and is now obsessed with bringing the sececed nation of Munchkinland directly under Emerald City control.

Brr is trying to gather information on the whereabouts of Liir, Elphaba's son and rightful heir to the throne, but the reasons why and how he came to be a civil servant to Emerald City is all part of the journey. Like every other Maguire book, it isn't so much about plot as it is about the characters.

This is book 3 in the Wicked series and newcomers will be lost if they have not read the earlier books. While much of the story functions as a stand alone tale about the Lion, the ending can only be appreciated fully by those that have been on the journey from the beginning. Questions are answered, but this in turn reveals other questions. The "action" in A Lion Among Men takes place in one night, making this the most urgent of the series so far. The middle chapter always suffers a bit in an epic, and this one definitely is The Empire Strikes Back of the Wicked books. It starts with things going poorly and ends with a declaration to join forces and find/rescue another character.

If you are already a fan of the Wicked series there is a lot to like here. Brr is a fascinating anti-hero, not so much cowardly as he is opportunistic. While I never grew to positively like the character, by the end I at least understood him. His interactions with Yackle supply the most entertaining sections as the Lion attempts to draw information from the old maunt while she in turn is searching for something from him. The final 30 pages or so pack a lot in and several revelations are unveiled one after the other.

I've liked all of Maguire's re-imaginings of old tales, but the Wicked series is my favorite. Something about taking the structure of The Wizard of Oz, turning the whole narrative on its' ear and keeping the tone deadly serious works for me. When A Lion Among Men ended I was already thinking ahead to the next chapter and who it might focus on next time. I have my suspicions but I'm even more intrigued by one of the final lines of dialogue:

"Don't you understand? She's coming back..."

Looking forward to Book 4 already.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

Sometimes I become interested in a book based on title alone. I think it was a blurb in EW that I first read of Say You're One Of Them and I became intrigued by the premise and found the title to be wonderfully evocative and frightening at the same time. So I tried to get the book from my local library but it was on order with no release date. After tiring of waiting, I finally ordered it from Amazon after Christmas. The book was both what I expected and nothing that I was ready for.

The book consists of five short stories told from the perspective of children in Africa and gives a human view of such horrifying topics as ethnic cleansing, child slavery, extreme poverty, and religious warfare. Often the title of a book bluntly describes the contents or a specific subject of the book. However the phrase "Say you're one of them." or a similar sentiment is invoked at some point in all of the stories and underlines the premise of an "us vs them" mentality and in many of the stories the children's only hope of survival is by blending with "them" and hiding their otherness.

The first story, "An Ex-Mas Feast" describes a family on the streets in the slums of Kenya on Christmas Eve, as told by Jigana, an 8 year old boy. It establishes quickly that these stories will not shy away from the horror it describes, nor will it glorify or present it as mere titillation. Like a reporter, Nigerian author and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan recounts the details of this family's life as simple fact, with little commentary or expression on how the reader should feel. The family expresses gratitude when they are given a gift of glue from one of the other poor families. They take turns, including the children and babies, inhaling the fumes deeply because this holds off hunger. The oldest daughter is 12 and works as a prostitute, a profession that the parents encourage but ultimately tears the family apart.

The second story, "Fattening for Gabon" is really a novella. Told from the perspective of 8 year old Kotchikpa, it tells the story of 2 children and their uncle, Fofo Kpee, who sells them into slavery. The story plays out like a thriller, with the children first delighted by the attention the slave traders lavish on them. They are told these are NGO activists and are coming to take the children away to Gabon where they will live a life of luxury. It is only as their Uncle begins to have doubts that the plan goes awry and the truth becomes clear to the children. Calling the story harrowing is an understatement. The nonchalant nature of the deal, and the way that so many adults work to deceive the children is repellent. But again, Akpan takes no side in the matter which makes the story even more effective.

The longest story in the book is "Luxurious Hearses" and it is here that I was having a hard time shaking the spell of the book. It tells the story of Jubril, a teenage fundamentalist Muslim fleeing northern Nigeria for the southern villages during a religious riot. Because his father was Christian, he is forced to flee his home and ends up on a bus full of Christians also fleeing to the south. He is forced to try and blend in, a task made much more difficult because his right hand was lopped off when he was arrested for stealing a goat months before.

Jubril is a "good" Muslim in that he hates Christians and is a strong believer in Sharia law, the idea that a country should be governed by strict fundamentalist Islamic teachings. On the bus he is forced to confront women in western style clothing, television, and Christian views which challenges his world view. And through it all he has to keep his right arm in his pocket to hide his stump, because if the other passengers see it they will know he is Muslim and kill him.

This story throws the idea of religious way and ethnic cleansing into stark relief, forcing you to change your perspective on right and wrong. There are few things I hate more than religious fundamentalism in any form. Be it Christian, Muslim, or cultist, I simply do not believe that ancient doctrine has any place in modern society. Believe what you want to believe but leave the rest of us out of it. Unfortunately, the very foundation of religion fundamentalism is to spread the word so like a virus these radical views infect millions. "Luxurious Hearses" is about taking that crucial step away from radical intolerance and understanding that we are all at our core human beings. The shattering conclusion just underlines this revelation making what has come before all the more tragic.

The book wraps up with a story set during the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and as harrowing and horrific as it is, I was numb after "Luxurious Hearses".

Through these fictional stories, Uwem Akpan shines a light on the dark continent forcing western readers to look at the horrors and not turn away. It is a read I won't soon forget.

For further details, and to read the first story in the collection, "An Ex-Mas Feast", please visit www.sayyoureoneofthem.com

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

I am new to the essayist/memoir field of writing so I'll admit to being (way) late to the Sedaris bandwagon. This is the third Sedaris book I've read, after Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and I would say it is my favorite. While not as consistently funny as Me Talk Pretty, I found the stories were more interesting and offered something more than just a humorous anecdote.

The emphasis is off the immediate family this time around and focuses more on David Sedaris' personal experiences, especially cross-country hitch-hiking when he was in his 20's. The standard family tales are still present; crazy Ya Ya lives with the family, Lisa gets her first period during the US OPEN, etc., but they have been de-emphasised a bit and this helps to open up the narrative and give it more depth and incite into Sedaris himself.

Of particular note are the hitch-hiking episodes. While played for humor it still didn't make me ever want to get into a stranger's car, I don't care how desperate for a ride I may be. Some of Sedaris' adventures very easily could have killed him, but he blasts past the really scary/creepy parts to get back to the humor and this makes the story feel a bit rushed, especially since we don't actually get to find out how he escaped some of these situations.

50 pages of the book are devoted to one essay called "C.O.G.", a title which doesn't makes sense until the final 20 pages. This monster chapter details Sedaris taking a bus to Oregon to work as an apple picker for the season. After the season is over he is offered a job in the factory that processes the apples and he takes it. There he befriends a co-worker and things go swimmingly until one night he returns to the guy's trailer after being invited for a drink and things get really scary really fast. But as uncomfortable and cringe worthy as the events the stories are always funny.

It takes a lot of skill to make cancer funny, but in the story "Ashes" Sedaris does a brilliant job of bringing both the humor and pathos to a cliched subject. He perfectly captures the helplessness of finding out someone close to you has cancer and how your behavior changes toward that person.

The book wraps up with the title essay, "Naked", in which our neurotic hero decides on a lark to visit a nudist camp (they don't call them colonies anymore). This story is probably my favorite of all the ones he has done. Uproariously funny, insightful, and just a blast to read, I found myself re-reading passages because my eyes were blurring from laughing so hard. It is the perfect capper to a book that is all about mining bad situations for their inherent comedy but sacrificing none of the integrity of the stories themselves.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

So here is the list of the albums I listened to the most in 2008. Feel free to blast away in the comments, that's what makes it fun after all. One note, while I did buy Metallica's Death Magnetic and after giving it a good week of dedicated play I have never gone back to it. The production sucks, the songs meander all over the place, the lyrics suck, and I've come to the conclusion that I am simply over Metallica. I've come to terms with this and I encourage you to do the same. Oh well, we'll always have Kill 'em All and Master of Puppets.

In no particular order...

Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.

The album really wasn't that odd. It is essentially one big homage to the Beatles and ELO. But the band make the songs sound fresh and it is probably the most cheerful album I've heard all year.

Best tracks: Nine in the Afternoon, Northern Downpour, Pas de Cheval

Nine in the Afternoon


Alanis Morissette - Flavors of Entanglement

I already wrote about this album here. This was Alanis best since her breakthrough Jagged Little Pill and proved that an unhappy Alanis is the best type there is.

Best Tracks: Straitjacket, Not as We, Tapes

Not As We


The Offspring - Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace

This is my pick for best comeback album of the year. It isn't flawless, and the latter couple of tracks could easily be outtakes from Green Day's American Idiot, but after shoveling a decade's worth of shit onto the airwaves, The Offspring finally came back with a rock album that had some teeth. Hopefully it won't be another 10 years before we get another one from them as good as this one.

Best Tracks: You're Gonna Go Far Kid, Nothingtown, Let's Hear it For Rock Bottom

You're Gonna Go Far Kid


Fall Out Boy - Folie a Deux

Fall Out Boy have always (unfairly) been slagged for the poseur-riffic antics of bassist Pete Wentz when the truth is the band has consistently put out solid albums. Folie a Deux is their most ambitious to date and it succeeds more often than it fails. The band has always excelled at clever wordplay (even if the songs rarely make sense) and at least half the tracks benefit from playing at a decibel level usually reserved for 747's on takeoff. Folie a Deux is no exception. True that the guest stars like Elvis Costello and Debbie Harry, among others, are all but unrecognizable under the sonic assault, it is still an album well worth hearing even if they don't always reach the heights the band is reaching for. But they have got to retire the nonsensical song titles.

Best Tracks: I Don't Care, Sliding Headfirst into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet, Tiffany Blews

Sliding Head First Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet

O.A.R - All Sides

O.A.R. has been around for years on the jam band circuit but this is their most mainstream album yet. The songs are tight but there are serious musical skills under the hood. Only one song is over 6 minutes long but it's a foregone conclusion that these songs will be stretched to breaking point live. In some cases, like the stunning The Fallout, I would have been happy if they had continued for at least 10 minutes more. High praise indeed.

Best Tracks: Our Town, Shattered, The Fallout

This Town


Alkaline Trio - Agony & Irony

More laid back than previous releases, Agony & Irony takes a bit to grab you but once it does it's hard to stop listening to it. A perfect album for the winter months, the lyrics are somber, the songs are not happy but there is an honesty there that is missing from a lot of rock releases.

Best Tracks: Calling all Skeletons, Do You Wanna Know, Love Love, Kiss Kiss

Do You Wanna Know?


That's it. Have a happy new year everybody!

Labels: music, TylerDFC

Most of us at one time or another have used drugs. Whether it's alcohol, nicotine, pot, or even just aspirin we have sought out chemicals to change the way our body feels. Like most people my age I have dabbled in illegal drugs from time to time. Nothing too heavy, I don't need all of my fingers to count the number of times I have smoked pot, but I HAVE sought to alter my consciousness with drugs beyond the standard alcohol. I was never a big fan of pot so I didn't feel the need to go any deeper in the experimentation of drugs. But I've never really been OPPOSED to it either. Once you make a choice to try one I think it opens up the possibility that one day you could see yourself trying others.

Hell, I'm sipping on a particularly delicious bloody mary while I write this and fighting the strong impulse to get the cigarettes out of the freezer and fire one up. Having "quit" smoking a couple of years ago I do nevertheless slip from time to time. Now instead of throwing the smokes away after a night of hard partying I put them in the freezer where they stay mostly fresh and I don't waste another $5 the next time the urge strikes to flirt with lung cancer. My addiction to cigarettes is nothing to do with physical and everything to do with mental. I can go weeks without a cigarette but the moment I get in a particular frame of mind, or get more than 2 or 3 drinks in to a night of drinking, a near overwhelming clanging refrain begins ringing in my head :WE NEED SMOKES. Sometimes I can ignore it, sometimes I don't bother. It's irritating but I've mostly made my peace with it and just try not to fall into the REALLY bad old habits.

I spent a few weeks in the winter of 2002 when I was a functioning alcoholic. My girlfriend had just moved out of state, I was laid off from an extremely lucrative contract position, and I was having a serious case of "I need to make a fucking change." I was going through a bottle of vodka a day, not to mention the beer chasers, and it all culminated in one brutal night of misjudgement and a final burnout of an admittedly seriously dysfunctional relationship. And it was the wake up call that I needed to stop acting like a fucking idiot.

The point is, I know what it is like to rely on drugs to get through the pain of life.

Which brings me, in an admittedly long winded way, to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What starts as an incredibly funny (to me) escapade through the desert and Las Vegas with our main characters Raoul Duke (or Hunter S. Thompson) and his attorney stoned out of their skulls on all manner of drugs, ends up an indictment of the drug culture for being just as empty a response to the madness of the world as living clean and playing by the rules.

I have done no research on this book beyond simply reading it so I don't know how much of it is true and how much is made up. This is my first Hunter S. Thompson book and I really have little knowledge of the man beyond knowing what books he wrote and the Terry Gilliam film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I intend to read up on him after completing this review but I wanted to get my thoughts down without being unnecessarily influenced one way or another by the "truth".

The book doesn't have a plot so much as a random series of events that are being filtered through a seriously burned out mind. Over several days Raoul Duke and his attorney attempt to cover a motorcycle race in the desert outside of Las Vegas called the Mint 400 and following that infiltrate the National District Attorney's Convention, all while ostensibly trying to find the "American Dream". The pair slash and burn their way through Vegas, trashing hotel rooms, terrifying the locals, destroying their rental cars, and ingesting enough drugs to put down a platoon of Marines. Through it all the pair are absolutely riled with conspiracy theories and paranoia that everyone is coming after them for their shenanigans.

By describing an extreme look at the consequences of drug use, Thompson forces you to look at your own foray into the world of drugs and altered consciousness. What starts as funny becomes depraved and shocking, but how many of us haven't had a night in our past where the wheels came off and we just rode a drunk or a high until its' devastating conclusion? There is plenty of time the next day for regret, but when you are in the moment and in the grip of a serious binge the consequences seem far away and impossible to recognize.

Reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was cathartic for me to revisit my own experiences with out of control behavior and be thankful that I have left that time in my life behind. Whether it was his intention or not, Thompson made me remember why one of my favorite platitudes is "There but for the grace of God go I."

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC

I am a pretty big music freak and this is my Best of 2008 Music list. Before you all go running for the hills I'm happy to say it's not quite what you think.

No, we (meaning I) are going to do things a bit differently this year. I'm not just going to list my favorites (although I will in a later column). Nope, this is the list of the top 5 songs that according to Itunes I listened to the most from the 2008 crop. There is no hiding, no trying to bluff that I've been listening to some avant-garde navel gazer with a xylophone and a bag of marbles singing twee songs about daisies and whatever twee xylophone bands write about when they are not busy boring the ever loving shit out of me.

I tried linking to the music video for the tracks listed when it was available. Unfortunately, due to the draconian lengths the labels will go to in order to insure their artists are seen by as few people as possible I have had to resort to live tracks or music only tracks. So don't take the poorer quality of these You Tube clips as indicative of the studio version of the song. Besides, you are getting full length free previews and that's a damn sight more than the 30 second clips on Itunes so you really can't complain can ya?

1. Saints of Los Angeles - Motley Crue (29 times) - Saints of Los Angeles

This is not surprising. The song was the best the Crue has done in years and my kids requested it constantly. Believe me, the only thing missing from this song are the sprightly voices of an 8 and 12 year old singing "We are, we are the saints we signed our life away!" Luckily I can provide that myself in the comfort of my own home. Fun fact, not only is Saints of Los Angeles number 1 on this list, it is the number 5 most listened to song out of my entire 4,500 track library! Not bad for a bunch of ex-drug addict deviants and a lead singer that can't sing more than 2 words in a row on stage without hyperventilating.

If you think it's crazy
You ain't seen a thing
Just want until we're going down in flames



2. Straitjacket - Alanis Morissette (16 times) - Flavors of Entanglement

The best song on a hell of a good album. Alanis finally found her anger again and this song perfectly encapsulated the frustration of being in a relationship that is imploding through mixed signals.

Conclusions you come to of me
routinely incorrect
I don't know who you're talking to
With such fucking disrespect

Alanis' music had gotten a bit cuddlier of late with more of a "love everyone" vibe. This new album brought back the woman scorned she-bitch that we all met way back on You Oughta Know and it's her best in years.



3. Calling all Skeletons - Alkaline Trio (12 times) - Agony & Irony

I'm a big Alkaline Trio fan, and while a lot of the long timers have dissed them for writing poppier music of late, I really don't see that big a change from their earlier stuff. The lyrics are still some of the best out there and the chugging guitars never cease to lend the right melancholy to the somber sentiment. Sure, it's ready made for the Hot Topic set but these guys are more on the ball then the typical mallrat pop-punk.

It's only just begun
It's been fun
We were blind, deaf and dumb
There's a party in my closet
Calling all skeletons



4. Hell Yeah - Rev Theory (11 times) - Light It Up

Not the most original band by any stretch of the imagination but what Rev Theory lacks in inventiveness they make up for with an earnest approach to the material. Hell Yeah is a big slab of dumb rock that gets better the louder it gets and a chorus that is built to shake arenas. Sometimes that is all you want in a song. Witness these riveting lyrics:

Gimme a "hell" (Hell!)
Gimme a "yeah" (Hell Yeah!)



5. Into the Nightlife - Cyndi Lauper (10 times) - Bring Ya to the Brink

Every now and then a good pop dance song grabs me and this was the one this year. While the critics and sheep have been falling all over themselves praising Katy Perry for this year's pre-fab-every-song-sounds-the-same cookie-cutter-dance-schlock, veteran Lauper released a solid collection of dance tracks that were all but ignored by everyone. Into the Nightlife is the best on the album.

I'll take ya till you're all spun up
And in love
Into the nightlife




So that's it. The numbers don't lie. I'll be back later (probably) with part 2 of the Best Music of 2008 According to TylerDFC. I know y'all are on pins and needles.

{CROSS POSTED AT RUFKM.NET}

Labels: music, TylerDFC

"Jews with swords". That is what Michael Chabon wanted to name this book according to his afterword. And the title would not be far off. "Gentlemen of the Road" tells the tale of Zelikman, a German Jew, and Amram, an African Jew, and their various adventures in 1000AD Europe. We first meet the 2 in a tavern, staging a fight to con the oblivious drunk patrons out of some coins. No sooner are they about to abscond with their money then they are found out and have to high tail it out of town. But not before being asked to escort a boy to his uncle's fortress by an elderly fellow who unfortunately gets dead when the townspeople discover they've been conned and catch him with an arrow meant for our heroes.

With that the tale is off and running and doesn't slow down until the final page. There is action, drama, romance, intrigue, and all those other things the publishers would like me to relay to you readers.

What sets "Gentlemen of the Road" apart from similar adventure potboilers is that I needed a dictionary (preferably from 1000 AD) to figure out what the hell half of the descriptions were describing. Chabon writes the novel as if he were living in that time as well. This can take a bit of getting used to and the jarring mix of a familar tale told with archaic wordplay can be slow going.

However once you get past the first couple of chapters you figure out to stop dwelling on not understanding every third word and just going along with the flow. It's not a complicated plot so it isn't too difficult to just blow past the jargon but you still can't help but think you are missing something. The writing style brings to mind classics like "Count of Monte Christo" and "Treasure Island" and to be honest would make an incredibly entertaining movie. Each chapter ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger and keeps you reading even when you should be turning out the light and going to sleep.

It doesn't compete with "The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" or "Wonder Boys" but "Gentlemen of the Road" is a fun (and short) book that Chabon fans should seek out.

Labels: Cannonball Read, TylerDFC