World War Z

World War Z, Max Brooks
Read: 5 to 8 October 2011
4.5 / 5 stars 


Like The Road, I bought World War Z so people would stop recommending it to me; also like The Road, a few years passed between purchasing and finally reading the book, the latter effort being choked with innumerable moments of vivid déjà vu wherein I wondered why the hell it took me so long to delve into such a disturbingly awesome novel (and so indulging myself in Halloween-appropriate reads already proves to be a brilliant move).

The most immediate success of WWZ is Brooks's ability to write believably in dozens of unique voices. No two survivors -- not even the military personnel -- have the same story, so it stands to reason that none of them should sound the same in their interviews: The only commonality in the various personal accounts is their palpable humanity. Each survivor's pre-war life and wartime experiences shape their narratives, and it's impressive how one character's ongoing internal battles can be so well hidden while others still are visibly dealing with their own psychological demons. Taking on the international element and offering the reader a global perspective only makes the zombie scourge more believable.

It is the worldwide perspective that makes WWZ an ambitious undertaking. Seeing each country's response, how national identities affected individual responses and how global relations played a role in every stage of the war offered an unsettlingly realistic look at a hypothetical tragedy.

Brooks really doesn't leave a stone unturned, and his impeccable attention to detail is another one of the book's strongest assets. He addresses everything from seeking refuge in a nuclear sub to some nations' return to isolation tactics to the environmental devastation of attempting to blast the undead back to the hell from whence they shuffled (OH HAI NUCLEAR AUTUMN) to the failure of standard wartime tactics in the face of an unconventional enemy to even the biologic composition of zombies, which becomes creepily relevant upon revealing the "quisling" phenomenon. Though, given that a staggering number of survivors AND undead have taken to the oceans, I'm kind of curious about the possibility of zombie sharks. Yeah, it sucks that the whale population is a notch below extinction by the end of the book but.... c'mon. Zombie sharks. Let's entertain that doubly insatiable flight of fancy, please.

The scariest part of this novel? How much it assured me that neither my country's government nor its people are even close to being adequately prepared for anything more traumatizing than a really bad week at work. The events that unfolded in these 342 pages had me wondering if the rise of the undead might be the bite in the ass that society needs to get its priorities in order. My fellow Americans worry me more than zombies do (but that's no recent development), which was more than enough inspiration to make sure that the zombie-apocalypse go-bag is up-to-date before heading to the range for target practice.

In the end, I came for the zombies; I stayed for the authenticity of the book's various human reactions.

Electric Aphorisms

Electric Aphorisms, John Roderick 
Read: 22 to 23 December 2011
4 / 5 stars


One of the few reasons I bother (albeit rarely) with Twitter is that John Roderick, the sasquatchian mastermind behind one of my all-time favorite bands, has an account there. I can read his 140-characters-or-fewer bursts of dry wit for free, aye, but he can't very well autograph my computer screen when I see him next month, can he? (Though the internet doesn't get ink from its cover all over my hands and its pages dont't start falling out halfway through the reading experience, so score one for gadgets.) To appease the unbridled fangirl in me, I ordered this book, which arrived the same day as the tickets to John's January solo show. Is that the hand of Fate scrawling out a message for me? Of course. Duh. What, the universe doesn't rearrange itself for you?

I gleaned some crucial information from this collection of amusing assertions. Like me, John talks to machines in the hopes that the human behind the curtain hears him. He, like me, has a soft spot for songs in 3/4 time. He clearly enjoys dropping allusions to Idiocracy, "Kashmir," Janis Joplin tunes, MST3K and Gabo, much like I do. He scoffs at folks who make responsible life choices, uses "sarcasm to soften [his] fury and use[s] over-formal politeness to soften [his] sarcasm," looks for grammatical errors everywhere, knows that Sarah Palin is evil, appreciates aging technologies, hovers somewhere left of center (unless the punchline calls for an exaggeration of political ideals), feels like his nature alienates him from modern society, likes watching fat animals be fatties, stays inside for days, and facetiously revels in his complete lack of interest in other people (including his future self), all of which sound just like me.

All of this leads me to believe that JoRod and I should be the bestest of buddies, complete with those plastic heart necklaces everyone rocked like they was pimpin' in the early '90s. I'm sure he'd appreciate my hilariously ironic fake-racisim just as much as I'm tickled by his -- even if I can't play guitar like a middle-aged prodigy or cover 80% of my face with a beard that would make everyone in ZZ Top drip with envy.

I'm also now armed with the knowledge that Mr. Roderick, like my darling husband, is a left-wing gun nut who embodies many bearlike qualities, which will be quite useful in convincing my beloved that I'm not really dragging him to a show he's guaranteed to be lukewarm about.

American Psycho

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
Read: 18 July to 11 August 2011
3 / 5 stars


Is Patrick Bateman a murderous sociopath? Or just some narcissistic Wall Street yuppie whose delusions of grandeur nearly had me puking all over the book? I have no bloody clue because the only way I could get through this novel was reading it as an allegory for the evil of capitalism. That's not the point, I'm sure, but it did make things interesting, if not bearable.

The only real answer I can offer is to the question of whether Brett Easton Ellis is a writer with whom I'd voluntarily spend 15 minutes alone (which is a resounding 'hell no'). As much as I'd like to pick his brain, I'm afraid of what would ultimately happen to mine -- microwaved? stapled to the floor? fed to a chow?

I will say, for its more gruesome moments (and there are many, all of which are infinitely more visceral than anything I've read before -- and I've read a lot of King, which means I've mostly unflinchingly encountered a dude's manhood unceremoniously shoved into his mouth and left to rot), the quality of the writing was damn good. Ellis does whirlwind narratives well, and he's a mighty fine wordsmith.

Unfortunately, Ellis also has a knack for creating some deeply disturbed and deeply disturbing characters. Yes, the main character is horrifying for his realism, which is a testament to Ellis's skills as a writer. The violence could have turned into a self-parodying bloodbath. Bateman could have dissolved into a prattling cliche. But.... hey, I've got a vivid imagination, too, and a selectively weak stomach to go along with it, so picturing some of the scenes was a bit much for me at times. As much as I'm inclined to believe that this book is an eerily accurate depiction of what goes on in a sociopath's mind, I enjoyed being trapped in Bateman's head very little. He is probably the least reliable narrator in modern literature and.... okay, that part of it WAS entirely too entertaining. Every thought spilling from Bateman's unstable mind was as plausible as getting reservations for eight-o'-clock tonight at Dorsia, and that knowledge had me snickering over certain passages far more than any sane person should.

In short: It's a good book, yes, but I'll be damned if I'm ever reading it again.

San Francisco Musical History Tour (Joel Selvin)

San Francisco Musical History Tour, Joel Selvin
Read: 11 December to 13 December 2011
3 / 5 stars

Years ago, I rescued this promisingly titled tour-guide-in-a-book from the wastelands of a former job's free-book pile, which was really just an embarrassing array of Sookie Stackhouse tripe and battered romance novels that made me ashamed of my supposedly well-educated journalists-in-arms (okay, I kid, but.... I've never seen people with otherwise smashing taste take that much pride in letting their guilty pleasures run amok). I figured that since I love reading and have a special fondness for the catch-all genre that is classic rock, something combining two of my most lovingly nurtured interests should have been downright onanistic. I mean, right?

It's not the fault of Musical History Tour that I've never been able to shake the suspicion that I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, though the book couldn't have possibly rubbed my face in it any harder (why, yes, it totally got personal, thank you for asking). My three-star rating is a terribly reluctant one, though the vindictiveness behind it is slightly less reluctant. Because... seriously. Damn you all for getting to see Janis and Zep and Floyd and CCR and The Dead and scores upon scores of other rock legends in their prime while I have to settle for bootleg recordings and the occasional Allman Bros. gig when my neo-hippie chums and I can get our shit together enough for a trip to fucking Camden. Which is like Philly, only you're way more likely to get fork-stabbed in broad daylight.

The blurb on the back cover hails this as "....more than a guidebook--it's a trip." I'll certainly grant it that. It was pretty neat to see history play out against the backdrop of not just music's greatest talents but also some of literature's and even comedy's biggest names and brightest stars. Reading about how creative minds representing all of the arts mingled was a treat unto itself; there's something quietly, beautifully unifying in knowing that writers I love were in the audience when bands I love even more took to the stage. The bonus of more modern outfits -- Metallica, Green Day, Les Fucking Claypool (!) -- popping up in places that once showcased their predecessors did lend a strangely endearing cyclical nature to everything, and I did thoroughly enjoy and appreciate that aspect of the narrative.

For all the sad endings a lot of these venerable music institutions met -- fires, inept management, runs of straight-up bad luck -- it was an interesting reminder that nothing's forever (not even the heyday of rock 'n' roll) as well as an inadvertent tribute to our society's fondness for hanging on to the past and other emotionally relevant but fleeting intangibles via old memories and older buildings.

The one not-in-my-head shortcoming of this book was its woeful lack of photos. I've never been to The City by the Bay or any of its surroundings areas, so lengthy descriptions of structures and areas didn't mean as much to me as, say, a faithfully reproduced photograph would have. What struck me as a little odd was how many of the photos were from the '90s. I would have much preferred to see these clubs and makeshift recording studios and parks as they were when the book's anecdotes existed in the present tense. I mean, if I wanted to see more current images of these locations, I could just run to Google maps (which I plan to do anyway). Reading about these once-in-a-lifetime shows and spontaneous mixings of musical powerhouses made me want to see what things were like when it was all happening, which is the largest contributor to how denied I felt by the time I got to the last page.

But! Speaking of anecdotes, the liberal sprinkling of tales about notable events, performers, recordings and general goings-on from the past was what had me hemming and hawing over my tepid rating. This book's biggest success was the stories it told about what made each of its landmarks musically notable. I loved how San Fran was actually treated like a physical presence in these artists' lives and how the city had such an influence on the miscreants who called it home and the work they produced. Reading about the places where some of my favorite albums were recorded was such a treat for the fangirl in me. Learning new things about bands and musicians I love was the purest kind of delightful.

All in all, this would have elicited a much gushier reaction from me if not for my distaste for reality's harsher points. So I'll let the need for a serious classic-rock binge that this book left me with be its lasting impression.

Now excuse me while I go dance '60s-documentary-style to "Box of Rain" for the next five minutes.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Seth Grahme-Smith)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahme-Smith
Read: 10 October to 17 October 2011
3 / 5 stars
 

This book is an exercise in damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't literary risks. Had it contained less Austen and more zombies, I'd be complaining about how the original material was trampled in an effort to cash in on those of us who love a classic novel just as much as we love seeing the undead wreak havoc on society; however, it seemed like the zombie element was more of an intermittently applied afterthought than an actively engaged central plot point, and therein lies my issue.

I realize that's the fine line books of this ilk have to walk, and I appreciate that difficulty both as a lit snob and a writer. Just like I'm keenly aware that I shouldn't be taking this so seriously. I know I should have been reading this with my tongue firmly placed somewhere in the vicinity of either cheek (and I did for the most part, with special thanks to repeated plays on the obvious dual meaning of the word "balls"). But I can't help but feel a little a little cheated by this book, just like I did with the various missed opportunities of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

To me, if you're going to call a book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there should be equal parts snooty British society, personal opinions shaped by erroneous assumptions and the shuffling undead. And, okay, I get it that you can't totally rewrite such a beloved manuscript without unraveling familiar storylines and creating an unorganized mess that can't be resolved. But the way this was executed felt a little phoned-in, like the zombies were just thrown in enough to be a gimmick (which, I suppose, is the intent but that's not my point). I wanted Elizabeth and Darcy's courtship to be overwrought with teeming masses of undead, not just the occasional allusion to how equally they're matched in the art of zombie slaying. Don't tell me about it -- show it to me (hel-looooooo, basic tenets of creative writing).

What I'm trying to say is that for me to have been totally impressed with this book, the zombie element would have played a much bigger part in moving the plot along. A little more effort to emulate Austen's style while weaving a thoroughly modern cultural phenomenon into a familiar tale would have tickled my demented funny bone a lot more and would have resulted in a much stronger satirical effort. The way this reads is like it's five pages of unaltered text with the "Time for more zombie hordes now!" tacked on for effect rather than relevancy. One could argue that not really mentioning the unmentionables is a nod to how the book's high society doesn't really acknowledge its brain-eating scourge; I'll argue back that it's simply lazy (re)writing.

I'm not saying that this book is devoid of any merit, humorous or otherwise. It isn't. At all. It was greatly entertaining and had me snickering quite a bit. Like S&S&SM, the recent addition of supernatural creatures had the fortunate outcome of emphasizing the hypocrisy and damnable delicacy of society that Austen has taken many a jab at. It just seems like this would have been better executed in the hands of someone with equal reverence for and knowledge of Austen's work and zombie lore, and who had the intent of adding a whole new layer to a familiar story instead of inserting the odd bit of undead mayhem here and there. My overall impression of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that it's a prime example of a great idea that lost something in its execution.

The Last Werewolf (Glen Duncan)

The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan
Read: 13 July to 17 July 2011
4 / 5 stars


This being the Glen Duncan book that's getting the most attention is like that time that band I love (oh, just pick any indie-darling-turned-pop-culture-phenomenon and it'll work) got famous for a comparatively lesser album. It's Glen Duncan, so of course it's better than most of what's storming the bestseller lists, but.... really? This is how the staggering majority is cutting its teeth on Duncan? Y'all gotta give Hope or I, Lucifer or Death of an Ordinary Man a chance to see what this guy can do when he's firing on all cylinders.

So it's accessible, or as accessible as Duncan gets. Pop-culture references do-si-do with allusions to classic literature, foreign phrases tango with base instincts, werewolf-myth mainstays cozy up to new twists on an old theme. Duncan's penchant for telling a story by slowly mixing the past with the unfolding present helps everything blend together smoothly. And, since Glen Duncan is a wickedly fabulous writer, the narrative is also beautifully written. Sure, Duncan can come off as pretentious but what high-minded bookworm doesn't love a well-turned phrase? Or a whole book of 'em?

The story explores all the human elements that Duncan has so expertly captured in his previous works. Love? Yep. Lust? Of course. Loss, selflessness, selfishness, the omnipresence of personal histories, journeys of self-discovery: It's all there. Just like they were in Love Remains and The Bloodstone Papers.

Glen Duncan has been one of my favorite writers for years so I'm amped that he's finally getting a modicum of the attention he deserves. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy The Last Werewolf on its own merit (or the fangirl bonus of seeing my name pop up throughout the first half of the book). I liked Jake. What others saw as whining, I saw as soul-baring. I have no idea what it's like to be 200 years old and racking up murders by the dozen for most of that time. I don't know what it's like to feel as utterly alone as Jake did. I don't know what it's like to be hunted by maniacal organizations and their equally crazed splinter groups. But I imagine I'd be experiencing a lot of what Duncan has Jake pontificating about. To whittle a monstrous, other-worldly being down to a sympathetically human character is hard to do but Duncan always does it well -- I, Lucifer, anyone?

My only bone to pick doesn't really pertain to the work itself but the way that it's being heralded as a "sexy" novel. To that, I paraphrase Tom Robbins, another author I can't ever get enough of: Just because there's sex doesn't mean it's sexy. Sure, Jake sounds like he's more physically attractive and loads hornier than, say, the he-beasts depicted by Benicio del Toro or Lon Chaney, Jr., but this is also the first werewolf story I've encountered that set out to make its love-story element so overt. Yeah, Jake gets his were-rocks off more than the norm but does that make his story a sexy one? If so.... er, that's a little too puritanical for my crass and demented tastes.

Ultimately, I very much enjoyed this book but am not-so-secretly hoping that it'll attract some attention to Duncan's seven other novels. Because, like every band that I love who got famous for their most accessible albums, I maintain that the older stuff is even better.

Girl With a Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier)

Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
Read: 13 December to 16 December 2011
2 / 5 stars


So the parts when Vermeer was actually being a painter were pretty interesting. Seeing as I slogged through this on account of a recommendation that arose from an art-class lecture on Vermeer, I was hoping that the art stuff would at least deliver.

But it's not a good sign when a book's most compelling moments revolve around two people grinding pigments. And, no: "Grinding pigments" is not a clever euphemism for artist-bangin'. It is, quite literally, referring to the detailed descriptions of how paint was made in the days before those fancy metal tubes replaced pig bladders as the paint-storing vessels of choice.

This was the most predictable book I've read in a while, and that includes the two graphic-novel series that are simply retelling stories I know well in a new medium. I knew exactly where the plot was going within the book's first dozen pages. Every subsequent thread was introduced with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the writerly finesse of a 14-year-old's first attempt at fanfiction.

It was also pretty obvious what stereotype everyone was going to play from his or her very first appearance. There really isn't a multi-dimensional character in this book. I understand that the first-person voice is a limited perspective by its nature, and I would write it off as just that if the peripheral characters were the only flat archetypes, but even the narrator doesn't carry any convincing weight. Griet is the protagonist because she's the main character. And because all of the characters with whom she has scuffles are inexplicably bitchy. Not giving characters any real motivations, not making them behave and interact believably, and generally preferring to tell rather than show all contributed to making this whole book feel sloppy, underdeveloped and rushed. If Girl with a Pearl Earring was maybe 200 more pages of really hammering out the story and its players, maybe then it'd be a more satisfying read. At least it's mercifully quick and mostly painless at its current length.

I say "mostly painless" because there are some groan-worthy lines showcased here: While more pages would have maybe benefited the plot, there is nothing -- save for a control-freak editor -- that could have improved the prose itself. I could not get past the clunky writing. It didn't take me long to get violently annoyed by the author's fondness for hitting the reader over the head with the most obvious attempts at subtle foreshadowing by way of forcing too much weight on these flimsy, laughably ominous one-sentence paragraphs. There were numerous other technical things that kept grating on me about the writing and its myriad shortcomings. Among them: Griet saying things like "I always regretted that decision" to indicate that she's looking back on a time that is very clearly written as the present; not one character shows any development throughout the novel; sixteen-year-old Griet, the daughter of a tile painter, somehow knows more about painting and composition than Vermeer, a professional artist who actually managed to garner some fame during his living years.

Even when the book pissed me off (which was often), I will admit that I never found Griet herself to be irritating (maybe because I kept fantasizing about Scarlett Johansson to save my brain from oozing through my ears?) -- but I was irked at how it felt like Chevalier was Mary Sue-ing her way through the character. The way that every man whom Griet encountered in the whole! damn! book! fawned over and flirted with her, the way she was presented as being uneducated but naturally clever just because she sometimes spoke her mind and separated her chopped veggies by color, the way Griet's family was painted as these simple, sheltered little Protestants who knew nothing of the world around them.... there was far too much black-or-white for me to take anything about the book seriously.

I don't care enough to write about this book any more. So. Every other gripe I have notwithstanding, here are three of the book's most glaring failures:

-- Vermeer, for being the central male character, remains an enigma. It's not that he's shrouded in an air of charming mystery but rather that his personality is nothing more than a bunch of suppositions that Griet "just knows" about him.

-- Griet does not ever refer to Vermeer as anything other than "he" or "him". Not. Once. It made her sound like a starstruck teenybopper and it undermined any sense of genuine affection between the painter and his maid.

-- The similes. Oh, dear sweet Baby Jesus, the similes. I now know that I have a limited tolerance for the number of trite comparisons of faces and voices to household objects that I encounter in one novel, all thanks to the time I spent reading this book.