Peter Ackroyd: THE TRIAL OF ELIZABETH CREE

I mean it this time: once the tortuously long and painful saga of my car getting inspected is over and done with (they forgot to switch the stickers, and apparently need me to wait twenty-four hours in order for a manager to do that?), I actually will update these posts to include actual reviews, rather than just promises. And I mean that. I promise.

David J. Skal: DEATH MAKES A HOLIDAY- A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN

Review forthcoming; check back soon.

Ray Bradbury: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

Review forthcoming, check back soon.

Robertson Davies: FIFTH BUSINESS (& Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!)

There's an interesting trend emerging here: around Canada Day this summer, I elected to read a book by Canadian writer Robertson Davies--The Manticore. Come Canadian Thanksgiving just this Monday, I was making my way into another Davies novel, from the same trilogy of books--Fifth Business. I wonder... should I just go for it, and read the final book in the trilogy (World of Wonders) around Statute of Westminster Day in December? To be honest, I most likely should, and probably will (unless my annual winter Dickens gets the way, which it very well might. Funny story: I read more than half of David Copperfield curled up on the chilly tile floor of a poorly-heated Budapest bathroom, following my ingestion of some excellent but apparently tainted nut roll outside the Hungarian parliament [largest parliamentary building in all of Europe, I might add]. Like I said, just a funny story, has nothing to do with this entry-review-whathaveyou). Anyway, let's get back to Fifth Business, a book read largely in snippets on my breaks at work, over lunches, and once sitting in the car on Route 73 in New Jersey waiting for a drawbridge to close. I won't bother going into what the "fifth business" is--you'll learn in time, should you choose to read this book. Not much time, either, as you find out essentially before beginning to read the actual story. But listen: go back a few months, and check out my review of The Manticore, because this is much the same story, retold from a different perspective and thus with different emphases, but much the same story nonetheless. It answers a few more questions than The Manticore, and opens up a few more as well, some of which will no doubt be answered in World of Wonders (again, just another aspect of the same tale). An important point about this book: to be entirely honest, despite my being a bit confused whilst reading The Manticore, and despite its actually being the second book in this trilogy (and Fifth Business the first), if I had to do it over again, I'd still read The Manticore first, to be followed by Fifth Business. This would not only leave the mystery of The Manticore intact, it would also make the revelations to be found in Fifth Business that much more revelatory. A+ for this book, most definitely. It comes highly recommended by me.

Neil Gaiman: NEVERWHERE

It was with a certain sense of trepidation that I first approached Neil Gaiman's work. I'm not sure why, but I'm inclined to think it has something to do with his popularity. It's not that I'm so pretentious I can't stand to read anything that's even the slightest bit popular; I've gone cover-to-cover on all the Harry Potter series, two Dan Brown novels (if you can call them that), and even read the first Twilight book (was it called Twilight? I think so...). While I'm at it, I might as well admit to a more-than-passing familiarity with even Mitch Albom's prose. So it's not that I object to reading popular fiction--it's just that so much genre fiction these days is just trash, and the ignorant masses (I'm being semi-ironical here, please note) can't seem to separate the wheat from the chafe, or however that idiom goes. The truth of the matter is, I was quite concerned that Mr. Gaiman's writing would just be bad, something like the inexplicably-popular Stephen King's (how do people read that tripe? Do they, or do they just buy it?). Fortunately, it was not. I pounded back the first three volumes of the collected Sandman (still waiting to get my hands on my father's copy of volume four to finish the set, at which point I'll write it up glowingly here), read and reviewed American Gods sometime during the month of August, and just recently finished enjoying Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? earlier this week. By the time I sat down to read Neverwhere, I expected to like Gaiman's writing. I wasn't disappointed. Is this his absolute best work? No, not that I've read. In fact, it's an awful lot like plenty of other late-twentieth, early-twenty first century, but really good. Hidden world underneath London? It's not groundbreaking, but the story is well-told and the stock characters artfully employed. Any cheap hack could've written this story, but because that hack turned out to be Neil Gaiman, the story turned out excellently and the book thoroughly enjoyable. B+ material, this, but solid B+. This is a book I read quickly, without feeling terribly sorry to put it down. It was, in the best way possible, nothing more and nothing less than pure fun. I like that, now and then (it's possibly worth noting that there's a BBC2 television series associated with this book. I know nothing about that, but figured it was still worth noting, at least).

Alan Paton: TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE

Before I start to tell you about how much I loved this book, I'd like to spend a little while discussing something completely inconsequential. In the early 1960s, the publishing house Charles Scribner's Sons issued a series of trade paperbacks under the banner of "The Scribner Library." Featured authors included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, C.P. Snow, Edith Wharton, Thomas Wolfe, and Alan Paton. Both the Paton novels I've read--Cry, the Beloved Country on a trip to Pittsburgh with my father during my senior year of high school, and now this one, Too Late the Phalarope--have been Scribner Library editions, and this might be one reason why I like Paton so much: because these editions are, without a doubt, my favorite-looking books. I don't really know why (you can judge for yourself, the image at the left looks exactly like the copy I read), but there it is. I don't think that's the only reason, however, because Paton is also one hell of a writer. I don't exactly remember, but I'm pretty sure I cried whilst reading Cry, the Beloved Country, and I almost did as I was finishing Phalarope. It's the story of one man and his family's destruction. The man is Pieter van Vlaanderen, a South African police lieutenant, rugby star and all-around great guy, making his destruction all the more sad yet all more inevitable. Narrated by his aunt, this novel has all the tragedy of, well, a classic tragedy. It's A+ literature if I've ever read it, and possibly even capable of ousting Graham Greene's The End of the Affair as the best literary depiction of human guilt I've ever read. Read it, please read it. Or something by Paton. And if you absolutely refuse to, at least look at it and tell me you like it's attractive design.

Ian Rankin: DARK ENTRIES

It's been quite a while since I've posted a review one of the comic books I've read, and I'm almost sorry that I've that it's this graphic novel to signal their return. Ian Rankin's Dark Entries is billed as "a John Constantine novel." It's not, as I had initially expected it to be, anything that actually appeared in the Hellblazer comic, but a stand-alone item. It's also not very good. The plot is uninspired, to my feeling, and the whole thing reads, well...cheap. That's it, it all seems very cheap. I wouldn't know Ian Rankin from Adam, and I've even thought about reading anything else he's written, but I can tell you now that I never will. I mean, really: I know the British love them some Big Brother, but to set a Big Brother-style gameshow in Hell--I don't know, I really don't know. To be fair, I'm not super-familiar with Hellblazer, but what I have read has been much better than this. I thought about giving it an F, but it wasn't really quite that bad. So let's call it a D, and never speak of this again.

David Lodge: THE BRITISH MUSEUM IS FALLING DOWN

There are certain books, certain very Catholic books, about which I've often wondered: "Do non-Catholics get this? Would I be enjoying myself quite as much had I been raised in a different faith?" I'm less sure than ever after having read David Lodge's send-up of Catholicism and academe in 1960s Britain, The British Museum is Falling Down. Laughing at the book's Catholicism was, in a way, laughing at myself and my...heritage, if you will. I can't say that I'd've enjoyed a send-up of, say, Methodism quite as much--but then, I can't say that I wouldn't have, either. I just don't know. At any rate, I found The British Museum is Falling Down to be quite, quite entertaining. It's the second book of Lodge's I've checked out from the library recently, but the first proved to be no-go: it was quite long, and called for more of a commitment than I was willing to make without having sampled some Lodge, first. Now that I have, though, I can assuredly say that I will be reading more David Lodge in the future. He reminds me--particularly in the way he mocks the academic establishment--of a young Kingsley Amis, whom Lodge acknowledges as a strong shaping influence on his work (Amis even comes up in this book, which seems to me to draw fairly deeply from Lodge's own life). This book's plot takes its impetus from the Catholic position on birth control, and the concern that position elicits in its main character, Catholic graduate student Adam Appleby. Already the father of three, Appleby fears that his wife may be pregnant yet again, and this concern drives the rest of the book's action, all of which takes place during a single exciting day. I like this A-grade book--but then I'm a Catholic who's not afraid to laugh at Catholicism. Whether or not that's the only reason I like it remains to be seen, but I probably won't find out until I've read more Lodge.