| Black Friday Shill |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|08:55 am] |
Black Friday today. If you have to buy gifts for the upcoming holidays, don't hassle with overcrowded stores and malls, bad parking, the crush of the crowd, that peculiar dizzyness that comes from wandering aimlessly with too little money and too much aggravation. Remain in the comfort of your own home and give the always welcome gift of books. More pointedly, give the gift of my books. Here, let me make a few suggestions:
The Shadow Year (winner of this year's Shirley Jackson Award and co-winner of this year's World Fantasy Award for Best novel) from Perennial/Harper Collins
"Properly creepy, but from time to time deliciously funny and heart-breakingly poignant, too. For those of you-and you know who you are-who think the indispensable element for good genre fiction is good writing, this is not to be missed."
-Kirkus Review, Starred
"Surreal, unsettling, and more than a little weird. Ford has a rare gift for evoking mood with just a few well-chosen words and for creating living, breathing characters with only a few lines of dialogue."
-Booklist
"The Shadow Year captures the totality of a lived period, its actualities and its dreams, its mundane essentials and its odd subjective imperatives; it is a work of episodic beauty and mercurial significance."
-Nick Gevers, Locus
The Drowned Life (winner of this year's World Fantasy Award for Best Collection) from Perennial/Harper Collins
From School Library JournalSometimes we read something and immediately think of a friend who would really like it. This collection of short stories from the author of The Shadow Year contains some of the most unusual and provocative settings and plots this reviewer has ever encountered, which will make it perfect for book talking to patrons. The first story features a man who, filled with the pressures of daily life, finds himself at the bottom of the sea in a place called Drowned Town, on the run from sharks called Financial Ruin. In "The Night Whiskey," local citizens win a chance to drink a magical berry liquor that enables them to experience the dream of a lifetime, only this year the results are quite shocking. In "The Scribble Mind," an art student stumbles onto an elaborate conspiracy where a select few can remember something that gives them exclusive membership into a special society. Sometimes shocking, sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes humorous, this collection will please fans of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor. Recommended for libraries where short story collections are popular.—Kellie Gillespie, City of Mesa Lib., AZ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Publishers WeeklyFollowing close upon the release of The Shadow Year, Edgar-winner Ford's third collection leads readers down dark and subtle passageways onto some very strange turf. In the title story, people drown and end up in a submerged city whose inhabitants are scornful of anyone wanting to return to the surface; a man named Hatch is compelled to escape Drowned Town in order to uphold a promise to his son. Similar metaphors of submersion are applied to drastically different effect in The Manticore Spell, The Dismantled Invention of Fate and In the House of Four Seasons. In Night Whiskey, the book's strangest tale, two men must roust slumbering drunks from trees after an annual festival; in addition to sending celebrants literally up a tree, the special once-a-year bash also features visitations with dead relatives, and what begins as near-slapstick ends with disturbing revelations and a loss of innocence. Throughout these 16 stories, Ford covers much stylistic terrain, weaving between science fiction, realistic stories with fantastic elements and even some nearly straight-up (and successful) comedy. Readers of all stripes should be able to find something here to love. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.    The Well-Built City Trilogy from Golden Gryphon BooksThe PhysiognomyFrom Kirkus ReviewsHumorless, inflexible, drug-addicted physiognomist Cley is ordered by Drachton Below, Master of the Well-Built City, to investigate a theft in the remote mining town of Anamasobia. The miners of the town, while delving for blue spire--a coal-like mineral that eventually turns the miners into blue statues--have discovered in a cavern the living mummy of a strange being, the Traveler, holding a perfect white fruit (now missing) that Below believes will confer immortality. Cley pronounces the guilt or innocence of the townsfolk by studying their physiognomies, but he becomes distracted by the beautiful and knowledgeable Arla, whose father Cley suspects of having stolen the fruit. In a delusional frenzy brought about by withdrawal symptoms, Cley attempts to improve Arla's disposition by mutilating her face according to physiognomic principles--but then the Master impatiently sends in troops to slaughter the townsfolk and capture Arla, the Traveler, and the fruit; Cley is condemned to the sulphur mines. He is later pardoned, deliberately re-addicted, and brought back to the Well- Built City, where Drachton Below, having eaten the white fruit, is suffering headaches so dreadful that they're causing explosions and threatening the destruction of his empire. Can the reformed Cley defeat the mad Master and save Arla and the Traveler? Seriously, logically, stunningly surreal: a compact, richly textured, enthralling fantasy debut--even if the publishers prefer to bill it as an ``unconventional literary novel.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Memoranda
Amazon.com ReviewThe awe-inspiring historical concept of the memory palace is put to grand use in Jeffrey Ford's fascinating novel Memoranda, the sequel to his World Fantasy Award-winning New York Times Notable Book, The Physiognomy. Cley was once the greatest practitioner of the Physiognomy, a dangerous pseudoscience invented by the twisted tyrant Drachton Below. Since the fall of Below's Well-Built City, Cley has dedicated himself to healing. But when his new people fall into a deadly sleep from which he cannot wake them, he ventures to the ruins of the Well-Built City for the cure. He discovers Below is still alive--but the antidote is lost and Below is asleep, victim to the disease he created. Cley must strike a pact with Below's demon to enter Below's mind in search of the antidote's formula. But even if he survives the demon, Cley may not survive the very real dangers of Below's vast, intricate, and treacherous memory palace--or the disintegration of the dying madman's mind. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.The Beyond
Amazon.com ReviewIn Jeffrey Ford's World Fantasy Award-winning, New York Times Notable Book, The Physiognomy, the Physiognomist Cley destroys the Well-Built City and almost destroys the woman he loves. In the sequel, Memoranda, the ex-Physiognomist experiences one of the strangest adventures in all of fantasy fiction when he is forced to literally enter and explore the mad mind of his dying master, the murderous tyrant Drachton Below. Now Cley returns, along with Below's demon son, in The Beyond. The trilogy's concluding volume is slow to start and episodic, but also imaginative, unusual, and intelligent. Cley wanders both literally and figuratively in the wilderness as he follows the woman he hideously harmed into the Beyond, a mysterious, bizarre, and frightening frontier between worlds. The demon Misrix uses the Physiognomist's powerful drug, sheer beauty, to watch his friend's journey, even as he pursues his own equally dangerous quest, the search for his humanity. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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14theditch's journal
The following is my favorite part in Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford. It gives the phrase "stuffing the turkey" a whole new meaning. Oh, those Puritans. 