Belated Friday Finds: September 18, 2009

Friday Finds (hosted by Should Be Reading)

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week?

Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

I’m behind, I know, and the only excuse I gave give you is that I have been in training all week prepping to get ready to start teaching English 101 and my own grad classes this next week at Western Washington University. So … what do we have as finds this week? The first two were books that were referenced in the dreadfully disappointing The Science of Stephen King. The third is a book that I am itching to get my hot little hands on as it is a book of homages to Richard Matheson (this is were Stephen King and Joe Hill’s “Throttle” can be found in print). The fourth was a cool little gem I discovered as I was perusing the aisles of my new university library and seeing what they had in the way of scholarly references on Contemporary American Gothic (my field), and the last … well … who can resist a Doctor Who story read by none other than David Tennant himself. I mean, c’mon … it doesn’t get any better than that, does it? I submit that it does not!

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp

Collision Course by Barrington J. Bailey

He is Legend: An Anthology of Celebrating Richard Matheson edited by Christopher Conlon

Science and Destabilization in the Modern American Gothic: Lovecraft, Matheson, and King by David A. Oakes

Doctor Who: Pest Control, An Exclusive Audio Adventure by Peter Anghelides, read by David Tennant

A-Z Wednesday: From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules:

Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week.

Post:

1. A Photo of the Book
2. Title and Synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: F

My “F” Book is:

From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival

by Thomas “Toivi” Blatt

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997)

Trade Paperback, 242 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780810113022, US$19.00

From the Cover: From the Ashes of Sobibor is the extraordinary account of a young man’s life during the German occupation of Poland. When the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Thomas “Toivi” Blatt was twelve years old. He and his family lived in the largely Jewish town of Izbica in the Lublin district of Poland—a district that was to become the site of three of the six major Nazi extermination camps: Bełzeċ, Sobibor, and Majdanek. Blatt’s account of his childhood in Izbica provides a fascinating glimpse of Jewish life in Poland after the German invasion and during the period of mass deportations of Jews to the camps. Blatt tells of the chilling events that led to his deportation to Sobibor, of his separation from his family, and of the six months he spent at Sobibor before taking part in the most successful uprising and mass breakout in any Nazi camp during World War II. Blatt’s tale of escape, and of the five horrifying years spent eluding both the Nazis and late anti-Semitic Polish nationalists, is a firsthand account of one of the most terrifying and savage events of human history. From the Ashes of Sobibor also includes a moving interview with Karl Frenzel, a Nazi commandant from Sobibor.

My Thoughts: Picking an F Book was much harder than choosing my E Book. After perusing and re-perusing my shelves and choosing and rejecting a handful of other F Books, I finally spotted Blatt’s book (it was hidden behind some other books) and I suddenly knew that From the Ashes of Sobibor was the book to share in this week’s A-Z Wednesday. The reason for that is that I have a personal connection to this book: Three years ago when I had just began working as an assistant teacher at the charter school where I was for the last three years, the director (an Holocaust scholar) was able to convince Toivi Blatt to come to Springville, Utah, and discuss his experiences in the Holocaust and in Sobibor with the middle school kids. (He also did the same for parents and members of the community that evening, but I didn’t go to that one.) It was a really moving experience and one that I am not soon to forget nor, I suspect, will any of the kids. While Blatt was at the school, he was passing out copies of his book, From the Ashes of Sobibor, and I was able to get myself a copy and have Toivi Blatt sign the book for me. It is one of the most special books I have in my collection because of this. It is a small piece of a very important part of history that I have for my very own now, and that I will pass on to my children when the time comes. That probably came out more insensitive than I meant it to. What I mean to say is that this is a very special book, as it not only is the story of a Holocaust victim, but it also is something he touched and wrote in to me, and is therefore a direct and concrete connection to that event that is not, in the least, abstract. Anyway, the great sin in this story is … I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet. It really is something I need to pick up.

Friday Finds: September 11, 2009

Friday Finds (hosted by Should Be Reading)

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week?

Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

There is nothing better than discovering new and interesting books, that is why I love this particular meme. Because the only thing better than finding a new and interesting books is sharing a new and interesting book. These are my entries for today. Flashforward was featured on another reviewer’s blog (and I apologize profusely, I can’t remember whose) but the premise sounded so interesting I had to immediately put it on hold (as a matter of fact, it is waiting at the library for me right now, along side Dragons of the Hourglass Mage … I don’t know which to read first!). Did you know there was a sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? I didn’t. Now I do. Pickles to Pittsburgh is a great book. Look for the review on the blog later today. Mark Justice runs a blog titled I Was a Bronze Age Boy: The Ramblings of a Middle-Aged Comic Book, Crime Fiction and Pulp Fanatic where pretty much all he does is post cool and interesting covers to pulp novels, comic books and paperbacks. It’s a fun blog (Mark also hosts the Pod of Horror podcast, which I highly recommend if you are into the horror genre in all its many incarnation) and he recently featured Charles Beaumont’s Hunger. I was so intrigued by it, that when my sister-in-law wanted to know what book I wanted as a house-warming gift, I immediately pointed her in its direction (it is currently winging its way to me now *squeal!*). The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World is a book that I somehow missed when a friend of mine first reviewed it, but as I was going through his blog’s archives recently, I rediscovered it, and seeing that it has the infamous Harlan Ellison short story “A Boy and His Dog” I immediately added it to my Books To Buy pile. (As I think I’ve mentioned here before, “A Boy and His Dog” was a formative story reading experience for me in middle school … made me think that I wanted to do what Ellison did.) Finally, I came across the last book at my new local library, and while not strictly a “book” (i.e. no story) it is a great book of literary cartoons from The New Yorker and would be a welcome addition to any bibliophile’s library.

Flashforward by Robert Sawyer

Pickles to Pittsburgh: The Sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, illustrated by Ron Barrett

Hunger and Other Stories: A Collection of Violent Entertainments by Charles Beaumont

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison

The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoons edited by Bob Mankoff

Booking Through Thursday: We Want ... Information

Well, another Thursday is upon us, and that means it is time for yet another Booking Through Thursday prompt. What will it be this week, you ask? Here you go…

Prompt: What’s the most informative book you’ve read recently?

Certainly the least informative book that I’ve read as of late was the book I just finished reviewing: Why Did It have to be Snakes?: From Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg. Beyond that, I’ve read a lot of fiction lately, and so I think that what it comes down to is a toss-up between the following books:

How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion

by Daniel H. Wilson

read by Stefan Rudnicki

(Ashland: Blackstone Audio, 2006)

MP3 Audiobook, 42.2 MB, 3 Hours, Survival Guide

ISBN: 9780786171484, US$27.00

Reviewed HERE

...and...

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

(New York: Penguin Books, 2006)

Trade Paperback, 450 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780143038580, US$16.00

Reviewed HERE

Of course, these books are “informative” in wildly different ways and for wildly different reasons and accomplishing very different outcomes, but that does not make them any less effective. In fact, one could argue that they are actually quite complimentary, considering that in the coming robot rebellion and overthrow of mankind we will all be forced to forage for our meals, Pollan’s information on foraging and the ethics and moral implications (as well as the proper procedure for and best ways to accomplish said food gathering) are quite informative indeed.

Or is that reaching a little?

Until next Thursday…

A-Z Wednesday: East of Eden

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules:

Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week.

Post:

1. A Photo of the Book
2. Title and Synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: E

My “E” Book is:

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

(New York: Penguin Books, 1986)

Paperback, 778 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780140049978, US$7.95

A searing novel about the oldest and most terrible of conflicts: brother against brother.

From the Cover: Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all around him; the other grows up in loneliness, enveloped in a mysterious darkness. As Steinbeck interweaves the stories of the Trasks and their neighbors, the prosperous, open-hearted Hamiltons, he portrays men and women determined to conquer not only the land but the forces of love and hate, trust and suspicion within their hearts.

My Thoughts: When I saw that this week’s letter was “E,” there was no doubt in my mind that the novel I would pick would be John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I’m not even sure where to begin on this book. This was one of the books I had to read for my Eminent Authors: John Steinbeck class that I took this past Spring, and I was blown away by what Steinbeck manages to accomplish in this novel. It is definitely one of the best books I have ever read, and is now in the Top Five Best Books I Have Ever Read (up there with the likes of The Three Musketeers, The Shining, Flight and Moby-Dick). Though, rather than rehash all of that, I’ll just direct you to my review from March. The link is HERE.

Teaser Tuesdays: That's Quite the Circumstance!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I found this book on one of the shelves as I was browsing my new local library. (How fun is that? Getting acquainted with a new library?) And even though I had a different book at the top of my TBR pile, I decided to bump this one to the top because (1) it looked like a lot of fun, and (2) it looked like it would be a fairly quick read. So, what teasers does it have to offer? How about the following:

Why Did It Have to be Snakes?: From Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones

by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

(Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2008)
Trade Paperback, 264 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780470225561, US$15.95

My Teaser: “The party of Adolf Hitler, the leader of 1930s Germany, stood for bigotry, intolerance, and racial hatred, all beliefs that were anathema to patriotic Americas, yet strangely enough, Indy was once associated with the hated symbol of the Nazi party, the swastika. Not by choice but by circumstance” (126).

Musing Mondays: We Are Listening...

Today’s Musing Mondays (from just one more page…) is as follows: What is your preferred method of listening to audiobooks? Where and when do you listen to them?

For the longest time, I was a book purist, meaning NO AUDIOBOOKS. I had a hard time concentrating on the book when I wasn’t reading the words on the page and so audiobooks seemed like something that I wasn’t cut out for.

Then, in 2003, a good friend of mine pushed me and pushed me and finally got me to listen to audiobooks. (At that time, it was still books on tape.) The audiobook that she got me hooked on was Stephen King’s Bag of Bones (I have since reviewed it twice on the blog HERE and HERE) and I have to say that after listening to King’s reading, I couldn’t get enough of audiobooks. Looking back at my old email reviews—from before I started this blog—after Bag of Bones I listened to three more Stephen King audiobooks, in that month, then another four the next month, two in June and then I discovered the Harry Potter audiobooks in July 2003 and my love affair with audiobooks was a sealed deal.

What changed? Well, I had to train my brain to be able to listen to a book while I was doing something else (usually driving) in such a way as to divide my attention, often in an unequal way (i.e. more devoted to driving than listening) but it soon became a great way to pass the time of my commute.

We were living in Seattle at the time and not only did the Seattle Public Library system have a great collection of audiobooks, but there was also Half Price Books where I could get audiobooks for very cheap. That is how I became the proud owner of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis on cassette tape (for under $20 together) as well as quite a few other books on tape.

When we moved to Utah, I got a job at a place where they let us listen to music or audiobooks while we worked (it was interesting but painfully repetitive data entry) and my listening of audiobooks moved from cassettes to CDs to, eventually, MP3. In fact, it was another Stephen King audiobook that was my first MP3 audiobook: The Colorado Kid (read by Jeffrey DeMunn).

Once I started back to work on my Bachelors degree (in English—Literary Studies) audiobooks became the only way I was able to do leisure or pleasure reading, since my reading piles were soon dictated by a syllabus. Now, if you were to come across me, I will often have a print book in hand and an audiobook loaded onto my iPod for the car. So, audiobooks have become yet another way in which I get my literary fix.

Since I have had people ask me this in the past, here are some of my favorite audiobook readers; performers who I will go out of my way to get an audiobook that they read:

First and foremost is Frank Muller. Unfortunately Mr. Muller is no longer producing audiobooks, he was involved in a devastating motorcycle accident in 2001 in which he suffered severe head trauma. And, I have just found out that he died last year and that makes me very very sad. I can’t believe I missed that. Muller read many of Stephen King’s novels but he did other books as well, for example Moby-Dick and The Silence of the Lambs. Muller is the best there was, and you really haven’t experienced an audiobook if you haven’t heard one the Frank Muller narrated. My favorite Frank Muller audiobook is The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Ron McLarty is another stellar reader. He also does a lot of Stephen King novels, but I also have heard him read Hunter S. Thompson and John Steinbeck. McLarty has a very earthy voice that gives any audiobook an immediate air of authenticity. He is a truly superb reader/performer. My favorite Ron McLarty audiobook is ‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Campbell Scott is another performer that I have discovered and absolutely love. He is the son of actor George C. Scott, and reads a number of great books, and is yet another reader who I discovered through Stephen King. (Scott reads The Shining which is a novel with special importance to me as I have staked my academic and professional career firmly in its pages.) However, like many other reads he narrates a number of great novels aside from Stephen King including Bryan Burrough’s Public Enemies and Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain.” He has a great authoritative voice and adds a certain veracity to any book he reads. My favorite Campbell Scott audiobook is The Shining by Stephen King

Jim Dale is an audiobook reader sans par. I know him chiefly through the seven Harry Potter audiobooks though he does read others (my favorite is his reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). The things that Dale can do with his voice in the service of Rowling’s story are nothing short of amazing. He makes an already magical set of books even more magical. In fact, in the service of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Dale creates 140+ separate and distinct voices for each of the speaking parts in the book. My favorite Jim Dale audiobook is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

George Guidall is an okay reader, and one that is so prolific that it would be surprising if you haven’t already heard a book narrated by him. He is a kind of Poor Man’s Frank Muller or Poor Man’s Ron McLarty. This is not to say that he is a bad reader of audiobooks, but just that there are better out there, if you’d prefer. Guidall is a kind of second-string reader, if you will. I don’t love him, but I don’t hate him either. My favorite George Guidall audiobook is Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of ibn Fadlan, Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in a.D. 922 by Michael Crichton

There are others out there that I highly enjoy, Stephen Lang, Tim Curry, Nathaniel Parker, Jeffrey DeMunn, and Rob Inglis. Now, I know I’ve been heavy on the male readers, but there are female readers out there that I enjoy: Kathy Bates, Mare Winningham, Sissy Spacek, Emily Bauer and Sally Darling leap to mind.

There is one, in closing, that I will warn you against. Under no circumstances pick up and listen to a book read by Ilyana Kadushin who is bets known for her narration of Stephenie Meyer’s popular Twilight series. She is the most uninspired and dull reader that I have ever encountered. She drones on and on and sucks all the life and joy out of the story she’s reading. To trot out the old cliché, avoid audiobooks read by Ilyana Kadushin as if they were the plague.

What's Cozy?

“I don’t know anything that could replace books. I’m with them all day at work, and when I go home, I’m surrounded by them there. I have a library, bookcases in every room, stacks next to the bed, stacks on the dining room table. Surrounded by all the possibilities within each book—a journey taken, a world discovered, emotions felt—well, I just don’t see how I could do without them. It would be awful and very, very cold.”

—Toby Cox, owner of The Three Lives & Company Bookstore

Unlucky Arithmetic: Thirteen Ways to Raise a Nonreader

Taken from The Smart Bean:

A tongue-in-cheek list by Horn Book’s Dean Schneider and Robin Smith of the thirteen things you absolutely must do if you want your child to be a nonreader. We have replicated this interesting list below - it is certainly one you must heed! NOT!

1. Never Read where your children can see you.
2. Put a TV or computer in every room. Don’t neglect the bedrooms and kitchen.
3. Correct your child every time she mispronounces a word.
4. Schedule activities every day after school so your child will never be bored.
5. Once your child can read independently, throw out the picture books. They’re for babies.
6. Don’t play board games. Too dull.
7. Give little rewards for reading. Stickers and plastic toys are nice. Money is even better.
8. Don’t expect your children to enjoy reading. Kids’ books are for teaching vocabulary, proper study habits, and good morals.
9. Buy only 40-watt bulbs for your lamps.
10. Under no circumstances read your child the same book over and over. She heard it once, she should remember it.
11. Never allow your child to listen to books on tape; that’s cheating.
12. Make sure your kids only read books that are “challenging.” Easy books are a complete waste of time. That goes double for comic books and MAD Magazine.
13. Absolutely, positively no reading in bed.

My Life is an Open Book

I found this through Well-Mannered Frivolity who apparently found it at The Indextrious Reader, and it seems to have made the rounds from there.

RULES: Answer the following questions using ONLY the titles of books you've read this year. Try not to repeat titles.

Describe Yourself: Nice Work

How Do You Feel?: As I Lay Dying

Describe Where You Currently Live: East of Eden

If You Could Go Anywhere, Where Would You Go?: The Lost City of Z

Your Favorite Form of Transportation: A Streetcar Named Desire

Your Best Friend Is: The Bloody White Baron

You and Your Friends Are: The Grapes of Wrath

What’s the Weather Like?: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Favorite Time of Day: Twilight

What is Life to You: Ghost Story

You Fear: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

What Is the Best Advice You Have to Give?: How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Thought for the Day: The Composer is Dead

How I Would Like to Die?: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

My Soul’s Present Condition: Dead Until Dark

OK all you book bloggers, I dare you to try this! It’s a lot of fun, but harder than it looks. And if you don’t have a blog, pick a question or two and answer them in the comments.

The Friday 56: "Do You Feel Lucky Punk? Well ... Do You?"

The Friday 56 is hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends

RULES

1. Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
2. Turn to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like).
5. Post a link with your post to Storytime (and here on Bryan’s Book Blog, I’d like to know what book you’ve got at hand).

I was looking through Stephen King’s Danse Macabre the other night for information on The Doll Who Ate His Mother for my A-Z Wednesday entry, and it was still sitting next to my laptop today, so it is the closest book to hand. So, let’s see what words of wisdom Stephen King has for the Friday 56:

“In terms of image and emotion—the young kidnap victim being pulled from the cistern at dawn, the bad guy terrorizing the busload of children, the granite face of Dirty Harry Callahan himself—the film is brilliant” (56).

I have to add the next sentence as well, because it is just brilliant: “Even the best of liberals walk out of a film like Dirty Harry or Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs looking as if they have been clopped over the head … or run over by a train.” Say what you will about Stephen King’s place in the canon, or merits as an author, you can’t deny that the man certainly has a way with words!

Friday Finds: September 4, 2009

Friday Finds (hosted by Should Be Reading)

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week?

Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

It’s always nice to move and get to explore a new library, and that’s what we did this last week. We moved to Bellingham, Washington, on Monday (I’m attending the grad school at Western Washington University to get my Masters’ in English) and on Tuesday the first thing we did was head to our local library and get a card. The first two of my finds are books I discovered on the shelves. The Pines is a book that I have had on my radar for a couple of months now (thanks to Mark Justice over at Pod of Horror) and since it was unpacked (i.e. not in a box) after our move, when I finished my current read, I picked it up. Dragons of the Hourglass Mage is a book that I have been anticipating for a very long time, and was under the impression that it would never be published (as of the last I had heard) so imagine my surprise when I saw it on the shelf at my local bookseller today! Lastly, First Dog is a book I read with my kids today at the book store and fell in love with.

Why Did It Have to be Snakes?: From Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

The Science of Stephen King: From Carrie to Cell, the Terrifying Truth Behind the Horror Master’s Fiction by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

The Pines by Robert Dunbar

Dragons of the Hourglass Mage by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

First Dog by J. Patrick Lewis and Beth Zappitello, illustrated by Tim Bowers

A-Z Wednesday: The Doll Who Ate His Mother: A Novel of Modern Terror

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules:
Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week.
Post:

1. A Photo of the Book
2. Title and Synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: D

My “D” Book is:

The Doll Who Ate His Mother: A Novel of Modern Terror
by Ramsey Campbell
(New York: Jove/HBJ Books, 1978)
Paperback, 191 Pages, Fiction
ISBN: 9780812516548, US$1.75

“It’s superb. Grand Guignol in the great manner. This is the chilling best!” —Robert Bloch

From the Cover: A woman’s car hits a lamp-post and her brother loses his arm in the crash, literally. She then finds a nightmare unleashed in Liverpool, with overtones of witchcraft, possession, and cannibalism.

My Thoughts: I first came across this book when reading Stephen King’s treatise on the horror genre, Danse Macabre (New York: Berkley Books, 1983), in which he says of Campbell and Campbell’ novel:

“As with Robert Bloch, the last thing you would suspect is that he is a writer of horror fiction, particularly of the grim brand he turns out. Of The Doll Who Ate His Mother he has this to say—some of it bearing directly on the difference in the amount of endurance needed to do a novel: ‘What I wanted to do with The Doll was to invent a new monster, if that is possible, but perhaps the big thing was to actually write the novel, since previously I’d been doing short stories. In 1961 or ’62 I made notes for a story about a black magician who was going to take revenge on his town or village for some real or imagined wrong it had done to him. He was going to do this by using voodoo dolls to deform the babies—you’d have the standard pulp-magazine scene of the white-faced doctor coming out of the delivery room saying, “My God, it’s not human…!” And the twist was going to be that, after all these deformed infants had died, the black magician was going to use the voodoo dolls to bring them back to life. An amazingly tasteless idea. At about the same time the Thalidomide tragedy occurred, making the story idea a little too “topically tasteless” for me, and I dropped it. It resurfaced, I suppose, in The Doll Who Ate His Mother, which eats its way out of its mother’s womb’” (356).

King goes on to describe more about the story, and it is—in essence—a story of cannibalism (continuing our theme from last week) among other themes, and having the interest I do in cannibalism, I set about trying to find myself a copy of Campbell’s novel. This was a harder feat than it seems … this was about eight years ago, and I wasn’t as savvy in the ways of the internet and rare books as I am now, and so I began hunting (and haunting) the shelves of Seattle’s used book stores in search of Campbell’s novel. After about three and a half months of searching, I finally came across of copy of the book in one of the stores and immediately bought it. This is what I had to say then (in my proto-book blog, which went out fanzine style in email form):

Anyone familiar with suspense and horror in the late 60s and 70s will think of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, for example, and recall that Satanism was a common trope of the times, as expressed elsewhere in the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare(s) of the mid-70s and later. That is to say, Campbell’s novel fits in nicely with its decade. And that’s basically what this novel evokes... a kind of distant or detached view of these events in Liverpool – almost as if one is watching a recreation of it on the Discovery Channel, and not witnessing the actual events. This, however, is not to say that the story lacks that emotional connection, Doll’s atmosphere is very heavy and there are quite a few cringe-inducing scenes within the course of the story, and truly manages to frighten the reader with the “ripped-from-the-headlines” feel of the narrative. This is not some creature from the Great Beyond, or vampires coming out of the night, this is the “man-monster” that has risen to attack humanity. The monster from within, so to speak. Stephen King lauds Doll and speaks extensively on the book and its contribution to the horror genre in his 1981 treatise on that genre, Danse Macabre (see review 04/02) [pages 355-359 of the same]. On a personal note, I was very excited about reading this book, due in part to King’s endorsement, and due in part to my own efforts to “backfill” my horror/Sci Fi education, and spent quite a few month’s hunting this book down (it’s out of print in the US) but finally found it in a used book store just outside of Seattle in Lake Forest Park. Again, as I said in my review of Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos above, I love book-hunting in used book stores and coming across that gem in the rough book, and Ramsey Campbell’s The Doll Who Ate His Mother is just that, a diamond in the rough book that, while difficult to get into, is well-worth the effort. Though I will qualify that statement by saying that this book is only for true fans of the classic horror genre.

I haven’t read Doll since that initial foray in 2003, but I may have to revisit it soon, not only because I’d like to re-experience what I experienced then, but also because of the fact that as I have furthered my academic career and have been making a name for myself in modern gothic novels, both American and British, The Doll Who Ate His Mother is such a fundamental book in that genre that I really need to re-familiarize myself with it, and soon.

In close of this post, I will reiterate what I said back in 2003, that The Doll Who Ate His Mother is a “book […] only for true fans of the classic horror genre.” That much I remember about my initial reading.

Teaser Tuesdays: Being a Ghost Means Never Having to Say "I'm Sorry"

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’m currently reading Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century by Robert Charles Wilson. It is one that has been in my TBR pile for quite some time now and opening to a random page, we find the following teaser:

Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century

by Robert Charles Wilson

(New York: Tor Books, 1998)

Paperback, 372 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780812566628, US$6.99

My Teaser: “The expression on his face seemed to say: How absurd, that we have to meet like this. As if a ghost were to apologize for its clumsy trappings: the winding-sheet, the chains” (241).

The Friday 56: Right is Wrong

The Friday 56 is hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends

RULES

1. Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
2. Turn to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like).
5. Post a link with your post to Storytime (and here on Bryan’s Book Blog, I’d like to know what book you’ve got at hand).

This week, the nearest book to hand was one of my wife’s library finds, Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe (and What You Need to Know to End the Madness) by Arianna Huffington, and opening to page 56, the fifth sentence reads as follows:

“It’s no secret why the arbiters of conventional wisdom get so defensive when these kinds of questions are raised: their opinions helped lead to the war in Iraq, so anytime the conventional wisdom is threatened, they rise in its defense” (56).

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: “As true today, as it was when it was written.”