#4: Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

My weekend sojourn into Michigan gave me a chance to finish up a book I have been working on for a while: Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany, a big, sprawling, astounding space opera.

Rat Korga is a slave who is the only survivor of the mysterious destruction of his planet, which begins to attract him an almost cultish following. Marq Dyeth is a galaxy-traveling negotiator from an affluent mixed human-alien family. How these two men meet and fall in love against the backdrop of the social and political wars between three distinct factions in the universe is the core of this imaginative tale.

Delany is a dense, creative writer, and I have been enjoying a batch of his books I bought from a lot on ebay after finding Empire Star in a collection at the library. I was interested in his writing as I have been on a Philip K. Dick kick lately, and several people suggested I seek Delany out. Everything I have read thus far has been rewarding, but this one is a real knock-out.

The main drawback is that a sequel was promised in the mid-80s that has yet to materialize which would certainly, I hope, tie up all the threads. But Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand stands on its own as, I think now, one of my favorite sci-fi novels. It is just so full of ideas and concepts to think about that the thoughtful reader can chew over for some time to come.

Delany himself is an interesting person: a gay black man who wrote across the breadth of subjects from sci-fi to literary criticism to autobiography to hard-core pornography. I found this work to be a notable accomplishment and plan to seek out more of his science fiction writing in particular.

#3: Blackmailer by George Axelrod

I have been a longtime fan of the "Hard Case Crime" series of lost noir reprints with period covers, and I think this latest one--George Axelrod's Blackmailer--is one of my favorites.

Blackmailer, written by Axelrod in the early 50s, starts like one of those flip uptown New York society stories of that period, but surprises with dashes of blazing violence and cold-hearted dealings.

A boozing writer who more than resembles Hemingway, in failing health from alcoholism and on the verge of suicide, sells a manuscript to a high society gadfly who more than resembles Truman Capote. A flinty starlet who resembles any number of actresses at the time is the third side of a poisonous triangle that ends up in double-crossing and death.

I was intrigued to find out, googling Axelrod later, that he was a prominent playwright and screenwriter with only some dabblings into novel writing. It is obvious that Axelrod moved in the society he was writing about, and I'm surprised that his central characters, closely drawn from real people to say the least, did not draw more attention to this work.

Blackmailer is lighter than a lot of Hard Case Crime books in some ways, and reads at a fast clip; but it also packs a sucker punch that will leave the reader thinking.

I read this one in a long snowy weekend in Michigan, purchased from a Books a Million gift card given to me by my daughter for Christmas.

#2: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

I think I was officially the last person on Earth who hadn't read the Harry Potter series. I'm one of those people that have an aversion to whatever bandwagon everybody else seems to be on; sometimes to my detriment, as when I passed on the Harry Potter series. So now that the buzz is over, I thought I would try it.

The first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is a bright, cheery young adult adventure about a youngster who did not know about his powerful magical legacy until he gets invited to a mystic boarding school. The story covers one school year and centers around Harry's emerging friendships and a growing threat from a supposedly dead wizard who killed Harry's parents. I suppose most everybody else knew all this already.

I found the creativity engaging and the pace brisk, so I am sure I will seek out the next one.

I listened to this on audio book on loan from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana. Jim Dale, the reader, has gotten much acclaim for his performance in the audio series and I know many people who preferred to enjoy the books this way. I would count myself among them.

#1: Spook Country by William Gibson

My first volley into reading 50 books in 2008 is William Gibson's Spook Country. Gibson is probably best known for the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, a prophesy of the internet age written on a typewriter. He wrote a loosely-tied together trilogy including Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, then wrote a second trilogy (starting with Virtual Light) set a little closer to our time. Then he started what I suspect will be another trilogy more or less set in this era, the first being Pattern Recognition (largely dealing with viral video on the Internet) and then this one, Spook Country, with artistic uses for GPS technology at its core. I don't know if this closing in on the modern era is intentional, or whether Gibson stays in one place while the world is catching up to him.

Nonetheless, Spook Country is a somewhat meandering tale of various characters--a journalist for a mysterious European magazine, a prescription drug addict, a strangely talented member of a small crime family, and other eclectic sorts, following various tangents leading towards a mysterious cargo shipping container wandering around the world. The story ambles along for the first two-thirds, finally winding up the various threads in the last third.

All of Gibson's strengths and weaknesses are on display, from his deft prose style to his very loose-limbed plotting and his oft-flaccid denouements. Fans will be with him, but others might be better served seeking out a dog-eared paperback of Neuromancer.

I checked this one out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

And We're Off

My pal the Mighty Caveman convinced me to blog a year's worth of reading alongside him, so as an avid reader who wants to read even more steadily I said okay.

My tastes currently run towards hard-boiled stuff like the Hard Case Crime series, European crime fiction like Arnaldur Indridason and Asa Larsson, "hippie-fi" like Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany, high fantasy, and a smattering of everything else including an occasional Western and a taste or two from the bestseller list.

Historically I have liked pulp novels, cyberpunk, golden age sci-fi, and people like Cornell Woolrich, Mickey Spillane, Robert Sheckley, Chester B. Himes, Roger Zelazny, Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard, and a lot more.

Right now I always seek out the new Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley novels.

The five best books I have read lately, and recommend to everyone, are THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz, THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by Kevin Brockmeier, THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE by Jonathan Lethem, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY by Michael Chabon, and CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL by Glen David Gold.

So that's a bit of the flavor you'll find here, though I suspect I will later think of a lot more stuff I should have mentioned, probably a whole different list's worth. Stay tuned.