The Cannonball Read III (aka The Cannonball Read: Osaka Slide)

As anyone who's followed me over from the early days of Mr. Controversy knows, I was once involved in a reading race known as "The Cannonball Read".  This race was conceived as a way to help a Pajiba commenter/light of life/warrior queen against Cancer pass her time by reading books to best a fellow Pajiban.  That woman, Ms. Amanda Amos, aka Alabama Pink, lost her battle with Cancer in 2009 and was mourned by her fellow posters.  The Cannonball Read is now held in her honor, scaling back its initial "100 books in one year" criteria to only 52 and making a donation to her child's college fund for every person who crosses the 52 book threshold.  That said, Ms. Pink wouldn't want me or any other Pajiban to make this into a sob story.  Her memory lives on in this healthy competition to promote literacy and remember a friend/acquaintance who has passed. 

Unfortunately, due to a mishap around the time contestants were entering (I didn't read the requirement that I had to email the person running the race, so I thought a simple "I'm in" comment would have done it) I was not entered in last year's Run.  However, due to whatever force in the Universe you want to attribute it to, I've been able to Vin Diesel my way into the new run.  (Which connect the header graphic and title to the latest run, seeing as it's the third and Diesel appears at the end of the Third Fast and Furious film, albeit for a cameo.)  Rest assured, this is no cameo.  It is officially on, and while I've volunteered for a "Half Cannonball" (half of the 52 books), I have designs to crush the 52 threshold.  It's going to be fun, and I might even get myself published on Pajiba yet again!  But most of all, it helps validate my literary addiction by making me read, as well as helps me write by keeping the story centers of my mind sharp.  So with that, I say let the reading begin!

With that, I am set to announce that the first review will be one that is rather atypical of my usual tastes.  With that, I give you the first book of The Cannonball Read: Osaka Slide...

Weird choice, considering my tastes and all; but you TBK readers should be able to pick up on why I chose this selection.  For the rest, all will be explained soon.  Until then, keep turning those pages!

2011: The Year I Write/Sell/Pimp A Book

2011 is here, and with all of the celebration and the hoopla out of the way it's time to get back to business.  Serious business.  The business of literature, particularly reading and writing it.  You see, I have until February 28th to finish a publishable first draft of "The Collegiate", my National Novel Writing Month winning novel.  (Otherwise my free proof copy from CreateSpace expires and I'll have to pay for it myself.)  This leaves me with about 2 months to revise/fill in story gaps/nurture the individual story arc as well as world build for the overall story arc.

If it were up to me, I'd probably stop reading altogether for the next two months and just hardcore focus on the book.  But it's not up to me, because I almost always have that inner drive to read something new during the course of reading whatever book I'm currently on.  So you'll still be getting review fixes, but be warned that some writing posts will be thrown up as well.  (Also, I'll be writing about owning an E-Reader from time to time, seeing as I received a Nook from this past holiday season.)

In the meantime, expect a review soon on a book I normally probably wouldn't read (damn my newfound fandom for John Green), some E-Reader Chronicles, and posts on how NaNoWriMo consumes a soul long after that Nov. 30 deadline.  Happy New Year all!

(One last note, that graphic isn't mine.  That belongs to Ms. Debbie Ohi.  Her works can be found here, and throughout the Webs.)

"I'm Dreaming Of A Black Christmas" by Lewis Black

Usually New Years is the time of the year that we associate with personal reflection, but lucky for us Lewis Black doesn't wait until a specially sanctioned holiday to bitch, gripe, moan, and ultimately come to a sober and reasoned understanding (full of sound and fury) about just what the Hell is going on.  I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas proves this, and it proves it with style and substance in a neat and tidy 192 page package.  There is no ribbon, there is no bow, there isn't even wrapping paper to cover this gift.  Because Lewis Black saves all of his time and energy for his thought processes, and delivers us the gift we all could probably used at the end of this 2010 we've all had...the gift of rage.

I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas gives us not only Lewis Black's feelings on the holiday (less greed for ourselves, more charity to others) but a chronicle of his usual Christmas routine, as well as a lot of self reflection and self analyzing anecdotes that tie into his usual stops and actions during the Holiday Season.  I would even dare say that Black's writing shows us more of his personal psyche than any of his stand up bits ever have.  (Note: I have not read either Nothing's Sacred or Me of Little Faith, so I'm not sure how much of a better, more comprehensive job they've done encapsulating his life, but after this book I surely will find out.)  Married young, Lewis thought he was having a child with his wife...until it turned out she was carrying someone else's little bundle of joy.  For him though, it was a bundle that would explode into divorce, and a lifelong aversion to commitment and fatherhood.  However adverse he is though, he enjoys the fact that through his friends and their families, he has a brief moment where he can feel a party to the life he wished he could have had, if only he'd met the right girl.  It is with that penultimate realization that Black realizes the true joy of Christmas, which is gathering around those you love and those you care about, if only to enjoy a few hours of uninterrupted, unspoiled joy and love.  (Also, as a bonus section, Black recounts his USO tour with Robin Williams, Kid Rock, and Lance Armstrong.  Trust me, it's as good as it sounds.)

Lewis Black is the perfect example of the dichotomy people should embody:  through the love of family and friends, we enrich ourselves; but we must also enrich ourselves by scrutinizing things and demanding more than we are usually given by the world.  We have to be pickier, but more generous; more compassionate, but much more abrasive; a little kinder,  but a little crueler at the same time.  Ultimately, we must be peaceful people, but allow ourselves to fight the right battles for the right things and stop being the sheep we choose to be on a day in/day out basis.  Of course, I'm reading much more into the serious angle of the book and completely underselling its humorous elements.  Yes, Lewis Black rants in his trademark dark style.  Yes, he makes points and laughs at certain figures in our lives that we take as punching bags.  Most importantly, he makes us laugh in a way that inspires us to be better.  Not because we can, but because we must.

As the last book I've read in 2010, I can easily recommend Lewis Black as a cap off to 2010, as well as the perfect way to start 2011.  You're going to be looking back on the recently passed Holiday Season anyway, you may as well do it with the Host of Christmas Fury.  Happy New Year, everyone!  Good reading to you all!

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Library Edition

Well folks, it's Christmas time again.  As such, it's a perfect time to give (or receive) books that'll help you kill some time, should you ever be snowed in.  With that in mind, here's 12 books that you should be requesting from your local Library, or purchasing on Amazon.com.  (*hint hint* Use the links I've provided in my Bookish Kind reviews to order your friends and family some quality reading material, and kick me back some money in the process.)

On the first day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... A vampire plague to wipe out NYC

On the second day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me...2 Gentlemen of Lebowski

On the third day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 3 Red Lobster glasses

On the fourth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 4 Spears of Destiny

On the fifth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 5 Brakebills Students

On the sixth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 6 Secret Successes

On the seventh day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 7 radioactive golden ingots

On the eighth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 8 fearful patients

On the ninth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 9 nymphos clawing

On the tenth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 10 Bennett Children

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 11 Vamps for Lincoln

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my Librarian gave to me... 12 Katherines dumping

That said, Merry Christmas to all, and to all turn the page.

"Toys" by James Patterson & Neil McMahon

Full Disclosure: I was given this advanced review copy by Hachette Book Group.  I wasn't paid, unless you call giving me a free book paid.  I would like to thank Brad Parsons over at Hachette for providing me with this and two other Pattersons that will be reviewed in the near future.

This is not going to be a happy review, nor is this going to be one that I think will turn out all that positive.  Which saddens me because I love James Patterson's writing, and find him genuinely (and consistently) entertaining.  His detective novels are aces, and I'm eager to dig into his Maximum Ride series and some of his other stand alone works that span other genres.  The man has talent, he's a personable figure, and he's a stitch on Castle.  All of this ass kissing has a purpose kids, I promise you.  It's to soften the blow I'm about to partially strike against a favorite author of mine.  I'm mostly going to roast the other guy though, because I KNOW in my heart and mind that James Patterson couldn't deliver a book as disappointing, as derivative, and as weak tea as Toys on his own.  Someone else had to have frakked it up.  And that someone is Neil McMahon.

Toys takes us to the far flung future of 2061 where people are basically separated into two castes: Humans and Elites. Humans are just like you and me, born after a nine month incubation period, normal abilities and such.  Elites, however, are born after two years in an artificial womb and endowed with super strength, speed and mental abilities.  Basically, it's Gattica on steroids.  One such Elite, Hays Baker, is our protagonist who, (MILD SPOILER ALERT) as it turns out, is a Human cut to look like an Elite.  This "betrayal" busts him down from top cop at the Agency of Change to fugitive on the loose.  As he goes on a journey to clear his name and stop the Elites from killing himself and every human on the planet, he cuts through swaths of Sci Fi cliches, action sequences, and pre fabricated twists that make this book seem more Human than Elite in its own right.

This book may as well have been titled "Humans Are People Too", because we see Hays go through the "Disgraced Hero" story arc that some of you may have heard of before.  Ok, you DEFINITELY have heard this story before.  As a matter of fact, there's one such story that this whole book seems to recall in my own Human brain.  This little film/short story you may have heard of called...Minority Report.  Yes, they rip off that story, as well as Total Recall in this book; which is meta-humorous because they mention Philip K. Dick's name in the story, as if to absolve themselves of cribbing his past works.  (While we're at it, parts of this book has hints of A.I. (creepy kid dolls) and Children of Men (there's a sequence involving British hooligans and Molotov cocktails chasing a car) thrown into it as well.)

As if that weren't bad enough, the writing is littered with too many "Is that what they were called?" or "That was from back then, wasn't it?" references.  The constant recall of our modern times in this futuristic tome do not ground the story in legitimacy, but show us just how far fetched it really is.  They didn't look to the future for inspiration, they just took a couple tropes of future life (haves vs. have nots, over population and global warming, Fascist utopia on the decline) and they grafted modern faces onto them.  Basically, if they were to constantly refer to the the Converse sneaker scene from I, Robot throughout the whole picture, it would be similar to this book.  And be warned, there is some clumsy, teenage written smut in this book.  I enjoy literary sex as much as the next person, but there's a reason you don't read about that much sex outside of Harlequin's "distinguished" library...it's hard to write a sex scene without it being cringe worthy in its description.

I love, love, LOVE Patterson's work in the Cross and Bennett series; and I have several other collaborations of his on my shelves waiting to be read.  The key to picking the right collaboration is to pick the right collaborating author.  Patterson works well with Andrew Gross (Read "The Jester" if you haven't already!) and Patterson works well with Michael Ledwidge (I'm dying to read "Tick Tock").  But ultimately, Patterson works best on his own.  It's sad to say it, since I don't know much about the man's writing, but Neil McMahon is only further proof of that very point.

Get Toys from the library if you have to, simply because it feels like the Third Act picks up and the ending leaves it open for a franchise (which felt like equal parts blessing and curse), but the Third Act doesn't make up for the lame First Act and the weak Second Act.  I guess my thinking is too Human and not Elite enough to "get" this book, but if that's the case then Human I am, and Human I will be.

"My Year of Flops" by Nathan Rabin

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the fine folks at Scribner, particularly my Publicity point of contact Brian Belfiglio. I'm not getting paid for this, I just do it out of the enjoyment of reading.

Consider for a moment the art of movie making.  A writer had to dream up a story, a director had to dream up a way to tell it, and a studio had to dream up the possibility of said end result even being marketable to greenlight its production.  Up to this point, there are many careers on the line, reputations at stake, and of course the collective dreams of the three branches of film production.  So naturally, it feels like a nightmare when the public, the critics, even test audiences you bribed with pizza and a signed photo of Alec Baldwin grind their collective boot-heels on everyone's dreams and turn them into cinematic cannon fodder.  Some films (Gigli, Howard the Duck, and Battlefield Earth) deserve it, others ( Joe Versus the Volcano, Heaven's Gate, Ishtar) don't, and others still (The Rocketeer) shouldn't even be compiled in a list of "flops".  Though no matter what level of Flop Hell they belong on, there's one man who's brave enough to take them all on and give them the second opinion they so desperately needed...Nathan Rabin of The Onion A.V. Club.  This is his charge.  This is his ballpark.  This is his destiny.  This is "My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure."

For the 288 pages the book spans, Rabin takes the knife to the films he's chosen, while providing historical context and in some cases insight from those directly involved.  Each film is given equal time, each movie objectively evaluated equally, and each entry is an entertaining mix of trivia and snark.  Every film falls into one of three categories:  Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success.  (To clarify: a Failure just doesn't make the cut, no matter how you put it, a Fiasco fails, but does so with flying colors, and a Secret Success turns out to be a a gem that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.)  What's most interesting is when Mr. Rabin actually gets to interview someone that actually worked on the project he's just spent about a good couple pages either defending or eviscerating.  These interviews try to clarify somehow just what went wrong, who's to blame, and ultimately what lessons were learned in the act of flopping.  You might be surprised to see just what passes for a Secret Success, as well as just a mild "failure"; but the Fiascos are well screened.

Reading this book is a breeze, much like other anthologies I've read.  This one might have breezed by faster though because not unlike Mr. Rabin, I have a slight fixation with cinematic failure.  I've always wanted to riff a copy of Gigli, see just how horrible Ishtar was to have gained its reputation, and always take time to rip a new asshole in the remake of Psycho that should never have existed.  If you are a movie geek, or even fixated with just how bad ideas are created, this book is definitely your thing.  (Though if the relatively average length of this book makes you feel safe when it comes to films you thought most surely would make it onto the least, fear not...his entire archive/continuing adventures can be found here, and hopefully in 'My Year of Flops 2: Flop Harder'."

As if reviewing flops, expanding pre-existing reviews on his flops, and writing brand new "book exclusive" reviews for flops wasn't enough, Nathan does what only the brave have ever attempted...write a real time review of the Director's Cut to Waterworld.  This alone should be the reason you read this book, if anything to vindicate the author's dedication to his collection and destruction/redemption of such publicly neglected films.   (That, and it has a rather interesting anecdote about James Caan and his love of orally pleasuring females.)  Rabin uses his A.V. Club savvy and knowledge to tie together a collection of analysis that ultimately makes us think, just what films would we defend liking in public and which ones we leave in the dark corners of our DVD shelves.  

With another Holiday Movie Season approaching us, now is as good a time as any to read "My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure", if only to help us truly separate the wheat from the chaff.  Indeed, if this book were to have been released this Summer, we might have seen a Box Office where Scott Pilgrim Versus the World would have ruled, and Eclipse would have resided in its rightful position next to Gigli.  To put it in corny critic pullquotes: "It's no secret, this book is a success!"

"An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green

Getting dumped makes a person look inwards just a little too much.  We wonder what we've done to draw this fate upon our person, we think about whether we really deserved it or not, but mostly we just can't help but wanting the person who dumped us back.  Maybe it's because our emotional investment isn't as easily forgotten as that of the person who dumped us, or maybe we're just fixated with how things work and how they eventually don't.  Colin Singleton is a little bit of both, and throughout his life he's had one major quirk when it comes to his dating life...all 19 of his girlfriends have been named Katherine.

An Abundance of Katherines tells Colin's story of introspection and fixation as he tries to make the leap from "Prodigy" (someone who can learn really fast) to "Genius" (someone who can create unique, intellectual  properties and ideas).  To do this, he's taken his introspective eye and started to plot out the relationships he's had with all 19 Katherines onto graphs that use a mathematical formula he's created to pinpoint where and when a relationship begins and ends.  More importantly, he believes his formula can figure out who will dump whom in the relationship, thus separating people into two flat categories: Dumpers and Dumpees.  None of this would have been possible if it weren't for his best friend Hassan and his decision to drag his best friend on a road trip to the South, but don't tell him that...geniuses are rather sensitive of their capability for independent thought.

I discovered this book, on happy coincidence, through a Barnes and Noble clearance sale not too long ago. Up until that point, I'd never heard of John Green or any of the books that he had written. However, the concepts intrigued me as they centered around similar premises: young man falls for a somewhat quirky girl and goes on a journey to find out more about himself and deal with said romance. The variation on the theme in An Abundance of Katherines: our protagonist is dealing with the absence of romance instead of the pursuit of it.

John Green has honestly and truthfully written a character I can believe exists in real life, particularly because I see shades of myself within Colin.  Ok, so I wasn't a prodigy in anything except reading, but I was considered a "smart kid".  As many "smart kids" know, once High School is over, the rest looks pretty competitive and downhill.  Colin is so ahead of the curve with his contemporaries that he sees what they won't see for a little while longer...High School, if your not careful, is where you peak.  The trick to not peaking is simple in concept, but hard in execution: do something that makes your name stand out.  It is this journey that Colin embarks on, mostly because it keeps his mind off of Katherine (whom we learn more about as the book goes on), that he tries to actually matter to the world.  His heartache, his longing, and eventually his rejuvenation at the prospect of a new love is all extremely human and extremely identifiable.  This book may be written as "Young Adult Fiction", but age the characters a bit and change the setting, and you've still got a story that's at times poignant and at times funny.

I might not have heard of John Green before discovering and reading this book, but I can see why all of his books have consistently high Amazon and Barnes and Noble customer ratings.  Green's characters are real people, with real experiences and journeys, thoughts, and hopes.  They just live in a world parallel to ours where things are slightly different.  For what it's worth, I enjoy that slightly different world quite a bit; where problems are solved with road trips, bravery is found during a hog hunt, and ultimately all of the answers reveal themselves to you through a piece of paper, a phone call, and a moderately adventurous trip down South. 

A read that should never have to be a "Bargain Book" (but is especially worth the effort of procuring should you find it at such a price)  An Abundance of Katherines is one of the highest recommendations I can give, especially for a piece of YA Fiction.  These are characters I can relate to, events I can remember dealing with myself, and happenings I kind of wish I could have had myself as a teenager.  I can't wait to read more of Mr. Green's work, because if it's as captivating as this book was, I won't have a problem buying the whole lot in an instant.