Who's reading what this summer? Episode 2 - Rod Lott

It's part 2 of my ongoing series of summer reading lists of the rich and powerf...I mean, the talented and the willing to respond to my emails.

Today's list comes courtesy of Rod Lott. Rod is the editor of Bookgasm.com, a book review site that...well, here's how Rod puts it:

Hey, have you read the new Nora Roberts?
Are you a member of Oprah’s Book Club?
Do you enjoy stories about the struggles of the disenfranchised in our society?
If you answered “no” to all those questions, we’d like to welcome you to BOOKGASM, the site dedicated to READING MATERIAL TO GET EXCITED ABOUT.
That includes all kinds of genre fiction, from horror and sci-fi to mystery and suspense. It also includes graphic novels, trashy paperbacks, cheap magazines and other things that much of America pretends to be ashamed of, for no good reason.
At BOOKGASM, we celebrate these escapist efforts, through daily news, reviews, interviews and other things that don’t end in “-ews.” Think of it as a community; we encourage your posts via the comments section under each item.

Based in Oklahoma City, Rod Lott spends his days as the assistant editor of Oklahoma’s largest alternative weekly newspaper. In his “spare time,” he is the editor of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity, and some of his humor essays have appeared in the anthologies 101 Damnations (St. Martin’s Press), More Mirth of a Nation (HarperCollins) and May Contain Nuts (HarperCollins). He also adapts classic short stories to comic book form for the ongoing Graphic Classic series of graphic novels from Eureka Publishing.

Rod's a terrific fella with great taste in books, and is a fearless promoter of novels that sometimes fly under the radar (hint, hint). Bookgasm should be placed on everyone's Netvibes list immediately.

And what is Rod planning to read this summer?

Here's what I hope to get to this summer (limited to things actually coming out between now and Aug. 31). You'll be able to judge how much I accomplish by seeing how many pop up as reviews on Bookgasm:

• Hit and Run by Lawrence Block
• The Shadow of Reichenback Falls by John R. King
• Old Devil Moon by Christopher Fowler
• Halloween and Other Seasons by Al Sarrantonio
• The X-Files: I Want to Believe by Max Allan Collins
• Who Can Save Us Now? edited by Owen King and John McNally
• The Mammoth Book of Crime Comics edited by Paul Gravett
• The Darker Mask edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers
• The Sandman Presents The Dead Boy Detectives by Ed Brubaker
• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
• Tigerheart by Peter David
• Just Do It by Douglas Brown
• Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
• Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes
• Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich
• The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending by Jon Land

That is a huge list. Rod's a dedicated reviewer, so I have no doubt he will get through the list expediently.

Book review - Valley of Day-Glo by Nick DiChario

As loyal readers of this blog may be aware - and a quick shout out to all the regulars: Matt, Rod, Jeff, Colin, Koop, Rob, Tanya, Elizabeth, Big D, Shaggy, C-Doc, Smelly Joe, Big Tiny, Earl, Jedthro, Anonymous, Mom, Dad, Big Shirtless Murray, Squinty, CRAZY LADY WHO USES ALLCAPS TOO MUCH, and Teddy (way to fight fires, bro!) - I am a big fan of Nick DiChario’s first novel A Small and Remarkable Life. It remains one of the only modern novels I’ve come across to effortlessly evoke the works of sci-fi legend Theodore Sturgeon, which in itself is a rare and wonderful thing. Yes, comparisons to Frank Herbert, Orson Scott Card, or Arthur C. Clarke are all well and good, but who gets compared to Sturgeon? Very few, and with very good reason. Sturgeon was an innovator, fusing a depth of humanity with bizarre, outworldly concepts that resulted in works of astonishing complexity and clarity. A Small and Remarkable Life was Sturgeon reborn, and if you haven’t read it, or Sturgeon for that matter, then shame on you. Needless to point out, I awaited DiChario’s second novel, Valley of Day-Glo, with an eagerness that bordered on the pathological.

So, here it is, and what’s the consensus? DiChario is no Theodore Sturgeon, not anymore. And that’s a compliment. Valley of Day-Glo is as far away conceptually from A Small and Remarkable Life as Sturgeon’s To Marry Medusa is from, say, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan. That is to say, pretty damn different. But it is equally compelling, equally weird, and equally accomplished. DiChario cannot be accused of repeating himself in anything but quality.

Valley of Day-Glo is ostensibly a post-apocalyptic epic, but by way of the absurdist fictions of Kurt Vonnegut and Will Self (whose novel The Book of Dave has slight echoes in DiChario’s narrative). Its protagonist is one of the last of the Iroquois, in a future where tribes of Natives are slowly reclaiming the earth, the white men (or Honio’o) having perished in the Great Reddening which decimated the planet. It all sounds deadly serious, and DiChario approaches the subject with utmost respect, but when you realize that the main character’s name is Broadway Danny Rose - the eunuch son of Father The Outlaw Josey Wales and Mother Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - you get an inkling of DiChario’s warped and refreshing take on the apocalypse genre.

It is the intent of the tribe of Broadway Danny Rose to “actively integrate the words of wisdom, the objects and rituals that remain from the Pre-Reddening Honio’o into the cultural habits of the Indian tribes, so that the horrible deeds that provoked the great Indian spirits to destroy the yellow- and dark- and white-skinned people will never be duplicated in ignorance.” Unfortunately, there are only three members left, and when Father The Outlaw Josey Wales is strangled to death by Mother Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? after an argument concerning Major League Baseball, there aren’t many options left for keeping the tribe alive. Mother and son decide to take Father’s body to the Valley of Day-Glo, a fabled land “where all the colours of the pre-Reddening Earth can be found. Flowers are in constant bloom there. Trees reach up so far into the sky that it is impossible to know where the branches end and the flowers begin.” It is, in other words, Eden, where death becomes life. And although Broadway Danny Rose does not believe it exists, Father The Outlaw Josey Wales did, and burying him there seems the right thing to do.

In a recent interview, DiChario classifies Valley of Day-Glo as absurdist fiction, although he admits even he does not necessarily know how to define the term (He also states his love for Steven Sherrill’s The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, which makes me like him even more). Much of what occurs in Valley is indeed absurd, as when the tribes each take a book as their personal bible; the tribe of Broadway Danny Rose, the Gushedon’dada tribe, worships The Microwave Cookbook. After a harrowing journey through the blasted landscape, Broadway Danny Rose meets up with an established township of tribes, and discovers that “[the] chiefs of the Independent Iroquois nations planned for the future by organizing the tribes into a coalition of argumentative nincompoops.” The ultimate answer to the existence of the Valley of Day-Glo is as strange and inspired a piece of weirdness as ever graced the pages of sci-fi. But DiChario never flinches, never winks, never suggests that he’s just goofing, which contributes to Valley’s lasting effect on the reader.

There is much of Vonnegut in DiChario’s narrative; the beset-upon and often impotent hero, the strange underhanded humour, the overarching anger at unending human stupidity. The book jacket makes a slightly misleading comparison between Valley and the works of Douglas Adams; both are science-fiction with a humourous bent, but Adams, God love him, was far more concerned with making people laugh than exploring the literary boundaries of his chosen genre. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Adams was Monty Python and The Goon Show, whereas DiChario is Samuel Beckett and Joseph Heller. Both options are funny, but if you go in expecting similar levels of hilarity, you’re bound to be disappointed at best, and outright perplexed, befuddled, and flummoxed at worst.

What is clear is that DiChario is a unique talent, a writer of depth and originality (a mix far more rare than it should be). He’s not afraid to take risks. He’s warped. I await his third novel with all the breathless anticipation of a child newly introduced to chocolate, with the promise of more in the indeterminate future.

And as an aside, if for no other reason, I would love Valley of Day-Glo for its book club discussion guide alone, rife with such questions as:

2. Do you think humankind can survive a nuclear world war? If so, are you serious?
5. How important is it for you to be accepted by other people?
9. Why are you reading this guide when you could be out in the world discovering great books?

Now that’s ballsy, suggesting that people read something else.

Who's reading what this summer? Episode one - Andrew Pyper

I am please to announce the first in what I hope to be an ongoing series of blog entries regarding the 2008 summer reading habits of authors, bloggers, and critics I have across on my travels. In other words, I'm getting not much done on the writing front, so this might make me feel like I'm getting something done. I kid. I hope that the series will remind you (and myself) of some of the fantastic literature that's available, as well as draw attention to some works you might not have considered before.

Our first participant is the award-winning Canadian author Andrew Pyper. Andrew is on the cusp of releasing his fourth novel The Killing Circle, which I am currently reading and currently loving. It is a fantastic thriller, and a biting look at literary types to boot. Don't miss this one, I'm serious.

From Andrew's website:

Andrew Pyper was born in Stratford, Ontario, in 1968. He received a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from McGill University in Montreal, as well as a law degree from the University of Toronto. Although called to the bar in 1996, he has never practiced.
His first novel, Lost Girls, was a national bestseller in Canada and a Globe and Mail Notable Book selection in 1999 as well as a Notable Book selection in the New York Times Book Review (2000) and the London Evening Standard (2000). The novel won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel and is an Otto Penzler pick on Amazon.com. Andrew is attached as screenwriter for a feature film adaptation of Lost Girls, working with producer Steven Hoban (Ginger Snaps, Oscar-winner Ryan, Splice).
Andrew's second novel, The Trade Mission, was selected by The Toronto Star as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year. His third novel, The Wildfire Season, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and has been published to acclaim in the U.K., Canada, U.S. and Holland. The Wildfire Season is currently in development for feature film with L.A.-based producer Chris Moore (Good Will Hunting, American Pie).
He lives in Toronto.

And here's what Andrew has to say about his upcoming summer choices:

Here's what having a 21-month-old daughter (and the shortened hours that has come with her arrival) has done to my reading strategies: (almost) no more magazines (and definitely no texty ones, ie. The New Yorker, Harpers, etc.), an even greater liberty to quit books that don't get off the ground in the first 50 to 100 pages, a newfound appreciation of mass market paperbacks (they can fit in the pockets of my shorts), a fiercer-then-ever aversion to the "duty read." The result has been a more focused - but more pleasurable - reading life. We're going away to a cabin in Quebec for a couple weeks, and though our daughter will be with us, I am hoping for stolen naptimes for books. The pile, at the moment, includes:

The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq

The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford

Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, by John Stape

Thanks, Andrew! I've been meaning to pick up the Chabon, I think I'll put that on my TBR Summer list.

BookExpo Canada 2008

Ah, BookExpo, my Disney World of literary dreams, with the same long lines, the same sweltering heat, and the same roller coasters...wait, no roller coasters, but free beer, which can approximate the experience handily enough.
The big mug you see here is myself, at the front of the lineup of ravenous hordes who awaited patiently to feast upon their favourite authors and free swag.

Here's myself (on the left - no, your left) with ECW Press' David Caron, and my magnificent Gold Medal for Best Popular Fiction Novel at this year's Independent Publisher Book Awards. I wore it around all day, and despite the neck cramps and chaffing, it was so worth it.

Myself and bestest bud forever Andrew Pyper (The Killing Circle, Lost Girls). A little hint for those who've never met me: if you want to immediately gain my trust, affection, and pin number, when we meet for the first time, utter the phrase, "Corey Redekop? Hey, I liked your novel!" Man, it gets me every time.

Canadian crime novelist Peter Robinson (All the Colours of Darkness).

Canadian wunderkind Nathan Whitlock (A Week of This).

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring).

James W. Nichol (Transgressions).

Rawi Hage (Cockroach, IMPAC Dublin winner for De Niro's Game).

Paul Quarrington (The Ravine, Galveston, Whale Music, King Leary, and a terrific blurb on my novel).

Quentin Jardine (Aftershock).

Nick DiChario (Valley of Day-Glo, A Small and Remarkable Life).

Rick Blechta (A Case of You).

Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes).

It was the end of the day, I was exhausted, and whatever this thing was it spoke to me.

I've been tagged!

No, not in the catch-and-release-of-polar-bears-to-determine-migratory-habits sort of way.

By way of the sfsignal.com meme (and probably going back quite aways further), trusted advisor and book guy Matt Staggs has tagged me with this instruction:

"To participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people."

So, the novel in question is George Pelecanos' Hard Revolution:

"Strange was under the wheel of his '65 Impala, a blue clean-line V-8 he'd purchased used at Curtis Chevrolet."

Don't know what I should do with that, but I am enjoying the Hell out of the novel.

And I hereby tag:

Nikki Stafford

Chrissy Calhoun

Rod Lott

Mark Rayner

Elizabeth Bardawill