Monkey droppings - Away from Everywhere by Chad Pelley

Today, the monkey weirds out on lingering family resentments.




Away from Everywhere
by Chad Pelley (2009)

Families are funny things, sometimes. Sure, we all rhapsodize about the strengths of familial bonds and the importance of community to your proper upbringing, but deep down inside, in those areas of the brain we rarely explore, there is always that hint of doubt, that niggling of uncertainty best left unspoken; If I wasn't related to these people, would I be friends with them? Would I even like them?

This is only a rhetorical theory, by the way. I love my family. Whether they love me back, I leave that argument to the unfathomable depths of their souls. But we don't get a choice, so we're stuck with each other no matter what. That's the definition of family. And that is what puts the fun in dysfunctional.

Newfoundland author Chad Pelley understands the dynamics of families, the give and take, the love and the hate. It is the kindling of good drama, and in his debut novel Away from Everywhere, Pelley uses it to creating a roaring fire of familial angst.

Pelley starts his narrative in the middle, a tragic accident involving two of the principles, working back and forth from that point to fill the pieces of the puzzle. Alex and Owen are fraternal twins, born to a strong mother figure and a journalist father who, it is quickly revealed, suffers from schizophrenia. Pelley captures the deterioration of personality with grace and nuance; indeed, it is when Pelley confronts the darker elements that his story comes truly alive.

He went delusional, then catatonic: a raving lunatic and then a body in a rocking chair that wouldn't have the instinct to fell a burning room; a man seeing people to a man with no use for eyes.

The event serves as a wedge to send the brothers on alternate paths. Alex becomes determined to be a man he sees as 'successful,' driving himself to become a doctor. Owen, the more melancholy of the two, opts to pursue his romantic dream of becoming a writer. As the years pass, both men discover the costs of their choices, as Alex's drive leaves his marriage empty, and Owen's passion drives him to drink.

Pelley's tale does not travel down new roads, but he navigates the familiar path of his characters extremely well. Owen is the novel's main focus, and Pelley deftly captures the bottomless well of self-pity and loneliness that an alcoholic can dwell in.

Pelley also brings a good eye for description, with an almost poetic air to the physicality of his characters:

She had a mannish face no man could love - patches of wiry hair on her blotchy chin and cheeks that would grow a beard if left alone, a large droopy mole on her forehead that hung down like a cocooning insect, and a witch's crooked nose. Owen figured she held the world in contempt for the face she was born with.

Yet despite its plentiful strengths, Away from Everywhere suffers from a sometimes leaden ear for dialogue. Characters have a tendency to make speeches rather than talk, lending certain scenes a 'disease of the week' television movie quality. Pelley has some satisfactory twists to delay showing his hand, but a third-act development (no spoilers here) is the sort of surprise you either buy or you don't, and I'm afraid I fall into the former category.

Notwithstanding such criticisms, there is far too much good in Away from Everywhere to dismiss it. Pelley achieves some affecting moments of true transcendence in Everywhere's pages; his is a talent to watch for.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES

Paul Quarrington, 1953-2010

I apologize up front; this may be a rambling post.

For those you haven't heard, Canadian author (among many other careers) Paul Quarrington died this morning at the age of 56. He had been suffering from lung cancer for some time, but his passing was still a sudden blow.

I barely knew Paul. I met him in person only one time, at a reading in Winnipeg, but I found him a very warm and approachable man. He had read (and remembered) my complimentary review in the Winnipeg Free Press of his novel Galveston, and we chatted for a few moments as he signed the five or so novels of his I had brought along. I remember recommending Taras Grescoe's The End of Elsewhere as being a companion piece of sorts to his memoir The Boy on the Back of the Turtle. I thought he might enjoy Grescoe's sense of humour.

A few years later, I contacted Paul by email to ask if he would consent to blurb my novel Shelf Monkey. I felt that he had been an influence on my style, and hoped against hope that someone I admired so intensely might actually like my work. I was delighted when he accepted, and seeing his words and name on my back cover was a thrill on a level I've rarely experienced.

When Paul was diagnosed with cancer, I did not contact him. I have had some dealings with cancer in my immediate family, and know the terrible toll it takes on both the patient and those around him. I could not find the words to convey my sorrow at his condition; I had grown to hate the platitudes and homilies I received from others when in similar circumstances, and could not find it in myself to repeat them. So, I remained silent, imagining that I would someday find the right way to express myself.

I missed my chance, and Paul never knew the deep admiration I held for him, both as a writer and as a person. He seemed like a genuinely good fellow; flawed, most definitely, but by all accounts a very nice guy. And I am a huge fan of his work; in the best of his novels (Whale Music, of course, but also Civilization, Galveston, The Ravine, and my personal favourite Home Game), he always managed to balance riotous humour with believable pathos, a balance not many can pull off. His novels could be devastatingly funny, but it was always rooted in character. And his ability to create characters of depth was astounding. The bloated musician in Whale Music, the deluded magicians in The Spirit Cabinet, the grand eloquence of King Leary himself; Paul's gift for character was just that, a true gift that he shared with us all.

Paul Quarrington has passed away, but his work will live on. I hate like hell that he won't be around to share more stories with us, but I love him for the tales he told.


We'll miss you, Paul.

Monkey droppings - The City & the City by China Miéville: "Nothing are still like the dead are still."

Today, the monkey tries to see two points of view at once.

My brain! MY BRAIN!!!


The City & The City
by China Miéville (2009)

She turned her head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion, and I met her eyes. I wondered if she wanted to tell me something. In my glance I took in her clothes, her way of walking, of holding herself, and looking.

With a hard start, I realised that she was not on GunterStrász at all, and that I should not have seen her.

I can't speak for everyone, of course, but it's been a banner couple of months for me, in terms of discovering quality mysteries set in worlds that'll wrench your brain around and make it glad for the experience.

I've traversed the mushroom-laden streets of Ambergris in Jeff Vandermeer's Finch. I've gone colour-blind in Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. I've trekked through the caverns of dreams in Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection. Speaking honestly, I didn't think I was up for any more bizarre literary worlds.

Well, shut my mouth, 'cuz China Miéville is on the scene.

I'm not personally familiar with Miéville's output, but I am aware of his stature as a fantasy world-builder of no small repute (his Perdido Street Station, set in his fictional world of Bas-Lag, has been taunting me to pick it up for some time). His newest novel, the detective mystery The City & The City (hereinafter C&C), is set in a new universe, one only a stone's throw away from our own.

But there are throws, and then there are throws. And Miéville has one hell of an arm.

C&C is, as the title implies, set in two cities. On one side is Besźel, a poor European city-state guarded in part by Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad. As O&C opens, a woman's body has been discovered, and Borlú soon learns that solving the crime may involve the authorities in Ul Qoma, Besźel's sister city. The cities have existed in a state of truce for some time, although there are constant rumblings from nationalists as to the unfairness of the truce. And if that was all there was to it, C&C would be an interesting police thriller set in an unusual yet familiar setting. While the physical descriptions of Ul Qoma and Besźel set one in mind of European realms such as Croatia and Serbia - war-ravaged regions of Europe that are slowly becoming integrated into the 21st century - there are signposts that mark this world as being very much like our own. People use cell phones, and the Internet, and they Google for information on their neighbours.

But the border between Ul Qoma and Besźel (and this is where it gets weird, and where Miéville's manic genius for world-building becomes obvious) is not so much physical as it is psychological. For the two cities exist in the same geographic space, and are kept separate and apart by each city's populace psychologically "unseeing" the other. Borlú explains it thusly:

How could one not think of the stories we all grew up on, that surely the Ul Qomans grew up on too? Ul Qoman man and Besź maid, meeting in the middle of Copula Hall, returning to their homes to realise that they live, grosstopically, next door to each other, spending their lives faithful and alone, rising at the same time, walking crosshatched streets close like a couple, each in their own city, never breaching, never quite touching, never speaking a word across the border.

Each population lives in constant yet unnoticed awareness of the other, and the cities, while in the same physical space, are experience through unseeing as being distinct cities. "If someone needed to go to a house physically next door to their own but in the neighbouring city, it was in a different road in an unfriendly power. This is what foreigners rarely understand. A Besź dweller cannot walk a few paces next door into an alter house without breach."

Each population is kept in their place by Breach, a mysterious third entity that exists somewhere between the two psychological empires. To traverse from own city to the other at any place other than a designated cross-hatch is considered a crime, a breach, and Breach is summarily summoned to ensure that the guilty party is punished.

Yeah, it's a complicated world, and one that twisted my tongue more than once as I tried to explain it to friends. It's difficult to describe in a few words a world where people drive through border crossings and then "they doubled back, to the crosshatched streets in the Old Town or the Old Town, to the same space they had minutes earlier occupied, though in a new juridic realm." You try and wrap your head around that.

Luckily, Miéville has obviously written a map, and consults it constantly. C&C flows effortlessly, and its mind-boggling premise quickly becomes second nature, never drawing attention to itself except through its interaction with the story. For this is a story, and a darned good one, a police procedural with twists and turns as labyrinth as any one of the twin cities' shared back alleys. The cities are fascinating enough on their own, but Miéville is not out to create a Lonely Planet guidebook; he's telling a hardboiled noir police thriller, and excellently to boot.

It almost comes as a disappointment when Breach is contacted directly, but this was a risk Miéville had to take. I won't give away Breach's purpose or construction here, but there is an inevitable disappointment as a tantalizing mystery is revealed. Miéville never shows too much, luckily, and keeps the plot moving at a speedy pace that propels the reader through some crazy passages (including this reader's favourite, a foot chase down a single street between two men in different countries).

The City & The City is one crazy mind-trip, and an excellent mystery. Miéville may not traverse his new realms as deeply as he supposedly has with Bas-Lag (again, I'm going on the opinions of others here), but who cares when the result is this damned good?

Verdict: MONKEY LOVES

Critical Monkey - bonus disqualified entry! The Murder of King Tut: The only murder here is the death of hope.

The Murder of King Tut
by James Patterson & Martin Dugard (2009)

I have an ability, or a curse, to focus on several projects at once. But Tut was distracting me from all the other projects.
- James Patterson

I once made a vow to myself to never read another James Patterson novel. I have read three of his Alex Cross 'mysteries,' each more incompetently written than the last, and each reinforcing my belief that Alex Cross is one of the most ineffectual detectives I've ever come across. And they were boring, perhaps the worst sin a thriller can commit.

So when his new "non-fiction thriller" The Murder of King Tut came across my desk, I initially ignored it. But then I considered whether or not I should include it as my next entry in Critical Monkey, my ongoing exercise in self-induced brain mutilation. By my own rules it should not count, as a primary component of the challenge was to read authors I had not previously read. But this was a work co-authored by Martin Dugard, and might just qualify. Patterson has a lucrative side-business in coming up with plotlines but letting other authors do all the dirty work of actually writing the things. Perhaps I could make an exception? After all, maybe Dugard was an exceptionally talented writer and could somehow overcome the limitations of his hack co-author and come up with something, at the very least, bearable.

Alas, I cannot in good conscience place King Tut as an official entry, as Patterson was most definitely involved to a large degree (see below). I should never listen to myself. I should gouge out my eyes with a rusty spoon the next time such an impulse takes hold. Consider this an entry with an asterisk, a mark that the reader definitely suffered at the hands of a meastro of hackdom.

The Murder of King Tut is, without fear of exaggeration, one of the absolute worst books I have ever had the displeasure to read, and very likely the worst I've read to be released by a major publishing house (Little, Brown and Company being the perpetrators of this particular crime against humanity). It is a cruel exercise in banality, a work so inane and lightweight a book that Dan Brown would be impressed. It isn't even a book; it's an outline, a sketch, and one that would undoubtedly never have seen the light of day were it not for the galling hubris of its main author.

I say that without fear of argument for, you see, The Murder of King Tut is not simply a novel (sorry, "non-fiction thriller") about Tutankhamun. Nor is it solely about Howard Carter, British explorer and discoverer of Tut's tomb. No, it is also the gripping (apologies, 'gripping') tale of James Patterson, "one of the best-selling writers of all time," and a man suddenly consumed by a new obsession:

As I do on many mornings, I was walking Donald Trump's golf paradise in West Palm, my favorite course anywhere. But my mind was on Tut. What an incredible mystery this was turning out to be. I was becoming as obsessed as Howard Carter must have been.

Yes, indeed, as obsessed a man as Carter, a man who, if Patterson and Dugard's research is to be believed, sacrified everything and spent decades of his life toiling in the deserts of Egypt for his chance at fame and fortune. Yes, he and Patterson, playing the links and mulling over random facts in his head. Peas in a pod.

It's easy to be snarky, yes; even easier when faced with a man who brags, "I have a hunch that Tut was murdered. And I hope, at least on paper, to prove it." Because I honestly don't have a clue what Patterson hoped to achieve by this undertaking, other than possibly gaining a written record of his own ego. It's hard to take anyone seriously who writes of his theory that Tut was murdered, "There was that gut instinct of mine again - the reason, I think, that Time magazine had once called me "The Man Who Can't Miss." Nice bit of reverse-bragging there. When Patterson writes, "My gut feeling is getting stronger. Tut was murdered...I just have to figure out who killed the poor guy," his ego stretches the exercise in self-gratification to the breaking point. The book is not about Tut, it is about Patterson. And King Tut is not a well-thought out historical re-enactment of Tut's life, it is a thin and barren exercise in narcissism, a mystery as compelling as anything ever faced by the Hardy Boys, and not nearly so well-written.

Patterson makes a point right off the bat that he is a stickler for research; I'll let that claim lie. I am no Egyptologist, nor a history buff, and cannot make any claims as to the accuracy of his and Dugard's research. He states that Dugard travelled to Britain and Egypt on exhaustive research jaunts, and I have no reason to disbelieve this. I can only assert that none of this attention to detail shows up in the final product, which is a depiction of Egyptian life straight out of the most juvenile of juvenile literature, filled with featureless characterizations and dialogue along the lines of "If I ever see you looking at me that way again, I will feed your heart to the crocodiles." In fact, the entire book is written as if for very young minds; the chapters are rarely more than three pages long, paragraphs are usually made of three sentences or less, and the font is fairly large. King Tut is barely an essay, and never becomes a book.

And as for the tale itself? Patterson and Dugard tell the dual stories (ignoring Paterson's mercifully brief examinations of himself) of Tut's upbringing and that of Howard Carter, a young English boy who is fated to discover Tut's tomb. Carter's overall tale is mostly exposition, with very little in the way of dialogue or characterization, rife with passages of 'excitement' such as this:

His heart raced as he finally held his lantern into the burial chamber. The workers standing behind him peered excitedly over his shoulder.
There was nothing there.
The treasure, and the pharaoh's mummy, had already been stolen.
By somebody else.

What dialogue there is is of the pre-teen adventure variety, such as when Carter discovers the footprints of a thief who has burgled one of his sites:

Carter guaged the prints with his tape measure. They were the exact size of those found at the robbery. "Down to the millimeter," he marveled. "I've got you, el Rasoul!"

Tut's tale is no better, a race through the lives of himself and his predecessors that barely functions as a sketch, and never rises to the level of an honest-to-god work of research. P&D pepper Tut's life with ludicrously inane dialogue, such as this exposition-laden exchange between Tut and his mother:

"Tut, there's something else we need to talk about. I need you to pay attention to what I have to tell you now."
"Yes, Mother?"
"You are just a boy and have not yet been trained in the ways of the pharaoh. But you must know that this is your destiny."
The boy stopped her. "I don't understand."
"You will be pharaoh one day, Tut."
"I don't want to be pharaoh. I don't! Why can't you be pharaoh, Mother?"
"It is not considered best for a woman to rule Egypt, Tut. But because I am of royal blood, I will find a way to rule for as long as it takes you to learn to be a great pharaoh...I know that you will do great things. You will be a pharaoh people always remember."

And let's not forget the sterling machinations of Aye, Patterson's purported murderer, a villain straight out of the mustache-twirling variety of old movies, prone to such pronouncements as:

"I'll deal with her when the time comes," Aye mumbled, already planning his crime..."Someday I will be the pharaoh," he said boldly.

So, yes, King Tut is bad. Monstrously, unforgettably bad. It functions neither as a historical examination of the fossil record nor as a thriller, as it forgets that a thriller needs characters, atmosphere, and above all, thrills. But what is truly astonishing is that any publisher would take such a pitiful excuse for a treatise - a treatise whose central conceit, as Bookgasm's Rod Lott has pointed out, has already been considered in Michael R. King and Gregory M. Cooper’s Who Killed King Tut? and Bob Brier’s The Murder of Tutankhamun - that any publisher would deign to release such a pathetic wretch of a work to the public. The Murder of King Tut is horribly-written tripe that should never have seen the light of day, save for the powerful fact that money-machine James Patterson put his name on it.

The Murder of King Tut is not a book; it is a cash grab, plain and simple. It is a scheme to remove $33 dollars from the pockets of fans, and reward them with the barest minimum necessary for it to qualify as an actual book. The entire 340 page book can be read in under three hours, written at the level of a particularly bright Grade 4 child. That this piece of hackwork was released at all is utterly contemptible, a middle finger to Patterson's many fans. His hubris is astounding, his arrogance depressing. It is that which transforms King Tut from merely being a waste of time into something worthy of all the bile and vitriol one can spew at it.

VERDICT: MONKEY CANNOT CONTAIN HIS LOATHING

Critical Monkey entry #5 - The Stainless Steel Rat

After my last foray into forbidden territory led to nightmares and despair over the state of my mortal soul, I retreat to seemingly more moderate climes. Will I survive? Thrive, even? Read on...

The Stainless Steel Rat
by Harry Harrison (1961)

Why I might like it: I have come across references to SSR a number of times over the years. As an impressionable youngster, I was captivated by the pulpy cover that stared out at me from the paperback racks of the local Safeway. Being young, and unware of the concept of metaphors, I imagined that the title was literal, and there was indeed a robotic rat roaming the world somewher. As the years passed, my grasp of metaphors grew, but my interest in the novel faded, only revived when I chanced upon a copy of Harry Harrison's novel Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires (a novel later disowned by Harrison, being actually written by Jack C. Haldeman II and only marginally based on a reputedly far superior original novel and character of Harrison's). Harrison, while I am unfamiliar with his work, is somewhat of a science-fiction icon, with near sixty releases, including Make Room! Make Room!, the novel that the cult classic movie Soylent Green is based on, and which automatically now goes on my TBR pile. He's also now, at the age of 84, working on the 11th Stainless Steel Rat novel, The Stainless Steel Rat Returns.

Why I might hate it: No reason. It has a good pedigree, and a fair number of admirers (but then, so does Twilight, so we can't go by that). It's clear that Harrison has had a lasting talent; I'm expecting a fun read, but beyond that, who knows? Maybe I should have taken on something more obviously not to my tastes, but after the spasms of reading Left Behind had finally passed (not to mention an unfortunate bout of glossolalia), I had to step back and tackle something that was not, on the face of it, going to cause internal parasites to feast on my innards.

The verdict: Phew, a good one. Really good, in point of fact, a prime piece of pulp. I can understand why this became a series.

James Bolivar diGriz is, in his own terminology, a "stainless steel rat," a criminal working in a future society that very rarely comes across a criminal element anymore. "We are the rats in the wainscoting of society - we operate outside of their barriers and outside of their rules...It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat - and it is the greatest experience in the galaxy if you can get away with it." drGriz is a natural born criminal, and he is exceedingly good at his job.

Not so good that he doesn't get pinched, however, and forced into employment with the Special Corps, an intergalactic intelligence agency that hires people with diGriz's special talents to ferret out others with the same mindset. diGriz finds himself taking to his new job, and soon finds himself racing across the galaxy after a criminal mastermind who has procurred a space war ship and isn't afraid to use it.

There isn't a lot of excess plot or introspection to SSR; it zips along from plot-point to plot-point with near-light speed, counting on the charisma of the narrator to keep the reader balanced. There are some salient points scattered about concerning individual freedoms and the dangers of over-dependence on governmental authority, but Harrison is far more concerned with derring-do. SSR is primarily an adventure novel, and Harrison never pretends that his story is meant to do anything but keep you entertained.

And why shouldn't that be enough? There's more than enough bad pulp out there, so we should celebrate good pulp when we find it. diGriz is an engaging and resourceful lead character (as I said, I can see why this series has stretched to eleven novels), and the narrative never lets up. SSR is meant to be nothing more or less than fun, and it succeeds admirably, on the scale of some of Robert Heinlein's peppier works. In the end, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and it doesn't linger long after completion, but the trek was memorable while it lasted.

MONKEY WOULD CONSIDER READING MORE OF THESE.

Monkey droppings - Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde: "Once monochrome fundamentalism gets a hold, it can be hard to eradicate."

Today, the monkey weirds out on the future of mankind.

I'm a'scared, I tells ya!

Shades of Grey
by Jasper Fforde
Penguin Group (Canada), 2009

The known had been so long dwarfed by the unknown that confusion was an easy bedfellow.

It has been a boon time for purveyors of post-apocalyptic fictions. Margaret Atwood has received plaudits for The Year of the Flood, Cormac McCarthy saw his Road hit cinemas, and all told, there is a bleakness that translates well into artistic expressions of mankind’s prospects.

However, nothing says humanity’s downfall can’t provide some laughs along the way. And as the decade wends its way to a close, Jasper Fforde has decided that his depiction of a brave new world will be a bit more overtly entertaining than is the norm; think Aldous Huxley by way of Douglas Adams.

Shades of Grey begins a new series for the Welsh author, best known for his riotously funny Thursday Next novels. Set in a future “Colortocracy” where one’s place depends on one’s ability to perceive colors, Grey is a complex tale of mystery, irony, and clever humour that highlights Fforde’s gift for literary wit and fantastically goofy plotlines.

Fforde’s story begins over four hundred years after the Something That Happened, and humankind, strangely affected with variations of colorblindness, now functions as a rigid caste society. Edward Russett is a Red, a servant of the Collective who distinguishes shades of red far better than others.

It is a world where color is everything, and all civilization goes atwitter over the release of a new “shade of yellow that would give bananas chromatic independence from lemons and custard.”

To keep society in Stasis, the “Word of Munsell,” a strict set of Rules, has been set in place. “[The Rules] were sometimes very odd indeed: The banning of the number that lay between 72 and 74 was a case in point, and no one had ever fully explained why it was forbidden to count sheep, make any new spoons or use acronyms.”

Edward’s life, heretofore unremarkable, becomes rather more complicated when he meets Jane, a Grey who refuses to know her place. As he slowly uncovers some truths about the past (which otherwise remain tantalizing unclear), he finds that his new knowledge puts him at odds with some very powerful individuals who would do anything to keep the Stasis in place.

Much as in Fforde’s Thursday Next stories, Shades of Grey revels in a world as bizarre and unexplainable as it is a joy to visit. His future, a domain where love is secondary to acceptable color marriages and swan attacks often turn deadly, is at once gloriously elaborate and completely implausible, yet somehow always believable within the confines of the page.

Fforde has a fine ear for turning dialogue into giddy flights of lunacy, sometimes recalling Monty Python routines at their most absurd. This may sometimes occur at a cost to plot, but Fforde is a fine fantasist, and his flights of surreal wit only serve to heighten the monstrous amounts of pleasure he ladles out for the reader.

There are myriad delights to be discovered within Shades of Grey, far more than can be adequately described in a review. To put it bluntly, the first novel in Fforde’s new series is as warped and peculiar as anything he has written to date, which bodes very well for the sequels.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Originally published (expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, January 2, 2010.

Critical Monkey! Update the half-year gone! Can you handle six more months? How much torture can one person withstand?

Half-way through. Whoooo! Wheeet! Whaat!

Seriously, I am proud of all of you, you have taken up the challenge and run with it. It's not easy confronting one's demons, but there is a certain cleansing that goes along with the experience (of the bowels, if not the soul). And we still have six months to go, and there are two more possible contestants currently girding up their innards with extra fibre to have a go at it. They've got some catching up to do, but if there is one thing I have learned so far from this exercise in masochism, it's that the human mind can take a lot of pain.

So, let's take a look at the big board!

Acceptance (seven reviews)

Depression (six reviews)

Anger (five reviews)

Lori L
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Roses of Glory by Mary Pershall
Spock's World by Diane Duane
A Texan's Honor by Leigh Greenwood
Star Wars: Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin

Guilt (four reviews)

Corey Redekop
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Justice Riders by Chuck Norris
Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell
Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

Steve Zipp
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Whiteoaks of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche

Bargaining (three reviews)

Jeanne
Empire of Lies by Andrew Klaven
A Merry Heart by Wanda E. Brunsetter
A Washington, D.C. by Robert J. Hensler

Denial (two reviews)

Betty
Generation Dead/Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters
A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks

gypsysmom
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Shock (one review)

Alison
On the Road by Jack Kerouac

As you can plainly see, we have a good, solid mix of highbrow art fare that everyone claims to read and love (Jane Austen and Stephen Hawking), and lowdown dirty bile that we should all be ashamed to have checked out of the library (Andrew Klaven, Chuck Norris(!)). What, you think I liked anyone knowing I was reading Left Behind? I'd much rather sit in a coffee shop perusing the latest issue of Sex Cauldron than have people think I'd willingly read LaHaye.

And now, as promised, a drawing to reward you for all your hard work. This month's prize? A signed copy of Canadian author (and Canada Also Reads longlist candidate) Mark A. Rayner's enjoyably strange sci-fi opus The Amadeus Net.

And the winner is:

Steve Zipp! And Steve is also a longlist contender for his novel Yellowknife! Oh, his cup runneth all over the place!

Steve, I will contact you about your mailing info, and get Mark to send you out a copy post-haste. As for the others? Well, I've got an ARC of Jasper Fforde's new novel Shades of Grey just begging for a home. Next month, all new reviews get entered for the draw.

As for myself, I believe that I am still suffering from post-rapture fatigue, so I'm going in a different direction from the usual punishing fare. Instead, I've tracked down a copy of a novel I've always wanted to read since I was an overly-impressionable teen. The Stainless Steel Rat awaits!

See you in a month!