Currently Browsing: fiction
Nov 18, 2010
The Secret History neatly performs an exquisite balancing act: one the one hand, it’s full of classical allusions and Greek phrases and lush, evocative descriptions of lovely things, and on the other it’s absolutely deliciously tawdry, full of every seamy literary delight: sex, drugs and murder. Although basically as trashy as any episode of Jerry Springer, its patina of academic...
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Fatal Flaws can be fun!
Oct 25, 2010
Every term I subject my UCLA students to two fragments of Neal Stephenson’s excellent novel Zodiac. First, there’s the snarkalicious opening line:
Roscommon came and laid waste to the garden an hour after dawn, about the time I usually get out of bed and he usually passes out on the shoulder of some freeway.
And this bit:
On the screen, poodle-headed rockers were strapping a cheerleader to a...
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Zodiac: Toxic Lobsters Unite!
Oct 21, 2010
The year was 2004. I was voting for John Kerry (*sigh*) at a polling place located in a rather stately library, and I was stuck at the end of a very long queue of other restless Americans. Just as I got in, the cover of a book caught my eye and I picked it up, intending to idly flip through it and set it back down. 208 pages later, and still in line, I did. Hello, this shit was enthralling.
The book...
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Ninjas. Hot ones. Need I say more?
Sep 20, 2010
Portlander M.K. Hobson’s debut novel The Native Star is fantasy deliciousness of the first order. I want at least three sequels and a high budget SyFy original series. It would be Deadwood meets True Blood meets Xena, and would melt underwear across the nation. Guaranteed.
Eight reasons why...
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The Native Star: Bustlepunk revolution
Aug 2, 2010
Five minutes ago I was invited to contribute to this blog. I didn’t even blink before I accepted because it gives me the opportunity to gibber fannishly about my all time, most splendid, most timeless fantastico fave thing. No other favourite thing comes close to this. What, you might ask, could make my bum hum so ecstatically? Is it Salma Hayek clad only in those glasses she wore during the pole dancing...
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On Mars with Michael Bishop
Jul 16, 2010
If you haven’t read it, it’s never too late to soak in late-80s era ennui!
The basic premise of Generation X involves Andy, Claire and Dag, three friends who come to the desert to be… well, themselves. Not reinvented so much as stripped down, they make the deliberate decision to eschew the “get a career, climb the ladder, amass wealth” model that most of the people they know have...
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Generation X
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