The 2010 Reading List: January to June

Not surprisingly, the big, honkin' reading list on the side of this blog has grown a bit unwieldy. So I've decided to store the January - June entries below and press on in the second half of the year.

It's been fun and interesting for me to compile the list, which is an exercise I've never undertaken before. Not surprisingly, I find that I read a ton of genre fiction. For the most part, this is my late night reading before I go to sleep, so I'm seldom looking for heavy sledding at that hour. I usually try to work my way through a heftier tome about once a month, but I find that I've slacked off that pace this year in favor of more escapist fare. So be it.

I also find that just listing the books tends to ignore the hefty quantities of news, periodical, website, government-related, and work-related reading that happens on a daily basis. Perhaps I'll list those sources in another post to better capture my full reading diet.

Anyway, here's the January-June list for anybody who cares. (Judging from the collective crickets that greet my book reviews when I post them, I'd say that nobody's even made it this far in this post.) Instead of sorting it by category, I'm keeping it in chronological order to reflect the order in which I finished these books:

Finished

--Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett (Review)

--The Big Four by Agatha Christie (Review)

--And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer (Review)

--Little Lost Girl by Richard Aleas (Review)

--Songs of Innocence by Richard Aleas (Review)

--Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines by Robert Lesser (Review)

--The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie (Review)

--The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: 60th Anniversary Anthology, ed. by Gordon Van Gelder (Review)

--Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (Review)

--The Stolen Village by Des Elkin. (Review)

--Pleasure Model by Christopher Rowley, with illustrations by Justin Norman. (Review)

--Murder by the Book by Rex Stout (Review)

--Blackout by Connie Willis. (Review)

--On the Natural History of Destruction by W.G. Sebald (Review)

--Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie (Review)

--The Black Diamond Detective Agency by Eddie Campbell (Review)

--Kull: The Shadow Kingdom by Arvid Nelson and Will Conrad (Review)

--Death Times Three by Rex Stout (Review)

--The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling (Review)

--Julie & Julia by Julie Powell (Review)

--The Chronicles of Conan, Vol. 18: Isle of the Dead and Other Stories by Bruce Jones, John Buscema, Marc Silvestri, and others. (Review)

--Very Hard Choices by Spider Robinson (Review)

--Money Shot by Christa Faust (Review)

--The Last Coincidence by Robert Goldsborough (Review)

--Captain America #1-#50 (2004-2010) by Ed Brubaker (Review)

--Marvel Secret Wars #1-#12 (1984-1985) by Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck (Review)

--The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison. (Review)

--The Stainless Steel Rat Returns by Harry Harrison. (Review)

--The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World by Harry Harrison. (Review)

--Double Shot by Agatha Christie (Review)

--Charlotte's Story by Charlotte Arpin Niedhauk (Review)

--Triple Jeopardy by Rex Stout

--The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby (Review)

--Spider-Girl #0 - #100 by Tom DeFalco, Pat Oliffe, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema (Review)

--The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You (1979) (Review)

--A Stainless Steel Rat is Born (1985) (Review)

--The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted (1987) (Review)

--The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues (1994) (Review)

Book Review: The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell (1996)

I just realized that I forgot to throw in a review The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell (1996) with the rest of yesterday's long back-from-the-hiatus post. It's another good one that comes late in the series. Angelina goes missing after she tries to bust a religious con-man, and soon Slippery Jim DiGriz's attempt to rescue his beloved wife lands him in a very warm dimension with some suspiciously pointed and pitch-forked denizens. Though many of us would have predicted that destination for him, it comes as quite a surprise to this atheistic criminal.

Needless to say, wacky hi-jinx ensue.

Like most of the later entries in the series, it's a standalone book but is probably most fun for longtime fans. Somebody who wants to check out the series and has never read one would do best to go back to the beginning.

Yes, I'm still alive... (Redux)

... and aware that I used that title for a post just a few weeks ago. However, since I hadn't posted in a couple of weeks I wanted to make it clear that I didn't just collapse and die of sheer joy when I found out that Star Blazers is coming out as a live-action Japanese movie. It's just been a really busy couple of weeks. Plus, my desk at home has been put out of commission for a few weeks while we tear up carpet in our living room and figure out what to do for flooring afterwards.

So, here's a quick summary of the past couple of weeks for those who care. All of these items would've merited full posts if I weren't overcome with joy at the upcoming release of Space Battleship Yamato ... er, I mean "if I weren't so busy":

Tiki Night -- We had a good time and a much-smaller than usual party. This was in great part due to a really busy schedule for me and Monique, the (sadly usual) lateness of the invite going out, and the fact that lots and lots of folks had plans because Tiki Night was on a Saturday this year.

Nonetheless, the fireworks were first-rate, the company was lovely, and a good time was had by all.

A Wedding -- Congratulations to my sister Jamie and my new brother-in-law Greg! Susan, Rich, Monique, and I assure you that some of the smallest weddings lead to the best marriages.

The Floor -- Monique imported an ally from Minnesota, her friend Patricia, and thanks to their combined efforts the stinkiest 3/4ths of our nasty old carpet is now long gone. The under-flooring will probably have to serve us for the summer while we figure out what to do over the top of it. It's accumulating an interesting variety of left-over and surplus paints to protect it for the time being. Keep a sharp eye out in Summertime pictures to come.

Bread -- A nice bonus from a few cleanup efforts in the garage. I rescued my old bread machine and started making bread again. Most of the efforts to date have been rye breads or pizza dough, which has led to yummy sandwiches and delicious margherita pizzas. There'll be more tastiness to come.

The Stainless Steel Rat for President (1982) and The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus (1999) -- The last two Stainless Steel Rat books in my Stainless Steel Rat re-reading binge in anticipation of the upcoming release of The Return of the Stainless Steel Rat this August.

In The Stainless Steel Rat for President Slippery Jim DiGriz runs a shifty and slick campaign to depose the corrupt president of a banana-republic planet. The galaxy's greatest criminal and electoral politics are a frighteningly good fit for one another. Good stuff.

The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus was the only one of these that I hadn't read before. Somehow its release slipped by me, so I was very happy to discover it when I was setting up my re-reading list. That means that by the end of this Summer I will have read two new (to me) Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison, when I had thought he was done writing them 15 years ago. JOY!

The plot itself meanders through a series of incidents as Slippery Jim and Angelina are hired to track down a bank robbery ring, go undercover at a circus, and find themselves on the Rube end of a con. I got the feeling that Harry Harrison was having fun with a favorite old character in this one, and in fact it ends at a good retirement point for the Rat. It's a fun read with a heavy varnish of nostalgia, so newcomers to the series would do better to jump in at the start.

Hey, there, "Star Blazers" fans...

Look what's coming soon to a movie screen near you! (Well, near you if you live in Japan.)



Finally, there's a summer movie that I want to see ... and it's in Japan! Aaaargh.

I don't know how and I don't know when, but oh yes, it must be seen.

Book Reviews: Four more Stainless Steel Rat Novels

Yup, I'm still working my way through the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, courtesy of the Commerce Township Library, in anticipation of the release later this summer of the first new Stainless Steel Rat novel in more than ten years: The Stainless Steel Rat Returns. Your local library is a great way to catch up on these books. Few libraries stock them all, but most have one or more of the collections and they are all easily available through inter-library loan.

Here's what I've read most recently:

--The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You (1979)

--A Stainless Steel Trio, collecting:
---- A Stainless Steel Rat is Born (1985)
---- The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted (1987)
---- The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues (1994).

All of these are played more for laughs than drama, but they all contain enough action and suspense to keep you turning the pages. None of is likely to be nominated as the best of the series, but they all make for good entertainment with the galaxy's greatest con-man turned interstellar agent Slippery Jim DiGriz. Harry Harrison is a Science Fiction Writers of America Grandmaster for good reason, and these entries all show off his ability to combine good plotting and pacing with a light comic touch.

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You (1979) -- The fourth of the series. This time Slippery Jim DiGriz is defending the human race from an invasion by a vast coalition of aliens. So, the ultimate undercover agent goes undercover among the aliens, thanks to a loathsome-looking alien suit. Good fun, with several memorably tense scenes in the second half of the book when he finally goes to the planet of his worst enemies, The Grey Men. Good stuff.

A Stainless Steel Trio -- This collection collects up the first three Stainless Steel Rat prequels, in which Harrison goes back and shows us how slippery Jim DiGriz turned to a life of crime and some of his early adventures before he joined the Special Corps.

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born (1985) -- We learn how little Jimmy DiGriz turned Slippery, as he turns to a life of crime and tutors under his planet's greatest career criminal, The Bishop. This is definitely a book best enjoyed after you've read a few of the other novels because the process of discovering his back story is set up so deftly by Harrison.

The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted (1987) -- Slippery Jim goes undercover in a quest for revenge and finds himself drafted into an interplanetary invasion force. Needless to say, the military is no place for this young criminal anarchist. Mayhem and fun ensues.

The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues (1994) -- Slippery Jim DiGriz cuts a deal to get himself out of the clutches of the League Navy and finds himself leading an undercover team on the prison planet of Liokukae. Their undercover identity? The galaxy's greatest rock band: The Stainless Steel Rats! This entry -- one of the later ones in the order in which they were written -- has a lot of interesting things to say about modern culture and celebrity.

Coming soon: A review of The Stainless Steel Rat for President (1982) which is in my hot little hands right now.

Book Review: Spider-Girl, #0 - #100

I first picked up the Spider-Girl comic written by Tom DeFalco almost six years ago right at the end of its 100-issue run, and have followed it ever since as it morphed into a 30-issue run as Amazing Spider-Girl and has then bumped around a few other joint titles and mini-series in the last year or two. In many ways the comic has been by far my favorite of the many Spider-Man comics on the market. It has a great lead character, May "Mayday" Parker, the daughter of Spider-Man; a deep and interesting cast of supporting characters; and is written and drawn with a sensibility that reminds me very much of the best comics that I enjoyed back in the 1980s. With so many grimly dark comics or books that take two-dozen issues to tell a brief tale, it's nice to still be able to pick up a comic that will reliably give me a good story and a fun read.

So, I figured going back and reading the original 100-isssue run would be a fun stop in my ongoing effort to get my money's worth out of a year-long subscription to the Marvel Digital Comics platform.

It was.

The character of Spider-Girl herself lives in an alternate Marvel Universe based on an issue of What-If (#105) that essentially the question "What if Peter Parker and Mary Jane had a teenage daughter?"

The real-world answer? The comic book series that had the longest continual run of any Marvel comic with a female lead. That's right. Step aside She-Hulk, Red Sonja, Phoenix, Black Widow, Elektra, Scarlet Witch, and everybody else. Marvel Comics all-time female champion superhero is a teenage basketball-team dropout with babysitting duties and hand-me-down web shooters.

I won't go into detail about the cast of characters and Spider-Girl's rogues gallery. Suffice it to say that her family includes Peter Parker, now middle-aged and retired from his run as Spider-Man; her mother, Mary-Jane Watson Parker; and -- about halfway through the run -- her baby brother Ben. She has a deep cast of assorted high-school friends and fights an assortment of villains that includes original villains, some second-generation Spidey villains, and even a few old Spider-Man classic villains who are still around and up to no good.

Reading the 100-issue (well, 102-issues, including #0 and an annual) run all in one fell swoop was a lot of fun. Ron Frenz was the artist who co-created the character with DeFalco in the original What-If issue, but he was replaced by Pat Oliffe for the first 50 issues of Spider-Girl. Interestingly, I thought the book improved when Frenz returned for the second half of the run. That surprised me because Oliffe is a really good artist who provided lots of good art, but DeFalco and Frenz seem to have a chemistry that translates better on the page for some reason. The narrative of the stories with Oliffe as artist sometimes felt a smidge stiff and forced, whereas the ones with Frenz have a fun and freewheeling feel that makes them especially fun to read.

Interestingly, I had the opportunity to talk with DeFalco and Frenz briefly at the Motor City Comic-Con last year, and was struck by the good chemistry they seemed to have away from the page, too. They just seem to be having fun making comic books, and that comes through on the page. I've picked up some of the original Ron Frenz pages inked by Sal Buscema, and they're among my favorite pieces in my entire comics art collection.

Many of Spider-Girl's exploits are available in graphic novel collections of individual issues. I'd recommend them for anybody looking for a family friendly comic-book read for a youngster. And I'd recommend the whole run of Spider-Girl -- especially issues #50-#100 -- for any comics fan looking for a fun read.

Good Night, Blogosphere

The beagle sleeps curled on her chair,
Where she can keep watch
Over her binkies on the floor
And her mistress on the couch.

My wife sleeps on the couch,
Still sitting upright
With a sheaf of pages to proof
And her glasses sliding down her nose.

And I will gently pry the papers
From the sleeping hand
Remove the glasses,
Cover my dear wife with a blanket,
Gently pet the sleeping beagle,
Then head up the stairs
To sleep in bed.

In bed?

I'm a rebel.