Thbiblio

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Since thmazing.com is down (and at risk of having to be bombed into oblivion as part of its salvation), I thought I would reproduce its list of publication credits here. It's the only clean list I have.

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Novels
•Byuck (Strange Violin Editions 2012) *buy*

Novellas
•Perky Erect Nipples (Antemoff Ebookery 2015) *buy*

Short stories
•Armageddon, Burning, And, Hell (The Looking Glass 1994)
•Afterlife (Quantum Muse March 2006) *read*
•The Widower (Dialogue Paperless June 2007, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Summer 2009) *read* *read offsite*
•The Oracle (Nossa Morte February 2008) *read*
•Happy St. Patrick's Day (Arkham Tales May 2009) *read*
•Blood-Red Fruit (with Danny Nelson, The Fob Bible 2009) *read* *buy*
•How Long Till Two Times (The Fob Bible 2009) *read* *buy*
•Along with the Rainbow (The Fob Bible 2009)  *buy*
•Solomon's Reprise (The Fob Bible 2009) *buy*
•Them Bones Them Bones Gonna—Walk Around (The Fob Bible 2009) *buy*
•Ezra's Inbox (The Fob Bible 2009) *buy*
•The Avon Lady (Pandora's Nightmare 2010; Faed 2015) *read* *buy*
•17 Facts About Angels (Irreantum Fall/Winter 2010) *read* *buy*
•Davey Dow and Lala (Wilderness Interface Zone October 2011) *read*
•The Legend of Boitown (Scars.tv May 2012; Children, Churches and Daddies August 2012; the Mission (issues) May-August 2012; After the Apocalypse: Prose Edition forthcoming) *read offsite* *buy*
•Lovely, Fearful Symmetry (Surreal Grotesque Magazine June 2012) *read offsite*
•Swallowing Bones (Windmills 2012 Ninth Edition) *buy*
•Stars Were Gleaming (Sing We Now of Christmas 2012) *buy*
•Maurine Whipple, age 16, takes a train north (Everyday Mormon Writer October 2012) *read*
•The Dancing Monkeys of Blackpool (Windmills 2012 Tenth Edition) *buy*
•Bearing Testimonies of Death (Lowly Seraphim 2013)  *read offsite*
•Laurel Wistian and the Adventure of the Dangerous Mice of Dr. Mortimus Alexander Fitzbottom, PhD, AlcD (Midnight Movie Creature Feature 2 March 2013) *buy* *read offsite*
•Do Not Open Until Christmas (Carol of the Tales and Other Nightly Noels 2013) *buy*
•Out for Santa (When Red Snow Melts 2013) *buy*
•The Great Mormon Novel of the 21st Century (Antemoff Ebookery 2013) *buy*
•Yes, Snow White Ate the Apple. It Was a Suicide. (MicroHorror January 2014) *read offsite*
•Then, at 2:30. . . . (365 Tomorrows February 2014) *read offsite*
•A Laurel's First-Night Fantasies (longlisted in Mormon Lit Blitz 2014, Dialogue Summer 2016)
•All Right, Have It Your Way – You Heard a Seal Bark (365 Tomorrows January 2015) *read offsite*
•An Excerpt from But Very Little Meat (Modern Mormon Men February 2015) *read offsite*
•The Naked Woman (Pulp Literature Spring 2015) *buy*
•Angry Sunbeam (Mormon Lit Blitz May 2015) *read*
•The Swimming Hole (Redneck Eldritch April 2016) *preview* *buy*
•Duties of a Deacon (forthcoming in Dialogue)

Chapbooks
•After Chadwick (Antemoff Ebookery 2015) *buy*

Poems
•Chores (From the Asylum June 2007) *read*
•Morning Walk, Spring 2009 (Wilderness Interface Zone March 2009) *read*
•Maher-shalal-hash-baz (The Fob Bible 2009) *read* *buy*
•Gomer (The Fob Bible 2009) *buy*
•My Latest Trip to the Berkeley Botanical Gardens (Wilderness Interface Zone February 2013) *read offsite*
•Rifflection: “To His Mistress Going to Bed” by John Donne (Psaltery & Lyre May 2013) *read offsite*
•Completely Static Account (3by3by3 June 2013)  *read offsite*
•Goal Stunning Goal (3by3by3 June 2013) *read offsite*
•God (Psaltery & Lyre July 2013) *read offsite*
•A Hymn for Mother's Day in Long Meter (first accepted to be published as part of "Our Mother Who Art in Heaven" in A Mantle of Stars December 2013; first published on A Mother Here) *read offsite* *buy*
•Sponsored Funeral (Quantum Fairy Tales May 2013)*read offsite*
•Amtrak to SAC (Psaltery & Lyre July 2013) *read offsite*
•Being a High-School Teacher Is a Great Disguise (Psaltery & Lyre August 2013) *read offsite*
•Accidentally Deleted (Quantum Fairy Tales October 2013) *read offsite*
•Overall Free (無μ November 2013) *read offsite*
•Rifflection on the Climax of “The Monkey’s Paw” (Passages of Pain, Lyrics of Loss February 2014) *buy*
•In Memoriam: B (Passages of Pain, Lyrics of Loss February 2014) *buy*
•The Young Amateur Imagines the Editor’s Pen, ca 1997 (Passages of Pain, Lyrics of Loss February 2014) *buy*
•Enough Is (The Poet's Haven March 2014) *read offsite*
•Solstice (Boston Literary Magazine March 2014) *read offsite*
•The Fiberglass Giraffe in Davis, California (Epigraph Magazine April 2014) *read offsite*
•Some seduction this— (Psaltery & Lyre July 2014, After Chadwick 2015) *read offsite* *buy*
•Jesus Fishing the Styx (Psaltery & Lyre August 2014, After Chadwick 2015) *read offsite* *buy*
•After Party (Psaltery & Lyre October 2014, After Chadwick 2015) *read offsite* *buy*
•Creator (Psaltery & Lyre November 2014, After Chadwick 2015) *read offsite* *buy*
•If I had a Book of Mormon Broadway show (LDS.net Poetry Contest Finalist February 2015) *read offsite*
•Vulnerability / Intimacy (Quatrain.Fish 2015, After Chadwick 2015) *read offsite* *buy*
•Sheep (have poetry) (After Chadwick 2015, forthcoming in Wilderness Interface Zone) *buy*
•Appreciation to the first poet (After Chadwick 2015, forthcoming in Wilderness Interface Zone) *buy*
•Doline (forthcoming in Califragile)
•El Niño (forthcoming in Califragile)
•If Joseph Smith Had Been Born in California (forthcoming in Dialogue)
•Domestiku (forthcoming in Dialogue)
•Sonnet—for Solstice (forthcoming in Dialogue)
•Sixth Mass Extinction Event (forthcoming in Califragile)
•Working Theory (forthcoming in American Journal of Poetry)

Comics
•Mormons by the Bay (SF Weekly Dec. 12-18, 2012) *read*
•Inappropriate Book Illustrations Redeemed through the Glory of Dance (Red Fez February 2014) *read offsite* 

Essays and Criticism &c.
•Living Literature (flashquake Spring 2007) *read*
•Saturday's Werewolf: Vestiges of the Premortal Romance in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Novels (Reading Until Dark April 2009) *read offsite*
•Saturday’s Werewolves: The Doctrine that Makes Stephenie Meyer’s Lycanthropes Golden Investigators (Sunstone Magazine December 2009) *read offsite*
•How to Get Over It (The Fob Bible 2009) *buy*
•Communion with the Small (Wilderness Interface Zone July 2009) *read offsite*
•The Ambiguity of Excellence: Kazu Kabushi’s Daisy Kutter (Fantasy Magazine December 2009) *read offsite*
•Foreword (foreword to Cetera Desunt by Danny Nelson 2010) *buy*
•Space Opera 101: Jake Parker’s Missile Mouse (Fantasy Magazine March 2010) *read offsite*
•Annie & Kah Leong Poon (Mormon Artist April 2010) *read offsite*
•How to Become a Mormon-Comics Snob in Five Easy Steps (Sunstone Magazine September 2010) *read*
•Why Church Artists Owe Ric Estrada a Thank-You Card (Sunstone Magazine September 2010) *read*
•Pow! Zot! Amen!: Mormon Theology in Michael Allred's Madman (with Stephen Carter, Sunstone Magazine September 2010) *read*
•Ain't No Such Thing: Moving Beyond the First Series of The Lonely Polygamist Reviews (Irreantum Fall/Winter 2010) *buy*
•Orson Scott Card (Mormon Artist December 2010/January 2011) *read offsite*
•Monsters and Mormons and the Deseret Book (Monsters & Mormons 2011) *buy*
•The Bold Spirit of Bryan Mark Taylor (introduction to 200 Paintings by Bryan Mark Taylor 2012; introduction to Bryan Mark Taylor: Cities by the Sea 2013) *read offsite* *buy*
•Connecting the Generations through Disco: A review of David Clark’s The Death of a Disco Dancer (Irreantum 14.1 2012)
•Mormons in Comics (Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon 2012) *buy*
•Marital Matters (Antemoff Ebookery 2013)  *buy (free)*
•What if Mickey Mouse Isn’t Mormon? (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Summer 2013) *buy*
•Our Mother Who Art in Heaven (published as an introduction to "A Mother's Day Hymn in Long Meter" in A Mantle of Stars December 2013) *buy*
•Luisa Perkins (Mormon Artist November 2013) *read offsite*
•Steven L. Peck (Mormon Artist November 2013) *read offsite*
•Denise Gasser (Mormon Artist February 2014) *read offsite*
•Seriously—Why the Hell Can't You Be More Like the Nelsons? (Sunstone Summer 2015)
•. . . then he was like, “Mind if I hang out here for a while?” (foreword to The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Part Two) *buy*
•Foreword (foreword to States of Deseret 2017) *buy*
•Something Outside the Temporal (Whale Road Review Fall 2017) *link*

Presentations/Panels/Lectures/Whatever
•Saturday's Werewolf: Vestiges of the Premortal Romance in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Novels (Sunstone West Symposium March 2009; Life, the Universe and Everything Symposium February 2010)
•Mormonism and the Arts: Mormon Fiction (Berkeley Institute of Religion December 2009)
•Funny Papers: Sunstone’s Comics Issue (Sunstone West Symposium March 2011)
•Rehabilitating Nephi Anderson, a Mormon Norwegian-American Writer Lost to Assimilation (part of the panel "Nephi Anderson, Mormonism's Norwegian-American Novelist" at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study conference May 2013) *report*
•Mormon Culture and Comic Books (Salt Lake Comic Con September 2013) *view*
•Mormonism & the Arts: Poetry (Berkeley Institute of Religion October 2013)
•Mormonism & the Arts: Fiction, literary (Berkeley Institute of Religion November 2013)
•Mormonism & the Arts: Fiction, sf/f (Berkeley Institute of Religion November 2013)
•Monsters & Mormons: Reclaiming the Peculiar (Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Xperience April 2014)
•Representations of Mormons and Utah in Comics (Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Xperience April 2014)
•Sherlock Holmes in the 21st Century (Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Xperience April 2014)
•Mormons in Comics (San Diego Comic-Con International July 2016)

Plays
•Fuzzy Vision, Straight Aim (The Looking Glass 1994)
•Balaam's Sin (The Fob Bible 2009) *buy*

Positions
•President-elect (Association for Mormon Letters August 2016 – 2017)

Peculiar Pages
•The Fob Bible (primary editor) *buy*
•Out of the Mount: 19 from New Play Project (publisher only) *buy*
•Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets (initiator) *buy*
•Monsters & Mormons (co-editor) *buy*
•Dorian: A Peculiar Edition with Annotated Text & Scholarship (editor) *buy*
•States of Deseret (publisher) *buy*

Tom Petty Counsels Us as He Leaves Us

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Today in Las Vegas
they bathe in our prayers
but blood stains
are not
prayer-soluble.

And Wayne LaPierre,
a god since ’91,
grows rich
in the iron-rich soil.

But professionals will always
outlast damaged amateurs
or at least
so far that’s true.

Yet one voice cries,
an echo away,

Well, I won't back down
No, I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down

Some look through blood
and some look through tears,
but with sweat we must stand
to declare

Well I know what's right
I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around
But I stand my ground

And I won't back down

Somanybooks

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113) Paper Girls Volume Three by Vaughn/Chiang/Wilson/Fletcher, finished September 29

I kind of hate serial fiction. Now I'm supposed to wait? Ugh.

Yet serial fiction lives and dies by people reading it as it comes out.

No way left to love myself....

two days



===========================================================



112) Paper Girls Volume Two by Vaughn/Chiang/Wilson/Fletcher, finished September 28

Although not as mindblowing as the first volume, it also doesn't feel at all derivative anymore. It has shed any last vestiges of similarity as it has figured itself out and boldly being itself.

One great thing about this book is that I really don't know which group from the future is the good guys and which group from the future is the bad guys. I genuinely do not know. And that's great. Because it means the storytelling will keep me guessing and we may stay ambiguous all the way through. And that excites me.

two days



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111) Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso, finished September 26

This is a lovely, striking book. From the cover I was expecting something cutesy that belonged in the kids section. You might argue cute, but certainly not cutesy.
And it definitely doesn't belong in the kids section.

The sex, in fact, is one of the most mature aspects of the book. (MATURE in the dictionary sense, not the euphemistic sense.) Along with the violence and the politics and the family dynamics and the business and ritual and culture---the sex arises naturally from the lived lives of these characters. It's natural and functional and inevitable. It's life.

This is a book about collisions between the micro (me and you) and the macro (my nation and your nation and the drive of history).

If you don't mind monohromatic cartoon characters living fully realized lives---dirt and all---check it out.

four or five days



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110) Adulthood Is a Myth: A Sarah Scribbles Collection by Sarah Andersen, finished September 20

Sometimes---you know how a comic can be great when you occasionally bump into it on Twitter or Facebook, but then when you sit down to eat a big happy lump of it it becomes repetitive and boring and kind of dumb? That's what happened here.

I mean---it probably didn't help that this collection was put together by theme like a gift book. Maybe if The Far Side had put out a book of, say, duck comics, we would have had a similar problem. Who knows.

one sitting



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109) The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe by Thomas Levenson, finished September 19

I first learned about the planet Vulcan in a book of astrology I picked up somewhere. (You can get one too! Hurry! Only two copies left!) It was the first (and, to date, only) book by a serious astrologist I've ever read. It was fascinating---the mix of math and science with utter nonsense fascinated and delighted. It didn't convince however, and I didn't really ever think about Vulcan again. I rather assumed it was born of astrology and that was that.

Wrong. It was born of the fer-reals math and science!

My amateur astronomer friend with whom I viewed the recent eclipse (life-changing),
told me I must read this book as eclipses are frequent guest stars in the story of trying to understand why Mercury behaves so nonNewtonianly---the reason Vulcan was initially predicted, and problem left unsolved until Einstein rolled around. The book is written for someone with my capacity to understand sciences I didn't get to in college, and is thrilling intellectual fun.

I think I liked best though the final section with Einstein. A man who loved to think and who was willing to work through enormously blocking problems until he changed the world. But he simply succeeded. All the failures and missteps before him were usually not that at all. They were stumbles forward. I also really like how this book showed how Einstein was a man of his time and building from what his contemporaries were doing. No genius creates alone.

I do have one unanswered questions. The failed sightings of Vulcan---particularly the one by Watson---can they be explained by the increased bending of light near the sun that was later used to prove general relativity?

under a month

Previously in 2017

Are we still writing poems about players kneeling down?

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Are we still writing poems about players kneeling down?

Of course we are.
It’s now immoral not to write a poem or ten
about the brave souls kneeling as crowds boo them then cheer on cue
at free,
at brave.

Bruce Maxwell kneeled at a baseball game last week,
and for his first at-bat two days later
the hometown crowd cheered him.
Leeet's go, Oaaakland—

Then
he was getting booed in Texas.

Next door, this Sunday, the lastweekkneeling Cowboys
will play a home game.

I wonder how that’ll go.

Are we still writing poems about players kneeling down?
Of course we are, of course we are.

As long the middle class is definitely probably maybe I don’t know
not getting no tax increase
and our glorious leader is flying his too-expensive airplane to his

              beautiful tremendous golf course
and our Big Water-surrounded brothers and sisters scramble for internet and food
and the occasional brutal policeman gets a nice severance

I suppose we’ll be digging through our metaphors
to write one more stupid poem about players kneeling down.


At least football’s on tv.

2017: Tʜᴇ Mᴏᴠɪᴇs part three

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In theaters:

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017): This doesn't rise to the heights of its most obvious forebear (1977's Star Wars---perhaps you've heard of it?), but it has a pleasing humanity that's clear from the opening sequence explaining how the titular city came to be. It has some flaws, many of which would have been easily fixed (establish that the leads had been working together for some time; tweak the bad guy's exposure; show Rihanna taking an injury), but overall I thought this movie gave me something I haven't seen before and did so with panache. I also appreciated its ability to be original while allowing subtle nods to its ancestry (including at least two to that 1977 film). I don't think it's a masterpiece but I hope it succeeds---if for no other reason than to show that a new way of funding blockbusters has validity. (And hey---it's at least as good as Tomorrowland.)

Dunkirk (2017): I read on Facebook, someone complaining that this film was too simple with not enough subplots. Perhaps on some level this is true, in terms of sheer numbers, but I see this complaint as high praise for a film that attempted something rather complex in terms of how it interweaves its three stories (I'm sure you've heard, but the three differ in time covered: a week, a day, an hour [ish]) I'm not a big one for war movies, but it was that innovative angle that got me into the theater. And Nolan pulls it off with aplomb. I don't know whether this is a "great" movie (only time can answer that question), but no question it succeeded as a suspenseful sequence of tiny character studies splashed over a large canvas of human suffering. Although all does not end perfectly, the heroism and survival that does come to the front is pretty awesome.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017): This. Was a great movie. Sure, I laughed, I cried---but I do that a lot. Let me give you a couple examples that lifts this above other well made, heartfelt popular film. One. The bad guy. Although they may have been more evocative comic book villains, there ain't many. And probably none of them has been as human as this Vulture. Somehow, in very few scenes, they managed to tell a tragedy. And, post-credits-spoiler alert, then they managed to drop in an earned redemption. That is no mean feat. Two. Partway through the movie, I thought to myself, Hey, self. I'm disappointed there hasn't been more of Aunt May and Peter's relationship here. Well, I may have thought that, but clearly I was wrong. Because that I-cried, I mentioned later? Two May scenes did that. And I haven't even talked about Peter as a true high-school student or the use of action or the layering of father figures or the trust of audience or anything else. I know I say Marvel movies often don't hold up to rewatching, but I'm confident this one will. It's the best Marvel movie yet.*

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): I've finally seen it. And on the big screen, on scratched film, preceded by the mighty Wurlitzer and a cartoon. And I recognized the DNA that's appeared in future films: sometimes just as I expected (WALL-E), sometimes quite differently than I expected (Star Wars), sometimes much more than I expected (Interstellar), and sometimes where I hadn't expected to see it at all (The Meaning of Life). I also was surprised that some of its own DNA came out of the sort of experiments I'd just seen at the Berkeley Art Museum. Look: I knew this wasn't going to be a typical commercial project. I did not expect how exquisitely straight-up weird it was going to be. Even knowing what I knew (which was a lot), I was not prepared. It blows my mind that, in 1968, this movie could be produced, released, and successful. As for me, it will have to lay in my mind for a while before I have real opinions. Next time it's on a big screen, I'll take those opinions with me and try them out.

Dunkirk (2017): My thirteen-year-old's been begging so I took him. Definitely worth seeing again. I found it more emotionally moving this time. And I'm just as impressed with the composition. Something I meant to mention last time is how excellent Tom Hardy must be to act so well with only his eyes visible (again), but this time I was even more impressed by Mark Rylance. There's something about an actor who can choke you up with what he does not say.

At home:

Napoleon Dynamite (2004): Still as wonderful and marvelous as ever. All I can say is that Jared Hess is the American Edgar Wright but we're too blind to see it. WHEN WILL HE GET FIRED FROM A MARVEL MOVIE???

Moana (2016): For a movie whose making was almost entirely led by men, I sure feel like a feminist now! I enjoyed this movie. Would watch again.

Swiss Army Man (2016): I'm not sure what to say about this movie. I certainly liked it. I certainly appreciated how it took apart some tropes and reassembled them into something bizarre yet familiar. Without the omnidirectional penis and masturbation talk, I might well pair this movie with teaching Frankenstein. It's definitely the sort of thing I use in my classroom. I just usually stick with shorts. Anyway---it's exactly what was advertised and yet still not what I "expected"---largely because how can one expect ANYTHING? I mean really. (One last note: Has there been any other movie ever to provide farting with such breadth and depth of symbolism? Everything from self-actualization to catharsis to friendship to shame to existential loneliness. Not at all in that order.)

De Palma (2015): I love movie documentaries and this was a good one, but no one was shocked more than me that the only De Palma movie I've ever seen is the one I knew I'd seen (Mission: Impossible). Now I'm even more interested in his oeuvre, but even less sure where to start.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997): Lady Steed graduated high school the year this reunion movie came out, and her reunion is this weekend. So! Time to finally watch it! It's not one of Film's Great Comedies, but it was certainly a fun flick. A couple questions (where are Grosse Pointe's police??), but overall a tight and coherent script.

Doctor Strange (2016): I was in and out some as the kids watched it, but guess what? I think we've found another Marvel movie that holds up to a second viewing!

The Eagle Huntress (2016): If you watch this, I recommend pairing it with its making-of because it answered some questions for me regarding the honesty of the editing (questions one should ask of every documentary). As the director points out, although, sure, this is a female-empowerment film, it is first and foremost the story of a dad and a daughter. Or---more correctly---the girl's entire family. The small shots of her mother reveal how much each person is giving here, even if it isn't a big, showy gift. My boys enjoyed this movie. And it's beautifully shot. Shocking to watch the making-of and realize how few people and how little money made this happen. (One caveat the film should have mentioned. Fuller version.)

Arrival (2016): This is a smart and complicated movie. It's still unspooling in my head. I can't remember the last time a movie's content and form were so well intertwined. The movie I think it most closely ties to is The Tree of Life---I think thinking of it as a more popcorn-friendly version of that film might be more useful than thinking of it as an improved Interstellar or an intelligent genre film generic. I hope to watch it again, to watch it with my kids, maybe even show it to students to promote another kind of heroism. Who knows.

Magnolia (1999): Wow. I think the mark of greatness is putting something together that really should not work and yet totally does. A movie that relies on coincidence? That's unrelentingly sad? That wants to be realistic but has frogs fall from the sky? That has meta intro and outro? That's over three hours long? Dude. None of that sounds like a good idea. And yet----what a movie. This is powerful, moving stuff. And it comes down to craft. Good writing. Excellent acting. Smart direction and cinematography. It's daring. And being daring is the only thing that can really, really pay off. Of course, being daring can result in absolute crap too. But that's why greatness dares. Greatness is willing to fail. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Trolls (2016): When I first saw a trailer for this I immediately determined that American culture had reached its nadir. Then Trump was elected and I decided to see just how wrong I had been. (Joke.) This is clearly a movie for people willing to set aside their cynicism. It's not easy. It's the plot of a feelgood animated TV movie from the '80s and an overblown toy commercial to boot, but all that said, if you can set your cynicism aside, it will reward you. The thing I liked best about the film was the creature and set designs in the world between the trolls and the enemies. Those were creative and willing to leave behind the tired sameness we expect of most large-studio, big-budget animated flicks. And now it's time to let my cynicism return lest I start scrapbooking.

Napoleon Dynamite (2004): I don't know how YOU define "favorite movie" but I suppose if I tried to think of a movie I've seen many many times and never tired of; a movie that brings me joy each time I see it; a movie that makes me tear up during a final montage; a movie that makes me laugh out loud every single time; a movie that took a song I've never heard before, played it over the closing credits, and made it one I love; a movie I will always say yes to; a movie I can quote all the way through---then Napoleon Dynamite might be my favorite movie.

Elsewhere:

What We Do in the Shadows (2014): In many ways, it was funnier this time around. Less concerned with what I know and with what I don't, I could just enjoy it. And so I certainly did.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966): I'm not going to pretend the plot is airtight or anything like that, but this is truly a great comedy. First, it's one of the best showcases of Don Knotts's comedic abilities. Second, it's generously directed with shots that last a bit longer than a more nervous director would allow. Third, it's generously written---a movie like this doesn't require added gags like ATTABOY, LUTHOR! It also has one of my all-time favorite movie kisses (but not a favorite kiss for the normal reasons), even if the age difference between leads is among the most ridiculous ever.

Ladyhawke (1985): This was our pre-eclipse movie and it was an awesome choice. Now sure, the music is ... hilarious, and the love story is so-so, and there are plenty of ways to dismiss this as a Cheesy Eighties Movie, but you should watch it anyway because Matthew Broderick's character is brilliantly written and brilliantly executed. I will take anyone up on watching this movie just to see him again. But I reserve the right to mock the astronomy.

Logan (2017): the first X-Men movie wasn't much of a movie, but it showed the promise serial film could have. X2 was one of the worst in-theater experiences I've ever had so I really have no idea if the movie's any good or not. I may have seen X3? I'm really not sure. And I haven't bothered with any of the in-between films before this chapter. And I wouldn't have watched this either except that it garnered such high praise from the critics. And well deserved, may I say. This is what I want out of my superhero movies: human stories. Superheroes are only useful when they allow us to see ourselves, heightened, not fantasy versions of ourselves. Special shoutouts to Hugh Jackman who was excellent, and Stephen Merchant in his First Dramatic Role who is standout as Caliban. One final note, the little girl is rather a lot like Wonder Woman---growing up outside the normal world and fascinated when placed into this real world. Everything else just goes to show how widely the flesh can differ on a story skeleton. (Oh: one more: the intertextual use of Shane was pretty bully as well. That's how they got me to cry.)

Unfaithfully Yours (1948): So I knew contemporary audiences were thrown by this movie, confused by its shifts in tone. But you know what? I was still thrown by this movie, confused by its shifts in tone. I laughed a lot in this movie. I covered my face in horror. I was perplexed. I was whiplashed by a sudden turn, then, when it looked like I would have to live through it again, I cried aloud, "No, Preston! No!" (Read a longer version of this review here.)

Tyrus (2015): This is a lovely documentary with a perfect closing thirty seconds about a wonderful man and an incredible artist. If you're like me (or the yahoos who run IMDb), you pretty much only know about Tyus Wong because of his exquisite work on Bambi. Which I love. But he worked inbetweening some Mickey shorts, and worked for Warner Brothers and Republic's art departments on many, many films for years. Besides that, before his movie work he was already a lauded fine artist and he never stopped creating. He died at 106. He lived long enough to be part of the ugly backstory of California's racial history, but he seems to have come out the other end only more beautiful. I'm very sad to have missed his show at the Walt Disney Family Museum. Their Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle shows were incredible.

Elevator to the Gallows (1958): I love how the elevator takes him to the gallows by not going anywhere. If he hadn't been stuck in the elevator, he would not have been accused of a murder he didn't commit. If he hadn't been stuck in the elevator, that murder, in fact would not have been committed. And it was the investigation of that murder that uncovered his guilt in the murder he did commit! Egad! This film is allegedly pre-New Wave, but it feels very New Wave to me (I disclaim expertise).

Fences (2016): This movie wrecks me, even when I'm watching it three times at once, spread over three noncontiguous days.

Previous films watched

LATEST POST

2016

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2015

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2014

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2013

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Mostly good comics, but also Fences

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0108) Gast by Carol Swain, finished September 19

This book is wonderful. It reminds me of Duncan the Wonder Dog---and not just because this is a world as normal as ours exept the animals talk, although that's an obvious point.

Largely, what makes this book great is its quiet. It doesn't rush. It's not anxious to prove anything. It just presents the days of this eleven-year-old girl and allows her to live them.

Here's the basics: she moves to Wales with her parents. Shortly thereafter she learns that her neighbor recently killed himself and she undertakes learning all she can about him. She learns plenty, but what she comes to understand hasn't much to do with the facts uncovered.

My favorite characters are the dogs. The way they look at each other. The way they talk does, I think, better catch the way dogs would talk, could they talk,
than, say, Up. My favorite dog bit is when they're leading the girl somewhere and one of them keeps biting her ankle and she keeps complaining and the dog says, "Sorry, I keep thinking you're a sheep." and I love that.

two days



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107) Paper Girls Volume One by Brian K Vaughan et al, finished September 16

Brilliant! I don't know what the what's going on, but every new layer to the mystery makes me more excited for the eventual conclusions (which there had better be). I can't remember the last first-collection I was this exited about.

The art, with its line style, dynamism, faces, religious allusions, and colors, looks like Mike and Laura Allred's work much of the time---which is just the right homage to make with this madness.

So we have time travelers and ancient reptiles and the '80s and more, and I've already put the next two volumes on hold.

afternoon



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104, 105, 106) Fences by August Wilson, finished September 15

I'm not sure there's any play I more enjoy reading in class with my students.

a week



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103) Drama by Raina Telgemeier, finished September 11

This is my first full book of Telgemeier's and I have to say I like her long. I get why the kids like her. And if this is typical, it's probably a very good thing for America that the kids like her. This is just straight up middleschoolers being decent human being as they try to figure themselves and each other out. And although these kids are putting on a grotesquely more complex show than anything I did in middle school, it still felt real. And I love that kids taking on big tasks could feel real.

I suppose, maybe, this book is aspirational. But what, pray tell, is wrong with that?

an evening

Previously in 2017

Dialogue: Vol. 50, Num. 2 – Summer 2017

.

I've had an electronic subscription to Dialogue a few times, but reading pdfs on my laptop sucks. So I almost never read anything. I would love to subscribe to the paper, but it ain't cheap and my subscriptions budget is, shall we say, already rather full. And so most of the Dialogue I've read over the last ten years has been the gratis copies received when they've published my writing. I'm a bit ashamed to admit this.

But every time a new issue comes out, I always look over the table of contents and sigh and moan over the fiction I want to read and the poems I want to read and probably another thing or three I wish to read. But I never actually buy the issue.

UNTIL NOW.

And, weirdly, although it was the poetry and fiction that first caught my eye, it was a pair of book reviews that got me to plunk down five bucks for the Kindle edition. Specifically, reviews of The Garden of Enid (or, rather, the new collected volumes) by two of my favorite people, Brittany Long Olsen and Stephen L. Peck. Since I'm supposed to be an expert on such things, I had to read these. And I did. And while I'm tempted to review the reviews, I'm not sure that sort of metarecursion is really what America needs right now.

Instead, here are some brief looks at some of the issue's artsy writin.

Personal essays:

Lon Young, "That’s Where the Light Enters" — I learned a lot about leprosy from this essay. And about living abroad, far from certain internet and casual cultural assumptions. The alchemy that turns these things into spiritual metaphors is rather lovely and moving.

Gail Turley Houston, "Dreaming After Trump" — It's crazy to me how close the September Six brouhaha is to my own BYU experience and how little I was aware of its aftermath at the time. Laying that chaos under the chaos of Trump's election certainly makes for something to talk about.

Poetry:

C. Dylan Bassett, "True Ideas" — Couple fun bits of wordplay.

R. A. Christmas, "Not the Truman Show" — Always glad to see Christmas still publishing. I'm hot and cold on his work, but I like how this one is filtered through its title. Completely different work without that title.

Joanna Ellsworth, "Averted Vision" — This poem's placement next to Christmas's makes for a fun juxtaposition. They both are interested in the cosmic and in overlaying science with art.

Ronald Wilcox, "The Grammar of Quench" — This poem has a thrusting rhythm that adds a vital sense to its destructive suggestions.

Darlene Young, "Echo of Boy" — This story of a deacon becoming an adult during his freezing fast-offering route is the only thing in this issue I quoted on Twitter. It also ends with the very nice "contrail of boy."

Fiction:

Erika Munson, "What Happened Sunday Morning" — I suspect this tiny piece started life intended for Everyday Mormon Writer's Lit Blitz. There is so much excellent Mormon flash fiction these days. Anyway, this is short and ambiguous. Don't expect utter clarity on just what epiphany the p-o-v was supposed to've experienced.

Heidi Naylor, "The Home Teacher — This does a nice job weaving together the story of a missionary's success with a ruined human being and his later, less successful, experiences with another. For me, it had a lot to say about the heights missionary work provides for missionaries and the sometimes ambiguous effects memories of that single-minded devotion can have later in life.

Unfaithfully Yours is ... wow

.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948) is a Preston Sturges film. And so I had a Preston Sturges experience.

I knew coming in that contemporary audiences were thrown by this movie, confused by its shifts in tone. But you know what? I was still thrown by this movie, confused by its shifts in tone. I laughed a lot, especially in the final act.* Perhaps because I spent the middle of the film ... engaged in all other human emotions.

At one point I covered my face in horror, aghast at what I was seeing. I now realize the Dali painting should have warned me that what I was seeing was only real for a certain value of real. Instead, when I realized this routine was about to recur, I cried aloud, "No, Preston! No!" But this time, instead of anger and vengeance, I was treated to delicious self-pity. Which was ... funny, I guess. And then the third time---

So yeah. It's ... a comedy. It almost becomes a tragedy along the lines of Othello or a weeper along the lines of [tip of my tongue] or a freaking farce of particularly vicious vintage.

This is a whole lotta movies crammed into one perplexing space.

So it's funny kind of like, say, Burn After Reading is funny. I mean, that's funny, right? I remember laughing.

It's a funny movie. Is it?

I don't know. Burn After Reading is funny, but is it a funny movie? Great scott, the blood in that film!

Yeah. Once again, the only movies I can find to compare Sturges to are those of the Coens. At least this one obeys the rules of comedy in its final moments. But every moment up to then is steadfastly engaged in breaking rules galore.

Hoooolee, what a movie. I'm dizzy. I need to lie down.

Lost Songs: Break My Stride

.

I don't have anything, really, to say about this, but I'm glad it turned up on the radio this morning. What a great song!

Clean Room

.

102) Clean Room Vol. 3: Waiting for the Stars to Fal by Gail Simone et al, finished September 9
101) Clean Room, Vol. 2: Exile by Gail Simone et al, finished September 7
100) Clean Room, Vol. 1: Immaculate Conception by Gail Simone et al, finished September 7

Gail Simone is such a big deal whom I hear about so often that I was surprised to look through my records and see that I've never read any of her stuff (other than a single story here). I suppose a completely original work is a worthy entrypoint.

In short, this is the story of people who are saved from being dead by medical science and then can see the demons (if you will) all around us. One of them starts a Scientology-like organization. Although it's arguable that she is the series' protagonist (ultimately, I would say yes, though it takes a while for it to resolve around her story), the culty leader is certainly the key visual used on the covers:



At first, she seems to be the villain. Slowly she moves to being a villain who is the hero of her own story. By the second volume, she appears to be not evil in nature, but forced to be evil in order to stop the evil around her. By the end, she is a tragic figure who has sacrificed herself and her humanity in order to save the world.

One interesting aspect of this story is that she is but one of at least three Christ-figures, each of which competes, shall we say, for the true Christ-like role within this cosmology and within this moment of time. Which is an ugly and evil moment in time. Some people are good, but many are bad---and it doesn't help that the world is filled with things that are not, after all, hallucinations of the mad, but real evil come from elsewhere and looking to ... play with us, shall we say.

Here I enter true end-of-the-story spoilers territory.

The three volumes tell one coherent story, but the end bothered me. First, there were a couple sloppy bits that didn't make sense but were projected beyond the crisis (the Suddenly bisexual! storyline is the best example), but the primary issue, to me, was the great resolution itself. Our redhaired cult leader, having succeeded at destroying the enemy's invisible city in the sky AND their leader, arranged to have herself completely discredited---her entire organization dismantled and disgraced---all so people will not be forced to believe in this evil she successfully destroyed.

EXCEPT. Sure she destroyed the city and the leader, but untold numbers of these monsters are already living elsewhere on the earth and the alien pipeline that brought the demons here in the first place has not been destroyed. So, although the ending makes a certain emotional sense, it's utterly absurd in terms of good common sense.
And that means I was not, in the end, satisfied.

All that creative violence for nothing.

two days and one day and two days respectively

Previously in 2017

I have 99 books and A Bitch ain't one(I don't even own that book)gee whizI wrote that title beforeI knew what the top bookwould be and nowI feel terribleI am definitely going to hell

.

099) Mother's Milk by Rachel Hunt Steenblik, finished September 7

Read my full review here.

And shoot. I just remembered that I said I was going to buy another BCC Press book after I read this one. Hmm. Maybe Mel's should be next....

TIME



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098) “L” Is for Lawless by Sue Grafton, finished September 6

I saw that “Y” advertised in the new Costco mag and I realized I have fallen behind pace to be ready to buy “Z” when it comes out.
Egad! The problem is: Kinsey isn't all I want to read.

That said, “L” was a lark. Crosscountry treasure hunt with cons charming and evil. In some respects, I worry though. Either this book was a bit more straightforward than some of the others, or I'm just getting better at cracking the code. I don't read mysteries much, but when I do, it's not because I want to outsmart the novelist---I want to be surprised! I solved this book a few steps ahead the whole way.
And sometimes I noticed dangers that didn't come to pass. I'm not sure if those were intentional on Grafton's part (and thus unintentional on the part of her otherwise quite competent detective) or errors. I don't like wondering this. Mysteries are not my genre. I should never worry that I'm smarter than my guide.

But: as I said. A lark. I shall continue onward.

a couple weeks



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097) How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, finished September 2

I try to pay attention to how numbers are used, but I'm often not careful and can get distracted by something that's more exciting than certain. Reading this brief and fun 63yrold book makes it much easier (still!) to sort through the garbage. As I was reading this I wanted to believe the world changed. Then I sat down and read this and saw all the same tricks employed. (And that's journalism! Not advertising or politics!)

Props to my Economics Professor Friend for the free copy, and I might as well pass along the warning he gives his student: This book was published a long time ago. It might not be as PC as you're used to. But it makes its points ever so well.
about ten days



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096) Flight, Volume 4, finished August 30

Remember when Flight changed the world? Each one singlehandedly demonstrated to an amazed public the breadth and depth of comics possibility.

This, of course, is also why my kids were largely mystified by this book when I brought it home from the library. They wanted story,
in the way they were used to, from every single entry. But that's not what Flight offers.

For that, maybe check out Flight Explorer?

two or three days

Previously in 2017

Books with looks!

.

095) What Was Left of the Stars by Claire Åkebrand, finished August 30

I first came to know Claire (or, her work) when we were working on Fire in the Pasture. I've read bits of her poetry when it's appeared in my feed and now I've picked up her first book.

The cover is a painting by---I'm guessing her sister-in-law?---Amanda Åkebrand. It's titled "The Garden of Eden" and it looks like the Moulin Rouge. It's a beautiful cover. And the right cover.

I'll write a longer (but not completely thorough) review for Motley Vision. Here's a link that will get you there.

about a month



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094) Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse, finished August 30

This has all the hallmarks of Wodehouse's comedic genius: well-meaning idiots, gloriously constructed strings of slang,
inexplicable love affairs, bubbly male friendships, and more! more! more!

That said, it's not surprising this book appears to currently be out of print.

The book takes place in old Hollywood, and it observes its racism without comment. And the Freaky Friday plot (a child star and a visiting English aristocrat change bodies at the dentist whilst concurrently under nitrous) is a danday set-up, but somehow both over- and under-used. Also, the end doesn't quite fulfill all the promises made by the beginning.

And, finally, the characters, though deliciously drawn, just don't come to life the way they do in his very best workds.

I don't disagree with those who claim Wodehouse is among the previous cenury's greatest artists, but this isn't the book with which to make thine argument.

about two months



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093) Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Skottie Young, finished August 30

Gaiman's small book is for young readers or---even better---parents to read to young readers who may then reread.
It's charming and funny and a sequence of clever gimmicks that combine to make something greater than their silly parts.

But not too much greater. It remains firmly grounded in the world of the silly.

two days



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092) Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, finished August 29

I often check short-story collections out from the library, read one or three, then return them. Generally,
I'm impressed by the writing, but I just have too many other things to read to take more than a representative sample.

This book I put hold because of an article in Wired about Arrival
(an article I can't find now because it's insanely difficult to find any magazine article on their website---why I'm not tweeting them all the time), but I wasn't totally sold on reading the book, so I didn't pick it up when the library set it aside for me. But as soon as we DID see Arrival, it went right back on hold.

I read the title story which inspired the movie. It was the same. It was different. I read the shortest story in the book. It was interesting. I started from the beginning. Here I recognized just how broad and masterful Chiang could be.
This story is a Tower of Bable tale that takes ancient cosmology seriously. As the tower grows, the moon passes by its workers.

Also featured is a world where sperm cells really are tiny humans awaiting an ovum to bring them to life. A world where angels are common occurrences and we can see with our own eyes whether the dead are lifted up to heaven or dropped down to hell. How I want to write a story placed in this world.

One thing that's clear reading these stories (and which is shown here) is how Chiang creates such deeply real worlds.
Genuine research. Geniune time. Geniune care.

The final story, written for the collection, did not seem to me, at first, as fully realized as the others.
Written as a documentary's transcript, it seemed a way to splay ideas without creating the world they fit in.
I should have been more trusting. It's a bigger challenge, but one Chiang was up to. If I ever teach a Chiang story,
I think it will be this one. If we could take away the tendency to judge by beauty, would we be right to do so?

This collection will keep me in thought for a long, long time. Check it out.

maybe two weeks



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091) Upside-Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski & Lauren Myracle & Emily Jenkins, finished August 21

This book feels like it was written by a committee. And I'm not saying that because it has three listed authors, though that may count of evidence of my gut theory, but because of the nature of the writing itself. Sometimes it skips over important developmental moments to get to the next checkbox moment. It's hard to believe the novel wasn't first imagined by a room of educators and editors and marketers trying to put together a Needed Book not currently represented in the market.

That said, it does have a handful of brilliant moments and my kids---even the thirteen-year-old who started off chilly---all dug it and were glad to learn there are sequels.

So sure, it's a crass commercial project, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its merits.

one leg of a long long car ride

Previously in 2017

Books I finished, mostly today

.

090) The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold, finished August 15

This is, according to its cover, a CLASSIC TIME-TRAVEL NOVEL. And I've read some good one in my days. My trifecta of excellence is To Say Nothing of the Dog, The Time-Traveler's Wife, and Replay. It's too soon to say if this novel will stick with me the way those have, but it was definitely good.

Curiously, even when I realized where this essentially plotless book was headed, the arrival of that destination still managed to be strange and satisfying and even surprising. And isn't that part of what a good time-travel novel should do?

Maybe it's necessary that a time-travel novel will have a curious relationship with time, but this one takes is a step further. It claims a 1973 copyright, but it talks about buying Apple stock and Fox having an unusually successful film in 1977.

Poorly aging aspects of this novel can be explained away by its own conceit. But the most obvious "out-of-date"
aspect is its take on sexuality.

Let's keep going with this disjointed and chaotic review, shall we?

I like the way this novel full-up embraces paradox as the story its telling rather than trying to explain it or work through or around it. I like how a seeming error in the first sentence is the key to the whole thing. I like how it dismisses its largeness in small paragraphs to instead embrace its smallness. I'm intrigued how I was much more involved by the heterosexual sex when the author is gay. I like how its plotless solipsism hid what was going on for most of the novel. I like how much the book just doesn't care.

But only time will tell if it is great.

six days



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089) Mormonism for Beginners by Stephen Carter, finished August 15

This was sent to me by the publisher and I thought about comparing it to a similar book coming out about the same time, but I never got around to requesting it from the publisher. And then I misplaced this book for several months. So, you know, very professional.

Anyway, I'll admit I was a little leery coming into this. No knock against our author whom, generally, I trust. But I always get nervous when things sacred to me are presented for an audience who may not appreciate that. And I'm not convinced there are always two sides to a story. (For an obvious now example, cf.) So I can be jumpy.

The great news is that Stephen Carter's light touch and generous spirit makes his presentation of even extremely touchy topics like gay restrictions and polygamy and Book of Mormon historicity and racial priesthood restrictions understandable and open---we are free to judge, but we are also free not to judge. I not only enjoyed this book myself, but would give it to my kids to read or a neighbor curious about the Church or a longtimer knocked off balance by Recent Information.
Which isn't to say I view the book as a missionary tool per se, but that I feel its presentation is fair and detailed and respectful and daring.

And, frankly, pretty darn funny at times.

Speaking of funny, Jett Atwood's illustrations are often, essentially, standalone gags. Sometimes they're truly illustrative. And, in that latter category, they often add another layer to what Stephen is saying---as good illustrations can. And sometimes, as in the temple section, they move from her better known style to something more abstract.
Appropriately, I would say.

In short, this is a thoughtful book. Yes, it's funny. Yes, it spends some time among the weeds. Yes, it's filled with cartoons. But it's thoughtful and very well constructed.

The top-level topics in the table of contents are Mormon History, LDS Scripture, Mormon Life, Hot-button Issues,
and This Mormon Life. Each of those is broken down into multiple subtopics.

By the end of this book, the uninitiated will be well prepared to have intelligent conversations on the faith; and the initiated will likely end up with a few new facts they didn't know. For instance, did you know clips of Fantasia were used in the first version of the temple film? Or that the true order of prayer was practices in wards and stakes outside the temple clear into the 1970s? I didn't.

I suppose I should mention if I found any errors. I did, but they were minor and few. For instance, on the same spread as those last two facts, Carter claims that outside live sessions, those doing endowment sessions never move room to room.
Not quite. I submit Los Angeles for your consideration. But none of the vanishingly few errors I saw merit much attention.

In short, the book is well constructed. Friendly and easy to access while providing surprising depth and breadth in its pages. You could do a lot worse than assigning this to an Intro to Mormonism class.

most of the damn year



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088) Ben, in the World by Doris Lessing, finished August 15

This novel offers a different set of complexities from its forebear, The Fifth Child. Ben, here, is an adult. And he becomes a much more sympathetic charactr, even as understanding him remains largely impossible.

The narrative voice pulls no punches---Ben may be strange and animal, but it is US and OUR WORLD that is evil.

It's interesting though---the much bigger canvas this novel plays with is ultimately less compelling than the very intimate and domestic story told in the first novel.

a small number of weeks



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087) Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken, finished August 9

I'm not sure what possessed me to look-inside-the-book on Amazon before this was even released, but I did and I wanted to read more and so I put on hold at the library. I didn't really expect to read it. I mean, skim, sure. The takedown chapter of Ted Cruz, you betcha. And when I got it from the library and saw how thick it was, I knew no way would I finish it before it was due (it's new! no way I'll be renewing it!). But surprise surprise. Read it I did.

My main impression of Al Franken before he ran for Senate was from the titles of his books. And so I rather assumed he was a blowhard evenly balanced with blowhards on the right: a joker who pretended at reality, just with a different set of "facts." And so when he entered the Senate,
my main hope was that entertaining news would come out of it. (Minnesota had not disappointed with Jesse Ventura, after all.) That didn't happen, but when he did show up in the news,
he was acquitting himself pretty well.

Anyway, I learned a lot from this book. And Franken does a fine job establishing ethos that makes me trust him. Were his previous books more current, I might well read them for the facts (though jokes certainly help---how many other senatorial memoirs has Theric read?).

Reading this book also pushed me forward in recognizing the real nature and purpose of politics. Notwithstanding appearances, in fact, politics is the art of getting along.

The book has also pushed me further away from ever desiring to seek office. For all the reasons I would have said it's a bad idea last week.

In short, Franken is an intelligent and amusing guide through his life and the Senate. I hope people outside his normal sphere of influence / politics give him a shot.

under a week (unless you include reading the intro literally months ago)

Previously in 2017

Lost songs about commas and men in traditional men's jobs

.

When I first moved to Provo in the a*****e-end of the Twentieth Century, one of the songs well embedded in my Internal Jukebox™ was James Taylor's "Handy Man," a song utterly forgotten by American radio and apparently equally unknown to those of my generation.

Skip to 1:47 to start where my spontaneous outbursts would start---the famous comma comma comma bit.

So there I am singing comma comma comma and people like yeah, I'm into it, and then they start singing about lizards.

I had never heard that song before. Not ever.

(This could lead into a discussion of how my knowledge of '80s music and Lady Steed's knowledge of '80s music barely overlapped at that stage in our history ... but not today.)

Eventually I had to push "Handy Man" back down whenever it arrived because it was subdesirable to have it hijacked by this . . . other song.

After Lady Steed and I wed, my music diet changed such that now I know about things like Culture Club and Depeche Mode and The Cure and U2 and stuff I'd never listened to as a kid and now I know "Karma Chameleon" perfectly well, thank you very much. And it feels like I've been hearing it all the bleeding time these past 17+ years. Which would be fine except everyone thinks IT invented comma comma comma-ing!

But then, two days ago, in my less-than-once-a-year trip to the bank, I heard "Handy Man" over the speakers.

Holy smokes!

Then! Tonight! In the grocery store! "Handy Man"!

Incredible.

Maybe the rest of the world has finally discovered what I've known since 1977.

(Incidentally, the original version of "Handy Man" by Sparks of Rhythm (listed at the link as Jimmy Jones) and the first charting cover by Del Shannon can be heard here.) (Just kidding. The Del Shannon version's not on Spotify. But isn't "Runaway" a great song?)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

As long as we're here, why not one more song? This is "Delivery Man" by The Cruel Sea. Big in Australia. I got the album with a punched cover at an American dollar store. And it was awesome.

Turn up your bass.

In which Theric (!) complains about sex. Twice.

.

086) The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey, finished August 4

Up in the middle of the night writing a screenplay and eating cereal and reading this. Although I think the images could have been cranked a bit further comedically, this was a fun book. I enjoyed it.

My kids have enjoyed it too, though I think it might be best aimed at an under-eight crowd.

a few minutes



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085) Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen by Dylan Horrocks, finished August 3

This is an ambitious book. It's filled with metametanarrative and philosophical discussions on literature and fantasy and self-realization and all sorts of hifalutin concepts. In the final analysis, though, it really seems like the philosophy is just sugar dusting the book's real raison d'être: drawing lots and lots of naked women.

For all its firm discussion of and ironic-winking commentary on the appropriateness of making women subject to male fantasy, it's hard to read this book as anything but a full submersion into just that. And that's not the only double-standard the book wants to engage in. Or to reject. Tentacle-monster/teenage-girl sex is discussed in largely the same tone, but Horrocks doesn't indulge in pages and pages of drawrin it.

Maybe I'm a prude. Perhaps. But what bothered me was less the sex than the high-minded preaching that was in direct war with what the book was actually doing. You can call that ambiguity if you want, but I think it would be more accurate to call it hypocrisy. Or perhaps merely horny laziness.

about a week



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084) Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, finished August 3

I listened to this on a lone car drive. This was probably better than reading this as the conceit is that the book is narrated into a plane's black box as its lone passenger waits for it to crash. Of course, the downside is that whenever the narrative pushes that conceit a bit past believability it is perhaps more obvious that this is the case.

I didn't know when this book was published but somehow I imagined it wasn't that long ago. But this assumption became obviously wrong as time went on. Some items it seems like Palahniuk should have anticipated (in 1999, wasn't it already obvious how the internet would change pornography?), but some probably could not have been (how America views and deals with hijackings took a sudden turn, after all, in 2001). But I'm not complaining about any of the above.

My primary complaint is how Palahniuk, near the end of the book, has a member of an ultraconservative Christian cult present a hyperliberal view of sex. The way this side character had been presented from the very first minutes was the initial damage against my suspension of disbelief. This character who could know very little started out by knowing a whole lot. And when his opinions change, the way he speaks about this change goes against his entire history. I can accept his change in opinion. What I cannot accept is the manner in which he speaks this opinion. I don't know if his opinions are Palahniuk's, but it sure feels the author stepping in, turning a character into a puppet, and soapboxing his opinions.

Sigh.

That said, this is a book in the Fight Club or Invisible Monsters vein, and its criticism of modern American culture is largely on-the-nose. Both cruel and fair.
Largely. It is satire, so your mileage may vary.

But really: the most remarkable thing about it is how well it documents how much we've changed since 1999. It's not just porn and planes; it's many small,
subtle things.

two days



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083) CatStronauts: Mission Moon by Drew Brockington, finished July 29

This is a charming book. The cats are cats, even if they're scientists and politicians, and the details are suitably witty for even an adult to enjoy.

not very long at all



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082) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, finished July 29

Believe it or not, I've never read A Wrinkle in Time before. I read A Swiftly Tilting Planet many times because I owned it and it was one of the books I frequently reread, but my only experience with its forebear was a teacher reading it aloud in elementary school.
I remembered the concept of tesseracting clearly, but otherwise all that was left was a vague sense of disquiet I did not desire to revisit.

Rereading it now, I can see the legitimacy of that sense of disquiet, but still. It's a beautiful book. Granted, I seem to be going through a weepy stage,
but weepy I got. And I knew the book was supposed to have Christian undertones, but I don't know if "undertones" is the right terminology---it quotes scripture at length, darn it.

Anyway. Even with modern film technology, this still seems nigh unto unfilmable. I haven't see the trailer for the new film yet, but I wish them well.

I'm excited to read the rest of the quintet. I didn't know there were more than three books until recently and not that there were five until today. I'm looking forward to working my way through all these unread words. (And to see how well I remember ASTP.)

about three weeks



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081) The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, finished July 15

I'm not sure where I got it into my head to read this, but I asked the library to get me a copy upon my return from our travels and I read it during a solo shot to San Francisco to buy discounted pants. I'm glad I did.

It hasn't settled yet, a day later.

I don't know whose side I'm supposed to be on. The parents seem like good people. And the baby is horrible. But a baby can't be to blame. But if removing a baby returns happiness . . . is the baby to blame?

This book takes easy questions and makes them very very difficult to answer.

From what I've read, it seems this is one of those Instant Classics that didn't get assigned in schools and so has slowly slipped below general public awareness.
I'm seriously considering rectifying this. I love it as a companion to Frankenstein . . . .

And then maybe show Eraserhead for a fun finale?

one day

Previously in 2017

Books read while travelling

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Three weeks on the road. Five books finished. Many books started but unfinished for various reasons (nephew returned it to the library, competition with kids, Pratchett audiobook proved to have more familywide appeal*, just never finished it alas). But it was a week of great variety and this is how it went:


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080) The Novel by James C. Michener, finished July 12

Having grown fatigued of The Man, I replaced it with my first time reading a Michener novel. Luckily, I generally ignore blurbs until after reading a book because the ones on this were darn misleading. All the calls for adventure and thrills were . . . not exactly so. Perhaps out of context? I don't know.

I'm not sure what is the novel referred to in the title. At first I thought it was Lukas Yoder's eight novel as that is what the first section of the book---written in Yoder's voice---is about. But it doesn't even get mentioned in the second section starring his longtime editor. Maybe THE NOVEL is about the concept of the novel?
Some kind of platonic ideal? I'm not sure.

So the novel is broken into four sections. Writer, Editor, Critic, Reader. Each is narrated by such a person. Each narrator has his or her own motivations and concerns.
It does come together as a single, cohesive work with plot and everything! in the final section, but those aspects are also some of the most clunky in terms of the actual writing.

I found it most fruitful to read The Novel as an intellectual memoir in metaphorical form. Yoder, in this reading, is both an idealized version of Michener and a confession of what many of his contemporaries dismissed about him. It's hard to read this book and not think about the $30 million dollars he put up to endow the creative writing program in Austin. The book both defends the stodgy old and celebrates the daring new. It's various sections allow Michener to write both to a popular audience and to an audience of elites (though I don't know if the latter accepted his feelers).

It seems to me that UT MFA candidates should read this book. It's not great---it's not pushing me in the direction of more Michener novels (which, after all, on average are much longer than this one)---but it does intrigue. It certainly has made me question decisions I have made in my own writing over my unsuccessful years....

about than four months



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079) Dodger by Terry Pratchett, finished July 11

Like Nation, this is a standalone novel for younger readers.
Like Nation, it takes place between a hundred and two ago. Like Nation, it features brilliantly conceived young protagonists. Like Nation, it's absolutely terrific.

Here's the gist: Dodger, a seventeen-year-old tosher (one who makes his living searching the sewers of London for lost valuables) saves a girl from being murdered which sets off a sequence of events that catapults him through all layers of society.

It's Pratchett-smart stuff and, listening to it, I kept thinking how tailer-made it is for BBC adaptation. It takes place in Victorian England. It features a wide variety of fascinating sets from the grimiest to the most glamorous (and all the people to match). It has fish-out-of-water. It has the opportunity for Sherlock-like "thinking." It even has some upstairs/downstairs stuff! And if all that wasn't enough, it also features all sorts of cameos historical (Charles Dickens,
Queen Victoria) and fictional (Sweeney Todd).

Were it up to me, I would ask Edgar Wright to take on this task, though I imagine more people would think first of Guy Ritchie. But it doesn't have to be someone with a movie background, of course.
It just can't be the people who've been making the BBC's Discworld nonsense.

about ten days



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078) Big Nate: Great Minds Think Alike by Lincoln Peirce, finished July 10

If it wasn't for Big Nate and the Wimpy Kid, would boys read? I honestly do not know.

I feel obliged to read some Wimpy Kid, but haven't been able to talk myself into more than a few pages. Big Nate (the strip, not the Wimpy Kid-style books) is an easier sale. It's a smart strip, consistently funny. In that respect, it can stand proudly alongside the greats like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes. However,
Big Nate doesn't have much to say beyond that. In other words, it has daily quality, but it does not have the broad years-wide quality of the greats.

This is not a knock. It's a good strip and good on Peirce for making money.

Fine book. I'm surprised I got through it though considering how many boys my reading was in competition with....

two days




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077) Living Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson, finished July 7

This is a wonderful book. Like most people, I know Jackson best through "The Lottery" and one or two of her novels, but I also know the Charlie essay and so I got this collection for Lady Steed this Christmas, with the plan I would read it after her.

Lady Steed loved it. At first. And it never stopped being funny, but the way Jackson captures the oppression of being a mother was stressful for her to read.

From a professional standpoint, two things to observe. One, how she takes disparate essays published separately and turns them into one whole. Two, how well she uses adverbs in tags, something every writing teacher will tell you can't be done. But instead of being redundant or insulting the reader's intelligence or becoming swifties, Jackson's sly and ironic usage is like a secondary punchline---almost a parallel storytelling. It's quite something. She is a master humorist. Even if that's not how we remember her best.

not sure, but not that many days of actual reading time, most of them centered in the last couple weeks



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076) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, finished June 30?

Of the books I downloaded for our trip, this is the one the kids chose to listen to first.

It's been a looong time since I've visited Narnia, so although the plot of the book was familiar to me, but of the rest was newly seen through an adult's eyes. For instance: the symbolism is actually quite heavyhanded. And the narrative voice has the sort of charm I know best, these days, as parodied by Lemony Snicket---but without the moralistic excesses Snicket is inoculating us against.

In the end, I enjoyed it. I expect I would still now, as then, prefer the standalone books (The Horse and His Boy and The Silver Chair), but I don't deny its classic status.

three or four days ish

Previously in 2017