Bookivorous

Title:

The Genome

Who wrote it?

Sergei Lukyanenko, czar of Russian science fiction, builder of fantastic alternate worlds, scribe of the "World of Watches" pentalogy, and the East's answer to Heinlein and Gibson.

Plot in a box:

A genetically modified master-pilot must captain a ship and its crew on a dangerous and mysterious mission.

Invent a new title for this book:

The Adventures of Human Genetic Engineering

Read this if you like:

The aforementioned Heinlein and Gibson, world-building, the human race, genetically modified organisms, Sherlock Holmes, that recent space movie with that alright, alright, alright guy.

Meet the book's lead:

Alex Romanov, an Earth-born human that's been genetically modified to fill a specific societal role and perform specific tasks (Lukyanenko refers to a genetically modified person such as this as a spesh; regular humans are naturals). In Romanov's case, he's been modified to be a master-pilot, which means he has all the traits you'd want in a captain of your interstellar spacecraft, for better and worse.

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:

I'd dig Jason Momoa here. I think his roles in Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones show he's got some emotional range in addition to being a physically terrifying individual.

Setting: Would you want to live there?

The Genome takes place smack-dab in the middle of an interstellar empire in the distant future where humans have been genetically modified to fulfill certain roles and duties. I don't think that's my bag, man.

What was your favorite sentence?

His legs were slightly shaky. Alex got up from the captain's chair as it softly pushed him up, just the way he liked it to. Everything had changed. The world had acquired meaning. A unique and all-important meaning. He wondered if those who could love other humans ever felt this way. He doubted it.

The Verdict:

A space opera with three disparate acts, The Genome by Sergei Lukyanenko is one of the most impressive exercises in world-building that I've had the pleasure of reading.

Set at some point late in the 22nd century, we pick up protagonist Alex Romanov, a pilot-spesh, shortly after he's released from a hospital on the planet Quicksilver Pit. He was in a nasty space accident of some sort, and he's on the hunt for a job to get himself back on his feet. Of course, even in the late 22nd century finding a job is hard work, so in the meantime he's decided to entertain himself with the plight of a 14-year-old fighter-spesh named Kim, who's going through this world's equivalent of a pubescent transformation (referred to in the book as a metamorphosis). Alex feels obligated to help Kim through this tough time; after all, she really is in a bad way, having just escaped her home planet Eden (which is a bazillion light years or so away), and part of being a pilot-spesh means it's in your programmed nature to sympathize with others and aid them, despite the fact that you can't feel love of any sort. Kim has some shit going on with her too, like most teenagers going through puberty. Namely, she's got a pretty juicy secret inside of her. No, this isn't some Teen Mom bullshit; this isn't that kind of story, thank goodness. But it's worth noting here because it affects shit, you know? 

That's the first act in a nutshell. It's a fantastic character study, and Lukyanenko really does a great job building Romanov as a cool, sort-of badass hero type. The second act starts when Romanov finds that job he's been looking for; it seems like one of those too-good-to-be-true deals — he signs on to captain his own ship, the Mirror, for two years and he gets to pick his own crew, a rarity in this world it seems. What's more, he gets a signing bonus up front and it's more than enough to help care for Kim as she struggles through her metamorphosis. Romanov picking his crew, which eventually includes Kim and few others with their unique focus areas and specializations, and their mission on board the Mirror is a rather weak middle act, if only because Lukyanenko uses it solely as a bridge to get to the final act.

That's where things pick up again, and we're suddenly in the middle of a full-blown murder mystery, complete with a detective and his sidekick coming on board the Mirror to investigate. It's the classic Sherlock Holmes set-up, with a dash of Hercule Poirot and a heaping spoonful of Lukyanenko's philosophical commentary on the future of humanity and some other such nonsense. The latter detracts you from the former, which would have been so much more enjoyable had it not have been bogged down by the latter. Make sense? You dig?

Bottom line here, folks, is that if you've never read Lukyanenko, you'll be impressed by the sheer inventiveness of the world he's constructed in The Genome. I hadn't read Lukyanenko before I started swiping through this on the ol' Kindle. I didn't necessarily know what to expect, although I did see Timur Bekmambetov's adaptations of Night Watch and Day Watch and enjoyed the world that was built in those films. Clearly there were plot differences from the novels (or so I've heard), so perhaps that wasn't a great introduction to Lukyanenko's written universe. For those of you in the same boat as I was, The Genome is such an introduction, even if the philosophy slightly hinders the plot.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Ryan Peverly

 Title:

Damn! A Cultural History of Swearing in Modern America

Who wrote it?

Rob Chirico, artist and author of several books, including Field Guide to Cocktails.

Plot in a box:

Non-fiction works aiming to investigate the historical underpinnings of society's obsession with bad words thankfully don't come with plots.

Invent a new title for this book:

What the Shit? Why We Curse All the Fucking Time

Read this if you liked:

Coming up with creative ways to dump on your friends when you were younger; brooding in timeout after your hypocrite parents washed your mouth out with soap when you were younger; cursing: any time, anywhere.

Meet the book's lead(s):

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

Said lead(s) would be portrayed in a movie by:

George Carlin

Setting: Would you want to live there?

Oh, I've been living in this filthy world for years, believe me.

What was your favorite sentence?

Literally or figuratively, words cannot stand alone; they can only be fully understood in relation to the message they are meant to convey. In that respect the context in which language is spoken determines the comprehension and reaction of the listener. Is our choice of graphic expletives just a means of being descriptive, or is it an expression for establishing and possibly rationalizing our personal identities in the real world around us? On a more basic level, have we assimilated the F-bomb into our vocabulary just because it sounds so damned good?

The Verdict:

Everybody curses. Parents curse. Pastors curse. Presidents curses. Everyone expresses anger or frustration or joy or sorrow vocally, often using a few choice words to color their response. Damn! takes a look at why we all curse, how certain words became so prevalent in the English language, and the various ways that people curse even when they think they're being clean (spoiler alert: there's really no difference between screaming "shoot" and "shit" when stubbing a toe, at least to your brain).

This book could be a bit corny at times, but its in-depth look at various factors involved in swearing and its non/acceptance in our society is fascinating. Each chapter approaches the concept from a specific angle, from the psychological necessity of cursing in a war zone to the rebellious nature of the evolution of women's use of dirty language to the emotional relationship that swearing has to crying, one being more and more acceptable than the other as a person ages. It's a fairly straightforward read, so it isn't going to mightily impress someone who isn't already interested in learning about so-called "filthy language," but on the flip side, anyone with a mouth towards the vulgar will appreciate the comprehensiveness of Chirico's handling of the topic. There are humorous anecdotes and running jokes and dirty stories all thrown in with the bawdy history lesson. The word "fuck" is given special attention, looked at from as many angles as it has functions in today's world.

There really are no surprises here. If you clinked on the link to read this review, you're probably the exact type of person who would enjoy this book. What the fuck are you waiting for? It could also work as a great gift for some vulgar dickhead, shit stain, or bastard in your life.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor by Brian McGackin

Just to add that Hello Devilfish got the Big LitReactor Seal of Approval on Bookshots. Definitely worth checking out.

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If you won a copy of Hello Devilfish on the Goodreads giveaway - congrats!  If not, why not pick up a copy here?  

Title:

Watch

Who wrote it: 

Albuquerque born Cass McMain, a former greenhouse manager and author of the novel Sunflower.

Plot in a Box: 

A woman is summoned to the deathbed of her dying uncle, who informs her that the father who abandoned her at birth is a vampire.

Invent a new title for this book:

Dead Birds

Read this if you like:

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Meet the book's lead:

Corky, a thirty-something woman who works in a bookstore.

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:

Jodie Foster comes close, but I couldn't quite get a clear visualization in my mind for Corky. Edgar, however, (the vampire) would definitely be portrayed by Jon Hamm.

Setting: Would you want to live there?

A good chunk of the first half of the book takes place in a hospice that “smells of medicine.” So no, definitely not.

What was your favorite sentence?

…her eyelashes are made of wires, I can feel them crackling with electricity when she blinks.

The Verdict:

First off, I would like to assuage any potential fears that readers might experience when hearing the word “vampire” in connection to a recent work of fiction. Whatever Watch is, it isn’t of the Twilight canon, and there’s no sparkling to be found anywhere in its pages. McMain has created a family drama that is propelled by a more subtle possibility of vampirism that takes some time to reach a boiling point.  

A little too much time, in fact. Story momentum builds rather slowly here, with the first hundred pages taking place in and around a hospice. Not much transpires other than some phone conversations, several meals in diners, familial squabbling, and Corky trying awkwardly to come to terms with the fact that her uncle truly believes that his brother is a monster. Unsurprisingly, she thinks that he’s merely unraveling as death draws near. While it’s a realistic reaction, this constant hesitancy does force the plot to congeal a bit at the beginning.

McMain has a genuine talent for making observations that are eerily on point. For instance, Corky’s wretched cousin Pam reads like a flesh and blood recreation of your Least Favorite Relative, and the short exchanges between children when no adults are present can only be the result of someone with a very keen attention to detail. Minor conversations with waitresses and hospice patients have a startling ring of authenticity, even if they don't always forge a solid connection back to the main plot.

Watch considers themes of vampirism and blood with more nuance than many books that focus on such topics. The condition is posed as more of a psychological or genetic issue than a supernatural one, yet that more grounded perspective doesn’t diminish the danger of being around someone who violently craves blood. Rather than depicting vampirism as something mysterious and powerful to be coveted, the line is often blurred between the actions of Corky’s father and regular sadism. It's an approach that works well, modernizing a kind of "demon" that has stalked mankind throughout centuries of folklore, but might actually lurk on our family trees.

All things considered, Watch is a slightly mixed bag, but one that certainly has moments of bright lucidity, and shows a lot of potential for future writing by McMain.

Title:

No Mercy – True Stories of Disaster, Survival and Brutality

Who wrote it?

Eleanor Learmonth, teacher and freelance journalist and Jenny Tabakoff, senior journalist and author. Both live in Sydney, Australia

Plot in a Box:

An analysis of how we react in survival situations, leading to some interesting conclusions about what to do if you end up stranded with a bunch of disparate and hungry folks.

Invent a new title for this book:

Eating People is Mostly Wrong

Read this if you liked:

Ripping true life yarns along the lines of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, or Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Meet the book’s lead(s):

Survivors — of shipwrecks mostly, but also of mining disasters, plane crashes and polar expeditions gone horribly wrong — who have found themselves trapped in hostile environments with scarce resources.

Said lead(s) would be portrayed in a movie by:

Tom Hanks reprising his role in Castaway.

Setting: would you want to live there?

Are you kidding me?

What was your favorite sentence?

For any group driven to abandon centuries of social conditioning, starvation can open up a path deep, deep into the woods.

The Verdict:

We all like to play armchair survivalist from time to time, and I’m no stranger to the game of sitting in my comfy house imagining how if I happened to end up in the jungle with nothing but six boiled sweets and a bent spoon in my pocket I’d make it out alive, no problem (and probably with a tame monkey on my shoulder and the map to a fabulous secret kingdom clutched in my hand). We all have a touching faith in our own abilities to react well under pressure, to make the right decisions in difficult situations and, in times of crisis, to provide the calm and effective leadership that will save the day.

And, of course, we all are deluding ourselves about that.

Taking Lord of the Flies as a starting point, backed up with a real life study of what small boys do to each other when adults aren’t around, No Mercy takes a long, cold, hard look at how people really react when the boat goes down and they find themselves on a small raft with the sharks’ fins circling. Do they behave like Leo in Titanic and sacrifice themselves so that Kate may live? There’s a short answer to that question and it begins with an ‘N’. Drawing evidence from many survival situations, ranging in dates from the Numantian siege in 134 BC to the San Jose mine collapse in 2010, No Mercy demonstrates pretty effectively that, when the chips are down, instead of squaring our jaws and Doing the Right Thing, your average human will either kill and eat the person next to them or run around in circles shouting for their mother.

This is riveting stuff and all the better because Learmonth and Tabakoff use the findings of various social science studies to cast a light on what went wrong and what went right. There are lessons to be learned here, and not just about the importance of not eating bear liver and making sure someone keeps the matches in a dry place. In more or less identical situations, some people make it and some people don’t, and the reasons have more to do with group dynamics and communication than strength and fitness. At the end, the authors provide a list of rules you should follow if you want to avoid living like the boys in The Lord of the Flies: painted blue and hunting each other with sharp sticks. Hopefully you will never find yourself in a situation where you need to use them. But if you do, they might just save your life

Title:

Sex World

Who wrote it?

Poet Ron Koertge, author of The Ogre's Wife and many other great works

Plot in a box:

On the one hand, it's a collection of flash fiction, so there is no plot. On the other hand, it's a collection of flash fiction, so there are like 50 plots.

Invent a new title for this book:

Did You Know That Ron Koertge is Good at Flash Fiction, Too?

Read this if you liked:

The Ogre's Wife (obviously), Brecken Hancock, Brendan Constantine, story-based poetry, poetry-based stories

Meet the book's lead(s):

Well, there's a pornstar who gets off thinking about domestic life, a dog that may or may not be Jesus, a grip of errant intellectuals who find themselves in mortal danger, several mythical figures exacting revenge in the dating world, a gambler, a homicidal housewife, a homicidal daughter, a set of twins, a set of clones, a werewolf, a war vet, an abortion escort, a robot, a troll, and a geriatric kissing booth Casanova. Oh, and Lois Lane.

Said lead(s) would be portrayed in a movie by:

I've always thought that Mary-Louise Parker would have made a great Lois Lane.

Setting: Would you want to live there?

Several of these pieces are set literally in Hell. I'll pass.

What was your favorite sentence?

The next time a brute oozing the heady oil of self-righteousness pulls me over and says, as they always say, "Do you know why I stopped you?" I'll shout, "I hope it was for that sestina!"

The Verdict:

Ever since I read The Ogre's Wife, I've been a huge fan of Ron Koertge's poetry. Sex World is a collection of flash fiction, though, so I wasn't sure what to expect. If possible, I enjoyed this book even more the Koertge's poetry. Each individual piece is perfectly sized, weighted, and flavored for a unique story experience. Some are only a few short sentences, while the longest come in at almost three full pages, but each creates its own perfectly imperfect characters and universe. If you are already a fan of flash fiction, then this is exemplary stuff that I highly recommend. If you've never read flash fiction before, then this is the perfect gateway to the medium. (I never read much flash fiction before this myself, to be honest.) It truly marries poetry and prose together in such a beautifully interesting way, and of course Ron Koertge is always hilarious in that way that makes readers feel smart for getting the jokes, no matter how low hanging. I've enjoyed a lot of books this year, but this is the first that I would blanket recommend to almost anyone. There's so much to get out of this collection, so many directions that the individual micro-stories take. Many involve death, or sex, or mythology, or mundane modernity, or the common fantastic happenings of the magical realist world, but all are interesting. It's also a really fun and fast book to get through, which I tend to appreciate. Get in; get excited; get out: the perfect book. Read Sex World.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Brian McGackin

Title:

Consumed

Who Wrote It?

Depraved Dave Cronenberg, King of Venereal Horror, director of Scanners, Videodrome, The Brood, The Fly, as well as adaptations of unfilmable literary novels such as Naked Lunch, Crash, and Cosmopolis.

Plot in a Box:

A pair of tech savvy journalists (of the yellow variety) explore the death of a famous French philosopher from opposite ends, meeting in the middle like Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti. Spaghetti made out of human flesh.

Invent a new title for this book:

Ingest My Left One

Read this if you liked:

The films of David Cronenberg, especially his earlier work (Fast Company not included); the novels of J.G. Ballard, Don DeLillo, and Vladimir Nabokov.

Meet the book's lead(s):

Naomi and Nathan: Journalists, technophiles and lovers, trotting the globe in search of bizarre stories to document. They spend the bulk of the book apart, connecting mostly through cell phones and video screens, but their individual pursuits become inevitably entwined, highlighting the six degrees of separation of the internet age. 

Said lead(s) would be portrayed in a movie by:

Brit Marling, star of Another Earth and Sound of My Voice for Naomi. She's got the range to cover the strength and vulnerability. And Adam Driver, that dude from Girls (which I've never seen) as Nathan. I like the cut of his jib.

Setting: Would you want to live there?

Japan: yes
France: no
North Korea: yikes

What was your favorite sentence?

Cronenberg gives us many beautifully constructed sentences, but this bit of dialog sums up the book's humor, themes, and sexuality nicely:

"So? My breasts are now radioactive. I'm not allowed to hug pregnant women for at least three months. What do you think of that? Journalistically?"

The Verdict:

For those unhappy with the direction of Cronenberg's recent directorial output, his debut novel is a return to the body horror themes that made his earlier work so engaging. Or should I say engrossing? Because you can't spell engrossing without gross. And Consumed is delightfully so. The canvas of the novel allows Cronenberg to indulge himself in ways prohibited in film, and he throws in every perverted idea but the kitchen sink transforming into a biological construct of phallic pipes and hot and cold running blood. These ideas include:

• Body Identity Integrity Disorder and voluntary amputation
• Cannibalism
• Ekbom's syndrome
• Experimental breast cancer treatments
• Crooked penises and the digital printing of
• Rare STDs
• Sleep disorders and self harm

...as well as some weirdness about North Korean hearing aids and the philosophy of sound design.

That's not to say Consumed is a retread, or even a distillation. It is more of a continued exploration. Cronenberg's obsession with the physical and its intersection with technology is taken to its logical conclusion here. Not in the extreme of science fiction storytelling, but in the realism of science fact. Consumed reflects how everyday technology has been thoroughly integrated into our lives, and how that integration has simultaneously expanded our horizons and made the world an infinitely smaller place.

Cronenberg's style is informed by the authors referenced above, and his writing is smart and incisive. The story is viewed through his typically clinical gaze via young intellectuals Naomi and Nathan, and has more twists than a penis afflicted by Peyronie's disease. There is much pleasure to be derived from its inventiveness, more so than... a penis afflicted by Peyronie's disease. Well, I can't vouch for that last one personally, but I can assure you that fans of Cronenberg's cinematic work as well as fans of dark literary fiction will be delighted with what he's produced.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Josh Chaplinsky

Title:

Thrown

Who wrote it:

Kerry Howley (incidentally, Googling her name brings up a completely separate artist who makes some fascinating jewelry out of hair).

Plot in a Box:

Howley works as a “seatstealer” at MMA (mixed-martial-arts) shows in order to get close to two very different fighters and chronicle a year of their lives in the ring.

Invent a new title for this book:

Broken Teeth and Bloody Angels

Read this if you like:

The Noble Hustle by Colson Whitehead (also a Bookshot) and Andre the Giant: Life and Legend by Box Brown

Meet the book's lead(s):

Besides Howley herself, there's Sean Huffman, an experienced fighter just coming out of a post-divorce slump, and a rising star named Erik Koch.  

Said lead(s) would be portrayed in a movie by:

I kept thinking of a younger Sandra Bullock.

Setting: Would you want to live there?

I was completely unaware that there was any kind of MMA subculture in Mississippi (I’m pretty unaware of all things MMA) and it sounds like an interesting place to visit.    

What was your favorite sentence?

Jab after jab Sean ate, and with each precisely timed shot to his own mouth Sean’s smile grew, as if The Fire were carving that smile into him.

The Verdict:

Thrown is one of those books that I began with some trepidation, being quite ignorant and not especially enthusiastic about the subject of professional fighting. By about page five, it became apparent that my hesitation was ill-founded, and that Thrown should be required reading for all fans of literary nonfiction. Kerry Howley has a genuine knack with a pen, and it’s sure to carve out a permanent place within the genre. Her ability transforms dimly lit arenas into houses of the divine and tattooed wrestlers into winged angels. Industry knowledge on the part of the reader is not required to enjoy the offbeat humor or vivid imagery.

A narrator can be little more than a disembodied voice, outlining the events of a book from a distant and neutral perspective, but Howley is about as interesting as the fighters she profiles. An erudite but somewhat jaded academic who writes for Harper’s and The Paris Review, she’s not the first person you'd expect to see at a professional MMA match. Her fascination with the violent sport proves strangely contagious, and you’ll begin to wonder after a while why you’ve never given MMA much thought (unless you have, in which case I imagine you’ll feel a satisfied sense of vindication).

Thrown isn’t just about the nitty-gritty details of the fights (although those find a place in its pages as well). A major focus of the book falls on the state of mind of those in the ring, and society’s primal, ritualistic need for blood sport. Finding Sean Huffman as he's being beaten to a pulp in the ring, Howley describes feeling a kind of ecstatic awakening from her normal self. This contemplative, philosophical frame sets Thrown apart as a highly original commentary on a strange world that is often only seen by those who are already looking for it.

Maybe it was partly because I began Thrown with misgivings, but for that very reason, the impression of this title will linger with me. It’s a rare book that successfully transcends the stereotypes of its subject matter, but a combination of skill and devotional attention to detail make it possible here. If you’re looking for a read that engages all of the senses and then some, look no further: Thrown is a safe bet to get your synapses firing.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Leah Dearborn

Title:

The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen

Who wrote it?

Dennis Etchison, Peter Straub, Gemma Files & Stephen J. Barringer, Stephen Graham Jones, Laird Barron and Kim Newman, are just a few of the authors appearing in this anthology, culled by renowned editor Ellen Datlow.

Plot in a box:

The title pretty much says it all—horror stories revolving around the movies in some capacity, told from the perspective of writers, directors, producers, critics, and viewers. All but one entry—Stephen Graham Jones's "Tenderizer"—are reprints (not a bad thing). Read more about The Cutting Room over at Tachyon Publications's website.

Invent a new title for this book:

Lights, Camera, KILL!!!

No wait, that really sucks...

How about, Cut to the FACE!!!

That sucks even worse. I'm no good at this. The Cutting Room is fine.

Read this if you liked:

Obviously, if you're a fan of Datlow's previous anthologies, you should pick up this one too. Also obviously, if you like any of the authors mentioned above, or clever, well-written horror in general.

Meet the book's lead(s):

There were more than a few sleazy producers populating the stories in The Cutting Room. Think Max Renn from Videodrome.

Said lead(s) would be portrayed in a movie by:

James Woods 

Setting: Would you want to live there?

The Cutting Room features numerous locales, from London to small towns in the Midwest. Still, Hollywood serves as a predominant backdrop, and yes, I would live there, despite every reason not to. 

What was your favorite sentence?

There were so many outstanding candidates (across so many outstanding authors) that I would be remiss not to include at least two. Here they are:

The wind is the tongue of a ravening beast. It licks at our warmth, the feeble light of our miserly souls.

—Laird Barron, "Ardor"

You want to to feel something, do something, say something, but it's only 11:30 in the morning, and everyone else in the world is dead or has a job.

—Douglas E. Winter, "Bright Lights, Big Zombie"

The Verdict:

It's pretty much a given that an Ellen Datlow anthology will at least be good, if not great. I know that putting together a collection of stories isn't that much like assembling a mix tape—despite such comparisons being made in the past—but one does get a "solid mix tape" vibe from anything with her name on it. 

The Cutting Room is no exception. Each tale flows into the next with such natural ease, it's hard to imagine the table of contents progressing in any other fashion. Sometimes the transition plays upon binary ideas—the first story, Edward Bryant's "The Cutter," deals with a disgraced Hollywood editor turned small town theatre manager taking artistic licenses with the films he screens, slashing scenes he deems unnecessary; Datlow follows this tale with Steve Nagy's "The Hanged Man of Oz," which cleverly plays with the urban legend that you can see a man committing suicide in the background of The Wizard of Oz—in other words, a scene that should have been cut, but wasn't. Other times, the connections are quite literal, as is the case with Denis Etchison's "Deadspace" and F. Paul Wilson's "Cuts," which both feature producers trying to get a new project off the ground.

Looking at each piece individually, I'm hard pressed to find a genuine dud among them. Sure, there were some I didn't enjoy as well as others, but none elicited any feelings of "meh" or, worse yet, downright ire—you know the kinds of stories I mean, the ones that make you throw the book across the room and scream to no one in particular, "I just wasted all my time reading THAT?!?!" None present in The Cutting Room, I'm happy to report.

Perhaps I'm biased. I love the horror genre all-around, but I'm also a general film buff, so this collection does present some built-in appeal for me and like-minded readers. Then again, as Genevieve Valentine notes in her introduction:

With a medium so inherently suspenseful, made through a fabulous alchemy into a series of atmospheric angles and special effects, horror writing could make good use of cinema's visual vocabulary and the beautiful artifice that modern readers can parse nearly as easily on the page as on the screen. Scary stories about film itself were going to be inevitable.

This inevitability is all the more prevalent when we remind ourselves that only Stephen Graham Jones's story was commissioned specifically for The Cutting Room; all other tales were previously published in other venues, meaning that this intersection of film and horror has already been crossed by an eclectic group of writers working decades apart, long before Datlow decided to pull them all together. Reading these stories in succession this way—seeing the greed and blockbuster-lust characterizing the Hollywood-dominated industry of the 1980s, the danger of unlocking inestimable terror via the indie experimentation that sprang up in the early 21st century, and the beguiling effect films have on us, regardless of genre or time period—this sense of inevitability becomes firmly cemented.

Musings on the intellectual justification of this anthology aside, The Cutting Room is a ton of fun, particularly with the appearance of comical fare like Ian Watson's "The Thousand Cuts," the aforementioned "Bright Lights, Big Zombie" by Douglas E. Winter (more black humor than straight-up comedy, but it had me chuckling) and, last but not least, Kim Newman's hysterical "Illimitable Dominion," which deals with Roger Corman's spate of Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price. 

Halloween is just around the corner—a time when we gather 'round the television and watch spooky movies. But All Hallows Read is fast approaching too, and what better way to supplement your horror movie viewing than by reading a scary book about films and filmmaking? Makes perfect sense to me.

Title:

Last Winter We Parted

Who wrote it?

Japanese crime novelist Fuminori Nakamura, winner of the 2010 Ōe Kenzaburō Prize.

Plot in a Box:

Death row inmate Yudai turns the tables on his interviewer, pulling him into a dark, obsessive world he may not want to leave.

Invent a new title for this book:

Burning Girls and Butterflies

Read this if you liked:

The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Meet the book’s lead:

Yudai Kiharazaka, famed photographer who had...ahem...a burning desire to get some memorable shots of his models.

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:

Daniel Henney of X-Men would work.

Setting:

While this novel takes place in Japan, it could be set in any modern-day city. Our real landscape is the twisted minds of Yudai and those who claim to understand him.

What was your favorite sentence?

You ask a lot of questions for a coward.

The Verdict:

Multiply-lauded Nakamura’s latest novel takes us into the mind of a murderer whose greatest lie may be the admission that he’s guilty. When an unnamed writer agrees to interview one of Japan’s most notorious Death Row inmates it becomes clear—as he flees to the nearest whisky joint after their first meeting—that he’s bitten off more than he can chew. The accused, Yudai Kiharazaka, begins demanding that the writer trade pieces of personal information for details of Yudai’s crimes in sort of a ghoulish quid-pro-quo. Threatening the writer’s equilibrium even more is “The Dollmaker”. This elderly man makes eerily life-like replicas of dead girls and has insight into what makes a man like Yudai tick. Less forthcoming is Akari, Yudai’s sister. Beautiful and malevolent, she soon becomes as much of an obsession for the writer as she is for her own brother. Struggling not to be drawn into the labyrinth of deception he’s rapidly uncovering, the writer turns to other sources—archival material, letters, even Twitter, to discover the truth.

Last Winter We Parted takes us into the mind of a photographer, so it’s no surprise how highly visual this novel is. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking, ‘What a gripping movie this would make.’ (This would be particularly true if certain scenes were shot similar to the video for Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”). Another strong point is the sexual tension between the writer and sister Akari. Their scenes are amongst the most engrossing in the book.

That said, Last Winter…is not without its flaws. The narrative shifts POV quite frequently. I found myself having to read certain passages over again just to figure out who was speaking. In a novel with so many twists and turns, this is an issue. The writer is rather sketchily drawn. We know he likes a drink, and that he likes Akari, but there’s nothing really to draw us to this protagonist, who is much needed as an anchor in this type of mystery.

Flaws aside, Last Winter We Parted is an engrossing, original mystery that does not neglect the element of surprise. I would recommend this book. And I’d definitely check it out if it ever came to the big screen.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Naturi Thomas

From Flavorwire.com. Quite a few of the stories include links to where you can read them.

Title

Sometimes the Wolf

Who wrote it?

Urban Waite, Seattle resident with two previous novels under his belt: The Carrion Birds and The Terror of Living. More info at his website.

Plot in a Box

Washington State lawman Bobby Drake discovers his recently released jailbird dad has a secret. The dangerous kind.

Invent a new title for this book

Be Careful Who You Make Friends With in Prison

Read this if you liked

Cormac McCarthy, Joe Lansdale, Jim Thompson. You get the picture.

Meet the book’s lead

Bobby Drake, a man with some difficult moral choices to make.

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by

Ryan Gosling

Setting: would you want to live here?

There are wolves in these woods. You would not be able to tear me away.

What was your favorite sentence?

The smell of the girl on his skin and a memory of the night before like a cruel act from his childhood he hadn’t quite forgiven himself for.

The Verdict 

I don’t want to oversell the ‘just like McCarthy’ aspect of this book, because actually it lacks that total deadpan nihilism, that ‘life is shit and everyone you ever cared about is going to die and cold eyed killers will get away with it because that’s how it is’ schtick at which McCarthy excels. I don’t want to overplay it, because if I do, you’re going to come away from Sometimes the Wolf disappointed. This is an altogether more hopeful and redemptive read than No Country for Old Men or The Road, but it bears an important resemblance to these forebears in that it falls under the heading of what I privately (up to now at least) have dubbed Patriarchal Noir.

No, hear me out. This is not a sly feminist dig at the predominance of male lead characters in a certain type of literature. Here I use the p-word in the most respectful sense, to signify that these are all books which centre on a particular kind of relationship: the one between fathers and sons.

There are many refrains in noir literature (She’s No Good, being a particular favourite and one about which I will have more to say when I talk about Gone Girl in a future article) but As the Father, So the Son is one particular tune which has produced some of the true standouts of the genre, Sometimes the Wolf being amongst that number. At the outset of the story, Bobby Drake is trembling on the brink of marital disaster. Thrown into this mix is Patrick, his father, the ex-sheriff of the town where Bobby is now a deputy, put away for drug smuggling twelve years before and now on parole. Later, Patrick’s father Morgan enters the scene and Bobby discovers that what was intended as a legacy—and you can read that in both the financial and spiritual sense—might turn out to be a death sentence.

I don’t know why this particular corner of the human psyche should provide such rich material for noir, but it says much for Waite as a writer that, faced with these riches he uses them without ever exploiting them. He draws his distinctions quietly, carefully spacing key scenes so that we can appreciate the differences between the choices Bobby and Patrick make without ever detecting the presence of signposts. He takes the same care with his characters—even the killer duo Bean and John Wesley (think a psychotic version of Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men) are drawn with respect, if not sympathy (it’s hard to feel much sympathy for Bean). The story is bookended by two events which provide a righteous symmetry to the narrative. We begin with a deer caught on a fence, we end with an escape and, not content with this structural completeness, Waite saves one final twist for those closing sentences. If you buy this book—and I sincerely hope you do—the casual ease with which Waite tosses out that final clue, the one which lays bare all the family secrets, will have you shaking your head with admiration.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Cath Murphy

So I wrote a column about Gone Girl. Some people think it's right on the money. Some people beg to differ. What do you think? I'd really like to know!

You can read it over at LitReactor, or to save time, here's the text below:

Let’s start with this: Gone Girl is a great book, a really great book; one of those rare works of craftsmanship that make even we battlehardened correspondents from the front line of book reviewing drop our habitual sneers of ennui and let slip a small nod of respect. Gillian Flynn pulls off so many tricks in this novel, that it’s hard to believe that one brain could be so crafty—the careful set up in the first pages which wrongfoot us into believing that we’re dealing with a case of murder, the rug pull when we appreciate the game Amy is playing, the second rug pull as things do not go as planned (how can a writer pull off two rug pulls with such aplomb, dammit?), the nail-biting omigodnoshedidn’t climax, the dark, dark ending. Oh yes there are spoilers in this article and I’m not ashamed of that. If you haven’t read the book or seen the film by now, you live in a cupboard and you’re not reading this.

If you believe from the title of this article that I have Gone Girl in my crosshairs and are already composing an outraged comment about how I’m just jealous/wrongheaded/snarky/all three, you may step away from the keyboard now. Gone Girl is a great book from a great writer, a book I would enthusiastically endorse if anyone asked me for a recommendation or wanted an opinion on its quality. Yet, I do have a problem with it, just not the kind you would expect. My problem with Gone Girl isn’t the book or the writer or the film. My problem with Gone Girl is us.

Spool back to 1944 and the movie Double Indemnity. Based on the novella by James M. Cain, Double Indemnity starred Barbara Stanwyck (at that time the highest earning woman in the US) as a woman, Phyllis Dietrichson, who beguiles a hapless insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) into helping her murder her husband and collect on his life insurance policy. The film, directed by Billy Wilder, was nominated for seven Oscars and won a grand total of zero, but who cares about that because Double Indemnity can lay claim to being the very first noir film ever, spawning a thousand imitations and a genre we’re still enjoying today. It also featured a femme fatale—a stereotype which caught on so hard and so fast that it became clear that there was nothing that western culture yearned for more at that point in time than a dirty girl who used her sexual wiles to get dumb guys to do her bidding. The 40s and 50s were full of these women—Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Laurie Starr in Gun Crazy, Kitty Collins in The Killers—the stereotype became so pervasive that Elvis Costello even wrote a song about them and for a while it seemed every bar in every town contained a scarlet-lipped temptress, using her compact to check her mascara and simultaneously scope out the room for a mark.

Then the craze subsided and in the history of female archetypes, the femme fatale became just another chapter. We moved on and started reading crime books where women solve the crimes instead of getting men to commit them on their behalf (or are the corpse, probably the most popular role for a woman in noir). The age of She’s No Good faded and other themes claimed our attention: A Loner Came to Town, Smart Guys Find a Novel Way to Rob a Bank, Two Mismatched Characters Try Not to Get Shot, and so on. Like all good themes, She’s No Good persisted, cropping up in cultural outliers like Body Heat, or the excellent Last Seduction but tellingly, never garnered more than polite critical attention and modest success in either book or movie form. In terms of mass adulation, She’s No Good seemed to have had its day and those of us who were never comfortable with the portrayal of women as conniving she-snakes with a moral compass where all poles point to Me, could breathe a sigh of relief.

Until now.

My problem with Gone Girl isn’t the book. It’s the success of the book. Plenty of books are well-crafted and well-written. Not so many succeed. When you pick apart the reasons why we choose some books to like and some to love, the success of Gone Girl says some disturbing things about who we are and what we think about women.

Here’s Amy Elliot Dunne, the femme fatale updated for the age of wheatgerm muffins and hot yoga. How does she differ from Cora and Kitty and Phyllis, her 1940s counterparts? Back then, bad girls did bad things for two reasons: money and sex, preferably both. Preferably lots of both.

Amy doesn’t want money. She’s not too interested in sex. What Amy wants is revenge. But revenge for what? What terrible wrongs have occurred which justify her actions? She makes that clear early on in the narrative, when she talks about her parents’ worry over her disappearance:

"Then, after they siphoned off my money, my ‘feminist’ parents let Nick bundle me off to Missouri like I was some piece of chattel, some mail-order bride, some property exchange...They deserve to think I’m dead because that’s practically the state they consigned me to: no money, no home, no friends. They deserve to suffer too."

Because thinking your only child is dead is exactly the same as living in a place you don’t like. Amy is breathtakingly, mindblowingly entitled. The sins which precipitate her carefully plotted plan to frame her husband for murder include him losing his job and having an affair, the kind of small stuff that a thousand people go through every week without once sitting up in the middle of the night and thinking I know how to make that bastard suffer. I’m going to unleash a social media witchhunt on his ass. And notice how Amy tearfully uses the word ‘chattel’ as though her treatment resembles that of a Yemeni child-bride, not of an educated woman who has the skills and opportunities to remake her life the way she wants it.

Later in the story, this is exactly the point that Nick, her husband, makes to Amy when the extent of her subterfuge becomes clear.

"You are a tough, vibrant, independent woman, Amy...You’re not a scared little girl. You’re a badass, take-no-prisoners woman. Think about it. You know I’m right: The era of forgiveness is over. It’s passé. Think of all the women—the politicians’ wives, the actresses—every woman in the public who’s been cheated on, they don’t stay with the cheat these days. It’s not stand by your man anymore, it’s divorce the fucker."

Amy’s response to Nick’s appeal to let him go? She gets pregnant.

Amy is a Men’s Rights Activist’s worst nightmare come to life. The woman who gets pregnant to trap her man. The woman whose sweet exterior conceals a psyche composed entirely of vitriolic hate. The woman who fakes rape (‘I took a wine bottle and abused myself with it every day, so the inside of my vagina looked…right. Right for a rape victim’ Amy coolly admits to Nick after she returns). Amy’s actions present a text book case for those who believe that most rape victims are liars, that women are incapable of rational thought, that women are the controllers, not men, that you can’t trust a word a woman says because she’ll just twist everything to make you look bad.

But this is just fiction—right? Though reading about Amy might be an unpleasant experience, especially for women, she isn’t real. She’s a fantastically well-conceived creation, a vehicle for a particular narrative about modern marriage, a device through which Flynn can make some sharp, shrewd points about how some relationships work. Yes, this is just fiction. My problem isn’t with Flynn’s choice of character, or how she made Amy act. My problem is with how we reacted to it.

We embraced it. Something about Amy struck a chord with us. Just as audiences of the 1940s flocked to see Phyllis Dietrichson plot and flirt, the audiences of 2014 greet Amy Dunne with a smile (or wince) of recognition. We know this woman—the entitled, embittered, privileged woman who keeps lists of every slight, colour-codes her grudges and deploys her children in the same way a retreating army sets out landmines. This is who we think bad women are nowadays. Not hussies on the make, but cupcake-bakers settling emotional scores.

This is my problem with Gone Girl. It holds up a mirror and shows us what we believe about women. It explains why rape goes unreported or unprosecuted. It explains why women find it harder to gain positions of trust. It explains why many people still believe that victims of domestic violence were asking for it (see p412 of my edition). Of course Amy Dunne is #notallwomen but she rings a loud enough bell with many of us that we find her actions utterly and completely compelling and believable.

On her website, Gillian Flynn makes this point about women in fiction (and it’s a good one):

"Isn’t it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains—good, potent female villains Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some."

The success of Gone Girl says we think we do

This collection was such a lovely surprise. When I picked up this book I was expecting a gimmicky, shoddily constructed, collection that might be worth a few laughs. I am very pleased to report my preconceptions were totally off the mark. Instead what I got was a book filled with razor sharp feminist poems geared toward young women. Does the word feminist turn you off? These poems will change your mind. Cataloguing the pains of body image issues, eating disorders, first loves, and what it feels like to be seen as an object rather than a person, these poems capture what it feels like to be a teenage girl (and really a woman of any age) through the lens of fairy tales and allegory. And to top it off, the poems are well written. Accompanied with striking photography this is a really compelling book, especially for young women who might balk at the word feminist but know they don't like how the world makes them feel.

My thanks to the good people at Harper Collins for providing me with a review copy of this book!

Title:

Butterfly Skin

Who wrote it?

Sergey Kuznetsov, a Russian novelist whose previous works include The Circle Dance of Water, which was shortlisted for Russia's Big Book Award in 2011. Kuznetsov is also a journalist and has contributed to Playboy, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. He's widely regarded as one of the pioneers of the internet in Russia.

Plot in a box:

In Moscow, a young journalist investigates the identity of a serial killer.

Invent a new title for this book:

я ищу тебя (Translate it, you lazy bums.)

Read this if you liked:

Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, Silence of the Lambs, Creepypasta, ICQ, swiping right, sexy times.

Meet the book's lead:

Ksenia, the young journalist working for an internet news site in Moscow. She's a bit of a freak.

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:

A younger Milla Jovovich.

Setting: Would you want to live there?

The streets of Moscow? No thanks.

What was your favorite sentence?

It is good to kill in winter. Especially if it has snowed overnight, and the ground is covered with a delicate blanket of white. You put the bound naked body on it. The blood from the wounds flows more freely in the cold frosty air, and the warmth of life departs with it. If you are lucky and she does not die too quickly, she will see the solid film of ice cover what was flowing through her veins so recently. Red on white, there is no more beautiful combination than that.

The Verdict:

I was at my parents' house recently. My mother—an avid reader of anything with a good, trashy murder mystery (and, thus, an avid watcher of anything on Lifetime)—picked up my copy of Butterfly Skin and read the blurb on the back. Her eyes got all googly, and she said, "Ooooh." So, you know, that should tell you something, if all you know about my mother is what you just read.

Truth be told, Butterfly Skin is right up my mother's alley. It's trashy, and it's a murder mystery. That's all she gathered from the back-cover blurb, and that's all she needed to gather to get all googly-eyed about it.

What you're going to gather now, what you need to gather now, is that Butterfly Skin is more than some trashy murder mystery. It's perverse. It's horrific. It's grotesque. It has a bigger sexual charge than the snaps you send to your SO. Put it this way: if Stieg Larsson and Thomas Harris met each other on ICQ, courted each other, then met in person and had a lovechild and posted its picture on a creepy subreddit, it'd look something like this book.

To put it another way: Butterfly Skin is fucked up.

So fucked up that Kuznetsov thought it was a good idea to write chapters from the killer's perspective (it is a good idea) and dabble in the second person so you feel like you're the one not only being stalked by some psychopath but participating in and enjoying auto-erotic and BDSM-type shit (also a good idea).

That is what Butterfly Skin is about, discovering what you're into while hunting a serial killer whose victims are all tortured in weird sexual ways, and you yourself being into some weird sexual shit, least of which is chatting on ICQ with strangers who may or may not be interested in torturing you (okay, it's about Ksenia doing these things, not you, but sometimes you just can't help but feel like you're the one with the abnormal fascinations, you know?).

Originally published in Russia in the 1990s (which explains the endless amount of ICQ mentions, each one more awesome than the last), it's scary to think that Kuznetsov was commenting on the dangers of online chatting and meeting up with complete strangers long before the days of Craigslist, Tinder and FarmersOnly.com. 

Butterfly Skin has attained that ever-exclusive cult novel label in Russia, and if American audiences embrace it, I dare say it will become such a novel here as well.

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Ryan Peverly

Title:

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances

Who Wrote It?

Matthew Inman, aka The Oatmeal. Yes, that Oatmeal. The one who creates brilliant web comics and has been entertaining us for years.

Plot in a Box:

This is a graphic-novel-memoir-thing—a conglomeration of stories and lists and images all designed to help The Oatmeal explain exactly why he runs long distances.

Invent a new title for this book:

RunSanity

Read this if you liked: 

Read this if you run, plain and simple. Read this if you want to run. Read this if you've ever considered running a race longer than a 5k (that's 3.1 miles for laypeople).

Also read this if you enjoy the humor presented at The Oatmeal. There's plenty of humor within these pages.

Meet the book's lead:

This is a memoir, and thus the book's lead is its author. Its creator. Its fearless leader. Matthew Inman, aka The Oatmeal, was once a fat kid. Now he's a fat kid in a runner's body, forever running from an evil beast called the Blerch. 

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:

It's gotta be Jerry O'Connell. He played Vern in Stand By Me, the quintessential tubby kid. He grew out of his tubbiness (and into hotness), but I'm sure the tubby kid still haunts his dreams.

Thus, he'd be perfect.

That said, I have no idea if The Oatmeal is actually hot. Nor do I care. Runners aren't auto-magically hot, I promise you, but if this is a movie, we're going with a hot actor. Or at least someone who was hot ten years ago.

Okay, enough about hotness. Let's move on to....

Setting: Would you want to live here?

Inman lives in Seattle, which is a city I'm dying to one day visit. But based on what I know of the weather, and my experiences this summer in a very soggy southeast, I don't know that I could handle the rain of the Pacific Northwest. Of course that's just a personal preference...

There's also this scene in the book involving a long run in Japan and some Killer Wasps from Outer Space, and no, I don't want to live with the wasps.

What's your favorite sentence?

I run because this is the only way I know how to quiet the monster. I run because, deep down, I am the Blerch."

You don't have to read the book to understand the Blerch. You need only know the feeling of insufficiency that haunts us all. I, too, run to quiet monsters. I, too, am the Blerch.

The Verdict:

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances began as a web comic. The book is an expanded version of the original comic, as far as I can tell, and there are RACE STICKERS that come with the book, so although I don't yet have the hard copy, clearly I need one. I love stickers. 

But I digress. 

I read the original web comic about a year ago, on a warm, rainy afternoon, while my husband and child sat nearby building Legos, and I'm not going to lie...I cried a little (okay, a lot) while reading it. Seriously. As a runner (I have a half-marathon coming up next weekend, in fact), it hit so close to home that I cried. I had a moment. It was like, "Ohmigod, he understands! He gets it!  The Oatmeal knows exactly why I run too!"

Running is so often a solitary thing. Even when you run with someone, you're alone in your body. You have aches and pains and things going on inside your joints and muscles and digestive system that are embarrassing and weird and you don't ever want to share them EVER. 

Inman shares them. He talks about outrunning the beast (the Blerch) who tells you to sit down, run slower, to quit and to allow life and time to take their toll on your body without ever caring about those extra ten pounds you carry. He talks about the pain of a long run, but also the elation that follows. The "I'll never run again" feeling that lasts only until your post-run shower. He understands.

So yeah, I cried when I read the original comic.

The second read for this review, and the first read of the new material, was never going to live up to that first, eye-opening experience. In a way, that experience was sacred to me, so reading the actual book could only be a let-down. The expanded material isn't as impactful, isn't as startling. But I love it anyway, for the memory of that first read, and for my gratitude at knowing there's someone out there who really, really, really gets it. 

So I think you should read it too, especially if you're a runner. Let me know if it makes you cry

Bookshots review written for LitReactor.com by Leah Rhyne