Reading Roundup, May 2009

Since I am no longer doing regular weekly reviews I thought instead I’d mention every month or so what I’ve been reading. I do plan a return to formal reviews, just not at the crazy schedule I used to keep. If it was just a question of skimming a book and throwing up a 300 word summary I have no doubt I could manage one a week (or more) but, as anyone who’s read my reviews will know, that’s just not my style.

Looking at my ultra-geeky super-cool book log I see I have only read four books in May. Four! OK, there were extenuating circumstances, and not a few technicalities. The technicalities are that my log only reflects those books that are completed, not the ones still sitting next to my bed with bookmarks in them. Looks as if I’ve been digging in a lot of short story collections lately without finishing them, including John Collier’s Fancies and Goodnights, Brian McNaughton’s The Throne of Bones, a couple of Warhammer anthologies, The Annual Worlds Best SF series edited by Donald Wollhiem (quite a lot of those I’ve just picked through), and Two-Handed Engine, the collected fiction of C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. This last book is big enough to brain a cow, so I don’t expect to have it as a ‘complete’ in my log anytime soon.

Another book I’ve been hitting on and off is The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charlie Dickens, in preparation for reading (and reviewing, as I promised the nice people who sent me a copy months ago!) Dan Simmons’ Drood. I’ve found it slow going so far, and I’m a fan of Dickens.

OK, so what have I actually finished? First, there’s a little slip of a book, Mona, by Lawrence Block. Block is a giant in the thriller/mystery field, a descendant of the hard-boiled crime writing school of Hammett and Chandler, and an all-around excellent writer. Mona is really just novella length, a quick tale of a double-con game getting all mixed up in sex, drugs, and murder.

Then there was William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Didn’t speak to me. A disjointed and feverish look at, well, who the hell knows what. A series of increasingly disturbing vignettes that jump around in space and time, and inside and outside reality, some of which are experienced by the junkie-on-the-run main character. While the disturbing imagery was truly  well-rendered — and much more effectively horrific than any of the splatter stuff written by gore-fetishists — it all seemed rather frivolous and self-indulgent to me. This book reminded me why I don’t generally care for most kinds of experimental fiction, though maybe with more patience, or some heroin, I would have thought it was as mind-blowing as its reputation. Maybe I’ll like the movie better.

After Lunch I slipped in a non-fiction book, The Phoenicians by Gerhard Herm, possibly as an antidote to the mess I described above. It’s a great, readable account of a strangely underrepresented ancient civilization. Herm, a German writer, covers Phoenicia from the earliest times, through the Biblical accounts of events in Palestine, and right up to the clash of its former colony of Carthage with Rome in the Punic Wars. A good survey history, on par with another book of Hern’s I’ve read and recommend as a primer, The Celts.

I’m reading up on Phoenicia in preparation for finally visiting Wolfe’s Soldier of Sidon.

The last book I read in May was Fritz Leiber’s last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story, The Knight and Knave of Swords. I definitely prefer Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser short stories and novellas to his two novels, which seem to represent a baroque phase to his saga both in prose style and content. But, despite some eyebrow-raising scenes (what is the obsession with depilation, Fritz?) the book is worth the read to see these two lovable rogues finally grow up (mostly) and find their place in the world. Ultimately the hallmarks of this series, the humor, the wild invention, the colorful language, and endearing characters, are all present in the concluding volume, which makes a fitting last chapter to their adventures.