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San Francisco, 9:49 PM
Sat Nov 7
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
Anyhoo, I guess actual illustration has gone out of fashion now, pity that. RANTY, RANTY, RANT-RANT...
10/14/09
10/14/09
Okay, I'm sorry. I feel much better now.
I'll go with Nursey back to my room with the special jacket.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
"PAGING DR. FREUD, PAGING DR. FREUD..."
I like the FROOMB!, The Tenant, and The People:.... The others are kind of 'meh...'
10/14/09
10/14/09
Sanda Zhairovic has done some brilliant wortk for Gollancz recently. Simple but striking.
[www.planetvideo.com.au]
10/14/09
Art directors take note. Gimme this.
10/14/09
RANTY, RANTY, RANT-RANT...
10/14/09
I want hard-edge op-art, overwrought hand-painted vignettes of the story, and I also want the corpse of Saul Bass propped up on a stick so we can give him blankets, bottles of rum, and cigars.
The future belongs to the analog loyalists!
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
I wonder if that is intentional and/or maybe related to the story?
08/27/09
The Graveyard Book, Monster, Sharp Teeth, The Darker Mask, Graywalker and the first three of the Dresden Files. In my defense I thought Butcher was going to stop having all his characters from saying, "Stars." and talking in the same voice but I was wrong. Man was I wrong.
08/26/09
08/27/09
I think my first "urban fantasy" was the way out of print (1985) Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm (who is actually Robin Hobb). Great book, worth hunting down. It dealt with the problems of the homeless and poverty in modern Seattle and also had a fairly original take on magic.
I wish the glut of subsequent urban fantasy was as good. Instead we get tripe like the Dresden Files series, sorry folks, Jim Butcher is a hack. But do not be discouraged, there is some goodness out there.
For fantasy set in modern cities that ain't pure drivel? Hmmm, just off the toppa my head...You might like Charles DeLint, he's done a whole bunch, most of which I liked. He blends the old First Nation folks like Coyote with Celtic myths and such in his own made-up Midwestern metropolis of Newford. China Meiville's very first novel King Rat is worth checking out and I found Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Anansi Boys sorta similar. The Good Fairies of New York by Mark Millar is wicked funny. Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim which Charlie just reviewed on this blog is pretty good but I prefer his Butcher Bird. If you want to go for a "classic", please Please read Little, Big by John Crowley. Pure magic to read.
Good hunting.
08/27/09
08/26/09
(do not want)
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
I miss spaceships.
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
@Grey_Area: Or..
08/26/09
@Grey_Area: ...and...
(to be fair, this ain't paranormal romance, just jumping on the cover art bandwagon)
08/26/09
08/26/09
@Rasselas: But wait there's more!
08/26/09
@Grey_Area: Look, diversity! Equal-opportunity tramps!
08/26/09
@Grey_Area: Okay, I'll stop now, but this trend won't die.
I miss spaceships.
08/26/09
08/26/09
@Rasselas: Fortunately, there is an antidote to these photo covers.
08/26/09
08/26/09
My daughter got turned off of the Twilight series by the dreadful movie and all of the hype but she has also read many many other books since that time including Little Brother, The Hunger Games, Dracula and historical fiction.
On another note, Twilight even got my adult sister to read and this is amazing because she hasn't read a book since she was forced to do book reports in high school.
Getting people to read opens so many doors to so many wonderful books. So what if they get drawn into that world by sparkly vampires?
08/26/09
Ps: I don't know, or care, how many Twilight books are there.
08/26/09
My daughter on the other hand, read easily 30 books this summer. She will be a life long reader.
I believe that the fandom phenomenon does encourage children and adults to read books that they may not have felt they had the ability to tackle. For many children a novel can seem like a giant step from chapter books but once they have finished their first many have the confidence to read more.
08/27/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
I think we should tack on "contemporary" to all those detective wizard books to differentiate them from Swanwick, Jay Lake, VanderMeer et al. Or do we still use (ugh) "slipstream" for those?
I hate genre labels, but it does make things easier when buying or selling books.
08/26/09