Matt

I can't imagine anything I would want added to this book. A thoroughly researched and well-written book about an amazing person and life.

I've never had any interest in urban fantasy, but I'd heard great things about Richard Kadrey. Good writing can make anything great, and this is some spectacular goddamned writing! I look forward to the rest of the series.

The ideas in this book may change my life for the better.

I knew I'd love The Only Harmless Great Thing before I bought it because I have knelt before Brooke Bolander's prose many times before and cooled my hot head beneath its flowing language. What I didn't know is that I'd want to hug her heroes and interlace my fingers with theirs as they raised their fists (or what have you) to strike at things miles wider than themselves. Things that very much deserve to be struck. Yesterday, I peeled open the electric cover, read this book around work and around life, and resented the hell out of every interuption that came my way.

Coming to a new Bolander piece, the mind has to wade in slowly. It has to pause sentence by half-sentence to translate a work of English-as-we-wish-it-would-be into the English we use over countertops and through car windows. As she overthrows clich??d phrases again and again, she reminds us how large life truly is and how we fail as thinkers to make the connections that would open up worlds to us.

Should we thank our publishers above who know enough to deliver her verbal delicacies to us like events on some secret holiday schedule of need? Or should we curse our culture because life in general isn't written like this? (Just imagine an existence of Bolander-scribed street signs and vacuum cleaner directions! sigh) We should do both. Be thankful for what work of hers we get, and shout at life for always leaving us wanting more.

A fast read, good fun, and some good laughs. Pick it up and love it!

Amazing.

Holy shit. Tears were running down my face. I can't remember when a book did that to me.

Warmth.

Although I share a name with the protagonist, our life circumstances are very different. But I found myself nodding several times at our shared darkness. I would say that pain is Sam Miller's medium, if he wasn't so skilled in the other corners of human experience.

Ted Sturgeon, for all his varied story ideas, said that the only thing he ever wrote about was love. Sam writes about love. When you put this book down, you'll want to go to someone you love and maybe hug them, or maybe just be in their presence for a little while.

I've been reading comics for four and a half decades. Williams' art is some of the most astonishing and creative I've ever seen. The variety of styles he works in for this mini-series is incredible. Gaiman's story is great and adds to the enjoyment of the original series, but even if you're not a fan of Gaiman, Morpheus, or this particular story, you must see this art.

The second volume made me hungry for more. This one made me feel I ate too much. I was disappointed by the change-up in art styles. Some of the turns the characters took made me wonder, “Why are they doing this?” “What is the point in the larger concept that has been established?” And “Who cares?”

Deeply strange things occur in these stories and because the people that populate them adapt so quickly, they themselves seem darker, not the types of people we would trust to be alone with in a poorly lit stairwell. There are so many beautiful words, so many disturbing images, and the stories run deep, if not long, because each explores several different aspects of humanity simultaneously. Body issues, relationships, philosophies, psychological landscapes, and fears branch off from the seemingly straight forward narrative, reconnect, or tangle themselves into knots. Helen Marshall's characters are cut off from one another, from all others, but most importantly, the people to whom they should be closest, the ones they need the most. That's the deepest horror at the core of all the others in this collection. Losing love, never finding love, never being loved. Being utterly alone.

I really needed this after volume 1. I felt relief long before the ending, seeing the heroes getting their teeth kicked in. That was bad enough that the comeback of this pile of dicks made me happy. Great art, twists and turns, but it did get to the point where the “tough-guy killer line of dialogue” was beginning to grate. Very entertaining stuff.

If you've read the original Ultimates you already know that nearly every character is kind of a shitty person in some way. Mark Millar is awesome at making that happen. Growing up in the seventies, I looked to superheroes as paragons of goodness. In my pre-pubescent mind, they were. As an adult I know that morals vary from reader to reader, but I think everyone needs their version of good people in at least a portion of their entertainment. I'm not sure that good people are often available.

Having said all that, shitty people do make for page turning. Even thought I feel worse about the world, I have to say the story is compelling.

When I heard John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats had a novel coming out, there was no question in my mind that I'd be gobbling it up as soon as I got my hands on it. Darnielle writes the most visceral lyrics I've ever heard, with a knack for cutting right to the pain, whether emotional or physical, in just a line or two. I got what I expected from Wolf in White Van's prose by the second paragraph:

“Every other day they'd bathe me, and every time, I'd feel like it wasn't so bad for a few minutes; and then the heat would slacken the resewn flaps of my cheeks a little, and the tingling would start up, a rippling alarm traveling down confused wires.”

If you figure the paragraph which precedes that one explains what's led up to that point of the narrator's life, you're no expert figurer. Answers come in time, but not all of them. There are a couple of things going on here. The telling leaps all over the story's timeline and it's meant to be disorienting. There are times the reader isn't quite sure when an event is happening or which of the other narrative strands it might be connected to. We're left to attach the pieces with little reference, perhaps echoing the reassembly of the narrator and his life after the accident that is central to the story. And centers are important here.

A little Robert Frost:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

There are many unknowable centers in the book, from the imaginary fortress which sits right in the middle of the country and is the unachievable goal of the narrator's play-by-mail game, Trace Italian; to his motivation for the central act of the novel, which may be unknown even to him; to the unspoken feelings of so many of the characters.

It's the search for what lies in those centers that drive us on through the book and drive the characters through their inner turmoil. The answers at the core of everything are cloaked in many layers of protection, the innermost wrapping being the hardest and most inviting of them all: the apprehension of the seeker. Darnielle lays out the story so we can see the ending coming, and it's probably for this reason the last ten pages of Wolf in White Van filled me with dread.

Very few books excite me, but these do. It's not just the action, but the ideas; the stakes; the sense of possibility; and the ballsy, brilliant, and perpetually damaged Petrovich. Fantastic!

Great science fiction with fresh ideas. Haanu really pulled everything together in the end. I'll have to give it a second read to fully absorb everything. Looking forward to his next book.

Gibson is my favorite author. I got quite a ways into this book feeling like it was missing something that was inherently Gibson. The final third of the book springs to life and I found what I'd been missing: The weird uses for high tech, the something's-going-down vibe, characters coming together in cool and unexpected ways and some wild ideas. What I'm saying is, stick with the book. It pays off.

I'm doing The Great Twitter Bond Read on Twitter if any of you care to read along and/or join in. Search for the #bondread tag. I'm working through Casino Royale right now, doing a chapter a day.

It had some good points but overall it was a disappointment after reading “The Stars My Destination.”

An excellent book. Gladwell twists our preconceptions once again.

It doesn't quite capture the spirit of the first book, but Pullman is a masterful writer. fifty pages can fly by without the reader being aware of it.

An excellent book much to my surprise. If you had told me a month ago that I'd love a book that featured talking animals, I would never have believed you. Pullman's world has so many odd and interesting things going for it, I experienced the same thrill as I did when I first read Dune. Excellent characters, especially Lyra, of course. I'm starting the second book tomorrow.

A short biography of Steve Martin which focuses on his Comedic career. I've been a fan since memorizing my sister's 8-tracks of “A Wild and Crazy Guy” and “Comedy is Not Pretty” back in the seventies. It's great to understand how each element of his classic style came into being. Martin explains his philosophy of comedy as well as his solitude and depression during his greatest success. The book is a great insight into a unique brand of comedy.

I'm a William Gibson fanatic. Spook Country is set in 2006 and is tenuously connected to Pattern Recognition. These books aren't science fiction, but they are just as cutting-edge cool. I thought Pattern Recognition was Gibson's best work since Neuromancer. Spook Country didn't quite capture an overall mood like PR did, but it's a blast seeing its characters work the system in their personal spheres with the very latest technology as they bump into and up against one another. Gibson's commentary on the current state of America is perfect: understated and wry.

The story concerns the intersection of the lives of a member of a former rock singer whose band achieved cult status, a member of a Cuban-Chinese crime family, a drug addicted Russian translator, a couple of ex-government agents, and some hi-tech artists all affected by the comings and goings of a mysterious cargo container. There are a few people out there that will pick up this book simply because of that last sentence. Whether it's that or just Gibson's name on the cover, pick it up, read it, enjoy yet another of Gibson's worlds.