Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 146

Short is the New Cool: Four Collections That Use the Right Words

(Seriously? You don’t have any of these? Okay, well, you’d better have started acquiring them by the time I get back from the gym, or I’ll beat the reading into ya…)

I just posted a new Omnivoracious feature on four excellent collections that I think deserve your attention, possibly even your love. I’d also note all four publishers produce excellent books in general.

Apparently, it was my week to read and then blog about it. Have I made up for the Godzilla poop post yet?

Excerpts:

We Never Talk Abo

“Predecessor” from Conjunctions Now Online (along with Hand, Marcus, and Carroll)

When I posted about Conjunctions and my story “Predecessor” the other day, I didn’t realize they’d also put the story online, along with a few others. Here’s the link to the main page, and to the individual stories.

“Predecessor”
“The great man’s home lay within thick woods, beyond a churning river crossed only by a bridge that looked like it had been falling apart for many years. The woods were dark and loamy and took the sound of our transport like a wolf taking a rabbit. The leaves passed above

Chuck Palahniuk’s Pygmy: Good, Bad, and Ugly

My review of Chuck Palahniuk’s Pygmy just appeared in the Washington Post. Here’s the opening:

Sloppy yet smart, Chuck Palahniuk’s “Pygmy” veers from sublimely ridiculous to just plain ridiculous, sometimes within a single paragraph. An infiltrating agent from a nameless authoritarian country, Pygmy poses as a high school exchange student and joins the Midwestern family of Donald Cedar. “Host father,” as Pygmy calls him, works for the Radiological Institute of Medicine and has access to biotoxins

Strangeness in the Mail…and Elsewhere

(This was on some booktv show for like 10 minutes before it changed. No wonder people think books on TV be borin’.)

Cat sitter walks in the door. “Um, there’s got to be a story behind those.” Points to the giant blow-up penguin and the huge dragon head. Me: “We’ve got a friend in Australia….sent us penguin…penguin wars…then bought dragon head…at daughter’s place but now we have it. Er, at night people outside think they’re humans.” A kind of suspicious, confused look from cat sitter…but that’s n

For We Are Made of Cardboard…and Yet We Live…

As reported on Omnivoracious, I have been playing demi-god and sending this Star Wars punch-out-and-play book to blawgers all over the world, to see what playful photography they might come up with. Corey Redekop is the first to take the bait, and the results can be found here. Still to come, entries from Sir Tessa the Reluctant Ninja Knight, the Wondrous Thunderous Finn, the Laconic Vodka King, and the Fathomless Boneshaking Supahstah. Gawd, what a motley crew has manifested and thus been assem

Booklife, Predecessor, Shriek–Linkerage

(Me at Utopiales in Nantes a couple years back. This photo was taken after three days of epic food poisoning, and I was thinking please gawd let me die rather than suffer through another interview or panel. Shortly thereafter, I participated on a panel where the moderator asked me a question and I said I had no interest in the question whatsoever–next!–mostly because my brain had been scooped out of my skull by then. I keep this photo as a reminder of my least impressive performance.)

….I hope y

60 in 60: #37 - Henry David Thoreau’s Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (Penguin’s Great Ideas)

(The Penguin Great Ideas series goes where it’s never gone before–St. Marks Wildlife Refuge, seven miles out on the Deep Creek/Stony Bayou Trail, far from any other human being, May 14, 2009.)

This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series–a Guardian’s book site of the week (back in the day) and mentioned on the Penguin blog. (Their latest post comments on the first 20.)

My plan was to read one book in the series each night and post a blog

The Pathology of Derek Raymond’s Dead Man Upright

“Killers are like mushrooms; the deadly ones look like the ones you have for breakfast, unless you happen to have the sense to turn them over and look at the funny underneath.”

Dead Man Upright, the fifth and final volume of Derek Raymond’s Factory series is altogether a different beast than its precedessors. It inverts the structure and intent of most of the prior volumes by focusing more on the killer than the victims; in this respect, it most closely resembles The Devil’s Home on Leave, but wi

Evil Monkey’s Thought For a Sunday

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(Miraculous defecation?)

Jeff:

Hey, Evil! What’ve you been up to?

Evil Monkey:

Watching those Godzilla movies, like you asked me to. Gawd, most of them suck.

Jeff:

Thanks for doing that. I’ve got so much other work to do on the new novel, I haven’t had time for the research aspect.

Evil Monkey:

You know, they’re not very realistic, these movies.

Jeff:

You think? Rubber costumes. Cardboard cities.

Evil Monkey:

No, not that, idiot. I mean the poop.

Jeff:

The poop?

Evil Monkey:
Yeah, the poop. The crap. Th

Shearwater for a Rainy Saturday

Fast becoming one of my favorite bands. Okkervil’s good and all, but at their best, Shearwater’s visionary qualities transport.