Jared Shurin's Blog, page 120
June 21, 2013
Underground Reading: Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer
Dead at Daybreak (2000) is my first Deon Meyer. Which isn't seem a huge confession in the great scheme of things, but after seeing Mr. Meyer's blurbs on the covers of all the South African literary/crime fiction that I've been reading, well, it seemed inevitable.
Daybreak's protagonist is Zet van Heerden, an ex-cop turned self-loathing mess/private eye. At the start of the book, he's living in a shed in his mom's garden (more on that later). An idealistic attorney, Hope (more on that, too) h...
June 20, 2013
Underground Reading: Say It With Bullets by Richard Powell
This is the latest installment in my steady quest to review each and every Hard Case Crime publication, one every week (two this week, as we're making up for lost ground). You can follow along here.
Richard Powell's Say It With Bullets (original publication, 1953) is a serious (or not so) change in pace from the last few books. If Charles Williams was some sort of rough whiskey, burning all the way down, Richard Powell is serving us a big fizzy glass of soda pop. Possibly with a bendy...
June 19, 2013
Has Samsung given us the greatest fantasy story of all time?
Today's Stylist featured an advertisement for the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8, impartially illustrating the difference between books (BAD) and the e-reader on the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (UTTERLY AMAZEBALLS).
Not sure about you, but I'm a little worried that Samsung thinks this is reading at its "best".
YE OLDE FASHIONED PHYISIKAL BOOKDouble K(DK) is being persued by vicious enemies and is injured in Souron’s sneaky trap.. He decided to go into The Darkest Forest..where even little light c...
The Lowest Heaven - Paperback pre-orders & Forbidden Planet Launch!
We're releasing The Lowest Heavenin its non-limited formats, and we'd love it if you could join us for the fun.
We'll be at Forbidden Planet with piles of paperbacks on the evening of Wednesday, 3 July, alongside authors E.J. Swift, Lavie Tidhar, Esther Saxey and David Bryher. We'll be signing, shmoozing and eventually heading to the pub. Plus, the crafty people at FP have whipped up some special bookplates based on Joey Hi-Fi's design.
Here's the Facebook whatnot with the details.
Even if y...
June 18, 2013
British Fantasy Awards: Non-Fiction Category
A little song, dedicated to our friends over at Fantasy Faction, Ansible, The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Stephen Volk and Diana Wynne Jones.
"Was a time when I knew the earth."
...thus begins Sam Sykes' "Wish for a Gun" from A Town Called Pandemonium.
In many ways, that's how we felt when, coming home last night, we discovered that A Town Called Pandemonium and "Wish for a Gun" are both finalists for the British Fantasy Awards.
A huge congratulations to all the contributors to A Town Called Pandemonium. As a shared world, it was a shared effort, and the ten authors, two editors and one badass illustrator who worked on it should all be enormously proud of themselves....
June 17, 2013
Underground Reading: A Touch of Death by Charles Williams
This is the latest installment in our scheme to review each and every Hard Case Crime publication, one every week.You can follow along here.
A Touch of Death (2006) was first published in 1954. Like many of Charles Williams' other books, it first appeared as a Gold Medal paperback. Although commercially and critically successful during his lifetime, Williams is now almost entirely out of print - both Joe Lansdale and John D. MacDonald have referred to him as one of the most "neglected" write...
June 16, 2013
Post-script: We're gonna need a bigger boat...
I'm going to combine the 'post-script' (book purchasing) and 'everywhere but here' (stuff that's happening) updates from now on. They're both sort of... bloggy, self-indulgent entries. We'll see how it works out. Bear with me as I figure out how best to talk about myself.
First up, latest purchases/new cause for groaning floorboards & concern from the downstairs neighbours:
Lee Hoffman's The Legend of Blackjack Sam. Dunno. Ace Western. It is a thing. I read a lot of Westerns ahead of A Town C...
June 14, 2013
"Essential" Epic Fantasies: Wrap-up
This week's listing activities have been a lot of fun - and goes to show that the internet loves a list.
Between the four of us, Liz, Justin, Tansy and I selected 165 different "essential" epic fantasies with 201 picks (Liz took a bonus pick). I figured that, before I put the whip down and let the dead horse be, it was worth doing a bit of poking around in the numbers.
Download all four lists as a CSV file here.
Here's how the math works out:
Books with multiple selections:
Chosen by all f...
June 12, 2013
The Lowest Heaven - Launch Day!
The Lowest Heavenis out today!
Our latest anthology is published to coincide with the Visions of the Universeexhibition at the National Maritime Museum, and the book is officially released this evening at the Museum's late night event.
Tonight's shindig features readings from several of the contributors, telescope workshops, comics from The Phoenix, music, comedy, poetry, alcoholic wizardry from Bompas and Parr and, of course, one of the most amazing exhibitions of astrophotography ever ass...
