Corey Redekop's Blog, page 51

Get me some blog recognition! And others, sure, why not?

Hey, did you know that Book Blog Appreciation Week is coming up? I know, I know, where has the year gone?

Anyways, nomination for your favourite book blogs are here until August 15, and although it would not do for me to toot my own horn:

toot.

So, go vote, have fun, and get some of those blogs you like some regonition.

Critical Monkey Contest - update the first [UPDATED]

[UPDATE:] I've put a new entrant into the first update, as I really shouldn't have published this until the official one-month anniversary of August 2, 2009. Welcome to the jungle, Betty! And as Betty is located in Missouri, this contest has officially gone international! Whooo!
Well, it's been a wonderful first month! And now that the shakes from my brush with Twilight have completely subsided, let's go to the leaderboard!

Acceptance (seven reviews)
Depression (six reviews)
Anger (five reviews)
G

Critical Monkey Contest - update the first

Well, it's been a wonderful first month! And now that the shakes from my brush with Twilight have completely subsided, let's go to the leaderboard!

Acceptance (seven reviews)
Depression (six reviews)
Anger (five reviews)
Guilt (four reviews)
Bargaining (three reviews)
Denial (two reviews)
Shock (one review) gypsysmom, Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee Corey Redekop, Twilight by Stephenie MeyerSteve Zipp, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

So, two souls (excepting myself) brave enough t

An open letter to the person did not like my review of Twilight

Recently, I put together an admittedly snarky but sincerely heartfelt review of Stephenie Meyer's pop-phenomenon Twilight. It was not complimentary. Such is my right.

Now, someone has commented on it (via the comments section of the Chapters website, where I lay a copy of the review). I would not normally respond to hate mail (or at the very least actively dislike mail), but I thought I'd take a moment in this instance to respond. As the author put this up on a public site, I assume he or she doe

Monkey droppings - The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell

Today, a quick little review, free of lengthy quotations. I'm sorry, I recently moved and can't find my copy.





The Resurrectionist
by Jack O'Connell

I have not read a great deal of Jack O'Connell's past work. I really dug his Word Made Flesh , a bloody dark mystery rich with virtuoso passages and rich literary themes. But as with many cult authors, tracking down his other novels is usually quite a difficult task. Needless to say, when a copy of his latest showed up on my doorstep, I was quite happy

Monkey Droppings - the visual edition!

I've come across some rather amazing images lately, and rather than enjoy them by myslef, I thought I'd lump them all together and bring some very creative artists to your attention. If you don't like these, well, at least you've learned something about me, and what turns my crank.
First (via Geekologie), we have the immortal cartoon sad sack Charlie Brown, immortalized by artist Tim O'Brien as a living breathing human. Prepare to be amazed and likely horrified.

Next, continuing the cartoon-to-hum

Monkey Droppings - The Abortion by Richard Brautigan

What? A book about abortion? Outrageous! I'll never read your blog again!

I'm assuming that some readers who inadvertently come across this site may have that reaction. Now that they've left the building, let's continue.
The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966
by Richard Brautigan

We don't use the Dewey decimal classification or any index to keep track of our books. We record their entrance into the library in the Library Contents Ledger and then we give the book back to its author who is free to p

Monkey droppings - Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

On today's menu; spies and intrigue, with a side of 1960s glamour.





Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks (writing as Ian Fleming)

I like James Bond. Hell, I want to be James Bond. I want to romance women and kill henchmen and foil schemes for world domination. I live vicariously through my television whenever a Bond film is on, and will willingly sit through every single one of them again and again. Yes, even A View to a Kill, wherein the now-octogenarian secret agent seduces a twenty-something woman

Monkey droppings - Necrophenia by Robert Rankin

The monkey has been a bit lax of late, up all night carousing and so forth, so he's going to blast off a few quick reviews to catch up. He apologizes for the brevity, unless you like it, in which case, that was the plan all along.


Necropheniaby Robert Rankin

It is a fact well known to those who know it well that very bright lights presage trouble. The arrival of aliens and booger men and bogey-beasts from the bottomless pit. Those ghostly things that come out of the televisions set. And dawn raids

Critical Monkey entry #1 - Twilight, or, Bella feels chagrined and Edward chuckles.

For my first entry in my personal Critical Monkey list, I thought I'd go big or go home, and tackle a publishing juggernaut of almost unprecedented size: 
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer.
Why I might hate it: Let's face it, a near-forty-year-old man is not the target demographic for a tale of high school vampire romance. Also, Stephen King hated it, and while his output may have waned over the years, the man's a born storyteller with a true grasp of the craft of writing, and I'm inclined to follow hi