Book Stack 2

Nice, huh? I actually tried to cut down on flash glare this time. Still not perfect though.

More Zombies From Permuted Press

These two are both from Permuted Press, purveyor of all things zombie and apocalyptic. I featured two other Permuted Press books in my previous Book Stack post, both were really good so I decided to get some more. On the left is Every Sigh, The End by Jason Hornsby. I do not know anything about this one other than what I read on Amazon. Looks good though. On the right is a Zombie collection with some lovely cover art! Again I do not know much about it, but it sure looks good.

Surreal Botany and A Pulitzer Winner

I was talking to my dad via the magic of the telephone when he mentioned that he had just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. He recommended it to me. I bought it and read it this past Sunday. Here is my review as I emailed to my dad:

I thought it was Okay. 3 stars out of 5. I liked the language style, as if Hemingway and Brian Evenson’s love child wrote it. I thought that he did a good job of developing the bleakness and I liked that he left the characters nameless and that we never know why the earth is failing. However, the core of the story, the love between the man and his son, with a fablesque approach to the nature of good and evil is a bit shallow, maybe undeveloped is a better word. I think that a smoother transition between the father as the leader to the son would have been more interesting. The father just up and died, as if the publisher demanded a quicker ending (not that they did I am sure). Then the saving of the kid at the end, while clearly symbolic, seemed forced. The kid never really develops as a character, he is more of a prop for the man’s development. At least until the very end. Then we are expected to animate the kid-prop now that our protagonist is dead and follow him off into the unknown.

I ordered Surreal Botany directly from the publisher and I can not for the life of me remember where I heard about it. Anyhow, I read the first section (covering the surreal botany of the Americas) last night and I love it so far.

More Zombie Goodness

Two more zombie books, this time not from Permuted. World War Z seems to be quite popular (at least as compared to most of my other reading) as I have seen it the local chain bookstores and the cover splat says that it was an “Instant NY Times Bestseller”. How is that even possible? Does it mean that tens of thousands of books were purchased the minute the book hit the stores? Were people lined up for it? Just marketing I guess… Dead City is another unknown to me.

The Brothers Grimm and Kant, Together at Last

I bought the Kant book on a whim, motivated by my reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I bought the Grimm’s Fairy Tales to fill a gap in my cultural literacy. I learned on vacation that I do not really know any of these old fairy tales. Sure I know the outlines but that is it. This realization came about because we forgot to bring any books for my 4 year old son on our vacation (I had brought zombie books and they hardly seemed appropriate!). Without a book he wanted to hear a story. My wife told him Hansel and Gretel. As she told it, I realized that I knew none of the details! Now I am geared to remedy this.

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Behold the almighty stack:

I have read very little Borges and feel that this is a serious hole in my literary world, thus the Borges book. A quick quote from Borges:

Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing—more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

- From the Preface to the First Edition of A Universal History of Iniquity

The Pirsig book is very well-known. I can remember seeing it on my Dad’s bookshelf when I was growing up. I have always been interested in it.I know very little about it. Should be interesting.

I read about Permuted Press just this week via Jeff Vandermeer’s blog. In reality it was Matt from Enter the Octopus guest blogging for Jeff. The Undead: Headshot Quartet consists of four zombie novellas. Day by Day Armageddon is a zombocalypse novel written in the style of a journal. I am new to the zombie genre and look forward to both of these.

These two are both authors that I am familiar with. The Open Curtain is a novel by Brian Evenson, who I recently blogged about. I recently finished Evenson’s other published novel, Father of Lies. It was good though not great. I liked the method of exposition that he used, but the story was a bit forced and too bitter. It was all too obvious that the book was a not-too-thinly-veiled attack on the Mormon Church. (More background on this here if you want it.)

A World too Near is the second volume of The Entire and the Rose trilogy. Book one, Bright of the Sky, has set my expectations high. Kenyon has pulled off some epic world-building with a fascinating premise.

There it is. My first, though hopefully not last Book Stack post.

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