The graphic novel of the acclaimed animated film (which I will hopefully see tonight). And a detail page:

(more…)

(Okay, so I know this is the one everyone will be excited about, and I am, too–after all, I have a story in it, but frankly the book that’s got me way thrilled right now is the next one mentioned…)

Yeah, what happened to being back next week? Well, a couple days of going to bed at 1am instead of 11pm, combined with exercise in the afternoons and melatonin before sleeping, has me feeling much more like a normal human being.

So here’re books received and graphica received, with wombat contest winner Monday afternoon. Enjoy! (I’ll be curious to have your thoughts on some of these titles…)

(more…)

I’ve just posted a piece on Cat’s novel Palimpsest on Omnivoracious, including an exclusive “excerpt”. Okay, so it’s actually a deleted scene, but even better! Check it out.

My feature on Tan’s latest. I love this guy’s work.

The quality and subtlety of both the black-and-white and color art reflects a deep understanding of how to use space. Nothing feels cluttered, everything feels balanced. And, in encountering Tan’s written stories for the first time, I was pleased to find that text doesn’t detract from his work.

My review of The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes just went up at The Washington Post Book World. I really wanted to like this book more but the unevenness of tone and passivity of the narrator ultimately deep-sixed it for me (despite liking the opening and the title characters).

I thought Barnes’ first novel was great fun and felt really bad about having to write this review. I look forward to reading more by Barnes and plan to seek out whatever his third novel turns out to be, although I won’t be reviewing it unless I like it.

Finally, I’ll just note that if you don’t read the second half of the novel it becomes glaringly obvious in your review–I don’t believe reviewers for a couple of trade publications actually read the whole thing.

…a book I’ve been looking forward to for awhile now. It’s beautifully designed.

When you factor in some other releases this year, it’s got to be considered an intriguing year for cross-genre noir/detective fiction. These books are all different, and yet all have some aspect of noir with urban settings.

(more…)

I invited writers who made Amazon’s SF/F Top 10 for 2008 to send me their own year’s best list. The latest, from J.M. McDermott, is now up on the Amazon book blog. It’s a function of genre being a small pond that two anthologies I co-edited with Ann are on the list. Sometimes there’s no getting away from that kind of interconnectivity, and it’s always hard to know how to deal with it. But it also balances out: despite being on Amazon’s top 10 list several times in the past, I am not eligible to be on it so long as I do work for their blog.

I’ve also reproduced his list below, without his annotations. What would you add to it? What do you disagree (politely) with?

(more…)

Below find a short piece I wrote for the Tallahassee Democrat awhile back on Tamar Yellin’s first novel. It was in honor of her doing a reading at Ann’s synagogue. At the time, the hardcover was out from Toby Press and had gotten good reviews from the library journals. Since then, the book has won a $100,000 literary prize, was bought for an absurd amount of money in Germany, and been a finalist for other prizes. It was published in trade paperback by St. Martin’s this summer while Ann and I were in Europe, which is why I forgot to blog about it at the time.

(more…)

I just posted the secret New Year’s resolutions of the detectives featured in new novels by Charlie Huston, Paul Tremblay, John Meaney, and Jedediah Berry. A little teaser:

Huston: Get the decomposed dead guy smell out of my favorite jeans.
Tremblay: I will steal my mother’s clown pants. That is not code for anything with a deeper meaning. No one likes a clown.
Meaney: I will not be disturbed by the strange ideas of other zombies.
Berry: Leave a few typos uncorrected. A report with typos is a report with character, Detective Sivart always says.

As for Finch, making his debut much later this year, here’re his resolutions:

(more…)

My introduction to the limited edition of The Unblemished, from Earthling Publications…

(more…)