Storm Front (Book 1 of the Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher

I snagged this book from Roommate before he had a chance to read it. He’s not a sci-fi/fantasy fan, but he wants to start reading those genres (“on his own terms,” he says, and I’m not sure what that means). The Dresden files appealed to him because they’re urban fantasy, set in a Chicago where you can find a wizard in the phone book (although only one) and where the CPD has seen fit to create (although understaff, apparently) a special unit to investigate the more unexplainable crimes.

The Dresden Files appealed to me because I knew they’d been turned into a Sci-Fi Channel show, and with the demise of the Sopranos, Studio 60, Jericho (or maybe not) and several other “investment” shows, I have some TiVo space for a new one. And so far, I’ve had good luck with Sci-Fi.

Maybe the television show is better. I was fairly unimpressed with Storm Front, which read muddy and odd, like Butcher had a sloppy editor or perhaps one who’d read several Dresden novels and therefore wasn’t as critical of the holes in the world that Butcher created. I didn’t buy in from the get go.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden morphs from noir-ish private eye to a Dumbledore-style wizard replete with staff and wand, and the mash-up never feels natural. He’s funny. He’s attractive in a Snape sort of way. I’d date him. But I just don’t “believe in” him. And both fantasy and noir conventions abound. The plucky (and short—always short) female copy exiled to the weirdo crimes division; Murphy’s a cardboard cut-out of the chick cop with the chip on her shoulders and a soft underbelly. Harry has a spirit helper, a pervy troublemaker named Bob, who reads like just about every bumbling Igor. Although Harry is undoubtedly one of the “good guys,” he’s misunderstood by the White Council (the magic guardians) and they have their eyes on him (in the form of the gruff Morgan), and he’s always getting in trouble. Again, is any magical hero ever understood and supported by the powers-that-be? (See another famous Harry)

Some of the plot feels fresh and interesting (a crack-like drug that gives junkies the sort of Third Sight normally only afforded those with supernatural proclivities) and some… not so much (the pizza-loving spirit informant? Too easy.)

Maybe the books get better. I’m already skeptical of TV the series. The cast looks like a Bennetton ad, even though the book creates fairly white-bread characters. Harry is wayyyyy more attractive than he needs to be, likewise Murphy (who’s Hispanic in the series and fairly Irish and stout in the book). Morgan, who has a Highlander-style sword and ponytail in the book, is black and hot. I admire Sci-Fi’s consistent attention to presenting multicultural casts; I’m more freaked by the babe factor.

There are nine books in the series. I’ll probably pick up one more before I make a final decision. There are plenty of serieses that get good a couple books in.

Briga-DOOM!: A Kate London Mystery by Susan Goodwill

See the full disclosure statement from Getze's Big Numbers. I don't know Goodwill as well, but she's part of the same posse.

You know, I am pretty sure if I caught my future husband, the mayor, caught with his pants down making whoopie to the town bitch, I would probably mow down his porta-potty with my golf cart, too. I'm just hoping that my local judge wouldn't send me to anger management with the off-her-gourd Dr. Al.

So what if Mayor Ass turns up dead in the trunk of my car, right? I can handle it. And so can Kate London.

I really enjoyed this breezy mystery featuring Kate London, newly returned to home town Mud Lake to be closer to Aunt Kitty. Kitty, formerally a B-movie bombshell, is the real star of the show with her Kool-Aid hair colored hair topped with a fez, her passion for musical theater and bongos, and her side-kick, the equally whacky Verna.

Goodwill is a great writer with an excellent knack for humor and pushing the limits of "just how bad can it get?" The book is really well crafted and moves along at a strong clip. The interwoven mysteries had me guessing until the end. I wish the love-connection hadn't been made so early on, especially because this is a series and I know the second book is in the can. I'd be more than willing to wait through two or more new books before Kate gets her Man.

I think I am supposed to refrain from calling this chick-lit, but it's hard to not go there. If Kate mentioned her Jimmy Choos one more time. . . but see, that's just a personal peeve of mine. I dig some good ol' chick-lit now and again, and this was more mystery than girl fare, but Lordy, am I the only woman in the world who's happy as can be in Payless?

Damn damn damn Carrie Bradshaw and the fact that she made "loves expensive shoes" shorthand for being feminine. Kate had it in spades before the shoe obsession.

Lou Used to Read a Lot More

Nothing like a trip down memory lane to make you both weepy and thrilled.

Lou used to read a lot more. Back before Katrina turned my brain into an ADD-plagued California Raisin, reading was pretty much my raison-d'etre. For a year after Katrina, I merely stacked books on my bedside table as I started and abandoned them. It's really only been in the last six months or so that I've been "able" to read.

And that's where Lou Reads comes in. Once upon a time, I used to keep a log (before blogs) of every book I read. Mostly, I did it for myself, but I also published it on my old school's website so that my technology-crazed students could see the handiwork of an old-fashioned reader. Now that I'm reading again, I thought I would pick up where I left off-- in a more public and more thorough form.

So I've revisited and published my old reading list for your skimming pleasure. I stopped counting at 100 books. And what a gas it was to revisit my entries from some of my favorite books like Empire Falls and Life of Pi and Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. Re-reads of classics like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Princess Bride. Surprises like Chang and Eng and A Year of Wonders.

Every book stirs a memory of a time and place in my life. I read the bulk of Love Warps the Mind a Little in the bed of the man that I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I bought Lady Gregory's Toothbrush in a small bookstore in Sligo, Ireland. The only books I was able to devour post-Katrina were genre pulp fiction like Tom Corcoran's Gumbo Lindo and Dean Koontz's Frankenstein.

And so it goes, right?

Today would have been the 81st birthday of Allan Ginsberg. When I was a fresh freshman in college, I tried to join the college radio station staff (and now, with my crazy passion for all things NPR, I'm so sorry that I wigged out). My first assignment: to interview Ginsberg at after a reading he was doing at the Blue Note with Ray Manzarak of the Doors. Ginsberg attended my college and was a rather unhappy alum. When I approached him with my tape recorder, he granted the interview, but proceeded to answer every question with, well, let's just say the kind of answers that one cannot broadcast on any radio station. He was, in short, mean and vulgar. After listening to the absolutely unusable interview the following morning, I went to the station, turned in my press card and my tape recorder and called it a day.

So I've never been a big fan.

Today, a local guy I vaguely know decided to make it his mission to travel around to all the coffee shops in the neighborhood and read Ginsberg poetry in honor of the birthday. He'd studied with Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets. It annoyed me at the time-- I was on the phone with my roommate trying to get the skinny on why his stepfather had been admitted to the hospital with an egregiously high heart rate-- but in retrospect, it's just another reason that Louisville is a neat place. That being said, my still-bruised-after-fifteen-years ego wanted to ask the guy, "But was he mean to you?"

I'm still not a big fan. After having spent this year teaching American Lit, I realize all the more that he doesn't wear well over time. Whitman sang the body-- even the naughty bits-- with more worship. Thoreau actually built the cabin in the woods rather than just dreamed of it. Even Bukowski, who was a contemporary, got to the piss and shit of mundane life in a more honest way.

But happy birthday and RIP anyway. Any poet who inspires people to spend their day wandering town like a troubadour is all right by me.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
-- From "America" by Allan Ginsberg

Big Numbers by Jack Getze

Full disclosure: I’ve known Jack Getze for around five years. He’s a dear friend for whose writing career I’ve been a big cheerleader. I can’t even pretend to be unbiased about this book. Heck, I’m even mentioned in the acknowledgements. “Lou Reads” isn’t meant to be a forum to promote my friends’ books, but I just got back from dropping in at Writers Retreat Workshop, where I caught up with a bunch of folks, many of whom have published books since I last saw them. So I’ll most likely be tackling some Friends-of-Lou’s books in the coming weeks.

I’m still a little unclear as to what a “full-boat grin” is. I just Googled it and came up with a blog entry about Big Numbers. Indiana Jones has his whip and Luke Skywalker has his light saber, but for Austin Carr, the hero (or antihero) of Jack Getze’s first book, Big Numbers, the “full-boat Carr grin” is his weapon of choice.

(Is it full-boat, as in a fishing charter captain’s grin when he’s happy to have a full boat? Or full-boat, as in the grin’s so big it looks like a boat? Full boat almost sounds like a poker term.)

Big Numbers opens with Carr in trouble. Big trouble. On a boat duct-taped to a fishing pole with a 600 lb giant tuna at the other end of the line kind of trouble. Mr. Blabbermouth apparently wants to kill Carr with a bit of panache. Just as Carr’s about to go sailing over the rail, we flash back to the events leading up to his big nap with the fishies. And no surprise—it’s hard-boiled thriller, after all—it’s a redhead.

Carr is a down-on-his luck Jersey Shore stockbroker who’s $58K behind on his child support payments. His wife has issued a restraining order until Carr can make the payments. In the meantime, he’s living out of a rusty camper in the parking lot of Luis’s Mexican restaurant—a convenient back yard for a man who likes his tequila shots doubled and in the morning—when he finds out that his “monster” client is terminally ill and has a red-headed knockout girlfriend who would rather not wait for her inheritance. Trouble ensues.

One can only hope that Carr has hellagood health insurance with Shore Securities. He makes no fewer than four trips to the hospital during the course of the book.

Big Numbers is funny and dark. Getze has a ton of fantastic zinger lines that make me so proud to know him. I have a soft spot for assholes, and Carr is a narrator who is both conflicted and decidedly wrong-headed (and downright shitty) at times. And while to some degree he’s almost a caricature (Getze cites Bugs Bunny and Vince Vaughn as inspirations), more often his serious and nearly-fatal flaws make him feel real.

It’s a quick read, a perfect beach book. I read the last half in a single sitting. And—I say this with no bias at all—Big Numbers was published by a relatively small press and the book is not getting the attention it deserves. It’s easily as good as most of the series mystery/thrillers that my family devours by the dozens. The book looks deceptively like the self-published crap you find in local bookstores. It’s a shame; what’s inside is first-rate stuff.

Visit Jack Getze's website.

A Dirty Job: A Novel by Christopher Moore

There’s no way in Hell Mike Rowe would take on Charlie Asher’s dirty job, not even if there was a free baseball cap involved. Which there isn’t. In fact the only things Charlie seems to get for free in exchange for his services as a “Death Merchant” are a couple of hellhounds to protect his toddler Sophie from the Sewer Harpies, a copy of the Great Big Book of Death, and some excellent deals on the estates of dead people for his thrift store in San Francisco.

And actually, with the exception of a few bloody run-ins with the Sewer Harpies and various ancient incarnations of Death, the job isn’t all that dirty in the Mike Rowe sense of the word.

Christopher Moore remains among my favorite contemporary writers. As a reader (and a writer) who surfs between literary and genre, I am satisfied by Moore on both fronts. Many people can tell an engaging and amusing genre story, but few can tell one with such literary panache.

I haven’t read the entire Moore catalogue, but A Dirty Job has taken its place at #2 on my list of Moore books, just under Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. You don’t get much better than Lamb for linked humor and profundity, and while A Dirty Job was thick with “I’ve got to read that line again” humor and there were a few moments of touching sorrow, it didn’t plumb the same philosophical quandaries as Lamb.

More importantly, A Dirty Job’s ending left me unsatisfied. Another book “ruined” (it’s hardly ruined so much as sullied) by a token romance tossed in as what seemed to be an afterthought. The romance, accompanied by its 14-inch high skull-faced squirrel minions, read like a hurried and chaotic response to some editor saying, “Chris, the book’s good, but it’s a downer for widowed Charlie to not have a love interest. Funny books should be uplifting.” The romance is neither funny nor uplifting, and it casts Beta Male Charlie in a decidedly shallow light. Really, Charlie? The hot redhead? You’ve got to be kidding me.

The one-dimensional redhead aside, you can’t beat Moore for “I wish I’d written that” characters and zingers. A Dirty Job is no exception. And perhaps readers less cynical than I—perhaps the ever-hopeful Beta Male readers— would consider the romance Charlie’s long overdue just reward.