Volume 6, Issue 3
March 25, 2010

The Latest

The 31st Annual Mission Hills Paperback Show was Sunday, March 21st. Most of the usual suspects were in attendance, including William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson, Gary Brandner, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Richard Lupoff and Felice Picano. Sadly, previously announced guests Fred Pohl, Ray Bradbury, Richard Christian Matheson and David Gerrold had to cancel. Attending the show for the first time, to the best of my knowledge, was one of Scott's favorite horror writers: Jack Ketchum. Enter "Mission Hills 2010" into the "keywords" field to search for new and signed items we brought back. And keep checking back for more stuff - we've only put up a very small fraction of what was acquired or signed at the convention so far.

We're still clearing out some of our lower priced items (grab up these clearance items while you still can).

Don't forget to mark your calendars! We've been confirmed as dealers at BayCon 2010 (May 28-31, Santa Clara, CA).

In the past month we've added over 80 photos (browse newly photographed items here), attended 8 signings/events (see our Just Arrived page), and posted countless new items to our inventory.

We now have over 11000 items available through Biblio and over 7000 through Amazon.

Scott & Tammie
Handee Books, LLC

• The Child Buyer - Hersey
• Blackout - Willis
• The Museum of Innocence - Pamuk
• Her Fearful Symmetry - Niffenegger
• The Long Man - Englehart
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

• Solar - McEwan
• Four Freedoms - Crowley
• The Somnambulist - Barnes
• The Word of God - Disch
• Innocents Aboard - Wolfe
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

What Scott's Been Reading

A few weeks ago some friends and I played a game online in which we quickly listed 15 books that have stuck with us over the years. There was some overlap (books by Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin and The Lord of the Rings showed up on multiple lists), and a bunch of titles I’d already read, but there was still a couple of years’ worth of reading recommendations.

The first I picked up (I ran across a copy the next day at a book sale) was John Hersey’s The Child Buyer, It’s Pulitzer Prize winner Hersey’s contribution to science fiction.

Wissey Jones comes to the small town of Pequot with the intent of purchasing a child. He settles on Barry Rudd, described as fat, immature, and a genius. The story is told in the form of minutes from a State Senate Committee meeting on the subject and comes off as a bit stodgy. But get past the unsavory notion of buying a child - the novel dispenses with it quickly - and The Child Buyer becomes a satire on our educational system and the value of persons. Though virtually everybody in the book expresses disgust at Jones’ attempts to buy Barry at the outset of the book, most are won over by the end. What convinces many of the characters in the book that this is a good idea is, sadly, unsurprising.

Blackout is Connie Willis’ first novel in nearly a decade. I recommend it highly, but be forewarned: it’s the first half of a two-part book, with the second part due in the fall.

Three historians travel from 2060 to 1940s England to witness key moments in World War 2: Dunkirk, the Blitz and the evacuation of children to the English countryside. Even before the three focus characters begin their assignments there’s evidence that all is not well with the time travel process: jumps are being rescheduled without explanation and there is growing concern with “slippage”, that is, touching down some distance, either physically or temporally, from their intended destination. The three travelers soon find themselves unable to return to their own time - the doors don’t open and no rescue teams come. And though one of the key tenets of Willis’ approach to time travel is that historians can’t change history, one of the protagonists, Mike, becomes concerned that he might have done just that by becoming involved in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Willis is clearly in love with this period of history, and her story is almost just an excuse to teach. She alternates chapters between the three historians, but she also throws the occasional incident in which seems (at this point) to have nothing to do with the main story. She also follows another character, an ambulance driver, the origin of whom we haven’t yet discovered. Willis is such an engaging writer and has such a great track record that I’m more than willing to wait a few months for the ending. If you haven’t read Connie Willis, you might want to wait, too, and read the two books back-to-back. Together, though, they’ll likely clock in a over a thousand pages, so...

I’d been looking forward to Orhan Pamuk’s new novel, The Museum of Innocence since I heard Pamuk interviewed at a Berkeley Arts and Lectures event in October. I’m fascinated by the impulse to collect (anything), and that impulse is central to the story Pamuk tells here. For me, the exploration of collecting overshadows the story itself.

In 1975 Istanbul, 30 year-old Kemal conducts an affair with his much younger distant cousin, Fusun. The relationship is inappropriate for many reasons, not the least of which is Kemal’s engagement to Sibel. Though the affair with Fusun is a short one Kemal is haunted, to the point of obsession, by the simultaneously more carefree and passionate time in his life the interlude represents. The most interesting aspects of the book are the recreation of Istanbul of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and the seemingly random objects Kemal has collected to help him recall the one passionate relationship in his life. There’s something beautiful about his recollection of a time, place or event arising from the description of a matchbook, ticket stub or other relic. Where the book disappoints is in the character of Kemal; a true narcissist, he exhibits little regret for anyone else’s pain. Also, though the first 250 pages of this long and necessarily wordy novel - Kemal is an unforgivable narcissist, after all - are beautiful in their description of a place as exciting as London or San Francisco of the ‘60s, the next couple of hundred pages are just wordy. If you like Pamuk, you’ll want to read this book. If you’ve never read him, this is not the place to start. Try Black Book or White Castle (and never ask Pamuk what his favorite color is, should you meet him). Or read something by Hanif Kureishi.

Audrey Niffenegger has successfully avoided the sophomore slump with her new full-length novel, Her Fearful Symmetry (she’s also written and illustrated two bizarre books, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress). It’s a schizophrenic book, partly an exploration of the relationship between twins, partly a story of grieving the loss of a loved one and partly a study of the effects of mental illness on a sick person’s loved ones. All this is dealt with in the context of a traditional British ghost story.

Upon her death, Elspeth Noblin (a rare book dealer; off to a good start) bequeaths her London flat and her wealth to her two young nieces, Julia and Valentina. The girls are mirror twins: physically identical in every way but opposite, e.g. Valentina’s internal organs are reversed. Her will is a slap in the face to the girls’ mother, Elspeth’s estranged twin, Edie, whose relationship with her sister was once as close as her own daughters’. The first third of the book is concerned with Julia and Valentina’s exploration of London, of their first extended time away from home and of Valentina’s growing discontent with their abnormally close relationship and desire to do something - anything - without her sister in tow. The first part also introduces Elspeth’s ghost who, through sheer force of will, develops the ability to communicate with the girls and with her grieving lover, Robert, who lives in the flat below. All this, despite the creepiness of the twins’ relationship, is presented in a fairly light manner, and the descriptions of Elspeth’s growing power are delightful. An upstairs neighbor, Martin, at first seems superfluous to the story but provides occasional humor, and his strained marriage acts as a counterpoint to Julia and Valentina’s deteriorating relationship.

Then Niffenegger introduces a cat and the story takes a dark turn.

Admittedly, this isn’t a tightly plotted book. The story’s all over the place, Niffenegger works hard to turn her beloved Highgate Cemetery, to which Elspeth’s flat is adjacent and where Robert volunteers while writing his thesis, into a character, and the growing attraction between 20 year-old Valentina and 37 year-old Robert doesn’t really go anywhere. But the characters are well-drawn and Highgate Cemetery is a fascinating place. Even if one of the plot elements introduced in the final third of the book is confusing, this is still a worthwhile read. I can’t comment on the ending without ruining it, but I found it satisfying. Recommended to Neil Gaiman fans, in addition to those who enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife.

I have to admit I know nothing about the relationships of twins, so though I found the book believable if creepy, I can’t speak to its accuracy. I did hear a story recently about twin tennis players and though their relationship was presented in a much sunnier light it seemed to verify some of the elements of Niffenegger’s book.

I read and loved Steve Englehart’s first novel, The Point Man, when I was in high school. Englehart had written some of my favorite Batman and Dr. Strange comics; his stuff was always different from the most of the assembly-line stuff of the ‘70s and early ‘80s. After I picked up an advance copy of his newest, The Long Man, I reread his first book. It didn’t hold up. It wasn’t well plotted and it was overwritten. But with its kitchen sink approach to storytelling it retained an undeniable verve and the setting, late-70s San Francisco, was dead-on as far I could remember.

Englehart’s written several kid’s books and a slew of comics in the intervening years, and he’s solved the problems that plagued his first book. The Long Man is a direct sequel to his earlier novel, and it retains that kitchen sink feel to the plotting while correcting the kitchen sink approach to the prose. Englehart’s also become more deft with the infodumps. He recounts the major events of The Point Man quickly and incorporates explanations of magick (the “k” is used to distinguish true magic from parlor tricks and stage magic), astrology and mythology without bringing the story to a grinding halt. His protagonist, Max August, is a little too good to be true - sharp-witted, permanently 35 and irresistible to women - but that’s true of most pulp heroes. The Long Man is a rollicking novel that harkens back to the pulp era. There’s little depth here, though Englehart manages to slip in a few political asides, but that’s not really why books like this are read. Recommended to fans of the hero pulps and those who enjoy well written urban fantasy.

Reading now: Solar by Ian McEwan.