Volume 7, Issue 3
March 31, 2011

The Latest

We've been busy doing some catching up around the office as Tammie just got back from a week visiting relatives in Texas.

WonderCon, Northern California's largest comic book and pop culture convention, is this weekend. Scott will be there, with his boxes of books. If you see him, be sure to say "Hello".

Since our last newsletter, we've added nearly 100 photos (browse newly photographed items here), attended 12 signings/events (see our Just Arrived page), and posted countless new items to our inventory.

We now have nearly 10,000 items available through ABE & Biblio, over 7,000 through Amazon and nearly 100 available through our new e-commerce site.

Scott & Tammie
Handee Books, LLC

• All Clear - Willis
• The Girl Who Played With Fire - Larsson
• A Shortcut in Time - Dickinson
• With or Without - Dickinson
• Madrox mini series - David
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Rowling
• With or Without - Dickinson
• The Town That Forgot How to Breathe - Harvey
• The Better to Hold You - Sheckley
• This Dark Endeavor - Oppel
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

What Scott's Been Reading

It's been a year since I read Blackout, the first part of Connie Willis' massive time travel novel. I was concerned before I started the second part, All Clear, that I'd have trouble remembering characters and situations from the previous book. Willis wrote the two parts to be a single long novel, not a series, and Blackout ended abruptly. All Clear has no prefatory material to catch the reader up. Within 50 pages I found the book's rhythm and fell right back into the story with no trouble remembering who these people are. In the end I found All Clear an excellent conclusion.

All Clear picks up right where its predecessor left off. Polly, Eileen (aka Merope) and Mike are time traveling historians still stuck in Blitz-era London and Mr. Dunworthy, Colin and the team in 2060 are coming to the realization that something is wrong with the time travel process. As the team in 2060 works to return the historians to their own time it becomes apparent the three focus characters are stuck for a reason, either because they're responsible for a significant change to history or because they're supposed to make a change. The narrative gains speed as the book goes on, moving with screwball comedy-like pace by the point everything comes together. And everything does come together, in startling and unexpected ways. This is a great book about how our actions have consequences, about how we're all connected. It's funny, well-researched and quite romantic. I can see myself reading it again.

I love feedback. I love knowing that somebody is reading this, that someone has taken the time to respond to something I've written in this column. Last month I heard from several people, one of whom disagreed with my opinion of a book (and sorry, I can't contact an author at your request to let them know you didn't like their book) – and a couple who felt I'd given short shrift to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a book with which they'd really connected. I liked the story but thought the book was poorly written, or at least poorly translated. Despite my misgivings about that book, I picked up The Girl Who Played with Fire, and found it a superior thriller.

Many of the problems I had with the first book are present in the second: the clunky writing, the meticulous and boring detail (there's a nearly two-page Ikea shopping list 100 pages in). The excessive detail serves to make the world the characters inhabit more concrete, or so my friend Nik believes. I just find it too much. Larsson wasn't Dickens, or Tolstoy, or Hugo, or any other author writing about a world which no longer exists. Furthermore, his language lacks poetry. For most of the book it is merely descriptive. That said, I think I understand why these books connect with people. The stories Larsson tells – this time it's about the international sex trade – are truly compelling and his characters, particularly Lisbeth Salander, are great creations. And a sign of progress with this book is the translation, which seems a bit more graceful; in particular, the dialogue is more naturalistic than in the first book.

Will I read Larsson's third book, The Girl That Kicked the Hornet's Nest? Probably, and probably before June, when I'll have an opportunity to meet Larsson's partner, Eva Gabrielsson.

Charles Dickinson's first novel, Waltz in Marathon, appeared in the mid-'80s and heralded the arrival of a literary talent with much potential. Over the next 15 years Dickinson published several more novels and a short story collection, With or Without (which I recently read) that were probably not seen by as many people as they should have been. In particular his time travel novel A Shortcut in Time delivers on this promise, packing a real emotional wallop. Sadly it's Dickinson's last book to date.

A Shortcut in Time is science fiction of the Ray Bradbury or Jack Finney variety, the kind that relies on character development rather than hard scientific rationale to advance the story. The main character, Josh Winkler, stumbles upon a method of time travel which doesn't involve a machine. A talented artist with little ambition, Josh has a comfortable home life: he's married to the town doctor and they have a teenage daughter who's fundamentally a good kid. Josh becomes obsessed with his discovery, and as word of his eccentricity spreads around his small town his wife's reputation and practice begin to suffer.

The tension in the story arrives with Constance Moreau, a 15 year-old from 1908 who has little understanding of her plight, and the disappearance of Josh's daughter Penny. The ending of the book infuriated some, but it's a logical culmination and it worked for me. If you enjoyed Finney's Time and Again or Richard Matheson's Bid Time Return (aka Somewhere in Time) track down a copy of this wonderful book.

Dickinson's short story collection, With or Without, is somewhat of a mixed bag, as many collections are. Some of the ten stories here are little more than sketches or writing exercises, easily digested and quickly forgotten. One, “My Livelihood“, actively annoyed me with its slacker protagonist. Two, however, stand out as simply excellent pieces of writing. “Risk” gets the most press as it won an O. Henry Prize. It's about a group of friends who meet regularly for game night and it has a great ending. My favorite, however, is “Bill Boston”, about a man who refuses to accept the death of a childhood friend; despite being told of Bill Boston's death, the protagonist continues to catch glimpses of him out of the corner of his eye. It's a poignant story that made me reconsider my feelings about social media.

Most of the comics I've been reading lately have been undemanding superhero or adventure material, with few standouts. Peter David's a fine genre writer who can write to order without appearing to “grind it out”. His stories are characterized by his use of humor. His five-issue “Madrox” series combines noir with the occasional fight scene as the title character travels from NYC to Chicago in search of his own killer (there's a long explanation behind the last part of that sentence). The story is let down somewhat by art that appears to be heavily photo-referenced if not outright traced in some parts. By-and-large, though, this is a fun series. Incidentally, David wrote one of the best TV tie-ins I've ever read: Imzadi, a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel.