Volume 6, Issue 4
May 21, 2010

The Latest

It's been a busy couple of months...

WonderCon, Northern California's largest comic book and pop culture event, was April 2nd - 4th. This year's guests included Joe Kubert, Adam Kubert, Darwyn Cooke, Murphy Anderson, Matt Wagner, Steve Englehart, Greg Rucka, Judd Winick, David Finch, Colleen Doran, Sergio Aragones (pictured, above, with Scott) and many others. Enter "WonderCon 2010" into the keywords field to bring up a partial list of items we had signed or picked up at the convention.

May 8th we had a belated "housewarming" at our new location. Just a little gathering for the volunteers who helped us move last year and/or that have helped us since. Everyone seemed to have a great time and there was even book cake (courtesy of the talented Laurel Cohen)!

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

April and May we were also busy upgrading our infrastructure. Which meant, among other things, that the photo station got turned into an IT station for the better part of a month. We're pleased to announce that the upgrade went smoothly (or as smoothly as these things ever can), the photo table has been restored, and we'll be back to posting inventory photos shortly.

BayCon 2010 is May 28th - 31st. We're busy preparing for our booth in the dealer's room and hope to see you there.

In the past two months attended 16 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

• Solar - McEwan
• Private Eye Grabote - Claveloux
• The Somnambulist - Barnes
• Marsbound - Haldeman
• Kill Kill Faster Faster - Rose
• Mike and Gaby’s Space Gospel - Russell
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

• Four Freedoms - Crowley
• The Word of God - Disch
• The Carpet Makers - Eschbach
• Red Rover - Houser
• Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell - Russell
• Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder - Nelson & Bayliss
• Model Home - Puchner
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

What Scott's Been Reading

Michael Beard, the central character of Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Solar, is one of the great bastards of recent literature.

As Solar begins, Beard is experiencing the dissolution of his fifth marriage. A lifelong philanderer, he’s racked up 11 affairs in the previous three years, but becomes jealous when his wife, Patrice, engages in one with the contractor who is remodeling their house. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, it’s clear that as he approaches 60 his best work is behind him. Curiously, his wife’s affair leads to a second act in the career of the ethically challenged physicist. The book examines the psychology behind Beard’s many bad decisions.

Don’t let me give you the impression that this is an unpleasant book about an unpleasant character. McEwan’s too good a writer for that, and neither Michael Beard nor Solar are one-note. In places this is a very funny book; I particularly enjoyed Beard’s trip to the Arctic to observe firsthand the effects of climate change and the final leg of his return trip in which he becomes involved in a real-life reenactment of an urban legend. A temporary shift in tone occurs about 100 pages in, and Solar becomes simultaneously queasy and hilarious, in the vein, of all things, “Pulp Fiction”. Toward the end of the book many of Beard’s bad decisions converge on him, and the effect is funny and cringe-inducing. I found myself rooting for the creep.

Solar is the second best book I’ve read about a self-absorbed middle aged man in the past year (the best is still Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist), but it is the first book published this year which fully engaged me. Highly recommended.

I recently read The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes because a copy showed up in my World Fantasy Convention gift bag. I vowed to at least sample everything in the bag, and I’m two books away from completing that task. I wasn’t aware that The Domino Men is a sequel to Barnes’ first book, The Somnambulist, and I don’t think my enjoyment of either was diminished by reading them out of order.

Barnes’ protagonist is Edward Moon, a brilliant sleuth in the mold of Sherlock Holmes, and a stage magician whose best performing days are long gone. Moon's Watson is the title character, a seven foot tall milk swilling mute, himself a mystery. No one knows his real name and his background is unknown. As the book opens, Moon and the Somnambulist are engaged by the authorities to investigate the murder of a horrifically bad actor and the subsequent disappearance of his mother. Moon is initially reluctant to take the case, as his previous adventure apparently ended badly.

From this starting point Barnes throws in some of my favorite elements of popular fiction: secret societies, real magic, cults, symbolic and secret architecture, and time travel. To describe any more of the plot would be to ruin it for a potential reader, so I’ll say only that if you enjoy the books of Sax Rohmer, Conan Doyle, Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman or the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, you’ll like this one. I can’t wait to see what Barnes does next. I just hope he brings back the Prefects.

I love the books published by Harlin Quist during the ‘70s. The best known is probably The Geranium on the Window Sill Just Died But Teacher You Went Right On. The Quist books are characterized by a childlike whimsy and distinguished by surreal graphics. I just came across one I’d never seen, Private Eye Grabote by Nicole Claveloux. It’s a short graphic novel about an unidentifiable critter who, after deciding to become a detective, tumbles through a series of surreal, color saturated adventures. There’s no real case to be solved and the translation probably isn’t very good. But the cartooning and the aforementioned color is glorious. Check out The Books of Harlin Quist; The unofficial website for Harlin Quist book fans for a short history of Quist’s experiences in publishing, a complete list (with pictures) of the books he shepherded into print, and unfortunately, his obituary. If you enjoy the current crop of “all-ages” comics from publishers such as Top Shelf and Oni, you’ll like a lot of Quist’s offerings.

Joe Haldeman’s Marsbound follows the experiences of 19 year-old Carmen Dula, a member of the first human colony on Mars. Carmen has the typical teenage troubles: parents who are alternately overprotective and absent, a bratty younger brother, body image issues. The first third of the novel (I read it serialized in three issues of Analog) is made enjoyable by the first person narration of Haldeman’s protagonist. Smart and resourceful and in full possession of teenage cynicism, she butts heads with the colonies’ administrator, Dargo Solingen. It’s Carmen’s reaction to this confrontation - a forbidden solo walk across the Martian landscape - that leads to the the real plot of the book.

There’s nothing about Marsbound that’s particularly ground breaking. Read it if you like Haldeman, or if you’ve read Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars too many times. It’s very well written comfort food.

I’ve long admired the films of Ken Russell. I love “Gothic”, “Altered States” and “Tommy”. I’ve even enjoyed some of his less-successful movies such as “Lair of the White Worm” and, yes, even “Lisztomania”. Always over-the-top and occasionally tasteless, his movies have a unique artistic sensibility. A Ken Russell film looks like a Ken Russell film and only a Ken Russell film (ok, “Altered States” is a little more conventional in its storytelling, but it still looks like a Ken Russell film). I picked up Mike and Gaby’s Space Gospel because Ken Russell’s name is on it. 50 pages was all I could take. Tammie will tell you I have a tough time abandoning a book. I’m always waiting for a bad book to get better, or I feel committed to a particular writer who has a good track record, or I think it’s “just me”. This time I couldn’t get past the puerile dialog (and that’s pretty much the entire book - puerile dialogue with a lack of descriptive passages). On the plus side, I did become interested in the author and have picked up a copy of his autobiography, Altered States.

Kill Kill Faster Faster has been on my reading pile for years. I’ll admit, being a fan of hardboiled crime stories, that I picked it up because of the title and the jacket copy. The title is apt - in this case, I got what I paid for.

It’s the story of Joey One-Way, released from prison after service 17 years of a 15-to-life stretch for killing is wife. While in prison Joey wrote a play based on his experiences inside which became a Broadway hit. He’s released early with the help of a Hollywood producer who has optioned the play and secured a position for Joey working on the script. The trouble begins almost immediately when Joey becomes involved with his patron’s wife. The story is a sordid one told in squalid prose. But it’s a compelling story made authentic by the quality of the prose. And as a satire of our media-driven society it works.

Fans of Chuck Palahniuk, Jim Thompson and some of the darker work of Joe Lansdale will enjoy this.

Reading now: almost finished with Model Home, the first novel by Eric Puchner. I’m enjoying it so much I was up til 5 the other morning reading it.