Volume 6, Issue 7
September 24, 2010

The Latest

Scott visited with living legend Jack Vance late last month. Jack played ukulele, talked jazz, & signed books. Everyone had a great time and we're already planning our next visit. More (and enlargeable) photos on our Just Arrived page (August)

We're looking forward to The Alternative Press Expo (APE). October 16-17th in San Francisco. If you see Scott in line for autographs, please say "Hi".

The photo tent construction is complete (shown here without cover or backdrop) and we're experimenting with lighting while photographing small batches of books.

Since our last newsletter, we've added over 75 photos (browse newly photographed items here), attended 16 signings/events (see our Just Arrived page), and posted countless new items to our inventory.

We now have nearly 10,000 items available through Biblio and over 7,000 through Amazon.

Scott & Tammie
Handee Books, LLC

• Star Island - Hiaasen
• Lady Chatterley's Lover - Lawrence
• Zombies vs. Unicorns - Black & Larbalestier (editors)
• Batman: Digital Justice - Moreno
• Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye - Morrison & Stewart
• Emiko Superstar - Tamaki & Rolston
• The Eater of Darkness - Coates
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

• The Passage - Cronin
• Four Freedoms - Crowley
• The Spies of the Balkans - Furst
• Objects of Worship - Lalumiere
• Freedom - Franzen
• Tinkers - Harding
• Pug - McCulloch & Espinoza
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

What Scott's Been Reading

Star Island is exactly what Carl Hiaasen's readers have come to expect from him: a tightly plotted caper novel populated by quirky characters who get what they deserve in the end. And like Hiaasen's previous books it's laugh-out-loud funny.

This time out Hiaasen takes on modern celebrity culture exemplified the train wreck lives of some of the rich and famous and media outlets such as TMZ and E! which report on them 24 hours a day. His focus character, at least at the start, is Cherry Pye, a hard-partying barely talented singer in the Britney Spears-Lindsay Lohan mold. As the book open Cherry has hit bottom professionally and those around her are pinning their hopes on an imminent comeback CD and tour. Cherry doesn't care about the work, though, as long as she can keep partying. And party she does, with the benefit of a stunt double, Ann DeLusia, who is paraded in front of the paparazzi whenever Cherry crashes. This works until one paparazzo, Bang Abbott, figures out the scheme.

Two criticisms: first, Hiaasen's character names are increasingly cartoonish. Cherry Pye? Maury Lykes? While I wouldn't accuse Hiaasen of contempt for his audience, these names show contempt for his subject. Which I admit may be the point. Second, the jacket copy betrays two pieces of information integral to the story, two pieces I wish had remained surprises. I rarely read jacket copy. I'm not sure why I read the flap on this book. Just dive into the book, whether you've read Hiaasen or not. You will be entertained. There are other writers mining the same vein: Tim Cockey, the late Donald E. Westlake, and occasionally Elmore Leonard. But nobody does quite what Carl Hiaasen does.

D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of those classics that, based purely on anecdotal evidence, most people know but few have actually read. The plot is familiar to nearly everyone: aristocratic Lady Constance Chatterley has an affair with one of her servants (most people misremember it as the gardener). Most are also aware of the controversy that surrounded the book's publication in 1930. Labeled pornographic, Lady Chatterley's Lover wasn't published in unedited form in Lawrence's native England until 1960.

So, the book's checkered past set aside, is it porn and more importantly, is it any good? To the first question: yes and no. Some will likely find it offensive, others will find it quaint. Lawrence's work doesn't have a patch on the offerings of this age of widely-available erotic entertainment. In the literary world, though, time hasn't diminished the book's power to shock.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is still a powerful novel on several levels: the visceral, with its blunt descriptions of sexuality and its raw language; the societal due to its taboo-breaking portrait of a marriage's end; and the cultural, in its depiction of class disparity and the English aristocracy's decline. Lawrence is sympathetic to his protagonists and not the least bit so to the higher classes. The only member of the upper class who fares well is Lady Chatterley's father, a self-made man.

Zombies vs. Unicorns is a new YA anthology edited by Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Tithe) and Justine Larbalestier (the Magic or Madness trilogy). The title tells it all: which are cooler, zombies or unicorns? It's an amusing premise, but like so many anthologies this is a spotty book. The book leads off with a story by Garth Nix, an author I admire. “The Highest Justice” is perfectly entertaining, but within a few days I'd forgotten everything about it. Ditto for “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Alaya Dawn Johnson. The chief virtue of this story for me is the chapter headings, all of which are titles of great songs. More memorable is “Purity Test” by Naomi Novik, which pits a snarky unicorn and a down-on-her-luck teen against an evil wizard named Otto Penzler (because Voldemort is too crazy a name). Zombies vs. Unicorns is serviceable entertainment for as long as it lasts, but most of it likely won't stick with you after you've put the book down.

Some graphic novels of note: I finally read my copy of Batman: Digital Justice after I met Pepe Moreno at the Cartoon Art Museum last spring. I'd avoided reading it because the computer-generated art has always looked cheesy to me (the book was published in 1990). After hearing Moreno discuss the process of the book's creation I became more interested and even more appreciative of the art. Moreno's work here looks like a cross between Richard Corben and Rick Veitch. The colors are incredibly rich, the lettering very readable and it appears to be typeset rather than computer generated. The story, set in a near-future world in which computers control everything, is poorly paced and the dialog, written by Doug Murray, is stilted. In addition, due to the complexity of the process, Moreno repeats panels or detail from panels in order to fill space. And the whole thing feels unedited, likely because corrections were next to impossible to make. In the end, despite the presence of at least two iconic images (the front cover, repeated near the end of the book, and the Time Magazine cover 3/4 of the way through) Batman: Digital Justice is a curiosity to be flipped through and admired rather than a book to be savored.

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye is the sequel to Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart's 2004 Seaguy. I probably should have re-read the first book before jumping into the present one, but despite my inability to recall details of the original I enjoyed the sequel. In it, the naïve and reluctant hero Seaguy goes up against Mickey Eye, the all-seeing Disney analog who just wants to make everyone happy. This surreal series is packed with quirky characters: Seaguy's true love She-Beard, his sidekick – the ghost of a sentient tuna named Chubby, and designs: Mickey Eye's minions (a Residents reference?) and is so Phildickian that the reader can't be certain of the reality of Seaguy's adventures. You can only be sure it's all real to him.

Emiko Superstar is another book from DC's hastily-cancelled Minx imprint. I haven't read a bad one yet. In this, Emi struggles with the ennui of summer and her own teenaged awkwardness. She finds herself through performance at an impromptu club called The Freak. The problem is that she's based her act on the troubled life of a woman for whom she babysits. Beautifully written by Mariko Tamaki and drawn in a clean-line style by Steve Rolston, this is near the top of the Minx list (the top two spots are still occupied by the “Janes” books by Castellucci and Rugg).

The Eater of Darkness is Robert M. Coates' first novel. Published in 1926, it is also the first work of surrealist fiction in English. I read and loved one of Coates' later novels, Wisteria Cottage a few years ago and I would recommend it over this - it's a compelling story within a more conventional structure – but if surrealism appeals to you or you just want something very different, try this.

Written in an energetic style which emulates the most lurid pulp fiction of the '20s, The Eater of Darkness is a science fiction murder mystery involving death rays and an accidental detective. Charles Dograr is a down-and-out looking for employment in 1920s New York. Touched by madness, he's about to be evicted and he can't even find his employment agency – it keeps moving without leaving a forwarding address. While roaming the halls of his boarding house one night, Charles stumbles upon a mad scientist, The Eater of Darkness, who has developed a spectacularly effective x-ray machine which allows him to peer through objects miles in the distance. Unaware of his role, Charles becomes an accomplice to murder.

I fundamentally enjoyed this book, though I generally find surrealism and stream-of-consciousness in literature tiresome. Despite its brevity it took me nearly a week to finish. That said, I recommend The Eater of Darkness to fans of really weird fiction. Try it also if you enjoyed Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, which bears a passing resemblance to this.

I've been listening to “Escape Pod”, an SF short story podcast. It's been a great way to experience some stories I wouldn't have otherwise come across or even to discover some new writers. Garth Nix' “Infestation” is a very enjoyable first person account of vampire hunting. The vampires here have a scientific rationale. “Come All Ye Faithful” by Robert J. Sawyer uses as its central character the only Catholic priest on Mars. The ending's somewhat predictable but the story is no less enjoyable for that. “Little Ambushes”, by the unknown (to me) Joanne Merriam is a rarity: a nearly perfect story. It's about an artist teaching an alien how to paint in order that it may understand the human experience. Beautifully written and featuring a believably alien alien, the only thing that keeps “Little Ambushes” from perfection is that it ends abruptly.