Doyle's Blood

"Blood", written by Roddy Doyle, is the first story in the new Stories anthology.  [Side Note: As enchanting as Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is, this anthology just keeps calling to me.  I think I'm going to alternate between reading a couple chapters of the novel with a story or two in the anthology]  It's a bizarre little tale, with its protagonist dreaming up initially a fairly plausible reason for wanting to drink blood -- anemia -- to just doing it because he wants to. 

I think the most interesting part of the tale is the repeated notion that the man who wants to drink blood -- or bite necks or have sex with most things -- is normal.  It ends with a twist that does make you think "...and then what happened?" as per Gaiman's introduction, my only hope is that with each of these stories, there is some sense of conclusion rather than ambiguous endings.

Summer Reading List

As I'm currently working my way through Carlos Ruiz Zafon's excellent The Shadow of the Wind, I've also been starting a pile of interesting new books to start tackling.  The one that keeps calling me is the new anthology, Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio; I've read the introduction, "Just Four Words" by Gaiman, and it's fairly enticing.  Also sitting on the pile is Justin Cronin's The Passage (although I'm probably going to read his previous novels, Mary & O'Neil and The Summer Guest, first), Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and finally set down to read Joe Hill's Horns.  I'm also eagerly anticipating China Mieville's new book, which I'm sure he titled just so he could say, "I'm going to realease the Kraken."

Thrilling Tales...

I've only watched the trailer so far and read some of his write up, but check out Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, it looks downright brilliant.  The art and design are gorgeous.

Unthoughts Unknown: Don't Piss On...

"The Edge", the second episode of the new Persons Unknown series, I thought was largely better than the first episode.  The pilot basically set up the situation and gave broad strokes toward the characters, this second episode gave us more showing the characters actually trying to deal a wee bit more with the situation.  It's also nice that we've finally got names for some of them, although I still think most of the relevant information on surface character background should have been related at their first dinner together.  Details and backstory naturally coming later, but it seemed like the usual introductions were only half-delivered.  The "microwave" fence, blinding white light, and driving back into the town after trying to esxape definitely gave off more vibes from The Prisoner, as well as Dark City.  The night manager and the Chinese restaurant waiter are also officially creepy.

Not Wednesday, but...Comics

My copy of the new hardcover collection of Wednesday Comics finally arrived in the post today.  I've not started to dig into it yet, but I will say a couple of things.  Like the original series, the production design is just brilliant.  I love the overall design, but what really stands out to me is the frontispiece with two different variations on the comics themselves arriving to a newsagent/front door delivery. 

The colours also look much more vibrant on this paper than they did in the original run; I think that's one of the overall things that they neglected in the series.  On most of the strips, the colours seemed to be designed for modern paper and not the newsprint that the series was printed on.  As such, some of the beauty of Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman piece was lost that's regained here. 

What I do have a complaint about, though, is that this collection is smaller than the original series.  Although this book is still oversized, it doesn't match the broadsheet view of the originals, and I think something's lost in making this book smaller.  The original series felt right in the hands, this hardcover feels a little awkward; not necessarily in length, but it feels as though it should be an inch or so wider.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

It's unsurprising that as the series progresses, Happy Town is indeed getting better.  I thought last week's episode was a little bit like treading water, but this week was certainly firing on all cylinders.  Shame that the show's been cancelled (what possesses them to essentially cancel it after only airing the two parts of the pilot?)

So...is it Alejandro...or Fernando?

I watched the Lady Gaga video for "Alejandro".  I think I liked it.  Overall, I like the song more than "Telephone", with it's ABBA meets Madonna style (which is saying something since I don't like ABBA), but the video...bizarre art piece.  I love the production values, evocative use of black, white and red, but part of me is still left scratching my head thinking, "what?"

Unthoughts Unknown

I caught the pilot episode of NBC's Persons Unknown tonight.  I thought it was a decent entry into The Prisoner/first-season of Lost/Cube vein of storytelling, with a group of strangers waking up in a deserted hotel in an initially deserted town with no recollection of how or why they got there.  I think the cameras themselves are the interesting part, some sort of black market reality television is what I'm thinking right now.

I did, however, catch a continuity error between the episode and the preview for next week.  When we're shown Eleanor's fortune cookie message in the episode, "Kill your neighbor and you will go free", is on one line.  In the preview, it's on two.  I wonder how many months went by between filming the pilot and starting the reason of the series to cause that gaffe?

Costing an Arm and a Leg...

I like the new Broken Bells video for "The Ghost Inside". Granted I'd probably find watching Christina Hendricks watch paint dry interesting, but well...

I am convinced that people are psychotic.  Entertaining, but psychotic.  What possesses people to write a blog from the point of view of a cat?

New King

I got the trade edition of Stephen King's new novella, Blockade Billy, yesterday (still waiting on the limited edition hardcover to arrive) and read the entire thing in maybe an hour.  The title story is only about 80 pages and the bonus short story, "Morality", only runs another forty or so.  There's no supernatural element to either of the stories, although to me that's not a deal breaker.

You may ask why I bothered to buy both, well, I preordered the limited edition before the announcement of the trade edition because I wanted the novella, and then ordered the trade edition because I wanted the bonus short story.  After having read it, I think I may have just stuck with the limited edition (I'm looking forward to reading it again, with the illustrations), but I don't necessarily feel any regret over purchasing the book twice in different formats.  I've done the same thing for previous Stephen King works (like purchasing the hardcover editions of the first four Dark Tower novels, getting the Pocket Books editions of Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, and Pet Sematary for the new introductions, the illustrated edition of Salem's Lot, both the individual serialised Green Mile and the hardcover collection, the new edition of Danse Macabre, and the pop-up version of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon), so I guess it kind of comes down to a collector mentality.

Anyway, with regard to the content, "Blockade Billy" was a good read.  It's not particularly deep, and there's nothing all too shocking, but it's an entertaining story, well told.  I like the backdrop of old school baseball and King does a good job of fleshing it out.  "Morality", on the other hand, isn't bad, although I think I could have waited for it to be collected at a later date with more stories.  It hinges on the main character doing a morally reprehensible act for someone else, but when it comes down to it, the act could have been so much worse.  Maybe it just shows you where my morals happen to be, but it didn't seem to be the thing that would cause the overall moral decay of the character to the extremes presented.

Personally, I think a variation of the idea -- basically living a "good" life but doing a "bad" act in order to choose between the two; leading to the argument between Aristotelian and Modern ethics -- was done much better in Brian Bolland's contribution to Batman: Black & White.