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| Fiction Notes | | Date Created: Jul 26, 2004, 01:41 PM |
I've got a few minutes now as I cool down from a long walk on a very hot day in St. Louis. Typical for July. But on to books. Fiction in particular. Let me begin with a real disappointment: Neil Gaiman's American Gods. How did this book win the Nebula award for best novel last year? I got about 100 pages into it and couldn't muster enough interest to read another page. I just didn't care. The characters did not interest me. The story was blah. The sex was disgusting. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. I've read Stephen King stories that I liked more. Maybe I ought to read a little more. I remember the first time I saw the movie Back to the Future. The first 15 minutes of the movie were pretty depressing and I wondered if the whole movie would be so dark. Perhaps American Gods gets better. I just don't give a rip. I'm putting it aside for good.
But I did love Jeff Vandermeer's Veniss Underground. I like this kind of book. Densely written with riddles galore. His City of Saints and Madmen was a masterpiece of odd-stream literature. I'd compare Vandermeer to Gene Wolfe or Cordwainer Smith, definitely Smith. If you like these authors, you'll enjoy Veniss Underground. Come all without, come all within.
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn. Ah, yes, the Grateful Dead.
I think I'll go back and read Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. It deserves a fourth read. |
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