Department of Book Reports: Boneshaker

Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest (Tor Books $ 15.99)

Briar Wilkes Blue's son has gone off into the walled-off Pioneer Square of Seattle, hoping to prove once and for all the innocence of his father. 16 years earlier, prior to Zeke's birth, his father was a brilliant inventor who won a contest from the Russians who are looking for a better way to mine gold out of the frozen land of Alaska. Something went terribly wrong during the first test drive of Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine, it veered off course and hit some unknown vein of poisonous gas releasing the heavy yellow Blight gas into downtown Seattle. "Banker's Row" on Second Avenue has collapsed into its basements and gold and currency are missing from the vaults. Dr. Leviticus Blue has vanished and his widow claims no knowledge of his where-abouts. Was Dr. Blue the villain, or a mis-understood genius? And what of Maynard Wilkes, Briar's father whose last act was to release the prisoners held in Seattle's impromptu jail before they could be blighted into Zombies from the gas? His bravery is honored by the remaining residents of Seattle, but despised by the settlers outside the wall.

A wall has been erected, 200 feet tall and 18 feet thick around the waterfront area and only air pilots are able to get anywhere near the toxic city. Left inside are an assortment of Zombies and Doornails. The Zombies are hungry because food has been short for 16 years, and the Doornails (townspeople who did not leave and are not yet Zombies, but are "dead to the rest of the world") try to eke out a living in the Underground catacombs. Briar Wilkes must navigate this dangerous zone and the evil Dr. Minnerricht (who may or may not be Leviticus Blue) and bring her boy out alive.

This Steampunk alternate history is a real "rip-snorter" of a read. Some bits of Seattle's history have been moved around a bit to accommodate the storyline, but you'll be too busy dodging Zombies, criminal overlords and pirate zeppelin Captains to notice. This is a novel that buckles every swash and you'll love every moment.
Cherie Priest just won the Northwest Booksellers Award last week and it's well deserved.

Special H/T to Zathras Afarensis for his hearty recommendation of this book. We're hoping Cherie can join us in Second Life in February, stay tuned.

Boneshaker is available at Jackson Street Books and every order will include a freebie "ARC" surprise.

On Sunday afternoon I will be interviewed on Off The Shelf, a production of Bookstacks in Second Life. We'll be talking about the SLJackson Street Bookstore. You can listen live here, or attend yourself at 1pm, SLT.
Codpast is up now

Department of Book Reports: Mariposa

Mariposa, by Greg Bear (Vanguard Press, $25.95)
In a near-future America, teetering on the brink of financial devastation, 3 remaining members of the Turing Seven must infiltrate Axel Prices Talos Corporation. Talos is in the business of out-sourcing its Security Forces (think Blackwater), which now perform operations for all aspects of US government. The Turing Seven are FBI agents who have undergone the experimental Mariposa treatment, gene modification to rid them of their post traumatic stress demons.

Rebecca Rose is called back from her sabbatical to join with Nathaniel Trace to try and rescue Fouad Al-Husam who is undercover in the high security Talos complex in Lion City, Texas. It becomes a race against time as the effects of the Mariposa degeneration begin taking a toll. When the Vice President remorselessly kills his wife, and the President is shot with bullets whose fragments are coated with a delay release poison the timeline shortens to a week.

Filled with lots of high-tech gadgetry, this is a fast paced read that completely draws you in. I was reading this when we went to see the movie Avatar, and that reading gave me many "a-ha!" moments at the technology I saw there. Greg has been a consultant with many government and private organizations from XBox, Microsoft Corporation, the State Department and U.S. Army, Homeland Security, Sandia National Laboratories,to Callison Architecture, Inc. His association with the FBI gave him the idea for this novel and the first in this series, Quantico. If you're a Sci-Fi or Spy Thriller fan who enjoys the tech side of things, these books are for you. There's also a large dollop of politics, and unlike our current world, the bad guys get their due.



I wanted to link to Greg's website, but I keep getting error messages at www.gregbear.com, so here's his publisher site. Greg has won two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction. Jackson Street Books has a nice selection of Greg's books, several of which are signed. I suppose this is the proper place for a disclaimer. I was given this novel as an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) at our local trade show last fall, courtesy Vanguard Press and Greg. The fact that I was given a copy had no bearing on whether I would do a book report, I report on books I love and can recommend enthusiastically.

In which we get mentioned on the radio machine!

I heard yesterday that Garth Stein would be on KUOW's Weekday with a couple other authors to discuss The Future of Indie Bookstores. We decided to stream the radio at Lacamas Reading Hall and invite folks over for discussion. Here's the MP3 and the book discussion starts at 24 minutes and Garth gives a shout out to virtual Jackson Street Books at 48m. You can't see it in the picture, but w00ts filled the air!

http://www.kuow.org/mp3high/mp3/WeekdayA/WeekdayA20100106.mp3

University Bookstore is celebrating 110 years by asking 110 authors to write 110 word essays. You can see a sneak peek pdf at their website and attend the party on Sunday to get a copy of the book with the purchase of a contributor's book.

My favorite is from Maria Dahvana Headley, one of Garth's co-panelists today

Pulp Romance

He saw her across a crowded shelf.

Her deckle-edge was seductively deep, her endpapers velvety. She was a first edition, probably autographed. Any man would want to write his name in a book like her.

She noticed him perusing her pages, and blushed. He had a hard spine, and a crisp dust jacket. His eyes were capitalized, and in an obscure font designed in Amsterdam in 1768. She caught herself glancing at his flyleaf, and looked away, mortified.

They were in the YA section, and she was acting like a common galley.

"Can I have your ISBN?" he whispered. He could nearly see her addendum.

"Yes," she cooed, helpless. "Yes."

Department of Book Reports: Kitchen Express

Happy New Year! Here's to a better year and a better decade. This book report will certainly help you eat better in the coming days and years.

Kitchen Express, by Mark Bittman (Simon & Schuster $26) Mark Bittman has long been one of my favorite cooking writers, and a main reason for continuing our NYT subscription out here in the boonies. I love his common sense approach to cooking, and his ability to get to the bottom of a recipe by concentrating on the basic ingredients.

This wonderful volume was under my tree this year, and I recommend it as much more accessible than tearing out and saving the pages in stacks of newspaper on the table. The articles have all been in the NYT, by seasonal subject. Appetizers, Salads, Picnics, and Headstarts on the Holidays. I know I have those sheets around here somewhere! Trust me, the book is easier to find.

I will share my favorite recipe from his column: Creamed Corn. Really? Teh kid complains when I cook this... that I don't make enough of it. It's super easy and if you toss your Ginger root into the freezer you can easily grate it for a fast stir fry improv following this. Use different veg, or meats (it's great with stirfried Beef stew bits or tofus), and the marinade sauce works on any stirfry.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound boneless chicken (breasts or thighs), in 1/2-inch chunks
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sherry, rice wine, sake or white wine
2 tablespoons peanut oil or another neutral oil, like corn or grape seed
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 small chili, seeds and stems removed, minced (or dried red chili flakes to taste)
1 15-ounce can creamed corn
1 cup corn kernels (fresh, frozen or canned)
Chopped cilantro leaves for garnish
PREPARATION

1.
In a small bowl, mix the chicken with the soy sauce, the sesame oil and the wine. Put the peanut oil into a deep skillet or wok, preferably nonstick, and turn heat to high. Drain chicken. When oil is hot, add chicken to skillet, and cook, undisturbed, until bottom browns, about 2 minutes. Stir once or twice, and cook 2 minutes longer. Turn the heat down to medium-low.
2.
Add the garlic, the ginger and the chili to the skillet, and stir; 15 seconds later, add the creamed corn and the corn kernels. Cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through, 3 or 4 minutes. Garnish, and serve over white rice.
YIELD
4 servings

Bon Apetit!

I would also like to thank Miss Poppy for once again filling my stocking with Jeebus-y goodness!

department of Book Reports: Nobody Move

It's no secret that I love the writing of Denis Johnson. I reported on Tree of Smoke, the National Book Award winner here. It is the long, ambitious story of American involvement in Southeast Asia as done by a sort of post-modern Graham Greene. Not nearly as long, and not quite as ambitious, nevertheless, Denis Johnson's new novel Nobody Move (Farrar Straus Giroux $23.00) is a finely written caper novel that has its own fascinating passages.

Originally serialized in Playboy magazine, the plot is fairly straight forward. Jimmy Luntz has just finished participating in a barbershop singing contest when he is picked up by a shady character called Gambol. It seems Jimmy has many gambling debts, and Gambol's boss, Juarez, has a taste for eating late-payers testicles. Luntz is able to escape from his captor and hooks up with a woman, Anita Desilvera, who has her own set of problems. The chase ensues and there is plenty of guaranteed mayhem, as Gambol, Juarez and "The Tall Man" pursue Jimmy.

The dialogue is smart and quick. Here's Luntz talking to a young woman at a mini-mart:

"Are you walking?"
Luntz said, "I guess I'll hitchhike"
"You better clean up first."
"Yeah, where's the washroom?"
She shook her head. "The whole back of your pants is like you been rolling in dirt. You better find some deep water."
"Where's the river?
"Right over there a half mile."
"Is it cold?"
"It's cold. But it wont kill you".

I should mention the jacket art, which is reminiscent of Chip Kidd. Susan Mitchell's jacket design of bullet holes with board illustrations by Philip Earl Pascuzzo are a great update of paperback pulp art from the forties and fifties.

Nobody Move is available at Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores.

When Hollywood comes calling, I'm sure democommie will be up for the part of Luntz.I have a special offer for orders placed here: enter the code FOG (stands for Friends Of the General) in the ask the bookseller a question tab, and I'll include a free Advance Reading Copy of something delightful.

Interfictions 2 in Second Life

Second Life truly is an amazing place that has reinforced my belief it is indeed a Small World. I've had the pleasure of meeting a couple authors I know in Real Life, and one of them, Ray Vukcevich, has been most gracious in helping set up an author salon for Lacamas Reading Hall. I met Ray back in the day at Seattle Mystery, when we had the signing for his delightful novel The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces.

Monday night, Dec 7th at 6pm PST/SLT, five of the authors of Interfictions 2 will gather to discuss their Intersticial Fictions from the short story collection Interfictions 2 (Small Beer Press, $16.00).
Delia Yorfle (Delia Sherman) is the co-editor of this volume and explains Intersticial Fiction:

What is interstitial art? It is art made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. It is art that crosses borders, made by artists who refuse to be constrained by category labels.

Erin Terrawing (Erin Underwood) is the Vice President of the Intersticial Arts Foundation, who sponsored this project.

Cecil Soup (Cecil Castellucci) will discuss her story The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory. Mason Leitner (F. Brett Cox)brings us Nylon Seam and its accompaniment music. Capricorn Brewster (Carlos Hernandez)has the delightfully titled The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria. Sardonicus Optera (Will Ludwigsen)has Remembrance is Something Like a House. Ookami Moonwall (Ray Vukcevich)rounds out the evening with The Two of Me.

Each copy of Interfictions 2 ordered through our store will receive a special signed bookplate, that I will send later. The bookplates are being mailed from one author to the next and I will drop them in the mail as soon as they are available.

Department of Book Reports: Carl Sagan Edition

Seattle Tammy and I are relaxing this week for the holidays with good company, fine liquor, and many great things to eat. We have also been watching Cosmos with Carl Sagan on the new-fangled Youtubes. What a great show it was, too. We thought we would share the following segment where Sagan talks of books and libraries. His thirst for and his delight in knowledge is clearly evident and contagious. We need more people like him.
We are thankful for good readers and good friends. May you find wonderful books in the coming year.

Edit update from Danton: Carl Sagan autotuned: