Fnord Incorporated

Parasite Positive / Crooked Little Vein

Parasite Positive by Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (Import - June 30, 2007)

and

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins (Hardback - July24, 2007)

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Enjoyed two books in the last couple days. one definitively more than the other.

I picked up a brand new discount bin copy of Scott Westerfeld’s Parasite Positive. It is an imported book. The US Title is Peeps. The name of the book from the UK is far better. Peeps is fine for slang but is a lame name for the book itself in my opinion. But that is a Strike against the publisher not the Westerfeld. The last thing i want to do when I pick up a book is look at the binding and wonder why there is not a yellow marshmallow Easter chick on it instead of humans

Peeps look like yellow fluffy sugar coated dog turds, and thus make me feel funny.. inside.. my stomach.. .

This book is pretty enjoyable, a little bit frustrating. Set in the current times, imagine a world where vampires exist. They are not as we describe in mythology and urban legend, similar but not the same. In Parasite Positive (peeps for short), people can be infected by a parasite through kissing or sexual activity.

Cal, a first year NYC college student from Texas, hooks up with a woman in a bar and loses his virginity. He does not see her again. Soon after, every girl he kisses or is other wise physically intimate with goes bat-shit insane. They have contracted a virus from him.

The virus rewires your brain slightly, give the typical super human strength, yadda, yadda. Cal is brought into a secret organization to hunt down Peeps, Starting with his ex-girlfriends.

It played out in a faster paced story line than I prefer. the ending seemed far too cut and paste, and main characters became too forgiving. It was frustrating to see a good set of characters get a cleansing white wash treatment for no apparent reason, other than a need to close out the storyline. I was pleased to read that there is a sequel, but i am unsure if i will be picking it up. maybe i will read the first chapter at Powells and see if Scott give people back their written vitality. otherwise.. meh.

Best part of the book, every other chapter is a short information package on different parasites in our world, their effects, habits, and horrors. personally, these little segments were my favorite parts.

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Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis, “awesome” in a box… ready to be mixed, baked, and eaten while youa re stoned and listening your records.

Now, do not confuse your Warren Ellises here. The Ellis who wrote this book is not the phenomenal composer who works with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Grinderman (with nick cave and a bunch of the seeds), and Dirty Three.

No, this Ellis is of comic series Transmetropolitan, among other comics, books, tv shows, etc.. He puts forward one hell of a book here.

hm.. i dont know where to start here. I guess with a quick thank you.. THANK YOU JARET AND JENN. i rean through this book in a few hours time while i was riding the max train to work and back.

No spoiler here, the description given here will happen in the first five-10 pages.

Apparently, back in the day, founding father Benjamin Franklin wrote a book when he was in france for a few days. The book was written when his nights sleep was interrupted 6 nights in a row by an alien being. On the seventh night, he punchs the alien in the face and kills it instantly. Ben Franklin then takes the aliens skin and binds his book.

What exactly is this book? It is an alternate and secondary constitution to the united staed. it is the fix for everything bad that every happened to our country and our people… only problem is that Nixon gave the book away back in the ’50s and no one knows where it is.

again, this is in the first few pages. the main character, Mike McGill, wakes up  to find a giant rat taking a piss into his coffee cup and then appears to be laughing at him. before he can adjust to the zoological ramifications of a rat taking pleasure in his pain, he is approached by a high power politician. The politician would like to pay him $500,000 to find the book and return it. its not that he is the best detective in America, they want him because he is a “shit magnet” and as such, the book will likely just come to him directly.

Not sold on Crooked Little Vein yet? Two words:

Godzilla Bukkake… (if you do not know what bukkake is, look it up first. it will help you determine if this book is a good match for you)

Buy this book. borrow it. steal it (then give it back with foot notes)…

One last thing, Listening to Grinderman while reading this book is fantastic.. so you could actually ahve both Warren Eliis parts at once.. i wold highly suggest it actually. Grinderman is a nice cooperative sound to the hilarious and surprise of the books scenes…

oh yeah.. i wanna holler out to spider jerusalem. props. love you man,… even if you are fiction.

Review: Cold Tom by Sally Prue

Cold Tom by Sally Prue

• Suggested Reading level: Ages 9-12
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Press (June 1, 2003)

I picked this book up about a month ago in a bargain bin at Barnes and Nobles. They were charging a dollar for it. I read the inside cover and decided, what the hell, its only a buck.. The cover art for the hardbound book was worth a dollar by itself. it was glossy and reflective. if i were a raven, i would rip it apart and love on it for its shininess.

I read it cover to cover in a couple hours, reading it slowly because it was a combination of harsh and soft writing. the character Tom was very conflicted and he needed a little more care in reading. I have been meaning to write a review for it for a while, but have been so busy that it has sat in my “incomplete drafts” untouched except for the placeholder blog title. This changed earlier today.

I was reading some other book sites that i lurk on (only recently started even commenting), It appears that i caught the tail end of a contest that Rebecca over at Readerville The book Ladyu’s Blog was running. Readerville TBLB is running a contest to give away a copy of Months and Seasons by Christopher Meeks. She had specific requirements for participants to have an entry accepted.

Interestingly enough, Rebecca’s requirements were just what i needed to get this book review up and running. text from my comment on Readerville is contained below along with the remainder of the review.

review:

Tom cannot hunt, he is too clumsy. he cannot creep quietly through the forest as the others. He very nearly outs the whole village to the “Demons” or as we refer to ourselves, humans. Demons have plagued the villages existence for long enough that no one can truly remember a time where they were not around, but they do remember when they were much further away. Not as far away as the stars, mind you, but far enough away to be comfortable.

Tom has not always been clumsy loud and confused. infact, as his hearing and eyesight worsen, everything else seems to go to pot as well. he seems to be falling apart.

Through circumstances i will not get into here, Tom has to leave his tribe. The only place for him to go is into the world of the demons.

All in all, i was pleased with this book. the publisher rates this as a book for 12 year olds, but i was really into it. there is a simple philosophy that acts as an undercurrent to this book, one that any age group can identify with.

From Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s (character) last lines amount sums it all up:

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Human nature is so simple. The connections you make with others do nothing but strengthen your inability to be a hermit. simple communication can destroy one’s ability to stay separate, clean, and clear of others.

you see a similar clarity in many books, but recently it was most visually evident in Cold Tom, visual being the word to carry forward.

Tom, being an elf, can actually see the vines and organic elements that bind families friends and humanity together. the more he interacts with humans, the stronger their binds to him become. they are both suffocating and comforting. as with all of us, it is a juggling act to determine which is more important, the suffocation or the safety of relationships and society.

Though Tom himself is not human, he shares many charcteristics with us. the degrees of seperation are muted and flimsy, in many places completely invisible. this book teaches tolerance with out preaching. it shows good faith, with out reason for faith to exist. it suggests lessons, but not in an overt lecturing manner as many early teen books have been known to do.

review: End of the world blues by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

End of the world blues by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (September 25, 2007)

This was an advance reader copy i recieved.
book was published in Sepember 2007.

maybe someday i can get advanced copies  to review BEFORE they come out. this was a head trip book for sane people.

interstellar gods managing the leftover refugees of humanity. our world iss nothing but a constructed barrier of safety created by them to allow us life.

think this book is sci-fi? it is not.  this book is a thinly veiled series of structured thoughts showing the smallness of our universe. everything we know is insignificant.  interestingly enough, everything outside our understanding is also also insignificant.

From the the Hagakure, The Way of the Samurai -
“Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige’s wall there was this one: ”Matters of’ great concern should be treated lightly. Matters of small concern should be treated seriously. Among one’s affairs there should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great concern. If these are deliberated upon during ordinary times, they can be understood.”

These are ordinary times and the deliberation of concerns will not be fully qualified and resolved until the end of the tale…

This story revolves around, Kit Noveau, an ex-rocker from Ireland. living in Tokyo. he is also ex-military, unable to go home without fear of being arrested for being a deserter, not that he would want to go home.

for ten years he has been married and hiding out in Tokyo. his wife is an introverted world respected pottery artist. his best friend is an Australian biker in hiding, unable to return home himself. Yoshi, Kit’s wife, owns a bar called “Pirate Marys” in a rundown part of Tokyo.

Enter into the story Lady Neku. Neku carries blades and wears costume. Neku is hiding $15 million dollars in a train station pay per day locker. Kit gives her fresh coffee on cold mornings and she feels she owns him more than owes him.

When a homeless man (or an assassin) attacks Kit one morning, Lady Neku leaves a blade in the attacker’s lung, and blood pouring from his body. soon after she rips a hole in time space and steps through.

everything else is story… but it is more detective novel than sci-fi fantasy. all the elements of this book meld together into a nice blend of images. it is like reading Murakami lite with a bit of bit of gaiman and  joe hill.

Change, and book: Pretty Little Mistakes

Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (May 1, 2007)

as you may have noticed, i made an alteration to this page…again…

i got tired of the normal layout and noticed that on some computers the text was a bit hard to read.. i am all about accessibility. i dont like to squint or search, so poof. newness comes forth and assaults your sensibilities with colors that should never be put together.

opinions?

background image came from some medical website, and was altered a great deal, duplicated, rebuilt, masked, etc. it reminds me a little of some newer pinkfloyd artwork now, though i do not really know why it does.

there are a few quirks i need to work out still, but for the most part, it is ready for use.

~~

books. i have been slacking on the book front. not on the reading, just on the reporting. i have 4 new books that i need to list up here. a couple of which are weeks old now.. so i will continue to slack, and talk about the one that was the most fun to read.

how many people remember reading Choose Your Own Adventure books when you were younger? it is a generation thing, so older visitors may be familiar with them whilst never having read one themselves.  Those who have read them inevitably have a similar response when they are brought up. They all enjoyed them and they all wish that there were adult versions of them to read.. well get used to it, there are not. get over it.. nah, just fucking with you.. there were not.. now there is one..

Pretty Little Mistakes was written by Heather McElhatton is the adult answer to “why are there no adult choose your own adventure books?” She calls them “Do Over” books and has filled a gaping hole in the consumer world.. addicted adults with no outlet for their addiction to manifest itself. She has created a story that begins on the day you graduate highschool.

• do you go to college? if so, do you major in art or science?
• do you say “fuck college” and go touring the world with a back pack and an eye for adventure?
• do you start making drugs and selling them to an unsuspecting populace?

and one of my favorites…

• do you strap the meat to your naked body?

this book is not for younger kids. some of the sections you would not want your 5-11 year olds reading. it is not meant for them, it is meant for us! We are taking back the genre!!  this book is filled with tumerous cocks, bullets, random accidents, numerous versions of heaven and hell. angry gods, flacid boyfriends, lesbian lovers, fame fortune, porn stars, disease.. that is the short list.

unlike a normal choose your own adventure, and contrary to how you are told to read the book, Heather has made i easy for you to quickly navigate the story lines. it is simple to “do over” decisions that you feel were not the best. each decision is set before you with a section number as well as a page number. i found that the section numbers were easier to navigate as they are presented in large bold print in the top corner where as the small print page numbers in the bottom left were cumbersome. each section begins by telling you what section you came from, thus allowing you a fast back pedal action if you decide not to start from the beginning.

i read this book through to its completion, which can be difficult with 150 possible endings. there seemsed to be an underlying theme to the whole story. regardless of what choices you make, you were still brought back to some similar situations. almost as if heather’s book was a chronicle of fate’s tangled web. you have a path, and you can stray from it, but in the end fate only gives you a few scenarios to play with.

it was interesting to read extra into the stories. i found myself pondering creationism and evolution.. considering that one person could be fucked for life from the get go with only one decision to sway the odds. it was fun, and suprisingly compelling.

i officially have fed the addiction and anxiously await more of my drug.

anyone who wants to try it out before going to the book store, see below. As part of her website, Heather has placed a section of the book online in a semi-low tech fashion. it is not the same as having the weight of the book in hand, but will give you an idea of the writing style. i suggest traveling after school. try going to californication.

click here to test out a preview of the book

i am excited, a second book called million little mistakes is being written by her right now. i hope a third book later will have a less predictable title.

per her website http://www.prettylittlemistakes.com

***million little mistakes***
won’t be out till next summer!**
Why?
Because Heather McElhatton is the worlds slowest writer
and mlm is going to be so so so good!