Book review roundup (slight spoilers)

1. Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo: Here's the official description:

Filled with extraordinary characters and told at breakneck speed, Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller. But this is most certainly not fiction. It is the astonishing narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. Stretching from London to Paris to New York, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist John Myatt. Together they exploited the archives of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today.

If you enjoy nonfiction, it doesn't get much better than this. (Although I think the authors were a bit too kind to some of the members of the conspiracy.) If 300 pages sounds like a little much, just enjoy the Wikipedia links I inserted above. But it's only $2 used at B&N, and well worth that price.

2. The Maze Runner by James Dasher: I give the writing and character development a D+, the plot a B, and the cover by Philip Straub a B+ (unusually good for a fantasy novel). The story is Ender's Game meets The Stand, which sounds promising, but I barely managed to force myself to skim the last 40 or so pages to find out what happened. Just read the Wikipedia entry for this one. $5 used at B&N.

3. This Is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams: The first 140 pages are an excellent novella that imagines, "What if Jane McGonigal got stuck in Indonesia during a coup and had to rely on her ARG-loving fans to help her escape?" Unfortunately the next 300 pages are so horrendously cliched and predictable that I (incorrectly) thought the book must have been the author's first. $2 used at B&N, which is a good price for the 140 pages.

4. Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon: An intensely boring collection of his nonfiction essays. However, there were some fun factoids in the essay about Arthur Conan Doyle. For example:

At least one writer has suggested that Conan Doyle might have managed to kill a patient, through Charles Bovary-like ineptitude or more sinister motives; he did subsequently marry the dead man's sister, and took control of the income that she inherited from her brother.

And this is quite a sentence:

Detective Freud might well conclude that Conan Doyle never entirely recovered from the pain and humiliation first of watching his mother cuckold his demented father in his own house and then of being obliged to stand by as the old man was packed off to the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum, never to return.

I wish he'd simply written a novel called The Amazing Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle. $2 used at B&N, but only for the Chabon completist.

Link roundup

1. From an interesting interview with Neil Gaiman:

The last time I was in China, I was very puzzled because none of my children’s picture books are in print in Mainland China. They’re in print in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, in complex Chinese characters, but they are not in print in Mainland China. I asked my producer, “Why aren’t any of my children’s picture books in print in Mainland China?,” and they said, “It’s because of their disrespect for authority.” I said, “Really?!” And they said, “Yeah, look at them. The Wolves in the Walls is about this little girl who tells her parents that there are wolves in the walls, but they do not believe her. There really are wolves in the walls, and thus her parents are proved wrong. And, in The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, these kids swap their dad. If that happened, society would crumble.”


So, suddenly, it became a goal of mine that was almost a little obsession to write a children’s picture book that would be published in Mainland China, that they could not help but publish, but still could have all of the things that are in my children’s picture books, and I did it. I wrote this book and it’s being painted right now by this wonderful artist, and it’s called Chu’s Day, and it is about a baby panda who sneezes. There is no way that anyone can resist a baby panda who sneezes. This is the single cutest book I’ve ever written. It is written for two-year-olds and is designed in such a way that I’ve tried it on kids and it actually works that when you get to the end, they just look at you and they say, “Read it again!” The only words on page one are, “When Chu sneezed, bad things happened.”

2. Shark.

3. IMDB on The Shining:

Because Danny Lloyd was so young and since it was his first acting job, Stanley Kubrick was highly protective of the child. During the shooting of the movie, Lloyd was under the impression that the film he was making was a drama, not a horror movie. He only realized the truth seven years later, when, aged 13, he was shown a heavily edited version of the film. He didn't see the uncut version of the film until he was 17 - eleven years after he'd made it.

Via.

Because of the Cats

Because of the Cats by Nicholas Freeling. It's real:

Chief Inspector Piet Van der Valk of the Amsterdam police has a teenage gang on his hands: they are coming into Amsterdam from out-of-town, and they are remarkably professional. They leave behind a trail of wanton damage, senseless brutality, and rape, and one piece of possible evidence- 'the cats won't like it'. ""Because of the Cats was an international best-seller-indeed its group-murder plot was reenacted in real life shortly after, in Latin America-and Van der Valk acquired a huge following.""

One copy with this cover at eBay. Via.

Crazy 4 Cult: Cult Movie Art (the book)

Crazy 4 Cult: Cult Movie Art:

The annual Crazy 4 Cult art show in LA has quickly become a phenomenon, with thousands of visitors, a million hits on its website on opening day, and high profile buyers including Kevin Smith and Edgar Wright.

Why? Because the cream of the pop culture-influenced art scene - including Shepard Fairey, creator of the Obama 'Hope' poster - come together to celebrate cult movies with art that is surprising, beautiful and very, very cool.

This lavishly produced book presents the best of the first 4 years of the show, with art inspired by such movies as The Big Lebowski, Edward Scissorhands, Blade Runner, Donnie Darko, A Clockwork Orange, Pulp Fiction and many more.

34% off at Amazon and available tomorrow.

There's also going to be a signing at Gallery 1988 as decribed:



Via.

Dunny and kid's book

The Hole in the Middle book and Dunny by Paul Budnitz and Aya Kakeda. I'm not sure about the Dunny, but the book is 33% off at Amazon. Via.

You have to be one heck of an illustrator to get away with a book cover like this

Book cover for On Illustration by Andrzej Klimowski, which apparently contains "only a few illustrations." Here's a sample of his work:










You can see many more of his posters here, and the book can be preordered at Amazon.

*Buy Polish movie posters at Amazon.

A Pagan Book of ABCs

A Pagan Book of ABCs is a free Kindle download, or $5 for the hard copy. Only two reviews at Amazon so far.