RUNNING WITH SCISSORS: A Review

Growing up in the 70’s, Burroughs was left by his mother to live with her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. Together with the other adopted Finch children, Burroughs experiences adolescence and teenage/young adult years in a very radical house and family with too much freedom.

The family believes that a child reaches his maturity at the age of 13, and no adult can tell him or her what to do. This may sound like paradise to most teenagers. And while Burroughs initially embraced and enjoyed his freedom (he was encouraged to explore his homosexuality) in the end he realizes that he needs boundaries and rules, and that all he really wanted was a “Hamburger Helper” mother.

I am still perplexed by the accolades this book has gotten. It has been marketed as a "humorous memoir," which is half-right. If you find the dysfunctionals on Jerry Springer and Maury Povich funny and entertaining, then this book is for you. White trash ruining each other's lives.

THIS is considered literature?

BIBLIO SAYS: Don't bother.

BLOODSUCKING FIENDS: A Review

Jody was a career girl. Working 9 to 5. Working for the weekend. But one evening she wakes up beneath Dumpster in an alley, a badly burned arm, superhuman strength, and a thirst for something NOT coffee. She's not prepared to be a vampire. What's a girl to do? She needs help.

C. Thomas Flood, country Indiana bumpkin, new in town, a wanna-be writer is the perfect partner. Before he knows what hit him, Tommy's in love with a vampire, juggling a night time job in a grocery store, a homeless Emperor, and an 800-year old vampire killing victims and making the police believe Tommy is the killer. Not to mention all the great sex in the shower.

If Kurt Vonnegut and Carl Hiaasen had ever decided to write a vampire novel, it would have turned out like this. Irreverent and breezy. Fiends has a lot of fun with the oh-so-serious vampire books that have flooded the market recently. Jody and Tommy are so clueless about the life of the undead, they seek guidance from Anne Rice and the local library.

BIBLIO SAYS: Recommended.

THE HISTORIAN: A Review

The Historian is billed as an epic work of historical fiction that sweeps across Europe during the four decades between 1930 and the mid 1970s. From all the hype this novel received upon publication, who would have imagined it was going to be so bad and boring. At least The DaVinci Code was exciting.

WARNING: Major plot points and story surprises follow. Trust me, read this review and skip the book.

Dracula (yes, him) has kidnapped an old professor, so a student of the prof sets off to search for the tomb in which Dracula was buried some 500 years ago. I guess it doesn't matter that the Count has been traveling freely across continents and oceans for centuries, the student is positive (AB-, ha ha) that's where he has to be.

So the boredom begins. We follow these bookworms from England to France to Turkey to Bulgaria to Romania to Hungary - city to city, castle to monastery, library to mosque - and nothing happens. Except a lot of coincidences. The woman in the library just happens to be as the professor's long-lost daughter. The Turkish fellow sitting down to dinner at the next table is a lifelong Dracula fanatic and amateur historian, who speaks perfect English because he is a professor of English Lit. How many coincidences can you have in one scene before you have as much credibility as Al Gore?

Six hundred pages later (yes, 600), we discover that Dracula's nefarious plot and kidnapping was to make the professor catalog his library. That's correct, read it again. Dracula wants his personal library cataloged. At this point, if you're not already catatonic, the Sears Roebuck catalog would be a breezy read.

BIBLIO SAYS: Stay away! In fact, if the ever see this book, DON'T LOOK AT IT!

ONE SECOND AFTER: A Review

Electromagnetic pulses can result from natural phenomena and, in much greater strength, from nuclear blasts. The result of an EMPs is the destruction of unprotected electronic circuitry, about 95% of it in the United States. A nuclear bomb set off at a high altitude would cause electronics over a large swathe of the planet to fail and almost nothing has been done to protect the US from this threat. This frightening novel depicts what life might be like in the case of an EMP attack.

With no electronics -vehicles won't run; no phones, computers, radios, or televisions; no electricity. America descends into the Middle Ages.

In One Second After, a lack of food and medicine leads to mass death. Society crumbles quickly. Cities turn against the countryside; friends and neighbors turn against each other in a desperate struggle to survive. Criminals take advantage. Forstchen humanizes it by giving a detailed look at how events unfold around the idyllic small town of Montreat College in North Carolina.

The weeks pass, and society deteriorates quickly - food runs out, people die due to lack of treatment and medicine, tyrants try to take advantage of the weak and confused, and criminals run rampant.

One Second After is a masterpiece of distopian literature that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World, but is even more horrific. You will have restless nights while you are reading this, and several nights after. Particularly when you realize that our government has done nothing to prepare this country for this serious threat.

BIBLIO SAYS: Highly recommended.

Companion Read: Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORREL: A Review

Strange is an alternate history novel set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. It has a fascinating premise: that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. The novel explores the nature of "Englishness" and the boundary between reason and madness. It has been alternately described as a fantasy novel, and a historical novel.

Clarke spent more than ten years writing the novel which draws on various English Romantic literary traditions, part Jane Austen, part Charles Dickens, part Gothic. And she infuses the entire narrative with a very droll, English dry wit which as page 100 becomes page 200, then 300, the 400, then 500 ... tends to wear out its welcome.

I REALLY wanted to like this book, but found myself dreading to keep reading. NOTHING HAPPENS! The first 300 pages of the novel could have easily been discarded since those pages did absolutely nothing to advance the plot. The story doesn't just dawdle, it creaks like a stone statue with rheumatism. And BIBLIO'S Rule #1 is: Be entertaining.

The fact that the book has been almost universally lauded says more about those reviewers' bias than the quality of this book. Group think is not always a good thing. Some reviewers rhapsodize about the rich language and clever literary games, while others call it daring and imaginative. They forgot to mention boring.

BIBLIO SAYS: Not Recommended, unless you're one of the university-centric snobs who worship at the altar of 19th century English fiction, still buying into the canard that it is infinitely superior of modern fiction.

Companion Read: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

UNDER THE DOME: A Review

During the 21st century the arrival of a new Stephen King book has been greeted with mixed emotions. Each new volume of King's so-called masterpiece, The Dark Tower, was released -thicker and messier than each previous book - and stinkers like Dreamcatcher, From A Buick 8 and Cell were unleashed upon the public, so the arrival of an 1100 page new King novel could be viewed as either an act of torture or a guilty pleasure. I'm happy to report that Under The Dome is less pain and more joy.

Dome is one of those works of fiction that manages to be both pulp and high art at the same time, a trick King has pulled off several times in his career (think The Stand, The Shining and Misery).

The town of Chester's Mill, Maine - just up the road from the equally fictional Castle Rock is minding its own business one dazzling October day when an unseen force field descends upon it, slicing in two pretty much anything that was crossing the edge of town at that moment.
What happens in ensuing days is even more unsettling. Except for Internet service and spotty cell-phone signals, the town is isolated and imprisoned in plain sight. And inside the dome, society slowly, inexorably, almost methodically begins to fall apart. It's a weird combination of Lord of the Flies meets Our Town with some Peyton Place tossed in for fun.

The chief protagonist, Dale Barbara, is a just-retired Army man who fought in Iraq and did some things he isn't entirely proud of. He has retired to Chester's Mill as a fry cook, trying to lay low. But in the days before "Dome Day," he runs afoul of some of the local cretins and becomes persona non grata through no fault of his own. In fact, he is trying to leave town when the dome falls and narrowly escapes becoming one of its first victims.

Barbara becomes one of the focal points in the us-vs-them panic that overtakes Chester's Mill like a slow-motion tidal wave, pushed along by the other focal point - "Big Jim" Rennie, the town boss, who is about as prosaically malevolent (to the point of ridiculous caricature) a character that King has ever devised and who has a genuinely creepy son to match.

First, THE GOOD:

• King is always at his best when writing about small town blue collar folks, and Dome is peopled with dozens of great characters, deftly sketched into life by King's great and casual observations.The story practically gallops. For such a hefty book there are almost no tedious sections -can you say that about equally-sized books like Finnegan's Wake, Gravity's Rainbow or any Tom Clancy novel? It is tightly structured and it propelled toward an increasingly bleak and inevitable (almost) apocalyptic conclusion. Lots of people die ... including many of the good guys.
• Kudos to King for some fun cross-referencing of another fictional character. King is a huge fan of Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" books. For the uninitiated, Reacher is a retired military police officer who lives a nomadic drifter's life and is constantly getting into dangerous situations. One of the Dome characters, police officer Jackie Wettington, was a former MP whose training under Reacher comes in handy toward the end of the story. Well, done, Mr. King!

THE BAD:

• King often switches into the annoying old fashioned narrative device of addressing the reader directly, from a traditional third person past tense view into a cinematic, omniscient present tense view - "and now, dear reader, we go look at the events transpiring at the diner" - which is jarring and annoying. Just because Charles Dickens used the device in the 19th century doesn't mean its a good idea.
• Equally annoying - not to mention downright idiotic - is the narrating a few sections of the story from the viewpoint of a dog. The dog is not only able to understand conversations but makes observations on the conversations. WHAT?
• The mystery of the Dome is, at best, laughable. And the reason the Dome exists at all is ... all we know is based upon the speculation of the characters. The removal of the Dome at the last moment is ... well, unbelievable.

However, the end and resolution are less important than the path taken to get there. The book has very little supernatural elements, but if you've been paying attention to King's career, the point has never truly been the bump-in-the-night creatures. What King is best at portraying is the truly disturbing and horrific reality of human nature.

BIBLIO SAYS: Recommended.

COMPANION READ: One Second After by William R. Forstchen.

BEST VAMPIRE NOVELS

Okay, before we get to it, let me you tell you straight up that DRACULA is NOT ON THE LIST. And Anne Rice only makes the list once. As amazing as some of her Vampire books are, she quickly ran out of things to say, but continued to take 600 pages per book to not say them!

Mr. Stoker gets his due for inventing the fictional culture of vampirism and laying down the ground rules. We all know the rules; shall I list them? Garlic, mirror, daylight, sleeping in a coffin with your native soil, silver bullet, crosses, wooden stake in the heart. And therein lies the problem. There are way too many books that travel down that tired road. It's okay to break the mold, and believe me, there are plenty of vampire stories that are moldy. Here are a few of the best, whether working within Stoker's tradition or breaking all the rules. Listed alphabetically. 

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BLOODSUCKING FIENDS by Christopher Moore
Screamingly hilarious. If Kurt Vonnegut had written a vampire book, this might have been it.

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under a Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her.
Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door ... hires Tommy to do daytime errands for her and proceeds to rock Tommy's life -- and afterlife -- in ways he never imagined possible.


CARRION COMFORT & CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT by Dan Simmons

Simmons is the only writer who makes this list twice, which is odd since he is only nominally considered a horror writer. After making his initial mark as a horror novelist (Stoker Award winning Song of Kali) Simmons moved on to write science fiction, hard-boiled mystery and literary-historical fiction. However, he did write two great classic horror / vampire novels before he moved into different literary circles.
Carrion Comfort I have written about elsewhere (Some Charleston Fiction). The vampirism featured here is psychic, not the blood-letting kind. The basic plot is about a small group of people who have an Ability, where they can possess someone mentally and Use them to do their bidding. They also use their Ability to Feed, prolonging their lives by mentally drawing sustenance from people. The battle among the Users with the Ability for power leads for a gargantuan plot and a cast of more than two dozen characters, from Nazis to southern sheriffs, to Holocaust survivors to Hollywood moguls to CEOs of the world's largest corporations.

In Children of the Night Simmons takes a completely different look at vampires. This time, however, the count's sanguinary tippling habits may hold the cure for both AIDS and cancer. The key lies with a Romanian orphan adopted by American hematologist Kate Neuman; the infant, Joshua, has a series of rare diseases, and can survive only because his body extracts and processes genetic material from blood transfusions. If the virus in his system responsible for this ability can be isolated, his diseases could be remedied and medical marvels would be within Kate's grasp. The drawback is that Joshua has inherited his talents from the decrepit but murderous Vlad Dracula, and this patriarch of an accursed clan of blood-drinkers is more interested in perpetuating his power than in providing miracle cures for the masses. Simmons makes the fantastical scientific claims easy to swallow and the book offers a mesmerizing tour through the ghostly, gray tatters of Romania.


FEVRE DREAM by George R. R. Martin
Roger Zelazny got it right when he said, "George R.R. Martin, somehow, has managed to write a novel that will delight fans of both Stephen King and Mark Twain."
Set in the middle of the 19th century, Fevre Dream is the story of the strange friendship that develops between river boat captain Abner Marsh and Joshua York, vampire. Marsh is a down-on-his-luck owner of a fleet of river boats that was crushed to kindling by a hard freeze on the Mississippi River; York, a vampire on a quest to unite his race with the freedom to no longer depend on blood for their sustenance. And when York seeks out Marsh and offers to buy him the boat of his dreams in exchange for the right to take that boat odd places when it suits his purposes – no questions asked - the adventure begins.
Featuring everything from quotes from the poet, Byron, - "She walks in beauty, like the night…" - to a truly disturbing banquet featuring a baby's hand offered on the end of a silver fork, Fevre Dream is rich in atmosphere, long on action, and deep in great characters. The vampires are the traditional, blood-sucking, live-forever-unless-you-drive-a-stake-through-their-heart, shun-the-daylight sort of vampires. What makes this novel stand out is the exceptionally high quality of writing, the extraordinary relationships that develop between the characters, and the perfect setting – a 19th century river boat on a Mississippi River that's about to run red with blood.

THE HUNGER by Whitley StreiberMiriam Blaylock is not a weepy, broody, remorseful vampire. She is stunningly beautiful, intelligent, and very lonely, to whom humans are nothing more than animals. She is a chillingly evil character in the way that she treats her human lovers and dominates them and the matter-of-fact way she stalks people knowing that no one will ever be able to stop her. Strieber does an admirable job of letting you feel her loneliness, as the last of her kind, but then reminds you what it means to be loved by her, that you could end up spending eternity rotting conscious in a box.

Her current lover and companion is John Blaylock, only a couple hundred years old when he starts to age rapidly, showing the signs of degeneration that Miriam has seen so many times before. As John deteriorates, Miriam prepares her next companion ( a woman) for the transformation, but John consumes her before she's ready. Desperate, Miriam impulsively chooses Dr. Sarah Roberts to be her next, for Dr. Roberts has been intensively researching aging and the human biological clock. But Dr. Roberts is not who she appears to be ...


I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson
Written in 1954, this novel casts a long shadow on current vampire and zombie fiction (and movies), although very few people know how great this book it. Most people only know the movies (The Last Man On Earth - Vincent Price; The Omega Man - Charlton Heston; I Am Legend - Will Smith) and each film is good in its own way. But the book ... is a classic.

After a plague decimates society, infecting the living and creating vampires, Robert Neville finds himself as quite possibly the last living human on earth. Even though the book has a huge creep factor, it is ultimately a heartbreaking portrayal of a man faced with the utmost loneliness.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE by Anne Rice
The story is a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris.

Rich in atmosphere and literally dripping with vampire lore and lifestyle, this book was justly famous when it was released. I read it when it was first released 1976 upon the recommendation of my high school English teacher. Although Rice has continued to explore this world in with varying degrees of success, Interview is a legitimate classic.

MIDNIGHT MASS by F. Paul Wilson
In Wilson's creepy, terrifying thriller, vampires are rapidly taking over the planet. They've got Europe, and now they're encroaching on the East Coast of the U.S. In New Jersey, Carole, a nun, witnesses the death and transformation into a vampire of her best friend. After killing the vampire who used to be her friend, Carole becomes a vigilante, killing vampires and "cowboys," the humans who have aligned themselves with the vampires. She saves a rabbi, Zev, who is seeking Father Joe, hoping to enlist him in the fight against the vampires. Joe's niece Lacey has turned up with the same idea, but Joe himself is trying to drink away his problems. Zev and Lacey, however, succeed in drawing him into the fight, and all three head to St. Anthony's Church to retake it from vampires led by Father Palmeri, a corrupt priest-turned-vampire. But when the vampires capture Joe, the stakes are raised in ways neither side could have imagined. Wilson makes his vampires truly frightening and the eerie atmosphere of the book not unlike that of the movie 28 Days Later. The undead might have every advantage, but the likable, compelling mortals in this gripping read aren't giving up easily.

SALEM'S LOT by Stephen King
This was King's second novel and was the book that began the King phenomenon, which quickly took off with the release of The Shining. But this was 1975, and Lot was released a few months before Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire and suddenly, vampires (and horror fiction) were hot!

Lot examines about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire that is consiously patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula. This novel has two elements that King was to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil. Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel, 'Salem's Lot is great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In 'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light."

THE TRAVELING VAMPIRE SHOW by Richard Laymon
On a hot August morning in the summer of 1963, in the rural town of Grandville, tacked to power poles and trees, fliers have appeared announcing the mysterious one-night-only performance of The Traveling Vampire Show.
The show will feature Valeria, the only known vampire in captivity. According to the fliers, she is a gorgeous, stunning beauty. In the course of the performance, she will stalk volunteers from the audience, sink her teeth into their necks and drink their blood!
For three local teenagers who see the fliers, this is a show they don't want to miss.
The Traveling Vampire Show is the tale of what happened to them on that hot summer day. It's the story of their friendship and love, their temptations, their betrayals, and their courage as they went where they shouldn't go, did what they shouldn't do... and ran into big trouble.
Laymon is an interesting writer. Devoid of almost any literary intent, he writes in-your-face stories that begin immediately and take the reader into dark dark places, but often with a wry sense of humor. Laymon is a storyteller, period. And this book is one of his best.