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Picks of the Week

  • Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel

    Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel
    Anyone who thinks John Banville lacks a sense of humor clearly did not read his serial for the New York Times magazine, available in novella-ish format in July. The story has all the basic crime ingredients - blackmail, adultery, murder, betrayal, that sort of thing - but it is so, so clear how much fun Banville had writing this pseudonymous exercise, loading up sentences filled with bizarre but well-placed metaphors and gently (or not so gently!) lampooning his characters as he moves them around his narrative chess board.

  • Cassandra Clare: City of Bones

    Cassandra Clare: City of Bones
    I read this on the flight home from the LA Times Festival of Books and it really is about the perfect airport read: fantastic storytelling, characters whose adventures and melodramas wrap you in their spells and really ass-kicking action scenes involving demons and all manner of underworld types. Sure, Clare clearly owes a huge debt to Buffy and Harry Potter, but dammit, I want to find out what will happen next to Clary, Jace, Simon & co. - and that's exactly the button that's supposed to be pushed.

  • Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS

    Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS
    Reading this novel was like being transported back to the mid-1990s Montreal I knew during my college years. But it also affords an inside look at the ups and downs, the politics and the dramas, the hookups and breakups endemic to a rising rock band. It's clear, whether told from the vantage point of the young violin prodigy with a boy's name or her bandmate looking to redefine himself outside the orbit of his best friend (and leader) that Kaslik knows this world cold, and we're privileged to share in this knowledge.

  • Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

    Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    I'd recommend this simply based off of the utter gobsmacking brilliance that is LE BAL, one of the most crystalline and shocking novellas I've ever read, but the other three works simply confirm Nemirovsky's literary brilliance. THE COURILOF AFFAIR is a wonderful surprise for mystery readers because it's her version of a spy novel, tackling the moral quandaries of terrorism for a so-called greater good by personalizing the narrator's deeds and misdeeds. In other words, Nemirovsky's entire backlist can't be translated fast enough for me.

  • Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North

    Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North
    Goddamn, Hall can write, and her chosen dystopian subject matter gives her the chance not only to show off her sentence-by-sentence chops but to demonstrate how few steps removed our current culture is from the apocalyptic fervor of her world, where the reproductive rights of women are trampled on so definitively it takes an army of women to try, however futile the exercise might be, to take some independence back. I can't think of enough good things to say about this except that it should be read, now and years to come.

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« On the deal front | Main | Great Guest Blog Month, Week Four »

August 22, 2006

Flights of fancy

Of all the dog days of August, I think this might be the alpha dog. Ay yi yi. Never mind that it's (yet again) gorgeous, sunny and hot, which means brain cells are dying by the millisecond. And so, a list of links that have nothing whatsoever to do with crime fiction, literature, or anything of the sort. Yee ha.

First up, I feel incredibly sorry for this dude.

Then there's Captain Picard...singing. Just following the lead of his ancestor in Trek, after all!

George Rock...still funny after all these years.

This has been making the rounds but still...damn.

Gregg and Matt at CrimeRant have been on amazing form with regards to John Mark Karr.

And hats off to these guys if they can break the record.

Posted at 11:00 AM in Absurdities |

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Comments

Sweet mother of God, I think every guy who clicks that first link will scrunch their eyes and cross their legs.

Although he would make the perfect boyfriend for those conjoined twins from Nip/Tuck...

Posted by: Jason | August 22, 2006 at 11:11 AM

The "making the rounds" link isn't working here...

Posted by: Keith | August 22, 2006 at 12:43 PM

I really feel for the guy, too. It's like Sophie's Choice, but with penises.

Posted by: JDRhoades | August 22, 2006 at 02:04 PM

That guy is like Bewitched. He has two Dicks. (York,Sergeant)

I wonder if they get aroused together or one is soft while the other is hard.
Why does he have to have one removed? You'd think a woman would like it doubled.
Or he could find a woman with two vaginas.

Posted by: Phil | August 22, 2006 at 03:59 PM

Phil:

BWHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

Posted by: JDRhoades | August 22, 2006 at 05:39 PM

Wonder if one is longer than the other.

(C'mon--like the rest of you didn't!?)

Posted by: Duane Swierczynski | August 22, 2006 at 07:26 PM

ok the quick change people - I saw them at a Bull's game once and I was just DYING afterward. I could not understand how on earth they did it. I was sitting there for hours trying to figure it out. Now re-watching it, I still have no clue. One of the coolest things ever.

Posted by: christin | August 23, 2006 at 11:33 AM

Christin: Something tells me you're not talking about the guy with two dicks.

Posted by: Duane Swierczynski | August 23, 2006 at 11:02 PM

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