The Dark Knight Returns

The Dark Knight Returns
by Frank Miller
(3/5 stars)
I wasn't a big comic book fan even when I was a kid, so I missed out on when this first came up and by all accounts was a Really Big Deal.  It's pretty easy to tell this is the same guy who did the crummy "Robocop" sequels and equally crummy "The Spirit" because of the ridiculous plot, absurd newscasts, and hammy noir-ish narration.

As the title suggests, the story is about (initially) an older Bruce Wayne taking up the old cape and tights ten years after retiring.  Somehow this morphs into a plot involving Superman and nuclear holocaust.  Many of the familiar players like Commissioner Gordon, Two-Face, and the Joker are featured.  There's also a new, female Robin.

Since this was written in the mid '80s it focuses on the Cold War and ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation.  Alan Moore's "Watchmen" similarly covered this ground, only in a less heavy-handed, juvenile fashion.  They're both pretty dated, though this one feels more so.  If you were going to read just one major graphic novel from the '80s, read "Watchmen."

I obviously don't know much about artwork.  Sometimes the crude drawings were distracting.  Especially during some action scenes it was hard for me to tell what was going on.

Despite that I thought this was pretty silly, it was grimly fascinating.  And really it only takes a couple of hours to read through.  But I guess to really appreciate this you would have had to have read it when it first came out.

That is all.

Stiltsville

Stiltsville
By Susanna Daniel
(3/5 stars)

I think the simplest way to sum this up is to say:  If you liked "The Stone Diaries" you'll like this book.  I thought "The Stone Diaries" was an exercise in tedium, so there you go.

The problem with this book is that the life of the narrator Frances is so ordinary that it's dull.  I always say that if I want to read about an ordinary life I can read my journal.  The reason most of us read books is that we want to read about lives that aren't ordinary, about people who have experiences that we ourselves don't have in our ordinary lives.  Until a terminal illness is thrown in for the last third of the book, there's nothing that even remotely qualifies as anything extraordinary.

The more cynical reader of this review would sneer and say I want car chases and explosions and that.  No.  I would appreciate some kind of conflict and drama, though.  Really, Frances goes through the first fifty years of her life without anyone dying.  By the time I was half that I'd lost both grandfathers plus numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.  That's just symptomatic of the problem that really nothing of interest happens through the first 2/3 of the book.

Here's what happens:  a woman named Frances goes from Atlanta to Miami with a friend and they go to this place called Stiltsville, which is a group of houses off the coast of Miami built on stilts.  She meets a man named Dennis.  They date, get married, and have a kid.  There you go.

On rare occasions you can get away with telling an ordinary story.  I point to "Breathing Lessons" by Anne Tyler as the gold standard for that.  But to be successful, you have to really make the characters and their world come to life.  You have to make the ordinary seem extraordinary.  The mistake the author makes is writing this as a first-person story.  Frances' narration is about as interesting as talking on the phone with my mom.  Her voice is dull and that makes her life seem dull.

The terminal illness at the end almost redeems this, but it comes too late.  Anyway, I'm a guy so I'm not really the target audience.  I imagine women might find it a better read.  Though why they want to read something that would only reinforce the dullness of their own lives is beyond me.  (But hey, if I knew anything about women I'd be a lot further along.)

That is all.

Model Home

Model Home
By Eric Puchner
(4/5 stars)

In the sub-genre of "suburban families whose lives go into the crapper" there are the truly standout examples like "White Noise" by Don DeLillo and "American Pastoral" by Philip Roth.  Then there are those highly regarded examples like "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen or "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.  (And there are probably dozens of other examples I can't think of at the moment.)

Since his book takes place in the 1980s and a toxic incident is prominently featured, Puchner is clearly aspiring to be "White Noise" but his story and characters all have a been-there, done-that sort of feel to them.  It's a decent enough read, but it's not enough to make you forget the books I mentioned above, plus probably a number I didn't.  And we could throw in movies like "American Beauty" as well to murky the waters a bit more.

Anyway, as mentioned the story takes place starting in 1985 in suburban Los Angeles.  The Ziller family has moved from Wisconsin a couple of years ago so patriarch Warren could launch a housing development in the desert.  Except the government decides to put a toxic waste dump near the development (the toxic incident I mentioned) which wipes out Warren's dreams of wealth.

He keeps his looming bankruptcy a secret from his wife Camille, who makes educational videos for the local school district and if this were the '90s would be driving an SUV and described as a "soccer mom."  The good thing for Warren is that his three children are all too engrossed in their own lives to notice the handwriting on the wall, even after Warren's car and the furniture in the house are repossessed.  18-year-old Dustin dreams of being a punk rock star.  16-year-old Lyle (short for Delilah) dreams of books and escaping her embarrassing family.  And 11-year-old Jonas dreams of Mandy Rogers, a missing mentally handicapped girl.

The first act of the story begins the unraveling of the Ziller family.  Warren tries in vain to sell houses in his development.  Camille thinks he's having an affair and takes up smoking.  Dustin becomes obsessed with his girlfriend's sister.  Lyle starts seeing the older boy who works the gate of their subdivision.  And Jonas starts wearing all orange.

The second act is when things really hit the fan.  Like in the movie "A Serious Man" it's like the God of Job shows up to shower plagues upon the Ziller household.  Really all you needed was the frogs raining down from the sky.

The third act then is picking up the pieces to get to the message such as it is.

Really I gleaned two messages from this book.  The first is that if you have a family, you should value your time with them.  Not just the big moments like holidays and such, but the little ones.  This I found to be very true when thinking of my own family.  For instance, I remember one time my dad was in the hospital and my siblings and I were just hanging out late that night, eating pizza and watching a rerun of "Wings" on TV.  It's little things like that stick in your memory years later when time and space conspire to tear you apart, because you realize that just being together meant as much or even more than big gestures like Christmas or birthday presents or what have you.

The other message might not have been intended, but really when the book gets to the second act it seems like someone should be wearing a sandwich boards and shouting, "Repent, ye sinners, ye relentless consumers worshiping the false idol of Commercialism!"  Because think about it, the Zillers go from idyllic Wisconsin to California, that hotbed of commercialism and phoniness best exemplified by Hollywood, and live well beyond their means in an attempt to accumulate more wealth.  Then, as if in retribution, all this bad stuff happens to them.  Maybe I'm overthinking this point.

Despite the problems I've mentioned, the book was interesting enough to keep me moving forward.  Puchner's writing is sharp and witty, though again it's not going to make you forget about DeLillo or Roth.  Parts of it in the second and third act drag a little and really the story ends with more of a whimper than a bang.

Still, I'd recommend it as a decent enough read that should remind you of the value of family and perhaps the evils of commercialism.

That is all.

Imperial Bedrooms

Imperial Bedrooms
by Bret Easton Ellis
(1/5 stars)

It's just as well that JD Salinger never published a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye" with Holden as a middle-aged man because it probably would have turned out like "Imperial Bedrooms."  While Ellis' "Less Than Zero" wound up being the '80s version of "Catcher in the Rye," perfectly capturing the emptiness and wastefulness of that decade, "Imperial Bedrooms" has nothing to say and really no reason to exist.  It's just a dull Hollywood thriller like the type we've seen dozens of times before in books and films.

Picking up 25 years after "Less Than Zero" the novel again features Clay as the narrator.  It might have been helpful to have reread "Zero" beforehand because the first few pages go on about how someone wrote a book about Clay and his friends back in the '80s but it wasn't really Clay, it was someone else who like Nick in the "Great Gatsby" was close to the action but not entirely a part of it.  The book then goes on about the difference in the movie version, which is remarkably different.

Then it finally gets down to the brass tacks.  Clay is a screenwriter and like most stereotypical Hollywood screenwriters is an alcoholic and fringe player on the scene.  The rest of the book goes on as a B-movie-style thriller involving Clay, his friend Julian, and the stereotypical struggling actress/whore Rain Turner.

None of this rises above the level of cliche and really the only thing you could take away from this is something I figured out a while ago:  most people don't really "grow up," they just get older.  If you were looking for Ellis to provide some kind of commentary on 21st Century society, think again.  He gets bogged down in the cheap TMZ tabloid theatrics instead.  But maybe the point as I said was that nothing's changed for Clay.  He's still a selfish idiot, only now he abuses alcohol more than cocaine.

In short this was a disappointing book that smacks to me of a cash grab.  If you're reading this and you haven't purchased the book yet, then don't waste your money.  Just go pop "LA Confidential" in the DVD player instead if you want a good Hollywood thriller or reread "Less Than Zero" if you want a nostalgia fix.

That is all.

Play Dead

Play Dead
By Ryan Brown
(3/5 stars)
I've never actually read a book featuring zombies before, but I have watched a few zombie movies like "Night of the Living Dead," "Shaun of the Dead," and "Zombieland" so I am familiar with the subject.  All of those movies I'd say are better than "Play Dead," a book I'd give 4 stars for the concept and 2 stars for the execution.  A lot of potential was left in the locker room instead of on the field, not to mention an overall pedestrian writing style.  While the book is easy to read and not really terrible, it could have been a lot better too.

The story is about football--and zombies.  In Texas there's almost nothing the people care about more than football, so that the people of Killington (pun intended?) are crazy about their team even though they're about as good as the Detroit Lions.  Things seem to be finally going their way with the emergence of quarterback Cole Logan, who has the team one win away from the district finals against the hated Elmwood Badgers.  The Badgers have made a successful run in large part because their team is more doped up than the East German Olympic team.

Everything's bigger in Texas, including the pranks played on the opposing team.  Instead of stealing the Killington mascot, the Badgers attack Cole with a hatchet and then run the team bus off the road, seeming to kill everyone but Cole (who wasn't on the bus) and Coach Hickham, who managed to escape out a window.  That's where the zombies come in, thanks to a football-crazed witch.  From there it's down to a showdown between the zombie Killington team and doping Elmwood team.

The game itself is almost an afterthought, crammed into the last 30 pages of the book.  The other 310 set up the bus accident, the zombies, and the game itself.  Most of this is devoted to the emerging romance between Cole and ace school reporter Savannah Hickham, also the coach's daughter.

In the hands of a far more gifted author--like Stephen King maybe--this situation could have turned out to be much more interesting.  As it is, the characters are stock and the Killington players have no personality BEFORE becoming zombies.  Even the name "Cole Logan" seems like something pulled from an Action Movie Cliche guidebook.

In the hands of a gifted satirist the Texan love of football, various football cliches, and so forth could have been exploited to better advantage than they are here.  There is some of that, but not enough to make this a truly great book.  That's too bad because Brown has a fun concept but he's the wrong author to pull it off effectively.

I mentioned the pedestrian writing earlier and overall I felt this was the kind of story I'd see in an online writing critique group.  One particular issue was the author's heavy use of dialog to the point he actually describes Savannah through dialog thusly:  "Oh, she's a doll.  Red hair.  Green eyes.  That adorable figure."  That just made me shake my head sadly.  For one it's unbelievable dialog and for another it's just plain sloppy writing.  Probably the only worse way of describing a character would be to use a police APB.

Anyway, this is an OK book, not a great one.  It is light beach/airplane reading that seems destined to be made into a movie with a Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart lookalike in the Cole and Savannah roles.

That is all.

The Serialist

The Serialist
by David Gordon
(4/5 stars)
I was predisposed to liking this book as I wrote a very similar character to Harry Bloch in my novel Where You Belong.  That is a writer who gets by writing under pen names that sometimes are not of the same gender as the real author.  In my case the male author wrote a YA sci-fi series under the pseudonym of an Irish woman.  In "The Serialist," author Harry Bloch writes porn, sci-fi, "urban" detective novels, and lately vampire novels by using a variety of aliases; the pseudonym for the latter series is actually his mother's identity.

Despite publishing dozens of books, Harry has never published under his own name and he makes only enough money to get by.  He lives in his mother's former house, alone after his ex found greener literary pastures.  The closest he has to an agent is a 15-year-old girl named Claire whom he "tutors" by writing term papers for her.

So it's not much of a surprise that Harry jumps at the opportunity to ghost write the autobiography of notorious serial killer Damian Clay.  Clay is on death row and slated to be executed in just three months.  In exchange for providing his story, Clay wants Harry to visit some of Clay's fans and write perverse stories about them for Clay's amusement.  While Harry is reluctant to go along with this, ultimately it's an opportunity he can't pass up.

From there things take a deadly turn.  Really the second half of the book plays out like a two-part episode of "Murder She Wrote" where Harry takes on the case.  Actually it would make for a good series on the USA Network with the unconventional detective and his equally unconventional sidekicks Claire and a stripper named Dani who's the sister of one of Clay's victims.  The last fifty pages especially drag along as Harry unravels the last few clues of the mystery and things run their course.

I suppose, though, that if this never turns into high art or "literature" that's keeping in character.  It's hard to believe someone like Harry could suddenly create a stunning masterpiece.  Then again it's hard to believe he does a number of things he does in the book, so here we are.
Anyway, the narrative is witty and engaging.  Harry is a lovable loser, not a Sam Spade-type detective, which makes the story fun as it goes along.  I am disappointed though that, as I said, the second half comes off as a TV detective show, but then I was probably hoping for something too much from a mere serialist.

That is all.

Snapped

Snapped
by Pamela Klaffke
(5/5 stars)

I'm surprised I liked this as much as I did because I'm definitely not in the book's target audience.  For one thing, I'm a guy.  For another I don't know anything about fashion.  I've never seen an episode of "Sex and the City" or "Ugly Betty" or "America's Next Top Model" or "Project Runway."  I never watched "The Devil Wears Prada."  I did read one "chick lit" book solely on a whim because it was super cheap and I was bored.

But I did really enjoy this book because it's so funny.  The story centers around Sara B., a cofounder and photographer for "Snap" magazine.  Sara's main contribution is to take pictures of people who are then labeled as "DOs" or "DON'Ts."  She's been doing this for almost twenty years to the point that she's now 39 and most of her subjects are far younger than her.

Despite the success of the magazine, Sara feels generally unfulfilled.  She's never married or had children like her friends or really even had a serious relationship.  She drinks and smokes almost constantly, often to the point of excess.  And when she takes the picture of a young woman with a parrot on her shoulder whom she calls "Parrot Girl" she realizes her passion for the job is waning.  Not long after this, she meets a perky young woman named Eva, whom Sara makes her assistant and takes under her wing.  Except of course Eva is a backstabbing phony out to usurp Sara's job--not that she really cares.

The story is narrated by Sara and full of hilarious asides and fantasies, many of which are darkly comic like a game show where only the fastest shoppers survive while those who use coupons and write checks are shot.  A lot of her asides are also self-deprecating about her enlarging rear or sagging breasts or flabby stomach.

I think what I enjoyed the most is that while Sara goes through changes, she never really changes entirely.  There's not that "A Christmas Carol" moment where she decides to change her ways and be "good" forever.  Nor does she decide that to be happy she needs to settle down in the suburbs like her friends and have kids.  In other words, she never sells out herself.

The story doesn't contain many surprises, but it's enjoyable guilty pleasure reading--even for dudes.

That is all.