| Now’s the time to enjoy reading outside in the summer heat because, in a couple of months, it’ll be impossible (best not to think of that right now). So, to aid in your summer reading, here are a few new, choice picks:
· The Night Buffalo by Guillermo Arriaga (Atria, 240 pp.) – The creepiest of the bunch. What seems to be a simple tale of loss and love turns into a sinister meditation on madness and obsession. Arriaga structures the tale much like his screenplays for Amores Perros and 21 Grams, skipping through time and memory with ease. It follows a young man, Manuel, dealing with the suicide of his best friend Gregorio. The two shared the same love of a girl, and as hinted at by their shared "blue buffalo" tattoos, much more. It’s a compelling, depressing page turner.
· The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones by Anthony Bourdain (Bloomsbury USA, 288 pp.) – Bourdain gained a lot of fans, both professional chefs and cooking neophytes alike with his Kitchen Confidential, detailing the seamy underbelly of the restaurant world. Now he’s returned with Nasty, a compendium of collected essays on everything from seal hunting, to Vegas food and an attack on Woody Harrelson’s "raw food diet." Bourdain’s breezy, conversational style works well with these short snippets. They’re sure to infuriate some but are entertaining all the same.
· Blood Mask by Lauren Kelly (HarperCollins, 252 pp.) – Lauren Kelly is actually the nom de plume of Joyce Carol Oates, with Blood being the third book under the pen name after Take Me, Take Me with You and The Stolen Heart. Oates has dabbled in suspense and horror before (see the gross Zombie) so why she chose to write these three books under an alias I don’t know. Anyhow, Blood’s twisted tale of murder, "blood masks" and bio-art is a genuinely well-crafted mystery, sure to trick aficionados of the genre.
· The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont (Simon & Schuster, 384 pp.) – With a title like this, you know you’re in pulp territory. Malmont has written both an ode to bloody noir and a literary fanboy’s treat. It follows Walter Gibson (creator of The Shadow) and Lester Dent (creator of Doc Savage) into a seedy underworld of tunnels and secret islands to solve the murder of their friend H.P. Lovecraft. Along for the ride is a young L. Ron Hubbard.
· The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard (HarperCollins, 416 pp.) – Historical fiction is a hot commodity these days, particularly the pack of novels authors and famed characters (read Elizabeth Kostova’s mammoth, preposterously-entertaining The Historian). Pale Blue’s labyrinthine tale of murder and missing body parts on a college campus finds its hero in a retired cop and a young drunk, Edgar Allan Poe. Weirdness abounds. Bayard manages to find just the right balance between a period tone and a modern thriller.
· Shadow People: Inside History’s Most Notorious Secret Societies by John Lawrence Reynolds (Key Porter Books, 320 pp.) – The Da Vinci Code may have reinvigorated our desire to learn about hidden, underground societies, even if a lot of the facts are flawed. How much of Reynold’s research would withstand scrutiny from scholars I don’t know, but his introduction into the history of the Mafia, the Yakuza, Kabbalah and the Skull and Bones society is a tasty bit of mind candy and bizarre as hell.
McNally Robinson hosts Calgary Ink on Thursday, July 20 at 7 p.m., with readings from Chris Ewart (Miss Lamp), Natalee Caple (Mackerel Sky), Melanie Little (Confidence) and William Neill Scott.
Local author Nalia Umar is reading from her new children’s book Majestic’s Search at the Crowfoot Terrace Chapters on Saturday, July 22 at 2 p.m.
At The Banff Centre, on Monday, July 24 at 8 p.m., Rosemary Sullivan (author of the Governor General’s Award-winning Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen) leads the next journalism discussion, with Villa Air-Bel and The Road Out: A Collaboration.
In news, Shakespeare’s famed first folio was sold at a Sotheby’s auction to a private bookseller for 2,808,000 pounds.
Also, a couple of issues from now, I’m borrowing a page from The Guardian and doing my own monthly top 10 list. It’ll be as specific as I can make it. If you have any suggestions, as well as events and info on anything I’ve missed, e-mail me at bevans@ffwd.greatwest.ca. |
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