Friday, October 23, 2009
Some times I ask you guys these things ...
Finishing up reading a great novel called FINCH which I will post more about later. The book has put me in the mood for more innovative novels that cross genres, mixes things up a bit. I love "hard to categorize" books. Stuff like that. Let's hear some suggestions.
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12 comments:
For post-apocalyptic dystopia meets Lawrence Block's Hit Man meets Oliver Twist, Jeff Somers' Avery Cates series is fun: The Electric Church, The Digital Plague, and The Eternal Prison.
If you're looking for genre benders, then Michael Gruber is worth a peek. His first three give you great, bloody mysteries heavily leavened with mystics, weird religions, etc. More here.
http://danielboshea.wordpress.com/bang-bang-books/
I second the nomination of Gruber. I don't generally like supernatural mysteries, but locks the story in and keeps things from becoming fantastical.
While I'm here, thanks for an excellent panel on noir at Bouchercon last week, and for the recommendation of GUN MONKEYS. Educational and much fun.
Paolo Bacigalupi
I just finished up the Wind up Girl and was pretty impressed. Lyrical and gritty.
And I've been on a hardcore Lansdale kick lately. Just started reading Bumper Crop and Mr. Mojo is impossible to define.
Victor - I have o recommend Daniel Pinkwater. If Salvador Dali took really potent Hallucinogens and then decided to write weird kids book, he might be Pinkwater. In particular, try YOUNG ADULT NOVEL (which features high school anarchists The Wild DaDa Ducks), THE SNARKOUT BOYS AND THE AVACADO OF DEATH, or LIZARD MUSIC (with the fabulous late nigth TV show You Bet Your Duck with lizards wearing Donald Duck masks doing bad Groucho Marx imitations). His picture books are fun and his non fiction (particularly FISH WHISTLE) is amaziong.
Victor:
B'con, you said ALTERED CARBON, I said MARKET FORCES. Morgan, man. Morgan. It's like Stone's WALL STREET meets THE ROAD WARRIOR and then molests THE DOGS OF WAR on a dynamite-laden bridge.
THE GIRL WITH THE FLAMMABLE SKIRT, by Amy Bender, short stories that are anything but definable or conventional.
I think of Christopher Moore as mixing genres: mostly humor and horror.
Even Jim Butcher has mixed hard boil private eye w/ horror (although I am still deciding how much I like him.
Lastly, Jennifer Government | by Max Barry
I'm waaay behind the curve, here, Victor, have recently read only the first novel by an author I am excited to have discovered after a friend's recommendation. I laffed so hard at times during Suicide Squeeze that I think my wife started coming to bed later than usual so she could do her end-of-day reading in peace. At least I hope that was the reason. "Pissed-off firecrackers" is so fooking funny I damned near pissed the bed when I read that line.
Anyway, with apologies, at the moment I'm less interested in genre bending literature as a theme than I am in your characters and their entanglements. I'll be reading Pistol Poets, next - even if it means my sweetheart continuing to turn her evening pages on the couch awhile longer.
To you, sir, I say (sotto voce), bravo!
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey a thousand times over. If Finch is noir fantasy then SS is hardboiled fantasy.
I know others and will try to come back later
I'm currently reading the second book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. The first book is "The Eyre Affair." It is a mix of post-war memoir, detective fiction, romance novel, science fiction, political critique, eccentric humor, and literary fantasy. Though not as hardboiled as your novels, I did think of your work when I was reading it.
I guess these are kinda old hat now, but Joe Lansdale's _Zeppelins West_ and _Flaming London_ are uncategorizable romps of literary greatness. Also I'd have to throw in Neal Barrett Jr.'s _Piggs_. These aren't hifalutin fare, but just darn good reads. Okay, okay, one more: the now infamous _Bubba Ho-Tep_, the original genre-bender extraordinaire (but bring your puke bucket with you; it's word for word the best thing I've read in a long time, but the scatology gets gruesome).
- Lawrence
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