Good day to you all, my fellow bibliophiles, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me and all my fellow Sagittarius natives! I turned 61 on Sunday the 12th, and I had a wonderful day, with bookish presents and lots of lovely cards. Unfortunately, the day before my birthday we lost famed gothic writer Anne Rice to a stroke...RIP to the writer who brought an entire genre back and made vampires sexy again. There's a ton of tidbits and obits to get through, so I only have space for two book reviews. But I will be back in a week with more reviews. Here's to a warm holiday season of reading!
I'm a huge fan of the original play and the 1983 musical version of Cyrano, starring the late Christopher Plummer as Cyrano de Bergerac. I still listen to the recording of the original Broadway cast.
Movies: Cyrano
MGM has released a new behind-the-scenes https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50626823 featurette for Cyrano https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50626824, as well as "Somebody Desperate," a single written and performed for the film by indie rock band the National, Deadline reported.
Director Joe Wright's first musical is an adaptation of Erica Schmidt's 2018 stage production, which was based on the classic 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. The cast includes Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Bashir Salahuddin, Ben Mendelsohn and Ray Strachan.
Scripted by Schmidt, the movie features an original score and songs by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, with lyrics by Matt Berninger and Carin Besser. Cyrano premiered at Telluride and will hit theaters in Los Angeles on December 17 via United Artists Releasing, expanding to select theaters nationwide January 21.
This is hilarious, and something that only comic book fans could appreciate fully.
Oddest Book Title of the Year
Is Superman Circumcised? by Roy Schwartz "has cut through the competition to claim the 2021 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50626830, earning a 51% share of the public vote," the Bookseller reported, adding that the winning title, "an academic study on the Jewish origins of the iconic DC Comics character, flew faster than a speeding bullet to quickly grab the number one spot in the polls when the public vote was first announced in early November, a lead it never relinquished."
Horace Bent, the Bookseller's legendary diarist and Diagram Prize administrator, said: "Congratulations to Is Superman Circumcised? and its author Roy Schwartz for the heroic effort put into winning the 43rd Diagram Prize. Mr. Schwartz seems smarter than Lex Luthor (and presumably less evil) as I can't recall any author being so pleased to make the Diagram shortlist. He has been busier than Meryl Streep's publicist during Oscar season in pushing Is Superman Circumcised? out to his fans.... There were obstacles--including a concerted effort by Kremlin-backed troll farms to swing the election to The Life Cycle of Russian Things--but truth, justice and the Kryptonian way ultimately prevailed."
Schwartz said: "The competition was stiff, but I'm glad I was able to rise to the challenge.... I'm sincerely honored to receive this august literary prize. It's a great reminder that even serious literature is allowed to be fun."
I NEED this audiobook! I can only imagine how great it is to hear this talented cast reading Neil Gaiman's iconic graphic novel series.
One of the Best Audio Books of 2021
The Sandman: Act II https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50626846 by Neil Gaiman, Dirk Maggs, read by James McAvoy, Neil Gaiman, Kat Dennings, Michael Sheen, David Tennant, John Lithgow, and a full cast (Audible). Anchored by Neil Gaiman's hypnotic storyteller's voice, the second act of The Sandman bewitches. As Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, James McAvoy sounds both imperious and weary, otherworldly and very human. The star-filled cast of actors and lush production guide listeners back and forth in time and in and out of fantastic worlds. Sound effects and original music make for a completely immersive experience.
This is just so cool...a record and bookstore all in one. This would have appealed to me even more when I was a teenager in the 70s.
Hi-Voltage Records, Tacoma, Wash., Adds Books
Hi-Voltage Records https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50628161, a new and used record store in Tacoma, Wash., has taken over an adjacent storefront and added a selection of about 2,600 new books, the Tacoma News Tribune reported.
Owners Meredith and Brian Kenney, who opened the store about 17 years ago, are offering books for all ages and plan to add used books to the mix. Meredith Kenney said she's particularly proud of the store's children's book selection, which makes the store feel like a destination for the whole family. She explained that adding books wasn't part of any long-term business plan, but it came about quickly after the soap-and-pottery store next door closed earlier this year.
"This was not a long, thought-out, meticulously planned adventure. But it came together so easily for us because we had a business already going, which is what allowed us to be able to take a little bit of a risk," Kenney told the News Tribune. She noted that there seems to be a natural overlap between people who are interested in vinyl and people who are interested in physical books. "There are some things, in life, that I think just won't go away. I think books and music will always be a part of people's lives."
Brian Kenney added that he's always wanted to have a bookstore. There's a certain feeling people get when they walk into a record store, and it's "the same thing when you walk into a bookstore."
I grew up (from 5th grade through 12th) in Ankeny, Iowa, which is right next to Ames, Iowa, the home of Iowa State University, known fondly as "Moo U" since they have always had a strong veterinary sciences dept. I really wish this bookstore had existed back when I was a teenager in the 70s.
In Ames, Iowa, Dog Eared Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50629288 has seen steadily growing sales since about November 1, with co-owner Amanda Lepper reporting that "people starting showing up in a different fashion" at that point. The biggest change has been in weekly daytime business, which Lepper said she found surprising. The store, which opened on March 8, had a good Small Business Saturday turnout but a "huge sales total" on Black Friday. She noted that she and co-owner Ellyn Grimm never pushed the shop-early message particularly strongly, but they would mention potential supply-chain issues when customers placed special orders.
When it came to preparing for the season and potential supply chain problems, Grimm and Lepper kept an eye on what sold well all year, which titles were already hard to keep in stock, and how quickly different publishers shipped things. They were able to "order really deep" on the titles that just kept selling, on staff favorites and on books that were seeing an uptick even if they weren't staff favorites. They filled the store's basement with "books and books" and, while ordering so heavily did make them a bit nervous, "we know the books we're ordering will sell eventually."
On the topic of supply-chain issues, Lepper said that for certain publishers and for Ingram it has indeed been as bad as expected, although some publishers, including Penguin, Scholastic and Simon & Schuster, are still "coming through." Despite how deeply the store ordered on many titles, they are still running out of some, such as The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow and The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, which "took off."
Asked whether the news of the Omicron variant has affected in-store shopping, Lepper noted that "we started in the pandemic, so we don't know any different." That said, after school began in the fall, the store once again started asking customers to wear masks while shopping. For the most part customers are happy to comply, and there are only a very few who ask the staff to bring their purchases out to their car.
What follows are two obituaries for Anne Rice, who wrote the amazing "Interview with the Vampire" that brought gothic fiction and vampire stories back into the national zeitgeist. I read about 5 or 6 of her books before I became offended and disgusted by the first Mayfair Witch book, which glorified and glamorized rape and incest. However, the other books of hers that I read prior to that were riveting stories that often had me turning pages into the wee hours. Her legacy of work will stand the test of time, I believe. Go with God, Anne.
Obituary for Anne Rice
Anne Rice, influential author of “Interview with the Vampire,” died on Saturday due to complications resulting from a stroke. She was 80.
The author’s son Christopher revealed the news on Facebook and said that she would be interred in the family mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans in a private ceremony.
Born in New Orleans in 1941, Rice became renowned the world over as a writer of gothic fiction, with her books selling more than 150 million copies globally. In the early 1970s, while grieving the death of her daughter Michelle, she began converting one of her stories into what became her first novel, the gothic horror “Interview with the Vampire,” which was published by Knopf in 1976. The novel turns on vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, who tells the story of his life to a reporter. Michelle served as an inspiration for the child vampire Claudia.
The book was the first of ten in what is collectively known as “The Vampire Chronicles.” It was adapted by Neil Jordan as a 1994 film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater, with Kirsten Dunst playing Claudia. Rice adapted the screenplay from her novel and the film gathered two Oscar nominations and a brace of BAFTA wins.
“Queen of the Damned,” based on one of the bestselling sequels to “Interview with the Vampire,” was adapted as a film in 2002. Other adaptations of Rice’s novels include Garry Marshall’s “Exit to Eden” (1994), starring Dana Delany, Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell and Emmy-winning Showtime original “The Feast of All Saints” (2001).
Second Obituary Note: Anne Rice
Anne Rice https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50665791, "whose lush, bestselling gothic tales, including Interview with the Vampire, reinvented the blood-drinking immortals as tragic antiheroes," died December 11, the Associated Press reported. She was 80. "As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions," her son, author Christopher Rice https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50665792, posted on her Facebook page and his Twitter page. "In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage."
Published in 1976, Interview with a Vampire was her first book with Knopf. "Anne was a fierce storyteller who wrote large, lived quietly, and imagined worlds on a grand scale," said Victoria Wilson, Rice's longtime--and only--editor at Knopf. "She summoned the feelings of an age long before we knew what they were. As a writer, she was decades ahead of her time. As a longtime friend, she loved and was beloved by everyone who worked with her at this house. The world will miss her and continue to know her again and again through the lives she imagined."
Rice's many books, including The Queen of the Dammed, Cry to Heaven, The Tale of the Body Thief, Servant of the Bones and Christ the Lord, have sold more than 150 million copies around the world. Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, a novel co-written with Christoper Rice, will be published in February 2022.
Rice wrote more than 30 books over five decades, 13 of which were part of the Vampire Chronicles begun with her 1976 debut. The AP noted that "long before Twilight or True Blood, Rice introduced sumptuous romance, female sexuality and queerness--took Interview with the Vampire as an allegory for homosexuality--to the supernatural genre."
"I wrote novels about people who are shut out life for various reasons," Rice observed in her 2008 memoir, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession. "This became a great theme of my novels--how one suffers as an outcast, how one is shut out of various levels of meaning and, ultimately, out of human life itself."
Though Rice had initially struggled to get it published, Interview with the Vampire "was a massive hit, particularly in paperback," the AP wrote, adding, "She didn't immediately extend the story, following it up with a pair of historical novels and three erotic novels penned under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure. But in 1985, she published The Vampire Lestat, about the Interview with the Vampire character she would continually return to, up to 2018's Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat." She also used the pen name Anne Rampling for Exit to Eden (1985) and Belinda (1986). Her series Lives of the Mayfair Witches began in 1990 with The Witching Hour.
Horror author Ramsey Campbell told the Guardian that Rice wrote "in the great tradition of the gothic https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50665793, both thematically and in her prose.... I would argue it's a specifically female lineage that stretches from the classical gothics but in particular from Mary Shelley, in its humanization of the monster and the way it accords him a thoroughly literate voice."
Only two book reviews this time...but I will have more next time.
When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire is the 15th book in her October Daye urban fantasy romance series,
and having patiently waited through the last few books for Toby to get married, I was particularly excited when this book debuted...enough so that I bought a hardback copy, which I rarely do. I wasn't disappointed, fortunately, except by the odd choice of turning the epilogue chapter into an "all new novella," which was pretty shifty on the part of the publisher's marketing dept. Anyway, here's the blurb: Toby's getting married! Now in hardcover, the fifteenth novel of the Hugo-nominated, New York Times-bestselling October Daye urban fantasy series.
It's
hard to be a hero. There's always something needing October "Toby"
Daye's attention, and her own desires tend to fall by the wayside in
favor of solving the Kingdom's problems. That includes the desire to
marry her long-time suitor and current fiancé, Tybalt, San Francisco's
King of Cats. She doesn't mean to keep delaying the wedding, it just
sort of...happens. And that's why her closest friends have taken the
choice out of her hands, ambushing her with a court wedding at the High
Court in Toronto. Once the High King gets involved, there's not much
even Toby can do to delay things...except for getting
involved in stopping a plot to overthrow the High Throne itself,
destabilizing the Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting
married through nothing more than the sheer volume of chaos it would
cause. Can Toby save the Westlands and make it to her own wedding on
time? Or is she going to have to choose one over the other?
I loved that Toby's found family managed to help her fend off the bad guys and ended up making certain that she got married in style (with a dress that had red faded 'stains' on it as part of a pattern and also had an armor spell to keep it from getting soiled) and still kept the king alive. Now if only Tybalt and Toby can get through their honeymoon without having any bloody crisis thrust upon them, all will be well. I will admit that I am rather curious as to how a fae and a cat shifter will genetically combine to create kittens? Half fae furry babies? Who knows, but whatever happens, it will doubtless be bloody, chaotic and heartwarming, all at once. I don't want to give away all the juicy details, but I will say that though there was too much re-capping of previous books, I really enjoyed this book, and devoured it within a day. So I'd give it a well deserved A, and recommend it to anyone who has read the previous 14 books.
Little Shop of Found Things by Paula Brackston is the first book in her delicious new paranormal romance/fantasy series. I'd read the second book in the series, "Secrets of the Chocolate House" prior to reading this book, but it was fine because the books work well as stand alone novels due to the stories shifting focus to new characters in each book. Here's the blurb: New York Times bestselling author of The Witch's Daughter Paula Brackston returns to her trademark blend of magic and romance guaranteed to enchant in The Little Shop of Found Things, the first book in a new continuing series.
An antique shop haunted by a ghost.
A silver treasure with an injustice in its story.
An adventure to the past she’ll never forget.
Xanthe and her mother Flora leave London behind for a fresh start,
taking over an antique shop in the historic town of Marlborough. Xanthe
has always had an affinity with some of the antiques she finds. When she
touches them, she can sense something of the past they come from and
the stories they hold. When she has an intense connection to a beautiful
silver chatelaine she has to know more.
It is while she’s
examining the chatelaine that she’s transported back to the seventeenth
century where it has its origins. She discovers there is an injustice in
its history. The spirit that inhabits her new home confronts her and
charges her with saving her daughter’s life, threatening to take Flora’s
if she fails.
While Xanthe fights to save the girl amid the
turbulent days of 1605, she meets architect Samuel Appleby. He may be
the person who can help her succeed. He may also be the reason she can’t
bring herself to leave.
The story continues in October 2019 with book two in the Found Things series, Secrets of the Chocolate House.
I got this book as a free ebook (part of a publisher's promotion) and had few expectations, so I was surprised and delighted by Brackston's evocative prose and assertive plot full of well drawn characters. Xanthe's time travel romance was particularly poignant, though I wish she would have done some historical research to find out if the man she fell in love with ever married and produced children, whose family tree would extend, hopefully, into the current century. It would be great to discover that the man who is interested in dating her now is the many times great-grandson of that man from the 17th century. Still, I found myself enthralled by this novel, and would therefore give it an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes time-travel romances, or just time travel stories in general, whether it's HG Wells or Doctor Who.
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