That's all by way of saying "gosh, I really didn't read much this month, did I?"
I'd like to read more, or at least I think I do, but, when I have time these days, it seems that reading long-form prose is not at the top of the priority list. (Once again, I can wish that long-form prose was still my job, but it isn't.)
Anyway, here's what I did read:
Gary Fingercastle, Wanted: Bear Cubs for My Children
(11/2) -- I picked this up, knowing that it was a collection of strange posts from Craigslist, but thinking that Fingercastle had found, curated, and edited those posts --that it was a work of found art, or of "look at all these weirdos." I was mistaken, though; this is more like those books of annoying letters to famous people that Jerry Seinfeld keeps insisting that he didn't write. Fingercastle has spent much of the last decade thinking up, writing, and posting to Craigslist deliberately strange, offensive, and unpleasant posts, across all of the categories on that site, and Wanted collects those posts. So it's not found art; it's a guy imitating found art, and trying to out-bizarre the real world, which is quixotic at best. It does feel like Fingercastle is making fun of people -- and, even more so, that he's making fun of non-specific, vague ideas of particular kinds of people, which is worse for comedy purposes. It is moderately funny in spots, but the exercise is unpleasant to begin with; Wanted is an extended trolling expedition that got a book deal, and I don't think trolling should be rewarded.Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth (11/12)
(11/13) -- I don't know that I have much to say about this novel -- it's a funny mystery novel, which manages to be both really funny and a real novel (though the mystery, in the core genre sense, is slightly skimped along the way -- I didn't mind at all). It centers on a very dysfunctional family of private detectives in San Francisco, as seen by the ne'er-do-well older sister of the family, and it has already been a big success, with praise and bestsellerdom and four sequels to date. (I got to it several years late.) If you've heard about it and were waiting for one more person to rave about it, count me as that final rave -- it's not a demanding novel, but it's both deeper than it looks and a hell of a lot of fun to read. (It was my primary airplane book for the round-trip transcontinental flight earlier this month, and made time in that cramped seat pass admirably quickly.)Daniel Handler, The Basic Eight (11/16)
(11/26) -- The third volume of the HBO-stylish Vertigo vampire series (see my reviews of the first and second books) isn't as middle as the second book was, though it's still clearly more stuff in a saga writer Scott Snyder intends to spin out for a while. This particular book collects a one-shot story, with series anti-hero Skinner Sweet coming across a Wild West show in 1919, which is mostly to remind us that Sweet is the ostensible core of the whole story. And then there are two longer stories -- "Ghost War" and "Survival of the Fittest," the latter of which was published as a separate miniseries for complicated and probably irrelevant comics-publishing reasons. "Ghost War" brings the main timeline up to WWII, and focuses on the other American Vampire, Pearl Jones, who chases her human husband, Henry Preston (and Snyder does the tedious vampire-story thing of having Preston continually note how he's getting older and slower, while Jones stays young and spry, even though he could become a vampire any time he wants, and have essentially no bad side-effects) off to the pacific war. There's another vampire variant, and the usual mad-scientist tinkering in the realms of God, and Sweet is involved a bit, too. But, all in all, it's just an episode -- a thing that happened to these two characters, without much more significance. "Survival of the Fittest" has an entirely different cast -- primarily Cash McCogan, the ex-sheriff turned vampire hunter, and Felicia Book, the requisite half-vampire vampire hunter, and their secret organization, the Vassals of the Morning Star -- in a secret mission in WWII Europe at nearly the same time. Both stories have a big impressive death scene for a major character -- one of which I expect will be much more permanent than the other -- and both are impressive modern supernatural-comics thrill rides. But they're both pretty surface-y; they don't get deeply into either the characters or Snyder's mythology, so it feels a bit like ticking off boxes: this series is working its way through the 20th century decade by decade, and WWII was a big deal that had to be addressed. It's still solid comics, but Snyder is telling a long story in small episodes, so it might be a while before anything really important happens.
(11/27) -- New York circa 1980 was dark, dirty, corrupt, depressing, and ominous -- so much so that even a bunch of Frenchmen knew it. New York Mon Amour collects one long and three short stories, all drawn by world comics superstar Jacques Tardi, written by various hands (including Tardi himself, for one of the short pieces). They're snapshots of a particular era and style -- very influenced by early Scorsese and '70s cinema in general -- of a city seething with anger and resentment, bubbling over with danger and fear, crammed full of death and violence and revenge and hopelessness. It's all very noir -- all but the last, devastating short story, "Hung's Murderer," are clearly over the top -- and all very bleak. There are no happy endings, no moments of grace -- just the big bad city looming over all, and destroying all of the small lives it touches. Tardi has done better, subtler work than this (see my reviews for It Was the War of the Trenches and West Coast Blues for examples), but this is solid noir in the '70s style, though it does get a bit cartoony at times. Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died a Lot (11/27)
JT Petty & Hilary Florido, Bloody Chester (11/28)
Lemony Snicket, "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (11/28)
Shannon Wheeler, I Thought You Would Be Funnier (11/29)
Yes, 60% of the books I read this month were finished the last week; I've gotten into an odd rut where I don't read books while I'm on vacations or holidays. (It's not on purpose, but there's always so many other things that need to be done that finding time -- or a place -- to sit quietly and read is difficult.) Well, the boys will be grown and out of the house before I know it -- Thing 1 got his first piece of mail from a college this month -- so I had better enjoy the bustle and excitement while I have it.
Links and reviews -- deep or desultory, time will tell which -- for the missing books will follow at some indefinite time in the future. (Possibly some over this weekend.)
to allow you to do so.) 
is one of the strongest novels of Pinkwater's long career.
is a handsome paperback repackaging of the back half of Daniel Abraham's acclaimed fantasy series "The Long Price Quartet" -- that would be the novels An Autumn War and The Price of Spring -- as a follow-up to the similar omnibus Shadow and Betrayal, which came out last year. Price was published by Tor earlier this month, and comes with encomiums from Jay Lake, George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Jo Walton, S.M. Stirling, Paul Di Filippo, and (unexpectedly) Junot Diaz. I haven't read the series myself, but who am I to quibble with such a line-up?
by Sacchi, the latest in the manga series based on the light-novel series by Shinichi Kimura (with art by Kobuichi and Muririn, who therefore designed all of the characters). I have the first two volumes sitting on my shelf to read, so I can't say a whole lot about this one -- I believe it's a shonen harem story (the M-rating tends to agree with me) with one shlubby boy and a bevy of busty supernatural girls (at least one vampire, I'm sure, though the Japanese don't go in for werewolves the way we do in North America) who fall all over him and/or beat him up for perceived bad behavior. This one, like the first two volumes, is from Yen Press.
is a hardcover from Tor on November 27th, continuing the high-fantasy story of shape-shifters and dragons than I vaguely remember liking at the time. (Hey, it's been thirteen years! I've read a lot of other things since then. If it weren't for the flood last year, I'd be able to pull out my old reports and see what I said about the old books at the time, but those were yet more things I lost last year.) Anyway, if you remember the old books, or just want a big fantasy in the McCaffrey mode, check this out.
, a Tor hardcover also coming on the 27th. Quantum Thief was big, bold, and almost too zippy for words -- so much so that less-experienced SF readers have reported having trouble comprehending it -- so I'm happy to see Rajaniemi back for another go, and not quite as happy to keep trying to teach my fingers how to spell his name correctly.
by Howard Andrew Jones (also known as the managing editor of Black Gate), the sequel to The Desert of Souls and thus the second of "The Chronicles of Sword and Sand," a pseudo-Arabian fantasy series. I understand that this is an old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery style series, meaning that each novel and story stands alone (and, I dearly hope, that Jones's heroes at no time attempt to save the world), so a reader could easily begin with this volume, in which scholar Dabir and swordsman Captain Asim head out into the worst winter in history to battle an evil cabal and save a beautiful noblewoman. Bones is a hardcover from St. Martin's Press, coming December 11.
(also by Ohkubo). This one seems to be sillier, and more focused on "partnering" between scythemeisters and their (sentient, shape-shifting, often female) weapons, with the romantic/sexual undertones that implies. (I might have to ask my older son, who read the first one -- in fact, he grabbed it away almost before I saw it.)
is not a new superhero team -- well, it probably is, somewhere, but this particular manifestation is not. It is, instead, a new novel by steampunk queen Cherie Priest, the fourth book in her loosely-linked, alternate-historical, zombies-in-Seattle "Clockwork Century" series. And it's a trade paperback from Tor, hitting stores November 13th.
is both a new superhero team and a novel -- the former made up of four girls, best friends, who are splattered with a mysterious purple goo that transforms them, and the latter the story of their adventures, written by Sophie Bell with illustrations by Chris Battle. The latter is aimed at middle schoolers -- who will have to wait until April of 2013, when Razorbill will publish it -- and, I would suspect, in particular young women who want a Powerpuff Girls for their generation. It looks quite cutesy and fun, in a very girly way.
, has just appeared. It's written by Westerfeld with long-time comics writer Devin Grayson, and features art by Steven Cummings, who has also been part of the Udon collective. This book is a side-story to the main novels, telling the story of Shay's time in New Pretty Town from her point of view. And it will be available on December 4th from Del Rey.
is the second book in a dark urban fantasy series by Joseph Nassise -- the first was Eyes to See, in which series hero Jeremiah Hunt gave up normal sight for the ability to see the supernatural world. This time, Hunt and his compatriots (urban fantasy heroes always have compatriots; it's the core Scooby-Doo DNA of the genre) travel to New Orleans, one step ahead of the feds hunting for them as serial killers and just in time to try to battle a nasty evil something-or-other. This one is a Tor hardcover, publishing on November 27th.
, a thriller about the special forces that battle supernatural threats, with the tone and style of the Clancy-derived technothriller. I'm probably jaundiced, but it looks to me like Stross's "Laundry Files" series, written for your cousin who only reads James Patterson. (Although that could probably be a lot of fun, come to think of it.) Seal Team 666 hits stores on December 11.
is an alternate-historical novel, set in a 14th century where the Earth is flat and magic works, and it promises "alchemy, human dissection, sea monsters, betrayal, torture, religious controversy, and magic." (I'm slightly worried that the publisher feels the need to mention both human dissection and torture, as if they're both selling points, but it otherwise sounds awesome.) Quintessence does not sound like anything else out there, which is a huge plus. And it's coming from Tor as a hardcover in March.
by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, the first book of a new series (The Dragon Prophecy) set in the same world as their prior two trilogy-length collaborations, The Obsidian Trilogy and The Enduring Flame. This may be a prequel to those earlier series, and the publisher's copy promises things like "the truth about the Elven Queen Vielissiar Faricarnon, who was the first to face the Endarkened in battle and the first to bond with a dragon." If you're looking for that kind of big fantasy, full of "Elves and demons, unicorns and goblins, and Mages and warriors", then this is exactly what you want. It's a Tor hardcover, hitting stores last week.
