You Owe it to yourself #7: The Classics

When my daughter (not pictured to the left) was six-years old, she informed me that no good music (which to her meant boy bands) had existed before N*Sync. And it didn't matter how much I tried to explain that there were dozens of other popular boy bands who had existed before N*Sync that she might like (Yes - I'll admit I watched The New Kids on the Block Cartoon way too much in my early teen years, but that's beside the point) - she was not even willing to listen.

I've had people explain to me that no good movies existed before Star Wars - none, that somehow before May 25 1977 every other motion picture was simply a waste of film.

The problem is, as a boy band fan - unless you've listened to your Jackson 5 and Menudo, or as a Star Wars fan, seen your Lawrence of Arabia and The Hidden Fortress, you are missing out on the origins of whatever it is you are interested in.

If you love horror, take the time to check out the original five monster novels (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, and The Werewolf of Paris) If you loved 10,000 BC check out Clan of the Cave Bear and Quest for Fire. If you read lots of Science Fiction - Give the ABCs a Try (Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke)

No matter what kind of stuff you are into, the classics in that genre deserve your attention. You never know where checking them out might lead you (a few years back I got very interested in Demonic Possession stories and started reading everything I could find - Classic books full of demons? How about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Jesus exorcizes all kinds of demons in those books!)

Eventually my daughter listened to enough boy bands that she became willing to try other music (thank god), and now she's got amazing and wide ranging taste in music. So check out the classics, everything that came after owes something to them, and admitting you are into the classics may help people forget that you said you used to watch The New Kids on the Block cartoon - I hope.

Book Review: Dark Ladies

I've been reading horror books as far back as I can remember, starting with fairy tales, Greek myths and Halloween books (I was born too young for Goosebumps, and I was too male for Christopher Pike books) and eventually moving into the mainstream with Stephen King, Dean Koontz and even a quick run through Anne Rice. A few years back I came across a book called Horror: The 100 Best books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, and was finally able to begin a look at some really cool classic horror. I have now read a lot of horror from the 1800s - and I'll probably post on the value of reading it in a few weeks, but one of my favourite finds in the book was a novel called "Conjure Wife"(1943) by Fritz Leiber.

It is very difficult to pick a favourite book by Fritz Leiber (pictured right). I love this guy's writing, he goes from classic Fantasy (his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series were one of the main influences on Dungeons and Dragons) to award-winning Science Fiction (he won two Hugo awards for best Novel - The Big Time in 1958 and The Wanderer in 1965), but the books I'll be looking at today were in the horror genre.

Yup - I said books. I cheated a little, I'm using the book Dark Ladies, a collection of two of his horror books, Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness (1977). When I went looking for a copy of Conjure wife, all I could find was this two-in-one edition, but the other book - Our Lady of Darkness, was both extremely Lovecraft influenced and looked a lot like one of my favourite RPGs of the 1990s, Kult (Sorry Vampire: The Masquerade, but I like the REALLY dark stuff).

Anyway, back to the reasons you should read these two books - The plots are simply awesome:

Conjure wife focuses on a college professor who comes across witchy stuff his wife is keeping, which she says she has been using for years to help his career, and in fact she says that most college professor's wives do the same thing. Being a bit of jerk, he demands that all of it be removed from the house as it is all just superstitious mumbo-jumbo. Unfortunately, at this college it isn't, and when this up-and-coming professor loses his magical protection, things get very bad VERY fast.

Our Lady of Darkness (which won the World Fantasy Award for best novel in 1978) is a little trickier as a read. If you are looking to start reading Leiber, I would only suggest this one if you are really into H.P. Lovecraft, as this book takes the ideas from his Cthulhu Mythos and updates them to 20th Century San Francisco. The book focuses on a writer who becomes aware of a cult and begins to see just how massive it's control of the city is. I really liked the book, but I am definitely a big Lovecraft fan so I have a lot of bias.

Both books are worth a read, but if Horror is not your thing, check out his Fantasy or SF, they are all older, so should be available at your local library and are some of the coolest fiction I have had the luck to come across in the last few years.

Things I've Noticed #6: 80% of Fantasy series are pointless

Growing up in the Prairie Provinces of Canada with bad asthma and where winter lasts more than half the year, I spent a lot of time indoors. While the other kids were skiing, skating, and having snowball fights, I spent most of my time doing a lot of reading, and although Horror and SF where my favourites growing up fantasy series definitely had a special place with me.

Both of my parents loved fantasy books, so you could say I have the love of Fantasy in my blood (True fact - my Dad originally

wanted to name me Conan - the fact that I ended up with at a career in libraries would have ended me). The Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, and The Xanth Series were huge favourites of mine, and when I say huge I mean those three series alone took up most of my bookshelves.

Now, just to clarify my complaining, I am not talking about episodic series, where the main characters go on different adventures (Farfhd and the Gray Mouser or Conan the Barbarian). I like these books and many of them are still favourites of mine.

The Fantasy series I really have a problem with are the "Quest" series, which basically cut and paste from other, better books. This quest fiction, wherein some evil takes over a world, and a band of plucky youths my travel the land collecting parts of a fantastic treasure to ultimately defeat the villain is repetitive and pointless (The Sword of Shanara is a complete rip-off of The Lord of the Rings - I liked the rest of the series, but that first book shamelessly steals from Tolkein). Author Neil Gaiman actually calls this cut-and-paste process "plot coupons" and explains it very nicely here.

I think that unless the author actually has a story that MUST be told in more than 10 sequels they should go out and try something new. Heck, I would even be happy if they told other stories in their own world - I'm a huge Terry Pratchett fan, but if you break down his Discworld series into books about each character, the numbers are actually pretty conservative.

In the end, the best fantasy stories can still use the standard plots, but they do it from a new angle, or bend the rules to dazzle the readers (Fables, by Bill Willingham is a wonderful example). As of late my favourite Fantasy books are definitely stand alone ones (Neverwhere), or series that seem to be going somewhere - but in their own unique way (Percy Jackson and the Olympians).

You Owe it to yourself #6: Reading your favourite Author more effectively

One morning while reading the paper I was struck by an interesting idea - what if you read all of an author's books in chronological order? Would it change your perception of the world? Would it change me from a black-and-white '50s Dad into some sort of demented bookmonkey? Only one was to find out.

I started the habit back in 2003 - never having read any crime fiction I thougt I would try some Elmore Leonard, and more specifically, I would read his books in the order he wrote them. I had just finished reading all of Louis L'Amour and as Leonard started with Westerns before he moved to crime fiction, I figured it would simply be a fun couple of months reading.

6 months and 40 novels later, my reading habits had changed. I was hooked on reading authors in publication order.

What I noticed as I went through Elmore Leonard's books (his first novel, The Bounty Hunters, was published in 1953) was that over time, the quality improved. I love his early stuff (again, big fan of westerns - thanks Mom), but by reading his books in order I could see that over time his pacing, his descriptions and his already amazing dialogue just get better and better.

I only had two problems with my experiment: first, reading 40 books of a similar style and tone in 6 months kind of made all their plots run together, secondly, it felt really cool to read an author like that, really, REALLY cool - I had to do it again.

The next author I tried this with (starting in July of 2004) was Terry Pratchett, and to solve my first problem I limited myself to one book of his a month. I just caught up with him this spring (March 2009). Pratchett wrote his first book - The Carpet People, when he was 17 years old, so again, over the course of nearly 50 books and 30+ years I got to see the evolution of a writer.

Since then I've done the same with a few more writers - Lois McMaster-Bujold, Michael Crichton, Robert B. Parker, Pierre Burton, and Robert R. McCammon, next up is Canadian fantasy author Charles De Lint.

The rewards are great - especially if you are personally looking to get into writing yourself. What I do not recommend is doing this with an untested author - often their first book is the worst place to start - read something you've heard good things about first, and once you've decided you want to commit, then you can go back to the beginning.

It'll show you a lot of stuff about the writer you might not have noticed before, which will make you appear much smarter (and slightly annoying) to your friends and family.

If you've already done this - congrats - get yourself a celebratory piece of cake and send me a comment letting me know about your experience, otherwise give it a try, after all, you owe it to yourself.

Bookmonkey's top 5 SF books for Kids

I got hooked on Science Fiction (SF) as a kid back in the '80s, so the majority of this list will reflect the fact that MY SF is better than YOUR SF, and now that we have established my obvious bias, let's go:

My 5 sure-fire books that will get your kids hooked on SF are:

5. The Time Machine

First published in 1895, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells introduces kids to time travel, giant lobsters, Morlocks, Eloi, and most importantly a really wonderful sense of "What if..." Also the book is very short - so reluctant readers are more likely to give it a shot.

4. The Time Machine Series

This series of books is almost identical to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series, with one big difference - not only did you travel back in time and fight dinosaurs, samurai, knights and cowboys, but you also went into the future and kicked alien butt. One of my favourite parts of this series was reading all the ways you (the reader) could die by flipping through the book - and trust me, lots of them were pretty darn disgusting.

3. Interworld

The only book in this list I did not read as a child, Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves was originally a TV show concept that ended up as a Young Adult book. Imaging a war straddling across dimensions, where all of the heroes and villains fight for the sides of Chaos or Order and every single one of them is an alternate version of you. Simply an incredible book.

2. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Before I read this book I had seen the 1981 Television series, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but nothing could have prepared me for this incredible story - starting at the end (literally - the world is destroyed right at the beginning of the book), we follow a main character who is probably the least prepared traveller in existence as he makes his way through the galaxy with a friend, an extremely helpful book, and a towel. This book also receives massive kudos due to the fact that it is the first book I ever read out loud from cover to cover.

1. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

I read this book in Junior High - probably grade seven, so that puts it somewhere between 1988 and '89. Even though this book isn't meant for kids, and looks kind of like a Fantasy-Western, it has dimensional travel, robots, mutants, Hey Jude by the Beatles, and mention of a company called North Central Positronics. The book is terrifying, brutally violent, and told in a reverse narrative (it starts at the end and moves backwards). This book started me on all sorts of freaky stuff, perfectly mixing all three of my favourite Genres (Fantasy, Horror, and SF), and started with possibly the coolest first line of a novel I have ever had the pleasure to have read.

So there you have it, my picks for the books most likely to get kids hooked on SF; I know my list is different than my wife's, my friend Mike's, or even my kids - but the list of best SF I want to know about is your - so tell me, what do you think the best SF books for kids are?

Things I've Noticed #5: Age Appropriate Materials

Whenever you look up a top ten list of horror movies, you are bound to come across The Exorcist, it's the horror equivalent of Madonna on a top ten pop music list of the '80s. It joins Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre as horror movies everyone has to see, like Star Wars and 2001 are to SF fans.

So as a die-hard horror fan I have seen this movie a lot, and let me tell you, the first time I saw it (age 12) my opinion was this:

BORING! By the time I got to the end I was definitely checking out a book instead of watching the film. (Picutred above - and yes I was reading a Grover book at age 12 - that book is AWESOME! and for the record, more suspenseful to my 12-year-old self than The Exorcist anyday) I mean, you spend most of the movie watching a mom wander around Washington D.C. talking to people, you don't even get to the devil stuff practically until the end and it's over pretty fast.

At age 16 I saw it again, and my opinion changed - the girl is pretty scary and I was beginning to be able to appreciate camera angles and the strange imagery throughout the film.

As a parent of 2 at age 20, I watched the movie again and you know what (pictured left) This is one of the scariest movies ever. The stuff with the mom finally clicked with me - to have a child so sick that you end up going back and forth between doctors and therapists, who give you no hope, and end up going to priest for help (the mom is a capital-A Atheist) suddenly became very relatable to me.

Here's my theory, certain books and movies work best at a certain age. The Exorcist doesn't work for kids, because the scary stuff is aimed at parents. You get more out of it when you can relate with the main character (the mom). This happens with books too, I first read Lord of the Rings when I was in grade 5 - but to be honest, I mean I first read Fellowship in Grade 5 and then all the Sam and Frodo bits of the next two books. I simply didn't have the patience to wade through all the rest of the book at that age.

Now, does this mean I think kids shouldn't even give The Exorcist a try? Of course not, but what I do think is that certain books and movies benefit from being revisited. Earlier this week I talked about my first impression of The Terminator (at age 10), At first it was scary, when I re-watched it in Junior High it was awesome, and only last year (age 32) did I see the Christ story parallels and the fact that every machine in 1984 is also trying to stop Sarah Conner.

So we can view it one of two ways - either certain books are aimed at certain audiences, and therefore resonate better with them. or (and my personal favourite) I may be getting smarter...

You owe it to yourself #5: Book Clubs

In the last three years I've joined two book clubs, the first one really wasn't for me (basically we just read the Oprah book of the month), but the second one has been a really great experience. I mean really, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think, Book club?

HEY! Fine, I guess some of you thought of some sort of reading circle from the 1800s (pictured above), but reading clubs don't really have that "Anne of Green Gables" feel any more. Let me tell you some of the great stuff I've done in my last three years at the club. I've massively expanded the kinds of books I read, met tonnes of great people and eventually found the inspiration to do these posts.



And for you guys out there who think book clubs are only for the ladies, remember, men reading books are sexy! (pictured right - my reading nemesis, James "Sawyer" Ford) And especially for you single fellows out there - the ratio of men to women at a book club is usually 5 or 6 to 1, so there you go.



The club I belong to selects a new genre every month, so we read all sorts of stuff, including non-fiction, short-stories, and more. Basically, being in a book club forces you to read a lot of books that you wouldn't otherwise look at, as well as sharing your own personal favourites with other people and doing it all with a nice cup of coffee (pictured left).

Check out local book clubs, you'll read great books and meet great people. After all, expanding your horizons is good and you owe it to yourself.