What's next, a police procedural starring Hulk Hogan?

Every once in a while, we at Bookgasm stumble across a book so much fun, it's worth all the blood, sweat and tears that goes in to the site. That my book, my friends, is Rudy Joseph's BIG APPLE TAKEDOWN. It's about the NSA approaching Vince McMahon to assemble a black-ops spy squad from his stable of pro wrestlers. Yes, you can scoff all you want and call it trash. Not being a wrestling fan, I'd call it a guilty pleasure except I don't feel guilty about giving in to its pleasures. Just because its cover is branded with the WWE logo and a cleavage-baring hussy doesn't mean it should be discounted automatically, despite our body's natural inclination to do so. Click the links below to read the full reviews ... if you still have any respect left for us, that is.

� BIG APPLE TAKEDOWN by Rudy Josephs � "Now brace yourself: I enjoyed the hell out of this book. Like WWE's matches � both live and televised � this is plotted simply but distinctly. Josephs makes it move, even if his word pool isn't exactly vast (note five uses each of "strawberry" and "chocolate" within a single paragraph) and even if he offers no surprises � except being so upfront that pro wrestling is all theatrics and a late-in-the-game cameo that certainly will have the intended market throwing their fists up in a whoop, provided they can read that far. (What intended market? The kind to which lines like this make sense: "The idea struck him like a double-arm DDT from Mick Foley.")"

� FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL by Bill Willingham � "Bill Willingham get a chance to explore his FABLES universe with FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL, an anthology that both supplements and stands alone from his acclaimed Vertigo series. ... Luckily, inexperience with prior issues of FABLES is not a detriment to the new reader; rather, SNOWFALL serves as an effortless ease-in to get newcomers used to the idea that you can deal with fairy-tale characters and talking animals in a manner that is cool, cutting-edge and very adult."

� THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU AND OTHER STORIES by Susanna Clarke ��"Whether it satisfies depends upon your reaction to STRANGE. If you found that book's purposely antiquated language, paced plotting and predilection to footnotes charming, expect to get caught up in these stories, all set in STRANGE's world and utilizing many of its characters. If you didn't, look elsewhere for entertainment. And although these tales � save for the new "John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner" � were birthed long before STRANGE made waves in hardcover, I would argue that Clarke newbies would be best served tackling the mega-novel before these shorts. Otherwise, you may be a little lost."

� THE WIDOW OF SLANE AND SIX MORE OF THE BEST CRIME AND MYSTERY NOVELLAS OF THE YEAR edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg � "as cumbersome a jawbreaker of a title as ever graced the cover of a highly readable volume. ... Honestly, none of the stories are bases-loaded home runs, but they�re all extra-baggers and Allyn, Douglas and Hockensmith are good for solid triples. But the bottom line is that you have to buy the book so the publishers won�t run screaming down the hallway when Gorman goes back to them next year with another collection of novellas. Seven long stories. Seven nights in a week. My guess is you won�t be able to ration them out that way. I couldn�t."

Brighten your Friday by visiting to read more, for this week's reviews also covered Halloween horrors, Bob Dylan and the Stones, he-man adventure novels, another post-MST3K gig for Michael J. Nelson, a World War II witch, costumed zombies, the Darwin Awards, Robert Bloch and the director known as Alan Smithee. Whew.

Murder Attempt on a Novelist, and Halloween Kills

If this isn�t the cake-taking week of book news from surprising corners of the world, then it�s going to take a whole lot of Antarctican biographers and Tongan encyclopedists to unseat it. A few days ago, we had the Vast Concrete Book in Turkmenistan at Dibs! And today, to our horror, Reuters reports a shocking crime against a literary colossus in the tiny Adriatic republic of Montenegro. �One of Montenegro's leading novelists said on Wednesday he was beaten and his driver shot dead late on Tuesday in the capital, Podgorica. Jevrem Brkovic, 73 ... said he was attacked outside his apartment building by masked assailants armed with guns and metal clubs. His driver and bodyguard, 53-year-old Srdjan Vojicic, was shot dead. Brkovic himself was treated in hospital for head injuries.� Well, that is just f&*%ed. What work of fiction could possibly have aroused such a lethal frenzy? Brkovic �said the attack was linked to his latest book, A Duklja Lover, a novel set in an underworld where crime and politics come together. �It was the act of killers and mafia bosses who recognised themselves in my latest novel,� Brkovic said. No stranger to controversy, the outspoken writer fled to Croatia in the early 1990s after he fell out with Serb nationalists over the 1991-95 war in Croatia. He returned to Montenegro in 1999... The new country is still dealing with the image of lawlessness it acquired in the 1990s, when smugglers using its rugged coast made fortunes from breaking sanctions imposed on the rump Yugoslavia for its role in the Bosnia war.� Now, as you will notice if you click the link, that is actually what the article says. �Imposed on the rump Yugoslavia.� Anyway it�s a perilous region for individuals who deal in words. Two years ago, the editor of a main Montenegrin newspaper �was shot dead and his death was seen as resulting from his public campaign against officials he accused of having mafia links. His killers have not been found.� You bet they haven�t.

Meanwhile, a Canadian doctor claims that Halloween causes cancer. �Fear will provoke acidity in the body. Anything that provokes negativity in the body will have a chemical reaction and cause the body to become acidic,� insists Dr. Laurence Magne of British Columbia, author of Cancer-Free for Life. (She also promises to help you �Discover The Simple, Yet Effective Ways To Rid Your Body Of Cancer And All Terminal Illnesses.� All of them? Ebola? Because I�ve got this little puncture wound and it�s � urggghh, the blood, my nostrils, it�s ... just kidding. About something horrible.) In a timely press release, Dr. Magne adds: �Halloween is the celebration of fear. People like to be afraid. People wear scary make-believe ghosts and witches costumes. Children are dressed in ugly scary costumes and sent from door to door.... Next, children will want to eat ALL the candy at once, ruin their appetite, and think of the damage they're doing to their body with the colorants they�re ingesting. At the unconscious level, Halloween triggers memories of childhood Halloween, times when we were scared. These fears are brought to the surface during Halloween.� So don�t be scared. Because that could kill you. Being scared, that is. Of death. Which could kill you. Dead. Don�t be scared.

Come See the Sideshow!

My colleagues at the Lit Blog Co-Op have been busy promoting the first of our three Read This! finalists for the fall quarter and it's a book definitely worth checking out.

Sidney Thompson's Sideshow, published River City, brings together an odd assortment of misfits from the South. Yeah, I know... the last thing we need is another eccentric cast of Southerners. But Thompson manages to give these oddballs a grace and humanity that is all too lacking when writers typically trot out the crazy-aunt-in-the-attic stereotypes.

Barry Hannah blurbed the book and said, "Thompson's wonderful stories prove that often the best way through to the meaningful anarchies of this world is classical restraint. It's beautiful to see the short story hanging tough as a bright form beneath Thompson's hands." George Singleton also weighed in and said, "Unlike a county fair's sideshow wherein viewers get a salacious peek for five minutes then return to the relative safety of an outside world, Thompson's characters linger closer to the reader than a noon shadow."

And of course, the collection does contain The Romanticist and the Classicist, the short story accepted for publication by The Atlantic Monthly only to be rejected after the editors learned Thompson's race. It's a story that has been called "incredibly creepy in tone and execution, and just strange enough to be plausible."

Sideshow is an intriguing collection. Be sure to check it out, or if you want to learn more, swing by the LBC website as we'll be chatting about it all week.

The ultimate airplane reads

Hudson Booksellers, the company that runs bookstores and newsstands in airports all over North America, has announced their best books of 2006. Not surprisingly, there are few if any surprises on the list, below.  Still, it's great that they're promoting excellent writers like Richard Ford and Sara Gruen.  But can they please stop gouging us on those $4 bottles of water, especially now that the authorities have forbidden us to bring our own from home?


Hudson Booksellers' Book of the Year: 

Thirteen Moons by Charles
Frazier

Best Fiction Books
The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
The March by E.L. Doctorow
The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
The People�s Act of Love by James Meek
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

Best Nonfiction Books

The Great Deluge by Douglas
Brinkley
The Devil�s Teeth by Susan Casey
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
Blind Side by Michael Lewis
Collapse by Jared Diamond
The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Thunderstruck by Erik Larsen
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood

So now you know what to pick up for that long flight to Bangkok.  Meanwhile, if you're grounded or just plain cheap, Bookburger has you covered: you can win a copy of Janet Fitch's bestseller White Oleander and  her new one, Paint It Black, set in the LA punk scene of the 1980s. Just sign up for our free monthly burger bulletins (in the "we deliver" box on the sidebar) and you'll be entered to win.

Save Up to 50% on America's Best Writing

It's that time of year again, when Houghton Mifflin's Best American anthologies start popping up in bookstores. So far, I've had a grand time reading The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Travel Writing cover to cover for work, and I've been dipping into some of the other collections, including the sports and spirituality collections whenever I get a chance to unwind. As always, each anthology has some phenomenal stuff; it's been wonderful to reread Calvin Trillin on Ecuadorian bean soup, or Malcolm Gladwell on Rick Warren, or to discover Michael Chorost's "My Bionic Quest for Bolero," among many delights.

Now, thanks to the generosity of Houghton Mifflin, ten Beatrice readers will be able to delve into the year's best writing as well. If you're one of the first ten people to contribute $20 or more to the site's operational funds, you can have your choice of The Best American Gold Gift Box, which has short stories, mystery stories, and sports writing, or The Best American Silver Gift Box, which has short stories, travel writing, and spiritual writing. Both box sets normally retail for $40, but they can be yours for as little as $20...and you'll be supporting a literary website in the process!

Alax Fox Explains the PR of Storytelling

Alan Fox is the director of StoryFocus, a corporate communications firm, and has managed more than 350 publicity campaigns including work on behalf of major publishers, Hollywood film studios, and a wide range of leading companies. He's also a novelist who chose to publish The Seeker in Forever himself and is using his own publicity background to get the word out. In this essay for Beatrice, he explains how solid PR work isn't just about knowing the right tactics to use; it's about having a strategy in place that those tactics will serve.

I have found, through 14 years in the field, that a lot of people don't understand the true nature of publicity. If you are interested in writing as a human enterprise, and you want to know one of the great secrets of the story industry, then you'll want to pay attention to this. I have not seen this adequately explained anywhere.

Publicity was born out of news writing. News writing was born out of story.

Most people think publicity was born of advertising. They have totally the wrong picture in their heads. It's not that at all. To go there is to go in the wrong direction.

It's sad to see writers work for years and then go wrong.

For a writer of stories, publicity is not going off to fight a strange war in an alien territory. Publicity is coming home. You're coming home to your finished story. You will find quality. And there you will stand. And you will not let anyone move you.