Amazon Daily

Jack O'Connell's surreal noir novel The Resurrectionist made Amazon's Top 10 Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2008. O'Connell is one of the best writers of dark fiction I know, often mixing noir with strange elements that skirt the edge of fantasy and horror. There's really no fiction writer quite like him. I thought it would be interesting to ask him for his own top 10 books read in 2008. I'll be posting more such lists over the next week. For more from O'Connell, check out this link to some blogging he did this past summer. - Jeff V

Here are ten books (listed alphabetically by author) that worked their mojo on me during the last 12 months. - Jack O'Connell

Criminal by Ed Brubaker, art by Sean Phillips: Like a great early ’70s neo-noir that somehow eluded me, Criminal is a comic book story of lowlifes, scores gone wrong and double-crosses. If Don Siegel, Richard Stark and Warren Oates had teamed up on a graphic novel, this would be the result.

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. Crumley died on Sept. 17 and we’re all the poorer for the loss. Kiss is probably his masterpiece. Reread it in tribute to the fallen master. And then go search out The Muddy Fork and read the story, “The Things She Cannot Write About, The Reasons Why.”

Melville: His World and His Work by Andrew Delbanco: I remain Melville-obsessed. In fact, I think the condition is becoming increasingly acute as I age. The old mariner inspires a lot of books every year, but Delbanco’s study feels fresh and has smart things to say about the way Melville’s mind and heart responded, through his writing, to the merciless shifting of the world around him.

What the Dead Men Say by Ed Gorman: Gorman is the pro’s pro. Reading any one of his novels could save the would-be young fiction writer the whole of his MFA tuition. This one is a bracing, stripped-to-the-bone heartbreak of a western. Think James Cain meets Oakley Hall—pure American Naturalism served up as revenge gothic.    

A Story that Ends with a Scream by James Leo Herlihy. Herlihy died back in 1993 and if he’s recalled today, it’s mainly as the author of Midnight Cowboy. Published in 1970, this collection of nine stories is utterly of its time—that brief season when fictioneers felt free to get wild, and their work seemed robust and risky enough to keep pace with the culture exploding around them.

The Fever Kill by Tom Piccirilli: Here’s one that can fairly be judged by its cover—the pre-distressed, faux-yellowed design and the ’50s drugstore lettering are perfect signifiers of the breathless, gritty, Thompsoneque story you’ll find inside the wrapper. Pic is legit heir to David Goodis but with his own unique strand of brutal DNA that makes him the chief scout on the frontier of 21st Century noir.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck: I’m a sucker for Weird Theory and Pinchbeck spins some great stoner myth, crawling out past the borders of northern rationality while arguing that metaphor and magic can sometimes be the same world-saving thing.

A James Sallis Reader by James Sallis: A treasure trove—stories, poems, essays (including that stunning, must-read reflection on Goodis), and two full-length novels. This omnibus gives you an idea of the scope of an extraordinary writer’s talents. More than this, it provides a sense of a fine and ever-curious mind as it wonders if the right combination of language and myth might make us richer--if not necessarily “better”—humans.

Prime Green by Robert Stone: A memoir of the ’60s by the perfect chronicler. Not only was Stone part of Kesey’s prankster crew, he’s one of the great prose stylists of our time--his ability to assemble a scene and convey its ethos is both hypnotic and addictive.

Hawthorne by Brenda Wineapple: Hawthorne, the great cipher of the American romance, is brought into focus—along with his clan, his pals, and his time--by Wineapple’s clear writing and refusal to crush the writer under the Academy’s lens of the moment.

If you saw all the books that pile up in my cubicle week after week, you'd realize why my wife was ecstatic to have found a book for me for Hanukkah that I neither had already nor really knew about, but was thrilled to get: Tennessee Williams's Notebooks, the gigantic and complete edition that came out a couple of years ago. I'm not sure there's any kind of book I like to get more than diaries or journals, especially a writer's: in part because I love to see the daily lives behind creative work, but in part because a diary, like a good reference book, can be squeezed into my already-fully-booked reading life in tiny, random bits. And so the Notebooks have taken a prominent place on the short stack of books in one of the rooms in my house where, ahem, a get a fair amount of short-term reading done, along with longterm favorites that I've been poking in and out of for years, like Cheever's Journals and Brian Eno's Year with Swollen Appendices.

I mention the Notebooks this evening because I just came across a note that still has me shaking my head. One of the beauties of this edition is that Margaret Bradham Thornton, the editor, has added voluminous, wonderfully informative notes (as well as photographs and facsimiles of letters, manuscripts, and diary pages) that appear on facing pages to the notebook entries and, far from overwhelming the main content, flesh it out in fascinating ways. I must say I hardly know anything about Williams, beyond what almost everybody does, and I've done my first poking around at the beginning, in 1936, when he was a college student in St. Louis. He was in his mid-20s, his education having been delayed for a few years after his father stopped paying his tuition and made him take a job as clerk at a shoe company, but he wrote indefatigably throughout--writing and rewriting stories, poems, and plays--despite only the most moderate of successes. Here's his short entry from March 20, 1936:

Friday Morning -- Better -- much better -- a bright cool windy day -- slept soundly -- feel like a patient old cow -- will finish dressing now and later try to finish my play --

And here's the beginning of the much longer note that links from the word "play":

Most likely, "Moony's Kid Don't Cry," an expanded version of "Hot Milk at Three in the Morning," which had received thirteenth place in the University of Missouri's 1932 Dramatic Prize Contest.

Thirteenth place? I'm not even sure where to begin with that. First of all--what contests even go all the way down to thirteenth? Not even Miss America goes past fourth-runner-up. And who would expect someone who finished #13 in an undergraduate play competition to end up becoming maybe the greatest American playwright? Probably nobody besides #13 himself. Certainly one proof of that writing-workshop truism that there's usually no way to tell who in a class, if anyone, is going to end up making a career out of their writing--it's often not the apparent talent on the page that gets you there, but the drive to stick with it.

I wonder how many people were even in that contest. Fourteen? Maybe more people were writing plays in 1932, but I remember when a friend in college won our drama prize one year I thought--okay, enviously perhaps--"That's pretty cool--but how many people wrote a whole play and entered that contest?" I have no idea, but it's worth noting that the runner-up in that year's competition is now writing the book for U2's Spider-Man musical. So the lesson is, I guess: stick with it, even if you don't finish first. Or even twelfth. --Tom

I've been swimming deep into the murky, day-glo waters of '80s pop music lately. DEEP. Like, I-can't-see-anything-around-me-anymore-because-I'm -so-far-down-the-sun-no-longer-reaches-me deep. I've been finding music I missed the first time around and discovering that I love it as much as the memory-laden favorites I always seem to crave. So, in what is sure to be a failed attempt to flush my mind of some excess nostalgia, I'm going to post some '80s videos. I hope you don't mind, but I really need to feel less alone here. Let us begin:

Ready For The World, "Oh, Shelia"
The best part about this video/song is that they're from Michigan, and obviously have some serious thing for Prince/Minneapolis--however, when the singer speaks, he has some sort of weird fake British/Irish/Euro accent (more on fake accents later).

Bardeux, "Magic Carpet Ride"
I know Bardeux are kind of an early era Madonna knock-off, but this song is way fun, criminally out of print, and kind of undeniable.

The Jets, "Crush On You"
Best '80s band ever? Possibly. It's not hard to believe that this band is made up entirely of one family, but it *is* hard to believe that there were 17 kids in the family. SEVENTEEN. KIDS.

Tina Yothers (yes, *that* Tina Yothers), "Baby I'm Back In Love Again"
I scored a copy of this on vinyl a few years ago, and I'm so glad I picked it up. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I love this song so much, but it's pure '80s teen pop, and that's something I find incredibly hard to resist. It's surprisingly not embarrassing for young Miss Yothers either--unlike the b-side track "Girly, Girly," where she sings in a fake Jamaican accent. It's totally unbe-freaking-lieveable. You think I'm lying, but I'm not.

I could truly post '80s videos all day. However, I'll spare you--but not for long. Watch out for another upcoming '80s-centric, youtube-filled post focused on my most favoritest genre of '80s music: pop ballads.

--Alan Wiley

Last night, just after I had excerpted Michael Dirda's praise ("her easy-going prose and startling honesty are riveting") for Diana Athill's memoir of old age, Somewhere Towards the End, in Old Media Monday, I saw that she had just won the Costa prize for biography. And her win, at age 91, after a lengthy editorial career and a much-belated writing one, leads all the stories on the awards, which, to refresh your memory, used to be called the Whitbreads and are awarded in five categories, out of which a Book of the Year will be named on January 27. Here are the other category winners:

• Novel: The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (which had been a bridesmaid for the Booker)
• First Novel: The Outcast by Sadie Jones
• Poetry: The Broken World by Adam Foulds
• Children's: Just Henry by Michelle Magorian

Here's my earlier post about the nominees, including some further praise of my own for Athill. The Guardian article linked above is full of quotes that show how sportingly UK authors know how to respond to award chatter. Athill admitted she hoped for the prize "because I'm always terribly broke, and how wonderful it would be to get that lovely cheque," and Sadie Jones said about her debut, which has made award shortlists and bestseller lists like, "The book has had so much luck, I'm having all my jam at once." And Barry, when told his novel was the early bookies' favorite to capture the overall prize,  "God bless them," he said. "My dear old grandfather lost four fortunes backing favourites." --Tom

And, yes, those are bunny ears on that gentleman. They're giving them away on the floor, and if you are seen wearing them at just the right time, you might win an iPhone. I think I'll stick with my OG iPhone for now and spare myself the ignominy.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz

The MBP is given a power boost with a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM right out of the box (with an 8 GB total RAM capacity), and it features the dual graphics processing scheme first offered in last fall's the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro (with the discrete NVIDIA 9600M GT getting a boost to 512 MB of dedicated video RAM).

The real story about the new 17-inch MBP, however, is the battery. And that should tell you everything you need to know about the excitement level of this conference. True, the engineering that went into creating this non-removable, extended life battery (with up to 8 hours of battery life when using the integrated NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor) is impressive (and you can read more about it as well as watch a video trumpeting its industrial design at Apple). But you can't switch batteries and when the battery runs out of cycles (it's supposed to provide up to 1000 recharges, which Apple estimates to be about 5 years of use), you'll need to get a replacement battery from Apple for a $179 charge.

Still, the battery might not be a deal killer for some, as it does give you a good amount of time away from your power brick, and it ostensibly greener since it lasts about three times longer than typical removable notebook batteries today. And Rich Mogull over at TidBITS notes that this might signal more laptops to come with proprietary, non-replaceable batteries.

Moving to a fully integrated battery is a risky move, but it is a direction the entire mobile computing industry is considering as users continue to demand power for bigger processors, better graphics, and more wireless networking. Notebook designers can build the batteries right into the laptops, taking advantage of custom designed cells that fit into the nooks and crannies left after squeezing in all the hardware.

The 17-inch MacBook Pro is available now for pre-order from Amazon, and it's expected to ship at the end of January.

One of my favorite parenting blogs is Goodyblog.com from Parents Magazine.  I was poking around the other day and noticed that they had a Parents TV webisode where they were sharing 2009 trends for kids' products.  I thought I would share it with you here.

Some of the highlights:

• Sprig Toys that are kid-powered (One of our favorites! Podcast here and a toy review here