KJToo

I’ve been updating the status of various books on this list since shortly after I first published my 2009 Summer Reading List. This post is scheduled to be published at 5:18pm on the 22nd of September, the official start of Fall. Let’s see how much reading I actually got done this summer…

Finished

1. Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow.

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2. The Touch by F. Paul Wilson.

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3. Glasshouse by Charles Stross.

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4. His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire · Book 1) by Naomi Novik.

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5. Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Audio; narrated by William Dufris).

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6. Lamb by Christopher Moore.

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7. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Audio; narrated by Simon Prebble).

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8. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

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9. The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan (Audio; narrated by Ron Perlman).

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10. WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Audio; various narrators).

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11. Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison (Audio; narrated by Marguerite Gavin).

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12. The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines.

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13. Paranoia by Joseph Finder (Audio; narrated by Scott Brick).

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14. Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout.

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15. The Destroyer #14: Judgment Day by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir.

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16. The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks.

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In Progress

1. Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Audio; narrated by Bianca Amato).

Not Yet Started

1. Throne of Jade (Temeraire · Book 2) by Naomi Novik.
2. Personal Effects: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman.
3. Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi.

Not too shabby, overall. My peculiar flavor of attention deficit disorder came into play, as I expected it would, and I read or started to read several titles that weren’t on the original list. I also failed to even start a handful from the original list, but maybe I’ll get around to them this fall. Speaking of fall, here (in no particular order) is the 2009 Fall Reading List:

1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Audio; narrated by Lyndam Gregory).
2. The Devil You Know by Mike Carey.
3. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
4. Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant.
5. Black Powder War (Temeraire · Book 3) by Naomi Novik.
6. Broken Crescent by S. Andrew Swann.
7. Furies of Calderon (The Codex Alera · Book 1) by Jim Butcher.
8. Fool Moon (The Dresden Files · Book 2) by Jim Butcher.
9. Condemned to Repeat It: The Philospher Who Flunked Life and Other Great Lessons from History by Wick Allison, Jeremy Adams and Gavin Hambly.
10. Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason.
11. The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan.

Posted September 22, 2009 Comments(0)

I’m taking a page from Ken Newquist’s book (or rather, his blog and podcast) to present my Summer Reading List. As we’re well into the season, the list includes books I’ve read since late June, those I am currently reading, and those I intend to read before summer comes to a close. The last of these three lists is—to put it lightly—mutable, as which book I pick up next is subject more to whim than design.

Pages Past

• Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow. During World War II, a B-movie actor is hired to play the part of a giant, fire-breathing lizard in order to convince the Japanese to surrender or have a trio of Godzilla-like creatures unleashed on their cities.
• The Touch by F. Paul Wilson. The third installment of The Adversary Cycle tells the tale of a doctor who suddenly gains the ability to heal with a touch. It wouldn’t be a medical thriller if there weren’t a terrible price to pay. This isn’t my preferred genre, but I enjoyed The Keep and The Tomb, so I thought I’d continue the cycle; The Touch isn’t anywhere near as creepy as its predecessors, but it’s a pretty entertaining tale.
• Glasshouse by Charles Stross. In a far-flung future where technology makes changing your gender, race, and even species as commonplace as changing your shirt, and humanity has been through a great Censorship War, Robin wakes with no memory of his past and a killer on his tail. How much of what makes you you is determined by your physical being, your memories, and your relationships with other people? This was really a fascinating read.
• His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire · Book 1) by Naomi Novik. During the Napoleonic Wars, the H.M.S. Reliant, a British naval vessel, captures a French ship and siezes a most unusual cargo: a dragon’s egg. When the dragon hatches and bonds to Will Laurence, the Reliant’s captain must leave the Navy behind for His Majesty’s Air Corps. I love Novik’s writing style and the relationship that forms between the dragon, Temeraire, and Laurence is beautifully executed. This is definitely my favorite book of the summer so far.
• Anathem (Audio) by Neal Stephenson. The audio version of this lengthy tome consists of twenty-eight compact discs and took me eleven weeks to complete. As Chris Miller pointed out to me, Neal Stephenson doesn’t so much write novels as essays stitched together with bits of story. Much time is spent explaining how the world in which Anathem takes place is different from our own, complete with excerpts from The Dictionary (4th Edition, A.R. 3000) that mark the beginning of each of the eleventy-three thousillion chapters. Anathem follows Fraa Erasmas of the concent of Saunt Edhar as he ventures out into the sæcular world during (and after) Apert. And to explain every term in that sentence would require more space than I’m willing to devote to a single bullet point right now.

Pages Present

• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. The Bible doesn’t go into a whole lot of detail where the first thirty years of Christ’s life are concerned, and now Levi (who is called Biff) has been resurrected by the angel Raziel to fill in the gaps. Chris Miller and I will be discussing this somewhat-apocryphal gospel on a future episode of The Secret Lair.
• The Strain (Audio) by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Vampires!
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Audio) by Susanna Clarke. Magicians!
• The Way of Shadows (Book 1 of The Night Angel Trilogy) by Brent Weeks. Assassins! (Sorry: wetboys.)

Pages Future

• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Chronal Displacement Disorder!
• Throne of Jade (Temeraire · Book 2) by Naomi Novik. Dragons!
• WWW: Wake (Audio) by Robert J. Sawyer. Artificial Intelligence!
• Dead Witch Walking (Audio) by Kim Harrison.
• Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. Aliens!
• Personal Effects: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman. Serial Killers!

Finally, here is a fourth list, which may be considered a bonus by some and entirely excessive by others. I have been using GoodReads to track my ever-expanding library and hummingbirdlike reading habits, but there are a number of similar sites and as I become aware of one I can’t help but set up an account and import at least a portion of my books, just to see how it compares to the others. Here is a list of said sites (I don’t claim it is comprehensive, and if you know of another please leave a comment with a link to it.) that I’ve been using recently, in the order I joined:

1. GoodReads. Very well put together. The interface is generally very intuitive, though management of group “shelves” could be enhanced. GoodReads is, unfortunately, ad-supported.
2. Readernaut. My favorite of the bunch so far. Pages aren’t as “busy” as those on GoodReads or LibraryThing and there’s a lot of flexibility around tweaking books (I especially like that I can upload my own cover images). Pages tend to render poorly on some installations of Internet Explorer. Readernaut is not currently ad-supported.
3. Shelfari. My least favorite by quite a large margin. I’m not a fan of the default “shelf” layout and though the add/edit book interface is nice and streamlined, it is also rather limited. Shelfari is ad-supported.
4. LibraryThing. I haven’t played with this one very much, but I do like that there is space for BookCrossing IDs (though it’s been months since I last logged in to BookCrossing) and they seem to pack in a lot of information about individual titles. LibraryThing is not ad-supported, but offers both free and subscription-based models, so I can only assume that the size of my library (as a free user) has a limit.

Posted July 30, 2009 Comments(8)

Recently, I spouted a series of “facts” about some of the folks I converse with on Twitter. In their original form, these all contained 140 characters or less. For ease of use today I have expanded the names of the Factees, so some individual facts may exceed the 140-character limit.

BONUS QUEST: Savvy readers might be able to determine the impetus for this exercise in lunacy if they examine the list carefully.

• FUN FACT: Sam Chupp has not one but two arms, each with a five-fingered hand at the end. Individually, the hands are incapable of clapping.
• FUN FACT: Jared Axelrod can go from clean-shaven to a goatee in seven minutes flat if he concentrates.
• FUN FACT: Chris Miller once stabbed a minor Internet celebrity in the face…WITH HIS EYES!
• FUN FACT: J.C. Hutchins loses all his super powers if he sees the color chartreuse, but only if it is actually Pantone® 14-0445.
• FUN FACT: Contrary to popular belief, Bob is not married to the daughter of a prominent Mafia Don…ANYMORE.
• FUN FACT: Evo Terra would just as soon kill you as look at you, but in actuality HE DOES NOT WANT TO LOOK AT YOU.
• FUN FACT: Kris Johnson had a triple-shot venti mocha from Starbucks after lunch, and now his BRAIN IS ON FIRE.
• FUN FACT: Ken Newquist has never been within arm’s length of an extraterrestrial being, but only because he has RIDICULOUSLY SHORT ARMS.
• FUN FACT: Ivan has a removable face, used to switch expressions and show emotion, but he never changes it because he is ALWAYS ANGRY.
• FUN FACT: Mur Lafferty once wrote a romance novel under the pseudonym Karyn Van Heusen. The title: LOVE’S FORBIDDEN FILLING.
• FUN FACT: As a master of several forms of martial arts, Jason Penney knows 114 ways to immobilize a man, seven of them using JUST HIS GILLS.

SECRET BONUS QUEST: If you are extremely observant (and I suspect you are), you have already noticed that each of the names mentioned above is actually a hypertext link to another area of the Interwebs altogether. If I were to suggest that a CODED MESSAGE can be revealed by reading the fifth word of the most recent blog post (as of 18 January 2009) at or near each of these locations, I WOULD BE LYING. If I were to suggest that the first person to embark upon such a wild goose chase and comment here with the unscrambled message might win a prize of not-insignificant fabulosity, THAT WOULD ALSO BE A LIE. You should not do this. There is no message. There is no prize. Any effort you expend in attempting to glean such a message in order to attain such a prize would be UTTERLY WASTED. I am absolutely not kidding.

Posted January 19, 2009 Comments(11)

Matthew Wayne Selznick’s Brave Men Run: A Novel of the Sovereign Era is the latest podiobook to make the jump to the print market. The book will be released by Swarm Press this Sunday, 13 July 2008, and Matt has planned a day-long “Book Release Web-a-thon” to help promote sales on Amazon.com. There are plenty of details at the the book’s official site but the gist is this: beginning at 10am EST on Sunday and continuing every hour throughout the day, Matt will be streaming live video and reading new short stories set in the universe of his novels. Contributors include Mur Lafferty (Playing For Keeps), J.C. Hutchins (the 7th Son trilogy), Nathan Lowell (South Coast, Quarter Share) and other well-known podcasters and podiobook authors.

Brave Men Run is the story of Nate Charters, a teenaged boy who is about as far from normal as teenagers get: he looks different and he has abilities that he has kept hidden from his peers for his entire life. But when the existence of the so-called “Sovereigns” is announced on live television, Nate learns that he is not alone, and his life changes forever. Brave Men Run is a superhero coming-of-age story that doesn’t feel like it was lifted from the pages of a comic book, but rather like it was born in the halls of your own high school and on the streets of your home town.

Brave Men Run: A Novel of the Sovereign Era is still available as a free, serialized audiobook at Podiobooks.com, read by the author. The audio version was nominated for a Parsec Award in 2006.

Posted July 11, 2008 Comments(3)

There are days when you just have to put it all on the line, throw caution to the wind and go for it; you put your best out there and see whether it’s good enough. The sad fact of the matter is that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much effort we put forth, no matter how far beyond what is theoretically achievable we push ourselves, we’re going to fail. We simply can’t all be winners every day; it’s statistically impossible.

Do you think I’m going to let some statistician tell me what I can and cannot do? Hell, no! I’m going to raise my middle finger high to their bell curves, their means, their medians, and yes, even their modes. I am a walking, talking, blogging deviation, dammit! A non-standard deviation, at that! Mine all the data you want, math boy, it’ll do you no good: I do not compute!

Today, I did something that defied our mathematical understanding of the universe. I won the unwinnable. “Success against all odds” is my middle name. Okay, that’s not true. I mean, what kind of whack-job parents would name their kid “Kris Success against all odds Johnson”? That’s just stupid. My middle name is “Alan”, but it probably means “success against all odds” in Swahili. Either that or “crossbite”, but that’s beside the point; the point is that I won, baby. I won big time. A major award.

Which award would that be? Why, Funniest Tweet of the Day, of course. Awarded on a whenever-he-feels-like-it basis by novelist/podcaster J.C. Hutchins to the individual on Twitter who utters the single funniest thing ever uttered (that day, on Twitter), the Funniest Tweet of the Day grants the recipient fame, adoration and respect that will last a lifetime, or until J.C.’s award tweet scrolls off everyone’s front page, which ever comes first. That’s some serious Internet cred, folks. It’s not the same as street cred, but I live on a cul-de-sac, so my chances for street cred are few and far between.

Here’s the best part: I’m going to let you in on how I did it. That’s right, I’m going to tell you the secret of my success, and it’s not going to cost you a penny. You don’t need to buy my upcoming bestseller, The Utter Incompetent’s Handbook to the Funniest Tweet of the Day, (available in paperback at most major booksellers or as a pay-per-play downloadable audiobook) or attend one of my sold out seminars—I’m going to tell you right here and right now, for free.

Write this down on a sticky note and attach it to the mirror in your bathroom. Might as well write it on a dozen or so sticky notes, while you’re at it. Put one on the fridge and another on the edge of your computer monitor. Put two on the front door—one on each side—so it’s the last thing you see going out the door and the first thing you see coming in. Stick one on the center of the steering wheel in your car and another between your girlfriend’s shoulderblades. You get the idea.

This is what you’re writing on those sticky notes—and remember, penmanship counts, so don’t just scrawl it like you’re a doctor writing a prescription for Zanaprexinol, print it in nice, friendly, legible letters so you can read it later—the secret that’s going to set you off on the road to success: bring the funny.

That’s it. That’s all you need to know. If you keep that one thought—bring the funny—in the back of your mind every waking hour, you’ll be writing tweets that make J.C. Hutchins laugh in no time.

Okay, that’s a lie. Thinking about bringing the funny isn’t enough, you have to make it your credo, your entire way of life. You have to walk the funny, breathe the funny, eat the funny and crap the funny if you want to get a giggle out of The Hutch. It doesn’t matter where you are, what time it is, or what the circumstances may be, you have to be ready to bring the funny at all times, and that ain’t easy.

Take the Funniest Tweet of the Day, for example. By now, you’re probably wondering just what it was that made J.C. laugh so hard a smiley-faced JPEG shot out of his nose. Well, I’m not keeping anything close to the vest today, my friends. I’m going to tell you. That’s right, I’m not going to keep this award-winning tweet under wraps anymore.

Okay, I’m awake. Everyone roll for initiative.

That’s comic genius, right there, pure and simple. It just doesn’t get funnier than that. Not on Twitter. Not today.

I’m not going to explain it to you, not because what makes it funny is a secret—we’ve gone over this, that’s not how I roll today—but because dissecting the funny is like watching Spider-Man 3: it might seem like a good idea, but by the time you’re done you’ve died a little inside.

But I’ll tell you this: that tweet didn’t just happen. That tweet is the result of me striving every hour of every day to bring the funny. I work at it relentlessly. I could make a montage of me training like Rocky Balboa, but it would be a boring montage, because the funny isn’t like boxing. Training yourself to bring the funny doesn’t happen in a meat locker or on the stairs of a stadium, it happens in your head, and nobody wants to watch what’s going on in your head. No one is that twisted.

I won today. I beat the odds. You can, too, if you bring the funny. And if J.C. Hutchins follows you on Twitter. And he happens to be watching at just the right moment. The guy follows twelve hundred people, so your chances of him actually seeing your tweet, no matter how funny it may be, are pretty slim—maybe one in a twelve hundred. Statistics are a bitch, which is pretty much what I’ve been saying all along.

Posted April 12, 2008 Comments(13)