Review: Beer From a Growler

There’s been a rather remarkable change over the past few months. As late as the end of summer, I don’t think I’d heard the term “growler” before. By the fall, I’d found a store, the beer lover’s heaven known as Ale Yeah, that offered them. Now, they seem to be everywhere. There is literally no direction I can go upon leaving my house without passing a store that offers quality craft beers and ales in growlers. The neighborhood markets, Cander Park Market and Oakhurst Market, carry them. Heck, even the gas station at the of my street has them now.

For those of you who are where I was just two seasons or so ago, a growler is a glass beer bottle, 64 or 32 ounces, filled with beer from a tap. The term growler dates way back to the late 19th century, before the dawn of the age of the six-pack, when folks carried fresh beer home from the local pub in a small bucket. The inside of the pail was usually coated with lard to decrease foam, meaning more beer for the buck (if you don’t mind a certain lardy taste). Supposedly, the escaping CO2 made a growling noise when it escaped from the lid as the beer sloshed around.

Pick your ale from a list like this, fill 'er up, and enjoy!

Modern growlers are glass bottles, not lard-coated tin (or whatever) pails. You buy your bottle (they’re pretty cheap. I mean, it’s a glass bottle.), and it’s yours to keep forever. Take it back to the shop of your choice, and choose a beer from a selection that (in the stores around my neighborhood, anyway) changes regularly. They’ll sanitize and fill your growler, send you home, and then it’s time to enjoy. You don’t get the growly sound anymore, but then, you don’t have to worry about the lard, either. So, you know, give and take.

There’s something that’s jus deliciously old-fashioned about growlers. Maybe it’s just the novelty, but frankly, I can’t help thinking that beer tastes better when it comes from a growler. After all, you won’t have to go far to find someone who thinks draft beer is better than canned or bottled. In fact, I’m willing to bet that you’re more likely to find people who’ll disagree about why draft is better than those who quibble about the premise itself. Growler beer is draft made portable and convenient.

There’s another advantage, too. Sometimes, you just want a little beer (I’m as surprised as you are, but yeah, that’s possible). Not a whole bottle or pint. With a growler, you can pour as much or as little as you like (well, up to 32 ounces, anyway). The choices are usually craft beers, and the selection is usually eclectic and well-chosen, when more than a few that you might not have discovered otherwise. Yeah, even at the gas station.

I’m not sure when or how then trend got started, or rather rediscovered. I certainly have no idea how or why it became ubiquitous so quickly. But I’m delighted. Oh, one more thing. Someone asked my wife Carol and me how long beer in a growler would last when opened. Does it go flat after a certain amount of time? Carol just smiled and shrugged. “We don’t know,” she admitted. Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

Ten Places to Get Amazing Pizza in Atlanta

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard someone say they just can’t find good pizza in Atlanta, I could buy a lot of slices, all with extra cheese. Frankly, the comment never ceases to astonish me. That is, until I remember that it’s usually uttered by carpetbagging Yankee new-comers who likely haven’t found their way past the mall Pizza Huts yet. For better or worse, Atlanta hides its hole-in-the-wall gems well.

And so, offered as a public service, here are ten places (with two extra honorable mentions) to get amazing pizza right here amongst the maze of Peachtree Streets. By the way, these are listed in alphabetical order, not in order of quality or preference.

For the record, I am skipping some of the more popular chain type places, like Mellow Mushroom and Fellini’s, despite the fact that I am fond of both. But the simple fact is, you’ve probably already tried them, or at least know about them. And to be frank, yummy as they are, they simply didn’t make the top ten list.

1.) Antico Pizza Napoletana

This was the place that redefined what pizza can be for me. I made that comment to a friend of mine who is both a Yankee and of first or second-generation Italian descent, and she admitted that it had redefined it for her, too. You order at the counter, and then you hope for the best since seating is extremely limited. There are bench seats that surround long tables that you share with others, making you feel (rather delightfully) as though you’ve been invited into someone’s kitchen, where you can see these giant imported Italian ovens (which heat to more than 1000 degrees), bags of imported flour and cans of exotic imported extra virgin olive oil, fragrant fresh herbs, and stuff like that. It’s homey, warm, and wonderful.

I think I would have fallen in love with the place even if the pizza was only passable. Happily, it’s a lot better than that. It’s transcendent. The word Antico means ancient, and the techniques and recipes the master bakers employ here have stood the test of time for a reason. They are amazing. It’s a little hard to find (the west side, behind Georgia Tech in that nebulous area between downtown and midtown, is more maze-like than any other part of the city, and that’s saying a lot), but it’s worth it. I promise.

2.) Athens Pizza House

When searching for pizza, generally what you’re looking for is a pie baked by a Yankee with a last name that ends in a vowel. There are exceptions to that, albeit not many, and Athens is chief among them.

A few years ago, my wife offered to take me to any restaurant in the city for my birthday. She assumed I’d pick one of the pricier steak houses, like Bones, Rathbuns, or Parker’s on Ponce. I picked Athens, because, frankly, when the Athens craving is upon you, nothing else will do. Nothing.

The pizza is Greek style, meaning the crust is a little breadier, softer, and very so slightly sweeter than New York or Italian styles. It’s always astonishingly fresh, which matters more than I’d realized. It’s probably the best crust you can find in Atlanta, and it hold up will under a pile of ingredients without getting soggy, which is good, because Athens is generous with the toppings. The sauce is tangy, slightly salty, had has a hint of premium olive oil in it. It’s impossible to describe and impossible to forget. It’s comfort food at it’s most comforting, and if I had to pick a last meal, this might be it. (unless I could think of something that, like, takes several years to cook. Anyway.)

Some of my friends swear by the other Greek dishes, especially the Lemon Chicken Soup, and they may will be right for all I know. I’ve been ordering the same thing for years: a small pizza with pepperoni, Canadian bacon, and feta cheese, just the way the Lord and Mrs. Papadopoulos intended. Be sure to try it the feta.

3.) Avellino’s

Remember what I was saying about pizza baked by a Yankee with a last name that ends in a vowel? Maybe more than any other spot in the city, or the known universe, Avellino’s proves this rule. The recipes here come from New York, where Avellino family has been baking for generations. In fact, the family claims that the pizza here is better than what they can make up north, because they have access to better and fresher ingredients.

The pizza is some of the very best I’ve had anywhere. Everything tastes fresh, wonderfully spicy, and, for lack of a better word, hand-made. It ranks a solid A, but it gets a boost to A+ for atmosphere. It’s small, homey, charming, and friendly. It practically defines the term “neighborhood spot.” The staff is great, the crowd of regulars is welcoming, and the overall experience keeps me coming back again and again. Well, that and the fact that it’s walking distance from my house. But seriously, I’d drive to the ‘burbs for this.

One more thing: the beer is is terrific (it would have to be, since it shares space with beer heaven, Ale Yeah) and the deserts are to die for. I haven’t sampled the wine yet, but my wife is pleased. The list is small but solid and eclectic.

4.) Bambinelli’s

Of all the glorious pizza spots on this list, Bambinelli’s might be the one I’ve loved the longest. It opened in the early 1980s, and happened to be located right smack between my old high school and the mall where I worked at the B. Dalton Bookseller. I was there the day they opened and, although I don’t get to this charming little family-owned place as much as I used to, Bonnie Bambinelli still greets me by name.

Picture a cozy New York neighborhood spot in little Italy. Not one of the newer, trendier places. Think of a smaller, warmer, more comfortable corner that a single family has run for generations. Pull that image off the shelf of clichés in your brain, transport it to the Northlake area, and you’ve got Bambinelli’s. They’re only missing the red and white checkered table cloths.

Bambinell’s was the first authentic New York style pizza I ever tried, and although I’ve new visited New York itself dozens of times since, it’s still the standard by which I judge. It’s the A+. And it’s scores that A+ on all four of the main criteria: crust (crisp and favorable), sauce (tangy and ever so slightly sweet, with fresh herbs), cheese, and toppings. While I generally prefer the thin, the Sicilian style is also excellent, with that wonderful fresh-baked bread aroma. The other Italian dishes are first rate, especially the ones with cream sauce. But the pizza is what keeps bringing me back, decade after decade. Oh, and the garlic rolls? To die for. Seriously.

5.) Bella’s Pizzeria

If you were to describe Bella’s as Bambinelli’s west, you would not be far wrong. They’re not exactly sharing recipes, mind, each is unique, but there’s a certain neighborhood charm and cozy goodness that makes one remind me fondly of the other. Like Bambinelli’s, it’s family owned. That makes a difference. In fact, nostalgia aside, I’m hard pressed to think of something I’d say about Bambinell’s that I wouldn’t say about Bella’s, except that Bella’s won’t have that basket of hot garlic rolls on your table before you order, at least not at lunch. Bambinelli’s has an edge in taste, too, but it’s close. You’ve got to drive over to Bambinelli’s on the northeast side for that. But the slices are solid, with good crust and tangy sauce, and they’re always hot. A warning: I haven’t been there in a few years, but I assume it’s just as good as always. By the way, I was torn on whether to put Bella’s or the New York Pizza Exchange (see the honorable mentions, below) in this spot. It was a hard decision and might have gone either way.

6.) Cappozi’s

Cappozi’s is one of the most versatile spots in all of Atlanta. I’ve been there for special occasions (an amazing Valentine’s dinner with my wife), family gatherings, and when I just want to grab a seat at the bar for a fast slice. It’s causally elegant, romantic, warm, and welcoming. Every time I visit, I leave knowing I’ll be back … and soon.

The slices are foldable (my Yankee friends assure me that this is a crucial test) and tasty, with home-made sauce that’s the star of the show (although they have the best pepperoni in town). Everything tastes fresh, and the high-quality of the ingredients is evident from bite one. You’re best to stick with the traditional, the pepperoni (seriously, the best in town) and the sausage. Stuff like that. I’ve ordered extra cheese a few times, but it’s not really because it needs it.

This list is about pizza and I don’t want to drift too far off topic, but I have to mention the rest of the Italian menu. It’s fantastic, creative, and always delicious. There’s even a chef who creates daily specials, and the wine list is exceptional. The staff is terrific. This is another place that gets a boost from solid A to A+ for ambience and welcome.

7.) Edgewood Pizza

Edgewood Pizza in Atlanta’s historic Old Forth Ward neighborhood pretty much defines the concept of urban “no frills.” As near as Google and I can tell, they don’t even have a Web site — I had to link to the Facebook page. There aren’t many tables (a problem if you want to go at night—the neighborhood hipsters will have already grabbed them) and parking is limited. Although to be fair, neither of those are an issue at lunch.

What you’re going to get in place of the charm and, uh, seats you might find elsewhere is a darn good, honest slice of pizza served hot and quickly by a friendly staff. Everything tastes fresh and homemade; the crust especially is delicious. When you lost past the counter, you see those machines they use to mix dough. Always a good sign. The herbs in the sauce are terrific. And even if you order the “King Slice,” (other places would call that “two slices”), you’re not going to pay a lot for it. Edgewood Pizza is one of intown Atlanta’s best lunch bargains. It might be the closest thing you’re going to find to a genuine Manhattan pizza slice south of the Sweet Tea Belt.

8.) Nancy’s

In my long-ago youth, one of the very best spots of pizza was the long-vanished Upper Crust. It closed (I think, back in the 1980s), and I’ve missed that three-inch pile of gooey goodness ever since. At the time, I thought Upper Crust was utterly unique. I thought I’d miss that decadent yumminess forever. Then, I found Gino’s East in Chicago, and realized I wasn’t just missing a restaurant, I’d been missing a whole genre: Chicago-style pizza. Happily, Nancy’s Pizza, a chain that originated in Chicago itself, is every bit as good as Upper Crust was, and nearly as good as mighty Gino’s itself. (Although they don’t have that flaming cheese appetizer that I could never pass up at Upper Crust. Seriously, it was cheese and bread, and it was on fire! What’s not to love?)

If you don’t know Chicago-style pizza, it’s not pizza in the traditional Italian/New York style. It’s like the too-delicious to exist love child of pizza and lasagna. You start with a thin and crispy lower crust that that’s deep … like a pie shell. A really deep pie shell. Then, it’s stuffed with enough cheese to fill a bucket, and topped with another crust. The sauce, thick and tomato-y, bubbles on top of that. There’s still plenty of room for toppings. It’s pricy, sure, but then you’re buying a whole cheese shop in every pie. And man, is it amazing.

There are two locations here in Atlanta. One is in Buckhead, where I am told they have lots of table seating and all the amenities. I’ve never been there. The Ponce de Leon location, close to my neighborhood, is carry-out only, and it’s next to impossible to park. (Think of that pie slowly cooling while you circle. Grrr.) But it’s worth all the trouble.

9.) Varasanos

Varasano’s is probably the most upscale place on this list, tucked as it is in the high-rent district between Midtown and Buckhead. Don’t let that fool you. You can still get a good, honest pie here, with a nice, crispy Napoletana-style (not New York style, so set your expectations accordingly!) crust, tangy and favorable sauce (you can taste the fresh tomato and basil), and high-quality ingredients. Varasano’s adds a sourdough base to the crust, something (as far as I know) that’s unique. But eat it quickly, while it’s piping hot. Sure, that’s important everywhere. Especially here, though, because as all that bubbly deliciousness cools, the sour taste becomes more pronounced, and a little less pleasant, It’s still yummy, though. If you take some home (the pies are huge) the left overs will be disappointing, unless there is some arcane secret to reheating that I haven’t cracked yet.

10.) Zucca

Zucca has the rather dubious distinction of being the place I found because it’s the one place where you can usually find a table when all the other Decatur Spots are full. Thank heaven, because otherwise, I might have missed some mighty tasty pizza. It’s one of the best slices in a neighborhood that’s full of them, and while you can’t (alas!) get slices at night, the pies are always piled high with generous toppings and cheese, and the crust has a subtly sweet bready taste that’s terrific.

To be honest, the ambience seems a little out of place for Decatur, known mostly for charming, quaint pubs and casual but upscale dining. Entering the door is like crossing a portal that leads from the Square to a dive in any college town, anywhere in the USA. It can be a little loud, although in a fun rather than oppressive way, and the service can be a little on the slow slide. It’s friendly, though, and the pizza is worth the wait. The sauce is made fresh on-premises every day. That makes a difference. The bar is solid.

Honorable Mention:

New York Pizza Exchange

As you’ve likely guessed from the name, New York Pizza Exchange is the closest thing you’re likely to find to New York street pie south of Jersey. It might be a little pricier than, say, Edgewood, but there are plenty of seats, an extensive bar, and an extensive non-pizza menu. You’re probably going to want to avoid it after 7 on Friday and Saturday night, when the crowd and live music makes conversation challenging.

The pizza, though, the pizza is down right yummy, made special by the subtle dash of oregano in the red sauce. The garlic sauce on the white pizza is terrific, too. In fact, while the crust and toppings are delicious, the sauce is the star of the show here.

The New York Pizza Exchange is as much a sports bar as a pizza place, a change from my college days, so it’s a good place to catch a game if you happen to be in the neighborhood. In Atlanta, longevity counts. The fact that this place has been around and thriving for more than three decades says something.

Uncle Vito’s

To be honest, I haven’t been to Uncle Vito’s in years. The location I used to know and love when I lived in the wilds of suburbia has long since closed, and the remaining ones just aren’t close to any place I ever go. So I am reviewing from memory, which is probably unfair. I am convinced that one of the reasons transplants can’t find pizza that compares to what they got back home is simply this: Atlanta pizza isn’t competing with any specific New York pizza, it’s competing with memory. Nostalgia always wins. But I remember Uncle Vito’s having generous slices, enough cheese that you never felt the need to order extra, good, foldable crust, and some of the very best Italian sausage I’ve ever tried. Here’s hoping they’re as good as I remember, and that I find myself passing one at lunch time some day soon.

Book Review: “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern

Read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Wow, the last quarter of 2011 has been a grand one for books. Erin Morgenstern’s lovely and haunting The Night Circus continues a string of truly good reads that began with Among Others and The Magician King. It’s a book I’ll be thinking about for a while, and one I’ll alms certainly read again some day … something increasingly rare when my to-be-read stack reaches the ceiling. It’s certainly one I’ll be pushing on my friends and family. Lots of them, in fact. The Night Circus is a book that I can recommend to a wide swath of them, because it will appeal to a very broad range of tastes. It’s romantic, it’s mysterious, it’s evocative (certainly that!), it’s magical (oh yes), it’s lovely, and it’s (at times) heartbreaking. And it’s almost impossible to describe.

Celia and Marco are the young proteges of rival magicians that have been dueling for ages. They are meant to continue the struggle by playing a game they don’t really understand, for stakes they can barely imagine. The arena is the marvelous Le Cirque des Reves, The Circus of Dreams, a place that Celia calls “wonder and comfort and mystery all together.” Think of the most wonderful Cirque du Soleil possible, a carnival imagined by Isabel Allende, Ray Bradbury, and J. K. Rowling.

Le Cirque des Reves appears suddenly, and is open only at night. It’s the place of wonders we’ve all dreamed of finding, the marvel the artist sleeping within has always longed to create. It’s a place you’ll ache to visit. Neither Celia or Marco knows how to win the game. But they know they can’t stop playing, and they begin to suspect that the loser will die. The game gets complicated when Celia and Marco fall in love.

A synopsis doesn’t do The Night Circus justice. The prose is lovely and elegant. The writing is not as lush as, say, a Ray Bradbury, Catherynne Valente, or Mark Helprin, but the lighter touch is perfect for the story, like cotton candy spun from silver moonlight (which, by the way, is the kind of thing one would be likely to find at the Night Circus). At times, her descriptions seem almost like sketches, whips of dream glimpsed then vanished. Nonetheless, it’s a sensual treat … the sights, and even the sounds, textures, and scents, seem immediate and real. We never stay too long with any one character or scene. We drop in and are gone. We long to linger, yes, but we are eager to see what’s around the next corner, too. It’s a brilliant structure for a novel.

As author Katherine Dunn said, The Night Circus has a “leisurely but persistent suspense.” I wanted to rush through The Night Circus, and I wanted to savor every word. I couldn’t wait to get to the end; I wanted it to go on forever. I hope you’ll give it a read. Your local corner bookshop is sure to have a copy, or it’s perfect for that new holiday tablet gadget. Either way, I look forward to hearing what you think.

UPDATE:

Erin Morgenstern will be signing here (or at least fairly close to here) in the Greater Atlanta Area on Friday, January 27, at 7:00pm. The event occurs at FoxTale Book Shoppe, in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s a ticketed event; $30 admits two and includes a copy of the book ready for signing. For more information, contact: FoxTale Book Shoppe, 770/516-9989, 105 E. Main St., #138, Woodstock, Georgia.

Book Review: “The Magician King” by Lev Grossman

Read The Magician King: A Novel by Lev Grossman

I don’t usually review sequels. That’s not a bias, mind. I have nothing against sequels, especially when they continue a story I enjoyed. There are exceptions, of course. I reviewed the brilliant The Angel’s Game, for example. Although that doesn’t really count; it’s not so much a sequel as a related novel set in the same basic milleu. Besides, it really is a special read. I reviewed Robert V. S. Redick’s The Ruling Sea, the second in a series. I didn’t review the third book, despite the fact that I rather liked it—mostly because readers of the first two were already likely to pick it up, and those who haven’t aren’t going to want to start in the middle. As with most sequels, generally speaking, I didn’t have much to say that I hadn’t already said about the first book. (If you haven’t read Redick’s series, it’s worth checking out. It’s a light, fast-paced, fun read with characters that remind me of those created by the late, great Lloyd Alexander. But I digress.)

If you read my review of Lev Grossman’s previous novel, The Magicians, you’ll recall that (spoiler alert!) I liked it a great deal. On the surface, it’s a sort of Narnia/Harry Potter book for adults, with familiar archetypes viewed through the lens of modern literary fiction, with all of the cynical irony you’d expect in the post Bright Lights, Big City era. But it’s actually a lot more than that. It’s a powerful and moving novel about what happens when wishes come true, about power, about love, yes, and even about responsibility. It’s also a heck of a fun read, albeit a heartbreaking one at times, one that my love of the source material (Narnia, Harry Potter, The Once and Future King, etc.) made especially poignant. It’s exciting, it’s funny, and, frankly, it’s darned insightful. I was excited to learn that a sequel was in the works.

I went to hear Mr. Grossman speak when his author tour brought him to Atlanta, and while I found his talk and reading delightful, I didn’t think The Magician King was a book I’d be reviewing. Largely because, when someone asked about a third book, Mr. Grossman joked about writing as many as his agent thought he could sell. Great, I thought. This isn’t a book. It’s an episode. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I've got to say, the Brits got a much cooler cover than we did here in America. Of course, you can't judge it that way.

While The Magician King assumes familiarity with the first book (although it does a fine job of reminding you of the hight points if it’s been a while since you read it), this is a sequel with it’s own beginning, middle, and very definite end. It’s not a product. It’s a novel. And darned if it’s not an out an out better book.

More, Quentin Coldwater (how great is that name?), the main character, grows and changes in this book. Sure, he’s (at times) the same whiny git he was in The Magicians, and you’ll want to slap him more than once. But there’s something in him that longs for more, and that something makes us long right along with him. If the first book was (at least ostensibly) about Quentin becoming a Magician, learning to harness, if not live up to, the power within, the sequel is about Quentin learning what it means to be a hero.

The first book had nods to all sorts of fantasy classics, and the sequel has them, too, with all sorts of delicious Easter eggs for fans of the genre (from the obvious—a winking reference to mischief managed—to the almost achanely obscure—Free Trader Beowulf). The structure of the main story is drawn primarily from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of my favorite of the Narnia tales, but The Magician King is far more than a mere homage or pastiche.

There’s a parallel story as well, one that shows us what happened to another character, Quentin’s friend Julia, while he was away at the Brakebills college of magic in the first book. Her story is a harsher one than Quentin’s, and in some ways a more interesting one, but it provides a delicious counter melody. What Quentin was essentially given in The Magicians, Julia has to fight for. Hers is a gripping and, at times, even difficult story to read. If you’ve ever wondered about the characters left behind, the unchosen, so to speak—think of Dudley in the Harry Potter stories, or Susan in C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle—Julia’s story will fascinate you. Julia is the one who wasn’t granted access to Brakebills, the one to whom magic is denied. But unlike cartoonish Dudley, Julia is a character of mighty intellect and grit. And also, alas, a toxic sadness. A sea of depression that seems sure to drown her. She pays a terrible price, but she gets what she wants. But in Grossman’s books, magic and irony come wrapped together, like a bitter center in a sweet chocolate.

The stories intertwine, and their parallel resolutions, which come with sacrifice (from both), reward (for one), and loss (for the other) are elegant and unexpected—although, in retrospect, inevitable. It’s got an ending that absolutely threw me for a loop, but by Heaven, Grossman earned it. As Quentin learns, the hero isn’t the one who gains the reward; the hero pays the price.

At the end of the story, Quentin is a man who has accomplished his quest and become a hero. But in many ways, both literal and metaphoric, he’s lost everything he holds dear. But oddly, he’s left in a good place, or as close to it as a flawed hero like Quentin might hope. There’s a sort of optimism wrapped in his too-familiar despair, a core of cheerful nihilism. A journey has ended, sure, with victory and heartbreak. But I for one can’t wait to see where the next one takes him. When the next book is released, I’ll be first in line.

Book Review: Jo Walton’s amazing “Among Others”

Read Jo Walton’s Among Others

I readily confess: I am not above occasional flights of hyperbole. Nonetheless, I don’t think I am indulging in it even in the slightest when I say, Jo Walton’s lovely, startling Among Others is more than amazing. It’s a book that’s going to save someone’s life some day.

On the surface, Among Others sounds like a typical genre book. An almost too-smart, too-precocious, too-isolated teen girl, suffering the loss of her twin sister, must find the strength to confront her-own half-mad (at least) witch mother. That kind of synopsis is more than inadequate. It’s almost unspeakably unfair. It doesn’t scratch the surface of the subtle way the story is told, and how we’re not always sure what is literally “real,” and what is the product of a lonely girl’s desperate imagination. (The book provides clear answers, don’t worry, but it manages to do so without sacrificing any of its delicious ambiguity.) The writing is spare and lovely, and the story is certainly engaging. Although honestly, the story is almost incidental. Here, character is what matters. And the lead character, Morwenna Phelps is fascinating. And for, I think, more than a few of us, the bookish types, she’s a little too familiar.

Morwenna narrates her own story through a series of journal entries. Ostensibly, she’s telling us about her encounters with magic, here something more akin to the subtle marvels that Isabel Allende, Alice Hoffman, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez might describe, rather than the bombastic miracles that Harry Potter encounters. More importantly, she’s talking about growing up in a world (here, an English boarding school) that she is in but not a part of. With subtle and and times devastating cleverness, Jo Walton lets Morwenna show us the loneliness of growing up surrounded by others who simply can’t — or don’t care to — understand her, and so respond either by tormenting or simply ignoring her. It describes her escape into the world of books — mostly science fiction and fantasy — that provide her only real company, as well as (for better or worse) her framework for understanding the challenges and complexity of her world.

That latter part, the escaping into the beloved worlds of Tolkien, Zelazny, Heinlein, Silverberg, and the like, hit a little too close to home for me. Like Morwenna, I was a child of the late 70s, and those very same books were my own solace and escape. Morwenna’s reading list is my own biography. Now, I was one of the lucky ones. I found friends like Chris, Jay, Big Squat, Beth, Terri, Lashayne, Patty, Jim, Doug, DJ, Greg, Celine, Laura, Paul … and others that I’ll kick myself later for not mentioning … that pulled me out of my dusty covers and showed me the world of music, parties, March of Dimes Haunted Houses, theatre, baseball, astronomy, beer, and, yeah, girls. And even other authors (like Dickens and Bradbury … thanks one more time, dear Matt) that I hadn’t found on my own. You can’t, after all, live your life in the isolation of fiction. You learn its lessons, and then you have to live out here, Among Others. The others I found, they made it worth while. I’ll love them forever for that.

I know others that weren’t so blessed. For them, high school was four or five years of hell made remotely tolerable only by rare escapes into the fleeting heavens of Narnia, Middle-eath, and Amber. For them, I think, Among Others is going to read a little like a love note, one they might wish they could send back to the child they used to be, that says, things are going to get better. Really. You are going to meet people that are like you and who will understand you. You are going to meet people you will like, and who will like you back. You’ll even love some of them, and that love will prove stronger than years and miles. It’s worth the wait. I promise.

When a book can do that, it’s more than a book to read. It’s a book to cherish and share.

Beer Review: Heavy Seas Great’er Pumpkin Ale

Sip a mighty tasty Heavy Seas Great’er Pumpkin Ale, just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving!

I can still remember the first time I found a pumpkin ale at my local market. Pumpkin is one of my absolute favorite flavors, especially when combined with all the cinnamony-nutmegy flavors that tend to come along with it. Add ale, another of my favorites, and it sounded like heaven. I can’t even remember who made it — there are usually quite a few pumpkin ales on the shelves and taps at this time of year. I couldn’t wait to get home to try it. The reality, alas, was a disappointment. So was the next pumpkin ale I tried, and the one after that. I never learned my lesson, though. I never gave up. Someone, someday, was going to brew a pumpkin ale that lived up to my expectations.

That persistence finally paid off when I tried Heavy Seas Great’er Pumpkin Ale on tap at my neighborhood Marlay House pub. It’s everything I ever hoped a pumpkin ale would be. It pours a lovely brown amber (almost orange) color with a tan head that doesn’t linger. The aroma, rich cinnamon and spice with caramel sweetness and, of course, pumpkin, is pleasant and evocative — it makes you think of those bright Arthur Rackham illustrations of the Fezziwig’s party in A Christmas Carol, or holiday feasts in a Norman Rockwell painting. There is something quaint and lovely about it, something distinctly autumn, a comfort scent.

The flavor lives up to the aroma. It’s a big, festive ale. The bready, wheaty tastes of the ale balance the sweet pumpkin spice nicely, creating waves of complex flavor. The flavors promised by the scent are all there, along with a very subtle touch of vanilla. More, the ale was seasoned in bourbon oak casks, giving it a boozy wood finish that is unexpected and really quite delicious. In fact, that conditioning is what separates Great’er Pumpkin from the merely Great Pumpkin that Heavy Seas also brews. I haven’t tried that yet, but the oak cask conditioning and the hint of bourbon flavor make this really special, so I’m not sure I want to.

This is one of the very best seasonal brews I’ve tried in ages. It’s a little hard to find, but it’s absolutely worth the effort. If you give it a try, I hope you’ll let me know what you think.

Root Beer Review: Boylan

Sip a tasty Boylan Root Beer

A while back, I read a review of Boylan sodas, saying that the cane sugar gave them a more refined, “white collar” taste. I honestly have no idea what that means, but I got a chuckle out of it all the same. What I can say about Boylan’s root beer is that, like the other cane sugar varieties I’ve been sampling of late, Boylan’s is mighty tasty, and it’s a large step ahead of the corn-syrup stuff you find at your local gas station.

Boylan has been making root beer since 1891, so they’ve had plenty of time to perfect their recipe. It shows. Boylan has more head than most of the others I’ve tried, and it tastes creamier than most. It also has more vanilla flavor than any say perhaps the Tommyknocker, and the cane sugar taste is more apparent (Tommyknocker is also sweetened with maple syrup, so there is a bit more complexity to the sweetness).

If there is any knock against Boylan, it’s that the sweetness is a little too strong, and the vanilla seems to to be trying just a little too hard. Don’t get me wrong” real vanilla is one of my very favorite flavors. But I miss the balancing root beer “bite.” While the flavor is terrific, its not nearly as complex as some of the others. The sweetness makes a little less refreshing as well. That said, Boylan Root Beer is terrific, and it’s one I’ll buy again.

By the way, their grape soda, also made with cane sugar and natural ingredients, is amazing. Growing up, Fanta Grape was my favorite soda. I tried one recently, and I have to admit … the stuff they make today doesn’t match my memory. I don’t know whether Fanta has changed, or whether my tastes have. A little of both, most likely. Boylan Grape, though, that’s what grade soda should taste like.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think!

Music Review: “Old Blue Truck” by Charles de Lint and “Crow Girls” by MaryAnn Harris

Listen to Old Blue Truck by Charles de Lint and Crow Girls by MaryAnn Harris

If you’ve read the contemporary “real world” mythic fantasy works of Charles de Lint, you know he has a knack for creating believable characters that seem just a little too real, and stories that exist somewhere in the twilight land between wish fulfillment and nightmare, between the all-too-familiar and the too-long-wished for. You also know that his tales are absolutely thick with music—his prose is lyrical and poetic, and more than a few of his plots revolve around songs or tunes, lush and dripping with gritty urban enchantment. Many of his characters are themselves musicians, and even the ones who aren’t will mention a favorite artist, concert, or recording now and then.

But of you haven’t had a chance to hear Charles de Lint perform live with his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, you’re only getting half the story. Up until now, that meant you had to be lucky enough to catch the couple at a fantasy convention or book festival, or make the trek to Ottawa to hear them at a quaint pub like Paddy’s. If you’ve had the experience, you know what a treat it is. The music carries echoes of Celtic, roots, folk, rock, blues, and … whatever the heck it is that artists like Fred Eaglesmith, David Franklin, and Tom Waits sing. I’ve heard it called urban country, which is certainly an evocative label, except that it really doesn’t tell you anything unless you already know what it sounds like.

Happily, the couple has finally found the time to record and release a pair of CDs. And better still, while the tunes are dressed up in their Sunday best, they don’t have that slick, over-produced quality that drives the life out of far too many first time recordings. Old Blue Truck and Crow Girls captures all heart and energy of their live performances.

MaryAnn Harris’ Crow Girls is the shorter of the two with only five tracks. Her voice is bouncy and energetic, and offers far more range—I mean that more in terms of style and emotion than vocal range—than you’d expect if you’d just heard her singing back up on Old Blue Truck. Her voice is gentle and melodic, of course, but you’re kind of expecting that. So much so that the more raucous, more rascally edge kind of sneaks up on you.

The title track, Crow Girls, is taken from two of the more memorable characters in Charles de Lint’s Newford stories, and it’s just as fun and lively as you’d expect if you’ve encountered them in the tales. It has its own strange logic, and it continues to defy your expectations, even when played again. Another favorite is In A heartbeat, a more overtly roots tune about a long love that does more than endure—it keeps its magic alive. All in all, it’s a lovely gem of an EP, and MaryAnn Harris’s voice and mandolin blend perfectly with the guitar and fiddle that accompany her.

MaryAnn Harris’s voice is much, well, smokier in her backup vocals on Charles de Lint’s Old Blue Truck. Charles de Lint’s voice has the throaty growl of a smoother Tom Waits or a rougher Lou Reed, and it’s perfect for the CD’s ten tracks, all off which just shine with de Lint’s talents both as a musician and as a storyteller. To my ear at least, Great Big Moon is the strongest track on a strong CD. If you’re listening with headphones or earbuds, be prepared to explain to anyone who might pass that you’ve got something in you eye. If you’re playing it through speakers, well, you won’t have to explain why you’re wiping away a tear. It’s a quiet and introspective piece about the harder edges of romance, and de Lint’s rough but smooth (think of the best whiskeys and you’ll know what I mean) voice gives it power and poignance.

The rest of the tunes are equally strong, although Cherokee Girl and Medicine Road deserve special mention. All feature strong guitar lines, solid vocals, and evocative lyrics. I hope both CDs will find the wide audiences they deserve. The couple deserves to have their reputation spread beyond a few pubs and festivals. If you’re about to hear them for the first time, trust me. You’re in for a treat.

Theatre Review: “Noises Off” at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival

Catch Noises Off at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival … but hurry.

Far, far too often, I hear people complaining about the lack of good theatre in Atlanta. Frankly, this always mystifies me. I find myself asking, what have you seen? Did you catch The Alliance’s brilliant productions of The Road to Mecca or Dancing at Lughnasa? (For that matter, did you know the Alliance won a Tony?) Did you see Theatrical Outfit’s amazing The Blood Knot (a show so powerful that, years later, I still have trouble talking about it) or Confederacy of Dunces? Or heck, have you seen anything at Horizon Theatre? Or Push Push? Or Dad’s Garage? Or the Center for Puppetry Arts? Or The New American Shakespeare Tavern? If not, I tell them, see a few shows. Then tell me there’s no good theatre here. I dare you.

Did you miss the Georgia Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Tempest this summer? The Tempest was exceptionally well performed, and I say that as one who has seen Shakespeare at the RSC, the Globe, and London’s West End. If you missed it, you missed a treat. If you haven’t seen Georgia Shakespeare Festival’s production of Noises Off, featuring much of the same remarkable cast, you’re about to miss another.

Noises Off may well be the funniest play — or one of them anyway — in the entire canon of modern theatre. I can’t remember ever laughing so hard at a live performance. It’s a genius mix of fast entrances and exits, rapid dialogue, and, yes, physical comedy. Not to mention doors and sardines. Noises Off doesn’t merely exemplify classic farce, it practically defines it.

Noises Off tells of a company of fifth or sixth-rate actors struggling to perform a British bedroom farce called Nothing On — a play within a play, or rather a farce within a farce. The first act shows us the final dress rehearsal. Act Two takes us back stage for a performance midway through the run, and the final scene shows us the final performance — with each act somehow managing to top the others for sidesplitting disaster.

The show is hilarious, always, but this cast, along with Richard Garner’s inspired direction and choreography, makes it even better. Act Two, when the actors are essentially performing two plays at once, is the single funniest half-hour I have witnessed in ages, but the final scene, somehow, manages to top it. I laughed so hard I literally lost my breath at times. I can’t recommend Noises Off highly enough.

I think one of the reasons that people complain about the lack of theatre here in Atlanta is that shows don’t run very long, and with funds stretched thin, they aren’t promoted as strongly as you’d hope. So it’s up to us as audiences to seek out the gems that surround us. It takes effort, but it’s worth it. If you blink, you’re going to miss something amazing. My advice? Don’t blink.

In the meantime, see Noises Off. Seriously. Don’t miss it. But hurry. It closes this weekend. By the way, the program contains a program within a program for Nothing On, the play within a play. The director’s notes therein are worth the price of admission alone.

One more root beer review: Abita Root Beer

Sip an Abita Root Beer, straight from Louisiana

Like more than a few of the better microbreweries, Abita also brews a root beer, which it boasts is made from pure Louisiana cane sugar. I have no idea what’s different about Louisiana cane sugar, but it’s mighty tasty in Abita Root Beer. Like all the (admittedly few) cane sugar sodas I’ve tried of late, that puts it well ahead of the cloying corn syrup-sweetened sodas you can pick up at your local gas station. To me at least, the cane sugar tastes smoother, less sticky, and both tastier and more refreshing.

Abita is a fine root beer, with the traditional, familiar root beer taste of, say, IBC or Sprecher. As soon as the cap is popped (pun intended), the scent is pure licorice-root beer, and the taste matches. The color is dark and the carbonation is solid, although (alas!) the head fades quickly. The familiar root beer bite is there, more pronounced, even, than in the Sprecher variety, and with the vanilla smoothness to balance. It disappoints only in the aftertaste—there really isn’t any. The finish is almost watery, surprising after the boldness of the flavor mix in the first sip.

If the aftertaste is lacking, Abita wins with its sweetness. It’s not overpowering; it’s simple, balancing, and delicious, with hints of something subtle that reminds me a little of honey. I can’t remember tasting anything quite like it, even in the rarified spectrum of cane sugar sodas. I should also mention that I’m writing this in August, and the balance of flavors, the subtle sweetness, and perhaps even the weak aftertaste, make it especially refreshing. Recommended.

Okay, I promised book and music reviews. They’re coming soon, along with a couple more cane sugar soda reviews—neither of which are root beers.

One More Root Beer Review: Sprecher Root Beer

Try a yummy Sprecher Root Beer

Earlier this week, I praised Tommyknocker Root Beer, calling it delicious, one of the best sodas I’ve tried, but somehow not a root beer. Sprecher is a classic root beer … in fact, it may be the Platonic ideal of root beer.

Taste-wise, it falls right smack between A&W and IBC … it has all the liquorice and sassafras zip you expect, with a hint of something like wintergreen and the creamy finish of good vanilla. It’s also a good step above, a likely consequence of it’s being fired brewed, whatever the heck that is. It’s absolutely one of the best plain old honest root beers I’ve tried. If IBC were made with organic ingredients and pure cane sugar, this is likely what it would taste like.

Sprecher is sweetened with corn syrup, but there is a hint of honey in the taste. The vanilla is also apparent, especially in the after taste, but no other spice or flavor is obvious. The flavors blend harmoniously. There’s a mild, spicy aftertaste that reminds me of what a vanilla wafer might taste like if it were backed with the merest tease of ginger. The bite is mild and short-lived.

Sprecher is a little more syrupy than, say, the Jones or the Tommyknocker, but it’s nowhere as cloying as you expect from corn-sweetened sodas. I’d love to try a cane sugar batch. All the same, it’s truly tasty, and quite refreshing for summer. Sprecher doesn’t just live up to the taste expectations you have for a root beer — it comes mighty close to defining them. It’s an absolute treat.

One hint: root beer should be sipped from a frosty mug if at all possible, or at least served very cold. There’s a reason for that, aside from the obvious aesthetic one. The cold blunts the sweetness ever so slightly, so that the other flavors become more apparent. Save a sip or two, and try it after it’s warmed a little. You’ll see what I mean.

Root Beer Review: Tommyknocker

Try a delicious Tommyknocker Root Beer

Last weekend, I created a new tab for root beer here on the ol’ blog. Figured I might as well make use of it, huh? Anyway, turns out there are quite a few “gourmet” root beers out there, all made with real cane sugar which, as far as I’m concerned, is a must in any soda. After discovering and reviewing Jones Root Beer, I was eager to try more. My local market carries quite a few, so I picked up one called Tommyknocker. Tommyknocker also makes a few tasty beers, and they use all natural, organic ingredients, including Tahitian Vanilla Extract and pure Maple Syrup. I have no idea what Tahitian Vanilla is, but real vanilla is one of the world’s truly great under-appreciated flavors. And how can you go wrong with real maple? Besides, it’s named after a creature from Celtic myth, which is certainly a way to my heart.

The Tommyknocker did not disappoint. Like a good ale, the pleasure comes in waves, beginning with the nose, proceeding through waves of flavor, and ending with a bit of an aftertaste. I drank it from the bottle, so I’ll have to skip the usual description of the pouring experience. The maple scent is pleasantly present as soon as the bottle is opened, and the taste is the most evident in the waves of flavor that follow when sipped. The vanilla is more subtle, but it balances the other flavors beautifully. Seriously, the real vanilla and natural maple combine to create a truly pleasant experience. More, with the real cane sugar, it’s not as sticky or overly sweet as corn-sweetened sodas can be. As a matter of fact, I’d go so far as to call Tommyknocker Root Beer one of the very best sodas I’ve ever tried. It is not, however, a good root beer.

I’m not sure I can describe what root beer tastes like. You either know it, or you don’t. There’s the liquorice/sassafras twang made delicious with the vanilla finish. From A&W to IBC to Braq’s to Jones, there’s a continuum of flavor — an almost indefinable essence of root beerness — that they all share in common, even while each stakes out a spot of individual distinction. Tommyknocker doesn’t seem to fit in that spectrum. It’s a neighbor, sure, but one that lives a few blocks away. With Tommyknocker, the root beer flavor seems almost like an afterthought, something added to balance the maple and vanilla. It might almost be closer to a cream soda, although it’s still a block or two from that street, too.

That’s not necessarily a complaint, mind. Tommyknocker is delicious and refreshing, and the quality of its ingredients are very apparent in the well crafted recipe. I guess Tommyknocker Maple Vanilla soda would have been too hard a sell? Tommyknocker may not be root beer, exactly, but it is mighty tasty and well worth a try. Whatever the heck it is.

On a related note, I found a variety of A&W made with the real cane sugar at Kitsch’n 155, which also happens to serve one of the very best burgers I’ve ever tried — made with high quality, local organic ingredients, and at fast food prices. It’s a new favorite. But I digress. The difference between the cane sugar A&W and the regular stuff you get at a gas station or grocery store is night and day. I’m telling you, there is something to this real sugar soda stuff. If you can find it, give it a try. It really does make a difference.

Sip a tasty Ace Pear Cider

Ace Pear is the desert wine of ciders. If you haven’t tried a hard pear cider (Woodchuck makes one), they are, in general, littler and sweeter than most apple ciders, crisper, and less tart. Ace is no different.

It is, however, more golden than the norm, slightly heavier (although still not as heavy as most apple ciders) and certainly sweeter, although it’s far from cloying or syrupy. It’s pours a lovely clear, pale gold color with a thin white head that disappears quickly. The bubbles remain, though, and a very pleasant champagne-like carbonation sparkles on the tongue. It has a very light mouthfeel and no feeling of alcohol warmth. The pear flavor lingers on in the finish.

It’s a little too sweet to go well with a full meal (although there are worse options out there, and it goes exceptionally well with salty foods, cheeses, and bread). It’s best sipped on its own on a supper evening, or as you might serve a desert wine. In short, it’s sweetly delicious, and well worth a try.

On a somewhat related note, I hadn’t seen Ace Pear in a while, so to be sure the reality matched my memory, I used the finder on the Ace Web site to find my local distributor, and then to the distributor’s site to find where it could be found.

For the bottles, I was forced to drive nearly half a mile … to find a six-pack at the local Candler Park Market. On my street. Of course, the draft version is a little tastier. To find that, I had to drive nearly a mile farther … to The Porter, an amazing upscale gastro pub. On my street. See, this is the trouble I am willing to go to for you, faithful blog readers and cider sippers. May your quests be even easier.

I’ll have a couple more cider reviews, a music review (Charles de Lint and Maryann Harris), and a book review (Jo Walton’s amazing Among Others) soon. So stay tuned, and let me know what you think.

Root Beer Review: Jones Root Beer

Enjoy a tasty Jones Root Beer

You know, I had to add a new category for this one.

Anyway, the simple truth is, I drink a lot of root beer. I have for years. When I was 16, a co-worker at the Northlake Mall B. Dalton Bookseller said I was like a cartoon character, like Linus with his blanket … I’m the one who’s always drinking the root beer. I’ve tried a number of varieties, and there is just about always a case of Diet A&W in my fridge (the real aged vanilla makes it a treat). It makes a great nighttime soda. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d usually stick with one of the classics, venerable IBC (the king) or ubiquitous A&W. My tastes tend to the simple.

But since I’ve found Jones Root Beer, I may have to reevaluate. It’s got all the classic sassafras root beer taste with a very pleasant vanilla aftertaste. It’s a little sharper than you might expect; it’s a grownup’s soda. But it’s surprisingly delicious. The Jones Root Beer has one secret that lifts it above so many others: it’s made with real cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup.

Now, I’m not debating the relative health benefits of either product, especially since I am pretty sure that neither one has any. But to me at least, cane sugar just tastes better, and that difference is especially obvious in soda. It has a subtler sweetness, and a slightly different taste that’s hard to describe. It’s also less, well, sticky, and more refreshing. In summer especially, that’s a good thing.

I actually forgot to photograph my first delicious root beer float, so I was forced to make another. Truly, a dedicated blogger's work is never done. You're welcome.

I found Jones Root Beer at my local Kroger, and bought it more or less on impulse, since they were out of my usual Diet A&W. The bigger Krogers also carry the cane sugar version of Coca-Cola (in little glass bottles on the bottom shelf of the Mexican food aisle), so they may single-handly start a cane sugar soda Renaissance. I hope so. Try some. The difference will, I think, surprise you. Jones also makes a heck of a root beer float. Use the Breyer’s All-Natural Vanilla with the real vanilla bean specs. If the store is out, go elsewhere. Do not repeat my mistake and let yourself be conned into getting the extra-creamy variety. It’s not the same thing. It’s just not.

Anyway, Jones Root Beer, on its own or as a key ingredient in a a root beer float, is a perfect summer treat. Even if, like me, you have to wait until your wife is out of town.

Film Review: Disney’s lovely animated “Tangled”

Watch Disney’s Tangled

Tangled; Disney's best animated effort since 1991's "Beauty and the Beast."

All that about “John Reviews Pretty Much Anything” never said anything about “fast” or “timely,” am I right? Right. Anyway.

Disney’s 50th Animated film, Tangled, was released back in November, and I’m guessing that most of you probably missed it in theaters, which is a shame. I didn’t catch it until (close to) the last week. It’s available on DVD now, and I hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t. It’s Disney’s best effort since Beauty and the Beast. Yes, music aside, it’s better than The Lion King—which, despite that astonishing opening sequence and fantastic score, never did find a middle act. The animation is, in a word, stunning. And learning from their compatriots at Pixar, Disney absolutely nailed both the story and the characters. It’s been a while, Disney animators. Welcome back. You were missed.

The backgrounds have a painted look that would have pleased the famous "nine old men" animators who crafted the timeless Disney classics like "Snow White" and "Bambi."

This is a 3D computer animated film, but don’t let the technology fool you. This is old school Disney, with all the warmth and charm of the very best of the films you remember. The backgrounds have depth and texture and a downright painterly look—those are backgrounds of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio quality. Rapunzel’s forest tower (shown above) is stunning, and the castle alone is worth the price of admission (or, now, the price of a DVD). That castle, with its surrounding hamlet, is old school painted Disney, sure, but the fly-overs that take advantage of newer technology would make Disney’s famous “nine old men,” the last of the old school animators, swoon with envy. Disney has created a rich and textured environment for this film—a world of forest towers, dodgy taverns, and charming castle villages that I found myself aching to explore.

More, the characters actually seem to fit into the environment. While clearly computer-generated, they seem a part of the scene—something that couldn’t be said of some of Disney’s lesser efforts, even when every frame was hand-drawn. While Disney animation’s Pixar siblings raise the bar with every effort, the animators behind Tangled have wrought some wonders with light that will be hard to beat. When (spoiler alert!) Rapunzel leaves her tower for the first time, the sunlight seems more real and natural than anything I can remember seeing in animation, whether crafted by paintbrush or keyboard. A scene with floating lanterns (pictured below) comes close to beating it.

In "Tangled," Disney accomplishes miracles with animated light.

That horse is a Disney horse.

And while I miss the hand-drawn Disney classics, and look forward eagerly to the next one, whenever it may arrive, I have to admit the tool the artists use doesn’t seem to matter. Tangled just feels like a Disney film—not like a Pixar film (and I say that as a huge, die-hard Pixar fan). Oh, the Pixar touch is there—Pixar’s chief creative officer John Lasseter had his fingers in the pie, and it shows. But the result is a better Disney film, not a Pixar clone. In fact, Tangled feels more like classic Disney than the last hand-drawn (and stunningly beautiful) effort, The Princess and the Frog. There’s a horse in this film that has more charm and personality than any Disney animal sidekick since, well, since the prototype, Jiminy Cricket himself.

The characters are wonderful. Somewhere, Walt is smiling.

It’s the characters that make this film succeed where so many recent animated films not crafted by Pixar (and so many films in general) failed. All of them—from principals to it players—have personality and, well, life. There is a moment between Rapunzel’s parents, the grieving mother and father, that carries more genuine emotional weight than I’ve seen in a dozen lesser films. That moment, communicated with a look and a touch, and not a single line of dialog, is heartbreaking. Like all Disney fairy tales, Tangled is a love story, but here, the love grows slowly and feels earned. That makes a difference. The voice talent, especially Zachary Levi from televisions silly, fluffy, and woefully under-appreciated romantic adventure series Chuck (somehow, it always makes me grin).

Despite the familiar story and formula, Tangled actually manages to feel fresh.

The story is as familiar (for Heaven’s sake, if you don’t know the story of Rapunzel, look it up—read the original and see the film) as the Disney fairy tale princess formula through which it is told. Nonetheless, it has an attitude (think The Princess Bride) and a lighter than air panache that makes it seem fresh. There is self-aware irony in the wit, sure, but (again like The Princess Bride) it works as a post-modern comedy and as a romantic fairy tale adventure. That’s a hard balance to achieve, sure, but Tangled pulls it off.

If I have two complaints (that’s not really an “if;” I do have two complaints) they’d involve the marketing and the music. The marketing for this film was, in word, bland. None of the freshness, life, charm, or Princess Bride wit came across—that’s why I nearly missed it in theaters. And does anyone remember any kind of celebration about this being Disney’s 50th Animated film? To me, that’s the kind of milestone that deserves to be celebrated. Heck does anyone remember any marketing at all? In all seriousness, I am sure I saw a trailer or a commercial—I must have. But I can’t remember a single one. Bland is not the secret to a successful, audience-atttracting campaign.

Memorable wit, memorable characters, memorable adventure—and utterly forgettable songs.

Second, the very best Disney films have always had scores that you can hum—usually after hearing them just once. Think Whistle While you Work or Some Day My Prince Will Come from Snow White, or When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio. Or You’ve Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story and When Somebody Loved Me from Toy Story 2. Or Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast. Or heck, anything from Jungle Book or Mary Poppins (that last one isn’t fair, I suppose).

I think the marketing team might have been responsible for the tunes in Tangled. (Actually, that’s not true—it’s Alan Menken, who crafted unforgettable songs for Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, so frankly, the blandness here is just baffling.) Sure, they are pleasant enough. The love duet is pretty enough, I’ve Got a Dream (sung by thugs in a pub—really) is grand fun, and the wicked stepmother sings a song called Mother Knows Best, or something along those lines, that drips with evil wit. The problem is, I can’t remember a single line from any of them, and couldn’t hum a note if I had to. Just try to get Chim Chimney or Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious out of your head. Just try.

Thankfully, neither of those nitpicks ruin a fun little film with genuine wit, heart, and adventure that deserves a bigger audience than it found. I hope it finds new life on DVD. After all, the best Disney films deserve to be shared and passed down. So what did y’all think?

Hard Cider Review: Magner’s Irish Cider

Try Magner’s Irish Cider

Continuing to answer my requests for more cider reviews, after my reviews of Crispin’s The Saint and Browns Lane, I offer a few words on a hard apple cider imported from Ireland: Magner’s. In fact, if forced at gunpoint to name a favorite “everyday” cider, this is probably the one I’d choose. There are two primary reasons. First, it’s delicious. Second, it’s almost universally available. My beloved Marley House, Mac McGee’s, and McGowan’s pubs have it on draft (most of the establishments here in pubtopia do, I think). Last night, I even found the bottles in bar in a bowling alley. My opinion of bowling alleys has gone up a notch or two.

Magner’s pours a lovely red-copper-gold, and its aroma carries citrus and floral notes as well as the expected apple. There is very little carbonation. The mouthfeel is medium. The taste … well, sweet apple with a bit of balancing tang from the alcohol. You’d expect that from a hard apple cider. But honestly, most ciders have tastes beyond what you’d expect, like the maple and Trappist yeast in Crispin’s The Saint.

Magner’s is almost surprising in its basic simplicity. In fact, I’ve even heard it criticized for being basic. Honestly, I just don’t get that. The more exotic ciders (again, like The Saint) are just that: exotic. They are special occasion ciders, if there’s such a thing. Magner’s is more like a good, favorite table wine. It’s (almost) always available, always dependable, and always delicious.

Magner’s is crisp, red-apple sweet without being cloying, and quite refreshing. In a word, it’s satisfying in a way that too few products of any sort are. Magner’s is the perfect alternative for a night at the pub when you’re just not in the mood for beer (in theory, that could happen).

It’s best served very cold (in Ireland, it’s usually poured over ice), and is mighty tasty with food, or just on its own. It also defies seasons—I tend to think of it as a refreshing spring/summer afternoon pick-me-up, perfect for a deck or a ballgame. But honestly, it’s also very nice in autumn and winter. In fact, I’ve had hot winter drinks that use it as a base, and they are amazing.

There is nothing especially unusual or distinguishing about Magner’s. It’s just a nice, slightly sweet, well-balanced, and delicious cider. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you’re looking for. It’s a staple for a well-stocked fridge. As always, please feel free to use the comment space to let me know what you think.

Book Review: “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent” by Galen Beckett

Read The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

I was about halfway through reading, and thoroughly enjoying, Galen Beckett’s The Magicians and Mrs. Quent when I decided to pop online to check out the reviews. It’s a rather irritating habit (irritating to me; I can’t imagine that anyone else cares), but I like see if every one else agrees with my own assessment. The first review I read (I tried to find it again to link, but alas, it seems to have vanished) offered this critique: “nothing new.” For the record, that doesn’t seem to be the majority opinion, but frankly, I can’t say I disagree. None of the ingredients, or few of them, anyway, are what you’d call groundbreaking. But then, it’s not always the ingredients that make the stew; it’s how they’re mixed. Sure, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is pastiche. But it’s very good pastiche. Outstanding, even. My wife and I took turns reading it aloud to one another, and we had an absolute blast.

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is a fantasy set in an alternate world that has strong echos of an England that would be familiar to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. In fact, the author’s voice is a deliberate pastiche of Jane Austen’s in the opening chapters, and of the Brontes and even Dickens in latter ones. The plot certainly carries with it echoes of Austen and the Brontes: comedy of manners, a strong emphasis on marriage proposals, a gothic country house where the brooding but romantic master hides a secret, falling ill in someone else’s house, the entailed house, and couples carefully (and at times sadly) avoiding the “inappropriate” marriage. Not to mention a Dickens-worthy subplot concerning a young man of good family fallen on hard times and working as a scrivener in a counting house to provide for his frail sister.

The echos extend beyond plot: Beckett does a terrific job of suggesting the wit, atmosphere, and mood of his sources without merely mimicking them. More, he does it without ever coming across as stilted, dated, or musty. He strikes a pace and tone that’s decidedly modern. More, he writes complex, fully-developed characters that are of their time and culture—his women, especially, are strong and determined even a restrictive age that Austen would recognize. They are not anachronistically feminist or democratic, for example. But they’re not pushovers, either. They are compelling. Nonetheless, the structure of their society places restrictions on men and women of all classes, although to the modern reader, at least, the plight of women and the poor are more likely to make us cringe. Women, for example, are not allowed to perform magic (a story reason is given, but it’s a spoiler so I’ll avoid talking about it) but the lively, intelligent, and charismatic young heroine, Ivy Lockwell, consoles herself with historical study, thereby placing herself in a position to become a hero.

The cosmology in Beckett's familiar yet strange world is not like ours, and signs in the sky auger a dark future, creeping inevitably closer—and possibly tying in with the madness of our heroine's magician father.

Beckett doesn’t shy away from the sex and class restrictions of a society that reflects the England of Austen and Dickens. Nor does he use the tropes of an alternate fantasy world to sidestep them. Instead, he uses them to build compelling characters and to tell a story that’s truly gripping. He doesn’t skimp on the world building, either. While Beckett’s in Invarel is a mirror of Austen-era London, it has a cosmology that is utterly unique, and a subtle, creeping mythology that as unique and delicious as anything in, say, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. His descriptions are vivid and lovely to read—especially his word-paintings of the shadowy underbelly of the Illusionists shows on mysterious Durrow Street, or the streets and alleys were dark-clad highway men prowl, or the taverns and coffee houses where students and intellectuals question authority in whispered tones.

I should say something about the story, although it’s not really one that lends itself to a paragraph. Our heroine, Ivy Lockwell, is the unmarried daughter of a family stricken with poverty after her magician father went mad. She meets the aristocratic Dashton Rafferdy (I would have called him dashing, but you knew that already, didn’t you?) and, despite obvious mutual attraction, can not pursue a relationship. Rafferdy, meanwhile, has strange and unsettling encounters with a gentleman magician. Ivy travels from her home to become a governess at the country estate of Heathcrest, a Bronte-analogue complete with a brooding and mysterious Rochester stand-in. Soon, Ivy discovers an ancient story wrapped in the dark mythology of a sinister wood, still working its will on the world. And I haven’t even mentioned all of the lead characters! Mysteries, romances, magic, illusions, cons, dark prophesies, and even revolutions abound—enough to keep you turning the pages long after bedtime.

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is complex, but the pace is relentless, the story gripping, and the characters unforgettable. It’s a page turner with smarts and depth, and its a terrific, truly fun read. I hope you’ll give it a try.

One sequel, The House on Durrow Street, has already been published, and another is coming. I can’t wait.

Hard Cider Review: Crispin Browns Lane Imported English Cider

Try a pint of Crispin Browns Lane Imported English Cider

A pint of Crispin Browns Lane Imported English Cider, poured into a frosted mug.

A week or so ago, I reviewed one of Crispin’s special ciders, The Saint, finding it surprisingly complex and quite delicious. After that, I decided to try some more of their products. Especially since I had numerous requests for more cider reviews (well, four—not counting one specifically for an Ace Pear review—but I don’t often get requests to review, well, anything, except by book publicists, and I aims to please). So, ready and eager to do my duty, I picked up a four pack of Crispin Browns Lane Imported English Cider.

“Bittersweet” is one of those overused terms that long ago reached the status of cliché. Nonetheless, it remains one of the most poignantly ironic contradictions in all of English, a language that excels at paradox. The official description of Browns Lane claims that it is pressed from traditional bittersweet English cider apples, and if ever a product deserves to be called bittersweet, it is this one. It’s bitter and it’s sweet.

It pours with a very light, effervescent carbonation and a pale gold color, about the shade of, well, apple juice. That’s not as much of a “duh” as you might think—ciders have a surprisingly wide range of hues, ranging from so pale it’s almost clear to a deep reddish gold. The scent … well, I guess that is a duh. Apples.

Bittersweet English Cider Apples look pretty much like any other regular old apples, apparently.

The taste is surprising. After the gentle sweetness of the Saint, I’d expected something similar from the Browns Lane. Not so much. The first taste is tart, mouth-puckeringly so. So much so that it look a few sips before I decided that I liked it. The sweetness that you expect from is there, certainly, but the sharp tartness almost (but not quite) overwhelms it. It’s not as refreshing as Crispin’s other ciders, but it has a dry, well, uniqueness that grew on me, sip by sip. It’s bitter; it’s sweet.

The Browns Lane truly excels when paired with food. I tried it with my own secret recipe creamy chicken and wild rice soup, and later with a nice slab of delicious prime rib with red potatoes. In both cases, the sharp flavor complimented, and even enhanced, the flavor of the food, like a good dry wine. While The Saint is as good (or better) on it’s own, the Browns Lane is one to pair.

My tastes run to the sweeter side of the cider scale, especially when you can find well balanced ones like Magner’s Irish, Ace Pear, or Crispin’s The Saint. Nonetheless, I found the Browns Lane interesting enough to buy again, although I’ll save it to pair with meals, rather than simply popping one open on a warm summer afternoon. I also applaud Crispin for offering such a wide range of flavors. While I find some of their offers better than others, I have to say: they are all interesting, and they absolutely refuse to be pigeonholed with just one style. In my book, that’s quite a compliment.

One final note: the label suggests that Browns Lane should be served ice cold. They’re not kidding. When the English, of all people, suggest serving any beverage ice cold, take them at their word.

I’ll have at least two more cider reviews this month (see the paragraph above for some hints), as well as music and book reviews. So please stay tuned. As always, thanks for dropping by.

Beer Review: Baudelaire Saison Ale from Jolly Pumpkin Ales

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin’s Baudelaire Saison Ale. The label seemed Parisian, somehow—the Paris of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the Moulin Rouge. For all it’s many amazing qualities (it really is the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited, and the Disneyland there just rocks), Paris isn’t really a city one associates with beer. Baudelaire is from Michigan, not France, but still, Paris is what the branding suggests. Also, for a craft ale, it’s label is, well, girly. Beer labels usually feature rugged rocky mountains, or patriots, or pirates, or wild dogs. Or at very least, bundles of, you know, wheat or something. This one? I mean, just look at it:

It has rose petals in it, for cryin’ out loud. And rose hips. I’m not really sure what those are, but they sound girly. That said, it comes in one of those great big bottles that holds enough to to fill two glasses—perfect for sharing. You know the ones I mean—big, manly bottles like the ones you see pirates swilling rum out of in the movies. So curiosity got the better of me. My wife might like it, anyway, I decided. She’s in to all the arty French stuff. Besides, it also has hibiscus in it, the stuff that’s in that good Jamaican tea. And some of the best writers and philosophers salons ever have sprung up in Paris. Maybe they’d drink something like this there, at least when the absinthe ran out.

See what I mean about the head?

The pleasantly strong and bready aroma is apparent as soon as the bottle is opened. It’s wheaty and yeasty, with subtle hints of fruit—dried orange, maybe—and floral notes. It pours a ruby red (like roses, of course) with one of the thickest, creamiest heads I’ve ever encountered. It reminded me of a root beer float. The taste surprised me—it wasn’t nearly as sweet as I was expecting, although there was a very subtle fruity, floral undertone. The hints of sweetness, as a matter of fact, came mostly in the very pleasant, lingering aftertaste. Almost like a white wine.

The grains dominated the first and most obvious wave of flavor, reminding me of a cross between a Belgian wheat beer and a hoppy American craft ale in the Anchor Steam/Samuel Adams tradition. There is a rustic farmhouse rawness there that I didn’t expect, but that I quite enjoyed. I can’t say I tasted the rose petals (actually, I have no idea whether I did or not—I have no idea what rose petals taste like), but there was a gentle, almost lemony flavor that balanced the wheat grains and yeast nicely. That, with the slightly bitter, hoppy finish, made the flavor balanced and quite refreshing.

Overall, I’d call Baudelaire Saison Ale a very pleasant surprise. We paired it with Italian food. It held its own admirably, offering terrific flavor without overpowering the meal. It wasn’t girly at all. It’s well worth purchasing, especially to share over a good dinner.

Belated Book Review: “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke

Read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

if there was ever a book I truly don’t know what to say about, it’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Don’t get me wrong—I adored it. I’ve recommended it to dozens of my friends. But not all of them. I don’t even recommend it to all of my friends who like fantasy, or mythic fiction, or British drawing room comedies of manners.

It’s a massive book, something like 400,000 thousand words (that’s a guess; I haven’t actually counted them). Nonetheless, I found myself enchanted from page one. Magic and sly witticisms were so thick I had to swat them away like flies, and the oh-so-English narrative delighted me. The characters are engaging and well-drawn, and the period voice, complete with obsolete spellings and elaborate, fanciful footnotes (don’t dare skip them!) delighted me. All the same, when I was nearly halfway through, I found myself still wondering when the actual story was going to get started. It had been going all along, but Ms. Clarke, like any good magician, had distracted my attention. Tricky rascal.

Clarke has crossed a fantasy mythology as complex as those of Tolkien himself, or very nearly so, and coupled it with the gaslit, fog-shrouded Britain of Dickens or Jane Austin. It’s a book-lover’s book, not something for the causal beach reader. Mr. Norrell, magician, is out to restore magic to Britain in the age of Napoleon. In Clarke’s Britain, gentlemen scholars pore over the magical history of their island, following tantalizing hints dominated by the mysterious Raven King, who long ago mastered enchantments from the lands of Faerie.

The study of the gentlemen scholars is only theoretical, of course—until Mr. Norrell reveals that he is capable of producing actual magic and becomes the toast of London society. Meanwhile, one Jonathan Strange, an impetuous young aristocrat, decides that he, too, will follow the practical study, and finds surprising success quickly.The two magicians irritate one another equally, but Strange becomes Mr. Norrell’s first student. Soon enough, the British government shows interest in their budding work. Mr. Strange, in fact, serves with Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars, but after finds himself unable to accept Mr. Norrell’s rather restrictive views on magic’s proper place. And all of that is almost incidental to the main story, teeming just below the surface. Still with me?

The copy i have to give away has this nifty white cover.

In Susanna Clarke’s England, magic is a believably complex and almost tedious labor. Her England is a strange (no pun intended) land of omens and miracles, where every incident or object may harbor secret meaning. Through it all, signs indicate that the Raven King may return, and more than one character is more than what they seem. It’s a dense, slow, fascinating read. In many ways, it’s like rich food. It’s delicious, but you don’t want too much at once. It’s a feast to savor slowly. It’s not for everyone. All the same, it’s a book that absolutely deserves a wider audience. There are wonders here. We need more books like this.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is not a new book. I’m reviewing now not because I’ve just reread it (although I due, as soon as my to-be-read stack grows slightly less ponderous) or anything like that, but because I have recently found myself in possession of an extra hardcover first edition that needs a good home. Atlanta friends, I’ll trade it to you for a beer. Or heck, you can have it free for nothin’. Just let me know.

In the meantime, please use one of the links to help spread the word? I’d appreciate it.

Hard Cider Review: The Saint from Crispin Cider

Try The Saint from Crispin Cider

A few days ago, I happened to pick up a bottle of The Saint from the Crispin Cider company of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It comes in one of those large, two-pint bottles that’s just perfect for sharing. Usually, I’ll check reviews before trying something new … especially when a bottle goes for more than eight bucks. I didn’t this time. what the heck. The label promised crisp, all-natural cider with real organic maple syrup and the Belgian Trappist Yeast that’s a key ingredient in some of my very favorite ales. I took a gamble, and I’m glad I did. It was an absolute treat.

The color is hazy straw—golden and, well, natural looking, for lack of a better term. The aroma us subtle and pleasing: fruity, of course, like fresh apples and a hint of something else—pear, maybe—and the delicious, bready scent that always accompanies the . There is a light head that disappears quickly,leaving only a few bubbles and faint lacing. The mouth feel is surprisingly light with pleasant carbonation. The taste, though, that’s where the Saint excels.

The first taste is apple, of course. Tart and sweet, but the tartness isn’t puckering, and the sweetness is far from syrupy or cloying. The maple is the next taste to emerge, subtle but clearly present, and it adds to and balances the apple in a marvelous way. The Trappist yeast adds very pleasant herb and vanilla notes. It all blends in a delicious, satisfying, and all-together delicious way.

I’ve only tried the one bottle (although I am about to race back to my beloved Candler Park Market to pick up another—and maybe see what else Crispin has to offer) but I feel fairly confident in declaring this my very favorite cider—maybe even over Magner’s Irish Cider and Ace Pear. It’s delicious and refreshing, and (while I usually think of apple cider and maple to be more autumn flavors) perfect for summer. As always, please let me know what you think!

Book Review: “The Wise Man’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss

Read The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

A few years back, I read and fell utterly in love with a book called The Shadow of The Wind. I recommended it to a friend. “This one is special,” I promised him. He raced out at once … and bought a book called The Name of the Wind. Different author, vastly different genre, similar title. All the same, an easy mistake to make.

A days later, he called to thank me for recommending such an amazing read. “Special indeed,” he agreed. “Damn special.” When we began to compare notes, we discovered the mistake. The book he read wasn’t set in gaslit Barcelona, and didn’t feature a sinister police officer or the Graveyard of Forgotten Books. The one I read didn’t involve a fantasy world, a stunning woman who appears and disappears like the wind, or a University of arcane knowledge that makes Hogwarts seem like a mundane kindergarten.

So we both raced off to the bookstore, and we each found another book that found its way to the top of the favorites list. Amazingly, both have remained at the top of that list despite a few years of reflection and even a reread or two. To this day, it seems amazing to me that two absolutely brilliant books with such similar titles could be released at around the same time, and both feature such lovely, aching prose (with sentences and even whole passages that absolutely demand to be read aloud) and such utterly unforgettable characters. But there you go. These books are special. Both of them.

Quality aside, the books could not be more different. The Name of the Wind is a fantasy with all the imagination that makes the genre so rich. And in a market where the shelves are overflowing with doorstop-sized tomes offered tin-eared echoes of the mighty J. R. R. Tolkien, Patrick Rothfuss has created something that feels comfortably familiar at times, and startlingly original at others. More, he has, without question, the best ear for prose since, well, Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, or Patricia A. McKillip.

Rothfuss creates characters, and a world around them, every bit as complex and believable as those crafted by George R. R. Martin in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, but without the relentless darkness. That’s not to say that Rothfuss’s work is all sweetness and light. Far from it. But he balances that darkness with joy. The latter makes the book shine with a beauty that the best fantasy strives for, and makes the former all the more poignant. In fact, that balance is a key part of the book’s success. Some of the very best, loveliest, and most wounding fiction comes from an author who crafts characters that you can’t help but love, and gives them true happiness—for a moment—and then snatches it away. Or who gives his characters exactly what they want the most, but in the worst possible way. Joy and heartbreak, blended. It worked for Dickens, it works for Joss Whedon and J. K. Rowling. It certainly works for Patrick Rothfuss. (In fact, Rothfuss’s fans seem to have the same level of passion of Rowling’s and Whedon’s.) It’s a brilliant, beautiful book that comes awfully (emphasis on the awe) close to doing all that fantasy can at its best. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so.

The sequel to The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear, was released a few years later than promised, but it was worth the wait. The new volume picks up right where the last one ended. The central character, Kvothe, has been narrating the truth about his life—already a legend—to a scholarly young man known as Chronicler. Kvothe promised that the telling would take three days. The first volume was day one; the new one is the second day. The final volume, day three, should be released within our lifetimes, if all goes well. There’s apparently a sequel trilogy coming after that. I have no idea when, but I feel utterly safe in saying that whenever it arrives, it will, like The Wise Man’s Fear, be worth the wait.

Of course, that strength is also the book’s shortcoming. It’s not so much a book as a chapter. (A hell of a long one, but still.) The Wise Man’s Fear doesn’t really have a beginning—that was offered in The Name of the Wind. It doesn’t really have an end. Kvothe stops narrating when the day ends. He happens to be in a happy place then, but we have enough foreshadowing to know that it’s not going to last. The Kvothe who’s narrating the story isn’t the same man who’s living it. Something has happened, a wound, and the next book will tell us what, and how he came to be where he is now, a shadow of his old self, living in hiding, even his name left behind.

I reread the first book before diving straight in to the new one. It’s one of the very few books I’ve read in the last decade or two that I feel is honestly worth a second, and perhaps even third read—yes, it’s that good. And looking back, I have a hard time remembering where the first one ended and the second one became. They blend together seamlessly. The first book doesn’t so much end as stop, pausing for a rest before the next one begins. The second volume does the same. That can be especially frustrating when the next book is a year or three away. But like I said, it’s worth the wait. And please, don’t bother waiting until all are released. In most cases, I’d agree without hesitation. That’s the right thing to do. In this case, you’re only denying yourself the pleasure of a very special read. And the anticipation? That’s a small price to pay.

The books, both of them, are rather episodic. That’s not truly a complaint—the underlying storyline is subtle at times but always present—ad the character arc is always moving. That’s the real reason that we’re along for the ride, after all. If I have one other complaint, it’s this: some key segments seem to be missing. At least two sequences are skipped over—the narrator insists they’re not a part of the main story. When one of those glossed over instances in a very critical court trial that can cost our hero his life, and the other is a sea voyage that involves, among other adventures, a shipwreck and a pirate attack, well, I beg to differ. I ache to read those scenes. And while the episodes that we skip ahead to reach are breathtaking, I miss the chapters we don’t see. All the same, when a book nears 400,000 words and still leaves you wanting more … well, it’s done its job, wouldn’t you say?

The story is fascinating, as is the world of its setting. The is magic aplenty—well designed and believable—with daring adventure and romance. The pace is fast—I had a hard time putting both volumes down, even when I reread the first. Kvothe is an engaging lead character. Sure, he may seem a little too perfect at times. Even his flaws, of which he has many—not the least of which include his temper and his arrogance (he is all too aware of his own cleverness)—are, in a strange way, perfect. But then, Kvothe is narrating his own story, and he has established himself as a gifted, if occasional, liar who is not above deliberately crafting his own mythology. So we never really get a feel for how reliable a narrator he is, and that subtle ambiguity only adds to the complexity of his character arc. Speaking of which, his arc follows one as old as storytelling itself—Kvothe grows through the hero stages of orphan, wander, warrior, and, ultimately, martyr. But in Rothfuss’s skilled hands, it never feels clichéd or formulaic. Somehow, it always feels fresh, new, and surprising.

I’ve read a lot of fantasy in my day. Some where brilliant, some almost embarrassingly bad. There were many, many that I liked, and dozens that I adored. But loved? That’s a shorter list. Tolkien’s books, certainly, and the Narnia series. John Myers Myers’s Silverlock, of course. Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books. The Harry Potter books, maybe. It’s early yet—it takes a little time to know that you’ll return to a book more than once. All the same, I think it’s safe to say that Patrick Rothfuss’s books are going to remain on that very special, treasured, rarest shelf. These are special. They are.

Please be sure to let me know what you think.

Book Review: “Guardians of the Desert” by Leona Wisoker

Read Guardians of the Desert by Leona Wisoker

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you might remember that about a year ago, I reviewed Leona Wisoker’s Secrets of the Sands. The same disclosures apply: the author is a friend of mine, and I have a soft spot for quality small presses that take a risk on innovative new writing. Finally, Guardians of the Desert if a sequel to Leona’s earlier book, so you’ll want to read Secrets of the Sands first. Okay, that’s out of the way. Back to your regularly scheduled review.

What I liked about Secrets of the Sands was that, in the increasingly crowded fantasy bookshelves, Secrets of the Sands actually felt fresh and original. Leona created a desert society that was harsh, vivid, and believable—without reminding me of, say, Dune or The 1001 Arabian Nights. More, her characters were vivid and memorable. I was eager to turn the page to see what happened to them, sure. But I was more intrigued to see how the events would shape and change them, and the budding relationships growing between them.

The sequel, Guardians of the Desert, actually expands on the earlier book’s strengths—the world is deeper and more complex and the characters have grown. Leona’s sense of pace hasn’t dulled, and the mental pictures conjured by her spare but elegant prose and much more vivid. Her subtle, wicked wit is still apparent—and still luring to catch the reader unaware.

Guardians of the Desert picks up almost right where the last book ended—and Leona is clever enough to refresh the memory subtly without a cumbersome “what has gone before” recap—a skill I envy. While the first book was focused on three lead characters, the sequel focuses almost exclusively on one: Alyea, the new-made Desert Lord. Her journey to understand her role in a complex and dangerous society, and in the events that threaten to shake them to the core, is a fascinating one. The other characters are present enough not to be missed, at least not sorely, but the tighter focus makes Guardians of the Desert even more gripping that its predecessor.

Nonetheless, Guardians of the Desert feels more or less like its own novel, and not merely like the second half or the middle third of a larger story. Sure, it builds upon and expands what has gone before, but it stands neatly on it’s own (although again, this is not the place to start), both plot-wise and thematically. Too many “series” books feel like fragments or bloated chapters. Guardians of the Desert is a book, and a darn satisfying one, even while it’s a part of a larger whole. Fair warning though: it does end with a fairly large “to be continued.”

It’s refreshing to see a sequel that not only lives up to the promise of a bright debut, but actually surpasses it. This is a more mature book, and I am eager to see what the future brings, for the series, sure, but more for the author herself. Small press books can be hard to find, and often don’t get the attention they deserve. Often, though, they produce gems that are well worth the effort to seek out. This is one of them. if you enjoy a good fantasy with a complex and interesting world, compelling characters, and elegant prose, I hope you’ll take a chance on it.

If you enjoyed this review, please consider using one of the links below to share!

Book Review of something utterly new, strange, and powerful: “The Orange Eats Creeps”

Read The Orange Eats Creeps

See, there’s this thing I can’t help doing when I’m reading a novel. More often that I really care to admit, I find myself picturing the author in the act of crafting the page I’m reading. I don’t mean to. In a way, it sort of breaks the spell of the story. In another way, though, it sort of deepens that illusion of connection between writer and reader.

Usually, I picture a man in an untidy office surrounded by piles of books and papers, pounding some old-fashioned manual typewriter while downing mugs of hot, bitter coffee, or a woman scrawling in an elegantly-bound journal, her tongue wetting the corner of her lips in some over-stuffed but cozy Victorian parlor. In her case, the mug is a china cup, and the bitter coffee is tea with twists of steam that carry the scent of lemon. Sometimes I picture a shabby coffee house, all bohemian chic, sometimes a quaint pub, and sometimes a library, with hardwood shelves straining under the weight of two many leather-bound books. More than a of my imaginary writers inhabit those spaces.

It makes me uncomfortable to picture Grace Krilanovich crafting The Orange Eats Creeps. I get these fleeting, nightmarish image of a young woman, wild-eyed and too thin, scrawling the words on the underside of a bridge somewhere, or on the walls of the kind of bar I’d be afraid to enter, even if I was cool enough to know how to find it. I picture her mainlining caffeine laced with meth, or something, some drug I’ve read about in newspapers, not for stimulation but to dull the fire of stranger substances screaming though her veins like electricity. Because you see, witnessing the birth of an new kind of literature, a utterly new way to pound and twist blocks of English into something mind-blastingly fresh, is a little frightening.

Mind, I don’t know anything at all about Grace Krilanovich. Maybe she is huddled safely in a library or parlor, sipping tea and tracing neat letters on fine, cream-colored paper. Her words though, they come from a stranger, harsher, lovelier, and all together original place that is three parts in-your-face and one part heartbreak. Maybe she’s wearing a high-necked blouse and a jacket. I imagine it’s more likely to be a ratty t-shirt, one even the thrift store wouldn’t take, one with writing that holes and fading have long obscured, but might once have been something obscene, or maybe a prayer. You can’t tell. You’ve seen girls with shirts like that. But you’ve always looked away quickly, haven’t you? I have. And later, a part of me always wished I hadn’t.

Ernest Hemingway declared that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” He’s got a point, because starting with frank Huck and his innocent, original declarations on that raft, American literature has been about voice: about expressing something universal, but in an absolutely unique and personal way. At it’s best, American literature, from Twain to Faulkner to Bradbury to Pynchon, is about grabbing words by the root and pulling them, raw, out of a character’s soul and straight through the gut, to reveal something that absolutely couldn’t have been revealed in any other way, or by any other character.

Grace Krilanovich follows in that tradition. Her voice reminds me of a sort of stylistic love-child of William Burroughs, Phillip K. Dick, and some of the edgier grunge bands of the 90s (it’s best not to try to imagine the physical specifics of that metaphorical union). All the same, I can’t help feeling that listing her even among that august company does her something of a disservice, because while she is clearly a part of a continuum, comparison, pretty much by definition, makes her sound in some way derivative, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Grace Krilanovich has brought forth something new, fresh, and, yes, original.

Take three examples (that I picked largely because I could find them on the Internet without retyping them, but they are more than typical enough to make my point):

“Safeway at sunrise: we storm through the doors; totally wasted we run for the back, behind the scenes. We barricade the door so Josh can menace the bag boy. What would happen if you harnessed the sexual energy of hobo junkie teens? The world would explode and settle on the surface of another planet in a brown paste, is what. Cockroaches would lick it up and a new wave of narcissistic gypsy-slut shitheads would hatch out of tiny pores on their backs.”

Or this:

“We not only devour each other, but we bite, hard. We’re blood-hungry teenagers; our rage knows no bounds and coagulates the pulse of our victims on contact. we devour them, too; the bodies of mortals become drained when they reach our fangs. Our cause is nothing…I’ve been living off crank, cough syrup, and blood for a year now. I ride the rails with a bunch of immoral shitheads, hopping freight trains, secreted away in rail cars across this country. We have no home, no parents. I can’t remember being a child, maybe I never was one. But I’m sure I’ll never die; I get older, my body stays the same. My spine breaks and then gets back together. I have the Hepatitis, I give it to everyone, but it never will actually get me. Our kind doesn’t die from anything, all we do is die all the time.”

And this one:

“The city smelled like a wet paper bag. That great big dirty rag hung up in the sky, casting a shadow over the middle of town. A motel was strangely and inexplicably equipped with a smokestack and it spit streams of pigeon-shit colored smoke up into the sky.”

You get the idea. But don’t dare think The Orange Eats Creeps is just about attitude. I did, and so help me, I nearly missed that behind all that aggression was a rather heartbreaking mix of story and character. The voice captivated me, but it has a way of getting the hackles up. While my guard was raised, watching out for the relentless beating power of those words, the story snuck in past my shields and devastated me, leaving my heart a deserted city. I felt numbed and overwhelmed, moved and shaken. Mostly, I felt, well, exhilaration. I didn’t expect that. Not just any book can do that, move you that way, you know. You have to watch out for the ones that can. And you have to share them. Even when you don’t know quite what to say.

An update: A couple of people on Twitter noted that I never said anything about the story, aside from it’s impact. That’s because any kind of synopsis really does the book a disservice. But I aim to please, so here goes.

A band of self-described hobo vampire junkies roam a nightmarish, broken landscape—the Pacific Northwest of the 1990s. It’s not the Pacific Northwest I’ve seen as a tourist, though. Thank Heaven. And when i say vampires, don’t think Twilight, or anything else you know. They are creatures of appetite. The narrator, a girl with (apparently) drug-induced psychic abilities and a strange connection to a young member of the Donner Party (who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her vanished foster sister along “The Highway That Eats People.” Meanwhile, she’s stalked by a monster out of a David Lynch film. She has no memory to speak of, only vague feelings, and she rambles like someone reporting the events of a fever dream.

We never really get a feel for how much of the events presented are “real,” and it doesn’t really matter. The events are shocking, sure, and fascinating. But the haunting power of the story comes from the stream of consciousness that carries us through them, and the burning question that haunted me on every page … is this really what it’s like in the brain of some drug-burned street kid in the urban underbelly of the Pacific Northwest? The story is fascinating, sure. But it what’s might be real that lingers after the last page is turned.

The Orange Eats Creeps is a new kind of literature for a century that’s just getting its feet wet. It’s an undefinable novel for a yet-to-be-defined era. It’s a product of its time, sure, but its one that I think has the power to endure. Ultimately, it is about matters of heart, family, and home, or lack thereof, themes that will always be universal. I’m still not quite sure how to respond to it. But I do know that it’s impossible to be indifferent. I wish I’d discovered it for my own fledgling publishing enterprise. I hope you’ll give it a try, and I hope you’ll let me know what you think.

Beer Review: Saint Somewhere’s Lectio Divina

Try a tasty Saint Somewhere Lectio Divina

First, I have to admit a hint of bias. I bought amy first Saint Somewhere’s Lectio Divina at my neighborhood Candler Park Market because, quite frankly, I feel in love with the bottle. I know, I know. You can’t judge a book by its cover and all that. But with a front label that suggests the idyllic whimsy of Maxfield Parrish and a lyrical back label that echoes, almost, the pen of my favorite poet, William Butler Yeats, they could have filled the thing with mule piss, and I would have been predisposed to like it. Thankfully, they did no such thing. The Belgian-style ale inside absolutely lives up to it packaging. The brewers are every bit as talented as the marketing folks.

Saint Somewhere Lectio Divina comes in a tall bottle that easily fills two pint glasses, making it perfect to share. As you can see from the picture I stole off the Internet, the bottle is topped with a champagne style cork. Be careful with that. I’d just started to twist the wire cage when the cork shot out, bouncing around the kitchen like a superball (missing anything breakable, thank heaven) and scaring my poor wife and dogs half to death. The aroma is apparent at once: complex and yeasty as you’d expect from a Belgian pale ale but pleasantly fruity and sweet, too. Lectio Divina pours a hazy amber red, with an off-white head that fades quickly, leaving a pleasant lace around the rim of the glass.

The body is medium—not nearly as heavy as I was expecting, even for a pale ale. The taste is surprising and wonderful. It starts off with a surprising sweet that gives way to waves of wonderful wheaty grain and spice flavor, and finishes with a fruity citrus aftertaste that’s sweet and almost tart, although hardly puckering. As the glass empties, the taste wavers between grains, caramelized sugar, spice, and citrusy sweetness, always complex, surprising, and delicious. It’s also quite refreshing, and pairs very well with food.

Overall, I’d say this has far too much flavor and complexity to be a saison/farmhouse style or a pale ale, and it’s a little too silky smooth to be, say, an abbey double. It lies somewhere in between. It’s delicious, complex, and decidedly unique. It’s certainly one I’ll buy again, and I am eager to try Saint Somewhere’s other offers.

I’m not quite ready to award it an A+ yet … that’s reserved for special favorites like mighty Aventinus. But it’s a solid A in my book, with extra points for originality, and my wife gives it a B+. Give it a try if you’re in one of the thirty states where it’s available, and as always, be sure to let me know what you think.

I’ve got a couple of book reviews, a Web TV review, and another beer review coming later this month, so stay tuned. And if you don’t mind, please use of of the links below to help spread the word. Thanks!

Book Review: “Mr. Timothy: A Novel” by Louis Bayard

Read Mr. Timothy: A Novel

I received Louis Bayard’s Mr. Timothy: A Novel as a Christmas gift more than a year ago. Since it is a sequel (of sorts) to Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, I decided to wait and read it over the holidays. I shouldn’t have waited.

If you’ve read my earlier reviews of The Meaning of Night and The Shadow of the Wind, you know I am fast becoming a fan of the emerging “Victorian Noir” genre: tales set in the romantic but shadowy Europe of Dickens and Hugo, but with modern pace and psychological character depth. It’s a love that began, I think, with that long-ago favorite, The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. Most of those books seem to echo the feel of Dickens and his ilk—colorful characters, quaint pubs, sinister urban underbellies, and fog-shrouded alleys and gaslit streets, for example—without offering literal echos. Mr. Timothy: A Novel goes farther. The Timothy of the title is none other than Timothy Cratchit himself, Tiny Tim. Stripped utterly of his angelic sentimentality, Bayard’s Timothy emerges as a fully realized character worthy to number among the best Dickensian heroes.

I should mention that I am not generally a fan of writers making use of another author’s characters. While I have enjoyed more than a few modern takes on, say Sherlock Holmes, more often, we wind up with something like Scarlet, the unworthy followup to Margaret Mitchell’s brilliant Gone With The Wind. Mr. Timothy: A Novel succeeds largely because in Dickens’ original, Tiny Tim is little more than a caricature, a sort of cherubic plot point with a crutch. Building on our shared memory of “God bless us, every one!” Bayard shapes Timothy into a fully realized, if somewhat broken, human being—one that fascinates and, yes, makes us care.

Bayard’s Timothy is young man who, like Dickens’ Pip, say, or David Copperfield, is struggling to find a place for himself in a wide, atmospheric, and often dangerous world. Trying to free himself from his dependency on the generosity of his “Uncle” Neezer (none other than an elderly Ebeneezer Scrooge himself, a man who keeps his house decorated perpetually for Christmas), Timothy earns his room and keep by teaching the madam of a London brothel how to read. Timothy is a man haunted—not by the literal spirits that troubled his Uncle Neezer, but by images of his late father, and by the bodies of murdered 10-year-old girls, who appear in London’s seedy docklands branded with a letter G.

The mystery that follows is a page turner, with a puzzling mystery in a coffin-filled basement, an assault on a gloriously gothic mansion, and a desperate final chase along the urban river. The characters are, well, Dickensian—all colorful, complex, and worthy of the master himself. The mystery is intriguing and the suspense is relentless. But the true stars are Timothy himself, as the events both scar and heal him, and Bayard’s lush, elegant prose, filled with passages that beg to be read aloud and shared.

As another old favorite, Silverlock, reminds me, there is a joy in meeting old literary friends again in a new and unexpected place. Mr. Timothy: A Novel is more than a pastiche. It’s a fully realized and absolutely original novel that is well worth your time. Don’t repeat my mistake and wait for next year’s winter holiday season. Do yourself a favor and read it now.

Book Review: Looking for the King, An Inklings Novel

Read Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel by David C. Downing

A very special Christmas gift brightened this past gloomy December: a chance to spend some remarkable evenings in conversation with the Inklings, that famous band of readers and writers that counted among its members C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Hugo Dyson. This remarkable experience came in the form of a new book, Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel by David C. Downing. It’s a somewhat flawed but overall delightful read.

The story tells of a young American, Tom, who has come to England in the months just before World War II to research a book on the historical King Arthur. Along the way, he encounters a lovely young woman, Laura, who is haunted by dreams that seem to be leading her to specific historical sites, all of which are connected to a famous lost artifact—the Spear of Destiny that pierced the side of Christ as he hung on the cross. Along the way, our heroes are fortunate enough to receive some help from the Inklings themselves, especially Williams, Tolkien, and Lewis.

From a pure storytelling point of view, the Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel could have used, uh, well, another draft. We never get a feel for why Laura is apparently led to discover the Spear of Destiny, or what might happen if she doesn’t. There are sinister “others” after the spear, and we know they are following our heroes closely. But we never really get a feeling of danger from them. Even the ultimate end of the quest seems a little too easy, and there’s little to suggest that the world would have been significantly different had Tom and Laura simply stayed at home. More, there is a significant obstacle in the way of Tom and Laura’s chaste and charming budding romance that simply disappears, in a rather offhanded way midway through the novel, without apparent consequence, emotional or otherwise. All of those are fairly significant and rather obvious storytelling flaws.

And, frankly, none of them matter a bit.

While Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel doesn’t quite work as a supernatural mystery thriller, it does work as mythopoeia, as myth making—it is a reflection of the true light, like a shaft of dappled sunlight reaching through the thick, green canopy of a dense forest. For better or for worse, David Downing isn’t Dan Brown. The thriller aspects of this novel are lacking, the character arcs, especially for Tom, are profound and significant.

Unlike Brown’s shallow Langdon, who is basically the same smug man book after book, Tom changes profoundly as the book progresses. He is changed by the events of his quest, by his growing feelings for Laura, and, most of all, by his conversations with the Inklings. Those conversations alone are worth the price of the book. I’ll be thinking about the ideas, philosophical, theological, and mythic, long after I’ve forgotten the details of the story.

Downing has done a remarkable job researching the Inklings … plowing through volumes of biographies, first person accounts, essays, and, most of all, letters to capture the essence of their personalities, their speech patterns, their humor, their relationships, and even their thoughts. In many cases, Downing has used their own words (carefully annotated at the end of the book) to recreate the wisdom they might have bestowed upon a bewildered, seeking American. In some cases, I felt like they were talking to me.

The Inklings, Lewis and Tolkien especially, are a part of a very special personal pantheon for me: they number, along with Ray Bradbury, Lloyd Alexander, Dr. Seuss, Walt Disney, Hank Aaron, Joseph Campbell, and the crews of the Apollo flights, as my personal heroes. My journey to the Eagle and Child, the Oxford pub where the Inklings met, was a kind of personal pilgrimage for me. Reading Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel is as close as I’ll ever come to joining them for a pint and a night of conversation. For one night, at least, I felt like I was right there with them. I’m grateful for that experience.

Also, kudos to Ignatius Press for crafting a lovely edition, with quality paper, stamped spine, and, so help me, stitched binding. While I sincerely applaud print on demand for making far more titles available to hungry readers like me, and for making the publishing industry (at least potentially) more efficient overall, I am delighted to still run across fine craftsmanship from a smaller press now and again. Although come to think of it, some of the finest print craftsmanship around these days comes from small publishing houses like Small Beer Press and Subterranean Press.

Review: J. D. Rothschild’s Hot Chocolate Blend

Try J. D. Rothschild’s Hot Chocolate Blend

A short blog today, folks, but something I wanted to share: my first ever hot chocolate review. The best hot chocolate I’ve ever tried came from a friend’s mother some (I think) 25 years ago, who made hers from shaved gourmet chocolate and fresh, creamy milk. Nothing else I’ve tried has come close, alas. Nothing, that is, until I tried a tin of J. D. Rothschild’s Premium Hot Chocolate blend over the snowy Christmas holiday. It’s probably not fair to compare a powder from a can to a 25-year-old memory of melting shaved chocolate, but I am happy to report that J. D. Rothschild’s holds its own just fine.

I have to start by admitting: I am a hot chocolate fan. Much to my wife’s unending amusement, I actually own a hot chocolate making appliance, which I swear by. The machine makes chocolate that is perfectly hot and wonderfully frothy. It is, however, only as good as the chocolate inside it. Rothschild’s is the best I’ve found. It’s all natural, and it’s made locally, by hand, in small batches. And it’s just terrific—exactly the way real hot chocolate is supposed to taste.

The directions call for water, but I used milk (by mistake) the first time, and a blend of water and milk the second (on purpose). I think the ideal blend may be 3 parts milk to one part water, but I have great incentive to keep experimenting. Each “test batch” yields mugs of rich, creamy, delicious chocolate, and I am happy to keep sampling them. All in the name of science, of course. To the best of my knowledge, it’s only available at the Irwin Street Market, but if you don’t happen to live in one of the groovy intown Atlanta neighborhoods, give them a call. I’m sure they can mail you a can.

Beer Review: Abita Christmas Ale

Try Abita Christmas Ale

Samuel Adams doesn’t brew any of my favorite beers (although I hear their Christmas brews this year are sensational). I don’t dislike Samuel Adams, mind—not by any means—they just don’t happen to make anything that makes my top ten list. Nonetheless, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Samuel Adams because, rightly or wrongly, I credit them for truly sparking the American craft beer revolution. Sure, there were other plenty of American craft beers on the market before Sam Adams burst on to the scene with a winning combination of excellent product and powerful marketing savvy. But I think Samuel Adams is the brewery that made truly fine, well-crafted beers and ales a part of the national mainstream.

More, I personally credit Samuel Adams (again, rightly or wrongly) with defining what has become the American “style” of craft brew—as opposed to, say, Belgian, German, Scotch, or English styles. If there is such a thing as a stereotypical American craft brew, it would be golden amber in color, offer a few waves of wheaty flavor, and finish a very distinctive hoppy signature after taste. That, in a nutshell, is Samuel Adams.

Abita, a brewery in the New Orleans area, follows in the Samuel Adams tradition, making bold, small batch beers and ales with very distinctive bitter, hoppy tastes that are both utterly unique and proudly American. Their Christmas Ale is no exception. My pal Mike Mikula, the brilliant cartoonist, introduced me to Abita Christmas Ale when he found Sweetwater Festival Ale a little too sweet for his tastes. While I am usually more fond of the sweeter and spicier winter ales, I have to admit, this is a mighty tasty alternative.

Christmas ales, in my experience, are usually Belgian or English style ales … brews that make you think of cozy seats by the fire in quaint, snow-dusted pubs with frosted windows. Abita’s offer is, again, distinctly American. It pours a nice amber red with a small and white head. It’s medium bodied and smooth, with very light carbonation. The signature taste comes mainly, but not entirely, from the malted grains and hops themselves, rather than from fruit or sweet notes—although very subtle hints of cinnamon and ginger are present.

My tastes tend more to the sweeter Belgian and Scottish style ales, but Abita’s Christmas Ale is a surprisingly nice alternative. I can also report that it pairs nicely with food—try it with a bowl of hearty winter stew or chili, or even with a nice Sunday roast. And while yes, I do own a calendar, I feel safe in declaring that it’s never too late for a fine Christmas ale. Especially when the temperature is still hovering in the 20s and 30s. Cheers, and let me know what you think!

More blogs are coming soon … hot chocolate (seriously) and book reviews. Stay tuned.

Beer Review: Sweetwater Festive Ale

Try Sweetwater Festive Ale

This year, I was fortune enough to fine two (two!) favorite Christmas ales: Red Brick’s Long John (reviewed yesterday) and Sweetwater’s Festive Ale—both brewed right here in my very own home town, Atlanta. As I mentioned, the annual arrivals of the Christmas/Festive/Winter ales at my local pubs are some of the most eagerly anticipated joys of the season for me. This is an especially good year for Christmas ale.

Sweetwater Festive Ale pours a dark, almost black color—unless you hold it at an angle so that it catches the light … then it has a very deep ruby red tint to it. The aroma is mild, with very subtle notes of dark chocolate, cherry, vanilla, molasses, nuts, and roasted malts. Those scents carry through in the taste, blending nicely like the notes in a symphony—although one played at low volume. Despite the complexity, Festival Ale is far from overpowering. Like most Christmas/winter ales, Festive Ale is sweet, although less so than Red Brick’s winter offer, and yeasty. Festival Ale has a decided Belgian flavor to its yeast—always a good thing in my book—and the malt flavor is tempered nicely with the roasting.

The mouth feel is light to medium, even mild, not nearly as robust as you might expect from the dark cherry color. Nonetheless, the flavors blend well, and the overall experience is wonderfully satisfying and quite delicious. It’s a worthy addition to an celebration—a sip or two will make you feel like you’re at the Fezziwig’s Christmas party in A Christmas Carol. It’s certainly a worth offer on the crowded shelf of winter brews.

While the 2010 bottles you’ll find at better stores are terrific, if you happen to be close to intown Atlanta, you are in for a special treat. The Candler Park Market put a few bottles of last year’s 2009 brew aside. A year of aging has mellowed and deepened the flavors, raising it from delicious to absolutely amazing. Give it a try if you can.

Be sure to let me know what you think, and cheers! Happy Christmas (or the winter holiday celebration of your choice) to all.

Beer Review: Red Brick Long John Winter Ale

Try Red Brick Long John Winter Ale

A few weeks ago, I stopped by The Marlay House Pub on a cold Winter night to hear the Tuesday traditional Irish/Celtic music jam. Speaking of, if you haven’t given it a try lately, you’re in for a treat. The music is nothing less than legendary. Legendary. As I said before, I’ve paid serious money to hear bands that weren’t nearly as tight. But I digress. The Marlay had local brewery Red Brick’s winter ale—Long John—on tap, so I decided to give it a try. I am glad I did.

I’e always had a fondness for the winter ales … Samuel Smith, Sierra Nevada, and Anchor Steam make especially good ones (and my pal Steve Scheer assures me that Samuel Adams has some terrific ones this year). In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the annual arrival of the festive and winter ales at my local pubs is one of the highlights of the Christmas season for me. Most of them are hearty, yeasty, and slightly sweet, and feature subtle hints of spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, and fruit. Pouring one is like breaking open a loaf of liquid Christmas bread—it just makes you feel warm and merry, somehow.

But even allowing for regional bias (Red Brick is brewed here in my hometown of Atlanta), Red Brick’s Long John is one of the best I’ve tried. It pours a nice deep burgundy color, ruby brown, with a nice two-finger head that thins to a nice lacing … like frost on a window. The scent is bready and rich, and the taste is, well, festive. There are hints of cocoa, almonds, and fruit, raisins, figs, and banana, and spices. The body is medium and smooth.

I’ve heard one or two people complain that Long John is a bit too sweet for their tastes, even when compare to, say, Sweet Water’s equally delicious Festive Ale. If sweet isn’t your thing, you might want to stick with something like Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome, an always amazing treat. But c’mon. It’s Christmas. Indulge a little. Cheers!

A few (expanded) thoughts on the future of television

Some of these ideas were originally a part of my review of The Best Sketch Comedy Show, which sort of explain why this post isn’t a review, despite the blog title. But all this future of television stuff didn’t really have anything to do with that review, and it made the article awfully long. So I expanded the thoughts and moved them here.

Watching online shows like My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation and The Best Sketch Comedy Show makes me wonder if the networks and media giants are watching, too. They’d better be.

I talked to a few of my neighbors at a Halloween party, and learned that more than a few of them are ditching cable and satellite services altogether, and replacing them with Internet television delivery solutions. Thanks to sites like Hulu or TV Guide, most network shows can be streamed to your computer, tablet, or TV, especially if you are willing to spring for a device like Apple TV, Google TV, or Boxee. Some televisions, in fact, already ship with Internet-ready connections built in.You can find most (if not all) of your favorite networks shows, and you can purchase or rent others from Amazon, Netflix, and iTunes. Best of all, you can watch on your own schedules, with or without commercials.

Old media distribution outlets are reacting in a predictable manner … they’re fighting it tooth and nail for the most part. Comcast, for example, is attempting to charge services like Netflix a toll, much to the chagrin of net neutrality advocates. They may well win, at least in the short term. But long term? No way. The best they can hope for is to postpone the inevitable, and lose more of our good will in the meantime.

As the technology improves and alternatives become more ubiquitous, the old media models will have to change. Viewers will no longer have to settle for content that the networks chose to push their way; they’ll pull their favorites, from a multitude of sources, and consume on their own schedules. I’m not entirely convinced that the legacy networks, at least in the forms we know today, will survive the next couple of decades. Increasingly, even specialty cable outlets, like SyFy and Comedy Central, will seem like unnecessary middlemen when users can pick and chose the content they like best … and even whether they’d like to pay for it, or sit through advertising. Content creators—from the independents to the conglomerate backed—can come straight to us.

The question isn’t if the models will change, but when. Will the media conglomerates evolve now, or wait until they’re obsolete? Networks can struggle to hold on to their dwindling market share, an ultimately unwinnable fight, or they can look at bellwethers like Flipboard or Pandora to find new models for the personal “pull” networks we’ll create for ourselves, based on our own specific tastes and moods.

Right now, the networks have to cast as wide a net as possible … to every degree possible, they have to be all things to all people. Even specialty channels like Syfy or Lifetime have to reach beyond their core base to keep dwindling numbers as high as possible. That’ll change soon. Soon, the networks will be able to “narrowcast,” targeting their programs to a very specific audience. Maybe even an audience of one: you.

If you’re not familiar with Flipboard, it’s an ipad application that allows to to create your own iPad newspaper or magazine, pulling in articles of specific interest to you from a variety of sources. Imagine being able to do the same with television.

If you don’t know Pandora (I’m sure there must be someone somewhere who doesn’t), you are in for a treat. Basically, you enter some of your favorite songs or artists, and Pandora uses a complex algorithm to determine other songs and artists you might enjoy, and then creates a custom radio station just for you. You may enter as few or as many songs and artists as you like, but the more you enter, the more uncanny it gets … I can’t remember the last time Pandora played a song I didn’t appreciate. If you don’t like a song or artist it suggests, click the thumbs down, and Pandora won’t play it again … and it adds that data to its algorithm. You can even create multiple Pandora stations for different moods and occasions.

Now, imagine being able to do that with television. You’ll be able to enter your favorite shows … dramas, comedies, anything. Then, like Pandora, the network of tomorrow will pull content from a wide spectrum of sources, ranging from the major studios to the garage independents, to create a personalized network that matches your own unique tastes. You’ll be able to flip on your own network not to see what’s on … but to chose from a menu of shows that match your tastes precisely. You’ll be able to narrow or widen your search as much as you like.

Will it be expensive? Possibly. But honestly, I don’t think that’s terribly likely, especially when you compare it to your present cable/dish bill. Remember, choice opens markets. Right now, we’re facing an environment where fewer and fewer conglomerates control both production and distribution of content. A wider market opens the playing field, and offers us more choices. Just think of the indie music scene. Think of how many truly amazing indie films you miss, even if you frequent the festivals, because there’s just not enough distribution, or because some studio exec feels (probably correctly) that there’s not a vast enough audience for wide distribution.

But back to the original point, choice also brings competition. We’ll certainly pay for some of this content. Some will be paid for by advertising. Imagine how attractive a precisely-targeted series of networks would be to advertisers. Even the commercials will be better, because we’ll be seeing marketing that’s more likely to be of interest. Marketing itself can become a service rather than an intrusion, something done for, not to, the customer.

Granted, the models for monetizing will have to change. Television is still expensive to produce, even if the inherit waste in the process can be eliminated. That will come. Advertising will continue to support some, and we’ll pay for others—subscribing to a series, or just buying or renting an episode or two. We’ll see more branded entertainment (a lonely hero drives across the nation in his new Ford Mustang, fighting crime while wearing Levi jeans, navigating with Google Maps on his iPhone). “Freemium” models will emerge and evolve. Some of them will work.

But in the end, as my agent and business partner Philippa Burgess is fond of pointing out, there are only two monetization models in all of entertainment—one where the consumer pays for the content (buying a movie ticket, a CD, or a book) and one where advertisers subsidize (network television, Pandora, broadcast radio)—or maybe a hybrid of the two. There’s no other option. That, at least, won’t change.

In any case, the end result is the same. We’ll have choices, and we’ll shape our own personal networks. We’ll access them through the channels that give us the most bandwidth, flexibility, and service at the best price. The only things that seem likely to evolve are the layers of filters and middlemen between you and the content … layers that, increasingly, don’t add significant value. At present (forgive the oversimplification), a studio produces a show. A network buys it and shows it to you for free. Their customers, advertisers, pay to hitch a ride (remember, you’re not a network’s customers; you’re the product). Right now, the network adds value to the chain because that’s the channel (pun intended) that allows the programs to reach the consumer. In the next decade or so, that value is going to shrink if not disappear altogether.

One complaint about customized television is that we’ll lose the “shared experience” of television … we won’t hear as much about how all of America was watching as one, say, the Apollo moon landing, the final M*A*S*H episode, or even the ending of Lost. To a degree, that’s already happening, at least outside of sports, and has been since the VCR and DVR came on the scene. But the shared experience and water cooler talks won’t go away altogether—it never will. We’ll still want to watch the shows that excite us most as soon as they’re available. After all, we wouldn’t want to wait another minute to find out who shot J.R. We’ll still watch together, or we’ll discuss later. But if we miss something terrific, no problem. We can pull it the next day, or the day after that.

In the meantime, we have a wealth of content from a broad spectrum of providers from which to choose. The teams behind The Best Sketch Comedy Show and My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation are some of the pioneers that are shaping the future of television. I hope their efforts pay off brilliantly for them.

I’ll have a few more Web TV series reviews for you soon—as well as the usual book, beer, and general stuff reviews. If you don’t mind, please help spread the word? Also, I’d love to know what you think. Please be sure to let me know.

Web TV Review: The Best Sketch Comedy Show

Watch The Best Sketch Comedy Show

Originally, I had a few thoughts on the future of television here. Since they made this review awfully long, and took away from the conversation about what the Junior Varsity guys were doing, I expanded them and moved them to a new blog entry. Okay. Back to your regularly-scheduled blog.

Sketch comedy seldom falls on the politically correct side of the humor scale, and The Best Sketch Comedy Show's Jesus for Justice is no different. Way wrong, but funny.

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Alexis Niki’s mythic archetype-drenched Web TV series, My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation. Since then, I’ve discovered a wealth of original content waiting on the Web. Much to my surprise, a lot of it is quite good. Some of it, in fact, is as good as a lot of what you’ll find on the commercial networks or cable television channels.

One of the surprises I’ve found lately is The Best Sketch Comedy Show from the guys at Junior Varsity TV. As you can tell from the descriptive if not overly modest title, this is a sketch comedy series. So far, the team has posted eight episodes, each around four or five minutes long. All of them are funny enough to make you smile—and, in fact, all contain at least one or two good laugh out loud moments.

Sketch comedy is hard to pull off, at least if you define “pulling it off” as doing it well. The best sketches create a character quickly, usually one you can describe in a sentence (remember John Belushi’s Samurai? Or Eddie Murphy’s Buckwheat?) and puts them in an absurd situation that’s good for a few obvious chuckles. To really pay off, the best sketches build toward an obvious punchline, and then veer away at the last second to a different, unexpected payoff. The guys at Junior Varsity do two of the three brilliantly—the situations are good for a smile, and the punchlines, more often than not, actually inspire a laugh. The characters they create (with a few exceptions, like the way, way wrong but way funny Jesus for Justice) aren’t that memorable. They usually play variations on their own everyman personas. It works, though.

The Best Sketch Comedy Show hasn’t quite lived up to it’s title yet. Unless they mean the best on the Web, which is possible, because honestly, I haven’t seen any others. Still, they are easily as good as most of the sketch troops I’ve seen live (some of which are quite brilliant) and many of the ones I’ve seen on commercial television. I won’t put them on a pedestal with the very best of Saturday Night Live just yet, but I’d put them ahead of, say, the Anthony Michael Hall years (yeah, I guess that’s damning with faint praise), and ahead of most of the sketch shows I’ve seen on cable that don’t involve Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. The production quality exceeds some of what you’ll see on cable. More, the episodes get better as they go along, although all are worth the four or five minute investment.

In short, if you go out to see live improv, and you enjoy it, this is going to be your cup of tea. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Book Review: Lost Lore: A Celebration of Traditional Wisdom

Read Lost Lore: A Celebration of Traditional Wisdom

Just last night, my wife Carol and I discovered something nifty that we didn’t know we could do with our iPhones. That wasn’t the first time that’s happened — almost every week, we’re learning something new about our latest gadgets and toys. Er, I mean tools of our trade. That’s it.

But it seems like for everything that’s learned, something is lost. It makes me a little sad to think of the gems of knowledge, once deemed critical, that are now relegated to the dusty attics of our brains reserved for trivia until, at last, they vanish forever.

That’s why I was delighted to discover Lost Lore: A Celebration of Traditional Wisdom at my beloved Blue Elephant Book Shop in Decatur. Want to know how to send or read smoke signals? Looking for the Christmas traditions our ancestors enjoyed? Or maybe how to navigate with old-school maritime instruments? Well, likely not, I suppose. But anyway, you’ll find all that, and more, in this treasure chest assembled by authors Una McGovern and Paul Jenner. You’ll even find a section on letter writing, another gentle art vanishing in the age of instant communication. I found the letter writing section especially fascinating. I now want to go out and buy sealing wax with a custom seal, fine paper, and scented ink. If I can’t find the scented ink, no worries. Lost Lore tells me how to make it.

The book is divided into sections like Health and Wellbeing, where you will find everything from time-honored cures for drunkness (plunge the whole body into cold water, the excitement of a git of anger, terror, or even a “good whippping.” Frankly, I’d rather stay drunk.) or headaches to tips on natural first aid and long life (eat sage in May and have a gentle temper). Other sections include Household (for example: soap making, laying a fire, dyeing, living thriftly), Outdoor Life (Working With the Moon and Tides, Seafaring, Foraging for Wild Food), Education and Knowledge (Using an Abacus, Using a Slide Rule, Using Mnemonics), and Socializing and Celebration (Celebrating the Seasons, Wooing and Courting, Making and Taking Tea, Predicting the Sex of a Baby, and Writing by hand).

Granted, you’ll probably never need to know most—or, franky, any, of this stuff. But it’s a delight to know that you can. And besides, life is uncertain. You never know.

In any case, the text is an absolute joy to read. The entries are consise but wonderful, offering brief but absolutely fascinating peaks into the past—not at its great events, but at its minutiae, the tiny details that made life rich. More, the book is beautifully illustrated, designed, and bound. It’s as much a pleasure to hold as it is to browse.

There is a wealth of knowledge that my great-grandparents never passed down to me. There is little need now to properly stack wood in the fire chamber of my kitchen range, alas. What they knew is all but lost. Nonetheless, I find it oddly comforting to know that the subtle and delicious details of their everyday lives are preserved, especially in so handsome an edition. I’ll browse through it often, I’m sure, during the winter months when the holidays seem to turn one’s mind to the past.

Co-author Una McGovern has put together a companion volume as well: Lost Crafts. I look forward to picking up a copy soon. Another volume, Lost Wisdom, is forthcoming.

Web TV: My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation

Watch My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation

The talented, engaging cast begins their Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation in a six-part Web series

New media has opened the doors for all sorts of content creators who might never have taken that band out of the garage, or that unpublished novel out of the drawer. The good news is, a tremendous number of truly amazing artists, like my pal Bill Shaouy, have found a way to connect with audiences even without the boost of the major labels, and my friend Jim Gillaspy has just gone the self-e-publishing route for his hard science fiction/coming of age novel, A Larger Universe.

Now, “do-it-yourselfers” are creating, shooting, and distributing their own films and television episodics. I don’t think the major publishers, networks, and film studios are losing any sleep just yet, but for audiences and artists alike, this is an exciting time. And for the media giants with open eyes, there’s a minor league system developing and polishing major league-ready talent. Sure, we don’t have the filters that the major company’s offer—a book you see on the shelf and your favorite local bookstore has at very least been vetted by an agent and an editor. The next time you complain about the crap that you find on the shelfs or all 2000 of your cable channels, think about the stuff you’re not seeing.

Esmée Buchet-Deak as Miranda

Even boutique publishers or niche cable channels have to appeal to at least somewhat broad audiences. That leaves all sorts of smaller demographics that are, at best, under-represented. All of them have stories with telling, and hearing, but anything that doesn’t fit neatly into a marketing box is all too likely to be ignored by even the most open-minded conglomerates. Meaning there is some terrific content out there that simply hasn’t found a home. At least not yet. Thankfully, we have the Internet. And while we might have to pan through a lot of sand to find it, there are some nuggets of absolute gold in them thar Webs.

Which brings me to My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation, a six-part Web series created by writer/filmmaker Alexis Niki. My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation follows a menopausal mother and her two daughters, one pregnant and one adolescent. It’s not really a drama, and it’s not really a comedy (although it has plenty of both to offer), which means it likely never would have found a home in the TV Guide grid. But the portraits it paints of three women at three very different and pivotal points in their lives, and their efforts to bond, are fascinating.

Kate Michaels as Diane

I have no idea what the budget is, but the look and feel is surprisingly professional. The cast is sharp and engaging, and seems to grow as an ensemble with each episode (only the first episode has been posted so far, but I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview). The beauty of the Paris setting doesn’t hurt, either. In fact, the setting is almost a fourth character: the wide and magnificent expanse of urban Paris coupled with the vaguely ironic smallness of their crucible of an apartment.

Not confined to a network, the characters are allowed to be real … they are not glamorized or over sexed. They complain. One has hot flashes, one has all the unpleasant issues of pregnancy, one has all utterly unromantic issues of budding adolescence. In short, they are, well, human. As a male, I felt vaguely voyeuristic—this is a world we men don’t often see. And I say that as a man with the life experiences of a wife, sister, mother, and two semesters at an all-women’s college. The pure, raw, and seemingly unfiltered look at the experiences as they alternately define, divide, and (I’m guessing, since I haven’t seen the enter series yet) ultimately bind the characters is compelling. And utterly unlike anything else you’ll see.

Pelham Spong as Ashley

The only real problem is the nature of the medium itself. Right now, Web viewing is a more comfortable experience when taken in smaller chunks. My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation is told in five-minute mini-episodes—the first of which does little more than introduce the characters and tease the journey that’s ahead of them. The second begins the storytelling in earnest, although it too leaves you wanting more. Still, “I want more” is never a bad feeling to have after a chapter or episode closes.

In a year or two, most of us will think nothing of streaming Web content to our gianormous flatscreens, or catching an episode on our iPads or Smartphones. When that happens, the lines between networks and emerging new platforms will blur. The process is already underway, even if its still in its infancy. In the meantime, the content is already here. I hope you’ll spare five minutes to give My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation a try; I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Alexis Niki and her team have voices that deserve to be heard.

Update: this blog post was picked up by Reelgrok. If you didn’t just come here from there, I hope you’ll give them a look. It’s a terrific resource.

6 Blogs For Writers And Those Who Lead The Creative Lifestyle

There’s something kind of meta about a blog that reviews blogs. But the title says “John reviews pretty much anything,” right? As I see it, my blog, my rules, yes? Uh, anyway.

There are dozens blogs out there that I’ve found enormously helpful, and dozens more that I find fascinating or even challenging, and still more that are just downright entertaining. I’m starting with a few favorites that deal with writing or creativity in general. Some are about writing, some are about living the creative lifestyle, and some are just about turning your passions into a career. In any case, they all deserve to be shared. Here are a few to start with:

1.) K. M. Weiland maintains a number of blogs, all with the mission of helping writers become authors. I read her WordPlay every time she posts, and I try to drop in on AuthorCulture at least once a week or so.

2.) Speaking of K. M. Weiland, she wrote a terrific guest post, 10 Essentials for an Inspired Author’s Life, on Margo Berendsen’s terrific Writing at High Altitude blog. It’s always worth a visit.

3.) The author Leona Wisoker turned me on to Fan to Pro: The Blog of Professional Geekery, a blog by the amazing Steve Savage on turning passions or hobbies (like, say, writing … or gaming, computers, costuming, art, etc.) into a productive career. It’s practical, entertaining, informative, and even inspiring.

4.) Cassandra Jade in the Realm is a blog that talks about all sorts of challenges facing writers—from topics like character motivation to the perils of writing high fantasy. Cassandra Jade often mentions a challenge, say, or a problem, or a thought, and then offers her explorations. What I like best, though, is the way she raises questions that leave me thinking about my own creative work from new perspectives.

5.) Inky Girl offers daily diversions for writers, librarians, editors, and readers. She’s witty, concise, insightful, timely, and always worth a look. She also has a couple of Twitter accounts, @Inkyelbows and @ipadgirl. Both are well worth following.

6.) Backstory is a site where authors share the moments or ideas that inspired their work. It’s a great place to visit and remind yourself that ideas can lurk anywhere. Anywhere. That’s not a bad thing to remember.

That’s a few to get you started. I know I am forgetting dozens … I’ll post more soon. Please let me know your favorites.

In the meantime, here are a few more Resources for Writers I’ve collected.

A Brace of Beer Reviews: Victory’s Moonglow and Old Chubb

Victory Moonglow

Saturday afternoon, the only thing that made the Braves heart-rending loss tolerable was darn good company (hey there, cousin Chip) and a truly excellent beverage: Victory Brewing Company’s Moonglow Weizenbock. It is without question one of the very best weizenbocks (a strong German style wheat beer—yeah, I had to look it up to be sure) I’ve ever tasted. Which is saying quite a lot, because honestly, I can’t think when I’ve ever had a bad one. Put simply, Moonglow belongs on the shelf close to my beloved Aventinus. It’s that good.

The color is on the darker side of amber, like caramelized honey, with a small, creamy head that settles to a small lacy rim that hugs the side of the glass. The scent is heady and wonderful: bready with subtle hints of apple, nutmeg, citrus, and clove.

As for the taste? Well, enough to say it lives up to the name. Victory Moonglow has the spice bread taste of any good wheat beer or ale, with the definite sweetness suggested by the nose, and a faintly bitter after taste—think dark malt rather than strong hops—that balances nicely. It’s wonderfully and surprisingly complex, but smooth and extraordinarily drinkable—which could be problematic given the higher than usual alcohol content.

This is a beer that will pair well with food—or make a meal on it’s own. Although it’s not nearly as heavy as you’d expect from a sweeter weizenbock. It’s perfect for a cool autumn evening or a long winter night by the fire.

Old Chubb

Sunday’s much happier Braves game was accompanied by a lovely Scotch-style ale, Old Chubb. At first glance, it looks rather like the Moonglow—a dark amber brown with a thin, lacy head. It’s one of the better Scotch Ales I’ve tried, one that stands up proudly to Claymore Scotch Ale and brings back happy memories of McEwan’s Scotch Ale, a dear old friend that’s far too hard to find these days.

Like all Scotch Ales, Old Chubb has the distinctive caramelized malt flavor that’s light on hops and carbonation—giving it a sweetness that balances a full grainy flavor nicely without being syrupy or overly heavy. The nose is all about the malt, with just a hint of smoke. The taste is distinctively Scottish: peaty, smokey, and nutty with wonderful notes of fruit (fig, maybe?), brown sugar, and cocoa. The feel is thick and creamy, certainly, but silky and with a pleasantly dry after taste.

Drink this slowly. The flavor changes slightly as it warms, making the experience much more interesting as the glass empties. It’s an ale to be savored. Even served cool, it warms the belly nicely, making it another delightful choice as the nights grow longer and colder.

It turned out to be a pretty darn good way to celebrate the Braves’ return to the post season, too.

Update: for those who asked, I found the Moonglow at the Decatur Taco Mac, although I’m sure it can be found elsewhere. Living in Pubtopia, I don’t hit Taco Mac very often—although it ties with the good old Brew House as the best place in the neighborhood to watch a game. Still, the original Taco Mac pretty much introduced the Buffalo chicken wing and the magnificent beer list to Atlanta way back in the olden days. Maybe those finer aspects of modern civilization would have made it here without Taco Mac, but how can we know for sure? So Taco Mac will always have a special place in my heart. The Decatur location doesn’t have quite the divey charm of the original Virginia Highlands location, but it has parking and more TVs. So really, you win either way. But seriously, try the Victory Moonglow.

Book Review: “The Meaning of Night” by Michael Cox

Read The Meaning of Night: A Confession

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post listing my fifteen favorite first sentences in literature. At the time, I hadn’t read Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night: A Confession, or I would have been forced to give serious consideration to including it. It begins: After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an Oyster Supper. Now that’s a pretty good start. It’s an opening that hooks us immediately on the story, certainly. It’s hard not to wonder what’s going to follow that. More, it hooks us on character—who is this narrator, and how can he describe an act of terrible violence in such a casual manner? I’m happy to report that the balance of the novel lives up to the promise of that first sentence. It is a dark, chilling read, and an utterly compelling one.

Like another favorite of mine, Charles Palliser’s Quincunx, The Meaning of Night is set in the fog-draped London of gaslights and greatcoats—the labyrinthine city that Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins described. The language is deliciously Victorian, a pastiche that is always just present enough for flavor but never overpowering enough to distract. And like Quincunx, The Meaning of Night reads like one of the “sensation novels” that Dickens himself might have written, had he the benefit of modern noir sensibility, pacing, and psychological insight while retaining his flair for character and atmosphere.

The story can best be described as, well, Dickensian. There are all the diabolical narrative twists one would expect in a tale of hidden identity, questions of inheritance surrounding a magnificent manor and a considerable fortune, and, of course, revenge. The drive is relentless and the tale is absolutely a page-turner. There are secrets a plenty—some obvious enough, some truly shocking, all earned. But beneath them all, there are deeper levels to explore here. The Meaning of Night is more than a Victorian mystery thriller—it is an unforgettable portrait of psychological obsession, and it is an unrelenting, unflinching exploration of the darkest reaches of the human soul.

The story is compelling, but the most fascinating elements are the characters. None of them are perfect; in fact, most of them are barely sympathetic. Only the most minor bit players are more or less who they seem to be, and not even all of them can be reliably depended upon not to wear a mask or two. Few are entirely innocent in the revealing light of day—the one who comes closest dies quickly; his death is the one referred to in the opening sentence. The next closest is a prostitute. The rest exist somewhere between twilight and the darkness of night. Even the beautiful Emily Carteret, object of the narrator’s obsession and sufferer of a traumatic loss, is very possibly carrying on at least two secret affairs. The rest of her secrets? Enough to say they’ll keep you turning the pages late into the night.

Worst of all, though, is the narrator himself. The narrator is told bluntly at one point to “trust no one.” We’d all do well to bear this in mind, too. Cox raises the concept of the unreliable narrator to a new level. Edward Glyver, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, is no heart-of-gold rogue, and certainly no Victorian gentleman hero, even though he comports himself with gentlemanly charm and chivalric courtesy. We know from the opening line that he is capable of unspeakable violence. We learn quickly that he is an accomplished liar. In fact, one of his casual actions may have sent an innocent man to the gallows. More, he shows hints of seeming madness—he is so accused more than once—and is a regular user of both alcohol and opium. Unreliable? Yeah, I’d say so.

But despite the fact that we have, at best, little reason to feel any sympathy at all for Edward Glyver, or even to accept his account of events, Cox’s skill is such that we can’t help but feel for him. We want him to succeed, to achieve his revenge, and claim what is “rightfully” his. In spite of ourselves, we like him. Even—maybe especially—when we really, really don’t want to. Whether we can trust him or not, his is a soul in torment. Is his confession enough to earn him some manner of peace or redemption? That’s a hard question, one to ponder long after the last page is turned. I’ll be interested to know what you think.

Cox has written a sequel, The Glass of Time, one that’s already skipped ahead to the top of my ponderously high “to be read” pile. It’s a stand-alone novel, but from what I can tell from the cover blurb, it seems to deal with some of the consequences of Glyver’s actions. I can’t wait.

Update: I’ve just learned that Michael Cox passed away from cancer in 2009. These two books are all we’ll see from him. Our loss. Rest in peace, sir.

If you liked this review and if you don’t mind, would you please consider using the links below to help spread the word? I’d be grateful.

Game Review: Falling into a Story with The Lord of the Rings Online

A fast note: versions of this article have been published before, most notably in the amazing Silver Leaves, a scholarly journal focusing on J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and the Inklings. It is a terrific publication, a must for both the causal and the obsessive fan. Best of all, the proceeds go to charity. Please give it a try if you can.

Play The Lord of the Rings Online

My character, Jack Rowenstaff, visits Bag End in the Shire. Click any image to enlarge.

While there are, of course, many virtues in fantasy, it’s not hard to argue that one of the chief appeals is wish fulfillment. I’ve known many readers who lost themselves utterly when visiting the charm of the Shire hills, the welcoming comforts of the Prancing Pony in Bree, or the golden, enchanted magnificence of Lothlórien. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen a person look up, blinking, from a tattered paperback of The Fellowship of the Ring and realize, suddenly, that they are in a doctor’s waiting room, or a school cafeteria, or on a train. Each time, whether I’ve actually spoken to them or not, I’ve smiled an inner smile and thought to myself … friend. There sits a kindred spirit.

I don’t think I am the first to have been so lost in a story that I’ve almost forgotten I’m reading, and that there’s a world around me that will, all too soon, require my attention. I am probably not the first to long to vanish into a story for a longer period, to hear forgotten tales at the Hall of Fire in Rivendell, or raise a pint with the Gaffer in the Ivy Bush. And I don’t think the desire to go left, when the author took the characters right, is necessarily a lonely one. What might have happened then? What paths were left unexplored? What surprises did the author not reveal? Is the beer at the Golden Perch really that good? What of the Forsaken Inn, a day’s journey east from Bree, that Strider hinted at so tantalizingly? What is that like? Or Staddle, the hobbit town outside of Bree; could it be as charming as our beloved Hobbiton?

The Prancing Pony Inn in Bree

Critics, of course, would be quick to dismiss that longing as puerile escapism. And they are, of course, quite right, the smug rascals. But as Professor Tolkien himself noted, who objects to escapism? Jailors. The master wrote in On Fairy-Stories: “I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” Since Tolkien is careful to distinguish between the escape of the prisoner and the flight of the deserter, the question arises: what’s wrong with wanting to escape into a story, to wander the hills of unknown shores, now and again?

Unfortunately, books have endings, the hidden roads remain lost and secret gates unopened. As much as we might want to, we can’t wander north to see what is beyond the Shire, or linger in Lórien’s golden wood, and Fornost remains forever only a dread rumour.
Until now.

The dread Barrow Downs by night

The Lord of the Rings Online is a computer game that actually captures the feeling of falling into a story. There are some limits, of course, but by and large, Middle-earth is yours to explore at will—from Thorin’s Hall in the west to Lórien and perilous Mirkwood in the east. Using the arrows on your keyboard, you can send your character wandering through the towns and forests of the Shire, or through the dangers of the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs (both deliciously creepy), or even all the way to Bree and Rivendell, where old friends will be waiting. The experience of the game is astonishingly immersive—sounds, voice, and music blend seamlessly with the visuals. Every environment is lovingly—at times even astonishingly—rendered. Even more than Peter Jackson’s films, the game feels like Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

The eastern gate of the Mines of Moria

Everything you recall from the books is there—even things only mentioned in passing, like the taverns at Frogmorton and Stock, or the mysteriously-named Forsaken Inn. Barliman Butterbur welcomes you to the Prancing Pony, and you might happen upon an abandoned Elf camp in the Shire, just before you come to Farmer Maggot’s farm. Wander through Bag End itself (although you’ll have to endure the shrill complaints of the thrice-dratted Sackville-Bagginses) or brave the dread halls of dark Moria or (now) Dol Guldur in Mirkwood.

And, of course, there are a few smiles and in-jokes for the more dedicated fans of Tolkien and the Inklings. The Inklings met regularly at an Oxford Pub called the Eagle and Child, or “the Bird and Baby,” as they affectionately called it. In the game’s version of Michel Delving, just below the famous Mathom House, you’ll find a pub called The Bird and Baby. The painted sign will be familiar to any fan of Tolkien, C. S. “Jack” Lewis, Owen Barfield, or Charles Williams, who has visited Oxford. If you wander to the back room of the game’s version, you’ll find a group of lively hobbit friends raising pints, arguing literature, and wondering about the whereabouts of their friend Ronald Dwale. Their names are Jack Lewisdown, Owen Farfield, and Carlo Williams. What fun to spend a lively few minutes, even virtually, with the Inklings!

Indeed, it’s tempting to ignore the “game” play and simply wander and take in the sights, or simply to stand on the porch of your very own Hobbit Hole or Bree house and blow a few virtual smoke rings as you chat with the neighbors. But then, the game itself is terrific fun.

Sunrise over the Golden Wood of Loth Lórien

I should issue a fast disclaimer. I’m not a computer gamer. At all. Well, at least not until I discovered my virtual passport to Middle-earth. I pretty much went straight from mobile phone Solitaire to The Lord of the Rings Online (or LOTRO, as the experienced gamers say). I’m not sure how this game compares to others, save that I’m told the interface is similar to World of Warcraft. That said, I’d often heard how these games could be incredibly addictive. I used to shrug and scratch my head when players of games like Everquest called it EverCrack and NeverRest. I now get the joke. If you’ve ever stayed up way too late, flashlight under the covers, to finish a wonderful book, you’ll know the feeling.

The first thing to understand is that this is a multi-player online game. As you wander Middle-earth, you’ll constantly bump into other players—Hobbits, Men, Elves, and Dwarves. The hobbit you meet at the Moria gates may be your neighbor; that Gondorian warrior in the North Downs may be huddled over a computer in France or Africa.

It’s the social aspect that makes the game so utterly charming. Need help? Ask, and someone is sure to give it. And you’ll find yourself doing the same, even when the laundry needs folding or bed is calling in the last hours before an early morning. And you’ll find that, by and large, the people you encounter are kindred spirits. They, too, fell in love with a certain story. And, just like you, they longed to be a part of it: to share the adventure.

You begin by creating a character. Select the gender and the race—a female Elf or a male Hobbit, for example—and then choose a class: minstrel, warrior, burglar, captain, or lore master. Each has their own set of skills and attributes. Next, customize the appearance—hair colour, body type, even the shape of the nose and the size of the lips. Finally, choose an occupation. The game has an economy, and you’ll find it useful to craft a weapon, grow a crop of pipeweed, stitch a cloak, or even cook a tasty breakfast to make your way in the world. Choose a name. You’ll find that your characters become, well, characters. I play the mighty Jack Rowenstaff, warrior of Bree, Nickollas Windsong, minstrel hobbit of the Shire, and Nedberry, burglar—or rather, expert treasure hunter. There’s something rather Tookish about those latter ones, I dare say. Much to my very great surprise, I’ve come to care about them almost as much as I care about characters in a favorite story. Hmmm. I wonder if the idea of Mythopoeia can apply to a computer game. Why not?

My character, Jack, in front of his house in the greater metropolitan Bree area

Once you’ve created your Dwarf or Elf, explore the world. Wander anywhere you like. Sure, there are a few “barriers” here and there—a cliff too steep to climb or a locked gate—but for the most part, the whole of Middle-earth is open to you. And more is opening all the time. The most recent additions opened Moria, Lothlórien, and Mirkwood. In the months since Moria opened for play in the spring, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Middle-earth is, after all, big. Remember how long it took to get anywhere in the book? Part of the charm, and, I’ll admit, the frustration, of the game is that it takes a while to get from, say, the Shire to Rivendell. But as you advance, travel gets faster. You can buy a pony or horse ride from the stable masters in most towns, and eventually acquire your own mount.

Players can undertake quests—anything from delivering pies in Hobbiton, to finding Bilbo’s lost buttons in Goblin Town, to slaying an army of Orcs in Moria, or even trying all the beer in the Shire. That’s the object of the game. The more quests one completes, the more experience your character gains. With more experience, characters gain new abilities. Quest completion also nets rewards—nifty items or money to save for buying those horse rides and Hobbit holes.

The game takes place concurrently with the events in The Fellowship of the Ring. For all players, the game begins about the time that Frodo and Sam leave the Shire. This means that your story parallels the one you know so well. And, indeed, you provide some unseen help. For example, when you arrive in Bree, a strange Ranger called Strider asks for your help. That begins a game quest. By the time you’ve finished, you race back to learn that Strider has left in a hurry with four Shire hobbits. In his place, you speak to Gandalf the Grey himself, who is eager for your news. And another quest begins. Later, you find an abandoned pony just outside the Moria gates, and save him from ravenous wolves. This is, of course, poor Bill and you help him return to the safety of the Elves.

You can’t alter the familiar events, of course. But your aid, given “off screen” as it were, fits seamlessly with the story you know so well. Perhaps best of all, you get to witness, first hand, some key events: the reforging of the sword Narsil and the departure of the Fellowship from Rivendell, for example.

Evening at Tom Bombadil's house

Along the way, you interact with familiar characters—including, just to name a few off the top of my head, Gimli, Gloin, Elrond (along with his sons and daughter), Gandalf, Aragorn, Barliman Butterbur, Nob, Bob, Fatty Bolger, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, Radagast the Brown, the Sackville Bagginses, Gollum, the Gaffer, Ted Sandyman, Legolas, Galadriel, and old Bilbo himself. There are many, many others. All right where they should be, doing exactly what they should be doing, and acting just as you would expect them to act. You’ll find yourself grinning, as though you’ve spent a weekend at a monumentally grand party or reunion, smiling at each new meeting with a dear old friend.

For the most part, the game truly feels like Tolkien. Sure, there are a few more monsters than you remember from the books—but none that would seem out of place in the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon sagas that Tolkien loved so deeply. And yes, some of the quests can be redundant and, at times, even tedious. But no worries. You can skip those, or find some new friends and complete them as a fellowship, sort of making a party of it.

The Bird and Baby Inn in the Shire ... where old friends wait.

Some of the quests are difficult, taxing the brainpower and the strength of your hero. But again, don’t worry. There’s usually someone happy to help. And before the night is done, you just might surprise yourself by thinking of them as friends—met unexpectedly—just like the helpers that appear in a fairytale, and are suddenly, instantly dear. The storyline is terrifically engaging, and complements the familiar story in the books beautifully.

I do have a few complaints about the game, and I fear this first especially is one shared by many.

I discovered the game when my wife started playing it for business research. She was immediately hooked and insisted that I give it a try. I used her account to create a character of my own. Now, I too am hooked, and have opened my own account. But my main character is trapped on her account. We’d love to play together, but since I can’t transfer that character to my new account, that option isn’t available to us. It is available, for a fee, on many other games, so I hope the folks at Turbine will offer it soon. I know many other couples and families in this same very frustrating boat, and Turbine’s inability to accommodate them is costing them customer loyalty and good will.

In their defense, Turbine spokesman Adam Mersky says that this service is not offered to prevent fraud and to protect the game play experience for the majority of their subscribers. But bluntly, speaking as someone who has worked in new media, e-commerce, and even game development, I can think of at least a dozen simple solutions without breaking a sweat. The resources required, of course, aren’t trivial, but speaking from experience, honestly, it’s a fairly simple matter all told. More, people seem more than willing to pay a premium for this service. In this economy, when someone wants to pull out the old credit card, find a way to accept it.

The other complaint is a bit more serious, and it involves customer service.

Recently, I joined a group of friends for a very long (something like four hours) adventure, which was supposed to lead to some nifty items to better equip your character. We fought through and completed the adventure … only to discover that the chests were bugged. We couldn’t open them. No loot. The four hours was vanished forever.

Now of course, I understand that software, but its very nature, it occasionally buggy, and in the case of The Lord of the Rings Online, problems are extremely rare. In any business, problems arise. It usually can’t be helped. The best you can hope for is to make problems as rare as possible (Turbine gets an absolute A+ here), and to make every effort to make things right when they do arise. In the latter case, Turbine failed, and miserably.

When we reported the problem, we were informed that there was nothing Turbine could do to correct the problem, which is understandable. But Turbine’s customer service rep made no effort at all to address the issue. The rep wasn’t even especially polite about it.

Again, problems arise in any business. But all the same, when you pay for a product, it’s not unreasonable to expect that product to, you know, work. When it doesn’t, you expect the company you’re doing business with to make some effort to make things better. If you buy a new television and find it doesn’t work, you expect to have it replaced. If you check into a hotel and find that the shower doesn’t work, you expect to move to another room. If you go to a movie and the film breaks, you expect the theater to make a repair, and probably hand out a few free passes if the delays stretch on too long. If your steak is overcooked, you expect to get a new one. Usually with a heartfelt apology from the manager.

Turbine offered … nothing. No attempt to mail the items we’d just one, or something else. No apology. No coupon for free play to offer a friend. Not even an apology. We were just told, tersely, to try the instance again.

Speaking only for myself, four hours of time is a pretty precious commodity, and it’s not very easy to come by. Not by a long shot. I truly haven’t had it available in the weeks that passed. While the costs of the game are fairly insignificant, I do value my money, too. Turbine should have made some customer service outreach. Something. Even if it was just an apology.

From another company, I might understand. You don’t, for example, expect the same service from a $14 a night no-frills motel that you get at, say, the Ritz Carlton. But Turbine has always, always been a first-class organization. I expected better from them, and I am deeply, deeply disappointed.

On the other hand, it is a rare experience. That’s something.

To play The Lord of the Rings Online right away, you’ll need to purchase the game (either on disc through Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or any other affiliated stores) or download from the Internet. You’ll also have to purchase a monthly or lifetime subscription. Subscription rates are reasonable, and start at around $9.95 for unlimited visits to Middle-Earth. I purchased a lifetime subscription, so I have no monthly fees. A free trial is also available. If you wait a month or so, the game will be free to play, with very attractive additional content available for (surprisingly reasonable) cost. The free to play sounds like a great way to try before you buy, but I imagine that most players will want to upgrade fairly quickly.

For more information, please see: http://www.lotro.com.

Book Review: “The Great Reset” by Richard Florida

Read The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

I’m not sure that anyone other than Richard Florida (author of The Rise of the Creative Class) could thoroughly examine today’s economic climate and its long-term implications, and write a book that leaves the reader with a rather surprising feeling of optimism. Nonetheless, he’s done just that in The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. It’s an absolutely fascinating and even exhilarating, if perhaps a bit too broad, read. More importantly, it expresses a vision that seems to make readers on both sides of the vast political divides want to roll up their sleeves and get busy. Like the best visionary works, it’s a very practical and timely call to action.

Early on, Florida argues that economic peaks and valleys are part of the life-cycle of a society’s development as “obsolete and dysfunctional systems and practices” fall apart and are by necessity replaced by “the seeds of innovation and invention, of creativity and entrepreneurship.” Looking to history, Florida points to the first Great Reset in America that occurred in the 1870s, and to the second in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Each was a period in which the previous period of prosperity reached its limits, and a “reset” of innovation literally remade both the economic and geographic landscape of the nation.

In the First Reset the factory became the center of economic life. The industrial city became the place to live. The shift was from an agricultural to an industrial economy. The transcontinental railroads were built. In the Second Great Reset, the one that evolved from the Great Depression, manufacturing efficiency and productivity improved dramatically. Suburbia attracted the mobile population with the new wealth to buy a home and a car to travel to it. The population migrated to the suburbs and the South and the West — so much so that a majority of us lived in the South and West by 2000. The interstate highway system was constructed.

Florida then points out that a third Great Reset is developing now, one that focuses on the development of denser, closely-linked “megaregions” made possible by, for example, new investments in public transportation and the technology that allows for the increased productivity of telecommuting. Florida believes that this is the time to build a great high-speed rail system to further integrate each megaregion and eventually to connect the megaregions of America. In emphasizes the promotion of creative jobs and service jobs—and the need to prepare for the former while making the latter more appealing. We are moving from “…an industrial to an idea-driven creative economy now,” Florida argues. We are seeing the Third Industrial Revolution and moving from “…an economy based on making things to one that revolves around knowledge and creativity.”

The Great Reset also calls, to a degree, for a shift in values and a redefinition of success. “The promise of the current Reset is the opportunity for a life made better not by ownership of real estate, appliances, cars, and all manner of material goods, but of greater flexibility and lower levels of debt, of more time with family and friends, greater promise of personal development, and access to more and better experiences. All organisms and all systems experience the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.” The coming Great Reset gives us the promise of time … to innovate, to devote to causes, to spend with family, to simply live. Renting, rather than owning, in some cases gives individuals the mobility to take advantage of new opportunities—and may well be the better long-term investment. Quality of life may be measured more by the time and resources to have meaningful experiences than by possessions.

In Florida’s discussion of the current Reset, he builds a compelling and, yes, practical case for recognizing, understanding, and then taking full advantage of the opportunities created by “new ways of living and working” that will drive “post-crash prosperity.” Speaking both as a passionate idealist and hard-nosed pragmatist, Florida proposes guiding principles, based on his examination of history and the present economic, social, and political climates that can help America and the rest of the world to move toward a more sustainable and prosperous future. Here are a couple of those guiding principles, offered for example:

1. An abiding faith in a simple, undeniable first principle that “every single human being is [or can be] creative … The real key to economic growth lies in harnessing the full creative talents of every one of us.”

2. “There’s an urgent need to create new good jobs — lots of them. We need to support the growth of higher-paying knowledge, professional and creative jobs, and make sure that greater numbers of workers are prepared for them.”

Having rigorously examined two Great Resets, Florida makes a compelling argument that together, we can address urgent needs and build a new prosperity. He calls for us to look beyond the short-term band-aid quick fixes and invest for the long-term — something that’s hard to accomplish in the short-attention-span days of the 24/7 news cycle. We are past the time when we can afford to focus on a problem’s symptoms rather than its deeper root causes. The older, non-sustainable fixtures of our society, frankly, are not coming back. We need to start working on what will replace them. “Let’s stop confusing nostalgia with resolve. It’s time to turn our efforts, as individuals, as governments, as a society, to putting pieces into place for a vibrant, prosperous future.”

Florida also has some excellent points about the financial industry, reminding us that its original, intended purpose is to connect capital with enterprise. Basically, it’s a necessary middle man. Like all middle men, it should be as small, efficient, and invisible as possible. It was not meant to be an intoxicating instrument of ever-increasing complexity and risk, existing largely to feed itself. The instrument of commerce needs to refocus on capitalizing innovation and infrastructure.

After reading the book I found myself not just hoping, but believing that a new model of sustainable, long-term prosperity is within our grasp. I found myself wishing that the book was longer—I kept wanting more depth, more exploration. It is, after all, a very quick read. But in the end, The Great Reset isn’t meant to provide all the answers and blueprints. No one book ever could. It’s meant to spark thought, conversation, and, ultimately, action. It does the first two brilliantly. The vision articulated is practical and exciting. I am ready and eager to start working on the third. and I am eager to go back and read some of Florida’s earlier books. I hope my elected leaders are doing the same.

Beer Review: Claymore Scotch Ale

I first tried Great Divide Brewing Company’s delicious Claymore Scotch Ale at Mac McGee’s, one of the fine pubs here in Decatur (I’ve gone out on a limb and called the area that stretches from my beloved Marlay House and past Mac McGee’s, The Brick Store, Leon’s, and Twain’s the very best pub crawl district in all of America outside of Boston) and I adored it at once. I was happy to discover that my neighborhood Candler Park Market carries it, and it’s just as good in the bottle as it is on tap. For a “wee heavy,” it’s surprisingly refreshing and drinkable. It borders on sweet, but the malty graininess adds a nice balance. It is, in a word, delicious.

The pour is darker than I expected … a deep ruby/cherry brown, and it has a nice two-finger, creamy head that laces beautifully. But wait a second before you taste, okay? Savor it from a wide-mouthed glass, because the aroma is a big part of the pleasure. Start slowly. Breathe deep. The scent carries roasted caramel malt, chocolate, coffee, and a very subtle hint of fruit — cherries and raisins, maybe. Ready? Now take your first sip.

The feel is exceptional — smooth and creamy, and surprisingly complex. Bready, sure, in the best and most comforting sort of way. Sweet, but not even a little bit syrupy. The taste follows the scent: roasted, sweet malts with subtle hops, chocolate, grains, and light accents of, well, something fruity. Apple, raisin, or cherry, I think. Maybe notes of all three. The finish balances the sweetness nicely, with just a touch of the woody, peaty notes you’d find in a good Scotch. It’s complex, drinkable, and oh so smooth.

I was about to say this is one of the best Scotch ales I’ve had in ages, one that equals or maybe even surpasses my fading memories of McEwans Scotch Ale, which (alas!) is hard to find these days, at least here in the Atlanta area. But frankly, it’s one of the most delicious brews of any sort I’ve tried recently. It’ll be cementing a place on my favorites list, and it’ll be a mainstay in my kitchen. I can’t wait to try it in the fall and winter. In the meantime, it’s mighty tasty in the summer.

“Secrets of the Sands” by Leona Wisoker

Read Secrets of the Sands

It’s a sad fact but a true one—some of the most interesting books today are being published by small presses, but they remain the most difficult to find on your chain bookstore’s shelves, or in the ever-shrinking book review pages of your local newspaper. Leona Wisoker’s (the usual note of disclosure: the author is a friend of mine) debut fantasy novel, Secrets of the Sands, is a perfect case in point.

Wisoker has created an elaborate, well-crafted fantasy world that doesn’t feel like the too-familiar pseudo-Celtic Medieval Land, and a complex desert society that doesn’t feel like, say, Dune or The Arabian Nights. She’s created a logical and consistent language that feels exotic but (despite the ubiquitous apostrophes) doesn’t feel like Klingon or Tolkien’s masterful Elvish. She manages to use her language to make her world seem textured and real, but still keeps her dialogue fresh, lively, and yes, even contemporary. Secrets of the Sands is a fun read—it’s delightfully original, and it deserves attention.

Secrets of the Sands tells parallel stories. The first focuses on the desert lord, Cafad Scratha, whose entire family was murdered when he was a child, and the orphaned street thief, Idisio, who like most of Wisoker’s characters is more than he seems. The other follows the young noble woman Alyea, who must navigate a perilous journey and a maze of deadly politics to become a desert lord and hold the Scratha fortress for her king. Both characters carry deep wounds from the past that drive their actions, and both stories ultimately connect in a surprising manner that satisfies while leaving you wanting more.

While I generally prefer the longer, door-stop tomes when choosing fantasies (or, well, novels of any genre), I found Wisoker’s brisk, relentless pace refreshing. Trials and the learning of skills pass quickly, but never seem effortless or unearned. Revelations come fast, but we never really miss the deeper dives into motivation that bog down so many longer works. The focus always remains right where it belongs, on the primary characters and the rather profound changes that are occurring around and, more importantly, within them. It is the characters, after all, that make the novel.

The book is filled with subtle and delicious wit. For example, one character, when discussing a whore, replies “tartly.” Wisoker’s book is also distinctly, and even anachronistically, American. Village Inns have front desks, for example. Those touches made me smile while reading, and set her world distinctly apart from the generic worlds so prevalent on the shelves at your local Mega-Barnes-a-Zillion.

I have only one real complaint. Wisoker has done an amazing job of creating a vivid, breathing, original world—but more than a few chapters pass before she slows the action enough to describe it, leaving us to fill in the gaps from the shelf of clichés we all keep stored in the attics our brains—with images from, well, Dune or The Arabian Nights. When we have to revise those mental pictures later, it’s jarring and pulls us out of the story. Thankfully, the characters are rich enough to pull us right back in, and leave us eager for the sequels when the last page is turned.

I hope you’ll give Secrets of the Sands a try. Since the small presses are the ones taking real chances in this market, they deserve support. Even if they don’t have the budgets to buy space on the tables at the mega chains, and, yeah, even if you have to make the effort to seek them out.

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Pastries A Go Go
Candi’s for Breakfast at the Irwin Street Market
The Marlay House Pub
Parker’s On Ponce Steak House

Actually, this isn’t a review of those meals, specifically. The truth is, I am for all of them. This is about some truly outstanding and more or less undiscovered gems where you can find them.

I’ve often referred to my neighborhood and the surrounding mile or two as Pubtopia. with all sincerity, I think it may will be the very best pub crawl area outside of Boston. Yes, even above New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. It’s Pizzatopia as well, and is fast becoming Q-topia (barbeque, of course), but those are topics for another blog.

Breakfast:

Getting (at last, and in the third paragraph no less) to the subject at hand, this area — the Atlanta neighborhoods between Decatur, Little Five Points, Inman Park, East Atlanta Village, and Druid Hills — is breakfast-topia, too. When you live in a neighborhood with the venerable Flying Biscuit (the oatmeal pancakes are amazing), Java Jive (the ginger waffles with lemon curd are to die for), and two Thumbs Up locations (best pancakes in the city, bar none) and none of them make it to the top of the list of your favorite spots, you know your options are pretty close to terrific.

My two favorites are Pastries A Go Go, just a couple of blocks from the square in downtown Decatur, and Candi’s for Breakfast at the Irwin Street Market in the Old Fourth Ward. I usually order pretty much the same thing at both — a good old fashioned southern breakfast with scrambled eggs, biscuit, sausage, and (naturally) grits. Both offer other alternatives with the southern breakfast, like bacon, toast, and potatoes. Both places are amazing. Despite the somewhat similar menus, neither could be more different from the other.

Pastries A Go Go is a bakery first, and one of the very best. The biscuits are simply amazing — quite possibly the best I’ve had that wasn’t served at a southern relative’s home. They make their own sausage, and they do something (and I have no idea what) that makes their scrambled eggs just absolutely heavenly. My wife says that the Eggs Benedict are delicious.

The place is small, homey, and causal, but with a subtle vibe of Decatur hipness. They say that Decatur is the place where Berkley meets Mayberry. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Pastries A Go Go in either place. The coffee (from local roaster Dancing Goats) is terrific and plentiful. The staff is friendly. Comfort (comfort food in a comfortable space) wraps you like a blanket. Don’t miss it.

Speaking of comfort, you’ll find that feeling in abundance at Candi’s for Breakfast. It feels like an old fashioned diner … and honestly, the food tastes like what you always think (or hope) diner food will deliver. Sadly, diners seldom live up to your expectations. Candi’s exceeds them. The food is cooked in a tiny kitchen right in front of you (assuming you sit at the counter — if you take a table, well, it’s close by, anyway) and is crafted with care.

The biscuits aren’t as subtly sweet at those at Pastries A Go Go; they are breadier for lack of a better word, and absolutely delicious with butter, sausage, or one of the hand-crafted spreads that Candi has to offer. The house specialty is the stuffed biscuit. Baked to order, it’s a biscuit stuffed with your choice of yummy things: sausage, home made turkey sausage, bacon, cheeses, or veggies. I’ve never tried anything like it.

My pal Jay Gagliardo says that the Eggs Benedict (available served on a biscuit, of course) are the best he’s ever had. And in fact, Candi’s has more than a few specialties that I have yet to try. I can’t wait.

Sunday Lunch:

Speaking of pubtopia, I’ve mentioned my beloved Marlay House Pub a time or two. It’s one of my three or four favorites here in the Decatur/Little Five Points area (out of more than a dozen or so that I would consider very legitimate contenders). I’ve been for dinner and drinks, the amazing Tuesday night Celtic Jam, and even breakfast. In all that time, I never once tried the Sunday Roast. What was I thinking?

In Ireland, a Sunday roast is traditional at the pubs. Darren Comer, one of the owners, assures me that the Marlay House’s recreation is just like the ones he remembers from home. I’m more than willing to take his word, but in all the times I traveled to those fair Isles, I never once found pub food this good. And I say that as a man who adores pub food.

The roast is a standing ribeye, rubbed with herbs and cooked slowly to to be tender. It’s served with roasted potatoes, a “lashing” of gravy (I had to ask — a lashing means a lot, so think about getting it on the side), fresh veggies (from experience, I can assure you than these can be held), and Yorkshire pudding, which again is much better than any I’ve found abroad.

The Sunday Roast at the Marlay House is comfort food, pure and simple. It’s delicious (it pretty much has to be to survive in Decatur) and, along with a frothy pint from one of the best beer and ale menus in the city, it’s a wonderful way to relax away a Sunday afternoon. Share it with good company, even if that company is a good book. I wish I’d tried it sooner.

Dinner:

Decatur and the surrounding areas provide a wealth of dining, from comfort food to exotic “foodie” paradises. What’s been missing is a truly outstanding steak house. I am happy to report that Parker’s On Ponce fills that gap neatly. I can’t say it’s the best steak I’ve ever had. It is, nonetheless, one of the top ten or so that I’ve had anywhere, and a genuine A+. In a city where people will literally line up for a B- steak, that’s saying a lot.

The steaks are seasoned subtly and well, and cooked perfectly. A medium actually comes out medium. Vegetarian options are more than an afterthought. My wife tried a grilled portabella mushroom, and found the flavor and the presentation delightful. She wasn’t even remotely jealous of my steak, or the Porterhouse for two that my parents praised.

The flavor and quality is absolutely first rate. The sides are generous; some familiar, some imaginative, all (that we tried, anyway) outstanding. The beer and wine list is solid and the deserts are superb.

The ambiance is casual, friendly, and comfortable, and blessedly lacking the “upscale” pretentious attitude in which so many fine steak houses seem to bask. The place is divided into smaller nooks (and a private room for events), making the large space seem more intimate.

Parker’s on Ponce is a welcome addition to one of the very best dining neighborhoods Atlanta has to offer, and I look forward to visiting regularly. In fact, I’m looking forward to trying the brunch this weekend.

“Secret Voyage” by Blackmore’s Night

Listen to Secret Voyage by Blackmore’s Night

As anyone who knows me or my forthcoming novel Blackthorne Faire can tell you, I have a fondness for Renaissance festivals and the music you’ll find there that borders on the fanatical. I also have a love for Celtic, folk, and, of course, good old rock. For that reason, I was thrilled to discover Blackmore’s Night a few years back. Blackmore’s Night was born when Richie Blackmore (of Deep Purple fame) met Candice Night, and discovered their shared love of Renaissance music.

What you’ll hear on their latest album, Secret Voyage, isn’t exactly (or at least not entirely) Renaissance music—not even the kind you’ll hear at your local Ren fair. Instead, think of it as being invited to a cast party thrown by one of the best Ren fair bands you’ve ever heard. They’ll do some of the music from the fair, some originals, and even some old favorites. The point isn’t authenticity or thematic purity, it’s to make sure that everyone has a rollicking good time. Happily, when Secret Voyage is playing, we do.

Once again, Blackmore’s Night takes us on a journey through ancient times to modern. As always, Richie Blackmore’s guitar stylings are energetic and complex while Candice Night’s vocals are utterly bewitching. The merry band of minstrels that accompanies them are solid as always. The album begins with an instrumental, “God Bless the Keg,” opening with a harpsichord solo until other instruments join in, ending with a haunting, deep organ. That leads seamlessly into “Locked Within The Crystal Ball,” a song that echoes the darkest, most romantic fairy tales—with a beat that’s somewhere between fast Celtic folk and driving rock. Those two cuts provide a very strong opening.

The rest of the album is just as solid. Special favorites include the merry but wistful “Toast to Tomorrow,” the Renaissance-flavored “Peasant’s Promise” and “The Circle,” and the utterly charming “Far, Far Away.” There’s even a lively, fast, folkish cover of Elvis’s hit “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” After all, you never know what the band will decide to play with when it’s their party. Just be glad you’re part of the circle and share the fun.

If you’ve heard some of the earlier Blackmore’s Night efforts, like The Village Lantern or Past Times with Good Company, you know what you have to look forward to. The Secret Voyage is neither a step back nor a tremendous leap forward. But like a reunion with dear old friends, that’s not really what you’re looking for here. You’re looking for fun, and a CD that you can listen to again and again … on its own, or as excellent company while driving, reading, or writing. The Secret Voyage is a party I intend to revisit again and again.

“Total Oblivion, More or Less” by Alan DeNiro

Read Total Oblivion, More or Less: A Novel

Total Oblivion, More or Less is a strange novel. In a lot of ways, in fact, it’s a novel about strangeness, and how ordinary people deal with it. Imagine Huck Finn’s raft drifting through a post-apocalypse American wasteland. Things have changed. The government has disappeared, geography itself seems to have been altered, somehow, technology doesn’t work, plague decimates the population, and bands of Goths and Scythians roam the landscape for plunder and mayhem.

In this case, Huck is a teen girl, Macy Palmer, fleeing St. Paul with her family for the faint, fleeting hope of safety on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. The novel is packed with action, mystery, and genuine suspense … to say nothing of an utterly fascinating (and deeply unsettling) new world. It’s a weird, wonderful, heart-breaking, and thought-provoking read. You’ll find surprising and laugh-out-loud humor, adventure, and, yes, even grounded, well-earned emotion. The result is an absolutely original and gripping read.

None of which, mind, is the real strength of the novel.

The comparison to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn goes deeper than the incidental detail of shared journeys down the Mississippi River. Ernest Hemmingway famously declared that all of American literature begins with Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s genius in Huckleberry Finn, undimmed even by the controversial ending, is his invention of an absolutely original character’s voice. Read any one line of Huck’s narration, and it’s utterly impossible to confuse him with, say, Natty Bumpo, Hester Prynne, or Hamlet. Huck is not an archetype or a stereotype. Huck’s voice, and his famous “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” declaration, make him a unique and fully realized individual. According to Hemmingway, at least, that focus on an individual voice was the birth of American literature, and what makes its tradition different from its European forefathers.

Macy Palmer is Huck Finn’s heir. The adventure, for all its gripping suspense and clever originality, isn’t what makes Total Oblivion, More or Less such a triumph. In Macy, Alan DeNiro has created a unique and compelling voice spoken by a compelling and all-too-real teen girl—one like the teens we all see at any Starbuck’s and every local mall. She is smart, clear-eyed, and mordantly sarcastic. She’s often petulant and resentful, but ultimately resilient and even heroic. Most of all, even when facing the loss of all she knows, she is intensely and acutely alive.

Maybe, as Hemmingway declares, the ending of Huckleberry Finn is faked. In the end Huck goes home again, full circle back to the starting point, and his monumental decisions and soul-deep changes don’t seem to matter much. Macy has no such luxury. There’s no going home for her, and the promises of safety are illusions. That makes her story heartbreaking and heroic, and offers us a unique and terrific read.

Left Hand Brewing Company’s Milk Stout

Try Left Hand Milk Stout

Several months ago, I tried Left Hand Brewing Company’s Milk Stout at the Decatur Craft Beer Festival, and it was love at first swallow. I was lucky enough to find it again at two of my favorite spots: The Marlay House Irish Pub (formerly the Grange Pub) in Decatur, and in bottles at the Candler Park Market, just a few blocks from my house.

To be honest, I’d been afraid that, when I chanced upon it again, the reality wouldn’t match my fond memories. There’s something about the Decatur Beer Festival that just makes everything seem better. I needn’t have worried. Honestly, this fine brew matches Highland’s amazing Oatmeal Stout on my list of the best stouts brewed in America.

Like all good stouts, it pours a very dark brown, almost mahogany black, color with minimal head. The first tastes are of the smoky, roasted grains and malt with hints of coffee (or even espresso) and chocolate. But what sets this stout apart are the milk sugars added, which add a sweet, smooth finish that is delightfully complex and exceptionally drinkable. It’s not nearly as heavy as most stouts, but it has enough body to please, and the sweetness balances the slight bitterness of the hoppy finish.

If you’re drinking this in a session, you’ll probably want to start here. More robust stouts will overpower it. It’s also a terrific brew to enjoy with food—from a good pot of chili, a steak, or a nice plate of roast beef, or even a selection of quality cheeses. Or heck, just enjoy it on its own. It’s a terrific choice for stout lovers—and even for those who find stout a little too, well, stout and prefer lighter brews.

Most critics seem to rate Left Hand Brewery’s Milk Stout a B+ or an A. I’d give it a solid A. This is a brew I intend to keep on hand, especially in the winter months. That said, I’m enjoying one right now, and it’s May. Why wait?

Jake’s Hot Fudge and Capobianco’s

Visit Jake’s Ice Cream and Capobianco’s at the Irwin Street Market

A week or two ago, I reviewed Jake’s Ice Cream at the Irwin Street Market. In short, I declared Jake’s Ice Cream, made by hand in very small batches, to be the best I’ve ever tried, period. I also mentioned how much I adore the Irwin Street Market space, with its cozy nooks (perfect for conversation with a few friends or for settling in with a good book or a laptop), eclectic mix of businesses, and hip urban vibe. It is completely unpretentious, comfortable, and wonderful.

I had only one problem … Jake’s had no hot fudge. For an ice cream shop, that just seemed, well, wrong. It’s like that one blemish that keeps it from perfection. I needn’t have worried.

The very next day, I received a message from Jake Rothschild himself, the Jake, Jake of Jake’s. Jake assured me that the rumors were true. Homemade hot fudge was on the way, and sooner rather than later. In fact, if I would be willing to come down and serve as the official taster, Jake would name the final hot fudge recipe after me.

What could I do? A blogger’s work is never done. Since I take my responsibilities very seriously, I agreed. Someone, after all, has to do it. The whole name thing, of course, has nothing to do with it.

Not to kill the suspense, but since I was the official taster with at least some influence over the final recipe, and the product is named for me, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that the review is (spoiler alert!) going to be a positive one. The simple truth is, the reality far exceeded my expectations. It is, quite simply, the best I’ve ever tasted.

When I arrived at the Irwin Street Market, Jake led me back to his secret laboratory (it looks suspiciously like a kitchen). There, he set me up on a stool, and went to work. First, he had me try his chocolate syrup. I wasn’t especially excited about that, to be honest, but much to my surprise, it was amazing. Seeing my surprise, Jake explained: “it’s not made with corn syrup. The stuff you’re used to … that’s all corn syrup.” After that, I expected Jake to use the chocolate syrup as a base for the hot fudge, but not so much.

Jake started from scratch, adding heavy cream, real vanilla, and two kinds of gourmet chocolate chips (semi-sweet and dark) to a great pot … along with a few other ingredients that I honestly couldn’t track. A few minutes later, the first batch was ready. I was prepared to offer my expert analysis and a few suggestions for improvement, but honestly … I had nothing to say. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect. It was sweet, sure, but not so sweet that I couldn’t taste the waves of subtle flavor in the melted chocolate. This is, I think, key. Too sweet, and all you taste is, well, sweetness. It overpowers the flavor. Nor was it too bitter. That’s even worse. Häagen-Dazs, I’m looking at you.

Next, texture. Too thick, and the hot fudge thickens into a globby mess. Too thin, and it might as well be chocolate syrup. Once again, Jake nailed it, and on the first try. Sure, other variations were explored, but the first batch was the one. Of course, one more critical test remained. How would this concoction hold up over ice cream?

We tried it over Brown Sugah Vanilla (my favorite) and Ginger. The Ginger was surprising … it had the sharpness of real ginger with the creamy smoothness of homemade ice cream, an excellent combination. In both cases, the hot fudge passed with flying colors. It enhanced, without overwhelming, the subtle flavors of the ice cream. I could clearly taste the real vanilla and the ginger, as well as the wonderful, chocolatey complexity of the fudge.

Just to be sure, I tried it again when Jake wasn’t present. (Like I said, a blogger’s work is never done, and someone has to do it.) My wife and I took my folks after dinner on Mother’s Day, and once again, the hot fudge (this time, I tried it with the Sin Oh Man) did not disappoint. There truly is something to be said for foods that are handcrafted, in small batches, in a real kitchen. There is a complexity and, frankly, a freshness that factories just can’t match. Give it a try. I think you’ll be surprised.

Speaking of handmade, the Irwin Street Market also boasts a bakery called Capobianco’s, which bills itself as “the King of Cannolis.” That made seem audacious, but they’ve earned the coronation. The cannolis are simply fantastic. The pastry is light and wonderful, and the fillings of sweetened, whipped ricotta and chocolate chips are to die for.

Capobianco’s also offers a surprising (and constantly evolving) list of variations, including chocolate dipped (I suspect Jake may have something to do with that chocolate sauce, although that’s just speculation), chocolate mint, and even blueberry. The blueberry is amazing. When I was tasting Jake’s Hot Fudge, I overheard Franky Capobianco, the baker himself, ordering fresh mango. That’s a variety I can’t wait to try.

I think what I like best about Capobianco’s —seriously, maybe even more than the baked treats themselves—is the fact that it’s a family business using recipes that date back centuries. Franky himself is usually present, greeting all comers like old friends. His obvious pride and enthusiasm is contagious. To be honest, I’d never though of Cannoli as something I’d go out of my way for … it was always just that desert you got at Italian restaurants. Thanks to Franky and his handcrafted creations, I know better now. I’m glad I do.

I think I’ll head over to the Irwin Street Market today to get some writing done over a good mug of fresh coffee. And then I’ll face the hard decision … do I fuel the muse with cannoli or ice cream? May I always be faced with such dilemmas.

More blogs are coming soon … one or two new beers and a book or two. Stay tuned, and let me know what you think. Please share this site if you don’t mind.

Jake’s Ice Cream at the Irwin Street Market

Visit Jake’s Ice Cream at the Irwin Street Market

I first discovered Jake’s Ice Cream about six or seven years ago (thanks to my pal Katy) and I’ve loved it ever since. It is, quite frankly, the best I’ve ever had, bar none. And believe me, I’ve tried quite a bit. I love good ice cream. Jake’s is made by hand in small batches, and while it’s much harder than soft serve, it’s still softer than most. It actually tastes like what you might get out of a real, honest-to-God, old-fashioned churn at home, if you had the genius to create such amazing recipes as Chocolate Slap Yo Mama and Brown Sugah Vanilla.

The flavors are amazing and constantly changing. My favorite, the astonishingly delicious Brown Sugah Vanilla, is usually available, although some of the other varieties of vanilla, such Yo Daddy’s Vanilla, Honey Vanilla, and Vanilla Malt, are a little more rare. Not to worry, though, they are all terrific. I am especially fond of cinnamon ice cream … and have more than once visited Jake’s and found two different cinnamons available at the same time. In all, I’ve found five different cinnamons at one time or another, including Cinnamon Chocolate, Cinnamon Roll (with real pieces of yummy cinnamon rolls), Cinnamon Kenya AA (cinnamon with coffee!), Cinnamon Apple Piescream, and just plain Cinnamon. I’m not sure I could pick a favorite. Although in the interest of journalistic investigation, I intend to keep trying.

Speaking of coffee, there are at least six varieties of coffee ice cream, and nine chocolates—from the simple but terrific Just Plain Chocolate to the exotic (and rather surprising) Mexican Hot Chocolate, with adds a bite of hot pepper. Don’t laugh. It’s unusual, sure, but amazing. The point is, there is always something new to try, although it’s hard to say no to old favorites, since you never know if they’ll be there next time. I haven’t seen the Root Beer Float variety in ages.

Not to worry, though. Whatever happens to be there … it’ll be wonderful. The problem, alas, is making a choice. Thankfully, American genius has concocted the two scoop/two flavor cup or cone. Give Jake’s a try. I challenge you to find better ice cream.

When I first discovered Jake’s, they were located in a funky old house on Church Street in Decatur, Georgia, just a block or two from the Square. They later moved to a space on Clairmont, which was fine but just never quite the same. Now, they’ve moved to the Irwin Street Market, which I think is my favorite space of all. Jake’s shares the space with a breakfast nook and lunch counter, a coffee shop and bakery, a few shelves of homemade pasta sauces, and a market.

Aside from Jake’s, of course, I’ve only tried the bakery. I recommend it highly. It’s run by the baker himself and his wife, and their obvious pride in their cannoli is well-justified. The coffee has always been hot, fresh, and well-brewed. The other treats look almost too inviting.

The space itself includes lots of comfy chairs and tables, perfect for lingering over breakfast, a coffee, or an ice cream with friends, a laptop, or a good book. It’s deliciously unpretentious, relaxed, and welcoming—spacious and wonderfully quiet, perfect for reading, working, or conversation. It’s a cozy, welcoming space—one of my very favorite urban hangouts in a city that is rich with them. I can’t wait to go back and try the breakfast. I’m planning to do some writing there this week. I hope to see you there.

One complaint … Jake’s doesn’t (yet) have hot fudge. Granted, their vanillas are all so good that they don’t really need it, but somehow, it seems like a must. But don’t worry. Rumor suggests that homemade hot fudge is in the works. I’m looking forward.

UPDATE: the hot fudge may be coming sooner rather than later. Jake himself has informed me that testing of various recipes begins this week. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Throw-back SciFi in “Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck” by L. S. King

Read Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck

First, a note of disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.

L. S. King’s novel Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck began life as a serial somewhere out there in the Interwebs on a site called Ray Gun Revival. Ray Gun Revival is an online pulp, if you will, offering throw-back stories inspired by the Golden Age of science fiction, when heroes faced forbidding planets and space monsters armed not with phasers or blasters, but with good, old-fashioned ray guns. Not surprisingly, the stories there aren’t exactly cutting edge. What they are is fun. Refreshingly so.

In Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck, a cowboy and a space pirate team up when both are threatened by gangsters, shadowy government types, and an insane emperor. That’s right. This is a story about a cowboy and a space pirate. How cool is that? Happily, the book lives up to all the unabashedly cliff-hanging, popcorn-eating, silly-grin-inducing fun of the premise.

The science is plausible — something rare in Golden Age throw backs — and the world-building is closer to Star Wars and Firefly than to the art deco-inspired environs of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. No worries. The heart and feel is the same. The roots show a bit. Since Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck started out as a serialized collection of stories, the plot is not as tight as most of us have come to expect from modern science fiction. Characters that seem like the may become important don’t reappear, and heavies that seem destined to become major threats are dispatched much sooner than one might expect. In fact, my one complaint is the lack of a villain strong enough to be a match for our heroes. There’s no Darth Vader to tie the episodes together.

None of that matters. Like the movie serials of yesteryear, when narrators used words like, um, yesteryear, the emphasis is on moving the characters from one wild adventure to the next.

More, the arc that makes Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck work is the at first reluctant friendship that grows between the two leads. Imagine what might have happened in Star Wars had Luke met Han in that bar without Obi Wan and some urgent mission. Imagine them slowing coming to respect, and even like each other and they drift planet to planet, constantly finding new trouble to get themselves out of. The growth of that friendship is what keeps you smiling in spite of yourself and turning the pages.

A few story threads are hinted at but not explored—they are, in fact, left tantalizingly open for a sequel. And that’s just fine, because something this much fun deserves to be continued.

Intown Acupuncture

Visit Intown Acupuncture

The title of this blog promises reviews of pretty much anything, right? Well. Okay then.

For years, I’ve suffered from severe seasonal allergies. Actually, I’m not sure severe is a strong enough term, but I don’t want to be overly graphic in a family blog. Enough to say that it had been years since I’d been able to enjoy spring or fall.

As my wife will tell you, I always called them the killing seasons. She even had to take me to the emergency room a time or two when my symptoms got so bad that I literally couldn’t breathe. I once joked with my pal Bill Shaouy that I could never be the Braves stadium announcer, because I’d always start the season on the disabled list. Frankly, they made my life utterly miserable for at least four months of the year.

Needless to say, I tried just about every remedy available, both prescription and over the counter. I literally exhausted every option my doctor had to offer. Nothing worked. Nothing.

Finally, one of my wife’s friends (thank you, Mary Frances Jones!) told me that she used to have the same problem. Now, she swears by … acupuncture. Seriously. Acupuncture. I was desperate enough to try anything, despite my general distaste for anything involving needles.

I made an appointment with Laura Greiner at Intown Acupuncture, located just a mile and a half or so from my home. First, I have say that the experience met none of my preconceived expectations. The practitioners were not male or Asian, they didn’t wear long red silken robes decorated with Chinese symbols and characters, and they didn’t have those little pointy gray beards. The needles were not long and gold, nor were they tapped in with a little hammer. Apparently, Hollywood has misguided me.

Laura Greiner is professional, kind, and skilled, and happy to educate. As near as I can tell, the other practitioners there are as well.

The needles are small, and barely break the skin. But … it works. Now, I’d been warned that I wouldn’t see results after the first or second treatment. It would take three or four. That turned out to be true. Since that fourth treatment, I haven’t needed allergy medication. Seriously. Not a single tablet or Albuterol shot. I still have a symptom or two, but not enough to make me lose my voice, hack up a lung, or (best of all) miss a wink of sleep. I doubt I would have exhausted even one of those little pocket packages of tissue.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with one being no result at all and 10 being stones to bread, Red Sea parting, and pillars of fire in the desert, I’d put it at around an 8. Given that my insurance covers it, I might even push it up to a 9. I now go eight times a year for “refresher” treatments—four times in the spring and four in the fall.

It’s good for more than allergies, though. I have friends who swear by it for everything from fertility to back pain. I can attest to the energy/mood boost and the overall feeling of well-being. Not too long ago, my dad suffered what appeared to be a very minor stroke. Since then, he’s suffered occasional fainting spells, difficulty walking or getting in and out of chairs, and a host of other, similar symptoms. After batteries of test from a small army of specialists, he wasn’t closer to learning what was wrong … or how to treat it.

So I made him an appointment with Laura Greiner, and (another “9″ miracle) managed to talk him into going. Unlike me, his results were immediate and dramatic. He’s been twice now (two consecutive Fridays) and is planning to go at least twice more. If he continues to improve as much as he did after the first two treatments, they may have to lock the doors to keep him away.

To be honest, I have no idea how or why acupuncture works, and I certainly don’t advocate it as a substitute for traditional medicine. I don’t know anyone who does. But if you have lingering issues that more familiar remedies haven’t soothed, give them a call. Or get a recommendation for a licensed acupuncturist near you (I wouldn’t go to one without a recommendation — any more than I would choose a doctor without a recommendation) and ask. Who knows? You might be surprised.

“The Ruling Sea” by Robert V. S. Redick

Read “The Ruling Sea”

This is a short review, folks, largely because pretty much everything I said in my review of The Red Wolf Conspiracy also applies to its sequel, The Ruling Sea. Once again, Robert V. S. Redick has created a fantasy that recaptures the swashbuckling adventure that I first fell in love with in my youth in books like Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers, The Sea-Hawk, Captain Blood, and the wonderful, marvelous tales of the ever-brilliant but woefully under-appreciated Lloyd Alexander. Yet once again, despite the familiar elements, The Ruling Sea doesn’t come across as a pastiche; it feels terrifically fresh. And, again, it’s packed with page after page of rollicking fun.

Like The Red Wolf Conspiracy, The Ruling Sea is set aboard the great sailing vessel Chathrand, a veritable fortress on the waves, last of her kind. The story picks up right where the previous volume left off, launching us directly into the adventure. Again, there is swashbuckling action, deft conspiracy, double-crosses, and unexpected twists aplenty. This time, Redick adds budding, forbidden romance, a secret island witch, a monster on a jungle island, battle at sea with cannons ablaze, and a whole lot more.

Indeed, there are times when I think Redick must have made a wish list of all the things he’d like to read in a favorite “under the covers with a flashlight” novel and then twisted his plot until he found a way to work them all in. As a result, the novel feels rather episodic at times. Some chapters, or at least groups of chapters, feel like complete adventures as well as a part of a larger, sweeping saga. Nonetheless, the well crafted, complex characters, both major and minor, and their evolving, engaging arcs tie the episodes together and kept me turning the pages long after bedtime. They are terrific, and I loved spending time with them. Now that the last page is turned, I find myself missing them all—as much as I miss those dear heroes from Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain and Westmark books. Thankfully, Redick’s next novel in the series is coming soon. I’ve already preordered my copy.

I should mention that the book has a much more evocative title in England: The Rats the the Ruling Sea. I’m not sure why it was changed, save that rats play only a minor part in the story. I suppose rats just don’t sell as well in the United States as they do in the UK. Go figure.

As always, let me know what you think, okay?

“The Red Wolf Conspiracy” by Robert V. S. Redick

Read The Red Wolf Conspiracy

I’ve noticed that more than a few reviewers, especially those who write jacket blurbs, have compared Robert V. S. Redick’s The Red Wolf Conspiracy to George R. R. Martin’s magnificent Song of Ice and Fire series. Honestly, I think that’s a little unfair. Sure, both are fine achievements in world building and character creation, and both authors sport an extra initial. And, uh, both write fantasy, I guess. To me, that’s where the superficial resemblance ends. Redick doesn’t match Martin’s depth, complexity, or stark, brutal beauty. Nor does he try.

What Redick has accomplished in The Red Wolf Conspiracy is something that seems all too rare in the fantasy genre these days. He’s written a book that’s flat out fun.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy is in many ways a throw back to old-school romantic adventure. Since comparisons are inevitable, Redick’s storytelling reminds me less of Martin and more of the seagoing adventure of Rafael Sabatini or Robert Lewis Stevenson with the intrigue, clever plotting, wit, and, well, panache of Alexandre Dumas—with a liberal dose of the late, great Lloyd Alexander’s ability to create lovable, complex characters that manage to do heroic things not just despite their flaws, but often because of them. Yet despite the abundance of familiar ingredients, Redick has crafted a story that feels altogether fresh.

In a world of great sea-going empires, The Red Wolf Conspiracy tells of a voyage of a massive sailing ship, Chathrand. The last of her kind, the secrets of her construction were lost ages ago. Aboard we meet Pazel, the young tarboy cursed with a strange gift, spirited Thasha, destined to be a treaty bride whose arranged marriage is meant to bring peace to warring empires, and a host of engaging characters that includes an intelligent rat, a hidden clan of doll-size warriors, a mink-wizard from another world, a sinister captain, a conspiring magician, a deadly spy, a heroic warrior, a mysterious doctor, a mad god-king, and more—all fascinating, all bound in webs of conspiracy.

Once the great ship’s voyage begins, the pace is relentless. In fact, some critical events happen “off screen,” and we only hear about them as the the characters upon whom our attention is focused at that moment learn of them—Redick never wastes a chapter, or even a page, going back. The story is always moving forward. It’s a complex structure, and it works, leaving us breathless, even though at times I wished we could have found some magical, impossible way to follow more than one set of characters at once.

My only “complaint” is that when I reached the last pages, I discovered that The Red Wolf Conspiracy is the first of a series. While the novel ends in a satisfying place, it leaves the reader aching to know what happens next. I am happy to report, however, that the sequel, The Ruling Sea (in the UK, it has the much more interesting title of The Rats and the Ruling Sea) has just been released. The third book is coming to the UK in September (thank you, http://www.amazon.co.uk/) and here in the USA in February, 2011. But there are worse things an author can do than to leave readers wanting more.

More than a few rather obvious events never occur—the massive cannons on the deck are never fired; swords are seldom crossed. What does happen is just as good, though, and after all … Redick has to save something for his sequels. I can’t wait. As always, please let me know what you think.

“The Angel’s Game” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Read “The Angel’s Game”

Yesterday, I reviewed Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s brilliant novel, The Shadow of the Wind. Continuing with the “holy crap this is good” theme, today I’m taking a look at his follow up, The Angel’s Game.

While both The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game are completely stand-alone novels, they are subtly connected. The two novels both a part of what Zafón says will eventually be a four-book cycle of loosely connected stories with overlapping narratives and characters. Either can be read alone, but reading both makes each a deeper and richer experience. In fact, I read The Angel’s Game at the same time that my wife Carol and I were reading The Shadow of the Wind aloud to one one another, a strange and wonderful experience.

The Angel’s Game has quite a lot in common with its predecessor. Familiar locations recur, such as the mysterious and tantalizing Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the dear, familiar, dusty coziness of Sempere and Son book shop. Familiar characters appear, if only briefly—welcome reunions with old friends. And once again, the true star of the work is the poetry of Zafón’s heartbreakingly lovely language —every sentence is a treasure—and the richly gothic and atmospheric streets of Zafón’s Barcelona, beautiful, seductive, and dangerous, as vivid as any gas-lit corner of Dickens’ London.

The differences, though are  stark. The Angel’s Game is a much darker book, with grizzly murders, doomed romance, and subtle, shadowed, edge-of-your-vision elements of the supernatural. If the mystery in The Shadow of the Wind leaned precariously toward the noir end of the spectrum, The Angel’s Game makes a leap. At times it moves close to old-school gothic horror. It’s never graphic; it never even comes close. It’s certainly not the gruesome slasher porn of today. It’s a subtler dread that calls upon the imagination to ponder what might be lurking in midnight’s deepest shadows—those in the city and those in the heart. The Angel’s Game builds dread through hints and atmosphere, making a truly spin-tingling read that haunts the heart long after the last page is turned.

It’s not all fear, though. There is beauty, too, and love. Certainly that. Beauty makes the dread that much worse, and the hope that much dearer. The theme of the book is introduced in the first lines:

“A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood, and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on, he is doomed, and his soul has a price.”

The novel explores, subtly, long before we’ve begun to realize it’s doing so, what it means to sell one’s soul, the many ways we do so, what is gained, and what is lost. Is the gain worth the cost? I’m not sure even the characters themselves could answer that. The question lingers, haunting like the memory of a nightmare, or a fond wish. To me, one of the strengths of The Angel’s Game is that it raises questions and only hints at the answers, leaving the reader to interpret in a sort of storytelling collaboration between artist and audience.

Some of the reviews I’ve read have complained about the ambiguity of the ending. Honestly, I hadn’t even noticed the ambiguity until I read about it those reviews. Most of those critics, I think, seem to expect some kind of science-fictiony explanation for everything that’s happened. Like God is an alien computer or something like that. That sometimes works brilliantly in a novel like say, Dune, say, or Hyperion. Indeed, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion (one story in two volumes, both of which which rank among my very favorites) together are a kind of cosmic science fiction dealing with the ultimate mysteries of how the universe is structured and how reality functions—although personally, I think Hyperion’s latter sequels, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, weaken the first two novels by explaining far too much and making the grand sweep too mundane. I digress.

The point is, The Angel’s Game is not that kind of book. It works according to something akin to dream logic. To me, the ending is satisfying and thematically appropriate, and it’s one that I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come. Although I confess I am eager to see what Zafón will do in later volumes. Something this good deserves to continue. When Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s next book is released at last, I’ll be first in line. I hope I’ll see you there. Don’t miss these books. And please be sure to let me know what you think, okay?

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Read The Shadow of the Wind

I’ve wanted to review Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s brilliant and lovely The Shadow of the Wind for a while now. I’ve hesitated largely because I needed to think of something to say other than simply, holy crap this is good!

I first read The Shadow of the Wind when it was first published in the United States—it was already a best seller in Europe—about four years ago or so. I’ve knew at once it was a book I would reread. Over the holidays, faced with some sixteen hours in the car with two trips to Morristown Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama, my wife and I decided to take turns reading it aloud to each other. I wondered, frankly, if it could possibly be as good as I remembered. It was. No, wait. More than that. It was even better.

The Shadow of the Wind begins with one of my very favorite first lines: “I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.” That’s a pretty hard act to follow, as first sentences go, but the rest of the book, every word, lives up to it. The Shadow of the Wind is, without question, a book lover’s book, filled with dusty old bookshops and lost volumes holding terrible secrets. The very air is heavy with the intoxicating scent of dusty leather, musky old paper, and ink. The language is lovely; line after line, even whole paragraphs, demand to be read aloud and savored.

It’s also a book for lovers of a good story. The richly gothic-thriller plot is Dickensian in the best possible way, filled with surprising twists, fog-shrouded, crumbling old buildings, and labyrinthine, gas-lit streets. Nonetheless, despite its setting—a gothic Barcelona of the mid Twentieth Century—it’s decidedly modern—again in the best possible way, with a profound understanding of character, psychology, and archetype. Zafón’s characters, from comic eccentrics and earth-bound goddesses to struggling literary types and sinister killers, are fascinating, well-drawn, and unforgettable. The Shadow of the Wind is also a hell of a page turner, rich with suspense, mystery, and dark, forbidden romance.

The Shadow of the Wind is a gothic mystery story, certainly, but it is also a love story (or rather, several love stories), a story about the passion for books and stories, a bawdy work of comedy, and certainly a thriller. It’s pages are filled with the wide spectrum of human emotion and experience: love, hate, intrigue, coming of age and (of course) loss of innocence, humor, cowardice, courage, villainy, cruelty, compassion, regret, murder, incest, and, ultimately, redemption. Add to this delicious alchemy characters who come alive and leap off the page, and you have a book that resonates, deeply in the heart, long after the last page is turned.

If I have one complaint, it is that the end seems rather sudden, given the buildup. The events are all foreshadowed and certainly earned, but they seem to happen all too quickly. We are only given a few hints of aftermath; I ached to spend more time with the surviving characters, people I’d come to care about, to see how (or if) they healed, and what became of them. We are given enough, though, and when a book leaves you wanting more, well, there are worse problems.

Reviewers have compared Zafón to such luminaries as Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and, of course, Dickens. That’s a little unfair, since it sets the readers expectations pretty darn high.I am happy to report Zafón lives up to the comparison, while forging an utterly unique voice all his own. Just last week, I read Zafón’s follow-up, The Angel’s Game, a very welcome to milieu introduced so marvelously in The Shadow of the Wind. Like the previous volume, em>The Angel’s Game is a book to savor and treasure. I’ll review it soon. As soon as I can think of something to say other than, holy crap this is good!

“Last Night in Twisted River” by John Irving

Read Last Night in Twisted River

I’ll start with by answering the question that (I imagine) John Irvings’ many fans—assuming that there are any who haven’t read this yet—are asking. Yes, the John Irving who wrote Last Night in Twisted River is the good John Irving, the one who produced The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, not the John Irving who produced the flawed (albeit still interesting) Until I Find You.

In a television interview about Until I Find You (the vague citation is due to the fact that I can’t remember where I saw it, but I think it was this one), John Irving talked about rewriting the novel and removing the first=person narration to make it less personal—to distance himself, a bit, from the fire of the somewhat autobiographical events. Alas, it also distanced us, the readers. I am happy to report that Last Night in Twisted River is the product of an author completely unafraid to brave the danger and plunge deeply into the river that twists through his own psyche. The journey, part Twain, part Dickens, and all Irving, is one well worth taking.

Oh, and the answer to one other question that Irving fans will be asking: yes, there are bears in Last Night in Twisted River, although the remain just off stage. There’s even a wrestler or two, and the shadow of boarding school.

The novel begins at a mid-20th Century logging camp, where a series of three tragedies, each more gut-wrenching than the last, sends widower and camp cook Dominic Baciagalupo and his son Danny on a rootless journey into exile. The rest of the novel follows father and son over five decades as they travel to a Boston Italian restaurant, an Iowa City Chinese place, and finally to a Toronto French cafe, all while never really leaving the past behind.

As they travel, Danny evolves into a distinctly Irving-esque writer. The novel is structured in a winding sort of way that keeps twisting (like, well, a river) back around on itself, moving backward and forward in time to show how events, both accidental and arranged, shape, wound, and temper the life and career of a budding novelist. Yes, that makes the novel seem at times redundant, while at others morsels of plot are dangled in a tantalizing way—and we don’t see the consequences until much later. That didn’t bother me. The stark, lean sentences and well-crafted main characters earned enough trust to keep me turning the pages. Sometimes late into the night.

It’s not a perfect novel. Outside of Danny and his father, and the old logger Ketchum, few of the characters seem to grow beyond one dimension. They are types. The novel feels a bit self-indulgent at times, and critics will certainly be combing the pages for hints of autobiography. Nonetheless, it’s still an utterly fascinating read. If you’re not an Irving fan, I can’t say that this is the book that’s likely to change your mind. Thankfully, if you are a fan, it’s not likely to change your mind, either. In many ways, it’s a return to form. If there are elements that will remind you of earlier novels, and there most likely will be, they are viewed (or reviewed) from a fresh enough perspective to make them as interesting as ever. Irving certainly isn’t the first author to revisit a theme. I suppose that, like a Dickens story, there are elements (or archetypes) that make an Irving novel distinct, a part of his personal mythology, as it were. Revisiting expands, rather than diminishes, them.

This is an Irving novel that belongs on the shelf with Garp, Owen Meany, and The Cider House Rules. It’s quintessential Irving, and it’s a welcome return of an author re-achieving, if not actually exceeding, his previous heights. It’s a fascinating, revealing, and engaging read, and one I am certain that I will return to again.

Great first sentences in literature

As both a reader and a writer, I’ve come to appreciate the power of a truly excellent first sentence. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the most memorable and best-loved books ever written have truly amazing first sentences. In many cases, you can name the book just from the power of those all-important opening words. Think of Melville’s “Call Me Ishmael,” or Dickens’s “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Classic. Unforgettable.

Here are fifteen of my very favorites. Trust me, every single one of these books lives up to the promise of that first sentence.

14.) “Marley was dead, to begin with.” A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

13.) “He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful.” Underworld: A Novel by Don DeLillo.

12.) “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

The parody in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! is almost as good. Seriously.

11.) Tie: “First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.”
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

And:

“It was a pleasure to burn.” Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury is an absolute master of sentences, period. No surprise that a couple of his first ones should make the list.

10.) “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.

That’s simple but amazing. I can still remember vividly being eight years old, and being utterly fascinated to find out what a hobbit might be, and why one lived in a hole. The next paragraphs paint a portrait of a warm, comfortable place in the most vividly imagined other world in all of literature. Yeah, I’m going out on that limb.

9.) “A screaming comes across the sky.” Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

An amazing start to an amazing book. This is the heir to Joyce, Faulkner, and Proust, but it’s a surprisingly accessible book, and well worth the effort. This one is important.

8.) “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” 1984 by George Orwell.

This is a book that seems to be more relevant as the year in its title gets smaller in the rearview mirror. It’s a terrific beginning that puts the reader instantly into the hyperreality of the story.

7.) “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.” Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Say what you want about the ending, but all of American literature begins here. Shakespeare may have invented character (as opposed to stereotype or archetype) but Twain invented the individual voice. I never claimed that this blog was a hyperbole-free zone, but I stand by that one.

6.) “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

How can you not love that? How? Can you think of a more heartbreaking, and utterly fascinating, opening? It’s a truth that echos in a hollow place deep in the gut, and it makes anxious, in more than one sense of the word, to read more.

5.) “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” The Trial by Franz Kafka.

So, what’s the book about? Just read the first sentence. And stop there. I dare you.

4.) “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to be while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts.

As gripping as that sentence is, the rest of the first paragraph just gets better:

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when its all you have got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

The book is just delicious. Just delicious. Gregory David Roberts writes with the grace and fire of Pat Conroy.

3.) “I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.” The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As a book lover who adores finding those lost, dusty treasures that time has overlooked, that sentence alone was enough to make Carlos Ruiz Zafón one of my very favorite writers. This book and it’s follow up, <a href="The Angel’s Game“>The Angel’s Game, are not to be missed. Trust me.

2.) “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad, and that was his entire inheritance.” Scaramouche The King Maker by Raphael Sabatini.

What’s not to love? Swordplay, revolution, philosophy, romance, and an absolutely terrific first sentence. This one has it all. Sabatini, who also wrote The Sea-Hawk and Captain Blood, belongs on the shelf with the great Alexandre Dumas himself.

and… drum roll, please!

1.) “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

I think that sentence alone captures all the sadness and wistful, heartbreaking, magical joy that makes Gabriel García Márquez so utterly amazing.

And because you just can’t, can’t, talk about first sentences without mentioning this one:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer Lytton.

So what are your favorites? Writers, how important is a first sentence to you?

“The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia” by Laura Miller

Read The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia

I should start by pointing out that I am nobody’s skeptic. As a matter of fact, I consider myself very, if hardly conventionally, religious. That said, I read Salon co-founder Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia with a constant grin on my face, as passage after passage made me cry out with delight: “friend!” Here is someone who seems to not only understand the love I felt for C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, a love that still endures very deeply in my heart, but also my love of stories and reading. Indeed, she helped me understand that love better, and by consequence the person I am and the writer I hope to be.

The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia is a hard book to define. It’s part literary criticism, part biography, and part memoir. It’s also a very poignant meditation on the difference between reading as a child and reading as an adult, about what we lose and what we gain. Ms. Miller first read the Narnia stories with the deep love of a child. As she grew older, and was able to recognize the Christian themes that permeate the books, she felt betrayed — even tricked — by an author trying to “sneak” religion past her childish, unformed defenses. And yet as an agnostic adult, she circled back to the love she knew as a child. That journey is an especially moving one, and it tells us as much about the powerful and, yes, even defining relationship between reader and cherished book as it does about C. S. Lewis and the Narnia stories themselves. Which is to say, quite a lot.

As much as I adored exploring Narnia in Ms. Miller’s company—and I truly did, and will do so again—we don’t see eye to eye on a whole wardrobe full of issues. I found her criticisms of Tolkien, for example, to be a little harsh. And she has developed a view of Christianity that, frankly, has little to recommend it—as is as far removed from my own experiences as the deserts in the south of Calormen are from the giant wastes in the far north (a little Narnia reference for you. If you haven’t read the books, well, it’s just way far. That’s all you need to know. But seriously, read the books). But ultimately, those points are minor, and I found Ms. Miller’s insights fascinating. She doesn’t gloss over the points that critics are wont to attack—the apparent sexism, for example—but she deals with them in a frank and honest way that only deepened my appreciation for Lewis’s works. Her love for Lewis’s work is undiminished by examination. If anything, it is strengthened. The love of a child assumes that the object of love is perfect and above reproach and criticism. The love of an adult sees past flaws—acknowledging, never ignoring them—and loves more deeply for that insight.

Her research is excellent, her interviews with other readers and writers are well selected and insightful, and she leaps from idea to idea with seamless grace. In fact, the sections on the differences between allegory and metaphor are worth the price alone. She understands what Lewis meant by joy and longing more than many scholars and Christians I know. After reading her book, I felt like I’d spent a weekend in deep conversation with a person I’d just met—one with whom I happened to discover a shared and wonderful past—and one I thought of as an instant friend.

Whether you are religious, agnostic, atheist, or somewhere in between, I highly recommend The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia to all who loved the Narnia books as a child, or who has come to love them as an adult, or even to those who simply love books, reading, stories, and storytelling. It’s a special book. It’s certainly made me want to reread the Narnia books. With the holidays approaching, now seems like the perfect time.

I’d love to know what you think.

“European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents” by Warren Breckman

Read European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

Warren Breckman’s European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents takes an interesting approach: it allows readers to discover a topic as historians would, but reading through the actual documents of the period, including literature, essays, letters, and more. A fairly brief introduction—some forty pages—gives a very thorough overview and introduction. After that, the period is the reader’s to explore.

At the dawn of the 19th Century, one of the great cultural shifts of the modern era swept western Europe the Romantic movement. Dr. Breckman’s anthology gathers an array of insights into the history of Romanticism as more than an artistic and literary fad, but also as a politica and philosophical movement that had surprising and wide-ranging influence on modern views of art, science, and even religion.

Dr. Breckman includes both creative and critical writings from writers throughout Western Europe, and even a small (black and white, alas) selection of visual art, showing the crucial and apparently contradictory roles of swelling nationalism and transnational connections that made Romanticism a movement of such wide-reaching scope. The book also includes a detailed chronology and a selected bibliography.

I confess that, aside from the introduction, this isn’t a volume I intend to read cover to cover. Nonetheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed diving in here and there, like a culinary novice at a gourmet buffet (I know that’s a contradiction; work with me here), and sampling a little of this and a little of that. I am looking to doing more of that in the future. This is a terrific little overview that has made me curious to explore more.

I’m not really qualified to judge the skill of the collection. I can only see what’s here, and I don’t have sufficient knowledge to know what’s left out. But what’s here is fascinating, and I applaud this approach to presenting the history of a movement and its impact both to students and casual readers.

“The Magicians” by Lev Grossman

Read The Magicians: A Novel

When I first browsed through Lev Grossman’s The Magicians at Blue Elephant Bookshop, I knew it was a book that was coming home with me. The jacket blurb promised a book for adults who, as young readers, had adored the Narnia, Oz, and Harry Potter stories, and books like T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. And indeed, The Magicians draws liberally and lovingly from those sources. There is a magic school filled with eccentric professors and strange wonders, teaching by turning students into animals (as Merlyn does with the Wart in The Once and Future King), and even a hidden fantasy world accessed through a sleepy “between” world filled with pools, a motif familiar to anyone who has read C. S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew, one of the best of the Narnia books.

Even the characters in The Magicians grew up reading and loving a series of fantasy books, stories of a magical land called Fillory—one filled with quests, talking animals, mythical beats, and walking gods. That fond, nostalgic love is one of the reasons we are so drawn to them. In our mind’s eyes, we find ourselves pointing, smiling, and shouting, “friend!”

But don’t get the idea that The Magicians is a mere pastiche. The Magicians is told from a decided, utterly (even ironically) original, and heartbreaking, adult point of view.

Every page is dripping with unabashed love for the stories that moved and changed us at formative periods in our lives. But nonetheless, The Magicians is utterly unsentimental. Brakebills, the magical college, is filled with marvels, of course. But it is also filled with the tedium, hard work, angst, sex, and alcohol abuse one might expect in a novel about MIT or Georgia Tech. When the characters discover that Fillory, the fantasy land they loved as children, is real, they find it fraught with very real dangers they are utterly unprepared to face. And therein lies the genius, and the heartbreak, of The Magicians.

In the fantasies we love, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia, for example, the characters may seem ordinary. But ultimately, they are heroic, larger than life. They are our idealized selves, the wish-fulfillment individuals we always hope we might be, or at least might someday become. The characters in The Magicians are flawed and all to close ordinary, everyday humanity. They are broken, wounded, and petulant, and they do selfish, petty things. They don’t mean to, or even want to, but that makes the heartbreak even more poignant. They learn, in the hardest way possible, that our careless, most casual fights are like spells—when the words are spoken, the world changes and people are hurt. Sometimes forever.

The hardest lesson of all for the characters The Magicians is that fulfilled wishes don’t necessarily lead to happiness. Fantasy, regardless of the individual merits of any one particular work, is often accused of being mere escapism (Professor Tolkien famously dismissed that criticism by suggesting that the only people for whom escape is a problem are jailers), and I myself can remember reading Narnia and wishing for the secret path or hidden gate that would open up and take me away to my imagined “real life” of heroism and adventure. In The Magicians, the gates open to places where defeat is likely, victory empty, and where good people die. The true gates to happiness, to maturity, to fulfillment, such as it is, lie within. It’s up to us to open them. Or not.

Looking back over this, I think I might have painted The Magicians a little unfairly. Like I said, it is utterly unsentimental, and it’s characters are flawed in all-too-human ways. But for all that, it is a charming book, one I raced through. The world it creates is fascinating and seductive. The characters, for all their wounds, are people you’ll want to spend time with. There are beauties in this book that you will long to experience. The story is gripping. You’ll remember those long-ago nights staying way too late to read under the covers with a flashlight. In spite of your very best intentions, you’ll find yourself caring, maybe a little too much.

And it is caring, of course, that leads to heartbreak.

Grocery Items: Bacon and Tomato Sauce

When I titled the blog, I was still intending to review mostly books. But since I left the the door open, and since the weekend is the time for grocery shopping (otherwise, you miss the really long lines, and the fact that they’re out of a lot of stuff), I’m going to pass along a few tips. Specifically, I highly recommend Wright Brand Bacon for my bacon-eating friends and Dei Fratelli Brand Tomato Sauce for everyone.

As many of you know, I am not the amazing chef that my wife Carol is. She can make pretty much anything, and typically starts with, you know, flower and yeast and things she picks out of the herb garden. Her cook usually involves a trip to the Farmers’ Market. My skills are more limited, but what I do (steaks and burgers on the grill or roast beef with Merlot Wine Sauce, for example, and absolutely amazing scrambled eggs—don’t laugh, God gave me a gift) I like to think I do pretty darn well. I cook the steaks over real wood, when I can, and my eggs are light and fluffy.

Okay, qualifications established.

But being a man, my speciality is, of course, chili. Sadly, I am not at liberty to divulge all of my secrets. But I will tell you this much: I used canned tomato sauce. I know, I know. Most recipes tell you to use diced tomatoes or even fresh ones. Don’t believe it. Canned tomato sauce gives an extra dimension of flavor and spice. Up until recently, I suffered under the belief that all canned tomato sauces were pretty much the same. I generally used Hunts, or even the Kroger or Publix store brands. They were just fine. And then, one happy day, I discovered Dei Fratelli brand tomato sauce.

Honestly, I not really sure what the difference is. It is nicely spiced, has a full, rich, and fresh taste (despite the fact that it comes from a can), and it adds a surprising but subtle sweetness that blends with the chili spices in a truly delicious way. I’d thought my chili had reached a plateau—if you’ll forgive the immodesty, how does one improve upon perfection? I am delighted to learn that there are still discoveries to make. Better still, I discovered it just in time for fall: chili weather!

Speaking of scrambled eggs, they are best served with bacon (or sage sausage, but I’m not reviewing that today). When it comes to bacon, I have to go with Wright Brand. It’s sliced thicker than most (or in fact, any) other brands that I’ve tried, and has a rich, bacony flavor that actually tastes even better than it smells. The secret (aside from the thick slices, which one cannot praise highly enough) is in the quality of the pork itself and the smoke. It’s smoked over real hardwood, and the result is terrific. They have four varieties: natural Hickory Smoked, Peppered, Applewood Smoked, and Maple. The applewood is far and away the best choice. Alas, it is also the most difficult to find.

I should note that my wife thinks the Hickory Smoked—the variety we buy the most often, is a little too salty. She has, however, been wrong before. Also, the size can be an issue. You have to use a very large pan (microwaved bacon is only for emergencies, of course), and you have to move the pan and the bacon around to ensure that the ends are properly cooked without overcooking the middle. Trust me. It’s worth the trouble.

Dei Fratelli Tomato Sauce
Wright Brand Bacon

The Book of Ratings and Fail Nation: like the Internet, only on paper!

Read Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails

Read The Book of Ratings: Opinions, Grades, and Assessments of Everything Worth Thinking About

Two of the funniest Web sites ever to make their way through the tubes of the Internets are, without question, the Book of Ratings (part of the sorely missed Brunching Shuttlecocks) and Failblog.org. When I say funny, I mean consistently laugh out loud funny, day after day, year after year. Funny once in a while is hard enough. All the time? Amazing. I’m happy to report that the books are every bit as funny.

The Book of Ratings, as you can likely guess from the title, rates things, offering grades from A+ to a very rare F on everything from Aspects of Bowling (shoes, beer, and even bowling itself) to sports and Superfriends. The commentary that accompanies is absolutely hilarious. The more recent video versions, in my humble opinion, aren’t quite as sharp as the good old text ones, but they still rise above the excellent bar. This is Daily Show level of funny.

If you haven’t yet discovered Failblog.org, shame on you. The site is updated several times a week with photos that have to be seen to be believed. I’d describe a few, but honestly, it’s probably better for everyone if you just take a couple of minutes and take a look for yourself. Go ahead. I’ll wait. When the laugher subsides, we’ll continue.

Okay? Now then. I mention these sites because some the best content from both sites has been repackaged into books. Sort of like print outs, but conveniently bound, and at a size that’s perfect for … well, anyplace where you might want a few good belly laughs as you, as my Uncle Roger would say, relax privately while spending a little quality time with yourself. And in living color! How cool is that?

Like I said, in both cases, the books are every bit as funny as the sites themselves. That’s not a great surprise, I suppose, since the content is the more or less the same. All the same, the print versions are worth their respective prices for a few reasons. First, it doesn’t cost that much, and it’s nice to see the content creators rewarded, at least a little, for their efforts. Second, you never know when the Apocalypse might come along, causing the Internet tubes to fall forever as civilization descends slowly and inevitably into barbarism. If that happens, you’ll be glad to have a few chuckles, I dare say. Finally, again, perfect reading for the bathroom (other places, too, yes, but perfect for a few short laughs when there’s not much else to keep you occupied for those few moments). But who wants to take even a laptop in there? The risk of, um, water damage and the danger of (very unfortunate) shock would be a enough discouragement, one would think. Thankfully, the paper version is available.

For the record, the other funniest sites, Hawtness, There, I Fixed It, People of Walmart, FmyLife, and It Made My Day, have not yet been collected. Yet. Here’s hoping. Improv Everywhere would also qualify, but I doubt a site that primarily composed of (hilarious) videos will ever be collected in book form. Alas.

“Silverlock” by John Myers Myers

Read Silverlock: Including the Silverlock Companion

A couple of years ago, fantasy author Peter S. Beagle was a houseguest at our place. Before bed, he asked to could borrow something to read. In a house filled with close to five-thousand volumes, that wasn’t hard to arrange. Finding something that was both wonderful and something Peter hadn’t read was more of a challenge. As it happened, I had an old Ace paperback of John Myers Myers’ (that’s not a typo) Silverlock on hand. To my very great surprise, Peter had not read it. The next morning, he looked at me with the bleary eyes of someone who’s been awake far too late reading (a look I know all to well) and said, “My God! How could I have missed this? What else is out there?”

That’s a question I’ve pondered myself more times than I can count. How many wonderful gems are waiting to be discovered? How many treasures have I passed by, my eye diverted from just the right dusty, forgotten shelf at just the right instant? It breaks my heart, but that’s a question I’ll never be able to answer. I suspect, though, that when it comes to books like Silverlock, the answer is pretty simple. Not nearly enough. But then, the scarcity of the experience is what makes it precious, I suppose. And God, I love this book.

I’ve read more than a few books since I first discovered the Ace paperback re-release of Silverlock back in the ’70s. I’ve certainly read better books. When I came across Silverlock, I had yet to experience most of Dumas, Dickens, and Bradbury, and Proust, Cervantes (author of the very first post-modern novel, although that’s a point for another essay), Faulkner, and Joyce were still in my future. I’d read Tolkien, of course, but I don’t think I’d even begun to appreciate his work as it deserves. I’ve read more elegant prose, tighter plotting (certainly that), and more profound insights into character, the human condition, and all that. But so help me, I’ll swear before God and all His angels, I haven’t found a book I loved more than Silverlock. In fact, I’d even say that reading Silverlock actually enhanced my ability to love those other books.

When we meet the lead character, A. Clarence Shandon, he’s about as unlikeable a hero as we’re likely to meet anywhere. But Shandon, soon to be called Shandon Silverlock, is shipwrecked on a strange island called the Commonwealth. There, along with his companion, the bard Golias (who is also known as Orpheus, Widsith, Amergin, Taliesin, and pretty much every other bard name you can think of from myth and legend), he encounters the witch Circe from Greek myth, Beowulf, Robin Hood, Puck, the Mad Hatter, Oedipus, Hamlet, Pangloss, Don Quixote, Faustopheles, and … well, dozens of other characters from myth, lore, legend, and literature.

You see, this isn’t just any island. It’s an allegorical place, in the most mythic sense. It’s the Commonwealth of Letters, and it changes you. Chapter by chapter, we see Shandon awaken into personhood, tempered and reshaped, until he, at last, is left with the trembling desire to make. He begins as someone that’s easy to, well, loath, and grows into someone we can admire. And yes, someone we can relate. A little too well at times, maybe, but that’s always the danger.

The plot is loose at best. It’s episodic and meandering, and makes no real effort at world building. And there are more references than an entire university full of tweed-coated academics could hope to identify. Don’t let that bother you. You’re about to learn the joyous game of reference hunting. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds. When I read Silverlock for the first time, I doubt I could identify more than a quarter. It didn’t bother me in the least, and every time I found a beloved friend from Silverlock waiting for me in some other book, I found myself grinning, the way you do when you suddenly find a dear old friend again, one you haven’t seen in ages, but for whom time has not dimmed your love. There’s a lot of that kind of beloved nostalgia waiting in Silverlock.

And back in my day, we didn’t have the Silverlock Companion or sites like this one where one could quickly check a reference or two. I urge to read it the first time without an answer guide. You might feel that you’re at a party filled with people you feel you should know, but where no one is wearing a nametag. No worries. Everyone is friendly and ready to welcome you. You can get to know them better later on.

Silverlock is a booklover’s book, sure. But more importantly, it’s fun. There are battles, quests, love lost and won, drinking bouts, and enough adventure to fill a library. Which is, of course, fitting. There are belly laughs a plenty, and songs you’ll ache to sing. For me, maybe, the love is more personal. Maybe I read it at just the right time, or under just the right circumstances. But it has stayed with me in deeper and truer ways, and for a longer time, than many overtly better books have.

When I shared Silverlock with my wife, Carol, she grinned all the way through, loving every page. At the end, she smiled, handed the book back to me, and said, “This is your myth!” I looked at her with a slightly puzzled expression. She added: “Here’s a story about a man who sort of moves from one mythological experience to another, making friends and growing and changing with every encounter. Your personal mythology!”

She’s right, of course. So much of my life has been spent exploring the Commonwealth of letters, and I’ve been changed by it, educated deeply in the heart. Did I love Silverlock because I recognized that part of myself? Or did Silverlock teach me to love the marvels I find between the covers of books?

In his introduction to the 1979 paperback edition of Silverlock (I still have my first 1979 Ace paperback, as well as a hardcover first edition and a lovely new hardback that includes the Companion), author Larry Niven enthuses: “You’ll get drunk on Silverlock. When you finish reading, you will feel like you got monumentally drunk with your oldest friends; you sang songs and told truth and lies all night or all week; you’ll sit there grinning at nothing and wondering why there isn’t any hangover.” I couldn’t agree more.

Jerry Pournelle added, “you now have the pleasure of reading Silverlock for the first time. I envy you.” God, I love this book. I mentioned that, right? And I’m thrilled to be able to share it with you.

On a related note, be sure to see my dear friend Lee’s Silverlock Reading Journal. Also, the link above goes to the hardcover edition. You can still find the Ace paperbacks at used bookstores. I understand it’s about to be released, and a Kindle edition is available for preorder. But if you can swing it, I’d go ahead and get the hardcover. The additional material is terrific.

Two books (that aren’t quite) within other books

Alice Hoffman’s novel The Third Angel, reviewed here, features a book written by one of the characters. The text of that novel, The Heron’s Wife, isn’t given. But happily, Ms. Hoffman has released it on her blog. You can read it here. Enjoy!

Likewise, Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest (reviewed here) mentions a book within a book called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship of her Own Making. Again, the text of that tantalizing title isn’t given. But happily, it is available online, here, in return for whatever donation you feel is appropriate. It’s a wonderful, charming read.

It’s a joy to discover, after the last page of a good book is turned, that there is still more content to discover. Especially when the storytellers have the talent and grace of Alice Hoffman and Catherynne Valente. This kind of expanded “book within a book” content is a trend I applaud enthusiastically. I hope we’ll see more.

“Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture” by Michael Tucker

Read Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture

Normally, I wouldn’t recommend a book that’s out of print. After all, saying, “this is great, but you can’t read it, so nah nah nah!” is just kind of mean. But since you can still find a used copy for around ten bucks, and since it’s an amazing read, I’m going for it. This review is a little brief, but largely that’s because, despite the fact that I first read it four or five years ago, I’m still not sure exactly what to say about it, save that’s an amazing and thought-provoking read. I find that, years later, I’m still thinking about it. Frankly, that’s a pretty good recommendation in my book.

In Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture, Tucker looks at a broad sweep of modern art and finds, rather than the nihilistic cynicism, overt commercialization, and shallow objectification one might expect, a sort of hopeful ecstasy. Tucker makes a compelling argument that, at their best and most unfiltered, modern artists are the heirs to their ancient ancestors that painted on caves. They’re reaching into (forgive the pretentious cliché) an altered state of consciousness. As a result, they tap into something primal in the collective mythoconsciousness of humanity, something complex, symbolic, and profound.

In this book, Tucker has compiled a veritable encyclopedia of the literature of shamanism: literal (historic and anthropologic) and metaphorical, and draws compelling connections between the ancient and the bleeding edge. Modern artists working on the fringe of creative boundaries, Tucker argues, strip away some of the filters of contemporary experience and perceive the world in a metaphoric, archetypal way, as Aboriginal dream painters do. The result is art that reaches past the the filters of the consciousness mind to challenge the unconscious mind directly in its native grammar: the language of dreams and poetic inspiration, the language symbol. As a result, I’ve found that my own ability to understand and appreciate visual art as something more than mere illustration has grown deeper. I am beginning, at least, to appreciate that something profound happens in the communication between artist and audience, something that requires more than a casual read or glance.

Tucker argues that shamans, the first artists, have since ancient times been bridge-builders between worlds, visionaries whose journeys within the psyche bring insight, inspiration, and healing. Modern art is remarkable chiefly for what it reveals about the loss of meaning and spirituality in the modern world—and by what, at its best, it struggles to bring back. Modern art is trembling with shamanistic vision.

The language of the soul is metaphor and symbol. It’s no coincidence that, according to the Bible, God talks to us in “parable and dark passages.” The same applies, of course, to our own lives, both inner and outer. We’re not meant to understand at the most obvious, literal level, and to attempt to do so trivializes the messages of existence itself. The deepest communication, heart to heart or soul to soul, happens in a language that’s deeper. Most of the keys to that kind of understanding come from within, of course, but Tucker’s book offers some keys. He writes about visual art, but I find myself applying his ideas to music, mythology, and literature, and they work there just as well.

Dreaming With Open Eyes is a fascinating read, one that’s sure to make you question and perhaps even enrich and expand your own appreciation of the arts, and our own, truest desire to communicate and share on the deepest and most intimate levels. I urge you to pick one up while copies are still available and affordable. Check Amazon at the link above, or try abe.com. It’s worth the effort.

“The Third Angel” by Alice Hoffman

Read The Third Angel: A Novel

When I first started reading The Third Angel, I didn’t honestly care for it, despite the fact that Alice Hoffman’s prose is as lovely as ever. She is a master of a sudden and lyrical turn of phrase that seems as effortlessly graceful as a dancer’s casual step. Every line has magic and poetry in it, the kind that makes you smile and, more than occasionally, look back to reread a phrase or passage. An example: “It was that silver-colored time between night and morning, when the sky is still dark, but lights are flicking on all over the city. It was quiet, the way it is in winter when snow first begins to fall.” How perfectly and specifically evocative, concrete detail spun from froth and lace, and without a wasted syllable! Her prose has always been elegant, the way Earthbound angels would write, and she only gets better.

What bothered me in the opening pages, though, was her characters. They were a little too well drawn, a little too immediate. And they were, frankly, unlikeable. They all seemed hellbent on doing the worst possible and most hurtful things—to the people they love and to themselves.

I should have known better. I should have remembered that Alice Hoffman’s coat has magician’s sleeves. There are surprises hidden within, always. Some are magical, some are cruel. But they are marvelous, all of them. As always, there is magic in her book: blue herons, white rabbits, and, yes, angels. But it’s subtle enchantment, as in the very best works of Isabel Allende, Ray Bradbury, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, like a hint of spice in a cake that you savor even as it fades, but that you can’t quite identify.

A few chapters in, I realized that I’d misjudged the The Third Angel and its characters, because I didn’t yet understand how deeply they were wounded. This is a book that reminds us that the heart heals itself with scar tissue, hard and ugly, but that beneath there is, sometimes, something lovely and enduring. That something is worth finding, and it makes all the difference. The novel is stitched together like a quilt from three integrally-integrated (wow, that’s some awkward alliteration) novellas, which examine the lives of three women, decades apart, each of whom has reached some crucial crossroad in her life. Don’t get the idea that these London hotel-centered stories are just part of a collection. They are bound together in devastating retrospect to form a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

In the first, a successful New York attorney, Maddy, comes to London in 1999 has has a sudden affair with Paul, her sister’s fiancé. This was the point at which I had a hard time liking Paul or Maddy. Thankfully, I kept reading. After the night of fiery passion, Maddy copes with her sister’s impending marriage and with the hopelessness of loving the wrong man. That’s when she learns of Paul’s terminal illness—which happens to echo the cancer her mother faced when Maddy was a girl. The wounds run deep.

The next sections sifts back to 1966 London and the era of drugs, rock and roll, and free love. Now we get to know Frieda—the woman who will become Paul’s mother, and who we have just seen lose her son—as a young woman. Frieda falls for a singer trying to write a song. She knows he is doomed, and that he will break her heart. Love burns, but it is not wise.

The final section takes us back again, to 1952 and to Maddy’s future mother, Lucy Green. Now we see Lucy as a prematurely wise and book-loving 12-year-old. Lucy travels with her father and stepmother from New York to London for a wedding, where, at the same hotel, she becomes an innocent catalyst to a devastating event involving a love triangle, one that we’ve already seen echo through the other sections. Hoffman mingles the threads of these the three stories, gazing without blinking into forces that cause some people to self-destruct and others to find the inner strength that lasts a lifetime.

The novel is drenched in love, with all is beautiful, broken, and devasting glory. There is romantic love, of course. Hoffman’s characters fall in love with the wrong person, or with the right person at the wrong time. Hoffman writes about the love of parents for children. As one character puts it: “It will shock believe how much you’ll love your child. Nothing else will ever matter.” Love breaks the characters in the most devasting way imaginable, but it also rebuilds them, and binds them together in the most unexpected ways.

Hoffman writes as eloquently and movingly about death as she does about life and love. It is Frieda’s doctor father who describes, so beautifully, the Third Angel of the title. He says that when he went to visit a patient, there was always an angel riding with him: the Angel of Life or the Angel of Death. He never knew which until he arrived. But there is a third Angel, too. “You can’t even tell if he’s an angel or not. You think you’re doing him a kindness, you think you’re the one taking care of him, while all the while, he’s the one who’s saving your life.” He walks with us. He can meet him any time, anywhere. Hoffman’s characters are complex but flawed, yes, and they do terrible things, betraying those they love or even themselves. But they have heroic qualities as well. By mending their broken lives, they, themselves, sometimes become the Third Angel.

Hoffman doesn’t paint portraits; she sketches. We don’t see her characters through their whole lives. We only see moments, the most crucial and transforming ones, the moments that shape who we’re going to be. Now and then, maybe, the moments that can turn us in to the Third Angel. The Third Angel isn’t Hoffman’s best book. To me, that’s still Practical Magic. But it’s an amazing read, lovely and haunting, one that I find I’m still thinking about days after I turned the last page.

UPDATE:

By the way, the novel features a book written by one of the characters. The text of that novel, The Heron’s Wife, isn’t given. However, Ms. Hoffman has released it on her blog. You can read it here.

Beer Review: Aventinus

Several years ago, I was lured into a charming pub in Ottawa’s Byward Market by a hand-written sign which promised a Caesar salad for $9.95 Canadian. Since this was back in the days when a Canadian dollar was worth about 70¢ US, it seemed like something of a bargain even before I noticed the small print that mentioned that that the salad was served with a side of sirloin steak and fries. Sold!

Down I went, and I discovered one of those charming, warm, welcoming pubs that make you feel instantly comfortable in a new city. The food was tasty and the service friendly. But it was the beer menu that won my heart. Without question, it was the absolute best I’ve ever come across. It’s scope was amazing, and each brew was accompanied by long, loving descriptions that were almost poetic in their exuberance. Sort of like a beer lover’s J. Peterman catalog. I actually purchased a copy of that tome to take home. What they call a menu, I call a shopping list.

My friends and I sent a happy afternoon sampling quite a few from that list (old hard-to-find favorites and wonderful new discoveries) before we realized that we were reaching our limit, and decided it was time to stagger back toward our hotel. But just before we left, one last brew caught our eye. The last line of the description said, “quite possibly the best beer I have ever tasted.” Well. How could we pass that up? Happily, we did not. That beer was called Aventinus. I can say without hesitation, the beer menu poet did not exaggerate.

Aventinus is a Doppelbock, but don’t let its darker amber color fool you. It’s sweet without being syrupy, full-flavored without being bitter, and complex without being overpowering. I’m honestly not sure I know how to describe the taste, except to say that it’s like drinking a loaf of Christmas spice bread. If there was such a thing as a comfort beer, this would be it.

Most pubs serve Aventinus in its own glass. When poured, it has a medium golden brownish color that reminds you of harvest time and autumn wheat. It is slightly hazy, and about an inch or so of frothy head caps it off. Take a sniff. The aroma is soft and gentle, sweet and wheaty with hints of yeast, but also complex. I’d swear that there is some light presence of brown sugar, along with clove and some ripe dark fruit, almost like raisin or plum. The first glorious sip leaves rings and a pretty lace of foam. The flavor is amazing, mellow and complex with hints of subtle dark brown sugar and, again, raisin and plum, with no real trace of hops or alcohol. Not surprisingly the flavor opens up more as the beer warms, leaving a very subtle, faint aftertaste of that’s almost like (I swear) banana and chocolate. Like I said, it’s like drinking a loaf of the very best Christmas spice bread.

And yet, surprisingly, it’s not as heavy as you might expect. The feel on the tongue is medium-bodied with a soft, silky feel and gentle carbonation. Aventinus is definitely a sipping beer, but one that goes down easily. The rich, complex flavor makes you want to savor it slowly, and one a night is plenty. If you happen to live in the Atlanta/Decatur area, it’s easy to find on tap at the Brick Store (of course), the Grange, the Book House, The Porter, and others. If not, well, it’s well-worth hunting down wherever you happen to be. Sip it by the fire with good friends, warm and smiling, and think of crisp, longer nights as the year rolls from autumn to the winter holiday season. It’s terrific all year ’round, of course, but it’s best right about now.

Tuesday Night Irish Music Jam Session at The Grange Public House

Update: The Grange is now called The Marlay House. Same owners, same terrific pub. Just a new name. The rest of this review still stands.

Nestled as we are between Atlanta, Decatur, Oakhurst, and Little Five Points, Carol and I are blessed to live in Pubtopia. South, more or less, you’ve got the good old Brew House Café and the marvelous new gastro pub, the Porter. West, there’re two that I think would make just about anyone’s favorites lists: The Local (a quintessential neighborhood bar with great food) and The Book House (a friendly, literary gastro pub named for Twin Peaks!), both on Ponce. East takes you to Oakhurst and the Universal Joint, or to East Atlanta Village. North (I admit that my directions are approximate at best) and you’re in Decatur, where you’ll find Twain’s (a wonderful literary-themed Brew Pub!), Leon’s Full Service (delicious upscale locavore), Eddie’s Attic (the best live music listening room south of the North Pole), and, of course, the Platoic ideal of the perfect pub: the Brick Store. I’m not even mentioning the world’s most ideal neighborhood bar, the venerable and beloved Manuel’s Tavern.

I should mention that all of these places are within a mile or two of us, and every last one is warm, friendly, and comfortable. All have very good to excellent pub food, with beer lists ranging from solid to jaw-dropping. Each has something special to recommend it: music at Eddie’s, the books at the Book House, barbecue at the Local, God’s own beer and whiskey menu at the Brick Store, and sports at the Brew House, for example. Indeed, it’s the embarrassment of riches that keeps me from naming a favorite: my own Cheers, as it were.

Which brings me to The Grange, also on Ponce in Decatur. It’s an Irish Pub, actually run by Irishmen, and it has a beer list to rival even the mighty Brick Store. It’s a comfortable, homey place—and one where you’re never going to hear that dang unicorn song. (They don’t usually have live music—for the stage-Irish pub Irish singers, you’ll need to head down to Limerick Junction in Virginia Highlands.) The upscale pub food at the Grange is amazing, even for Pubtopia. I have a hard time not ordering the slow smoked, Guinness braised brisket every time, but when I’ve managed to try the bangers and mash, the pasta with cream sauce, the fish and chips (excellent, but the James Joyce in Avondale still has the best), or even the burger, I’ve been exceptionally pleased. These guys have comfort food down.

If I had to pick a favorite, I’d agonize—but the Grange is probably the one I’d pick, if only because you can’t get in to the Brick Store on the weekends, you can’t park at the Porter, and Eddie’s is for music, not just hanging out. In fact, the Grange is the place I’ve chosen for my Raven Wakes the World book release “after party” November 7. (If you’re in the neighborhood, please join us! There will be live music that night.)

Again, any of the ones I’d mentioned could be a favorite. They’re all on the list, and I grin ear to er when I’d heading to any one of them. So why the Grange? The funny thing is, I didn’t care for it that much when it was the Angel, a British Pub owned by the chain that operates (or operated) The Prince of Wales, Hand in Hand, and Fox and Hound. I didn’t dislike it, mind. It was a pub—by definition, I liked it. And honestly, it doesn’t look all that different now. It’s elegant, with lots of brick an old dark wood, but it’s comfortable and welcoming. The food and drink menus are vastly improved, though. The big difference, though, is more intangible. It’s the feel of the place. Something about it just makes me feel comfortable and welcome.

There’s one more thing. Every Tuesday night, there is a Celtic music jam session. While most of us sit around in a circle, nursing our ales and listening in a sort of golden haze of happy ecstasy, some of Atlanta’s very best traditional music play—well, whatever you feel like.

Now, as many of you know, I am a huge fan of Celtic music. Once upon a time, I used to host a Celtic radio show, and my forthcoming novel Blackthorne Faire is just drenched in it. I don’t play, but the world needs audiences, too, and on most nights, I can clap along, or distinguish the difference between a jig and a reel. I’ve been to sessions all over the world, and I own CDs from some of the more legendary ones in places like Dublin and New York, but I’ll swear, these guys can hold their own with any of them. Heck, they’re tighter than a lot of studio bands. I’ve paid fifty bucks to hear Celtic bands that didn’t sound this polished.

If you’re good, you’re welcome to join in. If you’re a beginner, you’re probably going to want to sit and listen. But I’m told it’ll make you ache to practice until you’re good enough to join the circle yourself. For me, it’s enough just to listen, to let the music wash over me like healing waters. But I understand the feeling. Something in the music wakes the urge to make. I’m always dying to write when I leave there.

The music is (not surprisingly, given that it’s a Celtic jam) mostly Celtic. But there are a few diversions. You’ll hear some Old Time, some Bluegrass, and even some Gypsy Jazz. It’s all great stuff. And you can listen as you swap stories with good friends, and nurse a pint of your favorite. Here’s raising a glass to simple pleasures and good times. Good times that happen every Tuesday night are even better. Cheers, mates. I hope to see you there.

Vienna Roast by Atlanta Coffee Roasters

I’ve become something of a coffee snob as I’ve aged. I didn’t mean to, but there you go. I’ve loved coffee for ages — going all the way back to third grade Sunday School when my pal Steve Martin and I used to wander down to the fellowship hall to pour ourselves a styrofoam cup filled with milk and sugar, with a splash of coffee for color. By the time I reached high school, I was drinking it black, as God intended. Around then, I discovered Dunkin’ Donuts, and learned that, indeed, some cups of coffee are better than others. I was in college when I discovered that there are much better coffees, even, than Dunkin. Gradually, I discovered different beans and gourmet roasts, picking favorites from various specialty vendors, like Peet’s. If you appreciate a good, steaming mug, chances are that’s pretty much your story, too.

Turns out, though, I had one more lesson to learn. Fresh coffee — coffee sold with a week of roasting, and roasted within a few days of harvesting — makes an astonishing difference. Seriously. An astonishing difference. I made this discovery at Atlanta Coffee Roasters at the Toco Hills shopping center. It’s a micro-roaster. The coffee they sell is flown in daily. If you ever step into the back room, you’ll see great burlap sacks of coffee stamped with exotic ports from all over the world, all carefully selected, each waiting their turn for the artisan’s attention. Then, small batches are blended and roasted to exacting standards. It truly is an art, and hearing the roasters describe the process with such obvious love for their craft is a joy. By comparison, even when you buy your beans from a gourmet specialty house, the coffee you’re getting is usually at least a month or two old. If you’re lucky. It’s picked, shipped to the US, roasted, packed, warehoused, distributed, and … well, you get the idea. At Atlanta Coffee Roasters, the beans are roasted literally every day.

Much to my surprise, the difference in taste is amazing. There are entire new dimensions of coffee goodness waiting to be discovered. I mean that literally. There are waves of flavor that I had never tasted before. Dozens of varieties are available, flavored, blends, special roasts, you name it. My wife Carol and I have tried several. We used to get a pound of something different every week. We stopped that when we found what is, to us, the perfect coffee: the Vienna Roast. It is a dark roast, like a French or Italian roast, and absolutely full of robust flavor. But it is much smoother than you’d expect from a dark roast, and the aftertaste is almost sweet rather than bitter. It is, quite frankly, the very best cup of coffee I’ve ever head.

As I mentioned, there are other blends. All are worth a try. If you take the time to describe your tastes, the staff there will be happy to make recommendations. You can enjoy a cup there, or take the beans to go. We have ours shipped, so we never risk running out when we can’t work the schedules to make it to Toco Hills before we run out. Those of you reading this out of town, give it some thought. Even when you allow a few days for shipping, it’s still fresher than what you’re getting from, well, anywhere else that’s not a micro-roaster. There are at least two other micro-rosters in the area: Dancing goats and Jittery Joes (assuming Athens counts as local, and assuming they are still as good as I remember). Both are excellent. Neither are quite as good as Atlanta Coffee Roasters. By the way, Atlanta Coffee Roasters also has a very good selection selection of teas and brewing supplies. They also have WiFi. Although these days, saying a coffee shop has WiFi is a lot like saying, they have air. You just kind of assume.

“Palimpsest” by Catherynne Valente

Read Palimpsest

Catherynne Valente’s new(ish) book Palimpsest is a hard one to describe. Palimpsest tells of a city visited only in dreams. It’s a sort of sexually transmitted city. Certain people bear a strange tattoo-like mark on their skin … a map. Enjoy a moment or a night of intense passion with one of them, and in the heavy sleep after climax, you might find yourself in the city of Palimpsest. It’s a city of decadent magnificence, strange delights, and twisting, labyrinthine wonder. Of tall gothic cathedrals, bizarre masquerade balls, and bejeweled vermin. The story’s four characters all carry a wound of some sort, a loss. They’ve come to find solace in Palimpsest. They are bound together, each sharing what the others experience, pain and pleasure, tasting what the others taste. In the morning, they wake back in our world, marked with a strange tattoo, a map, and a longing to return. Like I said, it’s kind of hard to describe.

On one level, Palimpsest is a metaphor, of sorts, for the maze of sex and relationships, with all its beauty and danger. Sex can be a hollow, fleeting, even dangerous thing, or it can be sacred, the ultimate sacrament. The emotions are complex and churning. It marks and wounds, and it opens a longing in the depths of the soul. It’s a way that too people can build a world all of their own, a city of the heart. Once they do, they’ll always long to return there. That’s one level.

The joy of Palimpsest is in it’s lush, dense, baroque, poetic and, yes, even haunting language. Every line is lovingly wrought, a treasure. Every paragraph aches with loveliness. It is utterly sensual and at times even erotic. It’s also refreshingly witty. But it’s like rich food; it’s delicious, even decadent, but it’s hard to take too much at once. It’s a book to savor, in small bursts of bliss, and return to. It’s not a book for careless beach reading; it is for autumn, with blanket, firelight, and blood-red wine.

Descriptions are loving, detailed, and exact. But for all their beauty and precision, the images in Palimpsest are microcosmic, rather than macrocosmic. And see, that’s the genius of the book. Like any relationship, it requires a partner. Palimpsest is not a city created solely by the author, for all the magnificence of her words. More than any other literary world I can think of, it is created in collaboration with the reader. Read it, and pass your copy along to a friend, and the two of you will not be reading the same book.

You see, Palimpsest makes demands of the reader. If the foreground is created with detail and a master jeweler’s precision, the background (so to speak) is sketched, leaving the reader to fill in the rest. Don’t come thinking to read passively. It’s impossible. Like any relationship, it’s a partnership, a shared act of creation. The characters are fully realized, their personalities are defined to a breathtaking degree. You can’t help but ache for them. All the same, the portraits have holes, here and there, inviting the reader like open arms to enter and pour their own wounds in, to patch the empty places with parts of themselves. The characters, then, become, like the dream city of wonders around around them, something new. Marked and changed.

It’s a challenging book, and probably not for everyone. (What is?) The beauties here are uncomfortable at times. Lines are crossed, and yes, raw nerves are probed. But Catherynne Valente has discovered or created (I have no idea which) a unique way to couple with a reader, an astonishing act of sharing through creation. I found myself finishing each chapter breathless and basking in a warm smile of afterglow, longing for a cigarette even though I’ve never smoked. I also found myself wanting to pass the book along to friends to see what they might discover within.

“I Called I” by Desmond Drive

Listen to I Called I

First, disclaimer alert. The band Desmond Drive is fronted by a friend of mine, Bill Shaouy. So I’m a mite on the biased side. I think I’d be saying the same thing anyway, though. Because I really enjoy this album. It’s catchy, it’s fun, and it’s even a little bit wise. Nothing wrong with a little zen in your pop. That said, Desmond Drive was a breath of fresh air to me. While the roots are showing — influences of XTC and “Abbey Road” era Beatles are impossible to miss — the results seem fresh and original, and even contemporary in a retro sort of way. It’s nice to be reminded that pop doesn’t = shallow.

The tunes themselves are catchy pop, albeit a few degrees of mainstream center … hummable and, frankly, a joy to listen to. Thre lyrics are at time almost childlike: the song “Isn’t it a Wonder” it at first pass a simple catalog of ordinary things that suddenly seem miraculous. But upon a second listen, the joy of epiphany seems moving and filled with unabashed joy. “Your Name,” on the other hand, is a decidedly mature song, about enduring, spiritual love as opposed to the fire of infatuation that makes too many pop love songs seem banal. “My Tribe” is terrific, and expands the idea of relationship, a theme that recurs throughout the album, to found family, people made close by spirit rather than blood.

Give I Called I a listen. It’s fun, and its seeming simplicity hides surprises that reward repeat listenings. Besides, ow can you go wrong with an album that begins with a Greek Chorus?

“The Promised Land” by Dar Williams

Listen to The Promised Land

Naming a favorite artist is always a tricky thing—be they authors, musicians, filmmakers, painters. Whatever. Heck, naming a top ten list is usually nerve wracking enough. With musicians, I find it easier to pare things down and list by category. Say, my top favorite guitar players or live performers. This drives my music purist friends up the wall—they don’t seem to appreciate my running the light through a prism, so to speak, and breaking the beam into separate colors. I suppose I can see their point.

Nonetheless, when I saw the always-amazing Dar Williams at Eddie’s Attic here in Decatur recently, it struck me that she joins Tom Waits (Tom Waits for no man) and Leonard Cohen in my trinity of top favorite lyricists. Well, she did that night, anyway. Frankly, I think she would on most nights. For the record, I cheat a little. I don’t count Paul Simon, Lennon and McCartney (or George Harrison), or Bob Dylan, because I think they’re just givens. And my lists shifts a bit with my moods and circumstance, often including the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Johnny Mercer, Stan Rogers, Paul Williams, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Randy Newman, Kristen Hall, both of the Indigo Girls, Johnny Cash, and the Sherman Brothers (if you don’t know them, you haven’t been watching enough classic Disney). But when it comes to the sheer poetry, to elegant turns of phrase that strike unexpectedly deep notes of emotional resonance, Dar is just about always at the very top. One of her early albums features a song called “You’re Aging Well,” and at times, even after I’ve heard it a thousand million times, it can still sneak up on me unexpectedly and make me weep, because, for some reason I can’t quite explain, it reminds me, deeply in the heart, of my wife, Carol.

Dar’s new album, The Promised Land, is no exception. (I can call her Dar, because I met her once. She may not know it, but I am certain that we bonded.) Sure, Promised Land includes a cover tune: “Midnight Radio” from the rock musical Hedwig And The Angry Itch. But even there, Dar has made it her own. The original comes across as tragic; the cover, oddly, is almost soothing. The rest of the album is original, and its vintage Dar. Deep emotions that both cut and heal—and more than once, inspire a good laugh.

Social causes are never far from Dar’s music, although she never descends to treacley didacticism. Songs like “Buzzer” raise questions that are hard to answer, but the catchy, up-tempo melodies make them fun to listen to, and listen to again. “The Business Of Things” and “The Tide Falls Away” are almost astonishingly poignant.

If you know Dar’s music, you’ve likely already heard this album. If not, well, think of the realm of Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow, with lyrics that can be mentioned in the same sentence as Waits, Cohen, Williams, Newman, Mercer, Dylan, and Simon. The Promised Land is a good place to start. But then, so is The Honesty Room, My Better Self, The Beauty of the Rain, The Green World, or … heck, any of them.Do yourself a favor and listen. Closely. Then listen again.

“Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO” by Zachary Steele

Read Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO

“When the Anti-Christ and Satan entered the bar, nobody took notice.”

That’s a great first line. Believe it or not, it’s not the start of a joke. It’s the first line of Zachary Steele’s novel Anointed, which is a scream. If you’re a fan of people like Christopher Moore or Douglas Adams, take a look. Sadly, (in my humble opinion) it hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

From what I hear through the grapevine, Zachary Steele was supposed to be interviewed on a radio show called something like The Open Mind, but they cancelled him when the found out the book wasn’t a slam on religion. Apparently, these are fundamentalist atheists that can only be open minded in one way. What it IS is a biting satire of the corporatization of religion, and it’s a scream. It’s a genuinely funny book, and well worth a read.

A word of disclosure: I know Zach, and his publisher, Mercury Retrograde Press, is also mine.

In Good Company: “The Company They Keep” by Diana Pavlac Glyer

Read The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community

Until the publication of Diana Pavlac Glyer’s new book The Company The Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, I hadn’t realized how strong was my urge to be a “completist.” A new book out on the Inklings? By all means, I had to have it, period. This is fortunate, because if I paused to remind myself that I’d already read Humphrey Carpenter’s superb biography The Inklings, and then to ask if I really, really needed another book on the subject, the rational part of my brain might have said “no,” and (it’s not completely impossible) might have carried the day. And that would have been too darn bad. Glyer’s book makes a wonderful companion to Carpenter’s more well known volume, and stands very well on its own. Carpenter’s book is a biography; Glyer’s is an examination of the very significant ways in which, as a community, the Inkings challenged, inspired, influenced, and supported one another. The Company The Keep is a terrific and insightful read.

Carpenter’s The Inklings tells a rollicking good story. When Carpenter describes the group’s meetings at The Eagle and Child Pub, you can almost hear the glasses clinking merrily; you’d swear that, now and then, you catch, almost the faint and fading scent of sweet pipe smoke. You feel that you know Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, Barfield, and the others, a privilege as welcome as it is rare. Carpenter’s recreation of the now-famous conversation between Lewis and Tolkien on mythopoeia and the deeper truth hidden in the “lies” of myth is moving and profoundly beautiful.

By contrast, Glyer mentions this conversation only in passing. Her purpose isn’t to tell a story. It’s to explore. In her introduction, Glyer notes that early critics, from Gareth Knight and Lin Carter to Mark Hillegas and Carpenter himself, tend to downplay the influences the writers had upon one another. Glyer reminds us that Carpenter claims that the Inklings has, for example, no influence at all on the development of The Lord of the Rings. Glyer argues that this claim is at best unfair. Why would the men have continued to meet and critique one another’s works in progress if they perceived no value in the exchange? More, Glyer points out that common sense alone suggests that any group that meets over a long period of time — some seventeen years — is bound to change its members in ways both subtle and obvious.

So why would critics argue that the Inklings had no influence on one another’s work? Glyer builds a convincing case that Carpenter, Carter, and the others were reacting to earlier critics who accused the Inklings of a sort of group think, marching in almost corporate lockstep, writing interchangeable, virtually indistinguishable works. Confronted with such preposterous accusations, it seems natural that more sympathetic critics would have been quicker to defend each individual’s personal achievement and genius.

To start her study of the Inklings, Glyer looked at other communities of working writers, and was stuck by how both members and critics readily acknowledge the groups’ influence without diminishing individual achievement. More, Glyer found that members of writer’s groups and communities tend to influence each other in very specific ways: as resonators supporting and encouraging progress, as opponents issuing challenge, as editors, as collaborators working together, and finally as referents writing about each other. Glyer devotes long chapters to each, using letters, interviews, essays and other evidence to show how the Inklings filled each role for one another.

Glyer concludes that writers don’t create in a vacuum; every artist’s work is inevitably embedded in the work of others. Community doesn’t stifle creativity or individual expression. Rather, it fertilizes and nurtures it. For anyone interested in how a favorite book came to be, and especially for artists exploring their own craft, The Company The Keep is a must read. Her conclusions are well supported and her arguments thorough. Best of all, her book is fascinating and a joy to read. Any fan of Tolkien, Lewis, and the others absolutely must have a copy of Carpenter’s The Inklings. The shelf is equally bare without a copy of The Company They Keep.

“The Gnostic Bible” Edited by Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer

Read The Gnostic Bible

The Gnostics were mystics, mostly Christian, who believed that direct, personal experience of the divine, or knowledge, was the way to salvation. The early church, who regarded it’s own intervention and hierarchy as the means to salvation, viewed the freedom and independence of the Gnostics as a threat. In a relatively short time, the Gnostics disappeared. However, with the discovery of the “lost” texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the publication of Elaine Pagels’ definitive works, Gnosticism is currently enjoying a renaissance.

For those interested in the Gnostics and their actual beliefs and mysteries, as well as the early history of Christianity, The Gnostic Bible is a welcome resource. As a matter of fact, The Gnostic Bible is quite possibly the most comprehensive collection of Gnostic materials ever gathered in one volume.

The Gnostic Bible collects a wealth of primary sources, Gnostic texts from a wide variety of sources, including three continents and spanning more than 1300 years. The expected texts are present, of course, including the famous Gospel of Thomas, along with some unexpected resources. Making the volume especially useful to students of Gnosticwisdom traditions, the texts are well-organized into distinct movements of Gnostic tradition: Sethian, Valentinian, Syrian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, and even, surprisingly, later Islamic and even Cathar texts.

I was especially surprised to find the Cathar material. Despite an amateur enthusiast’s fascination with the Cathars, I had no idea that such material existed. Until a “Nag Hammadi” or Dead Sea scroll” find of Cathar material is discovered, this is the best insight into their mysteries we are likely to find. Each section of texts is preceded by a brief but insightful introduction to that particular section’s brand of Gnosticism.

One thing The Gnostic Bible makes clear is that encapsulating Gnostic belief is a lot like summarizing Native American belief. Some themes and motifs seem to be consistent, but sweeping generalizations simply don’t do justice to the diversity of thought. The Gnostic Bible does an admirable job of expressing the surprising scope and breadth of Gnosticism, and the diverse traditions upon which it drew. The Gnostic Bible makes apparent the tremendous diversity of thought that exists under the broad category of Gnosticism, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, Zoroastrian and Greco-Roman influences.

Most of the translations are newer (and presumably more accurate and complete) than those in earlier collections, such as The Other Bible (itself edited by Willis Barnstone, one of the editors of The Gnostic Bible) and The Nag Hammadi Library. I am not qualified to judge the authenticity or accuracy of the translations, when the collection has earned praise from such luminaries as Elaine Pagels and Richard Smoley, it’s hard not to take their word.

In addition to the original sources themselves, The Gnostic Bible contains an introduction summarizing current debates about gnosticism (by Meyer) and a truly fascinating overview of the issues of translation (by Barnstone). But perhaps the best editorial feature are the extensive notes that illuminate each text, enriching the experience by defining terms, providing historical and cultural context, and comparing especially puzzling passages to others for clarification. Many of the texts are being published here in English for the first time, making this a valuable resource for students, scholars, and anyone interested to one of Christianity’s most fascinating mystery traditions.

“Coyote Moon” By John A. Miller

Read Coyote Moon

As fond as I am of trickster tales, it’s hard to imagine anything with a title like Coyote Moon can be anything other than mythic. Coyote Moon doesn’t have a lot to do with coyotes, or even with tricksters (although I have a feeling that author John Miller himself may qualify), but the novel is certainly mythic. First, baseball plays a major role in the story. As the brilliant book Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth shows, baseball is a goldmine for mythic material. Add in liberal doses of cutting edge physics (if you’re not up on your science, don’t worry), possible reincarnation, and the search for meaning and miracles, and the result is a myth lover’s delight.

A rookie baseball player, missing a past but blessed with a cannon for an arm and a stellar batting average, a Mexican waitress, a physics professor, the widowed owner of a trailer park, and a band of retired, wandering Germans are all drawn together to a place in the desert. Why? None are certain. Only that it seems something is about to happen. Something that might reveal a great secret, something that might even be a miracle.

As the relationships of the charming and engaging characters deepen, they seem reborn and renewed as their inhibitions and old lives melt away in the desert heat. What happens exactly? The ending, alas, is vague, or at least open to interpretation. All miracles are. And John A. Miller is at least as much a trickster as the coyote who seems to wink at the needy seekers in the novel.

But as ambiguous as it may seem in the end. Coyote Moon is certainly not unsatisfying, and is never less than a joy to read. The lyrical passages on love, life, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and, of course, baseball and the meaning of life and destiny, are lovely, and the characters are a genuine pleasure to meet and share a journey with.

“The Genealogy of Greek Myth: An Illustrated Family Tree Greek Myth” by Vanessa James

Read The Genealogy of Greek Mythology: An Illustrated Family Tree Greek Myth from the First Gods to the Founders of Rome

The Genealogy of Greek Myth: An Illustrated Family Tree Greek Myth from the First Gods to the Founders of Rome is a handy resource. Packed with well-researched information, this book provides “at a glance” charts and surprisingly detailed information about the complex and often confusing relationships of the immortal Olympians and the mortal heroes they interact with.

The author, Vanessa James, spent eighteen years putting the Genealogy of Greek Myth together, and it shows. The data is more than complete, it is exhaustive. More, it provides a truly elegant and genuinely useful way to trace the dynasties and major events of Greek and Roman myth.

The information, which includes more than 3,000 entries for gods, goddess, heroes, monsters, and mortals and 125 biographies of key characters, is nicely indexed, complete, and easy to access and grasp quickly. The family-tree style arrangement makes it intuitive to explore. It’s also fun to read.

Nonetheless, what really sets this book apart is the fact that it is just plain beautiful. It is lavishly illustrated with photographs, a mythological star chart, classical art (reproductions of paintings, sculptures, mosaics, pottery, etc.), maps, and the previouslty mentioned charts, all in lush and vibrant color.

The uniquely designed book slides out of a slip case and unfolds to become a 17-foot long poster, making the information accessible literally at a glance. The result is an excellent reference that’s also a treasure to own.

“Spirits in the Wires” By Charles de Lint

Read Spirits in the Wires

Like Isabell Allende, Jonathan Carroll, and Alice Hoffman, Charles de Lint brings myth and magic out of faraway Middle-earth or fairyland and makes it live and breathe in the modern world. The result is no less wonderful, but somehow even more immediate and relevant.

In his novel, Spirits in the Wires, Charles de Lint once again returns to Newford, the fictional North America city that has been the setting for his recent novels and stories. Newford is more than a city; like the forest in fairy tales, it is a place where magic waits, hidden and subtle, just around the next corner, or one step sideways.

Spirits in the Wires gives surprising and fascinating life to the emerging new mythologies of the modern world, the spirits of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and even computer viruses. This isn’t really a new idea; Neil Gainman addressed similar ideas in his American Gods.

But where Gaiman relies primarily on cleverness, de Lint draws on heart, insight, and characters that we can help caring about. And that is what makes de Lint’s book succeed. He shows us exactly how myth surrounds us, even in a wired world of instant messages, PDAs, and computer viruses, and how it continues to touch and change us. It’s also a lovely reminder of how we all live stories, and our stories touch others in such wonderful and unexpected ways.

Spirits in the Wires is fun and entertaining. As a thriller, it’s a page-turner. But the myth and the poetry of the writing make it lovely, and the characters make it come alive. Our compassion for de Lint’s beautifully-drawn characters moves us, and makes the novel linger long after the last page is turned.

Speaking of the characters, some of them, especially the folklorist/author Christy Riddell, are familiar to those who have read de Lint’s earlier Newford novels and stories. It’s not necessary to read the previous works to enjoy Spirits in the Wires. However, it’s a much richer experience if you have. The four Newford story collections make a great place to start — epecially the stories Saskia, The Fields Beyond the Fields, and Pixel Pixies.