Tag: I Read Odd Books

Automatic Safe Dog by Jet McDonald

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: Automatic Safe Dog

Author: Jet McDonald

Type of Book: Fiction, humor, just plain disturbing

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: This is an utterly fucked-up book that combines several genres into an unsettling, sometimes hilarious, sometimes trenchant book.

Availability: Published by Eibonvale Press in 2011, you can get a copy on Amazon or you can get a copy cheaper directly from the publisher.

Comments: When I began this novel, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to finish it because it features a business plan wherein dogs are turned into miserable, rigid, stationary pieces of living furniture. I cannot stomach cruelty to animals and, in a way, the cruelty to these dogs was all the more horrible because it was so bloodless, matter-of-fact and accepted by others in the context of the book. I suspect the reason I was able to finish the book in spite of the content is because McDonald managed to subvert the use of abused animals in a horror-like narrative. They aren’t victims of one specific madman but are a symbol of a larger societal callousness. Somehow, that distinction made it easier for me to tolerate what happens to dogs in this book, as unlikely as that may seem.

This is a dense book – a murder mystery in the vein of And Then There Were None, a frustrating love story, a story of corporate subversion and a moral awakening – so know my synopsis of the plot, by necessity, must leave out a lot of details. The protagonist, a sort of sad sack Everyman named Terribly “Telby” Velour, begins the novel working for one of a number of Pet Furnishings warehouses. There he meets a new employee named Ravenski Helena Goldbird, for whom he develops a deep infatuation. As he tries to impress her one day, he engages in an antic that breaks the back of one of the dog-furniture pieces and gets fired. He later learns Ravenski Helena Goldbird is actually the adopted daughter of the CEO of the Pet Furnishings firm and he decides to create a new identity in order to get a new job with Pet Furnishings. Ravenski Helena Goldbird is now part of the executive board and Telby cons his way into a job in research and development in order to be closer to her. Telby enters a labyrinthine world of corporate espionage, personal viciousness, wanton cruelty and salacious behavior, all tempered by subversive hilarity and sly ridiculousness that prevent all the horror from becoming too much. As Telby watches as his coworkers fall one by one to a mysterious murderer, he is forced to examine what he is doing and the morality of the job he has taken, the morality of those around him, and though I am not entirely sure what I think about the ending, Telby ends this novel consumed by a metaphysical sorrow that he did not entirely earn through his actions but has to experience nonetheless.

With my brief synopsis of this intense plot out of the way, the only way I can truly show you what McDonald is about is through text samples. Even as this novel hinges on modifying living animals into furniture, where, still living, they serve as settees and footstools and stands for televisions, there is so much humor, high ridiculousness, and an almost gentle sadness that it is a marvel that McDonald managed to pull it off.

Here’s one of the first passages I highlighted, and it’s an important one because it explains the title of this book. Ravenski evidently suffered some sort of breakdown after beginning to work for Pet Furnishings, but when she returned, she moved on quickly from her difficulties (likely caused from having to saw off dogs’ legs and similar).

She returned to Pet Furnishings and took a post on the executive board. It was she who was responsible for the Automatic Safe Dog. They developed a microchip that you could puncture through the dog’s skull; ‘With the chip of a mallet, the dog has a habit.’ The chip was studded into the dog’s motor cortex and pet sofas and divans were made automatic and safe so they didn’t howl, bite, shit or piss until programmed at preset intervals. This made for not just safer but cleaner furnishings. Our customers forever complained of the times their mutt would whine to be let out, just when they needed to pet it or love it or sit down for a cup of tea, and then they’d have to deal with the inevitable mud in the castors or dew in the tassels. But Ravenski changed all that with her bold new ideas and leapt up the career ladder, far away from the ‘real’ people.

This is some twitchy prose, gentle reader. Yet I struggled through horribleness like this – people making sentient animals into furniture and still being so craven that they resent the basic care their living divan upon which they settle their pampered asses requires in order to stay alive – because I hoped that the level of detail McDonald was giving this dystopia meant the novel would have some greater purpose than just inflicting such wretched details on the reader. My patience was ultimately rewarded, but this is an example of the careless cruelty that you will find in this book.

Continue Reading “Automatic Safe Dog by Jet McDonald”

Happy New Year’s Day to You All!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

New Year's Day Book Haul

Some people eat black-eyed peas for good luck on New Year’s Day. Mr. Oddbooks and I go book shopping for good luck. We spent our New Year’s Day in three book stores and scored 55 books and three magazines. A moderate haul, but a good one in terms of book quality. Having new books to sort and scan and put in my to-be-read pile is the best way for me to greet a new year. I hope you all had the New Year’s Day you wanted and I hope 2013 proves to be an excellent, productive year for everyone who reads here.

Amazon Gift Card Winners

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

I assigned everyone who commented on my contest entry a number and used the random number generator over at random.org to get the winners.  Congratulations to:

Hillary for winning the $100 Amazon gift certificate

Ben A. for winning the $50  Amazon gift certificate

Heidi and V. Weathers for winning the $25 Amazon gift certificates

I will send the cards to you all later tonight.  I am heading out to enjoy my anniversary with Mr. Oddbooks.  I hope you all had a wonderful Solstice and a fabulous Mayan End of the World!

This Is Not an Odd Books Discussion: Stop talking about Libor shooter conspiracies

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

I run a site devoted to bizarre books and ideas. I am about to launch a site devoted to debunking bad ideas, mostly focusing on books about conspiracy theory. While I would not consider myself an expert on conspiracy theory, I think it can be accepted that I know a thing or two about a thing or two.

Let me state very clearly: There is no link between the Libor bank scandal and the Aurora and Newtown shootings. Fabian4Liberty, one of the main sources for this theory, made a video explaining the conspiracy. Far be it from me to suggest he should crawl under a rock from the shame of manipulating the deaths of many to fuel the vainglorious arrogance that stokes conspiracy theory (he knows the real truth, dontcha know, and the rest of us are sheep if we disagree and rely on fact rather than half-baked and scurrilous speculation).

It is all nonsense. There are no Senate Banking Committee hearings scheduled on the Libor scandal and even if there were, neither Holmes nor Lanza would have been called to testify. There is no witness list because there are no hearings scheduled. I repeat: Robert Holmes and Peter Lanza are on no Libor hearings witness list because the Senate Banking Committee has no Libor hearings scheduled.  You will note that none of the proponents of this conspiracy theory have produced a list of people who were scheduled to testify at this non-existent hearing.  There is not a lick of actual evidence that proves anything Fabian4Justice asserts.

That should be the end of it, but most conspiracy theory True Believers won’t let that deter them, and they are spreading this garbage all over the Internet.  So let’s discuss it in a bit more depth.

Robert Holmes, father of the Aurora shooter, was an anti-fraud engineer for FICO. In a way, there is a certain demented logic in linking Holmes to the Libor scandal because FICO assigns credit scores in the USA . But it is a stretch to extrapolate an anti-fraud engineer for FICO into having the expertise necessary to be an expert witness on British banks falsely reporting interest rates and how that affected US derivative markets. A large stretch. There is no link between FICO and the Libor scandal and Holmes’ anti-fraud work with FICO. None.

The situation with Peter Lanza is even more tenuous and, frankly, stupid as hell. Lanza worked for GE as the vice-president of the tax division. GE has no link to the Libor scandal at all and one wonders how a man who worked in a tax division of a large corporation would have the expertise needed to help unravel interest rate misreporting in the UK and how it affected US  financial products like student loans and mortgage rates.

So there are no Libor hearings scheduled by the Senate Banking Committee. There is no witness list.  Neither Holmes nor Lanza had the expertise needed to testify in such matters.  Those simple facts slay this bizarre theory, and there is no need to discuss the fact that Suzanne Collins is from Newtown and that The Dark Knight Rises had financial shenanigans in the plot. Moreover, if the fact that the theory has descended into such minutia wherein it is important to note that an author of a Young Adult dystopian novel series hailed from a place where a disturbed young man killed children does not give you pause, then likely nothing anyone says can dissuade you from this strange and demented course of anti-logic.

But let me throw this your way, just to be another voice in the wilderness asking for sanity: Say Holmes and Lanza had been on a witness list for non-existent Libor hearings.  How on earth did “the forces that be” gain access to their sons, engage them in intense brainwashing so that they would commit horrific mass killings and do so without anyone noticing. Lanza lived with his mother – it beggars belief that a group of covert bank apologists working for some shadowy New World Order organization could have taken him from his mother and engaged him in the sort of brainwashing that would have led him to go on a rampage.

People unfamiliar with psychopharmacology may think that anyone who takes certain drugs can become a Manchurian Candidate. Possibly, but the sort of drug reaction that can make one psychotic enough to snap and engage in a mass murder will make it impossible to engage in the sort of planning both Holmes and Lanza exhibited before their rampages. The sorts of drugs that can make one susceptible to rampage training do exist but it still takes time to train such people and, if MK-ULTRA is anything to go by, mass murder assassination training is dicey at best.

But all of this asks the question: If there was indeed a list of people meant to testify before the Senate Banking Committee, what would training the unstable sons of two of the witnesses to perform mass murder ultimately do to the hearing process? Was this shadowy agency planning on manipulating mentally shaky family members of each person on the list? And if so, how does doing so manipulate those called to testify into withdrawing as witnesses? The government could compel them to testify even if they withdrew. Also, if I knew my child had been coerced into mass murder on behalf of a strange government organization to prevent me from testifying, I would redouble my efforts to make sure my voice was heard. Many would. Especially if they were already against the wall, known as parents as some of the worst mass murderers in history. What more can happen to their reputations and family?

And if this was an attempt to discredit the witnesses by painting them as untrustworthy because they raised mass murderers, it brings us back to the idea that this shadowy agency would have to engage in a lot of covert brainwashing in order to discredit all the people on that imaginary witness list.

Guys, there are unstable people in this world who do terrible things. While the motives behind those who create these theories are often unclear to me aside from the self-aggrandizement that comes from being separate from the “sheeple,” I understand all too well why people believe this crap. But it makes them defensive when I state the reasons, so I won’t.

Instead, I will just ask that any True Believer demand to see the witness lists that Holmes and Lanza supposedly appeared on.  Withhold judgement until you see those lists.  Do not take anyone at their word – not even me.  Demand solid, clear proof before buying into any of this.  Demand actual, accountable proof before you forward a single e-mail, share a Facebook status or retweet anything.

Conspiracy theory preys on the modern lack of perspicacity, as we see words on a screen and assume they have legitimacy.  The purveyors of lies rely on people believing them without question, which is the same reasoning they use against non-believers.  They accuse us of being mindless robots who refuse to see reason, but  refusing to believe without proof is a sign of mental strength. Don’t be weak. Don’t fall for this garbage.  Children were killed because an unstable young man shot them to death.  Not because the government wants to control your access to guns.  Not because an unnamed shadow organization wanted to stop testimony.  The children are dead because a mentally ill man shot them.  In this case, the truth really is harder to accept than the all the various lies.

One last thing: May those who have exploited the Aurora and Newton shootings to fit their pet paranoias eventually feel the hot blast of shame and condemnation deserved by charlatans.

End of the year thanks and reader celebration

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

So this has been a strange year for us all at Chez Oddbooks. Not bad, not good, just strange. One terrible thing happened, then a wonderful thing followed, then another horrible thing happened, then something fabulous ensued. It really was a bizarre year in that we spent a majority of it reeling from one thing to the next.

So I read fewer books this year than I have any other year in my life and I find myself at a loss to create the “end of the year” list that I generally post. I could come up with only 7 books remarkable enough to note and I have not discussed a single one of them yet. In fact, I have yet to discuss some of the books I mentioned in my end of the year list for 2011.

I wrote far less this year than I intended and there are multiple reasons for this, much of them stemming from neurosis and launching a couple of other projects (need cat toys? I got you covered). Yet, despite having written so much less this year than I had wanted, I somehow managed to gain some new readers and most of my “older” readers stuck around. I find that amazing. I really do.

Continuing in the strange vein of fate punching us in the gut and following it up with a rose bouquet, Mr Oddbooks and I had an unexpected windfall and I decided that since I can’t really prepare a proper end of year list, I’m going to ask you guys to do it for me and share some of my good luck with you.

Tell me the best book you read this year. Or maybe the worst. Or maybe tell me about the best movie you’ve seen this year. I want to hear about the media that affected you, positively or negatively. Starting now, the first comment you leave to this entry telling me about your book/music/film experiences this year will enter you to win one of the following prizes:

A $100 Amazon Gift Certificate
A $50 Amazon Gift Certificate
One of two $25 Amazon Gift Certificates

You can only enter once, though I do hope this entry sparks some lively conversation and you comment often. I will announce the winners during the end of the world, December 21, 2012, which is also my wedding anniversary. I will announce the winners at 6:00 pm, just before Mr Oddbooks and I set out to celebrate the date of our nuptials and, one presumes, the impending Armageddon.

When you comment, please do so with an e-mail address that can receive the gift certificate, as I will be sending them out via e-mail. Please note: I do hope some of my more paranoid readers enter this as well because your e-mail address can be a random free-mail or Hushmail address that in no way betrays your identity to me. If you win the contest and the e-mail with your gift certificate bounces or is rejected, I will run the number generator again and award a new winner.

I will announce this giveaway twice on Twitter, my LJ and my Facebook, but other than those six announcements, I will not be publicizing this. I am not doing this to gain new readers, though if that happens, welcome and stay a while! I am doing this to say thanks for sticking around and reading during my very strange year.

So until 6:00 pm CST, 12/21/12, tell me some things about the media you consumed in 2012. I hope your year wraps up in a pleasant manner and that 2013 holds nothing but amazing things. Much love to you all.

King of the Perverts by Steve Lowe

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: King of the Perverts

Author: Steve Lowe

Type of Book: Bizarro, novella, (borders on) pornographic (but not in a particularly sexy way)

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd:  Lowe created the “sexcathlon” and what I hoped were made-up sexual acts but weren’t, god help me.

Availability:  Published in 2012 by Grindhouse Press, you can get a copy here:

Comments:  I was expecting something far different when I received this book in the mail.  The cover, featuring a sleazy flasher with a bouquet of red flowers hiding his crotch, made my mind go to some very gross and demented places.  While this book was quite disgusting in some areas, it wasn’t The Diary of a Rapist made modern and set in a bizarro world.  It wasn’t even as subversively gross as some of R. Crumb’s drawings.  But it’s interesting to note how the absence of a continual onslaught of over-the-top sexual darkness made this book all the odder.  Not that there isn’t some disturbing content.  There is.  It’s just disturbing content mixed with a lot of humor.

Steve Lowe is an odd duck, which seems like a no-brainer because he is a bizarro writer.  Of course he’s a little odd, right?  Sure, but what sets Lowe apart from some of his bizarro brethren is that while he employs odd environments and strange plot details, he also manages to write excellent character-driven fiction.  And he manages to write character-driven fiction as he discusses arcane and/or wholly fictional (one hoped and one’s hopes were completely dashed) sex acts like the “Abe Lincoln” and  the “Alligator Fuckhouse.”   There were points during this novel when Lowe relied on caricatures, like the evil, money-grubbing ex-wife, and the protagonist, Dennis, sometimes was a bit too sad-sack for my tastes, but every step he takes in this book is a perverse step in regaining control of his life.

And yeah, the ending is… sort of rom-com-ish once you get past the horrifying, deeply disturbing section that takes place just before, but who cares when there’s violence, the mob, disgusting sex acts and even more disgusting sex acts.

I was a bit concerned when I realized that Lowe was mining a familiar vein – man down on his luck auditions for a controversial game show – but sometimes very interesting stories can be told within somewhat hackneyed settings, and Lowe does indeed tell an interesting story.  Hilarious too, but then again I’ve always found the scatological far funnier than the average person.

The story begins in medias res with Dennis contemplating how it is he is going to complete a particular sex act, for he has entered into a reality television contest wherein men compete to see who can complete the most esoteric and perverse sex acts.   Dennis is quickly in over his head, his innate decency at war with his desire to win enough money to take care of all the problems he faces after his financially and sexually profligate wife, Carrie, left him.  Dennis, who is actually a very nice and sexually average guy, is faced with completing a golden shower with an imposingly pretty woman.  Overcome by nerves, he is trying to get it all over with as easily as he can, but nothing really comes easy for Dennis, or without a lot of rumination:

Asking her to pee on me would go over better than asking if I could pee on her.  As far as I understand the rules of the game, a golden shower is a golden shower, regardless of the recipient.  So better me than her.

But I can’t honestly claim chivalry here.  There’s a performance anxiety element to this, like trying to piss at one of those cattle troughs in a football stadium, where you’re shoulder to shoulder with dozens of guys, staring at the wall in front of you, forcing your eyes to remain locked straight ahead and not wonder if you had the guy next to you beat in the meat packing department.  Nothing was worse than holding up the shuffling, drunken queue behind you because you couldn’t make wee-wee when the moment of truth arrived.

So how does his first golden shower work out for Dennis?

Waterboarded by a babe.

Dennis is clearly not into the experience.

I cough and blow urine from my sinuses, gagging on the bitter burning in the back of my throat.  When I can see again, I look up at her.  She’s dry heaving, holding her bucking guts with both hands, preparing to add an appletini chaser to my golden shower.  I scramble, slipping on the soiled slick tile flooring, spinning my tires in the puddle of piss beneath me.  I almost get away in time.

Almost.

Poor Dennis is clearly not an emetophiliac.  And we can also learn a very good lesson from this – never ask a very drunk woman to piss on your head.  You may end up covered in far more bodily emissions than you bargained for.

Though Lowe handles quite well Dennis’ progression from abandoned schlub to a man who manages his life and has a chance at genuine affection with an honest, decent woman, I think the reason to read this book is for the hilarious and bizarre descriptions of Dennis’ attempt to win the title of King of the Perverts.  To avoid spoiling the plot, I’ll have to restrain myself from going into too much detail but I really want to share some more of Lowe’s demented sense of humor.  He also has an excellent ear for dialogue and a style that is very appealing in its simplicity.  His clean and fluid style enabled me to read the squickiest of details without feeling overwhelmed by the sexually… interesting parts.

And there were many sexually interesting (and gross and hilarious) parts, a couple of which I swore had to be the result of Lowe’s fevered imagination.  Alas, a Google proved me wrong.  An “Alligator Fuckhouse” is a thing, people, though the online descriptions varied, as they so often do in such matters.  The “Abe Lincoln?”  Totally not made up and, interestingly, a source of great guilt for Dennis once he finishes the act.  So in a way, this book was an education of sorts.  A deeply gross education.  I’ll give a little context for the quotes but not too much.

Here’s a funny scene, when the game show organizer is giving Dennis a critique on his performance:

Peter’s voice kicks up an octave with excitement as he explains,  “We had to tweak the order of the challenges a little bit, but you managed to pull off two of them tonight in one spectacular performance.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you did!  First, you hung in like a trooper and went the distance to finish off that donkey punch but then you went the extra mile and snuck in an angry pirate.

“An angry wha-wha?”

“Technically, there were a couple of things not quite right with your angry pirate.  You nailed the cumshot to the eyes to produce a squint, but for a proper AP, you were supposed to follow with a kick to the shin to get her hopping around like she has a ‘peg leg’.”  He makes air quotes when he says peg leg.

“Your little bunny did that to herself tonight by running into the dresser, but the result ended up being the same – one pissed off bunny hopping around on one leg, squinting.  The angry pirate!”

It’s indeed a perverse world wherein one can find out one has completed an angry pirate without even knowing such a thing exists.  It was hard not to pity Dennis.  He feels very uncomfortable involving unsuspecting women in the perversions he is asked to perform, but his situation in real life is so dire (his ex has left him in horrible debt and gave birth to another man’s child while married to him, putting him on the hook for child support so he really needs the money from winning the contest) that he forces himself to continue.  And when he feels he wants to stop, he has a lunatic handler named Mongo who forces him onward in his perverse quest.

It’s also a perverse quest of the damned.  Poor Dennis.  His dirty sanchez does not end well and he wakes in the ER with no memory of the night before and a nurse named Sarah mocking his plight.

Was there a bar fight?  Did I get hit with a bottle?   That doesn’t seem familiar at all.

I can see stairs.

Did I fall down stairs?

And why do I still smell ass?  Something in here definitely smells like a butt.  I wonder if another patient in the ER has shit themselves, but Sarah sees me sniffing the air like I’m tracking foxes on a morning hunt.  She solves the mystery for me by pointing at the  tiny sink set in the wall next to the tiny desk.

“That smell is you,” she says.  “Wash your hands and face really well with that antibacterial soap.  Wouldn’t want anybody getting E. coli because of you, Señor.”

Oh, Dennis…  But perhaps this was his instant karmic-payback for involving unsuspecting women in his quest for the title of King of the Perverts.

This is novella-length book, coming in at 111 pages, and Lowe manages to cram a lot into those pages.  There are moments when it feels rushed but I also think that Dennis’ mess and desperation of his life had to be handled in a rushed manner.  What is remarkable about this book is how full a character Dennis is.  Lowe has a gift for creating believable characters with depth even in the middle of a ludicrous or extreme plot line.  I remember the body-switched husband and father in Muscle Memory, a man who is having to deal with horrible realities as the world around him is going mad in a comedic way.  This is not something you see a lot of in bizarro – excellent character development and growth are at times thin on the ground in the genre.  You can lose track of his excellent characterization in the midst of his extreme plot, but it’s there.

All in all, this was a very good follow-up to Muscle Memory.  Lowe’s humor, ear for dialogue, love of the nasty, fine characterization and willingness to plumb the depths of absurdity make King of the Perverts an excellent book.  It has its problems – like the rom-com sort of ending I alluded to earlier – but that which works in this book far outweighs that which doesn’t.  I recommend this book and would love to hear from anyone who managed to complete an Alligator Fuckhouse without going to jail afterward.

Recycled Reads in Austin, Texas

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

The ever devoted Mr. Oddbooks took me to a used book store on my birthday (my birthday was back during the summer, but you all know I run behind on things) and I didn’t have particularly high expectations. The store, Recycled Reads, is sort of a compromise store. You see, a few years back Austin still had Friends of the Library Sales, but some morally anal blowhards ruined it for everyone. One of the few benefits of being a volunteer on behalf of the library is that when the annual sales come around, you get to have first pick of the books. No one really abuses it and even if they did abuse the privilege, first pick means something different to everyone. My first pick sure ain’t gonna be someone else’s first pick.

It’s a small perk, a very small one when one considers the sheer hell of running the book sales for the library. All the screaming kids, all the assholes with scanners beeping up the place as they try to find stock for their online book stores, all the people asking for bulk discounts or special discounts, the mess and the dust. Yet someone made a fuss about some elderly women holding back a few books to buy after the sale and it resulted in such a mess that for a while, if I recall correctly, the Friends of the Library disbanded for a bit. They sure stopped the annual sales at Palmer Auditorium. Recycled Reads is what came after the annual sales ended. Not sure what the difference is since it is still volunteer-run but I guess now there are cameras to make sure no one there sets aside a completely trashed copy of some old school best-seller? No idea, but given my experiences with library sales, I expected Recycled Reads to be a complete shit hole filled with book sellers beeping up the joint, dust everywhere, and at least one kid with a smelly diaper toddling about.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
The outside did not fill me with confidence. It looked like it was going to be some hole in the wall. And yeah, strip malls, bleah…

But the store was much larger than the outside would lead one to believe. It was pretty well organized and nary a beeping shopper to be found. Clean, too.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12

The store was having some sort of steam punk thing going on.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12

I am not really that interested in steam punk, as a genre or as an aesthetic but some of the displays were visually interesting.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
I was interested in buying this little piece of art but was stymied.  The store was not authorized to sell these pieces and advised me to take a card and contact the artist. Funny but ultimately stupid story: I took the card next to the piece and contacted the artist. The man I contacted had no idea what I was talking about. He was a painter, not a maker of miniature vampire hunting kits. I went back and checked the picture I took of the section and sure enough his cards were placed right next to the little kit. But stuff gets moved around in this place, as other pics will show. A shame, really, but perhaps I should just try to make something like this myself.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
The store was far better organized than a regular library sale.  However, no matter how well-organized it may be, it’s hard to discuss a store like this because the inventory turns over every few days or so, even including the books that are not part of the library culls. The public donates books to this location – lots of books. I saw several people bring in boxes of books when I was there. Like, entire trunks of cars full of boxes sorts of drop-offs. While I was there, the fiction section was blah but I found a dozen or so history books that had to come home with me. Among them were a biography about Madame C. J. Walker, a book about a man who stalked Queen Victoria, a biography of Horatio Alger and a biography of Jennie Churchill.

Mr. Oddbooks also found a lot of books about naval history and doing stuff with boats. As a person who grew up then subsequently lived her life landlocked, I have no idea, but he seemed to like them.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
The store had a nice collectible section, but you will be hard pressed to tell because I took some really crappy pics with my phone. Sorry about that.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
The store also had a pretty good selection of sociology and cultural studies books but because everything in life invariably photographs terribly and is awfully staged when I am behind the camera, all you can really see is the misplaced copy of Jane Smiley’s Moo. I snagged a Cornell West title, One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race by Scott Malcolmsen, Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy by Albert Marrin, Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society by Peter McWilliams, No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City by Katherine Williams, and The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
I do feel some regret about not purchasing The New Glutton or Epicure.

Recycled Reads, 9/20/12
Mostly, it’s a brightly colored store with art and some seating, most of it less than comfortable. I have some more blurry pictures here if you are interested. But you really can’t ask for amazing seating in a place where the hardcovers are all $2 and the softcovers are $1. A friend of mine got a vintage and evidently very expensive collection of Mark Twain books for about $50 at Recycled Reads. I did not luck into anything like that but we did leave with 42 books for $90.

The hours are extremely limited. They are only open Thursday through Sunday, 12-6. But you know, cheap books and supporting the library system in Austin. So there’s that.

I didn’t really fall in love with this store but, again, the stock turns over so frequently that I could go there next Friday and think it is the best place ever. So checking it out if you are an Austinista or just visiting would be worth it if you land there on a day when they have stocked the sections relevant to your interests.

This Is Not An Odd Book Discussion: Stop talking about Texas!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

This is not a political rant. This is a common sense rant.

I have noticed online some disturbing statements from unhappy Romney-ites. Once it was revealed that Australia was not really the paradise they thought it would be to escape godless Socialism, eyes fell on Texas. Let me clear up a few problems with the idea of hoards of white, disappointed folk rushing my state in the hopes of creating a new republic when Texas engages in a bloody war against the USA to secede:

1) Texas is not about to secede. I know Perry spoke of it but Perry said a lot of things (I was of the opinion he deliberately tanked his presidential chances by saying loony things – he didn’t want to be president any more than I do), and despite being Governor, he really isn’t the boss of us. David Dewhurst is the boss of us and he has higher political aspirations and won’t risk them suggesting that Texas engage in what can only end up being a giant, bloody clusterfuck. Outside of Texe Marr enclaves of utter lunacy you will not find the mass of Texan bosoms heaving for secession. We are devoted Americans, though many of us value our state as much as we value our country.

2) I do not know where the idea that Texas as a whole hates the Democratic Party came from, but a simple Google will show you that a full 40% of the state voted for Obama. National election-wise we are a Red State but in terms of popular vote we’re more a purply-magenta color. We are not your default angry-white-dude Eden.

3) If common sense fails you and you find yourself on a modern day wagon trail coming to Texas thinking we will soon be a new country and a conservative stronghold, please understand that you may want to step lightly as you barge into my home state, a place where even the housewives are armed. It’s untrue that all liberals eschew pro-2A ideals, just like it’s untrue that Texas is about to secede. We won’t take well to Romney carpet baggers rushing down here and telling us what to do.

Yeah, I know all those people bloviating online have no intentions of moving here. But of all the reactionary things said in reference to Obama winning, this one is so dumb. At least when whiners in 2004 sniveled about going to Canada when Bush won, Canada made sense to the ideals of liberal butthurt.

Seriously, how hard is a Google. If the only places you can find sources for Texas secession as real possibility are infowars and the comment sections on a variety of AM radio stations, then don’t pack the car (or babble about packing the car). If the people who are commenting that Texas is about to secede are using Confederate Flags as their user icons, mayhaps they have a far different agenda at work than simply longing for “freedom.” If you don’t bother to look up how the actual popular vote went in my state, you will miss the better opportunity to go to Oklahoma, which is a far Redder state than Texas.

In fact, may I make a suggestion? Oklahoma: A Much Better Choice for Unhappy Romney-ites!

ETA: Yes, yes, a bunch of you are sending me a Fox News graphic showing that “thousands” want to secede from various states all over the Union. Maybe even tens of thousands? All I can say to this is that 26 million people, give or take a few, live in Texas. Even 500,000 people wanting to do anything in Texas is such a meaningless number that I cannot help but lip fart at anyone who thinks that signing online petitions means anything. If half a million people in Texas want to secede, that means about 2% of the state wants out. At any given moment 2% of the state wants all sorts of damn fool things they ain’t gonna be gettin’. I imagine 2% of Texans want to legalize meth, want to make it legal to beat postal officials on sight, want to make church attendance compulsory and similar half-baked notions that are near and dear to the lunatic fringe.

But that 500,000 I mentioned is a generous number since not even 100,000 Texans have signed the online petition. One hundred thousand butthurt souls wanting a bloody war of secession equals about .3% of the state. I imagine .3% of the state want to have sex with a tree. .3% of the state want to write snake handling into the constitution. .3% of the state want to eat your dog. And not even that many people want to secede.

So go on being butthurt while the national media eggs you on the way they egged on Alec Baldwin when Bush beat Kerry. All less than .3% of you. Tell Alex Jones I said hello.

Happy Halloween!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Hello, dear readers. It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I hope you all have a fabulous night and that any creepy experiences you have are the creepy experiences you want.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I had a paranormal experience that was pleasant and comforting. Not really scary but it’s all I got where actual Halloween-y experiences are concerned. We called the experience “The Mom Ghost” and if you have any interest in that sort of thing, you can read about it here.

Pretty Polly Pussycat (who turned out to be a dude and I really want to change his name to “Lola” but am meeting resistance with Mr. Oddbooks so for now he’s Pretty Paulie Pussycat) wishes you a fun, safe Halloween!
Polly

Carnal Surgery and Brain Cheese Buffet by Edward Lee

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Books: Carnal Surgery and Brain Cheese Buffet

Author: Ed Lee

Type of Books: Fiction, short story collections, extreme horror

Why Do I Consider These Books Odd: The extremity of the content.

Availability: Republished by Deadite Press in 2010 and 2011 respectively, you can get copies here:

Comments: I have not come close to reading all of Edward Lee’s books but, as I have mentioned in the past, I really enjoyed his “Infernal” books. I loathed the execrable Teratologist and I think my negative opinion of Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman is quite clear. It’s not often that I have such diverse opinions about an author’s works but looking at the original publication dates of Lee’s works clears up some issues. Though Teratologist was written roughly around the same time as the “Infernal” series, the Ed Lee books I truly loathe were written in the same three-to-four year time frame.  It may seem like dirty pool to analyze so harshly books that may have been at the beginning of Lee’s career and don’t demonstrate his career arc, but these books were recently released by Deadite, and were new to me when I read them.  If a publisher is going to release old books and the author has no problem with it, then claims that these stories were early in Lee’s career and should not be read closely hold no merit.

One can see some commonalities in Lee’s works that I dislike.  He was on a pedophilia, child porn, mafia kick not unlike some of the works of Andrew Vachss, though Lee’s works are quite a bit less sophisticated. And, interestingly, I find myself disliking some of Vachss’ works for the same reasons I dislike these two collections of Lee’s, as Vachss, in seeming defiance of all of his goals in writing, sometimes presents a moral ambiguity about all the sickness in his content that left me wondering what the point was, to have endured all of that nastiness and have no conclusion, no relief from all the horror. Not every Vachss book was that nihilistic, but Vachss has a tendency to often end his novels in such an unsatisfying manner that I have thrown one or two against the wall when I finished reading it. Had these two Lee short story collections not been on my Kindle, I suspect they too would have been tossed in a similar manner.

Don’t get me wrong. Writing from the id is generally a commendable thing to do because it’s a sign of bravery. You are letting the world in on your subconscious as you ruminate on taboo subjects. It’s all the more brave when one is a horror writer because the author is showing some real darkness and asking the reader to be affected by the content yet not be repelled by the author. I respect people who show their darkness when they write. I just need the darkness to have a point so that it is worth dragging myself through the content. If one is going to write of decadence and sickness in such a way so that the decadence and sickness are the sole points, one must write in a manner that is absorbing, penetrating, or even beautiful. Lee’s writing is banal at best in both collections. So no beauty, no point, no catharsis. And that sucks. This is a problem that plagues most splatterpunk stories. If one just wants to wallow in sickness with no greater point or catharsis – something I enjoy doing from time to time – the writing must be good enough to make the wallow worth it. Otherwise we can all just go to grue sites and view crime scenes and watch suicide videos.

Additionally, as I read these stories, it became clear that Lee had no real focus in his story telling.  I have no moral issue with writing or reading gore. Splatterpunk is not always my cup of tea but, when written well, it can be a lot of fun. But it’s best to decide what the story is going to be. If one is going to incorporate fat women puking down a man’s throat, prostitutes made into living human stumps and forced into exploitative porn, an old man keeping, mutilating and raping women in his basement, and similar images into one’s stories, then perhaps the stories should have a simple plot.  The horror or camp of extreme images make most plots difficult to stomach and to follow.

I decided to discuss in depth the first stories from these two collections because both collections are more or less interchangeable in content as well as the problems that plague them. Then I’ll just pull the most egregious examples from stories from both collections to illustrate in micro the major problems I encountered.

Carnal Surgery and Brain Cheese Buffet were repellent collections so gorehounds will like some elements of these books.  Additionally, at times both had some clever or funny content. But the pluses were outweighed by the following minuses:
–Terrible, pompous, or unlikely dialogue
–No characters, just caricatures or characters who are extremely unrealistic
–Unlikely or fuzzy plots
–Inappropriate word usage and writing that verges on gibberish
–Grotesque imagery that in no way fuels the stories but isn’t well-written enough to enjoy on its own merit
–Puerile humor
It should be mentioned that one of these stories, possibly the worst of the bunch, was nominated for a Stoker Award. So, like, you know, this is just my opinion, man…

By the way, this is a very long discussion. Very long, and hopefully entertaining, but mostly very long. I’m telling you this so you don’t have to click the “more” link and be surprised by the length. And if you click that link and then get all “tl;dr, you verbose bitch,” I will mock your hair and slut shame your dog. Cool?

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