Trashy Books

I read a lot of books, most of which are quite (Ameri)trashy. Fantasy, noir, sci-fi, etc. I thought I would recommend some of the stuff I really enjoyed this year. Feel free to add your own recommendations or simply ignore this post completely.

The Blade Itself (Joe Abercrombie)

This is the 1st in a fantasy trilogy that is anything but typical. It is full of great characters, dark, cynical humor and bloody, violent action.

Already Dead (Charlie Huston)
No Dominion (Charlie Huston)
Half the Blood in Brooklyn (Charlie Huston)
Caught Stealing (Charlie Huston)
Six Bad Things (Charlie Huston)

The first 3 books listed are part of a series about a hard-boiled P.I. in NYC who happens to be a vampire. Various vampire factions control different areas of the city, sort of like rival gangs. This series is nothing like the typical vampire-romance chick-lit all over the shelves these days. It is very noir; full of mean, violent people. The last 2 books are part a trilogy about a guy named Hank Thompson who gets in way over his head with some very bad people. Straight up crime fiction, but really well done.

Small Favor, Book 10 of The Dresden Files (Jim Butcher)
Academ’s Fury, Book 2 of The Codex Alera (Jim Butcher)
Cursor’s Fury, Book 3 of The Codex Alera (Jim Butcher)
Captain’s Fury, Book 4 of The Codex Alera (Jim Butcher)

Jim Butcher is a terrific writer. The best way to describe The Dresden Files is, "What if Harry Potter became a P.I. when he grew up?" Harry Dresden is a private eye in Chicago. Oh, and a wizard. He is always down on his luck, but finds a way to come out ahead in the end, wisecracking along the way. There is a lot of Peter Parker in Harry Dresden. The Codex Alera is straight up fantasy, but very well done. The main character, Tavi, lives in world where everybody (everybody except him, anyway) has access to elemental magic, in the form of Furies. Without magic, he has to rely on his wits and natural fighting ability to overcome all sorts of trouble.

The Man with the Golden Torc (Simon R. Green)

Simon Green is a British author who writes action-packed books full of crazy characters and British humor. This book is the first in a series that marries James Bond and the supernatural. It's fluff, but it is damned fun fluff.

Big City, Bad Blood (Sean Chercover)

This is a hard-boiled private eye novel, plain and simple. Ray Dudgeon, the main character, is a modern day throwback to the characters of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. Gritty, violent stuff set in present day Chicago.

The Lies of Locke Lamora (Scott Lynch)

Another first-in-a-series fantasy novel that feels like Ocean's Eleven meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Robin Hood. It's about a gang of thieves led by the apparently brilliant Locke Lamora. This one makes you think it is going to be all light-hearted caper action, but takes some very dark turns.

The New Destroyer: Guardian Angel (Warren Murphy and Jim Mullaney)
The New Destroyer: Choke Hold (Warren Murphy and Jim Mullaney)

If you've never read any of the Destroyer novels, or seen 'Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins", you are missing out on two of the best characters in modern adventure fiction - Remo and Chiun. Chiun is the master of Sinanju, the end-all-do-all-be-all of martial arts. Remo is is apprentice. They kill people for the government. And they bicker like the best cop-buddy couples you've ever seen. Great action and hilarious banter.

The Blonde (Duane Swierczynski)
Severance Package (Duane Swierczynski)

Swierczynski writes ultra fast-paced neo-noir that is incredibly entertaining. Each of these standalone novels puts an every-man in way over his head in very dangerous situations. The Blonde is one long chase scene involving nano-machines and some very nasty people. Severance Package is kinda Die Hard-ish.

The Automatic Detective (A. Lee Martinez)

This is another hard-boiled P.I. book, where the P.I. just happens to be a 700 lb. robot created by a mad scientist. He's just trying to make a living as a cab driver in Empire City after overcoming his murderous programming, but ends up getting involved in a mystery involving his kidnapped neighbors. Lots of humor in this one.

That is it for books without pictures. I read a lot of comics as well, but I'll keep this list short. All of the books below can be found in collected editions on Amazon.

100 Bullets (Azarello/Risso) - neo-noir crime fiction meets vast right-wing conspiracy
Fables (Willingham/Buckingham) - What if fairy tale characters lived among us?
Immortal Iron Fist (Brubaker/Fraction/Aja) - 70s Marvel kung-fu character remade for the 00s.
Hellboy/BPRD - The movies are just the tip of the iceberg with Hellboy and friends.

Enough blathering by me. What are did YOU read this year?

I went back and played catch-up on a lot of classic SF I either read in my formative years or somehow missed. I really dug into New Wave stuff. This included:

75% of the complete works of Philip K. Dick
CHRONICLES OF AMBER (the first five, at least), LORD OF LIGHT, and THIS IMMORTAL by Roger Zelazny
DHALGREN, NOVA, and TRITON by Sam Delany
GATHER, DARKNESS by Fritz Leiber
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE and CITIES IN FLIGHT by James Blish
CAMP CONCENTRATION and 334 by Thomas M. Disch
HYPERION, Dan Simmons
CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, Walter Miller
THE STARS MY DESTINATION and DEMOLISHED MAN, Alfred Bester (awesome, awesome stuff BTW)
MORE THAN HUMAN, Theodore Sturgeon (one of my favorite novels, third reading!)
FOREVER WAR, Joe Haldeman
DYING EARTH, Jack Vance
All the Elric stuff, Michael Moorcock (totally bad ass)
Totally non-SF- BLOOD MERIDIAN and OUTER DARK by Cormac McCarthy- one of the best living novelists. Awesome western stories with a real sense of bleakness.

And I just finished re-reading all of the Solomon Kane and Conan stories. Between you and I, I think that other than RED NAILS and BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER most Conan stories turn out to be extremely repetitive. Don't get me wrong, they're great stuff...but reading them in one pass like that you really, really get worn out on certain elements of them. But those two stories are just monumentally great- and not just because they're Conan- they're just great stories with awesome vignettes of action.

But far and away the best thing I read this year was Gene Wolfe. I never read him before, but the BOOK OF THE NEW SUN books (SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR, SWORD OF THE LICTOR, and CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH) are, hands down, the greatest fantasy books I've ever read. Period. Including Tolkien. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in approaching genre from a much more literary angle. This isn't the usual genre-pandering porn about elves, dragons, and post-D&D crap at all. It's challenging, pretty difficult to read, demanding of your total attention and analysis, and so starkly imaginative that it puts everyone else writing in the field to absolute shame. There are moments of pure wonder unlike anything else I've ever read along with absolute surrealist horror that is actually terrifying. And there is always, on every page, a sense of not getting the whole picture that lends the books a real sense of mystery and opaqueness that I find deliriously compelling. When I first started reading them, it felt like fantasy as imagined by the David Lynch that made MULLHOLLAND DRIVE or the Stanley Kubrick that did A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and BARRY LYNDON. Believe it or not, I think there's more comparisons that I could draw with those three films than any other works of fantasy literature. I've read other Wolfe this year too- PEACE and the BOOK OF THE LONG SUN (all four incredibly boring volumes) but nothing measured up to this crowning achievement.

Catching up on the classics is a great idea. I love Zelazny and Simmons, but I haven't read a lot of the other guys on your list. I'm gonna go through your list make a trip to the used bookstore.

BTW, if you liked Hyperion, you might want to check out Ilium and Olympos, two of Simmons' most recent books. I finished Ilium this year and it was terrific. Robert Charles Wilson is another sci-fi guy who might be up your alley. His 'Spin' is a great work of speculative fiction.

Glad to hear your rave on Wolfe. I have another of his books, The Knight, in the to-be-read pile.

My most memorable books of this year were:
Gomorra by Roberto Saviano. Not much ameritrashy but good anyway
The Crow by James O'Barr. I was finally able to get my hands on this classic
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Beautiful fairy tale.

the majority of the other books I have read this year are the books I need for my studies, nothing nice there but kinda ameritrashy

sydo wrote:

My most memorable books of this year were:
Gomorra by Roberto Saviano. Not much ameritrashy but good anyway
The Crow by James O'Barr. I was finally able to get my hands on this classic
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Beautiful fairy tale.

the majority of the other books I have read this year are the books I need for my studies, nothing nice there but kinda ameritrashy

Cool! Gaiman's stuff is terrific. I'm hoping to get his latest for Christmas.

About 50% of the books I read this year were re-reads of books that I've owned for years. The only fairly new stuff that I thought was great was some new cyberpunk by new writers, Richard K. Morgan and Jon Courtenay Grimwood, and also some science-fiction by Ian McDonald. Technically, these are all British writers, but I'm recommending them here anyway. Specifically:

Brasyl, by Ian McDonald: Overlapping adventures across time and space, centered upon a modern-day Brasil, policed by a cross-dimensional governmental agency. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the colonial period action the most.

Pashazade, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood: Have you ever read When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger? If not, step away from the computer and immediately do so, because that is one of the best cyberpunk books of all time. Seriously. Okay, now that you've read When Gravity Fails, try to imagine somebody writing the same basic concept with no awareness of the existence of When Gravity Fails. It should suck, but Pashazade succeeds on its own merits, because the author himself has led a very interesting life and manages to convey that through his main character. Besides, it isn't that often that you get to read a decent science-fiction story set in the Mideast anyway.

Broken Angels, by Richard K. Morgan: More british cyberpunk, but possibly the most AmeriTrashy thing that I've read in years. This isn't the first book of Morgan's trilogy featuring hardboiled P.I. Takeshi Kovacs, but each book stands nicely on its own, and this is easily the best of the three. (Though for fans of the boardgame Android, start with Altered Carbon instead.) Anyway, this book has a team of mercenaries recovering an alien artifact from the middle of a warzone. In the process, they come up against both creepy human technology and very creepy alien technology, as well as a traitor from within. If you loved the first two movies of the Alien quartet, you need to give this book a shot.

benny lava,

I'm not usually into the detective stuff, but I like your taste in comics, so I will look into those. From your description of the Destroyer books, you really absolutely need to read some Joe R. Lansdale, specifically the books featuring Hap Collins and Leonard Pine.

barnes,

I am a huge fan of Zelazny and Lieber, as well as all of the Dying Earth books and the early Elric books (everything up to and including Stormbringer). I liked Hyperion and some other early works by Dan Simmons, especially Song of Kali. Later, I realized that Simmons had become a right-wing libertarian nutjob. Also, he kind of ruined his early horror novel Summer of Night with a sequel that ignored most of the horror elements in favor of neo-nazis. A Canticle for Leibowitz is an amazing book that almost makes me believe in God. Gene Wolf is really frustrating. He has great ideas and writes wonderful prose, but his endings stump me nearly every time. It's like Wolfe can't stand the idea of somebody actually knowing how the story ended.

Mike & Mike - read Gene Wolfe's Books of the Sun in the 80s and agree with both of you, great writing but I have no idea what it was about at the end and what actually happened .... and I was too intimidated to go through the four books again.

Perhaps that can be my 2009 Book Resolution - read the series again and, if it still fails to seep into my thick skull, ask MB in December 2009 to explain it to me.

My backup resolution can be to start the copies of The Thomas Covenant Chronicles I bought a year or two to read again (another 80s reading episode).

(My reading disappeared once I migrated into IT in the 90s, as if I had spare time that could be used for reading there was always a backlog of IT books or papers.)

Shellhead wrote:

benny lava,

I'm not usually into the detective stuff, but I like your taste in comics, so I will look into those. From your description of the Destroyer books, you really absolutely need to read some Joe R. Lansdale, specifically the books featuring Hap Collins and Leonard Pine.

Lansdale is now on the list - thanks for the tip!

This thread makes me wish I had the time for fiction like I used to. Lots of good suggestions I'll have to keep in mind. My only complaint about my University studies is how little time it affords me for fiction. There is only so much reading I can do in a single day!

great thread. Shame I've got no time to read any of it (Cormagh O'Grady's the Road is still on my stack of 'to read' book since Ken B. gave it a raving review)

But it's inspiring to read so keep it up!

I've been pretty good about tracking my reading (for pleasure) in Shelfari. Looking it over, I'd say the AT highlights are THE ROAD, A VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE, and MY CUSTOM VAN.

THE ROAD is well covered in the recommendations pages here. I'm reading BLODD MERIDIAN now. Cormac McCarthy is a national treasure.

A VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE by Tony Horwitz is the non-fiction tales of early European explorers of the Americas. Largely concerned with the 500+ years of exploration PRIOR TO the arrival of the Pilgrims, it's a nice read. Cabeza de Vaca was something else, yikes.

MY CUSTOM VAN, as it's author Michael Ian Black states, will plainly blow your mind all over your face.

jeb wrote:

THE ROAD is well covered in the recommendations pages here. I'm reading BLODD MERIDIAN now. Cormac McCarthy is a national treasure.

Damn, I always get that guy's name wrong. But because of this thread I decided to take the road with me on my 8 hour return trip to Louvain today. Very gripping stuff! Hated to get out of the train in Louvain and couldn't wait to continue on the way back and see how it ended.

I'm now eager to pick up Blood Meridian as well.

so thanks again for this thread!

I think there's something trashy about Harry Flashman, main character of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series of novels.

He's generally a villain, cheat, liar, scoundrel, and rogue. But it's uproariously funny stuff--not for the easily offended.

I love the Flashman books...they are great!

Didn't care for Illium and Olympos by Simmons, actually...had to force myself to finish them.

I've gone back and re-read old Heinlein books as my 12 year old son is starting to read through quite a few---loved re-reading Starship Troopers. Son loved it...and the cartoon series Roughnecks that was based on a combo of the movies and the book---surprisingly good.

Robert Rankin . Utter Trash. Utter genius.