Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005.
The late Blake Snyder was one of the most successful screenwriters of the past few decades, at least in terms of sales of scripts for “genre” films. The subtitle is “The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need,” and it’s hardly that, but it’s definitely worth reading. (Syd Field’s books come much closer to that description, and Snyder recommends them, too.)
NY: Orbit Books, 2014.
If you enjoyed Jemisin’s “Inheritance” trilogy as much as I did, then you will certainly want to read this shorter sequel. She calls it a novella, but at 250 pages, I regard it as a novel.
NY: Pantheon, 2014.
This not-long graphic novel isn’t even close to an epic. No superheroes, not even especially unusual characters. A “quiet” story, as they say, but it’s quite well done. Corinna Park is a Korean-Canadian in her mid-20s who is burning out in her job with an ad agency. Does she really want to keep pitching perfume to nine-year-old girls? But what else can you do to pay the bills in the big city with a degree in English Lit? (She’d rather be a novelist, but. . . .)
Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2011.
Chester, who lives and works in Toronto, has been a working cartoonist for quite a long time and his books tend to serious subjects and transparent honesty. The subtitle here is “A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John,” and that’s exactly what it is. When he broke up with his third long-term girlfriend (though they kept living together), he decided enough was enough: No more traditional relationships. It wasn’t worth it.
NY: New American Library, 2016.
It’s the fall of 1926 and young Maisie Musgrave, born in Toronto and raised in New York by whomever her actress mother was able to dump her on, has returned to her adopted home of London. Moreover, after several years as one of the barely-working poor, she has just been hired as a secretary at the four-year-old BBC up on Savoy Hill. Mostly, she’s the typing assistant to the executive assistant to the Director General, John Reith, who hates being forced to hire so many women.
NY: Random House, 2006.
To my mind, Margaret Atwood is one of the very best living writers in English and has been for some time. Her novels are never less than first-rate, and so too are most of her short stories. Not that many people are equally good at both. This volume actually falls somewhere between the two forms. The stories were written and originally published separately, and over a period of years, but they all are episodes from the life of Nell, a Canadian woman now (apparently) in her seventies, as she looks back and remembers her life.
NY: Scribner, 2017.
I was aware that one of Egan’s previous novels had won a Pulitzer, and that the others had all been shortlisted for one major award or another, but somehow, I hadn’t actually gotten around to reading any of them until now. But I’m a sucker for a good historical, and this one is set on the Brooklyn home front during World War II, and it’s extremely well written.
Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books, 2016.
Like most Americans of my generation, I first discovered French graphic novelist Moebius (whose real name was Jean Giraud, and who died in 2012) in the highly innovative and much-mourned Heavy Metal Magazine. His work, like that of his European peers, was a far cry from the DC approach to comics. This epic (it runs to 360 pages) started out in 1983 as a contracted series for the Citroen car company, whose vehicles were always very “French” in design. But then it took off on its own and the resultant volume became an overnight collector’s item.
NY: Soho Press, 2016.
When this series started, back in the early ’90s, I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, in the West Country, was an abrasive and overweight bully. In fact, his high-handedness got him sacked and he spent the second book working security for a London department store. But Lovesey got him under control and Diamond settled down to a continuing and successful police career chronicled in writing and plots of generally high quality.
NY: Little, Brown, 2015.
This is the fifth volume in what has become one of the best-written space opera adventures to appear in many years. By this point, the reader has become thoroughly invested in the four main characters, as well as the half-dozen recurring supporting players, and there’s a tendency to hold one’s breath at key points in the story — because there’s never a guarantee than everyone will survive.
As a retired public librarian (very large system in a very large city), I've been writing book reviews for the consumption of other people for more than 40 years. Since 1999, I've been posting my reviews to a personal website, but I'm now shifting my reviewing jones to this blog.
I have been a semi-professional genealogist since the 1960s and I have another blog of book reviews in the field of family research! To read those, go to BookSmith's Genealogy Book Reviews.
