Firmin by Sam Savage

"Sometimes the books were arranged under signs, but sometimes they were just anywhere and everywhere. After I understood people better, I realized that this incredible disorder was one of the things that they loved about Pembroke Books. They did not come there just to buy a book, plunk down some cash and scram. They hung around. They called it browsing, but it was more like excavation or mining. I was surprised they didn't come in with shovels. They dug for treasures with bare hands, up to their armpits sometimes, and when they hauled some literary nugget from a mound of dross, they were much happier than if they had just walked in and bought it. In that way, shopping at Pembroke was like reading: you never knew what you might encounter on the next page -- the next shelf, stack, or box --and that was part of the pleasure of it."

I just finished reading "Firmin," from which this passage was taken.

I first heard about the book thanks to the Lit-Blog Co-op (you can read what they have to say about it here.) I read a couple of the posts about the book and went on to other things. It was only a few weeks ago, when I saw the book at Barnes & Noble in the staff recommendations with a 10% discount sticker on it that I thought: well this might be worth a try.

The book is the story of a rat, Firmin, born in the basement of a used book store in Boston's Scollay Square. The square is only a short time from being bulldozed and covered in concrete. In the short time he has, Firmin discovers books and writes his own in his head (he can't speak or write, so this is the only way he can do it.) He desperately wants to reach out to humans, he wants to communicate. His efforts to cross that gap make up the majority of the book.

The story is all about the love of books and how it can both make one feel more in touch with the world while, at the same time, increasing one's alienation.

I knew I would love the book when I got to the paragraph above. It reflects some of my same feelings about used books stores. (I imagine it's a pretty common feeling among book lovers.)

This was Sam Savage's first novel. He's got to be in his late 40s, at least, which makes me selfishly happy. You can hear an interview with Savage from The Bat Segundo Show. He sounds like an interesting man. You can also check out his Web site, The Old Rat, which includes some poetry and other writings.

New pulp reprints

Has anyone seen these in stores, repackaged Shadow and Doc Savage novels by Nostalgia Ventures? (Link found at gamera_spinning) I've collected many of the old Bantam reprints of the Doc Savage novels and I have a couple of the Shadow reprint novels (although I've only read "The Romanoff Jewels"), but this is the first time in years that I think they have been in print. (I also have some The Spider reprints, but Nostalgia Ventures doesn't seem to be doing anything with that series.)

What's interesting about these reprints, according to the Web site, is that they include historical information by Anthony Tollin and Will Murray. I know Murray's name as both the writer of many of the Destroyer (Remo Williams!) novels and as a pulp expert. Apparently, Tollin and Murray have also written Doc Savage novels "in collaboration" with original writer Lester Dent. The reprints also have the original illustrations and covers. I'm sorely tempted to pick these up. They are apparently available at Barnes & Noble and Borders.

If all these names (Shadow, Doc Savage, Operator #5) are unknown or confusing to you, get educated at: PulpWiki, The Hero Pulps!, Wikipedia entry, and The Pulp Gallery. For more on The Destroyer see Sinanju.com. Here's more on the movie Remo Williams.

Most of my pulp reprint needs, though, are usually served by Adventure House and High Adventure magazine. That's how I collected almost the entire "Purple Invasion" stories from Operator #5.

Loads of links and more

Arrested Development's Michael Cera gives you his tips to success.

Chris Roberson points out that Avatar is coming to the screen. I've only seen a couple of episodes, but I share Roberson's worries.

Paul Jessup skips the manifesto and creates a subgenre.

Two interviews with Nick Mamatas: Bookslut and Disinformation

Iwao Takamoto has died. I had never heard of him until I read the Boing Boing post, but now I realize he's the creator behind some of the best cartoons of my childhood.

Professor Hex points out this wonderful eBay sale that includes thousands of pulp magazines. Just check out the gallery of images from the sale of Weird Tales, terrific stuff.

And to round out this linkfest, a meme from a while ago. I found it at Myth Happens.

"Listed below are the fifty most significant science fiction / fantasy novels, 1953—2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club: bold the ones you have read, italicize the ones you started but never finished, underline the ones you own but never started, strike out the ones you hated, and put an asterisk beside the ones you love. "

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury*
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe*
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison*
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson (I assume this is for the whole trilogy, I only read the first book.)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon*
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith*
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester*
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

In the case of some of these books, the line between liking and loving is very thin. It's interesting that I don't hate any of these books. Though I imagine I wouldn't like it today, "Sword of Shannara" was a pleasant reading experience for me in my early teen years. I'm also pleased to see that I've read the great majority (31) of these books. It gives me a few ideas for rereads later.

What I read in 2006

You can see all of the books I read this year and their publishing information at LibraryThing. But here is the basic list. I've put them in order of enjoyment, though I could easily change around the order of the books in the middle. The list doesn't include short stories unless I read an entire collection (which is unusual for me, I tend to dip in and out of anthologies.)

Fiction
The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Vanitas by Jeffrey Ford
Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
The 37th Mandala by Marc Laidlaw
The Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce
Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock
Lint by Steve Aylett
Homeland by Sam Lipsyte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Imaro by Charles Saunders
Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer
The Conqueror Worms by Brian Keene
She by H. Rider Haggard
The Shadow: The Romanoff Jewels by Maxwell Grant
Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara
Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust
Hammered by Elizabeth Bear
The Rising by Brian Keene
The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
Cowslip by Kirk Sigurdson

Graphic novels
Black Hole by Charles Burns
Bone: One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith
Y: The Last Man, Volume 1 Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughan
Barefoot Gen: The Day After by Keiji Nakazawa
The Nikopol Trilogy by Enki Bilal


Nonfiction
Sixpence House: Lost in a town of books by Paul Collins
Haiku Handbook by William Higginson
With Respect to the Japanese by John C. Condon

It's about 32 books. While this was a busy year, I thought I usually read more books than that. I'll track this year, as well, and see how many I read.

"The Bamboo Sword," Shuhei Fujisawa

Late last year, thanks to the magic of Neflix, I saw a Japanese movie called "The Twilight Samurai." It was excellent and I recommend it highly. It's a drama of a working man disguised as a samurai tale. The samurai of the title is burdened by debt from his wife's funeral and does not make enough money as a clerk to pay it off. But his greatest joy is raising his daughters and watching them grow. Secretly, he's also a masterful swordsman, which will complicate his life further.

The film was a wonderful character study. For those wanting samurai action, it's there, but it's very restrained. It was one of my favorite films of last year. The movie was based off the stories of Shuhei Fujisawa, who wrote stories of samurai that reflected the problems of the lives of modern Japanese working people. He was one of Japan's most popular writers.

Thankfully, this March, Kodansha will be publishing "The Bamboo Sword and Other Samurai Tales." Here's the book description from Amazon:

EVOCATIVE, EXCITING, AND TENDER, THESE CHARMING TALES OPEN A WINDOW ONTO LIFE IN JAPAN AS IT WAS FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

This delightful collection of eight stories evokes life in early seventeenth-century Japan, a time when peace finally reigns after centuries of civil war. Tokugawa Ieyasu has defeated his rivals to become shogun, and is busily establishing the regime that ruled the country for the next two and a half centuries.

It is a period of political upheaval full of intrigue, rivalry, and betrayals. The samurai are still valued for their swordsmanship, and are a cut above the peasants, artisans, and merchants in the social hierarchy. Without battles to fight, however, these career warriors struggle to retain their sense of pride and meaning in life as they attempt to settle into mundane jobs and family life. Occasional flashes of the sword are tempered by the sympathies, conspiracies, kindnesses, and enmities arising between people from across the social spectrum.

Fujisawa brings a distant culture richly to life, with characters that modern audiences the world over can relate to presented against a detailed, realistic historical backdrop.

This is one of the books I'm most looking forward to this year. There's an article here about popular literature in Japan and how it relates to this book.  Apparently, Fujisawa's work is seen as "reassuring," and the article talks about the use of cliches. The book is reviewed positively here.