Month: February 2014

I love that you asked that while I was answering Dylan’s question about three recent books. My favorite book ever? Man, I don’t know. I keep going back to/re-reading From The Teeth of Angels by Jonathan Carroll, Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, 45 by Bill Drummond and Billy and Girl by Deborah Levy every few years, so maybe one of those…?

And as I said on Twitter: Yes! I do think you should still be writing on the side. I’m of the opinion that the hordes who know you from Vaginal Fantasy should be crowdfunding a book from you by now, though, so I may be biased.

Argh, I can’t do “without reservation,” because I always have reservations about this kind of thing. But if your tastes are close to mine:

The Fictional Man, Al Ewing

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple

S., Doug Dorst w/ JJ Abrams

All of those have come out in the last year or so, I think? That’s fairly recent-ish. If your tastes aren’t close to mine, then I’ve heard very good things about that one about the thingyamy. You know the one I mean, by whozawhatsit.

Good, right up until the last book, which falters a little.

For those who don’t know – and there’s no reason that you should – the Star Trek spin-off books set in the post-Next Generation time frame have, in recent years, ended up re-casting the franchise as more of a political thriller/Cold War allegory than has previously been the case. The End is the culmination of this trend, I suspect, a five-book series that ties up all manner of plot points and loose ends more-or-less satisfyingly, and clears the way for a relaunch of the major franchises involved.

The last book in the series suffers from, well, being the last book in the series, really; there’s a lot that has to be revolved and explained, and the writer was either left with an out-of-nowhere plot twist that everyone else had stayed away from or something that he invented himself in order to give his book something that wasn’t just spill-over from the earlier entries in the series. It’s an odd choice – I’m trying not to spoil it – that could have worked if it had at least been hinted at earlier, but appearing as it does when it does, it feels tacked-on and problematic.

But overall! I liked the series, in large part because I liked Star Trek: Cold War In Space as a concept. If they really do go back to the traditional exploration mode that the final novel hints is an option, I can’t tell if I’ll be disappointed or not.

I’m so tempted to say Blur, primarily because they’re my favorite Britpop group, but I think I’d go for Super Furry Animals instead, and lean heavily on a Kirby cosmic style, where everything was possible and the comic moved through genre and aesthetic as often and as nimbly as the band themselves.

That, or the further adventures of Northern Uproar, because really, who knows what DID happen to that band of teenage reprobates?