Summer Reading: What a great week.

So, it happens that I spent the last two days experiencing my version of happy, which means wallowing in new book acquisitions. I got two books that I was very much looking forward to, and like a great big goober, I swallowed them both up at once and sort of have to reread them a bit to try and maintain my "happy" a little longer. I'm a bit like a baby crying because the candy she ate is all gone.

But it was good.

First up, I got The Apocalypse Codex, which is part of Charles Stross' Laundry books, which follows the exploits of pseudonymous hero Bob Howard, computer geek, civil servant, and necromancer as he goes about the not-especially glamorous business of preventing the Eschaton (or at least preventing the eschaton-minded from nibbling the almighty fuck out of our corner of the universe, or out of the heads of people who inhabit it). I love this series, and this book was no exception. Here, we follow Bob as he and some new (possibly recurring?) characters investigate a charismatic evangelist preacher who seems to be "saving" souls--for someone to eat?

I like that Stross depicts the supernatural spy in real world ways--having his regrets and night-horrors, being flawed and needing to explore why he does what he does. I also enjoy that he interweaves real-world history with real myth and fiction in a seamless package. I'm slavering for the next installment of Bob's adventures--and kind of hoping for more entanglement with the newer characters introduced: Persephone Hazard and Johnny MacTavish.--whose interactions suggest a wealth of standalone possibilities.


Another lovely read I gobbled was the Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill graphic novel, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 2009. 

It's kind of hard to square the world as we know it, 2009, and the world as our heroes (mostly heroines) experience it, in Moore's 2009. I would not recommend anyone who wants to read LOEG start with this--by all means, read every one from the beginning.  But you'll not be disappointed when you get to this edition, just, um, depressed. Moore and O'Neill's 2009 (sort of like our world, but I hope not--much grimmer) is ugly and it's implied that the ugliness of our world has much to do with the ugliness/crassness of our literature. As with previous installments of LOEG, there is some lit and cultural criticism. But the portraits of Mina Murray, Orlando (as a woman) and others make this an oddly feminist work.

I am really loving the emerging character of Orlando/Vita, etc. The three thousand-year-old warrior and hermaphroditic immortal really is the voice of this issue. Also, you might shudder at the implied villain.

I totally recommend both of these books, but warn they are so devourable you'll really need to either read all the lit associated (and good on you, if you do!). Or you won't--it's a free country.  You do you, m'kay?