TopDragon Awards 2009!

This is always difficult for me.  I tend to like most books that I read and very few are not pleasurable reading experiences in one way or another.  Still, some are a cut above the rest and so I present these annual awards.  There are no qualifications to be entered into this award program other than I must have read the book during the calendar year.  Doesn't matter when it was published or even if it's still in print.  I don't judge by what a critic might say or by how much publicity it may have received or whether or not my friends liked it.  Simply, I judge by how much I enjoyed reading it.  FYI, the "Sleeper" award is for a book I didn't really expect to be all that good but it turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable.  Also, to be eligible for the Grand Prize, the book must have won in one of the lower levels.  So, without further ado...here are the 2009 TopDragon Awards:

Best Nonfiction: American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur
 byWilliam Manchester

Best Classic Fiction: The Fountainhead
 by Ayn Rand

Best Historical Fiction: River God
by Wilbur Smith

Best Mystery: The Cat Who Tailed a Thief
by Lilian Jackson Braun

Best Adventure: Conspiracies, (Repairman Jack #3)
by F. Paul Wilson

Best Western Fiction: The Cherokee Trail
by Louis L'Amour

Best General Fiction: The Carpetbaggers
by Harold Robbins

Best Young Adult Novel: Starlight (Warriors, The New Prophecy #4)
by Erin Hunter

Best Horror: Sandman Slim
by Richard Kadrey

Best Science Fiction: The Psi Corps Trilogy
by J. Gregory Keyes

Best Fantasy: The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss

Best Short Story: Survivor Type
by Stephen King

Best Audio Book: Night Over Water
by Ken Follett

Sleeper Award: Top Producer
by Norb Vonnegut

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Grand Award Winner: The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss

Runner up: River God
by Wilbur Smith

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A few notes on my reading year:  I read 98 books this year, 11 of which were audio books.  That equals almost 36,000 pages (not counting audio books of course).  I also read 49 short stories making that, by far, the most competitive category for an award.

Happy New Year to all!

Unicorn Point

Hey I made it!  I wasn't sure if I was going to complete this last book before the end of the year or not...but I did, and with a whole day to spare!  Unicorn Point is the 6th and final book of Piers Anthony's "Apprentice Adept" series.  Or so I thought.  In my rush to wrap up trilogies and other series this month, I hadn't realized that there is actually a 7th book in this series.  I don't own it but have seen it in the book store in years past.  Not so suprising that I hadn't realized it though when you consider that Piers Anthony is an extremely prolific author with 140 books published to date.  I've been reading him since I was a teenager, many moons ago and my database tells me this is the 63rd Piers Anthony book I've read.  Wowzer.

Mr Anthony is somewhat infamous for cramming 6-7 novels in each of his "trilogies".  Many people think the first three make a fine trilogy and then he proceeds to write more and thus ruin the series.  His Xanth series alone started as a trilogy and is still going strong after 34 books.  I tend to agree but am such a completest that I feel obligated to read the entire series.  This particular series, the "Apprentice Adept" series is among my favorite, expecially the first three.  The concept is very cool: a world that has a fantasy region called "Phaze" as well as a science region called "Proton."  Magic works in Phaze whereas Proton is very science fictiony.  Turns out the two regions were split from a single region sometime in the past and even the people have duplicates in the other region.  Thus a magical "adept" in Phaze has a corresponding citizen or serf in Proton.  But when one person accidentally enters the other zone...well you can imagine what sorts of chaos might develop.

This is definitely one of Mr Anthony's series that should have been limited to three books.  Those first three novels, beginning with Split Infinity formed a tightly woven and complete story with well developed characters and compelling plot.  They remain among my favorite fantasy novels.  However, his attempt at a follow-on trilogy largely fails in my opinion.  The new characters are mostly lifeless, and very similar to one another.  They even think the same way and have the same attitudes (something I've noticed for many of this author's characters). The plot is overly complicated and confusing making the entire reading experience an onerous one.  There are just enough intriguing parts to keep me on the hook and continuing to the next novel but overall I wished the author had pursued other stories.  That probably explains why it took me 2 1/2 years between reading book 5 and book 6.  This book, Unicorn Point is divided into 18 chapters, each with a different point of view character.  That basically turns the book into 18 seperate vignettes that are intended to bring the entire story together.  Instead it seperates the story and further complicates it.  Take my advice and stop after the first three books in this series.

Next up:  time to stop completing unfinished series and start fresh stories.  I'm not sure what I'll chose to start the new year with but it'll be exciting to browse my shelves (exactly 300 books still to be read) and come up with the next entry.  Tomorrow...the much anticipated (at least by me) TopDragon book awards!

The Strong Shall Live

No need to rehash the stories in this marvelous collection of western short stories by the immortal Louis L'Amour.  I've blurbed on my blog (blog-blurbed?) each time I finished a story in The Strong Shall Live so my thoughts are already posted.  All except the last one, "Bluff Creek Station."  That story is the perfect story to finish off the book; whomever selected the order of the stories is to be commended.

"Bluff Creek Station" is one of the shortest of the stories in the entire collection and yet it is one of the most inspiring.  It begins with the main character knowing he is soon to die, shot through the spine by Indians raiding the stage coach station.  His only purpose in living at this point is to warn the stage that is due in to the station shortly, striving to live just long enough to fire off his shotgun as a warning that Indians still lay in ambush.  His thoughts while he waits and as numbness sets in throughout his limbs are poignant indeed.  This is excellent writing and definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat for the few minutes it takes to reach the end.

I've said before that Louis L'Amour has two reputations: one as a hack western formula writer who churned out short book after short book for years and so was obviously a "bad" writer.  I know personally of some people who dismiss him as a horrible writer simply because there are so many of his books on the book store shelves.  Obviously he can't be any good.  Of course, they have never tried a single one; they choose to let their elitism keep them from enjoying a good reading experience.  Others have said that his writing is "authentic" and allows the readers of today a glimpse into the real west of the later 1800s.  I probably fall somewhere in between but I've read enough to know that he isn't just a western writer, having written all sorts of adventure books from the WWII era all the way back to the stoneage.  He puts a lot of real history in his stories.  His biography makes it clear that even though he was a self-taught man he did an enormous amount of research for his stories; walking the hills and valleys where they take place.  A quick check of my database reveals that this book is the 61st of his that I've read.  That puts him at number 2 on my all time list and I can honestly say that I've enjoyed all but perhaps 3 of them.  That's a pretty good record.  While I don't pretend to say he is a "great" writer, he certainly fits the description of an enjoyable writer.  And when all is said and done, that's a pretty good epitaph.

Coming soon: my end-of-the year "TopDragon" annual award winners.  Stay tuned!

Inkdeath

Here's hoping everybody is having a great end-of-the-year holiday season.  I know I'm enjoying some time off and spending time with my family.  My reading time is actually suffering some due to all of the other activities this time of year.  Nevertheless, I did manage to find time to complete my reading of the third book of the Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke, Inkdeath.

I confess to stalling quite a bit before getting around to this one.  I quite enjoyed the first book in the series but felt the second one, Inkspell dragged somewhat.  It was probably a necessary evil because Ms Funke did not take the easy way out and simply rewrite another version of the first book.  She greatly expanded the "Inkheart" universe and the number of characters and subplots jumped tremendously.  Now, here in the third book, I was afraid the whole thing would fail to wrap up in a satisfactory manner.  I happily discovered that not to be the case and even though I didn't enjoy it as much as the first book, it was still a good one.

There are numerous characters in this book.  I read somewhere that there are 114 of them which makes things hard to keep track of.  Fortunately, an appendix is included which contains a short blurb about each one and even some reminders of their roles in the previous novels.  I referred to that quite often, looking up several characters more than once to get that "oh yeah" moment.  The plot moved along pretty well in this novel with lots of jumping around among the many points of view.  I was, however, disappointed in the vastly diminished roles of Meggie and Farid, both major characters in the first book.  Mo has a major role once again, taking on the persona of a Robin Hood sort of figure called the Bluejay. 

This trilogy has really evolved over the course of the three books, becoming darker as we move along.  The attraction for me, and what I believe makes this a good trilogy for youngsters, is the idea of being able to bring characters out of fictional stories by reading, as well as changing the very reality of the story you are living in by writing new scenes.  That's just cool and gets to the very heart of young people's imaginations.  On a deeper level, I suppose, it addresses the idea of predestination vs. changing your own future through your actions.  I tend to take it more at the first level and just let my imagination go.

I commented to Anita, who wrote a comment here a couple of blog entries ago, and whose blog I also follow, that I think these books are best when read aloud to the whole family, particularly if you can do many different voices.  I used to do that with my family (when my kids were young) with classics like Narnia, Harry Potter, etc.  That sort of setting really brings the story alive and lets you sink into the characters.  I really miss those evenings at our house.

I also completed the last short story in the L'Amour collection but I will do a seperate blog about that in a couple of days since it is the last story.  Next novel, and last of the year is finishing up yet another series which I began years ago: Unicorn Point by Piers Anthony.

The Hot Kid

Elmore Leonard is a writer after my own heart.  He started with westerns and then turned to crime fiction, becoming one of the best selling crime fiction writers of all time.  When I saw the audio book, The Hot Kid on the library shelves this time, I just couldn't pass it up because I knew I'd be in for a treat.  I also needed a relatively short book this time so I could complete it before the end of the year.  It was so good though that I made excuses to go driving just so I could hear more of this story, lol.

The Hot Kid is Mr Leonard's 40th or 42nd book (I've seen references to both) and was published in 2005.  Boy, he sure hasn't slacked off.  I would guess he is probably best known for good guy characters that are right on the edge of being not-so-good.  Many people seem to like the movies that have been made from his books like "Get Shorty," and "Out of Sight" but I didn't care for them nearly as much as the novels themselves.  (Although I did like "3:10 to Yuma" in it's latest incarnation, adapted from his short story written in 1953). Here, he turns back the clock just a little and sets this novel in Oklahoma during the 1930's mobster era.  Right away that sounds like an unusual setting.  As always, his characters use dead-pan humor consistently, winning the reader over with their charm, whatever their ultimate intentions may be. 

The plot deals with two men at opposing ends of the law-abiding spectrum.  Jack Belmont is the son of a Tulsa oil wildcatter and pulls every dirty trick in the book to blackmail and extort money from his own father.  From there he goes on to organized crime and strives to rival Pretty Boy Floyd in evilness. Going up against him is a deputy US Marshall, Carl Webster, who has gained a reputation as a fearless lawman after killing several notorious mobsters.  Their confrontation is classic and truely a delight to read.  For a shorter novel, the characters are remarkably well developed and the plot was not predicatable in the least; just the ticket for a drive-time audio book.  I especially enjoyed the way Mr Leonard included the young adulthood of both characters and showed how they came to be the way they are.  If you haven't read Elmore Leonard in the past, it's never too late to start.

Tyrant's Test

I really like this time of year...for the time off of work :)  I really get to play, and try to dodge the hunny-do list if at all possible.  Actually I don't even mind that too much because I have plenty of leisure time to get in my serious play time.

Tyrant's Test is the third book of a Star Wars trilogy written by Michael P. Kube-McDowell.  According to the "About the Author" page, this is actually the pen name of Michael Paul McDowell.  I understand why authors use different pen names to keep from being typecast with a certain genre but I'm not sure how they came up with the mouthfull for this one.  Oh well.  This trilogy take place about twelve years after the "Return of the Jedi" and was written in the still early days of the first group of Star Wars fiction.  Consequently, it suffers, I believe with having to rely on plot development, filling in the "what happened next" syndrome and just doesn't have to time to really expand on the characters.  Most of us know a lot about Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Lando, etc. but do we really?  The plot of this one is fairly straight forward.  Each of the main characters I just mentioned plus some bad guys have their own sub plots and that's really too many to fully develop in a 350 page paperback book, especially when all of the sub plots need to be wrapped up.  I thought Luke's plot was especially contrived because it turned out he was just being lied to the whole time and nothing came of it.  But somehow at the end, that experience had substantially changed him and his outlook.  Hmmm...  Han didn't play a big role throughout the trilogy, just uncharacteristically being captured and having to be rescued.  Didn't ring true.

All in all, this trilogy has some of the worst reviews I've seen for SW books.  It wasn't that bad in my opinion but still, I am glad to see it come to an end.

Louis L'Amour, on the other hand, once again provided a wonderful traditional western reading experience in his short story, "The Marshal of Sentinel".  This time we have a very serious protagonist, the marshal himself, who has to defend his town against an outlaw gang of bank robbers whose method is to use an inside man to assassinate the marshall up front and thereby leave the bank as easy pickins.  I'm sure liking this collection but unfortunately, only one more story to go in The Strong Shall Live.

Next up: finishing off yet another trilogy with Inkdeath, by Cornelia Funke.

Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger's most famous work, undoubtedly is Catcher in the Rye.  I finally got around to reading that book, often considered among the very best of American literature, last year because, once again, my son had to read it for his high school AP literature course.  His class followed that up with a section on the short story form and used this book, Nine Stories, also by J.D Salinger, as one of their source texts.  So...in my usual fashion, I never like to have a book on my shelf that I haven't read so I decided to give these stories a try, reading them over the past couple of months.

I will say that I more or less "studied" The Catcher in the Rye as I read it, much like a student of literature would and my general feelings about it are not generally as good as most people's are.  It's not that it was a bad book and I can certainly appreciate Mr Salinger's writing skills.  It's just that I wasn't completely blown away.  Perhaps my expectations were too high going in.  So now when I approached this collection of nine short stories, I purposely set no expectations.  That wasn't difficult since I had never heard of this collection but nevertheless, I wanted to just read them as I would any other short story collection and try to enjoy each on it's own merit.

Overall, as in every other collection out there, I enjoyed some more than others.  Many are involved with the war, with soldiers who have recently returned and are trying to cope with what they saw.  Some have humerous aspects while some have downright horrific aspects.  Almost all of them had me scratching my head at some point and asking myself, "Where is he going with this?"  Ocassionally I was satisfied with the ending but more often than not the ending seemed to leave me hanging or send me scrambling back to the last page to see if I had inadvertantly skipped it.  Once again I appreciated his writing ability; he has a definite knack for letting you see a whole character with few words.  Somehow we understand a lot more about them than what is described for us.  I can see why a teacher would use this book as a tool for studying the short story form.  But having said that, I was reading for enjoyment, for entertainment, and while it was OK for that, I find myself preferring more plot-oriented stories.  The closest one of the bunch to that was the very last one, "Teddy" which was a very intriguing look at the nature of a young boy with an incredibly wise outlook on life and an eerily accurate ability to predict his own demise.

So if you like Salinger or classic short stories I would give this one a try but if you like a straight-forward beginning, middle, and end structural story you may want to skip these.

Veracity

I've unintentionally encountered quite a few post-apocalyptic fiction experiences this year.  Perhaps it's due to all the buzz surrounding the 2012/Mayan calander thing but certainly not all of it.  I had read 1984, A Canticle for Liebowitz, I am Legend this year as well as watching the complete "Jeremiah" TV series.  I've always been drawn to such work and perhaps it isn't all that suprising that Veracity, by Laura Bynum caught my eye when I saw it on my Amazon Vine Program list.

The book has an intriguing premise: much of the population of the US has been wiped out by a pandemic virus in 2012 and now in 2045, the survivors of that experience live in an extreme government-controlled society, for the citizen's own protection.  The protagonist, Harper Adams has a gift in that she can see people's auras and know what they are feeling, including if they are telling the truth or not.  She is recruited by a resistance force, organized by people who remember the way things were prior to the pandemic and want to bring back freedoms, democracy, etc.  A central theme of the book involves the "Red List", a list of words that are not allowed to be used any more, thus supressing the population.

This book was OK, but just OK.  I liked the theme that language has power and I liked the way that was resolved through the use of "The Book of Noah".  The author uses first person present tense, and also skips around in her timeline quite a bit during the first half of the book.  That can work well in the hands of an experienced writer but here it seems to make the whole work a bit snobbish, as if the author was trying to make it be more literary.  The characters were not well developed, at least not enough so that the reader can grow to really care what happens to them.  I also found the later half of the book, the part about the resistance's efforts to take back the government to be hugely simplified.  The battle tactics just weren't believable, almost as if there were large parts of the narrative missing.  Unfortuantely, novels like this will inevitably be compared to 1984 and similar works...certainly a difficult standard to achieve.

On a different note, "Big Man" the next short story in Louis L'Amour's collection, The Strong Shall Live, was a fantastic story.  I had just been complaining about the sterotype western hero from the previous story and here I get just what I asked for.  The hero this time is a 6'7" 330 pound, over confidant young man who starts a ranch in the middle of hostile Indian country and plants groves of cherry trees there.  How he interacts with the nearby townsmen that just shake their heads at his foolishness and how he not only manages to survive but actually thrive is the stuff of great storytelling.  Best of the bunch so far.

Next up: December calls for me to wrap up all series that I've started during the year so now it's the Star Wars one, number 3 of the Black Fleet Crisis.

Black Rain

Another day in Colorado Springs means another 2-hour delay due to snow...at least that seems to be happening a lot lately. I'm not one to complain about a shorter work day, however and so this morning I took advantage of the extra time to complete the reading of my latest advanced reader's edition novel. Black Rain is the first published book by Graham Brown and is written as an adventure/thriller novel with elements of science fiction and horror.

Right off the bat I'll say this is one very good book. It reads like an Indiana Jones adventure but in the present day and with some good solid speculative science weaved into the plot. If you are familiar with novels by James Rollins or Mathew Reilly then you'll have a good idea of the style...sort of like reading a movie. In a nutshell, the novel is about a covert government agency that is launched on a quest to find an ancient Mayan temple in the heart of the Amazon. But what they find there is a huge mystery and more action/adventure than I've read in a long time.

The scenes and characters are presented clearly, so clearly that you can "see" the movie unfolding in your mind. And the plot is heavy on the action, especially the second half. The first half builds up the mystery of just what is going on here, establishes the main characters and allows us to see what is motivating the competing groups looking for the temple. Intrigue abounds and it really keeps you turning the pages. And the second half just explodes with action. Very well done.

I was so engrossed in this novel that I've added the name Graham Brown to my "Best Little-Known Authors" list. I daresay he won't be unknown for long as my copy of the book says he is working on a sequel to Black Rain. If his work is marketed well, he could be the next "big thing" in this genre. The only problem might be the title...a search of that name brings up a lot about the Michael Douglas movie of the same name as well as the album by Ozzie Osborne. Oh well.

I also completed the next short story in Louis L'Amour's The Strong Shall Live. I thought "Duffy's Man" was fun to read but also was an example of boilerplate western fiction. I thought at first this might be a very different sort of western story because Duffy is an old, fat man...wouldn't that be a great protagonist to break the cliched mold? But no, the story is about the nameless guy who works for him and is the templated wide shouldered, narrow hipped, steely-eyed hero who stands up to the bully and whips him in the end. Not much more to it than that. Hehe, still fun to read though :)

Next up: another advanced reader's edition from Amazon that I need to get to: Veracity by Laura Bynum.

The Grapes of Wrath

I completed the lengthy audio book of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath over the weekend. I had selected this audio book for several reasons: 1) I always feel like I need to read more "classics" and this one was handy at the library, 2) I had read Of Mice and Men many years ago and enjoyed it pretty well, and 3) this is supposed to be one of the greatest American novels of all time. In fact, many people would put it number one on their list. And in case you didn't know, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel prize for Literature in 1962.

Many times I find the "classics" to be dull and even just plain boring. Not so this time although it is not an easy read and I would say it is usually depressing. This is truly an American story. We follow the Joad family for about nine months during the Dust Bowl/Great Depression days as they decide to uproot their family from Oklahoma where they have lived for generations as sharecroppers, and follow them to California as they search for a better life. Along the way they encounter numerous obstacles, many of them very dangerous, and we get an upfront and close personal view of their day-to-day lives. Once they finally reach California, they find it's not the paradise they have heard about and their daily struggle continues.

I believe this book can be read on several levels. The more scholarly types like to hold this book up as a classic example of the way one family has to exist in a system that favors the powerful land owner vs. the farmers and laborers. It's certainly true that Steinbeck's method of writing this book supports that view. He intersperses each lengthy chapter with a shorter "big picture" description of what is happening in the world at that time. The California scenes, especially, are poignant examples of the plight of migratory farm workers, a subject which Mr Steinbeck was almost obsessed. Some people criticise the book as too "socialistic" or even "communistic" but I see it as a reflection of the times in which it was written and in the timeframe it portrays.

While I can very much appreciate this novel on such a grandiose scale, I also appreciate they way the characters are written. I think most regular readers of this blog will know that characterization is the number one mark of a great novel for me and this one has it in spades. The entire Joad family, especially Tom, Ma, Uncle John, and the former preacher, Jim Casy are fantastic examples of greatly written characters. Tom Joad himself is as important a character in American fiction as Holden Caufield and Jay Gatsby and only a notch below Huckleberry Finn himself. I worry that many students were assigned this book to read in High School and came away with a complete distaste for Steinbeck. Actually I worry about that for all sorts of "classic" books. But now that I have achieved some level of maturity (I can't believe I just wrote that) it is possible that I can appreciate the true worth of a book like this.

My next audio book will be...dunno. Depends on what I find at the library but it will have to be a shorter book than this so I can finish it before the end of the year.

Kushiel's Avatar

During my lunch break today I finished up the final book in Jacqueline Carey's "Kushiel's Legacy" trilogy. Kushiel's Avatar follows the first book, Kushiel's Dart and the second, Kushiel's Chosen. This is a relatively long book, coming it at 750 paperback pages and does a fine job of concluding the trilogy. The heroine, Phedre, has grown from a young girl to a mature woman through this series and we get to experience her world and all of the complex intrigue included therein right along with her.

Ten years have passed since the end of the second book and Phedre has settled into a nice life with her consort Joscelin. She still takes on clients as an anguisette but now only three per year. Life is good. The only thing that still haunts her is the fate of her childhood friend, Hyacinth, who had sacrificed himself back in the first book to suffer the curse of being a perpetual apprentice to the Master of the Straits. Now when Phedre's nemesis, the beautiful Melisande contacts Phedre and begs her to go in search of her kidnapped son, Phedre makes a deal with her that will ultimately culminate in Hyacinth's release.

As in the previous novels in the trilogy, the tapestry of this world is vast and detailed. Essentially, it is an alternate Earth and we travel along with Phedra and her company of escorts, guardsmen, etc. from Europe to the Middle East and to northern and central Africa. Most of the place names are similar to ours so it is possible to decipher where they are going but I was very happy to have the map at the front of the book to refer to. Also, there are lots and lots of characters so the list of their names and relationships was welcome. This book is not for those easily offended by erotic scenes as there are several in here, one in particular which is extremely graphic but also very necessary to the plot. The protagonist, afterall, is bound by her gods to experience both pain and pleasure as a courtesan so that sort of thing does come up in the plot. Taken as a trilogy, this is a vast epic fantasy that is very enjoyable to read. I felt there were a few spots with too much description of scenery and a few too many stops along her journey that didn't seem to have much bearing on the plot. A little too long but enjoyable none-the-less. I plan to read the follow-on trilogy which focuses on the boy that had been kidnapped, and his life...but these books are so long that I will wait a while before beginning that series.

I was also able to complete another short story in the Louis L'Amour collection, The Strong Shall Live. "Hattan's Castle" was a bit different from what I'm used to but still quite enjoyable. It's told like a campfire story, lots of description about what happened but not much actual dialogue. It's the old story about a town in the Old West run by a bully that suddenly has to deal with a new man that challenges his leadership. There is an unexpected twist involved that makes this a cute tale but I won't spoil it for you. I continue to really like this collection.

Next up: Black Rain, a thriller novel by Graham Brown, part of the "Vine" program that allows me to read as-yet-unpublished bookss. This one will be published in January, 2010.