Stuck It Out: "Cowboys and Aliens"

Stuck It Out: Cowboys and Aliens by Joan D. Vinge, 2011, downloaded from Wisconsin Digital Library.

Audio version of the tie-in novel from the film Cowboys and Aliens. I recall the film being a flop. Well, after hearing the book version I suppose the film was rotten. I forced myself to finish off the last three hours of this novel. The story went on f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

The basic story is that a guy wakes up in the New Mexico desert with no memory and a weird metal thing on his wrist. Soon, he has quickly killed three bounty hunters and rode into a former-now-failing gold town. Memory Guy finds out he is wanted, gets in a fight, has a rich guy after him, and everyone is attacked by aliens. Then there are some fights, some chases, a half-baked love affair, blah, blah, blah.

I suspect Vinge had jack all to work with here. I was trying to imagine the screenplay version and there seems to have been plenty that Vinge had to put into the novel about the characters, their histories, alien society and culture, and the desperado gang. How much could the author create on her own? How much was outlined already? There is minimal dialogue in first part of story. How was that shown in the film?

Anyhoo. There are a bunch of stock western characters. There is a desert. There are aliens capturing people and eating them - I guess - and the aliens are mining gold.

Don't read it.

Comments:
1. Max Alan Collins has written how he wrote the tie-in novel for Road to Perdition. Collins received all sorts of revision notes from the film's producers even though Collins wrote the damn source material.

2. Other tie-in novels I have enjoyed: Christa Faust's work. Lee Goldberg's work.

Short Stories: "Murdaland" edited by Michael Lagnas

Short Stories: Murdaland: crime fiction for the 21st Century edited by Miachel Lagnas, 2006, 074470279761.

This is a very nice collection. A book I never got to when it came out. An interesting thing is that this collection precedes the novels of several of these people before others received a lot of exposure. Daniel Woodrell (though you can argue he already had press), Anthony Neil Smith, JD Rhoades, Patti Abbott, Les Edgerton, Tom Franklin.

All stories were by modern authors except one story by David Goodis. I read this a while ago and have little specifics on the stories. Let me look through:

My War by Paolo Madrigal. A new author and setting to me. Government fighters in 1980s Central America going against anti-gov guerrillas. Brutality of a dirty war mixed with personal conflict over a love affair.

I read the Woodrell one before.

Anthony Neil Smith's story about a obsessive and possessive jackass controlling the funeral of his dead girlfriend who didn't even like him.

Scouts by Tristan Davies. A fundraiser for Boy Scouts is a sexual dirtbag who is shagging a donor's wife.

Felon by Les Edgerton. I'd not read any of his work until this. An author I've been meaning to get to. Life as a small time crook. Taking jobs where needed. Booze and drugs and cheap hotel rooms. He doesn't want to go back to jail but the risk is just part of life. The jolt and excitement of pulling robberies, burglaries, and other crimes.

I quit Mary Gaitskill story very quick. That was some stream of conscious crap.

An excerpt from the novel Smonk by Tom Franklin. A teen prostitute on a turn-of-the-century riverboat kills a couple johns. I bought Smonk for work, it's sitting on the library shelf, and I never got to reading it. My library's copy was catalogued in September, 2006. Went out 8 times. Last circ'ed in November, 2013.

Anyhoo. That's enough. This is a completely solid collection. Except for that Gaitskill one - definitely not up my alley.

Hockey Comic: "Check, Please!" by Ngozi Ukazu

Hockey Comic: Check, Please!: Book 1: #HOCKEY by Ngozi Ukazu, 2018, 9781250177957.

This had a very positive review in either Booklist or Library Journal. The author was in a screenwriting class at some Ivy League school and decided to write about hockey. She was from the South, knew jack-all about, hockey, started hanging out with the hockey team, ended up loving hockey.

Story: Dude from the South takes up hockey after training several years as a figure skater. Dude is such a sharp skater that he earns a hockey scholarship to a school in the Northeast.. He has a few ups and downs over his first two years.

Eric "Bittie" Bittle is smaller guy who loves to cook and vlog. The story begins as a monologue addressed at Bittie's laptop camera. He has just moved into his dorm for August hockey training. Over time he becomes close friends with his teammates, tells everyone he is gay, tries to overcome an intense fear of checking (he is a small guy who does not want a 250 lbs. bruiser whacking him into the boards), and anxious about traveling on his own from AL to the WhereEver.

The comic book novel compilation follows Bittie's first two years of school. Bittie has no love interest but deeply admire the Quebecois team captain who who is the son of a NHL All Star. Captain was a hockey wunderkind until a drug habit derailed him when he was 18. He has become a college star and will soon head to the NHL.

Meanwhile the rest of the team can be described as "woke boozehounds". The team is very much dedicated to both booze and enthusiastic student themes of equality. It is an odd mix at times. Their team hazing is to take have new guys wear their underwear out to center ice and told to prepare for Hazeapalooza. No one takes it seriously. Bittie brings pie to the event and they all end up arguing before going home.

This is a fun book. The artwork is bright with big-eyed happy characters. The conflict is Bittie overcoming nerves, striving to improve his hockey skills, wishing for love affairs, and finding out Captain is gay and into him.

Audio Noises: "Bling Ring" by Nancy Jo Sales.

Audio Noises: The Bling Ring: how a gang of fame obsesses teens ripped off Hollywood and shocked the world by Nancy Jo Sales, 2013, downloaded from Wisconsin Digital Library.

The brief summary in the library catalog says An in-depth expose of a band of beautiful, privileged teenagers who were caught breaking into celebrity homes and stealing millions of dollars worth of valuables. That's the problem right there: a book about inane teenagers obsessed with fame who decided the burgle famous people so they could wear their clothes and carry their purses. The book dragged.

This was a 9.3 hour audiobook about dipshits. Sales wrote a 2010 Vanity Fair expose on the case and expanded the whole thing into a book. But, when you're writing about 18-year-olds who only care about reality TV, Los Angeles club hopping, looks and clothes, and appearing on TMZ you don't have much content. Sales had to pad a lot of the book with sociological chatter about teenagers, social media, celebrity obsessing culture, and the explosion of celebrities who are famous for being famous.

Anyhoo. Here is the story. Some teenagers in the Valley are really into fashion and famous people. A couple of the teens are good looking and one teaches pole dancing and another was a Playboy Cyber Girl. They started burglarizing celebrity homes and stealing clothes, shoes, purses, cash, and drugs. The burglaries accelerated. The victims's houses were left unlocked and alarms turned off. Video surveillance caught the crooks in the act but not always recorded their faces.

With one-of-a-kind designer items, a Rolex collection, and cash the burglaries tally into $100,000+. The kids are caught. Some of the stolen materials is recovered. When the book was published some kids are convicted. Some of those kids are still pretending they did not do the burglaries even though caught and plead guilty.

They are all idiots. They were all overjoyed at paparazzi questioning their involvement as they left night clubs, or asking for quotes during their perp walks. If I had read this in 2013 it might have been of interest. However, this craziness is nothing compared to the current shitshow of a idiotic, self obsessed, former reality TV star becoming President.

Comments:
1. Sales did a lot of work on this story. She was all over Los Angeles with interviews with burglars, cops, lawyers, friends, family, neighbors and court documents.
2. Celebrities famous for being famous. Sales mentions how a Kardashian became famous from a sex tape and that started the family business. When I was growing up there were people who were on the same spectrum but they were there after initial successes. Charo and George Hamilton are two that come to mind. Hamilton, though, hit it big with Love at First Bite and got somewhat regular roles after. Charo was both a punchline and skilled entertainer - just not enough to stay big.
3. The pole dancer and Playboy girl burglars did parlay their local party girl reputation into a reality show. The show was so awful is was canceled after a couple episodes. Sales quotes Joel McHale's blistering insult on The Soup.
4. Sales wrote this at the peak of reality TV and writes about how reality TV is actually scripted. The show with the dancer and nude model pretended the girls were still in high school. Sales mentions how viewers follow the shows for style and fashion guidance and examples of expected behavior.
5. The reality TV shows reminded me that a lot of the crazy, the boozing, the all-day-bikini wearing of 20-year-olds is actually scripted by TV producers in their forties.
6. Some of the attorneys are more interested in publicity and TV coverage than defending the burglars. One attorney was blathering to Sales about the concepts of judgment, justice, and fairness. How the lawyer was proud of being seen by police and prosecutors as a "fair guy". Fuck that. You're not there to be fair. You're there to fight for your client. You're there to keep the government honest, not get buddy buddy.
6.B. The lawyers reminded me of Connelly's Mickey Haller books. Haller's practice is built on advertising and notoriety. Except Haller actually does have his client's interests in mind.
7. Lindsey Lohan had it rough. She was modeling at age 3 and the generated the family income as a child. Her mother was a party girl. Her father sold her voicemail messages to the gossip websites. Lohan's life became booze, drugs, and no supervision or guidance. No stable home to retreat to.
8. One burglar is rotten to her mother during interviews with Sales. "Stop it! You're not allowed to talk!" The narrator reads that very emphatically.
9. I did not realize how long ago this book came out. Or recognized a film was made.
10. The book starts with Sales meeting with Sofia Coppola who ended up directing the film version.
Sales or Coppola wonder when the celebrity culture will evolve. If there will be a backlash or a change. My comment: the culture has not changed but people do not get away with as much. Before the book was written Paris Hilton was caught on tape disparaging racial groups and homosexuals with no result. Now, that behavior can swing back and sting. Kevin Hart's old Tweets. Governor Blackface in Virginia.
10.B. EDIT: now that TV is in the new Golden Age I presume the fascination with and ratings for reality TV have dropped.

Hardcover: "Perish the Day" by John Farrow

Couple Weeks Ago: Perish the Day by John Farrow (Trevor Ferguson), 2017 (USA),
9781250057709

Nuts. I wrote these notes up a couple months ago and never posted them.

1999's City of Ice was a revelation when I read it. There was nothing about the story I did not enjoy. It was gritty, set in Montreal during winter, had scary bad guys, a grouchy detective in Emile Cinq-Mars, dirty slushy snow, English vs. Quebecois tensions, so on, so forth.

I continue to enjoy Farrow's novels but the recent books have become a bit gentler. Cinq-Mars has retired and the novels incorporate more of his personal life and, with his wife Sandra attending, there is more of a cozy element to the stories. There is still a core of violent people doing violent things but Ferguson has the retired Cinq-Mars going back and forth from professional to personal.

This story has Cinq-Mars and Sandra in Vermont (New Hampshire?) attending to Sandra's dying mother. Cinq-Mars and CO. are also there for the college graduation of Sandra's niece. Lo and behold there is a murder on campus. Cinq-Mars and Sandra do discuss how murder seems to find Cinq-Mars or vice-versa.

Throughout the novel Ferguson has several interesting observations. Most of which I forgot because I did not write them down. There are the several pointed observations on the differences between Canadian and U.S. cultures. Ferguson is like most skilled and gifted writers in that he recognizes relationships among people and the small points that can drive those relations. Anger, jealousy, love, etc. play a part among those interactions and I think Ferguson strikes a nice balance between show and tell.

Anyhoo. Cinq-Mars gets involved in the murder investigation after the local Police Chief gets pushed out of the case by the State Police. Police Chief figures he can use Cinq-Mars as a surrogate and keep his hand in things. State Police Guy is not happy about this. Another murder across the river in New Hampshire (Vermont?) widens and [word I cannot think of] the investigation.

Along the way Cinq-Mars involves his niece and her friends who were close with the murder victim. Cinq-Mars detangles professional and personal relations, faces danger, suspects real-to-life spies, discovers a possible murder-for-fun ring, considers moving to bucolic Vermont (New Hampshire?)

A very good story. Worth your time.

Comments:
1. I don't think the last novel of Ferguson's City of Ice trilogy was published in the U.S. I have been periodically checking for River City for years and have never seen a U.S. edition. I've only briefly looked into getting a Canadian edition. When I first checked some people were trying to sell copies for $50+.
2. One observation about CA v. US is how Americans ask what other people do for a living when first meeting. Emile does not like that. Neither do I. I rarely ask anyone that question because I know it will color my perception of them. Most people are so much more than their work.
3. Emile is observant. He reads people well and is an expert in strategizing how to manipulate them or encourage them.
4. When searching for John Farrow-Trevor Ferguson my library video from 2011 still pops up. I stopped making those because they never had enough views to warrant continuation.

Audio: "Once Upon A River" by Diane Setterfield

Audio: Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield, 2018, downloaded from Wisconsin Digital Library.

Meh. The story started out ok. Then the story got dull. Then the story got interesting again.

A inn and pub on the Thames River circa 1850-or-so is a popular location for storytellers and drinkers. One winter night a man with a bloodied face stumbles in carrying a doll. Both the man and doll are soaked wet. The man collapses and everyone attends to him until the mentally disabled son of the innkeeper discovers the doll is actually a dead girl of about 5-years-old. Well, the dead girl ends up revived - her respiration was slowed by the cold - and the novel involves finding her family.

Three groups lay claim to the girl. A wealthy couple whose daughter was kidnapped and never returned. A mentally disabled housekeeper who is convinced the girl is her long lost sister - a sister who would be about 30 years old now. And a shifty guy and his honest parents who think the girl may be the shifty guy's daughter.

Setterfield shows us around all the characters. There is a growing love affair between a widower and a spinster (who is young to us). Anxiety by the Farmer Father of the Shifty Guy over the girl and Shifty Guy's shifty behavior. Rich Couple where the wife was in deep depression after daughter went missing. Lady Innkeeper with many children and a dying husband. Various locals and a couple scuzzy, and violent men.

The characters and setting are well done but did not particularly engage me. My interest would wane throughout the book. Setterfield does cover some other things that interested me.

Setterfield writes a lot about the weather.  The story covers a calendar year, winter-to-winter, and Setterfield writes of the rain, heat, cold, mud, tides. The weather is so much more of an issue for a more agrarian economy and the commerce and transport that rely on good weather. I was listening to this one day as I walked to work in freezing rain. I use slip-on spikes/crampons for my shoes to keep me from sliding all over but the going is still slow. Without good gear of rain coat and pants it would be a cold walk.  All the people in cars passing by me had no trouble on the recently plowed and salted roads. And, of course, the cars deliver you in relative comfort from -25° (which we just had) to 110°. Setterfield incorporates those needs into the characters' daily lives.

Another topic is the quickness of death from accident and disease. Sure, we know about the young mortality and the poor treatment of children but well done fiction brings those things home.

Comments and spoilers:
1. I knew pretty soon that Shifty Son would be running a con job on the rich people. Setterfield takes awhile to show this. There is a reveal at the end about Shifty Son's biological father that I did not see coming.
2. The reveal the Rich Couple's daughter was found dead by the husband after he paid a ransom was a surprise.
3. The is a supernatural ending that just did not make much sense. The revived girl is the daughter of The Ferryman who pulls people from the river. He either sets them ashore alive or transports them to death. The supernatural element was discussed a couple times in the novel but was treated as superstition. One drowning victim in the novel sees the ferryman reaching down for him but I figured that as a oxygen deprived hallucination before death.
4. I have trouble typing Setterfield.

Another Audio: "Curse of the Bane" by Joseph Delaney

Another Audio: Curse of the Bane by Joseph Delaney,

Second in the Young Adult series The Last Apprentice. The series follows Thomas Ward, new apprentice to The Spook. The Spook is a professional ghost and witch catcher. A Spook catches and binds witches and malevolent spirits by imprisoning them in a pit. Thomas has been working for Spook - everyone calls him that, it's kind of a job title - for about a year and Thomas is now 15-years-old (or so).

The story begins when a rather vicious and deadly boggart - the Horshaw Ripper - has restrained a priest and is slowly feasting on the priest's blood. The Spook is deathly ill and sends Thomas to bind the boggart. Thomas succeeds in drawing the boggart away from the tasty priest and into a pit lined with salt and iron filings and capped by a stone. This is a big success for a young apprentice.

Thomas heads back to the Spook's place, gets lectured a bit, and goes back to his daily duties. But, along comes a scare and The Spook realizes that an even nastier spirit than the Horshaw Ripper has is now a danger. The Spook banished The Bane into the catacombs of Priesttown several years ago but the Spook was unable to completely defeat The Bane and the entity has gradually become more powerful.  The Bane now exerts influence on some the Priests who run Priesttown by reading and influencing their minds. The Bane has used the priests to sow trouble and strife and press for more taxes from the people of WhatEverLandThisIsSupposedToBe.

As Spooks, both Thomas and Spook are roundly disliked and condemned by the church. Going to Priesttown is a danger for Spooks and Spook himself really dislikes the church and the church dislikes him What's more, there is a rather rogue Inquisitor is traveling the countryside and drowning witches. Thomas and Spook will have to avoid that guy.

Anyhoo. Things happen. The setting is akin to a somewhere between 1300 and 1400. Transportation is by foot or horse, everything is agrarian, no guns, the church controls many things, villages are fairly separate.

This is fun stuff with Thomas getting a bit cocky about his abilities. Alice from the first novel reappears. She was raised by witches and Spook does not trust her at all. Thomas, of course, wants to help her out even though Alice's behavior is kinda sketchy and flirting with disaster. The Spook ends up captured and Thomas is in Priesttown by himself looking to rescue the Spook and Alice and defeat The Bane.