"He wore a brown denim suit with lots of pockets and ropes and zippers, and a yellow velvet shirt, open to the umbilicus. His face was bland–brown, hairless as his brown smooth chest. Sleepy eyes, languid manner, thin little mouth, like a newborn shark."

- McDonald, who could write em, and never forget it.

And this. Especially this. Always this.

Some shiny advice for dark times.

"I do get tired of humans."
"Yeah. Too many maniacs, not enough Michelangelos."

Sublime read.
(Photo credit: wikimedia commons, Uwe Aranas. Magicked up by Prisma)

"The present Surprise, though shorn of her HMS, nevertheless carried all her old guns: Wilful Murder, Jumping Billy, Belcher, Sudden Death, Tom Cribb and the rest..."

I would like my own cannon so I could name it something like Cruel Comment, or Last Word, or Lethal Punctuation. I don't see why I can't have a cannon for my front yard and shoot it sometimes. Not AT anyone. Just in general celebration.

Art often knows more than the artist.

- Joshua Wolf Shenk, in his amazing book about creative collaborations.

Only two Narnia books to go before I complete the series. In this novel, Aslan tends to children who have faced great spiritual and moral corruption... by attending a co-ed school. 🙄

Maybe the best book about the creative life I've ever read... or in this case, listened to (I experienced Born to Run in its unabridged audiobook form, read by Bruce himself). A one-of-kind adventure through the last 60 years of American history, told with tremendous humor by a man with remarkable powers of perception, into himself and his times.

This festive Yuletide sentiment brought to you via Thomas Hardy.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Genuine sinners are plentiful, but genuine penitents are rare. - Ellis Peters

Sometimes you just want to read about cowled 12th century detectives.

(Photo: wikimedia commons, John Armagh. Treated with Prisma)

"The hardest battles are the ones you fight inside your own head, when nobody else is going to know if you won or lost or even if a battle was fought at all."
- Neil Gaiman

Love that quote. Going to use it as an epigraph some day.

My very good fortune to interview Warren Ellis on his tour for NORMAL... which is a chilling work of near future SF, a sweetly comic look at broken geniuses, and a pitch perfect locked room mystery.

That should work out great.

Mmmm, want something juicy for #allhallowsread? Have a taste of Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips' FATALE... a noir horror comic that plays like Hitchcock tackling the Cthulhu mythos in an epic starring Gene Tierney at her most seductive. #GiveaScaryBook

I loved this book so much. (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)

People sometimes ask whether the research or the idea for the story comes first for me. And I tell them normally the first thing that turns up is the obsession.

- Neil Gaiman

Yes.
- Me.

That's history. It happened whether it offends you or not. Quite a bit of it offends me, but there's nothing I can do about it.
- Octavia Butler

Kindred is the right book to read if you loved Underground Railroad and want another magic realistic spin on the pre-Civil War south, composed by a master.

(Photo, Wikimedia Commons: Nikolas Coukouma)

"As C.S. Lewis reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers." - Neil Gaiman.

Only just finished PRINCE CASPIAN (for the first time!) and have gone on to THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS and came across that line and it was too good not to post.

(Photo: Yathin S Krishnappa - Wikimedia Commons)

"Whether in the fields or underground or in an attic room, America remained her warden."

Probably the most must-read American novel since ALL THE PRETTY HORSES. Runs like a fucking freight train through the dark endless tunnel of the American nightmare.

"We all have flaws," he said, "and mine is being wicked."

Confessions of a Compulsive Book Buyer, Chapter 144: In August of that Year, He Was Up To His Old Tricks.

He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.

When I began, my oldest boy was 9. Today he acquired a driver's license.

I'm halfway through.

A hilarious examination of the out-of-shape, middle-aged, Viagra-popping, Prozac-snacking, existentially adrift American male in the early 21st century. Loved it.

You were never actually halfway through your life. Not in the sense that you were halfway through a... tank of gas or a trip home from the beach. You were always, instant by instant, at the very edge of your life, at the end of it, in it's entirety, and so never at any point in the middle.

I have read a brilliant short story which you should track down immediately. It is probably in Benjamin Hale's collection, The Fat Artist. The Fat Artist is probably not yet available. Don't worry and don't wait. You can find "Don't Worry, Baby" in The Paris Review 216. Get it now. Right now.

Hanging with some dirty girls this week.

Here are the instructions for being a pigeon: (1) Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items. (2) Take fright at someone walking along the platform and fly off to a girder. (3) Have a shit. (4) Repeat.

Here's today's haul from Mysterious Bookshop (where I left them with a huge pile of signed FIREMAN).

I've had some cute little doodles for the other books, but I don't think it's happening with this one...

Hard at work on signing sheets for the UK.

Yep. Totally the same guy. (The name is Child... Lee Child)

Does anyone else think Lee Child looks like cool, edgy mid-period Roger Moore Bond? Just me?

Out in June, chilling and heart-breaking horror from Paul Tremblay. Some wonderfully creepy bits right here.

I was gifted a "blind book date" at the ABC bookstore in Amsterdam, and unwrapped what looks like a winner.

Elmore. 1978. Prime.

My demonic power rises to its full strength at last.

At various times different book covers are on the wall behind the computer. I rotate them. Right now, it's WATERSHIP DOWN (squeezed in between THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET and TRUE GRIT).

My Advance Reader's Copies came!

Just heard Christopher Golden read his story, "Wendy, Darling," from a collection called OUT OF TUNE. A classic! Amazing, bleak twist on Peter Pan.

February book haul!

Coloring book! With recommended crayons.

Reading is the closest humans can come to having superpowers. Imagining your way into other rooms, other lands, other lives - basically, astral projection.

Sometimes it seems like Larry McMurtry casually tosses off one of these life-changing observations about once every ten pages.

Today's book haul, part two.

Today's book haul, part one.

Taking a poll: What female novelists write the best dialogue? Any passionate opinions out there? I flagged Laurie Colwin on this post because she wrote amazing talk. And amazing everything else.

Best collection of ghost stories in a while, and never mind the whole book is prolly less than a 1,000 words long. Catmull is pretty much the second coming of Edward Gorey.

A real earthquake of a book. Strangers Drowning examines people who have dedicated themselves to extreme altruism and it's a staggering masterpiece of true life story telling... a deep plunge into the chilliest, darkest waters of ethical living.