Ah, Beowulf, scourge of my senior-year Advanced English class. I remember you well, you “epic poem,” you. Supposedly about a hero slaying a monster, but so steeped you were in archaic verse, I could detect neither. However, if we had learned of you from the anthology THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF BEOWULF: CHAMPION OF MIDDLE EARTH, I might have performed backflips. Maybe even while reading you twice.

Edited by Brian M. Thomsen (who offers up a brief history of Beowulf in his introduction), the book offers four new, standalone tales of the Conan precursor – a template for all literary superheroes to come – as well as reprinting John Earle’s 1892 prose translation. Seamus Heaney be damned – Earle’s text is accessible and even exciting, neither term I could ever place upon the work in its original verse form.

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Discussing books on movies … almost as good as watching them, and without the sticky floors!

Quite some time ago I came to the conclusion that the one thing I wanted from any famous person’s autobiography was at least one moment where I got the sense that I could feasibly spend a second or two in a room with them. That’s not to say that I would expect it to be an interesting or particularly enlightening moment, but rather just one that briefly proved to me that this iconic personage was in fact a real, living breathing human being.

I remember that when I read Bob Dylan’s recent book, CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE, I despaired that no such moment would ever occur. Here was a book by a man so guarded and protective of his privacy that not only did he barely mention his family life, but he couldn’t even be bothered to tell us his wife’s name. All he was willing to give us was the side of him everyone already knew, and I thought the book suffered because of it. But then, near the book’s end, he included a brief unnecessary detail in one of his descriptions that gave me the moment I was looking for and proved that the world’s most loved and hated singer/songwriter was just as mortal as the rest of us.

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Now that November has come to a close (hell, didn’t it just open?), you know what we’re thankful for? That, for the second month in a row, more Internet searchers coming to BOOKGASM were looking for Evangeline Lilly nude shots than Charo nude shots. Next month, we’re hoping to see Charo drop off the list completely, and maybe people getting back to searching for actual books again. Like MARVEL ZOMBIES, making its first appearance on our incoming-search list. Glad to have you.

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You ever read a book and feel like you’re getting in on the ground floor? For me, that was the case with Sean Doolittle’s third book. You feel as though this guy has a lot more stories to tell, and you can’t wait for them. Take one part Leonard and a big chunk of Westlake, mix them up and you get THE CLEANUP.

Matthew Worth is a cop who pretty much shoots himself in the foot career-wise, when his wife runs off with another cop, one at whom Worth took a swing, with awful consequences: He’s stuck doing security detail at a supermarket during the night shift. While waiting for any potential robber to make an appearance, he becomes friendly with the workers, some of whom refer to him as “Supercop.” But he probably is closest to Gwen, a checkout girl he’s smitten with. But all is not right in Gwen’s world, and that’s what set’s the book in motion. Her boyfriend is a bit violent and his job is not what you would call legal: running drugs and cash payments to and from the Chicago mob a career choice.

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Right from the beginning of DAYS OF ALLISON, author Eric Shapiro makes his main character Louis come alive. The reader begins the journey with Louis – by all accounts an isolated loser – telling us by way of his internal dialogue, “My work and my books – that’s all I need.”

And that’s when I was hooked. Each of us has snippets in time when we feel like isolated losers, or at least I do. Louis’ mind continues to wander and explains, “If society ever relieves its inhabitants of the need to make money, then I’ll quite eagerly sign up to be a hermit, eating, sleeping, reading my life away.” I had a love- hate relationship with Louis within the first two pages – not an easy task for an author and Shapiro did it quickly.

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Rousing. You don’t see that word much any more, but it’s the perfect descriptor for James M. Ward’s fantasy series, the first of which was MIDSHIPWIZARD HALCYON BLITHE. After a handy promotion for Blithe, we get the second book in the series, DRAGONFRIGATE WIZARD HALCYON BLITHE. This is a rousing adventure of naval battles, dragons, magic, dwarves, evil demons and a budding relationship between Blithe and the mysterious Lady Teagan.

Blithe comes from a long line of old salts, a line that bequeathed to him his magical powers and a muddied heritage that is as much feared as respected. But Blithe is still just a young man at 16 years old, and his youth and impetuousness often get him into trouble. This may not necessarily be a good thing when you are at war.

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Mysteries of the universe baffle me: Is there life on other planets? Which came first: the chicken or the egg? And how does someone as grandpa-looking as Hugh Hefner score all that young tail? Thanks to Izabella St. James’ BUNNY TALES: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION, I can cross the latter off my “to ask God” list.

According to St. James, who was part of Hef’s live-in pussy posse for two years, it sounds like cold, hard cash is the reason behind the old man’s skill at roping in the breasty blondes, because any girlfriend who lives under his roof gets a $1,000 cash allowance every week, not to mention free plastic surgery. All you have to do for it is abide by his strict code of rules and occasionally service his aged member. Eww.

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There is one gift I enjoy getting more than all others: the gift card. They are simple and it means my relatives won’t screw up what I really want. The best kind, of course, are the ones for bookstores. As most people can tell from this column, I’m usually grabbing things from the dusty old shelves of used bookstores, so when I get a chance to treat myself to new books, I make it a point to grab stuff I really want, and not just hardcovers that I hope are good. Also, I’m not a huge fan of shelling out more than $10 for a paperback, but with a gift card, that becomes moot. So this column runs through three picks I got for my birthday last month. I would have included a fourth, but Rod did a great job of reviewing it already, and I fully second his opinion.

THE DESTROYER #145: DRAGON BONES by Tim Somheil – Notice how The Destroyer books no longer credit authors on the cover? If you’re wondering who writes them, just look at the copyright page. The “special thanks to” line is the true credit for whoever’s ghosting Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s creation. Now, I’ve stuck mainly with the earlier Remo Williams adventures, but this 2006 offering is the most current at this writing (and the last for Gold Eagle to publish, before Tor takes over in summer ‘07).

This novel is a sequel to THE DESTROYER #92: THE LAST DRAGON. Don’t worry; the plot of that one is given to you in the first chapter, and this DRAGON is a total fun fest. We’re led to believe that a dinosaur – which, from the descriptions, looks like an overgrown reptilian cow – has some sort of chemical inside its bones that can prolong life, prompting scores of drug company-hired assassins all living outside of the dino’s residence at a zoo. This is a total riot – I mean, we all know drug companies are greedy, but to hire mercenaries to live in a singles complex while they spy is just a laugh and a half.

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Reading Joseph Wambaugh’s HOLLYWOOD STATION is like listening to a cop share a bunch of his war stories: You get a lot of lingo, sometimes too much detail, but also an abundance of craziness and “holy shit” moments that make your day job all the more miserable by comparison.

The title refers to the men and women on the police force in the heart of La-La Land, all of whom have nicknames – cops like surfing-on-the-brain partners Flotsam and Jetsam; the detective Compassionate Charlie, known for being anything but; Budgie, the new mom returning to her beat despite painfully lactating breasts; and the Oracle, the longtime sergeant who holds the whole crew together. We meet them each slowly, and Wambaugh shares their stories. Halfway in, we’re still meeting characters, which makes you think his wholly freeform approach will result in mere vignettes than an actual plot.

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More of the late-’80s, post-Alan Moore run of SWAMP THING is collected in SWAMP THING: INFERNAL TRIANGLES, most of it written and drawn by Rick Veitch. This five-issue arc finds the former Alec Holland impregnating his wife Abby by taking control of the body of John Constantine for the deed. Once Abby is starting to show, Swampy shows sympathy symptoms of his own – and here’s where things get really strange – by giving birth himself … to himself.

But their happy tree home is threatened when Swamp Thing has business to attend to, and doesn’t return. Abby’s depressive situation isn’t helped by being taken hostage by an alien or encountering a rude Green Lantern. In a bridging story, Swampy becomes a computer virus with designs on taking revenge on Lex Luthor for an attempted murder (detailed in an earlier collection), but Superman won’t allow it.

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You’ve heard us talk about it (and talk and talk). Now you can win it! Paul Malmont has kindly sent us copies of his critically acclaimed debut novel, THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL, to give to two lucky BOOKGASM readers. And we do mean lucky, because they’re also signed by Malmont himself.

The book centers on the real-life creators behind pulp heroes Doc Savage and The Shadow, which ties in to how you can win. Below are 10 titles of Doc Savage novels. Or rather nine, as one of them is phony. Which one?

• THE FEATHERED OCTOPUS
• THE ALL-WHITE ELF
• THE GIGGLING GHOSTS
• THE FRECKLED SHARK
• THE DREADED BABOON
• THE WHISKER OF HERCULES
• THE AWFUL EGG
• THE SQUEAKING GOBLIN
• THE BLACK, BLACK WITCH
• SPOOK HOLE

Send your answer – along with your name and mailing address – to editor@bookgasm.com by this Thursday, Nov. 30. Those who pick the plant may be among our pair of selected-at-random winners, to be announced right here Friday, Dec. 1! (Sorry, BOOKGASM employees or winners of our previous contests in the last six months: You’re not eligible.)

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Our end-o’-week roundup of what you missed while working for The Man!

Man, I barely made it to the keyboard today. As usual, my mom made one pumpkin pie for the family and a separate pumpkin pie just for me, and the combination of that and frantic, harried Black Friday shopping nearly did me in. One more thing before we get to the week in review: I was at the Barnes & Noble in Green Bay, Wis., on Friday, and though it has far and away the best science fiction and fantasy selection in Northeast Wisconsin, it doesn’t acknowledge hometown hero Martin H. Greenberg at all. What a bunch of hillbillies.

ROYALE, HOLD THE CHEESE
There are a couple distinct flavors of James Bond fans out there: Some like the early films, the Connery stuff, while another group really thinks that Roger Moore was by far the best of the bunch, with his stupid jokes and outrageous gadgets. Ian Fleming freak Bruce Grossman comes down on the side of the former, and he’s pleased with the handling of the latest Bond film, as we learn in his BOOKS 2 FILM look at CASINO ROYALE. Although I nearly had a stroke when I found out that they would be playing Texas Hold ‘Em instead of baccarat, I can live with it as long as the rest of the film is good and Ben Affleck doesn’t show up to crack wise. Grossman hasn’t led me astray yet, and CASINO ROYALE just made my “to see” list.

THE SOUNDS OF SCIENCE
Grossman was on fire last week, and his BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS column was no exception. Departing from his usual tales of cowboys, detectives and spies, Grossman veered into science fiction, breaking down A SCANNER DARKLY, FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND (talking car included!) and A PRINCESS OF MARS. Yes, you read that right: Grossman kicked it old-school with Edgar Rice Burroughs. Man, those books were awesome, if you don’t think about the pro-colonialism/racial dominance subtext. Still, a red-skinned princess is better in bed than no princess at all, and swordfights have yet to get old for me.

ROD AND THE JAPANESE PEACH-BOY
Comics companies nowadays are taking the kitchen-sink approach when it comes to their major properties: Every new idea gets fitted to a license. For example, X-MEN: FAIRY TALES. I just don’t see the need for reimaginings of classic fairy tales starring the X-Men. But hey, Rod said they’re good, and as a bonus, we learned that Rod can sing “The Peach Boy” in its original Japanese. Now I understand why he wears those ruby quartz sunglasses everywhere.

SHAMELESS, BUT TASTY
We’re no stranger to rampant cronyism here at BOOKGASM – in fact, it’s part of our charter – but it’s really helpful when the stuff produced by our gang of merry pranksters is really good, and I, for one, would rush to buy GRAPHIC CLASSICS: JACK LONDON featuring a Rod Lott adaptation of “To Kill a Man,” if only my wife hadn’t restricted my book allowance. Other bits mentioned in last week’s NEWSGASM is a book-trading website called TitleTrader.com, which is intriguing, if vaguely un-American.

WELL-READ SKULL
True story: While I sat, nearly napping, in front of the TV Thursday, I had a strange vision in which Louis Fowler’s disembodied skull chased various Detroit Lions up and down the field. Okay, that’s not true, but it would have been awesome. Anyway, Louis got up to some serious single-comics speed dating, and he emerged slightly disheveled but sane, with LOUIS’ SERIOUS ISSUES kudos for ACTION COMICS #844, ARMY OF DARKNESS #11, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET #2 and THE INCREDIBLE HULK #100, while HEAD #14 got panned, despite having a huge amount of heads being shoved into crotches.

That’s a wrap, everyone. Time to load up the car and head back to the city, traffic be damned. If I make it home, stay tuned this week for some awesome stuff. –Ryun Patterson

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WINGS TO THE KINGDOM is the second book from Cherie Priest featuring Eden Moore, a likable young woman who has the special talent of being able to communicate with the dead. She doesn’t necessarily enjoy having this ability, and can’t control it at will. In fact, the book opens with a scene having Moore turn down a request from an anguished parent who hopes to speak to his lost – and presumably dead – child. It’s a poignant, touching vignette that draws the reader to Moore and directly into the story.

And the story is a corker. Dead Civil War soldiers, whose ghosts haunt the Chickamauga Battlefield, are coming out and bothering picnickers. They are unable to speak, but they point dramatically in a vague direction. All the ghostly activity brings in some professional ghost hunters, which provides a bit of friction. Moore isn’t very interested and tries to avoid the pros, but as you can guess, she inevitably is dragged into the mystery.

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In Richard Stark’s ASK THE PARROT, Parker is back being the anti-hero that we love so much. Picking up right after NOBODY RUNS FOREVER, where Parker’s last job went really wrong, we find him on the run from the law on foot in the woods of upstate New York.

While Parker tries to figure out what to do, he stumbles upon a hermit – former racetrack worker Tom Lindahl, who blew the whistle on some illegal money laundering. After pretty much given the shaft after the resulting exposure, Tom has been holding a grudge and crafting a way to get even for a long time. He figures meeting up with Parker will solve that problem. Having no other recourse, Parker figures “what the hell is one blown job” and that maybe he can make it up with Tom’s idea. Tom explains how he still has access to the track and wants to rip it off.

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Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

We have too much to get to before my turkey gets cold, so let’s not waste time talkin’…

ACTION COMICS #844 (DC) Now this is how you do a Superman comic. Over the past year, I have been trying out issue after issue of any of the multiple Supes titles and found them all disappointing, the worst of the lot being Grant Morrison’s highly overrated ALL-STAR SUPERMAN and the markedly declined-in-quality SUPERMAN/BATMAN. It was actually quite disheartening to see an iconic hero like the Man of Steel given a “blah” treatment. But, with this issue of ACTION COMICS, that legendary status is back. And why? Because it’s the start of a story arc written by SUPERMAN film director Richard Donner, bringing the same sense of wonder and unflawed heroism to the character that he did for the movie. This Superman is the “big blue Boy Scout” that, while in this day and age of “extreme” heroes is looked upon with scorn, I find totally refreshing and welcome.

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All the news that’s fit to capsulize!

TO SELF-PROMOTE A MAN
Eureka Publishing’s revised volume of GRAPHIC CLASSICS: JACK LONDON is now out, featuring 50 all-new pages, including an adaptation of “To Kill a Man,” scripted by me and illustrated by Kostas Aronis. Also new are adaptations of “The Red One” and “The Wit of Porportuk,” joining the previous edition’s “A Thousand Deaths,” “Jan, the Unrepentant” and six other stories of adventure, horror and science fiction. Snag it here.

TRADING PLACES
Too broke from Christmas shopping to buy yourself new books? TitleTrader.com is a site that allows you to trade books (as well as DVDs and CDs) with other users through a point-based system. Creator Dan Abercrombie says “tens of thousands of books” are listed currently on the free site. He started TitleTrader in 2004 after his sister noticed “she had a lot of books and a small house, and thought it would be a good idea to help get rid of some of them.” Since then, the site has hosted 90,000 trades between almost 8,000 users.

BABIES, YUM!
Hey, did anyone notice that 17th-century political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift has been writing book reviews on Amazon?

AND LET’S TALK TURKEY
Like all of you (we hope), BOOKGASM will be taking the day off tomorrow for Thanksgiving – not by choice but a dead-certain tryptophan coma. And because we haven’t had a holiday weekend off in … well, we can’t remember, we’re also not moving from the couch on Friday. There’s reading to do! So have a great four-dayer and give thanks to the ones you love; you’re already on our list. –Rod Lott

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Rather ingeniously, X-MEN: FAIRY TALES retells classic X-MEN stories and fairy tales but placing the characters of the former into the structure of the latter. The four-issue miniseries is now assembled into one book, so it can be savored at once, like all good fairy-tale collections should be.

The first story, “The Peach-Boy,” is based upon the Japanese folk tale of the same name (which I can sing in Japanese – no lie). Here, however, Momotaro-san – the boy born in the middle of a giant peach – is Cyclops. Whenever the peach pit covering his eye is removed, lasers shoot forth. He’s asked by a Professor X-esque monk to retrieve the emperor’s kidnapped daughter. Aiding him are a Beast-like blue monkey, a white wolf with the ability to form ice wih its breath and an Angel-ic bird; against him are Magneto, Toad, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Sana Takeda renders it in a style that’s somewhere between painted and manga, as if bridging the old and new.

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For this all-sci-fi column, I need to put the blame where it really belongs: First, to Channel 2 in Boston for showing it. Then to Tom Baker for being it. I’m talking, of course, about DR. WHO, which put me on the path that is science fiction. Sure, we all watched STAR TREK as kids, but DR. WHO pushed it further for me. You might think, “Hey, Bruce, you must have read all the classic stuff growing up,” but you’d be so wrong. There was no Heinlen, Dick or even Bradbury on my shelf; it was more about Philip José Farmer, Alan Dean Foster, Harry Harrison and, of course, Douglas Adams. So as I sit here waiting for the next episode of TORCHWOOD to download air, here are three little blasts of otherworldly fiction. (No Daleks or Cybermen were hurt in the writing of this column.)

A SCANNER DARKLY by Philip K. Dick – Being more familiar with Dick’s short stories – some of which have been made in to films both good (BLADE RUNNER) and bad (PAYCHECK), I felt it was time to tackle one of his most popular. Now, if it looks like a sci-fi book and feels like a sci-fi book, then it must be a sci-fi book, but it’s not. Yes, Dick’s 1977 novel has sci-fi elements in the plot, but this is more about Dick’s drug abuse in the early ’70s while he was living with a commune of youngsters.

The story is about a cop named Fred who works so deep undercover, he has to wear a “scramble suit” when he reports in. Fred is a narc reporting on drug activities while also setting up busts for the regular police. His other persona is a man called Robert Arctor, a known drug user and pusher. Since no one at HQ knows they are both the same, Fred is put on a case to bust Arctor. In other words, he has to set himself up.

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So there’s this concept in international relations called “mutually assured destruction,” in which the United States that made it known that if a foreign country attacks us with a nuclear weapon, we’re going to respond in kind. Thus, if you’re going to remove us from the earth, expect the same, bub.

Nelson DeMille uses this to his narrative advantage in WILD FIRE, having a secret group of rich white businessmen plot to set off a nuclear weapon on American soil, yet make it look like the work of foreign terrorists so the U.S. will return the favor, thereby resulting in the entire Islamic population the men so hate being wiped off the map.

Yeah, it’s a stretch. But fiction is fiction, and who’s going to save the world? Det. John Corey, retired NYPD now working for the FBI. He stumbles into the mess after his colleague assigned to do some undercover fact-finding on the men’s club is discovered and captured by them, led by the villainous Bain Madox, one of those names that just screams “corrupt, immoral, wealthy guy.”

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Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to read a book written by anyone who spent five years as the editor of SHEEP AND GOAT RAISERS’ MAGAZINE. (Call it a prejudice on my part and I won’t waste time trying to correct you.) Unless that editor is West Texas novelist Elmer Kelton, winner of seven Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and the man voted by that society of professional scribes as the greatest writer of Westerns ever.

His newest book in paperback is SIX BITS A DAY, a reference to the amount of money paid as wages to Texas cowhands in the late 1880s. As boss man C.C. Tarpley never tires of reminding his hirelings, “I’ll raise you someday when you’re a cowboy.”

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