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

Well, it’s the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2006, and it’s nothing but good news here at BOOKGASM HQ. Despite our nearly unheard of salaries, corporate profits are way up, especially considering that we’ve been around for less than a year. The upshot of it is this: There are plenty more book reviews where these came from, and profits be damned, we still care about you, the Reader.

MONDAY >> 7.10.06
There was more content than usual this week, and nothing starts off a week of crunchy, satiusfying editorial content than news capsules. Yes, yes, yes, I mean NEWSGASM. This week we found out that Simon & Schuster is pimping out a free e-book just to get us hooked, that there’s a Robert E. Howard tribute anthology in the works (I hope it isn’t hyper-boring!), and that Rod Lott knows enough about the world of Conan to know that Conan’s god is named Crom. Oh yeah, BOOKGASM has become the new Paul Wunder: One of our extra-awesome quotes has been printed in a actual book!*

Rod Lott took a look at DC Comics’ BRAVE NEW WORLD one-shot that introduces new takes on classic characters. Blah blah blah, OMAC, blah blah. Come on guys, where’s the reimagined AMBUSH BUG? The upside is the price: for $5 you can get this, a couple of double cheeseburgers, and a Coke. Like it should be.

Bruce Grossman took a gander at Chad Millman’s THE DETONATORS: THE SECRET PLOT TO DESTROY AMERICA AND AN EPIC HUNT FOR JUSTICE, and despite a name that threatens to stretch to infinity, he says it isn’t half-bad. More like one-fourth bad, from the looks of things.

TUESDAY >> 7.11.06
Tuesday’s BOOK WHORE started things off, but to tell you the truth, I think we’ve already given these books too much publicity. The only one that looks remotely interesting is Kathy Reichs’ BREAK NO BONES, and that’s only because I dig the commercials for the TV show based on Reichs’ work. The FBI guy is all, "Bones! You can’t carry a gun!" and Bones is like, "It’s obvious from these skeletal deformities that this 9-year-old Neanderthal girl was tortured to death." Comic genius!

Bruce Grossman used this week’s BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS column to make an impassioned appeal for the return of Matt Helm via reissues of Donald Hamilton’s original stories. I get that these books are good, but I really don’t like the name "Matt Helm." Do adults named Matthew still go by "Matt"? I think Matthew Helm is a good spy name. Or maybe it’s Matthias. Hmmm. Anyway, we also were treated to full-color covers for THE VANISHERS, THE INTIMIDATORS and THE BETRAYERS. Yes, I tried to come up with a funny, fourth book as a joke, but I couldn’t think of one.

Rod took on a subject dear to his heart in reviewing BIRDMEN, BATMEN, AND SKYFLYERS: WINGSUITS AND THE PIONEERS WHO FLEW IN THEM, FELL IN THEM, AND PERFECTED THEM. The first time I met Rod Lott, he was standing atop the University of Oklahoma clocktower; handcrafted wings made of discarded feather dusters were attatched to his shoulders. (He left his rifle at home.) As he plunged toward a lengthy stay in the hospital, The Flaming Lips filmed the video for "She Don’t Use Jelly" in the background (you can see the ambulances if you pause the video at just the right time. Ahh, capricious youth. Also, Rod liked that book

When he took a pause from his rant about lesbian equestrians, Rod also found the time to review DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEAD AND OTHER TALES on Tuesday. That Ed Gorman is surely a multifaceted writer – this collection showcases genre-spanning short stories from the man’s varied career. I really had no idea he’d written something other than "The Brasher Girl," but here I am, wrong again.

WEDNESDAY >> 7.12.06
I’m not ashamed to say that Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s THE RELIC nearly made me crap my pants when I listened to the unabrigdged version on a dark and lonely highway. Since then I’ve read them all and loved them. Rod Lott had the extreme good karma to get an interview with Preston himself, and it’s a great one. The most interesting part, to me, was that Preston never expected to make any money from this writing stuff. Douglas, please e-mail me. I’m sure we can find a way to get rid of all that cash in a manner that befits both of us.

Mark Rose is BOOKGASM, Ltd.’s resident fantasy genius. He’s sensitive to nuance (no, I’m not making a joke about how that dragon book made him cry) and has an eye for story, so his ultra-positive review of FIREBIRD by R. Garcia y Robinson should be taken as fact. I said read it, Bilbo!

THURSDAY >> 7.13.06
Isn’t GIANT-SIZE HULK redundant? I think he’s giant-sized by default, no? Anyway, said illogical phrase was the name of a comic that Rod read. He liked it well enough.

After being totally bushwacked by VELLUM last week, I’m finally catching up to my "to read" list of books. Thankfully, CRYSTAL RAIN was on that list. It’s a cool book, (despite a lack of sports drinks and strippers) and the author has a whole set of special features on the novel’s website that only people who have the book can look at. Unfortunately, the special features don’t include Evangeline Lily naked.

Despite a really lame cover, I think I’m interested in RETRO PULP TALES after Rod Lott’s review of the book. It’s a good idea and all, but I think the real genius of the pulps comes through sheer volume of output. I mean, they put out like 100,000 words per month. That’s almost more than Mark Rose.

FRIDAY 07.14.06
Marv Wolfman has written a novelization for SUPERMAN RETURNS and Rod liked it for the added depth afforded by such works. That’s why I really used to like novelizations, too, but the last one I read was in the mid-’80s; I think it was THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION by Earl Mac Rauch. Or it might have been for HOWARD THE DUCK. Either way, good stuff.

Mark Rose is at it again, and he says that Mo Hayder’s THE DEVIL OF NANKING is worth the time invested, despite a bit of padding. Much like my life, the book is simultaneously about a Japanese girl who works at a hostess bar and a man who witnesses the rape of Nanking firsthand. I hope it works out for them.

That’s it for our report this week. Hopefully the third quarter of 2006 will treat us as well as the second, and remember: Every investment carries an element of risk, but a book that gets a good review from BOOKGASM is a sure thing. – Ryun Patterson

*No, it isn’t my fan fiction about Spock’s obsession with slingback pumps. That has two quotes.

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