{"id":476,"date":"2006-03-13T00:37:42","date_gmt":"2006-03-13T04:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/03\/13\/book-notes-agony-column\/"},"modified":"2009-07-30T20:37:26","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T00:37:26","slug":"book-notes-agony-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/13\/book-notes-agony-column\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Notes: Agony Column"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, time to do some initial clean up on my &#8220;To Blog&#8221; folder.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing on the menu is a set of pointers to <a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/\">Agony Column<\/a> content, to thin out the &#8220;Books&#8221; subfolder. I&#8217;ve mentioned before that Rick Kleffel might be the reviewer who most constantly lines up with my eclecticism, and looking at my &#8220;To Blog&#8221; folder I see a lot of links to his stuff&#8211;although there&#8217;s lots more content there that I could just as easily be pointing to. <a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/\">Go explore it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/06-27-05.htm#063005\">An Interview With Andrew Vachss<\/a><br \/>\nAn MP3 chat with the hardest man in fiction. His dog can eat you in one bite, assuming <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vachss.com\/\">Vachss<\/a> doesn&#8217;t just kill you with an offhand glare. I have mentioned this interview and my thoughts on Vachss <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/19\/bookstore-splurges#vachss\">before<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/06-27-05.htm#063005\">Review of Liz Williams&#8217; Snake Agent<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sff.net\/people\/liz-w\/index.htm\">Liz<\/a> was really due for a hardcover, and they made this one <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/HLIC\/fc76382da2ef2c51c32055475a3d9374.jpg\">so beautiful<\/a><\/strong>. I&#8217;ve already ordered the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nightshadebooks.com\/book.aspx?bookid=139\">follow on book<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/09-06-05.htm#090605-2\">Review of Crowley&#8217;s Byron Novel<\/a><br \/>\nI quite enjoyed this book, although it&#8217;s not <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Little%2C_Big\">Little, Big<\/a>. (And boy, am I excited about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlebig25.com\/\">snazzy edition of that!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/09-06-05.htm#090605-2\">Review Of Irvine&#8217;s The Narrows<\/a><br \/>\nI freely admit that I first bought <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alexirvine.net\/\">Alex Irvine<\/a>&#8216;s stuff because of a conversation we had in a Framingham hotel about blowing things up. I&#8217;m glad I liked his thoughts on explosions, because I&#8217;ve really enjoyed his books. The &#8220;high concept&#8221; pitch for Irvine is &#8220;East Coast Tim Powers&#8221;, and you know I think of Powers as being a writer extraordinaire.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/09-19-05.htm#092205\">An Interview With Jeff Ford<\/a><br \/>\nI am a drooling fan boy for <a href=\"http:\/\/users.rcn.com\/delicate\/\">Jeffrey Ford<\/a> (indeed, when I was introduced to him it was with &#8220;Hey Jeff, come and meet one of your drooling fanboys!&#8221;). His novels have been uniformly brilliant (despite what Trish may say!) and his stories are always at least good, and occasionally staggering. It kills me that the person I had pictured after reading his books is pretty much the opposite of who Ford is in superficial details like appearance and accent, etc. If you&#8217;re expecting him to sound like an effete aristocratic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0380793326\">Physiognomist<\/a>, you&#8217;re in for a surprise.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/12-12-05.htm#121605\">Review of Ford&#8217;s Cosmology Of The Wider World<\/a><br \/>\nNot much to add to the above, except &#8220;boy, this was a good book&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/10-24-05.htm#102705\">Review Of Harrison&#8217;s Viriconium<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dying_Earth\">The Dying Earth<\/a> meets <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser\">Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser<\/a>, with some extra drugs and some <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Wave_%28science_fiction%29\">New Wave<\/a> sensibilities. What&#8217;s not to like?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2006\/03-06-06.htm#030806\">Review of Christopher Moore&#8217;s new book<\/a><br \/>\nFantasy comedy is hard to do right. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismoore.com\/\">Moore<\/a> does it right. We&#8217;ve talked about this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/index.php?s=christopher+moore\">before<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/trashotron.com\/agony\/news\/2005\/12-12-05.htm#121605\">Rick goes off about typesetting<\/a><br \/>\nI am just including this because it amuses me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">OK, time to do some initial clean up on my &#8220;To Blog&#8221; folder. The first thing on the menu is a set of pointers to Agony Column content, to thin out the &#8220;Books&#8221; subfolder. I&#8217;ve mentioned before that Rick Kleffel might be the reviewer who most constantly lines up with my eclecticism, and looking at my &#8220;To Blog&#8221; folder I&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/13\/book-notes-agony-column\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[257,458,293,371,208],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-linkapalooza","tag-authors","tag-books","tag-crowley","tag-jeff-ford","tag-things-to-listen-to","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-7G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2864,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/2864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}