Update 5 Oct 09
Man it’s been a while since I’ve updated this section, but I’m here to rectify that.
MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE- by Thomas Ligotti. MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE is comprised of the title story, an almost novel length tale of corporate politics and swimming with sharks, and two shorter stories to pad out the page count.
Ligotti (whatever that name truly represents) is very hit and miss with me. At his worst I find him an indulgent and fawning and uninteresting writer, his lengthier tales like a dog walking in circles, before laying down to sleep. Not everyone is cut out for novels, or can work well in the long format. Short story writing is a craft, and if you’re good at it, embrace that.
Poe never wrote a novel in his life, and he’s remembered as one of the greatest of American writers, and rightly so. Clive Barker while he now has many novels under his belt, for me it’s his initial BOOKS OF BLOOD short story compilations that continues to be the very finest works of horror done not only by Barker, but I would argue by anyone in the 25 years since their publication.
So Ligotti needs to stop, trying to pad stories, because it serves him poorly.
Ligotti has done stores I like. But he’s done even more that I don’t, and MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE falls into the latter camp. It’s the one thing that reading shouldn’t be… it Is a chore. It Is a pain to plod through, and there are too many books I have literally piled up to read that I’m excited to read, to force myself to finish anymore dragging Ligotti tales. So this is a review just based on the books inability to hold my interest, if you finish it and found it was great, I’ll be happy for you. I’ve waded through enough Ligotti, to know diminishing returns when i see it. So the title story,which takes up most of the book, I cannot recommend.
However the backup story, I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN FOR THE WORLD, while it exhibits the same plodding writing style, it at least progresses at a better pace, and the plodding style, can be seen as a device to express the unreliability of the narrator. An attempt perhaps even toward a dark satire, but it ultimately is just plodding writing. And by the time I had reached the end of the story, I felt what I had read was a waste of time. So with two poor reading experiences I could not get into the final story Nightmare Network. All in all, I have to say pass on this book.
I find Ligotti better, when he’s more succinct. For what I mean by that, check the short story section for reviews of Ligotti stories that did work for me. But MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE gets a thumbs down.
Update 21 Sept 08
I usually save the Graphic Novels for a different section, but I felt this revised review of CAGES was deserving of an entry here.
Dave McKean’s CAGES.
I just finished Dave McKean’s CAGES. All 496 pages of it. It took me roughly three hours of on again-off again reading.
The book has been widely praised in circles, as being one of the greatest works to come out in the last couple of decades. That is there opinion, this is mine:
If you only know the name Dave McKean from his movies or his children’s books or his SAND MAN covers, then you are in for a treat with CAGES.
The first thing that hits you about the book (the first printing huge slip-cased edition from Kitchen Sink Press which is larger than the later editions and is packaged with a CD) is the size. It is just a massive production. In length, depth, weight, it speaks of a forgotten old world quality. A forgotten love, passion, for our words and images.
And upon opening the book you know you are entering something weird and new and brilliant. some new different way, some new different voice, for our old stale world.
CAGES tells, on the surface a very simple story of an old world building and the lives of those people who make it home; and how those lives intersect, cross, fracture, and become somehow resonant.
It is a slice of life that speaks on the whole. Dave McKean uses a variety of abstractions; abstractions in art, abstractions in story, abstractions in time, to speak, to argue, to grapple. It is a book about questions and the fallacy of answers.
It is a book that is exceedingly hard to describe in a single phrase, because like life it is not about a single thing, it is about everything. Like life it is not about endings, so much as the moments on our way to the end.
It is a deeply personal, deeply beautiful, and for me deeply effective and affecting work. Is it the greatest work produced in the Graphic Novel format? No. But it is up there, with the best.
There are parts of the book that will make you smile and chuckle and fear and hope, and turn the page… with both trepidation and expectation. There are parts of the book that will confuse you, parts that will challenge you, and more parts still… that shall remain with you. There are not many books that can do that. This was one.
Final evaluation? It is a stunning, essential piece of work that the reader will come back to often, and is deserving of a place on everyone’s bookshelf. Highest Recommendation.
Update 24 Nov 2007
This is a list of essential, exceptional novels as determined by yours truly. They are all in the HEROIC TIMES HALL OF FAME! 
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Horror
IT by Stephen King- Still remains my favorite horror book of all time.
SLOB by Rex Miller- Wow! This book floored me when I first read it. The tales of a relentless madman. Miller’s Debut novel.
BOOKS OF BLOOD- by Clive Barker, absolutely essential reading. Short story collection that is so good, so influential, that the genre is now divided up into pre-barker and post barker.
Mystery
WHITE BUTTERFLY- Walter Mosley’s finest. Which means it is one of the finest mystery novels ever written. STUNNING. All of his books are required reading, but probably this one and LITTLE SCARLET are my favorites.
A COLD DAY IN PARADISE- An astonishing debut by Steve Hamilton, deserving of its acclaim.
A TICKET TO THE BONEYARD- Fantastic novel by one of the greatest of the great, Lawrence Block. What a phenomenal villain in this novel.
Crime/Police Procedural
KISS THE GIRLS- James Patterson. Phenomenal, reading it is like running a race. Will keep your heart pounding like a trip-hammer.
TIME OF THE ASSASSINS-There is some phenomenal action sequences in this, the late great Hugh Holton’s finest novel.
AND JUSTICE FOR ONE- John Clarkson’s terse, power-house tale of vengeance.
General
MIDDLE PASSAGE- by Charles Johnson. Gets my vote for one of the greatest novels of all time.
Science Fiction
DAWN- by Octavia Butler. What a staggering work, from one of the true stars of the genre. Her recent passing is a great loss.
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Update 21 Oct 2007
FRIGHT- I finally finished FRIGHT by Cornell Woolrich, first published over half a century ago under one of Woolrich’s aliases. My first introduction to the work of Woolrich… and my thoughts on the book?
FRIGHT is horrible, foisting on us an irredeemable character, and a plot that is by no means revolutionary, in fact one can call the story formulaic, however all that said against FRIGHT, and none of it alters the odd, little twisted fact… that this book is brilliant.
Everything that happens you know is going to happen. Well almost everything. But like the surety that every life ends in death, it is the getting there, the journey, the scenery… that defines the trip.
FRIGHT is a great trip.
The writing style is mesmerizing,really brilliant use of phrasing, an the turning of a word. And the story it tells of a man pushed, or perhaps called,to atrocious, unpardonable extremes, while riveting in itself, is elevated, made special by the style.. Cornell’s words… haunt.
The book even by todays standards is horrible. Nothing explicit, but horrible none the less, much more so by 1950 standards; it must have been virtually x-rated upon its release.
One caveat against it, some of the character actions don’t ring true to a modern audience. So the characters, particularly the wife, have to be understood against that backdrop of a younger, divorce-less, pre-women’s liberation America. Though even today as the nightly news will tell us, in a liberated America, women are no less prone to being poorly used by the men they love.
So that caveat made, I found myself completely immersed in this story; and suspense wise and writing wise it stands up against anything you’ll find on the stands today. Woolrich is often cited as the 20th centuries Poe and I think that moniker is apt. A figure who while extensively published and read, Woolrich like Poe eked out a meager existence, and only in death is receiving the acclaim for the works of his troubled life. Grade=A-. Loved it.
CROOKED LITTLE VEIN- So I followup Woolrich’s FRIGHT by getting to chapter 11 of Warren Ellis’ CROOKED LITTLE VEIN.
Warren Ellis for those of you not in the know, is probably one of the best, most exciting comic book writers of the last decade. With a wonderful body of eclectic, satirical, and cutting edge mature tales of man and future man, works from the AUTHORITY to PLANETARY to TRANSMETROPOLITAN to OCEAN to FELL, he’s proved himself a master of the medium of the graphic novel. And like erstwhile comic greats before him such as Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, Ellis decides to throw his hat into the purely prose arena.
And I have to say, eleven chapters in, and I’m much impressed.
Michael McGill, the erstwhile protagonist of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, is very much in the vein of other Ellis characters, an always in the fire straight man, in a world perpetually spinning toward strange.
And Warren Ellis does a very enjoyable thing in this novel by making the chapters short. It makes the book far more accessible, a joy and sense of accomplishment to quickly getting through chapters, rather than almost being a chore to slosh through a 40 page chapter. It is completely psychological, but that’s reading defined. It is an effect that most of my favorite writers use.
So quarter of the way into the book, and I’m enjoying Ellis’ tale of Sam Spade meets Gulliver’s Travels meets Deep Throat.
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I’m currently reading about 21 books. Every Tuesday I’ll add to this list. But till then please check out my links below.
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