Review Haiku for Those with Short Attention Spans

I have been slaaaaaaaaaaacking on reviewing again, sorry about that.  Too many books (106 so far this year!) and if I reviewed them all, I’d have no time to read. SO!  You get a bunch of review haiku, this time without mini-reviews.  Because I’m feeling super lazy tonight.  SORRY!

Etgar Keret’s The Nimrod Flipout

Shortest shorts of all
Stories, I mean – not Nair legs
Fun funny sad weird

Philip K Dick’s In Milton Lumky Territory

PKD litfic
No aliens or mindfucks
ZEE OH EM GEE, RIGHT?

Harambee K Grey-Sun’s Broken Angels

Blah blah blah blah STOP
I actually rage quit
This book was so bad

Kim Harrison’s Ever After

It’s too late now, but
I’m going down with my ship
(Hint: It isn’t Trent)

Dakota Cassidy’s Accidentally Dead

Nine of ten women
Agreed that the word “vulva”
Does not get them hot.

Charlaine Harris’ Dead Ever After

You’re right, Ms Harris -
We all NEEDED to know what
Sookie had for lunch.

…aaaaaaaaaand, that’s all I can see unreviewed that I wasn’t planning on talking about in more depth at some point.

Don’t forget that the Order of the Phoenix drinkalong is coming up on Friday – Same BatTime, Same BatHashtag!  See you then!

“And so the period of stable maladjustment is drawing to a close.”

Okay, so.  Trying to write about Dr Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb without spoiling the shit out of it for people who haven’t read it is NIGH ON IMPOSSIBLE but I’m going to give it my best shot (especially since I know of at least one person reading this that was considering it for their next PKD read).

It’s made especially difficult because I have so many highlighted passages that I want to talk about, but without the context of the book, or sufficient explanation, there’s really no point.  I realized as I highlighted the 30th thing last night when I was finishing the book that I was doing it for NO REASON…unless some of you decide to read it, and then I share them with you later.

Annoying rambliness aside, listen.  This is my third or fourth read of Dr Bloodmoney and I liked it even more than the first few times.  I think that’s the case with most of Dick’s work.  You read it once, and you like it just fine (or hate it) and it kind of blows your mind a little; you read it a second time and notice many of the things you missed the first time, your mind is further blown; but then the third time, there’s that Dick Click I talked about and you’re just “HOLY SHIT, WHAT DID I JUST READ?  MY MIND IS WELL AND TRULY BLOWN!” and then everything else you read after it kind of suffers in comparison.

[Queue the mind-blowing-Dick jokes]

When I talked about Counter-Clock World (click that link up there), I mentioned that it could be considered weird in that…it wasn’t all that weird.  It was a fairly straightforward sf story, that didn’t bend your mind all that much.  The same can’t really be said about Dr Bloodmoney.  Is it what has become known as standard post-apocalyptic fare, or is it all just some really fucked up fever dreams from the mind of a madman?  It’s hard to tell, and I flip back and forth on what I think each time I read (and sometimes several times during each reading).

Don’t let that terrify you, or put you off reading it, though.  It’s still a great story, even if you read it as just straight sf.  There are battles between mutants, mistaken/hidden identities, dogs that talk, rats that can dismantle traps on their own and one of the trampiest female characters I’ve come to…well, not exactly love, but appreciate.

AND!  She still has all of her teeth.

So, really, it’s all a bit of a downer, I mean – we had one nuclear incident in the 70s, then a few years later…something  happens and the bombs drop AGAIN, leaving everyone worse off than they’d thought – but we’re humans so we try to build shit back up again.  We come up with wood burning cars, or just have horses pull the old cars around.  We can’t have real cigarettes cos THIS IS CALIFORNIA, but we CAN have a reasonable facsimile…and ooooh, will they cost you.  Booze is hard to come by, but the same guy that makes the cigarettes has a reasonable approximation of brandy.

Unfortunately there’s an Ayn Rand loving, telekineses having phocomelus who thinks he knows what’s better for us than we do ourselves.

WHATEVER WILL WE DO?!

Sorry, I’m not telling you.

So You Want to Read PKD? Here’s Some Help.

The idea for this flow chart came from a comment Kate made the other day.

For the last MANY YEARS, people have asked me where to start if they want to get into PKD.  Because a little bit of work one time will save me ALL THE WORK later on, I decided to make this to keep from having to continually answer this question in the future.

If you’d like to share, that’s fine, but please link back/properly attribute.  I put a lot of work into this, many drafts and lots of time and consideration.  Thanks, and enjoy!

~o~

Click to embiggen!

~o~

Thanks to Trev, Reverend61 and the other Kate for their suggestions, which helped me put this whole thing together.  And extra thanks to Susie for being all amazing and adding the dodisharkicorn watermark.  <3

UPDATE PRIOR TO POSTING!  I finished reading Counter-Clock World (which I mentioned I’d be starting on the post that made this all happen) shortly after scheduling this post and put up a short review on goodreads.  RIGHT AFTER IT WENT UP, Ashley Awesome commented and asked where would be a good place to start for the “Dick curious.”  (hee!)  It made me a little bouncy and happy that I’d made the decision to do this.

In addition to my fellow Dickheads (heh) mentioned above, thanks to all of you for your support.  I AM SAPPY, OKAY?

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Had he lived, my favourite author would be 84 years old today.  I know I go on and on about my LIST of favourite authors, and I may have many that I absolutely adore (you’ll see me talk about this later this week when I wrap up the Naughty and Nice lists), but if a gun was held to my head and it was demanded that I CHOOSE JUST ONE, I wouldn’t even hesitate before naming Philip K Dick.

One of the best parts about having a favourite author that wrote and wrote and wrote is that even now (over 30 years after his death), I still haven’t read everything he published.  I hate the thought of coming to the end of that list more than I can tell you.  I don’t want to reach the end of the road.  I don’t want there to be nothing left to look forward to.

Which is why for the last few years, I’ve only allowed myself to read one or two of his works that is unfamiliar to me each year.  I can’t run out.  Or, I should say that I don’t WANT to run out of his books.  That will be a bittersweet day for me.

Anyway, to celebrate the (too short) life of my very favourite of all favourite authors, today I’m taking a book of his I haven’t allowed myself to read yet off the shelf.

If you don’t see much of me today, it’s because I’m falling into Counter-Clock World.

While I’m gone, go listen to some awesome music inspired by his work.  I know I’ve already talked about it before, but go listen to ieatpants’ The Empire Never Ended, and maybe this Japancakes song.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 16

I am having a REALLY HARD TIME with this category.  I already posted a list of Five Book-to-Movie Adaptations I Don’t Hate, and the only one I can come up with that probably should have been on the list that didn’t make it was High Fidelity, but that’s not a FAVOURITE so I don’t know.

Since that’s the case, I’m going to expand on one of those entries, which kind of makes me laugh because I think I’ve done enough talking about this author recently, but that is just TOO BAD FOR YOU.  You knew I was a snake, bitch.

Favourite Book Turned Movie

I successfully avoided this movie for five years.  Conversations about it went like this.

Friend:   “Hey, sj – have you seen A Scanner Darkly?  Don’t you love that book?  Is the movie any good?”

Me:  ”DKJAF;OLRKEJAWEK, DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT MOVIE!  Keanu Reeves as BOB ARCTOR?!  WINONA RYDER AS DONNA?!?!”

Friend:  ”Yeah, but – “

Me:  ”NO!  Do NOT talk to me about that movie.  I want nothing to do with that movie.  NOTHING.”

For five years.  This is almost exactly the conversation I had more times than I can count.  I’d been burned by terrible PKD adaptations before, y’know?  I mean – as an adult, I even have a hard time watching Blade Runner now (which I used to LOVE) because it makes me so mad, and Ridley Scott just doesn’t know how to leave well enough alone…but that is a topic for another day.

Anyway (I know I talked about this in the post I linked above, but most of you will be too lazy to click through.  I know you guys.), last fall, I met Kate on subjot (man, I totally miss subjot).  She’d written a review for Clans of the Alphane Moon, which kind of blew my mind.  I mean, that’s not a book one reads unless they’re a total Dickhead.  Shut up.

So anyway, we started talking about PKD and people were actually commenting just so they could follow the conversation.  Really, until I met Kate and Trevor, the people I could discuss his work with (that had read him before they knew me) I could count on one hand.

Kate asked if I’d seen A Scanner Darkly, and I’m pretty sure I had a similar reaction to the one I described up there.  I mean, Donna was supposed to be young.  Like, jailbait young.  How the hell did they decide Winona Ryder was appropriate for that role?  HOW, I ASK YOU?

Kate essentially told me to STSU and watch it.

So I did.  That day.

And I loved it.

Yes, I have minor quibbles with the way the ending was changed (but Kate actually prefers it, go figure), but really – it’s the strongest adaptation of any of his work I’ve ever seen (and am likely to see, unless they ever snaping release Radio Free Albemuth to somewhere other than a festival I’m not likely to visit since I live in the middle of nowhere).

Um…I seem to have lost my train of thought, completely distracted by the fact that there’s actually a Philip K Dick Festival that NO ONE BOTHERED TO TELL ME ABOUT!

So, yeah.  Favourite movie adaptation?  This is it.  Best scene?