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This post written by Clint The Last Wish
by Andrzej Sapkowski
[cover name=thelastwish]
Geralt de Rivia is a witcher, a monster hunter who uses magic, alchemy, his sword, and his brain to deal with dangerous creatures. He works as a mercenary, and he has a quirky sense of right and wrong. He has no problem killing three guys who attack him in a bar, for example, but he won’t immediately try to kill every supernatural menace he encounters. In this world, humans are often more evil than monsters, so maybe the person who hired Geralt is the villain and the creature Geralt has been hired to kill isn’t.
The Last Wish is a series of connected short stories. Geralt is recovering from his wounds in a temple, and the stories are flashbacks or stories he shares with people there.
This isn’t traditional heroic fantasy. As I said before, Geralt has a strange code of ethics, and sometimes he is tricked by a bad person into doing the wrong thing. The setting is kind of dark and gritty. The old, magical world is dying, and the new world is dominated by humans. People come to the wilderness, start new towns, and drive the monsters away. There is no one big bad out to conquer or destroy the world. Instead, we have evil humans and monsters facing extinction and trying to fight back.
There are some sexual situations in the story (including some in the first two pages), but most of it is only alluded to.
This is part of a larger series, which includes the TV series The Hexer (forget about the movie), several novels, some graphic novels, and a video game called The Witcher. The stories were all originally written in Polish; most, but not all, of the stories have been translated into English.
You can read some of the book online at the publisher’s website.
Where to Find It
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This post written by Clint Skeleton Man
by Joseph Bruchac
[cover name=skeletonman]
One day Molly’s parents vanish, but she has trouble accepting this. She lives alone for a while and tries to act like nothing has happened, but people from Social Services eventually catch on. They place her with her uncle, but Mollly has never heard of this uncle before. This uncle makes Molly very nervous, and sort of reminds her of a story her father told her.
Molly’s father grew up on a Mohawk reservation, and he made sure Molly was aware of her Mohawk heritage. One story he told her was the story of Skeleton Man, who was a lazy, greedy, and evil man who got hungry while he was waiting for his family to come home with food. First he ate his finger. Then he ate the rest of his flesh until he was just a skeleton. When his family came home, he went after them, too.
Molly is in trouble. Her creepy uncle locks her in her room every night, and she is terrified of him. Then she starts having disturbing dreams that seem to be warning her about him. Molly has to do something to save herself and find her parents.
You can read some of it online at the publisher’s website.
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Where to Find It
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This post written by Clint Wake
by Lisa McMann
[cover name=wake]
Janie Hannagan has a special power, or maybe a curse: whenever someone nearby falls asleep and starts to dream, Janie is sucked into the dream. She gets tag along while somebody flies around, shows up to work naked, or falls and falls and falls. Sounds fun, right? Janie is in high school, so she gets pulled in every time somebody falls asleep in class. She works at a nursing home, so she gets pulled in every time a resident dozes off.
She learns a lot about other people this way. She knows who who has a secret crush on her best friend, for example. She knows that somebody who lives on Waverly Road is really messed up. She knows that Cable, the class slacker, has dreams about her. Then she finds herself in one of Cable’s a really messed up nightmares, and she decides to stop watching and try to fix things.
You should know a few things about this novel before you start. First, a lot of it takes place in the dreams of teenagers. You know what that means. Second, there is a lot of swearing. Third, some people are put off by the writing style. You might want to preview it at Google Books.
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Where to Find It
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This post written by Clint The Cat Who Covered the World: The Adventures of Henrietta and her Foreign Correspondent
by Christopher S. Wren
[cover name=thecatwhocoveredtheworld]
Christopher Wren did not have good luck with pets when he was young, so he wasn’t exactly eager when one of his friends asked if he would be willing to adopt a kitten. However, she apparently knew Christopher well enough to know how to bribe him – she offered him a bottle of Scotch to take the kitten. I’m not really into cats or Scotch, but I really enjoyed this book anyway.
The Cat Who Covered the World is the story of this cat, named Henrietta by Christopher’s children. She’s an ordinary tabby cat, but since Christopher Wren is a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, she gets to travel the world and be a cat around all kinds of interesting people. She disappears in Egypt for a while. She makes friends with Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, who was also the guy who helped the Soviet Union develop the nuclear bomb. She kills a mouse and gives it to the ambassador of Pakistan.
This is sort of like a story about an ordinary person who gets caught up in extraordinary events, but in this case, the ordinary person is a cat. Usually. Sometimes it’s the author, like when he has to help his friend Kif sneak in to rescue a cat in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis.
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This post written by Clint World Food
published by Lonely Planet
[cover name=worldfood]
I love Japanese and Indian food, but I known next to nothing about any of it. What is “paneer” in my saag paneer? Where did Japanese curry come from, and why is it served on top of a pork cutlet? If you’ve ever wondered what some kind of food is or where it came from, you might want to check out the World Food series from Lonely Planet.
Each book covers one or two countries, or sometimes a specific region of the United States – there’s one for India, one for Japan, one for California, and one for New Orleans, for example. Each book is a little different, since it has different authors, but all of the books introduce you to the many different cuisines in a country, and you get to learn about different ingredients and traditions that go along with food. You’ll learn about the kind of food people eat in their houses, the kind they get in restaurants, and the kind they buy from street vendors. You’ll also get some of the history of different foods. I did, for example, learn how Japan got hooked on curry.
These are mostly books about food, but sometimes they contain a few recipes, as well. Some of the information will only be useful if you plan to visit that country, but some of it will help out eating in different local restaurants, and some of it is just plain interesting.
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Where to Find Them
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[linkplus name=”World Food” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search~S0/?searchtype=X&searcharg=t%3A%28world+food%29+and+d%3A%28guidebooks%29+and+not+t%3A%28walt+disney%29&sortdropdown=-&SORT=D” cchasone=some]
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This post written by Clint Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika
by Giles Foden
[cover name=mimiandtoutousbigadventure]
If you think history is boring, you should read this book. History isn’t all names and dates. Sometimes it’s crazy people doing stupid things, and in this case, it’s both amazing and hilarious.
When World War I breaks out, the Royal Navy of Great Britain is ordered to destroy the German fleet wherever it can be found. This includes Lake Tanganyika, a massive lake in Africa. The Germans have a steamship on it that the British want to sink so they can carry troops across the lake.
Unfortunately, the British don’t have any warships on Lake Tanganyika. They don’t have much of anything there. The Belgians had a ship, but the Germans destroyed it. They can’t send the parts and build a ship at the edge of the lake. The Belgians tried that, too, but the Germans have spies everywhere, and they would destroy the ship before it launched. The only logical solution is to take two small gunboats, ship them to Africa, load them onto a train, take them as far as the tracks went, and then carry them the rest of the way across Africa. Sure. That makes sense.
With a plan that is this good, the Royal Navy needs the best officers they can get to carry it out. They pick Lt. Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, the oldest Lt. Commander they have. Although he has barely been involved in the war, he has already managed to sink two ships and nearly destroy a submarine – all of them on his own side. He has been court martialled twice, once for running his destroyer onto a beach (not counted as one of his two kills) and once for accidentally ramming and sinking another ship. As if Geoffrey isn’t enough, the Royal Navy picks out a few more goofy people to send to Africa along with him.
Somehow these misfits and their gunboats make it to Lake Tanganyika and actually manage to cause the Germans some serious trouble. They don’t quite do everything they had hoped to do, but at least Geoffrey Spicer-Simson can now claim to have attacked a German ship. In fact, Lt. Commander Spicer-Simson is the first Royal Navy officer to capture a German ship in the war.
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This post written by Clint Dead is the New Black
by Marlene Perez
[cover name=deadisthenewblack]
The women in Daisy Giordano’s family have special powers. Her mom can see bits of the future. One sister can read minds, and the other is telekinetic. Somehow, though, Daisy missed out. She’s normal, or as near as you can get when your family runs a psychic detective agency. A lot of strange things happen in her hometown of Nightshade, California, but Daisy’s life really gets interesting when the most popular girl in her high school comes back from vacation looking kind of dead. Undead, actually, and she’s popular enough to make pale skin and custom-made coffins stylish.
Then one of Daisy’s fellow high school students is murdered. Death doesn’t seem to stop this student, though, and she shows up to a pep rally. It’s up to Daisy and the police chief’s son Ryan (the guy she’s got a crush on) to figure out what’s going on.
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This post written by Clint Life Sucks
by Jessica Abel, Gabriel Soria, and Warren Pleece
[cover name=lifesucks]
Dave has one of the worst jobs on earth. He’s the night manager at the Last Stop convenience store, but that’s not why his job is so awful. The real problem is his boss Radu, who happens to be a vampire. Radu is big into things like team spirit, so to make Dave a better employee, Radu made him a vampire, too.
Rosa, the woman Dave has a crush on, thinks that being a vampire must be wonderful – eternal life, vampiric sex appeal, the charming company of other vampires, money, power, and other fine things like that. Unfortunately, Dave gets nothing of this. He’s got no money. He rides a bicycle to and from his dead-end job, and he’ll probably work at the Last Stop for all eternity. Also, Dave has a thing about blood. Plus, even though he’s a real vampire, the goth women he interacts with seem more interested in goth guys with expensive capes and boots rather than real vampires with name tags that say “Shift Manager.”
Another thing that makes Dave’s life miserable is that he has to interact with Wes, a psychotic surfer vampire who is also a servant of Radu. When Wes finds out Dave is interested in Rosa, he decides to be interested in her, too. This is bad, since when I said Wes is psychotic, I mean he likes killing or enslaving people. Thus, Dave has to try to save Rosa, but keep in mind that Dave is a big old loser.
You can read the first eleven pages at MySpace or read a different thirteen pages at New York Magazine’s website.
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This post written by Clint Swords: An Artist’s Devotion
by Ben Boos
When I was a kid, my friends and I made swords out of dowel rods, towels, and duct tape.* When Ben Boos was a kid, on the other hand. had an actual sword that he used to chop oranges in half and trim the ivy along the gravel path in his yard. Ben Boos loves swords. That kind of enthusiasm is exactly why he quit his job in the video game industry to put this book together.
The swords from this book come from a lot of different cultures. You’ll find plenty of swords from Europe and, of course, Japan, but there are also sections on other parts of Asia that usually get ignored, as well as Africa and the Middle East. Each section has a page or so of text and then some full-color pictures. The author admits that he is not a historian, so I can’t promise you that the history is all accurate. However, he is clearly a huge fan, and you can see the love he has put into this book.
*: I always used two swords, and I beat everyone except my father. I’m guessing Ben Boos would have beaten me, too.
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This post written by Clint Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser
[cover name=notquitewhatiwasplanning]
The editors of SMITH Magazine asked their readers to describe their lives in just six words. You might think this sounds like a crazy idea. Well, I’m not going to argue with that, but the responses they got sure are interesting. Some will make you think. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you say, “Wait, what?”
It’s probably easier to give you some examples. If you want more, SMITH Magazine has an ever-growing collection.
Hope my obituary spells “debonair” correctly.
Aging late bloomer yearns for do-over.
The freaks, they always find me.
After Harvard, had baby with crackhead.
Catholic school backfired. Sin is in!
Girlfriend is pregnant, my husband said.
My life’s a bunch of almosts.
Mormon economist marries feminist. Worlds collide.
Cheese is the essence of life.
If you like these, you can also find some six-word stories at Wired that are from horror, fantasy, and science fiction writers. Some of them involve R-rated topics and language, plus a little politics.
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