28 Authors, 28 Variations on a list.
Five Chuck suggests as great gifts.
I still need to read Don Pollack.
You should check out Don Pollock too.
He sounds pretty cool too.
Haven't read The Devil All the Time, but Knockemstiff was incredible. Definitely worth a read.
haha interesting fellow Dakota.
@popeye, I was thinking the same think. I mean, following Chucks link to St. Helens this is the first thing you see:
In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic overtones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting.
I'm going to pick this up today.
Maybe you'll want to wait to read it. At least until Febrary... hint hint
Pollock is one of my favorites. Knockemstiff was just amazing and Devil All the Time is the novel length version of those linked short stories.
My books of the year were both on that list (and both found because of The Cult)
Nonfiction - Chronology of Water
Fiction - Devil All the Time
But now I'm reading Zazen on my kindle fire (yup, it works fine for reading - just change the background to the light brown color) and Miles from Nowhere shipped from Amazon yesterday.
(and if you like Donald Ray Pollock, check out Craig Davidson. His books have that same, dark feel. Rust and Bone is great and, much like Devil All the Time, The Fighter is the novel version of those stories. And Sarah Court is really good, too.)
@Pete, I will be pre-prepared for that Pollock discussion. He kicks ass. Oh, and today is his Birthday, so say Happy Birthday to him and tell him how much you love his book.
@Bryan: I second Chronology of Water. That is an amazing book. I will be interested to hear your take on Zazen and the Box-Mall-Church bombings.
The Fighter by Craig Davidson is one of my favorite books. I love that book.
@bryan Is this a normal occurance these days in fiction to have a book of short stories and then to write a novel based on the world of the stories? Seems a bit odd to me. Does the novel lose any of it's punch?
@Pete, hint well taken. I will wait for February for that particular piece. I think I'll read the Fighter now, then
It's totally happening all over the place. Especially if the book has linked short-stories. I love it, because fiction is starting to dip its toes into the sci-fi/fantasy world-building idea and populate a city with stories instead of just taking place in 'the city' or 'the country'. Sarah Court has a small community of linked stories that works really well.
I love seeing the characters appear in other stories as background characters. It's makes old stories come back alive, while giving it the Rashomon effect (or, the 'In a Grove' effect).
The novel is full of punch (whether talking about The Fighter or The Devil All the Time).
So it's not like the novel is a linked together version of the stories, it's merely just linked to the stories with the same population of characters, yeah?
Devil All the Time take place in the same place and most of the same time as Knockemstiff. The Fighter is like a novelization of Davidson's short stories. And Sarah Court is another book of linked short stories that share characters and location (like Knockemstiff).
It's funny to see that there are a lot of Inspirational Fiction (ie. christian, amish, mormon) fiction series that do the same thing. They do it in 15 books instead of in a book of short stories and a novel, but Davidson and Pollock have a community of characters that they build just like the Inspirational Fiction genre.
Point is, read everything by these two writers.
those are some great books. Don is great, gotten to know him, met him when he opened up for Chuck on the SNUFF tour. he blurbed a story of mine, "Victimed" which is up at amazon. KNOCKEMSTIFF was fantastic and his latest, THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME is really good too. Lidia's memoir is unreal, and it has boobies on the cover, it's a wild ride, read it. Also, ZAZEN by VV is very cool. I actually reviewed all of those (except KNOCKEMSTIFF) at TNB so check out my reviews if you want more information. i love Craig Davidson, pick up THE FIGHTER or RUST AND BONE, or his latest SARAH COURT (reviewed below too)
I like this thread. Really want to pick up Sarah Court soon.
Looking forward to Zazen when I make time to read it. It was pretty engaging what little I read of it, the narrative voice is just enticing, similarly to The Orange Eats Creeps which I've also yet to give a full read. Some of the weirdest books I've checked out from last year.
Looked at some of the other author's choices were pretty similar. Pollock seemed to make it on a lot of the lists.
