Tag Archives: Fiction

Oct 17 2014
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Horror

Public Domain Horror Fiction – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Green face.  Bolts in the neck.  Lumbering walk.  Says, “Grr!  Arrgh!” all the time.  No wonder that Frankenstein monsters did not take pop culture by storm in the way that vampires did.  While there are umpteen million stories about a heroine who must choose between a vampire or a werewolf, you’ll never see one where she has to choose between a vampire or a Frankenstein monster.

Still, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an epic tale of a) man’s desire to cheat death b) man’s awareness of his own mortality c) man’s futile attempts to control nature through science and well, if you learned any other lessons from reading it, feel free to post them below.

Published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s copyright over this work isn’t coming back to life, even if you strap it to a table and wait for a lightning bolt to zap it.  Thank you Mary for writing a work that has withstood the test of time.

And thank you Project Gutenberg for preserving it:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41445

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”

– Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Oct 15 2014
3 Comments
Horror

Public Domain Horror Fiction – Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Vampires.  They sure do suck these days.  Pun intended.

You’ve got your Twilight vampires who are all glittery and filled to the brim with existential enui.  Then there’s the True Blood vampires who think their whole purpose in life is to act out a different Penthouse forum letter everyday.

Let’s get back to vampirism’s roots, with the bloodsucking fiend that started it all – Count Dracula.  I don’t know about you, but I prefer my vampires to wear capes and medallions, have slicked back hair, and go, “Bleah!  Bleah!” all the time.  Call me old fashioned.

Published in 1897, a stake was driven through the heart of Stoker’s copyright long ago, so you can check out Project Gutenberg’s Free E-book here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345

Happy Reading, Suckers!

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” – Bram Stoker’s Dracula

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Oct 15 2014
1 Comment
Horror

Public Doman Horror Fiction!

It’s Halloween time and while the dead rising from the grave is not unheard of at this time of year, rest assured – the copyrights of some of history’s greatest horror authors are as dead as a door nail.

To promote the great horror classics, I’ll be sharing excerpts from the likes of Poe, Shelley, Stoker and King.  Wait, wait my lawyer just called.  King’s still alive.  OK, no King!

Links will be to http://www.gutenberg.org – the home of Project Gutenberg, a wonderful ongoing effort to digitize and preserve the classics, making them free and available to everyone.  Please check their site out and if you can, donate.

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Jun 28 2014
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Monthly Wrap-Ups 2014, Previously on Bookshelf Battle

Previously on Bookshelf Battle… (June 2014 Wrap-Up)

In case you missed any of the booktastic goodness, here’s a rundown of what was produced from the Bookshelf Battle Command Center in June:

GAME OF THRONES

Obligatory Spoiler Warning

As the Red Woman might say, Sunday nights in June were dark and full of terrors. Literally. It was quite terrifying to see some of my favorite GoT characters kick the bucket. It’s a good thing that I didn’t bet on the fight between The Red Viper and The Mountain because I chose Oberyn and would have lost a lot of money, in addition to the lunch I lost when the Mountain took advantage of the Viper’s showboating. Don’t gloat, people. No one likes a sore winner…loser? Whatever.

My predictions for Tyrion’s future weren’t all that on point either, meaning when it comes to plotting strategy, I’m about as good as Cersei. (That’s not very good!)

While some lamented that the episode did nothing to move the story along, I for one enjoyed the Attack on Castle Black as it was amazing to me to see Summer Blockbuster special effects on a television show.

On the Season 4 Finale of Game of Thrones Brienne and the Hound went head to head on Westeros’ Ultimate Fighting Championships, Arya cashed in her coin for a trip to Bravos, no one expected the Stannis Inquisition, and Tywin had the Worst Father’s Day ever, although he did achieve his wish of ending up on…a throne. That joke never gets old.

BOOK REVIEWS

A Light Between Oceans - being guarded by Robocop

A Light Between Oceans – being guarded by Robocop

Oh right – this is a book review blog. Australian Author M.L. Stedman managed to crack my manly exterior and allow a tear or two to shake loose with her riveting yet heartbreaking page turner The Light Between Oceans. After a boat containing a dead man and a live baby washes up on their tiny island, a lighthouse keeping couple decides to toss the dead man in a ditch and raise the baby as their own. I applauded the author for her ability to display the mental gymnastics that people put themselves through in order to convince themselves what they are doing is right when in fact, it is very wrong. I feel like we can all agree that the moral of the story is – don’t trust your kids around lighthouse keepers. Or Australians.

Master Chief - standing guard over Redshirts

Master Chief – standing guard over Redshirts

After Stedman made me cry (it’s ok, it happens to the best of us now and then), I was ready to laugh so I cracked open Redshirts by Sci-Fi author John Scalzi. This Star Trek parody delivered laughs at warp speed. A group of new Redshirts – aka the intergalactic lackies who do the grunt work for a space ship’s main officers, quickly learn that their reason for existence is to take the beatings, lazer blasts, monster attacks, and other abuse so that the officers can remain unscathed.

VARIOUS AND SUNDRY RAMBLINGS

To round out the month,I asked why the heck are those vampires so popular? Seemed like a good discussion topic since this is the final season of the HBO series True Blood. The series is based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries Series by Charlaine Harris, and my post provides a reading list of her novels in order, in case anyone is interested in reading the books that formed the basis for the Sookie-Bill-Eric love triangle. Actually, if you add Alcide, it would be a quadrangle. Wait a minute! A quadrangle? Isn’t that just a square? OK so they form a love square.

I urged readers to donate to Levar Burton/Geordi LaForge’s Kickstarter campaign to bring back Reading Rainbow. Please donate. He needs your support. Much has been said about his success as Reading Rainbow host, but people always forget that he was one of the finest engineers to ever serve Star Fleet. He rarely gave Capt. Picard any guff about fixing the star ship engines. He ran circles around Scotty. Capt. Kirk would always be like, “Scotty, we need warp speed in thirty seconds or the Klingons will kill us” and Scotty would be all like, “Damn’ it Cap’n the best I can do is get the wharp drive half-fixed by next Thursday!” Geordi, on the other hand, now there was a dude that got stuff done – even though he was blind! Well, he did have that special visor.

By the way, if you haven’t heard yet, Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame has pledged to match donations up to a million, so please get crack-a-lackin’ with the donations to this good cause. And as one of the three people who both saw AND enjoyed MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the Old West, I’d like to thank him.

Transformers 4 arrived at the box office Friday and I speculated as to whether Mark Wahlberg will reprise some of his past roles in this new blockbuster in a parody trailer script.

Last but not least, after hearing the song, “Wiggle Wiggle” for the millionth time on the radio, and being left unsure whether to be disturbed because they keep playing it, or relieved because they’re finally switching it up a little bit and playing a song other than “Let it Go” or “Because I’m Happy,” I asked the question as to why I bother slaving over my writing when America is easily pleased by lyrics about butts. You know what to do with those big fat words!

STUFF I NEVER GOT AROUND TO

With so many books engaged in fisticuffs over a coveted spot on my bookshelf, there where two things I forgot to mention:

  • 24-Live Another Day – I’m glad this show is back on the air. It’s nice to see William Devane has found something better to do than those damn daytime “Buy Gold” commercials. He’s really been stealing the show this season. Great to see Michelle Fairley back on TV as well.
  • No Lady Stoneheart – (Obligatory Spoiler Warning) – Actually, do I need to give a spoiler warning? Lady Stoneheart, a character from the Game of Thrones books, will not be in the Game of Thrones series. So, I guess if you never read the books and only watched the series, then this is not a spoiler for you since you were never going to see her on the show anyway. You can’t spoil something that won’t happen. Because if a tree was going to fall in the forest, but then it doesn’t, it doesn’t spoil. Alright, I’m going cross-eyed thinking about this. Anyway, there’s been a lot of chatter about this controversy. I do understand that TV shows can’t remain true to every little last detail in the book. Sometimes I’ll hear someone say something like, “This show stinks because on page 302 of chapter 40 book three Tyrion had on a pair of green shoes but on the show he wears blue shoes!” and I just want to yell, “Shut up, Nerd!” But I get why this makes people upset. I never read the books, but this seems like a big plot point to gloss over. A Zombie Catelyn running around Westeros exacting copious amounts of revenge? How does that not make for great television?

That does it for this month on http://www.bookshelfbattle.com – where the book reviews are always awesome, and yet, the book reviewer somehow manages to stay humble about it.

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Jun 26 2014
9 Comments
Books Published in 2012, Books Reviewed in 2014, Comedy, Fiction, Science Fiction

Book Review – Redshirts

BASIC BOOKTOMETRICS

TITLE: Redshirts

AUTHOR: John Scalzi

PUBLISHER: Tom Doherty Associates

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2012

FORMAT REVIEWED: Hardcover

GENRE: Sci-Fi; Comedy

NUMBER OF PAGES: 317

Beam me up, Bookshelf Battlers.

On the old Star Trek TV show, there was no worse fate than being – a redshirt. You see, back in the 1960’s, the writers wanted to add a dose of realism, or at least as much realism as possible to a show about a massive Star Ship exploring the universe and getting into altercations with a different alien species every week. When engaged in constant battle with alien marauders, it is a very real possibility that some crew members aboard a “real” Starship would kick the bucket. Sorry, but you can’t go up against that many alien bad guys without someone buying the intergalactic farm.

The problem? Certainly the main characters – Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Lt. Uhura etc. could not be the ones to cosmically croak because then there would not be a show anymore. Obviously, George RR Martin wasn’t a consultant for this show.

Sorry, I didn't have any Star Trek toys. Yes, as a grown man I think that's a perfectly normal thing to say. Here's the Master Chief instead. Yes nerds, I understand that one space character is not the same as another. Take a chill pill.

Sorry, I didn’t have any Star Trek toys. Yes, as a grown man I think that’s a perfectly normal thing to say. Here’s the Master Chief instead. Yes nerds, I understand that one space character is not the same as another. Take a chill pill.

The solution to this conundrum? Enter the redshirts – the extras, the grunts aboard the Starship Enterprise who did the busy work – fetch the Captain’s coffee, stand at a cheesy 1960’s hunk of cardboard with Christmas lights on it attempting to pass as a computer and punch buttons in the background, etc. The writers used these space traveling lackeys as fodder to take the beatings, leaving the fan favorite heroes unscathed.

Watch an old episode of Star Trek. If there’s an away team being beamed down to a planet consisting of Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones, and Fred the Extraneous Redshirt from the Enterprise Payroll Department being introduced to the audience for the first time, chances are that Fred would be the one chomped on by a monster, tossed into a volcano, blasted by a lazer, and so on.

In Redshirts, author John Scalzi hilariously lampoons the undesirable plight of the redshirt. Set in a Star Trek-esque universe of Scalzi’s creation, the book follows a group of freshly minted redshirts as they begin service aboard the Universal Union’s flagship, The Intrepid. The newbies quickly discover that strange shenanigans are afoot – namely, that there is a statistically and ridiculously high chance of a low ranking crew member being killed on an away mission, whereas senior officers appear to have almost absurd levels of luck as they avoid death even after being thrust into one dangerous situation after another.

I don’t want to spoil the ending or the various twists and turns but needlessly to say, this is the first book I’ve read in awhile that had me laughing and reading at the same time.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy

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Jun 03 2014
3 Comments
Books Published in 2012, Books Reviewed in 2014, Fiction

Book Review – The Light Between Oceans

BASIC BOOKTOMETRICS:

TITLE: The Light Between Oceans

AUTHOR: M.L. Stedman

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2012

PUBLISHER: Scribner

FORMAT REVIEWED: Hardcover

NUMBER OF PAGES: 343

Move over, dingoes. There’s a new danger Australian babies – lighthouse keeping couples.

The premise – in the 1920’s, Tom, depressed and bitter over the WWI baggage he is carrying finds a new lease on life when he meets happy-go-lucky Isabel. Tom is a lighthouse keeper and moves his new wife to the small, secluded island where he tends to a giant beacon of light that prevents ships from going astray. It’s a lonely life, far removed from the comforts of civilization. Isabel wants to be a mother but begins to believe her dream will never come true after she suffers one miscarriage after another. Tom only wants to make her happy.

One day, a rowboat carrying a dead man and a live baby mysteriously washes up on shore.

Pop quiz, what do you think the couple does?

A) Contact the authorities. Surely the baby has living relatives somewhere that miss her.
B) Signal a boat to come to the dock to carry the baby back to civilization and to the nearest police station so the whole mess can be sorted out.
C) Locate the dead man’s family so he may have a proper Christian burial.
D) Toss the dead man’s carcass in a ditch. Take advantage of the fact that you’re the only two people on the island to raise the child as your own. Return to shore later and tell the world Isabel gave birth to the baby while on the island.

Stay out of trouble...report babies immediately when they wash up on shore

Stay out of trouble…report babies immediately when they wash up on shore


If you selected A-C, you’re good people. If you selected D, you’re probably Tom or Isabel.

All joking aside, author M.L. Stedman does a fantastic job at displaying the mental gymnastics that people put themselves through in order to convince themselves that they are doing something right when in fact, what they are doing is so clearly wrong. Isabel grasps onto an assumption that the baby’s mother must have died in some kind of high seas tragedy and the only right thing to do is to take the child in. Tom wants to report the baby to the authorities but wants so badly for his wife to be happy that he can’t bring himself to do it.

Of course, when they return to shore, they discover who the mother is, how the baby came to be washed up on shore, and all manner of gut wrenching sadness goes on display as they debate whether or not to tell the baby’s true mother what they’ve done. With more mental gymnastics to convince herself that what she wants and what is morally right are the same thing – she argues that the baby, now a young child, has grown attached to her and Tom, recognizes them as her parents, and it would upend her world to turn that around. Tom, on the other hand, can get over the fact that the baby’s mother, Hannah, has become a sad, depressed, shell of a woman, in a constant state of sadness over her lost husband and child, clinging to hope that one day her baby will somehow magically return.

Well, it would be too spoilery to reveal all of the twists and turns, but overall, the book is a real tearjerker and the author has a knack for leaving the reader wanting to know how this truly messed up situation will work its way out.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy

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