Book Reviews

Plenty of people review good books, but I review the books of suck. Here are quick links to the Vale of Despond which are my bookshelves…

NOW ENTERING THE USSA
I am obsessed to an embarrassing degree with fiction about the Soviet Union invading the United States. It’s probably because of my childhood, haunted by World War III fantasies and nightmares in equal measure, but that just sounds like cheap rationalization. The short answer is: now you don’t have to read these books!

A very personal essay about my World War III fantasies.

Review of “biological warfare kills America” book, The Long, Loud Silence

Review of “Soviets try to destroy virus-ravaged America” book, The Last Canadian

Review of the novelization of the “Soviets Rule America with iron fist” miniseries, Amerika

Review of “woman with penchant for New England arts and crafts fights Commies” book, I, Martha Adams

Review of The Mind Behind the Eye about the arms race between the USA and the USSR fought by super-geniuses who ride around inside the eyeballs of dead space giants

Review of “rock n’roll teens fight Commie overlords” book, USSA

Review of “post-apocalyptic endless war between America and Soviet Union” book, The Steel, The Mist, and the Blazing Sun

THE HORRORS! THE HORRORS!
I read a lot of crap and much of it is horror fiction. There’s something about those cheap, mouldering, mass market paperbacks with their lurid covers embossed with silver foil, cut-outs, and insanity-making art that lures me in like a bug to the zapper.

Oktoberfest, probably the most disappointing book ever written about a Holocaust survivor/cleaver killer rampaging through Oktoberfest in Munich

The Closed Circle: nothing can prepare you for this “Nancy Drew meets Satan only with more oral sex” Satanic scare screed from the 70′s

Why read The Amityville Horror when you can read The Amityville Horror III: The Final Chapter and get right to the good stuff?

There is no question that John Christopher’s The Little People about Jewish fetuses animated during the Holocaust and now on the loose in Ireland has the greatest book cover ever conceived

TOTALLY RANDOM
Then there’s stuff that doesn’t fit into any category, like…

Absolved, a self-published online novel that inspired some guys in Georgia to try to blow up a Federal building

The stream-of-consciousness novelization of Taxi Driver

The bizarre, overheated novelization of Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu

The Park is Mine, a military porn wank book about a Vietnam vet who takes over Central Park. I worshiped this book when I was a kid, which is more than a little unhealthy

AND SOMETIMES…
…I just read pony porn about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan