Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was an anthology called The Appalachian Undead that contained my story “Sitting Up With the Dead.” For a variety of reasons, that book was forced out of print by the publisher. Like any good dead thing, it has risen once more as Mountain Dead. It contains most of the stories in the previous anthology, along with four new ones. The cover uses the same, fine illustration by Cortney Skinner, and once again you will find my story “Sitting Up With the Dead” within. According to Apex, it should be available in June.
I rarely put down a book without finishing it. However, I almost did that with The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. I was almost halfway through it in December when I put it aside to read something that I needed to review. I didn’t pick it back up. It sat on the coffee table, its bright yellow-trimmed red cover screaming at me. I finally decided it was time to tackle it again last week. At first I was afraid that I’d be lost and have to go back to the beginning, but that proved to not be the case. Finally finished it yesterday. Would I recommend it to anyone? Not likely. I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books, so I don’t have anything to compare it against, but it’s a dreadful novel. The characters are all reprehensible and many of them are stock images who are primarily defined by their most conspicuous flaws. The death of a town councilman is the story’s motivator. Everyone else in town has an opinion about who should be his replacement and what should be the stands he takes on a couple of issues. Problem was, I didn’t care who got elected. I could never figure out who I was supposed to be championing, and I couldn’t see what the major crisis would be in the book’s climax. Just didn’t care. Didn’t like any of the characters. However, I finished it and can put it up on a shelf somewhere so I never have to have its loud cover chastising me again.
Books seldom take me by surprise as early on as did Naoko by Keigo Higashino. I’ve read two of his recent crime novels and tracked down a copy of this earlier work. I didn’t read the back cover copy. I assumed it would be a straight crime novel, especially since the cover says it won Japan’s top mystery prize. A man learns that his wife and daughter were on a bus that plummeted into a ravine and they were grievously injured. He rushes to the hospital. His young daughter is in a coma and not expected to survive. His wife was badly injured. Her face is covered with bandages. Then she dies and is buried. Aha, I think. It’s not really his wife. The guy is going to think his wife is dead but she really isn’t. Mistaken identity or, perhaps, a deliberate act of subterfuge on her part. An opportunity to escape the marriage. After all, the book is named for her character. However, that’s not what it’s about at all, and the revelation just a chapter or so later took me very much by surprise. I’m curious to see how it will turn out.
So the master spy got burned on Survivor this week. It’s funny that Michael, the previous evictee, in his Ponderosa video, singled out Phillip as the one person he didn’t want to see eliminated next because he didn’t want to have to deal with him without someone else there as a buffer. That tribal council will go down in history as one of the most entertaining. I was glad to see that Eddie and Malcolm actually did get votes after Malcolm produced not one but two immunity idols and declared the three amigos safe and that they would be voting for Phillip. And thus began the scrambling. For a moment I thought Malcolm wasn’t going to use his idol, which he might have gotten away with, but he would have looked pretty silly if he’d been eliminated. Probst seemed to be enjoying himself, trying to keep up with all the mini-dramas going on at once, using his imaginary clicker to try to pause and capture what was happening. Question is, can the three amigos leverage this into a shift in the balance of power? Without Phillip around to tell people how to vote, they might be able to swing things their way. It won’t take much.
