BookExpo 2018 and BookCon, the premier 5 day book event in New York City starts on May 30 to June 3

Book Expo  America  is the number one book author event in America and is a perfect way to see the state of literature and books.  It takes place at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City between May 30 and June 1, 2018.   www.bookexpoamerica.com

As a bookaholic, it’s a great way to meet authors and be surrounded by books. If you are in the industry, a bookseller, librarian or book reviewer, this is the event for you.  Besides huskers, who will sell you many items, and several special lunches or breakfasts, there are lectures by famous authors, readings and panels. BookExpo is for people in the industry. . It is not for consumers, who can attend Bookcon, that occurs on June 2 and June 3, which I will discuss further below.

The highlight for me, as always, is the books and the interaction with the authors.  BookExpo has a legion of autograph lines where free novels and non-fiction books are handed out to the participants.  One day is more devoted to young adult titles, while the other day, seems to be more devoted to older fare.  If you are willing to stand on line, you will get a few minutes with your favorite authors, a signed advanced reader copy or an entirely full book to read. Or as most librarians I talked to do, copies of books for their summer programs or chances to get soon to be published books to get a first read to see if the books are good to get.  

  

Book Expo 2017 returned from Chicago to New York City after a one year absence.  Although the show officially started on Wednesday, that day was limited to educational programs.  I went on Thursday and Friday, where the crowds were immense.  To my eye, the autographing area was smaller than two years previously, although the major publishers did have a lot of action at their booths.  This is definitely a place to go and meet other readers who all have similar interests.

Its also important to plan ahead.  BookExpo puts out an online schedule of authors and autographing.  Some autograph lines require tickets. Without a ticket, the chance to get that book are much lower. Since the event starts in a little over a month, if you are interested in going, now would be a good time to plot out who to see. 

MAJOR HINT:  Remember, books are heavy and unwieldy. The way to go is to bring a suitcase  or two and park it in the bag check aisle.  Then as you get your books, bring them to the suitcase. This way you can snare books but not have to lug them around.

A highlight this year is the Bernie Sanders speech on May 31 at 7:15 pm, but there are also Author Breakfasts and Teas.  The Author breakfasts and teas do have a separate charge.

A few words about BookCon.  This two day event that follows BookExpo is open to consumers and is relatively inexpensive.  Autographs are given out on books, but you need to sign up for tickets to the listed authors and tickets are all dispensed online.  In order to get tickets online mailed to your house, you must purchase them by April 23, 2018. Otherwise, tickets will need to be picked up there, which means another big line. Kids tickets (ages 6-12) are ten dollars per day.  Adult tickets are $35 on Saturday and $30 on Sunday.  Bookcon wants adults with all kids so you need to plan for that.

Hint. Parking near Jacob Javits is not cheap and the area is on the far west side.  Use a parking app like www.SpotHero.com  or www.Parkwhiz.com to get a spot now.

 Last year I went with three teenagers on Saturday and two teenagers on Sunday.  Saturday was a much more fun day.  Most of the publishers who were there on Saturday, had decamped by Sunday.  One or two major publishers were still there on Sunday, so the horde of people overwhelmed the space, which is much smaller than the BookExpo space.  Security had to get involved to clear pathways and it was almost impossible to get access to books.  

My suggestion for BookCon is to go on Saturday. Major Hint, get there early.  Although tickets are dispensed for the authors online, there is a mad scramble from the basement of Jacob Javits – bare concrete walls, to the publishers up above.  Thousands of people will be underground. You want to be close to the front in order to secure a good spot when the breakout finally occurs.

Go to www.bookcon.com to pick out your authors. It pays to get your tickets early so you can get tickets to the autographing.  You need the barcode from your entrance ticket to get tickets to the autographing tickets.  According to BookCon's website, the list of authors will be posted in early May and you can select thereafter.  2 author signings per person per day. While autographs are free some books will cost money. Its important to check the site to make sure you secure a ticket to an author you want to see.

Be prepared to wait and wait and wait some more.  This is a convention, lots of people so there is lots of waiting.  But you should come out with a lot of books as well.

Boston's South End

Anthony Mitchell Sammarco
Arcadia Publishing
4 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by Nancy

Summary

Originally a narrow, barren strip of land known as the Neck, Boston's South End grew from a lonely sentry post and execution grounds to what is today the largest Victorian neighborhood in the United States. With the filling of the South Cove in the 1830s, the area became one of the greatest planned residential districts of its time, a heritage preserved in unique architectural features such as red brick swell bay facades, elaborate balusters, and fanciful porches.

My Review

This is a nice pictorial history of the South End in Boston, MA. The neighborhood is known for its Victorian style houses and parks. It was once known as the Neck, a barren strip of land connecting Boston to the city of Roxbury that was once the site of executions. The South End is now a flourishing neighborhood, home to a diverse population and known for its restaurants, boutiques and art galleries. Though the South End is very expensive, there are a number of low-income housing projects.

The pictures featured here include schools, hospitals, the library, businesses, and transportation. There was an interesting tidbit about Dr. Mary Jane Blake-Safford, among the first female gynecologists in the US and a lecturer at Boston University. There are pictures of trolleys, a perfectly efficient and inexpensive mode of transportation that gave way to cars and buses. Like many urban areas, the South End underwent urban renewal, demolishing many old buildings. It would have been fun to see some “then and now” pictures. Instead, I found myself referring to Google Maps to see how some areas stayed exactly the same while others were completely changed.

Reading this makes me want to learn more about the neighborhood I enjoy hanging out in.

Tornado of Sparks

Tornado of Sparks by James Maxey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Sky Dragon Vendevorex seeks to be named to the court of the dragon King Albekizan. The King demands a different demonstration of Vendevorex that leads to a human baby being orphaned. The would be wizard is far from heartless and he seeks to reunite the baby with her relative that escaped the wizard's demonstration.

Tornado of Sparks is an interesting prequel. First while this takes place before the main series, it was published afterward. This undoubtedly provides some greater insights into the main series. The idea of a dragon king with his court living in a castle was surprising and different from any dragon tale I've read before.

One main curiosity struck me with this book and that is why is Vendevorex seeking a place in court. Vendevorex clearly has power even if it isn't magical as he claims. If he can destroy stone so easily, then dragons like Albekizan should fear the destruction he could cause and stay away from him.

Tornado of Sparks was a good prequel that peeks my interest for the main series.

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PAPERBACKS FROM HELL BY GRADY HENDRIX

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”Between April 1967 and December 1973, everything changed.

In a little more than five years, horror fiction became fit for adults, thanks to three books. Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, Thomas Tryon’s The Other, and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist were the first horror novels to grace Publisher’s Weekly’s annual best-seller list since Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca in 1938. And except for three books by Peter ‘Jaws’ Benchley, they’d be the only horror titles on that list until Stephen King’s The Dead Zone in 1979. All three spawned movies and, most important, set the tone for the next two decades of horror publishing.”

When I started in the book business in Phoenix, Arizona, the Horror section was one of the most pillaged sections in the store. Guys in ripped black t-shirts, Goths with pentagrams tattooed on their wrists, truck drivers displaying way too many inches of butt crack as they searched the lower shelves, and flirty housewives with a glimmer of something dark lurking in their pupils would bring stacks and stacks of black covered paperbacks up to the counter and leave me a heap of cash in exchange. They couldn’t get enough of it.

The Goth chicks were so cool. In an attempt to look edgy and tough, they somehow came out looking adorable.

Then in the early 1990s it just stopped like someone turned off the hydrant to the firehouse. The horror section that was featured so prominently when I started in the business drifted to the back of the bookstore until it evaporated all together. Other than the crossover writers, like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub, the market for horror just disappeared. Writers began suggesting to their publishers to market their books as thrillers and not horror. So what the heck happened?

Even now when I write a review of a book that falls into my Nostalgic 1970s Horror Tour Category, I notice that those reviews receive a lot less attention than other reviews I write. So in about 1990, did everyone start sleeping with Blue Smurfs under the glow of a unicorn nightlight?

The publishers were churning out so much horror material in the 1970s and 1980s that there were plenty of steaming piles of drivel published, sort of like what is happening with the Young Adult market right now, but there were also writers of the horror genre who turned out some fantastic, creative, dare I say literary works, that make a book archeologist like me euphoric.

Grady Hendrix has devoted a chapter to each different subgenre of horror: Hail Satan, Creepy Kids, When Animals Attack, Real Estate Nightmares, Weird Science, Gothic and Romantic, Inhumanoids, Splatterpunks, Serial Killers, and Super Creeps. I came away from this book with a list as long as my arm of novels that I need to investigate further. I was expecting that. I wasn’t expecting Grady to be so damn witty. I haven’t laughed out loud so much reading a book in a long time. My wife was frequently giving me the raised eyebrow look, so I ended up reading her little snippets like this one:

”Most important try not to have sex with Satan. Fornicating with the incarnation of all evil usually produces children who are genetically predisposed to use their supernatural powers to cram their grandmothers into television sets, headfirst. ‘But how do I know if the man I’m dating is the devil?’ I hear you ask. Here are some warnings signs learned from Seed of Evil: Does he refuse to use contractions when he speaks? Does he deliver pickup lines like, ‘You live on the edge of darkness?’ When nude, is his body the most beautiful male form you have ever seen, but possessed of a penis that’s either monstrously enormous, double-headed, has glowing yellow eyes, or all three? After intercourse, does he laugh malevolently, urinate on your mattress, and then disappear? If you spot any of these behaviors, chances are you went on a date with Satan. Or an alien.”

Okay, so maybe my wife didn’t find that as funny as I did, but she still laughed despite herself. Then there was Grady’s observations on clowns and magicians.

”Hating clowns is a waste of time because you’ll never loath a clown as much as he loathes himself. But a magician? Magicians think they’re wise and witty, full of patter and panache, walking around like they don’t deserve to be shot in the back of the head and dumped in a lake. For all the grandeur of its self-regard magic consists of nothing more than making a total stranger feel stupid. Worse, the magician usually dresses like a jackass.”

I’m not one for advocating shooting anyone in the back of the head and dumping them in the nearest body of water. I do have a short list of mostly politicians who I would help tie heavy weights to their legs and shiver with guilty pleasure at the sound of that final splash. I could get behind a scheme, though, to put all the clowns, magicians, and mimes in the United States on a leaky boat and ship them off to Central America where I hear their kind are flourishing.

The book is an oversized paperback loaded with pictures of the innovative and evocative covers that vied for the attention of potential readers. Many have become quite collectible, and reading copies of some of these books can actually be rather difficult to find. There are some small presses, like Valancourt and Telos, who are starting to bring some of these lost treasures back into print. In the late 80s I was too caught up in reading The Beats, Woolf, Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Hemingway etc. to give any time to such “nonsense”. I’m making up for it now, and probably I’m enjoying them more now than I ever would have back then.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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Space Opera By: Catherynne M. Valente

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is beautiful, insane fun. It feels like golden age science fiction, where every step you take is weirder and more out there than your last and the only thing you want to do is go forward to see what's there. I have read several of Ms. Valente's works, really enjoyed them all, but the only issue I ever had (and it was a personal thing) She will use 40 words for something that may need 5 (THIS isn't a bad thing, just a personal thing) but here...HERE. She tap dances and waltzes her way through this bizarre landscape with words, beautiful, maddingly gorgeous language. Descriptions and paragraphs and references that are as wild and music filled as the story being told.

This book has won 2018, we can all go home, it's over... Go give her your money, read this!!

5000 stars, a treble clef and 4 blue flamingos out of 5 stars.

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Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) By: Mark Lawrence

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I did NOT think it was possible to ramp it up from Red Sister, it was exceptionally well done fantasy, hit all the points for a good book that I, as a reader, demand. Then....THEN...Grey Sister comes out and what does the man do? He surpasses himself.

Grey Sister doesn't suffer from the pitfalls of "middle book" syndrome in most trilogies, The blistering pace set doesn't slow down much. Terrific action, more world bullding in this interesting world and characters I care about. I had small quibbles with the first book and honestly the quality and the storytelling has risen to a degree, the quibbles..I DON'T CARE.

If you haven't picked up this series, do it, get in on it right now and thank me later. Mr. Lawrence has a contender for fantasy of the year, (YES, this early)

2200 stars out of 5



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Delightful Confusion

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know how when you pick up a book you've never read and just start randomly reading a passage right out of the middle you have no idea who the characters are or what's going on? That's what it's like reading To the Lighthouse all the way through.

Virginia Woolf's writing is gorgeous! As an individual entity, each of her acrobatic sentences is an absolute pleasure to read. For a person like myself, who doesn't enjoy overwrought poetry, this is a great alternative read for when I'm actually in the mood for poetry.

Woolf's stream of consciousness writing means To the Lighthouse reads like a dream. The problem is, it's someone else's dream. And honestly, other people's dreams are only interesting in short spurts. 200+ pages worth of someone else's dream is exhausting.

Will my issues with this book stop me from reading more Woolf in the future? Heck no!

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A Fantasy Adventure Begins

The Sword of Bedwyr by R.A. Salvatore
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once upon a time I met R.A. Salvatore. He came to my high school and talked to a small group of us 9th graders. He had just signed his first book contract and was about to embark upon a very successful career as a fantasy writer. This impressed me a great deal, because Salvatore is from Leominster, Massachusetts....I know, that's incredible, right?!....Okay, so the reason that impressed me was because Leominster is right next to Townsend, and Townsend was where I was born and raised. So, the thought of a local boy making good as a writer thrilled me! I wanted to be a writer and here was living proof that a kid from the sticks could live that life!

Salvatore's achievement was a far greater influence upon me than his actual writing, only because it took me 30 frickin' years to read one of his books. I find that amazing. I don't know how it happened. Ever since the day I meant him I've meant to read his stuff, but somehow I never got around to it until this past week. It's one of the great reading snafus of my life.

However, all that is being rectified beginning with the Crimson Shadow series. Book one, The Sword of Bedwyr kicks off the trilogy in a way that promises the kind of fun and adventure I was hoping for! There's battles and monsters and treasure and more!

The book plays out sort of how a game of D&D runs. First you get the party together. In this instance it's just a warrior and thief. A wizard happens along later on, but he's not quite a full member of the band. In this case, we're not starting with first level characters. We've got a skilled swordsman and a practiced thief. They're jumping right into the tough stuff, slaying a bit of sword fodder before diving into some truly tough monster encounters.

The actual characters are at least interesting, if not absolutely enthralling. The thief, a charming and funny halfling, is straight out of a Monty Python sketch. Actually, I mean that literally. He speaks with the heavy accent and delivers the same lines as the castle guard with outraaageous French accent, played by John Cleese, in The Holy Grail. That's borrowing perhaps too heavily from a preexisting source, but I enjoyed it so I let it slide. However, when you have a halfling thief enter a dragon's lair and proceed to flatter the dragon in hopes of escaping the encounter alive, well then you've gone too far with the borrowing. That scene from The Hobbit is just too famous to tread upon. Of course, dragon encounters are nothing new to literature. They go as far back as the Old Testament and Greek epics of the 5th century BCE. It's just, well, that particular scene combination is very Tolkien-specific.

Irregardless, this is still great fun and I'll be moving on to book two soon! I plan to dive into Salvatore's other series, and one day I'll no doubt devour his Drizzt stories. I'm told those are the shit, so I'm saving them and working my way up to them. Hey, ya gotta have something to look forward to!

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Twice Bitten - Rediscovering My Love of Professional Wrestling

Since time out of mind, wrestling was always part of my life.  Some of my dimmest memories are sitting on the floor while my dad watched Wrestling at the Chase on KPLR every Sunday morning.  Watching Randy Savage cheat to beat Tito Santana for the Intercontinental title was what eventually made the wrestling bug bite me.  For years, watching wrestling was my favorite part of the weekend.  Once we got cable when I was in my teens, I was a terminal case.  Or so I thought.

Years passed, occupied by the British Bulldogs, Ricky Steamboat, Bret Hart, Curt Hennig, and many more.  I played Champions of the Galaxy religiously, as well as any wrestling video game I could get my hands on.  The rise of the cruiserweights changed wrestling forever.  While I was a diehard WWF fan, I couldn't deny the thrill of watching the smaller guys compete.  Ultimo Dragon, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, and Dean Malenko lead to me watching both Monday night shows simultaneously on side by side TVs in my parents' basement.  I saw the first Hell in the Cell match live at the Kiel Center and drove three hours each way to see the second last show of the original ECW in Poplar Bluff.  I saw The Rock win the WWF Heavyweight title for the first time and was in attendance at the somber RAW the night after Owen Hart died.  I wish I still had the ticket stubs.

Once the Monday Night Wars ended and both ECW and WCW were wiped out, my interest started to wane.  The job was getting in the way and wrestling seemed to be a lot more talk than I liked, although the first year of Ring of Honor kept the flame going a while longer.  My friends that also watched wrestling were drifting away.  Couple that with two of my favorites dying in the space of two years, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero, and wrestling faded into the background for a while.

Sure, I still followed it from a distance and played the Legends of Wrestling card game from Filsinger Games, but I just didn’t have the time or desire to watch wrestling on TV anymore.  I played my wrestling card game and was pretty content.

Finally, after a drought lasting almost a decade, wrestling started worming its way back into my life, like Damien on a hapless victim of a Jake Roberts DDT.  A co-worker of my wife was a backyard wrestler and we went to one of his shows.  It wasn’t great, although the Vortex knew what he was doing, but it got me thinking about wrestling again.

A couple weeks later, I saw NXT was coming to town and the tickets were cheap. I grabbed the Vortex and had an enjoyable evening but it wasn’t enough. Nor was the WLW show where we met Vader a few weeks later.

Glory Pro had already run a couple shows at that point and they were bringing in some bigger name indy guys to work with the local wrestlers.  The first Glory Pro show I went to featured Michael Elgin vs. Cody Rhodes and Naomichi Marufuji vs. Dijak.  My rationale was that even if the rest of the show was crap, how often does Marufuji come to the greater St. Louis area?

Not only did Glory Pro hook me, I swallowed the hook all the way down to my asshole, as my dad would say.  While the bigger names drew me in, it was the other guys that captured my attention.  Since then, I’ve been to every Glory Pro show and bought every DVD, along with some shirts.

I’ve seen Curt Stallion go from being an underdog to a crowd favorite to a cowardly heel.  I’ve seen Jake Something climb the ladder to be Glory Pro champ.  I’ve seen Stephen Wolf go from being a substitute for DJZ to being part of the biggest angle in the company.  Not to mention Jake Parnell and Gary Jay brutalizing each other, Tyler Matrix’s chest chopped into hamburger, Davey Vega getting pounced through the ropes to the outside by T-Money, Hakim Zane becoming a contender, C-Lo Banks being the best referee in the business, and the whole slew of Indy names who have come through Glory Pro in the last year.

Naito!  I’ve gone from not watching wrestling at all to seeing Naito wrestle in the United States in less than a year!  I’ve seen LuFisto, AR Fox, Martin Stone, Ethan Page, Space Monkey, MJF, Shane Strickland, Jeff Cobb, Mance Warner, Air Wolf, ACH, DJZ, Shigehiro Irie, The Lucha Bros, the list goes on and on.

Funny how I don’t want to commit to a three hour wrestling show on TV but I’ll drive an hour each way on a Sunday afternoon to sit on an uncomfortable steel chair for five or six hours to watch wrestling in a crowded legion hall.  The appeal indy wrestling holds for me is a lot like the preference I have for going to smaller clubs to see bands.  There's an intimacy there, the performers are accessible, and you feel like your presence makes a difference, a far cry from a 20,000 seat arena.  I'd much rather risk having Cole Radrick backdropped into my lap than watch the WWE flavor of the month anyway.

And that’s it, I guess.  I’m looking forward to more Glory Pro events this year and I’ve got tickets to the steel cage showdown between Gary Jay and Jake Parnell in Mattoon for Zero One USA in May.  It’s a great time to be a wrestling fan.

Imperial Valley

Imperial Valley by Johnny Shaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Tomas Morales tracks down Juan's grandfather, Jimmy Veeder and his wife head to Mexico for a honeymoon and to meet up with him, with Bobby Maves and Grizelda in tow. Little does Jimmy Veeder know that he's stepping into a hornet's nest of drug dealers and killers...

I got this from Netgalley.

Johnny Shaw's dimwitted duo, Jimmy Veeder and Bobby Maves, are back and in fine form. Jimmy gets married and heads to Mexico, only to stir up trouble as only he and Bobby Maves can. Things have changed since the last book, however. Jimmy has built a good life with Angie and Juan and has a lot more to lose.

As with the previous book, the humor is the star of the show. The book is peppered with hilarious lines, shades of early Joe Lansdale. In fact, if Joe Lansdale ever chooses to die and his estate wants to farm Hap and Leonard out to someone, he could do a lot worse than Johnny Shaw.

Speaking of Lansdale, Imperial Valley reminded me of Captains Outrageous, both because of the humor and of the structure, with the first half taking place in Mexico and the second, when the conflict comes home. While I knew Jimmy and Bobby wouldn't die, there were some tense moments.

One thing did irk me, however. When a book is this hilarious, it kind of deflates the sense of jeopardy. When everyone is cracking wise, it's hard to take the violence seriously. That being said, this book is high on violence but higher on laughs. I lost count of lines I would have uttered aloud if anyone was sitting within earshot.

Honestly, the third Jimmy Veeder fiasco does not disappoint. It's as funny as the previous two. Four out of five stars. Special bonus points to Shaw for including the World's Deadliest Mexican from Blood & Tacos #1 for a cameo appearance.

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